It’s definitely a Monday morning. I woke up from annoying nightmares a few minutes early, and it was too late to go back to bed. I don’t really have words right now, just a lingering need to go back to sleep. Which I will not because of the danger of sleeping through that 11 o’clock appointment.
I now have my coffee. At the moment, it’s not accomplishing much. But the austere white house across the street has a rosy glow to it, and the day promises to be productive.
I will let it be a good day.
I am looking forward to starting the new book. There is hope for me and writing.
I’m trying to find a substitute for NaNo, as I will not be doing it this year because of their stance on AI. So far, the only thing I have found is in French, which will not happen, as my French is negligible. I need to find a word count motivator that doesn’t cost me any money.
I did a search on the Internet and found a few. The one I decided to use was MyWriteClub, which is a simple word count tracker. It doesn’t have the bells and whistles and community of NaNo, but it is a word count tracker. The one problem with it is that, when I made my account and goal, it made me start it today instead of November 1. So I guess I’m writing today.
I haven’t gotten back into my writing routine, and that worries me.
Maybe I’m tired at the end of the day, facing new classes and old challenges. It’s more likely to be that I’m stymied about my current writing projects, pantsing projects that seem more often than not to run themselves into walls.
Maybe I need a break from writing right now, but I’m afraid my break is going to turn into a forever break. I can’t believe that a couple months ago, I said that writing was my flow activity and I could never see myself not writing. Right now writing is not flowing at all, but jolting like riding a bike with square wheels.
I know I’ve written this before. Many times, in fact. This time is not different. I will get over this.
Every time I try to decide what this blog is about, my fingers take over. What this blog ends up being about is what’s on my mind. It’s an exercise in essaying, in freewriting, in expression. It’s sometimes about the seasons, a fascination of mine. Sometimes it’s about my writing, which has not gotten the niche following I had hoped for. Sometimes, it’s about my cats. (This is Chloe as a kitten). Sometimes it’s about heavier topics, like living with mental health quirks.
I feel guilty because I can’t stick to a topic. I think part of that is because of the admonition “write what you know”. What do I know? A little bit about a lot of things. I know what I have picked up from various places about writing but I am no means formally taught. I know about my subject matter (family economics and resource management) but I don’t want to write a work blog. I need my time off work. I know about moulage (making people look like casualty victims for training purposes) but that may be a little too niche. I know how to make bread, but not how to make really pretty loaves. I know edible flowers. I know Thai cooking, but not nearly so well as a native cook.
So I’m left with making a blog about what comes to mind; again, not something that appeals to a niche audience unless I find one who will ask me questions. I enjoy being asked questions, and will go to some lengths to answer them.
Hopefully I will find inspiration for a blog that people will flock to. More likely, I will find acceptance that mine is not one of them.
And the tree doesn’t fall,
Does anybody hear?
Too late, skip that,
Hey there, nice hat,
How you been, good day,
Wish I had more to say.
If the bird sits in the forest,
Keeps his song to himself –
Does anybody know?
No time, too rushed,
Gotta go catch my bus,
Still don’t know why
I don’t have any time.
If a forest lives
In the heart of a writer
And nobody finds it,
Does anybody care?
I’m sitting here trying to remember back to my absolutely harrowing mood of a week or two ago and I can hardly do so.
My brain confounds me. My body confounds me. When I am in a bad state the two are one and the same — my stomach tightens up, my bowels loosen; I feel cold flow through my veins; my adrenaline ramps up and at the same time I cannot move. I cry, I shriek, I say nothing and the crushing horses’ hooves keep advancing.
What turns the tide back to normal, I don’t know. Was it the news? That good cry? The 12-hour sleep? The cognitive exercise? All and none of these? The passage of time? I don’t know, but if I did that would be my sacrament.
Maybe it’s a good thing that I remember my bad spells only vaguely. Maybe it preserves my self-esteem not remembering how helpless I felt, how utterly agonized.
Today, then, is a good day.
It’s hard to write about dreams these days without sounding trite. Whether dreaming big or following one’s dreams, it’s been said before.
I want to talk about dreams as the cauldron of our subconscious, where our minds process the bits and pieces of our day into scenarios that twist through our sleep. Luxurious scapes, clandestine relationships, twisted corridors with monsters from our id, these are the denizens of our sleeping hours.
When we dream, sometimes we wake with decadent stretches and a purr, a grin on our face. Other times we sit bolt upright in bed clutching our blankets. Throughout the day, we revisit the dream, mulling it over in our head trying to find meaning in it, to use it to inform our day or to banish the tendrils of nightmare.
Or to harness its power in a story. Many years ago, I suffered through a kidney infection for a few days, spending much of the time asleep. I spent the time in dreams — in one long dream that passed for hours, where I found myself in a desert commune after the experiment called the United States had crumbled into city-states. The contrast between the strife outside and the people who pledged to peace, and the hope that peace lent to those the peaceful folk encountered, stayed with me when I woke, as did the relationship between myself as protagonist and a member of the commune.
I wrote what I could remember, the bare bones of a couple scenes, too long for a short story and too sketchy for a novel. I didn’t write novels back then, feeling overwhelmed by all the words needed.
This spring, after four or five novels under my belt, I revisited that dream with all its dread and promise. I was ready for the dream, for its message, for all its words.
The book, some seventy-thousand words long, waits for its developmental edit. Sometimes we manifest dreams into reality, one way or another.
In the infinite spaces between words,
we dive,
searching for treasure
in murky waters,
deep below the penetration of the sun’s rays.
Caught by the glint of an object
(or a subject),
we swim past the gold,
lured by the pretty sparkle of tin.
Hi, my name is Marcie, and I am eight years old. I had my birthday two — no, two months and seven days ago, and I’m counting down to the next one. It’s only ten months and three weeks from now! Time flies like a dragonfly!
Aunt Laurie said I can talk about words today. Let me first say that words are very important, because without them, we would all just stare and wave our hands around and if that kept up, how would we get pie? It’s easier to say, “please pass the pie”, especially if it’s that really gooey chocolate chip pie Aunt Laurie won’t make anymore because it’s too fattening. I think being fat just means you’re very happy because you got to eat the whole pie.
Ok, words. There are little words like “please”, “may”, and of course “pie” and those are good words because they get things done. Then there are the big words like Aunt Laurie writes, like “flabbergasted”, “preternatural”, and “multicolor” and I have to look them up in the dictionary. Why can’t she just used “frustrated”, “spooky”, and “pink and blue and green and orange”? Aunt Laurie says that you have to use the right word for the right thing, and preternatural isn’t the same as spooky, although it tends to weird us out. Think of someone who can read minds, or who’s thousands of years older than you. That’s preternatural. Why doesn’t she just say “spooky guy who could be your great-great-great-great-great a billion times over grandfather?”
Yesterday, Aunt Laurie told me I was right. Yay! I’m awesome! She said her beta-reader said her words were too big and if she wanted to be read, she would have to make them smaller words. Like “pink and blue and green and orange” instead of “multicolored”. She said this would be hard for her because big words love her. A lot like cats, I think. And did I mention that Aunt Laurie has a lot of cats?
I think I smell pie. Bye!
Words Like Me 