write for myself--more and more often

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I was doing dishes with my Dad yesterday while joking around and goofing off when I suddenly got a great idea for a children’s book. Of course, I like to think it’s one of those books that will mean something different to the kids than it will to the parents who read it, but I’m so stoked to have an idea to bat around.

We’ll see what happens. :)

I actually won NanoWrimo this year, baby. 50+K and while it doesn’t feel like that big of an accomplishment now it’s over, I do feel like this was a small but necessary step in my continued progress as a writer. I learned several things throughout the month:

1. I need to read. Constantly.
2. I need to write. Every day if possible, please.
3. I need to focus on narrative style and speech patterns.
4. I feel alive when I’m writing, even if the product is horrendous.
5. I’m terrified of failure at this.

So that’s that, right? But learning things is terribly important and 50K words is a decent accomplishment, even if they are suspiciously reminiscent of drivel.

Only recently have I begun to understand that writing need not be an official endeavor. I don’t have to be sitting in a certain way or submitting a certain type of piece or writing for a particular audience for it to “count,” as it were. I just wrote a pages-long email to my friend Nick that would basically serve as an essay in another forum. My short entries here often provide starts for longer explorations in their own right.

So I’m going to try to be less hard on myself with regard to this one. I still want to be out there in a professional sort of sphere and I want not to be so scared of both failure and success, but really, I write more often than I give myself credit for.

I have Post-It notes scattered everywhere, I have ideas positively pounding the door of my weary brain, and yet my time is rarely my own lately and so all goes unwritten. Reading and writing are the two single most wished-for activities for me at present, and neither have I been doing lately with any real frequency. And this kills me a little, you see.

So along with everything else I’ve got to start doing, I need to set up a schedule for myself and once I’ve learned to stick legitimately to it, I’ve got to put two hours in there that I may devote to personal literary pursuits.

One of my fondest wishes is still to make it as a critic or an essayist, so most of my day would in that case be literary. However, until I make that happen, I’ve got to find time for this elsewhere.

I miss it. =/

I made my way nearly to 15K words before I decided that I was too frazzled with everything else to give the kind of consideration to these messy compilations of words as I’d have liked. And so it’s lying quietly on my flash drive until I return to it. I haven’t essentially “given up,” but I’m at a place now where I’m alright that it’s not at 50K and that it probably won’t be.

I’ve fallen a little in love with my characters and I’m thrilled that I’ve been able to nurture them, but I have learned what I meant to learn and I’ve done what I meant to do, so I’m okay with this.

What I’ve learned overall is that I like the way it feels to actually put pen to paper with the intent of creating something fictional. I’ve never done that with any sort of fluency or any sort of careless madness before and it feels sort of good, rushing wildly to the next paragraph.

The point here, though, is that I need to write. Not fiction, I’m aware that this isn’t my thing, per se, but I know that I want to write…I’m terrified recently that I just can’t, but I’m still willing to throw myself at it and this has taught me that there are more forms, genres, ways to write than I ever dreamed were available to me.

So that’s a step, right?

I’d loosely considered it for years, but a week ago, Lauren finally gently convinced me to join up with NaNoWriMo and voluntarily submit myself to the insanity that goes on there. Essentially, I’m writing 50K words in 30 days and won’t have time not to write for myself.

This will be a nice swift kick in my naysaying pants. I’ve never believed I could write fiction and I’m hoping this will prove to me that I’m able, at the very least.

Game on.

I write more to Lauren than I do in any other venue and while I don’t want to stop doing that, most of those thoughts are ones I wouldn’t mind sharing publicly (if in different dialogue). I’ve grown tired of the blog I’ve had since I was 18 and while I’m in the process of creating a new one, I need to find some way of maintaining creative expression. Maybe I’ll start writing entries and essays on paper at least to keep myself on track. So many things fall by the wayside, but this, this absolutely cannot be one of them.

thanks

I fancy myself a bit of a writer, truth be told, and while I blog almost everyday and am generally very happy with the words that escape my fingers, I want to write more and I want to do so more often. There’s no sense in fixing what isn’t necessarily broken, but this is one of those things that is designed to keep me on track. Number Eight demands I become a legitimate essayist and this is a small way of keeping me on that task.