Today is November 1st, the start of National Novel Writing Month (better known as NaNoWriMo). Basically you force yourself to write a novel in a month – completely ignoring quality as you push toward the prescribed word count.

Some people at Emerson put a group together to help each other finish, by hosting writing days and generally being as encouraging as possible, and I got invited. And while I didn’t decline, necessarily, I can’t see myself writing a novel anytime soon. I have a few problems:

• When I write I’m constantly reading over what I’ve previously written to be sure a. it doesn’t suck and b. my voice is consistent with itself. While this has worked well for short stories, this would be fatal in trying to write an entire novel in a month.
• I have no novel ideas. Haha. Seriously, though, it seems as if I’ve trained my brain to think in short-story mode; it’s a chore for me to write something above 8,000 words. I can’t even imagine writing a novella in the near future (although I LOVE reading them and wish there were more of them around to read).
• When I write fiction I usually listen to one song on repeat when I’m writing that particular story – for example: “Jumping Rooftops,” which will be at Necessary Fiction in December, is courtesy of Coldplay’s b-side “Murder.” And there is no way I’d be able to listen to a single song for the entire novel-writing process. I would probably go insane.

So I really don’t think I’ll be writing a novel anytime soon – especially not a good one. But one day (hopefully) I will. And maybe it will be big.

The trick to writing a decent Halloween story, apparently, is to make it not about Halloween. See Carthage. It’s absolutely beautiful.

The second edition of Lung is now live. You should probably go see since, you know, I’m in it.

I don’t even have an explanation for this one. Only that it’s dated February 24th. Good luck:

The poet
rests her hands on
the podium. She
recites her life’s
collected work from
memory. Her book
rests on the table
opposite. She’s touch
it if not for fear
that her withered
hand would catch flame.

I’m now friends with two online-writer-people on facebook: Tim Jones-Yelvington and Jac Jemc. I’ve read a lot of both their work and was thrilled when they let me into their semi-private facebook worlds.

But I have my concerns. Now I know what they look like. Now I know when their writing is giving them so much trouble that it’s worth a status update. And these privileges are not ones I’m used to having when it comes to the writers of the literature I choose to read. I mean, I never got to see the pictures Hemingway took on his last fishing trip. I wouldn’t want such things to interfere with how I read their work.

These are probably silly concerns, especially as I try to build a set of writerly credentials of my own. I suppose it can’t hurt to get closer to those who are further along the path than I am. It’s good to have idols, I’d think.