October pretty much managed to get away from me, I’m afraid, although I did do some freelance work behind the scenes—and one Sunday book feature for the New York Post, noting a new biography of the founder of the ASPCA. (The author doesn’t come right out and say so, but I think Henry Bergh had a few quirks, shall we say, in the psychosexual department, and I tried to get at that in my report.) I guess I knew National Novel Writing Month was coming, but I hadn’t really given much thought to how I was going to handle it this year, what sort of advice I’d be offering writers throughout the month, and how frequently I would be offering it.
Well, we’re all playing 2020 pretty much by ear, aren’t we? As if the ongoing pandemic isn’t enough, we’re two days away from the most important presidential election in the history of the United States, one which seems bound to determine whether the United States will be able to continue as the (imperfect) representative democracy it’s striven to be since 1789—or whether it will descend into autocratic despotism.
My wife and I did our part last Sunday, spending a little over an hour in line to cast our early ballots. If you’re one of the millions who has already voted, thank you; if you’re registered to vote, but you haven’t yet, I hope that you will do so on Monday if that’s an option in your state, or else on Election Day Tuesday.
If, after you’ve done that, you have time and energy for your writing practice, I encourage you to dive into it, even if just for a few minutes. It might not be your best work, but you know what? First drafts almost never are, even in the best of times. That’s why we call them first drafts.
Let’s see how we do, day to day. If you’re able to produce a 50,000-word first draft of a novel between now and November 30, congratulations! If you’re not, don’t worry about it. As my friend Amanda ReCupido, an essayist and comedy writer and children’s book author, tweeted earlier this afternoon: “You can write a novel literally any other time of year and for whatever duration it takes!”