The Place For My Writers Notes

Original posting 27 Nov 2010

Hi, ho. I have to admit, I feel very odd. This week has been rugged, what with funerals and the end of quarter classes, all mixed up with my sinuses playing all kinds of tricky fun on me. I mean, Monday evening, Mitsuko's friend called and told us that her father had died. Tuesday we drove a couple of hours, then attended the evening service. I had taken a sinus pill to help get through it all. Then we stayed at a hotel in the area, and on Wednesday went to the main service at noon. And ended up being invited to the family meal afterward, and even to help with the final ceremony at the crematorium. I spent the day drugged, again. And then Thursday, back at school, one of the last classes.

Friday, I pulled all the scattered nanowrimo files together, and dumped the result into the validator. Which promptly said "We have a WINNER!" But you know, even with the count over the target 50,000, it doesn't feel? well, I wish it was coherent. I have bits and pieces, scattered shards that might develop into a story, but nothing that I feel as if I even want to show anyone. So it was nice to realize that I could grind out the words at that rate, but? I really want a better frame, somehow, so that the words make a whole, instead of just being a pile?

Two oddities. First, Friday I actually thought I was still short of the total, but somehow didn't really feel like sitting down and grinding out another chunk. I sort of wanted to not finish? I've noticed this before, and it ties into my feeling of letdown at realizing that we've reached the end of another quarter at the school. I enjoy starting projects, I love chunking along doing some work every day (or week, or whatever), but finishing? I don't like to let go, I want to keep going. I actually put the full file together for nanowrimo partly to see just how much more I needed to do -- and was a little disappointed to realize that I had finished, at least as far as they were concerned.

Second is my impression today -- I have a list of scenes to work on, and other stuff, but I also have this feeling that I should just declare a holiday, and let it ride. Except I know better -- I promised myself yesterday that I was going to keep on trucking, try to keep grinding out the words, mostly because I really enjoy it. Maybe I'll grab the list of "little stories" that I've kind of put aside while I was grinding on the nanowrimo story and do one of those (busman's holiday, so to speak). Anyway, it's interesting that having reached the goal, I feel like stopping for a while.

Anyway, back to the old nanonotes. Over here http://community.livejournal.com/writercises/147843.html I rambled about quotes from Bradbury, celebrating the madness of writing. And it does seem somewhat appropriate for the tail end of nanowrimo. Whether you are looking at a final burst of words to reach 50,000, have stopped struggling to reach that goal and are just enjoying the feeling of having tried, or even sat back and wondered why anyone would do this kind of thing, hey, you've got some insights into the fun of words. Grinding them out, laying them in place one carefully chosen word at a time, or just enjoying the re-visioning that every reader commits in collaboration with the writer? Hey, words are what writing is all about!

Tell you what. This time around, how about?
Imagine!