November. Not because of Thanksgiving, but because it's National Novel Writing Month. That's NaNoWriMo for short.
I made my first run at this in 2005, and despite the protestations of my ex-wife of my investing 30 days into the act of writing a book, I was at the point in my life where I figured if I didn't try something to get the ideas I had out of my head and down on the page, then how could I call myself an honest writer.
After all, the ideas are useless if you don't put them into effect to create plot, dialogue, emotion, action and characters.
In the ever-expanding stacks of notebooks I have in the box by my couch rest every idea for every book I've ever thought of writing. Under normal NaNoWriMo circumstances, I would just crack another one open and get started on it. Only problem is I have a story I started writing last year and got about halfway through before ended up in the typical corner with a need to find a way out.
The great cliche for novelists, or any writer for that matter, is to write what you know. The story I'm working on now is one I know all too well as I'm using it to try and make sense of a great many things about my life I've never really dealt with.
It also dives headlong into this world which I don't know as much about as I'd like, and more than I should, depending on your point of view. I think it can make a good backbone of the story, but it all depends on how I can pull it off.
The one thing about writing which can be liberating is through the avatars we create, we can vicariously confront and get past our own daemons. What's been holding me back in mine is still the issue of both not knowing how and not being willing to confront them as fully as I need to.
As it stands, I have the next 30 days to figure it out and get the first draft done. I have no idea how I'm going to feel when it's finished, but I hope I feel better about a lot of things than I do right now.
I'll never know until I sit down with the manuscript and start punching the keys.
Tally Ho.
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