The Great Write Hope

Fifty. Fifty thousand words.

Yes, I'm fricking crazy.

Again.

Still?

Yes, it's probably still.

I'm most likely going to be repeating myself here, but here's the situation. No, not the oompa loompa - I mean MY situation. I want to write. I've always wanted to write. Even when I didn't feel like writing, I still wanted to write. This November, I'm going to write.

I'm taking part in "National Novel Writing Month" (aka, NaNoWriMo), where aspiring writers (and some actual ones) attempt to write FIFTY THOUSAND WORDS over a mere THIRTY DAYS. That's like 2 million fricking words a day... well, it feels like it at times. It's my second venture into the murky NaNo waters, and I'm a little nervous. There's a lot to live up to, especially cause I made it to the finish line last year, I've done more planning this year, and cause I talk a lot of shit to people about how it's not that hard.

Why, though, do NaNo?

Simply, because.

Convinced? No, me either.

I do spend a lot of time trying to get my writing right, when there isn't some alternate deadline attached. Even this sentence, which has taken three hours, feels like it could use some kind of improvement maybe *fix this later*. Some people might call me a perfectionist - I have no idea what they mean nor why they would think that, since I don't condone perfectionism, and some of my friends are perfections.

Okay, I have to stop using that joke.

I do often spend an ungodly amount of time trying to get my words right, which lead to one particular setting of mine being worked on sporadically over an eleven-year period, that ended up being an EIGHTEEN-THOUSAND word outline. YES, OUTLINE DAMNIT. I think I then spent a few weeks writing a first chapter of a mere 500 words using that outline, edited it into a better second-draft, and had a usb stick fricking die on me, meaning all my world-class edits were lost in time. How could I even ATTEMPT to edit that first chapter again, knowing I 'had it right'? Yes, I probably didn't, as time since has shown me, but that's how it felt.

Last year, though, I somehow managed it. I wrote a novel. I wrote it in a month. It was the biggest single piece of writing I've ever done, and it turned out better than I could have hoped for.

Was it perfect? No.

Was it entertaining? N... actually yes! It was.

It was raw, rough around the edges yes, but it had heart. Yes I repeated myself at times, cause it was raw - a little rough around the edges. It's stuff I didn't realise when I was writing, but could see it in editing. Sometimes even the editing was a little rough around the edges... raw.

The miniscule amount of editing I've done on last year's piece though, has opened my eyes a little more. Yes, what I wrote first up was good. When I first read it, I had a mini-cringe, but came to love it. Then I edited. My second draft felt like a revelation... I had unearthed the diamond, and it was now polished and shiny. NOTHING COULD COMPARE ohwait, I read it again. Oh, there's a typo. Oh, that word is used a bit much. Hey, that line is awkward. So on.. so on...

Obviously it could go on indefinitely, but it was a comfort. I might get it right the first time. I might make it righter the second. I could no doubt improve it at every stage, and thinking that I could have it right from the very start was just... stupid. So, given that I've done a fair amount of planning (far more than last year), that realisation has come at exactly the right time.

You needn't think you'll just be writing unfiltered crap. You will be writing unfiltered crap. However hidden in there will be specks of imagination of the rarest sort that must be extracted. You will find serendipitous outcomes. Your characters will not only do things you don't want them to, but that you don't expect them to. You will be sucked into a world every bit as real and engrossing as any you have ever read, and you will feel like the passenger on this tumultuous trip rather than the pilot.

All you have to do is try.

Shifting Gears

Time is like... actually, Time is just like Time.

So, I think that this blog is going to be the last of my time analogies. That, or it's at least the first where I decide to no longer make an analogy to time, though it's possible that some view blog entries might make the comparison.

I've had an interesting weekend. Probably one of my most-filled weekends in some time. I always tend to count Friday night as being part of the weekend, since my brain is no longer stuck on school-night mode (and indeed, this week even Thursday had a healthy dose of that). It wasn't so much a 'party-mode' weekend, but just one with lots of varied events. Kind of like the Commonwealth Games, but without things falling apart. I tend to save the falling-apart stuff for when I don't have anything on, and stay at home with a tub of ice-cream watching Only You, Poltergeist, and When Harry Met Sally. :'(

Hug?

I had work drinks on Friday, which is always interesting. Unlike most work drinks, I went out for dinner afterwards. Yes, there was more drinking, but unlike other times where I've eaten, it wasn't a seedy hotdog at three in the morning before catching the nightride home. The people I had dinner with were friends of a work friend, and of course my friend from work.

Now, I've historically been fairly bad in social situations, though somewhere along the line, I think I've come to have a greater appreciation for myself. Maybe it's the writing thing. Maybe it's the messy legal entanglements I don't speak about on this blog or Twitter, but that some do know about (it's the sort of stuff you share over drinks). Well, not the entanglements themselves, but the progress that has been made through them. It could even be my taking stock of where I want my life to go, and jumping at a chance to carve a niche for myself once again. That is, move out.

It's not often that I really think of myself as funny. I know that I'm a nice person, and yeah, I can make myself laugh, but I guess the bar for awesomeness in my eyes is always a fraction or two past what I can normally achieve.

Somehow, I've been exceeding myself.

I think this year's NaNoWriMo is going to be good for me - it's not just challenging me to stick with things, but to also try and be more social, to organise more than I might normally do, and to really step outside my comfort zone. I found myself speaking a heck of a lot about my writing on friday night, and to my amazement, captivating people with what I had planned. Not only was this not my last-year-established-piece-that-can-make-you-cry-and-laugh-within-30-seconds-of-each-emotion, but it was my as-yet-unwritten 2010 NaNo Novel.

Even just my concept had some people saying I really know what I'm doing.

I think that's where my life has to go next, though - into the writing. While I can do the sort of work that I do, I never feel quite as fulfilled as when I'm doing stuff related to writing. Whether that's writing my own stuff, editing, talking to others about their stuff, or.. really anything.

I once had a dream where I was walking down a road, trying to decide which story I should write. I came to the realisation that one of my ideas was THE idea, the first that'd catch people's imaginations beyond what I could fathom. That idea was once I lovingly refer to as "Once Upon A Time In The Sky".

That's not what I'm writing this year. No... this year's is something different, but not by much. Trail to the Sky. An immediate prequel to the aforementioned subconsciously-noted plot.

I have a great feeling about it, though only time will tell if it is the first step toward a life writing, or if it is merely putting on my shoes.