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Nov. 7th, 2007 11:29 pmI've taken a big step this month. Like the last two years previous, I signed up for NaNoWriMo. But this year, I'm going to actually finish. I've got an actual plot and a vague outline and characters and everything. I even know how my story will eventually end up. Whether I ever get it published doesn't really matter (although it would be nice to eventually have a beach house in Ireland or some such in which I can spend my days writing and my nights counting my money and the boxed sets of my novels). What matters is that I'm writing.
Sure, a thousand words here and there don't seem like much to people who don't understand writing, but it's not just a thousand words. It's sentences, with grammar and words and stuff. It's dialogue, where you're keeping track of several different voices, and while A and B are talking, you're describing what's going on around them so that they're not floating in a featureless void. It's another world that is being constructed brick by brick, word by word, and I'm sorry that it takes my full concentration to make word mortar. Which would be an excellent band name, by the way. "Word Mortar." Just saying.
And it's not like I'm sitting around on my butt all day, writing a word here and a word there. I work hard at my job, doing a lot of physical labor, and then I come home and write. Today, the time I would usually spend writing just before lunch time got usurped by cleaning up after two exploding toilets. Two hours of scrubbing later, and I still hadn't completed my word count goal for the day. Instead of collapsing into bed, I typed. And while I did fall asleep on my keyboard (I had about three pages that looked like repetitions of this: "kjhg gh hgh h nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn," n repeating), when I awoke I got myself together, deleted all the crazy face writing, and worked on completing my daily word count.
This is what I want to do with my life. It's what keeps me sane. I know other people have other interests in life, but just let me have mine, okay? Thank you.
(Anyone interested in joining my new band, Word Mortar? All positions are open.)
Sure, a thousand words here and there don't seem like much to people who don't understand writing, but it's not just a thousand words. It's sentences, with grammar and words and stuff. It's dialogue, where you're keeping track of several different voices, and while A and B are talking, you're describing what's going on around them so that they're not floating in a featureless void. It's another world that is being constructed brick by brick, word by word, and I'm sorry that it takes my full concentration to make word mortar. Which would be an excellent band name, by the way. "Word Mortar." Just saying.
And it's not like I'm sitting around on my butt all day, writing a word here and a word there. I work hard at my job, doing a lot of physical labor, and then I come home and write. Today, the time I would usually spend writing just before lunch time got usurped by cleaning up after two exploding toilets. Two hours of scrubbing later, and I still hadn't completed my word count goal for the day. Instead of collapsing into bed, I typed. And while I did fall asleep on my keyboard (I had about three pages that looked like repetitions of this: "kjhg gh hgh h nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn," n repeating), when I awoke I got myself together, deleted all the crazy face writing, and worked on completing my daily word count.
This is what I want to do with my life. It's what keeps me sane. I know other people have other interests in life, but just let me have mine, okay? Thank you.
(Anyone interested in joining my new band, Word Mortar? All positions are open.)
