NaNoWriMo Begins!

I look forward to November every month, never because I have the intention of writing the entirety of a novel but to engage in a monthly challenge that gets me through every day where I am challenging myself to do something that I don’t do daily. 

I enjoy the practice of writing regularly, but this time, with some type of rules. The only rule being quantity, which seems like the thing that we’re always taught to NOT focus on because people don’t want quantity: they want quality. 

However, it’s not really the case, is it? People want quality AND quantity, and the only way you can give both consistently, it’s going to be through creating more. I don’t believe that we should put ourselves under that kind of pressure but is it me, or are our standards getting lower anyway? We’re usually content with SOMEthing because we appreciate the effort we see from others and are kind about the result. It doesn’t have to be some sort of crazy epic--just some sort of small and authentic offering from a human putting themselves into the world that we can see a little bit of ourselves in and we’re glad to have that mirror.

What is my goal? I’m not writing a novel but I want to see what comes up if I force myself to try and write around 2,000 words a day. This practice is often eye-opening and I call it digging. We never know what we might find if we commit to digging. 

It’s a practice that starts slow for me. I can’t just hop straight into writing that many words without a direction so I’ll focus this entry on my intention with this. 

I want to be honest, sharing until I feel like I’m empty of words to share and seeing what words come out of the emptiness. 

I want to be authentic, sharing even if all I have to say is small talk fodder that isn’t going anywhere because that’s where I truly am so that others see it as an example and know that it’s okay to just talk to yourself to see what you might say. You never know what you’re going to say and sometimes you have to be happy digging for an hour and only turning up stones and more dirt.

I want to share the humor that I find daily. Sometimes I feel like my humor is gone but I know that isn’t true. I write this with a little smile, thinking of the silliness of life, how funny it is that I’m sitting here again writing this month, as I have for so many months. I’ve tried to do this handwritten but I don’t have the time for that really. I know myself by now and know that I will write more when I can type and words can flow as quickly, or nearly as quickly, as out of my head, and it offers more freedom and honesty to do so without worrying about handwriting, appearances, the flow of a pen, or refilling ink, or how many pages I’m taking up in a treasured journal and should be switching to a different notebook. Should I have bought a separate notebook for this? Should I have done each entry in a color palette? This is about the words themselves and typing it, keeps it about the words themselves. 

I want to do this efficiently and quickly. As I said, I’m not trying to pull up a diamond every time. I’ve discovered I’m an introvert and have the ability to find genuine contentment with producing only for myself. If my audience is a version of me from the past or the future, well then, hello, and I love you, and I don’t want to force you to read any more of my romanticizing of my own experiences and pain. I want to bring things up directly, to face them, and though this is a metaphor I use often: it’s okay to dig just to plant a seed. 

I often say that I’m my own audience. That I’m wanting to write and create for myself: which DOES have to be the ultimate goal of an artist because seeking that external validation for fulfillment is a quick road to misery. But I recognize how selfish this is. So this time I say that my audience is for me, but that I also believe that you are a reflection of me and I am a reflection of you, that my stories are our stories, and my lessons and discoveries and messages that I receive are also yours, and surely if you told me your story or allowed me to read your honest and authentic stories to yourself that I would see myself in there too. 

I’m surprised at the stories I haven’t shared. I’m surprised at how often I hold onto situations that twist my stomach up and tighten my throat. Maybe they don’t have to be shared but I can work through them in a different way, not allowing them to stifle my voice but bring clarity to it. I won’t allow it to clench my stomach but ease it.

This is the point, I suppose. I’m going to learn in public--and do it more often. Because if I feel like there’s a lot of pressure to create and I feel uncertain about what to say, then I’m going to share that. If I feel like I’m too excited about things to share but want to do it in a certain way, then I’ll share that too. If I want to imagine the way that large white dog hung his head out of that truck window, wagging his tongue in the air and squinting at the wind, looking like an old man that found bliss in sunlight, then I’ll write about him too.

Right now, our lawn has an unfinished halloween scene but at least something was done. I have journals to photograph and upload to the shop but I’ve started the photos and they just need editing. I have a list of posts to make that I’m hoping will be fun and interesting for others. I have ideas and I am lucky to have so many ideas. 

My biggest struggle is finding a way to say everything I want to say and having it tie to everything, which is ironic, isn’t it? Because I make journals so that you have a spot to build trust in your voice, where you treat your words like they matter, even if it’s small talk fodder that you have to build with yourself. I’m a perpetual journalist. In my content and in my creation, I journal through making, through art, through songs, and through words and I think that it’s all the same. 

The linguists know: multimodal texts and whatnot. Journaling is everything because everything is a narrative. As you sit and read and slouch and notice your hunched shoulders and clenched jaw, you sit up a little straighter and relax your tongue, and with that, are queued to consider your water intake. 

Let’s not aim for two thousands of words, but just enough.