You’re going to be disappointed after that title, I know. And maybe the only shocking thing about my discovery is that it hadn’t occurred to me before.
Titles make a difference in how many people visit my blog. It makes sense, but I didn’t believe it until I started looking at which posts people followed the most. A Missive from the Goddess of Gore got many more visits than did It’s Only Wednesday, and I’m Done! received more attention than Fall’s True Nature.
Where does this get me? I don’t know, because I think Fall’s True Nature is a fine, inquisitive title. I don’t like the bait and switch of the title I gave this post. But is there a way I can make more exciting titles? I’ll have to try.
Now it feels like autumn. The trees are shaking off their leaves, and the drizzle makes them all soggy. It’s 73 out, the heater is on in my office and the dark skies outside make me feel even more wrapped in autumn.
The rainy days are almost the favorite part of my autumn. A loud October thunderstorm is my favorite. Maybe I’m a drama queen (I’m not anymore, but I miss drama) but there’s something about thunderstorms. They make for atmospheric scenes in books. I don’t know why I’ve not written a cathartic lovers’ argument in a thunderstorm. I need to remedy this.
November is in a week, and I am hearing rumors of snow in the forecast. Thanksgiving will be here before I know it. But I got my October rain.
Ok, that was random. I’m done writing Avatar of the Maker, at least the first draft.
It needs a lot of work, enough that I don’t know where to start. At the beginning, I suppose. I think I need to make lots of notes on it and I don’t know whether to make these on paper or on electronic sticky notes. Or both; some of these notes are on the overall body of the book and others are specific. Writing a novel is hard; editing is harder.
I think I can describe the novel in one sentence: One death in this battle could kill millions.
In a paragraph: Leah Inhofer sees visions of a battle held in a dim place. Her best friend, Baird, draws her from her sheltered upbringing by his very existence as a Nephilim. They meet with Luke, a near-immortal Archetype who reels from the loss of the human patterns he carried. The battle Leah sees will happen, a battle of Archetypes. One death in this battle could kill millions of humans. Leah knows that she must act to stop the battle, at the risk of her life. She carries the responsibility as the Avatar of the Maker, who has the power to change the flow of reality.
My mind is already working on the book cover. That’s a long way from now.
I sit drinking coffee at the local Starbucks. The sky is still dark, lit with street lights and the festive bulbs of Starbucks’ patio. I don’t know what to write on this gloomy morning.
Yesterday it rained. The remnants sit in puddles in the parking lot. Autumn rains have a special place in my mind, indelibly printed there by a friend who took me out walking in the rain.
I have found Fall, not in the perfect blue of a sky, but in rain, in being drenched on a walk through a chilly night.
(In a dream: I walk through the storm. I am the storm. My voice is lost in thunder, and that is as it should be, because I will go back to the world of order where I am sixty and thought to be tame.)
It will be sunny today. It will be placid. I will smile at the sun and be mild, but I know my true nature. I know Fall’s true nature.
The leaves are just beginning to turn, and there’s only two weeks till November (which I don’t consider fall). The temperature has just cooled down. There is no flamboyant maple tree standing against a cloudless azure sky. There’s no fireplace to curl up in front of. I had my annual pumpkin spice latte at the beginning of PSL season, which was way back in September. PSL season keeps coming earlier each year!
I’m too old for crushes. Crushes remind me of fall, and some of my best poems lay at the intersection of crushes and fall. I do not have that excitement in my life anymore, nor do I have that frustration. But it has diminished the brightness of fall somewhat.
Life hasn’t slowed down enough for me to appreciate the season. Between teaching a new class at the university, writing, and two moulage sessions, I fear things will never slow down. Maybe Christmas, I tell myself. But I want life to slow down sooner, if only for long enough that I can enjoy that flamboyant maple tree.
Dear Readers: I am in the thick of Missouri Hope, a training exercise for students in emergency and disaster management, nurses, and other emergency personnel.
Imagine a tornado hits the area, and there are multiple casualties being brought to a triage area. First responders sort the victims by severity of injuries and they are prioritized and sent to a field hospital, where nurses work to stabilize patients before they can find a spot at a nearby hospital. Meanwhile, other emergency personnel search in the rubble and in the nearby woods for other survivors. Incident command coordinates team efforts for where the teams are needed. This is our exercise for three days, with workers from logistics and operations to van drivers to safety officers. Team and lane controller/operators maintain the exercise itself.
Meanwhile, I am the moulage coordinator, leading 4-6 moulage artists to turn volunteers into victims through applying makeup. I am called the Goddess of Gore.
I have been the moulage coordinator for ten years, My view of the event is from a trailer classroom at the top of a hill on university land, where my crew makes up 60-some volunteers for each iteration (there are four over the three days). We simulate scrapes, lacerations, impalements, disembowelments, bruises, broken bones — these are some of the injuries we simulate. We also simulate hypothermia, hypertension, sweats, and hives.
The reason for moulage is to contribute realism to the exercise. Students take it more seriously when they face gaping wounds and blood. I think there is something in the primitive brain that gets triggered and hikes their heart rate up — just as in real life.
It is the end of the second day, and I am tired. But it’s worth it.
I feel like my life is disjointed; a disparate collection of tasks and happenings are pulling my mind in different directions. I have Missouri Hope (disaster training exercise) this weekend, yet I sit here publishing my blog for my readers. I have classes on Monday, but I have a cardiologist appointment on Tuesday. My husband and I have to buy a car after he totaled ours, but I don’t know when we are going to have time to go out of town to look at one. I feel lost in my roles, not having enough time in any of them to feel fulfilled in them.
What was the hardest personal goal you’ve set for yourself?
The prompt above leads me to two different answers. What was the hardest personal goal I’ve set to myself?
The first: In 2000, I participated in the Susan G. Komen 3-Day Walk. To do this, I first had to raise $1000 for the organization. For the walk itself, I had to walk 20 miles a day for three days. This meant I had to train for the event by walking further every day. I started at two hours a day to a two day 13/14 mile event.
I survived the walk with a few blisters and a lifetime experience. The fundraising was the hard part, with a chunk of the money provided by Walter Cronkite. Yes, the most trusted man in America Walter Cronkite. (Anyone younger than boomers should look him up). No, I didn’t know him. But a friend of a relative of his called in a favor. Sometimes, I guess, the stars align.
The second: I wrote my first novel. I’ve been writing since third grade, when a teacher (who didn’t realize she was teaching 3rd-graders a high school curriculum) taught poetry. I remember doing well in haiku, struggling a bit with diamanté, and being totally overwhelmed with sonnets. I wrote my first published poem that year, if the classroom’s front door was a publication. I went on to write descriptions, short stories, a short play, more short stories … But never a novel. I thought I had irredeemable problems with plotting a long story.
Many many years after that, my husband is responsible for my writing my first novel. I was writing several stories around the same characters. I was almost obsessed with them. Richard said to me, “If you’re going to keep writing short stories, you might as well write a novel.” My instant response was “I can’t write a novel. I have irredeemable problems with plotting a long story (or something like that).
I started writing, and admittedly I did have problems with plotting at first. My novel read like a bunch of short stories at first, and I rewrote it three times until I came up with a result I liked. My other novels didn’t have the same fault as I learned the narrative shape of a novel. The first novel (not the first published) was Gaia’s Hands, which has been published on Kindle.
For honorable mention, I should mention learning how to drive. I didn’t learn to drive till I was 32. The first time I took drivers’ ed in high school I failed for stopping the car in the middle of the railroad tracks to check for trains. (It’s not incomprehensible if you take into account I have a learning problem with spatial and sequential relationships.) The second time, I barely passed but didn’t feel comfortable enough to drive. I learned for real at 32 with the most talented drivers’ ed teacher there ever was. There is talent involved in teaching people to drive. There’s patience, there’s talking someone out of quitting, and there’s the ability to explain things in a way that someone who processes things differently will understand.
I appreciate the goals I’ve struggled with more deeply than the ones that came easy to me. They built more of my character. They became the accomplishments I judged myself by. It’s strange, because I have a PhD and I don’t weigh that among my greatest accomplishments. My greatest accomplishments have been the hardest.
It could be three trips to St. Joseph in four days. It could be my escapades in St. Joe chasing a wayward cart flying down the street in 90-degree weather. It could be waiting for what the doctor is going to do about my mildly leaky heart, if anything. It could be the fact that my dear little Pumpkin kept me up doing heaven knows what last night. It could be the time of the semester, or it could be the time of year (a nap and pumpkin spice sound lovely.)
I haven’t written for a couple of days, and I have little time to write today. I feel like writing, because I haven’t written on my book, either.
Things have been going well. After the author fair I attended on Sunday, I watched my flat cart roll down a hill at an alarming speed1. Luckily, it hit no cars. Sometimes “going well” is relative.
I have a very busy couple of weeks. Internship visits today and tomorrow. Wednesday I have a moulage2 session for the Northwest Missouri Docudrama (don’t drink/text and drive simulation), followed by an internship presentation. Thursday should calm down, but the following week is Missouri Hope, the major moulage event of the year.
I’m hoping to carve out some time to write between these happenings and the usual tasks to teaching and grading. A little Starbucks time would be nice. At least I got to type this out.
Words Like Me 