So, this year for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), I actually have two projects, which is a first for me! Yeah, quite ambitious, although I have no plans of actually hitting the usual 50,000 words like you’re supposed to do. Let’s not get too crazy, okay? I haven’t hit that since 2008, and that was via voice recognition. The book was Hereafter, which was supposed to be a dark comedy, and ended up being a dark conspiracy/paranormal romance thing that I still need to rewrite. Hmmm. Anyway, um, this year’s projects are the following: my Turtleduck Press novella, Soul Song, which is a paranormal romance about twin flames, and also Esperantaj poemoj (Esperanto poetry). Why on earth are you doing both, Erin, you ask? Are you insane? And with working crazy hours, and the holidays approaching, and your health being wonky and and and —
Well, see, it’s like this. We at TDP decided to try our collective hands and sporks (and possibly turtleducks) at the novella thing, and I’m uh, way behind. I figured I’d at least get going on mine. And it’s, uh…going? I’m 2,000 words in. Exciting stuff. 🙂 I’m doing the 100 words when-I-can method, which is really all I can manage at the moment. Man, it’s a far cry from previous years, but it beats 0, which was what I had for most of this year. So at least I’ll end on a semi-high note?
And the Esperanto poetry…my friend and study partner and I decided last year (yeah, we pre-planned this) to do something, and I wanted to keep the commitment. I am having a great deal of fun writing in Esperanto. I wasn’t up to fiction, which was the original plan. But since I’ve dabbled in writing Esperanto poetry prior to this, I figured it wouldn’t be too difficult. Yeah, well…it kinda is, because when you’re writing poetry, the words and language I need far exceeds my knowledge of the language. Oops? So I’m kind of forced to write simple stuff. And I do write straight to Esperanto — with the exception of one poem, which hit me like lightning at 3:30am and I couldn’t translate it fast enough. So that one I wrote in English and trnaslated it afterward.
It’s been an interesting journey. I have no illusions of “winning” or anything. I’m basically rebelling. And that’s okay. For many years I wrote fiction with a goal of 30,000 words instead of 50,000 because of my wrists anyway, so this is really nothing new, except for the addition of a second project. My focus is a bit scattered, but it helps to keep things fresh — if I’m feeling meh about one thing, I can switch to the other. I did that one year for Camp Nano and it worked pretty well, except it was two books. I made my goal, which I believe was 12,000 words.
If anyone is interested in checking out my poetry, I have one of my poems up on my poetry Instagram now, with more to possibly follow: https://www.instagram.com/erinzpoetry/. The poem is in Esperanto, with the English translation in the caption. I also cross-post them to my Twitter, which you can find here: https://twitter.com/ekendall.
If you’re ever in a rut sometime, I highly recommend you try something like this. It might help the creative juices to flow again. Or it might just confuse you. Either way, it’ll be a memorable experience, cxu ne, miaj amikoj? (right, my friends?)