Over 5000 words so far

Writing for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month)  http://www.nanowrimo.org/ has proven to be just the medicine I needed to propel me towards my keyboard everyday .-  several times a day.  Characters were born yesterday and now they live in my head throughout the day, each trying to assert themselves into the storyline.  No one wants to be left out.  As I write about the catalyst of the story, each have quieted down and allowed the story to be told.  In a quiet, anxious voice that leaves one's head bowed and reverent waiting for the news that will take the story and form it's life.  These characters are not completely real to me yet.  Not like my girlfriend who has begun to dream about her characters.

But I am 1/10th of the way into the story.  5,015 words are on virtual paper and the story has begun to take shape.  There are fellow NaNoWriMo comrades on my street.  There are 72 in Fredericksburg all together.  Writing groups have begun to spring up.  Encouragement parties, if you will, to help you shutup the inner editor and click away with abandon.  One friend pushes her screen down completely so she can't see any errors.  Another keeps a yellow legal  paper over the screen, lest she see something she needs to change.  I, of course, am too OCD to even try those methods.  I have gone back and changed the voice to third person throughout.  if nothing else, it's helped me stay consistent in my head...and that's where it counts.  I find myself shutting off the TV ( SHOCKER!) and locking myself in the backroom (my room of scrapbooks, candles and things that make me happy) and sitting down and writing sentences and parts of sentences.

This idea of throwing you into the writing pool and demanding you sink or swim is a positively charged circus of writing frivolity that allows the impossible to take shape as the possible.  Slowly ridding myself of the inner editor that sits with red pen in hand to circle my mistakes and correct spelling and grammitical errors is freeing.  It's like taking the dictator away and allowing the country to run itself...for a time.  Because the editor comes back in December and fixes the plot holes and the run on sentences.

For now, I bask in the freedom.  I am setting my words free and asking them to come together as the nucleus for a story line!  Ready, set, ......write.

It Was Almost Painless

The writing group met, despite the fact that we were a month early and not everyone could join us.  Three of us went ahead with the group...I mean we were meeting for our Scotch tasting anyway, right?

I deflected the request to read my piece first and succeeded.  Having someone else jump into the icy waters first, helped me realize I could do this.  I could read aloud the words that came from me, crafted and whittled for hours and I could do it with confidence.

So I read.  Finding my own mistakes as I did so, knowing they were like a snag on a nail and they would be filed or clipped later.  The response from my fellow group members was positive and helpful.  The work I presented was a rough draft.  Okay, a rough, rough draft...but it had potential.  So I head back to the drawing board for further whittling.  This has to be ready for presentation by September 7....

What's it gonna take?

So.......

I'm a writer. There I said it. How or why do I know this, I couldn't tell you. It's not just that I've journaled most of my life. It's not because I love words and their origins. It's not because I was the "geek" (a word yet invented, but applicable just the same), in fifth grade who kept a journal in my black and white marble composition notebook on all the homophones I could find because I found it fascinating that two words could sound the same --- and yet be spelled differently and have different meanings. Or that I have a running dialog in my head....it's not any one of those things that make me a writer, but perhaps they are the sinew and marrow of the beginnings of one.

Tonight is my first experience with a writing club. Fortunately, it's made up of other writers who have a desire to write, improve their skills and hone their abilities. I am excited and scared. It's like the first day at middle school again. Will they like my writing. Will they laugh and wonder why I ever thought it was possible to link words together in a sentence. It's not like kindergarden where I'm sure the teacher is nice to all the little doe - eyed children who rush through her door. This feels like the stuff fear and wonder are made of.

And like every experience I had in high school, when it came to huge projects, I have procrastinated until the last minute. I've got the ghost of an idea. I've nutured the idea, while cleaning bathrooms, cutting hair and playing stupid games on Facebook. This afternoon, I will sit down and call this ghost to the forefront. I will give it life by breathing words onto a page and then I will hope and pray that the members of this writing club don't extinguish the flame and make my idea a ghost once again......