How Ironical and NaNoWriMo

Hello:

It's been awhile since I've written what I consider to be a "real" post. Oh, I've had things posted - but they really didn't take much to write. Let's face it, I've been cheating. A relevant news item comes in like the Picture Rocks fire, and I'm off the hook for a day; we start enrollment for the Liguori Publications Focus Group and I just post the invite; I ship off the last of the cookbooks and woohoo, there's my post - I'll even talk about how it's "single topic" as if that adds value (maybe it does). Anyway, my recent posts have definitely lost a lot of their personal element. Ironically, readership has climbed significantly. I spend more time voyeuristicly watching my Sitemeter connection to see who's reading what and how much time they spend doing it.

If this post seems to have an unusual tone, it's because I am writing to myself. As I've mentioned in other posts, I am extremely skilled at misplacing my attention in order to avoid working on the things that are important to me. If I try working on my novel, I suddenly have to work on my Grandfather's project. If I start working on that, I urgently need to update my work related BLOG (you're reading the result of that one). When I need to update Dark Glass, I start watching stats or making tweaks to the BLOG template. At times this process seems infinitely recursive. I often picture a Tibetan prayer wheel spinning faster and faster. This post is just one more attempt to make myself confront the problem. I don't know that I can ever stop it, it seems so fundamental to who I am, but if I could control and direct it better.... I am never more productive than when my hyperfocus settles on something constructive.

I should probably point out that I am actually a pretty happy person - now. I've had phases of my life that were relatively dark and even angst ridden (I've always loved that expression), but as I've grown older things have generally gotten better. I love my work at Liguori Publications, I love the people in my life. Even so, I feel the need to keep pushing my envelope; not to settle and to achieve new and greater things. I may not go to Law School, but I WILL write a novel. Preferrably, it will even get published - but I'll worry about that after I write it.

Speaking of writing - I took yesterday off from work and arranged my schedule so that I could become a recluse in my house and just write. I knew I would spend a lot of time fighting my normal demons of distraction, so I had to block out a lot of time. The only thing I wrote I was yesterday's BLOG post. The post you're reading now is my attempt to "sneak up" on my other projects. On the one hand, I haven't worked on my novel. On the other my house has never been cleaner.

I keep flirting with the idea of participating in this year's National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo as it's called. These beautifully crazy people actually cause THOUSANDS of people each year to write an entire 50,000 word novel in ONE MONTH! I'm intrigued but frightened, if I can't work on a project that I've all ready started even with vacation days - how can I do that? A quote from their FAQ:

• If you don't do it now, you probably never will. Novel writing is mostly a "one day" event. As in "One day, I'd like to write a novel." Here's the truth: 99% of us, if left to our own devices, would never make the time to write a novel. It's just so far outside our normal lives that it constantly slips down to the bottom of our to-do lists. The structure of NaNoWriMo forces you to put away all those self-defeating worries and START. Once you have the first five chapters under your belt, the rest will come easily. Or painfully. But it will come. And you'll have friends to help you see it through to 50k.

I'm going to wrap today's post up by suggesting two books by J.P. Vaswani. The Way of Abhyasa: Meditation in Practice as well as The Good You Do Returns: A Book of Wisdom Stories both have a calming meditative theme that somehow manages to inspire as well as relax. These titles are influenced by a variety of religious perspectives but are each fully consistent with Catholic teachings. Sometime I'll write about how I accidentally met the Dalai Lama walking down a sidewalk in front of St Louis Union Station (it really happened).

Peace,

P. Del Ricci - Dark Glass