My setting

This was too adorable not to share. Tea on one side, cat on the other. (You'll note the bag of lindt truffles lurking in the back corner...for emergencies.) Begin typing.

Introductions?

Hi, all,

Excited to be beginning this journey with all of you (as soon as I get done procrastinating by updating this blog)! I was wondering if anyone else would want to respond to this post and introduce themselves. I'd like an idea of who I'm connecting with over the next month, and I know some of you quite well of course, but others not as much. Maybe anyone who is willing would just write a brief blurb about themselves and what brings them to this blog, NaNo or writing in general? Anyone else insane enough to be considering doing parts of this by hand? I write better when my thoughts are slowed down by the archaic and cramping hand movements of mechanically writing. Nuts, I know.

Cheers!
Kristen

Curious George

Out of the pure curiosity that tends to prove fatal in felines, have any of us actually completed a work of fiction around or exceeding this size? If so, do you have any advice for those of us who are floundering about without path or precedent?

Newbee

I feel a dread that what is in my head will ramble like I do when I am nervous. I think I  would create a character who is self-confident and poised. I don't think I even know what to start with. I guess a name. Niambh because it brings a smile to my face and because it is Gaelic and different. So Niambh is sitting at her desk and she is remembering the time when she was small and the world seemed fair and now she knows that it is not. She is disillusioned with the state of the world but has no energy to work to fix it. She feels that no matter what it will be ruled by the unfair bosses who use power to corrupt the goodness that lies beneath all ideas. I am not sure that she can carry a story and I think maybe she needs to be placed in some kind of situation where she has to make decisions. I think I have run out of gas and will stop for now. Not much of a start but a start none the less.

Day 1

Stopping writing today was almost as hard as starting. I've been itching to start ever since I signed up for Nano, but when it came time to stare at the blank page, my mind went blank. What do I start with? What makes a story a story and not just some rambly journaling nonsense that comes from the deep recesses of my mind. For me, this journey is about starting to write again, about making time for art everyday in my life. I took a course last fall that made me ask myself about the importance of creation in my life overall as well as my day to day. And once I started writing today, I didn't want to stop. Sure, I found stopping points and got stuck, but I found myself and started writing again. And I have to remember that I have more than Nano this month. So I do need to stop writing every day as well as start. And I fear that starting again tomorrow will be as hard as stopping today. My mindset changes so much day to day, moment to moment that I wonder where my story will take me next time. Every time I put something down and come back to it, it takes on a different life. I suppose that's a testament to my wandering state of mind, but it's also an interesting challenge in terms of taking on such a big project like a novel. I'm curious to see if it will be as wandering as I seem to tend to be, or if it will have a sense of coherency to it. Here's to finding out. 2062 words today.

a favorite, and apt, poem:

The Writer by Richard Wilbur:

In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,

And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,

It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.

It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.

Go!

Enjoy your writing...even if you have no idea what to write...talk to yourself until you do and write down that talking...what are you thinking...what are your goals...then relax and allow your brain to kick out and your "OTHER" brain to kick on. The brain that is creative but has been dormant for way too long.... Remember when you were a kid and you could write stories about anything? When you would tell stories or see stories in everything? That brain will kick in...might take awhile...depending on how long you've pushed it down and back out of your every day life.

Enjoy the freedom to write. Like never before. Happy NaNo-ing!