NaNoWriMo

I'm working very hard to "reinvent myself" these days.  A lot of shifting has been going on in the past year that brings all this on: career, family, friends, and ultimately my attitude and mood.  A lot of these shifts have been good, some of them not-so-good.  But all are molding and shaping me into someone different and new... and hopefully -- eventually -- more mature.

About two weeks ago, I decided to participate in National Novel Writing Month.  This is something I've wanted to do for years.  It's never been practical, however.  When your busiest months of the year for work are March/April and November/December, trying to write a 50,000 word novel in the span of one of those busiest of months is ... a mark of insanity at best.   This year, however, aside from my family & child-care responsibilities (not to be underestimated of course), I have the freedom to explore this idea a bit.

Writing is a necessity for me.  I have to do it to sort things out in my head.  Otherwise I babble at people endlessly and they just get annoyed and walk away (usually mid-sentence).  Anyway, I've been thinking I should get back into writing again for a while.  It's been sadly lacking in my life.  Several people have mentioned to me (those that know these things about me), that I needed to write.

So I started up this blog, signed up for NaNoWriMo and started making sure I write SOMETHING everyday.  Even if no one else sees it.  I write.

I'd love to have a finished novel at the end of the month, but if not, there are few things that are more important to me:

• That I've written at all
  
• That I have 50,000 words logged for November -- whether it's all the novel or a combination of "words"
• That I have finished something
• That I learn a few things about myself in the process, and hopefully become a "better" person for it

I think I'm well on my way.  I seem to have stalled out slightly on my novel at the moment.  Partly because of a migraine I've been fighting for the past couple days.  Partly because I prefer short story and poetry (and I don't really like "filler") and at somewhere between 5-10K words, my story might actually be "complete" with a little tweaking.  Do I smack it into "novel submission"?  We'll see.  Depends on the muses, maybe.  We'll see where the characters wanna go.  And we'll see what else I decide might be more necessary to write this month.  Because I'd prefer to use this month as the "kick in the pants to get words down" that I think it was intended for, than just another "writing failure" that I can hold over my head.  My guilt complex is big enough already to add that to it yet.

So... we'll see where the muses take me.  I've got a couple... Right now, they're too busy arguing in my head to help me write anything.