The End Again: National Novel Writing Month

Last year I participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and I was a bit cynical. As I struggled through the process, I learned a lot about MY process and a lot about the gaps in my writing toolbox. I only achieved half the goal for the month, but I like to think that what I learned (and the sheer amount of outlining and brainstorming that happened) made up a little bit for the lack of words on the page.

The truth is, nothing can make up for words that don't make it onto the page. Every word written is better than a word unwritten, and last year, I barely cleared 25,000 words. (And of those words, most of them were backstory for the world in which I thought I was writing. They weren't even ABOUT my main character, though they had some historical significance.)

This year, I decided to try a different approach and it seems to have worked out for me, though it didn't work as planned. (It never goes as-planned.)

I decided I wanted to write some specific types of short stories and based on average length estimates, I projected I could churn out 5-7 stories during the month of November.

I just can't seem to follow the rules though. (Incidentally, I have similar trouble when game-mastering and trying to use a module. I just can't do it.)

I started out working on a story about half of a set of twins and a graduation party. I finished that piece on the fourth day. At that juncture, I wasn't sure where to go, so I fell back on a character that'd been wandering around in my brain for a while. I started writing about her encounters. I thought it might be good for a couple of the projected stories. Then it got away from me and I just kept writing. So, the first 8956 words were on one project, but the rest were on this one character and her world of experience.

There are still a LOT of things unwritten and the majority of them are purely the happenings in her personal life. While that may be compelling (or not), I feel like I need to observe her character arc and give her a story arc with which to interact. Or maybe not. I know for now I will keep writing. My "master document" tells me I have over 83k words, which includes a lot of notes and some outlining, while my solid word count - which does not include those outlines/notes - comes in at 55,372 words as of today. (Today was a small day, 522 words on an incomplete scene.)

Did you participate? Did you "win" (I still hate the win/lose dichotomy - if you learned something, if you produced something, you are winning at writing)?

Feel free to share your thoughts, your victories, your defeats. Or ask me questions about mine. I'm not a professional writer (using the definition of 'being published, making money at it'), but if I've learned anything from my time talking to writers, observing writers, and writing... it's that we are all on a journey together. It's not a destination, it is ALWAYS a journey... and everyone has something they can teach and learn.

The Cost of Kindness

This morning I woke up, read some more of Stephen King's "Full Dark, No Stars" and then went out for some errands. I've been in need of sundry bits and a couple of nice shirts that would be appropriate for more-than-casual appointments or potential interviews. After knocking out a couple of stops, I went to grab a sandwich for lunch from the nearby Subway.

As part of my own sort of self-therapy (and because I'd had a good morning of reading and thinking about my own writing), I tried to smile at strangers, to make at-least-polite eye-contact, and to just be as pleasant as humanly possible. The idea being that not only would this help me feel more comfortable, but it might actually improve someone else's day. This, unfortunately, has a pretty messy price. It leaves me feeling a little spent - it really is an effort to not simply shut down to all the strangers milling about in a store. But it also seems to create in others an expectation of who I am, of what I am to them.

It says something when I explain that I know when someone is about to ask me for money. As I came out of the shop with my sandwich, I made brief eye contact with a slight smile and then went for my car. I wasn't worried that this person was going to do anything harmful to me, but I could see the shift in his body language and he altered his path to intercept mine. I was closer to my car however and had determined that I just wanted to leave. I was pulling out of my parking space when he entered my field of view again, this time in front of my car. I had no choice but to stop.

Of course, he approached and told me his story. This one was simple. He was 50 cents short for bus fare, if I had some change or could help him out, he'd be very appreciative. I didn't have any cash. I looked in my change tray. I had two brand new pennies that weren't superglued (by goodness knows what) to my console, so I was apologetic and offered them to him. He said something I couldn't quite understand and I said, "I'm sorry?"

At this point, he wasn't aggressive and I am not sure he was actually talking to me anymore.  He'd completely dismissed me now that he'd gotten the change I had and there was no further use for me. I didn't even get to wish him luck or give him a "God bless you" which is the standard exchange I'm used to with strangers who approach me for money in parking lots. But I could tell he's annoyed.

Did I want to avoid him? Yes. Did I want to leave as quickly as possible? Yes. Did I want to do it because I thought anything negative about him? Not particularly. It had everything to do with me being a means to an end, with knowing I would be wedged into a situation where MORE kindness would be asked/required from me than I could give at that time. And my deep-seated dislike of disappointing people. It also happens frequently enough that I've learned to recognize that it's going to happen - this means it happens a lot.

I find myself with very real justifications for the patterns of social behavior I'm trying to correct. Situations like this feed my anxiety and encourage me to close up and pretend other people don't exist.

"Kindness doesn't cost a thing." 

For those who struggle with anxiety, this is so far from true. Kindness given by an unwanted or unwelcome encounter feels essentially forced. It doesn't reciprocate, it doesn't feel good at all.

On top of that, every person that approaches me for monetary help brings back with them every person I've met in that way. The homeless man I spent 15 minutes talking to one day about surgery and the infection on his leg, the parolee whose family wouldn't take him in, the man who ran out of gas, the woman with three kids leaving an abusive husband, another parolee trying to keep himself in school, and a few others whose stories blend together. Sure, some of them could've been - probably were - cons. I knew that the moment they engaged me, and I decided that there was no way for me to know and that I would give them all the benefit of the doubt.

With all these stories though comes the emotional battery that some of us experience when taking on the burden of another person's tragic story. If I am to have faith in these people, I have to believe their stories. If I believe their stories, I cannot help but empathize, or at least sympathize, with every one of them. Their stories become my stories and that is what guides me to help them - tempered with keeping my own well being and means in mind.

Today I could only give the man 2 cents from my console and he did give a quick thanks, but then he was done with me. Obviously, I'm still carrying some of him. I hope he got the change he needed to get the bus he needed and that he got where he needed to go. I hope all of them did.

I don't remember where I was going with this other than to say that we bandy about the idea that kindness doesn't cost a thing, but it does for those of us who really consider what it means to treat others the way we would want to be treated. How do we know how we'd like to be treated unless we can slip on the other person's shoes to consider how we might like to be treated in their place?

Insert Witty Title About: Graduation

My PTK tassel is hiding somewhere.

So, I finally graduated from step 1 of college (it's a 4 step plan).

I now have an Associate of Arts degree from the Community College of Aurora. Graduated Summa Cum Laude, and during my time there completed 3 literature-oriented Honors papers and delivered 2 public lectures.

Lectures:

Lecture on Charles Brockden Brown & Edgar Allan Poe - December 6, 2012

Lecture on HP Lovecraft & Stephen King - May 2, 2013

(this video came to me in 3 parts and the software I used to merge the files causes the audio and video to fall out of sync. I am attempting to fix this issue and will fix this link with a corrected upload as soon as it is available. But - you can still LISTEN. There are no important visuals.)

Obviously, I finished all of the things that've been looming over me for coursework and now it is time for Summer Break before I embark at the University of Colorado Denver. Also called UCD, also called CU Denver - I haven't figured that one out yet.

I find that I don't really have much to say about graduation. It is a thing that happened; one step that allows me to move on to the next step. This is like every step. One, then another. I'm sure it was some excellent Zen poet who said that life is not about the destination, but the journey -- long before Emerson did. (Not that Emerson is a bad guy.) Maybe it was Matsuo Basho.

Fleas and lice biting
Awake all night
A horse pissing close to my ear.

Now that it is summer break, I hope to get some writing done both here and in my projects folder. I need to learn more, hone more, and get some things out into the world. In the meantime, I'm greatly enjoying my opportunity to immerse in books and research and intellectual discussion of topics like:

Just what IS magic realism? Feel free to offer some thoughts in a comment box. Research without thoughtful interaction is too stale for a topic like this (or in discussing and thinking about any genre).

On Being Ready or Not

Lately, I feel ready for almost nothing.

This spring is my final semester at the Community College of Aurora. I will be graduating with my Associate of Arts degree (no designation as we did not have the approval for the Literature focus when I started), and a 4.0 GPA (assuming I maintain it, and I have no reason to think I won't). I'm wearing this thing and myself out as though it were a much larger degree, I think. I'm not ready.

On my plate:

• Honors Paper - H.P. Lovecraft as the man who took the torch of Gothic horror explorations of the human condition, and carried it down that long hall into the future, opening the door and letting its light gutter in the escaping air and then spread its light and shadows over the rest of us. I'm lacking a solid thesis and there are only 8 or so weeks left in the semester.
• Research Exhibit - Sally Ride. A group project but only 2 of my other 3 members are even trying.
• Creative Writing (II) - "Murder Hobo" (I feel that my stories tend to have codenames rather than working titles.) Progress is slow on a level that would make molasses feel fast. I'm afraid I'm going to fall short on all of my goals in that class.
• Japanese (IV) - Final semester and the most intense as far as taxing my ability to remember anything, ever.
• Literature (American, Post 1865) - In addition to our short and excerpted works, we are reading two novels. One we just started this past week. The other I will start, regardless of the class schedule, once I have finished Richard Wright's Native Son. This class is particularly intensive due to the comprehensive and conceptual-understanding nature of the tests.
• Commencement Address - I am one of (I don't know how many) students applying to be the student speaker at my graduation. This week is the deadline for the application. I'm having trouble explaining what I want to say to my fellow students, or even knowing what I'm WORTHY to say to them.

All this segues into my introduction of a blog post that I found hiding and unread in my email box, by Andi Cumbo, over at AndiLit. I'll give you an excerpt here and then I encourage you to go to her blog and read the whole post (even her whole blog!). Andi teaches writing courses, online and sometimes in person... this excerpt is from the spirit of a talk she gives her nonfiction students, but is just as relevant for any kind of writing:

...you have to be ready for critique. You have to be ready for your classmates and I to talk about HOW you wrote about this subject, and while we will do our best to stick to the HOW and not the WHAT, it can be hard to separate those things in our writers’ minds and hearts.  Very hard.  So before you turn something in, be sure you are ready to hear it taken apart a little.

You'll have to go over to her blog post to read the rest: "Writers, Are You Ready?"

Valentine's Day

Credit: TARDIS Coloring Page by VioletSuccubus on DeviantArt - For time travel use only.

I have nothing insightful or particularly profound to offer up on this Saint Valentine's Day, but I thought I'd try to bring together all my passing knowledge of the holiday. I have decided to work backward, as I could not quite come up with a way to work from a point of origin to the present day... so, let's take a ride backward through time, linearly.

There was more than one Saint Valentine. I think there were seven, or eleven (open 24 hours a day?). Of course, this holiday is said to be named for a particular Saint, martyred for performing forbidden marriages. Notably, marriages for Roman Soldiers who were not allowed to wed while engaged with their soldiering duty. I don't recollect that I ever knew a time frame for this story.

What I do know is that it became associated with Courtly Love. This is no ordinary love, but a distant and chivalrous courting affair. ...Courtly love is a little weird and, I think, largely misunderstood by people who romanticize the notion.

To take us further back in time; the Valentine for whom the holiday appears to be named lived during the rule of the Roman Emperor Claudius. The Christian church was fledgling, and Claudius was not a Christian. (I've never been happier to be a humanities student who studied 3 years of Latin. I can finally tie all this together. Of course, I have a lot more information to which all this is tied that I couldn't hope to dump into a post - nor would I torture you in that fashion, my gentle reader.)

Overall, most people are at least passingly aware that many of our modern holidays, particularly tied to the Christian faith (or inspired by its influence), were created and placed in such a way as to overwrite older, pagan celebrations. Valentine's Day seems to be no exception. Mind you, this was not a uniquely Christian practice. Within pantheons, one deity's festivals could be subsumed by the rise of another, similar deity's worship...

Lupercalia was a festival held from February 13th-15th and while it probably had a lot of nuances I am forgetting, it was a kind of 'rebirth' festival. It's difficult to think of expecting spring while it's snowing outside where I am... and I'm pretty sure even Rome is at the same or a very similar latitude... but, it is what it is. Daffodils and some other plants bloom this early, despite the cold... so who am I to say nay to the ancients that wanted to party in the name of Spring as soon as possible?

At the same time, but temporally earlier in history than Lupercalia, was the "Februa" festival. This was a festival of cleansing and/or purification. "Spring Cleaning," if you will. (Februa. Roman month Februarius... February. (That word gets weirder the more you type it.).) It was celebrated on the same days during which Lupercalia was celebrated.

These sorts of events have always interested me. Somewhere in there came the chocolates and the love letters and then the candy hearts and witty cards. Somewhere in there, it became highly commercialized, to the point that flower commercials sound more like invitations for men to compete with one another through showings of status and public gift-giving (there's been a commercial locally for a flower delivery company that shows snippets of interviews with women talking about how their husbands/boyfriends made all the other women jealous and put all the other men to shame by purchasing superior arrangements). Then came the bitterness and a little spite. And somewhere in that, we've lost the cleansing festivals, the celebrations of spring-to-come, and even the notions of distant, courtly, transcendent love. I want to take it a touch further than that.

As frustrated as I may be with humanity, as curmudgeonly as I tend to feel toward my fellow people...

I love you all. I can't (and won't) give you flowers or chocolates or jewelry, but I can give you my respect and consideration and courtesy. Sometimes, I can give you the fruits of my brain. This is low-hanging fruit, and for that, I apologize. (I keep trying to give you British s's ("apologise") but spell-check doesn't like them.) Those are things you have until you lose them, and sometimes you can gain them back. It may not seem as nice as flowers, but I hope it is all esteemed a little higher. Just a little?

Plus, I give you random information that you can probably fact-check against Wikipedia and tell me
where I screwed up if you need to feel better today.


Happy Love Day.

Artists Doing Good

Too often people believe that "legal" means "right" - but I disagree. Sometimes, other people also disagree and we remember words like "ethics" and "fairness". Or, we remember how to treat each other the way we'd like to be treated instead of being hateful and rude. There are people out there doing and saying things better than I feel I ever could, and I wanted to share these in a way more lasting than a Facebook or Twitter update. Most of these links will involve people doing the "Right" thing in the face of actions that may be legal (or not) but are definitely not "Right". In the face of a world that seems ever more morally bankrupt, there are people doing good. Here are some pretty easy ways to help...

First, Jonathan Coulton. I love Jonathan Coulton. His music is quirky and perhaps he now dwells in the same house Weird Al carved out in my young heart. In Season 4 of the Fox program Glee, the song "Baby Got Back" was used. Glee often reworks pieces (or appears to), and this case was no exception - EXCEPT that they appear to have taken J. Coulton's individual arrangement (new melody, new lyrics, and all) and used it nearly wholesale. There was no acknowledgement of Coulton associated with the episode or the iTunes release of the song. (A Forbes.com article says that they did edit out "Jonny C's in trouble" line eventually but it was in early releases and can still be heard in this video at the 2:15 mark.)

In answer to this, Jonathan Coulton has re-released "a cover of Glee’s cover of my cover of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s song" ("which is to say it’s EXACTLY THE SAME as my original version"). Proceeds from the sale of this release will go to the VH1 Save The Music Foundation and the It Gets Better Project.

Links to the specific tracks from three different platforms:
iTunes
GooglePlay
Amazon MP3

(This information is directly from Coulton's blog post on the subject, put here for those who don't like following links to find links to find things they want.)

Second, John Scalzi. Not only do I enjoy Scalzi's fiction writing, but I have also come to enjoy his "nonfiction" by way of his blog and the way he tackles often controversial topics with aplomb.

Due to his candid manner of presenting his opinions, he's attracted his fair share of internet trolls. In light of one particularly persistent troll, Scalzi has decided to turn this person's bigotry and hatred into a good cause he refers to as "Counteract a Bigot". In brief, every time this one particular person mentions Scalzi's name, Scalzi will set aside $5 toward a fund, up to $1,000, which he will donate at the end of 2013 split between several charities. I highly recommend checking out his blog directly - it will allow you to read further details on the situation, and if you decide to participate, you can let him know in comments. This is not a traditional fundraiser nor a website driven one (such as Kickstarter or IndieGoGo), but based on the honor system. If you say you're going to participate, it's up to you to honor your word - no one is going to know one way or another (except for you).

On a smaller scale, a more local and more personal level, I'd like to add Art as Action to my list of folks doing good in the world - not to combat a particular wrong, but because doing good is something that should be active, not just reactive. This group is about performance art, but they also provide programs for people involving dance, especially people who live with Parkinson's Disease. They launched their Reconnect with your Body program in 2011 and it has been successful, but small groups like this are always in need of some funds - no matter how little - to keep their good works going. If you know someone with Parkinson's Disease, you know how important bodily health is and the ways the body can betray a person after so many years together. This is a program that I've seen do good personally and I am happy to support it. I encourage you to take a look at their webpage.