This is sort of in response to Stephanie’s post asking why we write, but it was also something I was thinking about — thanks for the push, Stephanie.

As I said in my last post, I am doing nanowrimo this year. I don’t make a big deal of it – which is probably why I’ve quit every time I’ve attempted it in the past, ha. It’s not like I get frustrated and throw my computer out the window in some violent display of giving up, I just kind of lose interest and suddenly it’s too late to finish in time unless I want to write 20,000 words in two days which generally I don’t.

I think the reason I’m attracted to the general idea of nano is because I’m somewhat of a perfectionist. I don’t think higher standards are always a bad idea (and frankly some people should look into getting some), but they can be somewhat paralyzing when everything you do has to be magical and fantastic and perfect and mind-blowing and new. It’s nice to be given permission to be terrible and just…do it. It doesn’t have to be good, and it’s almost guaranteed not to be good. And that’s cool, man.

When I was little (maybe 8 or 9?) I had this tiny plaid notebook in which I was working on this really long and elaborate story. I don’t have it anymore which is really sad – I’d love to read it again today! I remember that I was very excited about making chapters for some reason – I guess having chapter headers made it seem more book-y. The story started out with my friend and I going on a camping trip. We set up camp near a cave and decide to look inside – we find a metal figurine that looks like a squiggly little man (I even drew it in my notebook!) which, when pulled, opened up a secret door in the cave. I don’t remember everything we came across; I only remember that the last thing I wrote about was the discovery of an octopus that was sitting the cave, counting gold coins. I think I stopped writing after that, probably because you can’t get any better than gold-counting octopuses.

I also wrote some story about how another friend of mine was sick so I had to bring her medicine and I had to go through many strange obstacles to get to her house: a puddle filled with tiny (but deadly) alligators that I bravely jumped across, a giant mud monster trying to suck me up, and a Dandelion Man (like, a monster made out of dandelions) chasing me through a field.

I wrote without any worry about if they made sense or not (which is good because they didn’t really) – I just imagined this weird world and wrote down what was happening and how I reacted to it. I didn’t care if anybody read them or not because I just enjoyed writing them.

Of course generally as you get older you start worrying about doing things correctly, having somewhat cohesive plots, comparing yourself to others, etc. Some people seem to survive this phase OK; some people (like me) get weird and try to give up being creative all together because they can’t do it “right.” Of course the big joke is that there really is no right or wrong way to be creative (people who tell you otherwise have some other kind of agenda).

Long story short, I don’t know that I will ever be as free with my writing as I was when I was little but I knew what it felt like once and I’m aiming for something close. This sort of event gives me an excuse to just get anything on the page, and even if I don’t get to the 50K mark, just the act of sitting down every day(-ish) and writing gives me a huge creative boost. The fact that I can’t worry about quality really allows me to just go with it and I’m always surprised at how prolific I can be — and the fact that’s it’s not that bad. Not good either – you’re certainly not allowed to read it (ha!) – but I’m actually not a total failure, who knew? Of course the challenge is to continue not being a failure up to 50K and beyond…

I didn’t start nano on time yesterday (already doing great!) so I had to catch up today – 3,413 words plus the ~700 for this entry and I am ready for a break.