NaNoWriFlection

Nanowriflection:
-verb
1. To shit yourself while standing.
-interjection
2. Hallelujah!

I made up the word, I should get to define it right? Alright, enough fucking around, it's time to get down to the business of divulging my personal thoughts and impressions of my NaNo experience.

As a whole, I found it to be everything you might think it would be. Challenging, time consuming, sometimes miserable and an all around pain in the ass. Of course, there were good things about it too, and I'm going to concentrate on these simply because the other stuff wasn't really that big of deal. I didn't experience bad times or feelings often and they were greatly out-weighed by the benefits of writing a book over the past month.

First and foremost, it forced me to divorce the TV and, now that the writing is over, has increased my free time. I don't think I realized just how much TV I was really watching. I was in the routine of coming home from work, cooking dinner for myself and the little lady and plopping my ass on the couch in front of the tube for the next three hours until it was time for bed. I understand this was our together time every night, but honestly, how fucking sad is that? Sitting next to someone on the same couch with both pairs of eyes glued to the glow of the television screen does not count as quality time together. In the back of my mind I always knew that, but now it's clear as day. *Sidenote: Going to the movies on a first date is ridiculous for the same reason. How are you going to get to know someone in a place where you're not supposed to talk and you don't even face each other? I've done the movie first date before and it turned out horribly. I should have known better. I'm assuming that no one over the age 18 actually does this, although I'm surely wrong. If I ever have a son, there's no fucking way I'm letting him take a chick to a movie on the first date. If he's going to be my son, then he's going to have to be good with the ladies.* I now have time to work on editing my novel, which I'm not starting till January (need a little distance from it to get some perspective and recharge the novel batteries) and I want to start playing guitar again and writing music. Which brings me to my next point, committing to a difficult task and seeing it through till the end, even though you didn't have to, is the greatest confidence builder on God's green earth. Finishing Nano made me feel like I could do anything if I set my mind to it. It gave me back a speck of the will power I never knew I had. For those that know me, will power is not my middle name. Even so, I feel like, for once in my life, if I really want to do something then I'll stick with it long enough to get it done. And that knowledge brings freedom, my friends. And isn't freedom what it's really all about?

The other benefit I gleaned from NaNo, the reason I set off on this crazy adventure in the first place, was to improve my writing. I'm not sure if it shows or not, but I hope that it does. I haven't taken a writing class since high school and most the writing in my college career consisted of the technical variety. Not that I count writing a novel as a class but sometimes the best way to get better at something is to jump in and practice for awhile. I'd already been taught to swim in the literary pool, I just hadn't done laps in a very long time. Though my form may be a bit shotty now, I'm hoping that the more laps I make the better my form will become. To be honest, if I had known what I know at this point in my life, I would have majored in something literary like journalism. I'm better at writing, or at least grammar, than I am at math (don't laugh, not a ringing endorsement, I know). I always have been. It was just too impractical for me to do anything like that in college. My parents didn't have a ton of money to spend on college and I picked the only school that I didn't get a scholarship to. I was going to have student loans when I got out and wanted something that was a guaranteed job after graduation. Engineering was the best solution and it was what I thought I wanted to do with my life. Hell, I could still be an engineer in forty year and I wouldn't be upset about it as long as I had something else, like writing or music. I'm the definition of my job does not define me. Nano gave me hope that maybe I could be a writer or something. Gave me hope that one day I might put something out into the world that was actually worth a damn. I'm not delusional here, thinking that I'm going to be some kind of professional writer. I'm not that good, there are a thousand people who write better who'll never be published or even read and I'd never think I could do this as a source of income. My brain's went to shit long ago and I don't think it's going to get smarter anytime soon. The point is that now, there are possibilities out there and the chance that maybe I could grab one of them. This keeps coming back to freedom, in some form or another, and I don't mean for it to, but apparently it's inevitable.

As far as the actually writing of the book went, I'm amazed at how easily the thoughts and ideas came to me. I would lie in bed at night trying to fall asleep but not being able to because I couldn't stop thinking about the next chapter of the book, or how to finish the chapter I was writing or what I had written before bed and could I make it better. I was even interviewing bartenders for the story. Well, one really, but she was no help at all. In fact, her answers made me sad in a way, but that's a story for another time. I thought about the novel day and night, but that's how I knew I was doing the right thing. That's how I knew I liked writing the novel. (sane) People only obsess about two things: things they hate, and things they love. So I guess you could say that I love my book. It's not completely done, yet. Really, I have one chapter that I need to finish asap and the book probably needs a couple more that I'll writing when I start editing. I also need a way to end the book smartly that I haven't come up with yet. The book's supposed to be funny, though I'm not sure if I accomplished the task. I'll defer that opinion to Kristen when she reads it, post edit. She's my editor-in-chief on the project. I might try to get the final product published just to read the scathing rejection letters about wasting people's precious time. We'll see how I feel about the final product, but it could be fun either way.

So, to summarize: Nano - good, Homeless people - bad. Hope everyone had a great repeal day, I know I sure did.