National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) ended November 30th, and still I miss the camaraderie of shared excitement and despair. Luckily for us Wrimos, its effects continue on into the revising and editing months of December, January, February…

We all have different reasons for fearing to write a novel even though we badly want to. For me, it’s a brain injury that has damaged my ability to organize, plan, initiate. The latter in particular is problematic. You want to, you want to, but you sit there like a lump, for that part of you that initiates action, that part that normally gets you moving, is snoozing in me. Computers and iPads help to initiate many tasks but not to write a novel.

NaNoWriMo to the rescue!

I love NaNoWriMo for the way it makes writing the top priority, gets me to write a new novel, and proves to me that I can do it. The official pep talks, the Toronto regional forum, and tweets from fellow Wrimos around the world, all coalesce to keep me writing. Still, in 2011, in my third year, I wasn’t sure it would be enough. I had an idea, an outline, much of the background reading done for my time travel novel, but the physics behind time travel and envisioning a far future seemed so daunting, my idea so broad, that I wondered if I could hold it all in my head and get it right.

Yet NaNoWriMo isn’t about getting it right — it’s about writing. Just write! is its mantra.

This year, like every year, November 1st arrived with much excitement and anticipation; people could not wait to begin. The combined hooting and hollering on Twitter and the NaNoWriMo website got me into the spirit, and I sat down at my computer, read my outline on my iPad, checked my notes, put fingers to keyboard, paused, and then finally, finally typed. I was so relieved. But could I repeat the next day? I could!

Still, that fear of getting it right hovered in the back of my mind — until the day about three-quarters of the way through November when I got stuck between wanting to have one of my main three characters say something in particular yet fearing she’d sound preachy. I sat there and stared at the words on my screen, at the dialogue I wanted to expand, knowing what I wanted her to say but frozen by this battle. And then the NaNoWriMo spirit kicked me.

Just write!

Be free!

Type whatever you want, damn the consequences!

Cool, I thought. Yeah, I’m going for it! And off I typed. It was freeing. It was exciting. And most of all, it was fun. After that, if I wanted to be ridiculous or outrageous or subtle or go wild on the physics, I was and did. It was revelatory. It’s not that I haven’t been creative before, but usually my writing is fuelled by a sense of compulsion, of needing to write, of desperation to get it done. This time I didn’t have that sense of desperation, and perhaps because of that, the essence of NaNoWriMo was able to penetrate my brain and infect my writing spirit.

It’s December now. NaNoWriMo is no longer behind me to say writing is paramount. Like writers everywhere, it’s hard to carve out writing time and claim it as legit and a priori above all else. But my novel “Time and Space” has claimed me; the sense of fun and excitement that NaNoWriMo gave me, lingers. I am filled with a deep desire to sit at the keyboard and revise. And when that part of me that initiates action is no longer prodded awake, when life screams its usual demands, interrupting my revising schedule, I still have my NaNoWriMo pep talks, which I hoard like precious chocolate truffles, to read and to get me going again.

An excerpt from the beginning of “Time and Space” by Shireen Jeejeebhoy:

    “No escape,” says one.
    “No door you can find,” says another.
    They laugh harder. They’re right. I see no door, no way out. I examine the limp fabric, and abruptly it’s a suit hanging from my hands. I drop it in horror. They bend double, they’re laughing so hard. I pick it up with my right forefinger and thumb and eye it warily. It doesn’t change; it simply hangs from my finger and thumb. I take a firmer grip on it and nothing happens. I inspect it and find its feet.
    One stops laughing long enough to bark, “Put it on!”
    I jump. I glance up at him and immediately back to the suit. I don’t know whether to keep my shoes on or not and then decide it’s their stuff, what do I care if the heels of my pumps ruin it. I don’t want to take them off. I let the suit fall out of my hand, button up my cardigan, retrieve the suit from the floor, find the legs of it, and insert my feet, right foot first. My shoe gets caught in the stretchy, shiny fabric, and I struggle.
    They stop laughing and watch me maliciously.
    I try again. Suddenly the right leg of the suit opens up and my foot slides down easily into the foot of the suit. I gulp but duplicate the movement with my left foot in its shoe. I stand up and start to pull the suit up. It’s like panty hose, and my skirt’s bulk is bigger than the suit. I try to stuff it in because I’m not taking off my skirt. As I stuff one section in to one leg, another section flops back out. The boys’ crack up, but thankfully the walls absorb their high-pitched cackles. I persevere, pushing more skirt into each leg of the suit, trying not to expose the ugly topside of my panty hose. The suit bulges unattractively; lumps and bumps sprout wherever I’ve been able to shove in my skirt. Finally I have the suit pulled up to my waist, and I’m exhausted. I pause to catch my breath. And I look down at the results of my effort. My skirt in the suit is like a muffin top and feels just as bloated.
    The suit morphs.
    The lumps and bumps disappear.
    My skirt is sucked down into the legs.
    I suck in air, suck in air. I scream and scream and scream. I cannot hear myself. I cannot even feel the screams in my throat. But I can’t close my mouth or stop exhaling through my vocal chords. I want this awful suit off.
    Suddenly I’m sitting down, the wind blown out of me.
    One boy growls, “Finish.”
    I wipe my face from forehead to chin, stand up, and pull on the arms and shrug into the shoulders of the suit. I reach for the zipper to close the front, but there’s no zipper, no buttons, no velcro. I frown at this puzzle. I hear a choked chuckle and look up. They say nothing; they are too entertained by my perturbation. When I look back down to find some way to close the suit, I see the front edges of the suit moving towards each other, fusing, leaving no seam, making the suit into one fabric. My chest heaves hysterically.
    “Watch.”
    I look up at the boys. They step back, and in sync, their upper eyelids drop slowly, deliberately, stay shut for shorter than a second but longer than a normal blink, then as they open, out of the back of the boys’ suits arise hoods that pull over their heads, cover their faces, and fuse with their necklines so that the white fabric becomes one from their feet to their heads. My heaves turn into quick shallow breaths. One blinks again, that same slow blink, I feel something wispy cover my face. I reach up to touch my face. I don’t feel my face. I feel something soft yet not there, something that prickles and lets my fingers sink into it so that I can feel the edges of my cheekbones. I see clearly, as if nothing is covering me, yet I know I’m as covered as they are. My lungs don’t want to work anymore, my heart beats to get out of its rib cage, and I become dizzy.
    “Sit down.”
    He doesn’t have to order me because my swimming senses have sat me down already. I can’t breathe, and panic rules. From somewhere rises the thought: I must gain control of my breathing. I reach into my memory back to a friend during university who’d taught me deep breathing. I hear her instructions and obey. My breathing fights me, and I fight it. And as I struggle to gain control, one of the boys blinks that blink again, staring at me much like a cat at a mouse, and a shimmer appears before me and then is gone. They look at each other, laugh out loud, and start dancing. Or at least, I think that’s what they’re doing. It vaguely reminds me of football players celebrating a goal, no, a touchdown. I forget all about my breathing, for their contortions are too weird. This place is too weird. I must be in a dream, caught in a nightmare, thinking too much about my fortieth. I stare hard at the white walls, willing them to disappear and become the soft tangerine walls of my bedroom. And that’s when I notice that the walls don’t actually end in corners. They’re not round either. School-era geometry floats back from the past, and I think: maybe this is what the inside of an ellipse looks like. Smooth, never ending, yet beautiful as if it could cut the wind, creating no wave to show it’s been there. Seats emerge from the walls here and there. On the other side of the dancing boys, the wall coruscates as if it’s about to display something.
    The boys stop and leer at me, their grins self-satisfied. They nod at each other, and I feel a faint lurch. And then I have the oddest sensation. I feel like I’m moving yet not moving. I feel like my thoughts are with me then behind me. I feel like every cell, no, every molecule is forming and dissolving and reforming in me. I feel as if the suit is the only thing holding me together. The walls and the boys become semi-transparent, as if every other molecule in them has disappeared. I want to rub my eyes but cannot move. I want to yell for help, even though there’s no point, but cannot open my mouth. I want to run, but I’m fixated like a cobra’s victim.
    My boss is going to be pissed. Peggy and Sue won’t have anyone to take to my fortieth birthday lunch.

___________

Shireen Jeejeebhoy was born to English and Parsi parents, grew up in Bombay and Toronto, and received a B.Sc. in psychology from the University of Toronto. Her first book, “Lifeliner: The Judy Taylor Story,” won the 2008 Reader Views Reviewers Choice Award for best biography. Her first novel, “She,” has just been released and has already received a 5-star review on Goodreads. And her collection of short stories is now available in Kindle format. Jeejeebhoy is working diligently on her next two novels. When she is not writing, reading, taking photographs, she hunts for good coffee and sensational chocolate.

Connect with her on her website and follow her on Twitter.