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Nano Prep

I picked up a gem of a book today called "Writing Down the Bones, Freeing the Writer Within," by Natalie Goldberg.1 The author discusses the daily writing process and how it opens up creative doors. She wrote the book in 1986, so some of her comments are dated. (She writes in chapter one: I have not worked very much with a computer, but I can imagine using a Macintosh, where the keyboard can be put onto my lap, closing my eyes and just typing away. The computer automatically returns the carriage. The device is called "wraparound." You can rap nonstop. You don't have to worry about the typewriter ringing a little bell at the end of a line.) But, so much of what I read, seated on the floor between the stacks of shelves, related beautifully to the process needed for NaNoWriMo success, and I felt inspired and excited enought to buy the book.

In Chapter Two: "First Thoughts," Goldberg says that the basic unit of writing practice is the timed exercise. Thanks to Acme 's daily writing exercises, which I haven't done every day , and Legerdemain 's 15 For 15 contest now on day thirteen, I'm well into a stretch of daily timed writing, and I plan to keep it up in preparation of NaNo.

Goldberg says no matter what time limit you give yourself, whether it's ten minutes or sixty, you must commit yourself to that time and remember the following:

1. Keep your hand moving. (Don't pause to reread the line you have just written. That's stalling and trying to get control of what you're saying.)
2. Don't cross out. (That is editing as you write. Even if you write something you didn't mean to write, leave it.
3. Don't worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar. (Don't even care about staying within the margins and lines of the page.)
4. Lose control.
5. Don't think. Don't get logical.
6. Go for the jugular. (If something comes up in your writing that is scary or naked, dive right into it. It probably has lots of energy.


So I was inspired, and I wrote for exactly nine minutes. I gave myself one minute to edit -- Hey, we all have to start someplace! Here goes:

(4:08 p.m.)

The taste in my mouth is bitter, dry even though I feel like I have to keep swallowing the saliva that won’t stop gathering below my tongue. I shouldn’t have eaten that chocolate. I shouldn’t even have bought it. Sidney wanted it and I love my daughter to the point of giving into her whims even when I have my own ideas of what I should and shouldn’t be doing. “Whim.” It’s funny I used “whim” just now. It’s a word I don’t employ that often. But it is on the tip of my bitter, dry-wet tongue since earlier when Sidney asked me what it meant. We were sitting in the café in Barnes and Noble. I was drinking a black coffee; she had a bottle of spring water. Between us were a brownie and an enormous Rice Krispies treat – maybe the biggest I’ve ever seen in my life – and the book of children’s poetry we had just bought. We took turns with the book, running our thumbs across the length, letting the pages fan like a dealer ready to shuffle a deck of cards. Whenever the moment seemed right, we’d stop the pages moving, dig the thumb down and split the book in two, and read that poem aloud. The word whim came up and Sidney asked what it meant. ‘An impulse,’ I said. Like when you walk through a store and see a pair of sunglasses and you think, hey, these would look good on me and you buy them even though you were in the store to get a quart of milk. Sidney laughed at my example, and then she said, we do whims a lot. I smirked. The book of poetry we were reading from was bought on a whim. I guess she’s right.

(4:18 p.m.)

I'm going to challenge myself every day in October to timed writing. I may not post it all here. I may try writing by hand ( Or not...). I'm interested to see if what Goldberg says is true: (Timed writing) is a great opportunity to capture the oddities of your mind. Explore the rugged edge of thought...First thoughts have tremendous energy. It is the way your mind first flashes on something. The internal censor usually squelches them, so we live in the realm of second and third thoughts, thoughts on thought, twice and three times removed from the direct connection of the first fresh flash.

Looking forward to the exploration...!

Footnotes
1  Copyright 1986, 2005 by Natalie Goldberb, Shambhala Publications, Inc.