Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid-- Halloween, The Living Dead and Nanowrimo

Cemetery in Michigan (oooooOOOOOOooooooooOOooohhh... creepy...)

I am getting ready for everything.

Getting ready for Halloween. Goodness, these kids take a lot of work. Vampires and princesses. Witches for me. That reminds me, I have to make another version of my mini witches hat for my costume, because the one I made looks like... well... a mess. Maybe I'll photograph this version, and you can follow along.

Getting ready to finish my first novel. I need to take a break on that, but I'm still sending out copies to readers and receiving feedback. Thank goodness for google documents.

Getting ready to start the next book. Research research research. Outline outline. All in the few moments in between living life.

Gearing up for NaNoWriMo. Sorry if I talk about it a lot. Talking about it gets the juices flowing.

Actually that's true of all creative projects. Immersing yourself in the world of your project gets you excited to get going.

And another thing about nanowrimo... it's not just the deadline that gets you writing, it's all the months (especially October) where you aren't allowed to write according to the rules. And the anticipation of writing starts to build, and you think about your book and write around the writing (outlines, character sheets, research etc) and all of that serves to deepen your book and your thoughts and your entrapment in the world of the book, so that when you FINALLY start, there is something rich and deep and alive.

I am a big proponent of the "holding" stage of creativity. That's when you DON'T jump in to your creative project at the first urge of inspiration, but you let it live inside of you, in the darkness of your subconscious, growing like some sort of fungus or root system or larvae. Only the really strong ideas will last. And they will attract other strong ideas. And they will all grow and transform with the close proximity and the heat of your attention and the magic of your imagination. And then you will have a living being and when you finally start, you have already done so much inner work that the writing part takes on a life of it's own.

So with nanowrimo, on November First, (not coincidentally the Day of the Dead) your novel is ready to rise from the darkness and take corporeal form, like all sorts of uncontrollable frightening beings--ghosts, zombies, vampires, novels.

Are you scared yet?