subscribeNaNoWriMo Conflict
Friday October 31, 2008
National Novel Writing Month starts tomorrow and I’m eager for it but I keep going back and forth between the projects I want to work on for it. Neither are technically begun, which is their precise appeal for NaNoWriMo, but I’m so conflicted I might end up writing half and half, which will just be plain old bizarre. That, and the project I’ve been working on for the last few months is still not finished and I keep writing scenes (in my head, ugh) for it, and those really do need to get written. (All of this brain-clogging with not-yet-written stuff will be detrimental for speedy neuron processes, I’m certain.)
The first project I wanted to work on was something entirely new. It’s set in the same world of my other projects, but because I’m a single-novel girl, it’s its own single novel. New characters, different country with different customs, all of that. I only have a bunch of disconnected images and a few sketched characters for it (all in my head) so that project’s appeal is in its complete new-ness.
The other project is a novel I started (the first draft) back in high school. That draft is unrecognizable as the second major draft of it, which I wrote in 2004-05. And that again is completely different from what it now is — in my head. I’ve been editing this story mentally for years now and I really want to write it down. But I am so busy with my other projects that I’ve put it off, procrastinator style. I would be following the tenets of NaNoWriMo — fresh document, blank page, just go – but the difference is that I know a lot more of what will happen in my head for this one than I do for the other. (The odds of me referencing its old drafts? Slim to none. It’s that different.)
I probably will end up trying to write 50,000 words for one and 20,000 words for another, just because I want to do both, I think, and I want to make sure I write 50,000 in one novel to truly win NaNoWriMo. We’ll see how it goes… that is a lot of words… but I know I’m fully capable of that level of (attempted) insanity.
Age riff.
Sunday September 30, 2007
I am 21 years old (nearly 22) and I am in love, engaged, and happy. Is that odd? Sometimes I feel like it is; a century ago I was normal, now a days it seems as if it’s either a boon or a curse. Some people believe that I should be free right now to “explore” possibilities; others feel that I am lucky beyond measure. I, however, am not conflicted. I am sure. I am happy.
Being born in the fall but having a school district enrollment cutoff of December 31 was such a boon and a curse to me; I feel both too old for my years and too young for my experience. Bryan is 11 months older than me yet we went through the same school year together so things are somewhat different for him. It’s as if he’s appropriately mature. My whole life I’ve fought against the fact that numerically I seem a little young but realistically I feel age-appropriate.
I was only riffing tonight regarding this in lieu of inviting folks to my 22nd birthday bash this November via Facebook. I felt… well. I felt odd realizing that I am really turning 22 when I feel like I should be… 24? 25? I don’t feel only 22. I know (hell, I already do this) I’ll feel old and want to regain those years of my youth that I spent with abandon. I already have eye wrinkles and three gray hairs (ones I can see anyway) and somehow I feel both too old and young at once. Gah. This makes writing about coming of age fictitiously (in my YA novels) difficult; it complicates matters far beyond what you’d think of them as being. A person “comes of age” you think, when they achieve certain life objectives. Certainly Van Gennep said as much in his book The Rites of Passage. But even so… it’s not as if I haven’t gone through those rites yet — in a way I’m still going through one of them. But I still feel incongruously contradictory. Like… I get, at times, very baby-crazy, then at times feel like I need to be sixteen again, but to do it “right” this time — as socially crazy as television recommends. So… confusing. So contradictory. I said in my college admissions essay I am a contradiction. I wonder if I’ll ever outgrow that.
Ah, melancholia, serenity, and boredom. What you dredge from me.
Also:
Rock of Love: Season Finale. Boo yah, I was right when I called Jes from the first episode. HA! Her innate intelligence caught me off the bat and I have to say I was rooting for her all along. I hope she’s happy.
The duality of Facebook
Thursday September 6, 2007
… being its ability to allow people who haven’t seen each other in a long time to reconnect… or stalk one another.
I am somewhat guilty of the latter. I haven’t really stayed in touch with folks I knew in high school. Vaguely, rarely, perfunctorily. I had a busy freshman year of college — the year it would have been best to stay and keep connected — and by the time that was over, I was with Bryan and focusing on getting better grades and everything in the past was essentially nonessential. In a way, most people of the past were nonessential after I graduated.
This morning I was obligatorily checking Facebook and I saw a high school teammate’s sister got married. In attendance at her wedding were a huge group of my high school teammates (softball and field hockey) and the boys with whom they were friends or had dated. I have vivid memories of high school spring and fall days by the gym parking lot watching these people socialize (probably from over the cover of a Robert Jordan book) and thinking, “Wow. They’re not very intelligent, but damn they are pretty and fun.” (Mentally putting people down kept me from feeling too lonely. Damn high school.) Here they were in these photos. Some of them got fat — and ugly. Some of the guys had started balding (one in particular pretty bad, and I had LIKED him, ugh), and it looked for all like it was 2001. Like nothing had changed for them in 6 years.
Granted, I made several assumptions (and yes, those who assume make an… yes, you know). But I don’t really care whether or not anything’s happened to any of them. I don’t really respect them any more. If I got back in touch, what would we say? I was years younger than a few of them and we have nothing in common anymore besides. I have no desire to get in touch with them except for negative reasons, and I really don’t want to be that bitchy girl who gets in touch to gloat. I can gloat without them having to be present, and it’s somewhat more respectable that way.
Anyway. I had a bitter, odd moment when looking at those photos. I negated that, I think — I hope — by IMing with a long-ago friend from CMU who now works in the city. Reconnecting with her will be infinitely easier than reconnecting with anyone from high school (well, with a lot of folks from high school. There are a few notable exceptions). Hopefully we’ll be able to get together and catch up and enjoy ourselves a little — and this city we’ve found ourselves in.
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