To Write Without Fear

I started this month intending to do NaNoWriMo, but of course, that didn’t really happen.  I didn’t start with a plan of what I wanted to write, and after I hadn’t come up with something specific in the first few days, I was stuck, and no longer felt like accomplishing that goal was in my plans for the moment.  This makes sense to me, knowing my personality, my schedule, my desires, my goals… I like to read.  A lot.  But to write is a whole different story.  I can blog, because this is more about writing about my thoughts than having characters and a plot.  But I need to do this more.  I have so many thoughts and topics I could write about.  I even have a list of possible blog topics sticky-noted to my desktop.  But of course, writing a full fiction novel seemed too daunting a task for me just yet.  Needless to say, I accomplished no novel writing over the course of this month.

I did accomplish one thing in the month of November.  Come November 1st, I posted a closing status to Facebook, logged out on my laptop and phone, and stayed unconnected from Facebook for the month.  I still have a few days left, and intend to continue not using Facebook over those days.  Just so I can have accomplished something over the month, and because it really has been a valuable learning experience.  I have a Facebook chat/message app on my phone that I left available, and I did text one new status during the month, but I have not read my notifications, responded to friend requests, or scrolled my homepage feed for news about my friends and the various other people I know or once knew.  It’s been odd.  It’s been, painful to some extent.  It’s odd to discover quite how much you depend on a thing when you don’t use it for a month.  I should have used the extra time spent not on Facebook to write my novel, or failing that, I should have been writing blog posts.  I have nothing inhibiting me from writing blog posts, but I just was “too busy” or something.

I like writing about my thoughts.  I like putting my perspective out there.  I’d appreciate the interaction with the wide world, though I really don’t get much of that through this blog.  I think the idea of a public blog intrigues me a bit much perhaps, but I’ll keep with it.  I write all of this publicly, and while my name is not connected with this blog in any way, I do know that someone who knows me well might be able to connect the dots if they ever read this.  But there is a freedom in writing in this way, a freedom that I rather appreciate.