A Full Month of Writing? If Only.

NaNoWriMo is coming up, and I wish I could take part. I've never really cared that much about it before, but right now my schedule is ridiculously busy (I shouldn't even be writing this post), and I'm buried under mountains of other peoples' writing. I'd gladly take a month-long sabbatical with no goal but to be creative and write--drivel or not.

This makes me ponder what motivates people to write, and not only write, but what makes them want to write well. I know what it takes for me. The clearer I write, the more interesting the characters I create, and the more vivid the imagery I can produce, the better chance I have of getting my work published. This attention to detail, of course, carries over into my daily (read: non-creative) writing, because I care when I misuse punctuation. I care when I notice that a phrase is sloppy and can be revised for efficiency. I care when I notice--drat, too late!--a heinous error in the email I just rashly clicked along its merry way.

The mystery to me is when I see people who have sufficient motivation to care as much as I do, but they make it all too clear that it's the least of their worries. What bothers me is when it becomes my problem, but I suspect I make it too much of my problem. These kinds of people don't care, and maybe rightly so, because apparently no one has explained why they should care. I wish I could do it, but so far, my efforts have had minimal effect--like taking one step forward and two steps back.

It's tough, though, not to weep for our future when I present a short story (easily a part of literary canon) to a group of people, only to have them moan about how "pointless" it is. Yes, they caught me; they found me out. I thrill to hear the tortured cries of those subjected to the antiquated and the mundane. But wait, how do they react to a piece of contemporary fiction, something with a modern and familiar voice? It's confusing. It's just too hard to understand.

What's most bothersome to me about all this is that these attitudes seem to be held by the majority. I have friends who love to read and write often, and they do it well. We don't have the time to participate in NaNoWriMo, but I have a loose agreement with a friend to finish at least one short story during the month, and I'm afraid I may not even have the time for that unless I do it over the Thanksgiving break. We want to write. We want to share our views of the human experience, the exultant, the decrepit, the honorable, and the despicable. We want to write for people who understand our perspective, and for those who might not but still want to try. We want to write because it feels good to write, for the simple sake of doing, and to hopefully get better at it.

We don't write because it's pointless.

This post didn't really go in the direction I'd intended, but I guess, despite some of the bleakness, the subtitle of this post could be: "A Love Note to All the Writers Who Care." I miss your company. I also spent far too long writing this post, but I don't care. Hear my rebel yell.

*edit: I had to revise a sloppy phrase.

I Haz A Plan

This post is actually appearing in tandem with my other blog, mainly because I haven’t touched either for a while, and this topic is relevant to both. The issue at stake (mmm, steak) right now is my writing; since the beginning of this semester, what little writing I was doing has slowed to a crawl, but I think I’ve figured out a way to get back on that horse, thanks to technology. Thank you, technology horse.

Anyway, after prepping for courses, teaching those courses, and then evaluating students’ work from those courses, the motivation to write has been beaten right out of me. I wallow in shame at my lack of stamina; however, while the flesh is weak, the mind is still strong and willing. Well, willing anyway. Between blogs, new short story ideas, and The Novel, I’ve usually got quite a few narratives bouncing around in my head—so many that I often find myself thinking, Oh crap, what the hell was that idea about that thing that came to me the other day? The irony in this is that I’ve publicly boasted my habit of not jotting anything down, because if it’s a strong enough or good enough idea, then it’ll “stick,” but my brain has lost its stickiness. It’s like one of those window-crawling toys I had as a kid that lasted approximately half a dozen trips down the window before it just bounced off the glass and landed on the floor every time I threw it. No more sticky. Gone.

So I had to dig down into that crispy decrepitude and figure out some way to get past this, uh, this dry spell (ba-dum bum, crash!). After taking a quick inventory of tangible and intangible assets, I’ve devised a plan based on the resulting list which consists of:

• 6 hours of commute per week (more to come by the end of October),
• 1 laptop with relatively long battery life,
• 1 earpiece headphone w/microphone,
• 1 voice-recognition software application,
• 1 word processing software application,
• 1 audio recording software application (should the previous list item crap out on me).

Using my drive as writing time seems inevitable. My collection of podcasts and audio books is dwindling, and lately I’ve noticed my thoughts wandering off from whatever happened to be playing anyway. Focusing those thoughts on talking through my stories should be the ticket for making progress on this stalled creativity, even if I’m doing something as trivial as filling plot holes, talking myself through character profiles, or even dictating stupid blog posts.

Expect progress reports—probably on this blog. The other one will probably be filled with the stupid dictated posts.