Thoughts on an Impending NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo keeps getting closer, and I still haven't decided on a story.  I know it's going to be slow going if I just start writing off the top of my head without planning scenes ahead of time, so I'd better decide which story I'm going to go with over this weekend.  It's not that I have to have all my scenes planned out, but I need enough to at least get me through the current day's writing, so that I can take a breather and plan further scenes after it.  I think my issue is that I haven't particularly latched on to any of the characters I've been thinking of for my stories yet, so there isn't a particular story that jumps out at me.  Every so often I'll be seized by the notion to jump off and write something completely different---a prospect both dangerous and exciting.  I'm less worried about getting to 50,000 words this year than I ever have been before, but I have to be careful not to get cocky and just take it for granted that I'll finish on time.  I think in my fourth year I ended up going about ten thousand words over (and was still only about two-thirds of the way through the story, which I STILL haven't finished), but all the other years it came pretty close to the wire, and the story started to run out just as the 50,000 word mark became tantalizingly close.

Let me go over again what I've got so far: there's my coming of age story of a New York kid transplanted to Iowa, my fictional dystopian city anthology, my one about the struggles about an oddball Staten Island family, and (running a distant fourth) the tale of the world's last moviegoer, whose largesse supports the entire remaining industry.  They're all premises that I feel I could write at least a few chapters of at this point, but I don't know whether they'll peter out after that or inspire me to keep going.  I guess I could always start with one and switch to another if the situation becomes truly dire, but finding the momentum to start up an entirely different plot after the first one fails can be difficult given how fraught with discouragement that predicament is.

At the very least I'll have the opportunity to write with my friends again, and I'm looking forward to that in and of itself.  There's so much more creative energy in a room full of other writers than there is when I'm just alone with the blank page.  Granted the blank page doesn't terrify me like it used to, but other people's determination working towards the same goal is like a drug that there's just no substitute for.  Even after five years of NaNoWriMo I hardly ever write new work outside of November.  If I can find the time for my marathon training I'm sure I could find the time for writing, but then there's that question of momentum again...

At least I've been doing my daily writing pretty consistently (even if I only rarely work up the nerve to post it to the public).  I can write 750 words in 20 minutes pretty consistently now, which is something I never thought I'd be able to do before.  I'm sure it'd take me considerably longer if I was writing this all down longhand.  My penmanship was never the greatest, and I fear it's gone downhill significantly since the days I used to regularly practice it while taking notes in college.  I think I still have those notebooks somewhere in my parents' house, but lord knows what I'd ever do with them...  I just hope that I can keep this kind of speed (or anything resembling it) when I switch over from fact to fiction next week.

Wish I Was There...

I'm writing at the end of the day instead of the beginning today, since I ended up getting in here late this morning.  The reason for that was because I forgot to move my car last night, and as a result ended up having to spend a half hour driving around the neighborhood looking for a space.  I should really know better by now, but I suppose my memory will never be perfect.  It feels like the parking situation in Bed-Stuy has gotten noticeably worse every time I've forgotten to move my car the evening before.  Some streets are even lined with double-parked cars that are sitting around specifically in anticipation of the street cleaner coming through.  It's enough to make me want to give up my car entirely (or buy a space in the lot nearby, although I still balk at the notion of paying $200 per month for something that STILL isn't technically worth it in opportunity costs when compared with the gas I spent looking for a space and the time I wasted doing it).  Along the way there were a few near misses, and at one point I'd actually parked my car and gotten out of it before seeing the "NO STANDING" sign that somebody else had already parked in front of.

It's times like this when the density of New York starts to bother me.  I've said in the past that I don't think I'd be able to enjoy life in a small town, and I still believe that's true in the long run, but every so often I feel a desperate need to get away from here, and this is one of those times.  It's been a couple months now since I've left the city, actually---I feel like I'm overdue for a trip.  Going to visit my brother in California over the Labor Day weekend, and heading out to Iowa the weekend after that may help, but I can't commit to anything sooner, since I have NYRR runs scheduled for the two weekends before that.  I really wish I could take more than a long weekend's worth of days off, too, but I'm still working off all the time I took for my honeymoon, and I don't feel like getting myself in any deeper just yet (plus I'm going to need to take off a couple days around Christmas anyways).

There's also the notion of just taking some time to hang out at home, since it feels like one social responsibility or another has been tugging at me.  Then again, the prospect of staying at home might not be so appetizing once the contractors invade my apartment in the near future.

Plus, when you come right down to it, is being "away" necessarily even a relaxing, restorative experience?  In order to reach whatever haven you're heading for there's going to be a trip involved, be it by car or plane or train or whatever, with all the attendant stress those modes of transportation entail.  Worse still is the trip back, where the deadening grind of the commute steadily unravels what peace of mind you managed to gain from the trip.  Okay, so I'm being cynical here: not every trip is stressful.  In fact, some can be quite pleasant.  There's no way to be certain when you leave, however, what kind of travel experience you're going to have.  I'd be the last one to argue, though, that something shouldn't be done because you're uncertain of the outcome.  I guess I'm just arguing in circles now.

I'd love to get upstate sometime soon, before it gets cold.  There's so much more space up there, and the lousy cell coverage actively encourages me to cut the cord and engage with the world around me.  My family has a place up there, but I'm not sure that any of them have been to it yet this year.  The house was my grandfather's legacy, and now it would appear that his descendants are too busy to enjoy it the way he did.  It's an old barn that my grandfather converted into a two-story home by the sweat of his own labor, and I have many fond memories of making the trip up into the mountains, through the trees, to a place where there are blueberry bushes to pick in the daytime and millions of stars to gaze upon at night.  It's a quiet place: a place where drive-in movie theaters can still be found, and where being early to bed and early to rise can reward you with the sight of deer grazing in the fields.  There's even a baby grand piano up there...  It might need tuning, but it still plays well enough.  Plus, there are miles upon miles of potential runs to take, with hardly any traffic to worry about.  Maybe I'm romanticizing it too much after being away for a while, but I feel a powerful need to return there soon.  I may have to wait a month or two, but I desperately want to find a way to make it work somehow.