Galactic Voyages and Other Nonsense

Wow. A lot as been happening lately. I'm pretty sure there's a deity out there somewhere who's really trying to either fuck with my head, give me a heart attack, or both. Well, Mr. Deity, I've got news for you: I don't bow down.

Despite a chaotic week, my nanowrimo goal has been a complete success! 100,000 words written in 28 days. Not only did I make it, I made it with two days to spare. That doesn't mean the story is done and that doesn't mean I'm not going to have an editing nightmare on my hands when it is, but I'm happy. I think I've got a wonderful space drama on my hands that will keep me busy well into the new year.

Next insanity: my boss sold part of his business. Unfortunately, it's the part that I've been working in. There's been some chaos and argument over where I was going to be working this past week, as my current boss wanted me to stay and work for him in what has to be the worst job of all time: it involves an unheated trailer with no bathroom and a steady flow of truck drivers. Thanks, but seriously, only if it were the last job in the world. The people he sold the business too wanted to hire me to do the job I've been doing, only for them. In the end that's how it worked out, but there was a lot of chaos in the meantime. So, this is my last day in Cliffwood Beach.

Now here's the funny part: I've spent all of November writing this space drama about colonies surrounding Neptune. My new office is in Neptune, NJ. Go figure. When I told my roommate his answer was "too bad you don't drive a Saturn." Though it does entertain me a little that I'll be making a galactic voyage to get to and from work every day, and it only takes me 35 minutes. I'm sure I can even run into some aliens if I stop by the local 7-11. Okay, bad joke, but I find it all mildly entertaining.

So, here I think my life is settling out and my roommate gets home and tells me that he was just informed that he won't get his first check from his new job until December 24th. Thanks Verizon, you've just ruined Christmas. Well, we'll be a little poor this year, but at the very least we'll survive it, and come January we'll make it work. I hate to admit we had to ask for a small loan from a family member to get him by until then: my mom is an angel. Seriously. I don't know what I'd do without her and I have to think of a REALLY nice present to say thank you. Really nice, and, unfortunately, fairly cheap. Guess I've got my work cut out for me, huh? I'll make it up to her on her birthday when finances aren't so tight.

So, chaos #2 has been averted. Now for some good chaos. Our potential 3rd roommate has become official, and Sophie is going to be bringing a carload of her stuff down this weekend. She'll be moving in officially next weekend. With her two cats. I'm excited. Financially it's great, but aside from that Mike and I have been trying to snag Sophie as our third roommate since college. A few years later it's actually happening. I think my house is going to be pretty chaotic and fun from now on, but I'm kind of looking forward to it.

Then I find out two nights ago that one of my best online buddies, a few years my junior, may have stomach cancer. I don't know a lot about cancer, but I know that doctors should NEVER tell you you might have it. They should say 'this is probably nothing, but lets run some tests to be sure' and then tell you AFTERWARDS. She's got an ulcer as it is and the stress can't be helping. And to top it all off, she's had family members die of stomach cancer so that's extra reason for her to start worrying. As I write this, she's in the hospital for tests and I'm sending her every good mojo vibe I can conjure up.

So, anyone religious that's reading this, pray for her! And any non-religious person, well, pray a little anyway, or at the very least cross your fingers. She needs all the good luck she can get, and lots and lots of hugs.

No Limits But the Sky

So, today is my birthday, and I had the work project from hell. Okay, so it wasn't actually from hell--though there were a lot of 6's and 9's involved, often in repetition. It wasn't that bad, but imagine spending four and a half hours typing phone numbers. Yeah, like I said--blegh.

I didn't get any writing done today for that reason (oh well). I don't feel too bad about it though--I expected this to be a sort of wasted day. I got a cake and a card signed by my co-workers: I didn't know I had that many co-workers. haha.

So I got home and Mike (my roommate) had left my birthday present in my personal bubble, you know, in front of the computer. It's this adorable little inspirational book called 'No Limits But the Sky'. I saw it and laughed a little, thinking 'well, this is just the perfect present to get in the middle of nanowrimo, isn't it?' It's one of those books you never read from cover to cover, but you rest in a place that you see every day, but that's out of the way, and right when you're feeling frazzled, like everything is just a little impossible, you pick it up, open to a random page, read a passage or two, and everything seems more manageable. A silly thing really, but one that everyone should own.

For those of you nano-ers who may be reading this and feeling pretty frazzled yourselves, I thought I'd share a random excerpt:

I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.

~Booker T. Washington~


That's just the essence of Nanowrimo right there, isn't it? It's the essence of a lot of things, I suppose, but I rather find it appropriate for the mid-month nano blues that so many people are suffering from now. Everyone, chin up! You can do it! Nothing is stopping you but yourself.

No Limits But the Sky.

It's Madness, I Tell You!

As I sit here, about to call it a night and claim some much deserved sleep, I find myself remembering these old anti-drug commercials: you know the one--there's an egg, and a frying pan. There's also a semi-attractive unknown actress that holds up the egg and says 'this is your brain'. Then she smashes it into the frying pan and says 'this is your brain on drugs, any questions?'

I have a nostalgic sort of love for those commercials, and now, I have my own rendition. It goes "this is your brain. this is your brain on nanowrimo. any questions?" None ma'am, but thank you for asking. It's such a chaotic, wonderful, disastrous, delightful experience and there are many, many more adjectives thrown in between--to boost the word count, of course.

Don't get me wrong. I love nanowrimo. I do. Seriously. It drives me out of my mind. I plot and plot and my characters decide to change the story on me, and by the end of the month I'm talking about my characters as if I just had a conversation with them. There are procrastination games involving video games and thousands of other people going crazy right along with you. I'm half-tempted to say I wish nanowrimo happened all year long--and then I wake up from that particular nightmare. No, thank you, one month is enough.

I get more writing done in November than I do in half a year on average. I don't let myself get distracted. I force myself to struggle through unreasonable daily word counts (4-5000 words/day, anyone?) and I love every hair-pulling, heart-wrenching minute of it. It may be the definition of insanity. Or maybe not.

I'm progressing nicely. I've finished one nano novel and am 11.5k into the second one. I plan to write another two in December after a day or two spent recouping.

Today, a friend of mine said she thought setting a daily goal for writing was ridiculous, that writing should be fun. I told her writing is fun. Writing is fun in the same way (I imagine) that jumping out of a plane is fun. You just jump. You go. And it's a rush. And you have this safety net that is your parachute--your imagination--but you can't help but think 'oh my god, what if it doesn't work this time?') Writing IS fun. Writing is also work. Writing is an experience and a disaster and a high and a low and you never know which it's going to be at any given moment. It's insane. We writers, we're crazy, and unless you're a writer yourself, you can NEVER understand what we put ourselves through.

But you know, writing, creating a work of fiction, it's unbelievable. It's amazing. I can't help but think 'my god, who knew all these people were in my brain? Who knew they could act so crazy? Who knew this amazing world was up there just waiting to be transcribed to the page? And it's all mine! I love it. I love that David invades my dreams with lame jokes and Isaak points out the beauty in the most mundane things (like my hot cocoa), and that Shou takes one step in my room, looks disgusted and says, "you're going to clean this weekend, right?" I love that there's a little Torin in my head who always wants to play with my hair and that I can now imagine my car as a 'hover craft'. I love that my video games will be sitting there, patiently waiting exactly where I left them when all the insanity is over.

...and I love that when I go into the post-nano, lower production rate blues, all I have to do is sit back and tell myself 'don't worry. It will happen again next year.'

We writers, amateur and professional alike, we're crazy folk. We're masochists, every last one of us, and we're exceptionally good at cheering one another on. So, to all you nanowrimo participants out there who may or may not be reading this--whatever happens, don't stop--this late in the game it would be like forgetting how to exhale. And to all those would be novelists out there, all of you who would 'like to write a book, but don't know where to start' I say, starting anywhere is fine, as long as you start.

Daffodils

This month, I--like half of the rest of the writing world--am participating in nanowrimo. I've completed the goal of 50,000 words already, but am not nearly done. Still, I finished the chapter I'm currently working on and, flipping through some old files, I've revisited and revamped an old poem. I thought I'd share it here, for lack of other things worth saying at the moment.

Daffodils

I like the way your hand feels on my face.
When I turn to greet you, you’re always smiling.

There’s something different between us.
It’s subtle, but we’ve been the same for so long
even the daffodils notice.

If I recite Rumi at you one more time, you tell me,
you’ll probably go deaf for days.

I write so many poems about you that
I can no longer see you.

Early in the morning, my memories of you turn to sunrise,
but I think I'd cut out my tongue
before admitting it might be love.

Why We Write

Congratulations. You live on the planet earth, and because you live on the planet earth, you're inundated daily with mostly useless data. TV. Radio. The Morning Paper. The blow-hard next door who just can't keep his damn nose out of everyone else's business. And despite all this meaningless information, you've decided you have something to say. Join the club.

I thought I'd start my blog with something interesting, but the fact is I keep looking at the clock thinking 'I really should be writing my NaNo Novel. Yes, that's right. Like everyone else in the galaxy, I am a nanowrimo participant. So you might be asking why in the hell I decided to start a blog in the middle of November. To that I answer with a resounding 'No Fucking Clue.' It seems like everyone has blogs these days. I felt left out.

So I guess you can guess I'm an amateur writer. I'm an amateur at a lot of things: writing, art, computer repair, life--in general. I may be a bit wet behind the ears but when it comes to anything, I believe that if someone tells you their a professional they're either lying to you, or they're an idiot--especially when it comes to the arts. The arts are trial and error folks--let's face it, if you say you're a professional then you're admitting to be a professional at 'winging it', at 'trying something new', at having no fucking idea where you're going or why but enjoying the ride.

I am not a professional. If I'm a professional anything, then I'm a professional hobbyist, a professional jack of all trades, a professional juggler of projects, and the occasional cat (kidding on this last bit, of course).

That said, I thought I'd take my first journal entry to explore a little. In this world so full of information, so full of nonsense and so chock full of words, people still write! People still find there are things worth saying, and this, I think, is an amazing thing. Millions, billions of books out there, and there's always someone who's come up with something new. The human mind is unbelievable. It's like a puzzle you can put together in ten thousand different ways, make something amazing every time, and it doesn't matter if you use all the pieces.

For myself, I remember being a little kid, cutting out cardboard hearts, and writing my parents poems about red roses and blue violets and happy-sappy things about how great they were and how much I loved them--from there, it ballooned. I wrote my first story on a journal my mother brought me home from the grocery store. She told me to use it "however you want". The story was awful, of course, as are all firsts in life--a disaster when we look back. I was determined to fill every page, every line. It's an incredibly liberating feeling, scratching the last words on the inside back cover and trying to read them years later over a faded floral pattern.
Since then, I've written a lot of nonsense and a few gems, but I take solace and pride in the fact that I will always be able to look back and think 'Mom, this is all your fault.'

So here is my challenge to you, any and all of my readers. Sit back. Close your eyes. Purse your lips in unimpeded thought (gag the children if you have to!), and answer that question for yourselves. Why do you write. What's so undeniable for you about this incredibly frustrating, mind-boggling, insanely uplifting, rejection-filled, spiritual experience that comes with putting pen to paper or fingers to a keyboard and letting them take you where they will? What do you love? What do you hate? And why, for god's sake, do you have to tell the world about it?

For myself, the answer is amazingly simple:

I write because my fingers like marathons. I write because my mind never sleeps. I write because day turns into night, because the stars still shine through the smog, and most importantly I write because I'm alive, because I'm breathing, because I, like everyone else in this crazy, crazy world, exist.

And that is what I hope to be able to claim--weeks and months and years down the line--that Uplift & Implode is all about--existing, being alive, and using words to express both life's greatest triumphs, and most crippling defeats--and more importantly still, where they lead us.