Overwhelmed is a state I often find myself in. There is a phrase that goes, "when it rains, it pours." With me, it never seems to stop pouring. That's just how it's always been. The week my last semester of college started, I turned 22, my then-boyfriend broke up with me, and my paternal grandmother died... for instance. And now I'm trying to write a novel in the same month that I'm trying to renovate a house, or more correctly, finish renovating a house, a house I must move into the same month, oh, and of course there's a little holiday called Thanksgiving in there, too, which means driving back and forth across the state repeatedly. And I'm still considering taking a weekly hot yoga class, just to make things a little more interesting.
Usually when so many things like this happen simultaneously, my brain goes into overload, and I can get kind of depressed recounting everything that has to get done and realizing the improbability of any of it getting done. It makes me not want to do any of it. And the worst part is, I feel like I have a justified reason to quit. So I usually quit.
But then the most amazing thing happens. Everything ends up getting done. And the world doesn't explode. I still don't know how.
Up until this morning, I had justified to myself how ridiculous it was for me to agree to all these commitments and how foolish I was to believe I could accomplish any of them. I had given it the old college try, I told myself. I had learned some new things. I should be proud of what I've done up to now. Everyone will understand if I stop now.
Then I realized I should be used to being overwhelmed by now. And if I were to quit, I would just take all that time that I had devoted to projects and use it as an excuse to sit on the couch and feel sorry for myself. There are 200,000 other people out there right now who probably have just as busy of lives as I do, and I don't hear any of them complaining. In fact, I get emails from some of them (just randomly--I have no idea who they are) empathizing with the way I feel and then offering encouraging words to keep me going on. I always feel like my life is so much more outrageous than everyone else's, but really, I just like making excuses and letting myself off the hook. Being busy is just the American way. We like to bite off more than we can chew, even if we choke a few times getting it down our throat.
So last night I had decided to give up on NaNoWriMo, focus on finishing the house and getting moved and maybe get my grad school app done since December's lookin' crazy, too. And then this morning I changed my mind.
I'm 10,000 words behind. I think you are not surprised to hear that. I'm still not promising I'm going to be able to hit that 50,000-word mark. But I am promising to continue to try.
Because I'm desperate for every word I can get, I decided that when I'm writing, I just have to be as honest as possible. I'm writing everything I think and feel about whatever or whomever I'm writing about. It's been quite eye-opening. If I were reading my book as a complete stranger to my family and myself, I would think that I was a jerk and a brat. I've written some pretty terrible things about almost everyone, but it's not that I think terrible things about everyone. It's just, taken out of perspective, my opinions about things and people sound negative. I'll write a whole paragraph about my brother's perpetual tardiness and finish it with, "Well, this paragraph will never make it in the book," because I know it's coming off hurtful instead of intended funny (because it is comical--love ya, bro!). So that will be definitely a hurdle in the editing process.
Another major problem I'm finding is who this book is about. It's clearly about my grandfather, right? Wrong. So far, it's about me. And that's what memoirs are supposed to be about. But I don't know if I'm happy with that. Do I want my viewpoint only, even though it's so limited? Or do I want to include my extended family members, get their opinions, their stories, their memories? Or would that be opening a can of worms? I'm just not sure what would make the best story yet. Hopefully the answers to these questions will start revealing themselves the more I type.
I'm nearly 14,000 words, which sounds like an astronomical amount, but it's really only a quarter of the way and an entire week behind where I should be. But I'm feeling good. I'm not running out of steam yet. I have plenty still to talk about. In fact, probably too much.
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