This month might be slow (-er than usual) around here. I have a couple of places where I’m guest posting, and I will still do a couple of link-ups. Or I will procrastinate and end up writing here more often. Whatever happens, the reason is that I am participating in Camp NaNoWriMo. I have a goal of 75,000 words for the month on an old-but-new-again project called What Not to Say. It’s a commentary on the things that folks, trying to be helpful, say to single people that actually aren’t that helpful at all. It has its own blog space, because eventually I want it to become a community project, as my experience as a single person, vast and wondrous as it may be, is still just one person’s experience, and as self-important as I am, I don’t really know how to market what would essentially be a manual on how to get along with me.
So I’m spending a lot of time that I’m in front of a computer typing furiously toward 75,000 words, and I’m spending the time I’m not in front of a computer scribbling furiously in this lovely journal:
(My journal, my self)
I started this project years ago. I stopped because it made me angry. All. The. Time. I couldn’t let go of the anger that these memories were stirring up in me. And it’s good to vent – to get emotion out so that it doesn’t consume you. But when you vent (and vent…and vent…), and you are still angry, it’s not healthy.
So I stopped.
I was scared mid-February when I started getting the urge to pick it up again. I didn’t want to go back to that place. I especially didn’t want to go back to that place during the end of the school year, because that tends to be an annoying season to me anyway (see last post), and I didn’t want to fuel the fire.
Then it wouldn’t let me sleep. I would wake up with words, and I would not be able to fight them. At first, there were snippets that I could save as notes on my phone. Now, they’re whole chunks of text that would take forever to type out on Margaux’s touch screen, so I get up and type or scribble in the middle of the night. This project has become my life again.
But now it’s different. I’m different.
Jennifer Upton said, “You can’t see beauty if you’re bitter,” and it clicked. I was anxious about pursuing beauty this year, but it has prepared me for writing something that has been a source of hurt to me. It has prepared me to reframe my experiences – to say the true things while still acknowledging loving intent and leaving us a place to go from here.
So if you don’t see me a lot this month, that’s where I’ll be. Clicking.
M. Suzanne Terry 
WOOHOO! Cheering you on! I mean, I’m like giddy happy about this. Let it happen, those middle of the night epiphanies, the feverish scrawling. To me that’s confirmation that the time is right and the words are alive!
Oh, and this is me thinking ahead because I love to think way ahead, (well, maybe not “way.” It might be sooner than you think!) lol. But my idea is that if you have some words that come out during the project but don’t quite seem to fit in your book, I’d suggest saving those words for a blog post series that you post in tandem with releasing your book. (I can totally see this all happening. Believe it! Plan for it!) ❤ #highfive
That’s a great idea, Jamie! I’m usually so blah about marketing, but I am actually excited about marketing this one.
You encourage me so much. Thank you!
‘I started this project years ago. I stopped because it made me angry. All. The. Time. I couldn’t let go of the anger that these memories were stirring up in me.’
I had to excise a whole section from a journal a few years ago because I was constantly revisiting accounts of pain and, as you say, it was not healing, just keeping the anger fuelled. Over time I’ve been able to write about it from a more healed perspective and that has been helpful. I was able to see the bigger picture – value my part in it but also aknowledge the sufferring and confusion of others. Writing does that for me. Reframes things.
I’m so looking forward to following where you go with this.
I’m fighting the urge to give the old posts a spruce (because this month is about write, write, write), but I have written an addendum to them. It’s a richer view now. I’m so glad.
Thank you for your encouragement, Juliet!
I also realized recently that I’m carrying more anger than is healthy, and I’m trying to deal with it. Excited to hear what you have to say!
Thanks, Brenda! It was hard to put aside what was making me angry. It was my pain – I felt that I had a right to it. And I did. But I also had the right to put it down, and that was so good for me. I wish you luck in doing the same!