chronicled & illustrated

spires
Originally uploaded by nuanc

I’ve got nothin’. It’s been a long day. I’ve written, talked and altogether used up too many words. Instead of words, I offer this odd, rather mysterious photograph.

But just before I quit using words for the day, I’d like to make a toast:

Here’s to the inexpressible. The tangle of feelings that has no neat label. The overwhelming moment that leaves us not only wordless but breathless as well. The times words will not do. Here’s to tears, screams, moans, dancing, making love, wrestling, climbing trees, falling down, skipping, running for the joy of it. To laughter. To music. To drumming. To throwing paint and pounding clay. To all the non-verbal languages giving voice to that which we would otherwise be unable to express.

G’night sweet bodies out there.

soft landing
Originally uploaded by nuanc

I don’t want to write about writing today, so I picked out this photo from my flickr site to inspire me.

Maybe the title spoke to me more than the photo itself. A “soft landing” implies what went on before. If I’m landing, that means that something somehow got me up high enough that I needed to get back to earth.

What possibilities does that bring up?
An airplane
A hang glider
A parachute
A para-sail
A strong gust of wind
A huge kite out of control
A very big and friendly (or unfriendly and hungry) bird

Other than the airplane which is scary enough—but a necessary and therefore acceptable risk—I’m not likely, given my personality, to leave the earth by any of those means. I do have wonderful dreams of leaving the ground, but it is never exactly flying. It’s more a sudden ability, a defiance of gravity (what a great phrase, eh?) that catches me by surprise. Suddenly I am like a man on the moon. I jump just a little and instead of coming back down, I begin to float. If I do it ‘right’ I can stay aloft and guide myself through whatever setting I’m in. It’s a controlled, suddenly simple feat and that seems to be the best part of it: I find am capable of gliding through the air. No problem with the landing, either. I just lose altitude and settle down on my own two feet as gently as can be!

Of course, the need for a landing could be from being in a tree. THAT idea I really like. As a child, I used to climb trees whenever I could find one big enough. It was the 50’s. Most of the neighborhoods were new and the trees put in by the developers were saplings. But I had one friend who lived in an older house, and out back was a huge live oak tree. Those are the ones with the low, spreading thick branches. We’d climb up easily, taking up our paper and pencils and paper dolls and nestle into the crooks of sturdy limbs. I remember it as such a lush hideaway and other-worldly time-apart.

Getting our feet off the ground, especially if we can do it without scaring ourselves more than we like, is a treat for sure. But what we’re really after is the soft landing, the relief and sense of connectedness of coming back to earth. With our feet firmly on sand, grass, dirt we know that we’re where we were meant to be, gravity and all.

You know what that is, don’t you?

Shameless Padding.

I resorted to it today in my writing. Man-oh-man, am I ever distracted. I am really feeling the pull of everything else in my life! And right when I was on such a roll!

Is that a coincidence? Maybe not. Maybe it’s self-sabotage. Or maybe I’m just simply tired of writing every day.

The good news is that the novel itself doesn’t seem to be the problem. I like the story and it’s unfolded nicely.

But today I was attempting to write what feels like a crucial scene. It’s also a scene that I didn’t know was going to happen in this way, so I haven’t had a lot of time to think it through. As I was writing, I started wondering if I wasn’t getting off track. Maybe the characters should have come to this place by a different method. If that would work better in the long run, why am I, I wondered, wasting time writing something that I KNOW is going to have to be rewritten.

My solution to this problem was to write what I felt I did know and then move right on into Shameless Padding. I wrote the last page and a half as notes to myself about how I thought it might work better. AND I counted those words. You better believe I did. It was good. I think having done that will move things along better tomorrow and the next day. That’s why it’s shameless.

Of course, I’ll make certain that my word count by the end of November is well above the 300+ words so my padding or my shamelessness won’t show!

The 21st day of NaNoWriMo and all I could think about today was Christmas! It literally took over my writing time. I got about 500 words written.

Maybe if I hadn’t been ahead on the word count, I would have buckled down and concentrated on what I should be doing now. But as the word count has been good for the last five days or I let other things crowd in and take over.

I live far away from both of my sons and farther still from my mother and sister and brother. Getting together for Christmas has become a big hassle! Last year I decided that to have my sons, granddaughter, husband and me descend upon my sister and mother for the holidays was just too much. If any of us had our own home there (in Houston), it would be different, but we don’t.

What I would most like is for my sons and grand-daugther to come to my house, but at the moment that isn’t possible. Neither of them have passports and they live in the States and I live in Canada. I have to go to them. So considering these two parameters, I decided to take matters into my own hands and find a nice vacation rental in a beautiful place, invite my sons and that way we could have Christmas under one roof without causing more work for some third party.

Nice plan. Didn’t work. After spending hours online looking for that illusive perfect vacation rental, my younger son told me, “Honestly, Mom, if you are asking me what I want to do for Christmas, I’d have to tell you that I want to go to Houston.” He went on to say that it was important that my mother and sister see his daughter before she gets too much older. They haven’t seen her in a year. So what’s a grandmother to do? I sprang into action in the other direction. Back to Houston.

But I was still determined to have us all under one roof.

Unfortunately finding a “vacation rental” in the big city of Houston isn’t easy. I couldn’t find a thing that was near our families.

In desperation, I put two ads on Craigslist, one for a short-term (very!) rental and the other for a pet/housesitter. Guess which one paid off? No contest, is it? The pet sitter ad just came through for us.

We’ve been offered a truly gorgeous home in a nice location for almost the full amount of time we wanted. Our pet is an 8 year old greyhound who, we just found out, sleeps in the master bedroom. Eeeu, major drawback! At least it’s a king-sized!

It’ll be an adventure but I’m already feeling 100% better, just knowing that I’ll have a kitchen to cook in and a place to invite family over. In fact, I’ve already started inviting people for our first night in the house to help us make Christmas decorations for our tree. Once they get a load of the tropical plant-surrounded swimming pool with waterfall and koi pond in the back yard, we won’t be able to get rid of them!

Tomorrow, however, I have to remember that it is still November, so it’s back to my novel.

[Santa’s little elf up there is Cadi LAST Christmas]

fathers go to war
Originally uploaded by nuanc

My dad died on November 20th. I think. But I’m not certain of it. It is one of those dates that really seems as if it SHOULD stick— forever and without a doubt—in my mind, especially for someone like me who is basically good with dates and details. However, it doesn’t. I know what this is about. I have a mental block. I don’t want to remember it. If I remember the date, I have to also remember the details of that week and other things that my mind will immediately associate with this part of November such as when John Kennedy was shot and sometimes even US Thanksgiving which wasn’t always the best holiday for me.

Both John Kennedy and Corey Shepard—these good, interesting and smart men—have been gone a very long time. I was pregnant with my second son when my dad died and he is now 27 years old. But it will always make me sad that they died young and unfinished.

We are smartest when we appreciate life even through all the hardships and challenges and sad days that are rougher than others.

Yesterday I got a rejection letter. It was a wonderfully personal and NICE rejection letter. But it still hurt. I’ve always said that they’re like getting kicked in the shin. It’s a sudden unexpected sharp pain that doesn’t last long, then it’s sore for a little while and then you move on and don’t think about it much. Today, it’s still a little tender.

Small wounds and large, we sometimes just have an achy day to get through.

This has to be a quick post. I’ve got a publishing meeting to go to and by the time I get back, this post might not be dated the 19th but the 20th. So, here’s the preliminary post which I hope to pay more attention to later. Why do I care? It’s the magic of signing up and saying: I’m going to post every day. It works to motivate—even when that motivation leads you to do something kind of silly. Like posting quickly when you don’t have time to think about what you want to write. Maybe it’s all just run-off from NaNoWriMo. Write, write, write; don’t think!

It’s been a good few nano-days. My writing’s on a roll and that is a very good feeling. It’s also something I want to remember for next time. It takes not only time but effort to get a novel to a point that it’s clipping along at a steady pace. In order to get anything big, unwieldy and complicated rolling, it takes up-front preparation. That’s what those painful days in and around the end of the first week and beginning of the second (okay, all of the second!) are all about. You just have to keep at it, get through those times and do not EVER let it stop you!