Caterwauling

If I can write half a sentence novel this month, I’ll call it a victory. Happy writing to those of you who are participating in NaNoWriMo this year. Inspiration came my way yesteday and I ain’t wasting it. …

Oh, GAWD, is it that time again already?!?! I already have my first writers’ group invitation on my calendar and hot damn, I don’t have a story line. (Or a brain that’s functioning, for that matter.)

‘Tis the season to raid the liquor cabinet and offer delicious, designer chocolates on a silver platter to my Muse, who is off in warmer climes and certainly not here with me. My main character for this year’s book doesn’t inspire me the way the last one did. I usually write from a female lead’s POV but this year I made it a man. Well, one who needs to do some serious growing up, so I’m chronicling his journey.

And sure, there are always gratuitous sex scenes to fill up a few dozen pages, but I admit to being a virgin to writing those from a man’s point of view. (Hell, I forget how they happen from MY angle — I could use a refresher course or 20.) Oh, Inspiration, did you get my Change-of-Address notice when I moved a few months back?!?! Help me through this odyssey in any way you can!!!

I’m going to tell you why I hate moving. It’s because I’m compelled to dump the thousand pounds of paperwork that I’ve hauled everywhere. Not only that, but also because I take the time to read it.

And I just shouldn’t.

I just threw away my entire fundraising career. Believe me, I have no plans to return to nonprofit management/development. But I also got rid of the cell phone and credit card numbers of some of Pittsburgh’s most prolific donors. Why I kept that info is beyond me, but I have notebooks upon notebooks of telephone conversation notes, contact information, budgets, timelines and whatnot. It’s amazing, really, what I have accomplished in my lifetime. It’s a good reminder that I set out to be special and I didn’t let myself get in the way of that goal too often.

And then, in the process of digging, we unearth the personal writings. The stuff written in margins and at the back of those reporter’s steno books that I adore so much. And it makes a girl realize how far she’s come, yet how grown-up she was when she didn’t feel like it at the time.

But my observations and such are so timeless, like I knew I was going to want to write a book about it someday. Which I will, I promise. The world hasn’t met me yet, but I always knew I’d want to introduce myself someday, somehow.

Anyway, I wrote this when I was 25:

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I wrote this in my novel the other night, and I really really liked it for some reason. Not that it’s brilliant prose, but it signifies a real turning point for my protagonist:

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I’m just shy of 60,000 words in my NaNoWriMo novel (upward of 200 pages). I’ve tried to sneak back to it here and there, and I’m always thinking about it. Writing books is my first love, and I hope that this coming November’s endeavor is equally exhilarating!