Postcards Into the Void

I'm reviewing my travel journal and, after a few nations' worth of notes, I've started to notice something. I notice it more and more, the further back in time I go.

Any time I land in a nation, or when I'm about to leave one, I purchase a dozen postcards and take an hour in a coffee shop to write them all out and address them to friends. I was about to say "my friends in the States" but I have at various times had penpals in other nations. At the very least, a few people who collected postcards and traded them with me.

This gets to the core of what I realized: I'm not in touch with most of these people anymore. I look at the names of people I wrote in late 2010, when my wife and I toured SE Asia. I'm still friends with a few of those, but some of those relationships have petered out and veered to the wayside. In early 2009, when our families went on a cruise, I wrote postcards in France to people I struggle to recall. They were significant enough for me to note in my travel journal, but now they've crumbled to dust and have no property in my life.

Where to Write During NaNoWriMo

Image: Think, Write a Book

I haven't posted anything here in forever (literally forever), so I'm going to do a slight redirect and use this space to comment on another writing-related topic: NaNoWriMo. That's right I'm undertaking yet another novel this year. I've succeeded twice in prior years, though I've participated for several (some users insist that attempting at all is a success).

The first big thing that every writing advice book and website and list of authors' quotes will impress upon the would-be writer is that you just have to sit down and do it. Just write. Write freely, doesn't matter if it's bad: in fact, I believe it's Anne Lamott who advocated "the shitty first draft". Vulgarity aside, the core truth here refers to a fascinating psychological principle in which adults have a difficult time allowing themselves to make mistakes. Even with a first draft, even with a barely conceived storyline, many adults feel they have to get this right on the first try. This belief turns into a nearly insurmountable hurdle that can even cause the writer to abandon their project altogether.

I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was, too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.

—Katherine Mansfield