You are currently browsing the monthly archive for November 2008.
find a rhythm in my writing
look at all the things on my living room floor
a TV tray
a notebook
a laptop case, cat toy
canvas grocery sack
cookie and candy tins filled with magnetic poetry words
my daughter’s piano music
old mail
a dustbuster
and a stepper
I listen to Sarah McLaughlin sing
the Prayer of St. Francis
“Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace…”
I do not look at the clock
slooooooooow writing
but I find a rhythm
in the words
in the characters’ hungers
and their fears.
Oh dear.
I looked at the clock
1:18 a.m.
I forgot what I came here to write.
heat runs
should down turn thermostat
child getting ready for bed.
I am getting ready to write.
watched a young friend get his second tattoo for the day
really
his second
today (he has many)
a friend tattoos him
often for free
Billy
quite the artist (though I didn’t know what of the owl with four boobs
hanging on the studio wall
that he claimed was his)
conversation during the tattooing
ranged from martial arts sparring competitions
(“I’m going to destroy him, man.”)
to burritos
to Mumbai
my friend designed the tattoo in memory of his grandmother
who died on Halloween 1998
it is a figure dressed up as a ghost
a silhouette
very few lines
perfectly proportioned
it’s very cool
I think it would be all right
to get a tiny bit of ink
as long as I could hide it
from my brothers
my child and I
came home to watch more
of the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayers
which I loved when it was on
and she is now old enough to love
since she’s nearly the age
that the characters are
I feel fretful
for no reason
except …
well, just “except …”
I write on my novel a line, a bit of dialogue, a note to myself about what motivates a character to keep hold of another character he can’t possibly love because love isn’t something that’s in his nature…….
I think about the film we saw (Twilight) that was disappointing as film and novel. I wanted something beyond what the author gave us. Worry that I will disappoint when I finish my own, if I finish (50,000 words will not get me there).
I run a load of laundry.
Quit my email program because I seem incapable of communicating coherently with the only person who seems to be writing me today.
I think about changing something drastic just to shake myself up. Not the town where I live (not yet) or my lack of employment or my hair or my messy house.
Well, yes, maybe the messy house, though I’m inclined to lose things when I organize too much. I like my stacks. They give me comfort, remind me of my mother’s desk, the one in the yellow kitchen of my parents’ last house. Her stacks were far neater than mine, and she tended to write reminders to herself on smaller bits of paper than I do. We couldn’t really be true pack rats when I was young because of the moving. We were only allowed a certain amount of weight across oceans and continents (Army). Our books used to take up much of the weight. And we wouldn’t leave our books behind.
Maybe that’s why I keep everything now.
I have a catch in my throat today. I choke on it and find myself resorting to sarcasm and annoyed puffs of air.
appear to have tapped into some world sorrow.
that’s inconvenient.
I waited in front of the movie theater, car running, heater on low. I’d left the house a few minutes before I thought Twilight would let out so that my daughter and her friend wouldn’t have to wait long, so that I could get my sorry, old ass back home to my warm house as soon as possible. The girls were only wearing hooded sweatshirts. No coats despite the light snow coming down and threats of heavier snow showers.
“I’m not lugging a coat around the mall,” my daughter said on the way out the door before the movie.
Her friend showed up to our house in flip flops. I rolled my eyes at her and said, “Little A? Flip flops? You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I was just too lazy to put on real shoes,” she said.
I was about to turn into the theater parking lot when my daughter called me to tell me the movie was over, so she knew I would be in front of the theater almost as soon as we’d hung up. I expected her to bounce through the mall doors with her friend as soon as I put the car into park.
She’ didn’t, and I waited.
There is a boy, of course. The friend has a boy, too. They are all too young to date, so they go to the movies in gangs of five to ten, then pair off in the theater.
As I waited, three of my daughter’s friends who are boys tumbled out of the mall entrance, so wired. One is the boy who likes my daughter’s friend. They spun and leapt and twirled in midair. They are so long now. Even their faces seem long, like some kind of cat’s or a wolf’s. Because they have seen a movie about vampires and werewolves, because I write a novel about demons, I see the animals in these boys rippling under the surface of their skin. They are about to burst with beastly energy, with hunger.
The boy who likes my daughter’s friend kept turning back to look in the mall, to see my daughter’s friend, I think. But once he caught up to the other two boys, they absorbed him, and he was just another set of long limbs flailing.
Repulsively charming.
It’s no wonder I had so many crushes when I was in eighth-grade.
When my daughter and her friend finally came out of the mall, they walked in slow motion, heads close together, talking. In the car, they were so silent. So I turned on Switchfoot, and the whispers began.
“Did you like the movie?” I called over the music when there was a lull in the whispering.
“No,” the friend said. “I thought it was stupid. But I don’t like stories like that.”
“I thought it was pretty good,” my daughter said, “though it was really silly in places.”
“Cheesy?” I asked.
I don’t think they know quite what cheesy means, but I could be wrong.
“Sure,” my daughter said. “Cheesy.”
I took my daughter’s friend home, where she was happy to see her older sister’s car in the driveway. S is home from college for Thanksgiving. My daughter was quiet for the few short minutes to our house. She agreed that she was hungry, that she’d had a good time, said she thought the actors were right for their parts when I asked, gave me little more.
I am so used to more.
My daughter chats now with friends on Facebook, and I write this and think about adding another 800 words to my novel before bed.
I am losing my child. It’s not a terrible thing. It’s completely natural. And to say that I’m losing her is inaccurate and overly dramatic. She isn’t mine, any more. She belongs to her friends, to her teachers, her band director, to the boy who probably wanted to hold her hand tonight but couldn’t because his little sister decided at the last minute to go to his movie with her friends instead of the one she’d originally chosen just to bug him.
My daughter stretches away from me, and I try not to let her see that I’ve got a tight grip on the (metaphorical) tail of her shirt.
She’s a strong kid, defends herself verbally, is hilarious and smarter than I am. She knows who she is, has a strong sense of what she believes, knows even what she wants to study in college and has a few ideas of how she’ll make a living after she graduates. She’s good to her friends, beautiful, kind, sarcastic, interested in the world.
We made a good kid. It’s a good thing that she’s stretching away from us like this.
right?
I’ve got more than 2,200 words on the novel today (haven’t updated the word count widget below). I’m not stuck or stumped or frustrated. I’ve written more words than this in one day even this year. But, damn! I’m tired. I think the lack of sleep is starting to wear on me. Have been busy running around doing the kinds of pre-holiday prep things I hate doing.
I still have to go out into this gloomy, cold night to pick up Morgan from the movie.
But then I’m done for the day. Once she’s back with me, that little unconscious edge of worry will vanish, and I’ll probably sleep hard. Unless I keep writing because I can’t stop. Sometimes that happens. It’s so magical.
Really, though. I don’t think my body can take it. I’m just tired.
I’m hoping to kick myself to 45,000 words by tomorrow, but I don’t know if I’ll have the time or the concentration. I seem to want to reach 50,000 a little early so that I can go back and mold and weave and revise while this is all fresh and appealing (even though the writing this month has sucked, mostly).
I’m excited about the story again.
I wish I’d had the sense to try this sooner, using National Novel Writing Month to finish this damned novel.
At the library, where I volunteer most Mondays, my work was quiet today. The principal has decreed that the kids spend a certain amount of time every week on “Study Island.” I think they have to achieve a certain number of points or something. It seems like a terrible waste of time to me. This means no time for reading aloud, no time to help me shelve books, no time to be student circulation desk aides, no time for more creative projects.
I missed them today.
The kids have been loony, the library tech tells me. On Friday, a couple of boys used each other as tools to push kids down the steps. She witnessed it when one boy pulled a book out of another boy’s huge stack of books that he carried in his arms. The first boy slapped the second boy across the face with the “stolen” book.
She took the slapper to the office immediately.
It’s good tomorrow is the last day of school for the week. I don’t want my diminutive girl getting smashed in the hallways. She can stand up for herself, but I worry because she’s a tiny thing, and the boys sometimes think of her as “one of the guys,” which she’s not. Don’t mess with my tiny girl.
I braved the rain to get her things from her dad’s so I could l start a load of laundry now instead of later. I guess I’ll get to that.
no writing so far except that one paragraph I promised myself before I left the house this morning.
I’ve been going steadily since I got up. When my girl comes home, she’ll talk to me (I hope), and then she’ll fall into her online chats, and I’ll sit in the dining room and pound away at the story, if it still ensnares me.
Gosh. I hope it still ensnares me.
(reminder: if you are looking for an interesting blog, this isn’t it. this is basically a journal written by an ordinary woman with an ordinary life)
I suppose I should have just gotten myself up at 4 a.m. when I realized that even if I did fall back to sleep, it was going to be one of those sleeps involving dreams about my beautiful, blond sister-in-law’s hair turning black, but more than black, turning into the skinniest blacks snake you could imagine so that each snake looked like a thick, strand of hair, and writhed almost unnoticeably.
There was something about a pool, something about a mark on my back, something about the ocean, so cold.
But I couldn’t face getting up in the dark. I can face going to bed so late that it’s nearly light, but not the other way round.
I’ll regret this later, staying up until 1. I’m heading to the school for my (I hope truncated) library volunteer gig. I skipped it last week due to a bad attitude and tons of my own work.
I so wish I could stay here to write. At least I’ll pound out the first sentence of the day to keep me on track.
There. That’s done.
Another good thing about NaNoWriMo, aside from sneaking in 50,000 words on a novel every year, is that to “man up” and force myself to reach word count, I have to change tack now and then. I’m writing from the antagonist’s perspective right now so that I can figure him out. He’s changed so much since I created him. He has a way of speaking that reminds me of no one I know, thank God.
It’s 7:26. I have a list of things I want to do before I leave the house. I’ll write them like a poem:
I will dry
that hair wet
scrub bathroom counter
lemon scent of cleanser
will sting winter scoured knuckles
red
Trash
towels
bed
bold
brindled
bundled
…
Well, that didn’t work, now did it?
One of the fun parts about writing fiction is that you can battle your demons on paper.
One of the most fun parts about my novel in particular is that the antagonist in my novel is a demon.
do we call them antagonists and protagonists, any more? or is it just “main character (MC) and “bad guy?”
what I’m writing defies genre, but in a bad way because it really is genre. it is such a mess.
Sort of Anne Lamott (but not so funny) meets Laurell K. Hamilton (but not so gory or action-oriented or male (and I haven’t been able to read Hamilton since the scene in – what was it? the Obsidian Butterfly? where whatever monsters her main characters were battling were feasting on babies in the nursery of a hospital. yeah. That did it for me. Will never read her again).).
it’s
so
much
fun
I don’t know if I’ll finish drafting the plot by the end of next Sunday when November is over, but I think I’ll come close. This was the year I used NaNoWriMo to finish a work in progress that I did not start during any of the other National Novel Writing Months in which I participated.
This novel is like my ball and chain.
But it’s also my therapy.
But it’s also my work.
Once the novel is drafted and I revise and then get brave enough to ship it out (after I remove all evidence that it might have been kind of based on my own life if I’d lived in some alternate reality where supernatural or just weird things can happen), I can start working on the other projects.
Or find a job.
Except that I want this to be my job.
I had an emotional breakthrough tonight related to the novel and a film I watched. I had no idea what this film was about and didn’t even realize that it was in French. I wonder why it is that the French can get away with such ludicrous plot twists, but Americans can’t. They have a certain smugness about them, I guess, as if they are fully aware of how ridiculous the ending is, but they also know that it’s quite satisfying because don’t we all wish we could rewrite our sad endings to make them come out just the way they are supposed to come out?
Gave myself permission to try some things.
Of course, this means the novel will become more complicated before I simplify it during the rewrite (which will be about the third or fourth rewrite since I’ve been rewriting as I go, anyway).
Still, I see fun in my future when I try not to take myself, the story, the process too seriously.
Back to the real writing.
God. I hope no one is reading this shit.
Watching an old House episode. Well, not really watching it. Just have it on because I like the sound of Hugh Laurie trying to use an American accent. Christmas commercials. “pre-lit” Christmas trees from Odd Lots or Big Lots or Big Tease or whatever it’s called. Now there is a commercial for a grocery store. They show an image of a Thanksgiving feast.
Oh ick.
Had dinner at the (not)-husband’s with him and the child. One of these years, I will get my way and not have a single item of “holiday” food for 365 days. No cranberry sauce, no Bob Evans mashed potatoes with store-bought turkey gravy (I don’t eat turkey. Why would I want to eat turkey gravy?), no chicken (don’t eat chicken), no sweet potatoes with marshmallows (who the hell invented this dish and why did I eat it?), not Stove Top Stuffing (give me my mother’s Greek chestnut dressing, please, if I have to have dressing/stuffing).
I am done for working on the novel for the night unless I get inspired at 11, which does happen.
I wanted to write about process, but I’m done for that, too.
If you’re looking for a news-worthy, inspiring blog, well, you’d better go elsewhere. This isn’t a blog; it’s a journal.
11:21 p.m. – I think I’ve forgotten that I was even writing a novel. Too bad, really, even though it sucks.
I will start from this moment, the now and move backward, because right now, the now is a little overwhelming. My Girl’s father and I just dropped our child off at the middle school gym, which was filled with young teens, luggage, teacher/chaperones who were calling student names and searching bags for forbidden items. Parents stood against the walls in clumps trying not to “eye-cling” too much to their kids.
Ah. Girl’s dad sends me email. He has seen the buses. I think seeing the buses helps him. He was winding himself up to be too worried, thinking about lost purse, lost phone, lost money.
“If she calls to tell me her phone is missing or her money is gone, I’m going to lose it,” he said.
But that’s not what he was worried about. His verbal worry about the material masks what I say out loud. Even to her. I worry about slick roads and tired drivers, about violence, lost children. Money and phones are expendable. Daughters aren’t.
The students will be fine. The plans are brilliant; the kids are savvy. They go to a public school, after all, and even if our city is small (26,000), our city schools are, we hear, like inner city schools. Our children are tougher and smarter than we think they are.
The kids are heading to Washington, D.C., for the eighth-grade class trip. Usually, this happens in spring, but costs and schedules and reservations dictated this change. It will rain much of the time they are there. The Girl looked up the motel online and saw bad reviews. “it’s moldy. The front desk isn’t helpful, and the staff speaks heavily accented English. It’s not in a convenient location. This is pretty funny,” she said. “Maybe I should bring my own sheets.”
I don’t know. I think all these things are supposed to be part of school trips, even mother and father Angst.
My Girl’s father already misses her, you know. She has taught him how to love. I’m not even jealous that she managed it where I couldn’t because I see what she is, and I’m happy that he has learned true love from her.
Once her sweet chaperone (my new librarian buddy) searched our Girl’s bag, we thought we could leave. I eased one mother’s worry about money and letting our kids go out of town without us for the first time, She and I laughed about how different our girls are. Mine is so excited to go traveling without us (even as a preschooler, on her first day, my kid said, “Shoo, shoo, Mommy! Shoo, shoo!”); my friend’s already can’t wait to get home.
But here’s a secret about my daughter and me: as I left to follow my Girl’s sad daddy out the door, I patted my Girl on her shoulder. She grabbed my arm and pulled me in for a hug. She will miss me. I’m easy and only nag a little bit. I’m already longing for Friday night when they return.
I go on and on. But, well, you know. She’s it. My heart.
I think it’s cool that the kids will be in the our nation’s capital a week after one of the most historic elections ever.
And on that note, I do still wake up in the morning, turn on the news and murmur, “Whew! It wasn’t a dream. Obama is still President-elect.”
I may pour myself a short glass of wine and pop some popcorn, get myself back into noveling mode. I only have 560 words or so to go to be current on National Novel Writing Month word count.
But I wonder if I’ll be able to concentrate. I feel as if I’m in that damned, loud gymnasium that, during school hours, smells like boy sweat and farts, waiting with the kids for the buses to arrive.
