Ah, sweet, sweet November 30th. Last year, you may recall that I had a clever way to end NaBloPoMo. This year, I'm not sure that I can be that clever again. And I still have no photos, so I'm breaking the promise to include at least one more before the end of this whole month of blogging.
The best inspiration I can find for tonight comes in two parts from my friend Karla. She revealed today that instead of doing NaBloPoMo, she participated in the much more serious NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month, the goal of which is to pen 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days. She hit 50,700 this afternoon, so she won! Many congrats to Karla. I considered doing it last year and maybe this will give me the courage to try next year.
The nice thing about NaBloPoMo is that after the last post on November 30th, it's over. It's a complete cycle. I think there's slightly less of that with NaNoWriMo because it's unlikely that participants have penned a fully realized novel, so there's still work to be done, even if you're allowed to set it aside for months at a time instead of mere hours.
Karla posted a link today as well. It was to an NPR story about tiny paper sculptures that have appeared around Edinburgh over the past year. They are truly exquisitely made and as mysterious as they are lovely. NPR provides a link to a more comprehensive version of the story, with many, many more photos of all ten of the sculptures. There's a point to pointing you towards these stories beyond the fact that the artistry and sentiments embodied by these paper sculptures are worth looking at on their own.
When the last sculpture was left, anonymously as they all had been, there was also a longer note. It was written cryptically, but the first stanza (?) read:
"It's important that a story is not too long...does not become tedious....
"You need to know when to end a story," she thought.
Some of you might think it would be great if I kept blogging Every Day, but it would get tedious. Our lives are interesting, but not that interesting!
5 comments:
Well done, my dear. As always, I'm very proud of you. I love the way you write, and how you always turn me on to something unexpected and beautiful. You have made my life interesting, indeed!
Love,
Michael
p.s. I'll be looking forward to that novel...
Thanks, sweet man! Will you be looking forward to my writing that novel in 30 days?
Angela,
Thanks for what you wrote; that made my day! Yes, you should do NaNoWriMo next year; we could be writing buddies. (Did I just indicate I might do this again?) It was fun in a crazy way, and liberating to aggressively stomp on your inner editor/critic in order to keep up with your daily word count. Upon a whole day's reflection, I think November might be the easy part; the weeks or months to come when I will return to the story with my editor turned back on are likely to be harder. I'm going to let the story rest for a while, and do at least one major edit before I even let Jim read it.
-Karla
Ange,
I enjoyed your month of entries even without the final photos.
I presume they will come soon ...
Yes, some photos will come soon, mum. I wished for a camera this morning when Darcy was all set for today's pajama day/crazy hair day at school. Very funny.
Karla, glad you liked it and, yes, I think your work is just starting! I might be up for NaNo next year with you.
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