Grammaticaster

I have been bogged down in an epic writer’s block for going on what must be two or three years now.  Sure, I’ve had tantalizing little spurts of creativity – but all in all, it is approaching half a decade since I truly felt like I have crafted anything meaningful.   I used to write furiously – almost orgasmically – every single day.  I would find a quiet space and just let my pen rush across the paper.  Most of it was shit, of course.  But every now and then something amazing (i.e. something beautiful to me, at least) would burst through.  Despite all my attempts to jolt the creative beast back to waking life (the blogging, twittering, new notebooks, new distraction-less writing software), I have only really managed to rattle the bars a bit. 

Enter NaNoWriMo.  Because what better way to jumpstart the writer’s mind than to commit to penning the first draft of a novel within the space of a single month?  As soon as I heard rumblings of this little movement (that has grown into quite the phenomenally large movement), I loved the idea.  I have never attempted to write a novel before.  Hell… I’ve only written one or two short stories in my entire quasi-adult life!  “I’ll leave the fiction to other writers.”  “I can’t sustain a story for that long.”  That’s the sort of thing I would tell myself whenever the ‘great american novel’ motif teasingly appeared in my struggling poet brain. 

Well, too bad.  I’m doing it anyway.  The philosophy is: it doesn’t have to be good, it just has to be words.  50,000 words in one month.  That month, by the way, is November.  Yes, this November.  The one that’s a mere six days away. 

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Now, correct me if I am wrong, but I believe I have at least one friend (nudge, nudge) who may have participated in NaNo before.  Share with me your insight.  How did you do?  Are you participating again?  Care to make things interesting?  Eh?

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Okay.  My intention is to post a little sidebar widget of some sort whereby you may track my progress in this marathon… at least a word count or something.  Anyway, it should be fun.  Probably in the same way a marathon is fun – which I would assume would be brutal in the moment but exhilarating and gratifying afterwards.  Stay tuned.