Wednesday 1 December 2010

NaNoWriMo Blues

Yep, it's finally finished. I managed to get my Lands Of Mist wrapped up and then zoomed through the sci-fi/humour one.

I feel tired.

Like last year I didn't get that big rewarding feeling I got after I finished my first ever book (and I now realise, for a long time I thought I'd never say that), but that's okay because I wasn't expecting it anyway. The more and more I do it, sure, the better it feels throughout rather than at the end. The "end" leaves a kind of a void and that void brings me closer not to the writing but to life itself.

You see it's in moments like these when things really start to overlap.

Here's a list:
a friend with depression
a friend's critique of a short story
a fellow meditator going through some complicated stuff in his emotional life
the end of a month writing two books at the same time, still trying to figure out if I'm doing the right thing or not
experiences in meditation
family stuff
house stuff
life stuff
snowing throughout the day, home bound but glad
a beautiful night outside that I almost wish it would last forever though I know better
reading Gene Wolfe's Latro In The Mist (two novels in one)
the unmistakable feeling I've never done anything perfect, that everything has always been quite off the mark

Lots of things for you but, for me they're just one. They're all circling that very same thing that I can't put my finger to and that I'm always feeling will descend like an angel from heaven and sweep me and all the problems away, even while knowing that's a chimera more foolish than Quixote's.
I keep telling myself what I know is right but more often than not it just sound ridiculous, redundant and pointless like everything else.

But I know how this rolls also. My brain has been stuck into the same modus operandi for a month. Now it's time to go back to the real world. There are difficulties of adaptation. And the confines of fantasy have revealed their true limitations or, rather, my very own.
Perhaps one of the toughest things in being a writer is not to go crazy since you have to keep on searching for things deeper and deeper and deeper. That is, if you aim to achieve something with those words.
Which is the most foolish thing of all, to actually take them seriously.
But, if you do so, be advised that you are treading dangerous ground. I feel that there are rewards but there are also dangers. It's no wonder that most writers can be identified, categorised, known. They are mapping themselves out and, quite possibly, losing themselves in the process. Perhaps only a handful of the dedicated ones don't lose themselves. Those are the ones to pay attention to.

For they have found a way.

And they might still lead us there.

It's a beautiful night outside. Snow everywhere. As beautiful as it is dangerous. I want to be doing something else right now instead of writing. I don't know what.

Perhaps outside, walking in the cold and the snow. Hearing that vast silence of a city asleep. A silence that can only be made present with so many lying in their slumber. I love that silence. Just like the way I love the way the night is so much brighter whenever there's snow.
A part of me wants this night to go on forever.
But another knows all too well how long moments last.

Peace.