I’m so terribly excited- even as I recover from being sick (again). Last year due to personal issues and stress/depression was the first year actually didn’t complete the NaNo. The year before I finished my first novel from beginning to end at a whopping 150k words and the year before that I made it through half a terribly planned story idea at 56k… so last year was very sad in comparison.

Fortunately I have my excitement this year to make up for it. Following the aftertaste of new beginnings in my life I created a brand new NaNo profile. No, there wasn’t anything wrong with the old one but my username was part of my maiden name and it just felt- not me anymore. This year’s profile I’m acknowledging myself as Feeby Cote the purple haired wife, Taoist, and cat lover.

Up until a moment ago I didn’t know what project I wanted to work on this November… which is probably a bad thing seeing how it’s just around the corner but like I said ‘up until a moment ago.’ I was debating using this time to work on the next rewrite of KT1 but while the time would be used wisely I think the rewrite needs to happen with a calmer more decisive mind than the ‘splat’ that birthed it last year. :) I was also thinking about working on kT2 but do I really want to start the first draft of the second novel when the first is still in such disrepair?

I don’t know.

Then there’s all of my other writing projects that could obviously benefit from 30 days of off the wall, hour by hour attention: Why every writer needs a cat, Silent Violet, Blood Dragon, Other World, Silver Pen, HtDaH, Forgotten Rain, ScsofC, Reaper in Training… Mind you these are all names of complete outlines- some of which have half written first drafts and twenty some files on my hardrive.

Oh, and then there’s the stories Ree and I have planned out for our Abridged Coffee comics… also full of complete outlines ready to become stories.

At the end of things I just didn’t know but Ree gave me my answer even if she doesn’t quite know it. She walked in right in the middle of my little self argument and asked me what I was up to- so, I told her. Her words were this, “Oh, you should do the second Kat’s Tail. I really want to meet Rex so I can draw him.”

It may sound like something silly to base my choice off of but it is what it is. Ree was the first person to read KT1 from cover to cover, she draws my characters, and I’ve discussed the entire plot with her from book one to side plots and background bits that happened inside my head but might never be told. I could come up with over a hundred reason why I should work on any one of my projects but what better reason could I come up with than this that?

Someone wants to meet one of my characters.

Decision made. :) Now I have to figure out what the hell my synopsis is going to be. I’ll do that after I spend some time working on KT1. Let’s hope my brain doesn’t get too crossed.

Talked to my therapist the other day. We discussed that I have some really good coping mechanisms for all the stuff that’s going wrong inside my head and that I’m actually doing pretty good as far as that’s concerned but at the same time the coping mechanisms I have right now… well, it’s like I’ve outgrown them. I’m not sure that’s quite the right way to put it but it’ll have to do.

One of my CMs is to switch gears as soon as my mind starts going down darker paths. Sounds good, right? Not always.

Sometimes when I find myself writing particularly depressing stuff that I know is going to leave me hurting in the end more so than the venting thereof will have helped I switch gears and go work on another project. Then once I’ve found my groove in the midst of that project there’s room for the mental malfunctions to seep in again and I have to switch to something new- again!

It is a great CM, in moderation but I’ve gotten to the point (at home, at work, and sadly in my writing) where I’m having to switch so many times that not only am I running myself ragged but I’m not actually getting anything done and if I am I most certainly don’t feel like it.

At work I start in one kitchen and then make an excuse to run to the other kitchen for awhile before running back to the other one or- hell, even another totally different one! Let’s face it my job is monotonous, as any job as, and it gets to the point that I can do it on autopilot and my mind begins to wander… and then I have to run off and disturb the autopilot.

At home I feel like I can’t sit still because there aren’t enough ways for me to distract myself. My home has been carefully cultivate so I can spend all the time I want drifting in and out of days dreams which is just wonderful to the ever creative side of me but the rest of me, which is too quickly overshadowing much else, doesn’t do so well with spare moments to think. We spend out time in our hobbies (he gaming, she drawing, me writing) and when we’re not doing that we’re taking drives through the forest or nice long walks. All of these are wonderful but they don’t give me that temporary off switch I need for my brain. That moment of changing from one action to the next where the mind is entirely occupied with processing the change for just a split second. This makes enjoying happy moments very hard. It makes loving the silent contemplative moments I’ve not been able to love quite so much with any others a bit of a strain.

It’s sucking all the pretty colors out of my rainbows, damnit!

This mental cancer of mine is spreading. I’ll deny it for twenty-three hours out of my every day but for at least one hour, once a day, I have to admit that I can see it slowly spreading. I don’t want to admit this- it feels like accepting but it’s something that demands acknowledgement. I can see it spreading to every facet of my life and now… now it’s hit me where I really hurt.

It’s attacked my writing.

I’m sad to say that I have noticed that most of my writing has been focused on this crap lately. Usually my blog posts are sporadic but now… it’s like I have this one long running theme I can’t break myself of. I’m not sure if I’m peeved or distressed more but it’s a combination of the two.

My poetry has gotten better if only because I’m hurting in a way that feels fresh. My non-fiction has reached a new level if only because the details have become so much more vivid and bright. My journaling is going in ever smaller circles if only because my mind has already carved out the well woven path and it’s so hard to climb out of a rut when it’s been worn so far. My short fiction has become fractured if only because the little stories are so heart breaking I can’t bear to tell a whole one at length.

I can survive these. These are intimately effected by me like the reflection in the mirror. If I break I expect them to break too even if I’m not too fond of the resulting glass in need of cleaning up and the bleeding fingers that will follow soon after.

What I’m having trouble dealing with is my stories. Half of them aren’t written so much as they are played out in my head. Huge beautiful plots put together as a painter with her canvas. I love sitting down and just staring at a wall with my own mental television projecting things I’ve never seen. I love how I can take myself away, how the characters come to life, and how mysteries I don’t fathom my own creation of unravel and restitch themselves into extraordinary masterpieces. These are the things I try to write about. Everything else is mere expression but this is expression and creation. Everything else requires giving and giving but this- this bit of creation is like giving back to myself. It’s the art I gave up in foster care only because I didn’t think I’d live another month.

It is the very air I breathe and the process of lungs pulling in and out. It’s tides churning and the sun moving across the sky. It’s the blood bringing my body to life and the colors in my eyes. It’s a kiss in the dark and a dance under the moon. It’s been with me longer than any parental figure or friend…

And now I can’t visit this beautiful world without monsters hunting me down. I can’t work on one of my novels without having to change to another one after less than three pages. I’m no longer fleshing world out but running in for a quick look before being ruthlessly yanked out again before I get caught.

It doesn’t bode well for NaNoWriMo.

Writing puts me in this special place… Did you know I can type whole stories with my eyes closed? I don’t do it on purpose, sometimes it just happens as I see everything unfold before me. It’s like meditation of the most lucid kind but in these moments, where my body is moving on it’s own and my brain is left unguarded… things go wrong. I get the flashbacks and memories which require an entirely different set of coping skills but then because of what they do to me my body over reacts in much the same way it did to create the PTSD in the first place. My flight or fight response becomes hypersensitive and tries to be hyper-aware of when these ‘dangerous’ moments are going to happen again.

So, the second my mind has a chance to relax- fight or flight, random unexplainable terrifying feelings, or whatever the hell it is, forces me to change gears. To enter a new world that I have to re-get used to and the second I’ve found my rhythm it has to happen all over again.

First day of NaNo I went from really happy to unbearably and seemingly unreasonably depressed because these things, all this crap going on inside of me, wouldn’t let me sit still and work on just one thing. The depression passed and I went back to it but it was so forced it made me want to gag. My solution? I’m now working on three projects. It’ the coping skill needed to keep me from feeling either depressed or panicked but in the end I don’t finish anything which leaves me feeling even more like crap.

In far fewer words- because I’m a much less verbal person than you might expect from reading this, I told this to my therapist. She was pretty understanding and helped clarify a few things that I think I already knew but didn’t understand quite as well until someone else said them. She told me that maybe until I got a bit better with everything else I shouldn’t expect quite so much from myself… to lower my expectations…

I feel like I’ve already done that a little bit. I am going easier on myself. Taking more breaks, treating myself nice and all that jazz but at the same thing if I’m completing nothing than to expect less… I don’t know. I know where that thoughts going but I can’t shed light on it yet. I’m hurting, I’m tired- though I seem to do little else but sleep lately, and I just don’t feel like doing anything.

Later tonight I will sit down and I will write for NaNo. I don’t know what I’ll write or on what project but I will do it. Not because I’m expecting anything from myself, at this point I’m not sure I see myself completing my word count, but because I need to write. I need to embrace the familiarity of sunshine even if I have to imagine it and even if my imagination stakes it so far away. I need to achieve something slightly above the nothing line to know this stuff hasn’t taken over my life because to let anything else happen would be giving up and I’ve put myself through enough damn trouble in life being stubborn for what I wanted and needed to let something intangible kick my ass.

PS. I am reading all your wonderful comments- thank you so much and please know I do plan on responding to all of them as I always do though during this month it might take me more than the handful of days. Peace, hugs, and slugs.

I’ve been a tad worried as of late how my current ‘stuff’ would effect my writing and so far the worry has been warranted on and off so hopefully it doesn’t get in the way of NaNoing. There have been a few times these past two months where I even questioned if I would participate this year. Can you believe that? I’ve been very careful though. I know loss of interest, or feeling apathetic towards former interests is a bad sign- it’s usually a prelude to depression which would be really, really bad on top of everything else I have going on. I know I love to write. I know I feel like crap when I don’t write so when I start feeling like I don’t want to but I ‘do’ still want to… I know it’s time to start pushing myself in a better direction.

In other words. NaNo couldn’t have come at a better time of the year for me.

Now, I’m not participating in the forums so much and while I plan on meeting other NaNos I’m not going to be organizing or even trying to organize little writer’s groups. I just don’t have the energy I had last year for the complex social exercises I find beyond my own door. Sad but true. Hopefully that’s only temporary but for now I can bear to push myself.

Anyways, I’m thinking of catching a nap since Ree and I are NaNoing right at midnight. Feel free to click the image and add me or read my synopsis. I’d love some support- especially this year. Thankies and peace!

This year I sat down before my keyboard for nearly thirty days, typing away and wearing the letters off a good few of my keys (seriously). I stayed up well into the night, forgoing sleep from time to time because even when my fingers weren’t moving my brain still was and wouldn’t let me rest. I organized write-ins, told friends and family, and then pushed my self to the limits and beyond.

As a result I have the most wonderful news possible, the greatest achievement in my young life.

I wrote a novel.

For a total of 168,635 words, 600 some odd pages, 3000 some odd paragraphs, sweat, tears, and love.

Kat’s Tail was completed Thanksgiving night. :) We went to Red Lobster today to celebrate.

Yes, it really is morning. Usually I go to bed around six am (because I’m a night shift kind of girl) but tonight I wrote and wrote and wrote until my poor little fingers were so tired and my brain just couldn’t function anymore and I took a fifteen minute nap, then I woke up, turned the laptop back on and decided I was ready for round two. It’s nine in the morning and I still haven’t been to bed and I feel wonderful!

It’s amazing what a good mood can do for you mixed together with lack of sleep and the joy of reaching 127,357 words AND knowing you only have two or three chapters left till the story is actually finished, completed, ended, [inserts other words for 'oh, my gods, I'm almost done!' here].

It’s such a pretty thought, so shiny and tempting that I have no clue what to do with it but run around in circles right now. I was telling my husband last night that I really, honestly, believe I might cry when I finish the book. It’s not an if anymore, it’s a when. I don’t think I’ve ever been able to say that about one of my longer pieces since I happen to suffer from a chronic case of ADOSSO.

Attention Deficit… Oh, shit! Shiny object! Pardon the curse, lol, it’s something Kei and I came up with together while attempting to get up early the next day after staying up till noon writing (to clarify: we woke up, started writing, and didn’t go to sleep till lunch time the next day) and we were feeling rather goofy and random. To be honest I don’t know why people need drugs, if they’d just deprive themselves of sleep doing something they love, deprive a good friend along with them, then force each other into consciousness the next day they’d be whacked out all the time. I mean, given I’m bound to be cranky when I first wake up but while I’m trying to fall back asleep it’s like the little net that catches all the things I don’t mean to say while I’m awake is damaged. Even better- because of my lack of sleep and recent visit to dreamland my motor skills are generally suffering and sometimes saying a word with more than two syllables is a bit of a challenge… so yeah, I don’t need drugs. I’m weird enough as is.

Anyways back to topic…

Wait.

I had a topic?

Hmm.

Oh yes, finishing my novel. I can no call it a novel without thinking I’m stealing some catch phrase because even at size twelve font I’m numbering at over 500 pages right now. I know I’d be wasting trees if I did it but the urge to print it out when I’m all done just so I can hug the bulk of it is tremendous. Fortunately my husband has talked me into waiting until it’s gone through at least the first edit and then using the ‘CreateSpace’ offer from the NaNo to get a single bound copy for myself and then I can merrily accuse them of killing of innocent trees just so I can hug my novel.

I can hardly believe that the month isn’t even over yet (though I’m glad it’s not), it just seems like this has been the longest month of my entire life. Even thinking back to last years NaNo, it was nothing like this for me. I mean it was still crazy, awesome, inspiring, and finger numbingly wonderful but there is a definite difference. See, last year I used the NaNo as a means of forcing myself back into the writing world. When afraid to walk down the stairs go jump off a cliff so to speak to prove it’ll only hurt if… hmm…. that analogy was in my head and then as I was typing it I lost my train of thought and I can’t remember when I was going.

So, yeah, last year was a reintroduction into what I love, this year I’ve already been baptised so to speak and I’m no longer testing the waters but jumping in and swimming like a fish. I live and breath writing. :) I think it also helps having another writer in the house to compete with, it’s in my nature to try and type faster and hit the word counts faster if I can and if I can’t it gives me something to aim for like a mini game amongst the great challenge.

Even more so was all the encouragement my wonderful Husband keeps giving and his patience in my antics every thirty minutes or so when I busted another thousand out and had to tell him all about it. Both my brothers even helped push me along though I’m not sure they know it. I’ve been posting my latest and greatest word counts on my instant messenger the entire time and little did I know till recently that they were both following along and it surprised me when now and then they’d leave me a little message to go for it and such. It’s kind of cool how even though they don’t get along, or even talk, to each other how they can come together for me on this one thing. It makes smile.

Now for a random page from 365 Tao

“Do your devotions make you happy?
Is your life a joyous song?”

~Deng Ming-Dao

On this page Deng mentions while speaking of spiritual devotion that “it is unfortunate that so much coercion, unhappiness, bitterness, guilt, and fear become wrapped up in spirituality.” He goes on to talk about how being devoted to whatever you consider spiritual in your life, the thing you live for, or whatever churns your soul- it should make you happy and that it should be a celebration not a grudging ritual and I wholeheartedly agree. It’s difficult to explain without typing down what he said here and as my glasses are missing and I’m doing what quoting I am doing most from my head- you’ll just have to settle with my poor explanation.

When I read this earlier, this random page I turned to in a moment of contemplation I had a thought surface brightly in my head like the sun dancing up over the horizon. I wouldn’t call it a strange thought, it has occurred to me more than once but I don’t think it’s a common thought and I’m alright with that.

Writing is my spirituality.

I like to say that I do not have a religion, religion is for those who can name the faith they belong and can read out of the same book as millions of others without knowing the history behind it and follow it- not blindly but more like a sheep follows a flock. I’m not speaking of any one religion just organized religion in general.

To me spirituality is how you express your deepest soul felt feelings, it’s the guidelines you set for yourself, and your point of view in how the universe works. Spirituality is like a snowflake, no two for any two people are alike. Similar maybe but the same? Never because we are all different with different souls that have different needs but I’m ranting so I’ll pull myself back in the direction I was going beforehand.

Writing is my spirituality.

Everything that comes into my soul, my head, my heart. I express it through writing. The universe gives me all these wonders and I give back by writing. I celebrate my life and my happiness or the flip side of the same coin by writing.

Some Tibetan monk goes to his temple every single day, he adorns his robes, and purifies himself.

I sit before the temple of my laptop or notebook every single day, I build my writers nest out of all my favorite blankets, and I clear my mind.

The monk puts his hands together to pray.

I spread my fingers out over the keyboard.

The monk may sings hymns of the joy that his beliefs have brought him.

I dance spontaneously every ten pages.

He will sweep his temple steps in reverence to his place of practice.

I will meticulously pull all the keys off my keyboard and pick out all the cat hair and possibly Chinese food that has fallen beneath them because it is my place of practice and I revere it.

He will sit in silence for hours listening as his god speaks to him through it.

I will listen to my mp3 player for hours listening as random ideas pop into my head with convenient lyrics.

His god will bring him the greatest wisdom he has ever known if he listens with a full heart and an open soul.

My characters will bring me the greatest stories and teach me the greatest morals I have ever known, taking me on adventures I may have never had otherwise through my stories if I listen with a full heart and an open soul.

*grin*