started c. 12:07pm 11/03/11?
She had decided to (maybe?) try that Nanowrimo challenge. What might that mean? National Novel Writing Month was November. One was to write and submit 50,000 words in the presumed form of a novel. This was apparently a challenge to all those writers who always dreamed of writing a novel, or spoke of writing a novel, but who never got around to it. The challenge just to write all those words in such a compressed time frame was also a technique to bypass one's inner critic and just get the basic writing done, Editing might or might not come later. One's sense of accomplishment from completing such a task was surely to give one renewed faith in one's capabiities.
But she was an artist. She had no such dreams of writing a novel. The idea just intrigued her as a challenge. She had no belief that she could make up even a small story. The idea of making up a story of that length was almost unfathomable.
Recently she had discovered that she could just very possibly write a small story. She had tried it on a whim. Pulled a subject/character arbitrarily out of the air ( a bird), and tested whether she could write typing into her little mobile phone. She had to write in cyberspace using her webmail account. This allowed more typing than the phone allowed for sending messages. She wrote the story in six parts - each as big as the webmail entries allowed at a time. That was about 1000 characters - about 185 words each.
The discovery was the experience of the making up, the writing. It having been a spur of the moment experiment, she had not made a plan for the story. She just started to make it up, with the security that in an experiment like this, one did not need the normal rules. One could just play. The bird had started out by flying overhead of the main event that was occurring in her town that time of year, a big festival and parade. The story started out as some of the experiences the bird encountered. One thing led to another and raised considerations of issues facing the populace that the bird and other birds encountered.
She had been so surprised to find that writing in this way had two aspects previously unknown to her. It was like when she was a child playing pretend - either in dress-up or with her dolls. One went off into another world, and explored. In writing, that world also poured out of the hands and took a form in the physical world as the words on paper. This could then be (re)visited by herself and/or others. The other aspect was that the issues came up as one wrote. One considered them in a way one would not have if idly daydreaming. That one had put words to paper and given some form to this world enabled the questions and issues to rise and be considered. Besides being like play, the experience became almost an expansion of awareness. These aspects alone could make the effort worth pursuing just for her personal enrichment.
What a time investment would be needed. To write 50K words in a month would take 1667 words a day if one wrote on a daily basis. She was already into the 3rd day of November and over 3K words behind. How did one catch up? How would one find the time to write that much on a daily basis? What would she write about? What structure could she use? She had no big story to tell - just endless little bits. Her biggest idea or question was, 'how could she string together all these little bits to make a whole?' and/or was that considered a kosher/actual form of 'fiction'.
She had gone to a program at the library that was a preview on the Nanowrimo process. Even to go there, on Halloween evening yet, seemed like more commitment than she was willing to give. She was intrigued enough to go to the presentation though. The presenter explained that first one had only to concern oneself with getting down the 50K words to participate in the challenge. The purpose of the challenge was simply to get oneself to write that quantity of words. One should not worry about the form. Yes, some idea of a plan for those words would be a good idea, but even there, every writer was different in her writing approach. And, this stringing together the bits was something on the order of stream-of-consciousness writing. Yes, there were also fiction diaries. Memoirs nowadays were called 'creative non-fiction' instead of memoirs. Since every person remembers his commonly held experiences differently, who can say what is fiction and what is non-fiction.
Later it dawned on the aspiring Nanowrimoer that if she wrote as in a journal/diary using the third person, would that not instantly make it fiction? Within that, paths of possibility could be followed.
-------------------------835 words, 85 lines, 35? paragraphs ---- started 11/03/11 c. 12:05p - 1:15p to here--
Oh she had stopped too soon in eagerness to see how far she'd gotten. Only half way through the day's quota. How would she ever get through this challenge? She had been so sure that she was closer than that to the daily quota. There would be no way she could write more than the daily quota if she needed to play catch up at anytime. But then, part of the point of doing this was also just to get oneself to write anything at all. at this point it did not matter whether anything was good or not."Oh help" she said with the sound of Pooh and Piglet as they would have spoken in long ago childhood storybook readings.
Her mom had read aloud wonderfully from the Winnie-the-Pooh books. Mother and children had loved the stories and mom read them aloud so well. The problem would come at particularly funny sections. Then mom could not contain her own laughter long enough to read the words aloud, and would break apart in stitches of laughter, tears, and choking, spit out the words to the children waiting so eagerly to know what was so hysterically funny that mom was almost on the floor about it. They were never quite sure if the ----------- had been as funny as their mother found it.
------1:30p
She had an idea that she could combine the art class lesson program she had planned for November with the writing challenge. Could a series of stories be developed around the four basic subjects she'd planned for November? Deer, woodland animals, turkey and partridge (which was supposed to be pheasant but she'd used the wrong word when she sent out the announcement), and the crimson blueberry fields scenes of November. How many stories could one write about deer? There certainly were possibilities though. That art class had already been done. They'd worked from the drawings of a Disney animator, Ken Hultgren, who'd also put out a very instructive book on animal drawings in 1950. She was grateful every time she turned to this book for its sweeping movement filled drawings that his book had been republished. His deer drawings were his studies for work on Disney's Bambi. That was a deer story that still captivated people.
What might a week's worth of deer stories be? Here again, should it be six or seven deer stories or one?, or two, three or four? The thought of writing that many deer stories in light of just how long it had taken to get this far in writing about the process and anticipation of how to carry out the process of this nanowrimo - much too complicated, long, and unrelated to her. That was just going too far off her path. Like going way off to another city. This was looking too much like a commitment too far off her own path - too much of a sidetrack.
Was it for its distraction that she was drawn to doing it? It seemed too crazy to think one could do this if one had not already had novel writing as a prime intention in one's life. She did not. She wrote plenty as it was already. But she wrote accounts on the events of her previous day. She reflected on what these had meant to her, what she'd learned from the experiences, what solutions she could come up with to solve some of the problems, rants over her grievances.
1:53p 1433 words
She had almost reached the quota. Again she'd checked too soon. Anything to know how long the quota should take.
No, it did not look like she would be writing deer stories for a week. Maybe she would do one though. There certainly seemed enough material that came just from stream-of-consciousness wanderings. It was no concern to her whether she would write anything that anyone else might want to read yet. She might or might not deal with that question later. How to get through the next few words to reach the goal? How foolish to be thinking about a goal of word count rather than of having something to tell or share with another being. For now, she was the only person she would write to - her future self, if that Being could stand to reread what she'd written so quickly. This was becoming so boring she was sure. She would be bored to read it in the future, but she had to keep her typing fingers moving just to keep writing - anything, write anything at all. Hopefully a story would develop somewhere along the line. Now she would just be glad to know how long 1667 words looked on the page.
Was this like swimming laps? It had been so long since she'd done lap swimming. The pool she used when she last swam laps, had turned out to be treated with something that made her be congested all day. It was after a break in going to the pool caused by her having bought her first car and no longer relying on public transportation to get to the pool, so that she just did not get herself to the pool, that she realized the congestion had disappeared. Then there was the problem of goggles. Only one pair fit her well enough to protect her eyes. The headband and eye gaskets had finally worn down too far to be usable, and the model no longer available. Almost 20 years since swimming laps.
She had loved the rhythm of swimming laps. One pulled through the water using one's power and working to cut through as smoothly as possible. The rhythm would finally take over and give one a special sense of being engulfed in a unity. It was a physical meditation.
Years later she had started up practicing a daily exercise in the new apartment she'd moved to. It was so much bigger than her old apartment that there was room for her to walk or jog back and forth. Her aim was to complete 1000 steps on an almost daily basis. She'd made up a game to make it fun.
-----continue with laps and jogging?
2:18p word count
2:18p word count ---1886 words, 149 lines, 10360 characters (c. 2 3/4 pages)
Finally done for the day! Yes, this is crazy for me. ** broke voice/character**, she said?
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