[AE.NiNoBilMa] As April gives way to May and I transition to different ways of being and doing...
So, you might be guessing -- based on the fact that it's not the first Monday of the month or even the second Monday but a Friday that happens to be the very last weekday of April -- that this is the last of what I could stretch to call the "regular updates" I'll be sending out regarding NiNoBilma.
I started drafting this one morning weeks ago, much closer to the start of the month, by writing what I had intended to be a general all-purpose "state of the me" post that would have touched on NiNoBilMa, among other things, but I found that it came off a bit cranky and bitter, probably because I felt cranky and bitter, as a result of being too cold, tired, and rundown to feel much of anything else.
After I wrote it, I decided to sit on it for a bit so I could coordinate the crossposting of it with a few other things... and while that day only got busier and colder, I did graduall grow more awake and recalled more of the cold-weather adaptation strategies I have available, and started writing a new newsletter draft, which became this.
And then I never sent it, because things kept happening.
I've been updating and expanding the initial few paragraphs of this weeks-old draft so it would make chronological sense, but I think continuing to do that is going to result in me reworking it so much that I once again don't get around to sending it out before it's out of date again.
In lieu of that, I'll just mark off the portion of this newsletter that was written in the first week of April.
BEGIN MESSAGE FROM THE PAST
So, I've shelved the general update for a rewrite tomorrow or later in the week, and I'm instead here writing a more positive-minded update specifically on NiNoBilMa.
I specify "positive-minded" rather than just "positive", though I think of it as a positive development overall, but in short and simple terms, I think the project is over, at least in any kind of public-facing format.
The public aspect of it was part of what excited me when I came up with the idea at the tail end of last year. I thought it might catch fire with a few other people and we could cheer each other on, maybe have online write-ins or other participatory activities.
It did attract some attention early on. Maybe somebody else with a different personality, different brain, and different set of skills could have caught those sparks and fanned them into something brilliant, but that's not me.
And while I have found value in the exercises... well, a big turning point came when I decided to focus on inhibitions for March and April, and I came to realize that trying to do NiNoBilMa as a public spectacle has itself been inhibiting to me.
Part of it is the more rarely discussed flipside of Dunning-Kruger; the more I focus on what I don't know about writing, the more aware I am of my weaknesses and the less confident I am of my strengths. I started this project in part because I felt like I have relied too much on the idea of playing to my strengths in my writing, but they are my strengths and shying away from them takes a lot of the fun out of writing.
And part of it is the sense of expectation I created for myself that I would be raw and uninhibited and let people see my process and even potentially watch me write on a stream or video conference... it's not that I can't imagine myself being bold enough to write in real-time in front of an audience, but the more I build it up in my head as a thing I have to do, the more existential dread builds up.
But a big part... maybe the biggest part of it... is that as each new month arrives, I find the constraints of trying to create and then write within a monthly program... well, constraining.
And that might be a little bit "I honestly don't now what I expected," given that part of the point here was learning to make better use of structure both within my writing itself and with my writing habits, but I guess what I'm learning is that I need my structures to be lightweight, nimble, and flexible if they're going to serve me, and even while I seek a better understanding of structures, I'll never be one to submit to a structure for the structure's sake.
I have been thinking along these lines since the end of March, but everything in my life that's happened since then... which is a lot of little things that have added up to some serious disorder and malaise... have only firmed up my convictions.
My life... to say nothing of my body and my brain... is just not set up for a year long program of monthly writing exercises. During the months when things are going well, it can become a displacement activity for actual writing. When things are going poorly, the need to both keep up a schedule and build on past months become additional encumberances on my ability to create. At times, I have found myself torn between things I was really excited to sit down and write and the lurking obligation of "Oh, but I said I would be doing this prompt..."
All of this said, I would not call the attempt a failure just because it's going in a completely different direction. I have learned quite a bit about myself and how I write, and how I learn. I have found benefits from using outlines and external prompts, and also ways in which they can hold me back.
And I refer to this as a change in direction rather than an end to NiNoBilMa because I have decided, given what I have learned from December through March, that I can keep its spirit alive while destroying its body.
My more modest and personal goal for the rest of the year is to challenge myself to continue learning new things and revisiting things that I previously rejected or bounced off of. Writing aside, I've already picked up a bit of should-have-been-high-school trigonometry that I never absorbed in high school as part of one my casual gamemaking projects.
END MESSAGE FROM THE PAST
Yeah, okay, looks like I didn't even have a rough stab at tying it off at the end. I'm pretty sure I had other stuff in mind that I had picked up in a "better late than never" way, but it's not at the front of my mind right now.
I could look at when the file was created to try to figure out what exactly interrupted me, but I don't know what purpose that would serve. April: It's Sure Been A Month. And it's not over.
Anyway, to sum up: trying to make NiNoBilMa into a thing has taught me way more about myself and how I learn and how I work than it has taught me about writing. It has also taught me about what works in terms of little warm-up exercises, and one of the things I learned there is that I can get a lot of mileage out of doing that kind of thing to limber up my writing exercises and get excited about writing, but then I absolutely have to clear the deck of "exercises" and just get out of my own way and let myself write what I'm excited about.
So that's what I'm looking forward to doing in May. Next week I'll be sending out more newsletter updates about stuff in my life and posting some Patreon updates about stuff I'm doing with Patreon, but for now, I'm going to tie this off here and shoot it out into the world while the coast is clear.
Happy writing, reading, thinking, playing, creating, consuming, or whatever it is you're excited about.
-Alexandra.