author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

I've been participating in NaNoWriMo since 2002. How many times have I written a new novel draft? You do the math. Then add a conservative one or two for the trunk novels that I peck at from time to time on no particular schedule. This "don't bother getting it right; just get it down" thing, I have done it a lot.

So you'd think that by now I'd have learned all there was to know about "don't bother getting it right" and "just get it down." You'd think.

Apparently you'd be wrong.

This past week has involved a lot of uncertainty. Lia and Jet light out on the run after escaping Montrose Manor--then what happens? Then, apparently, we spend a lot of time changing motel rooms and arguing... until we finally stumble upon the next possible plot point. Both Jet and Lia spend time with no-good guys they've gotten involved with for dubious reasons, and this goes on for several nights... until something finally kicks loose and I know how the "everybody dies" scene comes together. After that, Jet spends a lot of time in Uberreality (only it's not "time," because time and space aren't real) keeping herself to herself and avoiding all contact with her colleagues and employers... until I finally realize exactly what Chender is up to and what their Employer's reaction to this is and how Jet's next assignment will lead to her own personal There Is No Spoon moment and...

And here's the thing. Sometimes you just have to send your characters out into the formless primordial stuff of story, not to live the plot they ought, but rather as your avatars in the fiction mines, trying to find the next piece of plot. Sometimes you just have to spend 5,000 words writing three nights of arguing and fighting in a motel room, knowing that not a single word of it will make it to the final draft but writing it anyway, because there is no other way to find out what happens next.

And I knew this. But I didn't really know it, not until today. This past week I've been coming back to the book with great reluctance, unwilling to write another non-plot-moving 2,000 words of "And then Lia went for another walk in the desert, and looked at the pretty cacti and the red sandstone rock formations, and nearly got bit by a snake, and 'Michael' met up with her again and they exchanged some witty banter and unresolved sexual tension, and then Lia went back to the motel room and had an argument with Jet, and then Jet went out and had another date with Mr. Totally Wrong Who Might Be Useful, and..." This sort of reluctance is new to me this year, because this year I am determined to finish not just 50,000 words but also the book by November 30. I don't reach "The End" in a timely manner if I'm constantly writing time-waster scenes on my way to the next brainstorm. But I've gotta.

Today it paid off. I opened a brand new blank scene, and, unwilling to start flailing around at Jet Grieving In Uberreality And Being Very Antisocial For, Lacking A Better Phrase, Several Days... I started jotting down the lines that Jet's Employer would say when Jet finally consented to listen. And then I started filling in Jet's thoughts between them. And before them. And suddenly I was writing an actual scene with pacing and movement and revelation and reaction.

And now I know what happens next.

See? It works! But I really need to spend the entire three hours of tomorrow's write-in writing down What Happens Next, because it feels like my characters sure spent a lot of November fishing in the primordial ooze.

But they didn't waste that time. It really was time well-spent. And now, I hope, I really understand that. In my 9th year of NaNoWriMo, it's really about time.

If this were Earth, I would say that days passed. But time is only fiction, and what passes is only me. The eternal now contracts around me to a point shaped like Lia's bedroom. I wrap myself in my human shape, so that I can bury my head beneath the crimson-gold-paisley quilt and breathe her scent where in lingers in the ivory sheets. A copper hair lies upon one of the pillows; I don't touch it, but lay beside it so that its breadth magnifies in my blurred vision. Each moment that passes is the same moment, and each breath I take is the same breath. And yet with each breath the scent fades, and my ability to furnish it from memory fades as well.

As I curl around the pillow, clutching it to my tightly, the voice of my Employer echoes about the room, bouncing off the fictitious walls that are my awareness and my being. Jetta. Speak to me, Jetta.

I hug the imaginary pillow tighter and say nothing.

Jetta. Please come back. You are needed.