nanowrimo.

I am going to write a novel in November 2013.

But ten minutes ago, I realized how terrified this makes me.

I don't know if I can even do it. I have spent about three hours today trying to find a way to start, and I have nothing. I ran through everything I'd heard about writing. I remembered C.S. Lewis describing the picture he'd had in his head since he was 14, that of a faun in a snowy wood with a red scarf, an umbrella, and some packages, which became The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. But I couldn't find any pictures in my head. I read about Flannery O'Connor looking at a blank piece of paper for upwards of three hours until an idea came to her. But I don't know that I have three hours to spare.

Ten minutes ago, I told my roommate K that I was doing NaNoWriMo, but the problem was that I couldn't come up with a story idea and I was super scared. And I sat at our kitchen table with tears running down my face while she was probably wondering whether or not I'd lost all my marbles.

What I didn't elaborate on, what I'm realizing now, is that if I try this and I fail, it means I can't write. It means my dream of being a writer is dead. It means that I have nothing to tell anyone. It means I am a failure in the most intense sense of the word.

Why is writing a story suddenly so hard? As a girl, I had so many story ideas bubbling up inside of me, even though many of them were caricatures or copycats of my favorite books (the Chronicles of Narnia and the Redwall series were my two great inspirations). Where did all my ideas go? In a way, I feel more like a child, yet more like an adult, than I've ever felt before: a child in the sense that I literally feel lost and don't know how to start writing, but an adult in the sense that my freedom to dream and play and just try something feels totally hampered and hemmed in.

Fortunately, I have in my lap Anne Lamott's book Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. She just reminded me that "good writing is about telling the truth." I think I can do that. I will find something to write about. I know I will. But I think I have to allow it to be less than inspired. And just do it. Because in the end, it will not really matter if I've created something "good" or not, and I have a hunch that it won't really mean I'm a failure at life if it's terrible stuff. What it will mean is that I finished a novel. I FINISHED A NOVEL. That sounds good to me.

So excuse me, because now I'm going to go tell a story.