I was on track. I was going to win. 50 thousand words in 30 days? I could do that. I was going to make November my bitch.
And then my hard drive fell on its sword.
Thankfully I had everything backed up. My draft was safe. But with no functional computer in which to write it, I was scratching away in a notebook and would never make it.
And that’s okay.
I knew I could do it now. I’ve won NaNo several times, but all before anxiety started crushing my mind and fibromyalgia settled in to steal my energy away. The fact that I was on course to win before my computer disaster means everything to me. Yeah, it sucks I couldn’t get the win in the end. But now I know I can still make that 50k. That’s huge for me. I feel like a champion.
Writing every day makes me feel alive, and I’d forgotten how writing – the creation of art generally, I suppose – can be cumulative. If you do it every day, it changes you. You begin to live it; it’s inside you. The way you’re on fire with words and worlds. Everything is poetry, and nothing hurts.
(Well, let’s be honest here. Poetry doesn’t come easy. You have to yank it out of your chest, and it has spines.)
I am still scratching away at it, my little novel. It will be long, I think, and I don’t know who will live and who will die come the end of it, or what the end of it will really entail. The theme, generally, is that some things are worth fighting for. Worth risking your life for. But how that precisely will come to pass is difficult to know at this point. I need to get it finished, and look at the novel as a whole, and then put it away for a while for it to ferment.
In the meantime, there are university courses that hover in the distance. Short stories to be written and submitted. Poetry to carve out. And at some point, I really need to do something with Sick Bacchus. I am proud of this novel, but I confess to you that it may be a little heavy-handed. It is in need of a good editor, who can guide me with what needs to be changed. I need an agent for that sort of thing.
It all takes time, this writing caper. A decade ago I wanted to be successful as soon as possible, so that the world would “know my genius” (ha) when I was still young. That really bit at my heels, for a long time. There’s a sort of pressure to be a wunderkind, to be famous when you’re young, because when you’re older people aren’t as impressed. Young achievers are put on pedestals so high that the youth who haven’t yet found their success feel like they’re already failures. Time feels like it’s leaking away from you, and every day that passes when you haven’t achieved your dream is another condemnation.
Now I’m older, nearly thirty (which will make some of you who are older and wiser than I laugh and roll your eyes, I am sure! Only thirty!) and I am pleased that things did not turn out that way. In practice, I like this way better: spending time crafting, getting better, slowly beginning to leak my things – my thoughts, my poetry, my prose – out upon this humble stage. It’s more organic this way; more – forgive me – bohemian. And I appreciate you all for reading it.