Today, Nanowrimo Is the Least Crazy Thing about My Life

[dr_pretentious]

12,948 / 50,000 (25.9%)

Today's words: 2328

Remaining deficit: 2055 Definitely closing the gap!

Working conditions: Longhand writing shift at Starbucks, late night computer shift at dining table. 3rd week with no pain meds but tylenol; ready to strangle my doctor. Easy to keep butt in chair when can barely walk w/o cane. Dissociating into world made of language even more appealing than usual.

Notable incidents: The seventh year of Stisele's life was awash in exposition this afternoon, so this evening I skipped ahead nine years to write her on the battlefield. Some of the carrion birds are shapeshifter spies, but which ones?

Anyhow, progress is good, and New Jersey's election results are very, very good. Most amusing lead headline in the Jersey papers: the Newark Star-Ledger, covering the Governor-elect's victory party, informs us that "CORZINE ROMPS." And well he might. Plenty to be happy about. (I bet he was allowed to take ibuprofen the next morning. Envy!)

Comments

That seems mean...

[jasminewind.livejournal.com]

Why no pain meds?

I'm very interested in the novel writing process, it seems that the creative process is not linear - you don't begin at the beginning and proceed until the end? However do you make sense of it all???!

Re: That seems mean...

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Some people begin at the beginning and proceed to the end, some don't. On any given day, I write whichever scene I can get the best view into, defaulting to linear narrative from the earliest spot that isn't filled if the view is uniformly cloudy.

It's so tempting for a person who had found A creative process that works for her to mistake it for THE creative process. Those of us whose processes make heavy use of dissociation talk about our work in terms of going into the story, being the characters, conferring with the characters, etc., and maybe that sounds easy, but it's actually a fairly strenuous discipline. People who use dissociation less in writing tend to regard writers like me with incomprehension and resentment--don't go around telling people that what we do isn't work! they say. It's tough intellectual labor, and there is no story fairy.

Yeah, well, such people conclude there is no story fairy because they don't have one. I don't know that writers get to choose which end of the spcectrum we fall on. Either we've had lives in which dissociative mental states were the only adaptive option, or we haven't. I enjoy my method immensely, but I would never have chosen the pressures that formed it. I can imagine being able to write without it, but not being able to write anything anyone would want to read.

Anyhow, the pain meds. My fertility doc says there's research that suggests non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, which work by interfering with prostaglandins fairly indiscriminately, may interfere with ovulation, which gets triggered by certain prostaglandins. In short, I get to choose between knowingly contributing to my infertility by managing my pain, or I can martyr myself further to a child I may never have anyway. Who knows, maybe the new research is onto something. If I've sounded whiny or crazy over the past three weeks, this would be a lot of the why.

The writing's actually the best thing that's going on right now.

Re: That seems mean...

[citabria]

Ye gods! No ibuprofen! May you have happy healthy children and many well-selling novels to mitigate that torture!

[reynaud.livejournal.com]

Um, did I miss something? Why do you need a cane?

Keep on the good work!

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

I've been nursing an overuse injury for 11 months. Without the non-steroidal anti-inflammatories to mask the pain, it turns out I wasn't recovering after all. Who knew?