NaNoWriMo Journal 2015: 17

Friday, 27 November 2015

It’s time to panic! I’m learning to associate my US-based friends’ social media posts about Thanksgiving (both for and against the occasion) with end-of-nano panic. We don’t have a Thanksgiving. I guess our similar holiday is Australia Day in January, which usually marks the end of the summer holidays, and sparks debate about the abhorrent treatment of Indigenous Australians by English invaders, versus calls to just shut up and enjoy walking around in Southern Cross-emblazoned paraphernalia. Though there were attempts by Christian political lobby groups in Australia to start a day of national thanksgiving and prayer. I’m not sure if that ever really gained much traction outside of evangelical circles.

I entered my story text so far into the word count validator and lost 578 words from my story. There’s a huge discrepancy between the word count statistics in Microsoft Word on my lap top, Scrivener on my PC, and NaNoWriMo’s official counter. As my winning or losing is determined by the Nano website’s official counter, I have to re-calibrate my Scrivener aims according to my best guess of Nano’s difference. (Nano usually seems to subtract roughly 70 words from my scrivener account.)

I have today and Monday left available to me to write. Saturday and Sunday this weekend are going to be so busy that I will likely not have any time. People keep saying, “Surely you’ll find time on the weekend, if you’re motivated enough.” Those people clearly aren’t stay-at-home mothers morphing into hair and makeup artists for their daughter’s two ballet concerts over two days and a separate full dress rehearsal in a suburb about half an hour away. At literally exactly the same time my son has a bunch of commitments – namely a birthday party and a church end-of-year celebration for the department in which he volunteers – so that I have the interesting dilemma of needing to be in two physically disparate locations at exactly the same time. If I were the main character in my NaNoWriMo story I may have that ability. But for now my real life is looking a lot like that logic puzzle where the boatman has to carry a wolf, a goat and a cabbage across a river without leaving them alone in a predator/prey situation.

It’s hard to focus on my story. I’ve had so many social interactions over the last two weeks that my introvert levels of exhaustion are very high. I love catching up with friends. I had no time to write yesterday, either, as I was out for a coffee (which was positive, so don’t get me wrong there, I appreciate friends who drag me out once in a while to talk about the deep stuff of life). At the same time I realise that because so many of us are asking really hard questions about life, faith, our collective dissatisfaction with controlling religious leaders in our lives, and fears of some that if they don’t get out soon they might one day find that they’d given their life, money and allegiance to a cult. Who knows? These are important questions and I think everyone needs to face them at some point in their faith journeys, but my impulse now is to start dialoguing on spiritual abuse forums to learn the warning signs from those who’ve already been there, when what I really, really need to do is to write almost 10,000 words within the next eight hours, get Nano done, so I can recover, and maybe even have some time to start confronting that most Wonderful Stressful Time of the Year, Christmas.

I have come down with yet another severe cold, which includes a really painful headache. My head is pounding as I type and my sinuses are beyond blocked. If I keep clenching my teeth I’m going to have to put in my mouthguard. The coffee grinder broke so I’m now reduced to using a mechanical hand grinder that makes me feel like I’m playing hurdy gurdy (which is okay, I guess, because I just imagine that I am like Anna Murphy the singer and hurdy gurdist in this song… Why yes, she is singing in Ancient Gaulish).

My story is at that disjointed stage where I’m just throwing in any scenes I can imagine. I’m not even bothering to connect them. I can do that later if I need to pad out the story. I look forward to getting this first draft completed so I can excise all its crumminess and get to the good stuff. A lot of people have requested to read my story and I massively appreciate the enthusiasm, but the reality is that I’m writing this first draft for me and my eyes alone. I don’t have the cognitive freedom to write it as creatively as I need if I’m spending the whole time worried that someone else might read it and see how terrible it is – it is in no way representative of the best of my writing. However, on a second draft edit it might manage to make the grade where I’ll look at possibly providing copies to my in-real-life friends (the ones that are sympathetic enough to understand that I’m really just developing my writing craft and that I don’t have the luxury of editors).

I’m looking forward to finishing Nano, and getting back into painting and drawing. December is always a hectic time of year. I can’t believe it’s almost upon us, and that my kids are finishing their first year at new schools (last Nano season I wrote a bit about why we left their previous school and home schooled during 2014, see here). Changing them to nonreligious schools has proven a fantastic choice for them and I’m just so glad that it’s mostly gone well for them. There were lots of hiccups along the way and new social dynamics to negotiate, but I can say with a lot of relief that neither of them has been bullied or beaten-up. Nor have the warnings of their previous school’s principal proven correct in any sense when he said, when we left, that non-Christian, government-based schooling was a factory of atheism that would force our children to give up on their faith. On the contrary, my kids have grown more confident in the knowledge that they choose to self-identify as Christians, while learning that their classmates come from myriad religious belief systems to which they are devoted at varying degrees of intensity (my kids now count Muslims, Sikh, Mormons, Catholics, Agnostics and Atheists from a huge range of ethnic backgrounds among their schoolmates). I realise just how more reflective it is of real social life in Australia. It’s so multicultural here in Melbourne that you either learn how to navigate the varied landscape of religious and philosophical worldviews – or put up the blinkers and pretend that everyone who isn’t exactly like yourself is “bad.” I love that just by changing schools the kids have been able to learn that “others” are more like us than they are different, and that differences aren’t bad, they’re what makes life interesting.

Anyway, enough progressive proselytising, it’s time to go back to my story… which, like my previous paragraph, seems to be morphing into a bit of a commentary on how we marginalise people because of external differences. In my story the bird-people were historically being jerks to the lizard-people but now the bird-people are starting to confront their deeply-embedded prejudices and realise that all the peoples must unite if there’s ever to be a restored pathway to travel between the inhabitable planets in their solar system… how my story went in that direction I’m really not sure. It’s going way off the original plot plans, that’s for sure.

Current word count: 41,144 / 50,000 words

Today’s writing soundtrack: a compilation of Native American shamanic music. I’m not sure I even like it. I’m also not sure how it ended up on my youtube suggestions, but there it is. I might switch to Gregorian chants soon. The birds singing out in the garden blend seamlessly into the music.

NaNoWriMo Journal 2015: 11

Wednesday, 18 November 2015

I’ve got a busy few days coming up so I need to get my word count as high as possible today. Ideally that would be about 4,000-5,000 words, which is doable… provided my imagination keeps going and I don’t hurt my wrists. I’m using a new computer and keyboard this year. The keyboard has a mechanistic quality that operates similarly to a typewriter, and the physical feedback of feeling and hearing the clicking of the keys as I type has been really helpful. I think it’s improved the accuracy and speed of my touch-typing.

Yesterday, I had one of those awkward and unexpected conversations at the shops with an old church acquaintance I hadn’t seen in years. We bumped into each other and had a brief chat. They recalled our conversations when I was first diagnosed as mentally ill, about three years ago. This person immediately reminded me that in their opinion, my being clinically depressed is somehow down to me “not being happy enough.” (At least they didn’t bring out the “joy of the Lord” phrase…) They said that while they thought psychologists could be helpful, I needed to hurry up and be cured.

I don’t want to judge this person because I know they mean well and come from a cultural and religious background that would prefer to find spiritual answers for every question. It’s also a sign to me that I’ve progressed far enough in my treatment that instead of becoming anxious by feeling pressured to “get better,” I was able to calmly explain that depression is a medical disorder. As it’s the “family disease,” in my case, it’s more like learning to manage a permanent genetic disorder than magically curing myself through more gratitude and more prayer. People don’t like being told that for my variant of psychological disease, there isn’t really a permanent cure. I imagine it makes them feel uncomfortable.

The conversation was a reminder to me that as much as I like the vast majority of people I met over the years through that church, who are all just trying to find and understand God the best way they know how, the social environment is not a safe one for those of us who deviate from the socially prescribed normative behaviours of perpetual and expressive joy. Even just being an introvert is enough for people to question one’s spiritual seriousness in the loud and more expressive forms of church – for example, see here, here, here, here, here, and here  for a brief overview of the discussions going on with introverts struggling to find a place of acceptance in expressive forms of Christian religion. Not to mention the perceived problem that there are those of us who get worse while in the church context (rather than being on a continually upwards self-improvement journey). I’m currently reading the fascinating book The Failure of Evangelical Mental Health Care and it’s really helped me to better understand how these beliefs regarding the supposedly true causes of mental illness arise in some Christian circles. It is a terrible drain having those conversations, though.

It seems that simply by turning to a doctor and a clinical psychologist outside of the church-sanctioned counselling centre for help, I am branded as a heretic. It’s absurd. If it were any other kind of disease then seeing a specialist doctor wouldn’t raise any concerns about my religious credentials. About six years ago I had all four of my horribly painful wisdom teeth extracted in a tricky operation by a facial reconstruction specialist whose day job was rebuilding people’s faces after serious car accidents. The teeth were in such odd positions that the dentist was worried he’d possibly paralyse my face if he attempted it himself (!). No church acquaintances at any point, upon hearing that I was having the operation, asked if the surgeon was a faithful born-again Bible believer. Why? Presumably part of it was that his spiritual journey had no bearing whatsoever on his ability to remove my problem teeth without slicing through the facial nerves (as it is, the nerves were bruised enough that I never have recovered full feeling in the lower left side of my face).

Yet somehow the fact I see a highly qualified mental health specialist to help me with a complex disease mostly centred in my brain and that severely affects my quality-of-life is considered evidence of a spiritual downward spiral. Atheist surgeons, okay. Atheist mental health experts, bad. That seems to be the attitude.

And so, for all the good I’ve experienced in that church community, it is not a healthy nor adequately supportive space for someone facing my particular set of circumstances. I’m sure they would like to be supportive, and even try as far as they can to be aware that sometimes congregants do it tough, but until they actively start speaking out against the myth that mental illness is a form of demonic oppression, they will not be a safe community for those of us with these types of diseases.

I cannot trust that they won’t try to force me to quit my doctor’s health plan and send me off to “deliverance ministry” – which is basically Pentecostal exorcism – and yes, I was instructed by some former pastors there that deliverance ministry would cure me. They gave me the contact details for a para-ministry specialising in deliverance, they diagnosed my anxiety attacks as the result of Eastern mysticism, martial arts and paganism that had leeched into me via my ancestors, not to mention the spiritual baggage I supposedly had after a lifetime of Catholicism, and my husband’s long-deceased grandfather’s involvement in Freemasonry. They peddled easy answers – “if this person prays for you and you confess your sins you’ll be healed.” And of course it would cost hundreds of dollars, and despite those pastors being fully aware that I was doing it tough financially at the time, they pushed me to go down the deliverance path. I now see that as like preying on the vulnerable, the sick and the poor. In Australia, treatment for medically diagnosed mental health disorders is subsidised by the government. I think it would be so helpful if those pastors, instead of trying to develop some complex conspiracy regarding my perpetually melancholy moods which would necessitate extremely high-priced treatment, could have admitted that they didn’t know what was wrong and suggested that I see my doctor. Not that it’s their responsibility, I guess, but I’ll be honest: I have a problem with the fact that someone with, at best, a theology degree (or in this nondenominational church, no qualification whatsoever) is able to make a career out of offering life advice to people at every possible level, and even promote themselves as having the answers, without a really basic grasp of the idea that they are not actually expert in, say, diagnosing and treating diseases. Sure, pray for the sick – I’ve done that, and received that and it is comforting and sometimes really helpful and can give people the emotional strength to keep fighting and who knows, maybe God actually heals people, I can’t discount that possibility – but to put someone else’s health and well-being at risk out of a misguided sense of spiritual authority is outright irresponsible – to say the least.

I thank God, literally, that I ignored His servants on deliverance. In fact, in true Pente fashion, at the time I felt that God told me very explicitly, “You don’t need a certificate from any deliverance ministry to prove that you are saved by Me. I have enough grace for you.” And I’ll be honest, that’s one of the only times in my 14 years of Pentecostalism that I was utterly convinced God spoke to me, and which was later confirmed by other “prophetic” believers. I know, it’s crazy. I won’t try to defend it nor explain it away. I am convinced that however that message came to me, it was the truth I needed to hear at the time and it protected me from a potentially dangerous situation. I shudder to think how much damage the pastors would have caused if I had followed their advice. I’d quite likely be in a psychiatric ward somewhere.

Back to Nanowrimo. The other things that have helped my writing have included:

• exercising more. Part of the mental health plan my doctor helped me develop includes aiming for a minimum of half an hour of exercise 3-4 days a week. The more diligent I am in exercising, the better I feel and the clearer my mind becomes. I’m also weighing myself about once a fortnight to track my weight. I wouldn’t normally but I gained a heck of a lot of weight in the last two years thanks to an increasingly sedentary lifestyle and my depression pushing me to self-medicate with junk food and alcohol (never a good idea).
• doing an hour or so of housework each day. Having a cleaner writing space and knowing that the work and school uniforms are washed is a weight off my mind.
• deactivating my facebook. That alone has prevented me from losing precious hours of my existence that may otherwise have been poured into the hostile abyss that is essentially just a forum for dichotomous political ranting and maybe it’s just my early forays into nondualist philosophy speaking, but I find it a huge jolt to re-encounter perspectives that operate out of a “if you’re not 100% in agreement with me then you’re 100% wrong” ideology. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no Thomas Keating or Richard Rohr, so I am guilty of that kind of thinking, too. But I find facebook really just feeds the worst aspects of who I am, inciting me to defensiveness, impatience and useless anger.
• mindfulness. I’m using a guided mindfulness meditation series on iTunes U. It’s been genuinely helpful in improving the quality of my sleep. I also let the kids listen to the guided ‘body scan’ meditation before bedtime and they really like it.
• prayer and contemplation. I know, I know. As my friends and family watch my slide into seeming-heresy and de-conversion, depending on who I talk to that’s a sign of my progress or a sign of my abject sinful nature rising up in a wild rebellion against the Creator. However, the reality is that my prayer life is a central aspect to my existence. I’ll write more on that another time. For now I’ll just leave it at the sense of gratitude that the more I travel through life, the more I see God (or love or life or force or a sense of meaning and purpose, choose your preferred term) in everyone and everything.

Current word count: 28,594 / 50,000 words

Today’s writing soundtrack: Polaris by Tesseract. Again. I just really like their music. It reminds me of all the reasons I first picked up bass guitar as a teenager.

NaNoWriMo Journal 2015: 10

Tuesday, 17 November 2015

There’s not a lot to say. I finally got up the courage to ring my hairdresser for the first time in almost 18 months to book a long-overdue hair makeover. This image from the IntrovertDoodles Instagram perfectly illustrates my feelings regarding going to the hairdressers. I also forced myself to go for a quick bike ride this morning, but after ten minutes of having to dodge lots of complete strangers on the local bike track my hyper-vigilant anxious introvert tendencies kicked in and before I knew it I was taking the first turn-off straight back to my house. Oh well. I’ll try to ride for longer next time.

This is a terribly busy time of year. The school year ends in a month’s time, so all that end-of-year stuff happens around now. On top of that, we have most of our birthdays around now. And Christmas, God help me, is just around the corner, with all its pointless stress. I quite frankly can’t be bothered dealing with all the histrionics and if I have to say no to each and every one of our  families’ Christmas events in order to maintain a shred of sanity, then that is what I will do. I sort of wonder if our Lord and Saviour had all this drama in mind surrounding His birthday celebrations. (Okay, historical realities and context aside, that is, seeing as the whole date and notion of a birthday for baby Jesus is contentious and it just happens to be the same time and similar imagery to a set of ancient pagan festivals. By the way, I tried to find a reference on that but it’s hard to find decent information on historical Yuletide celebrations when there are so many conspiracy theories on the topic.)

Instead of working on nano last night like I’d planned, I filled out reams of paperwork. School end-of-year excursions, next year’s school book list orders and fees, ballet school re-enrolments and end of year concert tickets, permission slips to go swimming with the school, and paperwork to do with the fact I’ve spent an insane amount of money on medical issues this year (in Australia you get a discount on your annual government-subsidised medical bills if you spend over a certain amount – we’re very lucky to have that system in place so I’m not complaining).

Not to mention a huge wad of incorrectly addressed mail that needed redirecting. (Aussie) Landlords take note, your tenants are not legally required to act as your own personal mail redirection service, and you can’t reasonably expect that. Unfortunately we are legally required to sit there sifting through every bit of incorrectly delivered mail, cross out the original address, scrawl “return to sender” on every single envelope.

Whinging about petty little issues put to one side, the reality is that things are okay at the moment. Not great – my health could be better, my depression could at least try to be less severe, and the process of de-converting from my current religious context is terribly difficult – only people who’ve experienced that for themselves will understand. But it could be far worse so I will try to uphold before me a sense of gratitude that in the grand scheme of chaos in the world at the moment, not being able to meet my intended nanowrimo word count because I was writing out a huge pile of forms while trying to decide whether to enrol my kid in either technical ballet classes or pilates for dancers is really not that big a problem.

Now, when I say de-converting, I haven’t gone quite so far as a head-first launch into Atheism, though I have plenty of friends and some family who wish that I would shed the shackles of organised religion and embrace materialist philosophy as well as science (I love science, not so convinced by materialism). For me, by de-conversion I mean that the styles, forms and theologies of fundamentalist-Pentecostal Christian belief that have informed my life over much of the last fifteen years have reached their logical endpoint for me. I read de-conversion stories and see a lot of familiar emotions, rational struggles and interpersonal difficulties in them. It’s taken such a huge toll on my mental health so that I’m now back to monthly visits with the clinical psychologist when for a while there I only needed one every few months. While there was much good within my church experiences (namely, the friends I made and the opportunity to give back to the local community through volunteer work), when I try to balance that good against the less-positive experiences, I can no longer ascribe to this style of belief without the pressure of a whole lot of cognitive dissonance. I wouldn’t even know where to begin. I have a lot of very mixed feelings surrounding my time there. I see great value in parts of it and I still willingly take my kids to services and allow them to participate, especially my extroverted son who finds the social context positive. However, it is time for me to move on and whether I want to or not, I find myself propelled out to spiritual paths more representative of the person I was before I married a Pentecostal guy.

On that note, back to nanowrimo…

Current word count: 25,899 / 50,000 words

Today’s writing soundtrack: Mutter by Rammstein

Only 2 Months and 21 Days Until NaNoWriMo and I Can’t Wait

I note – with significant excitement – that there are less than three months before NaNoWriMo 2015 begins. I entered this annual writing event in 2013 and 2014, in both cases taking out the title of “Winner.” To clarify, in this instance “Winner” does not mean that out of 310,000 adult competitors (as counted in 2013’s event), I somehow floated to the top and was deemed champion – as nice as that would be. It meant that in the month of November I wrote a 50,000+ words first draft manuscript of a novel, with the word count then verified by NaNoWriMo. Winners are anyone who hits the minimum 50,000 word count mark. Starting from word number one on 1 November, right through to word 50,622 submitted before midnight local time on 30 November, I joined a virtual community of would-be novelists in typing out an original story.

In 2014 I wrote within a fantasy-horror genre, and 2013 it was sci-fi-with a strong dash of fantasy.

I’ve learned a lot about writing, crafting novels, and the sheer hard work involved and I look forward to exploring it further later this year.

Some thoughts on NaNoWriMo and writing:

Planning is essential! In 2013 the story came to me fairly easily. I was writing something I’d internally composed over the previous decade, so once I sat down at the keyboard it flowed pretty naturally. The difficulties I faced had more to do with environmental circumstances. At the time I was struggling with my in-real-life experiences, which meant that my natural but extremely temperamental creative streak had to be forced to perform. This was a challenge; I’m used to “waiting for the inspiration.” NaNoWriMo taught me that sometimes you have to challenge your creative self to work, and work hard, and it’s entirely capable of producing some decent results with practice.

In 2014, while in-real-life circumstances were greatly improved, I was starting from scratch on a whole new set of ideas. I didn’t have years of unexpressed writerly goodness from which to draw: it was sheer hard work and I both loved and loathed the difficulty of the process. However, I also spent a large portion of the time asking myself why I thought I could just thrash out a whole novel in 30 days without so much as preparing a list of possible character names or having a beginning point more detailed than the phrase “vaguely post-apocalyptic supernatural horror” in my mind.

This year, 2015, I intend to do more on the planning side and see if that improves the writing process.

What does my NaNoWriMo planning entail? Procrastination! I’m better off procrastinating now than in November.

More helpfully, I do things like reading my favourite etymology websites to get a feel for possible character names. I like names with appropriate cultural references. This year I’m contemplating possibly writing something in a more contemporary Australian setting, which meant scanning lists of common Australian given names to try to give a more authentic feel to the story. Anyone up for the suburban adventures of Bazza, Gazza and Dazza, three mates hooning in their Commodore ute, drinking beer with Shazza and Kezza at the corner pub…? Okay, maybe not. All my characters will get their own handwritten page in a folder of notes, with detailed descriptions on anything relevant – from their physical appearance and ethnicity, through to their education or career or origin on a particular planet.

I go for walks, and find that being outdoors, listening to the birds and frogs and creek along the local bike trail frees my mind to imagine possible ideas, stories and settings.

I also like to draw maps. As a reader of fantasy, I appreciate a book with a decent map. I think of Dinotopia, by James Gurney, one of my all-time favourite stories and with a beautifully detailed map representing not just locations but terrain and ecology. I love plotting out the journey taken by the characters through the story as I read it.

Personally the visual prompt of a map helps me to ensure a consistency in the story. Otherwise even the basic geographical details are going to go awry and the cold, southernmost town in one chapter will later become a northern tropical village.

Geography is a big concern. I’ll make a pretty detailed map. I’ll write descriptive notes for each significant location, too. Is there a particular type of terrain, ecology, fauna or flora significant to the region? It all goes in my plans. It’s also a point of internal conflict for me, in the cultural divide between my own culture and nearly every possible reader demographic I could want. As an Australian, my inner compass automatically denotes southern regions as cold, and northern as hot or tropical. Winter is June to August, and the Summer Solstice falls in December. The sun travels across the northern half of the sky. East is coastal, damp and forested, but the further west one travels, the hotter and more desert it becomes. Deserts are red, forests are eucalyptus-based and evergreen, wild animals are kangaroos and koalas, and everyone drives on the left hand side of the road. I am quite conscious of the fact that the majority of people who might read what I write would find something jarring in all that. Conversely, Australia has a whole lot of unique attributes that people outside of our country might find fascinating, so I don’t want to pretend to be anything else. It used to be the case that the only novels I read were European or North American. When I came across The Silver Brumby series by Elyne Mitchell in my mid-teens, finally I was able to delve into a fantastical world entirely recognisable: the kangaroos sheltering under stands of wattle, the rough wild Brumbies (an Australian breed of domestic horse) galloping over the hill country of northern Victoria and southern New South Wales, references to characters from the Gippsland region (where I lived until my mid-20s), and the descriptions of different types of gum trees.

Making the most of every spare moment. In the last two NaNoWriMo Novembers, I have learned that while I do tend to frantically write the final 20,000 words in the last week, it’s the first half of the month that can make or break the word count. I will inevitably have days where I can’t make up the ideal 1,667 daily word count. So I need to be realistic. Some days I’ll be easily able to tap out 3,000 words. Others I might only write 100. But it all counts and it’s better to write a short paragraph on a bad day than nothing at all.

NaNoWriMo is a reminder to take myself seriously as a writer. The only other time in my life I was really encouraged to write, where I had regular feedback, support and constructive criticism, was during my university studies. Then I had to research and write an 18,000-word dissertation. It was incredibly hard work. But I received a lot of helpful advice from my supervisors, including the idea that what I wrote did, in fact, have value, and that it was both interesting and enjoyable to read. For me that was huge praise, considering that my three supervisors were all published writers and academics with some excellent books and journal contributions to their names.

Another useful idea that I gleaned from my uni days included the power of handwriting as a way to manage writer’s block. Following the advice of my supervisors, I learned that when I feel overwhelmed and scatterbrained in my writing, I can take a blank notebook, a pen, set aside any electronics devices, and sit outdoors to write whatever I can draw out from my memories. It’s also an excellent way of processing what I have already learned. Sometimes I surprised myself with how much I’d taken in from my studies.

Even though NaNoWriMo isn’t until November, already I’ve started taking notes and making up an inspiration folder for my story this year. I have no idea, yet, what I’m writing about, though it’ll will probably fall somewhere in the realm of sci fi or fantasy, simply because that’s what I enjoy reading. I make a note of any useful thoughts that pop into my head, too. An idea, a possible plot concept, and even printing out interesting photographs that I saw on websites about Celtic spirituality. They all go in the folder.

Ideally, I would love creative writing to be a daily practice. It almost is. Unfortunately real life, as it is, places other demands on my time and energy. I have to carve out time for writing – saying no to mindless social media, limiting catch ups so that while I do regularly see friends (which is positive) they don’t take all of my time (which is frustrating), allowing my introverted-self enough space and solitude to function healthily, working on eating healthily and maintaining my fitness so that when I write I can do so calmly and with a clear mind, and taking care of priority activities in the first half of the day so that I can write, in good conscience, in the second half of the day. I also note that about ten years ago I stopped watching television. At the time I was juggling preschool-aged children, volunteering, university and struggling to adjust to life in the much busier suburban environment, and The Husband had just started a new career after university which meant we had less time to spend together, and tv simply didn’t help. With so much going on in my life, the weakest link in the chain of activities had to stand aside in deference to higher priority concerns. I do sporadically watch some serialised shows on DVD (namely, Star Trek and the Stephen King-inspired series Haven) but generally the only use the tv gets is when the kids watch their weekend cartoons.* If I were an avid tv watcher I would have no room in my life for creativity whatsoever.

NaNoWriMo is great in that it enables me to set aside a whole month to write, when family and friends know that I’ll be deeply immersed in my creative work. It reminds me to take my writing seriously, too. It encourages me to give my creativity an annual top priority status, when so often it gets lost in the midst of chauffeuring the kids to school or fulfilling the endless stream of volunteer commitments and appointments and social events. When I look back on my life I’d like to know that I made a genuine attempt to wring from life the most I possibly could, in spheres like creativity, intellectual pursuits, spirituality and physical health, community involvement and social activism. Writing, for me, is a major way for me to express a number of those areas in a way that brings me a lot of joy and a lot of satisfaction.

So even though I have to wait until November before I can begin my third NaNoWriMo entry, today – a beautifully sunny August day, with early signs of impending spring in the mini daffodils in the garden, and the subtle changes in the blackbird songs, I am already preparing my initial character ideas and possible plot points in anticipation of the first day of Nano writing in November.

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Find the NaNoWriMo website HERE.

I’ve written elsewhere on the topic of NaNoWriMo HERE.

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*On television, and my avoidance thereof, and the endless bewildering monologues I’ve received fuelled by skepticism towards my preference for non-screen-based modes of entertainment: I know people are oddly compelled to interrogate me on my lack of knowledge about currently popular television shows, as if my profound disinterest in tv is somehow a moralistic attempt at asceticism, or an attack on tv fans, whose choice to watch tv doesn’t affect me in the slightest – but it really comes down to the sense that for me, I’m happier without extraneous noise, and I’m happier reading or writing or staring at the clouds than I am passively absorbing mass media content. To put it simply, I find tv to be mind-numbingly boring and a chore akin to scrubbing the bathroom rather than, say, a pleasant mode of entertainment. I feel the same way about the vast majority of films, too. When people say, “You should watch…”, regardless of what title follows that statement, it’s as if a heavy burden is placed on my shoulders and I shrink into myself, searching through my stockpile of polite ways to say “No thanks” for the most plausible excuse as to why watching hours of bogans cooking meat on whatever cooking show is currently in vogue or hours of American sitcoms interspersed with shouty adverts for ornate carpets just isn’t as exciting to me as it’s assumed to be by roughly, at a guess, all 23,859,641 other Australians (give or take a few). But that’s an aside and only relevant here in the context of the question, “Where do you find time in your hectic schedule to write?” Of course, I literally don’t care if my friends choose tv as their primary mode of entertainment, and more power to them if that’s what they enjoy. I’ll be over here reading heavy 19th Century dramatic European tomes, but it’s a big world and there’s room for all of us.

** A quick perusal of the Myers-Briggs Type forums for ISTPs (the personality type most resonant with my own experiences and outlook) very quickly suggests that, in general, we are not usually television watchers. I feel validated by that. I hadn’t really thought consciously about that before, but for those of us personality types compelled to engage with physical reality, in tangible and creative ways, tv is just too passive for our tastes. I’ve written elsewhere about being Introverted and ISTP and on how learning about personality types through a bunch of different systems has helped me better understand the way I interact with other people (and how they perceive me).