holoblomo day 15: halfway

note: “holoblomo” stands for Horribly Local Blogging Month, my response to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) that happens every November. The NaNoWriMo challenge asks writers to compose 50,000 words in a month; I chose 10,000 as my goal. Enjoy.

So here we are. 

I’m at the halfway point of this challenge, and so far I am on track to hit, and probably exceed, 10,000 words. Of course, part of me looks at the past 14 entries and thinks, You fool! That’s more than two months worth of regular almost-weekly posts you’ve squandered! You could have had a backlog, allowing you to rest easy in a hammock if you had one!

The other part of me is surprised I’ve had that much to say.

I know that the NaNoWriMo that this was inspired by is about sheer volume and not being too careful in one’s editing, and I can understand that since it is a daunting task to write a novel. However, I’ve chosen a different rule for myself. I’ve been editing. I’ve tried to keep these HoLoBloMo posts as similar in quality to my regular posts as I can, only shorter, since the average length of my regular posts usually hovers around 700 words, with the longest ones exceeding 1000 words (I do go on, don’t I?).

I’m not a fan of half-assery. It would be very easy (and indeed, it has been tempting) to go the “purple monkey dishwasher” route, throwing randomness and word-filler to the wall and calling it creativity. But I’m in it to win it -- the royal “it,” if you will -- especially since the Internet is forever. 

And as such I must confess that there are days when I write multiple posts if the spirit moves me, because I think it’s better to leap on the juicy-brain moments when they present themselves rather than try to tap a dry well. There is nothing more painful than writing insincere and purposeless crap... except reading it. You can call it cheating, but I call it a public service. 

Even still, the month is far from over and I am not out of the woods yet. In the past, I have found myself paralyzed by fear of imperfection, and this often hinders my taking various leaps of faith. It is not that I don’t take chances; I am, after all, still an actor... but sometimes I have to remind myself that risking -- and even tempting -- failure is the only thing that will allow me to grow as a person and artist.

That is, if you consider miscellaneous ramblings about culture and candy to be art.

Maybe I should ramble about Campbell’s soup cans instead. Hey, it worked for Warhol.

And that’s 6304 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.