Precious & Red

I'm never quite sure which part of social media to dedicate myself to. When I have an idea I usually stick it on Twitter if it's minor and stupid and fleeting but if it's long and complicated and artsy I'll put it here. Not really sure how to present myself on Tumblr other than through reblogs, but recently I've started following a lot of fellow Mormons who are also of a leftist nature and it's been reassuring.

All of this is just to say I might indulge in some cross-posting of ideas. Not word for word, but tailored for each medium.

I read a quote recently about taking the "preciousness" out of writing if you're going to make a business out of it; like stop thinking the magic can only happen if you're writing in your favorite cafe, listening to your specific playlist, using Word as opposed to Google Docs. Turn writing into something you can do anywhere, anytime, for the sake of your deadlines and productivity. Write at night, write in the morning, write in between classes, write to noise, write to silence, write in the middle of reading, write during a film, etc, etc. I'm slowly working on it, and though the beast within me grinds against the settings so opposed to my usual, my mind is slowly evolving to the comfort of it. Being able to just write the way we're able to just eat. Wherever, whenever.

Once, while driving by myself through Utah, someone ahead of me dropped a bouquet of roses from their passenger side. We were going around 70 mph, and the result was bizarre little red explosions all over the highway, smattering in a wave from that window all the way up to my windshield. It looked so violent, like a car crash without the car, blood everywhere, bloody little petals. The image scared me, unnerving me for several minutes. I was driving back from Seve's brother's play in SLC to our hotel in Provo. I wasn't enjoying the trip very much because we had to coordinate seeing Ben's play around who-could-watch-the-kids-when, and Graham was only a month old, and Utah isn't my favorite place. The image seemed like some bad omen. Until suddenly it wasn't, it was just a beautiful thing I'd just seen, a highway baptism awash in red roses to get me to just be in a better mood already.

I try and remember that whenever I think of Utah, being frustrated, or the color red.

Human Again

Attempts at a profile pic that descended into hairy madness.

Time for some reflection on this year's NaNoWriMo.

Seve hosted a race-to-the-finish party at his classroom where I wasn't able to get wifi, so I verified my word count early, pulling the extra 8K I needed from a previous story. This resulted in a final word count of 55,285, which I was sure couldn't have been right . . . where did that extra 5K come from? Did I really only need 3K? Nevertheless, that night at the party I finished with fifteen minutes to spare having written the full 8K in a mere three hours. My hands were shaking by the time it was over, and I'm pretty sure those last four pages descended into complete and utter gibberish.

But I did it! So on top of the initial 20K I wrote for the story back in China, I now have a fully completed 70K manuscript. In heavy need of revisions, of course, but I'll tackle that come January. I don't think I even want to look at the thing until January.

Seve also completed his NaNo on the dot at midnight after an equally frenzied writing session. Cowabunga, dude!

Tackling the NaNo this year wasn't like past NaNos . . . for once I knew the entire story from front to back, nothing was a mystery. I always thought that would help me write better, but it didn't. The writing and pace remained as it always had any time I sat down to write. Rather than dishearten me it gave me hope; that the other stories I have logged away and unsolved will reveal themselves to me in time, as long as I keep writing.

In fact, on days where I procrastinated my word count I kept returning to my 2010 NaNo. I hadn't bothered to read it since writing it three years ago, thinking it was awful and an eyesore. But I loved reading it! The 1950s werewolf story? I vaguely remember blogging about it at the time. I was sorely tempted to abandon my NaNo and just finish that werewolf effort. It's a full 50K after all, and only needs maybe 30K or so to wrap up the story. But then I remembered that's how this year's effort was brought about . . . a resurrection of 2007's NaNo, realizing it wasn't as bad as I thought, a sudden desire to finish it . . . so I pressed on, and finally made it to the finish line.

How did your NaNo go? Did you finish? Are you enjoying JustSleepAndEatDecember? Me too.