NaNoWriMo 2010

I am one of thousands of writers who make the commitment to write a novel, or at least 50,000 words of one, in the 30 days of November.  i love the concept of doing a high speed, quick and dirty, rough draft, instead of walking around for years telling myself that I am a writer, and I have great ideas for novels, and I WILL write that book starting tomorrow, um, Next Week, er...New year's Day.

 I always knew I was meant to write, I started telling myself stories before I even knew what words were.  I wrote poems and outlined stories on every scrap of paper that came my way and yet, I cheated myself by letting life get in the way.  I only wrote when I had a deadline, an assignment to fill, or when I was writing long Holiday letters to copy and send out en-masse.

 Then I began telling my stories to my kids, until there was a young handicapped boy named Duffy Barkley, already living and breathing in the air with me.  And then I heard about two extremely helpful on-line sites, one being NaNoWriMo, and  they changed my life from, "Someday" to "Do it Now!" Flylady.com,was mainly a site where I was encouraged to give up perfection and just bless my home with 15 minutes at a time.  What can you do in 15 minutes a day?  Create a warm, welcoming home out of Chaos, and write a novel in your spare time. Learn to Finally Love Yourself (FLY) as you do it.  And in bursts of inspiration and the willingness to just jump in where I was, my first dream of a book became a real thing that can be found on-line and in stores and held and hated or loved and has begun a life without me.

 But now, for the third time, I have made this commitment and it is November again, and I went from the surge of enthusiasm, to the, "This is terrible, I QUIT" to the "I can't stop eating, breathing and Dreaming this story," stage.

Halfway through the month, halfway through the 50,000 words, almost all the way out of my mind.  Committed?  Me?  Probably should be.

 So I had to take a break, remember that the world where my husband and children live, is not a fictional one.  I hugged my family, grabbed my camera and went outside, to breath the salty Fall air of the redwood coast and yet

 every step of the way, I felt them following me, reminding me that they can't move until I free them, that they can't find their way home until I do.  Every fictional word I write is a true part of me.  The world they inhabit, no less a part of who I am than the world I live in.

So I go back to my keyboard, back to Guatemala and the Oregon trail and mythical Uhrlin, but I sit down, fortified by chocolate, so the taste and smell can call me home from NaNoWriMo land when the story burns too real and the call of my own life is a faint memory.