trashing misconceptions & have tos

I spent a lot of time yesterday on a) the new look – like it? and b) a list of favourite reads – see page link above. I also got myself a twitter account and started hanging out over there to get some gossip, tips, tricks, ideas, encouragement, laughs… Like I said yesterday, there is a HUGE writing community there, something that I really didn’t know before. I thought twitter was either people talking about revolutions (interesting and necessary and cool, but too tough to keep up with, plus temporary) or people whose friends were, for some strange reason, interested to know what they were doing every minute of the day (uninteresting beyond belief). Instead there are cool people sharing knowledge, cheering each other on and forming friendships.

When I signed up for NaNo, I did it mainly for the fun of taking part. Also, because I apparently need deadlines to work efficiently, as proven once again by my recent last-minute scramble over my MA dissertation. I had the vague idea of tackling that one story that I have been fighting with and obsessing over for years and that still refuses to budge past the one million beginnings I’ve written for it. Then I read this post by Lynn Viehl about whether to go with an old idea for NaNo or choose a fresh one. Strangely, I’d never even thought about doing something completely fresh. I have so many ideas in my head and in notes and snippets and on random bits of paper, that I just assumed I should use NaNo to pressure me into finishing one of them. It seemed more of a task, than anything that would bring me a lot of enjoyment.

But now – liberation! I can do whatever I want to do. The same as I can start using twitter and learning to appreciate it long after I’d made up my mind about it and dismissed it as anything I would be interested in using, I can shake off the misconception that I *have to* finish anything, just because I started it. Hey, those ideas are noted down! I can take them up again any time I want to. Or I can just leave them where they are.

For now I’m heading off into daydreaming land to find the perfect idea for my NaNo project… use some old element or not… find a completely new idea… go with an older one but mix it with another older one… complete freedom!

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