Beyond Words

At the beginning of the week I started a post about my progress on the book, my slow scaling of the mountain that is NaNoWriMo-50,000 words high. Then I set it aside-it’s a rambling bit of words about what I wrote and how the internal editor is at play. Everyone on the planet is thinking that very same thing, every day-old news. The bigger question might reside in why the book isn’t moving along. Why is nothing happening?  I’m here, strolling through blogs, checking emails, reading the news, playing solitaire, writing for clients.  Absent is work on my book.

I’m listening to an audiobook of The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Great story, the main white character of the book, Miss Skeeter, is writing a book on colored help (her words) in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960′s. I’m more than half way through and at the place where Skeeter is writing frenetically, spending 15 or so hours a day at her typewriter. It’s ironic, I listen to that and then have to silence my little voice which wants to ask why I’m not doing something similar?  I talk the talk, all the time… but that’s about as far as it goes.

And, I’ve been talking this talk now for several years.

Miss Skeeter is risking bodily harm, and complete ostracization from the world she lives in, a genteel, upper crust life in the Deep South. I’m worrying about this little round bellied skirt-chasing weasel of a man and how he’ll take my depiction of our date. And, the mother who looks a little narcissistic and the heroine who had a record of making bad choices.

So what’s my problem? Or rather, what am I really afraid of that keeps me from showing up for this big step in my life. Because, it would be a pretty big thing to be able to say I’ve written a story. And, an even bigger thing to say I’ve written a book and here it is.

The challenge of National Novel Writing Month is about getting the words on paper. I have all the words in my head, I could probably tell you my story. And yet?   I’m at 14,631 words. I should be closer to 32,000.   As we all know, I am the Queen of Procrastination, but this has gone on long enough. I’ve got to show up for this assignment. I may not be getting paid, this isn’t a client project. Or maybe it is… maybe I am the client?