Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: writing

More thoughts on NaNoWriMo

I probably have brain damage. I want to state that outright because I think it has had an impact on how I write. Or not. I’ll get more into that, obviously. In yesterday’s post, I talked a bit about how I write. I don’t do what is commonly thought of as the right way to write. I don’t do it the first thing in the morning. I don’t do an outline (except in my head). I write a lot of garbage. That’s normal, but I write more of it because I’m so prolific. I edit as I go, which is a no-no as well.

This is the story of my life. I don’t do what I’m supposed to do just because I’m supposed to do it. It’s why I don’t identify as a woman any longer. It’s why I give a side eye to ‘but tradition’ or ‘but faaaaamily’. I have never understood why I should accept something is good just because society declares it as good. This is doubly so because as a minority, I have had to endure so many different kinds of isms across my life.

I am a weirdo, yes. This has put me on the fringe of society all my life. This has caused me no end of heartache, but it’s also been a strength. I have a bad tendency of being a people-pleaser–except when it comes to my writing. I mean, I do self-edit, but when it comes to how I write and the things I write about, I just don’t give a shit. I know that there is no way I can write about something that will have mass appeal. I just don’t have that in me. I am not a mass appeal person.  When I allow even a sliver of the real me to slip through, I get in trouble. I don’t like most of all pop culture, and I’ve learned to keep that opinion to myself.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not going to say I like Star Wars, for example. I don’t. I saw the first movie when I was eight or nine and absolutely hated it. I cannot tell you why, but I loathed it with every fiber of my being. I have seen the second movie (I’m talking the original trilogy), which I did not like either. That was the last Star Wars movie I’ve seen–oh, except for the horrid Christmas movie that Lucas tries to pretend never existed. I have no interest in the series, and I’m gobsmacked how fans just gobble down any shit Disney throws their way.


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NaNoWriMo in full effect

It’s the first day of November, and I started my NaNoWriMo project at midnight last night. Well, technically, I started before that, but since I did not record my first 2,000+ words until after midnight. It’s totally legit, shut up. I began with a little brainstorming, and I will do more of that throughout the month.

I decided to start with the mystery, Here’s the thing, though. Because it’s set in the hospital, it could be the start of the memoir as well with a few tweaks. Which then makes me think, why not combine both?

Here’s the thing with the memoir. I am not and never going to write a classic memoir because it’s not the way I roll. Plus, as I mentioned before, my life isn’t nearly interesting enough for that. In addition, my brain will not settle down enough to write anything in a straightforward, sequential way. Believe me, I have tried. Several times. I start out a piece telling myself sternly that I am going to write something that starts at Point A, goes directly to Point B, and does not stop at Point C or Point -Z in-between.

I can Start at Point A and be absolutely determined to go right to Point B without turning my head–hey, what’s that over there? Why, it’s Point C!

Believe me, it’s much better for me to be honest with myself. I can sit here and say that I’ll be sequential and tell everything in a nice, neat fashion–and it would be a bald-faced lie. I know it’s not true. I know that I’m messy and bendy and I will always prcefer footnotes over the main story. I have footnoted a footnote before, and I will do it again. Don’t think I won’t.

Here’s the thing about my project. I decided I wanted to do two separate things (a memoir and a murder mystery (sort of)), but now I’m thinking of smashing it together. But would that be possible or even wise?

Side note: I just Googled fictionalized memoir. There are some very strong feelings about this, but there is also a term for it–autofiction. Which, I’m not thrilled about, I don’t mind saying. Why? Because it sounds like I’m writing about a car. Which I’m not. Most emphatically not. Anyway, some people have Very Strong Feelings about fictionalized memoirs, meaning they are very against it. It’s not true to the feelings and the blah-di-blah blah blah. Or rather, it’s not being truthful, which is sacred in memoirs.

Which, come on. No one’s memory is 100% perfect, plus we all have our biases. It’s folly to think that a memoir would be 100% accurate or even 75%. If I were to go the route of writing a fictionalized memoir, I would be honest that it’s not completely real. It’s more about the vibes and the feelings. And me jsut musing about whatever I want to muse about.

This is how I am about, well, everything, really. I use something until it’s no longer useful to me (like a label). Then I let it go and move onto something else. Is this a part of my neurodivergent brain? Maybe? I’m not sure because I’ve never been any different. I don’t like labels (but not in the ‘no labels’ way), but I acknowledge that they’re useful as heuristics.


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NaNoWhatMo? WTF am I writing?

I want to talk more about NaNoWriMo which starts in two days. Here is my post from yesterday about it. I want to get back into writing. I miss it a great deal. I mean, yes, I write a post a day, but before my medical crisis, I wrote a post a day plus 2,000 words of fiction. Every day. I would love to do that again. As I’ve mentioned, I did continue to write after my medical crisis, but it was shit. Now, I am hard on my writing no matter what. That’s not unusual for writers. We are (usually) our own worst enemies. In this case, however, the negativity I have towards my writing is valid. Of course I would say that, though. Nobody has a great assessment of their own anything, really. But to me, my writing as of late has been shit. Maybe I needed to push through it to get to the good stuff (which is often the case), but last year or the year before, I tried to write the second book (though I didn’t realize it would be the second book at the time) of my mystery trilogy. I wrote over 50,000 words, and the words never started to shimmer.

I mentioned this before as well that I don’t consider myself anything but a conduit for the words to flow through. I don’t feel like I was the creator of any of my novels, which may actually be the problem now. The words are not flowing through me. Before my medical crisis, I could sit down and write effortlessly for hours. After my medical crisis, I had a much harder time doing that. Yes, I could still write the 2,000 words a day, but it wasn’t nearly as effortless as before.

My goal this NaNoWriMo is…well, I’m not sure. Writing the 2,000 words a day, obviously. That’s my own personal goal because it’s what I used to do. It’s also to see if I can actually finish a novel as I did before. Or my memoir. Speaking of the latter, if I write it, it’s not going to be a straightforward memoir. As I’ve said a few times, my life is not interesting enough for a memoir. Except for the one situation that is unique and has never happened to anyone else.

The problem is, will anyone believe it? I almost can’t believe it myself. Yes, I’ll reference my brother’s CaringBridge journal in which he details what happened to me–but, wait. I’m not sure he mentions that I had two cardiac arrests and a stroke as that happened before he came into the picture. (And the non-Covid-related walking pneumonia which kicked it all off.) He told me about it when I woke up, but no one needs to believe that.


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Big brainstorming dump

NaNoWriMo is fast approaching–where the hell has 2024 gone? Seriously. I know that this is a trope, but it’s also true. Every year does, indeed, go faster than the year before. Yes, I know this is not possible, but I am also not possible. So there! Oh, and here is the post from yesterday.

I know why it is, of course. It’s beacuse when you’re a kid, a year is a huge chunk of your life. When you’re five, it’s one-fifth of your years on this earth! I remembering waiting or Christmas (when I actually believed in Santa–which was up to eight or nine) and it took F-O-R-E-V-E-R. Now, a year is but a sharp inhale or maybe the following exhale.

I’m fifty…ah…three? Yes. Fifty-three. I’m never quite sure because I always add a year to my age at some point before I turn the next age. No idea why, really. In Taiwanese culture, you’re one at birth, so maybe that has something to do with it? It doesn’t help that I consider September 3rd to be my re-birthday. (In that case, I’m three.)

Anyway. This year has just flown by. I think in part because I have been grieving since February. Grieving is strange. It makes time both expand and contract. Sometimes at the same time. It seems like just yesterday that the tragedy happened. At the same time, it seems like forever ago. I have not been able to write (except here) since then–which I’m sure is part of the issue.

It’s nearly November. It’s because I’m thinking about NaNoWriMo that I’ve been musing about time in general. And because it’s been three years of bonus days of which I’m feeling I’m not taking proper advantage. Ugh. That was a terrible sentence. Let me phrase it better. I died (twice) on September 3rd, 2021. I was not supposed to come back, but come back, I did. Twice! Only to fall back into unconsciousness again. I was in a coma for a week, and my medical team told my brother to start thinknig about pulling the plug. Strongly advised.

And then I woke up. And while I was drugged out of my mind, I was able to do everything reasonably well. And was back home in a little over a week. No rehab. No physical therapy. Still drugged the fuck up, but functional. I could not read for the first few days I got home (blurred vision), but that went away fairly quickly.

Well I went far afield there, didn’t I? Let’s get back to brainstorming what I want to do for NaNoWriMo this year.


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I’ll tell you what I want (what I really really want)

We’re coming down to crunch time. Friday is the first day of November (!), which means the start of NaNoWriMo. As I’ve mentioned before, I have done it every year for over a decade. I never had a problem meeting the 50,000 words limit because I am verbose by nature. At that point, I was writing 2,000 words a day as a personal goal.

That dropped off about the same time as a personal tragedy befell me. I still don’t want to talk about that, but I’ll just say it shook up my life. I lost a lot of the passion I had for life, including my writing passion. To be fair, I hadn’t really recovered the latter since my medical crisis. Or rather, my ability to write fiction. I still don’t know if it’s brain damage from the stroke or what, but I’m struggling with it in a way that I have never struggled before.

I don’t want to get into that becuase this post is about brainstorming for what I want to do for NaNoWriMo. I do want to do something. I have three options. Well, three options with sub-options.

1. A mystery trilogy. I write mysteries. Or at least I did back before my medical crisis. I have an outline of a trilogy lurking in the back of my brain. The problem is that I want to start with book two. I can start with book two, yes, but would that make it book one? Or would it still be book two when I go back to book one? I can ask those questions here because I’m trying to decide what to do in NaNoWriMo so there are no stupid questions. Or something.

I like to do things my way even if it’s not the best way to do things. Being weird/different sparks joy in me. And, again, it’s not that I do it on purpose, but that my brain works that way. I am better then I don’t try to restrain the oddity and just let the creativity flow. The problem is that the masking I do is hard to shed. I can feel this very thin veil surrounding me when I write, admonishing me not to step outside the box too far.

The issue with the mystery trilogy is that I know the general shape of what I want to do with it, but I lose steam after twenty-five to thirty pages. I can’t make it sing the way it used to do. When something I’ve written is good, the words shimmer and lift off the page. I know that sounds like nonsense, but it’s true.


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Nanowhatmo? Part three

I have more to say about NaNoWriMo and what I hope to accomplish with it. In yesterday’s post, I talked about my time in the hospital. In part because I wanted to talk about it, but also because I want to write about it. I have toyed with the idea of writing a memoir since my medical crisis.

Side note: In the RKG Discord, there was a spirited debate about whether déjà rêvé was real or not. I did not know what it was when “C” brought it up so I Googled. It’s similar to déjà vu in that it’s the feeling that what you’re experiencing is something you’ve dreamed before. C talked about how he’d experienced it all his life, and a few people immediately dismissed it as not possible and bunk. One in particular, “D” was quite rude about it as was her wont.

I see this happen so often. If someone can’t imagine something, then it can’t be true. I am the opposite because I am so deep in the weeds of being weird, I constantly have to accept that my lived truth is not everyone else’s. I mentioned this about empathy a few posts ago, by the way. People really, really, really don’t like any hint that they are not as empathetic and/or intelligent as other people.

In this case, I easily accepted what C said because I had similar things happen to me. Not in terms of dreaming, but because there are times I can predict what is going to happen. I don’t talk about it because I have nothing to back it up (though my mother firmly believed I could make things happen because I would call them out before they happened.

C made it clear that he would dream things and then they would happen later. D kept saying it wasn’t possible. Someone else insinuated that he (C) just thought it was happening. The way D was so absolute about her belief that it just could not possibly be true was fascinating when viewed from a distance. I know it’s not unusual, but I rarely see it in such a discrete/concrete fashion.

The reason I’m pointing this out is that what happened to me is not possible, either, apparently. Or at least I cannot find someone else it’s happened to. When I tell medical people what happened to me, I inevitably hear that I’m a miracle.

Here’s an example. After I left the hospital, I had a nurse come once a week to check up on me. One time, the nurse could not get the system they use to work. She asked me what happened to me, and I gave her the quick summary (walking non-COVID-related pneumonia, two sudden cardiac arrests, and a stroke). She typed it all in and then went on with the checklist. She quickly read out the symptoms/situations and said no, no, no, and then said heart surgery, yes. I was half-listening, but sat up when I heard that. I said I hadn’t had heart surgery, and she made me repeat that. I said I did not have heart surgery; I just had an angiogram (which turned out fine).


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Nanowhatmo? Part two

I want to write more. I know that’s a very generic and broad statement to make, but it’s where I’m at right now.  I write my one post a day for this blog, but I have given up on my fiction writing completely.I am so frustrated that it’s not as effortless as it used to be. I did try for NaNoWriMo not last year but the year before. I got the 50,000 words done, but it just did not go where I wanted it to go.

I have a fairly detailed idea for a trilogy that I shaped and remodeled in the past few years. Every time I try to write it, though, it just comes out flat. When I write something good, the words sparkle and almost jump off the page. I like to say that I am not creating the stories, but am merely the conduit that allows the stories to flow.

In the last post, I wrote about the dysfunction in my family. How is that related to my writing? Well, if I want to write my memoir (which is one of my ideas), I have to delve into my family dysfunction because otherwise, the reader will not have the right context for when I talk about my medical crisis.

I firmly believe that things are interconnected. What happened to me in my childhood has an effect on how I reacted to my medical crisis. I don’t think this is controversial, but not everyone agrees with me. Or rather, not everyone sees it.

Side note: I just had a really big reminder in the RKG Discord as to how ‘normal’ people are really not into the idea that maybe someone else can have an experience that is outside what they believe is possible. And it reminded me that as accepting and welcoming as the community is in certain ways, in otther ways, they are just as limited as society in general. It’s one reason I rarely talk about my medical crisis to the gen pop. It sounds ludicrous when I say it out loud or type it out.

I am literally the only person I know who has gone through what I did. You know how people say that no one is unique (with individual experiences)? Well, it’s not true. I did so much research, and I could not find anyone else like me. I can’t tell you how many medical people have called me a miracle. In fact, when I was in the hospital, it was the first thing most people I ran into said when they heard my whole story.


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Nanowhatmo?

I have done NaNoWriMo every year for over a decade. Except maybe 2021. I don’t think I did it that year, but I have a handy excuse*. That was a month-and-a-half after I got home from the hospital from a life-threatening medical situation. I think I can be excused for missing that year. I tried the next two years, but could not get the fiction to gel. I have all these great ideas, but the execution is not so good.

I want to emphasize that I consider it a fair trade-off for still being alive. I would like to be able to get back to fiction one day, but if I can’t, well, I can’t. (I will. I just have to find my way back to it.) Fortunately, I’ve been able to write posts with no problem. I have several ideas for posts in my head at all times. I do have ideas for what  Iwant to write, fiction-wise. I just can’t get it from idea to written words.

If I do NaNoWriMo this year, I think I might actually use it to get back on track. In the past years, I did not need the 50,000 word count because I wrote 2,000 words of fiction a day. I haven’t been able to do that in the last year or two. I know it’s because of the medical crisis, which is why I’m not beating myself up over it.

But.

However.

I would like to be able to write fiction again. I have an idea for a trilogy (I always do trilogies), and I think I want to tackle that for NaNoWriMo. However, I want to start with the second book. Or rather, the second story chronologically. I’m not sure that will work, though, because all the pieces need to be set up before I can jump into a story proper. In that case, it would make more sense to start with the first book, but that’s not what I want to do.

I wonder if I could write a novella as the intro, jump to the second book, then go back to the first. Oh, this would be a mystery trilogy, by the way. That’s what I used to write before my medical crisis. I also wrote standalones, but I preferred to write trilogies. Only trilogies because I have the belief that series should not be longer than seven, whether it’s TV, movies, games, or books.

But I digress.

I have two discrete ideas for NaNoWriMo. By the way, that is one of my linguistic pet peeves–mistaking discrete and discreet. Usually people using discrete when they mean discreet.


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Firm writing goals for this year

Goals. That is what is on my mind right now. In the last post, I started actually talking about my goals for this year. I delved into the issues I was having, including the fact that my fiction writing has dried up.

I don’t think this means that it’s gone completely, though. I think I just have to rethink how I actually write now. It used to be so easy. I would get the idea in my head–

Side note: I don’t use outlines. I may have to in the future, but I haven’t up to this point. Yes, I know that this is the accepted way to do things, but it never worked for me. What usually happened was that I would get an idea in my head and let it percolate for days or weeks. I write murder mysteries (or at least mysteries. Usually murder was included), and I would start with the main character. Not a private detective, but a normie who stumbled their way into a situation, much like Jessica Fletcher. I usually wrote trilogies because that seemed to be the right amount of time with a protagonist.

Once I had the protag, then I came up with the victim. In doing so, the perp usually sprang to mind as well. I doen’t think I’ve ever changed the perp as I was writing, but I have changed circumstances, relationships, and almost everything else.

As I wrote yesterday, I know my strengths and weaknesses as a writer. Strengths: characterization and dialogue. Weakness: descriptions and transitions. I don’t like the latter two in part beacuse I can see everything in my mind, so why couldn’t everyone else?

I can be super self-indulgent about dialogue or world-building because those are the things I enjoy. I can write for pages about psychology and relationships, and I have to take a sterner hand with those. On the other hhand, I struggle with describing physical things other than in a “She has black hair and large brown eyes” kind of way. I envy people who can make the descriptions flow, but I just cannot.

Side note: I have to start considering that the reason I can’t write fiction the way I used to is because of my medical crisis. It didn’t affect me much in my day-to-day, but there were things that were affected that maybe I wasn’t able to see until later.

Such as: I have almost no peripheral awareness now. My eyesight is not as good as it used to be. My reflexes are shit(tier). All of these could just be because I’m getting older, but I think at least two of them (peripheral and reflexes) are a direct result of my medical crisis. Obviously, I can’t say for sure. I am not a doctor. I know what I experienced, but I don’t know what it actually did to my body.


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Goals that I most definitely will meet this year

I still want to talk about my goals for this year. In the last post, I mostly talked about my medical crisis that reshaped my life. Nothing is too hyperbolic to state about that experience. And it’s not something I can talk about with many people because it’s just not relatable at all.

The more time that passes, the less it stays in the front of my mind. Don’t get me wrong. I’m always aware of it, but it’s slowly become just a part of me. I don’t need to think about it as it’s embedded in the fabric of my being. As I would say that I’m Taiwanese American, bi, agender, and bisexual (not to mention areligious),  I would add that I died twiec and came back to life, better than even. Sure, there were a few netgative side effects, but for the most part, I’m fine.

That’s what blows my mind when I think about it too much, but I don’t do that these days.

I want to write about the experience, but I’m grappling with how to do it. Sure, others can relate to having a life-changing experience K thinks I can focus on that and the history behind it rather than the actual experience.

But here’s the thing. The actual experience is the attention-getter. Sure, other people have had had near-death experiences, but I have yet to find anything similar to mine. I would definitely have to rely on other hooks–dysfunctional family, how I overcame it, etc.

But it’s been burning in my mind since it happened. I want to write about it; I just don’t know how to do it. Part of the problem is that at the time, my mother was pushing me to write a movie script about it. When I demurred, she got upset and almost angry, saying it would be such an inspiration to other people. As if that was my duty–which in her mind, it is. My duty, I mean.

Ever since I was a child, she never considered me a person in my own right. I was supposed to be a mini-me of her–but it’s worse than that. I wasn’t supposed to be like she was as a person; I was supposed to be the ideal version of herself.

So all of that would have to be in the memoir in order for it to make any sense at all. I have no problem writing about my past, but I don’t know how to structure this memoir. That is my isuse.


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