This is my first time ever joining the National Novel Writing Month event, and it is kicking my ass. I am currently at 28,000 words (give or take) and 56% of the way through the challenge, so a little ahead of schedule.
It’s great.
It’s also not great.
Let me explain. Bad stuff first.
It’s not great
Mostly because I haven’t been able to do anything else. I skipped posting to Substack last week, and while I have a short story most of the way ready to share, it probably needs two or three hours of my time before I can post it here—and I can’t find the energy for that.
I also can’t find the energy for my Lone Navigator exercises, or the time for a handful of other creative projects I’ve been slowly working on. It is, essentially, all I can do to maintain my day to day life and also meet my daily word count goals.
So, NaNoWriMo kind of sucks because it’s pretty much dominating my headspace and there are some other things I want to do, but completing this challenge has become a Big Deal for me and I am determined to make it to the finish line.
Because…
It’s really pretty great
Mostly because I’m actually writing. I now have more words in my Black Tree Project in two weeks than I have in any other project I’ve started (and not finished, because I don’t finish things), some of which I’ve been adding to for years now.
It’s all terrible, of course. Really unreadable stuff. But I have faith that either a) I can edit it to where I am happier with it or b) I can see why I’m not happy with the shape of things, and figure out how to improve on it from there.
I am most certainly learning a great deal about my approach to writing, and how long of a journey I still have ahead of me. I will be writing up a post-mortem breaking down my experience at the end of this, but for now, it’s safe to say, this has been an immensely worthwhile endeavor.
Halfway there!
Oh, and also this
I have also been writing some daily poetry. The challenge is to write poems free of metaphor, to only write what I actually see on that day. They are not complete poems, necessarily, but here are a few of the ones I think are kind of nice.
11/1 the australian shepherd steps into the surf the pitbull avoids the water trotting to stay near as dry can be to the approaching receding wave cattle dog goes deeper pitbull stares after leaps forward and splashes to his adopted brother a high swell washes in up to their tummies absolutely not they high-step for drier sand
11/7 perusing the toy shop reveling in the nostalgia the unfiltered joy in her face when she picks up a plastic gray sea anemone that says squeeze me and squeezes
11/9 at the end of the lane, by the house with the chickens there is a red and white hutch that says farm fresh a smiley face denoting when there are eggs for the taking at the next house down there are red lava rocks shaped into hearts in the barrow along the roadside then a house with a bright yellow sign private driveway no trespassers protected by coast to coast security keep out
11/12 blue sock darned with kittens on the pitbull’s paw wrapped with tape to hold it in place to hide the self-inflicted red sores from overzealous chewing of a pesky itch his eyes look up at me ears down body perfectly still tail tucked and listening as I assure him this is love, this is love
That’s it from me.
I probably won’t post again this month, but will try to get something up the first week of December.
Thanks for your time, friends.
Really enjoyed the poems. Keep those coming! 😊
I have yet to join that writing challenge for that very reason. I would not have the time to do it. I barely manage to scape up the time to continue writing my second draft, although I am squeezing in the time, and managing a couple of blogs a month,but thats it!
When my time is my own again, when I am no longer responsible for the daily care of an elderly parent, I might give it a go.
Love your poetry, though. Nice humour threaded through it. I will have to try that ‘writing only what you see’ style. It is very effective.
Good luck with completing the challenge and looking forward to the post-mortem.