chronicled & illustrated

Last week in the middle of the NaNoWriMo home stretch, when I was at around 38,000 words out of 50,000, I decided to write a short story. I have a December 7th deadline to enter a provincial writer’s federation contest. So, since last Saturday, I’m writing a novel and a short story with two imminent deadlines. It’s going pretty well and it’s teaching me some new things about writing.

In NaNoWriMo, the idea is to write full tilt for a month and sort out the details (and everything else) later. This short story is a completely different kind of writing. Instead of writing as many words as I can in a short period of time, I’m trying to finish a story in as few words as possible (in a short period of time). To say it’s a different mind set is to say the least!

Because I’ve never written a short story under 6,000 words (usually they’re more in the 8-9,000 word range), I found that I have to think of this more like poetry than prose. In poetry, especially, every word counts. It should be the same in a short story, but my tendency is to tell the story with all those lush details that flesh out characters and setting and back story and not worry to much about the word count. This is a good exercise and discipline for me.

The way I’m going at it so far, is to start over each day. After writing a novel this month, the idea of 3,000 words seems like nothing, but—here’s the rub—these have to be the exact right words in the right order!

At a certain point, I will know enough about the story to keep the draft from the day before and pick up from that point to the end, but right now, starting each day fresh is keeping the story lean, if not mean. Hopefully that will make it lean and seen (as in published) in the future! In the MEANtime, my mind is a slightly blown having these two writing techniques going at the same time, so if this blog post doesn’t make that much sense, you know why.

View of Little Tobago
Originally uploaded by nuanc

I started off this month with a feeling that I had enough NaNoWriMo experience that I might be able to offer other people tips on how to get through it. I actually have evidence that a couple of people did get a little encouragement or a helpful message at the right time from these tidbits, so that’s good. I like that. You don’t do something like this 5 times without learning something.

But now, the 26th of November, I’m bushed! I do not feel chipper anymore. I do not have the energy to make little graphics for the blog or to even think up anything helpful to say to anyone. If I had any energy, I’d go looking for tips just to help me get through the next few days. I don’t know if my age is showing or if blogging every day has added just that much extra work or if it’s that short story I masochistically decided to begin over the weekend, or the other dozen things I could name that have nothing to do with writing. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. November is almost over.

I’ll get through it and I’ll get my winner’s certificate for what it’s worth, but this experienced Wrimo will be positively plodding her way to the deadline!

Illustration: I took this shot of my older son and my stepson with their heads together while on a superb vacation in Tobago

I only took one photo this week that I liked.
Next week I hope to have a bushel basket of lovelies.
Then again, one that you’re proud of is good too.

rumplestiltskin

Originally uploaded by nuanc

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!

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.