Write in the Now

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is in full swing, with writers around the world diving into their novel or rebel projects. Words are spattering themselves upon page like rain — either in drizzles or downpours. Plotlines are taking root. Characters are waking up and blossoming into shape. Scenes are growing lush and vibrant. 

At least, that's the blessing I send out to all my fellow writers this month. 

When I announced my intentions to partake in NaNoWriMo this year, one of the main methods of preparation was to eliminate all future considerations — all the little thoughts of what this new novel might be or become. In my first four days of working on the project, I have managed to get ahead of my daily goals, reaching just over 8,500 words. Along the way, it has been interesting to observe the little games my mind started playing, jumping past the present to future possibilities. Each time, I had to rein those thoughts in and find a way to keep writing. 

Brain Game One: Future Success — The first day of working on my new novel was incredibly successful, which was a surprise and a delight. It had been a long time since I had such a smooth writing day, and I was proud of the words I wrote and the direction the story was taking. My brain, noticing me reveling in the pleasure of my success, immediately began jumping ahead. THIS would be the novel, this will be the one to achieve an agent and a publisher, oodles of money and awards, and — 

Knock it off, I told myself. None of that matters right now. All that matters is here in the story. Who is this person you're writing? What comes next? Stick to writing in the now.

Brain Game Two: Future Editing — As I continued on the second day, I found myself discovering the characters and what would happen to them through the act of writing. I allowed details and traits and events to evolve throughout a scene, allowing contradictions to take place and letting them lie, knowing I could come back and visit it later. My brain, however, would not let it be, insisting on telling me all the ways the previous passages would need to be fixed and fixed immediately. 

Thank you, I told myself. But let's worry about those things at another time. We're focusing on the first draft. Let's write in the now. 

Brain Game Three: Future Failure — The process of writing is always shifting and not every day will flow smoothly. It was inevitable that self doubt would make its appearance, and it did on the third day. My brain fell right into lock-step, questioning whether these words would be good enough or whether this would just be another novel to sit languid in a drawer, ever unfinished. 

Hush, I told myself. Everything's okay. It's a draft. It doesn't have to be good enough. Just keep going, stick with the story and see where it leads. Write in the now. 

As the month continues, I'll have to face thoughts like this over and over again. It's a continual process of pulling myself back to the present moment, taking a deep breath, and writing from where I'm at in the her and now. For the moment, I'm just enjoying the act of writing — which is exactly what I was hoping to get out of my NaNo experience this year. 

If you're participating in NaNoWriMo or working on any kind of creative projects this month, let me know how you're doing. Do you find yourself fighting future thoughts? How do you deal with such thoughts and keep moving forward? 

Book of the Month

Winner of the Walt Whitman Award, Emily Skaja's Brute is a stunning collection of poetry that navigates the dark corridors found at the end of an abusive relationship. “Everyone if we’re going to talk about love please we have to talk about violence,” writes Skaja in the poem “remarkable the litter of birds." She indeed talks about the intersections of both love and violence, evoking a range of emotional experiences ranging from sorrow and loss to rage, guilt, hope, self discovery, and reinvention.

One of the things I love about this collection is the way the poems reflect the present moment — ripe of cell phones, social media, and technologies that shift the way humans interact with each other, while maintaining a mythic quality, with the speaker feeling like a character struggling to survive in a surreal fairy tale world just waiting to eat her up. Gorgeous work from Skaja, who I recently interviewed for the New Books in Poetry podcast. I need to finish preparing the episode and hopefully I'll be able to share it soon. 

If you're interested, you check out the rest of my Culture Consumption for the month of October, with all the books, movies, TV, games, and podcasts that I've enjoyed. 

More Good Stuff

I finished a new episode of New Books in Poetry, in which I was able to speak with Jason Bayani about his new book Locus (Omnidawn Publishing 2019). "Poetry gave me back a way to find my culture, my history, a way to understand my parents better, a way to understand my people better — and I feel more whole because of it," said Bayani during his interview, in which we have a moving discussion about how he found his way to poetry, the value of curiosity, Pilipinx narratives in America, and the power of music. 

We need new fairy stories and folk tales to guide us out of today’s dark woods, explains Andrew Simms.

Kids These Days: "When observing current children, we compare our biased memory to the present and a decline appears. This may explain why the kids these days effect has been happening for millennia." John Protzko and Jonathan W. Schooler present a scholarly scientific study of how and why people throughout the ages consider the youth of the current age to be worse than they were as kids. Fascinating stuff.

Holly Lyn Walrath asks, Does Publishing Short Stories Matter?

20 Witchy Books from 2019.