Ambition and Experiment.

I’ve given myself a mission of sorts in an attempt to drag myself out of the ever-increasing drama of retail. I’ve done it before (twice successfully, twice not so much) so one would imagine I’d go into this with a certain amount of confidence and reassurance that it is, indeed, something I’m capable of. Yet there is something about deadlines coming and going and the pressure to achieve a certain word count by a certain time that always reawakens that last minute panic.

The Goal: Complete a novel in 30 days with a minimum of 50,000 words.
The Plan: Chart progress in a prominently displayed area with a requirement of 1,667 words per day, face the inquisition of the Tophmonster and the threat of unpleasant chores if word count is not met.
Current Progress: 6,649 words.
Today’s goal: Reach 8,335 words.

This is the experiment. I used to be quite a voracious writer. I have stacks of old notebooks dating back to when I was 12 or so, every one filled to the brim with phrases, paragraphs, random scenes, snippets of this and that. If you go through some of them and pull out just the right passages, you can actually create an entire, chronological piece. You won’t find a single complete work in any one notebook. This is the way my mind works. I scatter things. Through the courses of various major life changes and quite a few more mundane ones, however, I’ve completely cut off that aspect of myself. At one point, I even convinced myself I had to rely on another person to create something beautiful, which we did, but it wasn’t the right story. Now it’s time for me to stand up on my own two feet and tell the story that should have been told in the first place.

Writing for me is not only a hobby of sorts, but it’s a way to look at myself objectively, in a manner of speaking. Of course there’s always a certain amount of real life filtering into characters and events, but beyond that into style, vocabulary, imagery, metaphor. I’ve found it’s an easy way to plot my own changes and development. Not so long ago, it also helped me realize how far I’ve moved away from certain things in my past. And I suppose, in a way, that’s the real experiment. Sometimes we all need tangible evidence that an era has ended. Words are loose and fragile, actions subject to interpretation, but objects are symbolic. This is why we treasure otherwise worthless objects, why we spend hours agonizing over just the right ring for that special someone, why we collect and horde without ever realizing that’s what we’re doing. I have entire cedar chest of random things my mother collected, some of them I know the reasoning behind; most I don’t. Now it also has some of my contributions and some day I’ll give it to my child and he’ll do the same. Because those things represent a phase of life, and there is power in that symbolism.

I know what you’re thinking. How did we get from writing a novel in one month to object symbolism? Everything is connected one way or another. We all go through transitions in life, from one step to the next. We only pay attention to the big ones – births, weddings, funerals, etc. – but sometimes the little ones have just as much affect. We go through our lives handing out pieces of ourselves to various people – friends, family, old lovers – and every time we leave one of them, we leave that piece of ourselves with them. In the past, I’ve given bits of myself out far too easily, but I’ve since learned it’s much better to save them for someone who knows how to care for them properly. I’m in the process of closing the book on a part of my life I’ve outgrown and opening the page of something exciting and beautiful and meaningful, and to do that I have to reclaim myself entirely. Writing this novel is part of that, silly as it may seem, but in the end, it will stand as a reflection of my life right now. It’s always a little fun to look back at things like that.

~ by Xan on Sunday. 4. February. 2007..