Four years of toil, tears, and typing, Peter was finally to the last page of his great American novel.
“Whirrr-click-click-click,” spat his hard drive in defiance.
With that cold, blue screen, Peter’s novel became, instead, his suicide note that no one would ever get to read.
Some far, far more talented people are posting their stories here.
I’m still treacherously close to the start of this year’s NaNoWriMo, and I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to write yet. At all. Bupkis.
The lack of an entry idea is bad, yes. But not knowing what I’m going to do once I go in is sort’ve par for the course for me. In 2012, the year I actually won, I had a story in my mind about an asshole with a bow and arrows. That was it. As my story ideas go, it was fairly light, even for me. But it sounded fun.
I write voices. Meaning, I write a lot of dialog heavy stuff. But it gives me the entryway I need into finding out who I’m writing about. And then I sort’ve pin story to that. It doesn’t always, or even often, work. But it’s my process.
I haven’t looked at that story, Fwip!, since roughly the point when NaNo ended and I sent in my word count to get credit for the win. It was, as I recalled, an ugly mess. Some of it wasn’t even really writing so much as emails and messages to myself and two of my muses about how stuck I was, where do I need to go, just what the fuck was this whole mess supposed to amount to anyway. I have carried that with me, even with the thoughts that, you know, I wouldn’t mind doing a sequel to that piece of garbage at some point. Not because it’s worth it. Just because I think I have a smidge of an idea and a title for book two.
But that’s all factored on pure ignorance. Because, if I don’t look at what I wrote, how do I know that there’s even anything there? Oh, sure, the muses gave me words of encouragement (during). But that’s how these things work. Talk him down off the ledge before he actually climbs atop it and decides to jump. That’s more helpful than you might realize.
Point being, in a drawer (virtual though it might be), a story isn’t a story. Or maybe it is. Something, something Schrodinger’s Novel.
Today, for no reason beyond me being lost for what else to do, I opened the drawer. I jumped partway in because I was taken by my chapter title (and how I guess I decided to do all of them, a mix of two things for each title). And then I read, again, what was basically dialog.
And I’m maybe a little in love with it now.
That doesn’t mean that there’s really anything else there. Because it’s a small-ish part of a small-ish chapter of a small-ish incomplete book.
But maybe there’s a small-ish bit of hope that it could be something. Some day. If and when I get off my ass. Of which there’s almost no-ish hope at all.
Anyway, because I like it enough, here’s the bit I read. It made me smile. It made me laugh. It made me think, hmmm… This seat of my pants thing may work this year too.
Unedited because Fuck It All.
If only.
Oh, hey, sure. I took the long nap in-between starting this blasted thing and then finally getting around back to it. But that wasn’t entirely unexpected, was it? I knew that I was bad at the blogging habits these days as it was, and then I went and allowed myself to reopen my Facebook page (I think I’d shut it down when I started here).
Facebook in a wonderful sort of time suck run by horrible people. I accept it for what it is, which is mostly a way for me to interact with friends and family that I normally never get to see or talk to any more without it. But I also recognize that it’s controlled by an entity determined to tell people how they should get their information instead of, you know, giving them anything resembling a choice. What things posted chronologically? How about seeing all the posts from something you actually like or are subscribed to? Nope, we’ll be having none of that (and neither will you).
So, you start a blog (or, let’s face it, a Twitter, a Tumblr, a… heh… an Ello), and you write to the ether instead. You lose the safety net of Facebook, but you gain… not being on Facebook?
I disabled my account again yesterday. Disabling is the cop-out. You’re not shutting things down fully. Facebook actually asks you why you’re doing it, and a choice is, “I’ll be back later, this s a temporary thing.” And that’s what I chose, of course. Again, because of the people.
Love the players, Hate the game.
Speaking of games, that’s why things are disabled once more. Because November is NaNoWriMo. And, while I finally made my “win” with National Novel Writing Month two years ago (just shortly after I’d been laid off my job of 12 years), I went from writing 50k to writing exactly nada.
(And now NadaWriMo must become a thing.)
So I’m climbing back on that horse. But I’m not as interested in finishing this year. Just in writing. A little bit every day. If I hit goals, great. If I win, wonderful. But none of that really matters this year.
I just celebrated my 1 year anniversary this month. I’m on six months into my new job (new career is more like it). I still spend every Friday with the best friends anyone could ask for. I get to do a couple webcasts with some newer friends (who are also really great folk). House is still keeping the wind off us. Health is reasonable (although I may have sleep apnea, but at least I have insurance so I get to see my doctor this week about it). And maybe, one day, I’ll get to make another comic.
S’good life. All things considered.
So all that’s owed to me (all that ever is, really) is what I owe myself. What I’d like for myself. And I’d like to write something.
Which is not to say that I have a single clue what I’m doing for NaNo this year. Every attempt (this is my fourth) seems to get a little worse with that. The first year I got a little more than halfway in my progress with a story I’d semi-plotted as comic book 10 years before. The next time, I got about 4k in on a story I’d been wanting to write for even longer (and it was torture the whole way through). 2012 was a newer idea, basically about an archer who was more than a bit of an asshole and, what I originally hoped at least, a story that was supposed to be like an action movie (think “Speed”), but because thematically about truth instead.
This year, nothing. I have several things I could use, but not a one of them has reached the surface to say, “Pick me! Pick me!” Maybe because now, knowing NaNo as I do, I see that giving is something that I care about is just going to kill me when I actively have to break it apart and destroy the idea just to be able to get words down on the page.
As I write this, I’m watching a really gruesome episode of “The Walking Dead.” Two things at once, that’s how I do it. But I think NaNoWriMo can be looked at with some comparison. We have the things and the people we love. We want them with us, always. To protect them. To help them to flourish. But that’s not NaNo. You take what you love to NaNo any more than you take those you love to the end of the world. Because NaNo is ugly. NaNo is struggle. NaNo kills the good.
You take what can survive, what can help you keep moving forward. What you can shrug off losing, and what you can live off the leanest parts when there’s nothing left. NaNoWriMo is post-apocalyptic writing. They say, in some writing advice books and columns, to kill your darlings, but no one should bring their darlings to this kind of environment. You may find something you love in there, by the end of it. But that’s hindsight. And hindsight is fine, but foresight is going to break you.
I was supposed to spend my weekend preparing myself. Cleaning my office up was the big thing. But, again, I’ve discovered I may have a sleep disorder, as I’ve been waking up choking every night. So I instead found I spent my weekend trudging around, catching cat naps in my chair (being upright helps a bit), fighting headaches and sinuses. Procrastination is probably also a part of my process. I abhor homework something fierce. I write for distraction anyways.
So this next month or so, I’m trading one distraction for another distraction. Which means, while I’m sitting in front of my computer screens, desperate to hit my two thousand word count every day, I’m probably going to desperately wish I could go play on Facebook instead.
