The Singing Well is finished

After Note

Dear All:

This November, I participated in National Novel Writing Month, started by nanowrimo.org. The goal was to write a 50,000 word novel by the end of November, having started on November 1st. I wound up writing a 64,000 word first draft of a children's novel titled "The Singing Well" in eighteen days. This averages out to some 3500 words penned per day. This means that my novel is not three times worse than a Hemingway novel, but seven times worse.

I pursued the NaNo nonsense pretty restlessly the last three weeks. I woke and wrote at 5 AM every day, and even drank less. The infernal NaNo backwards clock got into my head. I felt as if each second were being tattooed on my skin, erased, and then tattooed again with the new time--one second less than I'd just had to accomplish the task! I guess I'll write one hell of a sloppy memoir on my deathbed if this is any indication.

Some of the remarkable things I noticed during this process were that my writing style changed considerably. Changed even from what I thought I would write, or would be able to write when pouring through a story at top speed. What I thought I'd be doing, since I am a poet and the story involves a good deal of singing and spell-recitation, was writing poems and witchy rhymes for the characters to use to change their reality. Most of my other prose work has some form of elaborate meditation on inner states, or ornate remembrances. So, I thought I'd have vast descriptive passages punctuated by snippets of limericks, etc. What came out instead was a fast-paced, character and adventure-filled narrative. I found myself chasing after the story, putting down only the minimal notations to forward the action. Shock! "The Singing Well" was not merely magical in its proposed subject matter, but magical in its effect as well.

Perhaps the most interesting thing of all is the love story that occurred. During the writing of this novel, I fell in love with a fourteen year old girl. Her name is Sarah, and she's the heroine of "The Singing Well." Her grit, her fidgety aloofness, her disdain and self-doubt all brought me up into her difficulties and sorrows. Whether these fibrillations are ultimately redemptive or damning, the reader must tell.

The entire production, first draft foibles and all is available online here: http://www.gregglory.com/singingwell/. Personally, I recommend waiting until the draft has at least been gone through once entirely for typos and simple grammar errors. Check back in December.

Happy holidays!

Sincerely,
Gregg

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Gregg G. Brown
324B Matawan Avenue
Cliffwood, NJ 07721
(732) 970-8409
http://www.gregglory.com

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