If there is one thing that speaks to my career choice it is that I am helplessly gripped by my passions. No, I’m not talking about those passions, I mean the kind of passions you hope to find sometime between the day you declare your major and the time you are handed your degree. I know too many people who are older than I and still haven’t found what drives them. I consider myself very lucky to be paid to do the things I love. Unfortunately for me, I catch passions like 1st graders catch colds. I get them often and with a vengance. But they don’t last long and then I’m bouncing off to the next thing.
Luckily for me, my wife and children are patient. They understand (or pretend to understand) that sometimes I get swept up in my ideas and I can’t sleep/eat/make intelligible conversation until I get an idea on paper. More often than not these wacky ideas don’t get any farther than my sketchbook but one such fantastically ridiculous idea is currently being made into a movie so that’s got to count for something. While I don’t lack for enthusiasm, I am not known for my endurance. I work best if I can seclude myself long enough to get my ideas fleshed out and done in one, or a very few, sittings. I’d rather bang out a story in one short, furious session rather than pining away at something for a long period of time. Perhaps I fear that an idea will lose it’s newness, but I get restless when I’m still working on something that is more than a few months old.
In the past 3 months I started two different novels. One got stuck at 25,000 words when I realized I couldn’t finish it without either making an idiot out of my reader or delving into some serious research. As you probably guessed, research really isn’t my thing. So, I moved to novel #2. Currently, it’s at just under 20,000 words and I still love the book so, you know, that’s thrilling. And I don’t have to research anything which is another bonus. And it’s now three days into National Novel Writing Month! Granted, I started this book months ago so I think I disqualified myself but at least I have hordes of eager writers typing happily away at their manuscripts to motivate me. Go team!
So I am officially participating in NaNoWriMo. I’m going to bend the rules on my behalf to include December as part of my writing package since my novel is going to be about twice the length of your usual NaNoWriMo book. And I’m not going to be releasing it publicly when I’m done. I know, stingy me. But I actually want to sell my book so I’ll be selfish. And I probably won’t feel too bad about it even if I don’t get my official “I wrote a novel in 30 days and all I got was this lousy t-shirt” t-shirt, then so be it.
The plan? Write like crazy while my current novel is still haunting me and before I am possessed with the brilliant idea to write a romantic teenage vampire story. Who would read that kind of stuff anyway?
