NaNo Update #Forgotten
November 26th, 2008
Hey, it’s a post I forgot to publish. Yay. :) I wrote this just after hitting 50K, I’m almost to 150K now though.
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I’m still recovering from this week but I think I have just enough energy to trip through an updated post but before I do I just wanted to let you all know that I updated comments. :) Took me a bit since there are so many of you wonderful people out there but I got it done. Also, I should warn you that the thing I usually use to write my posts is acting wonky so these may or may not be spell checked.
There are a lot of thoughts in my mind right now, neither good nor bad mostly. They’re just there, swimming around more freely than I’ve ever let them swim before. Usually I keep certain thoughts tangled in protective webs but lately I’ve been feeling pretty brave towards some of these. It just sort of happened.
Hmm… feeling random.
So, yeah, 50,000 words the other night. 50 thousand in merely seven day. I think I’m rather proud of myself right now, still very tired but it feels great to be tired and have something to show for it which is more than I can say most days.
Pulling away from writing for a moment on that thought- It’s so amazing, right now I can feel my life happening. I feel busy when I look at the week ahead (every and any week) but yet I feel content as I go through the motions. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like I’m getting anywhere with my housework, my job, or just life in general but yet I can ‘feel’ my life moving all around me and it’s the most beautiful thing ever. I can see the constant changes around me like I’m part of this entity that keeps breathing in and out, or a sea as the tides come forth and fall back again. It’s a rythm but never the same twice in a row.
There was once a time in my life when I didn’t see these things, given, most of us don’t pay considerable attention ‘to’ change just the changes that are currently affecting them but I think I have been given a way or a reason to see this… feeling (if that makes sense) a little clearer than a lot of people.
I remember when I first left my mother’s home, I had to be about 15, and moved in with some friends. My mother can’t help the way she is, she has problems but that wasn’t the only reason I needed to leave though usually when I bring this topic up it’s the only one I talk about. It was a stagnant place filled with negativity and constantly changing rules. I was left on my own more often than not and probably spoke less than ten minutes all together out of any given day if I spoke at all. I wasn’t around people a lot unless we had them over and then they usually left with her and went to the bar.
Spending so much time on my own you’d think I would have been left to my thoughts but I wasn’t. I didn’t really think about anything except for the occasional story. My only thoughts, when I chose to have them, were always negatively directed at myself because when I was spoken to those were often the only things I heard.
I didn’t really have anything to get excited about and I didn’t cry unless my mother lost her temper. I didn’t get angry and up until the end I didn’t talk back. I didn’t emote at all unless I was afraid of getting in trouble for anything.
And I never realized any of this.
Think about it, if you had never been exposed to the color red in your entire life would you imagine things in that color? When you see it for the first time would you know what was going on or what to call it?
After and even a little bit before I left when I started being exposed more and more to other people, families, and was starting to engage in conversations and being asked what was on my mind something started to change. I thought there was something was wrong with me at first and I spent a lot of time crying but the more and more I was exposed to these outside influences I’d never had before I started to have all these different feelings I hadn’t felt before.
When the people who later became my adoptive family started asking me what I thought about this and that I started to think more. Did you know I never knew what my favorite color was until someone asked me? Seriously, the same thing goes with favorite music, food, style of cloths, and even what gender I preferred to date.
When I started thinking was when my mother and I hit the worst period. I stayed up at night thinking of all the things that happened between the two of us and examining the feelings she expressed, a really strange thing for a 15 year old to consciously do. I thought about what I thought about what she did! And needless to say I didn’t like the feelings that came with it. I started expressing myself more and more and it led up to a breaking point.
Getting back to my point before I fall into ranting mode: I never had change in my life before (unless you count moving and meeting mother’s new boyfriends), never had too many conscious thoughts, never felt so many things before- emotions I still have trouble giving words to even now. Because of all this I think I’m better able to see these things around me and it’s like a gift. Like interest for all those years I missed out on, now when I see the world I see it so vibrantly that it was worth the few years I couldn’t comprehend.
It still gives me trouble from time to time, I don’t adapt to change very well but I’m starting to get braver. Starting to see that not all change will hurt me and that the sudden appearance of something bad (like reappearing relatives) doesn’t always mean my entire world is going to fall apart. I’m still afraid sometimes and my emotions and thoughts still confuse me but it’s alright because I love learning and this means that I’ll never be done. ;)
I think if I continue at this rate for NaNo (since I am still writing) I could have another 50 thousand out around the 14th, and continuing at this pace till the end of the month I am very capable of reaching 200 thousand if I put my mind to it. We’ll see though, I think I’m only going to aim for 150 because my book might be close to done about then.
I really feel like I’m making progress on my novel for once. I mean, I have made progress n other stories before and I have felt it but this one feels so different. It was amazing when the idea came to me, the thing practically wrote itself in a matter of days (I speak of a rough outline spanning half a notebook) and this was by hand too because I didn’t even have enough patience for the laptop and typing I just had to pen it, my soul thirsting for the ink upon the pages.
Now though, the story is really on the move. I can feel the the tension building, the drama spinning out of control, and the climax- though I am far from it, I can see it way up ahead on the mountain top that I find myself climbing towards. My goal is in sight- far, but in sight and that’s more than I’ve ever dared to ask for.
I would really like to see it published some day but if I never get there (and trust me when I say I’m amazed I’m typing this) I think I’ll be okay. It’d be great but I just want to write a great story. I can share it without having it bound and contracted by some company though I more likely to make money which would give me ‘more’ free time to write but… if it never does I’ll just share it in my own little way. :)
