NANoWriMo - Plucking dreams

I've done something I've been wanting to do for the last three years. I have signed up for National Novel Writing Month. This happens every November. For 30 days, writers around the world, well, they simply... write. 50,000 words to be precise. A novel. A book. A living, breathing beast of a story. 

I have heard it will make me euphoric. I have heard it will drive me crazy. I have heard I will sit, rocking at my computer wondering what the hell I've signed up for. I have heard I will be punching the keyboard with delight. Words will flow, flounder, flail and fall onto the page. 

I have to tell everyone I am doing it. Some, out of respect: you will not hear from me for 30 days. I will not have died. I am just writing a book while trying to live my normal life. Some, out of hope: please help me and support me and ask me how it's going. Please: keep.me.sane.

I like a challenge. The challenge can be physical: run across the Andes in three days. Or it can be mental: write a word-a-thon for charity. I have done both. And it's true. There are hellish moments. My legs don't work. My brain can't think. I want to stay in bed and listen to the football. But, you keep going. Someone is relying on you. YOU are relying on you. You keep running. You keep writing. It doesn't matter if it isn't pretty or perfect. It is what it is. It is yours.

So, I am excited for the month of November. It will be a momentous, harrowing, spectacular journey. It will seem long and arduous. It will seemingly fly by. And at the end of it will be something, hopefully, resembling my bookish dreams. Something I have created that is whole and wonderful in parts, if cracked at the edges. That's OK. From December 1st the paint comes out and it is time to make it beautiful. 

Without doing this, ideas are dreams. My dreams may follow me, but I have to pluck them to make them happen. If I want that book on my shelf, the one with my name on the spine... well, then, I've got to write it. 

For more information on National Novel Writing Month see: http://nanowrimo.org/

Last moments before sleep

The dress. The flowers. The list. Its gone too long.

Burgundy shoes, black laces. Horrible little boots to wear to school.

If Martín was an animal, what would he be?

Cream curtains slightly too short, slightly too creamy, too light.

I wish I could lie on my front. It looks cosy. I'll regret it.

I remember when we were walking up to Uritorco and you said that it would be good to do more hikes.

Stick my feet out of the covers and then tuck them in between his sleeping legs. Crisp and cool.

It's only dinner time in Argentina. I wonder what they are doing.

I want to get up early. No dreams. A clean sleep.

Conditional tenses chain game, write that down tomorrow for last class.

Where is that car going? A hammock in Brazil. A pub bench in Somerset.

Follow a butterfly for a day, watch it live, watch it die. Is it really a day to live or a day to die?

Liver in gravy with mashed potatoes and cabbage, where to hide, not a clean plate.

Walk into Waterstones and see your book.

There was a sandpit, inside and outside. But a mistake was made, and we never went back outside.

Green mists rising from a bus in Colombia. Don't sleep.

Be happy tomorrow. You are happy. Look at this.

If I could take colourful photos, or black and white, sunflowers, Iguassu Falls, giraffes at the watering holes bending carefully.

Sitting on a train, some vodka, Siberian sunsets, a breeze flicking the book's pages.

Will we have separate armchairs when we are older, or we will stay together on a couch. Like we are together in bed. Like we are together, juntos...

Up where we don't belong

When I was 11, I wanted to be a pilot. It stayed with me for two years, until I realised I was much better at writing than physics; at talking than flying.

And now, I sit on my couch and watch the new British Airways advert. Goosebumps crawl across my arms. What would it have been like to fly with the wind in your hair? How would it have been training to lift all those tonnes off the ground and into the air? Could I really have become a captain?

I watch that advert and its romance makes me hold my breath. The first time I saw it, I was entranced. From the first scene of the man in that open-topped flying machine, I said to myself, Please be British Airways.

The magic of flying has never left me. It's not just that scientists never really understood how planes got in the air until relatively recently; or how they design those trays of food so everything fits within inches; or the walk of the crew as they stride along with their smart suitcases, imaculate and self-assured.

It's the possibility of the impossible. National Geopgraphic recently ran a front cover, Can we fly? http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/09/personal-flight/shute-text The dream will never go away.

I am fortunate enough to have a recurring dream about flying. It comes round about once every year, and it's exactly the same as the first time I dreamt it around the age of seven. I am flying over the estate I used to live on. It's a sunny day and I simply swoop over all the little pacthes of garden and cottages. It's exhilarating.

However, we came from the sea. Some 3.8 billion years ago life began there. Many of us live on islands. We are surrounded. The need to swim is therefore great. I couldn't imagine a life without seeing water, especially the ocean, and want to get wet. It pulses through our bodies, our cells.

And yet; that British Airways advert fills me with the nostalgia of flight. It was even the subject of my first prize winning poem when I was eight (see below).

But we don't belong there. I must keep my feet firmly on the ground. I will never be a British Airways captain.

I'll just keep dreaming.

FLIGHT OF FANCY

One night I was dreaming
I was flying like a concorde.
I could touch the clouds.
I could see the lord.

I said, "Could you pinch me
To see if I'm flying?"
The lord said, "You're dreaming."
I said, "But I'm trying."

"Trying what?" said the lord.
"I'm trying to fly," I said.
When all of a suddent as if by magic
I woke up in my bed.

To view the British Airways advert see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4JdQi60an0&feature=relmfu

Picture credit: Nic Morrish