Writing "The End"

It is a glorious feeling, writing "The End" (I will spare you the all caps and the exclamation marks) after a month and some of intensive writing. Of course, the piece is not finished, but the first draft of it is.

I'm tickled pink.

I thought I would be this self-satisfied on the 30th, after successfully completing the target 50k words for NanoRhino, but that feeling was, if I could sum it up in a word, meh. It took three more days and 6k of writing, and I finally got that full frog feeling.

Now what?

Finish the rewrite of last year's book?

Play that damned fiddle tune in tune for my animation?

Finish the meandering and malingering book that I've been working on for a couple of years?

Write that new one that I'd laid out, planning to use it for this year's November folly, but changed my mind at the last minute?

Paint in every spare second?

Meditate? A lot?

Shockingly, one thing I will not be doing is catching up on all of the Doctor Who episodes from this last season. I am trying to divest myself of some paunch, and, did you know, you consume 70 calories per hour more doing nothing of interest or value than you do when watching television? Or some figure like that. I didn't actually stop to calculate, but perhaps you will, after reading this article.

Hah! I need not exercise!

(Yes, I know, that isn't true about not needing to exercise... )


I have started reading Emily of New Moon to my daughter. She loves it, it seems, as much as I did.

My sister saw me reading it to her, and wondered why I was inculcating my child with mysogeny from the Victorian era.

I have to admit, Lucy Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables , written in 1908, does smack of that "females must be squashed to be good" flavor, the same that keeps me from reading to my daughter the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. Ugh. I can't stand that "I must try to be good" ... um... dung.

But maybe A of GG was written earlier on L.M. Montgomery's marriage, the one she only entered into because she saw no other way to survive in a brutally sexist time.  (Just checked, thanks Wikipedia, and it was written before she got married.) Which may simply have lacked imagination on her part, as she seemed to do just fine as a writer and a journalist. Still, she let society pressure her into getting married, as she freely admitted, and suffered her own and her husband's terrible depressions for the rest of her life.

So Emily of New Moon, written in 1923, feels more honest to me. Emily is never the happy innocent that that god-awful Anne is, and she is a moody artist, a writer, rather than a milk toast version of Pippi Longstocking who submits willingly to being tamed by close minded puritans.

So those are my thoughts on that subject. And I thank L. M. Montgomery for hers.

Now what?

Other posts about NaNoWriMo, and writing: The End of NaNoWriMoSoutherners must be laughing...,  NoMo what?Preparing for National Novel Writing Month,  Novel Inspiration, and How to Get Some,  and  Fiddle Advice, Noveling Novelties, and Wildness.

Comments

  1. Congrats on finishing the NaNo novel! :-) That's more than I've done (I'm still sloooowly finishing my story)!

    Coincidentally, I was just thinking recently of introducing the Laura Ingalls Wilder books or Anne of Green Gables to my kids. I liked them when I was a kid, yet the sexism and racism bothered me even then. I've never read Emily of New Moon! Maybe I'll give that a try!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, the racism. I had forgotten about that.

    Maybe I will sloooowly finish my other story while you finish yours.

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  3. How have I never read your blog to date? Weird. But good. I can totally envision so much of what you write here.. Not that I've read any or either of the books you mention, but still, I found my minds eye full of delight. Great words and imagings!

    Hope your feeling better..
    Xo!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh, good! Weird is what I aspire to, in lieu of any other reasonable option...

    Thank you. After being unable to stand for more than a couple of minutes over the last couple of days, I am now feeling almost spry, but dizzy. Which way is up, again?

    ReplyDelete

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