Goodbye October... Hello NaNoWriMo

I will be busy come November. Please don't try to book an appointment with me. I am not available for trivial events such as lunch or a movie. I will be busy with my regular back office desk job as QUALIFI's Client Care Manager(quotes all around). It's the usual, saving small business owners from clients with low credit scores, FAXing and emailing documents to the finacial entities we are partnered with. Training the local new client-how to use the payment system --but now there will be more.

I will become immersed in NaNoWriMo. I figure I am close to losing what's left of my mind, so I might as well give it the push it deserves over the edge.

National Novel Writing Month. Been going on since 1999. I missed all the previous years, but not this year. This is the year of my novel.

Writing 50,000 words in 30 days. I am expected to produce quantity, not quality. Finally, I am getting encouragement for creating CRAP! It is a group effort, hundreds of thousands of people-writer wanna-bees. Regular people with a dream in their heart. 30 days. Average 1,666 words a day will produce a 175 page novel. What a novel idea.

I just had a feeling of what it will be like: SCUBA. The sensation when I've plunged into the ocean from the dive boat. The flurry of the air that I drug down with my body, escaping past me, back to the surface. My body, with an air tank strapped to my back, my feet, now finned and flexible, my eyes adjusting to the skewed visual I have through my mask-I become neutrally buoyant as I slip into a slow motion version of myself. The water closes around me like a friendly blanket. I am immediately comfortable at home in salty liquid.

The only voice is my own, in my head taking in all the sights. The thoughts start zooming through my mind trying to record everything I see. I don't want to miss a single thing.The sounds are only my sounds. And if I am quiet, beyond the draw of the regulator, I can hear my heartbeat in my head, feel it in my chest as I tune into my channel. Or channel into my tune.

Last month, I made the effort to go hear Jean Michel Cousteau speak during the National Geographic LIVE series in Mesa, AZ. I grew up watching his father-Captain Jacques Cousteau invite me into that wonderful world. An audience member asked after the presentation, what was his favorite dive. Mssr. Cousteau answered, "The next one."

The future is always more alluring than the past or the present. I think it is the unknown, part dreams and part hope.

I think NaNoWriMo will be like that. I will get into my creative wetsuit and dive into a sea of words, phrases, sentence structures, characters, plots and ideas. I will try to take them all in and make sense of what I can grasp, focus on, feel and hear.

I will surface December 1st. 50,000 words from Under The Sea of Me.

Fins UP!