Dear Challenges: A Novel Experience.

All writers have briefcases.  That is mine.

In two days I am going to start writing a book.  By the 30th of June I will have finished writing that book.  The first draft of an entire novel.  You probably have so many questions.  Why?  What?  How?  WHO CARES?  Well, I care.  And I'm attempting to actually start and finish this project, which is why I have to tell everyone I know about it.  Accountability is one of the most useful motivating factors there is.  The guy who came up with this idea suggests you use it to ensure you finish.

As many of you know, November is National Novel Writing Month.  For those 31 days people all over the world take on the challenge of writing a novel, approximately 100 pages, without sharing, without editing.  Without stopping.  Many people see this as an opportunity to try something new, to have fun, to share in an experience being had by thousands of other people.  Some people use it as a catalyst to create a project they will later go on to edit and carry (hopefully) to publication. Many people use it as a tool to begin creating again, and often, having had the fulfilling experience of completing an entire book, can go on to immerse themselves in a project they truly care about. It's just people, you know, accomplishing something.

My dear friend Julie is also a writer.  Since we were teenagers we have somewhat quietly toiled away at projects we share with no one.  In college (we went together) we each had writing in our majors--hers in fiction and mine in "dramatic writing"(stage/screen).  Since then we have both gone back to (mostly) quietly toiling away on projects we share (mostly) with no one.  The thing neither of us spends very much time sharing is that we are writers, and that it is a hugely important part of our lives.  I don't really tell anyone I do it.  I think I put it in my bio on the edge of this blog as an attempt to "put it out there", and casually mention it when referring to my education, but that's about it.  Julie has gone on to become a teacher, and is also a very gifted painter (and now a very loving mother) and so those things often take the forefront of conversations one might have with her about what she "does".  For myself, it is one of the last things I'll tell someone I do.  Mostly because I have little to show for it, but also because I fear it sounds pretentious, and am even more afraid of the questions one might have about it.  [What do you write?  Can I read it?  What magazines are you in? What awards have you won?  What's your favorite thing you've ever written? What books are you reading? Tell me an interesting story!] Regardless, we are both writers who don't write very much and talk to each other about it a lot.   Julie decided she wanted to take on the challenge of Novel Writing Month, and didn't feel like waiting for November.  So she asked a couple of our friends (two of the most intelligent, creative people I know) and myself to take part in our own challenge for the moth of June.  Obviously we are doing it.  How could we not do it?  How many novels am I writing on my own? Answer: ZERO.

The rules are simple.  You write every day, for an entire month.  You can never go back and change something.  No edits.  You can ask questions and share ideas with others doing the challenge, but you cannot share any of your actual material.  No passing notes.  If you don't write one day, you have to write more the next.  By the last day of the month you have to finish your novel and it must be at least 50,000 words, or, 100 pages in length.  About the size of "Of mice and Men".  After that, you can do whatever you want with it.  Read it, not read it, share it, eat it, use it as toilet paper, edit it, burn it, put it on a very large refrigerator, use it to sop up all your tears, whatever the fuck you want.  It doesn't matter.  Because you already did the hardest part.  You wrote an entire book.

Now, I've written things before.  I've written short things and longer things but I have never attempted to tell a story on such a large scale.  I've written feature length films, but that's an entirely different thing all together. I have no idea how this is going to go.  The one thing I might wind up taking away from this experience is that I should never ever try to write a novel.  But if all my boxes of notebooks and years of not being able to sleep have proven anything it's that I want to write, that I feel I have stories to tell.  Even if they are not going to change the world.  So I have to at least try.  So I am going to try.

A thinking face.

Marathon writing is about the only thing that works for me.  A project without a deadline is an unfinished project.  A project without a sense of urgency is pages of notes I take for years before I actually begin said project (Literally.  Years.). Despite the amount of time I am given I only use the time at the end to actually start doing anything good, so I think this challenge is pretty well suited for me.  Sweat and white knuckles the entire way.  I used to think that was called procrastinating, but as an increasingly responsible adult I'm learning to call it "my style".  Whatever that means.

So I have a loose idea.  But I can't share what it is.  I know what kind of story I am hoping to tell, the main characters, what happens first, how it might end, some small moments in the middle, and that's about it. I really have no idea what I am going to fill 100 pages with.  I know I'm good at rambling, so hopefully that helps me out.  I'm anticipating a lot of deadlocked moments where there is nothing left to say and I chug cold coffee shouting about how my education was a waste because I am the most useless writer there has ever been.  I'm anticipating it's going to be a really delightful experience.  But, like I said, hopefully at then end I'll have managed to write an entire book and that will have been the whole point.  Mission accomplished.  For once I will not be allowed to obsess over weather something is good or not, I will just have to keep going.  And I'm excited to see what that feels like.

So the four of us start this process on June first, which is Friday.  Which is tomorrow.  Hopefully amidst careers, work, family, home renovations, and vacations (3 of us are going on a trip right in the middle and I am out of town for work right before) we all manage to stick with it.  I will probably be glued to my phone, sending emails to them 50 times a day.  So please, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, when you see me, ask me how it is going.  Remind me that I have to finish it.  Lie to me and tell me you're so proud or whatever.  Text me.  Call me.  Send me pictures of your butts with "write, you Asshole" written on them.  Whatever you want to do.  Whatever you have to do.  Just do it.  I just know I need this accountability or I might wind up letting my quiet toiling taper off until I have another mediocre start to a project on a USB drive sitting in my boyfriend's sock drawer.  Help me not let this go to the sock drawer.

One of my biggest goals in life is to legitimize my father's proudest statement about me: My daughter's a writer.
This one's for you, dad.

My dad loves sweat shorts and telling everyone I'm a writer.

Dear Growing Pains and Some Kind of Destiny

*Edit: I wrote this about six weeks ago.  The moment has passed, but it's still important.*

following my destiny all the way to portland

My horoscope rocked me the way something does when it tells you exactly what you are thinking.  It said things are changing.  And I knew that.  And I know that.

Things are changing.  And a lot of those changes I can see and they are healthy and small and tangible.  And some things are changing and I don't know what they are or how deep inside me they are or if they are about me at all.  I feel like I am stuck in the middle of a stoned moment, where I am super high and I am slumped, slack-jawed in awe of the whole mystery and beauty and tragedy of life.  But I'm not stoned.  I don't do that.  That isn't what's happening.  What's happening is that I am totally sober, standing, slouched, slack-jawed in awe of some sort of bigger mystery that I can't understand or put a name to except that it's just life and that I am simultaneously being blown away and swallowed up by LIFE.  This is a weird trip.
Tonight, while wandering through my job, I surmised it thus: It's like life is a jigsaw puzzle, and we are each just a tiny piece in this giant thing.  And sometimes you have to think about what kind of piece you want to be.
That is not the best simile of my career, I can say for certain, but it is truly the only way I can explain to someone what the hell is happening right now.  I feel like a minuscule puzzle piece and I am thinking about what kind of piece to be.  Or what kind of piece I am, and weather or not I like that.  Maybe I should do a fucking puzzle right now.  Maybe that would level me out.

I find myself saying a lot lately "I wish that what I wanted in life was to be a mother.  Because then it would feel so much easier to reach my goals and feel happy with my success."  Being a parent is something that I understand the path to get to.  It's a perceptible job that takes certain requirements and produces really concrete results.  The same could be said for many other jobs in the world.  Police officer, teacher (why couldn't I have just wanted to be a teacher?!?!!), plumber.  You go through the process of obtaining credentials and licenses for your position, then you get the position, then you spend your life working hard at being really good at it.   It's a thing that has safety and predictability and a universal point where you can breathe a sigh of relief and assure yourself "yes.  I do this now.".  So lately I find myself longing for a career in life that has that concrete sigh of relief in it somewhere.  Because lately I am really feeling how high the chances are I may never get to do that.  My career comes with no universal benchmarks, points of plateau, safety zones, or tangible mile markers.  My career is a sloppy, desperate, compromising, always about to change, one-million K race.

And it is tiring and terrifying.  Most people in my career have "jobs" to supplement their careers FOREVER.  Until they die or are too old to work.  Are you kidding me? Forever?  I like being a bartender and I love my job, but having a job and a career 7 days a week exhausts me.  I feel like I can never take a break.  Like I've never earned one.  And truthfully, I haven't in a way.  Until my career IS my job there is a lot of work to be done.  I can't stop.  And while I am very proud of my accomplishments to date I cannot say that the things I have achieved in my "career" warrent, for me, any sort of pee-break or reprieve from the work.  I just haven't done very much.  And I know, if we want to get really honest, that what I actually accomplish day-to-day does not at all measure up to the amount of pressure I put on myself.  I haven't done very much in general, and I don't do as much as I could moment to moment.  And I don't know why.  That has me very confused.  I feel like I am wasting my own time and giving myself ulcers for no reason.  That's stupid.

Here's the thing: my entire life I have known what I wanted to do.  My entire life.  Since I was too young to know what a career was.  I have never once in the almost 30 years I have been alive changed my mind about what I had to do with my life.  And that's a lot of pressure to put on a person.

Right now I really don't know the difference between following my destiny, and being an adult idiot who is rigidly chasing the daydreams of a 3 year old.  What's the difference?  Is this my destiny or have I been too stubborn to allow myself to come up with new dreams? What the fuck is destiny anyway?  Are you there God, it's me, the plot to a 90's coming of age Rosie O'Donell movie.

I have always wanted to do the same things in my life.  Be a performer, a writer, and to help people.  I always thought that meant that I wanted to be an actor and a writer and that I would help people with the power of my art.  (Intermission for laughter)  But what I am, right now, today, is a person who does radio commercials, writes a blog no one reads, and gives advice to drunk people sitting at my bar.  My dad thinks I am a huge success but he's the only one! Shhh!  No one tell him!

So, this all begs the question: what's my perception of success?  Well, this is the part where things get really messy for me, because in weaving my intricate life dreams I felt that to be successful and, thereby, happy, I had to be famous.  Success equaled fame, and fame meant reaching as many people as possible. Yes, reaching them with the healing power of my art. Thousands, maybe millions of people.  Why?  I don't know.  It just always felt like the right thing.  Success, fame and happiness are all pretty much the same thing and achieving them was the only way to fulfill my life's purpose.  No problem.  Totally doable.  PSYCHE.  What a boner.  I really set myself up there.  Even as a more adjusted adult I can look at the goal of being a popular performer/writer as a nice thing to dream for but not the "thing" to work toward and yet I can't change my mind about it.  It's what I want.  Plenty of people in my field build manageable relationships with their crafts that don't pit them against ultimate success on a daily basis.  But not me.  No.  I have to find myself weeping while I stuff a bag of tea into a pot on Thursday night to realize my dreams are wearing me the fuck out.  If I'm not Philip Seymour Hoffman, I'm a failure.  That's a healthy way to live.

Everyday that I'm not doing something important and helpful and amazing I feel like I'm failing.  And so I can never congratulate myself for being a good friend, a hard worker, or a talented person and just relax about if for a minute. I can never sit back and trust that by the end of the year maybe my commercial will lead to a bit part in a movie somewhere (barfing while laughing) because I know I'm working really hard.  Or that I'll try to publish something I've written and maybe it will work.  Or that therapists will ask me to come speak at their conventions because I love talking to people about their feelings SO much. It just isn't like that for me.  It's hard to trust in something that is so uncertain. But if it's my destiny and I really believe that then it shouldn't be hard to keep blithely plugging away at it.  And if it's not my destiny, and I don't like the kind of puzzle piece I'm being right now, then I should decide to be a different kind of puzzle piece.  Wait.  What are we even talking about anymore?

And that's about where I'm at.  I don't even know how to think about what I'm thinking about.
I am not where I want to be in my life.  That will either change if I keep working at what I have started, or I decide to do something else.  But something has to change.  I feel that things are changing.  I just don't know what or how.  I only hope one day I can look back to my 3 year old self and tell her everything turned out just fine.

came back, time for a nap