NaNoWriMo

Wrong month but same idea.

It doesn't take much to convince me to over-commit myself. If something sounds like fun, or like something I should be doing, I jump in.

Such is the case with NaNoWriMo, also known as National Novel Writing Month. My friends and fellow Medill alums (tools) Tian Huang and Bethany Marzewski pointed out to me this morning that today, November 1, marks the first day of the 2010 month-long, group-oriented catastrophe that attempts to make writers of plebeians. The basic idea is to complete 50,000 words in a month -- an average of 1,667 words per day. Quality isn't as important as just getting something down on the page, which for many writers (myself included) is usually the first and most daunting hurdle. I tend to edit myself as I write, so the idea of just trying to hit a word count each day is strangely appealing; therefore color me intimidated but determined. My plan is to respond to one writing prompt per day via a list of prompts from my Memoir Writing class, which ends in a few weeks but has planted a stubborn seed in my brain. So it's not a novel, but hey, it's daily writing -- something I've never before attempted or sustained, not even for this blog.

I'm cutting myself just a bit of slack right at the beginning by including in my word count not only my prompt from today, for which I wrote 1,689 words (woot!), but also a piece I wrote for class last month. The prompt I used was "Write two pages of your relationship to Sundays (at various points in your life)." I don't expect much of what I write this month to be blog-worthy, since again the goal is not quality but quantity, but if any gems emerge I'll be sure to share them with you. The Sunday piece is pasted below.

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Sunday was for church. I wore my little dresses with bows and black patent shoes. I sat in the church until the hymns were over – that was the fun part – and then the pastor excused the children to Sunday School. When I got too old for Sunday School, I had to stay in the service the entire time. I was bored, because you can’t make kids listen to sermons on marriage and being a good person when they don’t understand what that means. I started reading the Bible every Sunday during sermons instead of listening. I intended to read it cover to cover, but by the end of Genesis I was exhausted, and I knew that was probably the most fun chapter anyway, what with all the stories about arks and Abraham and stuff.

My grandma is the one that took me to church. My mother is an atheist and the man who became my stepfather is Jewish. One of my grandpas is Catholic. I was baptized Lutheran, because my mom wanted to appease her Nebraskan relations, particularly her grandparents. My great-grandmother sewed my white baptismal dress. So at least I had the sin officially washed away once.

My grandma took me to church because she felt it was her duty. She took me to Presbyterian church at first, and I really liked their Sunday School room because they had Mr. Potato Head and I didn’t have a Mr. Potato Head at home. My aunt got married in that church when I was seven. I was a junior bridesmaid and I wore purple with white lace around the collar and took my first limo ride. Then my grandma decided she disagreed with the views of the pastor (or is it minister? I can never remember) and we started going to an Evangelical church across town, which my grandma explained to me meant that they accepted all the different Christian sects as parishioners. I didn’t have an opinion either way, but luckily I was starting to get too old for Mr. Potato Head.

When I was old enough (eleven) I joined the youth group. We met once a week on a weeknight and ate pizza and played games and talked about God. I was really into it. I liked going there because it meant I had another set of friends, one that I didn’t go to school with, which was good because I didn’t consider myself that popular in school. But that didn’t matter as much in youth group. I went away to Bible camp for long weekends and played furiously and talked a lot about God and cried when I accepted Jesus into my heart. I was sure I’d remember the exact date forever, but I’ve forgotten now. It was summertime.

When I was 14 my parents moved and I went with them and my grandma couldn’t take me to church anymore. After a few months in the new town I made friends with a girl named Candice and she took me to her church, which was Baptist. I didn’t know anything about Baptists except that they like to sing a lot and they wait until people are older and can actually accept Jesus into their heart before they dip them in water. I didn’t need that, because I’d been baptized as a baby and besides, I’d already accepted Jesus into my heart. He was there to stay. I really liked the singing though.

I attended Baptist youth group with Candice and it was much more laid-back than at my old church, almost disorganized. We didn’t spend as much time talking about God, or maybe I just didn’t pay attention.

I would go home to my atheist mother and Jewish stepfather and assumedly agnostic baby sister and I could tell they didn’t approve of my church-going. Since I couldn’t rebel with marijuana or alcohol (I wouldn’t know where to get it) or sex (I was too shy), I went out on the religion limb. I helped found the Christian Club at my high school. My stepfather tried to tell me that we couldn’t have a Christian Club because of the separation of church and state, but I told him we could and then I talked to the principal or someone else in charge and they said we could too. I started the club and then only went to a couple of meetings. I was getting disgruntled with God. I started to have questions that no one could answer, at least not to my satisfaction. How did Adam and Eve start the human race without their children engaging in incest, which would be a sin against God? How can we live by the Bible when the Bible says homosexuality is an abomination? I stopped going to youth group, and I stopped going to church. I still hung out with those kids but we didn’t talk about God.

When I went to college I declared myself an atheist, but that probably wasn’t true. I was actually agnostic; I just didn’t know what to believe anymore because the Bible is obviously total bullshit. I took an Intro to Religion class at one point and visited a Baha’i temple to write about their services, because I felt like it was one of the few religions with which I was completely unfamiliar. Plus my college campus was just a few miles from the only Baha’i temple on the North American continent, a stunning, all-white, domed building with nine sides and exquisite architectural details, surrounded by gardens. The service was fifteen minutes long and consisted of readings out of different holy books. No hymns, no sermon, no collection plate. Just different members of the community getting up and reading out of the Bible, the Qur’an, the Kitáb-i-Aqdas (the Baha’i holy book). The man that read the Qur’an actually sang it, and I’d never heard that before. It was beautiful, and if it had been a movie I would have cried and thrown up my hands and said you know what? Religion doesn’t matter. Faith matters.

But it’s not a movie, and I still don’t know what I believe.