NaNoWriMo<\/a>. \u00a0And, 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.<\/p>\n(And now NadaWriMo must become a thing.)<\/p>\n
So I’m climbing back on that horse. \u00a0But I’m not as interested in finishing this year. \u00a0Just in writing. \u00a0A little bit every day. \u00a0If I hit goals, great. \u00a0If I win, wonderful. \u00a0But none of that really matters this year.<\/p>\n
I just celebrated my 1 year anniversary this month. \u00a0I’m on six months into my new job (new career is more like it). \u00a0I still spend every Friday with the best friends anyone could ask for. \u00a0I get to do a couple webcasts with some newer friends (who are also really great folk). \u00a0House is still keeping the wind off us. \u00a0Health 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). \u00a0And maybe, one day, I’ll get to make another comic.<\/p>\n
S’good life. \u00a0All things considered.<\/p>\n
So all that’s owed to me (all that ever is, really) is what I owe myself. \u00a0What I’d like for myself. \u00a0And I’d like to write something.<\/p>\n
Which is not to say that I have a single clue what I’m doing for NaNo this year. \u00a0Every attempt (this is my fourth) seems to get a little worse with that. \u00a0The 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. \u00a0The 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). \u00a02012 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.<\/p>\n
This year, nothing. \u00a0I have several things I could use, but not a one of them has reached the surface to say, “Pick me! \u00a0Pick me!” \u00a0Maybe 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.<\/p>\n
As I write this, I’m watching a really gruesome episode of “The Walking Dead.” \u00a0Two things at once, that’s how I do it. \u00a0But I think NaNoWriMo can be looked at with some comparison. \u00a0We have the things and the people we love. \u00a0We want them with us, always. \u00a0To protect them. \u00a0To help them to flourish. \u00a0But that’s not NaNo. \u00a0You take what you love to NaNo any more than you take those you love to the end of the world. \u00a0Because NaNo is ugly. \u00a0NaNo is struggle. \u00a0NaNo kills the good.<\/p>\n
You take what can survive, what can help you keep moving forward. \u00a0What you can shrug off losing, and what you can live off the leanest parts when there’s nothing left. \u00a0NaNoWriMo is post-apocalyptic writing. \u00a0They say, in some writing advice books and columns, to kill your darlings, but no one should bring their darlings to this kind of environment. \u00a0You may find something you love in there, by the end of it. \u00a0But that’s hindsight. \u00a0And hindsight is fine, but foresight is going to break you.<\/p>\n
I was supposed to spend my weekend preparing myself. \u00a0Cleaning my office up was the big thing. \u00a0But, 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. \u00a0Procrastination is probably also a part of my process. \u00a0I abhor homework something fierce. \u00a0I write for distraction anyways.<\/p>\n
So this next month or so, I’m trading one distraction for another distraction. \u00a0Which 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If only. Oh, hey, sure. \u00a0I took the long nap in-between starting this blasted thing and then finally getting around back to it. \u00a0But that wasn’t entirely unexpected, was it? \u00a0I knew that I was bad at the blogging habits[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[20,1],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-everything","tag-nanowrimo","uentry","postonpage-1","odd","post-author-crysctt"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p54o5n-A","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dontaskcomics.com\/captaintemerity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dontaskcomics.com\/captaintemerity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dontaskcomics.com\/captaintemerity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dontaskcomics.com\/captaintemerity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dontaskcomics.com\/captaintemerity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dontaskcomics.com\/captaintemerity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51,"href":"https:\/\/dontaskcomics.com\/captaintemerity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions\/51"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dontaskcomics.com\/captaintemerity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dontaskcomics.com\/captaintemerity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dontaskcomics.com\/captaintemerity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}