Do I ever think about quitting? Every week, particularly as I watch the deadline for these blog posts come roaring down on me like a runaway freight train [0].
The Plan [1] was to write the first draft of today’s blog yesterday. After all, I was going to be sitting mostly quietly in a room full of voting equipment for twelve hours, it was a primary so we wouldn’t be terribly busy, and what else was I going to do with myself? Heck, I’d write three and get all caught up! [2] I forgot a vital part of my process, which is that I cannot possibly get into the Flow of writing if there is somebody sitting next to me talking. Not necessarily talking to me, not necessarily talking about anything I need to know are am interested about, just talking. Sometimes just breathing loudly is sufficient to throw me off my game.
And yet I love Nanowrimo writeins. Probably because we spend good blocks of time where we Do Not Talk Just Write (called sprints). And as lovely as my co-election-ladies are, I could not possibly tell them, “OK, I’m going to do a writing sprint! You need to be quiet now!” [3]
The writing I do for the Cafe is totally voluntary. I don’t have to do it. I have no goals, nothing to prove. I’m not trying to sell myself as an author. If I quit, I doubt I’d so much as lose a friend [4].
But I would be very, very disappointed in myself.
The blog is a challenge, a writing exercise, a community builder. The flash fiction weeks just kick my butt all up and down the high street [5], which is good for me because it stretches both my ingenuity as a writer, but also exercises my discipline and my desperation. Putting stuff out there, with my name on it, forces me to take the long, public view; consider my electronic legacy, as it were. After all, future employers will be able to Google me and read these very words [6]. I’m fairly certain my current employer does.
As for community building? Well, I’m still working on that [7].
[0] I’m supposed to have them turned in two weeks before they’re posted. You may cue the insane laughter now.
[1] My life is like Farscape. There is always a Plan. It’s always a bad plan, it never goes well, people get hurt, and somehow I always come out the other end more broken but wiser. I have friends who think this makes me Cool. Sometimes I worry about my friends.
[2] Again, insane laughter.
[3] I wonder if I could convince the county clerk to assign me to a precinct next November where all the election officials are also Nanowrimo participants? “Hi, I’m here to vote! Where do I sign in?” “Hush! We’re in the middle of a word war! You’ll have to wait!”
[4] Really, my fellow Confabulators are the nicest, most forgiving people around.
[5] Which is why even my regular posts are late— and short non-fiction is my specialty. The fiction weeks suck up all the schedule slack accrued from the weeks before, and then through a mysterious warping of time and space, suck up the slack from the weeks following as well. At this point, I’ll be caught up in 2049. April, I suspect.
[6] Which will it be? “Holy cow!” or “Holy crap!”? And if the latter, do I want to work for them anyway?
[7] As I look glumly at the 50 or so unread Confabulator Cafe posts in my newsfeed.
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