Resolving NaNoWriMo: The Study of Grey

        I think I've settled my resolve for why NaNoWriMo is so often difficult for me. In my previous post about NaNo, I suggested that most of the reason for my constant dismay and fatigue from the month of NaNo whether that was one of the camps in April and July or the official one in November came from the off chance of life becoming wildly weird for just that portion of my life when I'm trying to focus on my project. However, this morning as I sat down to finish my final words for this month's NaNo I realized that my previous assessment was not fully touched on.

        This past weekend I came into some news about my health, which I will go further into detail when I know about what's happening, but long story short in my About Me page I mention my autoimmune disorder that led to my current chronic illness. So the news was that we are closer to fully diagnosing what it is that has taken the past seven years of my life away and in doing that we (the doctors and I) might be able to come up with a plan to build up a sort of recovery for myself. Also in lew of all this and coming under the weather again as I so often do having a shotty immune system, everything has gotten to me. In one of those you look around the world, you see the news and you just... Don't know how people can be so just God-awful to one another.
       All of this led me to look at my current WIP; Caught In The Grey. It's the sequel to my novel Buzzcut Season which I'm currently querying agents for. Some of you who are familiar with the writing/ publishing world may look at those two sentences and go;
            "Carly, why are you writing a sequel to a novel that's not even close to publishing? Isn't that getting a little carried away?"
            And I say to that,
           "Hey, I gotta get these stories out of my head or it will explode!"

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

           Terribly real jokes aside, the universe of Buzzcut Season and Caught In The Grey came to me in September of 2016 after hearing this song by Lorde:

     
             Many of Lorde's songs make me go back to a nostalgia-like place that I've been to yet have never been to at the same time. "Buzzcut Season" was no different. In that state of my mind, my imagination began to run wild that day even though I had heard the song numerous amounts of times since her album "Pure Heroine" came out. This time though, I was back in the 1970s, in Idaho, but it wasn't how we knew Idaho or the 1970s per say. There was much more political conspiracies and atrocities running amuck. If you'd like to read an excerpt from the story you can visit here or the Buzzcut Season page for more on that.

This movie was EVERYTHING

             However, because this Alternate Universe/History of 1970s Idaho came out of my mind before the results of the 2016 Election and the subsequent aftermath that we're currently living in, I had no clue that many of my ideas would actually come (in some form or another) to fruition. Due to this, there are times it becomes increasingly hard to write about this depraved universe, which to be fair is based in the worse aspects of American society, and see them mirrored in today's culture. It becomes overbearing and there seems to be no escape from people constantly being tormented for one thing or another. All too often it feels like there's no escape from reality and fiction.
          Looking back at my previous months after participating in NaNo I see why now I was so utterly and downright exhausted after each month and ended up hating my WIP for a couple months afterward. It wasn't the overall workload and stress that NaNo brought, it was my project that was wearing me down. I will say that I did mention this all sporadically in my first post but it didn't truly dawn on me until today.

What a metaphor

          Back in 2016, I never thought anything I was writing would truly happen. Most of it hasn't happened (Thank God! I write some really terrible things in my work.) but there are flickers of my world being brought to light and people seemingly ignoring those flickers or saying that it's not that bad. I know that most of this is happening because of the way the American system is set up to function. That the reason a lot of the things that I write about in my novels come true is because, not to go all Star Wars on you but, there's always a light side to the dark side. Where there's the American Dream there's the American Nightmare. This American Dream/Nightmare is what initially drew me to writing Buzzcut Season in the first place.
         This doesn't just stop with America, this is a 'rule' of society/ human phenomenon. Many religions have this good vs. evil ideology between their god(s) and humans usually get stuck in the middle. The grey area, if you will. I feel though that this grey area, while already having very blurred lines, is becoming all the more foggier in recent years. Maybe this is just me growing up. Maybe it's having news fatigue. Maybe it's having a disorder that literally makes you both fatigued and have a foggy brain at all times. Maybe it's all of these things. Maybe it's none of them.

What does this have to do with NaNoWriMo?

         Bringing this back around, I think once I'm done with the Buzzcut universe and finally getting their stories out of my head, I'll find that NaNo will be a more positive experience so long as I'm working on a positive WIP. This is not to say I didn't have a successful Camp NaNo 2018, I ended up with 65,921 words and about 20+ chapters done! I edited NaNo 2017's chapters and wrote four more chapters + started on scenes from unfished chapters. I also know now where just about all the characters are going and where they'll end up by the end of the book so party for me I'd say!

I want these balloons

          How did you guys do in Camp Nano? Did you participate? Have you ever participated? What are your stories? Let me know!

          Before I leave you with my catchphrase I just want to say while I get over this weird funk that's most likely news fatigue and elation from maybe possibly getting my life back, that do things in love and for love. There are so many horrible people out there that just want to tear apart the universe and watch it bleed, and although at times I understand that feeling, we can be better than that. Human's have stood the test of time again and again through our intuition, resourcefulness, and willingness to learn. To me, that just shows our eagerness to build things for the love of life. Whether they're used for that love of life is another matter.

        Remember to be good to each other,

❤CJ❤