What it is that is up

So, no progress on the short story as yet. I did spend some time today looking at a short story idea generator on the internets, which told me that the theme should be weakness, the setting should be a post office, and the story should somehow involve a silk scarf. Maybe I'll give it go. Haha.

Anyway, I also wanted to make a short note on my feelings about keeping a journal. To quote Mr. Horse from the original Ren & Stimpy series, "No sir, I don't like it." I've been trying to write a bit at the end of each day in an effort to chronicle my final year (or, with any luck, months) living in my parents' house as an adult person. I find, though, that it's mostly complaints about how my dad is sleeping in front of the tv, which is blasting police chase shows or how my mom is clomping up the stairs to see what I'm doing. And really, these events occur so often that I shan't soon forget upon moving out. What I don't want to forget are all the little details that might contribute atmosphere or depth to possible future projects. Maybe I'm nutso, but I feel like the fact that my brother's room collects all the dishware in the house (and the rest of us have to sneak in when he's away and retrieve it) or the series of "cat pee incidents" (in which my mom's idiot cat pees on shoes and towels mistakenly left around) are poignant. Like I said...maybe I'm nutso. But that's what's up.

Short story

So, I got this email about a short story contest put on by the Kenyon Review for writers under 30. The submission can be no longer than 1,200 words (which now seems quite short after working on the NaNoWriMo novel). I'm totally going to enter -- the winner gets to attend their writers' workshop in the summer for free and gets their story published. The only problem is, I don't know what to write a short story about. The entries are due at the end of February, so I do have a little time, but I wonder what to do.

I just took a few minutes to read the two runner-up stories from last year (the winning story isn't online), and I don't know... One is good, the other seems kind of pretentious. Also, I don't have an MFA in creative writing. I did take that one creative writing course in college...haha.

I guess we'll see...I'm nervous to put myself out there with writing because I don't really fancy a knock-out punch from the rejection fairy in this area. Making up stories is the one thing I'd like to continue dreaming that I'm good at. I suppose winning contests isn't everything, and I'm not pinning being a successful writer on doing well in some contest, but my ego's fragile, damn it (and already so bruised from never having any good job prospects). Oh well...I'll give an update when I come up with some story scenarios or characters or something.

An Untimely Update...

Well, I "won" NaNoWriMo at the end of November, though I didn't take the time to mention that on here. Of course, I didn't take the time to mention anything on here, so...oops. Anyway, I do want to get back to updating this blog since I find I have hours and hours at work where I'm really not doing anything but staring at celebrity gossip stories on the internets. Probably ought to do something productive, eh? Don't worry, I do perform the duties of my job, it just turns out that I don't really have the aptitude for secretarial work. I tend to finish all my work really quickly, but then do not feel motivated to seek more out. Secretarial work is really more for people who don't know how to multitask, I think. But that's not important. Back to NaNoWriMo (which is a dumb name, I know)...

To "win" NaNoWriMo, one must write 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. I didn't quite manage the full 50,000 honestly, so that's why I wasn't entirely proud to announce my "win." I think when all was said and done I came up with about 30,000 usable words. And now I just need to get back to working on adding to those (and editing). My novel really isn't too bad, I don't think, though it is probably a little boring and character-driven. I do have a plan to include a horrific fire set by the son of a major character as a homicide attempt; I just haven't gotten there. But that's action, right? :-)

Okay, I seriously promise to write more in this space in the coming months as I get back to writing novel #1 and move on to future projects. I guess this is also me committing myself to finishing novel #1 and moving on to future projects. I would actually like to try writing some poetry; I used to write angsty teen poems all the time when I was in high school, and I loved poetry a lot back then. When I got to college, professors told me that they didn't understand what my poems were about, so I decided to stop and work on writing in complete sentences. Haha.

NaNoWriMo

So...I decided to go for it and start a novel on November 1st! The happiness this project is bringing me is somewhat puzzling and certainly unexpected. Could I actually have been meant to be a writer all along? I don't know...I don't really write the kind of quality material typical of honest-to-goodness Writers (with a capital 'W'). But I really am having fun. Seriously. So weird.

Anyway, I just thought I'd take a break from my 5,500 words (oops...I'm supposed to be somewhere over 8,000 by now, but I'm trying not to fret) to make a note on something that's bothering me about my story so far. This is the fact that I started in a sort of flashback period, expecting this to last only a chapter, at most. But now I'm into the third chapter (yeah, these are Dan Brown-length chapters...suck it), and still about 8 months away from what I was considering "the present." And I'm tired of summarizing, so I started writing dialogue between characters to keep myself going. Is this okay? I was only planning to start my characters having conversations once I had caught up to "real time." Hmmm...I'm just frightened that dialogue within someone's description of the past seems really goofy. I mean, no one writes word for word dialogue in their diary, right? So would a narrator really recall entire complex conversations from 8 months ago? Doubtful.

I assume I'll just press on and continue to allow my characters to converse with one another -- it just feels so wrong! Oh well, the point of NaNoWriMo is to JUST KEEP MOVING, and that's what I'm trying to do.

Funny, but not really...

So how do you like that since I declared this blog would be dedicated to thinking about, talking about, and doing (about?) writing, I never updated again? Yeah, that's what I do...be afraid of the activity of writing, that is. I want to write, and I actually do enjoy the process, but fear of failure makes me want to just go to bed.

In order to combat fear and shrink WRITING back down to something smaller than myself, I believe I'm going to try to complete National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) this November. The quantity over quality aspect of the program really appeals to me in a sort of masochistic way since my instinct is to labor over individual lines and words for hours on end, (which is certainly a character flaw deserving of punishment). Also, what else am I really doing, anyway?

So, a challenge! Can I stick to the program? We'll see at the end of November.

Summer, friends, future directions...

Well, it's a summertime Friday and I can't keep my mind on my work for more than about 22 seconds. I have a tenacious headache, too, which isn't helping. I took an ibu-tab from the school medicine cabinet, but the pain has not abated as yet...boo. Anyway, I've been neglecting this blog, but no one has been clamoring for updates, so I suppose it doesn't matter much. I've been spending time doing fun summer things like going to the beach and performing pool maintenance and looking at real estate, so I haven't just been shirking my writing initiatives for no purpose...so if you have been waiting patiently for updates, know that I've actually been quite busy. :-) I've also been assisting with the ongoing grandparents' estate disposal/dispersal, which includes a lot of supportive conversations with my mother that somehow require a good deal of time.

In other news, some good friends from Minnesota have been visiting, and it's been great to spend time with them...too bad I have to work because I really hate cutting evening picnic table conversations short at midnight. Haha. I think my lack of sleep related to the sudden addition of friends is actually what's causing this pesky headache, but I'm not unhappy to suffer for a social life.

*many hours later*...so I got distracted doing actual work, but I wanted to say one thing before I close this entry related to the "future directions" portion of my post title. I'm thinking that in an effort to write more often, I am going to dedicate the future of this blog to talking about writing, posting writing samples, and recording inspirational stuff that might be used in my writing (and I'm not referring to pansy-ass "inspirational" quotes). I mean, I may have already been doing these things here in a less focused way, but I think I'm going to be more serious about it. To add some urgency to that sentiment, I truly believe that writing is the only thing I can do to save myself from a life of secretarial work. So what do you think?

So I don't forget...

I've heard that grief is a strange thing in that it hits randomly and without warning. You could be doing something completely mundane (such as data entry into a new database system), and all of a sudden, there's sadness staring you in the face (or anger or panic or some other emotion associated with the grieving process). As I've mentioned before, I've experienced some familial loss in recent months, and I consider myself to be in a grieving process for this now. So please excuse the following, dear reader...I make an effort to record memories when they come to me because I really don't want to forget little daily-life details from my life with my grandparents.

Maybe it's the fault of spending an hour or so last night going through old family photos and realizing that there are more photos of me with my grandma than with probably anyone else. This made me feel good more than sad, but I think it planted a seed to remember this random thing today as I was going about my work-ish business: as a kid, and even into teen-hood and early adulthood, I spent a lot of time hanging around in my grandparents' attic as my grandma worked on the sewing machine. She loved sewing up there in her little finished room with her plants and her paintings that my mom did in school hanging on the wood-paneled walls. And she would listen to the radio, a plastic, wood-grain-printed clock radio (I think it was a GE; I know it had the flip-over plastic numbers that were obsolete since the invention of digital read-outs), tuned to this bizarre "easy listening" station that played violin-heavy renditions of hits "from the 70's to today." We've all heard muzak played in elevators and insurance company phone system holds, but I swear this was weirder, though I don't think the station still exists in order to verify that claim. In any case, I HATED that music...it poisoned my dreams at night and waltzed around in my head like a soundtrack to my young life. If I had to hear Lionel Richie's "Hello" on those cat-fight screechy violins with jazzy soprano sax solo one more time, I was probably going to commit arson.

But you know, I thought of the lyrics to "Hello" a little bit ago and had to laugh at my juvenile rage over "grandma's radio station." And I just had to record that silly memory. I still loathe muzak (my hate fueled by many many years of musical instruction throughout my life), but the thought of it reminds me of my gram and her quirkiness. We dismantled the attic several weeks ago in the now-for sale house on South Hazel Street, but I will always see it in my head (if I can count on memory not to fade too badly) in the same warm, woody-toned way. The sewing machine perpendicular to the windows in the dormer and the radio (which was always perched on the top of an old black and white TV that was pretty much never on because it only got like one channel) at my grandma's back as she worked away hemming pants or whatever. The dangerous electric space heater plugged in near her feet in the winter, its coils glowing red just beyond a screen that you could easily poke your fingers through (and something she repeatedly warned me against). So funny and strange.