I am writing a novel in 30 days.  This is hard in and of itself.  But what makes it harder?  Zombies.

Nope, I am not predicting the zombie apocalypse early.  And no, I have not been dared to put zombies in my quaint tale of small towns and friendship.  I am the zombie.

I have a cold.  And I want to power through.  I should be using this afternoon when I got sent home from work to be writing up a storm but instead I’ve been staring at walls.  Literally, I really have.  My brain can’t seem to process things very quickly (you don’t even want to know how long it’s taking me to write this post).

So, see the moral of the story (wait, was I telling a story?) is that sometimes you have to cut yourself some slack.  Because yes, I want to write 50K in 30 days – but I also want it to not be a surrealist treatise on the color of the air.

Below is the beginning of my novel though – I really like it. 🙂

“No one gets it,” she said, staring out across the lake, her feet kicking back and forth idly.  “They say they do, everyone says they do, but no one really gets it at all.”

“What’s that?” he asked, pointing to the page her notebook had been open to for days.  The page itself was worn, like a hand had been drawn down it multiple times, trying not only to erase the words but their meaning as well.

She leaned her head against his shoulder with a sigh.  “Just something I wrote,” she murmured reluctantly, drawing her feet up onto the dock.  She’d been away for too long, been trapped in a house where no one paid each other any mind far too much, to forget that he’d notice.

“Read it to me.”

“You don’t want to hear it.”  But it was an empty protest, even to her ears.  Smiles darted across their faces.  She knew the expression on his without even needing to look, a side effect of a decade of friendship.

“We both know that’s a lie.  Come on, I showed you mine.  Show me yours.”

She took a deep breath, a slight catch in her throat – she’d never admitted any of this out loud before – and then started to read.

“I had a friend once.  She’s gone now.  I mourn. . . .”

It’s almost November and you know what that means – NaNoWriMo is here!!

For the uninitiated, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month (www.nanowrimo.org – visit them!).  No Plot, No Problem – just write 50,000 words in 30 days.  Easy, right?  Ha, I laugh!  This is one of the most creatively insane things that can be done.  1667 words a day?  Every Day?  For a whole month?!

I’ve done this before – twice in fact, always a winner! – and every time it has jump-started me.  What I usually write is fantasy insanity.  The first time the plot had holes big enough to drive a semi through and the tone could never make up its mind (am I a family drama? a mystery? an absurd fantasy) but there was a crime ring set at a circus.  The second time I created an awesome fantasy trilogy that will one day be published but currently, yeah, has plot holes big enough to drive a minivan through.

This time I’m planning on being a lot more focused – no fantastical elements, no supernatural powers – just a hopefully arresting story that I can look back on and be proud of.  This time I want the emotion to come through, loud and clear – this Published Author’s no longer joking around.

I’ll be proud when I make it to the end cause I’ll have written thousands of words in a month.  People brag about running 5Ks – this 50K sprint is much harder to achieve.  And much more up my alley – I don’t much like running.

So wish me luck!  It’ll be a crazy journey but you know what they say, it’s all about the journey baby, not the destination.  T-minus 27 hours and counting . . .

I turn in 30 in about 14 hours from now.  I’ve spent a lot (and I mean A LOT) of time thinking about what this means, all of the things that I thought I would have done, seen, and accomplished before I turned 30.

And then I got up this morning, and thought “Girl, seriously, you’re looking at this all wrong.”  So today, instead of listing all the things I’ve yet to do, here’s all the wonderful things that I’ve accomplished.

30 Things to Be Proud Of

• I’m a homeowner – all by myself!  Never thought that would happen.
• I earned a graduate degree – an MBA.  Never thought I’d have those letters after my name, that’s for sure.
• I no longer HATE driving.  In fact, sometimes, I think I actually kinda like it.
• I became a concert junkie!  I still remember when I thought, wait a minute, I’m making money and this is what I want to do with it.
• I went to Fan Fair in Nashville – saw the humid, the crazy, and the crazed and slept 18 hours in 5 days.
• I traveled to Spain and got that stamp in my passport – tapas totally rock.
• I lived alone – and hated it – then lived alone and didn’t so much.
• I won $15,000 because I was just so good at telling the story of my patheticness – patheticness for the win!
• I discovered what I wanted to do with my life, early enough that I might be able to make all my dreams come true. 🙂
• I had a literary agent rip me to shreds and years later had another one tell me I can write. 🙂
• I’ve made friends and lost friends – and thankfully made more than I’ve lost.
• I wrote a book that’s awesome but no one’s ever going to read.
• I wrote a book that’s even more awesome and hopefully thousands of people will read.
• I ran a 5K – I didn’t even know I wanted to do that (the word ‘run’ is used very liberally here).
• I sang karaoke in a bar.
• I did NOT beat up my brother in the womb when he was getting on my nerves – and no matter what he tells you, he IS the evil twin.
• I got lost in the worlds of others – tv, movies, books – and learned to never apologize for it.
• I figured out Bruce Willis was dead at the end of the Sixth Sense WAY before anyone else did (and yes, I still brag about that).
• I got a job right out of college and made it into a job I’d want.
• I fell down – literally, I’m the clumsiest person you’ll know – but I never let it stop me from getting right back up.
• I discovered that I could live without cheese – but life wasn’t worth it – and I could live without gluten – and life still is.
• I once flipped my brother over my shoulder in a fight – don’t know how I did it, was never able to do it again, but it was epic.
• I got my sister to make me delicious gluten-free bagels – though I am eternally still waiting on that cheese soufflé.
• I taught my nephew to say my name in the cutest little baby voice and to smile every time Aunt Val walks into a room.
• I started liking my family as people and people as my family.
• I painted my bedroom bright yellow so I’ll always have something to smile about.
• I shot a gun – and felt appropriately bad ass doing it even if it did injure me and I couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn.
• I discovered that an attitude is the biggest factor in what side of the bed you wake up on.
• I learned that the most important part of making lists is knowing when to stop measuring yourself against them.

Last night we pulled out the VCR, popped in a few VHS tapes and dabbled in the pool of old home movies.  We saw my sister get her first piece of candy, my grandmother sing in front of an unappreciative audience (her 4 year old grandchildren), tons of presents opened, a Christmas tree trimmed, and interviews with a pair of twins twenty years ago when we turned ten. In between the talent show, homemade stop motion troll movie, and the summer school graduation where the kids wore white trash bags as gowns, something dawned on me.

As a kid, I used to be fearless.  In fact until I hit high school and puberty I really didn’t have any self-esteem issues, body image problems, or doubts.  Doubts are made for when life crashes into you and pins you to the floor, when you second guess everything about yourself, when the sum of what you see doesn’t add up to what you feel.  But as a kid I did things I can’t even imagine doing now – standing up for a girl with no friends and facing ridicule from everyone else, defying the mean girl with the violent streak because I wasn’t going to let her push me around, performing in front of a crowd because I wanted to.  I remember clearly the moment the illusion shattered – when I realized damn, I sucked at that, why did my parents let me up there – but that girl before she realized it was an illusion, she rocked.

It was embarrassing to say the least – watching yourself 15, 20 years ago always is – but it was also enlightening.  People say they want to be kids again and I always thought it was because of the lack of bills and responsibility and stress.  But that’s not the whole story.  Because the childhood you was daring and adventurous, wild and creative before any of those words became euphemisms for business strategies and core competencies.  The ten year old me saw most of the world as black and white, but the results of that were breathtaking.

I don’t see much of that girl in me anymore and that’s a shame.  As I sit here and think about what I want the next decade of my life to be, I know that if I let that girl come out and play more, be as exuberant and fearlessly herself as a 12 year old who didn’t know any better was, then I would be a happier person.  My life would be better for it.  Can I tap dance and play the flute and sing any better now than I did then?  Highly unlikely.  But she didn’t know the word ‘can’t’  – and neither should I.

This morning I woke up, opened my eyes, and a thought occurred to me – I SUCK at multi-tasking.

You wouldn’t think this would be such an epiphany but it was.  Because I spend my days trying to do many things at once and when I don’t fail miserably I think “Hey, yeah, I got this multi-tasking thing down.  Productivity Superstar!”   But that’s not the case at all.

So there I was this morning, thinking about last night – how I should have started my thesis but didn’t – and looking at my alarm clock – and how I said I was going to get up to go to the gym and didn’t – and deciding whether I should snooze my alarm even though I was awake – I did – that it really sunk in.  I’ve always known I was a commit everything, all or nothing kind of person, I just didn’t realize it extended to the mundane task of tasks.

On Saturday I finished writing my novel (yeah, go me!) and I was hoping this would pave the way for me to focus on my final project for grad school (which I now only have about 6 weeks to complete – eek!)  On some level I knew that I couldn’t hold room in my head for both of them.  But then I got another idea for a book and the project gets pushed farther and farther away every time I think of them.  Curses!

But this happens around my house too – yes I need to clean but I don’t have enough time to do the whole thing so why even start.  Yes I should pay those bills but I haven’t organized the office yet so I don’t know where my mail is supposed to go so why bother.  What, my car needs to be washed – don’t even get me STARTED on how much my care needs to be washed – but the car wash I have the gift certificate for is in another city and I should really be taking the time to clean my house . . .    See, the excuses and being pulled 20 different ways is endless.

How did I THINK I was good at multi-tasking for so long?  Simple – I’m organized.  Not like OCD, I can tell you how many paper clips are in the cup organized but your basic bland organized.  Except with pretty colored pens and bright file folders – I like to color code.  And I make lists – lots of lists – that help remind me what I have to do.  When I don’t have the lists I rely on my memory which is not a good way to remember EVERYTHING so I list.  I list and I feel better.  And then I stare at the list and get overwhelmed.  There seems to be a pattern here.

But now that I’ve recognized it, let’s see if I can beat it.  Today at work I will make a list of everything I want to get done and when I’m working on something, I’m working on it.  No changes mid-shift, no stopping to get three other things done, just concentrate on the task at hand and then move on.  Hopefully it works because, seriously, my car really is dirty, my house needs to be cleaned and that Thesis of 120 hours of work?  It ain’t gonna research itself. 

Creativity is awesome, stellar, tubular, rad (really dating myself with this list, huh?), magnificent, great, and wonderful.  It’s also a huge pain in the ass.

Don’t get me wrong – sometimes I think about what life would be like if I didn’t have it sitting in my Mary Poppins bag of tricks (other items in that bag: chapstick) and it’s not a pretty thought.  My life has stories to tell and they’d be infinitely more boring if I didn’t have it.  I’d be that droning uncle at family reunions and none of us want that, really.

But right now, part of me really wants to strangle creativity’s neck.  Not because it isn’t nice and pretty and helpful – nope, it’s all those things.  But because it just won’t leave me alone!  I’ve fallen into a creativity bubble – forgetting to eat dinner, only getting four hours of sleep, wanting to spend every moment reading and rereading and vacillating between “I just have” or “I have just.”  Truthfully it isn’t such a bad place to be . . .

. . . except for the fact that I really have some other things I have to do.  I have a job – getting four hours of sleep doesn’t really help me stay awake at it.  I’m supposed to be researching and writing my thesis paper – sadly the romantic entanglements of fictional royalty does not have much bearing on my graduating.  I have a house that’s still packed in boxes – being creative won’t help me find the missing Tupperware or my cheese graters.

But I’m also way too selfish to walk away from it now.  I spent almost two years training myself to be creative when I sit in a restaurant with my notebook in hand – don’t I owe this to her, Lady Creativity, to let her come over when she wants to?  When I stopped having time for restaurants she stopped coming round and that about broke my heart.  Now she wants to catch up on lost time and what kind of friend would I be to say no?  A rude one, that’s for sure – and who wants to be rude nowadays (politicians and political pundits are taking care of that for the rest of us)?

So I’m both happy and sad that creativity came a knockin’.  I’m tired and cranky, rejuvenated and in need of buckets of caffeine, overwhelmed and startlingly at peace about it.  Heck, but what else is new – I’m a writer.

I find myself operating in that weird, teenage place of hope and denial recently.

So last month was a month of chances for me as a writer.  I did one of the most nerve-wracking things I could believe – I gave my book, randomly, to someone I knew to read.  Doesn’t sound too revolutionary, I know, but the only people who had read my stuff so far were hand-picked to love it – and me!  Not that I bemoan their truthfulness or opinions but, well, they weren’t about to crush any of my dreams, no matter how much they needed to be stepped on.

Lo and behold, the impossible happened – she loved it.  She loved everything about it!  And my heart grew two sizes (not that I’m a Grinch, I just have a really big heart now, you know, cause who likes economy sized).  So then I did something even more impressive – I participated in a charity auction for a 20 page critique from an agent I liked.  And, after spending WAY too much money – for a very worthy cause though, Water for Crits, look it up – I sent my first three chapters spiriting through the ether.

How, you may be asking, is this anything like high school.  Stop being impatient, I’m getting to that . . .

So I sent the words away and was told that I would hear something within the next 45 days.  It’s been about 30 and I’m starting to think about it too often, every time my phone shows the email icon in the corner, wondering if it’s from her and if it’s anything that I want to hear.

When I was a teenager I knew I wanted to be a writer.  I didn’t have the courage to admit it and I didn’t have the dedication to pursue it, but I still knew it.  Have probably always known it.  And I remember being a senior in high school and one of our projects for English was to write a college admissions essay.  I spent an endless number of nights figuring out what I wanted to say and when I turned in that essay I was as confident as I could be in it.  Throughout the week our teacher would read bits and pieces of essays that were good but it was never mine.  I started to doubt myself, to think that I had been wrong, maybe I hadn’t succeeded.  Until Friday when we came into the class and the teacher sat down and read my essay in entirety.

And that’s what I’m hoping for now – that the best is last.  And then the denial hits – when I realize that I didn’t send in my chapters to be critiqued, I sent them in to be validated.  I LOVE my novel, I love 100% absolutely everything about it.  I can take advice and suggestions and criticism – what I can’t take is if I find out that everything I did is just unintentionally wrong.

I’ve been told that after the first two chapters of my book, you’re hooked.  And I sent in three.  I’m holding onto some possibly childish, probably foolish, hope that the sky will open up and the heavens will sing and it will all work out beautifully.

But life has a tendency to get messy . . . .