Life on the open page

[vaneramos]

I've been stressing over NaNoWriMo, and this morning I realized why. I sat down at my desk, opened the notebook ready to write, and fireworks burst across the empty page. They were my feelings. The problem is I've been concentrating on the novel and neglecting myself. I hadn't written morning pages since October 18.

I didn't write anything just then. I closed the notebook. My first instinct was to blog about it, but that would still avoid the issue of getting back in touch with myself. My social needs are real, too, but no one else can fulfil me if I'm at odds with myself. So I masturbated, had a shower, finally went back to my desk and opened the morning pages notebook instead of the novel. That was what I needed.

I have some serious life changes looming on the horizon, mostly positive. Last night something more came up, which I'm not prepared to write about publicly yet. It's good in many ways, not the least of which is that it brought my issues into clear focus this morning. I am considering dropping NaNo this time around. I've been looking for a running spring, when what I have is only a dark well without a bucket. I don't even know the depth. I need the well. I need to know about it. I need to pour whatever I've got.

In other words, I need to write in a place where it's safe to be troubled, crazy, self-absorbed, a wreckage, without needing to shape something meaningful to anyone else.

Now that I've written those three pregnant pages, maybe I'll be ready to work on the novel when I get home from Two Rivers this afternoon. I'll give it another shot.

Comments

[eloquentwthrage.livejournal.com]

I need to write in a place where it's safe to be troubled, crazy, self-absorbed, a wreckage, without needing to shape something meaningful to anyone else.

Why can't your NaNoWriMo novel be that? In fact, I thought that's what NaNoWriMo was all about: just going for it, letting anything and everything spill out onto the page and go wherever it wants.

I gather, though, from what I know of you through LJ, that you have a defined vision of what you want your novel to be and you've pigeon-holed yourself into not letting yourself enjoy the process of NaNoWriMo at all. That's a shame. If you're going to work on a genuine novel, regimen yourself to do it over a reasonable period of time, not a month. NaNoWriMo should be about pounding out stuff and nonsense, playing with things you might not do otherwise, and making 50,000 words seem like fun. Then you can worry whether or not some or all of it is salvageable, and, where you are concerned, my guess is at least some of it would be.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

50,000 words does not seem like fun right now. I'm not in a flexible or adventurous enough mood to keep forcing myself to free write for two hours. It feels awful, boring, uninspired, physically painful. I just hate it. The idea that I'm 5,000 words behind just makes me miserable and anxious. I have other serious issues to worry about now, and need energy to act upon them. There are times for breaking through resistance, and there are times for realizing the resistance comes from a deeper palce and I need to honour those feelings.

I just want to write my morning pages. That's the religious regimen I've built for myself over years of practice: three pages, about 550 words, early in the day. If I miss today, I can resume tomorrow without feeling like I've fallen behind. So I am trying to reestablish my routine. If I also manage to work on my novel—the other one, not the NaNo—for a couple hours in the afternoon, without a time frame or word quota, that would be wonderful.