Stagnant

It amazes me how tied I feel to the sun.  We have had a dreary October and my production as a writer diminished dramatically.  When the sun reappeared I thought I was saved, but that was an illusion.  My ability to move forward and create lies within me.  The sun helps, but the drive comes from inside.  A poem surfaced as I tired to see my way forward.  Here it is.  Take it as you will.  Move forward as you can and so will I.

Movement



The blades of the turbine spin.
The air
moves them.
Or
do they move
the air?

How fast
does the wind slide
along their length?
I cannot feel it.
Yet I know
it must be blowing.

The grass bends beside me;
branches sway.
But I
am still.
My hair
lies
motionless
on my shoulders.

The turbine blades swing high overhead.
They move in the world.
Why can’t I?

~ Peace and movement

NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month - better known as NaNoWriMo - started Sunday, November 1. The general idea behind it is to encourage writers to write - with abandon, sans criticism - for an entire month with the goal being a 50,000 word novel. This is both a thrilling and frightening task. To actually write that much in 30 days sound impossible, yet if you calculate it out it comes to about 7 double-spaced pages everyday - or roughly 210 pages by 11:59pm, Monday, November 30th.

To participate in NaNoWriMo you must be starting a novel from scratch or from a preexisting idea. You should not have written anything about this novel before November 1st. That, unfortunately disallows me from the "competition" since I am uneasy stepping away from my novel so completely for such an extended period of time. I use NaNoWriMo, instead, as a motivator for serious focus on my novel - write everyday, as much as I can, and by the end of November I should be significantly further along. That’s the plan anyway.

So today - Monday, November 2nd, I am committing to that goal - to write everyday, as much as I can, in order to make forward progress on my novel so that I might complete this 1st draft before the end of the year.

What will you do this month? Keep me in your thoughts and I will keep you in mine.

~ Peace and forward momentum

Absence

Fourteen days is a long time to be absent. Two weeks of non-communication and silence. Do I apologize? Do I list my reasons, my excuses? Do I stop altogether or slink back and offer up my belly in submission? Or do I simply pick up where I left off and continue?

I have encountered what every writer on the planet encounters – the encroachment of life into the refuge of my imagination. It is amazing how this happens. It is, in some ways like a cancer – insidious, undetected for at least a period of time, relentless, non-repentant, and sometimes, fatal.

I teach beginning writers. I know better than to let this happen. I advise them not to allow the world to waltz all over their dream, press it into the grain of the floor until it no longer resembles what they have started. And yet, here I am. Absent due to the world.

So I will now follow my own advice and push out the walls of my space until it fits me well once again. I will drag in the good chair and the snappy keyboard and the sharp monitor so that I can clearly see what my imagination is feeding me and I will write.

I will honor the need and the urge and the desire. I will put the words on the page, extend them until they blend seamlessly into the images they are cultivating, until they become nothing more than the fine silken thread connecting one moment to the next within the story. I will begin…again…like I have countless times before, because being absent is simply not an option I can choose.