David Woolbright is a Professor of Computer Science at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia.  A mathematician by training, he’s taken a couple of writing classes over the years at Davidson College and Oxford University. Last year, he wrote a novel. I’ve read the first couple of chapters, and it’s really good. Here’s what it was like to accomplish this:

I didn’t expect to write a novel.   And I only had a couple of vague ideas in the back of my head about possible novel topics when I signed up for Elizabeth’s first writing course at the suggestion of a friend.  I did have some free time, and I thought her course might help me learn how to build a plot for a short story, or perhaps a first novel that I might write sometime in the future.

I really had no idea that the first course was preparatory to writing a novel in the 2008 NaNoWriMo write-fest.  So when Elizabeth suggested we decide on a topic for the novel that we would write in November, I complied, but I never seriously believed there would be enough time to complete such an ambitious project.  I would enjoy the first, preparatory course and bow out.

Somewhere during that first course I changed my mind.  I found the writing exercises that Elizabeth prescribed were just what I needed to free a creative urge which I had long ignored and suppressed.  Amazingly, I learned to build a plot – and not simply the plot of a short story, but the plot of a full-length novel.

The online community of fellow writers who were enrolled in the course was especially encouraging.  We cheered each other on in our virtual classroom.  By the end of the month I decided to take the NaNoWriMo plunge and write a novel.  It was now or never.  Stopping at that point would have meant letting down my classmates and myself.

November was grueling.  Writing sixteen hundred words a day is not easy to do.  But I did it.   And in doing it, I learned that the most important thing is to keep writing and never look back.  Send your inner editor on vacation until the task is done.  Edit later.  I wrote so many words in November!  When I reread the novel it was like reading something that another person had written.  I didn’t remember much of it.  The interesting thing is that I liked what I was reading.  It was far from perfect, but I wasn’t embarrassed by it.  In fact, I was proud of it.

I can highly recommend Elizabeth’s courses as a way to get moving, no matter what  your level of expertise as a writer.  She has an amazing literary sensibility that you can leverage for your own work.  Her courses are crafted with just the right number of exercises, phone calls, and encouraging words.  The sequence of courses flow seamlessly to help lead you to a finished work.

I wrote a novel last November – looking back I find it hard to believe, but I did it.

Gretchen Atwood took part in the Book Writing Cycle last year. She blogs about “Sports Race Politics America”

Last year I wrote the first draft of The Lost Championship Season, my nonfiction book about the racial integration of pro football in 1946, with the help of Elizabeth Stark’s classes and National Novel Writing Month. I can’t remember most of the details of that experience and for that I heartily credit both Elizabeth and the wonderful folks at NaNoWriMo.

Let me explain.

Early last fall I had been lurching this way and that trying to get traction with the draft of my book. I am a hard-headed midwesterner and thus prone to both “go it alone” on projects and beat my head against a wall with the fervent belief that if I just keep adding more effort to a goal I will get there.

Turns out I was wrong. For some people writing works as a completely solitary pursuit but I needed more. I needed structure, community, and inspiration. The Book Writing Cycle and NaNoWriMo provided that.

NaNoWriMo identifies one of the biggest blocks to actually finishing a draft–worrying that it isn’t good enough as you go and shouldn’t I really tweak that section more before moving on?–and bludgeons it with a sledgehammer. The only rule? Hit your word count. Doesn’t matter how good it is, how much you’ll rewrite it later, whether you’ll cut the entire scene or say, “Screw writing!” and join a convent afterward. Just get the words out and move on to the next day. Don’t look back, don’t hit the brakes, just write.

So 1667 words a day was my goal. And Elizabeth’s daily check-ins, weekly phone calls, and online message boards were the perfect complements to NaNoWriMo. I could have tried NaNoWriMo by myself and I would have failed. Why? No additional structure and accountability, no community of writers to struggle with and be inspired by. My goal of completing a draft had now been committed to other people. I loathed the idea of failing in front of my peers. And I got great suggestions from Elizabeth and the other writers when I got stuck. We even developed some friendly competition and gently egged each other on to greater accomplishments than we would have achieved otherwise.

And the exercises, though geared toward fiction, were a great help to my writing as well. The essentials of good storytelling apply whether doing narrative nonfiction or fiction…compelling characters, tension, movement (action or emotional), etc. The exercises helped me increase narrative tension (both within a scene or within a segment of the story), address weaknesses in the pacing of my book, craft compelling scenes and improve the dialogue. Sure, I couldn’t make up whatever I wanted to but I could choose to describe someone’s conflicted actions or draw attention to what he/she did *not* say in a similar way a fiction writer could.

I don’t remember the specifics of the day-to-day writing of that first draft because I achieved the mindset of “whatever happens, keep writing” and so I did. I hit snags and I wrote some strong passages and it all just kept flowing into the draft. To this day it is one of the writing accomplishments I am most inspired by. Sure, finishing a book is also challenging. But getting the first draft done, in a month no less, shows how incredibly *possible* writing a book really is.

“Writing about the novel counts toward the 1000 words,” Dorothy said. She’d been charting and process options for days and was ready, just that day, to return to the writing. But she’d never stopped. That was her point.

Perhaps I could have integrated my brain and my storyteller right then. I’d be unstoppable, really, if they could only work together better. But in fact, I did write about 500 words of scene, and produced something unexpected and exciting that actually taught me something about what I was up to, also. And then I did a bunch of exercises and wrote the rest of my words, and then some, about the novel.

Now I’m on vacation. I really wanted to keep the writing going throughout driving with the two toddlers (and Angie) to Santa Barbara, and though the family festivities. But instead, I am going to have to step it up, hard, when I get back. I am on deadline. That’s the second secret offered up in today’s blog.

Secrets to writing the second draft, summary:

1) Writing about the novel counts as writing. But only so much. Then you have to get back in there and see what happens.

2) Writing for a deadline that matters to you will make the wishy-washiness of your daily options give way to the force of that looming hard stop.

I took my sons to the Little Farm in Berkeley’s Tilden Park this afternoon. We’ve been taking them to a lot of memorials without knowing what, if anything, to say to them. They are, after all, only 25-months and 21-months, just getting the hang of having been born. How would we explain death to them? So we just pull our their khakis and button-down shirts and let them play in the side yards of the memorials.

On our way out of the the Little Farm, we crossed a wooden slated bridge, and through the railings, we saw a turtle floating in the water, its head straining up the the surface while the rest of it relaxed in the murk of the pond. We often walk a ways down along Jewel Lake in search of turtles; last time we had seen not a one, so we were excited by this guy floating there. We watched him and talked about him for a while until suddenly he tucked his head, flipped over and dove down far under the surface. Gone.

“More turtle,” said Leo.

“More turtle,” Charlie echoed.

Angie and I are getting used to these kinds of demands–more fire engine, more excavator–which is to say, demands which we cannot willfully meet. And it occurred to me that my boys are inevitably learning about impermanence, about the lack of control we all face repeatedly, whether we accept it or not.

I am not much more evolved than they are when it comes to what I want. More Aunt Lesley, for example. What do you mean, she is gone and there is nothing you can do about it? That makes no sense. There is so much you have control over. How can you not have control over this simple desire of mine?

So tucked at the bottom of this little koan is a writer’s confession. I have begun a new draft today. I have written 1000 words plus a few more to top it off. I have made plans and promises to myself; I have set goals. Now I am going public. It’s a risk, but since part of my life’s work is writing and part of my life’s work is helping other people to write, it seemed “in integrity” to admit this to you.

There is undoubtedly a link here–something about what we cannot control. Sure, I can only say, This is what I want. This day has been given to me and this is what I will do, this is what I have done. But that effort of will seems qualitatively different than fighting the gods. Most of the time it seems different enough to be worth the sweat. We do what we can.

Care to tell me what commitments you have made–and kept–today? I’d love to hear.

I hope you are hearing this in the grovel-y, growl-y voice of the Cowardly Lion doing his own call and response with the word “Courage!” Deadlines and courage are much the same thing in the life of the writer. The one forces the other, round and around. You have a deadline, you find the courage to produce. You have courage? You create deadlines for yourself. Sign up for readings, enter contests, submit your work, create a group, take a class, hire a coach, sign a two-book deal, whatever it takes.

My friend Kendra told me the Something from Nothing story at Habitot Children’s Museum the other day. The small underground museum was crowded with toddlers running and playing with trains, paint, water and baby dolls, plastic groceries, farm equipment. Not so far from the clubs where Kendra and I first met a dozen years ago, trading stories in the din and passing dates back and forth the way we now pass babies. Drinks instead of snacks . . . Anyway, she told me that she had two copies of this book Something from Nothing, about a grandfather who makes his grandson a jacket. After a while, the jacket is worn out, but the grandfather says, “There is just enough material left to make a vest.” So he makes a vest for the grandchild. When the vest wears out, there is enough material to make a scarf (say–not remembering exactly, as fatigue has replaced drunkenness in these new “clubs”), and when the scarf wears out, there is just enough material to make a button. Then the button falls off and is lost. “That’s okay,” the grandfather says, “for I think that there is just enough material left to make a story.”

That’s it, folks. You work with what you have and you stretch it in service of those you love. Kids form a kind of deadline. They make you realize that you have precious and limited time, that life is its own deadline.

There’s a great twenty-minute talk by Elizabeth Gilbert on genius at TED. Elizabeth Gilbert wrote the hit book Eat, Pray, Love, which Angie calls Eat, Pray, How Barbie Got Her Groove Back. This is a talk about doing your part–doing the work. She’s had enormous success, and now, she says, people look at her with an expression of . . . doom. What can she do to top this success? The talk is worth listening to. It builds to a point much related to my own point today, but rather more joyfully and with a large audience and a standing ovation at the end. But I guess the bottom line here is you’ve got to do it in the back room of a strange cafe with E=mc2 (don’t actually know how to do squared on my computer keyboard!) painted across a black brick wall of planets and DNA structure with only the cell phone conversation of the guy in the corner as accompaniment. Take the evidence of life, your own waking and sleeping dreams that keep telling you stories, the richness of what’s around you as encouragement. Take the growing word count (what as a child I  fantasized would be a stack of pages beside a typewriter), the hours clocked, the clicking of the keyboard as applause.

And find, force, create a deadline. A real one. Invite your friends over to a party to hear your latest story . . . and then write it. Do what it takes to make the work urgent, and then do the work. Cut your judgment about how great or terrible it is out of the loop until you’ve got a productive rhythm that serves you and can’t be broken. If you aren’t writing, it really doesn’t matter how good the writing that you’re not doing is, does it?

Declare your deadline here. Let’s have it now.