TRAVERSING Z

Process

Hiatus: NaNoWriMo 3

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You awaken in darkness and leave your house and start walking. You have a place to go – an end scene – and you can see a bit of the path before you, but that’s all. You do have an old map, a hodgepodge of ideas and characters and events, but who can see maps in dark like this? It’s that darkness before the dawn. It’s chilly. People keep calling you back to sleep in and have a strong cup of tea and a nice hot breakfast.

You keep going.

The sun starts to rise. Little by little you can see a bit more of the road and the surrounding land. You can make out trees and hillocks, and that damp in the air is a nearby river. Other times it’s been village lanes and other times it’s been city sidewalks, but this time it’s proper countryside. Still chilly, a little hungry now, kind of wishing that someone would just pull up alongside you in a nice warm car and shoot you ahead to that ending scene you have scribbled down in your head. But that wouldn’t be this story.

You keep going.

And then the sun finally rises. You stop and climb up on a rock and you look over this vast expanse, behind and before you. You see the hills the path cuts into and you see a bit of smoke from some center of habitation far ahead and you think, oh THIS is the story. Now you have light to see by, so you can take out your map. Now you can see where the paths actually go, where before you might have taken wrong turns, where the landmarks are. You’re about 1/3 of the way to that end scene. November 30 comes and goes.

You keep going.

Hiatus: NaNoWriMo 1

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It’s a little over halfway through the month, which means we’re a little over halfway through NaNoWriMo, and I am behind by about 3 or 4 days. One of the ways I use NaNo (and there are many ways to use NaNo besides writing a novel) is to check in with myself about writing. What’s my process now? What are my fears, my anxieties? But this year I also wanted to win. I told myself I wanted to get out a 50k garbage draft as a way of clearing out the mental pipes and to try and write daily again. But I also wanted a gold star for something, a little rush of success in a year when I’ve only had three stories out and missed every self-imposed novella deadline.

I have, kind of, sort of, succeeded.

The past few years have been hard. All sorts of sorrows un-grieved, work changes, health changes. No major crises (thank fuck!!), but a series of little earthquakes, not worth even commenting on … until you look around and see the cracks and debris everywhere. (This may be a post of many metaphors. I apologize in advance.)

NaNo has shown me that all of that is with me now when I write, a kind of constant weight that keeps distracting me. I don’t remember the last time I slept through the night, and the thoughts I have in the darkness of 3 am are depressed ones that I have to slowly, painfully unravel before I can get back to sleep. I have developed a long to-do list over the last few years, so many things put off because of money or just not feeling well; that hovers over me now, distracting me at every pause. All this has placed me at a low ebb emotionally: I find myself skipping sad or angry scenes, shying away from inflicting on my characters the situations I know they must face. 

And yet … and yet, I am writing every day. It has been months since I managed a daily practice (the last time was probably last year’s NaNo, when I drafted The Painter’s Widow up to That Scene and then put it aside because I just couldn’t bear to write it) but here I am on a Tuesday morning, tapping out these words and more, pasting last night’s laptop scribbles into the larger Scrivener file. I am still overwhelmed and still low on spoons and sleep, I am behind and may not win, but I am getting words out every day. 

Years ago Daniel José Older wrote a lovely piece on how writing begins with forgiveness.  And yes, it’s primarily about not writing every day, the exact opposite of the NaNo model (they even give you little badges for it!) But for me, what I needed most this November was to remember that I am capable of doing this. Which is yet another way to use NaNo: to find your way back to something you thought you’d lost, even if it will only be to lose it again. To make peace with all of that, to start exploring ways to move forward without it. Which is in itself a kind of forgiveness.