11/10/13 1:35p Sun.
The would be wrimoer settled in to her daily writing stint. She had gotten a glimpse of an idea of how she might continue this ritual after November if she thought it might be worthwhile to continue. She could carry on in the same way but use a smaller daily target. The other idea was that perhaps this should be published on a daily basis online in a web blog, not so much so that others could or would read it, but more that the act of making it public meant it was even more of an act of communication. She suspected that that alone, the fact that it was now communication with others besides herself, would improve her writing skills. Practice alone did not mean that much, but practice in the context of real function and use made one get better at a thing. Children did not learn to speak by 'practicing' - they learned to speak by wanting to speak, wanting to exchange and engage with others.

She wanted to be able to write off the top of her head, make up a story off the top of her head. Perhaps she would never be able to do that. Perhaps it would turn out that she did not really want to do that, but loved the idea of it. She could do it with music, dance, painting, drawing, cooking, fairly easily whether it was at a high or low skill level. Making up stories could not be that different, or maybe it could. Perhaps there was another significance to making up stories that kept her from allowing herself to do that. If a story was about something occurring in the 'real world', the world as she knew it around her, there could be the danger, (had she thought 'danger'?), of having to keep straight what was real and what was not real.

Actors had to contend with that all the time. They had to dance a fine line between getting so deeply into being the character they were playing that they could get lost in the role, lose themselves in the role. For that time of playing the role, one became that character.

She had always been very concerned with keeping the 'facts' or memory of any events as straight as possible. It irked her no end to hear how others remembered things or did not. She knew that even her own memory was fallible. She had a reputation for being able to remember things. She knew that very few people really remembered things the way they actually happened. One tended to remember more by associations and by what one was emotionally drawn to.

Another thing she  thought she could try in the regular November writing sessions was to start off a session by listing as part of the writing any of the ideas, thought, and events she had been experiencing. Then they would be there for her to refer to and pick up on or not. That would mean some pausing for reflection and contemplation at the start of the writing session.

She could also set a timer so that she could write uninterruptedly for a given amount of time. That way she could not get distracted by wondering how far along she was in the word count. The best of course would be to have such confidence that one naturally had enough thoughts, ideas, and events at a sitting that one need not attend to time or word count.

Another idea was to make a word association list and then start making up little stories around some of those word groups. That was too much intellectual exercise for her though. Unless such things evoked or invoked affairs of the soul, they just seemed like dry practice.

2:03pm

She had had a chance to read up a bit on Charles Dickens. She wanted to know what his writing approach was. She knew he wrote for serial publication. There apparently were no clues left behind as to how he kept his story lines straight, she had heard. She read that he had burned his journals and letters not long before he died. She assumed that was why there were no records of his writing methods. It seemed he had a near photographic memory. That was very helpful in his writing.

Dickens engaged in many speaking/reading tours as a way to earn money not only for himself, if even that, but as a philanthropic activity. She loved the idea that one could write something and then use that to give performances with. That intrigued her as a possible direction to move in for herself.

That morning on the radio they had done a little piece in the news about a 'new' Shakespeare production that was actually being done just the way it would have been done in Shakespeare's time. All the roles were played by men. There was little in the way of scenery and props. Everything was in the performing. The producer explained that this meant greater audience participation because they had to imagine the details. As they heard the story recited by the actors, it was in the audience members' own imaginations that the story took place.

The wrimoer rememberd how her mother read to her from the thick volume of Grimms fairy tales. There were no pictures except for the head capital of each story.  That capital was very ornately decorated with perhaps a hint of illustration relating to the story. It was small. The text of the story was in 'fractur' German print. She was too young to be able to read then. She could just curl up in the safety of her mother with the book spread between them as her mother made the story come alive with her reading. There were usually ghastly endings to the stories. She already knew this was a different version of the story then other children knew. Perhaps she remembered this as being from a time before she could read because she could not read fractur, and therefor just associated it with not being able to read. How did she know of the regular versions of the stories? She was not going to nursery school yet. She did not have a tv. Where had she come across the regular versions?

Disney's movies. Snow White had been created when? She had had a little musical carpet sweeper that played "Whistle while you work" as she ran around with it as a three year old busily cleaning the floor. Over and over again. There was a Golden Book of the Disney version.

When had the movie Cinderella been made? She had a wonderful carousel cut-out book of the Cinderella story.
2:30pm

She had even searched for this book online. The book was such a magical creation. One opened the book and tied the covers back to back. Each double spread formed a different scene. There were papercut layers that stretched between the double spread pages like layers of scenery and actors in a stage set. Little tableaus.   She did not think the illustrations were part of a Disney movie. She had been able to find it online and had filed away the information. She wanted to see that again. She wanted to make a book like that. She had made a few simplistic cards like that but never anything as elaborate as this book.
2:36 pm

Now she was getting restless about her writing. The time was nearing that she ached to find out how much she had done. Unless she had written at a much faster pace though, she would not have reached her quota yet. Her writing rate meant she had to write straight for 72 minutes in order to make the quota.

She fished around in her mind for something else to consider  telling about or musing about. The cat that was not quite her cat yet, was at least comfortably at her side, having taken over the chair she usually sat in. He had answered her whistle readily that morning, appearing very wet from the rain they had been having. She had worried the night before because she'd seen reports there was to be snow. Apparently the reports were not  meant to be for the area she lived in. There was only rain out there and the quite wet cat.

Once upstairs he had not wanted the food left over from the previous day. Usually she turned that over to the crows and bluejays outside. He was not interested in dry food. He had been so spoiled by whatever other food he was getting elsewhere outside, that he was never interested in her dry food. She had to add water and wait for it to soak into the kibble. That took a few minutes. The cat lay waiting patiently on the kitchen floor for a little bit, and then went off to the chair to groom himself and go to sleep. He had been there ever since, for almost six hours.

2:47pm
She had read that some of the other wrimoers worked at their word targets and writing session by setting themselves to completing to certain targets within the story lines that they had plotted out. She envied their knowing what they would write about.

That morning she had even started telling herself a story in her imagination of a possible someone connected to Hansel and Gretel. It was simply a matter of this young sibling of theirs, (whether they had such a sibling she did not remember), going for a walk in the woods and of course getting lost. She had thought she might play with that in her writing that day, but she never got to trying that. Perhaps another day. Just now it seemed as if she had probably finished the time needed to complete her daily quota. And now there was just a bit of sun on the clouds that were separating to show bits of blue in the western sky. At last she could stop and check her word count.

2:55pm 1691 words 80 min = 21wpm