NaNoWriMo

I have decided to make the grand attempt at writing a novel in 30 days, joining the ranks during National Novel Writing Month. Slow going thus far, but I have a general idea of where I'm headed and some interesting "people" are emerging from the far, far recesses - the back of my head. This is how I visualize different levels of consciousness...the great unconscious as the "back of the head", consciousness as the "front of the head" and dream state as the pool between the two spaces where ideas float about, waiting to be hooked and reeled in by conscious mind. Simplified, but it works for me.
I used to think that I couldn't meditate, that it was something hard, something that needed a users manual or some intricate form of direction to acheive. Other people did that; I was too busy to learn the trick. Eventually I realized that I was meditating constantly without realizing what I was doing. The pattern emerged as I gave myself over more and more often to the writing. I noticed that when I needed to write on assignment, I found myself suddenly exhausted, heavy headed and in need of a catnap. I usually wound up face down on my couch, drifting until a line for a poem or the first sentence of a story came to me. Suddenly I was clear-headed. I would jump up and take that line for a walk - literally - out the door, down the road and through the wooded path to the neighboring roads. I would work out the lines in my head and then sit down to write when I got back to the house. Eventually I realized that my "catnaps" were alpha states and that I was indeed meditating my way into the process - grabbing the word ideas as they floated up from the deep. When someone asks where I came up with a story idea or where a particular line of poetry came from, I just smile and say "oxygen deprivation." Hmmmm...all that time face down on the couch...
I am fighting a seasonal head cold right now and feel sluggish and confused...not optimum conditions for writing, but I intend to push through and get done what gets done...hopefully a good seed will have been planted and, with a little nourishment and hard work, will eventually produce fruit...