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Rachael Herron

(R.H. Herron)

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Archives for November 2018

Day Eight

November 8, 2018

It’s day eight of NaNoWriMo and I haven’t started the memoir I meant to write this month.

I’m actually liking this method of doing NaNo this year–I’m using NaNo as a challenge to take myself less seriously. I really meant to start today (I couldn’t before this – Monday and Tuesday were 14-hour days of grading and teaching) and I didn’t. I still could today, this I know. I have lots of work, but I could squeeze in 30 minutes of writing before I go out tonight.

But will I? Probably not.

To be totally honest, I’m enjoying being the bad girl. Day Eight! No words! I’m “failing!” And it feels good, to lean into it, and to know that I’m still a writer. I’m just fine. I wrote 60,000+ words last month. It’s not even like I’m out of practice. But seriously, if I hadn’t written a word in months, I’d still be okay.

I said it on the Writer’s Well podcast this week: I’m just fine, as I am. If I win the Pulitzer in the next ten minutes, I’ll be just as fine then as I am now. If the New York Times writes a review about how I’m the worst writer in the world tomorrow, I’ll be equally okay.

This whole I’m-okay thing is WEIRDING ME OUT and also making me feel pretty content. I blame meditating for 30+ minutes a day for the last five weeks. (I wrote my last Patreon essay about the experience. It’s so good I’m running with it and still doing it.)

Maybe I’ll start my NaNo tomorrow! Maybe not!

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Already Behind

November 4, 2018

So, I’m already behind with NaNoWriMo, and I’m here to tell you–that’s OKAY! If you start on November 21st, and only get 1200 words all month, if that’s more than you would have gotten without the challenge, you’ve done an awesome thing. The point of NaNo is to get you out of yourself and get you moving on the page.

Here’s my excuse: I’ve been at Walker Creek Music Camp. It was important for me to take these four days (okay, three) off writing altogether. I had a vague hope that I’d find time to write, but I didn’t. Please note I’m saying I didn’t, not that I couldn’t. You can always, always find time to write, even if the only way you do it is to get up earlier. I could have written. I chose not to.

In fact, yesterday I skipped my country-singing class with Laurie Lewis. She’s a fantastic teacher, and I was enjoying learning from her.

But I was tired. My stomach hurt from all the seltzer I’d drunk the day before (true story). I went back to bed to “write” and instead, I read and dozed and spent 45 minutes trying to write a song that went nowhere but sure was fun to noodle around with. Three hours! I spent three hours doing, essentially, nothing, and my brain spent the whole time thanking me.

I’m reading Tara Brach’s Radical Acceptance right now, and it’s already rewiring the way I think about myself.

I’m okay, just as I am.

You’re just fine, right now. The way you are, the way you’re sitting, what you ate, what you’re going to do tomorrow, everything you’ve already done today. It’s all just fine.

I’m doing NaNoWriMo, and I know I might not “win.” THIS IS SO GOOD FOR ME TO KNOW. Of course, I’ve lost NaNo in the past, several times. Sometimes I win. And it does not matter. If I win, I’m good. If I lose, I’m still good.

I’ve spent my life being competitive, mostly with myself. This month, I’m trying to let that go. It’s a funny month to do it, and it’s a strange use of NaNoWriMo, but hey, I believe in the power and magic of NaNo to achieve many impossible things. It seems impossible for me to let go of perfectionism in Gettings Things Done, but I managed to completely let go of perfectionism in writing first drafts (and how), so I have hope that this can be done.

This morning, as I skipped another morning of class, I’ve been sitting in the camp dining room reading my most recent Venice journal. As I think of things that I could write about in my Venice memoir, I’ve been jotting them down in another journal. I have two columns, the What and the So What. What happened, and what did it mean? 

This kind of brain dump assures me that I’ll have more than enough to write about this month. When I teach memoir, I always encourage my students to write whatever comes to them, in whatever order. Throw all the scenes into a big box. Organize them later. I’m following my own advice, and I’ll let you know how it goes.

Grateful for this moment: No one is paying any attention to me. I can hear the last-chance jam playing “Rambling Man,” which they’ve been playing for at least ten minutes now. Outside the big windows, the sycamores are losing their leaves. Young live oak trees, no more than ten years old, I’m guessing, circle the property, and I just looked out to see a hawk slanting through the wind near the flagpole. A man is whistling along to a song that isn’t “Rambling Man,” and he’s been doing so since — AUGH, he just came over and said,

“Are you really a word prostitute?”

“Yes,” I said, unamused. To myself I thought, I really have to cover up that sticker on my computer. 

And now he’s been met by another male whistler. They’re chatting now, but I expect them to break into whistled song at any minute. (I’m an absent-minded whistler, too. I know how annoying we are, but I swear, it’s impossible to hear when you’re doing it yourself.)

Soon–GOING HOME! I haven’t been home on the weekend for almost a month, and I CANNOT WAIT to be home and not on deadline. So, so, so grateful.

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November is for NaNoWriMo!

November 1, 2018

So it’s November 1st, and you know what that means, my friends. It’s time for NaNoWriMo! I’m going to try something (and I very well might fail! I’m okay with that. I fail a lot, and it’s just part of life. I also succeed quite a bit, since I’m not too scared of failure).

I’m going to try to blog every day about how my NaNo is going for 2018. This might not work right off the bat, since Lala and I are off to music camp for four days, and I don’t suppose I’ll have much time to write my NaNo words, let alone a blog, but you see? I still have grand intentions!

Just like I did in 2006, the first year I tried NaNo. I won that year and that book turned into my first published book, How to Knit a Love Song, which came out from HarperCollins in 2010. I’ve written more than 20 books since then, but I’ve never managed to capture the sparkling magical unicorn PLAYFULNESS of that first year, because every year since then, I’ve tried to Write Something For Money during NaNoWriMo.

Not this year. This year, I’m a rebel. I’m writing a memoir of my time in Venice over the past twenty-five years. I’m doing it because I want to. I’ll eventually package it into a book and either self-pub it or give it to my agent if she thinks it’s good enough, but I’m decidedly not worrying about that now.

November is for play. For recapturing that magic I felt the first year. I have dreams of combining the magic of Venice with the magic of NaNo, which means that I think the book will be made of sparkles and moondust and the sound of a gondola’s paddle just around the corner of the next crumbling building. Of course, it will end up being something else entirely–books never do what I want them to do.

They always do something better.

Are you doing it, too? I’m yarnagogo over there – buddy me if you’d like, and let’s do this!

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