Random String Theory

Or, everything is connected, even if we can’t see any of it.

The “random string” was lifted, by me, from a post by a fellow Pepper in an overnight Instagram story.  Don’t ever think that the eyes of the world aren’t watching, as we all try to write our way through these 30 Days of Creative Night that are National Blog Writing Month. 

It is day 2, and I’m already telling you that it’s hard.

But if that’s what I’m telling you, what am I telling myself?

I’ve done this before.  More than once.  More than twice, actually.  I don’t need to be told, “You can do it, Duffy Moon”.  My awareness is well aware.  However, the ONE BIG DIFFERENCE in this, from every other NanoPoblano is… for 2022… I’ve decided to fly creatively by the seat of my stretchy morning pants.  No advanced plans, no maps, no charts and graphs, no organizational schematic, narrative theme, or any other literary devise with which to cheat/don’t cheat my way through.  This year, my challenge to me is, park your ass in your comfy recliner and do not get up again until you start from scratch and finish the day’s post, and hit SEND.

So, yeah, when I just wrote that I’ve decide to fly creatively, what I should have said was, panic creatively.  Or, if all goes well, treat NanoPoblano 2022 as one great big exercise in undisciplined discipline.  And here’s why.  An infinitymillion years ago… say around, 2009ish… I thought my future in writing was going to be in some kind of long form, fiction or possibly thinly veiled as fiction, semi-autobiographical, fat book you can dog-ear the pages of while you sip coffee and get cinnamon grease all over your fingers at a great big Barnes and Noble near you.  Then, an industrial-sized dump truck of writer’s block landed in my lap and, over the next few months, I found that I could not write anything longer than the back cover of a matchbook, just above the “close cover before striking” warning.

Uh-huh.  In other words, I became a poet.  Or as my earliest online biography stole from Spike of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a “bloody awful poet”.  Also, just as ironically hilarious, I lost every bit discipline that I had trained my scribbler’s brain to muscle memory a story out of, on deadline.  I became a prose-crusted cliché, waiting for some muse to blow inspiration up my metaphorical skirt, before I could get any words onto the page.

And like any life that is totally devoid of discipline, whether that discipline involves mixing in a salad, drinking 8 glasses of water a day, or trying to regulate exercise, or sleep, or get enough fiber to adequately poop, an undisciplined life, an undisciplined writer’s life, is a very uncomfortable life when all you want to do is crap out thoughts, like magic from your fingertips as they clackety-clack over a keyboard, but you can’t.  Not anymore.  And you know that to change that, it is going to take some kind of dramatic action on your part to change what has become more than just a pattern, but a life.

Hello, November.

Remember yesterday, when I said that this NanoPoblano was going to be as much about you as it was about me?  Well, I mean it.  So, here’s what I’m asking today.  In the comments, tell me what change or changes you would like National Blog Posting Month to make in YOU.  As a writer, a reader, or just a human being.  

I can’t wait to see your answers.