It’s November, which means it’s NaNoWriMo! Was I planning on doing it before my hospital visit? Not really. Would I have ended up doing something for it? Probably. I usually do because, well, it’s there. Why not? I’m going to be writing, anyway. Why not do NaNoWriMo? I can start a new novel and whip out 50,000 words in a month. Let’s do this thing! In the past few years, however, I’ve grown bored with it. 50,000 words a month is not a big thing for me (and, yes, that IS a humblebrag. Wait. It’s not humble at all, so it’s just a plain brag). I didn’t like the stricture of starting a new novel because it seemed so random and unnecessary. And restrictive. I ain’t mad at it because it got a lot of people to write who were hesitant about writing. It’s overall good, I think, but it was in the need of an update.
On my own, I started messing with the formula. Starting a sequel to a novel. Editing a novel. Then, I found out that NaNoRebel was a thing and I was intrigued. It basically said, “Fuck all the rules. Do what you want as long as it’s writing-related. Even if it’s tangential. Edit a novel? fine. Write a multimedia performance piece? You go! Word count? What’s that? The freedom of NaNoRebel appealed to me because there were no rules. As someone who writes every day (or did before the hospital), I wrote three to four thousand words every day. 50,000 weren’t no big thing.
I’ll admit it. NaNoWriMo felt stale. There was no thrill, no excitement. It’s like the lover you know too well. Yeah, you might get the orgasm, but it won’t be as explosive as it used to be. Then, NaNoRebel swept in on its Harley, revving the engine outside my apartment door at 3 a.m. You have my attention! It looked so goddamn sexy with their legs casually spread across their hog—I knew I had to take that ride, even if it ended in a spectacular crash. I hopped on without donning a helmet and raced off into the night. My heart pounding so loudly, I could hear it in the stillness of the night. The crisp, autumn air blowing in my face, making me feel alive.
Wait a minute. What am I talking about? I forgot for a minute. Oh, right. NaNoRebel. It was a breath of fresh air after doing vanilla NaNoWriMo for several years. NaNoRebel assumes that you don’t need urging to write–no, you need permission to spread your wings and fly! Be as creative as you want to be. There are no limits except those that your mind imposes on you. You want to write a stream-of-conscious poem that consists of you adding one word a day? Go for it! You want to write in Windings? I’m sure that’s fine as well.
So. This year has been quite the year. I went on a journey that started with me collapsing in my front hallway, had me spend a week sedated and unconscious, and ended with me waking up miraculously with very little damage to my brain. That wasn’t the actual end, of course, as I’m still here typing madly on my keyboard, but that’s the cinematic end of my experience. No one wants to hear about the boring struggle back to normal or anything like that. No, they want the feel good ending of the hapless heroine suddenly waking up after all hope was lost.
Understandably, I w as not thinking about writing at all as I left the hospital. My eyesight was blurry and I could not read internet fonts very easily. When I did think about writing again, it took a while before I realized that November was nearly upon us. Probably the end of September/beginning of October. Thinking about NaNoWriMo, I decided my goal for NaNoRebel was to write about my recent experience. It didn’t matter in what form–and I started it early. Now, however, I decided to shape it a bit better. Or rather, write about it in three different ways.
One: I’m going to continue writing these posts on a daily basis. They have been between 1,000 and 1,500 words on the average and each post has been about a certain aspect of my experience or my feelings. My tendency is to just write in a stream-of-conscious ways; I’ve been trying to curb that somewhat for these posts. It’s not easy for me to do because my thoughts are constantly bubbling in my brain. I’ve learn to let them flow over me for the most part, but when I’m especially depressed and/or anxious, they’re hard for me to ignore.
Two: I plan to write a more traditional-style memoir about my experience. It won’t be completely linear, but it won’t just be stream-of-conscious babble, either. I’m not quite sure where I’m going to start (either from me collapsing in the hallway or me waking up) ,but it’s not really important as I’m not doing it completely linearly. In addition, I don’t have to write things in order, even if I want things to be chronological when I’m done writing.
In this part, I’m planning on regurgitating much of what I’ve already written, but in a more streamline fashion. That could just be me babbling on an on before heavily editing what I’ve written; it doesn’t really matter. I’m trying to strike a balance between being too rigid about the structure and having enough structure to make the memoir portion readable.
Three: I want to write a murder mystery based on what happened to me in the hospital. Murder mysteries are my jam and my situation in the hospital is prime for a good murder. Talk about the ultimate unreliable protagonist. A person who had been unconscious for a week, coked to the gills on hard drugs. That same person waking up miraculously with the damage more hidden than visible. She’s convincing when she speaks so people have a hard time realizing that she’s out of her mind on drugs and not to be taken too seriously.
Now, with the drugs completely removed from my system, I find it endlessly amusing that I was so serious about ice packs, hospital cabals, and ice water. It took me until I was out of the hospital to realize that I was floating in and out of reality. For example. The night before my angiogram, I thought–well, I’m not going to give it away now. Suffice to say it involved FBI operatives, a famous mobster, facial reconstruction surgery, and switching identities. In other words, nothing that has anything to do with angiograms. Which, by the way, was easy-peasy and turned up no blockage or tears in my heart.
I’m not planning on finishing all of this in November, obviously. That would be way too ambitious, even for me. These are essentially three different projects that I want to mash into one. Why? Because I can! It’s NaNoRebel, baby. There are no fucking rules. I’ll be writing a post every day, which is what I started doing three weeks ago. Except an odd Saturday or Sunday here and there. In addition, I want to write a page or two of my memoir, and the same with my murder mystery.
I honestly have no idea if that’s overly ambitious or not. I’m just throwing everything at the kitchen sink and seeing what sticks. The biggest thing to remember is that none of it matters. I mean, I’m not taking a blood oath or anything like that. I don’t have to give up my morning coffee if I don’t reach my goals. There will be absolutely no consequences–which may or may not be a good thing. I tend to work better under pressure, which also may or may not be a good thing.
This is my short-term goal for November. I don’t have a long-term goal right now–just a few short-term ones and one medium-term one. I don’t feel ready to make any long-term changes after the life-changing event I went through. We’ll see if that changes any time soon.