NaPlWriMo 2009 11 days left!

We're getting close to single digits of days left!

To commemorate this, I want to tell you a little about something called Monomyth, The Hero's Journey. This is a pattern common to many stories from around the world. Joseph Campbell explores it in his book, 'The Hero With a Thousand Faces'. There's seventeen stages to this. I'm not going to get into all of them in this post (this isn't school for God's sake!), but I would like to discuss the Call to the Journey, the first step in the journey.

"The hero starts off in a mundane situation of normality from which some information is received that acts as a call to head off into the unknown." (Wikipedia)

This is where we are all at, Rhinos. We heard the call to write an at least 75 page play in November. Right now, we're dealing with the 'mundane'--working, going to school, taking care of our families, dealing with our worldly obligations. I put 'mundane' in quotes, because I don't want to lessen the importance of these obligations--we all need to eat, we all need to get our educations, take care of scraped knees and hungry pets. These things are important. But it's also important that if you are hearing the call to writing, that you listen to it.

This call is to head off in the unknown--but it might not be completely unknown. We might actually have an idea of where the play we want to write is going to go--I personally have a real life historical structure for the beginning, middle and end. We might have characters in mind, we might have even seen the entire play in the fog of dreams or in the clarity of our mind's eye, all set out on the stage, waiting to go. Some of us might have a title or maybe a vague idea. Whatever we have, it's still the unknown.

I don't know if any of you deal with this, but I have a serious issue with dealing with the unknown in reality. It's surprising I up and moved to Arkansas two years ago--this is NOT something I would ordinarily do. But I had the call--actually several calls--but the overwhelming one was one of change in my life. So I did it. I went off into the unknown. I fell down a lot, had a lot of bumps in the road, had to have my meds adjusted, but there's more good than bad to my story, my own journey, which started with the call to the journey.

So I urge you today, think about the call to the journey of NaPlWriMo. Think about what you want to accomplish--of who and what you want to write about. Whatever you do, don't ignore the call to the journey.

It is life-altering.

Happy 11 days left, Rhinos!