getting on the bus

Camp NaNoWriMo starts tonight at midnight. I've prepped my scene board, written some character studies, figured out where in my day I can write "bites." Tonight I explained to my kids that I'm doing a contest, trying to write a whole lot of words in August. My five-year-old said, "Mom, winning the contest isn't the most important thing. Contests are about having fun." This got me thinking. . .

One summer when I was fourteen or fifteen, my best friend and I had a series of sleepovers where we cooked up a story. In between sleepovers, I wrote the scenes we had planned in our lengthy way-after-midnight conversations. Eventually I pulled out my mom's Smith-Corona and pounded it all out. The plot isn't so important (it involved our meeting and marrying movie stars, and wild horses could not compel me now to reveal which ones). The point was, we had a total blast doing it. I was driven to write it. My BF was a great plotter and wonderful collaborator (and is such a good friend, she recently told me she rereads her copy of the story--there were only two ever produced--every few years just for fun). It was pure play.

Somewhere along the way, writing got too serious. As a kid, all I needed for entertainment was paper and a pen. Then I majored in creative writing in college--at one point in time I was willing enough to declare as a writer that I repeatedly faced the blank page and suffered the excruciation of reading aloud to people for four years. Some aspects of that exercise killed my joy and convinced me I wasn't "supposed" to write. What really happened was that I lost my ability to connect to the part of me that loved the play of writing. I looked for awhile, and never found a writer's home--not with my blank pages, not with other writers. I stopped writing, and I stopped thinking of myself as a writer.

I've learned some things since then. It's supposed to be hard. It's also supposed to be essential. No one will ever again make me believe I'm not a writer, as long as I'm writing. And ultimately, when all the gears are moving, it can be play.

My son is right--this contest is not about "winning," and getting the camp badge or even proving I can write 50,000 words in one month. It's about making the time and space to remind myself that once, this was the most fun I could imagine having. I'm going to camp--I'm so very excited!