May 2/300 words
Only 1100 words for last month, total. I'm pushing to triple that word count for this month. We'll see how I do.
School continues to suck my life, not that it's any surprise this time in the year. There's too much to do, and I'm not getting enough done on the cleaning up--it's all about trying to stay abreast of the paper.
Today's activities include singing two first communions, but hanging around all day for the parking space. (There's a third I'm not actually singing.) Before then, I have to fix the drawstring on the skirt I'm wearing and write the physical notes on some of the songs we're singing. (Music in our little group morphs. Constantly.) I have the recordings of practice, my keyboard, and an hour. This should be fun. Not.
Somewhere along the line, I'll hit the store for cards for the two First Communicants I know (their parents are in my choir group) because who had time to deal with that before now? Luckily, the store is a quick hike across the street because I'm not moving my car once I get there. Parking.
When I return--oh, somewhere along the line of 5P, it's onto the novel section for the posse. Two out of three scenes are mostly angst-driven, and I'm tired of the feelings, I want some action. I may have to hit a character over the head with a stick.
My new little short suddenly turned prosaic on me. It's my fault, I let my protag and her nemesis-to-be sit in front of a fire and knit, and really, it's definitely relaxing for them but nothing happened. Unless you count the damn angst.
I'll probably chop that bit because I wanted something... oh, wilder, more unpredictable. And start again.
But the thing that really bugged me is that the voice I loved in the opening bits has turned so-so in my head. My brain is going you've used this kind of voice before, and it's okay, but it's nothing spectacular. Get something else.
Yeah, sure. I can do that.
Change time and period, change the characters, change their situation... oh, sure. Piece of cake.
So yeah. Not too happy with the fiction at the moment. Still love the concept, though. I just want it perfect. In my head and out.
You can consider this the latest development in my relationship: I love it--I do. But it would be so much better if it would just straighten its tie, not leave its shoes and underwear scattered on the floor, and oh, by the way, did it notice that the plate it just put in the dishwasher is backwards?
Get rid of those few flaws, honey, and you'll be perfect.
Perfect.
I blame my Mary Poppins alterego for these demands.
May 3/300 words
Hrm... the first feedback from the crit group, and the chapter I thought was all angst and no action may not be.
What. The. Hell.
Maybe I'm never going to catch onto the novel balancing act of scene and sequence, and the overall pacing. I guess I'm going to reread my old copy of Scene and Structure--one of the very first books I purchased. (Right up there with all the plot books I bought, since I have always considered plot my nemesis.)
Or maybe everything I write lately is colored by my perception that it sucks big pointy rocks.
Maybe I need new crayons.
The bottom line, though, is that I'm not thrilled with my current prose, and I've got to figure out what is ticking me off the most about it. Maybe pick just one thing to focus on--action or voice--get whatever is annoying me about either of those out of the way, and then look at the second. It would certainly be the easiest in my short to deal with voice.
On the other hand, that might very well mean I need to deal with the action. Because bleah, angst. Shades of Twilight.
So brainstorming looms on my horizon. Not an actual outline--just a couple of scenes that I could write to get the story closer to the end. So what if they get dumped in a rewrite, I want a finished story with these particular characters.
If I were truly an organized writer, I could brainstorm and clean the bathroom simultaneously. I would dream story plot. I would watch TV or pick up a newspaper and a plot point would slide into my conscious mind.
Sadly, I am not that organized. I am firmly anchored in the here and now and what I must do to survive another week at school. (My god, how did Mother's Day get here already? I've got to cut out the shrunken heads and slap those puppies on 5X7 cardstock. And make cards. And make an envelope. I thought I was done with paint for the year. Rats.)
Twenty-two more days before vacation.
Maybe then I'll be able to sit back and fixate on story.
May 9/300 words
The best-laid plans often twist around to bite you in the write.
Why should this week's have been any different?
I managed word count early in the week. And then I slammed into Wednesday, tumbled over the kinder's performance, and spent the remaining weekdays on my knees begging for relief. And sleep.
Well, no one was listening. Again.
In the battle between write or sleep, sleep won. But it wasn't as though I slept. I had to fight hard for those minutes of respite.
What exhaustion did give, as I fervently tried to sleep but the brain wouldn't let go, were a couple of images: black feathers scattered on snow and a finger bone.
You know, it's damn hard writing a story when all you get are unchained little bits here and there in the dark of your head, with no flashlight to illuminate the damn thing.
So, during my next conscious period, 2AM, for the curious, I pulled out my sekrit weapon which shines a light into the recesses of my empty consciousness, and pulls out a bit of meaning to drive the story.
Yes, it's my dream book.
Feathers can be signs of an infection intruding on life.
(Okay, I can make that work.)
Snow can cover up what lies beneath.
(Noooooooooo, not an incest story! Something else.)
Bird: the ability to see the truth or the big picture.
(Check. Well, that changes things. Blackbird girl is going to appear sinister, but switch roles in retrospect.)
Black bird: unconscious drives, death, negative aspect of mother.
(Hrm. Okay. That's where I thought I was going, but that aspect of mother is throwing me.)
Bone: A situation or relationship you realize is long dead.
(Ooooooooooookay. Have to work on that one.)
Tracks in the snow: a new beginning.
(Huh. I may have an additional image for the ending.)
Fingers: manipulation, dexterity.
(Well, seeing that I know who holds whose finger bone at the end, I'd say so.)
But having done all this? Oh, my god. This is going to be a hard tale to get to first draft. I'm just muddling through the middle. Again.
Still, there's enough imagery with subconscious symbolism to make this work, if I can get the story straight in my head first.
May 10/0 words
The story crawls forward--not in actual counting of words, however. No, it's actually related to research and a decision, of sorts, of the setting.
I'm tending toward the Lake District of the early 1830's before Wordsworth made it popular. I'm also tempted to set it later--when Beatrix Potter lived there, but I'm hesitating. I need a farm cut off from any town or neighbor by snowdrifts, and the popularity of the place would make it less isolated, rather than more.
Yeah, yeah, make it up, but I've always wanted to visit the Lake District and hike the hills. This may be my only shot.
No words yet, but I have two more phone calls to accomplish before I can settle into writing.
Mother's Day was lovely: Farmhouse Eggs Benedict on cornbread with a lovely Hollandaise for breakfast, then a trip to the local IMAX to see Star Wars.
Yes, there were a few things that bugged me about the movie--most noticeably, the sound of stuff exploding in space--but as an older adult with a fondness for the original Trek she watched in her childhood, I loved the way they tied this into the original. The younger versions of the characters were close enough visually to get me to believe in them.
And the CGI! I love that stuff!
I did have to curb my impulse to return home and immediately write fanfiction. And I've never written any.
The only shadow on an otherwise lovely day was the information that a young woman (two years older than my eldest, and one who had visited our house several times to swim as a child) had apparently committed suicide last Monday. I'm still grappling with the horror of the death, and what it means to her parents and family.
Children aren't supposed to precede their parents, and certainly not by choice. I can only shake my head when I contemplate the depth of despair she must have felt.
I think the most difficult thing about aging is being left behind by those who leave us too soon. And don't all deaths occur too soon? Certainly before we can murmur the words we meant to say, speak of the remorse that stifled our voice, or convey the gestures we meant to make.
Squeeze the good memories tight. Hug your loved ones and tell them of your love.
Somewhere a mother is grieving this Mother's Day because her child is beyond the circle of her arms and the touch of her lips.
May 11/0 words
WTF. I keep slamming into the last few sentences I wrote, and stop dead.
He winced and grabbed for my hands, stroking his hair with the damp cloth. "She mustn't stay. Our farm is too cold for her kind."
I nodded, slipped free of his weakened grip, but I did not understand his urgency. In bitter January, the season was too cold for all of us, my brother most of all.
My usual method is to remove the bits that make me slam to a halt and rewrite. I know I can come up with something else, and maybe something that makes my little writer heart go pitter-pat as these few lines do.
I am strangely committed to these few lines. But there's no story shaking its hips and crooking its finger at me after them. A curtain's dropped and hides it from my view.
Poor baby story. It's so flawed already. I've got a list of Things I Must Fix in the Next Incarnation, and I haven't even managed to get a whole story out of it, patched or pieced.
It's frustrating, and the last thing I need to research on the damn thing are the Herdwick sheep, because, dammit, how many talking sheep are there in this story?
At least the chickens are walk-ons.
Perhaps it will all be better if I take some ibuprofen and beat my head against the kinder minds.
Oh, heck. Who am I trying to con here?
May 17/0 words
Writing? I scoff. Why the hell would I write when the story is withholding information and playing hide-and-seek with me? The only thing I accomplished this week was linking up the end I was stuck on to a previously written paragraph for the next scene.
Glaring at the story did not intimidate it at all.
Why can't the damn things be more like kindergartners, hmmm?
I did manage to scribble notes about the characters' history, so I kind of know the back story--or at least I kind of think I know the back story. I'm pretty certain it's going to swing around on me with that "AHA--fooled you! Neener-neener!" like so many of my tales do.
I'm also rejecting my tendency to toss what I've got and start over. Get the damn thing written once, and then I can throw whatever away in a rewrite. For god's sake, let me figure out the story.
The past week was not conducive for word production. I left early each morning, got home later each night. In between, I sandwiched writing lesson plans for two days, two days of interviewing principals for our site, Open House, cleaning the classroom (sadly, some of the cleaning was through this stuff in the file cabinet and move on), testing kids, writing address-label sized notes to put in the cums for each child, and preventing children from breaking me or themselves. It wasn't easy and it took me all of yesterday to recover.
Next week is about Father's Day gifts (I'm spending a bunch of time in Photoshop today printing out individual poem and kid photos, so I can make a black footprint on the page tomorrow,) more testing, photos for the last page of the memory book and make-up artwork for the kids who were absent. Lesson plans again for two days, since I'm at Wiscon, and of course, there's the packing.
My only goal is to not get sick. I'm sleeping as much as I can--early bedtimes to make sure I stay healthy.
If I can, there will be words. I'm staring at my notes trying to get the story into my head, and then working out the slow reveal. If I have to smack characters upside the head, I will.
Funny how the Herdwick sheep seem to be behaving just as they ought.
But maybe that just means I should write more sheep into my stories.
