50K and counting

Where do bloggers go when they disappear? This one finished her first novel during NaNoWriMo. I almost want to say "novel" because it's difficult to know what will become of this one. I don't think it will end up winning any book awards, like Haruki Murakami, but I learned something I didn't know before and that seems darned good enough: apparently, I can write 50,000 words in 30 days, or if we want to be precise about it, 29 days, or even more precise, 23-ish days (too much precision is bad for you) - because I took some days off, yes I did, and if you think I wrote in my novel on Turkey Day, you have another think coming.

And just how did I accomplish this, you may ask? (Or, you may not, but because I'm in charge here - ha ha that's secret awesome thing number twelve about being a writer - let's pretend that you asked). Well, the answer is visualization. I pictured myself in a future where I'm still around, telling some interested person who also asks questions, "How did you come to write your first novel?" and I would say, "Well I found myself with an awful lot of time on my hands one November and my mother was seredipitously visiting and looking for something for us to do and found this writer's workshop and it was mid-October and they talked about this crazy thing called NaNoWriMo and I went for it."

No, no, no, you've got it all wrong, story-teller. Visualization didn't get anyone anywhere unless you count the time that some unnamed person that I know (not me) took LSD and climbed up in a tree and was happy to be sober later and not have fallen out. What got me to 50K plus words was something more like this new favorite quote about writing, by our dear terse friend Mr. Hemingway:

Work every day. No matter what has happened the day or night before, get up and bite on the nail.

I suppose I already gave it away, that I don't work every day, but only work-a-holics feel the need to do that, and that is not me, no sir Mr. Bob. I do better when I rest and eat and exercise and I ran three miles today before coming home and making a white sauce with onion juice to pour on my baked potatoes and leftover turkey and sesame oil-drizzled green beans. And then, I sat myself down, and pounded out my final 600 or so words, and went to the handy dandy word verifier at the NaNoWriMo site and got my webpage with certificates and shamelessly ordered myself a t-shirt that says "winner." Because the best contests are with yourself. I learned that this month, too (or in the past several months of Crash Course in Life and Living in the Moment). In the end (and in the beginning and middle, also), our greatest pain and freedom originate from our own mind and the silly things we do with it.

Two new favorite books that would make the world a better place if everyone read them:

When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron
Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle



Isn't he just the most charming and wise man in a gold vest that you've ever seen?