November Learning

November has been a month of finishing for me. Finishing my last major Highland dancing exams, finishing autumn, finishing the regular routines before the craziness that anyone involved in theatre can tell you comes with having a show starting in just over two weeks, finishing this weird and wonderful novel I've been writing this past month. Cello is finishing too, soon, at least for the winter holidays, and although I'm less than enthusiastic about some of the music we've been playing (London Bridge in B Flat, anyone??), I'm still plodding along, still progressing, as slow as it may seem.

That's the thing with NaNoWriMo, at least for me. It's a rapid amount of learning all at once. I have no idea how to write a novel, I just go for it, because if you don't you'll be left behind, left with no words at all. You must pick up the notebook or laptop, iPad or typewriter, and pound the words out, as silly as they may seem. There are painful parts to the learning, when you are half way through the novel and hating it, when you realize you've used the word "Italian" hundreds and hundreds of times (true story), but all you can do is pull through and in the end you look back and realize, hey, this time I actually had dialogue, had better pacing, and I really love my characters. A lot of learning occurred, and maybe most prominently at that "hating it" point.

And I need to remember that cello is the same thing. London Bridge in B Flat is my Week Two, my tough spot, my "steepest part of the mountain" to use a popular metaphor, but maybe it's where I will learn most. Maybe it's just hands to the keyboard, bow to the strings, no hitting backspace.