NaNo 2012

Doing it again this year. :)

Here's an excerpt:

It was raining the day they put me out of jail. Heavy drops like the sky was determined to beat me down under it. I could hear mom in my head saying somewhere the devil was beating his wife and those were her tears making their way down my face and soaking my pants. The rain got soaked up into the walkway. Could almost hear them hissing. For weeks I’d wanted some cool weather on the yard. Figures it’d come on the long walk home. Styles walked next to me, uniform creased like he was attending a funeral. Underneath all that hat and all that hair his face was creased just like his pants. Seemed like everytime he looked at me the crease got deeper and longer. Thought I saw him open his mouth to say something once or twice, but if he had anything to say it got lost in the sound of the storm.

“You going to be okay, Swift?” He said, finally.

We’d reached the gate all barb wire and doom. Remember when I’d been forced through it 8 years ago. Now I was leaving the same way. Guards stood up above me like the eyes of god watching, making sure I wasn’t doing wrong. Making sure I walked right and went down the right path. Truth be told I felt the right path was right back into that brick house. Wasn’t nothing for me on the other side of that gate. Nothing and no one.

“Yeah,” I said. “I made it this far.”

Styles spit on the ground, didn’t know if he was spitting at what I said or just in general. He grunted. Didn’t say nothing after that.

When we reached the entrance he gave me a bag. I looked in it to see everything that’d been on me when I got took. My wallet, with not a damn thing in it but wishes, prayers, and an ID. The kid in that picture looked soft and stupid.

I wasn’t much for goodbyes. I took the wallet and put it in my back pocket. Nodded at Styles and turned to go. He grabbed my arm. If I hadn’t been looking, would’ve thought my arm was caught between two 45lb plates. I tried to pull away. You didn’t let nobody grab you like that on the other side. Quick way to be somebody’s bitch. Took everything I had not to swing at a cop.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ll figure it out.”

Styles pulled something white from his chest and handed it to me. His card.

“You call me, Swift.” When I nodded the crease in his forehead got deeper. “God dammit, Swift.” He said. Yelled. He tightened his grip on my arm. “You don’t belong in here. Everybody saw that. Don’t end up back here like so many of you do.”

I nodded again. Something he saw must’ve satisfied him because he let go of my arm. I rubbed it. Not like I was hurt, just wasn’t used to people grabbing me the way he did.

“We had some good times,” Styles said. “Considering your situation.  I’m not opposed to having a few more outside of here.  Call me.  You owe me a game of chess.”

Here are my stats:

I feel good about this one. Hoping to finish or come extremely close. :D

On rejection and being burnt out.

I submitted a short story I wrote to three publications.

The first responded:

Thank you for your submission to the Urban Resistance. Unfortunately, it's not what we are looking for at this time.
We wish you good luck in placing this piece and hope you continue to submit your work to us in the future. 

I was not put off by this.  I wrote and revised the story for class.  I know of the issues and only submitted the story as part of a class assignment.  Still, every writer is hopeful for acceptance and acknowledgement.  Every writer, I imagine, secretly hopes that some stranger will read the submission and say, "This is amazing. I must publish it."  So, while I was not put off, some part of me was still disappointed.  It is tempting to take such rejection as a rejection of self.  Stories are a part of the writer, and saying, "This is not good enough," is almost like saying, "YOU are not good enough."  It's tempting to think that, but I have been taught well and have friends who have been through this, so I avoided depression.  This time.

The second rejection was more positive:

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to 10,000 Tons of Black Ink. Unfortunately, our editorial staff has decided to pass on your piece, "On the First" at this time.
We found this to be a thoroughly gripping story. It is well written and does not strike a false note. The description of three children watching TV was very accurate and natural—all acting their ages, arguing, giving in to one another as they wait for their dissolute mother to come home.  The language is a nice blend of adult remembrance and childhood naivety: “When [the microwave] is turned on for too long it protests it use by making a whining sound which burrows into the headache inducing centers of one’s brain and activates the pain centers.”  You might, however, take a look at the scenes and descriptions that do not move the story forward or give the reader an insight into the characters. You begin the piece by having the narrator tell us this is the night things changed. How is that statement addressed in the end? In what way have things changed? To a degree this is left to the reader, but a somewhat stronger allusion to your intent might be more effective. Overall we found this to be a very strong piece, but perhaps one final polishing draft from being ready.  Though we are unable to publish your work this time around, we wish you luck in your endeavors and look forward to reading more of your writing in the future.

Yes, more personal.  This one sounds like they read my story.  Actual comments.  This one actually made me smile.  Not only because they look forward to reading more of my writing in the future, but also because some of the comments from this publication are similar to those from my writers group. I never thought I would be published for this story, but hearing stuff like this makes me want to go back and revise the story and try again.  Maybe then it would be ready.

The third said:

Thank you for submitting "On the First" for inclusion in Nine. We haveread and discussed the story, and have decided to pass on it. It's not amatter of the writing so much as the content. We choose stories that havea strong plot and characters, and this is a bit too far toward theliterary and away from the genre. We like to ride that line, but not quitethis far. Good luck placing this elsewhere, and thanks again for thinkingof us.

Not quite as personal, but still, it feels good to hear the reason for rejection is that it is not genre enough.  That's good, as the story wasn't genre at all.  As far as rejections go, that's about the least offensive reason one could give. I'll chalk that one up to not reading the types of submissions this particular publication wants. 


Although this class did force me to submit my stories to publications, something I had long wanted to do and could never work up the nerve for, it beat me down in other ways.  Most of the students were not serious writers, others were not writing at the level I felt capstone course warranted.  I had to read and comment on about 25 stories in the span of 4 months in conjunction with the writing I needed to do for the class.  This wouldn't have been a problem if the writing had been quality, but it is very frustrating to me, as a person who takes the craft very seriously, to waste time in class explaining that this story is not a story because this "story" has no plot.  At this level, every story should be a story, I believe, and time spent discussing the stories in class should be focusing on character inconsistencies, dialogue, padding, what is aiding the story and what isn't.  If the writer isn't aware that the story does not have a plot, it is my belief that these other, more minor, and just as important things will be unheeded.  


So, because of this class, I haven't written creatively in about a month.  This blog post is the most substantial thing I've written since then.  It feels good, Brian.  It feels right.  


Maybe I should go tighten up a story and peddle my wares elsewhere.  


Edit no Jutsu:


Also, I got a cat.  

She's pretty much the best cat ever.  A gift from the best girlfriend ever. <3

The only problem is, said cat likes to attack said girlfriend's hair and face when we sleep.

Kittens. :) :(

November is upon us.

It is October. The leaves are changing colors, from green to orange, they wither and die. They give up on life and jump from their branches where they lie helpless until passersby trample them underfoot or the wind whooshes them away at a whim. School is well underway and students bemoan their professors and complain about how much homework they must do. And November looms large in my mind. NaNoWrimo is comes again. I'm not sure if I'll be able to finish it this year. I'm in a few classes that are taking a lot of my writing time. One of them is a Creative Writing class, so at least that's good. I'm still going to try. I've got a pretty cool story idea that I want to try out. It's comic bookie-ish idea. My premise is that the villains have won, super heroes are either dead or in hiding, and the badguys are slowly destroying the world. One villain realizes this can't be allowed to continue. It's his story. I think it'll be a lot of fun to write. Thinking about plot and whatnot now. Anyway...here's a poem I read this month. I write poetry now, apparently.

I am told I speak well

I follow the rules my teachers

And their teachers and their teachers taught

I pronounce my ings and errs

I enunciate each syllable

I speak well

But I think my grandfather

His voice pleasant and slow like change

As he savored each word

Ignoring diction and the rules

Told stories filling as Sunday dinners

His speech comforting as old jeans

He spoke well

As knowledge and history trickled

From his tongue like revelation

He ain’t nevah read my books

Or my teachers

And I don’t speak like him

So did he speak well

When he sat me on his knee

And told me of the time he spent

In ‘nam his eyes far off

Unseeing and seeing too much

Did he speak well

When he shook the ghosts away

And I could feel them

Those ghosts grasping clawing

Trying to take root like weeds

When he asked if I want breakfast

Pancakes and sirp

Not syrup with two syllables

the way I say it

Did he speak well

When the words rolled together

Like pools of honey

And you could feel the rhythm

And his emotion

even when he ain’t got no diction

He spoke well

He spoke good as he was able

And because of him I stand before you judged

Before I open my mouth

And surprised when I do

It saddens me because

My grandfather is not in my speech

And sometimes I wish he was

Because he spoke real good

And the stories he told me

As memorable as homer or Shakespeare

And because of him

I know

 Poems seem longer than they are.

Faye Valkyr

The Valkyrie story that has weighed so heavily on my soul is about finished. Right now, it sucks. I'm not sure how much mythology to put in, or whether or not it's relevant to the character.

Here is an excerpt WARNING, EXTREMELY ROUGH DRAFT:

Faye strolled around the park listening to the sounds of death; the lack of children's laughter, the creak of a merry-go-round. She could hear the scattering and scratching of leaves scraping against the sidewalk, a brittle sound that always reminded her of a skeleton's laughter. She circled a swing set and sat, the seat was cold and the chains creaked with each movement. Darkness consumed the sky taking with it the sun and blanketing the world in a warm glow. Her legs stretched out before her as she climbed higher, reaching for the stars, hair fell behind her like a flag in the wind. It was easy to sense the souls of those torn unexpectedly from life if you knew what to look for. If you knew what to listen for you heard their wails like tom-cats mewling, or heard their voices mingle with the wind. Faye heard and was comforted. Coming to the park was like coming home.

"Bit old to be on a swing set, aren't you?"

Faye started and almost fell. She settled herself and looked behind her, the direction of the voice. She was not surprised to see Officer Jacobs there. She nodded to him and continued her smooth arc, forward and back. The heavens came closer and retreated. Only conscious thought kept her from putting her hand out and reaching. She smiled at her foolishness, and slowed her momentum.

"How are you, Officer Jacobs?"
He smiled and sat on the swing to Faye's left. He was not in uniform. He wore simple jeans and a t-shirt that read "Change" below a picture of Obama. He scooped up pebbles in his hand and began throwing them into the distance. After each toss he would look at Faye and smile, his white and even teeth like bones against a background of charcoal.

"Can't complain," he said. "You?"

Faye considered before answering. "Unhappy," she said. "Confused."

Officer Jacobs nodded like she'd said nothing out of the ordinary and threw another pebble.

"Why're you here, Faye?"

"Do you hear them?" she asked, "They call."

He dropped the pebbles and wiped a hand across his shirt, smearing dust across his chest. He looked out in the distance, towards the merry-go-round and past the jungle gym, he looked at the trees swaying with the wind and then back at Faye. A look crossed his face. Confusion, Faye thought, and worry.

I like Faye a lot. I've got to do some more research on Norse stuff (I have been reading a lot. I read the Nibelunglied, amongst some other Norse stuffs. I haven't come up with an ending yet because, well, it will change after I know my character a bit better. I decided to end on an unsatisfactory note while I do some more character sketching. Faye's voice still isn't clear to me.

A winner is me.

I did it.

I won NaNoWriMo.

What does that mean, exactly? No glitter fell at my feet the moment I crossed 50,000 words. No trumpets blared, no small man offering me the keys to the city appeared. No angels appeared, flouting at my feet, their blinding and terrible beauty forcing mine wits to evacuate mine mind.

No, it was more simple than that. I sat at work, the day after Thanksgiving, writing away. Happy to have a day where no phone calls or students came in to interrupt. I noticed, after writing almost 5,000 words on the day, that I was a mere 20 words away from the goal. I finished two more sentences and ended up at 50,006 words. I saved my file, uploaded it to dropbox, e-mailed the document to myself, closed Pages (I did all of my writing on the iPad), and sat back. Content. I did it.

50,000 words in a month. In less than a month, actually. I had several days to spare.

I have not opened my NaNo writings since. I left several stories unfinished, but I will come back. After the writing has had time to sit, and I've had time to ruminate upon what I learned in November, I will go back to it, and I will finish. That I can finish is not a worry. I wrote 50,000 words in a month.

I finally think of myself as a writer.

I have several ideas I've started on. One is about a guy named Stranger (placeholder name; I'm waiting for a name that sings to me), chasing after another guy. Thsi story is my attemptt o write something like Stephen King's Gunslinger. Just to write something different in another style, after so much talking about myself.

The other is my Valkyrie story. I need more time with that, but it never leaves my mind.

And, as always, Darkness Falls. I'm going to go back and discover more about my characters. It's the reason I fell flat last year. But I'm going to go back and talk to all of them. Cain's voice gets stronger in my head the more I think about the story.

I a pleased with myself. I would say I can't wait for next year, but I don't need NaNo to get me to write a novel. I realize now I can do it myself.

But I'll do it again next year, anyway.

NaNoWriMo 2010

 

As I’ve posted before, I’m doing NaNoWriMo this year.  Looking at my past blogs, one would notice that I did NaNo in 2009.  I began a potential novel titled “Darkness Falls.”  I really liked this story, but was not up to the task of writing an entire novel on the characters.  I do not know them, or the story they are to go through, well enough.  My file on NaNo 2009 is about 15,000 words (if I’m rounding up).

This year I made a different approach.  I decided to write memoir.  My life is full of characters I know very well, and this year I’m doing awesome.  As of this night, I’m just past 35,000 words.  This is over 110 pages in MS Office.  I believe I will finish this year.  There are only two hurdles in my way.  I have two separate essays in two different classes due the same day NaNo ends.  At 35k, I’m going to try and get ahead a bit this week, especially of Thanksgiving weekend. 

I also read aloud this weekend at this:  http://www.cswritersreading.blogspot.com/

What I read is pretty much a work of fiction using those characters I know from real life.  I believe that much of my writing is melancholy, devoid of humor, and far too serious.  This is because much of it is just that, so with this piece I wanted to prove to myself that I could write something funny and serious, not just serious. 

And with no further ado, an untitled work for whomever even reads this blog.  There must be one or two people.

 

Ten minutes after meeting my father, John Stephen Jones declared that “the boy would cause no end of trouble for me and mine.” He uttered the prophecy while sitting in his favorite chair, a worn and comfortable coffee colored thing. The chair groaned like a prisoner of war forced to undergo another familiar torture. The cushions bulged, threatening to spew their yellow cushioning all over the floor, held in only by clever stitching performed by my grandmother, intent to keep the prisoner viable for torture as long as possible. John Stephen Jones looked at the man that would be my father, beginning at his eyes, where, he said, you found a man’s worth. Michael Ferguson’s pale, watery eyes, blinked rapidly at my grandfather, flitting here and there, landing on my grandfather as a bird does a likely spot to eat, unsure of whether of their own well-being. John Stephen Jones harrumphed, raising a hand oak-like in its strength and color, dismissing his daughter’s young man from his presence. John said his piece, his family could take it into account or not, it didn’t matter to him.

Michael Ferguson looked to my mother. My mother stared at my grandmother, pointedly ignoring the looks of both men in the room. My grandmother acted as if the book she read, Roots which she read at least once a year, occupied the entirety of her attention. Lisa did not miss the curl of her lips, the way her shoulders seemed to tremble under some unseen weight. Lisa did not fail to note that her mother, Judy Jones, seemed to be shaking her head at Roots, disagreeing with the words of Alex Haley as she never had before. Michael floundered, finding no help in his girlfriend’s presence and no comfort in Judy’s apathetic smile. He opened his mouth and closed his mouth, and opened it again. He looked at Lisa again, his hands clenching in a silent plea. Lisa continued to frown at her mother, unconsciously rubbing a hand over her stomach.

“Sir, um, Mr. Jones” Michael said.

“What?” John said.

“I’m pregnant,” Lisa said.

Roots fell to the floor, its hollow thud swallowed by the bellow of my first grandfather. Standing over six feet tall and weighing over three hundred pounds, Michael never expected John to have the ability to move with the fluidity of flowing water. The strength to crush Michael’s neck, the young man had surmised from John’s size and did not appear at all surprised to find the older man’s hands currently gripping his throat. Michael’s hands found their way to my first grandfather’s, but his own hands were but weeds to the man’s oak, and almost as annoying. The look in my grandfather’s eyes, so my grandmother says, stole the mobility of every person in the room. Michael James Ferguson, convinced he was soon to die, could only choke out sounds. He believed he said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” What he actually did was cough, slivers of spittle trailing down the sides of his mouth, pooling at the skin between my grandfather’s hands and Michael’s neck. Lisa, for the first time in her 16 years on God’s green Earth, was shocked into silence. One hand found its way to her mouth where it stayed positioned as if she smelled something foul, the other on the burgeoning swell of her belly. My grandmother moaned, “John, stop.” Repeatedly.

And my first grandfather did stop. He released Michael’s neck, holding his hands above his head and looking down at the young man in disgust. The look he spared my mother was coated in disappointment. Lisa had the grace to look down at her feet, ashamed.

“Sixteen years old,” was all he said. And left. The sound of his car starting came through the door.

My grandmother shook her head, tsk’ing. She picked her book up off the ground, looked at her daughter and my father, and tsk’ed again. She placed the book on a coffee table before she went into the kitchen, began running some water, occasionally looking back at the two kids who did not move. She grabbed a tea kettle from the cupboard, filled it up with water, put it on the stove where she let it warm until its whistle sounded. She poured three cups, adding a shot of liquor to each before putting the mint tea bags into the cups. She put them each on a tray, with three spoons for stirring, and gave them to her daughter, her daughter’s boyfriend, and took one for herself.

Warts and all.  Revising is for later. 

I'm doing NaNo this year. I will have a more indepth blog later when I have time, but I have been doing very well. I missed this weekend due to moving, but I was ahead by a day so I'm not so far behind. Looking to make up lost ground tonight and tomorrow.