by elizabeth on November 30, 2008
My relationship with NaNoWriMo (or “National Novel Writing Month” for the uninitiated) has varied greatly over the course of the past thirty days. I’ve surprised myself with some of the things I’ve managed to do and I’ve also hit extreme lows of self-doubt in which I thought the best home for my novel-in-progress would be a nice blazing fire. I’ve laughed, I’ve cried, I’ve complained in every possible way, and over the past ten days I’ve skipped a lot of sleep to hit my 50,000 word mark. (I know, I know — the entire project could have been easy enough if I paced myself, but it’s been a busy month and a week ago I had only written 20,000 words. Yesterday alone I wrote about 8,000 words.) The community around the event is something incredible, though — hundreds of thousands of people around the world banding together across the internet to try to accomplish a task which is, clearly, madness. (50,000 words in a month? Easy. 50,000 words as part of a coherent and compelling narrative while holding down full-time employment and not alienating everyone you know and love? Less easy. I’ve probably failed on that very last bit.) It’s oddly inspiring to have been part of this sort of communial insanity, and forum conversations have been both a form of encouragement and source of solace of late. (I wonder if the community continues in the off-months, though if so, I imagine it will not quite be the same as these mad November days.)
I feel a sudden understanding of a line of dialog from this year’s Dr. Who season finale, when the Doctor tells Davros:
After all this time – everything we saw, everything we lost – I have only one thing to say to you… Bye!
I came, I saw, I conquered — and now I wish the project good riddance. For the time being I am simply exhausted from the project and, though my so-called novel is badly in need of an epilogue and a good second draft, I think I need to put the entire thing out of my mind for a while. (Dan advises revisiting it in six months — I’m not sure I have the patience to wait that long, but some amount of time is definitely required.) I have a pile of games that came out in November that I’ve been dying to play, several new books I’m eager to read, and I’m pretty sure my Warcraft guild has completely forgotten who I am. (Maybe that last bit is for the better — I could return as a new, friendlier me! …though I suppose that is unlikely.)
In the meantime, I’m wondering whether I have the energy or interest in cleaning up anything for the Chronicle’s short story contest. (At a maximum of 2500 words, it sounds like the easiest thing in the world to me right now.) I have a few works in progress that might be worth the effort, but, honestly, right now my brain is a little tapped out. I shall inquire again with myself tomorrow.
by elizabeth on November 24, 2008
Yikes. I was walking to the kitchen and suddenly really stopped to look at my desk. Sure, I work at it all the time, but some things you see so frequently you no longer actually see them. My desk appears to be an astonishing temple to a wide variety of obsessive behavior which, for some reason, I am attempting to catalog. You’d think these things would have better homes somewhere, wouldn’t you? Well, they probably do, it’s just that as I bring them into the house or finish reading them, they tend to be sat on the desk and then it’s up to fate as to when I get around to putting them into the theoretical place in which they may or may not belong.
In this picture, you’ll see…
- The Arabian Nights. I’m on kind of a fairy tale kick lately, but the rest of it (Hans Christian Anderson, Brothers Grimm, among others) is in the living room.
- Sandman: The Dream Hunters. I have the sneaking suspicion that I’ve bought this comic before, but it’s newly published. This confuses me greatly.
- Futurama postcards. They came with the latest DVD, which I have not yet watched. In fact, the latest DVD is not on my desk, which seriously begs the question of whether I’ve managed to lose it.
- Lucifer. I think every Lucifer comic I own is here somewhere.
- Most of Buffy, Season Eight. If you consider these piles to be arranged chronologically, it’s in the lower strata somewhere.
- Xbox 360 controller. My nest of computers is too far from the Xbox to really play games, but it’s perfectly in range to watch Netflix.
- Jekyll, written by the fantastic Steven Moffat
- Cassanova, written by the fantastic Russell T. Davies
- Hamlet and Love’s Labor’s Lost. These plays have a connection which I leave as an exercise to the reader to guess.
- The first three comics of Doctor Who: The Forgotten, a comic that reads a lot like mediocre fan fiction, like a lot of officially published Doctor Who stories. (Seriously, does no one but Russell T. Davies know how to write Martha Jones?) Maybe there are just some really awesome writers publishing Doctor Who fan fiction? I’m honestly starting to wonder.
- Three copies of Wrath of the Lich King. Those will actually be leaving the desk and heading to FedEx on Monday. Packing slips below.
- Sonic screwdriver. You never know when you’re going to need one. (It usually sits on top of the monitor, but it has a tendency to fall off.)
- Most of Angel, After the Fall. Like Buffy, these are in the lower strata somewhere. Probably under those Wrath boxes. Probably.
- All of Spike, After the Fall. (At least I’m pretty sure it’s there somewhere.)
- Blackpool DVDs.
- Absolute Sandman, Volume 1. I’m just going to skip the obvious Gaiman fangirlism at this point. You’ve probably heard it before.
- Y: The Last Man. Haven’t read it. Want to.
- Candide by Voltaire. Yeah, I was just starting to get predictable, wasn’t I?
- The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. I have only recently discovered Campbell, quite by accident via random bookstore browsing, but I find him completely fascinating.
- Watchmen by Alan Moore. Also not read this one before, but I need to in order to better flesh out my geekish credentials. Also, it’s supposed to be really good. It’s written by Alan Moore, how could it not?
- MacBook Pro x 2. One’s mine, one’s not.
- Monitor. Seriously, I love that thing.
- External hard drive. You’d be surprised how much space it takes to save TiVo recordings locally. Or maybe you wouldn’t.
- Wireless Logitch trackball. I’ve never been one for trackballs, but this one has a nice shape. (It’s, interestingly enough, the only one with a shape remotely like this.) Also, mice wreck havok on my wrists. Terrible, painful havok.
- Stress ball. For throwing at things. The wall is conveniently located.
- A bunch of WoW time cards, mostly used, from our last giveaway on WoW Insider. I can probably throw them away by now, but as soon as I do I’m going to wind up getting an e-mail about a mistyped code, I’m just sure of it.
Yeah, I could probably stand to put a few things away, couldn’t I? But as soon as I do, more things will start collecting. It’s a tough battle to win.
