On November (non-fiction)

      This past November I undertook in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) once more. This November proved itself to be difficult in many ways, often having very little to do with the actual challenge. It is noticeably the only November NaNo that I have not started a new novel, deciding instead to work on "The Beginning of The End", as well as the only time that my novel has little to do with romantic love.

      For those who are unaware, NaNoWriMo is an online challenge where participants attempt to write 50,000 words (or 200 pages) of a novel over the course of the month. I first attempted it in 2011, winning with "Love: A Chaotic Insanity". The year following I wrote part of "A Plead to Iris", and the next year I wrote part of "The Daughter of Athena", winning both times. All three of these have roots in romantic love, and it makes a significant appearance in all three of them. "The Beginning of The End" (or TBOTE) is quite the opposite.

      Reflecting now on the month of November, and how my thoughts (and writings) were being formed, I find that TBOTE was perhaps the best novel for me to have been working on. After all, as discussed in my last poem "The Awakening of a Fallen Man", I fell back into old habits from a time long past, predominantly a self-destructive praising of Love. But TBOTE began as an expression of the failed ultimate concern that my younger self experienced with Love.

      As it has developed, I have borrowed (from the poet William Blake) a notion of the Fallen states (which he uses for his Four Zoas, a coincidental parallel with the Four in TBOTE). To be Fallen is essentially to be broken in some way, to have something missing, to be less than one is. In falling back to a previous state (that of the Grey to extend the parallel with TBOTE), I became Fallen and forsook that which gives me the strength and confidence to do as I must.

      For the first time in four years, I had become Kuna Zero (of TBOTE) once more. I possessed doubt, was overwhelmed by sorrow, and felt as if I was wandering about in a world without meaning. Truly, I was more alone than I had been since those old times. And my attempt to break the loneliness of the finite was the same. I tried to find a love. (and inevitably failed).

      So why was "The Beginning of The End" so important in this past month? Why was it so helpful? Why do I think that it was so crucial that I wrote that and not another love-based novel?

     It is quite simple. For the whole month (without even realizing it at first), I was reminded of my initial failure, of the inherent flaw in the belief system which I had fallen back on in fear. Even more so, I was forced to face that which had guided me thus far, and write how the child of Fire has to put his faith and trust in it, as well as in himself. I rewrote the awakening of each of the Four by this awakened Kuna Zero, this flame-bound man following the path that lay before him. I was setting up my own reawakening.

      Had I not realized my folly, I might have fallen even more victim to the allures of affection, misusing the pen for mild and undeveloped affections. I suppose I was lucky I could write so much about that Flame-haired woman. Otherwise I might have written more about the friend, or even more recently the girl whose eyes I could not pull away from. Inevitably, this would have ruined any relationship with them (it has happened before).

     There is a strange power in the pen, one I feel I still fail to understand. But I understand it enough to not write any possible thing. Otherwise I would give life and substance to more fictions than I can keep track of, more fictions that very well may trick me into believing they exist outside of my mind.

     But with the end of the month came an awakening, in which all my doubts were expelled. Sorrow was seared away, and the loneliness of the finite (the terrible grey) was banished by the connectivity of the infinite. The flames in my eyes had returned.

     And with that potentially more metaphorical statement made (one should rarely take what I say as literal), I feel I have written enough in this post. Take care of yourself and never fear to reflect and reconsider your values. It might just save you. Until next time,

-Zero