So, I posted a day late. I apologized in my earlier entry, and now I want to make it up to you with a little extra content. I've been turning over the idea of extra posts in my head for a while now, just some random updates and silly things about me when it's not Wednesday. Hey, it's Thursday! Have a piece of my soul.
These days I’m reading enough to make my head spin. I get up, go to work, read on the subway ride
downtown, read for another seven hours or so, head home, read on the subway
ride uptown, and more often than not read for at least another hour before I fall
asleep.
Not that I’m complaining – a book on the subway is like a
frying pan in a fantasy world. One of
the best unexpected weapons yet. But
more on that another time.
In addition to all of this
reading, it’s National Novel Writing Month, so I’m trying for those 50,000
words again. This is the ninth year that
I’ve gone for it, and in that many tries I’ve reached the goal twice. But, as anyone who’s talked to me about NaNo
before has heard me say, it’s not about reaching 50k. If you’re really lucky, you’ve even see me
start to blubber about how victory lies in those first few words. You’ve probably stared at me in gobsmacked
horror when I get like that – tears filling my eyes as I go on and on about
honor and wordcount and brave souls.
Please, keep in mind that it’s probably already a week into November and
sleeping has all but gone out the window for me.
I stand by those feels
though. Some of you probably already
know that when I care about something, I CARE HARD. I AM A DEEP CARER OF THINGS. So while I’m up in the small hours of the
night, feverishly hammering something out on my keyboard, crying because I’m
killing someone off or because my most recent 8tracks fanmix for my own
original characters is squeezing my heart to death, I am loving every single
second of it. And I hope that everyone
else who takes their chances at NaNoWriMo – at writing, actually – feels the
way that I do when I do it.
I’m just so full of the sentiment
lately, huh?
It comes with being a deep carer
of things.
It’s even better when I find
someone who cares deeply with me. Want
to know how this year got started? With
one of the best people in the world, up into the late hours, notebooks propped
open on our knees and shooting ideas back and forth. Does it make sense if this person is
dead? Should this person actually be
kind of an anti-hero? How can I make
this world as depressing and ruinous as possible? In a particularly glorious moment, I came up
with a line of dialogue spoken by one of my characters that’s still haunting
me, that makes my throat close up for small moments, that has sparked at least
three playlists.
That damn line. It’s trying to kill me. It does kind of kill someone, as it were.
So, if you’ve embarked on the
voyage of NaNoWriMo with me, best of luck to you, friend. Remember that once we’ve cast off, the
journey has begun, and there’s no such thing as running aground in a sea as
wide as this. Same goes if you’re not
doing NaNo, if you are just a writer of the words that you want to write. Your sea is no less than mine. Your country is just as boundless.
May the road rise up to meet you.
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