For fun?

Even when I just do it for fun, I don't just do it for fun.

I realized that last night while IMing to a writing friend. I've had no time, as evidenced by the long gap between the last post and this. Like so many others, my family has been hit hard by the massive economic drop. In the years prior, I was a work-at-home and then a stay-at-home mom, and that had to change. My spirit was willing, but my use to employers was weak; there are too many people who have not been out of the work force for so long and who have the proper skills and/or degrees competing for the same jobs. I decided there would be no better time to return to college and get that degree.

Jumping in head first and late, I selected five classes for my 'add/drop' plate (one more than required for full time in case I didn't get one of the others), never realizing that they would all be reading (and most also writing) heavy. I'm having a horrible time balancing full time student with wife and mother, other things in my life are being neglected, yet I decided to participate in National Novel Writing Month again this year.

My brother pushed a small (but still heavy and painful, damn it!) T.V. on my head when we were little and apparently the effects are just being seen now.

There are better reasons for me to do NaNo than insanity. It's tradition. I do it every year and fall short of the goal; why change now that I have good reason to fall short? It might actually force me into better time management skills. I love the feeling of community NaNo brings. And I haven't really written fiction since school started, and I miss it.

So I was chatting with my friend about NaNo and explained my big idea...See, with no plot or characters calling me into November, I'd decided to use pre-NaNo October to populate a city. I dedicated a spare notebook, and in between studies or riding on the train, I could jot down character ideas. At midnight, when Halloween becomes All Saints', I would sit and write for whatever character "has the most to say."

Why not? It's just for the joy of it and to get the creative juices flowing. But then came my "ah ha moment." Wouldn't it be fun to make a play on all the mystery books/movies that have a killer staging murders out of some hapless author's books? What if some psycho ill-casts all the characters into urban fantasy scenes? It sounds, to me, dumb and brilliant and a blast to write.

I went on about the legalities to my friend who said something like, "Who cares? It's just for fun. Don't worry about that until you're getting published."

Heh. I treat every story like it's going to get published, don't I? Is that a good thing? A sense of striving that will someday push me over from would-be novelist to novelist actual? Or is it part of the pressure that gets me hung up on poorly paced middles and unsatisfactory endings--so hung up that these things never quite get fixed in revision? Hmmm....

not giving up the ghost yet

If I'm still at it a year from now with nothing to show but not-quite-ready manuscripts, I'm packing it in.

I'm dealing with a lot, internally and externally, and it's taking its tole on my Work in Progress (WiP). Plus I've had the weight of the above statement pressing on me. Thinking that the self-imposed deadline was in September, I decided that I could turn it all around. There are a few mandatory events for August, but otherwise, it would be a month of getting over June and July and prep for school. With a little negotiation with the family, I could get in an hour or so of daily "finish the revisions or die" time.

Then I went looking for the actual "packing it in" date and discovered it wasn't in September after all. August 13th. Frak. I could do the smart thing...recognize that my heads been churning out bits of story and proclaim that I will not go silently into the night...or...something. But a funny thing happened on the way to psyching myself up get this work done...

My husband spends a lot of time in Treks in Sci-Fi (yes, he is the uber geek to my geek). Leaving out the details that have nothing to do with this post, that means I spend a lot of time hearing about stories that I am neither writing nor reading. And while I was filled with angst over revisions, he was having the time of his life over a new character based on Han Solo (you know...if Han had been a Romulan). The fun was infectious. Before I knew it, I'd reimagined Han as a woman in an urban fantasy setting. The next thing I knew, I was world building and having a blast!

Yeah, I'd been right that I would never have a writing career if I continued to create lovely "half books" that fizzled out just past the middle (which is, technically, better than lovely first chapters so I've made progress). But I'm also not getting the desired career by transforming a once beloved story into my own literary hell. So August is going to be my fun writing month.

Totally fun. No freaking out over the hoped for career. No WiP angst. No fear of what anyone might think of my choices of characters or plot or inspiration.

Go me! And if you've had any of the same hang ups, maybe you should try it, too.