Reflection 3: Tranformative

“You managed to write your first draft,” says the metanovel. “You sat down every day for thirty days and you did it. So now what’s the problem?”

“Editing,” I say. “Writing the first draft was kind of fun. There was a clear end in sight. I did manage to sit down every day. But now I’m editing, and editing, and editing, and it’s depressing. I’m not finishing.”

“You’re not finishing because you don’t sit down every day,” the metanovel says.

“I can’t,” I say.

“Why?” the metanovel asks.

“Because I can’t make your pieces fit together,” I answer. “There’s an idea in you and a story to go with it, but I can’t quite find it.”

The author is not alone. The Not Quite Omniscient Narrator doesn’t quite know what the author’s idea and story are either.

“What are you trying to do with me?” Asks the metanovel.

“I’m trying to make you tranformative,” I answer.

The author is right about that, the Not Quite Omniscient Narrator realizes. And it realizes a great deal more, including the story that the author has buried in his drafts and still doesn’t quite understand is there. The Not Quite Omniscient Narrator doesn’t quite know whether or not to narrate what it knows. After a bit of thought it decides it’s best to wait. Discovering the answer himself will build the author’s character.

“What do you mean by tranformative?” Asks the metanovel.

“When I started you, all I wanted to do was to win NaNoWriMo,” I answer. “Any 50,000 words would do, even a 50,000 word shitty draft. When you turned into a self-referential metanovel it was joke. But then I started to get serious about you. I started to write how writing a book about writing a book would transform the author—me—as I wrote. And I started putting in a lot of things that I’d learned and I wanted my kids to know. I wanted you to be a self-referential transformative metanovel and I wanted writing you to help me transform myself. The more I edited you the more I wanted you to be transformative.”

“That’s a lot to ask of a book,” the metanovel says.

“I wanted even more,” I add. “I wanted reading it to help other people who wanted to change themselves. Not just my kids but also anyone who reads the metanovel.”

By ‘anyone who reads the metanovel’ the author meant you, the person who is reading this book, unless you are one of his kids, in which case he meant you when he said ‘my kids.’

“Are you nuts?” Asks the metanovel. “I can’t possibly do that.”

“I’m not asking you to do it,” I say. “I’m asking me to do it. I want to edit you so that you become a book that makes a difference in my life and a difference in others’ lives. And I’m failing.”

But the author wasn’t entirely failing.

“I’m not entirely failing,” I say after a few more drafts. “You are getting better. But I keep running into trouble. Then I give up. Then I start again. Give up again.”

“Where am I going to end up?” The metanovel asks.

I don’t have an answer, so I again give up. But I don’t quit. Several drafts later, I have an answer.

“I’m going to practice what I keep preaching,” I say. “I keep preaching about practicing instead of practicing practicing. That has to stop. It’s time to practice practicing. I also preach about decision, and imagination, and iteration and evolution. And I preach about having faith. It’s time to practice all those things.

“I have my answer,” I continue, “I need to decide that I’m going to finish, and practice imagining finishing, the way that I did in Chapter 1. I need to keep trying things, iterating, and evolving. And most important, I need to sit down every day for long periods of time, and practice, practice, practice. I did it with the writing. And I’m going to do it with the editing. I’ll keep editing and rewriting until I figure out what I want you to be, or until I die, or until the heat death of the universe, whichever comes first. What else can I do?”

“I have faith I’ll be finished,” the metanovel says, several drafts later, after the author put day after day into editing. “And I have faith that if you make me the book that you want to make me, you’ll make yourself the person you want to make yourself. Just keep practicing.”