Drifting

A little bit of an update since our last adventure. NaNoWriMo has consumed me, and I am drifting along with the tide.  It is a rather good thing that I am naturally buoyant.

I crunched and I scrapped, and I managed to pull in for an early win. Four days early, in fact.

I discovered in this attempt that I was consistently ahead on my word count. I would sometimes double it, especially over weekends, and even towards the end could occasionally take entire days off to kick start my brain without falling behind.

Frankly, I'm exhausted. But is it worth it? Oh, hell yes.

The last push was a bit of a mind-breaker. I wrote 2,000 words on Sunday morning, and slept half of my day away knowing that I had no further obligations to it - at least for the moment. I later awoke and tried to amuse myself with mindless things. That's when I got stubborn. I tried to pick up some of my hobbies - playing video games, watching Netflix...you know, something to help myself relax, and I found that 1.) I felt incredibly lazy for doing it and 2.) I was bored!

 I was staring at 47,000 words or so on Epicenter, and thought to myself "Well, let's get three days ahead. That couldn't hurt anything, right?"

And so, refreshed, I plunked out another 1,000 words or so before midnight. And kept going.

Once I reached my goal, I realized,  "I only have a day's worth of writing to go. Let's see how far I can take this tonight."  While I had to take frequent breaks, I somehow managed, over the course of two hours, to make that final stretch and am now sitting pretty in the Winner's Circle at 50,164 words. In a 24 hour period I had produced over 5,000 words.

Now to some, this is a feat - and to others, a way of life. I have two friends who picked up NaNo mid-month or later and have managed to nearly catch up to me already.  This is an incredible display of dedication, and I truly envy them! My 5,000 words left me quite drained.

A little background on me, for the interested. I am thirty years old, and frankly, I've never really been able to "get my shit together" no matter how many times I have tried. I've had to learn - as an unmarried, childless woman in a society that seems to think you need to either be married and have children by thirty, or have a highly successful career, a house, etc in order to be "normal" or "successful" -  that success is relative to the individual. If I based my level of success off of those factors alone, I would find myself woefully behind the curve. That is a very depressing way to live.

 To me, I like to live by the small successes. Did I manage to get out of the house today and not have an anxiety attack while driving to the grocery store? Hallelujah! You have to celebrate the small victories where you can.

I have always wrestled with some form of anxiety, and coupled with having an introverted energy management style - functioning in society is difficult at best and nearly crippling at worst.  I have always been lucky to have amazing friends to help me battle this, but handling things on my own is definitely a chore. As of yet, I haven't had the courage to talk to a medical professional about it, but I believe that it has prevented me from really seizing my full potential.

 Over the years, my anxiety and my addiction to work (because I can't see it as anything else) have consumed nearly everything about my life. I have alienated friends and been sometimes cruel to loved ones, all because I allowed my stress level to get out of control. You see, for the past ten years I have worked in the service industry - generally as a front line customer service rep. For someone who has anxiety issues, this is hell on the mind. In my free time from work I came to prefer more mind-numbing activities to the mind provoking, and my writing - except for during the month of November - fell completely to the wayside.

I have been lucky enough recently to find a wonderful company to work for, and that has helped me enormously in all aspects of my life. They have recently given me an opportunity to break new ground with them in a hybrid customer service and marketing position. While this puts me out of my comfort zone, this is a CREATIVE position, and I am very excited about it. I may be able to write - professionally! - and I will actually be using my brain. This is something that I have needed for a very long time.

After all, Customer Service is really the same no matter where you work. In most cases it is a series mindless micro transactions or handling customer complaints. While the confrontation involved with the latter part does help to stimulate the brain (problem solving skills, anyone?), it also adds the stress of often dealing with angry people. Yikes.

So yes - 5,000 words in a single day is a huge feat for me because my brain just gets TIRED lately. I may even need a nap after writing this blog from all of the effort! But the fact is - I did it! I wrote my 50,000 words, and I am well on the way to actually finishing a novel!

50,000 words is only the beginning. In my earlier posts I described my novel, and for those that may remember (or would care to look back to the previous blog posts - don't be shy! I don't have many so you won't get lost, I promise!) my protagonist was in need of recruiting a team to start her revolution. Well, at 50,000 words - she just recruited her last member.

 I have a ways to go yet to finish my story. I get the feeling that I will need to do a heavy amount of editing on this book, and while that is a bit daunting to think about - nothing is gained by becoming overwhelmed by it. Once I take a little bit of a recharge break (and only a little one!), I will be pushing forward to the finish. My goal is to finish the first draft of my novel by January 1. Then I will begin the editing process, to be completed by the end of March with a second draft.

Because real writers work on deadlines, and that is what I am going to do. I cannot explain my transformation, just that I have been transformed. And it is wonderful.

Thank you readers for letting me ramble at you. Whatever you get out of this post, know this. YOU CAN DO IT! There is nothing in the world that can hold you back from something that you REALLY want.

And what I really want right now is a nap. Whew!

At this moment, I am completely overwhelmed by NaNoWriMo.

Not in the way most would think. I'm three days ahead on my word count, and have hardly scratched the surface of my story. But here's the thing - The flood gates are open. I'm feeling so warm inside that I can hardly handle it. And it. Is. Wonderful.

The realization hit me last night when I was looking on Pinterest for pictures of Tattoos rather than working on my writing. I was doing some text roleplay with Dylan - my beau and one of my biggest inspirations - and poking at my word count here and there. I was a bit discouraged, because the scene just wasn't talking to me. But I was done for the day, so anything I added at that point was bonus.

(Or as you would call it..."bonus turtle meat". If you haven't seen 30 Rock, you really must :P)
http://www.hark.com/clips/wsxhdkspdh-bonus-turtle-meat

But then I found this picture, and for some reason it was so earth-shattering that I decided that I was 100% head over heels in love. With the picture. With my writing. With the concept of writing in general.



Now, this might not seem monumental to most - but just LOOK at how sexy this is! And then, realize that I had an immediate association with this image and a character that I had never met before until this adventure had begun. Jei's husband, the antagonist Daryl Trenholm, was here IN THIS PICTURE. And suddenly the thoughts began to flood in. Questions left unanswered, even after countless character questionnaires and mental puzzlings, slapped me in the face and left me stunned. And I seem to be a masochist, because I loved it.

I realized last night that I could easily do this every day for the rest of my life, so long as the ideas kept flowing from my head. That I didn't have to stay stuck within the confines that my own mind has created through all of these years. I have hurt, and I have allowed myself to be broken - all for the sake of a paycheck. My creativity felt as though it had drained from me almost completely, and it had broken my heart. But now I want nothing else in the world but this.

And I have three people to thank for this. All three of them have been such a vital contribution to restoring my inspiration that I don't know where I would be without them. So I want to thank them, publicly, for all they have done. These words just aren't enough.

My dearest love, Dylan Deatherage. You inspire me to be a better person, not just a better writer. It may sound cliche, but I would do anything and everything to give us a better chance for the future, to help us - in our deep anxiety, to find a place in this world that isn't tailored to our kind. I would do anything that I could to help us be happy, and so one day you and I can have our secluded home, filled with happy dogs and mountains of books - many of them of our making. The books, of course - not the dogs. Other dogs make those.

My best friend, Chris Vieth. Your patience and understanding is a light in a dark world. And even though you don't like dogs, that's okay. You've helped give life to characters and ideas that were flatter than the Pre-Columbian Worldview, and given me feedback that I have desperately needed. Sometimes things make sense in my head, and don't on paper - and you won't coddle me when this happens.  You're one of the best sets of eyes that I have, and one of the most honest. Though I can be a sensitive whiner-baby at times, you simply don't give a shit. I need that. So thank you.

And friend and fellow author, Serena Gulledge. Your book, Renegade, is sitting on my bookshelf as a testament to the hard work and dedication it takes to truly be an author. It is the first, but not the last, of a long line of work that you will create through your life, and I am so lucky to know you and have you as a friend. Our back and forth over facebook, relating the woes of characters gone terribly right, helps to keep me moving forward. May we never stop writing, and always keep inspiring one another!

And so, on that note, I run off into the day to continue my life's work.

Continue ever onward, but take the time to appreciate everything that you have left behind. For good or for ill, it has made you into the person that you are today. And that's pretty wonderful.