NaNoWriMo 2007
soo... I actually did it! woot!
Probably the only time I'll ever succeed...
Anyways, here's the only part that I feel comfortable sharing
Foreword:
Beginnings are the hardest things. Beginning a novel, or a song, a thought, or a relationship. How do you start something that really had no beginning? This novel, (or what will hopefully become a novel) had no beginning, it didn't really start anywhere solid. Well, thats not quite true. Its starting in a Caribou on Franklin St, Chapelhill, North Carolina at 7:55 pm on November 1st. But what's being written, that wasn't born, that had no beginning. Most of it wont even be written after this moment, most of it was written, or felt, or thought months even YEARS before.
What am I writing, then? “I'm writing my history, though I can not read nor write”
I'm writing a history that was, a history that is becoming, a history that was not born, and some history that will never be. Memories of moments that didn't happen will find there way into this “story,” wonderings that may never come to be. Even some of the words will be unreal, because there aren't enough words to explain everything that can be thought, and felt, and said. This is where the poetry comes from, this is where the art has room to grow, in words that can't be said.
My research will be myself, a series of journals going back to 1998, and a veritable library of conversations logged, and the spur of the moment thoughts that occur to me along the way. Dreams in the dark of the night that happen to be remembered, visions during the day, shapes and stories seen in the clouds. All will be recorded, all will be remembered, all will be imagined. And hopefully some of it will gain reality.
You might call a person who would spend so much time and effort reliving the last few years as an excuse to write a novel about them someone who lives in the past. I don't. However, I don't think I can say I live in the present either, and one look at my grades and attendance record would prove to you I don't live in the future. Infact, I seem to live in about a three foot radius of my current position in space and time. This tends to cause some problems. I am occasionally a couple feet ahead of myself, or a couple of feet behind, which is completely normal. But then there are the days I spend living life a couple of feet to the right, or left, which is a bit hard to explain. Think of if like a series of train tracks, criss crossing, winding, circling all throughout reality. Each of them is/was a possibility, a life to live. I think I tend to spend too much time on tracks other than the one I'm actually living, I spend too much thinking about a life I'm not actually living. My reality is traveling along one track, but my mind, my thoughts, my imagination, whatever essence that is not my body, is traveling along a parallel one, not quite intersecting, not a real past, not a possible future, but still there.
This will probably be the most trite, cliché, immature, falsely philosophical thing you've read in a very very long time, and personally, I don't really care. Its not for you, it wasn't written for you, and it wasn't even really written to be read. It was mostly written just to be... well, written. Because somethings become easier when they get put down in words. And somethings just need to be done to say you could do them. Like writing 50,000 words in one moth, and calling it a novel.
In warning: the style is guaranteed to be atrocious, the grammar embarrassing, the spelling not too bad thanks to spell check. The flow will probably be stilted, the plot non-existent and the characters incomprehensible.
Chapter One: Now.
Now she is sitting there, worried, fingers flying as if they can do the running for her. Running away from the depth of the waters she's slowly sinking in. She never throws herself into anything anymore, she just drifts in the currents. She's trying to change that though, she's trying to swim, she's just not sure where she wants to go anymore.
Thats the poetry anyway. The reality? A multi variable calculus test tomorrow. A physics class she must be close to failing, a Spanish class she's embarrassed to attend, and a philosophy class she hasn't attended in two weeks. A best friend she loves more than she should, a roommate she doesn't share much with anymore, and a group of other friends she was too afraid to leave. Afraid she'd never find their like again. Afraid she couldn't make friends like that again.
What she likes: Neil Gaiman, dancing (Irish, ballroom, ballet), writing things she doesn't really believe, believing things she doesn't really want to, reading things she'll never experience, experiencing things she never really wanted to. She likes posturing, she likes to create who she is, who people see her as. She likes her friends, most of them. She likes lofty ideas, and imagining things she'll never do. She likes escaping. She likes Mercedes Lackey books, even if people tell her they are trite and shallow. She likes Douglas Adams, even if he's “too well known to be cool anymore.” She likes frozen coffee, but not real coffee. She likes Nick Drake, Anna Nalick, Nightwish, Dispatch, Cake and Queen because they remind her of places and people she loves. She likes puzzles, she likes drawing even if she's not very good at it. She likes dressing up, she likes costumes, and she likes Halloween. She likes fall because of the way it smells, and the way the wind blows, and what the night feels like. She likes making jewelry.
What she has: A series of journals going back almost ten years that are worth more to her than anything besides the lives of her friends and family, and her computer. And the only reason her computer is worth that much to her is because it contains the archive of conversations, pictures, emails, essays, bits of writing, that may one day tell someone (herself?) who she is(was?). She has one sister, and two parents. She has enough college credits to be considered a sophomore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (which is exactly what and where she is). She has a group of friends who she wouldn't trade for a life anywhere else (which she has already proved to herself). She has a brain and a memory she doesn't trust to work the way she wasn't them to, and a personality she equally loathes and loves. She has a billion questions she believes will never be answered, and an inclination to paranoia in how others look at her, and judge her, and respect her.
What she looks like: Would it surprise you to find out that she has red hair she's always felt is her prettiest feature? She has brown eyes she's always protected with glasses, and she insists on wearing diamond shaped frames, a habit she picked up when she was 7. She's tall for this day and age, around 5'9”. She has freckles, and long legs. Fingernails that are never long, or painted, or even symmetrical. A thin figure and a high cheekbones. She is mostly comfortable with the way she looks. She finds herself nicely pretty, and is occasionally as vain as any other girl.
Does any of this change the way you think about her? Did you imagine this was written by a friendless, ugly, unhappy, anti-social girl will the self-esteem of a potato in Ireland?
She's not. She's mostly happy (As happy as anyone else, anyways, though she's self-aware enough to understand and accept that true happiness might not be possible for long or often). She wavers between worrying that she's more typical than she knows, and being utterly sure that she is one of the most unique and individual people she knows.
Do you like her? Do you dislike her? Do you know what you think about her? How are you judging her? If there's one thing she wants to know in this moment, it is that. She knows who she is in her own thoughts. She is her thoughts. But she is also YOUR thoughts, and this contributes to who she is. Like vector addition, her own thoughts point in one direction, your thoughts of her point in another, and she it not solely one or the other, but the addition of both. (Take THAT multi!)
Who she is will never really be answered, will never be quantified, and this is one of the hardest things she will ever be asked to accept. And maybe thats the point of life, that you never do quite accept it. That there are too many variables to adequately describe the function of who you are.
Can you handle that?
Probably the only time I'll ever succeed...
Anyways, here's the only part that I feel comfortable sharing
Foreword:
Beginnings are the hardest things. Beginning a novel, or a song, a thought, or a relationship. How do you start something that really had no beginning? This novel, (or what will hopefully become a novel) had no beginning, it didn't really start anywhere solid. Well, thats not quite true. Its starting in a Caribou on Franklin St, Chapelhill, North Carolina at 7:55 pm on November 1st. But what's being written, that wasn't born, that had no beginning. Most of it wont even be written after this moment, most of it was written, or felt, or thought months even YEARS before.
What am I writing, then? “I'm writing my history, though I can not read nor write”
I'm writing a history that was, a history that is becoming, a history that was not born, and some history that will never be. Memories of moments that didn't happen will find there way into this “story,” wonderings that may never come to be. Even some of the words will be unreal, because there aren't enough words to explain everything that can be thought, and felt, and said. This is where the poetry comes from, this is where the art has room to grow, in words that can't be said.
My research will be myself, a series of journals going back to 1998, and a veritable library of conversations logged, and the spur of the moment thoughts that occur to me along the way. Dreams in the dark of the night that happen to be remembered, visions during the day, shapes and stories seen in the clouds. All will be recorded, all will be remembered, all will be imagined. And hopefully some of it will gain reality.
You might call a person who would spend so much time and effort reliving the last few years as an excuse to write a novel about them someone who lives in the past. I don't. However, I don't think I can say I live in the present either, and one look at my grades and attendance record would prove to you I don't live in the future. Infact, I seem to live in about a three foot radius of my current position in space and time. This tends to cause some problems. I am occasionally a couple feet ahead of myself, or a couple of feet behind, which is completely normal. But then there are the days I spend living life a couple of feet to the right, or left, which is a bit hard to explain. Think of if like a series of train tracks, criss crossing, winding, circling all throughout reality. Each of them is/was a possibility, a life to live. I think I tend to spend too much time on tracks other than the one I'm actually living, I spend too much thinking about a life I'm not actually living. My reality is traveling along one track, but my mind, my thoughts, my imagination, whatever essence that is not my body, is traveling along a parallel one, not quite intersecting, not a real past, not a possible future, but still there.
This will probably be the most trite, cliché, immature, falsely philosophical thing you've read in a very very long time, and personally, I don't really care. Its not for you, it wasn't written for you, and it wasn't even really written to be read. It was mostly written just to be... well, written. Because somethings become easier when they get put down in words. And somethings just need to be done to say you could do them. Like writing 50,000 words in one moth, and calling it a novel.
In warning: the style is guaranteed to be atrocious, the grammar embarrassing, the spelling not too bad thanks to spell check. The flow will probably be stilted, the plot non-existent and the characters incomprehensible.
Chapter One: Now.
Now she is sitting there, worried, fingers flying as if they can do the running for her. Running away from the depth of the waters she's slowly sinking in. She never throws herself into anything anymore, she just drifts in the currents. She's trying to change that though, she's trying to swim, she's just not sure where she wants to go anymore.
Thats the poetry anyway. The reality? A multi variable calculus test tomorrow. A physics class she must be close to failing, a Spanish class she's embarrassed to attend, and a philosophy class she hasn't attended in two weeks. A best friend she loves more than she should, a roommate she doesn't share much with anymore, and a group of other friends she was too afraid to leave. Afraid she'd never find their like again. Afraid she couldn't make friends like that again.
What she likes: Neil Gaiman, dancing (Irish, ballroom, ballet), writing things she doesn't really believe, believing things she doesn't really want to, reading things she'll never experience, experiencing things she never really wanted to. She likes posturing, she likes to create who she is, who people see her as. She likes her friends, most of them. She likes lofty ideas, and imagining things she'll never do. She likes escaping. She likes Mercedes Lackey books, even if people tell her they are trite and shallow. She likes Douglas Adams, even if he's “too well known to be cool anymore.” She likes frozen coffee, but not real coffee. She likes Nick Drake, Anna Nalick, Nightwish, Dispatch, Cake and Queen because they remind her of places and people she loves. She likes puzzles, she likes drawing even if she's not very good at it. She likes dressing up, she likes costumes, and she likes Halloween. She likes fall because of the way it smells, and the way the wind blows, and what the night feels like. She likes making jewelry.
What she has: A series of journals going back almost ten years that are worth more to her than anything besides the lives of her friends and family, and her computer. And the only reason her computer is worth that much to her is because it contains the archive of conversations, pictures, emails, essays, bits of writing, that may one day tell someone (herself?) who she is(was?). She has one sister, and two parents. She has enough college credits to be considered a sophomore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (which is exactly what and where she is). She has a group of friends who she wouldn't trade for a life anywhere else (which she has already proved to herself). She has a brain and a memory she doesn't trust to work the way she wasn't them to, and a personality she equally loathes and loves. She has a billion questions she believes will never be answered, and an inclination to paranoia in how others look at her, and judge her, and respect her.
What she looks like: Would it surprise you to find out that she has red hair she's always felt is her prettiest feature? She has brown eyes she's always protected with glasses, and she insists on wearing diamond shaped frames, a habit she picked up when she was 7. She's tall for this day and age, around 5'9”. She has freckles, and long legs. Fingernails that are never long, or painted, or even symmetrical. A thin figure and a high cheekbones. She is mostly comfortable with the way she looks. She finds herself nicely pretty, and is occasionally as vain as any other girl.
Does any of this change the way you think about her? Did you imagine this was written by a friendless, ugly, unhappy, anti-social girl will the self-esteem of a potato in Ireland?
She's not. She's mostly happy (As happy as anyone else, anyways, though she's self-aware enough to understand and accept that true happiness might not be possible for long or often). She wavers between worrying that she's more typical than she knows, and being utterly sure that she is one of the most unique and individual people she knows.
Do you like her? Do you dislike her? Do you know what you think about her? How are you judging her? If there's one thing she wants to know in this moment, it is that. She knows who she is in her own thoughts. She is her thoughts. But she is also YOUR thoughts, and this contributes to who she is. Like vector addition, her own thoughts point in one direction, your thoughts of her point in another, and she it not solely one or the other, but the addition of both. (Take THAT multi!)
Who she is will never really be answered, will never be quantified, and this is one of the hardest things she will ever be asked to accept. And maybe thats the point of life, that you never do quite accept it. That there are too many variables to adequately describe the function of who you are.
Can you handle that?