Chances are...

"If I gave it all
If I traded it all away for one thing,
Wouldn't that be something?"

I often wonder why it is that people do the things they do.

It's an awfully broad statement, to be sure, but when one is attempting to conjure up fictional characters, it's an important thing to consider their personalities and motives, in order to be able to plan what they're going to do next. You know you've got a fairly developed concept of your characters when you write a paragraph for them and delete it, thinking, "No way, he'd never do that." That's the beauty of fictional characters, though. When my fingertips hit the keys, I am ultimately given the power to decide whatever it is they're going to do. Even if at times I don't agree with their actions, and don't like them, it is paramount that I do understand them.

Real people, however, are rarely so easily understood.

Most people who know me well will tell you that I rarely turn down any sort of social invitation, barring severe illness or prior obligations (and even in those cases, I've been known to make exceptions). However, beginning in just over 48 hours, I will be prepared to do exactly that. Parties, movie dates, romantic entanglements (har har har), and any completely non-essential outings will be taking a backseat to an endeavor I still think I'm crazy for undertaking.

I say I don't understand the things that people do. This remark is spurred mostly by the fact that I know people who have done things like this - not exactly of the ilk that I'm doing, but similar things all the same. I know folks who have quit their jobs, invested their life savings, and generally overthrown their entire lives because their faith in something was so strong that they saw no alternative. Most of these were flights of fancy that many would consider outlandish and foolhardy. Some failed and returned to their normal workaday lives. Some succeeded and are on to wonderful and brilliant things. Some are just beginning to take flight, and it remains to be seen whether they'll crash or soar. It's the hell of a chance to take. I've never been the sort of person who was willing to take a gamble like that, so I'm kind of baffled by people who do. Like I said, I've never really understood them.

But I do admire them.

I don't take chances. Hardly ever. I don't play the lottery. I back away like a frightened child at even the slightest hint of conflict. I'll take the blame for something that isn't even my fault because I think it's simpler to take my lumps and get it over with. I always wear my seatbelt. (Admittedly, though, that last one is just good lifesaving sense.) Most of the chances I have taken have ended badly... more often than not, I've fallen flat on my face. Maybe that's why I shy away from them these days. Nobody likes losing out all of the time, and I can't imagine that I'm all that unlucky. I figure that maybe most of the chances I took were just plain ill-advised. Maybe it took getting nixed all those times to help me figure out which opportunities were truly viable, and which were better just let go. Which brings me to my latest venture.

I don't give myself credit for very much. At all. I'm constantly downplaying my abilities and good qualities, and if anyone ever compliments me on any of them, my typical response is along the lines of "Nah... not really," or "It's nice of you to say, but I don't really think so." If someone compliments me on my outfit, I shrug my shoulders and tell them that nothing else was clean. When I receive a compliment on one of my cakes, I start bringing up a list of things I wish I'd done better on it. It's very difficult for me to just say thank you. A lot of people misinterpret this as ingratitude (nobody likes having a compliment thrown back at them) or modesty... it's really not. While I do consider myself modest under most circumstances, what it really boils down to is a lack of confidence in anything I am or set out to do. I'm very aware that I don't give myself much credit at all, although it's something I'm definitely striving to work on. I've worked on several crafts... most notably acting, my first love; and photography and cake decorating, which I discovered later. My writing, though, has always been a little something different. At the risk of sounding like a bit of bad poetry, it was something I always pulled straight from my soul, for better or worse. Most any time I took a chance on my writing, it succeeded. That was the one thing I could (almost) always win at, the one thing I never felt any reservations about.

I am a good writer. Somehow I've always known it, and while I know that there are certainly those who are far better at it than I am, I am completely content in my own ability. While acting was always my first love, and my parents weren't always thrilled about it, mostly owing to the instability of such a profession, they were always uber-supportive of my writing. Maybe they knew something I didn't, at the time. Truth be told, I've always wanted to do something with it. God knows why I never studied it in school. I've received various lauds from professors for my essays, and won a fair number of local writing contests... I even recall an analysis of the lyrics in the song "American Pie" for English class in my freshman year of college that earned me glowing praise from my professor (granted, she was something of a hippie, and I was banking on that to earn me a decent grade when I chose that particular song). Words always, always came easily to me, moreso on the page than verbally (on the page, I've got time to think), which is probably why I tend to prefer emails and text messages to phone conversations. I don't much like having to think on my feet. All this considered, it's really no wonder that I'm taking a gamble on something like this.

For those who don't know, I had surgery four months ago. While it was something that was pretty significant to me, it wasn't what one would refer to as major surgery, although it earned me about a week of downtime. During the pre-surgical consults, I'd already made the decision that I wanted to use this time constructively, and after the initial Percocet haze cleared, I'd gotten a few things done for myself. One of them was to purchase a book called "No Plot? No Problem! A Low-Stress High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days." The author was the founder of something called "National Novel Writing Month," colloquially known as NaNoWriMo. I'm not 100% sure when the seed of the idea took root, but I do recall that on that same day, I also purchased a book called "Strange Kingdom: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke." I'd always been fascinated with the story, and it wasn't long before the purchase of the book that I'd decided I wanted to write something about it. I'd largely forgotten the idea altogether until about a month ago. I imagine that I was searching through the attic of my mind for long-forgotten thoughts when the beam of my flashlight struck the box containing this particular dream and thought... okay, let's do this. It was early August when I picked up the NaNoWriMo book again and began to read it in earnest. I began turning down social invitations to spend my Friday evenings in the Barnes and Noble cafe, hunkered down with a latte and my research. I began filling a steno pad with my thoughts and learnings, and I went to Amazon to purchase books on daily life in colonial America. I even purchased a pendant that I determined early on would play a significant role in my story. I faced obstacles such as writer's block, historical inaccuracies, and potential plot holes. Each was easily plowed through with a bit more thought and study. For every question, with a few days' thought, I had an answer. Nothing had come so easily to me. On or about August 15th, I made my decision: my novel-writing odyssey would begin on September 1.

The ensuing weeks have been consumed with further research and brainstorming, and now, 48 hours before my self-imposed start date, I feel ready. Truly ready. So many other ideas and pipe dreams I've had and have felt committed to have fallen away with little ceremony, so naturally I felt some trepidation in the beginning that the same would happen here. At this point, though, I doubt I'm going to abandon it, partially because I've mentioned it to several people, and my fear of letting them down is keeping me going, but also partially because I've invested so much in it already, and haven't yet let it go.

So at the 2-day mark, I stand on the precipice of something really big, and I'm not really afraid. Sure, I've got some jitters that I'll run into writer's block, but overall, I'm very happy, and very excited at this thing that I've built for myself, and I'm fairly certain that I'll overcome any stumbling blocks I hit along the way, because it's important to me, and because I've already begun fashioning characters in my mind who have become so interminably real to me that I see them as actors waiting in the wings, eagerly awaiting their opportunity to take the stage. I'm quite certain that at the end of this 30 days, I will have, at the very least, a 50,000 word rough draft as the NaNoWriMo book suggests, because my characters demand at least that much from me. And I'll endure a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of turned-down plans, maybe a few discerning glares from friends. But I'm going to see it through, for a few reasons. First, I owe it to my writing. I've never dedicated myself to my writing, and I want to give it a shot. But mostly, I owe it to myself. I've rarely kept promises that I've made to myself, and this is one that I want to keep. As of late, I've let myself be used, devalued, and generally stepped all over because I figured I really didn't merit much more than that. For this one thing, though, I do figure I owe myself the effort.

So... as the final 48 approaches, I'd like to ask you all for one very big, very small thing: your support. For all those who have pledged to get on my case on a daily basis about my word count, for those who have pledged to read my manuscript once it's done, for anyone who's ever told me I had a gift... I beg you for your confidence, and your patronage. The road I've planned for myself is a difficult one, and more than anything, I want to prove to myself that I can do it, but it certainly wouldn't help to have a few kind souls cheering me on along the way. And for everything I've sacrificed in the next thirty days, I can only hope that some of it will still be waiting for me when it's all through. Because for every dream I've sacrificed everything for, there are still so many other things that mean a great deal to me. On the converse of those big dreams I've seen come true for folks I know, they've also sacrificed a lot in the bargain. I don't want to be one of those people. Still, I've got to be a little selfish. This is the road I've chosen.

"They were the best years of my life;
It's true the suffering shapes you
I didn't know it at the time,
But it's about the journey
And without your love
I would never have made it
That's the truth."

P.S. - As promised, the bit of trivia I found during my research: in colonial times, it was not at all uncommon for a homeowner to drop a chicken down his chimney to clean it out; the frantic wingbeats were highly effective in cleaning out the flue.