Writing Withdrawal

I thought I’d be sick of writing… but it turns out that I’ve been affected in quite the opposite way. I think I might be addicted to it. Didn’t see that coming.

I had a blast on Thursday night, crossing the NaNoWriMo finish line at a Write-In (which is where a bunch of nerds gather in the same place to type up their novels in close proximity to others). I had so much fun that I went back on Friday (and my final word count was 56,021, meaning that I wrote about 6,000 words in one day, which was far above my previous record). People were being goofy, daring each other to add words and phrases into their novels (I was particularly proud of the metaphor I created in order to incorporate “and then the aliens landed” into the middle of my chick-lit story). We did mini-word-wars (i.e. competitions to see who could write the most in 15 minutes. I averaged around 700 words. One girl wrote 1240 during one of them. It was ridiculously impressive. Her novel ended up passing the 140,000 word mark that night. Which is nothing, when you know that a 15-year-old girl from the Chicago suburbs wrote over 200,000 words. Yes, that’s in one month).

I actually just got back from the “Thank God It’s Over” party. About 50 writers gathered at a restaurant. There were awards handed out (for things like “passing the 50,000 mark closest to midnight”, which was given to the woman who hosted the 29-hour Write-In I was at… She hit the mark at 11:58pm). People read snippets of their novels (I read the first page of mine, and people were laughing, which I found to be very encouraging). We all discussed word-padding techniques, and all the things that we’d meant to cleverly compose that didn’t happen. It was so much fun that about 10 of us ended going to a coffee shop afterwards and talking for another few hours.

And now we’re all going through writing withdrawal. We’re thinking of getting together on a monthly basis to do writing exercises and readings of our works. And then in April there’s an event called Script Frenzy, in which the goal is to write a 100-page screenplay in a month. It’s just too hard to quit writing once you start doing it at such an extreme pace.

When I was in college, I took a class in playwriting (I wanted to improve upon skills from my high school days, when I considered myself to be a budding amateur playwright… I even won a few awards for my works). My professor was adamant that the skill of writing, like anything else, was best improved through practice. She recommended that everyone in the class write for at least twenty minutes every day. She said she did her writing in the morning, Sometimes she just wrote things like, “I’m too tired to be doing this, and I can’t believe I’m making myself type for twenty minutes today.” But just the act of getting some words down was enough to keep your skills shiny and polished.

After this past months post-a-thon, I’m a little worried that I’ve become dependent on writing as a means to communicate with the outside world. I had significantly fewer fun outings and meetings with friends than in previous months, and I didn’t care. But I did start checking my hit counters for this blog multiple times each day. That’s a sick addiction. And a horribly depressing thing to do, as checking it in the mornings before anyone has visited always has a negative effect on my psyche. But I do it anyway. And, actually, recently my blog has seen a massive jump in hits (over 40 visits a day for the last week, thanks to the NaBloPoMo Randomizer). But that won’t last. I give it a week before I’m back to having my five-or-so most faithful readers. The ones who will read this no matter how terrible it is. So thank you, to you five. Because without you, I’d just be sitting in my apartment, bored and miserable right now.

It seems that leaving my apartment is a good way to fix these issues with boredom, but when I get in one of these moods my apathy prevents that. I just want something new, fun, and exciting to magically appear here to entertain me.

Sometimes I play “the genie game” with myself. I’ll think, if a genie popped into my room right now and said I could go wherever I wanted to go, see whoever I wanted to see, or do whatever I wanted to do, what would I pick? If I think of a person, then sometimes I pick up my cell phone and dial their number. If I think of a place nearby, sometimes I get up and go (although that rarely happens). If I think of an activity, sometimes I make plans to do it. And then there are the times when the game fails… the times I think “I don’t want to go anywhere, see anyone, or do anything.” And then I usually end up taking a nap or surfing the internet for obscene amounts of time.

Have you ever gotten to a point where you’ve surfed the internet so frequently that it actually becomes boring? No new e-mails. Nothing new on Facebook. No new blogs updated. I get to that point on almost a daily basis. That’s how alone I am in my apartment. And I don’t have a television, so I can’t just turn into a zombie in front of that. Oh, how I wish I could. I occasionally watch television on the internet (which some people say I shouldn’t in light of the writers’ strike, but that’s dumb. They’re striking because new media is watched by hordes of people, and the writers should be compensated for that. If we all stop watching it, then that invalidates their point). But I fear that in a few weeks, there will be no new episodes for me to watch. And then I’m just going to be sitting here, doing nothing… All the time.

I got on a reading kick in October, before the writing kick set in. Maybe I’ll be able to hop back over to that. It’s a relatively cheap hobby if you shop at used bookstores, which I do. There’s a particularly lovely one over on Halsted just north of Diversey. I don’t think it even has a name. There are painted words on the windows that say “BOOKS: Rare, Medium, Well-Done”. I don’t know if that’s the name of it? My friend Anna just calls it “the BOOKS store”, as that is the largest word on the windows. It’s run by an older man named John, who has a knack for remembering details of my life and refers to me as “Little Sister” for some unapparent reason.



The really great thing about his store is that it’s a complete mess. Some used book stores are neat and organized. Those are the bad ones. First of all, they have a tendency to be more expensive than their slap-dash counterparts. Second, they’re completely picked over, because it’s so easy to find the good stuff. Not this bookstore. I’ve found books lodged behind other rows of books. I once went through and organized the Shakespeare section by publisher for my own ease, and John didn’t care in the least (he probably didn't even notice). And about a third of the time, the man has some sort of sale going on. I’ve found some real gems there. So if you’re ever in the market for used books, make sure you go to a good messy place, because with a little effort you’ll end up with better deals and better books. Plus, you’ll probably get to meet a delightfully quirky shop owner.

Speaking of strange people, I may have seen a pimp on the L today. Either a pimp, or the richest homeless man I’ve ever seen. He had bright blue pants on, along with an off-white button up shirt, an off-white vest, and a brown fur coat that went down to his ankles. He was holding a green painted cane with an elaborate handle. His shoes were black and shined. He had a pair of red plastic sunglasses on his head, and rings on several of his fingers. And he had the strangest facial hair I’ve seen in a long while: grey sideburns leading to white tufts of hair that stuck out on either side of his chin, with no beard or mustache to connect the hair from one side of his face to the other. He sat across from me with a suspicious duffel bag taking up the seat next to him, drinking a 7-up out of a bottle that he was holding through the plastic bag that he received upon purchasing it (the liquid inside is clear… I assumed it was 7-up, but come to think of it, I don’t know if a pimp would be drinking that… but really, I don’t know why a pimp wouldn’t drink 7-up).

And with that, I’m off. I have to say, it felt great composing something in a long form that wasn’t fiction. Ah, how I’ve missed being able to ramble. I hope you all enjoyed my brief stint into short-form. And I hope you won’t mind my return to my normal style. It is so much more comfortable to me, I can’t even tell you.

Much love and many blessings,

~A~

P.S. The song “Kicking the Heart out” by Rogue Wave is on my Project Playlist as I’m writing this. I love love love it at the moment. I highly recommend checking it out.

P.P.S. I got bored last night, while I was making a conscious effort not to write, and I started another blog. It’s just going to be random things that I like. Most of which are things I stumble across on the internet that I would normally just post on Facebook. Anyway. It’s called Lemon Wacky Hello (really obscure reference… major points in my book to anyone who knows it). If you need a distraction, that’s the place to go.