Reconciling Saints

I decided that I'm taking the plunge again... and then again I'm not.

That's right, I'm going to take part in NaNoWriMo this year and see how I do with work, school, and book.

I'm making a huge wish that this will work.

I'm going to try out the first week to see how I do. From there, if it works out ok, I'm going to take time to write each day - that is all. I'm taking time to write for the month of November in hopes of getting 50,000 words, but really just trying to get any.

I even updated my NaNo profile with info on the book, a cover (that'll do for now... see above) and everything!

As I was updating my profile and fiddling with the synopsis and excerpt, I got tingly... the kind of tingly I get when I'm writing and really into it. It made me want to write more right here... in the middle of the day... at work! I even tightened up the opening/excerpt as I added it and had to stop myself from doing more.

Want to know what it's about? Go here to check out my NaNoWriMo info.

So I'm back to working on Clara a little more... daily.

I finished last night with a word count of 50, 080 according to the site once I uploaded my file. I'm a little impressed with myself as I'm usually a little distracted, but I stuck with what I said I was going to do.

:)

It shows me that I should stick to a schedule because it will allow me time to write, even if it's just for practice.

So, what did I win?

I won:

• a few good stories - mostly complete except for editing
• some great ideas to explore
• more proof that I can do anything once I put my mind to it
• a new schedule for my writing

First, though, I'm going to go read some books.

I've started NaNoWriMo again. This is my 3rd attempt... of which I have a 50% success rate. Lemme tell you, having to work a night job last year, my prime writing time, I totally and utterly failed!

For those of you that don't know, NaNoWriMo takes place in November. It is National Novel Writing Month. In that month, the writers who participate strive to write 50,000 words (the word count that is considered a novel) in those 30 days. The goal is to just write so as not to get caught up in all the second guessing and editing that one can get caught up in when left to one's own devices. You make that push in order to cull something, anything, out of a bunch of words that are spewed onto paper or screen.

The thinking is that in the end, you might not have a finished novel, but you'll have the good beginnings of one.

As a person who favors the short story format, this hasn't been so successful for me. The first year I tried it and determinedly made the goal, I was left with... mush. Really, I still look at it and think... that's an interesting idea... and maybe I can make a short story out of it... but not much else and definitely not a novel. This is why I think I barely even tried last year. I didn't have much direction other than the way I begin any short story I write: a simple idea that might be a paragraph... or might be a few pages.

This year I decided I'd tailor it more to my liking. I'm still pushing for 50,000 words, but I'm aiming for short stories.... 5- 10 at 10,000 to 5,000 words each to be edited after November. The key is to get any idea (10 max) out there and to crank out what could be considered a short story in that time. I like to think of it as making a collection of short stories for me to whittle down and edit.

It's working. I've given myself a daily minimum word count and as long as I can do that, I figure that I'm pretty solid. Yesterday was hard to do (maybe because it was my first day?) but today was pretty freakin' easy. I would still be writing right now if this wasn't already such a tough work week and I knew I needed my sleep after having had little of it since last Thursday... or maybe it was Wednesday... anyway, you get the picture.

I'm excited... more excited than I have been in a long time. Maybe it's because I've finally gotten how to do this on my terms, and maybe it's because I'm just doing it.

I've come to think of what I'm writing as Shards of Glass - as a title, that is. I tentatively entitled my "novel" Glass and currently all I'm getting are shards. Some are totally disconnected and have nothing to do with anything except trying to get me to the next point, to break through and continue to form the story.

Last night's writing was more of an experiment to spew everything that's in my head out so there are some sections that look a lot like this:

There are many ways that this story can go and sometimes, like those stories, I can be overwhelmed by choice. I remember a story I read that a classmate of mine in University had written where the characters were all standing around having a beer as the writer went out to have a drink trying to figure out what came next. At first I didn’t get it, but once the brilliance of the idea came across I had to wonder, did I just not get it or did he just not convey it properly? Both? I dunno, hard to say.

I leave my characters to sit and drink in lounges waiting for me to figure out what comes next all over the place. Perhaps there’s a bar that they’ve all made so that they could keep each other company.

The scene would be something like this:

Anastasia had been sitting in the parking lot forever waiting to see where it was she going to drive off to.

“Fuck it,” she declared, taking the keys out from the ignition and grabbing her things into her pockets. (I suppose stuffing her things into the pockets of her jackets, would be a more accurate way of putting it.)

She watched other patrons she vaguely knew or had heard of enter and exit the bar. Some were outside smoking as they were wont to do as, they could never figure out if the bar had actually allowed smoking in it or not. Laws came and went so quickly and the author had a penchant to change her mind that came and went at her whim.

She passed by a group standing next to the door and figured she’d check in on them later, if they decided to come in and hang out or leave.

On entering the bar, she spotted a seat that seemed to have been pre-cleared for her that night.

Maybe this was all pre-written too, she thought.

She took a seat and asked the bartender for a gin and tonic. Much like what she thought would be appropriate as that had been what she drank in those days.

“I’m Mike,” said a voice next to her.

She swiveled in her bar stool and directed herself at Mike.

“Mike? You’re Mike? Thee Mike,” and before he could answer, she said, “Nice to meet you.”

Mike looked in place and yet out of sorts. It was the only thing he could do as he was a non-character here in this world. He was an idea, a muse of sorts. He was inspiration.

“I know you but I don’t think we’ve met,” he said extending his hand.

She took a drink and shook his hand.

“You I know well,” she nodded and drank again. “I seem to have a lot of lore on you.”

“Is this all based on what could have beens? Is this all based on things that She’d like to do? I’m not exactly understanding what’s going on here. I mean, is this all based on Her whims to leave or not? Stay and figure things out or change?”

“Pre-cisely!” Anastasia winked and took another sip.

“I’m a bit more of a legend around here as the my story wasn’t supposed to have a neat little ending. My story had only to do with my getting over you. You’re not in it of course, outside from my understanding and knowing of you. Well, and how you affect me.”

Mind you that's just me throwing up words on a screen so there's no editing that has been done to it. I just thought I'd put that out there so that you all knew I was still writing, still working things out and not just lost to the void.

This year I decided to do it again.

November is National Novel Writing Month and some of us crazies sign up here and challenge ourselves to write at least 50,000 words/ 175 pages by midnight on the 30th of November. I tried this in 2008 and succeeded (yay!) so I thought I'd try it again. Hopefully this time I'll take that challenge to do more than just hit my word mark.

My friend, Chloé is also participating this year and I wish her the best of luck!

:D

OK!
I have signed up for NaNoWriMo! YAY!

I had an epiphany tonight ... and yes, it started out as a revelation.

I NEED TO DO WHAT IT IS I'M SUPPOSED TO DO!!!
Namely, write.

I will die otherwise.

Also, YES! I'm drunk.

So I know that I haven't been on a lot lately and I've just been posting bits and I am very sorry and I miss my little blog.

The thing is that November saw me attempting NaNoWriMo, plus the Thanksgiving holiday, and I just had very little time to do much else. It seriously zapped me of all but the energy that running or spin class helped me regain.

December found me winning NaNoWriMo (50,056 words submitted by 11:55pm on Sunday, November 30th) and instead of being OVERJOYED on Monday... the vile green negativity monster reared its ugly head and I felt exhausted. EWW! Mainly I think it was just shear exhaustion, so I gave myself a week off and decided to do nothing but CRAM my social calendar and listen to lots of music!

The good news is that I let myself do all sorts of things that I hadn't been able to do. On Tuesday I went to see Un Conte de Noël with Kat. Wednesday was just as bad as Monday and I felt sick and exhausted again. Thursday was better and Pocket arrived! We went to Tony Starlight's for dinner and a show with Linda Lee Michelet doing Peggy Lee songs. The food was excellent, the staff was better than excellent and the show was magnificent. She's playing again on the 18th and we're hoping to go.

We did soo many things that I'll post on later, however, I wanted to explain that I was exhausted/busy/ exhausted again...

I will be posting more, I promise.

Now...for an early bed! WEIRD!

So...
in case you didn't know... NaNoWriMo is over and...
(click on the title of this post up there to go to my NaNoWriMo stats)

I had to spend most of Sunday writing and it didn't end in a spot where I'm even finished yet, but that's ok 'cause I at least made it to 50K! So I'm going to finish it off and then end it.

I feel a little happy, sort of scared and very tired.

Happy that I did what I said I would do.

Scared because, well it's not finished exactly and I want to finish it. Not only that, but I'm scared of what might happen to the story. I mean... can I do anything with it? Will I just keep writing until I find something that I believe in enough that I want to put out? Scared also of... well is the idea even any good? Yeah... the ugly green monster is rearing his head.

Tired because I was up 'til midnight (duh!) finishing off what I needed to to meet my mark. My friend Stephen called me as I had uploaded my "novel" and had finished typing in the synopsis & an excerpt. We had a challenge going and he wanted to know what had happened. We talked 'til about 1am.

I just HOPE... that I continue this streak, and that I can follow through on everything I want to do.

Today, maybe it's the tired speaking, but that hope seems very small. You'd think that after the things we do we'd be hopeful, but somehow, I'm fighting the urge to belittle the whole thing. *makes a face*

Perhaps I scared myself with what I can do... perhaps I'm just tired. I really wish I could stop thinking about it this way.

Writing.

I've been doing a lot of it these days. I've got my little space here, ourpdx.net where I don't post nearly as often or nearly enough like me, the odds and ends that I scribble in the many journals I keep lying about, the submission for Ashley over at Nostus Cookbook that I promised her a month ago and there is the novel I'm writing for NaNoWriMo. Then there are the projects that have gone by the wayside, like Waiting for Amanda and my websites.

Writing is my lover and my enemy. It's loved and hated. It's being naked but safe.

I guess you could say it's like sex... one wonders about how the body is viewed, how good one is, if one is really loved and yet, it's put out there, vulnerable. Writing, for me is very much like that. In a sense it's sort of a no-brainer, you do it 'cause you love it... and the person... sometimes. heh. It's an expression and this is how I choose to express myself, this is how I feel it. So I don't think, I just do.

It's also a lot like a relationship: it's perfect, it's horrid, maybe it's not for me, of course it's for me, I need to work through this.

These nights I've been struggling with the writing. It's a chore, but it's a chore I love, that I get caught up in. I do it because... because I love to. I think about that because a lot of people ask me what I expect to get out of it. Well, nothing really, except for the very act of doing it. When I don't write... it irks me, I feel out of it. Then again, when I do it, I question it all the time.

Ibsen wrote, "To write is to preside at judgment day over one's self." I cannot think of a better way to describe it.

Would I love to be able to write all the time and make my living off of it? Yes! Would it drive me mad because of how hard it is to try to come up with something without over-thinking it? YES! Do I think I can cut it? ... Maybe.

The point, mainly, is that I love to write, with all my heart, with all my soul, with every particle that's me. It's a labor of love. It's what I need to do. How it's done, whether I get paid for it or not, that doesn't matter. The problem still lies in that sometimes in the midst of it all, it scares the hell out of me! However, I'm learning that I can't help but do it, and the more I try to do, the more I want to do, and fuck the questioning of it! I find myself asking what I tend to do with the finished novel (as I will finish it!), and then what, and then what after that?

Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn, I just want to do it!

*Note: I'd like to thank IAMX for the title Naked But Safe as I can't get the song out of my head and the title worked perfectly for my thoughts on writing.

Third week of NaNoWriMo and I find myself grounded for not hunkering down last week and keeping my nose to the grindstone! I was too distracted with previous engagements (Peter Seller's The Party for movie night on Monday and Ground Kontrol on Tuesday for game night) and with inspirational and... dare I say, outings in the name of research (ourpdx.net meetup and ignite Portland 4) to do so. Since I was not responsible... I'm grounded for a fortnight!...even though the latter 2 did give me much inspiration and were GREAT in just what they were.

ANYWAY...

grounded. yeah.

I'm finding inspiration in dancing, quotes and music. Most importantly, Jesca Hoop as I find her stuff to be very fitting for my writing (especially Dreams in the Hollow).

So for those who are hunkering down with me for the last half of NaNoWriMo... here's some inspiration from my favorite, Neil Gaiman:

"By now you're probably ready to give up. You're past that first fine furious rapture when every character and idea is new and entertaining. You're not yet at the momentous downhill slide to the end, when words and images tumble out of your head sometimes faster than you can get them down on paper."

Now... to the grindstone!

I feel like I've been gone forever and yet I went no where!

Well, technically, I did go to LA last weekend (I'll post about that later... when I can provide photos), but you know what I mean.

I've decided I have to get to focusing on what's going on here with me, in all aspects.

To begin with, I told myself that THIS time (...with feeling) I'm going to participate in NaNoWriMo
since I think that this time, I can do it and not talk myself out of it.
For those of you who aren't in the know, November is National Novel Writing Month. Basically, you spend all of November trying to write a novel (50,000 words) - no editing allowed! You're basically just getting it all out there to see if you can do it. I decided that this year, I'd go ahead and run this marathon for writers and see if I can finish.
Anyone wanna join me?

So yesterday this kid at Mother's Bistro called me Ma'am and would ALWAYS do so. Do I look like a ma'am to you?! I do?! I dunno... someone should tell that kid that using ma'am all the time and with everyone is just... weird and bothersome.

*snorts*

... ma'am...

I'm considered a Lord in some lands, kid! I have photographic proof of this:


I'd like to thank London for this peecture. It's ever so great!

I have a new job! I love it and they sorter created a position for me as they knew they needed help but weren't sure what and they basically took a look at my resume and said, " yes please!" So they want to utilize all my mad skillz yo! Heh! Anyway, the guys are nice and the job has all sorts of aspects that I'm learning and it's really very exciting and... I love it!
I also love that I work in Cedric's building if ONLY for right now. It's fun!

Other things I'm doing:
-sweating like crazy at spin class 3 times a week... and loving it!
-trying to do better at keeping in touch with all my friends *hello out there!*
-putting plans together with Kat for Kat's Birthday European tour 2009! That's right!
-whining a lot (I'm not proud of this one, but it's true)