T Minus Two Days

A year ago I'd not quite finished the first draft of my novel.  If I recall correctly,   the bulk of my writing took place near the end of July and most of August 2011.    The draft wasn't complete, so I dribbled bits and pieces here and there until I finally felt it was complete in December.  Nearly 69k words, a surplus from the 50k I'd been shooting for initially.  Thousands of attempts to make something readable--a feat considering I'd sat down at my tiny HP netbook with no story and no direction.  Crazy what has happened in my life since then.

This year I'm going into National Novel Writing Month with an improved second draft under my belt.  This time, my biggest fear is going into this thing blind again.  I love writing, but forcing myself to spend months ripping apart and stitching back together the old with the new feels less like writing and more like playing Dr. Frankenstein.  Outlining and planning are two of my weakest points, I'm already aware, but even the crudest of ideas are a step up from blank pages and an oppressive deadline.

Scrivener is a snazzy program for writers who are in the drafting/research phase of a novel.  They offered a nice discount for 2012 NaNoWriMo participants (and something like 50% off for those who meet their 50k goal), so I hopped onto that bandwagon.  This blustery, miserable day was spent navigating the tutorial in an attempt to demystify the program.  Now I kind of have a clue what some of the features do instead of being convinced I'd wasted my dough on something I'd never figure out.  Plus, the guy who compiled the tutorial wrote like he was British, which is always fun to read.

Another positive:  This morning the name of the next big antagonist came to me, I don't even remember how.  Out of curiosity, a few minutes ago I looked up the meaning of her name and it means "heavenly".  That's pretty funny because she certainly believes she is God's gift to mankind.

I wish those minor accomplishments were enough to say I was ready for the start of this next journey, but I know it's not.

Two days to make some plans.  Scary.

Love Languages

Tonight I came to a conclusion.

The Love Language my husband speaks to me is Cookies.  This explains why I've been on a perpetual diet for the past 13 years.  All of my woes can be solved with the sweet union of sugar, butter, and flour.  Nevermind the immediate guilt, ever-expanding muffin top, and four-pound weight gain the next day...

Somehow I trained him to do this, to answer my frustrations with food.  Maybe it should be a good thing, but for an addictive personality such as mine, notsomuch.  If I'd put any thought into his training at all, I should have taught him the way to my heart was to buy me horse tack or books or something.  ;-)

If you have a significant other, what do they do to make you feel loved or comforted?  Even if you don't, have you figured out those things that make you feel cared for?  Please share!

Voice

I have a voice, even though I rein it in so often it has become barely a whisper.  You have a voice, too, and sometimes it is all I can hear in this room.  It's okay, though.  This isn't a request to make your voice quieter, but to make mine loud.

The spoken word is a betrayal to what I truly feel.  I need to spend some quiet time, glorying in the ink as it seeps into the page.  I need to rest in the calm of letters, punctuation, and emotion.  Speaking, I fumble and reach for ideas out of grasp.  

It is better this way.  This is my way.

The End Is Here

First of all, I know every one of you is sick of hearing about this novel (and most of the other things I go on about).  Word counts.  Chapter numbers.  The rather strange experience of having people living inside your head.  All of that.

Thank you for looking past that.

I realize that half of you will like what I've written, and half of you will think it is rubbish and will make fun of me behind my back.  It's okay.  What I've written isn't earth-shattering, but very few things are.  For me, it is a journey, a challenge, a dream.

Thank you for letting me be excited about my dream.

I'll probably never be a best-seller.  My book isn't about vampires, werewolves, zombies, or post-apocolyptic kids thrown into a death match.  There's no swearing, no sex, no drugs, no booze.

Thank you for letting me be PG.

I just can't believe it.

Thank you to Courtney and Tim who have stuck with me to the end of this one, and Rosie who suffered through the atrocity that was Draft 1.  Thank you to my muses, Moe and Ish.  And, most importantly, thank you, God.

Chapter 20

I am seriously going to be sick, I'm so excited to be done with this draft.  Here is it, my last chapter.

Mr. Ohboy, my biggest fan, has also been very skeptical when it comes to this whole novel ordeal.  He believes in me, I know.  It must seem that all I do is write, and it's been so much of what I've done for the past 16 months.  This shouldn't have taken that long, it's true.  My horse shouldn't have died, either.  The writer's block following that was incredibly frustrating.  Even now, I know that I haven't made my way back to the level I was at before.  Maybe I never will.... but I've learned a lot in the process.

It's not over yet -- these last words have to find their voice, and I think, first, I need to go ride a horse and give my hands (and mind) a break.

But I draw closer to it with each word I type.  That's nice.

The End Is Near

This could be the last chapter of draft two, which is pretty darn exciting!  I had to threaten myself with a Facebook hiatus until I wrap this thing up, which seems to have been effective.

Chapter 18 was awkward and I still don't love it.  I see revisions in the future, but at least I'm more at peace with where it is now.

I might be done with this just in time for National Novel Writing Month, where I would undertake another 50k-word novel during the month of November.  The question is:  How much do I hate myself?  ;-)

He Is

He is...

Spindly legs.

They say he will learn to put each one in proper place as he grows.

They were wrong.



He is...

A velvet nose.

He is sniffing, touching, testing, mouthing all the world has to offer.

And even some things it does not.



He is...

The perfect heart

Child-like, forgiving, trusting, loyal to the final flicker of life.

And loyal even yet.


****

I have been looking at baby pictures of some friends and recent clients.  I am led to flip back through some of my older Facebook photos, where little Ohboy's age could be counted in weeks and months rather than years.  His smile is the same in those photos, only now it is deepened with words and experience.

It makes me wonder about my Moe-Moe.  I've never seen him as a foal, but I imagine him much the same:  Gangly and awkward, hungry and inquisitive.  The idea of my beloved guy as a beloved little guy brings happy tears to my eyes.  What a character I know he was.  These things seldom change, even with age.

Miss you, as always, Moe.  Where you are, a big piece of my heart has followed.

12:12

A kiss on the cheek.
A kick in the teeth.
A face is much too frail a place
To receive such love and grief.

****

I don't know what this means, and, again, poetry ain't my thang...  But it popped into my head a few minutes ago.

Not Mine...

But amazing!  Enjoy!

Angie Smith - The Splendid Things

The Messenger

Last night I said goodbye.

It was on her terms, as always, but it was still closure.  A year is a long time to speculate about the hows and whys, to wonder if you could have done something differently.... At the same time, a year passes in the blink of an eye, here and gone before you can miss it.

Albus Dumbledore, beloved Hogwart's headmaster from the Harry Potter series, was outed in 2007.  It caused quite a stir, especially among the religious folk who had already been dishing out hate because of the story's basis on magic/"witchcraft".  Now, this was long before I knew I'd ever pursued something as crazy as writing a novel, but it made me shake my head--not because I am homophobic, because I am most certainly AM NOT.  Rather, I just couldn't understand why it mattered.  Why would J. K. Rowling share something that had such damaging potential when it never was mentioned in the books?  I think I get it now.

At the risk of confirming how crazy I really am, I'll admit that what I put to paper first plays out like a movie reel in my mind.  There's no guessing, and usually the movie is kind enough to replay itself enough to give me time to jot down a reminder.  For example, when my main character goes from one room in the hospital to another, the room layout changes without my having to consider it.  I know where people are sitting in these rooms, etc.  And that's true for most of what I write.  The people in my story rarely need my help figuring things out, and I am assuming that's because I'm not really all that bright... Or maybe it's because they are quite aware that my mind doesn't function well in straight lines and logistics.  They probably have rightly deduced that the only way I will be able to bring this story to life is if they work it out themselves and then hit me over the head with it.

The people in my story have their own personalities, their own rich pasts full of triumph and trauma.  They listen to some of the same bands I do, and turn up their noses in disgust at others.  Maybe someone somewhere in their story is a fan of the same sex, but, to date, no one has raised their hand.  It's weird to me how much it's beginning to make sense.  I'm afraid that someone will tell me this is possible because I have multiple personalities.  If that's true, shhhhh!  I don't want to know.

This isn't my story, and these aren't my lives.  I laugh.  I hope.  I fall in love.  I get angry.  I feel their despair.  I sit on the edge of my seat wondering what's going to happen next.  I'm just the messenger.

Not Forgotten

My dear human friend,

A door called death has closed between us for the moment.

But could a little thing like that

break the bond of love and understanding between us,

Who have been so close? Of course not. 

Having left behind the body which no longer serves me,

I can be with you always and everywhere;

On long delicious walks, at quiet times, and lively times,

Alone, among friends new and old. 

Let my excitement with life still brighten your days.

As long as there is a place in your heart which is the shape of me,

I will be with you.

One day you too will come through the door,

And we will be together in glorious ways we have yet to understand.
 

--Alexandra Day

For Realz, this is MY living room.

Release

It was time.  

And, no, the photo above is not really from the Ohboy home.  Google "hoarders" and take your pick....  I guess people will put ANYTHING on the Interweb.  Gasp!  I know!  I was shocked, too, when I found out.

I couldn't honestly tell you the last time I'd reached all of the nooks and crannies of my kitchen counter.  We had run out of space to make lunches and prepare meals because there was a teensy little glitch in the feng shui of my Leaning Towers of Paper.

In the living room, I moved the Christmas tree (yes, the Christmas tree.  In my defense, it's small and white, but, obviously not a Halloween tree) and thought I'd spotted Bigfoot, there was so much pet hair under there.  The not-so-fine layer of dust coating everything made me feel all nostalgic like we were still passing through the deserts of Nevada and Arizona--if the deserts were wall-to-wall with bins of Legos and Angry Birds.  

Okay, so I'm being a skoch dramatic.  

Over the past couple of years, we've decided that Mr. Ohboy probably has some form of Asperger's.  He's a fixer of things, but not at all neat.  I think he used to be neat.  He also used to be a tree-hugging Democrat, but then he married me and I flip-turned all of that upside down.  Must've been my cheery disposition, huh?  Anyhow, he's messy.  And, lucky me, I have a few more boys up in this hizzy who are varying shades of the same incredibly sharp and yet very fragmented mind.  Whether I nag for something to be tidied or he takes the initiative himself (which only happens in the garage), the results are always puzzling....  Usually a twisty-turny path lined with piles of things, leading to an eventual bottleneck.  Straight lines and angles?  No way!  Navigation through even the most mundane room should be an adventure, and even a little bit dangerous!  Where is the excitement in placing things against walls or--gasp!--throwing it away?  Nowhere, that's where.

If you've ever seen one of those t.v. shows dedicated to hoarding, you'd understand that my family was just one major life event away from never washing another dish or throwing away a food wrapper.  Again, I'm being dramatic, but, at the same time, I'm sure that lots of those people on those shows probably didn't see it coming, then BAM!  They wake up six feet deep in used adult diapers and fossilized cats.

Last Saturday four of the six of us came down with some stomach thing, so we decided, come Sunday, to hang out at home close to facilities and far from other persons who probably didn't want what we had.  That's when we (I) began Operation Declutter.  Spurred on by some organization my mom had done in the boys rooms while we were on our trip, we began by dusting our room.  To dust our room, we had to fold roughly 15 loads of laundry that had been dumped in the corner, file papers, throw away boxes.... you get the idea.  From there we moved to bathrooms, crusty floors, my walk-in closet nightmare, the living room toy explosion, and, finally, the kitchen (a.k.a. filing cabinet with a stove).

Five days, I've been at this nearly from morning till night, taking the odd break to sit down, go to a prenatal appointment, or ride a horse.  I estimate I clothed a plus-sized army with all of the clothes I lugged (literally) from the house--a mini-van full.  In one load of garbage/recycling, the weight of all of those broken, boring toys lifted from my shoulders.  I love the way my house looks, and the ease at which it takes to clean things now that I don't have to shift so much junk to unearth the surface below.

I've not completed my mission.  I still have three toy boxes to sort through, and a few baskets of boy clothes to move into bins, which will be exiled forevermore in the plastic bin catacombs.  The catacombs are next; and, while my soul is itching to tackle (and annihilate) the Rubbermaid abyss, I know I am tired and anxious to make some forward progress on the novel.  The clutter was a snare to my creativity, the words finding themselves buried in unimportant things.  

Releasing means receiving peace.  I'll take all the peace I can get.

Misplaced

My heart is not a keepsake box.
It clicks open and closed, no safety locks.
With flutters and pauses until it stops,
Love is not secure as it ought.

Instead, I'll keep you in my mind
To whirl and dance in dreams of our design.
Any better place would be rare to find,
Than this hiding place of yours and mine.

~~~

Poetry is not my thing, but I was struck with this thought today, as I considered a few close friends who have been struggling with heart issues.  Please don't criticize me too harshly.... I believe the last poem I wrote was something forced by my College Lit professor back in 1997.  Enjoy, if you can.