nanowrimo

I'm not gone gone, but I am tired.

It's been a week since I've stopped writing, and I haven't really written anything since then - spent most of the week catching up on visits with the people I couldn't see because I was writing most of the time.

I should probably do my dishes, I should probably sweep the floor. I should probably write a more engaged and engaging blog post.

Instead, I will pour myself a scotch, watch some TV on the Internet, and believe for a moment that things just happen when they need to happen.

I fucking did it.

Going into this, I know I said that I was going to consider myself a winner if I came up with anything, that I was doing is as an experiment to see what it took, what my life would look like if I were completely dedicated to writing in a way that I have never been in my life.

By those metrics, I won a long time ago, though I think it will take me a while to figure out what practical lessons I can draw from the experience for my every day life.

However.

I also won by NaNoWriMo metrics tonight. I had the same issue as Zoom, where my program counted 50,009 as compared to the 49,059 I had validated on the NaNoWriMo site.

Now, I could have just put 50,009 in using the handy little counter at the top. But I didn't want to.

I have a stubborn streak in me made of iron. And an honest streak a bastard mile wide. I was not, no fucking way in hell, going to have to say for the rest of my life, "Oh yeah, I won NaNoWriMo in 2009. By my counter, I mean, I was 1000 words short by their counter, but you know."

Fuck. That.

Another thing going into this is that I didn't really think I could do it. I thought that I would give up on it. Because I thought I didn't have it in me.

But I do. I started late and had to take a few days off. I wrote 50,000 words in 22 days. And I think that what I wrote is not terrible. I'm going to put it away for December and make a less exhausted assessment on that the beginning January.

Even though I feel like someone has grated a couple of layers off my skin, both on the inside and the outside, I also feel amazing. Like punching the air and dancing like Snoopy amazing.

Maybe I will do that after I have laid on the kitchen floor and cried for a few moments.

Just over 4000 words to go, just about. That means, if you're quick with the mental math, that I have written just over 45,000 words. Since November 5th. While working full time.

When I say that I almost start crying.

Feels like these last few thousand words should be a cakewalk, like I should be able to slide into home with no problem. But they feel daunting. Almost like I don't want to finish, which is a strange feeling, because why would I not want to finish when I've gotten this far.

Here is a somewhat startling and disgusting analogy: I feel like I'm at the point where I might start regurgitating my own innards.

Part of what I'm writing about is that horrible period in my early twenties, which hit its worst when I tried to kill myself by taking an overdose of acetaminophen. The reason the pills didn't kill me is because I started throwing up before I finished the bottle.

I continued to throw up for the next 12 hours. Till there was nothing solid left in my stomach, then through bile, through dry heaving, trembling on the bus to the hospital until I was gagging and heaving yet again in the emergency ward, sobbing because it hurt so much. My whole body felt like I'd been trying to quarter myself, each limb chained to something heavy and pulling, my torso starting to split down the middle, every muscle in agony.

A kind resident put her arm around my shoulder and held a metal bowl under my mouth. My body twisted into one last heave, and I felt something sliding up my esophagus for the first time in a few hours. What landed in the stainless steel bowl was white, pure white and glistening, honeycombed. The resident inhaled a sharp breath and I blinked. Fast.

I'd seen stuff that looked like that before, but only in the grocery store.

"Is that? That's the lining of my stomach, isn't it?"

"Yes. It is."

Part of me wanted to touch it, to feel what something usually buried so far inside me felt like, but I held back. The resident put the bowl on the nearest table out of sight, rubbed my back a bit more while I went back to crying.

How I feel now is how I felt in the moment before that chunk of my stomach detached itself and pulled up through me. I feel cleaned out, torn and tearing, emptied of everything, ringing hollow; my body still going forward. Going on.

Heading into the final week of NaNoWriMo. I've become insensible. People ask me how I'm doing and I tell them how many words I've written.

That number is both a marker of how happy I am and how exhausted.

Over the weekend, I had a few very productive days. Took the Friday off, time in lieu after the conference, and manage to get more than 12,500 words written in three days.

Doing this has been an invaluable experience, and I think I might be able to finish it. I like what I've written, at least well enough. A bunch of it will need to be stripped out, and a bunch will need to be added in.

But it has taken almost everything I've got. I feel hollowed out and paper thin.

I feel a bit bad about that, like a bit of a failure, strangely. A failure with a lot of words under her belt, so not really. I do feel like I must have a weak constitution, though. How do people do this?

Year after year, people do this.

Ten days in, I got a NaNoWriMo listserv email that someone had crossed 50,000. That's 5000 words a day. I wrote about 5200 yesterday, one day, and I thought I was going to start crying when I woke up this morning and realized I had to write 2000.

Dana, an old friend from my just-post Halifax days, was in town this weekend. When he was leaving Raw Sugar yesterday, where I was writing, he came over and said "Well, have fun!"

I started giggling, possibly hysterically.

NaNoWriMo is no fun. It is boring and frustrating at times, it is satisfying and exhilarating at others. But not fun.

I'm tempted to quit, because it is taking a lot out of me.

And then I think of Trevor Bardell. In OAC chemistry, he was my lab partner. In one and a half terms, I had gone from an A+ student in chemistry to a C student in chemistry. I was thinking about dropping it.

"Do you want the credit?" is what he asked me when I told him this. I thought about it for a second and nodded. "Then you're just going to have to do this again next year. It probably won't be any better then."

I hated that he was right, but I knew he was right. I kept going, and I finished. It took a lot out of me, and it was one of my worst marks ever. But I did it.

Do I want to write a novel? Yes. Very much so.

And I have one in reach. So fucking close I can brush it with my fingertips. I've got 32,000 words and enough time. If I don't keep going now, I will just have to do it again later.

It probably won't be any better then.

I have a feeling that the next two weeks are just going to be a litany of complaints.

Because you know what should not be allowed to happen?

PMS during NaNoWriMo.

Because also, the first half of my cycle was stressful enough, I mean really, that the last half should be more like a last almost-two-thirds. My body is telling me that is not the case, however, and I have wanted to throw something breakable for several hours now. Just to hear the glorious smash and know I caused it.

There is really not much to report these days. I am exhausted through a combination of staying up too late and writing a lot.

Of course, it's hard not to separate the two. I probably didn't get enough sleep this weekend, though what I was doing was totally worth being underslept for.

But the writing. Oh my god, the writing. I'm close to not being able to read Zoom's blog, I have to say, which pains me dearly. I'm just pushing at the underside of 15,000 and she is figuring she'll make 50,000 tomorrow. Not that I begrudge her those words, but fuck me. Every time I sit down it feels like I am trying to squeeze blood from the stone.

At those points, I think of Haruki Murukami. I can't remember the exact quote, but in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running he talks about his muscles. He talks about telling his muscles, when they complain, "Hey, muscles, this is what we're doing now."

I've taken that into yoga, and it's improbably effective. Takes a few days for them to really listen, but if you're doing something every day, they get the message pretty quick.

The same thing, I'm trying it with the writing, but my writing muscle, instead of acquiescing and just working the way I tell it to work, it gets spastic. It sends me off all over the internet looking at polka dots and wall decals and lining up colour chips.

If you have a few minutes, you should really line up some colour chips. I don't even know how I found that, but it was the most fun I've had today. My score was 11, with 4 errors in a row in the pinks, and the rest in a row in the greens.

Another 1600 words tonight, and I'm at a point where it doesn't matter how tired I am, how wrung out, how sick of my own words and sloppy sentence construction. It's 2500 words a day for the next 2 weeks.

Oh my god, I am tired of writing. I wrote an article for Xtra last week that was not my best work, then did the conference insanity, and then started on the novel. I'm up to just over 6000 words on that. Tonight I'm taking a break from the novel to hopefully get a draft of another article done.

Can you say it with me? OH-VER-SKED-YOU-ELLED.

But they say a change is as good as a rest, so here I am, writing to you, taking a change from the article writing which is taking a change from the novel writing. I wonder how many times I can do that before I've swallowed my own whole body and come out the other side.

Three things to say:

1) Even if I don't get 50,000 words, I consider NaNoWriMo to be a success. I've learned what I wanted to learn: what I lack as a writer is discipline. If I sit down and focus as much as I can, I can pound out 2000 words alright. And I can do that every day. But since I have a day job, it means that my social life is pretty much nil this month. I've scheduled a few things in, but have said no to about twice as many more.

So then, my guess, is that what I need to figure out is the balance. How much social fun stuff am I willing to give up to write?

Getting more info to answer that question will be the prize for me.

2) I have a fucking headache.

3) Thank christ I have Remembrance Day off. Would it be impolite at this point to thank the young men and women who have given up their lives so that I may enjoy the freedom to write a mediocre novel?

More soon, I'm sure.

It might be a slow month here at the dot com.

My work conference ended yesterday, and thank god. Pretty much everyone who was working it cried during the closing plenary, when the board president thanked us for working our asses off to put it on even though things have been a shit storm funding mess here since April, really.

So my days were crazy exhausting days full of bad hotel food, bad hotel air, unsolvable technical riddles, and lots of talking to people. My evenings and mornings and occasional breaks were full of the loveliness of D.Jack, who I'd invited to come hang out with me.

It was a brilliant idea, I have to tell you, because without him there, I would have been dreading the whole thing. With him there, I could tread water through the endless useless Skype conversations with our techie (who tried his best) to get to the fun parts.

Now, back to reality, back to regular work, thank christ, with a contract and everything.

And back to National Novel Writing Month. Not that I was ever there to start, not like Zoom and her thousands of words (go Rosemary go!), because I have been and still am, wrung out.

I don't feel creative at all and I have no plot.

But I do have an opening scene and a general question I'd like to explore.

So. Tonight it is. In I dive and we'll see what happens.

To keep myself going, I'm going to post what I write every day - without editing, mind - to a new blogspot: Start Here Tomorrow.

I don't promise it'll be good, but I do promise it'll be there. Encouraging comments very very very welcome.

By chance today, I ran into Janey on the street. We rarely see each other in real life, though it turns out she lives about 5 short blocks away from me.

We talked only briefly, it being jesus cold outside and both of us on our way somewhere else. About the fifth thing she said to me was "National Novel Writing Month! You should do it!"

"Yeah," I said. "I'm pretty sure I'm going to. Not so sure that I've signed up or anything, you know."

Well. Now I can say I am that sure.

The title of the post is pulled from the email right after. I'm not so great with imperfection, so I've started seeing NaNoWriMo as just as much an opportunity to push myself on that as to get a novel written. Either way, in that case, it's a winning proposition.

++

It's been a bit of a day. About 30 seconds before signing up for NaNoWriMo, I sent off a nervous-making email. Several hours before that, I cried in the Bridgehead while J. and I were having warm beverages. Having used her hanky to wipe up some spilled tea, she patted her pockets and said "If my hanky weren't already soaked, I would lend it to you!" and gave me a napkin instead. Now that's a good friend.

Other than that, the weekend's been lovely. Lots of warm beverages with good friends, an amusing trip to the Landsdowne Market, cranberry sauce, wine and more wine, dancing with d.jack, sun and hail and brisk air.