nanowrimo.org is really clunky so far, I tried to update my word counts yesterday, and it just seems to be overrun. I guess there must be a huge turnout this year, this is good. For the time being, this blog is my actualy text for my Nanowrimo entry, at least it will keep me honest. Instead of writing since finding the Nanowrimo site not resposive and dampening my enthusiasm slightly, I’ve been doing responsible things like homework.

For the time being, my count is 290, but in my head I have about 8000 thought out for when I can sit down and get it out. The story will be edited on one Post.

Full Updating Version of this Years Nanowrimo entry

It was only a couple days ago that I realized Nanowrimo was coming up, meaning it is almost November, and that I need to begin deciding what I want to attempt to write a novel about this time.

Right now, I am thinking about writing one around the theme and characters of The Mark of EL Chupacabra. Maybe it’s just trying to scrape the last of the scraps from my previous prolificity, maybe there is something there that needs to be worked. I liked re-writing the short story, but think I could go places with it. Maybe I won’t write myself into a corner like I did last year.

I am refraining from using my first novel attempt, Familiar Territory, or last year’s, The Guardian, tho I think they both hold promise. Nanowrimo is about new writing to me, fresh starts, and so it will go.

http://advancedmeditation.com/cmd.php?Clk=2095310

Hi,

Just in case some of you want to know about this . . .

Please Pass It On to Others!

The Call is Thursday 9/13

Do you know Gay Hendricks? He’s written over 30 best-selling transformational books — books about relationships, breathing, manifestation, even golf!

Gay is are offering an upcoming teleclass that I’d like to invite you to attend at no charge.

http://advancedmeditation.com/cmd.php?Clk=2095310

Here’s Gay’s message about the class:

   When I was in Boulder recently, I had dinner with an old friend,    Steven Sashen. He’s one of the best “system thinkers” I know. If you want to know what REALLY makes something work, or how to make something more powerful or efficient, he’s your guy. He and I are teaming up on a new meditation course that will be offered via teleseminar.

   Steven is a longtime meditator. And when he turned his systems-thinking scope on meditation he discovered something that truly impressed me, a set of insights and practices that I wish I’d had 30 years ago. (Some of you know that I’m a longtime  meditator–in fact, I haven’t missed a day of meditation since 1973. So, anything that fine-tunes meditation is right up my alley.)

   If I’d had Steven’s insights and techniques, I think it would have accelerated my practice and my spiritual growth by years. He’s taken people who are new to meditation or who couldn’t make it work  for them - he’s even worked with teenagers and homeless people–and after just a few minutes of instruction, they’ve had experiences of peace, and deep spiritual insights that take most meditators decades to find.

   Steven’s techniques work well for advanced meditators, too. If you already have a meditation or spiritual practice, you can make an almost instant leap to a new depth and expansion.

   With Steven’s techniques you don’t need to stop (or even slow down) your thoughts and you don’t need to take time out from your busy schedule. You can do them practically anywhere.

   I could tell you more, it would be better for you to experience it yourself. So, I’ve arranged a way for you to do that.

       Go to http://advancedmeditation.com/cmd.php?Clk=2095310
  
   When you get to the site, fill out the registration form and I’ll let you know about an upcoming free teleclass where you can discover for yourself how easily you can find deep body relaxation, greatly expanded awareness, and real inner-peace…even while the kids are demanding your attention or work is getting nuts.

   I hope you’ll join me for this new and exciting opportunity,

   Gay Hendricks

http://advancedmeditation.com/cmd.php?Clk=2095310

The teleclass is going to be really fun and interesting and there’s a chance to get a $400 gift. I hope you can make it, too.

presented by Garuda, Inc.

Have fun!

Love,
Stacy

“It is no sign of mental health to be well-adjusted to an insane world.”

                 The Dalai Lama

27.5 K, that’s where I gave up. I didn’t push ’til the last minute, and I didn’t reallylock up. I just took along look at some of the last words I wrote and realized I would not make it in the time I had and even want to read what I had written. In the interest of getting done, I was writing myselfinto a hole, one like the one that I wrote my first novel into and which I still haven’t gotten it out of.

This was supposed to be a throwaway plotline, but it grew on me. What I end up with is the beginning of what can be a really good book, in my opinion. One that I want to finish but not in a week like I tried to do. I wish my month could have started around the 17th last week, oh, I guess it could have, just not in the Nano world. Dang, I really wanted to be able to post one of those winner widgets here.

So, the Nano experience is over for a year, and I think that despite not being a winner, I came away from it with something worth the time. I’ll try again next year and here on out try to begin putting upposts about writing. One thing Nano did, fully,is make me a writer again. It’s good to be back.

This is it.

As I pause to write this, I have just updated my word count to 23,154. So, the offical count is 26,846 words to go in twenty one hours. Do I still think I can make it?

Yes.

The story is coming tome,I ammerely trying to write it down in between distractions. I can’t truly blame the distractions for the hole I am in tho, I’ve procrastinated. I’ve found time to play some Xbox and PokerStars, if a lot less than usual. And I’ve taken time to write here. All of these things, I am going to say, are part of the process. Do I wish that I was at this stage of prolificity a coupleweeks ago? Sure. But the deadline may be part of it.

The fact is, there is a story needing to come out, and it’s going to happen in the next twenty three hours or maybe never at all. That’s just the way it works.

If I finish, there will be some sort of icon to show that I have tomorrow and I will make one last post about the wholenanowrimo deal.If not, maybe nothing on nano until next november. I never talk about the Cubs after a loss. It’snot that I think it is the end of the world if I don’t make this arbitrary deadline, it’s just that it might be time to focus on something else.A nd write postsin this blog about other writing topics, or even write a couple short stories.

So again, wish me luck.
The baby looks as if she might let Dad have a run at it.

It’s down to nitty gritty time,but I’m not giving up. Somewhere along the line, this story has began speaking to me, and I’ve let go enough to write it down. Too often,this month and with other stories, I worry about minutiae. A firend of mine that also does this Nano thing gave me the best persperctive yet on the whole process. She does it because she says its nice to have the raw material to work with when it’s over.

Raw material is what I’ve got, in fact, I’ve already decided one significant plot development has to change, but will probably go back and do that after the deadline. Right now, I want the story out of me. I have less than 34 hours to write 20,ooo words. Once again, that seems less than daunting, and I am going for it.

When I read these posts later, they always seem so cheerful and unrealistic, as if I’m my own cheerleader, maybe I am. What I want from this is a bit of a record of the process I went through to hopefully finishing this story,and soI have it.

Maybe the most important thing that is happening right now is that I feel like a writer again. The muscles are being flexed and even taxed. It’s been a while. My girlfriend has never seen this, and is probably a little perplexed as I tell her what I’m trying to get done.

Hi,

I’m confirming something I’ve known about myself for some years now. I am not so much a writer in the sense of a craftsman. I don’t crave the art of it. I don’t revel in the mechanics of it. Not one bit. I know Kurt does. He’s studied this stuff his whole life. I enjoy listening to him about it. I don’t feel motiated to do what he talks about.

What I love to do is write letters. That’s it.

I’ve alway said I write to communicate. I must have an audience or I have nothing to say.

When I wrote my admissions essays back in the mid-90’s for grad school, I couldn’t write a word until I had called the department and spoken to a human being, someone who was likely to be the reader. I usually spoke to the faculty advisor. I’d ask what they wanted in the paper, have a few minutes of conversation with them, and I got of the phone ready to write. No problem. I had an audience.

So, it has been nearly terminally frustrating to try to do NaNoWriMo.

I’m not motivated to write fiction in the first place. Nor am I motivated to write an outline, create conflicts, create characters, get characters in and out of those conflicts and show, don’t tell, in the meantime.

Argh!

Sure, the “show, don’t tell” edict still applies, but the rest of it?

Argh!

In an attempt to pander to my proclivities, I created a word document and dutifully titled it “Letters,” thinking that maybe I could make up characters that Ann would write to, based on real life friends, of course, but made up.

That document remains blank, but this blog, well, I have a real audience. You.

This “problem” turned up when I tried to write something for Eric Francis. I’m not done trying to submit something to him that he will publish, but I have been regrouping since it first came up in July. I don’t know what all of the shortcomings of my attempts may have been, but even I could see that they were forced and weren’t going where I wanted them to.

So, for a while I wrote in to the forums on his site. Somewhere in there, he wrote me a note and suggested that I not write as if I’m writing directly to him.

Argh!

Fortunately, by now I’ve read some of the other astrologers and participants on his site and I can more easily address the group, but he caught me in my biggest characteristic as a writer… I write to a specific audience.

Even more fortunately, I am of the Steven Sashen school of thought that a seeming “problem” is nothing more than the pointer to the “solution.” Every single problem we have is practically screaming the answer to us.

I might be willing to learn to write better letters.

I am definitely willing to put effort into putting my letters together in some sequence that tells a story, writing some connecting material and bringing it together to say something that is meaningful. Yes. I’ll do all of that.

So, here I am blogging in an attempt to write another 14,000 words for NaNoWriMo. It’s physically possible. It’s even probable if I write enough letters.

Love,

Stacy

Well, I got a little bit of a steam going Wednesday,and then comes Thanksgiving. Its just been tough to get into the basement the last couple of days, but I’m not ready to give up.

It’s also a little too cold in the basement for my daughter and she’s most of the reason I’ve been up a lot lately. The good news is that my laptop,which I thought got killed by a cup of coffee a couple weeks ago, is miraculously working again, somaybe I have a chance. By My math, there are 66 hours left in this challenge,til midnight Thursday.

I started out today at 10,397 , so 39,603/66 = 600 words an hour, thats how I’m going to look at it,600 words an hour is do-able. I’ll probably have time to make up some slick graphic too as another Motivational Trick.

Wish me luck.

Aren’t they all?  Really?

When I began NaNoWriMo on November 1, I have to say I was not totally commited to finishing something I hardly knew how to start. Now, in typical Sagittarius Sun, Midheaven, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Pallas and Juno fashion I am shooting my arrows toward a goal.

Yeah, that’s a lot of Centaur energy in my chart and it’s all in the 9th house. Well, except the Sun depending on how you do that. The 9th house is the house governed by Sagittarius. Jupiter rules it. It’s the planet of fortune, expansion, teaching, philosophy and more. The Sun is our Self. The Midheaven has to do with how the world sees us in a certain way.  Mercury is how we communicate. Mars is how we act. For more on Pallas and Juno, asteroids, check www.planetwaves.net or www.philipsedgwick.com. I don’t have time right now. I’m on a deadline.

Yep. I’ve made it mine. Midnight, November 30 there will be 50,000 words in a document titled Ann’s Tale or I will know the reason why!

So, folks, no more here till then.

Love,

Stacy

Three weeks in and I’m just over 6K, but I feel surprisingly good about it. I fully intend to hit 50K and have a complete, if rough story by the end of this month. It’s just taking time to get revved up. What’s happening is a couple of things, one is that I find it hard sometimes to get back to my computer the other is that I’m kind of unfolding the story as I go, and taking my time with it as much as I can. I fully expect to have to edit the hell out of this book after it’s finished this month, but I just can’t leave it completely alone. I have already gone back and tidied up several parts of it.

My daughter, it turns out, is a load of fun, she might even be my co-pilot while I finish this story. She likes to stay up in the wee hours, and has me reverting to my old night owl ways. So here I am, 2:42 AM, she just went to sleep but I just filled my coffee cup. She looks like an angel. This is as close as she will ever get to this story, except maybe in the dedication. It is quite amusing to myself and my girlfriend how cliche’s have abounded for us with this child. Neither of us were anti-children, but similarly, lifetimes of hearing others expound about their own children would have us groaning to listen to ourselves. Okay, all you people ahead of us in the birthing department, you were right. It’s miraculous, special, and something that has changed me entirely.

But, like I’ve said, this is a page about writing; This story needs to be finished, because like the lead 1st person character says, ‘it bears tellin’, and like him, maybe getting it out of my head will do some good.

Untold stories are like untreated wounds for me. I tend to search for the things that disturb us most, and keeping them inside can’t be healthy. I’m not going to be dramatic and say they are anything but other ideas floating around in my head, or that they need to be exorcised, but I always feel better when I get a point down, written, and am able to put it behind me.

This is a chapter and plot summary of the Guardian so far, to be updated as I go along. I have usually had something like this going, as another word document, but this might be easier to do.

Before the meeting -

1. First person -Ted, in his apt. , walking the neighborhood.
   char’s - Old grey John
2. Kathryn - scared in her room
   coming home to Mommy w/Ruggie and Wally
   Aunt Maddie in her closet
3. Christian at the restaurant
   meets Ted/Spider
4. Ruggie at the trailer
5. Part One begins
   ted goes to the meeting - Ray takes the podium at the end
6. Ray begins to tell his story.
7. His wife’s dream
8. losing everything- starts after Ray’s wife’s dream til the end,
   after the meeting, Ted approaches Ray
9. Ruggie’s last dance
10. Ted walks intothe diner,starts talk
11. Ray walks in to diner with ted,his POV and reaction to Ted’s revelation;
    that ted comesfrom the world of aunt maddie
12. Christian and Ted

I’m listening to Scott Medina’s CD of kirtan chants.

“Sita Ram Jai Jai Sita Ram Jai Jai Sita Ram Namoh”

I’m looking at this page. My fingers move. If I think about them, I see them in my lower peripheral vision. I can see my green shirt that way, too. There is a tiny pine table under the laptop. The laptop is a charcoal black Sony VAIO, whatever that is. The battery doesn’t work. (I laugh. A guy I know says he had the same one and the first thing he said was, “Does your battery work?” His didn’t, either. I’d accept donations of a newer laptop if you want to support my work to write this blog and this book.)

There I am, right out of my business in a couple of sentences.

Okay, back at it.

Being with myself. I actually typed “Beign” first and backspaced to correct it. Why? Because I was out of my business. I was thinking of you, my imaginary reader, who would wonder what I meant, and maybe of my English and Spelling teachers who live in my head . . . and make me a pretty good writer. . . or do they? Read e e cummings sometime or Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll and then tell me about my English-teacher-in-my head.)

See? Can’t even manage it for two sentences. Heck, I can’t even manage it for one misspelled word!

Okay, so I am communicating… “co” means “with.” So, I’m inherently split into at least two to just write, but I’ve heard of authors being in a zone where that is not the case. Eckhart Tolle is said to have only been able to write his book while visiting California. When he was elsewhere he couldn’t do it. I should look that up. It’s interesting.

Natalie Goldberg, writing teacher extraordinaire, although I couldn’t even finish her novel, Banana Rose, talks about being in this moment. She also studies Zen meditation. She brings that awareness to her writing. There is a very present-moment-ness to her writing even when she talks about the distant past.

I want to do that.

I want to be in this moment writing and letting the words flow from my fingers like I am

*sigh*

I nearly had it there for a minute.

*pause*

Practice. That’s why I practice.

That’s why the 50,000 words I’m attempting to write for NaNoWriMo.org (please make a contribution. At least half of it goes to support children’s libraries in Viet Nam) . . . anyway, that’s why so many of these 50,000 words are drek. Yes, drek. Garbage, incineratable, even.

I can write a paper for school, you know, 15 to 20 pages, on just about anything and figure it’s good enough.

I have been paid for writing 300 to 700 word articles that I ripped off in 15 to 30 minutes each. And they weren’t half bad.

But we’re talking BOOK length here. OMG

This 50,000 words will amount to a mere 175 pages approximately.

How many words does it take to make a book?

Well, taking a few off the shelf here, let me see:

Kabbalistic Healing by Jason Shulman, 184 pages… trade paperback

Move Your Stuff Change Your Life Karen Rauch Carter, 232 pages… trade paperback

Macroscope by Piers Anthony . . . 480 pages, mass market paperback

   (Note Anthony is the only fiction at my bedside at the moment.

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott . . . 237 pages trade

Okay, let me go to the bookshelf for more fiction.

Star Dance by Spider & Jeanne Robinson . . . 288 pages, mass market

Grumbles from the Grave

… and at this point, my laptop decides to save this post. Or, really, I hit a key somewhere and landed myself in Save mode. Reminds me of a cartoon I kept for years and years when I was teaching software and working at help desks. The picture shows a business man, in a suit, with a briefcase, standing on the Moon with the Earth in the background, looking down at a little alien guy who is saying to him, “Think back. Which key did you press?”

See?  See?

And I had just typed in the page count for 2 more books! Which I lost.

What does it take just to be with myself, my feelings, in this present moment?

I don’t know. Sometimes I do it. I’m just walking along and I’m suddenly in some altered consciousness and there I am.

Right now, I think I’ll practice in a hot bath.

Love, Ann

Well, two weeks into this nano-wrimo thing and I’m only 12 days behind. However, I’d be two weeks behind if not for what’s been happening the last couple of days.I’m writing, and writing well, if the levee walls have not completely let loose, there is a lot of water coming over them. You see, I am even thinking in metaphors now. Just like the old days.

 So, I’ve got a new little game I play with myself, motivational ploy, gimmick, whatever you want to call it, I think it is making this a little more fun. What I’m doing is constantly updating my word count. I wish those little graphs went by update instead of by day, I suppose writing a widget to do that would be simple, but right now it is beyond me. What I keep doing is updating my word count when I hit a break in writing, and then refresh this home page. Then, Wah-Lah, I have this new little graph to look at and compare to previous days.

 I’m wondering about the graph a lot, wondering what happens when I max it out for a day, all that stuff, and thinking of how boring it will be if it just turns completely green. I hope not, something like that might make me take the time to figure out how to mess with it or make my own, and I don’t need to take time to do that, not this month.

It was my former husband who suggested this blog. (Thank you)

He did something really sweet last week.

He sent me one of my favorite songs, Queen’s Fat Bottom Girls, on a voice mail. He was right in line with something that was bothering me last week (my own fat bottom), and I emailed him that sometimes I wonder why I divorced him. The truth is that we both know the reasons, they had nothing to do with that, and a marriage between us still would not work. It doesn’t stop us from loving each other, though.

Here’s what I said:

Sometimes I wonder why I divorced you.  (And the answer partly is because I had created so much stress in my own mind about being with you… but it was being with me that needed some investigation.)

He queried:

“Being with me or being with you?”

Being with me, of course.

I can only ever have trouble being with someone else to the extent that I am not loving the part of myself they are reflecting. “But only always,” as Katie says.

I’m really going to have to do the School for the Work. I’d love to. I understand they do give some scholarships for it. I’d have to get there, too, which usually means flying to California. You know, I’d almost rather do that than go home for Christmas or my birthday. (So, I went and looked. The next one is in April 2007. If I can make it to Ireland, I can “probably” make it to California.)

Most of us have heard the New Age truism, “The world is my mirror.”

Most of us even say we believe it.

If that is true, then can you please explain to me why on Earth we would ever get mad at another person?

How could we?

Answer: We can’t!

This is an obvious, logical and true conclusion that stems from that fact. Now, I’ll admit that I understood to some degree that the world was my mirror even back in 1989 when I got married and all the way through 1995 when I got divorced and was in many ways still blaming my husband for things that were not working.

At least I made the decision from clarity. I’ll come back to that in a minute.

In fact, my current understanding is why a recent lover was able to say to me, “Thank you for not escalating when I told you I needed to be alone last night.”

Why would I? It didn’t mean anything about me.

Yes, he’s the same one who is having trouble with my fat bottom. So what? That doesn’t mean he is the cause of my upset about that. Not in the slightest. How could he be?

What? He’s supposed to ignore his preference for slimmer women?

Why? I don’t ignore mine for slim men.

Every single man I’ve ever dated, slept with or dreamed of is what the personal ads call HWP: height and weight proportional. Every one of them, bar none. So who am I kidding if I think a man doesn’t have the right to want that? Only myself, only myself.

If I have trouble being with someone who is fat, then I must first look to the plank in my own eye, as Jesus said, before trying to remove the mote from my brother’s eye. Well, yeah!

Katie’s most recent newsletter (www.thework.org) talks about a visit to a friend in the hospital who has cancer. She says something about her friend loving her cancer. I just tried to find that one and didn’t, but I found a blog on “Whose business are you in when you think that thought?” which is just as pertinent.

http://www.byronkatie.com/2006/09/whose_business_are_you_minding.htm

It’s short and sweet.

I spent 10 years in weekly therapy, groups and 12 Step programs over my internal thoughts and feelings about incest, how and whether it had affected me, what I thought of everybody else, especially my husband (yes, the one I was talking with above), and my father.

And do you know what I came up with?

*laughter*

Truly. I laugh. It’s funny to think that “they” did anything to me. That is one of the most absurd thoughts in the Universe. And we all think it all the time. I do, too.

When I am over there in your business, and you are in your business, who is here in my business?

And I wonder why sometimes my life doesn’t seem to be working?!

No one is minding the store.

Now.

Being with myself is simple and yet I forget, over and over and over.

For example, ask me how many other web pages and emails I have looked at in the course of writing just this blog, nevermind the whole book of Ann’s Tale?

How many do you think?

I don’t exactly know. I wasn’t in my business at the time and I wasn’t counting, but I’m thinking it has been in the range of more than a dozen.

Why?

Well, because I think if I think about how I could have been with myself… could I? Can we ever do, be or think anything other than what we did or were or thought? No. If you think we could have, please prove it to me. Go back and do it.

Right.

Now, when I lie to myself and think that I could have loved Marvin any more or been more forgiving or less angry or in less pain or less judgmental or any of those things, is that true?

Obviously not.

I could only do what I did. It’s very real to notice that. I did what I did. He did what he did. Hmph. Even that might not be true. I cannot go back and prove I was ever married to him. Oh sure, we can find a piece of paper in a courthouse somewhere that says I was Mrs. So-and-So, but that’s not proof.

Right now, in this moment, I seem to be sitting at my laptop telling you and me some stories about some thing that I imagine happened in some past that never really happened the way we think it did. How many versions of that past do you think I could find?

Answer: It depends on how many people I ask and how many versions each one of them has.

Well, we’re in the dozens and dozens right there.

See? There I go again!

Now whose business am I in? 

The business of dozens of dozens of imaginary people who have imaginary stories about a past that I imagine.

Well, maybe it will make for good fiction. And that seems to be what I am writing.

It’s kind of funny. NaNoWriMo has it right. Participants seem to want to know what they count as fiction. Their FAQ says, “If you think it’s fiction, so do we.” Good thing.

It’s all fiction.

Being with myself makes it so much easier to notice that.

I’ve been having a fabulous time writing these little fictions to you, my imaginary audience. For all I know, no one has ever read my blogs and no one ever will.

Just as well, you know. It’s fiction.

Love, Ann

Gotta admit, things aren’t moving quite the way I hoped they would from the start, but on the other hand, the words are starting to flow a bit and the whole premise of the novel is changing in my head, maybe. I guess that I am hoping that maybe having a month deadline will let me just cut the words and story loose. I found myself over-editing, analyzing, before. Meanwhile, distractions are at full steam with my child being four days late now, we are going to the hospital tonight and will induce tomorrow if the baby doesn’t start on her own.If I get to 20K with this novel, I will begin to put it up here to read, probably with user approval. Right now, at 1400, my little widget tells me that I’m –10K or something, but I’m not too worried about that yet. Having the graph is interesting and I hope to make it show my erratic writing habits.

It’s a bit sad that I started this blog about getting through life with no attention span and it has taken me several months to actually do anything with it….

So…. quick preview of my life and what you may (or may not) see here….

I’m a mom, so much of my life is taken up trying to keep up with a nine-year-old son with the mentality of a teenager…. I’m also a wife recovering from one hellish bought of infidelity on my husband’s part (with my roommate… err… former roommate…. long story, explain that some other time…) I’m a student, full-time, currently at a community college, though planning to transfer soon…. I’m majoring in Philosophy, minoring in Math, English and perhaps a few other things as I can never seem to focus on one thing for very long…. I crochet, a lot, it’s one of those things that keeps me sane and keeps me from thinking too hard about the pain…. and I write, when I can, though I’ve signed up for NaNoWriMo 2006 so I’ve got a huge goal this month of writing a novel….

This journal/blog will jump all over the place, one of the joys of a small attention span, and will cover many, many topics…. It’s as much for emotional catharsis as it is for anything else…..

Last year, I tried to write a novel for National Novel Writer’s Month, below is the word count widget, and I’m not sure how it works yet, but hopefully that will be self explanatory. I’ll put this on the sidebar like I’m a real blogger.

Last year, I didn’t make it. I burned out at about 20K, and to tell the truth, half of that was already written. I wanted to finally finish a novel I have been kicking around in my head for more than ten years now.  This year, I’m going to take a short story, The Guardian , a disturbing ( at least to me) little story that I wrote some time ago and have always wanted to expand and explore. I have never tried to do this before, with any other storyline than the one I worked on last year.

I’m excited, a little nervous, and ready to exert my writing muscles a little, in what may be the biggest month of my life. You see, in the next few days, my girlfriend is having my first child. I am 42 years old, have been married once but had no children, and I am having a child in the next few days, (November 3rd is the due date). I don’t plan on expanding much on the birth of my child on this blog, I have ultrasound pictures posted , and will probably have another blog about my baby, this blog is about writing.

With one day left before the novel begins, I am trying to descend into that mindset in which I write. Doing it with all the distractions around me may be impossible, but I’m hoping that the urgency and the feeling that I am very ready to write again will push through it all.

Hope I bring some folks along for the ride.

ron

p.s. And since I think I’ve figured out the widget stuff, here’s another.

Okay, it’s probably not a big deal, but when I got to the library last night for the NanoWrimo meeting, the library was closed. When I came home I found an email on my Nano account saying they had a meeting the 24th, and the next one is Sunday at 2PM. I doubt I’ll be there though, during the Bears game???? This also tells me a little about my fellow authors.

Not sure what I expected, but I did send an email back saying that I would be interested in attending the next meeting if it’s not during a BEARS GAME. Call me shallow, but I’ve found it easy to schedule my time without stepping on the 16 times(plus playoffs) that the Bears play. It is only when I allow others to do it for me that I get cross ups.

The words below, by Harlan Ellison, have been held close to my heart and soul for many years. Since I first got ruled paper and put a story on it, I have been a writer, the rest, as they say, are details.

Of course, I have to work to support myself, and have found that without work, I quickly run out of writing steam. I am not as prolific as I was in earlier times, but I am looking forward to next month, participating in nanowrimo , short for National Novel Writing Month. I tried last year, an effort at finally finishing my first novel, Familiar Territory, but didn’t make it.

 There is a public meeting at the DeKalb Public Library in DeKalb, Illinois tonight at 7PM. I got notified of it by email, and want to check it. Who knows, might be some folks I want to meet.

 This year, I am going to attempt to expand another short story, one which always seemed full of holes to me when I wrote it, the Guardian. The next post will contain, The Guardian.

I ran into one of the other NaNoWriMo participants at Whole Foods yesterday. She said “hi” back, but I had the definite sense of being avoided.

It’s funny. She’s a very outspoken person and I would have expected her to be the type to say, “I’m in a hurry and can’t talk right now.” That may indeed have been the case. I don’t really know.

But of course, Monkey Mind doesn’t accept the face value simple answers from us. Of course not! That’s why we call it Monkey Mind.

So, Monkey Mind has now made up this silly (or is it?) story. It goes like this:

I posted a few hundred words from the first part of my first attempt at “Ann’s Tale: There’s Another Mile to Go” on the NaNoWriMo page. What if she read it and was offended? That would be easy to do. There’s a naked body (mine) on the first page.

Who knows?

More to the point: Whose business am I in when I think that thought?

Love,

Stacy

*** There are 3 kinds of business: God’s, someone else’s and mine. It clearly is not mine.

Frankly, I think this is a bit lame. But I’ve been working toward writing 50,000 words on the fictionalized version of my memoir since November 1… sans outline … sans plot … sans sanity, if you ask me.

I might make the word goal, but next time I try this sort of insanity I will be sure to bring an outline, a structure, something!

It’s okay. I don’t really want to be writing this as fiction. I just see the value in doing so. I hate the process. I told that to another writer at brunch a few weeks ago. I said I didn’t want to write fiction. She took me at face value and said, “Then don’t. It’s too much work.” I can’t seem to stop it. At least not until I try.

So here are about 300 words that issued from my fingers today in an effort to write something, anything.

I used to say that when I travel, I finally feel comfortable in a place when I have found the health food store, the Indian restaurant and the Starbucks. I found all of those quickly in Ireland, but I never felt at home there.

The health food store was tiny. It had wooden floors, like all health food stores should, but the products on the shelves were mostly unfamiliar to me. I saw a few things I recognized, but the brands and packaging were not those comfortable familiar objects I saw at home. There would be Vitamin C, but no Solar Ray brand of it. Chai, but none was Oregon, not even Third Street which I hated. Even the way things were lined up on the shelves seemed foreign and unfamiliar.

The Indian restaurant was closer. I mean, being a foreign restaurant in a foreign country, how much difference could there be? They served pakoras and dal and saag panir. Good. So far. The décor was dark wood rich with tapestries of blue people and gold and red borders. So. The chai was spicy and sweet. Good. This I could deal with. Funny to find that the very foreign was the most familiar thing in a foreign country.

Starbucks. You’re not going to believe this, but at the Cork airport in Ireland, I went to the Starbucks counter asking for the Ethiopian Sidamo that was on the menu board. “I’m sorry,” the girl told me, “this is our first week to be open and the Ethiopian Sidamo has not arrived yet.” Oh dear. So, I drank Costa Rica blend and liked it. I normally don’t drink Starbucks at home anymore, but I guess even at the airport, after hours and hours of airplane travel, I realized that any taste of home was better than none.

*shrug* It’s word count at this point, that counts.

Love,

Stacy

At about 11 am I was on the phone with my friend, Ralph, catching up on some things. I started hearing some kind of loud, sharp noise that could have been someone poking around downstairs. Because the carpet was removed for the painters to do the trim, and I have no car in the driveway, the place looks pretty empty. So, I asked Ralph to stay on the phone while I checked. Nobody was there. I figured maybe the house was shifting. I had the stereo on and I was mostly focused on our conversation.

A few minutes later, an officer rang the doorbell insistently and I trundled downstairs quickly (in my nightshirt… I had run bathwater, but then Ralph called). He informed me that there was a fire next door and I should probably (how’s that for the Most Gratuitous Use of “Probably” in an email?) leave the house till they had it under control.

Since he didn’t grab me or insist I walk out the door in my nightshirt, I went back upstairs, dressed quickly in last night’s clothes, while turning off and packing the computer, grabbed my purse and cell phone.

I saw flames shooting out of the condo 3 doors down from us as I left the house. That helped my adrenaline levels quite a bit. Aubrey tells me I was not quite coherent on the phone, that I was missing some of her questions. Okay. Maybe I was a little bit shocked.

At one point, describing the scene to someone on the phone, I counted about 13 or 14 emergency vehicles with accompanying official-looking personnel.

Apparently, it was so well known that drug dealers live there that when our realtor called, he told *me* about it relieving me of the decision just as I was trying to figure out how to say something. Aubrey has information from a friend in the sheriff’s department that an arrest was made on a previous controlled substance warrant, but no Haz Mat team showed up, so no one was making drugs at that moment.

They let us go back into our houses, all but the one where the fire started and the one adjacent after about 4 hours. So, about 2:30 or 3. The rest of my day was kind of a wash other than a good conversation with Cricket. I just finished talking with Aubrey for half an hour and then I called Sean for a little emotional support, and left a message for Ralph that I’d like to talk tomorrow.

I can smell smoke (and paint), but I feel like it’s more in the air. I believe we’re far enough away that any damage here is unlikely.

Aubrey told me that her mother said, “Oh, how awful!” and Aubrey assured her that, while certainly there were losses, it might help clean up the neighborhood.

Even her realtor called me and offered to come by and be emotional support. He’s completely different than I’d expect a realtor to be. He has consistently offered to be there for us if we get overwhelmed at all. I told him I have a good support system, but that I’d call if need be, and that there was apparently no smoke damage that we could find at this point.

I wonder if a fire will figure in my fiction now?  :)  I’m beginning to look at everything, every story that happens as fuel for the f… no wait, let’s choose a cooler metaphor… as . . . I don’t know… fodder, inspiration.

Okay, I will likely sleep like a log.

I’m okay. My roommate is okay. We’re both a little shaken, but that would be normal. 

I’ve been taking time to be as aware as possible of “who’s business am I in when I think that thought?” after becoming aware that I have used other people’s business to avoid my own.  So, I’m not all that interested in this whole story beyond whatever plot line the experience might assist or whatever assistance a live human being might need around here, especially my roommate re: the refurbishing and sale of her house.

Good night,
~ Stacy