"How was it important for people to be writing novels?" ......
11/15/13 9:55a Fri.

The Wrimoer supposed she was not getting too late a start on the day's writing session. This was about the same time she'd started in on her last two sessions. It was so hard not to think in terms of how long it would mean she would have to sit there writing. When she did her regular journal writing, it could take just as long as the Nanowrimo writing, but there was no intention to concern herself with any end result. She simply wrote because she wanted to. She had gotten into the habit so long ago because what started out to be an experimental 'practice' soon showed itself to be very practical and useful to her. This provided further momentum and motivation to continue the practice of journal writing not just for the sake of itself, but because it was very important to her.

The Nanowrimo project had not reached that level yet. She was still questioning it. She tried to keep her intention on the idea that this daily exertion gave practice in fluidity of generating writing and ideas while typing, (rather than longhand). It also convoked a different state of mind the way she was going about it. This was an ongoing experience that she was exploring and playing with. She was not yet convinced that being able to think and type fluently was that necessary or useful. But if it also allowed her to have something that she could share in the digital realm of cyberspace, she thought that might be reason enough.

It was very hard to force oneself to just type without self-correcting when working digitally. It was just too easy to self-correct. But that interrupted the flow. One was always stumbling and back tracking to correct a misspelling or other error. There was not enough rhythm in this way of working. One would never want to listen to a speaker or reader who always stopped one's speech to correct what one had just said.

Her mother had taught her early on that when practicing music it was most importan first to keep a rhythm. If that meant going slowly, then that was what you had to do. So here she f - Here the wrimoer found she was trying to type very slowly so that she could think while writng. But she was still making typing errors,. They were driving her crazy and the sloness of this typing wrate was putting her to sleep,. She would never be able to continue like this. It made her cross eyed.

Well she had to revert to the fast typing with errors and correcting as she went along. The just mentioned experiment had already set enough tone of putting a glaze over her eyes, and had gotten her wondering how she would complete writing the required amount of words for the day.

It did not matter that she was now a bit over her target. Those extra words would certainly be needed on another day. And the sooner she was finished with this effort she felt, the better. Right now it was just something to get through.

The Wrimoer had still been following the local social media Nanowrimo group and putting her two cents in. She had not made postings announcing have made it to the half-way mark or whatever other word goals people had set for themselves. Supposedly it was helpful and incentivizing to be able to share such accomplishments with others. She wondered about it though. She was finding it unpleasant to read about. It sounded too much like bragging. She did not mind bragging that much if it was done openly - where the bragger was aware of the boast and disclosed that along with the boast. When it was down without the disclosure it felt too much as if the bragger was asking for agreement without being able to say that directly. No, not asking for agreement, but expecting a reaction of agreement. She hated when she felt as if someone was saying something and then waiting for the other person to return an expected reaction. It was an emotional pressure one person was placing on another. That put one person in a position of either giving a false response rather than a spontaneous response, or withholding a response out of resistance. It was not lea

10:25a alarm

...leaving people free to share and communicate from within. It meant one person held the reins. This was not a collaborative venture but an engagement controlled by one person. What then was the point of the other person? Would a doll, puppet, or machine do just as well?

Here in the local Nano group, people would post their accomplishments, and others would chime in with their cheers. Was it truly a sharing of one's pleasure with one's accomplishment? Did the sharing spur others to keep on? The Wrimoer felt it could act as a deterrent. If one was too far from the target one could too easily give up. There was the other side of it too. If one was too far off the target, it seemed to almost start off a pity fest. No, that was not true. The Wrimoer had seen where people had jumped in to buoy up the person who wrote of falling too far behind. They gave advice on ways to catch up and encouraged that it was very possible to do it. This seemed to have worked in at least one instance.

The Wrimoer wanted to see people realizing that one had all the tools one needed within oneself to do this challenge. So what then was the purpose of doing it at this particular time of year. Why had she felt she should be doing it? She had very little illusions that she was actually writing a novel. She was writing certainly, but she felt she could hardly call it a novel.

The other Wrimoers were very caught up in having to concern themselves with the other aspects of novel writing - form, structure, characters, plot development, details of reality, setting, dialogue, etc. This got her wondering just why did they want to write a novel? Did everyone want to write one so that they could publish and sell it?Or did they just want to write so that others could read it? Or was it to give others something that would be a pleasure for them to read? How did one write a novel for oneself? What would one write of fiction that one would want to read oneself in the future?

If it was just the experience of writing a novel, of getting lost in that world, then it would hardly seem to matter whether one did it according to the Nanowrimo goal. It would seem the primary purpose of that was to prove to oneself that one could do it. One would gain confidence in oneself by acting on a desire and carrying the desire out to fruition. By doing it with others doing it at the same time, one did not feel alone. One had a companionship in one's mission. Man was after all a social creature.

10:45 a

She was stalling in her writing, wanting to think, wanting to rest more than think. She could not wait til she would be free to work in her natural rhythms. Outer imposed constraints served some purposes she knew. They were much like the exercises she gave her students in the art classes. They were like puzzles or challenges that got you looking at a thing in a differnt way. The got you to try a thing in a different way. They were exercise. They strengthened the muscles while also creating flexibility. The mental muscles in this case.

Why did one think one had to make an effort to strengthen one's muscles? Did one not believe that one came into this world with a natural proclivity to act and perform in the manner one was created to? In a way, putting oneself through exercises, rather than having regular life be the source of where and how one used one's abilities, was saying and strengthening the idea, the message to one's self, that one was weak and lacking. The Wrimoer wanted to reflect more on this idea.

It was one thing to do it all as a game, for the sheer fun of it. And to join with others in that way.

The other question

10:55a alarm

... was, why was it so important for so many people to write a novel? How was it important for people to be writing novels? What did they gain from it? Was it that they were creating? Was it that they were entering that world of make believe when they wrote? She felt that that was the most important reason to be doing it, but that did not require any follow-up work of preparing a manuscript for a publisher, for printing, for distribution etc.

That made her wonder just how had this whole movement gotten started. When she had searched on the question of why Nanowirmo was a bad idea, she had come across one article that included a point that what was really needed was readers, not writers. With all the writers out there now, there were supposedly very few people who actually did much reading, according to that author. The ranks of the world's Nanowrimoers could hardly be a big enough pool of people who taken out of commission as potential readers!

This was a bit like the question of the current Health Care quagmire the government was struggling with. The Wrimoer remembered how on the one hand it had been so important that healthy (young) people get signed up for the new Health Care options. It was their payment into the funds that would provide the surplus money from which payouts would be made. Exactly the people who did not need Health Care. On the other hand the argument had been made by all the lawmakers that indeed everyone had to sign up because Everyone would need healthcare. The question never seemed to be asked - so which one is true? If everyone will need to use the healthcare, than why is it so important to get the money from the people who are not costing the system anything?

The Wrimoer wondered from her cynical self, was there a hidden ulterior motive in the Nanowrimo movement? As she had also read in that article on why one should not participate in the Nano challenge, that there was a great market now for 'How to  write' books, methods, coaches, websites. Involving people in such challenges as Nanowrimo was also a way to keep people engaged in this activity. It was by now a good sized business. But that was all from her cynical side. Perhaps she would look into this some more at another time, or perhaps she would just forget about it for awhile.

Just now she was concerned over whether she would be able to make it through the next fifteen minutes or whatever was left of that time segment. Her nose was clogging up terribly, the back of her neck had been getting too numb. This was all from sitting still in one position while doing the writing. She had intended to get up after the first alarm and get herself ready for the day before returning to the rest of the writing. But she was in the middle of writing a thought when that alarm had rung, so she kept on. She reset the alarm and plowed through the next half hour. This day she had no intention of going further than one and one half hours. She would have to be so deeply involved with writing something that she desperately wanted to capture, for her to go beyond the decided time.

11:22 a

The Wrimoer had been finding that the administrative aspects of this writing challenge, that she had set up for herself, seemed to be taking up almost as much time as the actual writing. She spent time transferring the writing to another two documents. One to get the word count with. The other to keep the whole running document together in. And a third

11:25a alarm ( She reset the alarm but would stop whenever she had finished what she wanted to say.)

... was a spreadsheet in which she entered the statistics of every day's writing session. She was finding herself adding columns of things to keep track of - how many minutes a writing session had been, the words per minute rate. What was this fascination with numbers and counting that even she could not resist? This was looking not that different than dealing with monies. She had this issue on her list of things to write about. That was as far as she would go with it now.

And lastly there was the posting to the new blog of the day's writing. That always took some time. She was trying to get caught up in posting all those earlier sessions. She only allowed one such back posting a day. She did not want the blog machinery to think her posting was a spam action. She had heard that numerous postings at one time were sometimes interpreted by the blog machinery as being spam from a robot poster, something meant to game the digital system.

She hated having to write about these technical aspects. She suspected that such references would soon be outdated and meaningless. She did not like placing her writing in such a specific time and space. It was the vagueness of the time and space that let her feel it was a fictional place, that gave her the atmosphere of stepping outside her day-to-day reality. This was the experience that she found so exceptional about doing the challenge, though at the same time it gave her some creeps to do that, just because she got so involved and almost lost in it.

Whether it was a good thing or a bad thing, she had not yet decided. She was managing to hold off checking into social media until she had finished the daily writing. But then, after she had had such an intense effort of concentration, was she spending even more time and involvement in the social media? Yesterday it had felt as if she had been quicker about it.

Later in the evening though there had been so much more activity from others though that she had wound up spending more time with it. Was this just because it was a time where everyone was nearing or rounding the corner of the halfway mark and therefore more were reporting in? She would try to keep this in mind as she attended.

She had also had ideas that perhaps she could use her writings that she put on the new blog, in which to insert some of her own images as a way for them to be found, as perhaps purchased through the various venues she had been so slowly setting them up in. The question was how willing was she to spend time setting this up? If it was just to make money, that never gave her enough motivation to follow through with the effort required. It would have to be something that was done for the pleasure of itself. For instance and experiment. Could this be useful? Would people  find it and make use of it? That sounded like a fun thing to test as a test. One item was not enough of a test though. One had to have several things going that way. Yes she wanted to try just for the fun of trying a thing.

11:47 a (It seemed there was only 10 minutes left in this session.)

The Wrimoer had been so sure she would not continue past the last alarm, and now she had done it. She had broken her word to herself. One needed to be careful of this. One had to be careful not to hurt one's future desire to do a thing. There was that question again of 'needing to be careful'. Why did one need to be careful? Was there no resilience built into one's life, into existence? Was there no inner desire that had an innate wisdom of its own rhythm's? She was at least becoming aware of when she was forcing herself instead of allowing things to flow naturally.

Now she was sitting there staring off into the sky not really wanting to get further involved in any writing because the alarm would then interrupt it. She had finished the writing for the day.

11:55 am alarm

And only by now had she wanted to see her word count. That was perhaps a first for her
11:56 am
2812 words 120 minutes = 23.4/wpm