Pam Bustin
creator, editor, story tender
What to do when….(shall I play in NaNoLand this year?)
When the mind is aswirl and will not rest…
Will not settle to the work at hand…
What to do
What to do
What to do
There is always work at hand.
And there is, within me, so often resistance to the work I think I SHOULD be doing.
Like today/this week…
I have such a yearning to find my way to a new draft of a story about where we learn grace that I wrote last year for a Geist contest. Cuz I think there is something there. But oh oh oh this work feels so … heavy and hard to me right now.
And as I sat in the bunky doing my Scrib this morning, a thought/vision/idea raced across my mind and gave me shivers.
I’ve been contemplating a return to NaNoWrimo Land this year.
A bunch of my pals from the 3Day Novel Contest are regular NaNo participants and I always like the feeling of working in/with a community, so I was thinking of signing on as a NanoRebel and using the month to work on revisions to already existing work but…
This morning, my heart leapt up and offered me something else.
The thought of maybe doing something brand-spanking new and using November’s NanoWriMo world as a spur to do it.
I had a vision of…. a notebook.
A writer’s notebook.
A notebook filled with ephemera and stories. Various bibs and bobs pasted in and surrounded by words. Story. Dialogue. Poetry. Whatever.
I saw…a fun way to spend November.
Creating—short shots.
Finding my “inspiration” in…. I dunno yet… maybe just my world of the day before (or the morning OF the day), like gathering an idea/quote/picture and then just … free falling into a story/poem/whatever.
If I was in a city and wandering around during the day I would grab things, like… found treasures from… the ground or posters or whatever that I could paste into a notebook and then… riff off of.
Since I don’t tend to wander through the world in quite that way right now, maybe I will stumble across things online or whatever. That could work as well.
So I plan to create more of a … virtual notebook.
Jumping off of…
- Snippets of songs or poems.
- An image.
- Something from a book.
- Words from an email.
And I thought…
Hey, I could also play with this a bit in BlogLand – not posting the entire thing each day but maybe the … inspiration… and a wee excerpt of the thing I write or something like that.
As a way to…. restart this ole blogThing and also stand up to this awful awful awful loud CRITIC that is screaming at me all the time about how bad all my “work” is.
Because here’s the truth — this critic monster is KILLIN ME. Entirely. I see so many… possibilities in drafts of stories sitting, so long neglected on my hard-drive. But I seem unable to … bring the possibilities OUT. I know know KNOW that there are pieces I want to work on next year with an eye to … sending them out into the world somehow. But right now—everything I touch is crumbling beneath my hands.
So I gotta switch gears.
There will be time time and time to work on these pieces. Ha – even as I write that I can hear the monster panicking –
NO NO NO you must stay here with me and slam away at these pieces until the gold is revealed. If you don’t do this, you will never finish ANYTHING EVER AGAIN!!!!!
I see you monster. And I acknowledge the fact that, yes, there be gold in them thar hills but… I’m still missing something that I need in order to get to it.
I need to kick things up and make some new stuff right now.
I need to peel some bark off to get to the core.
I need to stoke the fire.
I need to get back to the playful in my writing practice and this idea feels FUN.
Am I just avoiding the hard work of revision?
Maybe.
But… so what if I am?
I stare at that question.
Right now, no one is… waiting on anything from me.
I’ve got no contracts on the go.
This idea might just just be…. foolish and goofy but… at least it is CREATING something, right?
And that feels… hopeful.
So… yeah… I’m gonna hop on over to NaNoLand and create a new project for this year.
And maybe even a new board over on Pinterest to play with.
Cool.
Do you have any plans for fun creative work in November?
I hope so.
go easy ~p
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Pam Bustin 