"They were like Hansel and Gretel's trail through the woods."
Fri 11/29/13 7:39 pm

The Wrimoer had left off writing for a week. She had gotten very much under the weather around then and let everything stop. Now as she had expected that she could simply transcribe her actual longhand journal entries to use as excerpts to insert into the Nano writing. But even that seemed too complicated at the moment. There was lots of writing that had taken place in the journal over the month. But transcribing would still mean having to go through the journal to choose what could be transcribed or not. It was looking like she was going to let this one go, even though she had gotten this close to finishing the challenge. Last she looked she had around 8000 words left. She felt  too drained to do it though. For the moment she would just try with one more half hour timer setting.

The timer was set. She was writing about the moment again, in which nothing much was happening.

Thanksgiving Day was over with. She had had nice plans to visit a family with whom she used to spend the holiday until a few years ago. She would prepare her two dishes that were very personally traditional to her. These were dishes that she had figured out the recipes to because she loved them a lot. They came from the family where she used to spend Thanksgivings with during her college and Philadelphia years. That family had been a home base from her old New Jersey home, until they moved to Long Island. After her own family moved from New Jersey to Michigan, she would travel back to the old home town to this family. Her best friend would travel home all the way from college in St. Louis.

That family then moved to Long Island, NY. Her best friend moved back to the NY area to continue college there. They would both converge at  the new Long Island home, from Philly and NYC, for Thanksgivings. These wonderful dishes her friend's mother made, were mashed orangey  sweet potatoes . and a whole cranberry orange sauce. The Wrimoer had until first tasting these dishes, not liked either sweet potatoes or cranberry sauce.

It was for a Christmas dinner back with her own family in Michigan that she wanted to try these special dishes. She was acting as caretaker for her siblings, while their mother was off on a long visit to Europe. She had decided she wanted to try to replicate the dishes. She had no idea how she figured out how to make the dishes besides her friend's mother having given a rough description of what was in the dishes. The Wrimoer tried what she could. Both dishes tasted as much like what she had remembered and expected. She was very pleased with herself for having figured this out. The dish had been a success as well. Had she yet written down the recipes?

For several years she continued to make the dishes for every Thanksgiving and Christmas if she was cooking. Always just working by memory and eyeball measurements. She always believed that cooking and painting were very similar.

At some point she decided she should write down some form of instructions for the dishes. Her measurements were descriptions of the eyeball measurements., not even the commonly held measuring instruments. The cooking always yielded good results.

Every year that she made the dishes, she had made a note account of the cooking process. What time the prep started, what time something went on the heat, what time was this aspect ready. how long had this cooked, etc. She had a stack of these cooking preparation cards/notes going back to 1998.

8:10 pm - alarm, but the device had been open and did not ring. Reset.

The Wrimoer had somewhat promised to bring her dishes for the large Thanksgiving gathering. But she had not started the work in the daylight hour. When she came in the kitchen to start her task, she had lost all enthusiasm for it. Earlier in the day she had been ready for it. She had let herself get sidetracked though and then just could not face it.

It could have been more than that though. The last few years she had grown used to being home alone on Thanksgiving. She had found the day so special and peaceful, unlike any other day. Only perhaps Christmas and Easter were like this where she lived. Once everyone had driven off to the various destinations of celebration, the atmosphere outside became so quiet and still. It had such a peace about it. She loved to feel that atmosphere. One could not feel it when one was in the middle of a hubbub. Two years ago, she had spent almost the whole day writing for the Nano project, though she had not expected to.

She suspected that she also just did not want to go to the celebration, much as she wanted to see everyone. The thought of having to get ready in the morning, and then to be there with all those people, much as she loved people, just felt like too much for her. She called her friends and cancelled the plans. Then of course she felt guilty for having done so.

On Thanksgiving, she continued to feel guilty but was happy that she had cancelled. By afternoon, she was ready to try the cooking. She knew she would have to start while things were still sunny out, or the dark of the hour would kill her motivation. That was so odd for her in Maine. In NYC there was never any problem for her to be doing things at night and way into the night. Maine however shut down at night. She never wanted to do anything at night in Maine.

Perhaps that was part of the problem here for her. After twenty years, she still could not get used to how limited and small everything felt in Maine. Once she had moved here, it was just too much trouble to go back to where she had come from. She could never figure out what could be a good compromise. In NYC the cost of living was so high. In Maine, one could have much more access to nature. That came at a hefty price. Just as she wished to go out to public spaces where there would be a diversity of people, there did not seem to be such places in Maine. Everyone seemed to gather with their own types of people.

There were the monthly art nights where a certain demographic came out on the town to mill through the galleries, and see, and be seen. These were the people who frequented the upscale restaurants. for the most part. What she could afford for just being out in public, one of the fast food places, was mostly only populated by another kind of demographic, but also limited in its way.

People travelled in their cars by themselves. One ran into a diversity of people when one went grocery shopping or to the big box store.  She had been disappointed long ago with the shopping experience at the local Main Street shops.

She was nearing the end of what she had to write about. She knew she did not have near enough material written. There was one more day in which to finish the challenge. She would see what would happen the next day with her writing. She had intended for this day to try for at least one writing session with the timer but had managed two. It would at least leave that much less to do tomorrow if she was going to try then too. She would see.

She wanted to see what more she could pull down from her social network comments. There had to be a fair amount of writing there by now. She still found this to to a foolish exercise for her

8:41 pm alarm reset

to have spent her time on. There she had reset the alarm. Her typing was too often coming out garbled now. She wanted to stop.

This day the Wrimoer had also cancelled her plans to participate in a local craft fair where she would have sold some of her artwork. This cancellation was on the same order as cancelling going out to Thanksgiving.

The craft fair would have meant getting up much earlier than she was used to in her daily routine, which was not such a good routine. She did not have on hand the inventory she felt she needed to have on hand. For a while that day she had thought perhaps she would be ok just taking orders at the craft fair. But then even that just did not make enough sense for her. It was all too sporadic, a one off thing rather than something happening on a fairly regular basis that could develop some kind of rhythm to it. No, there was more to it then that. All of these things, the cooking for dinners and transporting the food, the preparing products and transporting to a craft fair at which one might or might not sell the products - they all required so much preparation and lugging around - for too little payoff. Whether that payoff was how meaningful the interpersonal interactions were or how much business one did.. She felt there had to be better ways.

Recently a card order had come from her website. It had been strange for her. The order had been prepaid. The Wrimoer had a few products on her website that a visitor could pay for in advance, but as far as she could remember, these were products one could simply download as a digital product. Where was it that someone could pay for a specific product from her site? She had hoped she was making the expected product for the order. The materials had been on hand to make that product. Since she now had no car at her disposal, and also no printer, there was no easy means for her to make the product if she did not have on hand what she needed. She had managed to get it to the post office right away. The person had not figured in any shipping charge. The Wrimoer just let that one go. It had been quite a bit of work for a small product to make it, package, and walk to the post office with it in the very cold weather. But the small amount of money had gone into her digitaly payment account. She now had that much more in it than she had before.

Several weeks before that, at the end of the summer, she had gotten a request about notecards of a particular image. In this case the Wrimoer had already long ago made that image into a digital product that customers could pay for and print at home with their own equipment. She had made this in hopes that she could steadily build up a line of such products and not have to do the production work. In this case the customer had liked the image but wanted to buy the actual card. The Wrimoer directed her to the digital product. No, the customer did not find the product looked as good as what she was seeing on her screen. The Wrimoer had told her it would be awhile before she had gathered a collection of four images that went together well enough. And then the Wrimoer had forgotten about the question.

A month or more later the customer asked if she had found a solution yet and said she only needed one card. The Wrimoer was torn between the wish to accommodate the customer and the practicality  or feasibility of dealing with such a small one shot request. One card was still just a $3.00 item. She had had a chance to look around and see a little bit what other people were doing for single cards. She was not crazy about the options. It still seemed like too much work/time/effort to be spending on such a little item unless one was moving several at a time. Even then, the Wrimoer would not have time to deal with such things if there were several such orders coming in. It all just did not make business sense or common sense. Perhaps to have someone else handling it, or if it could be automated. But she explored some ideas.

She found a place she could order a printed card and have it shipped.
9:11p reset
She was not sure if the terms of this business allowed such a thing though. She would have to reread the terms. This was from a huge company. They offered such a product for far less than all the others did, even undercutting the price their own actual supplier produced the product for. She had ordered a card for herself to see how it turned out. She made this option available to the customer. Told her that she would place order for her and the price would be $5.95 but she was not to pay for it until she received it and knew she liked it.  It took a few days to arrive. The card looked nice. It also came with a packing sheet that listed what her cost had been. It was much lower that what the Wrimoer was charging. The Wrimoer wondered what the customer would be seeing for a packing slip. But this was no secret that a profit needed to be made. The customer had not let the Wrimoer know that the card had gotten to her, and neither had the Wrimoer asked. It almost seemed too silly to bother over what had only cost her $2.00 to produce.

Finally on this day, the Wrimoer decided she had better invoice for the cards. She did so.  She offered that the card could be paid for by check, or by digital payment. This had all taken time to write up, to ponder just how to act on the issue. The customer wanted to make an online payment. The Wrimoer wrote an invoice through the online payment system. And then in minutes, she received notification that the transaction had been paid. Her digital payment system reflected the payment and now there was just a bit more money in the account.

That had been a gleeful moment for the Wrimoer. She knew it was a game, a silly game. The actual value of what had just transpired was so out of balance. But she was letting herself be seduced by thinking that it could work in a way that was good for both parties. Did she have time to sit around making such little things on a continual basis for people? It was one thing to make something that would be of use to people over and over again, that would get such use. But these little dribs and drabs of small exchanges? It was a seductive game. She had to watch out for it eating into that rare commodity of the time one had for things.

Why did one think one had to spend November writing a novel, or something like it? Once one had learned one could do something to that effect, what was the point of doing it again? On knew one could do it. Did one really produce anything of value in that time frame? If you knew you could do it, it did not need to happen in November. It did not need to take only one month. If one were serious about writing a novel, one would take the time one needed to. One did not have to wait for that month in which to do it. One did not need to be doing it along with others. If one wanted to write a novel, one went ahead and did it.

Perhaps one could call the fruits of November writing with those constraints, simply November novels. And were they just November Novels because of their prefixes. Was that even why they were to be written in November?

She hoped she had enough written at this sitting that if she truly did want or expect to finish this it would be somewhat doable.

How odd to have such a feeling of 'Bingo' over that little sale, that had it occurred at one of her craft fairs, would mean nothing. It was perhaps the potential that seemed to be lurking - there could be lots of little sales like this... She had to keep reminding herself - they were useless if they were not automated or handled by someone else. If she looked at it rationally, she had to see that it was not sustainable, it was not a viable business model. But so seductive. She had gotten so off track again.

9:41 pm alarm, reset

The previous day the Wrimoer had gone through a dark spell, where she just could not see a way out of things. What did she want to do with herself? Of feeling so stuck with what she felt was available to her. Then she'd remembered something she thought she still wanted to do, and that she felt needed doing. She still wanted to write/produce some kind of children's book that had a local appeal. Something dealing with at least one animal and a local spot. There was a need for such books for all the visitors that came to the places around here. She had seen what was out there. There was not that much with good pictures. There were a few nice books with dogs, and only one book with decent cat illustrations in it. This in a time when people loved cats. Most of the Maine books with dogs were very poorly done. It did not matter. People wanted books about the places they visited. The Wrimoer had a rough idea of at least one storybook she wanted to do. This was something she needed to sink her teeth into.

What she had liked so much about doing Nanowrimo, was a) it needed to be done almost every day. Even that did not need to be. But in doing the work one could watch one's efforts pile up, add up. Aha! That was what the 'bingo' had been about the little payments coming in to the online payment system. They started to add up. It was not the actual money, but that it was the watching something grow aspect of it.  To translate a work effort so that it would have those same enjoyable effects of getting seeing one's efforts grow. How did one do that with in another medium - how did one track it so that it was a bit like a game and gave one that little boost?

That was what got her started with doing the paintings of  local Maine scenes, It was the stack of paintings that started growing, and taking on the appearance of a book in the making. That had made her keep on with it.

Aach - she had just had and lost a glimmer of an insight. Hopefully it would return shortly. Now what could she think of while she also hoped it would return. One never knew how these things came and went..

There - it was like knitting. She thought she had said these things elsewhere before. But, this she believed was why people so enjoyed knitting. It was a thrill to watch something appear, to grow, out of the ends of one's hands. At first one just had those few rows of knitting and one had so much to knit before it could have any substance to it. But there came the day when there started to appear something. It was a magic, a slow magic. It came from a seed within - one should remember that. Just the impulse, the desire, to make it was what started it. From there one had to keep at it for a little while to get it to the point where it had any kind of presence. At last one could put it all together.

The Wrimoer used to knit. She did not remember where, when, why, or how she had stopped knitting. She thought it was probably when she had had a wonderful heather blue yarn for an aran fisherman knit sweater she was making for herself. She and her mother had found the yarn in Maine one summer. It had that lanolin smell to it. But someone, probably her mother, had miscalculated how much would be needed. Her mother had bought a yarn that went with the other, but not in a workable way. Not in a way for a knitter who was not

10:11pm alarm, reset?

so experienced as to be able to figure out how to make this work. The yarn was a much lighter color and weight. The problem was just too big for her to solve. The poor sweater moved from apartment to apartment with her, She had gotten quite a bit done before having realized the degree of the problem. The sweater got hidden away in the depths of a storage section in the Wrimoer's captain's bed. Sometimes she would take it out and think she could solve the problem. This was just over her head though. She had not knitted again. She did not remember what had happened to the yarn or the knitting. She had probably thrown it away during one of her moves. Perhaps before coming to Maine. She did not know.

One could not do all things though. The night before there had been an interview with the singer Linda Ronstadt. She either had written a book or recorded an album. It had to have been a book she had written. The singer had Parkinson's and was unable to sing anymore. She could not control her voice the way she needed to. One of the other things she said she had to give up was knitting. She had loved to knit. Ronstadt was very philosophical about the whole matter. She sounded prepared to see whatever was in store for her. She had enjoyed all the experiences she had had in her musical career. Now it was a matter of what took place in the day to day of this kind of existence. It was another aspect of life to be lived. She had sounded very much at peace with how things were, and how the would be.

As the Wrimoer wrote, with every half hour's timer ringing, the ringer had startled her. She had reset the timer each time with the stipulation that she did not need to go as far as the timer. She could stop when she wanted. Why did she set it in that case? She thought it helped her continue somehow. She had not al all expected to go this long writing. But she had found things she wanted to tell, though they may have been boring, inconclusive, and uninspired. At least she had told bits of her stories for the recent days. She had rambled quite a bit she believed. Had she even finished any one story or idea? She might find that out whenever she returned to reread.

Writing  longhand in the journal was different because she simply wrote the way she wanted to. She stopped to think and remember, to follow up on what she still wanted to tell, though she was probably only telling it to herself. It had become such a habit, no, a need  to do it. There would be times that she would start out saying she did not want to get into detail about something just yet. Then she would just write a few words that she meant to serve as reminders or notes to herself. And then she could not help it, she found herself writing it all anyway. She usually spent hours a day writing by hand that way.

She wanted to try recording herself reading the longhand writing just to see how that would come out. It would require too much searching for what was interesting. She still found her journals useful. They told her where she had been.  She liked that about them. They were like Hansel and Gretel's trail thru the woods - in pebbles, though, not with breadcrumbs which the birds ate up.

Now she really was needing to stop, but the timer was too close to going off. She did not think she would be surprised by it this time. Now she was aching for it to ring, as she thought she really did not want to write anymore. She had not even touched the tea that she had at her side. It was a fancy black tea one of her students had brought her. An Oolong. It must have been cold for hours now. Even as she wrote waiting for that alarm to go off, she could not bring herself to touch the tea yet. There were just those last few minutes to be typing away with the monkeys, producing words of almost nonsense.

So, that had been the second time she had thought she could try transcribing from her journals.

10:41 pm alarm at last! - that was it. She had written for 3 hours. Now she could check the word count. She guessed that she had done 4140 words? She would soon find out.
4255 words! 23.6 wpm