Ted (and a bunch of other people) are writing novels this month, part of National Novel Writing Month.
Impressive.
I won't be writing a novel this month.
When I was a kid, after I outgrew the fantasy jobs phase (hockey player, circus animal trainer, paramedic), I switched to the more practical. I sucked at math (and by extension, I figured I sucked at science, so I never paid it much mind) so I figured I'd become a writer.
Early on, though, I realized my imagination wasn't very vivid, so creative writing was out. Also, I'm shy. As much as Woodword and Bernstein were my childhood heroes, I never wanted to be a household name.
One day in high school I was reading a report on seat belt usage put out by the National Transportation Safety Board, and it hit me: someone had written that. I imagined an anonomyous government peon at a desk in Southwest (the fact that I knew the DOT offices were at L'Enfant Plaza helped me imagine this) combing through a bunch of computer printouts and summarizing the data into the seat belt pamphlet. I imagined the peon breaking at noon to eat a ham and cheese sandwich out of a paper sack, then spending the afternoon sorting frontal impact crash test results for another report. Then the peon would take the Metro home to eat dinner and watch tv.
I had found my calling.
I wrote that up into a little essay which my English teacher thought was hysterical. In my yearbook, she wrote "I expect to be reading you in the New Yorker!" I'm not sure why, but when I'm serious people think I'm kidding, and when I'm joking people take me seriously. I think that proves my communication skills aren't that high caliber, so I need to stick to fact-based prose.
How many people have their adolescent dream job?
Ok, my subject is health instead of transportation, and I didn't land in the government (my only regret...no government holidays.) But every day I read boring things and I write boring things.
And clearly this was my avocation as well as a vocation, because I can't turn it off. I write boring things for eight hours a day, but instead of coming home to watch tv at night, I write more boring things in my blog.
Posted by Nic at November 6, 2005 01:21 PM | TrackBackI feel compelled to shout out an "Amen!"
I went into journalism so it would pay the bills so I could write the Great American Novel. Either that or so I could always be correcting people's grammar because that's what my love has turned out to be. NaNoWriMo is just sort of my way of saying, "All right, asshole, you wanna write? Here's your chance. No? Then shut up about it."
I'm having fun with it -- although it sobered me up really quickly about all those romantic writing fantasies I'd had.
But it sure beats editing financial newsletters every minute of the day. ...
Posted by: dawn at November 6, 2005 04:44 PM