End of the Nanowrimo quest journey

Friday, 11/28/14 10:51 am

End of the Nanowrimo quest journey 

The Wrimoer finished breakfast and turned right to her laptop to begin working on what was probably her last day of working on her Nanowrimo project. She did not expect to finish in one sitting. She had a bit too much left of the 50000 words that had to be completed in order to finish the so called novel for National Novel Writing Month, the yearly November challenge that had been cooked up quite a few years ago to get people proving to themselves that they could write a novel in that amount of time, instead of leaving their desire to do so waiting forever on the back shelf of a closet. 

She had still cheated through her fourth attempt at the project, in that she felt she could hardly call it fiction. Everything she wrote was true, and happening around her, to her, or as she remembered. She did not identify herself specifically in the writing. She had no real name in the writing. That was how she felt perhaps she could call the writing fiction. It certainly felt like fiction in that sense. That was also what gave the experience of writing such a fascinating appeal to her, though it was also a queer experience. She was deliberately taking on the role of observer from a much more distant standpoint. It felt odd to step outside oneself in that way. One was so used to identifying with one’s experiences as one went through the day. Writing in this manner always made her go through the whole day with that point of view as if she was continuing to write the story all day.

The journey, or the quest, she supposed she could call it either, was coming to a close. What had she learned from it? Had she remembered to write anything she could think of that she was learning? Sometimes during her writing she did not want to write anything that would require her to stop and think. She kept her focus on trying to write without stopping – simply to plow through to get the required word amount done. It was hard to squash that impulse to be able to think and write, think and write. One would not sit talking with someone in this manner – just talking, talking, talking. Storytelling was another matter. There one did have to be able to spin a story non-stop, but in a way that kept the audience or the listener listening, spellbound. She doubted she had been able to do that. She was sure that most of her written blather was quite boring. That thought had made her want to give up the challenge so often. She had not been able to see what one really could learn from doing this project if one had completed it once before. Once one had proven to oneself that one could do it, why did one need to prove it again? If one had a real plan for a story, or one knew how to make up a long story, then it was perhaps a good idea. But if one had already proven to oneself that one could write that quantity of words, then why could one not just write the rest of the year round at a slower pace and get one’s novel writing done that way? Her real challenge was that she could still hardly conceive of how to go about making up a story big enough for a novel. That had to be too big a project to begin with. It would seem one would have to learn by starting off small. One should practice at coming up with short stories to begin with. She wondered of authors of long ago had started off by writing short stories. Had they practiced that way or had they plunged right in to write a long work?

The night before when she had updated the spreadsheet in which she kept track of her writing, and she could see the results of where she stood with the writing progress, it had finally looked so easy just to get 50K words written. That was still hardly the challenge. How did one learn to make up a story? One idea that came to her for learning how to write a novel was to take perhaps a mystery she had read, and use it as a template. Rewrite it perhaps. Take its basic structure and substitute different characters, settings, and events. She did want to try that. Another idea was to take a set of what she was calling ‘story cards’, shuffle them up and write the outline or story from that arrange them. ‘Story cards’ was an idea she had been toying with for quite awhile for her art classes but had yet to really use. For the art classes they were not ‘story’ cards but ‘art’ cards. Make a deck of about 50 cards on which one had written as many art elements as one could think of. One could then pull from the deck randomly for a set of parameters to make one’s artistic choices in creating a piece of art or an art exercise. ‘Story cards’ were similar to this. Instead of art elements, they would be made up of certain kinds of characters or roles, places, settings, actions, emotions, problems. As soon as she had thought of this, she had realized this was basically what Tarot cards were. It had struck her long ago that this was what the Bible was for – a huge collection of stories from which one could pull stories that fed the soul or kept a group of people bound together in the act of listening to the stories. A leader did not have to come up with new stories but had only to work from the stories collected in the bible. In popular music there was such a book called a ‘Fake Book’. It contained a huge selection of popular music that a musician could entertain a small audience with, or that a piano player could use for a group of people gathered around a piano singing.

11:38 am 1027 words 47 minutes 21.85 wpm 

Break

Resume 2:58 pm

The sun was about to drop. The Wrimoer had not yet reconnected with her sister as they had intended. The Wrimoer had realized she did not at all want to be on the phone during any part of the daylight hours. She was even reluctant to take up that last bit of time with the writing. But wt least with the writing she could do it while looking out the window. She supposed she could do that while she spoke on the phone too. It was not the same though because in a conversation one needed to be listening. In the writing one did not need to be listening other than to ones own thoughts. 

During her break she had gotten herself ready for the day at last, and also written at length in her journal, always by hand. She was getting confused between what was written where and when. Sometimes she wrote her thoughts and stories in both places. 

While writing the journal, she had thought she heard the sound of the cat padding across the porch a few times. It was a sound she was not that sure of. It seemed too quiet to be a person. Looking out at the snowy front yard, she saw the cat’s tracks heading out across the street. The prints came from the driveway area crossed the front of the building then headed to the street. There were no return prints. She was conflicted. It seemed too early to call him home. But if it had been him passing along the porch a few times, then had he wanted to come in? The traffic also seemed a bit heavy to try to call him in. She preferred to let him stay out as long as possible before getting him in for the night. That meant quite a wait too until traffic was slower. She had to remind herself that when he really wanted to come in, he came to the house in wait of when he could come in. He might also wait up by the neighbor’s house. She often saw him jump down from a spot over there and come racing home.

She had gone down anyway to check on him. She only gave a couple whistles. The rival cat showed up. She gave that cat some food. After he had finished, (she was still there waiting in case her cat showed up), the rival cat looked up at her behind the storm door. She ached to be able to let him in from the cold. This cat did not have the long thick fur that her cat had. She prayed that the rival cat’s fur would get thick soon. This cat had come from some experience being inside and often acted as if it wanted to come in.  

She was pausing to think too much instead of writing. It was the last stretch of scraping the barrel for something to say. This was like a filibuster. Anything to fill the space and keep up the words.

Just as she wrote she hear a sound that sounded like cat cry. She looked up in time to see two creatures race across the wooded area across the way. It was a cat in hot pursuit of a squirrel. It was her cat. The squirrel was safe. She would go down for the cat

3:21 pm break 1600 words

3:26 pm resume

It had been a dog’s high bark she had heard. She heard more of that dog’s barks as she shut down the laptop before going down for the cat. 

Downstairs she saw the cat was now back in the yard on the other side of the house and heading up to that spot she often saw him jump down from. She whistled and waved to him. Opened and closed the door thinking he might not know where her whistling came from and this might catch his attention. She called out to him several times, “Come on!” He paid her no mind. He had jumped up to the spot and seemed engrossed in eating or drinking something. At least he was back on this side of the road, for now.

Had she not started to tell what, if anything, she had learned from this writing project, or had she already told that? There was nothing in this writing she could properly keep track of. It was not like a stack of papers or a notebook one could leaf back through to see what one had written already. One might repeat oneself several times. She supposed that was ok. One did that in one’s conversations.

She had never been able to understand the people she spoke with who tended to repeat things immediately, sometimes several times over. This was not just drunk people who did it. Now that she thought of it, it had been a while since she had come across that. 

She saw the mailman coming down the sidewalk with the mail. She would listen for the sound of any mail delivery he might bring. He had delivered the shopping flyers the day before Thanksgiving already. She had not yet taken a good look at them, except to know there was no Friday special on roast chickens. It seemed quite a while since that store had offered that. The big box store had it as a regular item. She had not tried theirs and would put off doing so. It was enough to have it just when it came up by surprise at the grocery store. Between the two grocery stores, this store had the better. The big box store’s was an unknown. She so disliked the new big box store that she bought as little as possible there.

3:47 pm 1994 words

There had been no sound of the mailman’s dropping mail through her slot. Usually she could hear that if he had put anything through.

She would have to do some fast thinking to have other projects to replace this writing project. It would be interesting to see what the effects would be of finishing this. She hoped she would not feel obliged to try this challenge again.

She wanted to brainstorm lists of possible projects to work on and that she could jump back and forth between. Perhaps it was as simple as committing one’s self to doing 1 – 1 ½ hours on an almost daily basis of some creative activity of any kind. She had been finding that it was very good to do this before getting involved with any social media browsing or participating in a day. To be involved with one’s own creative ventures first was like the dictum to ‘pay oneself first’. It made her feel very good to operate this way.

She also wanted to brainstorm a list of things to do while deciding what to do. She had made such a list a long time ago, and had kept it attached to the side of her fridge. Once she wrote it, she never referred to it, or even followed its advice. She needed such a reminder again, at least to use until it was second nature to follow such a reminder. She had packed away the old list when she moved. 

It did not look like there were going to be any revelations or resolutions to the last parts of this writing. Life would go on as before. That endless cycle and repetition did scare her. The artists and authors who lived to old ages while adding to the world’s stores of creative ventures and explorations, which were private at the same time that they were public, gave her so much hope.

4:04 pm had she been hearing a message come through on her message machine? 2331 words. 

She would go check again and try to get the cat in again.

Break

4:21 pm resume

The cat had come racing in this time as soon as the Wrimoer whistled for him. He came from somewhere by the little boardwalk leading up to her porch. This walkway had a line of juniper trees running along side it at the bottom of the little embankment. The cat also often waited in the leaves and brush down there. 

He came in purring for his dinner, ate a bit of it, then settled himself on her mattress on the floor where she slept. He was in for the night, or so she hoped. She would go down later to put out more food for the rival cat.

Back to the question of what she had learned this time around. She wanted to make sure that she got something of her own creative venture done, a completed whole of anything, the day after her week’s classes. 

It did not really matter if it was done on that day, but she was not yet trusting herself to get it done sometime during the days off between classes. If she could find other ways to make sure she would, that would be good. Why might she have a problem getting this done if she did not have a way to make sure she did? Why could she not trust herself? 

Because she turned it into something that HAD to be done? Or because she had too many strictures on just how or what it was she needed to do? This was why she wanted a list of things to choose from – so that she could keep it playful rather than as something that had to be. Her main reason for feeling like it had to be was that she got upset with the feeling that time was passing so and that she was treading water. When she took care of her own creative desires, the passage of time was not a problem. Then it became more of a miracle.

She knew too that, if she were taking care of her own creative venture needs and desires, she was ready and eager to have her classes, eager to get ready for them in the mornings. When she was eager to get ready for them, it was easier to get ready for them. 

She could continue to play and experiment with ways to sell her productions online. It need never be carried out all the way if she thought it would create too much headache. Such things could always be taken off the table and not offered further. 

The lights in the back parking lot were off again for some reason – at 4:40 pm. It was pitch dark out there. She would try to remember to keep watch to see if they came on at a certain time. With the iciness out there that was a dangerous condition. 

She looked to see if the streetlight was on. There had been quite a build up of ice on one of the power lines strung between the streetlight and the side of her building close to the back. That line had looked like it was hanging very low. Standing up she could see that the backyard was lit, just not as well as she thought it usually was. There were times when the tree trunks were lit up. Now it seemed as if only the ground was lit. Perhaps it was because she did not usually have the light on in the bay window as she did now while writing. Usually she looked out this window from a darkened living room. She was not usually sitting in this spot during the evening. 

What final words could she say as she finished up the writing? What other big thing had she learned from this? She did finally have the experience of seeing it was possible to write a novel in not too long a time. She had two ideas of things to try should she decide to try it. She also saw how good it was to have specific goals to work towards bit by bit, but at the same time the importance of making small completions on a consistent basis.

4:56 pm 3048 words

Sounded like the heater just went out. She needed to check whether it was one light or both lights

4:58 pm the green light was still on.