Because. I. Can.

Finishing NaNoWriMo with over 50,000 words this year was about so much more than writing 50,000 words.

Looking back at the numbers from past years, I see that after the first two years, the percentage of NaNo participants who actually crossed the 50K finish line ranges from 14% to 17%.  It’s an accomplisment to be proud of, in itself.

But this was about teaching myself that I am capable of deciding to do something and doing it.  I know, that sounds simple, doesn’t it?  But for years, thirty-plus years, in fact, I have had a resistence to success.  Some people have a fear of failure.  Not succeeding is not an option.  For me, it’s been the opposite.  I’ve worked hard to strive for mediocrity.  I’m not completely clear on why.  Not wanting to invite a lot of attention to myself, maybe?  I’m not sure.  I only recently started to admit it out loud.

The last success I had was quitting smoking twelve years ago.  Before that, it was probably losing a good deal of weight (though not all I set out to lose) when I was 17 (and then I gained it back, and then some, for reasons I might write about some other time.  Maybe.)  Other than that, I’ve pretty much avoided doing very much I could be really proud of.

I’ve managed to stick with some things over time.  I’ve been at my job for over 11 years, for instance, but I don’t earn enough money to properly cover my bills and expenses.  I’m always scrambling to stay afloat and having to forego eating healthy most weeks because there’s nothing left for groceries.  I’ve beaten myself up for not staying in college so I could be earning more money now, and I’ve held onto the dream of someday becoming a published novelist and supporting myself with my novels, but have continued to never finish a novel.

Beating myself up for not succeeding, while continuing to avoid succeeding.

Recently, in therapy, the topic of my going back to school came up.  No, no, of course I wasn’t the one who brought it up; it had never occurred to me.  Not since about six years ago, when I was going to go to school for web design and chickend out after registering, and then spent the years since then believing it just wasn’t an option for me.  But my therapist asked me, if I were going to go back to school and go into some other kind of work, what I would want to do.  I suddenly remembered having thought, years ago, that I might like to do medical transcription.  I’ve always had decent spelling skills and discovered a possible aptitude for medical terminology years ago, when I worked part-time for an answering service and could almost always spell the medical terms in the doctors’ messages without stopping to look them up.  It’s a job I potentially could do at home, and according to the information on the community college web site, I could earn between six and ten thousand dollars more a year than I do now.

So I decided to do it.  It’ll take me between two and three years (probably closer to three years) going part-time, and I’m scared shitless, but I’m going to do it.  Three years from now, my life will be better for it.  I’ll be making enough money to survive and, if all goes according to plan, I’ll have finished one or two novels and be in the habit of completing what I start.  I can still pursue the goal of publishing, but it should be because I love to write and not because I have attached all my hopes of being financially independent onto it.

This year, I decided to make winning NaNoWriMo be about taking that first step in teaching myself I can succeed after all.  For the first time in a long, long time,  I have experienced how it feels to set out to do something and then actually do it, and you know what?  I like it.

Many thanks to Violet Hill for sharing her NaNo icons.

The Final Stretch

I’m up to almost 43,000 words with two days left (I’m posting this before 5 am on Saturday).

It only took me five tries over five years, but I have learned a lot this NaNo year.  In no specific order, except perhaps for the first point:

• Turn the TV off *
• Halloween candy is not the best choice for NaNoSnacking, especially if you respond badly to excess sugar, as I do
• Major editing can and should be done later – or laterlaterlater, as I keep telling myself
• Anything other than correcting obvious, glaring mistakes or adding new layers to parts of the story written earlier is considered “major” editing
• When the story isn’t flowing, it’s ok to make up a whole new sub-plot (I learned that well before this year, actually)
• If you refuse to get out of your chair until you hit the next thousand-word-mark, you will hit the next thousand-word-mark, albeit with a well-earned sore butt
• Celestial Seasonings Fast Lane black tea is really good
• The word counter on the NaNo site is slightly different from the word counter in yWriter (add approximately an extra .6%, to be safe)
• yWriter rocks! (I’ve known that for a couple years)
• Ok, I learned this last year, but here’s a neat little trick I picked up when an author friend let me read part of her newest novel-in-progress.  There was a spot where she’d repeated the same word twice, and she had an underscore _before the second time.  I quickly reasoned that she must not have wanted to spend the time trying to think of an alternate word while she was feeling inspired to keep writing, so she must have used the underscore to mark something she intended to come back to later, when she could do a Find for “_” and quickly locate all those spots that needed further attention.  I began to use the underscore in my writing for items I need to research, forgotten character’s names or facts like dates, etc, and so on.  I have shared the trick with other people, who have found it useful.  And the funny part?  I thanked my author friend for the tip and she had no idea what I was talking about!  Must have been a typo.
• So, yeah, I’ve learned a lot of this before this year, but I’m putting it all to good use now!

* I recently read an article that said that unhappy people watch more TV than happy people do.  I don’t think that necessarily translates to mean that people who watch more TV are less happy, but I do know that, for years, I have consciously sought out old reruns on TV to avoid having to think about or feel what’s in my real life, for just a little while.  It can be a useful tool if one keeps in mind that it’s just that: a tool for coping.  Of course, not every minute of my TV watching is an attempt to escape reality.  I do have a handful of favorite shows I like to keep up with, purely for entertainment, no matter how I’m feeling.  But this month, I have also seen what a distraction television can be.  I write so much more with it turned off, and I’ve been surprised to notice how many hours I go without ever turning it on, given that I live alone and have always tended to use it for background sound.

Just some thoughts.

The whip is cracking.  I have to go write some more now.

Many thanks to Violet Hill for sharing her NaNo icons.

NaNoWriMo: Day 23

Well, after running through all my excuses not to write yesterday, I stayed up til 4:00 AM and added 3993 words, bringing me slightly past the 30,000 word mark.

Now I only have to write 8305 by midnight to be caught up.

I’m doing better than I’ve ever been at this point in past NaNo’s, but not as well as I want to be doing this year.  So, enough of my excuses (yes, I’m going back through the same list today).

It’s time to write, again.

Many thanks to Violet Hill for sharing her NaNo icons.

Write-Ins: Virtual and In-Real-Life

There is a write-in today in a virtual pub where I sometimes hang out.  I’m supposed to be writing, but I’m blogging instead.  And reading others’ blogs.  And checking email.  And talking to my cat.  Making coffee.  Wondering if it’s too early for lunch, given that I slept late and ate breakfast at close to lunch time.  Thinking about the laundry I need to do.  Talking on the phone to my sister and my mother.

But I haven’t turned the TV on.  No, no, no.  Because I really do want to write, and the TV is the thing that can distract me more than almost anything else.  I do want to write, but I’m just making excuses.  Fearing success.  That is a fact I have finally been beginning to face of late: that I have a fear of success.  It pervades every aspect of my life.

Something else to talk about in therapy.

And in real life, today, I must write.

Well, I have done some writing today.  416 words, in fact.  And I have some idea of the scenes I’d like to work on.  And I have coffee.  And time.  And the knowledge that many others are writing, also, all over the world, which is one of my favorite things about NaNoWriMo.

I do like write-ins.  I generally don’t get quite as many words written during an “In Real Life” write-in as I am able to when alone, because in person, we talk occasionally.  But the socializing is a very good thing, and it’s helpful, at least to me, to see others going through the same (or a similar) process.  To talk about our writing.  To ask, when we draw a word-blank, “What do you call those things that do this-or-that?” and know that the other person or people will understand because they have also had those moments of not being able to think of a word.  (I called my mother about an hour ago, because for the life of me, I couldn’t think of the word “covert”.)  It’s also encouraging, to me, to see others who are futher ahead of me, because I can say to myself, “So-and-so did it.  I even watched while s/he did parts of it.  I can do it, too.”

I wrote just over 1000 words last night, in not quite three hours.  I was writing with a write-in-friend I met last year.  I enjoy writing with her, and I like her as a person.  As we were leaving the coffee shop last night, she said, “You’re only 10,000 words behind me.  You can catch up this weekend.”

And, so, I’m physically putting on the cap I had made a couple months ago (yes, I really did) that says, “There is no perfect time to write.  There is only now. – Barbara Kingsolver” and I’m getting back to work.

Many thanks to Violet Hill for sharing her NaNo icons.

The Great American Smokeout

The Great American Smokeout in 1996 fell on November 22nd.  That was the day I quit smoking.  It was also the birth date of a brother I never knew; a baby boy born with heart defects who died at six weeks of age.  That was before I was born.  I was thinking of him on that day, and the fact that I was born with such a healthy heart.  I had been thinking of quitting for awhile leading up to that day, but on that morning, I decided, while I was on my cigarette break at work, to do it in memory of my brother.

And I did.  I smoked my last cigarette on the way home from work that day.

I bought some nicotine gum, but only used it for a few days because to me, it felt like I was just teasing myself.  I found it easier to just grit my teeth and stop cold turkey.  Oh, yeah, and I called my mother about every 20 minutes for that first four days.  She kept helping me to divert my thoughts away from wanting to smoke.

It was tough, no doubt about it.  After the first four days had passed, I felt I’d accomplished too much to want to backslide, but it was still difficult.  I didn’t write creatively for about a year after I quit, because I didn’t know how to write without a cigarette.  Eventually, though, the desire to write won out and I found new habits to associate with it.  (Not necessarily good ones, as I’ve blogged about recently, and I’ve had to replace some of those habits as well, but it’s getting easier each time I have to do that.)

For several years, until quite recently, in fact, I continued to dream occasionally that I still smoked, but somehow hid it from people.  I’d wake up feeling guilty, and then realize it was just a dream.  I’m curious as to how many people who have quit smoking have had the same experience.  Two other people I know have said they did.

To anyone who is considering quitting smoking: It can be done! It’s not easy, but it’s so worth it, for your health and your overall well-being as well as your confidence in your ability to face difficult challenges in life.  I felt like a superhero for awhile.  And it’s also great when you can wake up without that tightness in your chest and when you lose the consistent cough that you’d gotten so used to.  :)

Writing Buddies, Write-Ins, and Word Wars

I went to a very fun write-in tonight.  The closest NaNo regions to me are a bit of a drive – about an hour to one area and an hour and a half to the other.  I drove to a couple write-ins last year, but this year, I thought I would like to try and find as many local people as possible to write with.  Last year, I write with one lady a few times, and really enjoyed her company.  She’s a few years younger than my mother, and a very interesting person to talk with.  We found that we wrote well together, and so I was very happy when I heard from her this year and we planned to meet at a local Panera Bread and write together again.  I posted on the NaNo Forums and there were quite a few more local responses this year than ever before.  One other person joined us tonight, and I am hoping maybe others will in the future as well.

Tonight’s group represented three generations in age our range.  We three are 21, 44, and 72.  It was so much fun, and we talked and got along as if there were not nearly so many years separating us.

Our young friend challenged us to a word war.   We set the alarm on my cell phone for (what turned out to be) 17 minutes, said “1,2,3, go!” and started typing.  At the end of the time, we had advanced our word counts by 735, 787, and 792, I believe, if I am remembering right.  We were all very close in our totals.  (I was the one in the middle.)  Many of my words were misspelled, but hey, spelling can be corrected later!

Our young friend added me to her NaNo Writing Buddy list, and I added her to mine, Thursday, I believe.  She has one other writing buddy on her list, and she told me tonight that her other buddy has been competing against my word count and being excited when she passed me.  I came home from the write-in tonight and looked, and her friend was only slightly ahead of me.  I wrote and wrote and passed her, but the second I updated my word count, she must have updated hers and she is ahead of me again!  But I enjoyed the challenge, and I think I will keep trying to catch up to her, and maybe even pass her again, if I can.

Between finally “getting” what it means to just write and not worry about editing (or even quality) so much, BTC’s challenge that lit a fire under me last Friday night, and learning how far ahead a word war or even a subtle friendly competition with a complete stranger can nudge a person, I am really happy with all these new things I’m learning.

Tomorrow is the big mid-month day.  By midnight, I need to have 25,000 words.  I ended tonight with 19,793, leaving a whopping 5207 for tomorrow.  I think I may be seeking out some word wars tomorrow!  Anybody up for it?

Many thanks to Violet Hill for sharing her NaNo icons.

Life is Change – For Others, Too

Huh.  Interesting.  Did you know that if you accidentally type in lifeischange.com and forget the “.wordpress” part, you’ll end up on the web site for comedian Judson Laipply?  He’s the Evolution of Dance guy.  Really talented.  Check out the first video on his site.  I remember getting that in an email quite awhile ago and loving it.  I hadn’t known it was a most viewed video on YouTube, though.

Anyway, I hope he doesn’t want to set up a wordpress blog.  Or if he does, I hope there is another screen name he likes as well.  Just sayin’.

A Kick In The Ass For Day Seven

BTC’s comment on my Day Two post was just what I needed (thank you, BTC!).  I started out at a great pace for the first two days of NaNoWriMo.  I was thrilled and excited and very pleased with myself.

And then Sunday night, I accidentally glutened myself with my hair color.  That, mixed with not sleeping enough Sunday night and the beginning of another Fibromyalgia flareup, put me in the optimum frame of mind to fall into a depression.  After the emotion I felt about the kitten Monday, all the ups and downs and intensity I felt, and possibly more gluten, as my desk, the kitten, and I were covered in canned catfood and it never occurred to me to read the label first (but it was likely that it contained gluten), I did fall. I lost my ability to focus, to think very far beyond a few words, and to care.  This went on for a few days, and I quickly lost my word-cushion and started to fall behind.

I figured I would catch up over this weekend, but BTC issued me a challenge I couldn’t resist.  I took half the day off from work on Friday afternoon, came home early, and started to write my heart out.  I wrote, and made coffee, and wrote some more.  Then I got up and made some grilled-cheese pizza bites and wrote some more.  (They turned out to be pretty good, too.)  I drank more coffee and wrote some more.  And as the hours passed, my word count climbed.

The goal at the end of the 7th day is 11,669.  I hit 11,805 at 1:00 am.  Unfortunately, I was only at 10,589 by midnight, but I did pass 11,669 before going to bed for the night.  I may not have met BTC’s challenge, but because of her challenge, I caught up to where I’m supposed to be, going into Day Eight.

I also discovered a way to boost word count that hadn’t occurred to me earlier.  The two villains can have sex on the kitchen table.  Yep.  I was just writing along, minding my own business, and they started to get all hot for each other, and well, who was I to argue?  I let them go for it. Characters never cease to surprise me with the way they develop their own personalities and start to tell me what’s what.  But they seem to know, and the writing is better when I trust them.  I discovered, also, that they really believe something I had originally intended for them to be lying about.  So, as it will turn out by the end of the book, the joke will be on them.  Huh.  Another layer that makes the story better.

And, thanks to BTC’s encouragement and the challenge that pushed me to keep writing, this may be the first year I actually become a NaNoWriMo winner, and the year I manage to overwrite that groove in my brain that always said, “Other people can do it, but I can’t” with “Why yes, yes I can!”

I’m a happy camper right now.  And a sleepy one, too.

Many thanks to Violet Hill for sharing her NaNo icons.

Will

If you imagine this kitten as an all-black kitten, it looks remarkably like the one I connected with on Monday.  Coworkers got him out from under the building, where he was all alone and crying.  There are several feral cats that live in the woods by where I work.  Nobody could find the mother cat and the baby kept crying and crying.

We had nothing to feed him, so one coworker went to his house and brought back a can of cat food (he has cats).  I opened the can and the kitty went nuts when he smelled the food, but he wasn’t able to eat it.  He would put his face into the food and try to suck, but he wasn’t getting more than a tiny amount.  I tried putting a little on my fingers and discovered that he has teeth.  Sharp little teeth.  He didn’t draw blood, but he made me yelp more than a few times.

I called probably ten veterinarian’s offices, as well as two or three animal rescue services, asking if they take in orphaned or abandoned kittens.  Nope.  Either they don’t take in animals, as in the case of the vets, or they are over capacity.  One guy from one of the shelters asked how old the kitten was and whether he had teeth yet.  I said yes, he has teeth, but he doesn’t know how to eat yet.  The guy said if he has teeth, he’s too old for them to take him.  Two other shelters are closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.

So, there I was, with the phone book open and canned cat food all over my desk (and my hands, and my shirt), and this little starving, cat food-covered kitten, still crying, crawling up under my hair, trying to nurse on my scalp.  And my coworkers leave, to go do their work.  And I haven’t gotten any work done all day.  And Boss comes in and has that tight look he gets when he’s getting pissed off, and I’m feeling terribly stuck in the middle of an awkward situation.

I went outside several times with the kitten, trying to find the mother cat, and never saw her.  She’s usually not far away.  I finally asked Boss if I could go and buy him one of those little bottles and some kitten formula, and he said yes.  (He loves cats, which really helped the situation, and it turns out that, while he didn’t like the disruption of work, most of his annoyance was because he wasn’t dealing well with the constant mewing.)  I put Kitty into a box that someone fixed up with an old sheet and went to get the items he needed.  I also picked up a small alarm clock, thinking the ticking sound might be soothing for him in the box.

When I got back, I was able to feed him from the bottle.  What an experience!  It took awhile to get the hole in the nipple the right size so the formula would flow properly, and it took a little doing to get him to open his mouth at just the right time to discover that there was something nourishing in that plastic thing I kept putting in his face, but once he got the idea, it was amazing.  He put his tiny paw on my thumb and ate enthusiastically.  His belly gurgled and he shook, and I whispered sweet nothings to him.  After he ate, I was holding him up under my chin, snuggling with him, getting a little bit of paperwork done with one hand, and I felt like I was being watched.  I looked down, and he was staring up at me with those little blue eyes, and I felt enveloped in love.  I hope he got the same feeling when I smiled back at him.

In the mean time, Boss called his wife, who called a few people, and found a couple who takes in abandoned baby animals and takes care of them until they can be adopted.  They agreed to come get him and help him, and then bring him back to us when he is weaned.  We’ll still need to find a home for him then, but he is getting the care he needs now.  And there is always the chance that someone the couple knows might adopt him, I am hoping.

(Anyone who lives in Florida and would like to adopt an adorable little kitty with a heckuva will to live, please contact me.)

If I were going to adopt him, I think I would consider naming him Will.  My 9 1/2 year old cat, Emily, wouldn’t handle it well if I brought home another cat.  I actually tried, two years ago, and brought home a six-month-old kitten that a coworker’s relative was trying to find a home for.  I had her for three months, and Emily was depressed the entire time.  She laid in the corner of the room, wouldn’t come to me, wouldn’t purr, wouldn’t talk to me, only ate enough to survive, and licked the hair off of part of her back.  When I saw that she wasn’t getting any better or adjusting despite my best efforts to spend quality time alone with each cat and to praise them every time they occupied the same airspace without fighting, I finally went looking for a home for the young cat.  I found a nice young couple with a baby and another young cat, and they fell in love with her.  (Recently I saw some pictures of the cat, all grown up.  She’s beautiful and looks very happy, and they even kept the name I gave her!)  The very night I took the cat to the young couple, I came back home and my Emily started to talk to me again.  (She has a huge cat-vocabulary and has always been very communicative with me.)  Her hair grew back and I haven’t tried to force her to accept another pet since.

End of Day Two

This is going well.  I reached 5004 words at about 9:30 tonight.  That’s three words more than three days’ worth, in two days.  I’m very happy with that.

I was also pleased to notice, when I exported what I’ve written so far into a Word document (from yWriter, which is the software I write in) and scanned for red-underlined misspelled words (yWriter has spell-check, but I forgot to use it before exporting) . . . there were more misspelled words than usual, which tells me I was more into actually writing and less worried about double-checking myself the whole time, and indicates that I have, in fact, learned to quiet my inner editor more than I used to.  To me, that is one of the greatest things to bring away from the NaNoWriMo experience.  Well, that, and the fun of knowing you are one of over a hundred thousand people all over the world who are all attempting to do the same insane thing, and many succeed every year!  I don’t know how many people are participating this year, but here are the totals from the NaNoWriMo web site for 1999-2007:

Annual participant/winner totals
1999: 21 participants and six winners
2000: 140 participants and 29 winners
2001: 5000 participants and more than 700 winners
2002: 13,500 participants and around 2,100 winners
2003: 25,500 participants and about 3,500 winners
2004: 42,000 participants and just shy of 6,000 winners
2005: 59,000 participants and 9,769 winners
2006: 79,813 participants and 12,948 winners
2007: 101,510 participants and 15,333 winners

Many thanks to Violet Hill for sharing her NaNo icons.