NaNoOhNo

If I were a chef and cooked meals the same way I write, I would just keep grabbing random items out of the fridge and probably a sock drawer too, dump it all in a bowl, hit it with a baseball bat, pace around nervously in circles for a few hours to decide if it’s worth serving and then if you ate the meal you would run the risk of ingesting a meat thermometer I forgot to take out.

-Out of context quote

So, it’s November and I (as well as every other keyboard fondler and wordslinger you know) am currently in the early stages of of NaNoWriMo. No that’s not a strange rare disease. For those unaware of NaNoWriMo, it’s a month long exercise in anxiety, depression, impostor syndrome and occasionally trying to write a fifty thousand word novel in 30 days. I’ve never made it close even once, but for some reason I decided to give it another go this year.

So, my dear neglected little blog got back-burnered as I once again decided to run head first into a wall while trying to convince myself that I can be a novelist all while neglecting writing skills I actually do have. After all, writing is writing…right? No sense doing what you’re good at when you can torture yourself instead trying to push a boulder up a hill.

At least this month I can cross off No Shave November without much trouble – that just kinda naturally happens as you sink deeper into the abyss and a general numbing sense of nihilism takes over as you stare blankly into the bright white desert of an empty screen whose only activity is a blinking cursor. [NOTE: Don’t even get me started on No Nut November. If you combine a lack of…gratification with NaNoWriMo, you’re basically creating a serial killer. That’s just science.]

I swear it all comes back to that fucking cursor. It taunts me. Like it’s condescendingly saying “I’m waitiiiiiing.” It’s the impatient foot tapping of a schoolteacher who decided to retire on the job, and has substituted quality education for blunt force repetition of making you write out the same line 50 times. Except you do it to yourself!

Every time that cursor blinks on that empty screen it’s like the heartbeat of a dead man hidden under the floorboards, thumping louder each time in a way that only a man gradually slipping into self imposed madness can hear. Guilt given a voice saying “If you were better at this I wouldn’t be blinking right now. Why are you making me blink? Why is this page empty? Why can’t you just write the damn thing?”

See that? Great literary reference there. Ok, not great. It’s basic stuff I learned from Simpson’s Halloween specials. Even so, why can’t I do that when the cursor is watching me? Why do I turn into a drooling caveman barely able to type out a coherent sentence? What is it about that little pixelated prick blinking at me that just turns me to stone?

You know I just realized the root of cursor sounds like ‘curse”. It that an actual thing? Couldn’t tell ya. At any rate, now the concept of blinking cursor as ever present reminder of failure is in my brain and it won’t go away. As malevolent schoolyard bully. As the symbol of your worst fears and anxieties of not being disciplined enough to do the one thing that you’re actually kind of good at in a way that matters or is beneficial.

No, instead the Cursor sits upon my screen. Blinking, haunting, mocking me. “What’s your word count?” I’m forced to answer “A paltry five hundred seventy-four”.

Quoth the Cursor, “nevermore”.

And the tapping, tapping of the keys. Always tapping, never pleased. Delete! Delete! Setting you back further than you were before.

Quoth the Cursor, “nevermore”.

And so I find myself despairing of another NaNoWriMo failing. Another junked November, just like many years before.

Quoth the Cursor, “nevermore”.

……aaanyway.

I feel like I’m losing the thread here. So I’m gonna ditch the Poe gimmick because it’s slowing me down having to think of rhymes (that honestly, are only kinda rhymes if you stand far away and look at them sideways while squinting and standing on your head).

I go through this every few years. You would think that running head first into a brick wall with “YOU ARE NOT A LONG FORM FICTION WRITER” stenciled on it in bright colours would get the message through but no.

Every few years my brain decides to go “Herp derp yes I am!” *CRASH*

There’s also a element of mechanics here. Long fiction just isn’t for me. Never cared for prose writing. I only ever liked writing scripts when I was younger because I cared more about the words than what colour my dashing hero: Jacques MacCoch’s eyes were. (Lawyer’s Note: Jacques MacCoch is a registered trademark of Yo Mama Hack Joke Industries Inc.)

No amount of prep or self imposed torture will ever make novel writing my thing. And yet I keep running into the wall. I think part of it is that publishing a book is seen as a legitimizing rite of passage for a writer and…whatever the fuck this is, is not. I think so many see writing novels as this certificate of validation so much that we overlook other writing skill sets and will twist ourselves into exhausted pretzels trying to make it happen. Like we’re trying to earn merit badges in a (slightly) more booze soaked Cub Scouts. “I published a novel, and so I get my “Real Writer” badge. It’ll go great next to my “Alcoholism” badge and “Tweed Jacket’ badge.”

That’s not to diminish the accomplishment of people who can do NaNoWriMo or write novels. Quite the opposite in fact. I’m being flippant but clearly it’s something that requires a great deal of skill, patience, discipline and work. Very recently, a friend of mine, Niall Howell (author of Only Pretty Damned available now at all the cool bookstores or via Amazon if you don’t like leaving your house) published his first book. [Note: Get used to me plugging his book. I’m planning on pimping him out like he’s the Batmobile.]

After reading Niall’s book I found the idea of writing a novel reinvigorated in my own mind. Like it was something I could do. Not in a “Well if that asshole can get published…” kind of way, but in a way that made this impossible goal tangible because someone I knew had managed to climb the mountain.

Maybe this time I can actually…*CRASH*

And then the old brick wall comes wheelin’ back in to re-assert it’s thesis on the whole matter. This time with slightly bigger brighter letters now surrounded with klaxon buzzers and a couple of wasp nests, just to really emphasize the point.

Of course, there’s an extra layer of irony in the cursor that taunts me. Astute readers (or based on my analytics and spam comment folder, Russian bots) will notice that I chose a stylized version of a cursor as the icon for my website. It’s a shape to me that represents the endless possibilities a blank page provides. The beauty of the dance that little icon does as it flits about a screen adding, removing, changing ideas, words and thoughts. Eventually assembling it all into into some kind of meaning. Or I junk the whole thing and start over. It’s 50/50 really.

Yet during NaNoWriMo, the cursor turns against me. It becomes an all knowing, ever watching Eye of Sauron, sitting there blinking…waiting…staring knowingly into all of my fears and anxieties and silently judging me. The symbol I took of hope and optimism becoming evil and threatening. It’s like going to Disneyland and getting mugged by Mickey Mouse.

The name of this site also exists as a nod to my own chaotic creative process. If I were a chef and cooked meals the same way I write, I would just keep grabbing random items out of the fridge and probably a sock drawer too, dump it all in a bowl, hit it with a baseball bat, pace around nervously in circles for a few hours to decide if it’s worth serving and then if you ate the meal you would run the risk of ingesting a meat thermometer I forgot to take out. I chose RogueType because my fingers tend to take on a mind of their own as my brain just churns out whatever collection of thoughts happen to be bumping around in there. It seemed fitting.

It’s for these reasons that I always run into issues with NaNoWriMo. For some I would imagine the pressure of one month deadline would energize them. For me it just causes the never ending cycles of analysis paralysis to gum up the works. All those little stabs of anxiety come flooding in. What if the story idea I’ve chosen hits a wall or doesn’t turn out? What if the story I’ve been thinking about for years comes out badly? After all it’s perfect in my head.

Along that same thought, did you know Barry Levinson spent a decade writing Toys before he gained enough clout from Rain Man and Good Morning Vietnam…to make Toys? Remember Toys? It was that weird 1992 Robin Williams movie that I pretended to like as a kid because I picked it and didn’t want to admit that I picked a bad movie.

Ultimately in my third NaNo attempt, I ended up sitting down to a blank screen with a couple of ideas that I wasn’t all that excited about writing because concepts and premises that seemed so unique to me when I first came up with them years ago had either been done better by others or I kind of lost interest in them. I was several days behind which only added to the overall ennui I was feeling about the whole enterprise. No amount of pre-planning is going to get blood from that stone. Not when I can toss off thousands of words about what a soul sucking process that realization all was and riff on Poe twice in the same piece.

I don’t have those problems with stuff like this. Those blocks don’t happen. However my brain has a tendency to think of what I do as just some freakish superpower that doesn’t involve any skill (like I got bit by a radioactive typewriter or something) and so I think I don’t earn anything by doing stuff like this because it doesn’t feel enough like a struggle. So I have to seek out things I find punishing and difficult, because only then will success be truly earned. Meanwhile, I sat down today to talk about my struggles with NaNoWriMo with no plan beyond that and this all happened. Posts like this happen by accident to me all the time because I can’t shut off the nonsense valve. So, the realization I’ve come to it maybe it’s time to let it run?

This is the part of the long winded essay where I try to wrap things up with something resembling a point. Settle in for some bullshit.

I suppose the point of all of this is (aside from “writing is cheaper than therapy”) to say, to my fellow NaNo sufferers “It’s ok if it doesn’t work for you”. I think sometimes people need to hear that because the lack of success in the structure of NaNoWriMo can often feel like a personal failure, but everyone works differently. If you write often, take pride in it and you know the difference between “there”, “their” and “they’re”; you’re a writer. Don’t let the completion of any particular item on a checklist or the accomplishment of a merit badge diminish the work you do or the pride you can have in it.

To those who do write books, keep it up so I have stuff to read. I can’t do what you do but I’m starting to appreciate that maybe not everybody can do what I do. And maybe I should appreciate that more, rather than chasing after something I find difficult and aggravating just so I can fail at it to re-enforce a deep seeded need to keep myself from feeling too good about things.

[Note: There’s also a whole thing about a tendency to self sabotage and under value my own merit due to my personal twin mental bullies of Impostor Syndrome and low hum Depression basically taking turns punching me back and forth like a 3 Stooges bit. I’ve kind of hit my limit for self examination today so that’ll have to wait.]

As for NaNoWriMo, while I enjoy a good book, I think it’s ok to admit that my skill set doesn’t necessarily translate to being able to write one. The process is too long (leaving too much time for second guessing myself) and my process is too chaotic to fit into that organized structure, but as the old saying goes: there’s more than one way to kill two birds while skinning a cat.

If you’ve got something that works for you, don’t be afraid to lean into it. Writing a novel requires a level of long term discipline and organization that just isn’t conducive to my own creative process of free flowing extemporized word-splatter but if it’s working for you, I’m pulling for you. I hope you nail it. And even if you don’t you should be proud of yourself for trying. One thing I’ve learned is that it’s one of those things that everyone thinks they can do but it’s harder than it looks and the only way to know that is to try.

I sat frozen staring at a blank screen 2 nights ago and today managed to come out the other side with thousands of words about my various experience and difficulties within that process. That’s not a novel, but it’s…something. I don’t imagine that my frustrations and anxieties are unique to me. The stuff I’ve talked about here is as much an exploration of the human condition as anything found in my award never nominated science fiction epic “Jacques McCoch and the Lizard Men From Uranus”. [Once again, trademark of Yo Mama Hacky Jokes Industries Inc.]

There’s nothing wrong with pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and trying something because it’s a challenge. That’s admirable and I hope to do it someday if I ever get comfortable enough in a zone to get pushed out of it. For now, my personal NaNo will be here doing what I should be doing instead. Still aiming for 50,000 words but on my own terms and in my own way. Without a road map for how I get there (and starting way behind where I should be) we’ll see how it goes.

2306 words.

I’m counting it.