31/10/2010

remember to remember me

NaNoWriMo is coming up and it makes me feel so... weird. I remember when I was a participant one year ago, and honestly aprrox. 365 days ago I was sitting right at this house, surfing my way through nanowrimo.com and feeling excited as ever. I had my 15's birthday party on the 31st which ended around ten-eleven (a bit different than the parties I throw nowadays...), and from midnight to 6 am on the 1st of November I just sat and wrote. I wrote 24 pages of the story I had had in my mind for over two years. I thought I knew exaclty how I'd write it, but, you know... when your characters really start to live, then there's not really much to do.

I remember the first week when I wrote and wrote and wrote and I spent most of my time on the computer with music on, writing or watching videos or surfing at FinFanFun or writing some more. I was so full of excitement and pride as I got the hang of my own writing style and I started to get ideas everywhere. And then... well, the second week wasn't so exciting anymore. I started to struggle when the story started to get deeper and deeper. I still wanted to write about Christine's mom and Darlene's uncle, but I started to realize that maybe I had a few ghosts too much in my past to make the story continue easily. And it started to weigh really really heavily, I remember I stopped watching videos and studying and all I could think about were extra scenes and dialogues and pasts and... And I remember the preassure, of maybe I couldn't put it all in there, maybe my writing was too complex, maybe the characters were too shaky etc. etc. Problems I'm pretty sure all writers fight with.

When I left to Belgium for a week, I was already behind a bit, and my computer was strating to get really shitty. It turned itself off all the time and everything I'd written just wiped out. I left the story on one of the first romantic scenes between C and D and left to Belgium with my head swelling over the struggles of finishing this story I so desperetaly needed to write.

Then Belgium changed everything. I met amazing people who gave me new perspectives in more than one thing, and things started to get fluent again. I discovered the joy of writing again, and started to forget whatever was happening outside the world of Christine. I started to... I don't know, see through her eyes, I guess. When my parents started fighting at Christmas I started to feel exaclty what I thought Christine would've. And suddenly those days when I felt too tired to write were gone. For a long-lasting moment there was nothing but me getting in touch with the deep ends of my soul for the first time in a long, long time.

January was passing by and I barely noticed. The story was reaching the levels I had been craving on and I just wrote and wrote. I skipped classes to run to home, write for half an hour and run back to school so no one would notice. I didn't see who I was anymore, I felt like I was just a piece in the inbetween of writing and... I don't know. I stopped going out, talking to my family (as creepy as it sounds) and I made my life all about the novel. And then... then came January 24th.

On the 23th I had met my friends. Although I doubt it was visible, I was only thinking about the two last chapters I had left. Only two. I talked about it lightly with my friend and she supported me, but I felt really weird. Kind of... empty. And so when I got home with ice cream and cookies, at 10 p.m I started writing. And I didn't lift my head from the screen until it was 2.40 a.m. And at that time I realised... I had finished it. I put the last dot in the end and I started at the computer, not believing what just happened.

For a moment, I feel everything froze. I was listening to PMMP's Salla tahtoo siivet and I just listened to it over and over and over again. I typed some words in but erased them immediately. I wrote a piece of how I felt about finishing the story and about how I'd gotten to that point, but it just felt like none of it really mattered anymore. I went to sleep and woke up the next morning feeling like full of... something. Like someone had pumped me full of air and rocks and I couldn't decide wheather I felt really empty or really heavy on my heart.

And I started to move on. But, to be honest, I think I never actually did, not even now. I just tried to forget it all, move on with my school work (since I had some catching up to do) and focus on finishing 9th grade with honorable grades. I went to Interrail in the summer and fell in love and found a lost one again. I picked up the pieces slowly, but still I feel like Christine and Darlene stole one piece of me. My heart and soul are poured into some silly pages and sentences that really haven't made a difference at anything but my own silly head. I have never in my life put myself in a situation like that, where everything is so fragial and sensitive and anyone could just come and smash it all up if they felt like it. My life has continued, but I can't understand people who were NaNoWriMo contestans last year and the year before and want to continue this year too. I am definitely not ready for that emotional rollercoaster again. I felt like I got some things outed and dealt with through the story, and I wouldn't take it back for anything, but I feel like it was one of those huge life-changing things that just remain forever haunting in your mind. And I don't really know what to do about it.

I still love writing, but the problem is I haven't really written anything eversince. I am not that girl anymore who reads tons of fan fiction and who makes up complex sentences and colors the text with strange adjectives and thinks only of character pasts and presents and futures. Who am I then, towards writing? Am I the girl who writes nothing but fake wannabe-artistic shit and thinks so much of herself? I don'n know. All I know is, I'm not ready to get on the NaNoWriMo train again, not yet. Maybe someday. Maybe when Christine and Darlene are nothing but names in just another crowd. I don't know. We'll see.

there's a light, there's a sun
taking all the shattered ones
to the place we belong
and his love will conquer all

(Trading Yesterday: Shattered)