Novel November?

"Patience, grasshopper," my volleyball coach likes to say.
"Yes, sensei," I reply, snickering at our running joke.

I'm not a patient person.  I think I've said this before.  It's not that I'm rushed or short-fused on a regular basis.  In truth, I've got a much deeper store of patience than a lot of people do when it comes to dealing with other humans.  Particularly short humans of the child-variety.  But when it comes to waiting for something really exciting to happen, I'm the one who can't sleep on Christmas eve (or better yet, the night before Fuds).

Wednesday night, I couldn't fall asleep.  I didn't bother checking my phone, but I knew it was late, and I knew I was wide awake.  You see, I get these ideas, and then in my mind, the best thing to do is rush into them.  My cousin, a writer, tells me that I should write a novel, and then I'm like, Let's write a novel, people!  Get out the midnight oil!  NO ONE'S SLEEPING TONIGHT!

Of course, I'm mature and responsible enough to know that staying up all night on a school night is a terrible decision, so I didn't actively go that route.  But my brain does what it does, and I found myself wide-eyed in bed, dreaming up characters and scenarios and structures.  I cracked a '90s chick-lit paperback I'd found at the library last month to help ease my eyelids downward, but then I started deconstructing the interesting point of view choices the author was making, and I was awake all over again. (BTW, reading about someone trying out the internet on dial up is a hilarious blast from the past.  I'm actively encouraging you to find a novel or movie from the late '90s and get a good, bellowy chuckle.  Man, I wish I was still that excited about getting email.)

Eventually, the responsible and tired side of me won out, and I got just enough sleep to let me function but require me to yawn every fifteen minutes the next day.  (You're welcome, coworkers who crossed my path in the morning and were thus condemned to day-long yawning.)

I've never really considered myself a manic person, but I just have these ideas, THESE GREAT IDEAS, and I want to make them happen.  Right now.  Because they're so great.  Why would anyone wait to implement these great ideas?

Luckily, the angel on my left shoulder is stronger than the insane person on my right, so I usually force myself to wait out good ideas.  If I'm still thinking of them down the line, they're still good ideas, right?  This backfires occasionally (like when I plan on voting the morning of my plane flight and then find out the night before that the polls will open as I'm boarding...or when I decide to spend 3 weeks in Canada in the summer and almost forget to pay the deposit), but usually, it's a wise idea.  Waiting until December to talk is giving me time to flesh out my proposal to my principal about a new position for me, and waiting until next week to register is giving me time to decide if I really want to participate in something called NaNoWriMo.

Don't know what that is?  Well, neither did I until about an hour ago.  My friend Lisa sent me a message earlier today with the suggestion to check it out.  She and one of her co-workers are participating in National Novel Writing Month this November (aka in 7 days).  It's like my month of writing, but on steroids: 30 days, 50,000 words.  People all over the world are committing themselves to writing a full novel (or at least as much of a novel as 50,000 words can get you) in a single month.  Personally, that seems insane, but I guess the purpose is just to do it.  I can push off novel-writing until next summer until kingdom come, but if I've got this online tracking program and community of people keeping me accountable, well then maybe I'll actually do it before I get my first gray hair.

I'm still debating if it's something I want to do, though.  As I said, I've got an idea of what I might want that novel to look like and sound like and be about, but 50,000 words in 30 days means 1700 words a day.  For perspective, that's three times as many words as I've written so far in this post.  Which means--because I normally write incredibly slowly and potentially would have no social life if I had to write even more than I already do--that I have to make a very important and uncomfortable choice: I either have to not do it, or I have to forbid myself from editing my work until after the month is over.  Which is insane and totally out of my comfort zone.  ...Which is actually making me think I should register right now.  Because I could really stand to learn how to write without constantly editing as I go.  (I'm trying to do it with this paragraph right now, and it's killing me that I haven't already re-read and edited the thing at least once.  Because I'm insane.)

But I won't register.  Not yet.  The angel on my shoulder says I should wait.  Next month will be busy with work, and I'm hoping to get some extra volleyball time in, too.  Adding even more writing to the mix would be hard.  I should think about it.  I should seriously consider the weight of the commitment, she says.

She's right.  I know she is.  But I kind of hope the insane person on the other shoulder wins out anyway.  Because IT'S A GREAT IDEA.

My advocate for crazy