Saturday, October 25, 2014

Intensely Felt, Sensitive, Promising Prose

Something dangerous happened the first half of this fall semester. I avoided fiction like the plague. I tried to write a line or two every so often, but I panicked. My prose was far from perfect. I wasn't enthused about my ideas. So I just didn't write. I pulled a Paul from Breakfast at Tiffany's. I was sitting around, "writing" my novel, but I didn't even own a metaphorical typewriter ribbon. It was downright depressing.

Is it okay if Breakfast at Tiffany's is my favorite movie now? Hope so.
Well, the past week I've been home on fall break with plenty of time to mull over NaNoWriMo e-mails and sift through old dreams, and you know what? I've decided I don't care if my prose is perfect. I don't care if I write the most trite piece of work to ever grace the planet. I just want to write something. I'm going to write something that doesn't look like "real literature" in the least because I've got to do something with all the scenes and voices in my head. Let there be irrational inventions and historically inaccurate societies and entirely fictional wars fought by impossible people sidelined by highly illogical romances. Let there be days where I don't write enough, followed by days where I write too much and the ideas all putter out into cliches and ramblings. Let there be early Saturday mornings complete with coffee and fall breezes and chapters only I will ever see because they are so atrocious. Let there be something, anything with my name on it. It's the only way I'll ever get better.

So there you have it. I'm doing NaNoWriMo 2014. I probably won't win. I probably will only get one decent paragraph out of it. And you know what? I don't care. And not caring feels positively glorious. Goodbye, Mean Reds. Hello, November.

November Mantra: Channel your post-Holly Paul and for heaven's sake, just write something.