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.