November 3, 2021
Day 387, Week 56
- Emotional State: Surface Skimming Rule Breaker
Life
It’s November. Nanowrimo started on Monday. My new writers (work) started on Monday as well, at least for my part of their journey. The week took off like a rocket and I’m plodding along like it’s the end of the marathon, rather than the beginning. Or middle, even.
I’ve had a lot of thoughts. I italicized the word because they are deep thoughts or self-reflected thoughts and I fear my thoughts are weighing me down more than normal.
I have one stuffed animal left from a childhood filled with them. Just one. I got him on my tenth birthday and named him Chup Chup. He’s the brown bear in the photo. Growing up, he’s heard a lot of my fears, soaked up quite a bit of my tears, but has also been replaced by my cat, Wicket, until he died and was replaced by my world builder. (Not that it happened the way it sounds; my cat died two months before my wedding).
Recently, I felt the need to hug him again. I know why and it’s not my tale to tell, so I won’t share it here. But I was sad enough and lost enough that I needed to hug my stuffed animal. And I felt better afterward. But it made me realize I have a lot more sadness running beneath the surface than I thought. I thought I was doing alright. I thought I was just tired or overwhelmed.
Nope. I was merely skimming the glassy surface of a lake that had a lot churning in its depths. Depths I do not want to plunder nor dive into. Been there, done that.
But what does that have to do with self-reflective thoughts? To deflect from the depths, instead I focused my deep thoughts on surface things, like why I feel the need to share my opinion so much. I don’t really need to. No one is listening any harder to my thoughts over any others; in fact, most people can’t hear it over the noise of their own opinions and thoughts or the bombardment of everyone else’s.
And the reason is this. Validity. Acknowledgement I exist and have something of value to add to the world. It’s the ego, again, raising it’s stupid head and focusing on stupid things that do nothing but draw the happiness away.
So, new plan. Stop giving my opinion unless asked. Stop asserting myself into a situation that isn’t my circus or my monkeys. I may have tried to do this before and obviously failed. No matter. I’m trying it again.
Let’s see how long that lasts.
The Books
Nanowrimo is here. Book 3 is underway. I started off strong on Monday, two chapters done. I hit Tuesday morning and only one chapter plopped out.
My brain refused to see what could happen next. I hit a metaphorical wall on day 2 of the challenge. I know the arc of the book, but I had no idea what my character was going to do in the next scene. That was it. All I had.
The old me would’ve freaked out. The old me would’ve taken that setback and used it to spin up a whole backstory as to how I couldn’t do this and I sucked, had no good ideas, blah blah blah blah. The new me decided, eh, it was alright. I’d figure it out the next day or write around it.
And I did.
I did have to rewrite the first chapter to get me there, though. So I broke a rule for my November goal, sort of. Technically I didn’t, because I didn’t edit, I added a phone call – 700 words of dialogue – that was not there before. I tweaked the language to make the phone call work, so there was minimal editing done.
I feel alright with it all. New rule: I can edit, but only if it is adding to the scene, not revising it. That’s what I meant in the first place, even if I didn’t spell it out. Right?
Right.
I’m four chapters in and feeling groovy about the direction of the book. I even have a better sense for what needs to be in book two. And this is making me wonder if I need do rough drafts of them all, so that I can figure out what’s missing in the previous book.
Nah. I’m too tired for that.
To read more of my weekly whine fests and writing journal journey posts, click here.