just wanted to send all you guys a quick wave – NaNoWriMo, the national novel writing month in which i am writing 50,000 words towards a novel, is almost over, and i hope to be able to pay more attention here again come next week.
what an experience this is! it is, among other things, an exercise in quantity not quality, and that brings some interesting learning. as i shared on twitter the other night: ” ‘everything is practice’ – tonight, it’ll be living with the irritation i feel at the mountains of cliches in my NaNoWriMo script.” focus on output, never mind the rest. focus. focus.
and as usual in novel writing, there are plot and character surprises galore. why did one of the (lesser) characters find herself at a willy pickton party all of a sudden? how come so many animals populate the pages? what’s up with my main character, waley, who dedicates most of her life to compassionate action but is also a drug dealer and pathological liar?
it was also fascinating to see how the writing interacts with the rest of my life. this was probably one of the most emotional months of my life. one day i spent half of the day crying; it did absolute wonders for my writing! another night i was in the middle of describing in some detail the death of one of my characters, only to be interrupted by yet another drama. that felt – weird.
all of this is what’s called life. so that’s a good thing.