I can't do everything, and actually that's great.
Hello again,
I attempted and completed NaNoWriMo for the first time last November. I'd considered it many times before but recognized - correctly, I would say - that most of what I'd get from it would be self-loathing that I wasn't writing like I should be. For me, there are good challenges and bad, and generally I know which is which from the outside. It's not pleasant, but it's useful.
Before 2020, NaNoWriMo would have been a bad challenge, all punishment with little likely reward. But last year, I used it to finish the first draft of the second book in the big weird universe I've half existed in for the last 17 months. It was joyful and exciting, and massively affirming after years of not writing as much as I wanted and often feeling bad about it.
But despite all that joy and affirmation, I'm not doing NaNoWriMo this year.
Why not? Because, earlier this month, I tried to do Jami Attenberg's Mini1000 at the same time as the LWH 100 Days of Writing project (during which I'm doing heavy, structured revision in pursuit of the second draft of a different novel-length manuscript), and I had to finally admit that I'd found my limit. I could do one or the other, but not both.
I did not like admitting this. I wanted this newfound ability to write and write to be infinite because it's given me so much already. I can do extremely involved revision AND draft heavily at the same time! I can refine one reality while creating another! I can do everything!
You know, I can't. What I can do is pretty good, though: I can have a job, see friends occasionally, get a little exercise, keep the house from being a complete nest from hell, and... either heavily draft or revise. But not both.
I did the first day of the most recent Mini1000 earlier this month. It was grueling, but I managed it, and I felt a grim satisfaction at pulling that 1,000 words out of myself. Sometimes grim satisfaction is a great reward, so I figured that was fine. The next night, I dragged myself to 459 words out of the 1,000-word goal and then, around 10:45 pm (a normal time for me to be writing and not part of the issue here), I just... stopped. In the way of how I process thoughts in this era when I'm home alone a lot of the time, I probably exhaled heavily and said, "Stop, dude. Go to bed. You've done enough."
I had.
I love Jami's challenges and was psyched she did more than one this year. And I got so much from NaNoWriMo last year, including some writing community that keeps me going to this day.
And yet life is little but challenges in this era, so a single optional one at a time is enough. I'll keep on with the novel currently named Paradigms through the end of the year, working through my post-its and being pleased at my progress. I've officially moved from post-its that say things like "look for all uses of the word 'gallant,' I think it's in there a lot" or "$character's expressed regrets should be deliberate and relatively few" to ones about whole-ass emotional arcs that span the entire thing. And addressing those larger issues feels much more attainable than it did even a couple of weeks ago. The method is good, and I've gone from thinking I am a hopeless student of revising to believing I actually have something to offer this process. The second draft will not be the final draft, but it was never going to be. I'm not seeking perfection; I'm seeking progress. Flashbacks tentatively placed feel like progress, as does finding holes, problems of space and time, and moments of clumsy plotting and character. It's all learning.
In the midst of all this focus, I did allow myself a small diversion: I signed up for the NYC Midnight 250-word Microfiction Challenge 2021. Had it gone for several continuous days, the answer would've been no, but a 24-hour window to write and submit just sounded like fun. I spent my October 16 writing time on a quick 480-word first draft that I edited down to 246 words across a couple of hours. I did nine drafts altogether, with a break to take a shower and another to go get groceries, which were effective palate cleansers. I am long-winded by nature as a writer (not, I imagine, a surprise to you, as you've read this newsletter), so the challenge was innately uncomfortable. But ruthless editing is almost always a good exercise; I know I stripped out some charm and detail as I whittled it down, but some needless words also got tossed. I'm glad I did it, and I'm psyched for whatever comes next in the competition (including just getting to see what kind of stories the people who get to move forward wrote).
Here are some things I've written or liked.
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So I've lost my mind for T. Kingfisher in the last month. A friend recommended A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking to me recently, but I started with Paladin's Grace, which I DEVOURED. I stayed up until 7 am on a Sunday morning finishing it, the equivalent of a snake unhinging its jaw to take in prey whole. Then, after I'd slept well into the afternoon, I started reading it again (and I've seen multiple reviews telling me I'm not the only one that did this). Fortunately I replaced my e-reader recently, as the old one had decided not to download books anymore, because then I read the second book of The Saint of Steel series, then Swordheart, and then I came back to my friend's recommendation, reading it at the same time as the third Saint of Steel book. Whew. They are joyful and fun, weird and dark, imaginative and sometimes quite hot. I love them. It always makes me happy to read a book I wish I'd written, and she's written several. Cassandra Rose Clarke, Becky Chambers, and Gordon Dahlquist have also written books that gave me that feeling. I have a lot of authorial jealousies, and mostly they are great and inspiring jealousies to have.
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As a tech person who tries very hard to be less terrible and damaging to the world around me, I've paid a lot of attention to the shoddy things Netflix has done leading up to and since the release of the latest Chapelle special. Stories are important, and the ones that are given prominent placement in front of people do affect this world. Stories do tell us a version of who's good and who's bad, and if a story says that one type of person is invalid or - as often follows suggestions of invalidity - worthy of violence, that shapes the world and makes it a shittier place. It makes it more likely that people will get hurt by other people who feel validated in attacking. There are a lot of things written about this. I think Terra Field's essay "It Was Never About Dave" has a lot of useful things to say about it.
And finally, a sentence I've written recently that I liked: I saw my friends get mowed down by it, giving their heart to some shitty sweaty-handed boy, some fucking high schooler (or, worse, sometimes someone older, ugh), and then a week or a month or six months later, they’d be an absolute wreck, crying in trig, looking for the reassurance we’d all learned to give: “fuck him” or “I’m so sorry” or “it’s good to try and fail,” if we were feeling especially sage.
I got to go to the Autumn Lights Festival at Lake Merritt recently in the company of two visiting friends - very exotic, both visiting friends and doing things, even still. "Bay Area outdoor art" always brings a heavily Burning Man contingent (and adding "light art" to the description means you get a lot of clever programmer types too), and this didn't disappoint. It felt really good to wander around beautiful things, most of them bigger than me, seeing them bright and beautiful right when the darkness encroaches on the end of day so much faster than we'd been used to. To just to be buried in color, to walk through inflatable shapes from a dream, to see black lights used in their most glorious applications... swoon. Something's still hungry from this last pandemic-length of time, and I'm just trying to feed it when I can. I hope you're getting what you need too.