The Elusive Bird

It was many years ago that I first stumbled across a quotation, and instantly fell in love with it. "Hope begins in the dark. The stubborn hope that if you just show up and do the right thing, the dawn will come." It was attributed to Anne Lamott, but I had no idea who that was.

About a year later, after I'd scribbled that quote on everything under the sun, after I'd recited it a thousand times to friends who felt helpless, and reminded myself of it, I was wandering through the library and a name jumped out at my from a shelf. Anne Lamott, staring at me from the spine of a book called Blue Shoe.

Wonderful, wonderful book. My library didn't have anything else that she'd written, so  for a while, she fell off my radar.

Another year and a half passed and I found the writers forum. What should my eyes stumble across in my first week there? Someone recommending Bird By Bird: some thoughts on writing and life, by, you guessed it, Anne Lamott. Did this woman know me personally? She wrote good books AND wrote for writers? Wow, how great! I was in a new city in a new state. Maybe some of her books are at this library. Coincidentally, the only one they had was Bird by Bird. Unfortunately, it was checked out and had a waiting list of 13 people. I added my name to the list. Finally, almost 8 months later, my name came up, I got the book, but  at that time I was in the midst of moving. I only read half of it before it was time for me to leave the state and return the book.

I moved back in a place where the library doesn't have it. I wanted to buy it, but my budget didn't allow it. I moved again, and found a library with some of Anne Lamott's novels (Rosie, Crooked Little Heart, Imperfect Birds) so I was temporarily satisfied.

Then, I signed up to take a writing class this fall at my college. What did my professor assign as a textbook? BIRD BY BIRD!

I'm thrilled. I immediately buy it. Two days later I recieve an email comfirming a returned payment. The bookstore I bought it from didn't have it in stock and had decided not to restock it. Fine. My local Barnes and Noble doesn't have it. I go online to Amazon. I found the paperback immediately, but I wanted, still want, a hardback. It took a little digging but I found it. I ordered it. It arrived on my doorstep. I opened the package, smiling because I knew what was inside.

Out fell a paperback.

I couldn't figure out how to exchange it for the proper format, so I returned it for a refund, and bought it again. What if it happens again? I'm nervous. I still haven't got the book. I'm nervous. Anne Lamott, you are one tough ol' bird to get hold of.

But I love you. Come invade my bookshelves with all of your wonderfulness.

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On a short Story

Remember me talking AGES ago about a little story called Mr. Buttons?

Well I finally finished writing it. I edited it down to fit into NPR's Three Minute Fiction contest. I went to submit it. Re-read the submissions guidlines and came across these horrible words.

entries must be received by 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on January 23, 2011.

I looked at the date and time on my computer. "January 24, 2011. 2:02 a.m."

I wanted to cry, or die, or throw something. TWO HOURS! I MISSED THE CONTEST BY TWO HOURS! Well, if you want to be REALLY specific, two hours and three minutes.


I'm taking a film class this semester, a production class. One of our assignments is to make a short, 3-5 minute film. Three minute story can be translated into a three minute film, right? I'm going to make it so. Mr. Buttons will soon be a short movie. I can't guarantee the quality of any of it. I'm new at this. But Damned if I'm not going to do something fantastic with Mr. Buttons, and do it soon. It'll take some editing to turn it into a movie script rather than a prose piece, but it'll work. I've already got it halfway done.

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NaNoWriMo 2010: Week Four

Today marks the end of Week Four of NaNoWriMo, and I am starting to really feel proud of myself, in a peaceful way that I hadn't felt throughout the rest of this. Up until this point I was excited (which I still am!) and it made my pride probably unbearable for everyone else. Now I'm sort of just calmly reminding myself that I've got this in the bag (which I have!) and that this novel is going to be great (I hope.)

Believe it or not, until this week I hadn't actually started the most important part of my plot. Up until about Wednesday, everything was just build up. I can already see that a lot of what I wrote is going to end up being cut. Sarah had been slowly decending into insanity a bit already, but the things that push her really over the edge only started recently. Friday night, actually, is when I wrote that first scene. From the beginning i was so eager to write that scene, and I've finally written it, and it felt like gold. I managed to write 1749 words in only 45 minutes. For those of you who don't know, that's fast. I can type that fast on any day, but to actually create that fast, to choose the right words, and build a scene that fast..... I impressed myself.

I'm still right on track for winning, and I love that I can say that. Last year, as I've probably already mentioned I didn't make it even to 14k. Not even halfway. This year, I'm going to win it, and be very proud of myself for writing 50k in a month. My novel wont be finished, and I'm going to try and keep myself going at the same rate through much of December if I can, or until the novel gets finished. It's starting to look like it's going to be somewhere upwards of 100k. I'd hazard a guess at around 125k, but I can't say for certain. The 47k that I've already written was supposed to only be about half that length, so I wouldn't trust that number.

I'm rambling aren't I? But this past week there hasn't been anything noteworthy. THe words flowed from my fingers with very little effort. I even managed to exceed my word-count goal on Thanksgiving, and in truth I didn't expect to write at all that day. But one minute I'd sit down, and the next I'd be nearing 2000 words and I be like "hmm, how did that happen?"

I love when I get into a flow like this, but it's also a bit scary. Just like a coffee-high or a sugar-high, it's going to eventually be followed by one of the most painful crashes. But you know what? I wouldn't trade this writers-high for the world, even if it does come with a crash later on. Because of this high, I'm thinking I might just win NaNo this evening. I haven't started writing today, and there are still two days left after today, and I've only got 3000 words left to write before I can officially call myself a winner. I can do that. I did more than that on Day One. My goal now is to write as much as possible before Midnight on the 30th. See how much I really can do.

And then I can start planning for next year.

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NaNoWriMo: Week Two

So if you read my last post, about my baby sister (forgive me, my teenage sister) you'll know that I mentioned to her that I had hit a bit of a block.

My problem was that I was SO READY to jump forward to January (on the book's timeline, that is.) The scene that I have been DYING to write since I started takes place right after the kids (remember, it's set in a second grade classroom) come back from Christmas/Winter/Holiday break. Last week I was totally ready to jump from September AAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL the way to January, but there were a few other key scenes that I would be skipping that were important to the plot. It made me want to stop writing, because I didn't want to skip those scenes, but I also didn't want to write them.

Talking to my sister, knowing she wrote all that bunches of writing, made me want to write. She pulled me out of my block, and I had a FIVE-THOUSAND WORD DAY! Now to some, that might not be a lot. I have talked to a couple of other WriMos (or whatever the most accepted term is) who managed to write 10 or even 15k on day one. So I guess to them 5k isn't grand.

But it sure as hell is for me. So I managed to get past those scenes, I realized that there are a couple of other scenes I'm exited to write, and all in all, I've gotten past the dreaded "Week Twos" which are apparently a common problem (see, I never knew that until now)

More importantly, last year, I only managed to write 13,885 words (I thought it was 13,500 ish but I checked this morning) over the whole course of last Novemeber. This year, though I thought it would be awesome to reach 50k, I didn't think I would be able to do it. So my unofficial goal was to reach and beat my score from last year.

I've beaten it. And I've gotten far enough ahead of the game that I anticipate everything going smoothly from here on out. I reached 25,000 on Saturday. According to the "schedule" I didn't have to reach that until, well, today, Monday. So I'm confident now that I can win this thing!

I hit a bit of writers block earlier this week, but once again I'm back on track. I just keep telling myself: I will win NaNoWriMo this year. This upcoming week is going to be full of distractions: My birthday, the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1, my Dad's birthday. (along with all the regular things like college stuff, and working awful hours.) But I think I can do it.

How has your week two been?

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Contagious

I've been writing my whole life, and when we were younger, I used to read my stories to my two little sisters. Sometimes, the older one would start to write her own version of the story. Usually, so that she didn't "copy" me, she'd change the names of the characters, but other than that, same story. I thought it was cute. She used to do a LOT of things in imitation of me, most of which drove me crazy. This one never bothered me.

But eventually she outgrew that. Stopped "borrowing" my plots, stopped re-naming my characters, and so far as I knew, stopped writing entirely.

I live 800 miles away, so usually I don't get to hear all the little details of her life. I'll ask "How's school going?" "good." "What have you been up to lately?" "Stuff." Mostly, when we talk, I'm the one doing most of the talking. Right now, she's in 7th grade.

Obviously, with NaNo being so much of a focus in my life right now, I told her how I was doing with it. Something along the lines of "Well I was doing really well, but I've hit a block and I don't know what to next."

Her response was "Well you should send it to me. We had to write a story for Halloween that was supposed to be between five-hundred and fifteen-hundred words. I wrote mine and it was three thousand. When I turned it in, he got annoyed that it was too long, so I went home to write another one, but it ended up even longer. I turned it in anyways, just to see what he'd do." I laughed, and asked what happened. Turns out that he graded them both (and both got As) but he did give her a sternish note asking her to follow directions and stay WITHIN the word counts next time. She then went on to tell me that she was writing another story, this one, just for her own personal enjoyment. When I asked her what it was about, she said that it was "a surprise" which hopefully means I'll get to read it when it's done.

It excited me. It feels so wonderful to know that the thing you love, brings joy to a person you love. It's also strengthens the connection that I feared we were losing. Despite our 7 year age difference, we were always really close, but we me far away, and her never talking much on the phone, we were slowly growing apart. Now at least, I have fodder for conversation.

Mostly though, I'm really proud of her for writing two great stories, and I can't wait to read them. Plus, that's a lot of writing in such a short time, especially for someone who hasn't written much at all in years. I'm impressed, I'm excited. I'm thrilled.

The writing bug is contagious.

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NaNoWriMo: Week One

Originally, I planned on writing a post here ever day, in addition to doing NaNo..... what am I? Crazy? Apparently so. Clearly that didn't happen, so I think I'm just going to do things at random as needed, and then do a weekly update every Sunday (because NaNo started on a Monday this year)

Day one was fantastic for me. I ended up writing over 3000 words, so I'm a day ahead of schedule, which is great, especially considering I have no hope of writing on Thanksgiving. My fiance's mother asked me to do Thanksgiving dinner with her this year. For me, that's a huge huge honor, and I'm very excited, but she lives almost 2 hours away, and between driving there, cooking, eating, spending time with teh family, and coming home.... there isn't going to be any writing time for me. So I'll probably end up not being ahead of schedule later in the month. Or maybe I'll get lucky and I will find a way to get even more ahead.


The week in general has been great. I've met my minimum-word-count-goals each day, my characters are coming to life... and my plot. OH MY GOD! SO GOOD! I feel so enthusiastic! I've had so many wonderful revelations, and I feel that everything is really coming together. I'm excited to write (though I haven't started writing today yet, because I have an assload of other things on my to-do list) I'm enjoying things. My MC is supposed to go completely insane by teh end of the book, and I was really nervous about how to do that, but I was looking though what I wrote last night and realized that she's already heading in that direction, naturally. I hadn't even meant to start her down that path yet, and it just happened.

Sometimes I get tangled up in the details, it's been a long time since I've been in second grade, and some things I never thought to research in advance... that's where facebook comes in. I am friends with so many different types of people that all I have to do is change my status to "How long in advance are field trips announced, and permission slips sent home?" and suddenly 4 people have commented on my status with various information, one telling me that permission slips are sent home 2-3 weeks in advance, the other talking about when the school board finds out about them, one mentioning that they're usually due to be turned in 2 days before the field trip. All useful, relevant information, but all different. So good!

My current word count (from last night) is 11,759. I've been keeping it update on my facebook, on the NaNo site, and now I'll keep mentioning it here too.

Good luck, to everyone else doing NaNoWriMo, as we go into week two. This week last year was my downfall. Let's hope it goes much more smoothly this time around.

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