Sharpening my pencils
Back to school has been going pretty decently, but now I’ve decided to kick things up a notch or three. I keep telling you all I neglect the writing portion. I suspect that, as usual, that’s because I have something I really want to say and am avoiding the real clarity writing can give.
Earlier this fall, Chris asked if I wanted to participate in NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. I have always scoffed at NaNoWriMo, because every year tens of thousands of people sign up to write stuff and just don’t. Or they do, and flood publishers with crappy drafts of novels that mean that good novels don’t see the light of day. Or any other number of cynical, jaded things that someone who once aspired to be a writer can think of to talk herself out of actually doing something. So I almost laughed at him, but he was actually asking for moral support while he wrote this month. I can’t laugh at that. That boy has libraries of books inside him, waiting to be written. He’s even got them all mapped out, if he’d just do it.
I, on the other hand, get hung up whenever I try to write anything big or fictional. I get hung up on the whole story arc concept, and want to know what is happening ahead of time. I get stressed out. I make characters I love and then don’t know what to do with them. I freeze. Plus, today my neck decided that the old injury would flare up, and I spent a large part of the day in bed. And why did they choose this month for these things anyway?! Aaah. I guess December would be slightly more challenging, but not by much. Plus, other excuses. Lots of them.
So, when Heather blogged today about NaBloPoMo (National Blog Post Month) I immediately thought, Yay, compromise! The idea of nablopomo is based on NaNoWriMo, but isn’t really restricted to only November. But I think I can commit to a blog post a day, though Thanksgiving week is kind of iffy, being at Granny’s and having company in from out of town. May have to do a few in advance, or just write something very short and sweet for those days. So in other ways, it’s even more of a commitment, because I’m not going to be given any slacker time.
The short of the story is that I’m tentatively committing to both. After all, can’t you tell I’m bristling with self-confidence? Might as well.