NaNoWriMo 2012!

Yep.  That's my username in that top right corner.  Which means it's official: I've signed up for NaNoWriMo.  This blog post is for all to see so that I can be held accountable.  As so many already know... it's a lot harder to quit or give up on something when all 400+ of your closest Facebook friends expect something of you.

The basic premise is that those who sign up for NaNoWriMo have all of November to write their novel, which MUST be at least 50,000 words.  (And even though NaNoWriMo is already shortened, I'm going to shorten it more to NNWM, because I'm just that lazy.)  NNWM is very generous in their definition of a novel: "If you believe you're writing a novel, then we believe you're writing a novel."

I have always wanted to do this, and I've always made excuses as to why I can't do it.  It's time to stop hiding behind these excuses... even though some of them are very acceptable.  I'd like to take a moment to reflect on my own insanity by agreeing to attempt NNWM the month before I graduate, which is sure to be one of the most hectic months of my life.  And let's not forget that I turn 22 this month, which will be my golden birthday, and I'm sure to receive 22 solid gold bars as a gift, so I'll have to figure out what to do with all that wealth and luxury, and if that doesn't say DISTRACTION from writing, then I don't know what does.  So, yes, there's a myriad of things to consider for my NNWM 2012 endeavor.

This is why I am changing the NNWM goal for me.  I did not give myself enough time to prepare an idea, background, plot, or anything necessary for writing a novel.  I have zero prewriting done.  Quite frankly, a novel is not the best thing for me to try and squeeze in just for the sake of completing NNWM with my last month of what is sure to be intense schoolwork left.  So instead of a novel of 50,000 words, I am going to be aiming for just 50,000 words of prose in general.  Whatever I write does not need to be connected in any particular way, or go together at all.  I just want to accomplish the 50,000 word deal.  I considered doing the 1,667 words a day version (which is exactly how many words per day of the 30-day month are needed to pass the 50,000 word goal on Nov 30, and would entail exactly 30 individual pieces with 1,667 words each), but I'd like to think that some of my prose pieces will take me longer, or may wind up being connected, or could even form a little baby novella.

I'm not ready to start writing a novel, not ready to take on a novel-in-a-month challenge.  But I am ready to do something.  I am tired of hiding and being afraid and not facing anything because that could mean failure.  If I fail... I fail!  As my dear bestie Jo Rowling has famously said, "It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all-- in which case, you fail by default."

If I'm going to fail, I'm going to fail in a high-flying epic scheme of intensity... like, say, a 50,000 word personal challenge.  I do not want to fail by default, by not trying anything.

Thanks to Fr. Kyle for convincing me to take the plunge, sign up, and commit myself in the best way I can.  And thanks to those that have sent me encouraging messages.  Y'all are great.  If you're considering signing up for and are waiting for a sign, HERE IT IS!  At least try it.  The worst that happens is that you fail, but succeed in gaining some awesome experience.  Check it out here.

Two days and counting until November first, when my first (minimum of) 1,667 are "due."  Wish me luck?

The Question

Can you hear the silence
As you stand
On the threshold
Of everything that matters
Clinging to your footholds and handholds
Listening to the growing hum
Of hundreds of humans
Slowly raising their voices
Until the hum becomes a buzz
And the buzz becomes a roar
And the roar becomes more,
A cacophony of insanity,
People desperately screaming
To make their words heard,
To distinguish their messages

And you, clinging to the edge,
What are you going to do about it?
It’s time, it’s time
Time to make your decision
And share your convictions
Time to get your gears in motion
And add your voice to the commotion
Time to fling the sounds
Your vocal cords have created,
Uniquely yours,
Into the din, until your vowels and your consonants
And your phonetics rise about the rest

Or will you find yourself frozen
Petrified by the devotion of others
That you can’t seem to match
Immobilized by the frenzy
Of those fighting for attention
In a world of self-invention
It is time, it is time
It is time to leap from your hiding place
Or turn your face away from it all
To leap and fly
To leap and fall
To do nothing at all
You rest on the cusp of the rest of your life—
And this is it
It’s time
And it all comes down to you—
What will you do?

Les Misérables: THE MOVIE!

Last night, I was at the movies with some friends, not paying attention to the trailers because my Bunchacrunch box was putting up an excellent fight in not being opened, when someone started singing on screen.  It caught my attention, so I looked up, and within the first three seconds of the trailer, I knew.

Not because of the music, not because of the first two shots of a man I didn't recognize, but because of Anne Hathaway and her haircut.  The desperate song, the hair, and the knowledge in the back of my head of a movie about this book coming out-- Les Misérables.

I'm not at all familiar with the musical, Les Mis (because I am uncultured and uncouth?), nor do I know any of the music from it.  But I know the book.  Allow me to catch you up with events leading up to me reading Les Mis:

1.  The Abridged Heidi Incident
2.  Desire to read more classics
3.  Started reading the abridged Les Mis
4.  Panic upon realization of another abridged book
5.  Purchase of a brick known as unabridged Les Mis

Les Mis took me almost an entire year to read cover to cover.  It is, by far, the most difficult book I have ever read.  I can't say that I understood every last detail or grasped every last symbol or even appreciated every last reference to historical events that I should know more about but don't.  My French history knowledge is rusty at best, and my God, was Hugo ever determined to make sure his readers understood Waterloo.  I still can't believe that one book took me a year to finish.  Granted, that was a very busy year for me and a very wordy, very elaborate, very difficult book to finish, but still.  I was a little ashamed of how slow my reading pace went with Les Mis.

But I'm so glad I read it.  And seeing the movie trailer gave me chills, truly, like, goosebumps all up and down my arms and hair standing up and everything.  It just absolutely blows my mind that things like this can happen, can transcend time and country and language.  This book was written in 1862.  I wish I could capitalize letters to impress how insane I think that date is.  EIGHTEEN SIXTY TWO!  In the year one thousand, eight hundred, and sixty two, Victor Hugo wrote a book as a social commentary on various subjects about the lives of these damned and somewhat helpless French lower-class citizens that we can still relate to today.  Centuries later, we have made songs from it and a movie from it, and if I can cry about the death of a fictional prostitute (driven to such a profession by her miserable circumstances) from the 1800s, then surely I can be moved to see the current world in which I live in a different light, and make a difference-- can't I?

Books and the themes with which they present us are meant to light a fire within us that catapults us to a new state of thinking and being.  When I read, I want to be faced with an idea or opinion or belief that I have never yet encountered, and if it's uncomfortable or something I've been opposed to before, all the better.  Make me think.  I am a conscious, sentient human being, and I want to be challenged and made to consider options I never would have thought of on my own.  My favorite books have shown me worlds and ways of thinking that make me hungry for more.

It was incredible for me to see the trailer for Les Mis, to see scenes so similar to what I had pictured in my head in bright, moving images before me.  I swear, the barricade scene during the émeute was almost exactly like what I had conjured in my mind, and that visions like this can happen astounds me.  And it all started from a brick book.  A book that it was my absolute privilege to read.

Banned Books Week has recently finished, and even though I'm quite late on addressing that topic, just give me a couple of sentences more to say-- books should never be banned.  Even when I think a book is stupid and worthless (and oh, I could name a few), I do not believe they should be banned.  There are so many worlds to discover and so many new ways of thinking to try.  I want so badly to share this sentiment through my own writing.  One day!

La douleur

What happens when our tired, aching feet,

grown too big for their shoes,

absolutely refuse to pull us out and

around to where our old stomping

grounds used to be, when our meeting

place is nothing more than the lost and

found for memories of old, forgotten days?

What happens when we scatter silently,

here and there and everywhere, like 

dandelion fluff, carried by a puff of

leisurely breeze at its ease,

to each their own, to find a home,

as the breeze turns into a wind, and

blows us to all four corners and more

of the earth, how will we continue

to determine our friendship's worth?

What happens when you are where 

you want to be and have forgotten me,

when I am lost in the middle of 

my mind, and cannot find my

way out through the maze I traced

from older days, when we 

used to know the path, but when

you are where you want 

to be, who will help to set me free?

What happens then?

Thank you for reading.  I am learning.  I am growing.  I am changing.