One of my favorite features about Facebook is the “You Have Memories” notification. All this year I’ve been reminded about stuff I wrote mostly up to four years ago (when I became active on Facebook).
“You Have Memories”
Three years ago, in November, I was participating in NaNoWriMo–National Novel Writing Month. (Writing 50,000 words in a month wasn’t much of a strain on me because I’m verbose.) Naturally most of my posts lately show NaNoWriMo daily stats. It’s a little depressing to me because, for one thing, they’re boring; for another, I decided to give up on writing. It was a choice I felt I had to make—give up writing or give up a great many other things that were actually more important to me. I enjoyed writing and I think, as with most skills, the more I did it the better I got.
Today I saw this series of posts and enjoyed rereading them so much, I decided to post them all together here.
Tomorrow I’ll take it easy on the walk and work harder in the office.
Love those days when I wake up dreaming about my book.
Watch. Out. Word. Count.
“You looked at this, so here are twenty more items just like it.”
“Those are nothing like it, besides, I didn’t like the one I looked at.”
“You’re so right. Here are twenty other, different things.”
“Some of those are the same things.”
“Ignore them and ‘Get Yourself a Little Something’ from your (endless) wishlist.”
“I don’t have time for this right now.”
Ah, therein lies the difference. Click!
Though it’s Pajama Wednesday I decided to switch my pajamas for clothes resembling pajamas in look and feel. Somehow it seemed the thing to do. While I was changing I had the idea that I ought to have emailed myself my morning’s work so far because I was nearing 1000 words and had ranged all over the document adding notes and didn’t want to lose all that information just in case . . .
And here we go into the realm of fiction.
Just in case a bomb blew up the house and I somehow miraculously escaped–blown into a backyard tree, perhaps–but my computer did not. Then, though I’d lost all my paper notes, I’d still have most of my book. I began to wonder if I should chose different clothes to be blown into a tree in. After all, if the clothes on my back miraculously survived the explosion I’d rather have my favorites on if that was all I was going to be able to wear till help arrived. Help. Never mind that. Back to the book. Could I reconstruct it from just the outline I have written? I think maybe I could.
This reminded me of a story I once told a friend. A TRUE story.
Once upon a time, as a college student I was home alone. We lived in a three story house in Edinboro, PA–not exactly a crime-ridden area. I was in my bedroom on the top floor and heard noises downstairs. What was that? Nothing. No, it was something. Someone? Ones? I cast about my room for weapons of defense. As luck would have it the ironing board and iron were in my room. (Had to be a fluke. What–me, iron something?) So I decided to arm myself with the iron, the board being too big and awkward to use as a shield. (This was in the days before Tangled which introduced the idea of beating ploughshares into cast iron cookware.) But just in case I was overpowered and abducted I had better leave a note for my parents. So I did–including the time of day–using a trusty Papermate pen. Then I took the iron in hand and proceeded downstairs where I found . . .
Nothing out of the ordinary.
My friend was incredulous. He thought I was a nut.
But he was wrong. I was an author.
Now I’m all in a Waiting mood and don’t feel the desire to do any writing of my own. I mean, how could I?
So, I’m laying off early today at 25,596 words. I’m halfway to 50,000 two days early. I’m going to watch a movie. Maybe I’ll even read a book while I watch it. I suppose I could listen to music and an audiobook at the same time. Wonder if that would work.
While I crochet, exercise, and . . . take notes.
Quite a program. Might as well work on my book.
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This might have been my favorite line: “This was in the days before Tangled which introduced the idea of beating ploughshares into cast iron cookware.”
It was fun being a writer. But now—for now—I’m something else.