Wordy Winter Wk I
Plans for the 90 Day Novel Challenge + outlining recap + intro to this upmarket love story
Welcome to Wordy Winter!
Here’s the Moodboard:
We are taking a mighty and much needed break from motherhood analysis, essays, and formal posts in honor of National Novel Writing Month. I will, of course, still write a love letter, because I’m infatuated with this twelfth of the year.
The next sequence of newsletters are what I call Writer’s Diaries. I’m approaching my first novel draft and fascinated with the process. If, like me, you listen to craft podcasts and watch ‘author-tube’ vlogs while you sip your sleepy time tea, these will be similar, just written rather than recorded.
Today — November 1st! — the challenge begins. I originally planned to sign up for NaNo, use the website, the forums, and relish in the community. My NaNa told me about the challenge when I was 9. Since then, I’ve had a NaNo crush but never been asked out by the right idea. This year, the suitor showed up. When we parked in front of the restaurant, a yellowed banner in the window read CLOSED. On the outside red spray paint scrawled, For good reason!
Writers around the world have made it a tradition accustomed to visit this diner each November and eat 50,000 burgers. Some are making similar recipes at home to recreate it, still calling their meals NaNoWriMo. Some branch off to new, less controversial entrees. Sarra Cannon of Heartbreathings starts The Rough Draft Challenge today. Instead of the standard 50,000 word month, she offers prizes for 4 tiers — 10k, 25k, 50k, and 100k.
Then there’s Kailey
author of my favorite newsletter (In the Weeds — check it out for her Writer’s Diaries. She just got a literary agent!),
CEO of my favorite litmag (Write or Die),
honored member of my favorite literary extravaganza (ChillSubs).
NaNoWriMo is like papa bear’s porridge and chair — too salty, too high. The Rough Draft Challenge, too sweet, too low. Kailey proposes a third option: the 90 Day Novel Challenge.
It begins on November 1st, but instead of a scramble to draft a whole book over the course of a month, spreads a consistent goal across 90 days. She posts daily guides on TikTok and Substack Chat from Alan Watt’s first draft manual, The 90 Day Novel.
This is what I call just right.
I’m painfully aware of my tendency to flake. More often than not, I overcommit in haste and bail on my dreams. My writing life must be protected from this. To make sure I can keep my word to myself in this sacred sphere of creativity and fulfillment, I draw 2 sets of goals for a wordy winter:
Angels
90,000 words in 90 days.
A first draft by February.
1000 words a day (maybe 10 makeup days as well to round up to 100)
Weekly newsletter diaries through November, for sure, maybe longer if inclined
Demons
50,000 words in November alone
1st draft (smaller) by December
1667 words a day
Weekly news reports through November and a swift wrap before December. Onto the next!
I know I can meet my angel goals with the saints Kailey and Alan, but if I best my demons too — whoa.
My writing bestie, Hailey, and I Initially decided on NaNoWriMo. Without any idea about the controversies (one and two) and in search of an external push to write, we committed. It felt ambitious, foreign, maybe overzealous, like signing up for a week long backpacking excursion through the Grand Canyon. Sarra’s alternative seemed like a helicopter on standby, ready to drop the ladder and fly me out if I got overwhelmed. Kailey’s idea sounded like a daily walk for three months around my own neighborhood. Now that appeals. Who gives a rat’s booty about the Grand Canyon???
I am a newly minted mom with a lot of other high stakes priorities to juggle: 8 a full 8 hours of sleep, Christmas movies to watch, pumpkin bread to eat in my pajamas at 2:00 P.M.
In all seriousness, though, the Grand Canyon with a one year old sounds miserable. A good stroll down the street, that’s feasible. I’m really looking for a consistent practice that can fit into my normal life — not burnout.
Here’s what you can expect on Red Gingham for the next few weeks:
weekly Writer’s Diaries — casual snippets of me working out my story.
a love letter to November (at some point)
a pause on the formal-ish Creative Nonfiction essays and the new Wordy Women Wednesday series. (I have an interview with a well known bookstagrammer in the bank, but I’m saving that for December!)
If you’re new to this newsletter, you may not be familiar with the normal MO. Here, I’ll explain that a little bit and introduce myself and the novel I’m drafting.
The Writer
I registered for university declaring English with an emphasis in Creative Writing, the most practical and respectable degree other than pre-med. The program required introductory level writing courses into each of the 3 big genres: poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.
I had zero idea what ‘creative nonfiction’ encompassed. After I took my seat in front of Robb Kunz and watched his dopamine soar when he doted on Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams, I told everyone I knew, “This is exactly what I want to write. I just didn’t know what it was called.”
I’ve always had a love affair with nonfiction. Up until then, I kissed it at masquerade balls, chased after it at midnight, “Please tell me what you are!” All I could go off of was the glass slipper, in my case, a slew of half-baked personal essays on my blog and podcast before I knew the term for that either.
Ashley Wells, my beloved advanced CNF professor took the mask off the genre. She taught us the art of the personal essay, poopoo-ed the criticism of navel-gazing, and presented on a silver platter: hermit crab, braided, and lyrical essays. We workshopped each others’ childhood trauma, identity crises, and worst decisions. I knew that I’d met the love of my writing life. I married my soulmate — creative nonfiction.
But this side I’d seen proved all too depressing. So much of the genre consisted of trauma writing. I respected it. I needed it at times. I also wanted to immerse myself in true stories that inspired, uplifted, and encouraged whimsy in the soul.
Red Gingham was born out of this taste for celebration. I write a love letter to each month as it runs its course, a practice that slows time and steeps me in gratitude and wonder. On Fridays, I normally publish some sort of joyful essay.
Recently, though, a weight settled over this home. The mechanics of my creative mind stalled on a slurry of fears: These aren’t literary enough. My motherhood qualms are all I can think or write about, but they’re heavy. This is a place for celebration. I’m trauma-writing instead! Oh no, I’m starting to sound like just another mommy blog!
I need a break from that conundrum, because I still don’t know how to figure it out. This space is new. I’m getting to know it. I’m getting to know me. All I can really offer as an explanation for what goes on here is this.
I normally muse on some aspect of womanhood — this romantic realm of silk and lace. I marvel at the phenomenon of floating on floating on a 28 day river of energy and emotion. The hands of women tangle with Mother Nature’s. What a delight and a whirlwind.
Some weeks wrestle the tumultuous contrasts of the natural world — pleasure and pain, creativity and survival, beauty and monotony, motherhood and individuality. This upcoming novel dissects so many of those dualities.
The Novel
This summer, I flipped through Google Docs from high school and recovered an old story idea. It was just one scene sketched in a warm up at the bell for English class. I think the prompt was “French Toast,” and I know I’d been listening to Good Directions by Billy Currington at the time.
Although my prose at 17 was terrible, I’m going to share it (cleaned up just enough to make sense).
French Toast
Character write: She’s beautiful, very womanly--petite and curvy. She blows out her hair in a dreamy, classic way so that the bottoms curl kindly. On Sundays, she always makes crepes--always. She plans on making peach crepes this Sunday but realizes she’s missing the peaches. She decides to pick some up. Her mother, who is at the house with her baby boy, says, “Why don’t we just make french toast?”
Dolly declines. “You’re such a creature of habit,” her mom mutters, shaking her head. Then Dolly buckles her son, Louie, and slips into her own seat. A few blocks from home, she remembers that the farmer’s market has just opened in the other direction and turns around to go there instead.
It’s there that she meets a handsome cowboy. He finds her absolutely beautiful, but she’s not looking for love. It doesn’t take much, does it? All you need is a yellow camisole, lips, and they’re sold, she thinks. He asks if he can help her with anything, but she replies, “I’m okay, thank you – just need a couple peaches.” She looks right back down at the fruit boxes to exhibit her disinterest.
There’s a farm animal with him. His momma died, so he’s attached to the cowboy and won’t let him leave his sight. I think it’s a baby horse — just like the paint on my vision board. He’s relaxed, laying in the grass near the Adirondack chair the fella reclines in.
Demi may not take to the cowboy, but her son falls in love with the foal. He asks the farmer twenty questions about him while she picks through a woven basket full of fuzzy, plump fruit. .
“The peaches are my favorite,” he chimes. She nods and continues putting some in her tote, when a cutting board slides into view beside her. “Would ya like to try some plum?” Fleshy, ripe slices lie sweetly on their sides. 11:00 A.M. with an empty belly, she can’t resist. She glances up and thanks him as she grabs a thick sliver then calls Louie for backup. He’s been kneeling next to the foal, petting him with his dimpled hands but pops up and leaps over to say, “Honey, I found horse!”
“Oh, I see! That’s a beautiful little horse. Do you wanna try some fruit?” He nods and the curly haired farmer holds the cutting board out to Louie, who thanks him and says, “Mm, good apple.”
She chuckles and looks up at him again, disarmed by humor, “All fruits are apples for now. That was great, thank you. Can I pay you for these peaches here?”
Demi and Louie stick around for a little bit, and she finally agrees to go out with the farmer.
She has long, caramel colored hair and little hands. He has long, long eyelashes, and they both have little ears. Her colors are yellow, gold, green, and brown, and her hair is golden. She has a bunny’s nose and a big, heart-shaped face. She used to despise how big her face was, but he loves that about her. He says she looks like a fairy.
I hadn’t read the poem yet but now realize it resembles The Woman Who Turned Down a Date with a Cherry Farmer by Aimee Nezhukumatathil.
Over the summer, this scene snowballed into an entire novel concept. I outlined during Lavie’s naps, discovered the meet cute, the first date, the conflict, the backstory.
Initially, I planned plot beats for all the regular marks in a 3 act structure, but I ended up scrapping more than half. They weren’t the right idea, and that shocked me. It nodded toward the existence of a right idea. Of course I toyed with novel ideas all throughout my life. Of course I never stuck with any of them. Something different seeded here.
As I stewed on the characters, I opened my summer spiral notebook and wrote down occasional ideas on the female main character’s backstory. Tiny fragments accumulated over time. I tried to abandon the story, but it just kept reviving in my mind. A fraction of a mosaic formed, and it became tangible, alive, independent of me, different from any idea I’d possessed ever before.
The collector in my mind gathered bits about the landscape and FMC, but the writer refused to really accept it as her own. She refused to attach to another project she had no real intention of completing until one day, she realized it wouldn’t leave her alone and committed.
I still had zero idea what the male main character’s flaws and arc would be until two days ago. I didn’t know what would happen in the second half of the book until I rewrote the second half of the outline.
After the writer mind penned her name beneath the imaginary manuscript’s title, all the tiny me’s in my brain organized meetings during Lavie’s naps to share updates and brainstorm. They even ordered the drafter to try the first few chapters.
The first went splendidly. Character chemistry and depth to the story they had no idea about surprised them. Chapter 2 flopped. I needed more direction with the story and needed to cut unnecessary scenes. I needed an outline rewrite.
This time, an unusual idea emerged for more of a plantser approach:
Make color-coded cards (coffee brown = settings; magenta = romance; peach = chapter numbers; algae green = character development).
Write out all events and story details that could happen — I know there’s a meet cute. I know there’s a first date. I don’t know exactly where. I can write a bunch of options and swap them in and out later.
Place a chapter number, choose a setting, figure out who might be there and what might happen.
Shift all the details around as needed.
The beauty of this approach is that it gives me a starting idea (even a terrible one) that I can easily rearrange/replace. Trying to fill in the blanks gives my brain a simple task and actually activates a process of elimination. My first thought might be a bowling alley — absolutely not. Second I might think of something on the farm — No, too similar to the other scenes, but I like the nature route. Then I think of outdoor date. What about a picnic? — In an orchard! Ding, ding, ding! This process is generative.
But even if I don’t come up with anything stellar for chapter 14, I at least have a filler. After I’ve written the 13 prior, I’ll probably have some better ideas. Still, I may get to a scene I’m not in love with and not have any better ideas. In that case, I don’t know if I’ll skip it and return later or fully flesh out the subpar plan and rewrite in revision. At least I’ll have the option.
I thought I’d creep into NaNoWriMo as a total discovery drafter, but the closer I got to November, the more uncertain I felt about my story. I wanted a plan.
Let me give you a before and after.
Before my plantser outline, I knew the farm stand wouldn’t be my first scene. My FMC wouldn’t look at all like she did in that warm up from high school. She’d have dark hair, dark eyes, and a Greek family. Her name would be Demi (like Demi Moore — full name Demitria), and instead of a little boy, she’d have a young daughter — shy and dealing with some big feelings. Demi would be fresh out of a divorce after discovering her husband’s serial cheating. She’d enter the story jaded, bitter, and all kinds of messed up. (Of course. It is a contemporary romance after all.) This could be annoying, so I’d need to figure out what would make her loveable. She’d be a straight shooter, insightful, intuitive, natural at life. She’d juggle a lot of responsibilities with ease — take great care of her little girl. My readers would see her be a charming mom with a soft heart for her family. She’d joke around with her goofy dad. She would have so much passion for her writing and light up whenever inspiration struck. She’d call people out on their BS.
Her mom would be a warm, cozy, incredibly helpful, nosy, gossip. She’d never keep a secret, air everyone’s dirty laundry — even her own family’s, and mean no harm. She’d be such a good grandma, watching the baby whenever Demi would need to write.
Her dad, a classic dad, kind of awkward about emotions, a wise-cracker, fuzzy in the middle, sometimes a bit stubborn and defensive of his loved ones even when they were rotten.
Demi would feel terribly guilty after her divorce and overcompensate in hope that she could make up for the absence of her daughter’s father. She’d begin the story as a martyr mother without any hope of peace or joy but open up to love again.
Enter Shep, stable, grounded, completely enamored with her, perfect.
His mom would have a juicy side story. So would Demi’s sister.
That’s all I knew.
Now I have a tentative chapter by chapter outline. I know how Shep is tested throughout the story and what major flaws he needs to overcome. I have scenes mapped back to back so I can draft the entire book without wondering what happens in between points A and B and still replace anything I want. I won’t tell you all the nitty gritty details of the story just yet. This post is long enough already.
Next week, I hope to have 7000 words under my belt when I report back. I’ll let you know what triumphs and troubles I’ve run into with the first draft up to that point, what scenes I’ve written, and share some of my favorite details from the story so far.
If you want to stick around, you know what to do!
If you want to know more about me, you can dig through my Instagram and the Red Gingham archive.
Take care and talk soon,
<3 Ally