The month of doom begins today.
Since writing my previous post about doing NaNoWriMo, I have been looking for ways to get out of it. It is the natural path my body and mind take when presented with a daunting challenge requiring diligence, hard work and time. I’ve realized it is a common thread in my life, in both little and large things. Here are just a few ways in which I defer to average-acheivement:
– Deciding whether a wall needs two coats of paint or just one. Hell, deciding whether I need to paint an entire room or just part of it. Case in point, my hallway.
The gray is supposed to continue into the hall. My intentions were to do that… about 4 months ago. It is conveniently sufficient as it is, and will remain so until my wife complains and/or reads this post. Besides, who spends time in a hallway? I’ve intentionally placed nothing there to stall you in your journey. It is a hall of ways, not of standing. Move along or yellow will burn your retinas.
– School. A particular math class had a 4 hour lab worth 10% of my grade. I figured it was a test to see who was sucker enough to actually spend 4 hours a week on only 10% of their grade. Never went to the lab even once. My reward was a C, or in other words, I passed. Mission accomplished, give me my degree.
– “Eating right” and his evil companion “working out” have also been slighted by my penchant for achieving the minimum. You know how everyone complains about that one guy who eats like crap and stays the same? Who, when he finally decides to workout, makes rapid progress? Well, I’m that guy. But rather than take advantage of my genes/youth/being male, I use it to fuel and justify a weekend of jelly donuts and sugar cookies. Seriously, yesterday I took a donut out of my garbage and ate it. Super-motivated-me threw it away and then regular-me wondered if we should taste it first. Regular-me is a tricksy hobbit.
– And now we come to writing. In all my avoiding, this pains me the most. I could tolerate being a flabby, overweight, dropout with no paint on my walls if I had a book to show for it. It’s not for lack of trying, just lack of trying for a long time.
I love to write and I love to create. I love tricky plots, I love fantasy worlds and I love imagining people devouring my book.
On the flipside, I hate sitting down to write. I hate being stuck on a scene. I hate thinking my book is going nowhere. I hate staring at a blank screen. I hate that any excuse is a good excuse to not write.
For all of those reasons, I am afraid of the 1,666.6666666 words I have to write today (trust me, I will stop at .6666666 of a word). I think that’s why I am doing it.
I’m hoping that by force barfing unreasonable amounts of words each day, I will lose weight. And while that probably won’t happen, I will lose my filter, my Excuseomatic 5000 will explode in futility, and I will learn to write.
Good luck to me.
And good luck to my friends below, who I am rooting for with selfish ulterior motives that they will root for me.
Julia Swancey
Mandaray
Ruth Rainwater
Kami
Dominique Amara
D.L. Aiden
Kiddy
(let me know if you would like to be removed from my root list. I will potentially be annoying)
Peter Monaco 
excuseomatic 5000…i love it…here’s to Nano
Learn to write? You dolt. This post is brilliant.
I am trying to talk myself out of quitting before I start. Can’t write. Must write. Two of my three kids are sick, and I caught it too. I am allegedly homeschooling.
I love yellow walls. My laundry room is yellow, by my choice and getting my dad and aunt to paint it for me while I kept the kids mostly out of the paint.
I am still laughing at your use of “tricksy hobbit.” L.O.V.E. the word “tricksy.”
There. I promised I would throw tomatoes, consider this tomato #1.
Here’s the thing: you get no more jelly doughnuts (by popular acclamation) until you write a certain number of words each day. Nor nary a sugar cookie is to be found (I will contact your wife if necessary for her to monitor the garbage can too, and any other “tricksy” place you may have hidden jelly doughnuts). I’m secure in the knowledge that even if you love them THAT MUCH, you at least can’t hide them in everyone’s favorite hiding place, between the springs and the mattress, without destroying them utterly. I find it hard to believe that even you would want to be found by your loved ones, licking and sucking the tops of the bedsprings and the bottom of the mattress in order to scarf a little bit of jelly doughnut. Please don’t disappoint me in my illusions.
You’re not alone in this. I, too, love to write. I just want what’s in my head to magically appear on the screen NOW without all that pesky typing. You are a brilliant writer, and I know you can do this. Maybe the trick is to not think about it too much? Just do and not think? That’s how I get through most of my days. Good luck to you!!!!
I almost quit on this first day. I was staring at my laptop for what felt like two hours before I managed to churn something out. 29 more days. >.< And I'm still backing that no doughnut sanction in the event of your failure, so get to writing. 😉
Butt to chair now, Monaco! Over time you will develop the habit. But developing the habit takes time. There isn’t the immediate satisfaction of a jelly donut, but there will be the satisfaction of the first day you wake up and can’t wait to get to your keyboard because words are already squishing out of you like the very jelly donut you hold in your fist now.
Now get to work! And good luck! 🙂
Good luck!! You are so brave!
you had best be working!! I made it to 1850 today!! nyah, nyah! 🙂
You can do it!! Last year, my first NaNo, I didn’t even write anything until Day 3 or 4. Then I decided I was just wasting time, and I wrote a bunch of garbage. But out of that garbage came the ideas I needed for the novel. This year, I haven’t started writing yet as I just got home from work. So here I go; and you can, too!!
Woop! Here’s hoping your 1st day went better than mine. 632 words and POW! Life smacked me in the face and wouldn’t give me any more time for the rest of the day. Blergh. Ah well, tomorrow’s my sleep-in day, so I can sit up late tonight. In theory, that is. I don’t seem to function after 10PM anymore…
632 is better than 0. And you’re more of a veteran than I, so you already know this, but a think a non-fucntional brain is more conducive to this challenge. I am considering letting my wife give me a daily concussion/drug.