A novel in 30 days? How does this sound:
When Tito’s Communist army liberates the Italian city of Trieste as World War II ends, a wave of revenge killings begins. Amedeo, a 50-year-old Communist trolley conductor and trainer of Partisans, must decide whether – and if so, how – to save his brother, a Fascist banker and Nazi collaborator who hasn’t spoken to him in 25 years.
In November, 2010, I signed up for National Novel Writing Month. I think of it as a global writer’s support group on steroids. The idea is to break through all the internal barriers a writer often faces and just put it in writing. 50,000 words. A novel. Just like that. Crank out 1,667 words a day and you’ll get there.
I found out about NaNoWriMo at the end of October. Luckily, I came up with an idea, built loosely around what little I know about the life of my grand-uncle, Amedeo Nassutti. And on November 1, I started writing.
The internal critic had no time to kick into gear. I had a deadline. A specific, day to day goal. And I stuck to it. I wound up averaging just over 2,000 words a day and finished on November 25. I barely nudged the thing over the line at 50,019 words. It ain’t pretty, but the basic narrative arc is there, the key characters are there and fairly clearly defined, the main conflict is there, I’ve sketched out a climax. There are notes and placeholders for stuff I still need to create, and I need lots more research (probably requiring another trip to Trieste) to round out and verify the historical background.
And I came up with the blurb at the top of this article.
I haven’t had this much fun in a long time.
Here’s a link to my merit badge.
