What I Learned // NaNo Update No. 2

(Sorry you have to endure two posts from me in one day, but I'm going to be working all day tomorrow and I really wanted to get these updates published so that I can stop thinking about them.  The third and final post will be coming sometime this weekend, hopefully.  And no, you needn't worry, it's not going to be another long rant about how I can't write because that would be silly, especially as I shall be sharing story snippets in that post and there's no point in stating the obvious.  :P  (I'm sorry.  Do I enjoy insulting myself, or what?) 

Moving on to the subject of this post.  What I learned while participating in National Novel Writing Month...

~I am a very lazy writer.

If the words don't start flowing within the first five minutes or so, I give it up as a bad job and decide that perhaps after all today is not the day for genius to burn.

~Keeping track of how many words one writes can be very rewarding.

But mostly discouraging, especially when one's word count is rising at the rate of 9 1/2 words per hour.   (Yes, I did the math.  30 days.  720 hours.  6948 words. Average it out and it comes to just about 9 1/2 words per hour.  Yeah, I think it's pathetic, too.)

~With all the time in the world, writing a 50,000 word novel in a month is an absolute cinch!

But do I have all the time in the world?  No.  I don't think so.  (There was bound to be a catch somewhere.)

~Practically everyone believes in me!

Practically everyone, that is, except that one stick in the mud, me.  (Spoil-sport.  Look, I know you don't like to go with the crowd but on a matter such as this, couldn't you be a bit more obliging?)

~I have a talent for saying way too much in my writing, while at the same time saying very little. 

It's the art of overly-descriptive, semi-repetitive, jibber jabber.

~I'm horrible at transitioning from one scene to another. 

Okay.  Forget transitions.  I'm horrible at writing scenes, period.  I have such a hard time making my characters do things.  I can make them talk, but what do I make them do?  How do I move them from one room to another without describing every single step they take?  How do I make a scene come alive with just a few simple words? 

~It's commonly said that NaNo is a risk to one's sanity...and even perhaps to one's life.  Well, it had nothing on me.  I survived it quite easily.

It's called admitting when you're licked and knowing when to beat a retreat.  Like one week in, perhaps, before the stress really begins to do things to you.  Just fall back.  Chill.  Give up.  Quit.  Ruuuuuun!  (Hey, it worked for me.  It can work for you.  Just trying to preserve lives here.)

~I hate my writing with a vengeance.  It makes me SO mad.

Because it rarely does what I want it to do.  And it rarely sounds how I want it to sound.  It's just the orneriest thing ever!

~Making up stories is fun!

No.  Making up stories is tragic.  Especially when you're bursting to get your characters out onto the page so you can read about them...but they simply won't be got out.  They're stuck.  Oh! the pain!

~It's one thing to know what sounds good in a story, and quite another to actually go and write it.

Couldn't have said it better myself!  (Wait!  I did say that!)

~Some people simply don't know when to quit.

I am speaking specifically of Natalie.  Honestly, people, I tried all month long to set her a good example of how to quit, but she never caught onto it.  She just kept going, going, going.  Like she was in the middle of a writing challenge or something.  (Mwhahaha.)  Seriously, though, she did an awesome job!   I won't tell you what her final word count was because she may want to tell you that herself, but I assure you, it totally and completely put my word count to shame.  YAY FOR NATALIE!

And while I'm on the subject of congratulating those strange people who stuck with this thing through the whole month, I have to mention Kate Marie.  Because apparently she didn't get the "it's time to quit" memo either.  She went and wrote 50,000 words...plus some!  And did it all by hand, too, which ...*shivers*... let's not even talk about that, okay?  Congratulations, Kate, my friend!  Remind me never to try and race you in writing a story. 

~Failing to reach a desired word count is nothing compared to failing to express oneself properly. 

I'll be honest and say I'm still a little shaken about my ability to write.  I mean, I'm writing right now, so obviously I can write.  But what I mean is, my ability to write stories.  Because it's a completely different ballgame.  And actually I'm beginning to think I really don't know how to do it. 

In other words...

~I HATE WRITING!

But somehow I have a feeling I'm going to go right on doing it just the same.  Why is that?

For those of you who participated in NaNo this year, tell me, how did it go for you?  Are you glad November is over?
And for all of you, how was your November?  Did you have a good Thanksgiving?  Have you decorated for Christmas yet?

Talk to you soon! 

Sincerely, Miss March

Here we go again...

No doubt you've noticed a rather pathetic theme running through the posts on this blog recently--something to do with writer's block, and lack of thinking power, and the absence of inspiration, and just plain all around nothingness. 

 

Well, it's true.  Miss March is in a writing funk...again.  (And, yes, I know you're probably sick of hearing about her writing woes, but please bear with her. She must find a vent for her frustrations somewhere.)  

Let me put it this way.  Though Miss March is a very organized person, and generally not prone to misplacing things, yet of late she seems to have acquired an uncanny knack for  losing her head (or brain, or mind, or marbles...whichever expression you prefer), just about every single day.  In other words, she feels on the verge of insanity.  (Not to over dramatize or anything...ha!)

 

This is, of course, very careless of Miss March, as everyone knows a person cannot function too well without a head, nor think very well without a brain, nor reason at all without a mind.  And as to losing one's marbles!  Well, that's just sad...

 

...The game's no fun if you haven't got marbles.  :(

I'm sorry to say that Miss March, while being fully aware of her sad predicament, has as yet no clear idea how to remedy the situation because--obviously--her mind is in such a jumble of a state that there's hardly a clear thought in her head at all.

It's not that she's lacking inspiration, altogether, I mean she has a lot of post ideas--probably too many--but for some reason whenever she tries to write them down she feels like she's hitting her head against a stone wall.  The thoughts just won't flow.  And when she does get something out, it doesn't seem worth publishing so it just sits in the drafts and becomes another of those unfinished projects which loom threateningly over her head like a huge dark thunder cloud.  Then, too, the constant reminder that there are other writing projects aside from blogging which also demand her attention, has a provoking tendency to paralyze her and hinder her from accomplishing anything.

What to do?  Oh! what to do? 

She told her brother the other day that she feels like a "time bomb just waiting to go off."  What she meant by this statement is not altogether clear, unless she was referring to the fact that she could at any moment explode into a flood of tears, and officially become a nervous wreck.  (But perhaps she's that already...)

Anyway, I guess the reason I'm rambling on about all this is because I'd like you to know--to set your mind at ease--that if Miss March suddenly disappears for  a time and you don't hear much from her, it's nothing to worry about.  Nothing serious.  She probably just hit her head against the wall a bit too hard and gave herself  a concussion, or dissolved into tears and drowned in them, or just decided to shut her mouth and stop talking because she's not making much sense at this point and shows very little hope of improving in that area anytime in the near future.

So that's that. 

(Really, though, things aren't as bad as they appear from this rant--or perhaps they are...but, hey, I'm trying to be a little positive here.  ;)  I wouldn't worry about or sympathize with Miss March too much.  She's just having a fit of her usual writing problems, that's all, and she needs to learn to deal with them and stop being such a grumpy face about it.  So now.) 

 

I fear you have long been desiring my absence.  I shall leave you now. 

 

Good-night!

 

How Miss March Went Crazy and was Never Heard From Again

Naturally, it's a bit of process--going crazy is.  It doesn't happen all at once.  In Miss March's  case the insanity has been building for several weeks now, and only reached a climax within the last couple  of days. Allow me to explain.

You see, Miss March refuses--point blank--to listen to that wise old saying of Mr. Benjamin Franklin's: "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise."  She knows for a fact that lack of sleep has a bad effect upon her constitution, but still she continues to indulge in this ill-advised behavior.   (Shame on her!)  And so she becomes a grumpy, discouraged,  unhappy individual--with a great deal of activity lacking in her upper story. 

The second ingredient which has been helpful in sending Miss March over the brink is the fact that she has an enormous amount of writing ideas in her head but is, at the same time, suffering from a severe case of writer's block.  This creates a sort of smash up in her brain which is not entirely comfortable.  In fact, it's entirely uncomfortable.  And very annoying. She wants to write, but silly girl!  She can't!  And oh how that aggravates her!  There are so many thoughts inside her which are clamoring to be expressed--so many joys, begging to be shared--but they're stuck.  Stuck fast.  And no matter how hard she tries, she cannot release them.  Not one jot.

Thirdly then, there's this family newspaper of which Miss March is the official editor.  It comes out in monthly installments and Miss M. is responsible for a good deal of the writing as well as the arrangement of the articles.  Sound fun?  In theory yes, but the November issue is now two weeks behind schedule and Miss March's brain is at a stand still.   She hates to be behind on things, but for some reason she can't move forward.  Her creative writing abilities seem to have been turned off temporarily, and she cannot for the life of her think how to write an interesting article--though she's done so many times in the past.  It's all just blank, blank, blank.   It's like a dreaded chore hanging over her head, keeping her from doing other things because she really needs to get that done first; but then never getting done itself because whenever Miss March sits down to work on it suddenly she can't THINK.  (Okay, stop.  I can't talk about  this anymore.  I'm going to have a nervous breakdown...)

Add to all this the fact that the past few weeks have been abnormally busy.  Miss March has been doing a lot of running around and hasn't had a whole lot of time to sit down and really concentrate on writing.  And then last week, when she had a good chunk of time, she went and set aside her writing projects in order to redecorate her blog.  (Which was a really smart move, I'm telling you!)  To top it off, she was so extremely satisfied with her decorating that I think it must have gone to her head a little, for she began to make grand plans for writing a whole bunch of Christmas posts in the next two weeks.  (Really, Miss March.  A bunch of posts?  You can't even write one post a week consistently.  What ARE you thinking of?) 

Funny, Miss March.  Very funny.  Hee, hee, hee.

So yeah.  Between the newspaper, the intended blog posts, e-mails, and comments, the very thought of writing has now become a  most formidable task and Miss March is about ready to hide her head in the sand and attempt to convince herself that she's illiterate.  (Wouldn't that be such a relief, though?  One wouldn't feel compelled to write if one was incapable of doing so.)

Okay.  We get the picture.  Obviously Miss March is in a writing funk.  Big deal.  That's nothing new.

Wait, wait!  It's bigger than that.  MUCH BIGGER!  Miss March is about to go CRAZY!  Don't you understand?  She's so exhausted, and so fed up with writing, that this may be the last time she ever writes anything! 

A likely story.  Calm down.

Look.  I am attempting to convey to you that Miss March's brain is about ready to explode.  She wants so much to comment on everyone's posts, and write dozens of deliciously lovely Christmas posts herself, but the mere thought of stringing words together in that fashion is causing her to hyperventilate.  Panic even.  Because there's so much to do and so little time.  The days, the hours, they're passing so fast--and she can't stop them, she can't hold them.  Everything is just one confused mass swirling around in her silly little brain and...well!  She may just go kablooey, drop off the face of the earth, and never be heard from again.  Of course, if that be the case, then I suppose this is really good-bye.  

So long, dear friends.  It's been wonderful knowing you.  Really wonderful.  Fare thee well and...don't forget to write.

Please.  Don't say 'write.'

~Miss March

P.S.  So, all that to say.  If you find me unusually quiet around the blogging world, please forgive me.  It's not that I'm not reading and enjoying all you dear peoples' posts, it's just that I may have to skip commenting sometimes in order to alleviate stress.  Not that I'm that stressed (I admit, I tend to exaggerate a little), but you know how it is.  I want to relax and enjoy the Christmas season and as commenting can sometimes be as major an endeavor for me as writing my own blog post, I'm just not sure I'll have the time.  I will do my best, though, not to disappear completely.  :)

"Tut-tut, It Looks Like Rain"

I'm ashamed to admit it...this being a sunshiny place and all...but rain does seem to be the typical forecast for my emotions these days.  And when one is feeling especially cloudy, it's hard to keep those raindrops from trickling over into ones writing.  At least for me.  I'm a very honest person, and especially so when I'm writing rather than talking (I open up a lot quicker on paper), and so I feel that I may have been giving the impression in my comments--on my own blog and other people's blogs--that I am somewhat emotional and prone to feelings of discouragement.  If you happened to notice this about me, please let go of all assumptions...because, there's no assumption about it.  You were totally correct.  I am currently an unpredictable, emotional, nut-case.  Haha!  (My family doesn't know what to do with me sometimes!) 

And, so you might be wondering, what is the reason for these varying emotions?

Well, there are many factors to be considered, I'm sure.  It's hard to delve into the inner-most workings of ones self and discover exactly what is making one feel out of sorts.  But I can tell you for sure that yesterday it was all owing to...

...that infamous art of writing.

(So I'll just focus in on that factor for today and leave the other ones in obscurity.)

I find that writing is the cause of a bad mood for me more often than I'd like to admit.  (It's terrible, I know.  I shouldn't let it affect me so.)  But it's true.  When I'm happy with my writing, I'm on cloud nine!  (That's not a storm cloud, by the way.  That's one of those fluffy-joyful-fat-little-white clouds.  That's a good cloud.)  At these times I'm enthusiastic and happy and full of hopeful thoughts about the future. 

But when my writing is not going so well...when I sit down and stare at the computer screen and find nothing but blank thoughts in my head...when I'm stewing over the perfect words for hours and end up with nothing to show for it...when I finish a writing project and then hide my head in the sand until people are finished reading it because I'm sure they're not going to like it... 

That's when my writing begins to dictate my mood and I fall into a slump of discouragement.  (Don't pity me.  I do enough of that already.)

Yesterday found me in a "what's-the-point-of-anything?" mood.  My writing projects were at a stalemate, and this frustrated me and lead me into a downward spiral.  I began by thinking that doing a blog was really quite pointless--and that my other writing project, which is a family newspaper, was not worth doing either--that nobody could truly care what I had to write about--and that if they didn't care what I had to write about then they probably didn't care what I had to say in general.  And, naturally, if people don't care about what you have to say then they really can't care too much about you personally...and so I was a friendless, lonely, unhappy person!  (That's how my little mind works.  Real logical, isn't it?)

(Yep, that was me.)



I begin to see that I'm an incurable pessimist when it comes to my writing.  It doesn't matter how many times people tell me that I'm a good writer (and believe it or not, people have told me that) I still come right around the next day fully convinced that I'm horrible at it.  Even when I finish a writing project to my own satisfaction, it's not good enough, because then I worry over whether or not other people will like it, and whether or not they will understand what I was trying to say...and blah, blah, blah.  I'm scared to have people read my writing because, frankly, it embarrasses me.   (Which is why it makes no sense at all for me to have my own blog...really...it's quite ridiculous.)

And then I begin the comparison thing.  "There are so many other good writers.  I can never write as well as them.  Nobody would ever enjoy my writing like they enjoy so-and-so's."  And...yeah...you get the sad, depressing picture.  "Oh, I'm just a little black rain cloud..."   Anyway, I was thinking about the comparison thing today and I remembered a scene from Chariot's of Fire where Harold Abrahams says to his girlfriend, Sybil Gordon, "If I can't win, I won't run."  Sometimes I feel like that.  "If I can't write so well that everybody in the whole world loves my writing...then I just won't write at all." 

Silly person, I say.  You don't really want to stop writing.  What you need to do is stop thinking about yourself.  Write for the joy of writing, not for the sake of recieving praise or commendation from others.  Write for the hope of putting something good...something healthy...out into this dark and needy world.  Write for the purpose of bringing a little sunshine into somebody's life, even if it is just ONE person.  Because somewhere out there, there's a place for your writing.  God didn't give you words for nothing.

And, anyway, what did Sybil Gordon say in response to Harold Abrahams complaint?  "You can't win, if you don't run."  Ouch.

Feeling sorry for yourself never accomplishes anything.  (Self, are you listening to me?)

And really, when all's said and done, it's not so much what you've written as how you've written it.  If you've written with joy and enthusiasm and hope...if you've written to bring glory to your Creator and not to yourself...if you've written to encourage, to uplift, to turn people's focus in the right direction, then no matter how well it was worded, no matter how many people read it and enjoyed it, it was still worth writing.  Every word of it.

You know, I think the rain is lifting a bit--at least for the time being.  Thank you all for so patiently wading through the puddles. 

And I assure if I ever have reason to indulge in one of these rainy-day posts again, I'll be sure to let you know, forthwith.

"Hey everybody!  There's a party over Miss March's blog!"

"It's called a Pity Party."

"Oh, I always have so much fun at those kinds of parties."

(And just for the record, I don't feel down all the time.  Truly.  In fact, I'm feeling just fine right now...until I click that publish button...  Oh dear.  Why do I even try?)