Posts tagged ‘creativity’

What do these things have in common? Not a damn thing as far as I can tell. (I just like to list in threes? Hmmmm… )
(Not necessarily in title order)
Last night I wrote just under 4 thousand words for my NaNoWriMo novel. Which is a really awesome thing, since I was about 6K behind. When I reached the halfway point in my month (if not my novel) of 25K I kinda freaked out. I realized that there was no way in hell I was gonna be able to complete my story arc within 25K more words. This might not seem like a big deal, but it really is. Chris Baty, the founder of NaNo, says so and as far as cranking out a novel in 30 days Chris is simply… well… GOD!!! Anyway, Chris says that it’s really important to complete your story arc within the 50K words. Basically because it’s much easier to come bact to fill bits in than it is to have an entire ending hanging over your head once the good (insane) pressure of November is over.
I think he’s right. I know he’s right. He’s God, after all; he must be.
So, gonsidering that 50K words is a really tiny (but doable in 30 days) novel (barely more than a novella, actually), and knowing (fearing?) that this year’s creative writing endeavor shall be about double that, (at least? I’m guessing.) I needed a vehicle to get me to the end of my story arc by November 30 and at somewhere just over 50K words. Since I write without an outline, (I can’t outline, it seems. My characters seem to have minds of their own, and I never really know what they will do until they’re doing it), and I have the vaguest sort of concept for my novel’s end, but no real idea how the story will take me to it, nor what will actually happen, I decided to sort of summarize each chapter and sort of flow in and out of narrative as the scene (or my pushy damned characters) demanded.
This is fucking rocking for me! Seriously!! I’m loving it, when I actually push all the other crap aside and sit down to write, this is working!!! Yay, me! Yay, novel! Yay, NaNoWriMo!!!
Okay, that was a rather long intro to segue into the title matter, but here goes. Last night, about 3/4 way through my 4K evening, listening to background music and occasionally struck by lyrics as always, I stopped a moment to sing along and was struck by a nearly overwhelming urge to stop writing and tattoo some song lyrics on my arm in a typewriter font. It was really weird. I mean, I’m a tattoo artist and all, and it has been awhile since I’ve had any new ink, and I do jones a bit for some occasionally, but usually when I’m inking on someone else. Not just out of the blue, apropos of nothing.
Well, I didn’t do it. I’m under the gun with this noveling and the holiday, especially since we are having two days of dinners; one here with family and one away with extended “family”. Even if I manage to catch up the 3K I’m still behind today, I’ll be behind abgain by friday and that’s fucking SCARY!!!
And for whatever reason, the overwhelming urge to tattoo these particular lyrics on my arm has passed, so I’m probably glad I didn’t ink something so transient on myself permanently. So that was the “strange urge”.

So yeah. I hope you didn’t think the masturbation was the strange urge. I mean, it’s a pretty normal urge in general, I think. But then again, sometimes the urge to break one off does come at the oddest times, doesn’t it? Am I the only one who thinks that an orgasm is better than a sleeping pill? Ever lie around tossing and turning, but not want to take anything and then bingo! You just know if you knock a quick one out you’ll relax and sleep like a baby? So I get to bed at about 4 AM and this urge comes over me. Not strange; perfectly normal. The urge to brak off a quick one. It’s not just a mental urge, either. Again; apropos of nothing my body was suddenly screaming for an orgasm!
Weird. Well, I managed to get to sleep without doing that either, but only because I didn’t feel like getting out of bed and heading to the bathroom or something. My poor girlyboy only had about another hour to sleep and I really didn’t want to wake her up. She’s PMS-ing like a freakin Harpy right now (Let me inform all of you that there is NOTHING, I repeat NOTHING, worse than a butch with PMS!!!), and she needs her beauty sleep to go do her job. She works hard, my girlyboi; so it was out of pure love and consideration (and PMS avoidance) that I resisted the urge to break one off.
*sigh
I did wake up this morning at about 8, handle the situation and go back to sleep for a couple hours. But I digress. The thing is, do these two seemingly unrelated urges have anything in common? Are they some sort of result of creativity overload or something? Am I coming out of my depression? WTF?
Only my muse knows.