Halfway there = Time for a detour

I was all prepared this year to actually suffer through a Camp NaNoWriMo. I had a great idea, even if it was just in its infancy.  I thought I had set my standards sufficiently low enough: just get to 10,000 words and call it good - just in time to finish college finals.  No one said it was a good idea, but it was mine, and I'll be the first to admit it failed.  I managed a little of 2000 words and then got lost.

I've discussed before how I feel that the obsession with "writing every day" is the best philosophy.  Trust me, I completely understand how the stress of life can eat at you from just about every direction.  However, I will say that the concept of editing a crappy page is easier than a blank one works wonders on research papers...

Anyway, I digress.  The fact of the matter is here it is May.  Finals are over.  Camp NaNoWriMo is over.  I didn't succeed, and somewhere in-between trying to start a new idea that I love and standing (or sitting) where I am now, I got lost on a detour of unfinished stories.

I've never been able to determine why some ideas stick with me like a nagging toothache - to where I can't put them aside until they are finished.  Then there are those that woke me in the middle of the night, forced me to pour out over 5000 words in a single sitting, and then sat in a corner waiting...and waiting.  With an entire summer break ahead of me, I had a plan, I was prepared to plot my way through the more completed ideas running amok in my head (even my characters are on summer break, apparently), but if there is one thing I've learned about writing, it is simply to never plan anything.  My characters all have minds of their own, and the sooner I realize that, the happier we will all be.  One can hope.  Let's hope this plan works out better than the last.

Anyone out there with a similar tale?  How many unfinished stories do you have haunting the cobwebs of your mind?  I think I'll count and get back to you.

-L.E.

It's Never Too Early...but it can be too late

With the advent of fall, the creative juices for most of us NaNoWriMos start to flow a little more freely.  We're all aware of that fateful day in November when we will see what we're made of - if we can truly manage 50,000 words in a single month of madness.  Since I first started participating, I have loved every moment of the struggle, and the reward of simply winning.  

With this in mind, I dove head first this year into a greater level of responsibility by applying to be my local municipal liaison (which I have yet to spell successfully on a first attempt).  It is an opportunity I am so excited to partake in that I get a little bubbly just thinking about it.  This year will mark the fourth and final book in a series (though I have already decided on add ons for coming years about other characters and the "what if" years after high school).  It will be a year of truly wonderful beginnings and less than wonderful endings.

However, this will also be a bittersweet year.  The inspiration behind my character who is set to star in November just passed away unexpectedly.  Wendy was truly the most remarkable, loving, caring, unselfish being on the face of the planet, and I cherished my friendship with her.  She was everything that people should aspire to be.  She was my friend when I was still a neurotic girl, barely more than a teenager, and she remained my friend for over a decade.  She helped push me into publishing, she always encouraged me to write, and she read everything I ever sent her.  The greatest tragedy is not that I never told her what she meant to me - I did but I could have done more - no, the greatest tragedy is that stories she had wanted to know the end to will never be read by her.  She will never know how Nora and Ivan survive their teenage years, she will never know how Scarlett finds out about her father.  Most importantly, though, she will never know all that Mary Usher has to offer.  Mary Usher was based on Wendy, and the hidden strengths of such a sweet, loving woman were set to come out in this young girl.  

There is no question in my mind that Pandora will be dedicated to my wonderful friend.  I just wish that there had been time to tell her what would happen, how it would end, so that she would never have had to wonder while I struggled with the time to put to paper all the complexities mirrored in her fascinating soul.  

For those who believe that the dead watch over us, I hope you're correct.  I hope that for a few, brief moments, Wendy might be able to see that without her in my life, I could never have even had the ability to even try and live this dream.  

Emotions are the fuel that fans a writer's flames.  We live and breathe love, hate, and everything in between.  But sorrow and tragedy are harder still to articulate, especially when we are still mired in the midst of them.  I can only hope that in six week's time, when the world of writers comes together to frantically put together their stories, that I can do justice to my friend, and tell mine.

-L.E. 

Growing Up is Underrated

When I was a kid, I was hardly one to wish I was older.  I never dreamed of taking on the world at an age older than I was.  Life as it was seemed just enough.  Of course, the simplicity of childhood is like a dream that we spend most of our lives remembering fondly once responsibility has decided to take hold of us.  For me, the first step along that dreaded path was when I was nine.  The next, when I turned fourteen.  While it might be common practice to share everything on the internet, there are still parts of my life that I feel are private.  As such, the events that led me down a somber, responsible path will remain known to me and a select few people.  However, having spent more than enough time depressing my readers, I'll move on to the whole point of my latest ramblings.

For those of us who have shouldered responsibility for most of our lives, there is a time when one might start to feel like that is all we have.  I know for me, the years between turning fourteen and halfway to eighteen felt like the world had fallen upon my shoulders.  I lost almost all traces of the child I was.  I still read books, I have never not read books, but the spark within me that had once led at the young age of six to writing stories, was dimmed to the point of absence.  The only pleasure in writing to be found was in the assignments that were given out by my English teachers, mainly Mr. Canode.  Every once in awhile a story would pop in and consume me, but they were mere wisps of what could be, and they were easily enough satisfied.

The winter of my seventeenth year, I had an epiphany.  I cannot affix on the moment or the catalyst, but I realized in short succession that I had been burying myself for far too long.  I had to break free, to be able to embrace just what it was I could do.  That was the beginning of what would become this passion that now consumes me on a rather regular basis.  

However, the years of repression were not without their effects.  I started many stories that had been building in my mind, but until I was twenty, never finished.  Then, through sheer perseverance, an idea finally came to fruition in its entirety.  It was a ghost of what I had originally imagined, but it was complete, and that was the most important part.  When something like NaNoWriMo stresses to let your inner editor lie quiet while you just get that rough draft done, there is a very good reason for this.  After that, I finally found what had been missing, and I could embrace the wild side of me to let out story after story.  

This might sound dull, perhaps a little trite, but the single most important factor I have found to continue to write has been a new found love of childish things.  I buy My Little Pony toys (preferably those that still look like ponies), Disney Princess pencils, and I never miss an animated film with a happy ending.  But that was exactly what had been missing for so long, my inner child.  By embracing her proudly, I can now write the stories that fill my head, and I can smile about it all again.  After all, it's hard to take life too seriously when you're playing with your ponies.

For all those who have felt a need to break free from the day to day grind of life, try watching something quaint, colorful, and, most importantly, with a happy ending.  You might just find what you've been missing, too.  And always remember:

Until next time...

L.E. Gibler