11.11.04: NaNoNoNoNoNooooo! ‹ Blog

The cure for writer’s cramp is writer’s block.
Inigo DeLeon

NaNoNoNoNoNooooo!

11.11.04

[Note: I actually started this entry a few days before the 11.10.04 entry—hence the seemingly insane references to an upcoming entry on the election. I broke to write the election entry, then finished this entry and dated it according to when I actually finished writing it, thereby causing the fabric of space and time to rip asunder and kill us all. Sorry about that.]

I know you’re expecting me to write up my views on the recent presidential election, and you’re wondering what the hell is taking me so long. To be perfectly honest, it hit me too hard for me to be able to write about it yet. I’ve just recently gotten to the point where I can say words like “Republican” and “Cheney” and “privatized social security” without spitting with rage or bursting into tears. But actually writing about it is a whole ’nuther story. So humor me while I avoid the topic of politics and presidents for a few years or so. (I’ll be back in fighting shape by 2008, I promise.)

On a lighter note, NaNoWriMo is killing me softly with its word count. 13,488 words so far; sounds like a lot, but I’m actually way behind schedule. I was toodling along just fine for the first ten days or so; then I got the second NaNoWriMo weekly motivational e-mail, which was very silly and spoke of rabid weasels and zombie-filled swamps and something called “the wall,” which apparently every WriMo hits during Week 2. “Ha ha!” I said to my computer monitor as I read the e-mail. “I haven’t hit ‘the wall,’ and I never will! Pathetic little gerbils! I will trump them all!” And then I opened up Chapter 09 of my novel and put my fingers on the keys, ready to type, and then—

WHAM. Goodbye, creative energy. Hello, wall.

I’ve just barely managed to scrape together a couple thousand words each day for the past three days or so, and oh dear god are those words bad. I know that this is just a first draft, that the whole point of NaNoWriMo is to write a hilariously terrible novel in a ridiculous amount of time, but it’s making me physically ill to write such vomitously bad prose. I’ve slipped from a remarkably decent first chapter to a string of mediocre ones, and now I’m trudging morosely along the cold and lifeless NaNoWriMo path, throwing elegance and decent grammar to the winds in my wanton quest for word count. I’ve spent so much time staring at the blank white screen of Microsoft Word that I ended up simply playing with background colors and gradients, just so I wouldn’t have to look at that goddamn white anymore. But even that has lost its charm, so now all that’s left to do is type a few words and then kill a few more hours playing with fonts and text colors. And then when that loses its fun, I’ll just change the background color to bright neon green and the text color to yellow highlighted in Schiaparelli pink, and then my head will explode all over the monitor, blam!, and my name will unfortunately not be listed on the NaNoWriMo winner’s list but I’ll probably get a nice obituary in the Twin Cities newspapers.

Now why the hell can’t I write like that in my damn NaNovel?