November again.

The sun was relentless today, perhaps mocking the biorhythms that adapted to daylight savings time, and thrust itself into the world like a too long denied lover.  It lights the morning now, silver rays stabbing through the trees and prodding me. There are things I am supposed to do today.

It is November again, and once again I am writing new words. I am taking a break from the relentless editing that haunts me year after year because I write these fifty thousand word novels and then have to do something with them.  I love the new words.  I don’t even mind the editing.  I just have to convince myself that this is what I do now.  I’ve been flirting with it for a long time, looking through the side of my eyes, slipping behind my desk or just opening documents on my computer and typing, always something that can be stopped or interrupted. And that is why I’ve never finished anything, because I never say, this is my job. This is my work. 

For the first time in the 12 years I’ve been doing this casually, I feel that it is okay to say it. I don’t have to say, “and I write” as a tag line to whatever else I am doing.  I don’t have to stand in front of a group and say, my name is Georgiana and I’m addicted to words.  It is socially acceptable, sort of, and mentally necessary. 

I’m going to get out of my way now and go see where my story takes me.

November

It's almost halfway through November, my tenth year of participating, at least on some level, in Nanowrimo. This is the first year, believe it or not, when I've actually had a day or two where i was ahead of the daily word count goal. I think it will stay that way from here on out, mostly because after ten years, it becomes an institution to be honored, and somewhat of a family tradition. Only my kids are participating this year, from the ten year accumulation of writing buddies. I have to wonder what all those other writers are doing these days. Maybe they published best sellers and are doing world wide book tours under their real names. Let's go with that.

At the risk of jinxing it, I'll confess that I'm well on the way to having a rewrite finished. By the end of 2011, it is my expectation to have work out there in Agent-ville. I don't feel nervous about that. I don't feel that if what I submit is not published, that I will quit. When I look through my comuter files, and my credenza files and the stacks of paper that keep me company in my office, I know that writing isn't optional for me. I'm okay with that too.

It is a muggy November morning, and I've got characters trapped in some space and time warp that none of us quite understand. That's the beauty of Nanowrimo. It lets you play.

Thoughts about process

Shall I just get it over with and admit to having slept too late to see sunrise today? I did open my eyes, and got up before the kid left for school, but it got light without me noticing. That's how it goes sometimes.

I got another thousand words on Invisible, the latest WIP today. This is the novel I worked on during November, for NANOWRIMO, and i was pleased to see that most of the writing actually wasn't so bad. I had stopped writing in November at the point in the story just before climax, and had begun thinking of it as "novelitus interruptus," fearful that I'd never actually get back to it to write the climax. Honestly, I didn't know what happened, and even though I'm a thousand words closer, I still don't.

The fun part though, is that this is a bit of a mystery story... no, it is all mystery I guess, though you, precious reader, have met both sides, you know the villain and what he's thinking, and you know the victims. You have been getting to know the protagonist, but she needs a little more work. She keeps surprising me, so I have to admit I don't know her fully yet either.

Today though, she figured out a piece of the puzzle that was missing, that if she ever goes down the stairs to dinner with her friends, where all the parties will be in the same room (well, they don't know the villain is "there") She might be able to talk about what she is thinking and the 4 adults involved will put it all together. Or at least have a good idea.

The writing process continues to fascinate me. Anyone who knows me personally will tell you how much I do not like horror, suspense or mystery. Yet I am drawn to write them over and over, always the escape from the literary prose that I *want* to write. I have learned though to just go with it. No sense trying to make myself drink from a dry well.

Focus

Anyone who knows me knows me to generally be the kind of person who gets hold of something and then chews it up until all the flavor is gone and its completely "handled." The problem is that i can't stay in any one subject area for very long without getting bored. So I'll hit writing hard for months at a time, then disappear from the writing world, reappearing at bar meetings and taking on pro bono clients and proving that yes, i still can change the world! This characteristic makes both law and fiction good options for me simply because the facts always change. Maybe not the rules or language or laws, but the facts always have new twists.

Overlap is hell though. If you are the "last client" on my desk before the creative writing monster grabs hold, I resist finishing your work, not because it is hard or I don't want to, it is just that my focus has already moved on.

This week is the last week of October, so NaNoWriMo starts Monday... which is a creative sprint for 50,000 new words of fiction. I really like Nano months, because they fit my personality.

But I really like the two clients on my desk, too, so discipline must set in and i must get their work sent off before the week ends. And hope they are satisfied and happy so when writing loses its tartness in a couple of months, I'll have work to come back to.

And what I have really lost my taste for is virtual worlds, so if that is where you've found me in the past, you might want to go to twitter or facebook or even... gasp... email! Who knows if that will light back up for me? Some things i guess we just outgrow.