ghost writing

I've been trying really hard not to remember the catalyst for last year's November writing frenzy, but it won't go away, and the feelings I had last year at this time seem to be descending on me again, as though they were imprinted on my psyche and were programmed to reappear. This bothers me, and I'm worried it will derail this year's noveling efforts.

Last year, around this time, I had broken up with a boyfriend, and I was aimlessly (or desperately) looking for something to keep my mind off of it, though in a way that wouldn't do me any harm. I had sunk to doing everything I swore I'd never do in such a situation - overeating, or not eating at all, sleeping way more than was necessary, or not sleeping at all, feeling sorry for myself, or blaming myself entirely for the break-up, hating every couple I saw, or envying them, crying at precisely the wrong moments. Normally, I'm not given to crying in front of people. I think only my sister and my parents have ever really seen me break down.

On Halloween night last year, I was sitting in the lobby of a client's office in Delaware, waiting for my co-workers. Somehow, my name had been left off of the visitors' list, so the security people wouldn't let me in, and I was left to sit in the lobby while my colleagues went in to talk to the client. I might have otherwise been a bit irritated about a wasted trip, but my energy had been depleted from the effects of the unceremonious abrupt halt of my personal relationship that I had none left for any other emotion. In effect, I was numb. No feeling whatever.

So I sat in the lobby, and took out my daybook and started writing. At first, it was just to keep the security people from talking to me, because I was in no mood to talk to strangers. As I kept writing, I remembered coming across a little blurb on some Internet page or other about NaNoWriMo, and I also remembered the storyline I had thought up during an acupuncture treatment, and the two met up and turned to face me and together said, "Well? What are you waiting for?" So I wrote out the plotline and characters and settings and other random things that I thought I could use in the story.

Then an odd thing happened while I was writing. It was as though I were thawing out and was no longer numb. I felt bruised and sore, all the tension from the break-up that I had shoved aside was going to be acknowledged all in one go. I felt as though I had been beaten and left for dead. And I felt anger too, because I had let myself sink into a severe depression, which I then didn't let pass through me, and which I had done a marvelous job of hiding from everyone.

I decided, in about a second, that I would attempt this NaNoWriMo thing. I would write 1667 words, or more if I could manage it, a day for 30 days, and have a substantial draft at the end of it. Never mind that it seemed bizarre and impossible. I'd do it anyway. Normally, I am so in my head that I overthink things. It's a very bad habit that I have, and it wastes a lot of time. (Funny, in his goodbye note, he told me not to think so much so that I'd feel more.) For once, I thought very little, and just acted on a quick decision. I just did it. I didn't procrastinate, which is another bad habit I have. I just sat down every night for a month and wrote.

Oddly, the ex didn't appear anywhere in the writing. Nor did the relationship, and yet, I felt like I was untangling myself from the final threads of it, and letting go of it, and acknowledging, though not regretting, my mistakes in it. I can now say that I made mistakes in that relationship and not flinch over it. I can't fix them. I can't change them. I can't erase them. I can, however, admit to them and do my best not to repeat them in the future. That's all I can do, really. That, and write.

And yet...

And yet, as I get ready to write insane amounts of Story again this November (starting tomorrow, actually), I'm surprised at how similar I feel to last year. How is that possible? I'm not breaking up with anyone. I'm not overeating, or sleeping too much, or feeling sorry for myself, or hating the sight of couples. Why do I feel the same? I can only figure it's the ghosts of last year's noveling come back to visit. Will they interfere with this year's writing? Is it that I need to feel really horrible to write lots of words? I hope that's not it. That sounds like something Dorothy Parker or Sylvia Plath would have done. Though I love their words, I don't want to BE like them.

I haven't even begun, and I'm already beginning to feel little prickly doubts creeping into my head and telling me I won't be able to make it to 50K this year, damn them. I hope to heaven they're wrong.