I am maybe getting a little distracted.
For one, I slept like crap last night. And early this morning Erin’s alarm went off well before mine. She reset it and went back to sleep. I wasn’t as lucky. Most of the night the cats (Bean and Gaiman) were being rambunctious and, we found this morning, destructive. So even with the melatonin and with my sleep mask and everything, I had a restless night. And that’s not even taking the well-deserved blame that i didn’t get to bed until nearly midnight.
(oh, and now my sneezing fit)
But all of that aside, the last part of my “still awake” time last night was finding a song that is by a band I don’t really listen to (not because I have anything against them, they just aren’t normally on my list) that I guess came out a couple of years ago. And it is practically an anthem for the story idea I was trying to talk myself into doing for NaNoWriMo. Which means, openly, I am admitting now that I’ve been considering NaNo this year. Considering doesn’t mean doing of course. But I was closer to it than I wanted to admit. My real plan was, if I did it, to not talk about it. To just be able to say when it was done if I’d succeeded or not. Because I find that it’s really easy to talk about NaNo coming up, and my big plans for NaNo, and everyone should be really jazzed for me that I’m doing NaNo. And then I get barely started with NaNo and I just wish I wasn’t doing it, and that i hadn’t told anyone.
But here I am, having read a book (pamphlet practically) about NaNo last week. And now I’m watching videos by other more serious writers about prepping for NaNo. And I’m on the NaNo web page looking over the forums. And I’m saying the word so much at this point that I’d probably get great SEO if I knew shit about that kind of thing.
So it’s on my mind.
And last night, that song pops up, and i listen to it, actually watch the video, and it’s so spot on to the ideas I’d been playing with, and even name checks one of the characters (kind of). And I get… a little pissy with myself about it. Because my brain does this. Like I said, I don’t really listen to that band, but it’s not completely far fetched that I could have heard this song at some point. I don’t listen to much music these days, definitely not the radio any more (and when it’s on in Erin’s car, it’s classic rock the whole time). But shit passes through my gaze all the time, and my brain is a bit of a sponge, so I could have. And it doesn’t take a single thing away from what I was thinking of attempting anyways. The idea was half-formed or even a lower fraction, and it was never meant to be something to be taken seriously, only something I thought could be fun to try to write. Like that time with the people who wanted to publish me… I sent them three different things in pretty quick succession, each time saying, “Okay, well that was just a loose idea, but I think what I’d prefer to give you is something closer to THIS!” This isn’t the story I want to tell. But it helps get me to the stories I do want to at some point. Before you play your rock opera on guitar, you start out playing Ode To Joy.
Everything starts with Ode To Joy.
But I hate even having crap ideas that seem to be fully formed in something else. Elements are fine, but too much and I feel like more of a hack than I normally do.
I don’t feel like a hack. A hack gets shit done. It may be literal (literature) shit, but they finish it, get their check, and move on to the next hack thing. So I guess I just feel more creatively bereft in a situation like this.
But that’s an aside and it’s made me reassess the idea, maybe, of the thing that I might do, maybe. Or maybe not to both things.
Still.. here I am. Listening to people talk about writing. Reading about writing. Threatening to join up with others that are writing. So I may as well fucking admit to myself that something in me wants to try this. For good or ill, the compulsion is there.
I would like to do it in a better way though. What’s the point of doing NaNoWriMo every few years if I keep using the same method to fail at it. So aside from being tired and feeling shitty and having nightly allergy attacks that I should probably talk to a physician about… I’d like to figure out a roadmap to building myself a better path at telling a story. I’d like to think more about where my line as a pantser (someone who writes without much of a plan going in) to a plotter falls. Outlines and character descriptions have seeped into my last couple of tries. But they’re always too loose, and too forgiving that i don’t solidify my ideas enough.
I’m also tempted to rewrite something I tried writing (as a pantser) not too long ago. Because it was, just several months back when I still had a commute to think during, something that kept coming back to my mind. It also was developing a soundtrack, which I find compelling in its own way. Songs started to blend with scenes. Some songs actually created new scenes I hadn’t written before. Maybe that will help me bring it all together. Or not. I shouldn’t expect miracles. But I do hear writers say that when you find yourself struggling with a story, it may be that it’s not the story you should be writing right now. And if I’m being pulled back to this other thing, maybe it’s because it’s the right direction for me. It would be easier, sure. It would also probably not make the 50k word goal, but that’s not really something I care about. I don’t want to do NaNo to win a race. I want to do it as one more thing to drive me towards finishing something. Writing something I give a shit about. And yes, I know, the whole first idea pitch I was making I very clearly don’t give a shit about. But I do give a shit about finishing it. Or whatever I decide to write. My “win” would be actually having something done. Hopefully something edited too. Even if it just wound up on my web page or on Wattpad or wherever. Just to be okay with clicking “publish” to any medium.
So I’m going to start looking at letting these distractions be part of my exercises. Like tonight, I thought it would be in place of my writing, and I could have been okay with it. But I guess I didn’t feel like I did enough with it, so here I am doing this too. Maybe that’s a sign that I shouldn’t let up on myself about actually writing shit down. I can research in the easy chair or in bed. It might still be important to waltz back upstairs at 9 or 10 to put a few hundred words down.
Add, don’t subtract. There’s still room for more addition. Okay. No promises how I’ll feel tomorrow, but today I’m going to keep my expectations where they are.
