“Luke. I am your dark side. Hug me.”

Tomorrow is the start of another NaNoWriMo. During National Novel Writing Month people from around the globe commit to writing 50,000 words in a brand-new project, in 30 days.

They don’t have to be 50,000 good words. The idea is to just pull the cork and see what spills out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wasn’t going to participate this year. I’ve been burnt out, exhausted and very near the dreaded writer’s block that I’ve always claimed doesn’t exist. However, this year’s NaNoWriMo event falls during a Mercury retrograde – in Scorpio. Which means that this year, there might be some pretty powerful stuff pouring onto the page.

Here are a few tidbits from Maria Desimone. Read the full essay here.

What are we hiding from our own consciousness? What are we afraid to admit to ourselves? This Mercury retrograde phase promises to ferret it out of us and deliver a chance to reconcile with darkness in our lives that we either truly don’t see or have tried desperately to sweep under the rug.

I’m a classic rug-sweeper, a deny-er, a smoother-over-of-conflict. And dang it all, there’s no great, nail-biting, stay-up-all-night books without it. You see my problem.

So, what if I use the next few weeks to explore that pulsating darkness within, lance that poisonous mass in a dramatic Alien meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest gesture of literary defiance? (FYI: we in the biz call that previous sentence Purple Prose. Don’t do it.)

Karmically, the universe is screaming at us to open wide and swallow the nasty medicine that will give us a new perspective. The nasty medicine is the uglier part of your life … the part that you might take great pains to hide from others. From yourself.

To up the ante, I’m also at that stage of life where my developmental tasks include taking stock, reviewing and adjusting goals, facing the fact that even coconut oil and psyllium husks can’t turn back time and that yes, that is my ass now. Naturally, I’ve been avoiding this inventory-taking.

 Once you call yourself out on it something powerful will happen. You will be unrestricted from the grip that this darkness holds over you in your life.

Best case, I emerge better, stronger, faster. Worse case, I’ve got another lavender-hued pile of schlock on my hard drive.

What the hay. Where do I sign?