sources

Today, I decided I needed some inspiration. (Yes, I know. I should be writing. And I am. This NaNoWriMo has started out pretty rocky, and my wordcount is hosed, and I don't care because now I'm on the right track.)

One of my favorite tests of good writing is from Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. It reminds us that every written word, certainly every written word of a novel, is part of a dream. In order for that dream to be believable and sustainable, it must be "vivid and continuous." I've been using this test to silence the inner editor, that nasty little voice (I once had a boss who called it "Mort" and posted a cartoony face on her corkboard to remind her just how unreal he was) that likes to tell me my novel has probably been written before and thus is derivative at best and plagiarism at worst, that you can't indulge yourself in details--the inner editor that has had a delightful time while I've been living at warp speed and just skimming the surface of everything.

The concept reminds me that 1) the story, the characters, the setting are supposed to be dreamed up and 2) it's not only okay but necessary to go deeply into it. I don't need to worry because first drafts are supposed to be squishy, lumpy, self-indulgent messes that get cleaned up later. Whew.

So, in deciding I wanted this to be on my wall in a big giant way, I found this little tool, that lets you make professional-looking motivational posters for personal use (no, not that goony type with the black border and white "iconic" word that keeps FranklinCovey in business, but slightly edgier ones): www.recitethis.com. It's free, fast, and shareable/downloadable. Here's mine:

It was so easy, I made another one--we'll call this the downer version to the upper above, for those times when you need to take a breath and remember:

another go!

July 1 approaches--the start of Camp NaNoWriMo 2013.

Quick wrap-up: I finished 2012 on August 31, 8 p.m., racing the deadline and finishing with 50,491 words. Then I put the manuscript away and couldn't look at it for a year. I didn't feel accomplished or different, and it was several months before I could believe I'd done it. Burning the candle--staying up sometimes until midnight, or even once or twice getting up in the middle of the night because I'd gone to bed without writing--at both ends stretched me and my family to the limit, and September was a rough recuperation.

But when I opened my work from last year recently and read some of it, I realized two things: when you just crank and write as fast as you can, you can not only produce some words, but some of them are actually good, and usable. I recognized my voice in them--and that became a touchstone for everything else I've been working on. I don't know if I'll ever turn that mass of pages into a novel--I realized well into it that I have a ton of research undone--but it was a great jump start to writing again.

This year, I'm tackling a novel that has been rattling around in my brain in various forms for several years--the pivotal scene, a secret that the matriarch of the family carries that has become the source of rumor in her small community, started off in another novel idea when I was in college. That one never got written, but the pondering on this book has been going on awhile. It was one of the contenders for last year's event, but I was afraid I'd "ruin" it by using it as my trial run. Its time has come. . .

Making scenes in Scrivener, doing character sketches, trying to figure out when I will actually write and how much. If writing hasn't exactly become play--some days I still get nauseous when I face the blank page and will do just about anything to avoid it--I again know it's essential.

Writing matters.