NaNoWriMo

I am a few days late. Uh, six days to be exact. However, I’d like to say that I have a valid excuse. My car got totalled last week. A guy hit me with his utility trailer. I said it that way because whenever I say I was in an accident everyone assumes I was at fault (I wasn’t).

Thankfully my physical injuries are relatively minor. I injured my lower back and I have headaches but no broken bones nor any facial damage. The emotional and financial repercussions of the accident are substantial. Direct and indirect costs due to the crash have reached about ten grand and will increase as I have to go to the chiropractors and physical therapy. I guess I’ve hit a spate of bad luck.

So, I’ve not had the energy to write much. In fact I think I hit a large writer’s block. I said I would do NaNoWriMo though and so I shall. I’m writing it on Tablo- a book writing site. I like it because it is very user friendly and I love the interface. It is very intuitive and I would recommend it to any and all of my writer friends.

Here is a link to the beginning of my NaNoWriMo novel keep in touch and check back often. I have about another 100 words to write tonight and then I’ll call it quits.

My goal is to hit 50000 words this month. At the moment that means I need to write about 2084 words per day. I’m shooting for about 2500 words a day but we’ll see what happens. The most important thing is consistency. Writing is all about consistency.

National Novel Writing Month

EEEK! It’s less than a month away.

This year I will be writing a novel in 30 days or less. I am so excited for NaNoWriMo. I have a story brewing in my mind and it is going to be fantastic. I can taste the opportunity in the air and I know it’ll be fun and exciting. I don’t care if it doesn’t win nor do I care if it is perfect. I want to be a part of something more. I want to write while others are writing.

Join me and take the challenge. Let’s do this together.

To help you (and me) to prepare for this month of feverish writing I will be posting writing tips, (from great sources) quotes and the like. If you need a pep talk or some motivation to keep on writing check back often. Let’s write some stories together.

My first tip: Check out this website for writing tips. Together we’ll do this. Together we will bring the imagination to life.

Temptation Tuesday

Blogging and writing is an outlet for those who think a little and for those who think a lot. There are blogs about anything and everything and that is good.

The world is becoming hyperlocal. Stories about the most remote village on the other side of the world gain international attention in a matter of minutes and yet the stories of the everyman seem to drift through the cracks.

First and foremost, I want to say that I am living a beautifully chaotic and unsettling life but that I have learned so much about the people i know because of it. I have met amazing people who aren’t afraid to take a chance and help out a relative stranger. I have met people who pause in their busy lives and lend a hand to a person who has gotten stuck among the briars.

It makes me want to help out others and to provide them with the help that I have received from so many amazing people. As a writer I often get stuck on the things I need to fix in life. I am very negative about my future prospects and I find that I forget to pause and reflect on how lucky I am. I live in a place where my friends saw I needed help and extended assistance, no questions asked. Every single day I am reminded of how blessed I am.

Yesterday I was having a very rough day. I was feeling like there was no way out. A friend of my reached out to me and provided me with exactly what I needed. My life has been extremely difficult these past few months (my own doing) and I am struggling to figure out what to do. I am a dreamer a “utopian schemer” where I have these grand expectations and dreams and I keep on hoping that things will pan out. I am also one of the “good girls” didn’t party in high school, nor in college. I abided by curfew and I respected the rules. I did as I was told and I never did drugs. Yet, it seems like those who took chances back then are living more successful lives.

The temptation for me right now is to give up and to give in. The temptation is to say I no longer believe in God nor do I believe in his plan. The temptation is to throw away my good girl persona and forget who I’ve worked so hard to become. Parts of me are slipping; becoming a bit unstable. Sanity is subjective, right?

I think all writers, novelists, authors, and artists run into this problem. The need to dream and create versus the need to pay the bills and accept defeat.

Part of it, I think, comes from the society and culture I grew up in. I believe in fairy tales maybe a little more than I should. I grew up addicted to the notion that a chance incidence will change your life and you’ll suddenly be a superstar with more money than you know what to do with and all of your money problems will be miraculously solved by this chance happenstance. 

It’s funny how that belief can wreck your entire thought process. I write about those types of things. My stories are all about young women who are down on their luck and then suddenly something happens and poof. They’re problems are solved and replaced by new ones. 

Laila is a young woman who just wants to live a “normal” life. She is extraordinary though and as such she isn’t slated for a “normal” life. I have the story in my head and it wants to erupt; to come to life but I am dragging my fingers at the thought of delving that deep into a character and into that world.

I want to write this novel in a manner that will create hordes of readers and I want to be a novelist more than almost anything else. 

What I really want is to be able to dream big and to keep my dreams going. I want to keep my horses but it seems that reality is quite certain to take them from me.

As a writer I need recognition. 

If you like what I write then hit the like button below and share it out. It takes a nanosecond.

WordPress prompt

Write about your strongest memory of heart-pounding belly-twisting nervousness: what caused the adrenaline? Was it justified? How did you respond?

Is it sad that I can’t answer this prompt? I’ve had lots of heart pounding moments but I cannot single out one memory. Maybe it is because I avoid high adrenaline moments because my brain shuts my body down and I black out.

The scariest moment I can remember is when I was in ROTC my freshman year of college. I was at a training weekend and we were supposed to repel down a wall with a rucksack on. I was getting nervous and by the time I was at the top I was very nervous. I have a fear of heights. I didn’t let my fear get the best of me and so I leaned backwards down the wall and the pack pulled me down faster than I thought. I blacked out and found myself halfway down the wall. Luckily I had a spotter. He was a skinny kid and probably weighed 30 pounds less than I did. I felt like a fool and an idiot. I was so embarrassed.

My narcolepsy makes me blackout when I get overwhelmed by adrenaline. It stinks because I feel so limited by what I can do. Stuck almost. “Let’s go do something crazy!” I have to make an excuse like sorry, not interested. Or I have to do something else.  Except that the truth is that I am afraid of blacking out.

I live in constant worry that I will do something to trigger a blackout moment. I live in fear that I’ll do something I’ll really regret. I’ve blacked out when a horse I’m leading spooked. I’m worried that one day I will get hurt. I also worry about my automatic behavior which follows the blackout events. My first reaction is anger.

The problem is that I am afraid to follow my dreams wholeheartedly. Every time I try to make something of my life I find that I am standing in a pile of rubble and I don’t know how I got there. My past attempts at building a career have ended in my being overwhelmed and on the verge of checking into a mental hospital. Madness threatens my every step.

When I read these types of prompts I always end up finding myself digging a little too deep into my psyche. I try to embrace my narcolepsy and I try to accept that I have limits but deep down I am beyond frustrated with the fact that I am stuck in the mud.

I have a college degree that I worked hard to obtain and for what? To be a burnt out somewhat unemployed exhausted woman with no hopes of moving forward?

When someone asks me what I want to be I say “I don’t know” but I do know. I just don’t know if I am competent enough to be what I want.

I want to be a novelist; to be an author of best-selling books. I want to be a house owner and a farm owner. I want to donate my time and money to charities and I want to help others chase their dreams. I want to pay my bills on time and I want to be more than my narcolepsy.

I would love to do crazy things; to explore the jungles and jump out of planes and learn how to fly planes but I’m afraid of what might happen if I get too nervous. This is true in social situations as well. I’m afraid of blacking out while talking to people and sometimes I wonder if I have a Dissociative Identity Disorder. That is what chronic exhaustion does to you. You being to worry about everything and you begin to wonder if you are sane or not. You being to see the world in chaotic colors and you begin to hear things that aren’t there and you being to forget how to function.

So, when you ask me what scares me the most? My narcolepsy scares me the most.