November

Has it already been a month since I last posted here? Good lord.

I guess it's kinda hard to want to update since I a) feel like I have so very little to report most of the time and b), I don't think that anyone really reads this here. I suppose it's hard to build any sort of readership when I don't post, or at least don't post anything insightful or interesting, eh?

November has for, several years now, been a pretty significant month for me. In 2009, I took the month to participate in the National Novel Writing Month's competition to write a (relatively) short novel in the short 30 days of November. It was a big stress to me at the time and I fretted the entire time over the purpose of it, wondering what could possibly be the benefit of doing such a silly thing. After all, who could really develop anything useful or interesting or well-thought out or well-constructed in just 30 days?

It turns out that I was both right and wrong. Although I participated (jumping in 5 days late, sigh), and I won by exceeding the 50,000 word minimum given in the pseudo-competition (50,294), the story was not of the greatest quality. In fact, it was far from my best writing or my highest capabilities. Although it was really only 4 years ago, reading back through some of the novel that I wrote is nearly painful for me.

Yet, I have a novel to go back and read. In fact, I devoted an entire month to writing. I thought daily about my characters and built an entire world up out of nothing. I got to know the imaginary people and began to see how they would fit in with my real life. I wanted to know them better; I wanted them to be real. Even though they were just figments of my imagination, I started to imbue parts of me into their little fiction-encased bodies.

And it sparked nearly two years of intense creativity that I haven't seen the likes of since. Part of me looks back at that time and remarks: "Oh, to be 22 again and not have had to pay any school loans back", or "Jeeze, I miss having all that free time and no car to do anything." I think realistically, a big part of that year of intense 'creation' was sparked off by the success I experienced in NaNoWriMo and the after effects of having my head constantly up in the clouds.

I miss that- that feeling. That knowledge that I was something more than myself, that I was building and creating, that confidence that I even could create. A few years of some difficult work and some very unfortunate life experiences sometimes makes me feel like all of that positivity and creativity was just stomped out of me.

But it hasn't been, and it never will be. Like blood, I have what I need to generate more of those positivity components. I never lost my 'creative marrow', I just forget that it was there. Maybe this November is a good time to search for those essentials again.