writing writing writing

NaNoWriMo marches on. Today my word count should be 13336. It is not. It's 8944.

So I've been reading advertisements from Burt Goldman and his Quantum Jump stuff. I imagine he doesn't teach anything I don't know as far as technique goes--visualization, relaxation, etc., but the idea in general is neat. He posits that there are an infinite number of universes in which we exist, so it's a simple matter of finding the you that's doing what you want to do in their universe and talk to them.

Now, I think that's just hogwash. If I could really travel to an alternate universe and talk to myself as, say, a successful novelist, who's to say that the me in the alternate universe would know what's going on and be expecting me? So if alternate universes do exist and there's a J.K. Rowling version of me in one, I doubt if she'd be waiting around to give me advice.

However, I do think it's a good idea to ask yourself what to do to do what you want to do. I read an interesting article last night about biocentrism, and now I want to read the book. It's in queue for this month's audible.com download. The concept is that time is an illusion we create to explain change, and that when we die, we just are, time-free. This fits in nicely with Abraham's notion that we are still our higher selves while we're in our bodies. Note: this is not a new age book, but a physics and biology book, and some of the concepts are mind-stretching in a good way. So--could I communicate with timeless Faithy? Who knows. It will be fun to learn about; fun to try. Maybe I'll try it with a ouija board.

Some of my favorite stories about hypnosis (really, this isn't a tangent) are stories from the early days of neurolinguistic programming, and from Erickson's days of experimental hypnotherapy. One claim, from the NLP people, was of an experiment in which they convinced the hypnotized person that they were an accomplished violinist. During the trance, they played as well as Itzak Perlman or the like. I have no idea whether they could play at all prior to the session; it is romantic to think that it was their first encounter with a violin, but I suspect they had at least a little skill beforehand. I would love to hook up with someone who's had that sort of experience and try it myself. My favorite story about Erickson is of inducing a trance in a man whom Erickson had no idea how to proceed with his therapy. He then asked the man how to best proceed, and then the patient spelled out for him, step-by-step, exactly how best to help him.

I have tried self-hypnosis for these sorts of things, with mediocre results at best. It's partially my desire for a short cut to where I want to be--just plug in the software, Matrix-style, and, boom! I'm a novelist. And a rock star.

Another angle, though, is that I'm convinced that that stuff--the talent, the drive, the know-how--are all inside me somewhere, and it's just a matter of tapping into it. So, I'm a sucker for anything that purports to get me there, via parallel universes or hypnosis or whatever.

Last night, while my lover was falling asleep on the sofa cuddled next to me, I imagined meeting myself as a famous novelist. I asked myself what I must do to become that me, and she said, "Lots of things."

Great.

"Where do I start?"

"Think of yourself as a novelist. You are a novelist already."

I repeated to myself, "I am a novelist. I am a novelist. I am a novelist."

A few half-asleep words with Jessica, then back to my novelist-self.

"New affirmation. Got it. What else?"

"Lots of things."

"What can I do now?"

"Write everything down. I mean, everything. Thoughts, ideas, imagined scenes--just write it all down."

When I was in college I would write essays and term papers by putting ideas on half-sheets of paper, then arranging them the way I wanted before typing them up. I've always thought this would be a good way to write a novel, but the arranging part seems daunting. So I spent the next few hours trying to find a program that allows me to write in snippets to be arranged later. I can't seem to find one. Ken Atchity, in A Writer's Time, suggests this method. I think. I've read a lot of books on writing, and it seems like that's the one . . . It could the The Weekend Novelist . . . . At any rate, the prospect of laying out all those cards, over 600 of them, and arranging them is a little daunting. Not to mention that if I hand-write them, I won't know my word count. So I want a computer program--a really simple one--that counts words and keeps track of note cards. That's all. I'd like the notecards to be shuffle-able.

Sounds simple, yet no one seems to have done it yet.

I'm wandering with my thoughts, I know. There is still some disconnect between present-time Faithy and novelist Faithy. Let's play a game of "Wouldn't it be nice?"

(side note: I was getting ready to bitch about my schedule at at the mcspa the other day, and decided that I should do a "wouldn't it be nice if . . . " instead of my usual bitching. The first one I came up with was, "Wouldn't it be nice if the front desk knew what the fuck they were doing?" I don't think that's how the game works, but . . . there you go.)

So, wouldn't it be nice if . . .
I wrote full-time for a living?
I knew what happened next?
I had a computer program as detailed above?
I had confidence in my ability to finish a novel?
I knew what the fuck I was doing?
the words came easily and quickly?
I had already written novels so I knew it could be done and what all it entails?

I had a plan for what to do when I got stuck this month. Just to say, "What happens next?" and then keep writing, whether it's good or not. I get bored with meandering stories, though, whether reading or writing them. Next year maybe I'll try outlining in October. Or maybe I'll learn to program and write that ideal writing program myself. Make it an extension for OpenOffice.org Writer.

I'd like to talk to Abraham, get them to convince me that I can--get them to show me what to do next. I doubt they would cooperate; they seem to think the journey is fun. And, well, puzzles are fun, so I guess they're right.

In with the laundry, and then . . . what happens next? Or even, what happens later? and worry with what happens next later.