Today I endeavor to start anew.

Renewed and refilled with the ever changing essence that is me.

I hope to make it clear that this isn’t just some new year garbled filled with resolutions and promises for a brighter 365 than previous. Nope, I’ve always tried to keep myself away from that trap… excluding the year I resolved to watch more television because a commercial told me to. :)

No. I’d Ike to stress that this is different. This is something that’s been building and beginning in me for some time now but begins are simple: they happen. Starting is a choice and today I start to choose.

My mantra has always been a simple yet powerful thing, a single word to keep me moving when my strength is drowning. Flow. Like in Tao, I need to bend without breaking to withstand whatever storm blows my way. Nowadays though I know better, my strength isn’t so much my question as perhaps my will. With that thought in mind I look to the other half of Tao. To stand firm, an indominable force in it’s natural state.

My new mantra is ‘Just do it.’

I need something I can’t find, I make it.

I want something done and waiting for help is wearing on my bones, I do it.

Need this moved, I move it.

Need to know something, I find the answer.

I’m done with waiting, asking, etc. I will go get, go do, go, go, go!

I will be a force of nature, raw and true to my core.

I want to explain how I’ve come to these thoughts, the months that have been put behind so simple seeming words but I feel like I can babble on that for ages and that’s not my goal. Right now I just want to say it, this morning I’ve chosen to renew myself. To start.

This means a lot for every aspect of my life but today’s focus is mostly toward my writing. This morning as I lay between dream and enough awareness to know it was snowing outside I began to think about all my posts from the years previous. I began to realize that I’m not quite the person I was between those words. I am, I was but I am also something so much different. Everyday. So different.

Good morning, November 1st. Time to give my fingers a warm up before I set off into NaNo land and fearlessly set sail into my novel though fearless may be a bit of an overstatement. I’m scared and delighted to be exploring the story I’ve set to my fingers.

It will be brilliant once I let go and face the truth between the paragraphs.

I can do it. I will do it.

Cleaned all day yesterday, made myself a wonderful little writing nest. I set up the tablet, a bunch of notebooks at my disposal, favorite pens, an inspirational book for when/if I get stuck and a lamp just in case.

I am ready.

Two days, four hours and about two minutes until this year’s NaNoWriMo kicks off. I’m excited and worried about it in ways I’ve never been before. I have an idea I’m compelled to work with that is both strangely beautiful and soulfully terrifying. It’s different than years prior for so many reasons- the first and foremost being that I have a completed (and completely unedited) novel sitting on my desk (glaring at me). I now know the glorious, half orgasmic, feeling that comes with finishing a novel with my own ten fingers. I know how to pour my heart into the pages like every word is my next breath and the spacebar is the only way to exhale.

There are other differences beyond that though. This year I’ve picked a particular project. Top secret… sort of. It’s a two in one sort of thing that’s been calling to me for as long as I can remember a love for story. For the longest time I’ve been looking at it as two entirely separate works that on their own would be quite impossible for me to write not only because of the skill I believe them to need in dealing with the sheer complexity but also because they’re so close to me and finiding a begining seems so… unfindable. Now though I’m looking at them as two halves of the same old coin, worn and warmed in my mental pants pocket for years. It’s been there for years just waiting for me to realize it’s a quater instead of a nickle- just in time for me to need one too.
I’m falling off track and jumping down the road.

This year is going to be different. This year I’m going to crack open my writerly ribs, reach inside and see what I can pull out. A story that on one side has surrounded my entire life and on the other side runs through my every thought and dream. This year I’m going to write the things I’ve never spoken of. The silence that I was thrust into and the screaming that pervaded me as a result. Shaping nearly all that I am.

I’m going to attempt to put that all together in one stack of paper and ink- mayhaps some blood and tears too. Here’s hoping the supreme power that motivates every NaNo’er through November is enough to sweep me through the words. At least 1,667 a day. No heroics this year, I’m going for the 50,000 and if I manage to make that then maybe I’ll aim for the glorious 163,000 that I did for Kat’s Tail. ;) Always so self competitive but it gets the job done.

I’ve always wondered at other writers- more specifically authors. The ones who push out several books a year, some it seem publish more than a few in a month! It’s crazy and beautiful. I could most certainly fathom that many ideas, it often seems like my every blink is just another step in pulling the next one deeper in my skull but whenever I think about all those words those authors must be getting down… wow. Fricking wow.

Could I write that much?

If I can do 163,000 in a month then it’s possible, isn’t it?

Now I just need to learn the art of editing.