Writing with Meaning

At the beginning of this month I started off writing like crazy for NaNoWriMo. I had told several people about NaNoWriMo and had inspired some of them to try it. I even gave a speech about it to my Toast Masters club. It was a fun speech full of enthusiasm, and by the time I finished the speech I was 90% there, actually doing NaNoWriMo.

When my pacing partner committed to doing it, I knew I had to try, even though November would be an insane month for me to do this this year, since I would have only 20 days (which breaks down into 2500 words a day).

My pacing partner is struggling with her mother’s imminent death and decided to write a book about the lessons she is learning through helping her mother and how she is expressing that learning into her relationship with her daughter. Wow! Talk about writing with meaning!

Inspired by her book, I thought, well, I’ll write out into the future about our annual getaways – the two of us plus our life coach. Long about year five, projecting our getaways became pretty uninspiring! How much can this event change and be interesting. I started writing about how each of us changed from year to year, but it became so outrageous that I scrapped the whole thing.

I know I could have pushed through week two because they say it is the worst – pure crap, but I really, truly could see no end to the crap that was spewing forth onto my computer screen.

Some would say I quit. I say I stopped the insanity that was becoming my November. Some would say I failed. I say there is never failure when learning happens.

When I stopped writing my NaNoWriMo, I started writing this blog. I decided I would rather challenge myself to really think about things that were churning around in my head and put them out to the universe (which is really scary to me – to know that just about anybody can now read what I’m writing – I have this little perfection hang up which is how I became involved in NaNoWriMo in the first place).

So my coach asks me this morning, “what is the meaning you are needing to write about?” She always has such good questions! I wish the answers were always forthcoming. Some times it takes patience to find the answers. I’m learning to be more patient.

But when I think about it, the meaning is this – this Journey of Joy. This is not a nonfiction NaNoWriMo book! This is life and how we choose to live it. And if I can help just one more person live their live as a Journey of Joy, then that truly has meaning for me.