28.10.08

Writing:my brain :: potato chips:my backseat.

Wow. Three nights to go until NaNoWriMo, and I don't know what I'm writing yet.

I mean, I know the story: twelve chapters, each one about a person from a different province or territory, and they all visit Nunavut for their own reasons.

I've done the research: not as much as I'd like, obviously, but enough to be sure that this is what I want to write about.

I've developed the characters: some are named after video games, some are named after cities, some are named after my dreams, and one of them is named Tim.

But I still don't know what my novel is about. I haven't had that rush of insight that says, "Yes! This is what I want to say to the world, and the world needs to hear it!"

Mind you, this is nothing new. This happens every year, and that rush always comes at a different time. One year, it didn't come until the twenty-third of November. Another year, it came that July. There's a change that this year, it came in Pond Inlet. You might say that that's a place, not a time. Honestly, I'm not sure if either of those descriptions apply to my experience there. If I can put it in words, I guess I'll have my insight.

But I won't find that insight, if I don't try to put it into words. And that, as always, is what NaNoWriMo is all about.

And, in other news, a bell pepper rolled out of my grocery bag onto the floor of my car at a red light this evening. It took me ten minutes of searching to find it, and I came out with an extra bag of potato chips. (All Dressed, in case you're wondering.)

The scary part is, I wasn't planning for my car to get any cleaner before December...

My apologies to the car pool.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Those were totally Howorko's chips. I'm so sure of it.