I am not going to lie, I am nervous about attempting another Nanowrimo. For all the reasons I am nervous about being or even, – calling myself a writer; I don’t feel qualified. Who am I to say that about myself? How dare I elevate myself to such a lofty place? Writer? You? “Get outa here kid, you go no future.”
There are a boatload of reasons I could point to that make me feel this way but they would all just be excuses , or series of excuses, similar to the ones I have used most of my life to justify and or hide from the fact that I am or at least feel like a complete failure.
In just the last 24 hours, I have committed to writing upwards of 2000 words every day this month to prepare for the mere 1667 words a day require to “win” Nanowrimo and then not even getting 1000 down yesterday. Day 1, already a failure. This is lifelong y’all. And it is exhausting! I wish I could revel in failure – then I’d be Elon Musk But I am more a Modern Day Cowboy kinda Tesla fan.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a firm believer in failing, even failing with flare – flames and sirens, bystanders commenting on how fast the decent was, how complete the crash was. Kind of like losing that lovin’ feeling, and “I hate when she does that.”
So what exactly is happening here beside a lot of self-loathing and movie quoting (that’d be a good name for a band)? I think I am trying to pump myself up to tackle the remainder of this month – 2 days in and I already feel like I am playing catch up… “Good Grief!” and hit November 1 with reckless abandon. Ready to take on the world, at least 50 THOUSAND words of it.
Is this a pep talk? I suck at this. If you need encouragement, quit reading this now and go read something where people die and stuff or watch the new Netflix train wreck, oh, I mean show The I-Land. Talk about something that will make you sad. I could go off on how it’s just a rip off of Lost but that would take away from the originality of their fairly liberal use the F-bomb. That in itself made me completely forgot how similar the two shows are. Or we could focus on the poor use of dialogue, “No, REALLY, I didn’t kill him.” The preceding was a paraphrase because I was cringing so much during that scene. There is so much to rail against about the show but I am going to wait it out in hopes that before too long they do something even semi original and throw a real plot twist at me. I say me because I cannot imagine anyone with any kind of self-worth watching more than the first five minutes of episode one.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to write even close to 500 words?
I love irony. Not skiing naked while smoking dope irony but good ‘ole fashioned irony.
Having said all that, I was reminded this morning about a scripture that has been following me around lately like that kid in 7th grade that came to my house once and knew how to play the Raiders of the Lost Ark game for the Atari 2600 – (read with a Boston accent) a wicked awesome game and game system if I do say so myself – and I do (resume hearing with your normal voice). But first on a related note, I’d like to point out that the movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark – WAS NOT originally called Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark it was simply Raiders of the Lost Ark – THAT is a bit of revisionist history and it drives me nuts!
{Dismounts soapbox}
Any who, the scripture that I want to talk about now is Zechariah 4:10 New Living (NLT) – “Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin, to see the plumb line in Zerubbabel’s hand,” (there is a bit more text but the absence does not change the meaning).
I have been reading that for the last couple weeks and applying it other areas of my life and then while writing most of the above, the Holy Spirit brought the verse to mind and reminded me that “small beginnings” are still beginnings. Why is that important especially in light of the deep lament and ferocious nature in which I was attacking myself earlier? Because, my plan – which I mention above – was to write 2000 words a day this month to prep for Nanowrimo – and so far, NONE of the days this month (3 of them as of this word typed) has seen the plus side of 500 words.
Small beginnings are still beginnings. Side note, I was going to call this post Psalm 151 because of David’s practice of railing against God in part one of psalm only to return to posture of praise and worship by the end – but now it has a new name – but you know that by now…
So, how do you apply this to your life? Not sure, we’ve never met. But, I’ll say this, if you find yourself struggling to get more than a step or two out of the starting gate just remember, very few people get to start at the top. Most of us have to work to get what we want, sometime that even means getting out of own way.
A lesson I learned while pursuing comedy is that it’s best to start off unknown anyway. That way you make all your bad jokes, hopefully all, before people know who you are. Why do you think that so few already famous people try to anything outside what they’re known? Terry Bradshaw and Jim Kirk (ok, William Shatner) both tried recording music. So did Lenard Nimoy but his street cred as Spock outweighs the miscalculation – hard to think of Spock as miscalculating anything, huh? Can anyone say Michael Jordan, member of the Chicago White Sox? No, because he wasn’t.
Need I say more?
OK, more it is – I’m just saying don’t be in such a hurry to get to the top because once you’re there it’s a long way back to the bottom…
I talk about this a bit in my eBook Pick A Direction and Go! Which you can get for free when you click in the box below and provide me with your email address. List members will also get periodic message from me and maybe a surprise or two – like details or samples of my latest WIP, Erased. No release date because I am still writing the thing.
I’d love to hear your thoughts about Zechariah 4:10, Jordan, Lenard Nimoy’s vocal styling or really, anything else on your mind.
Y’all keep the acorn spinnin’
#dontbreakthechain #donotdespisethesesmallbeginnings
Mick Holt 