Friday, November 05, 2010

Nanowrimo Update

How does this always happen? Not even a full week into the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and I'm behind.

Fuck, I know exactly why I'm behind.

The start of November has been a bit crazy, with my Story Telling event taking priority over everything. With that out of the way (it went off without a hitch last night - was great!), I can now focus on the challenge at hand - finish a 50,000 word novel in a month.

I don't think I'm really stressing as I've done this twice before - I know I can do it.

This year, I am writing a journal of sorts for the kiddo, something he can hopefully discover when he is my age, parenting his own children, so he knows and sees what things were like.

I'm stressing because I really have nothing else to stress about right now.

Here is a taste of what NaNoWriMo is producing from me.. enjoy:



I was listening to a podcast called Radiolab on the way home from work on my iPod and they were re-visiting an old question that the two had discussed on a morality show a while back. The question was this – its war time, your hiding in a basement with some of your villagers and the enemy soldiers are outside, with orders to kill everyone they find, no questions asked. You are huddled, holding your young baby, who has a cold. If your baby coughs, and they find you and your baby, they will kill everyone who you are in hiding with. The only way to hide you and all your villagers is to cover your baby’s mouth so they don’t cough. This would smother your baby and end up killing it. So what would you do? Would you kill your baby to save the mass amount of villagers hiding out with you, or would you let the child cough and in turn, damn everyone to death? While walking I thought of you, sleeping, peacefully. I thought of you laughing, smiling as you tried to tickle me and while I understand how dangerous it is and how not right it is for me to take the lives of all those people in my hands, but I just couldn’t kill you. I’ve developed this crazy protective instinct when it comes to you and I would rather die than see you die.

It scares me how true that last statement is. I never would have ever thought I’d get to a point in my life where I’d really and truly care about something more than I cared about myself, but I am here and its completely fucking with me. For the last 29 years of my life, it has been completely about me and I was more than fine with that. I worked hard to give myself everything I wanted – I pampered myself. It’s hard to change that view when you aren’t really prepared to do it. When you came around, kiddo, the last thing I wanted to do was to have to share everything about myself with someone else. I wasn’t ready to let go of it all. Not only did I have to change how I spent my time because of someone else, I also had to share the focus of my partners affections for the first time. I can admit to my selfishness in wanting him all to myself – the though of sharing him made me worry. Would I be able to? Would this faint feeling of resentment I had go away eventually?

Of course it did, and I know now I was a complete fool for thinking it might not. What was wrong with me?

2 comments:

Ojibwe Confessions said...

There is another person that I am following that is writing as well. I didn't measure up. i hope you succeed. The woman is Rainy.

Penny Lane said...

I have my fingers crossed. I'm feeling confident!