The Insanity Returns

It does seem somewhat strange that someone incapable of posting even one blog entry last month would seriously entertain the idea of writing a 50,000 word novel in one month – next month, to be exact. A perfectly rational conclusion that one might draw is that I am, in fact, insane, but it would be a ho-hum old-hat perfectly rational conclusion, because everybody already knows I’m crazy as a loon.

Are thoughts of NaNoWriMo meant to distract me – in ways only a self-destructive procrastinator can devise – from more important things on my plate, such as completing a very important job application (due frightfully soon and with frightfully little actually done), or the small matter of trying not to be such a godawful mother of the kind therapists dream of while rubbing their hands with glee? Probably.

Am I making less and less sense as this post goes on? YES! It is LATE! And I am TIRED! But that, my friends, is what NaNo is all about, n’est-ce pas? One must accustom oneself to such things.

While I technically ‘won’ NaNoWriMo last year (ie: I completed a 50,000 word novel), I considered it somewhat of a Pyrrhic victory, accompanied as it was by demoralising realisations that my writing was rife with purple prose, Mary Sues and eye-rolling stream-of-consciousness narrative that would no doubt have bored the pants off anyone had I been silly enough to let them read it. Of course, my NaNo novel was written with quantity rather than quality in mind, but still, one hopes to see evidence of phenomenal talent in all of one’s endeavours and is understandably downcast when abundant evidence to the contrary is presented instead.

I tried to encapsulate the disappointment in a December post which, ironically, or perhaps portentously, I never finished. It began:

“And…exhale. Ease hands out of the clawed typing mitts they have stiffened into. Confront the draft of your very first novel and despair.

It’s surprising to me how little my actual experience of NaNoWriMo resembles the experience I imagined. On one hand, I wasn’t nearly so busy writing as I expected. Of course, that’s a good thing since I have plenty of other responsibilities which are more than enough to fill my day (especially since Mr. Lonie decided to nick off interstate for four weeks of costume balls and Sunday drives, nominally known as ‘work’). Besides, I quickly discovered that two hours a session was as much as I could mentally handle, and one session a day was as much as I could temporally afford.

It was also somewhat easier to…”

To what? I can’t even remember how I meant to conclude that interrupted thought. To spew forth crap from my crappy little brain, I expect.

So anyway, wish me luck. No, not with the novel – with finding a plot for the novel.

Yes, I know. I’m doomed.