There's an old Smith family adage, slightly embellished by my particular member of the Smith family, "Prior proper planning prevents piss-poor performance." (As many times as I heard my mother-in-law say that, I'm fairly certain she never uttered the word "piss.") When I decided I wanted to make a run at NaNoWriMo, I told myself I wanted to bring out the story I started writing last winter, told in three parts, set in an assisted living facility. I had begun writing it by hand, and had all of the characters fleshed out, with several pages done. I don't know where I stashed the notebook containing all of that. It might be buried on the bookshelf in my bedroom, or lost in the impenetrable pile of junk on my dining room table. I never actually looked. By the time Halloween rolled around, and the kickoff for the story was looming, I decided that I didn't actually want to use that story. I have no idea why; I just bailed on it. The afternoon of November first, we drove out to look at a truck the Mr was considering purchasing (he didn't), and on the way, I said I needed a story inspiration. We drove past a sign pointing to the town of Frederick, and I chose that for my protagonist. There is a famous woman who I picture when I think about the villain, but I'm not going to tell you who she is. Her married name came from us driving over the Platte river on the way to see the truck. At sunset on the night I was supposed to start, that was literally all I had to go on. I think the character's obsessive focus on coffee came from Mr S-P, but the damaged coffee maker was because I kept failing with our own machine here.
I struggled to write out an opening scene, producing only a few paragraphs over about seven nights. I know how I want it to end, essentially, and I have an epilogue in my head for what happens to the villain. So I knew what I wanted to do. ("Phase one: Collect underpants.") I wasn't quite sure how to get there. ("Phase two: [shrug]") And I know how I want the very end to look. ("Phase three: Profit!") I'm getting the strong feeling that I'm not going to profit any more successfully than the Underpants Gnomes. There are too many unknowns in the middle of the plan.
I think I just have too many things to sort through right now. I cleared the month of November on purpose. I knew I had medical stuff going on, with the skin cancer removal and diagnostic colonoscopy. I was glad I'd left room open when I had to process losing old friends and gaining a tiny kitten. My body and mind are in shut-down mode, while my entire operating system is under repair. I am getting more tired and more dizzy than I know what to do with, and I honestly think it is a function of fatigue and having too many things going on to get my regular medication/supplement routine down or a normal sleep cycle accomplished. I keep telling people I'm trying to rest and recover, and I keep having things added in to my schedule anyway. I have spent the last few days in a short 1-2 hour sleep/wake cycle, over and over. This needs to end now. I need to sleep more than a couple hours in a stretch at night, and I need to spend more than two hours awake in the day before my head starts nodding and my eyes close involuntarily. Once I have rebooted myself, maybe then I can fill in the giant gap in the middle of my story of Frederick and the Dragon. Let's hope, anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment