From: A Room With A View

"Though you fly to Greece, and never see him again, or forget his very name, George will work in your thoughts till you die. It isn't possible to love and to part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal."

A Room With A View
E. M. Forster

Answer Key

Did you see what I did there?

I surrounded my post about not having time to do anything with parentheses of days with no posts. I thought it was very meta.

This has been a lesson in post-modernism.

Metaphor Salad: What is this "satisfaction" thing I hear so much about? I can't get none.

Clip art licensed from the Clip Art Gallery on DiscoverySchool.com

In college, my friends and I developed a theory about the three main aspects of university life:

• partying
• sports
• classes

Our theory held that every student must choose two of these aspects. Attempting to balance all three led to certain failure. You'd no doubt eventually wake up on a Sunday with a hangover, a morning game, and a test the next day. You'd theoretically go crazy, drop out, and--I don't know--die on Skid Row, or something.

It occurs to me as I try to squeeze in home-cleanliness, responsible pet ownership, career, writing, family (both extended and immediate), socialization, recycling, reading, bill-paying, car upkeep, health, pop-culture junkiness, and a host of other responsibilities--that I can't have it all. I didn’t even mention sleep. Starting Monday, I cut into sleep a little bit further each night, so that by Friday, sleep has grown into a giant beast that hates accomplishment. Sleep pushes away my laptop and doesn't care about my dirty dishes, my unfinished chapter, Project Runway.

I don't even remember sleep from college, but it must have been there. The sleep urge seems to get stronger with age, but even it is not invincible. Certain books challenge sleep, and occasionally I get so into writing that everything else cowers: the gym is a den for the self-obsessed, my house is an important observation site for dust growth, and I don't know what happens to the rest of that stuff. I guess it evaporates.

Anyway, I am noticing a pattern:

1. I come down with an inspiration-virus, which hits me with the mistaken notion that I can do everything. It's all a matter of following lists and not reading Perez Hilton.
2. I create a color-coded schedule of tasks: solve world hunger, dust curtain rods, write a poem.
3. The next few days I try valiantly to do it all, then settle for most. A battle ensues between the inspiration-virus and the growing strength of sleep beast. They fight. Sleep wins.
4. By Thursday, I am a petri dish of self-hatred. I've completed 50% of my plans; yet I feel like 100% failure. To coddle myself, I read all the Perez I've missed and grow angry as I count typos and realize that most of his posts are a whole lot of nothing described in sensationalistic language intended to make me think it’s important… AND I AM FALLING FOR IT!
5. I flog myself metaphorically, continue to tread the quickly rising water of my life, cultivate the inspiration-virus, and repeat.

How annoying! College offered less choices--sports, partying, classes--but I learned the mechanics of finite time. Still, I attempt to force 300 pounds of stuffing into a 10-pound bird.

I am Atlas, only I carry the world in a lumbar-supportive backpack. It doesn’t fit, but I squeeze the planets and shove them in, latch the bulging flaps, and reattempt my climb.

Oh wise blog-readers, this is a call to your collective knowledge. The sleep beast is a kitten compared to the unhappiness monster that will overtake me if I continue this pattern. But what stays, what goes? And how to battle the feeling of not doing enough despite doing all I can? Explain, please, how you achieve balance.

From: "The Black Art"

"A woman who writes feels too much,
those trances and portents!
As if cycles and children and islands
weren't enough; as if mourners and gossips
and vegetables were never enough.
She thinks she can warn the stars.
A writer is essentially a spy.
Dear love, I am that girl."

Man, I love me some Anne Sexton.

The Truth about November

Sometimes I am a stickler for the rules. Here are some examples:

• when I make the rules
• when the rule is "no butting in line"
• when rich people (not just money-rich, any kind of rich) break rules at the expense of poor people (not just money-poor, any kind of poor)

NaNoWriMo is not about the rules. I hate the daily word count. Some days, even in November, I am just not feeling it. I hate seeing my short little bar next to the taller bar in the progress graph. I want to tell the graph to bite me.

The truth is that I write 50,000 words a month anyway--even if it isn't November. Between work, emailing, novel-writing, blogging, journaling, list-creating, I probably write more than 50,000 words a month. However, because of all those different outlets, I rarely write 50,000 words on a single project in a month--except at work. For me, NaNoWriMo is an exercise in focus.

Yesterday, someone told me she couldn't believe I was writing a novel in a month. But I am absolutely not doing that. That's ridiculous! I'm writing 50,000 words of a novel in a month--I know I won't have a complete novel on November 30. THE INTERN is revising a novel this month--as is Frankie Diane Mallis. Do you know about NaPiBoWriWe, picture book writers? How 'bout HANOWRIMO? The ways to make this month your own are unlimited.

YA writer Justine Larbalestier says: "Use the month of November to explore. Whatever you wind up with—on paper or in your head—you’ll know more about yourself as a writer."

Have you changed the rules of NaNoWriMo to fit your style or needs? How are you making NaNoWriMo work for you?

Welcome... but shouldn't you be writing?

I'll keep it short so you can get back to meeting your word count.

One of my local region nano buddies directed me to a great article about removing Internet noise so we can actually write. I'm tempted to give up blogging this month, except that I think blogging helps my writing rather than hinders it--but so much else hinders it. Here's my favorite quote from the article:

"The hounds are out this month, guys, and they smell your fear and self-doubt. So, shovelbloggers will be offering you a tantalizing Vegas-style buffet of endless writing “help” that will range from the indispensable to the stupid to the unconscionably poisonous."

Now, here are various ridiculous reasons I've put off writing in the past:

• I need a new laptop.
• What’s the point of revising before my thesaurus arrives?
• I will write when everyone is silent.
• No one’s writing anything until this house is cleaned.
• Has anyone seen my muse?

I am giving up excuses for the month of November. What are you giving up to make sure your writing gets done?

Um, What Month is It?

My friend has a sign in her kitchen that says, I'll get my shit together tomorrow (we're a classy bunch). This motto sums up my preparation for NaNoWriMo. Despite the fact that E. Darker, a cool writer girl I met at the NaNoWriMo kickoff party, told me "the trick is to plan ahead," here it is November 2, and my word counter still says:

0/50,000

I planned to have a comprehensive scene list by yesterday, and I sort of do, but it's in my head, out of order, and still a little fuzzy. However, I checked the NaNoWriMo site this morning and saw that my betas are still at zero words too: Proof that betas are good for not only motivation, but also for making me feel better when I flake out.

I'll tell you what I do know. My main character has an awesome family. I have this picture of them, and I can't wait to see how they interact. Once I post this blog, I'm going to go write some scenes with the fam and make my pictures of them even clearer.

As you can see, I'm sort of a pantser in planner's clothing. I make big plans. I break big plans. I somehow emerge with a finished manuscript. I have no idea how it happens.

What about you? Do you plan ahead for your writing? Are you unaware how your magic manuscript gets completed? Got any tips to amp up my word production?