"Na No Wry Moe"

When I started this blog, eleven months ago, part of my secret agenda was that I, like millions of people out in the world, wanted to be a writer.* I wanted to be famous as Terry Pratchett or CJ Cherryh. I wanted to be rich as Croesus. (Yes, I know writers everywhere say that they do it for love, that you can’t get rich writing, that very few make it to the national stage, yadda, yadda, yadda. But I’m thinkin’, they just don’t want to share the wealth. If they can scare off a slew of potential writers, there’s more cash in the pot for them. Heh. Little do they know I am way wilier than that and can see through their little ploy.)

I have all these stories in my head. I tell them to myself all the time. I made the mistake of telling the girls about a few of them, and they’ve been pestering me ever since to WRITE THE DAMN THINGS DOWN. Without the “damn” part. They’re way more polite than I am. The problem is, I chose to become an editor. You know, one of those people who pick apart your prose and scramble it up. One of those things that writing courses always warn you about: Your Internal Editor. Except mine was internal, external, as well as a perfectionist. Trust me, you don’t want to be around when my internal monologue is going full swing. What abuse I take from that IE. Chip, chip, chip goes the chisel, and I often find myself several feet shorter than I started at when I sat down to write. (I find it amazing that I haven’t disappeared into nothing after 35 years of this. [I don’t think I was hard on myself the first 3 years of life; who knows? Maybe I’ve repressed it so strongly I can’t find it. Not that I really want to, you know. Find it, that is.])

So, starting a blog, and trying to write every day, was my first step. Thinking back on it, I think you’re supposed to write a bit every day on the kind of stuff that you’d like to eventually Write. Hmmm. I think I took a wrong turn somewhere…

Turns out, I made friends from blogging, and I like to go chat with you all at your blogs most days, as well. It’s only being neighborly, right? But, considering I’m not a woman of leisure, blogging time took up most of my free time (and some not-free time that I annexed as my addiction got worse), so none of the stories in my head have made it on paper. (I don’t think I’ve distracted the IE beast enough yet.)

Thanks to KathyR, I’ve found out about National Novel Writing Month. Well, I’d seen people mention NaNoWriMo on the professional mailing lists I’m on, but I didn’t look into it. It works like this: During the course of one month, November, people try to write 50,000 words (so if you want to take weekends off [like me because I am a certified Lazy Bum], that’s 10 pages a day—a DAY). It may become a novel, but most probably it won’t. I see it as the Liquid Plumr of writer’s block. If you put enough pressure on the clog, all that hair and grease and Internal Editor goop just has to be punched through and you’ll find yourself at the end of NaNoWriMo with one, really good, pure, powerful, brilliant metaphor that you can then use in the start of a real piece of work that’ll come from that kernel of goodness. (Or maybe I’m expecting too much, who knows?)

I’ve already signed up. Anybody wanna join me in this endeavor? C’mon, you know you want to.

*(Oh my god. Did I really write that out loud? Holy crap, I actually told real people about this? I am so screwed.)