Changing Gears: Life after NaNo

Ever the one to perpetuate the myth of my necessity to obtain external stimulus in order to produce anything, I am signed up with NaBloPoMo.  Sounds like some central California town with a near defunct mission, no?  Well, the idea is that you blog something every day, all month long.  Nothing as grand as NaNoWriMo…no waving of sugared carrots in your face just out of reach causing you to fabricate all manner of unfounded, fanciful and grandiose end results including feelings of self-accomplishment, recognition of peers and colleagues, possible eventual notice by Those That Publish and Market…and acquisition of Fame and Riches that Those That Publish and Market may lead you to believe they can bestow on you…or at least feed you a falsified fantasy to encourage you bang on your keyboard with your fingers ’til they bleed a bit, so that they may acquire at least the Riches part of their blathered bogusness.

No, no…NaBloPoMo is just blog everyday. They even give you a topic for the month.  Yep.  You barely have to think.  Ha! Right!  Yes, Write! December’s topic is “Thanks”.  Well, sounds quite too positive for me!  “Thanks”??  Yes, sure…next shall we blog about pink unicorns and fluffy bunnies (ones not intended for the pot with carrots and curry come Ostara)?  Bah…well, I signed on for this, and this I will do.  But do not for one moment think that all that is in Dy’s Mind’s Eye will revolve around such happy-hippy thoughts.  Thanks, my eye!  I have other things to say, fishes to fry and stories to finish, so all those scared off by Happy Shiny Things have no fear and please…stick around! You never know what will come spinning outta my head from one day to the next!

That said, today, December 1st, first day and first post of NaBloPoMo, I will tell you: 

I am thankful for NaBloPoMo.  That’s right. 

• For their just being there to provide the external stimulus that many of us need (or think we need…is it the same thing?). 
• For their insipid little monthly topic for December that makes me feel all squirmy inside like I’m at a prayer meeting having to hold hands in a circle with someone I just met and am not sure I like and I’m just not getting this whole “God” thing.
• For their easy-to-use site that’s so much like a MySpace for Bloggers.
• For insisting that I at least TRY to be positive about something without it breaking me.
• For their attempt at a sense of community for bloggers that procrastinate, so that we can all try to kick each other in the pants to “stay on the wagon”.
• And last but not least, I am thankful for NaBloPoMo as they give me yet another way to feed my cyber-crack habit and allow me to procrastinate any and all things that I really should be doing at any given moment.

So, anyone else signed on for the HappyLand Express to Hell (aka NaBloPoMo Dec 2008)?  Stand up and be counted!  Think of this as Friends of Bill W…but for bloggers. 

“Hi, My name is Dyanne and I’m an cyber-addict.”

(Everyone says, “Hi Dyanne!”) 

“Just want to say I ended the month of November with a post (or two or three posts in one day) and I’m logging on into December with my first post of the month.”

(Applause and general mumblings of encouragement from Everyone).

 

Now…if you’ll all excuse me, I’ve gotta a man to see about a motherboard…

 

© 2008 D. Kessler

 

Not-NoWriMo? Another Attempt at a Disclaimer or Some Such Non-sense…

Okay.  I think anyone who’s been at all reading my blog just a little bit has figured out that this NaNoWriMo08 thing is not really happening the way I had planned.  I mean 5,548 words at T minus nine days is so-o-o not going to cut it, ya know?  The 50,000-word goal is just…yeah, I think you get the picture. 

However, in the spirit of Good Sports-Womanship, as well as the principle of Pigheaded Perseverance, I keep pluggin’ along.  Obviously the attempt on my part to make it bare-bones-bad-prose didn’t work out so well…I mean, I’ve added visual aids, for cryin’ out loud!  A waste of time in any nanowrimo rule book.  But don’t they look nice on the page? 

I think the emails sent to me by the NaNoWriMo Team that are meant to be encouraging have had actually an opposite effect. 

Go to a “write in”?  Puh-leese.  I write when I’m antisocial, and because I’m antisocial. It’s a way of getting all that stuff in my brain on the outside and visual without having to deal with others.  I’m not a joiner, period.  No pep club, no book club, no house meetings with roommates (hell, no roommates!), no AA/NA or other “Friends of Bill W” club (take your pick, America…there’s one for everyone!).  In fact, the only organization I belong to is the Democratic Party.  I don’t like talking with others about problems, solutions, ideas or whatnot…and I don’t want to really hear others talk about the same or, worse yet, how well they are doing. Sap and Ick.  If I’m going to leave my house for a social function, it had better have drinks and some loud music and an even louder bartender involved.  Hardly conducive to “write in” activity, ya think?

Other “advice” given in these pep-talk emails?

1. “It’s okay to not know what you’re doing.”   Really?  Ya think?  Isn’t this the natural state of life as we know it?  Do any of us know what we’re really doing…ever?
2. “The only bad plot move you can make…is lingering too long at your story’s crossroads…”  Um…okay…thanks.  I’ll keep that in mind…I guess.
3. “Today’s tangents will become tomorrow’s arcs, and unforeseen connections will tie up your loose ends.”  Yeah…that’s kinda the idea, isn’t it?    I mean, we’re writing a STORY.  Are these guys coaching a high school freshman English class here? 
4. “One cheater knows another….Stop using a new story idea to avoid the work you still have to do on your current work-in-progress!  Put the Shiny New Story away for later…”  Huh?! Okay, maybe I’m totally not as creative as I thought I was, but I just think I’m not as A.D.D. as the person that wrote this email. Another story…At the same time??
5. And in reference to cranking out the word-count: “Write out the entire lyrics to American Pie, if you feel the need to…”  Okay. Nope. Sorry. No can do.  THAT‘s what I call cheating.  That’s not writing…not even bad writing.  It’s just…just…nope. Uh-uh.  If this is something condoned and even encouraged in this thing that I have signed up to be a part of, well I think I’ll just make myself apart from them and just plug away, slowly but surely, on my own at my little story and see what happens with it.  Maybe it won’t be a grand ol’ novel; maybe it will just be a long-ish short-story, or a short-ish novella. And the story itself will most definitely not be finished by the end of the month.

So.  There it is.  I’ll keep this NaNoWriMo fiasco going for November, but I’ll definitely still be writing the story after the end of the month. I guess I’ll have to think up some other titles to my installments posted here…maybe Not NoWriMo or some such.  Hmm…

© 2008 D. Kessler