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Wynelda-Ann Deaver

Challenge the Writer Within

As writers, we often challenge ourselves: write so many words in a day, write in a different style, genre, or perspective. The challenge is one of the ways in which we trick our muse to bid our heeding. There are other times, though, when as writers we challenge each other.

A few months ago, my study group had a writing challenge. Write a scene with a drunken elf, a broken sword and a dragon. My version of that challenge became the short story, Dragon Breath, (published in the October 2003 issue of T-Zero). This month, many in my group are involved in a challenge that could be called mass insanity.

We have decided to participate in National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. The challenge is to write a 50,000-word novel in one month. Specifically, the month of November. As I write this column, it is November 16, 2003 and I am at 21,157 words. I wanted to be at a greater word count. Some of my compatriots in the mass insanity have far out-stripped me. Others are plodding along, getting their words in as they can. The point of the exercise is to write the novel in 30 days, but the greater lesson is in how to get the words down every day.

And I haven't been. Some days I can't: work and family conspire to keep me from the computer. My entire family, both those who raised me and those who became mine through marriage, are behind me 100%. They have always supported my writing, allowing me time and indulgence in letting chores slip, dinner being late, and waving their pom-poms in my corner.

But things change.

I took on a new responsibility at the same time as taking on the challenge of NaNoWriMo. My sister, who is recovering from having 12 discs in her spine fused together and held upright by titanium rods protecting those discs, has moved in with my husband and me. Apart from getting used to having a third in our midst, I am also coming to terms with the amount of care she requires. It's more than just dishes and laundry and cooking. She cannot bend, and so it is also cleaning and helping her walk through the store and making her bed and making sure she doesn't slip further into depression.

And yet, still, I write. Am writing. I've written 21,157 words this month. More importantly, the words set down are words that matter. They are in the style of those that I admire, because when you are trying to make a large word count, those descriptions matter.

Challenges come in many shapes and forms. You never know when the one will come along to spark a short story, or to light fire to your prose. Try them out, they're fairly painless. Here's one to start you off. Write a scene with the following items: a pick-up truck, a broken earring, a woman in an evening gown. Go forth, have fun.

But most of all, write!