A Parting Glass

A few parting thoughts on NaNoWriMo, now that it's all over but the shouting (and cake...gotta get me some cake):
A 24 Hour Comic in October. A 30 day novel in November. It's like I'm dead set on proving the Law of Intention.
Actually, I'm dead set on doing away with all my excuses for not getting the creative work done. My usual rate of output for the past few years has been about 1 comic story per year and a short story in about the same. In the past two months, I've blown both of those limitations out of the water.
Surprisingly, I found I still had time for a generous amount of reading and the occasional game of Starcraft and Literati.
It seems to me that a creative endeavor is like going to the dentist...the worst part of it is the anticipation. With all the thinking and planning and "research" that goes into a project, you can talk yourself right out of doing it, or waste so much time in the preparation that you never get around to actually doing the job. That's why I find that quote from "Finding Forrester" so apt, and that's what this past month has taught me...the only way to get it done is to sit right down and do it. Worry about the details afterwards. It's easier to edit your work after you've written it than it is to "plan" it before you write it. That's what second drafts are for. And third drafts. And umpteenth drafts.
One thing I have noticed since I took on these projects is a jump in my general level of energy. Far from being caught in the typical dull routine of daily life, I've found that I'm eager to keep moving forward, and the things I found dull previously have only become waiting periods until I can get back to work on my projects. If nothing else, I guess NaNo is good for a mental boot in the ass that we all (especially us pretentious creative types) need from time to time.
I'm hoping that when I walk away from the effort of the last two months I'll be able to maintain a more realistic balance of creativity and productivity. I don't have any hot projects on my plate right now aside from editing the novel I've just written (and hoo boy, does it need it!), but I've got a ton of stuff that I've started and not finished, so maybe now's the time to get some of those things off my plate. I'm looking forward to the months ahead.

A few liner notes: The Daily News article ran on Thursday instead of Wednesday, and they didn't run my interview or my excerpt, so I guess I didn't get much publicity out of that one.
Thanks go out to Jaymee Goh, the Municipal Liaison for NaNo in Halifax. She organized the Sunday write-ins and the publicity, and introduced me to a great new cafe where I can hang out with the beret crowd and pretend I'm a grownup. All praise to she of the brilliant T-shirt and promises of cake yet to come. (And now I can say I know one of those people who use cute little anime characters for their avatar.)

Right now I plan to do this project again next year. Unless I make a gajillion dollars in the meantime and can finally build that underground bunker and begin training my horde of robot zombie ninjas to fulfill my plan of world domination. Whichever comes first.

Victory is Mine!!!!

Done like dinner! And with hardly an adjective to spare. Now comes the fun of editing this lump of radioactive rat droppings and trying to beat it into some kind of shape so I can begin to think about considering possibly sending it to a publisher and start collecting rejection letters.
This has been a great exercise, and if anyone has ever thought about writing, I heartily recommend it as a great way to get started. You never really know what you can do until you put your back into it like this.
Now go away...I've got work to do, and reading to catch up on.

He's Mad...MAD, I Tells Ya!

I'm going to be taking a break from most posting in November. "Why is that?" you might very well ask. OK...go on....ask.
Well, hot on the heels of my 24 Hour Comics Experiment, I'm feeling the jones for another crazy deadline, and so I've decided to take it on myself to join NaNoWriMo.
For those who might not be familiar with the term, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month...a masochistic little exercise that takes the fun of 24 Hour Comic Day and spreads it over the entire month of November. Except that this time I will get sleep, so maybe I won't suffer the system shock that 24HCD put me through. We'll see.
Now you might ask, "Why, Mike? Why are you doing this?" Ok...I'm waiting...ask, already!
Fact is, I want to write. It is a passion that burns in my soul like a poorly digested chili pepper, and usually does so about 5:30 every morning, when I wake to the strident peal of the alarm clock summoning me to another day of cubicle-dwellership, and I stand in the shower thinking, "There's got to be a better way to make a living."
Problem is, when it comes to writing, I'm highly skilled at finding creative ways to avoid it. If procrastination was kung-fu I would be that blind guy that used to torture the living shit out of David Carradine. Master Po...that was it. Never trust a kung-fu master named after a Teletubby.
I'm serious though...I will go to great lengths to find other things to do than write. I will reorganize my comic collection. I will dust my bookshelves. Repeatedly. I will surf the web until my eyes bleed, then I will surf some more. I will alphabetize my sock drawer...anything it takes to kill the time I should be writing.
None of which is conducive to furthering the kind of hedonistic lifestyle a want-to-be writer should be living. At this point, I should have a dozen novels under my belt and hordes of fans lining up to kiss the hem of my garment each time I walk into Chapters (at least, that's how it goes in my fantasies...another thing I do instead of writing.)
So, I need to break down the blocks. Just like I did with the art process earlier this month, I need to get past my own perceived limitations and, as follow Sean Connery's advice in Finding Forrester:

"No thinking - that comes later. You must write your first draft with your heart...The first key to writing is... to write, not to think! "

In November, I am going to commit myself to churning out 50,000 words, or as near as I can get in the time allowed. They may be 50,000 bright lights of genius. They may be total dreck. I may end up just writing the words, "No TV and no video games make Mike something something...." over and over again. I have no idea what I'm going to write about, or what genre it will be in, if one can consider the stream of consciousness I'm going to produce as belonging to any genre. And I'll be honest...I really don't think I'm going to make it. I very much doubt that I'll get out anything longer than a novella. I don't care; that's not why I'm doing this. My goal is to "get the lead out" as it were, and see if I can develop something like a proper work practice by breaking down all my excuses for not working. Wish me luck.

I'll have a space available on the NaNoWriMo site soon for posting a profile and excerpts of my novel in progress. I'll post a link here as soon as I can, but otherwise I won't have much to post here for a little bit.
On a technical note, I'll be doing my writing using the Google's online took, Google Docs. I've already completed a few pieces there under its former name of Writely and I have found it to be a very useful tool. This means I'll be able to update the same document from any internet connected computer, and I'll always have a backup.
As usual, I will be interested to hear or read comments on the ongoing work. Be as harsh as you like, but do try to be constructive.

One final note...there's going to be thousands of people taking part in the event this year....might be a good time to invest in Nabob.