NaNoWriMo Episode Three: We Are Never Alone

All throughout NaNoWriMo, I try to find some sense of a recurring theme to my weeks in the hopes of passing on some small nugget of knowledge that I've learned from the past week. As the final day of the week draws to a close and a new one fast approaches, the lesson that these last seven days has taught me is perhaps the most basic, the most obvious, but also the most profound: we are never alone.

The week opened with a very prophetic status update by a friend who I did not know was partaking in NaNoWriMo. In this update, he said that he was considering dropping out this year due to issues with his narrative: how it was coming out cliched and uninspired. At the sight of this update, I found myself leaping in immediately to ask for his reasons in dropping out. Whether he was convinced to stay in or not I do not know, though only time will indeed tell. As I thought about this, and I look back at the week, I begin to wonder if there is more to NaNoWriMo than just birthing a novel in the span of a month. For after all, if this week has taught me anything, it's that while the process of sitting down to write may seem like a lonely endeavor, it is actually quite social.

While I have been keeping my writing rather private from my family - if only because they all have their own things to worry about and are not into writing - my friends are constantly a part of my experience. Almost all of my friends are involved in some form of creative expression: from composing music to creating graphic art or drawing to writing and roleplaying, which is how I met most of this group I am fortunate to be friends with. Some of these people have been actively involved in the creation of both my novel and roleplaying game from the very beginning, and they in turn are the same people I can trust to bounce ideas off of. Ideas, as I've discovered, are like raw, unrefined ore that need to be hammered at over and over again, heated through scrutiny, cooled by time, and then reheated and beaten into shape before they become something salvageable. And sometimes that means sprinkling elements in from other ideas in order to make something stronger or more malleable. It's a long, tiring, and exhausting experience that sometimes requires the stamina and brain power of a thousand aspiring nerdy artists! But in the end, it is so worth it that it makes one want to repeat the process over and over again.

No greater example of this for me happened just a few hours ago, where a very good friend invited me out to spend the evening brainstorming for a roleplay that she wanted to make. Our session today was meant to focus solely on the races, but as we talked it poured into everything: from the classes that would be available and races that would eventually become playable to the potential storylines that would herald such events, the geography of the world and governments and cultures therein. My favorite part was the country known solely as The Ruins, as it is a land littered with the bones of a long-dead empire whose denizens had vanished hundreds of years ago under mysterious and terrifying circumstances.

The joy of writing this, and some of the things that I have been working on, has not been that they were sole endeavors. The reward was in sharing ideas and creating a world with someone who has the same passion and desire to create something unique and fun. Do not ever be afraid to share your ideas with others, to let them grow and change and become something more. You may be pleasantly surprised with the result.

NaNoWriMo Episode Two: A Week of Things

Week One of NaNoWriMo has come and gone, and as I promised both you and myself, I look back at what I have accomplished this week, both with a sense of disappointment that I have not gone further, but with a sense of wonder and hope for the future. For this has been a week full of change, excitement, and renewed purpose.

On the first day, as I was writing, I had the extreme pleasure of meeting up with a creative writing teacher while I was substitute teaching. This teacher and I had met before last school year when I began writing reviews for Fantasy-Faction.com (I was working on my second review at the time), and at the time she had expressed interest in me coming in at some point to discuss writing with her students. Although that had never come to pass, this time around we got to talking about NaNoWriMo, my new method for writing (which has been working very well), and various programs that are available for writers to download for organization purposes (I will possibly discuss these in a later installment). This brought us to the topic of an online creative writing course that she teaches. She expressed distaste for the program, citing it was clunky and not very user-friendly. After seeing it for myself, I have to admit that she was right. To assist her and to also offer a new venue, I decided to start working on a forum for the students. Hopefully this forum will serve as a more inviting place for the students to work and interact. As for the time it will be up, expect a link in the next update.

By the end of the week, I have come to a bit of an epiphany as well, which may as well serve as the epilogue for this part: I have decided to look for a job in publishing in either the literary or gaming mediums. While I love teaching and my heart is still in the subject, I do not know if it is where my destiny lies right now. Things are changing too much for me right now, and I have to go where my heart tells me. I want to teach. I want to write. I want to design games. I want to do a million things, but I have to do what I feel is right, and what I want is to create. With any luck, this month and time will tell if that is what I can do.

So far, I think it is.