Mess

I once had a dream that I was on a road blocked by trash. There was a steep cliff on one side, and a high wall on the other - no way to get past the huge trash heap. I wondered how I would keep going and an angel appeared, handing me a sword. Together, we began hacking away at the huge stash of paper, wood, and plastic.

I never got to see the road cleared, but I woke up knowing that there were things in my life junking up my path.

I sometimes wish to revisit that dream so I can see if I've cleared up a lot of stuff or if there is more junk piled on top. I need to keep hacking away at it, I guess.

Writing "Violet's Monster" reminded me of this because of NaNoWriMo - for those of you who don't know [and I'm sure most of you DO know], November is National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write 50,000 words in 30 days which is a good way to get a very rough draft of a story done. Your "inner editor" goes on vacation [or you put her in jail, depending on how you feel about her] and you just write.

Of course a lot of it is trash - but that's what the first draft is for. I wrote today thinking "Ok, when my editor comes back I'm going to cut this out," and it was a lot like slogging through a bunch of trash.

But I see a little tiny light in there. There's a jewel in there, somewhere, ready to be polished. I have a 'graveyard of novel ideas' and I know this is the first one that really has promise. I'm going to keep hacking away at it until it's presentable. Hopefully I'll have cleared all the trash out of it by then. :)