I Triple Dog Dare You
Decorate the Outskirts 2014
November is here, which means NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, is upon us. Objective: write a novel in 30 days. I participated 3 years ago & had a great experience, but this year, too many things are in the way of committing to 50,000 words.
On first pass, I 
thought about tossing it. Screw November. If I can’t do NaNoWriMo the “right” way, I don’t want to do it at all. I thought about taking my ball & going home, but a very wise friend, Leslie Nack, wouldn’t let me.
That same wise friend reminded me that the ultra cool people writing a novel in a month need folks like us, hanging on the outskirts, prettying the place up with our supplemental words & colors & music.
So, Leslie & I decided to join the fun in our own way, on terms that allow us to renew our commitment to writing AND juggle the 9 chainsaws we have in the air for November.
Hence, the launch of…
Decorate the Outskirts, 2014
A virtual kick in the ass for anyone whose creative Yee-Haw! needs a little oomph.
Here’s the deal. No matter what your art is–writing, painting, photography, baking or crime scene dioramas--we challenge you to renew your commitment & up the ante in your creative life.
What’s that? No time to do what makes your heart sing? I quote Kirk Hensler, creator of Write Yourself Alive & author of the blog Kale & Cigarettes:
I don’t fucking care what else you have to do. You’ll soon be dead and your worries and long to-do lists won’t matter then.
An hour a day, 3 hours a week, one day a week. Whatever is a step forward. Accept the challenge, put it in writing, run with it. I dare you.
Are you with us?
All right, I’ll go first: I accept this challenge.
I will write at least one hour every day in November. 30 days. 30 hours.
What’s your art? What’s your commitment?
How will you Decorate the Outskirts?
#DectheOutskirts #WriteEveryDamnDay
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I’m ready Anita! Saturday is the first day. Let’s get pumped up. And let’s Tweet about it the entire time. One tweet a day with our progress? Deal? #DectheOutskirts for sure! You’re awesome!
Thanks for the reminder that it’s not all or nothing, Leslie. Saturday it is. And yes, let’s do the Twitter thing, every day, progress report, even if the report reports “this sucks!” Heading to Twitter now to post this. My dive into the Tweet waters.
YAY! You go Anita! Absolutely loved every word in this challenge and I love the second picture of you! Can’t wait to see what comes. Miss you!
You mean the pic of me on my stallion? 🙂 What’s interesting about that photo, especially because we’re celebrating Dia de Los Muertos on Saturday, is that the two guys in the background are two ancestors I adored & feel very strongly in my cloud of supporters. They’re both also celebrated on our altar every year. On the left is my Pa-pa Breckenridge, my mom’s father, & on the right is Frank Breckenridge, my favorite uncle & my mom’s brother. They don’t look as excited as I am, but I imagine they got a kick out of my ride for the wide open spaces! Yee-Haw!
Oh no, my friend. Although that is a great picture of you on your stallion, I meant the one at Schoen Place with your arms crossed, hhhmmmmppppfffff! Love it!
So here is where I get stuck, besides the usual “laying in bed at 1am and the best dialogue comes to my head, but I know I will remember it in the morning” …oh crap, its gone. After all that is my original place of stuck, which is I think up bits of dialogue. I just have bits of different people, characters that chat, but no story, no plot.. my dilemma seems to be too many voices in my head. (non-schizophrenic edition)
“Voices in my head (non-schizophrenic edition).” I love that! This is what I suspect, Marise…I suspect the voices & characters in your head have to live there because they can’t find a home. What if your challenge is to spend the month of November giving just one character–one voice–a name & a home on paper (I guess it’s on screen these days)? Just one. No story needed. No plot or ending or beginning. Just a snapshot of a conversation or a stream of consciousness. Take him or her out of your head & give the voice a home.
Who knows where it might go from there. Maybe a another character will make an appearance, maybe not. That’s the beauty of the outskirts. We don’t have to carry the weight of the main feature! Our creativity has the freedom to fill in blanks, remain indistinguishable, add to the color scheme. No pressure.
Would LOVE to see what you come up with. Keep us posted?
Most definitely. Every so often a name will pop up in my head…I write it down. When I was a kid, I would have LISTS of character names. I don’t know what I did with all of those……
Hey Anita! I too was disappointed that I couldn’t participate in NaNoWriMo this year – in the traditional sense. So I love your idea – kudos to you and Leslie! I am a few days late getting started as I just returned from a 12-dy road trip, but I want to join in anyway. I will challenge myself to at least 2 hours of editing everyday on my ms. with the goal of getting it to my agent by the end of November. huzzah!
Who cares if you’re late. Get on the bus! Let’s have some fun. I’ve got you down–two hours daily editing (check), ms to your agent at the end of Nov (check). Woo hoo! Don’t forget to keep us posted on how it’s going.
Okay, I’ve got my plan. Better late than no plan, right? Each day I will spend a minimum of one hour on one or more of the following activities: 1) research which includes foraging – bringing my notebook with me every time I leave the house and not coming back without notes on a person, place, thing, feeling, smell I encountered; 2) experimenting with new ways of writing – going to at least two more Thursday writers groups in November/early December; 3) reading something I’ve written out loud at Dimestories on November 7 at Liberty Station;3) doing what it takes to accomplish the following by the end of the month: write a backlog of blog posts that will take me through early January and finish a draft of a very tough essay I am working on and would like to submit to Creative Nonfiction or some other market. I’ve just copied and pasted this to a place where I will see it every day. I’ll keep you posted.
It would help if I looked at the calendar before making my pronouncements. Just found out Dimestories is November 14th, not the 7th. I will have one more week to polish my prose.