A Win and a Beginning

There’s a magic to this NaNo business that I need to get a handle on in the next few days. It’s a clear and obvious sort of magic, but I haven’t yet learned to make it work for me.

This is my second year participating in National Novel Writing Month, and I’ve gotten so much from it. The month and the challenge – to produce a 50,000 word draft of a novel – will be over tomorrow, and I already have my technical Win. Like last year, it was a tremendous success for me. I started the month with an idea, and over the last four weeks I’ve worked and built on that idea and have sketched out a novel that’s full of ideas and substance. And I’m very happy with this beginning. I hope that the parallel to last year ends here. Because then, I barely advanced with the work over the course of the following eleven months. The mindset that worked so well in November evaporated, and I never figured out how to get it back.

What’s obvious is that it has to do with a deadline and a commitment. Both this year and last, starting with those two elements and a good idea, I was able to force myself to the keyboard multiple times each day, and to press to add an average of 1,667 words to the manuscript each day. After November ended, I wasn’t able to do so. And now, after having re-visited that very productive mindset, I’m at least a little clearer about what shifted that I can’t allow to shift this time around.

During Nano, I’ve granted myself permission to fail. I keep writing even when I don’t believe in what I’m writing, out of the commitment to get the words out and to hit the 2,000 daily that I aim for. I sometimes feel flat, uninspired, a little bored or even miserable as I’m producing those words. Because I don’t feel I’m writing well. The inner critic is very present and very loud in my head, telling me with every key stroke that I’m producing crap.

But rarely does it turn out to be crap. There’s always something there that I can use. Some few sentences, or a description, a character or an insight give me material that actually carries the work forward, that successfully fills in a gap in the narrative, the plot, or in the guts of the piece that I was trying to fill. Which then fuels me to push on, so I go through the entire thing again.

In normal time, there are several ways in which my process would differ. First of all, I typically don’t force myself to keep writing when I feel that I’m writing crap. I might go at it for a short while, but rarely beyond two or three hundred words. And if I do press on, it’s generally going to be with a fresh start, after abandoning what I’ve done that I don’t feel good about. I don’t write far enough through that pain of ‘writing crap’ to have anything to look back on the next day, something I might realize isn’t as useless as I thought it was.

Another difference is that during these Novembers I’ve been able to really put off any editing. I start the month knowing that I won’t be doing any through the entire month. It is really ‘out of mind’. So I continue writing free, able to think of it all as play, experiment, exploration, knowing that in the editing process I may change any or everything.

What it comes down to is that Nano incentivizes me to write much looser than I normally permit myself. And in the looseness lies the magic. I allow ideas to intrude sentence by sentence, make up characters on the fly, bring in or ignore key elements, or zig where I intended to zag just moments before.

Already, I’m feeling the signals of approaching anxiety that’s of a totally different flavor than anything I’ve felt all month. I did feel anxiety during the month, but forced myself to write through it. As I’ll have to force myself through the tightness that’s threatening now. I feel optimistic because I have a better understanding of it than I did last year. And the greatest gift of NaNo is the self-confidence it inspires. It’s amazing to have a rough draft of a novel where a month ago there was barely a scenario. It inspires great faith in the creative process and in my ability to enter into it. Every Day. And day by day.

An Odd Birthday

Today is a kind of birthday. I’m two thirds of a century old. Somehow, shortly after rising this morning, much earlier than usual but fully awake, the significance of the day popped into mind.

Odd, yes. Exactly 66 years and eight months, two thirds of a century pie. I LOVE it.

Maybe the reason I caught the date is because I have a very clear memory of the same happening when I hit the one third century mark. It must have been 25 July 1987 and I was in Seattle. I was – at the time I made the calculation – in a vehicle heading north, with my love of the time and one or two others that I can’t remember. Thirty-three years and 4 months old, I was.

And what did I think of that then? I guess that it seemed a good age to be. I was realizing that I wasn’t young anymore, in the way I had been. And a prediction by an old friend occurred to me: he’d said I’d ‘settle down’ by the time I was thirty-five. I guess he meant ‘get serious’.

He should’ve given me this other third of a century; it’s what I’ve taken, anyway. I think I’ve finally done it though. And if I haven’t gotten serious, I’ve at least gotten a lot more focused.

I’m lately re-discovering the power of promises I can make to myself. I’ve been reacquainting myself with that tool recently, not to hold away the distractions and temptations, exactly, but to press on and do what I committed to anyway. And I’m committed to living leaner these future days than I have my past ones. It’s a big advantage, a gift I can give myself.

Another promise was to do NaNoWriMo again this year, as it helped me so much last year. And it’s been amazing again, and has refreshed my vision and optimism about writing throughout the year.

Thanksgiving is here in the States, and I wouldn’t mind some time there. But the Hammer, here in Canada is home and I’m glad I don’t have that particular set of heightened stresses to deal with. My brother and family are in Atlanta, Georgia, in the state that was such a key flip in the recent election, and that is about to hold the final two nationally significant elections of the cycle. And right in the middle of the Covid explosion.

Thanksgiving was always my favorite holiday. All about actively enjoying the blessings. It’s probably always been a bit too much about indulging, and not enough about being thankful. But enjoyment is a full and direct expression of appreciation, anyway. So long as we’re aware of how blessed we are in having whatever it is we have to enjoy. Even when a lot of pain and lack comes with it. It’s a great strength to be able to thank. It’s a rich and an enriching experience.

Thanks forward, too, for whatever may be coming next. 

Trumpocalypse 3.0

    Version 1.0 was the takeover of the Republican Party with hardly a whimper of resistance.

    Version 2.0 saw Trump winning control of the executive branch of the US, and beginning to impose his will across the nation and the world. That period - thankfully - appears to be coming to an end. But the nightmare won't be over for some time yet.

    The new version of Trump that is emerging - version 3.0 - promises to be as chaotic and disrupting as the others - maybe more so. This latest version, which was unveiled at about 3 am on 4 November, the day after his defeat and removal from office was officially set into motion, is the manifestation of the terrified loser that Donald Trump has apparently dreaded being for his entire life.

    One of the characteristics of Trump that emerged during 2.0 is his need to respond to failure, rejection and criticism with destructive vengeance. And as soon as he found himself on the verge of becoming the biggest loser of all time - victim of the largest voter turnout in US history - he turned his full attention to attacking those entities responsible for his public humiliation with everything he has.

    His first targets: the democratic party and the electoral system that are bringing him down. Starting with the early morning press conference, in which Trump claimed victory long before all votes were counted and accused the Democratic party of fraud, Trump made clear his willingness to intentionally poison his followers' faith in the institutions that sustain them.

    Over the course of the last three days, Trump has done what no other losing presidential candidate in memory has ever done: he's appealed to the most gullible and loyal of his supporters, with lies that his opponents are trying to do what he in fact is trying to do - steal an election. He calls them out to put everything on the line to support what he is willing to destroy, in an attempt to retain the power slipping through his fingers.

    And my fear is that, after the final votes have been confirmed, and his loss of the presidency is clear, he will do what is in his power to sabotage the Biden administration, regardless of the harm it will do his supporters.

    Am I paranoid? Over-reacting? Falling into the bottomless pit of conspiracy thinking? I may be. Trump's insults, threats, accusations and dog whistles, and the unthinking acceptance by Trump nation of his every lie, have me dreading the worst of which Americans are capable.

    There's a silver lining of fresh hope. Actually, it's an enormous opening of possibility stretching into the future. Maybe, just maybe, Biden will restore some sanity to the political realm in the US. I'm actually very happy just now. I was near despair when Trump made his pronouncements the other morning, but by the time I woke, Wisconsin and my home state of Michigan were beginning to trend in the right direction. Since then, through endless hours spent following the developments, one state after another has shifted into Biden's column.

    But Trump isn't going to dissolve like a bad dream. Version 3.0 is newly activated, its ego has been badly damaged, and it's out for vengeance. And it has over two months remaining in power to stir up the chaos it so loves. May we all survive its infectious madness.