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At the mercy of fickle muses

Or, Rhi's Nano-Adventure Begins.

Terribly fascinating, the way these things happen.
Since I initially began writing this MHT anthology short story, I'd been planning to hammer out the last of it during Nano and have done with it. I desperately want to do a story for this project and despite the obstacles that are arising, my plans to finish it have not changed.

However, just as I sat down to write today I read a note from a reader asking about the potential for a sequel to "Blacker Than Black." And in the course of penning my response, Red woke up.

No, no. Red didn't just "wake up." Red came roaring to life like a soldier shaken awake by incoming mortar sirens and impacts. It's a good thing that she and I are so familiar with one another or I might have backhanded her into Alpha Centauri.
As things stand, however, my Nano-Adventure is off to a roaring, energetic start (which is how these things usually begin, is it not) with 3k already dumped out.

Not a bad number. The odd thing is, there'd be more of it but I had this silly idea to do it longhand. And then my hand couldn't keep up with my brain, and then it started to cramp, and I had to break out the magnetic wraps to stave off the stiffness and carpal pain. It's not a chronic thing, but any long periods of typing or writing without a break to stretch my forearms and flex my hands causes discomfort.
Yes, I have trouble remembering to pause and stretch and flex when I'm writing. My brain moves that fast, I'm too busy trying to keep up with it and get everything out to worry with silly things like writer's cramp and carpal tunnel stretches. PFFFT.

But now I have to transcribe 3k of longhand too, and ugh, why did I ever think longhand would be great for anything longer than a quick bout of thirty minutes of brainstorm writing during my lunch hour at work? Aren't I the cute little writer trying to be quaint. Not.

I might have to break down and get a tablet with a bluetooth keyboard and a simple text editor after all.

Which brings me to the second part of my Nano-Adventure. Before all this began, I had this lofty goal of attending a write-in at a little coffeehouse that was scheduled not far from where I am. It's across from a college campus (oh dammit) but that was okay, I would brave the crowd and go have some caffeine and escape the distraction of the internets and be productive. Even though I wouldn't have my Spotify... And maybe even socialize with some other writers.

Yeah that last part put the nail in the coffin of that idea. So much nope. I do not socialize. I do not schmooze. Not in person, no way. I have no propensity for "making nice" or smiling and lying about "how excited" I am to be in public and whatnot.

I'd like you to meet Rhi, the Introvert, if you haven't met them already. No, really. *waves at everyone*

My entire plan for this month got derailed in the space of a message that would fit inside a Tweet parameter. I guess, after a fashion, Red has been waiting to tell her story and this was the right time.
Fitting, since Black's story was also a Nano project. Fitting, too, that her story just dumped out in first person present tense as well.

I really hope everyone likes Red when they get reacquainted with her...

That's the nice thing about Nano. It's a tool, and it's only as good as the effort you put into it, like most things in life. This time it was the trigger that the floodgate was waiting for. I welcome it. I just won't be doing the longhand thing. HAHA.

Comments

  1. Cannot wait to see what Red has to say! Good luck and although it didn't work out the way you planned (what really ever does!) it sounds as though another path was uncovered.

    ReplyDelete
  2. @Kass Thanks! :) I'm looking forward to working with Red. She was fun the first time around too, and it'll be an invigorating break from the other project even if I only work on it for a couple weeks before switching back at the halfway point. The short story is already 20k so it definitely doesn't need a full 50k of effort to finish it, for sure.

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