Less than 9 hours to go...NaNoWriMo is about to begin...

I wonder if I'll stay up and write a bit at midnight? I know thousands of people will be doing just that - but sheesh, I can hardly stay awake after 10pm these days. I think the plan will be to get up early tomorrow and have at it. Elum awaits his next adventure!

Two Books = 100,000 Words?

NaNoWriMo begins in two days and I've got two books to write. Does that mean 100,000 words?

1. The Day of Days - the story of Edward and Margaret Gehrke's adventures touring the country by train and car, visiting every National Park but one between 1909 and 1953...in re-writes, new approaches, additional stories, mixed with our experiences of today
2. The Guardian - the story of Elum, the Guardian, suffering after the loss of his Seeker and re-entering the world of Guardians and Seekers to protect the sacred knowledge from the destroyers and make it finally available again to all. This is my NaNoWriMo novel.

So, my chances??? Pretty good, I think - I'm already so busy with work and Maggie what's one more thing??? Ha! It's gonna be a crazy month! But here's to fun and creativity, and inspiration.

My NaNoWriMo Strategy

1. Go to bed early
2. Get up early to write
3. Drink milk
4. Let my story take me where it wants to go
5. Don't slack on the chocolate
6. Get my friends to send me support
7. Have fun
8. Have fun
9. Have fun
10. Oh, yeah, and have fun!
    

7 More Days 'til NaNoWriMo

Seven more days to go and I'll be writing every day. I should be doing that anyway, but NaNoWriMo will make it so! 1667 words a day for 30 days to reach the 50,000 word mark. Can I do it this year? Heck ya! I am ready, excited, and all set to make some progress!

Gehrke is moving ahead too: coming at this from a different angle is helping a lot. Not getting distracted is still tough...but that's not unusual and I'm trying to not be too hard on myself.

I'm asking for your support as NaNoWriMo gets started --- being involved in two projects simultaneously (not including my job projects) is going to be interesting, but I'm hoping one will feed the other.

Maybe I just needed to whine???

Sunday afternoon's writing at Macy's actually worked - I made progress - yippee! Ed and Maggie are speaking again and my brain is listening, forming words, which are forming sentences, and those are actually coming down through my fingers hitting little letters on the computer and getting turned into 1's and 0's and then converted into something you can read - imagine that! Thank the gods!

at Macy's trying to write - why am I struggling so???

Sarah and I are at Macy's (for those of you in Lincoln, read "The Mill," for those of you in Denver, read "Kaladi Brothers") eating yogurt and drinking "specials" and I am trying to write Gehrke. I have to say that I really don't understand why I am struggling so with this book. It makes me want to scream! I have an inspiration and I write things down - usually this happens to me late at night, right before I go to sleep. I learned a while ago to always have paper and pen by my bed to capture these "moments of brain activity." I've got a book full of pieces of the story, I've got a couple of text docs on my computer that include pieces, but when I actually sit down and try to pull this all together I flame out - big time! What the heck is up with this?

So I got a book this week titled, "The I Ching for Writers," by Sarah Jane Sloane. (This is what happens whenever I try to kill some time in a bookstore - I end up buying a book.) In my defense, this book seems to be the perfect book for me: it's about divination and writing - what more could you want? It really spoke to me because as I was looking it over Sloane started talking about fear and writing. She says, "Embrace your fear; look it in the eye; write down everything it says" [page 5 if you're interested]. This is an approach I haven't taken yet - but it's very intriguing to think about what my fear is "saying..."

The next thing that happened - and this really sealed my buying this book - was looking at the first interpretation: Ch'ien which by no coincidence means to begin again...this is what I'm doing with the Gehrke book. I am beginning again and the interpretation presented by Sloane, indicates that taking a new approach to an existing project will result in success and not just regular success, but "great success" [page 25]

All bodes well for a positive result. Everyone loves Maggie's writing (what's not to love), I've gotten good feedback on my approaches to the new way of presenting the content, all indications point to success (beyond Sloane's book). So what the h*ll is going on? Why can't I just sit down and write? What is causing me to seize up, dry up and just stair at the page...waiting for something to happen...that never does?

Help!

Margaret Gehrke: An Amazing Writer and Wonderful Inspiration

If you had a chance to watch Ken Burn's wonderful documentary on the National Parks, you will have "heard" Margaret's voice. She has been my writing inspiration since 1994.

This photograph is from the collections of the Nebraska State Historical Society.

It's almost time to Nano again!

It's pretty crazy to think that it's almost November! I know it is just October 8, but it seems like October got here quick, so I'm anticipating a quick arrival for November. OK, so I'm writing a book already - two actually, one fiction and one non-fiction, but heck, why not add another into the mix? So here's to lost of creativity - starting retroactively back to the beginning of September - Ha!