This year Nanowrimo has been a different experience than 2009. Where do stories spring from? The Muse, which all writers hope visits, The first six days I was just riffing along, writing whatever came. But yesterday, something really opened up when I added a slight shift in the POV. It was Valdez who taught me to start with an opener and then the end, then write the between at least for short storys. Oddly, this is the first time that I am going to write like that on “Dreamstime.”
There are very difficult things going on in my life right now, so writing is grounding and helping the focus. It’s almost an escape from the rest of it. Yesterday was great, pure flow, but I didn’t eat all day so Boy and I went to the beach, then the market and got a few things. I have raspberries for breakfast! Which is good. The intensity of the focus is getting the 1667 words per day. No matter what. You just keep going.
Today I know I am going to write about a Christmas, a very special Christmas, once. The book is about love and survival after loss. The way I’m writing it is almost like in college where we used to cut and paste in a way? Geez. It’s coming out in segments and those can be cut and pasted later. I’m going to open a new document for that — to paste into — now that I have the beginning and the end. I really feel that i do have those two things now. It ends on a note of hope for the reader, which I like. I was thinking it would be a morality tale, but no. It’s a survival tale.
So, somehow the story burst forth yesterday. More from the story I started a different way a long time ago, Man in the Moon.
Ended here yesterday, like this sense of closure, cried through some passages yesterday, have to look back but here is start of the crux, in a way:
His arms were the greatest peace I’ve ever known. His arms wrapping around me and holding me tight, like this jacket I’ve kept that belonged to him. It no longer holds his scent but a few years ago I got it out of the trunk and I put it on when I was cold. I walked the beach looking at the breakers and he was with me.
“You’re going to be all right, baby.”
I heard him tell me that, and the whisper came from the clouds and the seafoam and the rustle of the cattails that grow by the shore. I think I can face the letters now, so much later. I can face them because I want to tell you our story. Because, after one story, there is another story and they follow themselves throughout our lives, the crisscrossed windowpanes that we look through, the kaleidoscopes of emotion. The torrents of love.
Okay, back later. I think the book is about how to survive loss and keep going? I think so.
Have to get on a better schedule for eating, because burning candle at both ends — working very hard to get 1667 per, yesterday had 2002, so fab! Yesterday was first easy day. When I wrote Heart of Clouds it was a very different process than this one — but I think the material comes as it does, when it does and in this state of focus and not planning htere is an opening from the unconcious — the material flows from there.
Back later! Coffee! srsly.
Muse song for today, one of my allt time faves, from Louis Armstrong:
There was something that happened yesterday and it was like Fante to me. Fante’s Ask the Dust. Same kind of story in a way. Love and loss, and truth on the page. Very hard to get at that truth. It takes a lot out of the writer, trust me.
xxoo!
Adrienne
Update:
never try and deal with outsie problems or the phone when trying to write — was off to a start on good note and then phone rang & world intruded — so much stree, no help, system crashed a sign to do a backup asap on novel — can email copy to self, christ, so diff without support and help — it really is, almost impossible to have gone all these years by myself like this. Very diff morning. it’s now 11 o’clock, exhausted already. But didn’t lose book so that is good. Geez.
hey limebird! thanks for liking my post, my inner editor is going to leave the mistakes in the graf above because they really reflect the chaotic! xxoo! back on track can edit later — the rule for this year, no kidding. Editing is easy, grab the flow while you have it — has huge blog post but no novel writing yet. FACE THE PAGE! ❤ xxoo!
Update! very happy am at 1805 today, 12,496 today…
Excerpt:
The tree was the last of the magic the two of us made, as if the little twinkling lights were the last of the time that surrounded us with the magic of the bubble that was not real life. Love is like that, when you are in it. Sometimes it’s a bubble of illusion, and sometimes it can be a bubble of pain. What I want to tell you are the beautiful parts. He would want me to. There is only one way I can do that. I’m going to have to show you our letters. I’m going to have to show you all of them, because we lived inside what we created. What we made was a work of art, in text. I want to show you the one about the cat first, that he sent me. But first I have to show you the advertisement I placed, while I was sitting alone in my little bed of dreams in the little white room where I lived once upon a time.
Let me start at the beginning again.
I wanted to be in love.
VALENTINE BONNAIRE - WRITER 