Seven Deadly Sins

It’s 3:39 in the morning. I have insomnia and I just committed the cardinal NaNoWriMo sin. Since I'm confessing, I have actually broken seven, to be exact, write-yourself-a-novel-in-thirty-days sins.

(1) I second guessed myself and tried to make changes in my predefined storyline. I then proceeded to scrap my first idea (2) and run amok with the idea number two (3). I drank coffee and I keyboarded over 11,000 words into a word processor. I then did something I probably shouldn’t have done. Far short of my 50,000 word goal, I stopped my writing at 11, 473 words (4) and read them (5) and let me tell you folks…it was crap.

I may not know how to get to be an A-List blogger. I’ve long given up trying to figure out how I can be a rock star or even Bon Jovi’s webmistress, but, one thing I do know is crap. I had four kids in four years. That’s a lot of diapers and a lot of crap. My book was stinking worse than the cat’s litter box.

So, I did what everyone does with their crap. (No, I didn’t stash it in the garage. That’s what I do with my good crap.) I selected Edit>Select All>Delete (6). I contemplated for a minute over the “Undo” feature but chose File>Save instead (7), sending hours of work spent writing all those individual words that together amounted to (yes, you guessed it) crap straight into the recycle bin. Actually, I sent it somewhere into hard drive hell with a waving flag just begging to be overwritten by something else. Regardless, my file that was secretly codenamed "Book" is now a blank page.

I was writing a memoir and factually it was exact, but it read like a textbook. The words didn’t seem honest as they were too void of emotion. There seemed to be no point to the story and no sense that sharing this story would help or inspire anyone else. I didn’t even know how I was going to end this story as I don’t have a resolution completely in sight yet.

I thought about these things as I read what I had written and realized that I had no purpose yet of telling this story other than trying to write a book in thirty days. It could be that perhaps you shouldn't try to write a bestseller while experiencing excruciating sciatica pain from a herniated disc. Maybe I shouldn’t tell my story while taking painkillers. Maybe I’m just not ready to tell that particular story as of yet…I don’t know. I do know that nobody would want to read that and I’m not sorry I committed the seven deadly sins of NaNoWriMo.

I’m not giving up. Tomorrow, ok in a few hours when dawn breaks and the kids are doing the mad scramble to get to school, I’m going to swap out the hot tea I’m currently drinking for a steamy cup of hot coffee and start another story. I’ll probably never make 50,000 words in the allotted thirty days of November, but that’s ok, too. I have other stories to tell and a vivid imagination and I want to be a paperback writer. I want to hold a copy of a book with my name on it, but even more so, I want it not to be crap.

Anybody can write crap and The Rock Chick is not just anybody. She may or may not be a lusty glutton of a greedy sloth wrathed with envy, but she’ll be proud of the book she’s signing at a Barnes and Noble near you. That’s for sure.