11/02/2013 start 9:43p (-1:30 am 3.5 hours)
Here she was, a year later, trying to decide whether to try the Nano wrimo challenge again. Had the would-be writer ever gotten a real name or was she still just the 'would-be writer', the wrimo'er, or whatever they called themselves. To backtrack a bit: Nanowrimo stood for National Novel Writing Month, which was November, supposedly as good a month as any, in which one was to take up the challenge of dashing out 50K words just to prove to oneself that yes, one could actually produce some semblance of a 'novel'. This had started out as a way to get all those people who insisted they had a novel inside of them, motivated to actually do something about that dream and prove to themselves they could do it.

Supposedly being in the company of lots of other 'wrimo'ers around the world who were attempting to try themselves on this feat or challenge, would help one's self. It would be a source of support and company. People would also be meeting in support of each other, or to be in earshot of each others' sounds of writing. Supposedly such things helped one write.

This wrimoer was not as keen on all that. She felt almost as if she was doing it to prove that it really was not that hard, (though it really was, but in a different way than people thought). She had no problem writing just to scribble. She had problems making up stuff - like story lines. She did not think that fiction was her thing. It seemed so unfortunate to her that this was all centered around writing a novel, rather than just about writing that many words.

The first year she tried the challenge, she felt she had cheated. First of all she had started late. It was five days into the month before she decided she would try it. And she only tried it because she figured out a way she thought might get her around the fiction requirement. She was going to do her journal writing, but as if it were in the third person. So, instead of 'I did this..." and 'I did that', it was 'she did this' and 'she did that'. Hoho, but as she wrote those words now, she could hear her mother, who had died a little over a year before, saying "Who is 'She' ?". This was a question her mother always demanded of most anyone whenever they referred to someone as 'she' or 'he' in that person's presence instead of referring to them by name. Her mother held that it was rude to refer to someone in that manner. That did not prevent her mother from committing this sin herself, perhaps quite often the wrimoer thought. The wrimoer chuckled to herself about this. Her mother could hold  these rules in her head and either could not see to what degree she was breaking them herself, was flagrantly breaking her rules, or - who knew what the other option was.

Yes, her mother was going to keep speaking to her over and over in her head, the wrimoer thought, or wondered. Perhaps it was reassuring to believe this. She hoped her mother would not continue to harangue her on all those political issues she always seemed to be seething to rail about. The wrimoer hated the unproductive or seemingly unresolvable aspects of all those political issues. She did not know how these questions could be solved, but she did not want to have to consider them or deal with them.That was the problem in being able to see both sides of the coin. She felt there had to be different ways to solve all these questions. She also felt - Aach, whatever it ends up being, we will just have to live with conditions the way they are. Better perhaps to just get on with things however they come to us. Like the weather. If it rained, one had to deal with it. If it snowed one had to deal with it. When it was gloriously sunny out one enjoyed it while it lasted. One could not go asking the sky to come forth with the weather one felt most comfortable in. The weather needed to be in different way because the planet needed those constantly changing conditions, or so she believed.

Neither would it do in life, to have such a thing as weather be completely predictable. The wrimoer did not believe that such things as the forces of Nature should be all that predictable. That would make for Life that was very predictable. Then how far was one from having a predictable almost machine like life or existence. No, she could not see that as being anything worthwhile to have.

The wrimoer wondered if she had started off her other wrimo attempts with the same series of thought meanderings. What would that mean if it turned out that she was just repeating herself after a year being away from this novel writing attempt. Would that be an odd thing to follow one's previous line of thinking so closely? She assumed she had very likely put these thoughts somewhere in her previous novel attempts, but probably not in the same place, in the beginning.

She meant to give herself, or her character a  name at least this time. last year, yes, she at least had several general nouns by which she could refer to 'herself' or her character. She supposed this character was the 'heroine'. That was hard for her to see. That was also perhaps why she had trouble writing all this. She just did not see this 'character' as a heroine. And now here she was already getting far enough in to the writing that it could again be too late to give her a name.

Then she wondered why or how anyone could ever want to read any of this. That too had been a problem that first year. When she had finished the writing, she was so glad to be finished with it. Yes, it had overall been a good experience doing it. But upon finishing it she did not feel she had anything she would ever look at again.  She thought she had just done it to prove she could. It had not really helped her in making up stories. Writing in the third person, even if it was all about herself, certainly made it feel like fiction. That was a very interesting phenomenon to observe. On the other hand it was also very very creepy. It made you wonder at the boundaries of self. Where did one begin and other selves start?

She had observed these sensations whenever she spoke in foreign languages using the best accents she could summon. It was like acting, or pretending, to be another person. It was such a creepy feeling. As if she were stepping out of herself and putting on the personhood, like a costume, of another self. It always made her shudder to know how slippery those identities were.

The night before the wrimoer had looked up information about James Joyce's Ulysses. What was the story line he used? It did not seem he had that much of one either. Did that mean a novel did not really have to have one and it still could be fiction and a novel? All this the wrimoer had to do to convince herself that her efforts at taking the challenge were legitimate. They still, however, did not help her in learning how to make up a story - a story in which things happened. A story in which the hero/heroine had a big problem or challenge to cope with. Something that readers wanted to hear about.

Well, what if this was enough for her, the writer, to enjoy reading a year later? Or then again, maybe not.  Back to her first wrimo attempt. When she had finished that one, she did not even have the effort in print to see as a whole. In the times of using computers and electronics, this all existed in digital form. So, was this any different than when things were still only existing in oral form? When things had to be turned into poetry or rhymes, or even musical form, just so they could be remembered more easily.

It was only several months before that she had decided she needed to do something about that first attempt. It had been depressing she thought, perhaps more depressing than she realized, to have given up on that piece of writing. She would at least get it printed out as a whole, where she could see it and hold it in her hand. She did not even need to do anything else with it. She did so. It made a huge difference to be able to hold it in her hand. She did not even need to read it. Just to know this pile of papers was the result of her thinking, of her creating. It was such a satisfying feeling.

Once she had the bundle in her hands, she did actually go into it and start reading it a bit. And she found herself pleased with the writing, with the ideas. She made little proofreading efforts on the first few pages. It was enough that she thought she had the faith she would indeed take care of this somehow. It was back sitting in a plastic envelope now, still clipped together with the big metal manuscript clip the copy center had given it when they had printed it out. That clip was meaningful too. It was the big fat kind, meant for a fat stack of papers. All so satisfying.

But she still ached to be able to make up a story. It was nothing to think about things and to write ideas about things, but how did one make up stories. How did one make up a mystery story, or a murder mystery, or a crime novel? It meant one had to write about horrible people. She did not want to do that. Well no, she did not have to do that. There were other kinds of challenges and problems a hero or heroine could have.

She as the so called heroine of her novel, was having the challenge of writing a novel. Here she was going round and round in endless loops of logic and/'or philosphy. This one was starting to touch on the infinity she had seen as a small child on the raisin box, or the Aunt Jemima syrup bottle. The character pictured on the box or bottle was shown with that same box or bottle in the picture. It went on forever, in theory at least. She knew this as a small child and found it intriguing.
10:49p  1805 words.

The writer had had glorious visions of perhaps being able to plow through this challenge by doing the writing in 5k words at a time. That way she could get it over with in 10 days. But here she was having just written like crazy for just over an hour and completely unwilling to write anymore than she just had. This was going to be torture she thought.

She also wanted to be able to use all those little comments one was writing everywhere whenever one went into social media such as Facebook. There was so much writing involved with all that. Couldn't that stuff be of interest when seen as a whole, or as a patchwork of writing?

If she had not so hated reading Joyce's Ulysses, she might be more open to trying to write that way. She had found it to be miserable stuff. So what if it broke new boundaries of writing. She had been in her first year at art school when she had had to read it for her class, Modern European Literature she thought the class had been. The only way she could get through it, if one could call it getting through it, was to read it very fast while pacing the floor. If she sat down, she fell right to sleep reading it. None of it made any sense to her. What had they even discussed about it in the class. She could not remember anything about that.

The wrimoer thought perhaps she could write about the apartment house she had grown up in in New York City until moving to a New Jersey suburb at age 10. But she did not really like to have to recount things about people or events. She did often do so, but because she felt the need to remember the events, not because she liked doing it. It was just something that needed to be done she felt. There was a sense of satisfaction once one had done it.

Telling the story of an event was to her like having to make a drawing or painting of something that existed. She did not really like to do that either. She remembered in art school how much she hated it. And here she was, teaching others how to do it because that was the only thing they wanted to learn about it. She wanted to be able to make up stuff. Thinking. She loved to think on things, to ponder about the way of things.

In the kids' art classes she taught, she worked mostly with subject matter that was either make-believe or close enough to it that it had some connection to make-believe. By working so closely to calendar related ideas and themes, there was at least a ritual aspect to the subject matter that brought it in the realm of the soul instead of the purely literal and reality based. She wanted things that spoke from the inside rather than just what was out there.

11:18p 2312 words

Some math was needed. The daily target was derived from 50K words divided by 30 days = 1667 words. She had another 1021 words to do for the evening if she was going to stay on track. She knew from past experience how hard it was to get back on track if one missed any of one's writing quota.

Part of that problem was that then one was operating from 'having to write' instead of 'wanting to write'. Then it really could become torture. One had better start figuring out how to give one's self rewards, so that one's self would set up wonderful pathways in the brain of the pleasure associated with the writing. Yes, this was seeming more and more foolhardy the further she got into it. The further she got into it, the more would be invested, and the harder to give up.

Here she was again kicking and screaming about doing this. Why would anyone want to read about this foolishness. She was sure she must have written these exact same sentences the last time around.

She had signed up with the Nanowrimo Maine group on Facebook. But then every time one of them posted something to the group page, she got a notification about it. She could chose not to get those notifications. It was hard to let go of the social contact, limited and probably unreal as it was though. The postings were always in her face reminding her about the thing that she had decided she did not want to do. Now here she was, wasting her time she thought, doing it.

She was sure she was wasting her time about it. This was not real writing she thought. And she certainly did not believe this was her 'inner critic' or 'judge' saying this. She knew she was just writing 'filler' while she wrote all this. It was a padding kind of writing. She had nothing to say. She knew this from writing her journals. There were many times when she had gotten done writing whatever there was that she had wanted to think about or had needed to recount, but then she had not wanted to stop writing, so she kept writing - about nothing. It was ridiculous.

So she wished she had something of consequence to tell about.

There was the apartment house with all the people she might be able to remember anything about. There were the funny story cards she had made up. They did not seem to go far enough. She had made up a set of little pieces of index type card paper. There were perhaps 48 card slips. She had divided them into four categories. People/Roles, Animals, Places, and the Nature/Forces category. She had made lists for the categories and put a different being or place on each card. The idea being to use it as a deck one could shuffle and draw from. Then one would make up a story based on what one had drawn from the deck. She had yet to try it. It seemed as good a story invention tool as any. She just was not yearning to tell any stories, or so she believed.

All the other wrimoers on the social media forums, seemed to have no problem making up stories. That was the part they knew how to do. She knew she was just more in love with the idea of it than in really doing it. She needed to get the seduction of this idea out of her face.

11:48 2908 words

Well, she had done that last section quite quickly. A lot more nothing about nothing. Was she getting faster in her writing? It was feeling as if she might be. At this rate she was at least getting caught up for having missed the first day. Oh but she wanted to be able to just have done with it.  She was still completely uncommitted to it. Why was it not as easy to do her art as it was to do this?

Because there was much more judgment tied up with the art. With the writing she had the freedom to play with it. It was of no real consequence to her whether she did it well or not. But art was her identity. So much self worth was tied up in that question.

Then the question was, how could one bring back that same sense of experimentation and play that one had in an area that one had not invested one's identity in, one's worldly identity.

Back to the question of the writing. As she also saw it, one had to write too fast to be able to properly think about story. One could not think and write so that one could even stop to make up a story. One had to just madly write away.

But then she saw how even as she had been writing one thing, an idea came up that she wanted to capture, so she broke away to a new paragraph to capture that new idea that had come up. It was not a story idea, just an idea about the current nature of being creative, or of writing.

Earlier that day she had seen how an artist collaborator couple/team friends of hers were making books with the modern technologies and offering them for sale. That idea too intrigued her. She assumed they were writing in a kind of free form verse, not stories but perhaps spiritual wanderings, and combining these texts with the visual imagery they created. She liked the idea of that, though she did not write that way. It certainly seemed like a good context to hold a load of images in. She had been intrigued with that and wanted to do that too.

12:03p 3286 words

She had  caught up with meeting the quota. Would she have anything left for the next day? At least she would not be behind! She could do the whole challenge without ever committing to it. Just always do the quota. Leave off deciding whether to go ahead with it. She was laughing again at the ridiculousness of that idea. One did not have to decide. Just keep writing. One never had to write anything really in order to do this. Still, it seemed ridiculous. What was the point of it then? Dear God, how did one write a story? She was avoiding having to do it, having to really try it.

Now she really had to stop for the night. Yes, that was how she had thought she might be able to manage doing this on a daily basis. Instead of worrying about doing it first thing in the day, she could do it at night. But the night before, after all the work she had done on another project, she had nothing left to apply to the writing. And here were these other people who were putting in full days of regular work, and then doing their wrimo stints. She could not imagine how they did that. Neither could she imagine how anyone could do their writing in the presence of other people is the close proximity of writing sitting together in a room.

In the Facebook Wrimo group there was  a conversation going about gatherings in which to sit writing together. She had never really been able to concentrate on certain kinds of things that way. She did want to be able to use her digital tools out and about to do her writing, but not in a context like that. Some things required too much concentration to be able to do in the immediate presence of people. There she would want to talk, to engage with others directly. Yes, she could concentrate, she thought, in the hubbub of a cafe or sitting in the car in a parking lot with lots of activity going on around her. That was not the same as being with others who were actually there with you. In one situation you were there with everything going on around you. In the other situation you were specifically with a group of people. She would want to be with the people.

She wondered what it would be like to try to write story in longhand. That was how she wrote her journals. She loved writing that way. She would have to give that a try. That would mean having to copy it all over though. Still, she knew that the different physical ways of writing led to different ways of thinking and different ways of communicating, of writing, of tone or voice. She did not think she had ever made up a story by writing in longhand. She would have to experiment with that.

She had fallen in love with how that best selling author/lawyer guy, Scott Thorow, wrote his novels. He wrote them longhand on a legal yellow pad, on his train commutes to and from his law job at the office. She loved the idea of it. How many books had he written that way? She loved the idea that he was both a lawyer and a writer. That was fantastic she thought.


12:27p 3853 words
She could not, she refused to consider going as far as those 5k words she had imagined she could do. She was however getting closer to such a possibility. Without ever having said anything. The wrimoer ran a real danger to her efforts if she let herself go ahead with writing too much at one sitting. As her dad had warned her with the first effort, "If you try to keep up with that pace, you'll burn out and then you won't be able to continue. You have to start with something really doable until you get used to doing it on a daily basis."  She had been stubborn that first time and kept up with it. It had become such an intriguing exercise. The practice of it had such an unusual effect on her state of being. She had never understood just what it was about it that made it that way. Why was not art the same way? Why couldn't she find a format in art that gave her a similar experience as the daily act of writing madly? What kind of art could one do madly for an hour and a half a day? It just was not the same. One would have to be drawing and inventing so many scenes if one wanted it to be about a story or about pretending. Otherwise one was either observing and capturing one's observations, or one was executing - not really making up or thinking in the same was as one did with words. Words were what one used to communicate with others with more directly. One used music and visual art to communicate with but there one was more getting lost in the pleasure of it, the pleasure of making it. This writing business was more about thinking and telling and talking.

12:42p 4161 words

There was also the bakery cafe she had worked at for quite a few years so long ago. She wondered if she wanted to write about that. Now it just seemed like to much trouble. Much easier to write about moaning about what to write about and the inability to write a story.

The last winter she had gone through a lovely spate of making up little stories about crows. They were somewhat anthropomorphosised crows. (What was the use of having the spell checker underliner tech dohicky if it could not spell enough words - she had tried every version of that word and then again, and it was still coming out with that big red underline saying it was spelled WRONG.. Besides, by now her eyes were getting so blurry from all the writing that she could no longer see the word straight.)  The crows had been lovely to write about. They had their little challenges too. The stories were short. She had been so pleased at the little collection of stories she had actually made up, invented. They were stand alone stories but connected. In retrospect as she reflected on the crow stories, she wondered if they could work into a novel. Could a big collection of little stories about one subject make a novel? Maybe this was how she could pick up with her crow stories. Would that mean she would have to throw away all the writing she had just done? What was the more important point - to meet the Nano challenge or to write something that was actually meaningful?

She would be upset if she had to throw away all the writing she had just done in one sitting. Perhaps she would be able to use it for something else. Or, yes, she would have to cut it. Writers often had to cut so much from their writing. She was having a chuckle about that. At least there was an inkling of a sense of being able to get back to writing about something she felt more for.

The crow stories had been sweet. Not that crows were that sweet. But she had felt her crows in the stories had been endearing. They were a bit like her toy animals when she was growing up. They had a life, a personality of their own.

That bum glue that some writers spoke of was really burning the bum now. She had been sitting there way too long. Would she even be able to get to sleep with it feeling that way she wondered.

1:06p 4591 words - only about 400 more to go...

This turn of the mind was shaking things up for her. Here she was having written so much with only a little left towards her original plan, and now she was finding she wanted to take an entirely different route. Perhaps she would not have reached realizing that she wanted to do that if she had not gone through all this beforehand. It could also all disappear by morning - all the desire and motivation.

She hoped she would at least still want to try the crow stories. She had thought she could do a year long cycle of them - not a years worth of stories, but stories that took place over a year. That had seemed like they could be distributed across several animal characters. To get herself back to writing these stories, perhaps in the morning, she needed to just mess around with the characters she supposed - to play with them. Make it just like when she was a kid. They were little companions or toys. Yes, she could make them talk and act in front of the video camera too. That sounded like fun. Or, she could read the stories to the camera, or even just a voice recorder. That made her wonder what it would be like to read from this immense nothing she had just written. Could that hold up when read aloud. She would have to try that too. She had to be finished for the night.

1:18p 4843 words

Not quite. What was the point of going on if she knew all this would not be part of anything? Now it was just so close to one target. Never mind that she would have to start all over again. But she did not even need to do the Nano thing. Here she was, arguing with herself all over again and round and round she went. That was the trouble with having to do things to the numbers. It was a bean counting way of things. It took away from the joy and the art of a thing. How did one find a happy median? Was there one? It was the desire to meet certain goals that could push one over the edge into new territories of experience but it could also prevent one from wholeheartedly experiencing because one was so caught up in that counting act.

1:24p 4992 words
Could she call it a night for word count yet? This was such nonsense - worse nonsense than what she'd already thought was nonsense.
1:27p. 5021 words

****Notes
Tomorrow - play w story cards and make up several story lines with them. Now unfortunately, I am curious if one can actually write 50 K words about nothing, or about trying the Nano challenge and writing about nothing. Isn't that what the Seinfeld show was about? - supposedly.