chronicled & illustrated

view from little tobago; taken by nancy

I didn’t have a plan for what I was going to write tonight so to play for time I went over to Under the Stars to see what my friend, Sherry blogged today. I didn’t even read it. She had a meme going on, so I decided to take it from her and see what I came up with.

The Five Most Impressive Sights of My Life

1) The Grand Tetons driving into Jackson Hole, Wyoming from the east. They took my breath away.

2) A thunderstorm forming in the distance while driving through New Mexico.

3) A pod of whales off the coast of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.

taken by my friend Ed Warner; I was too busy being impressed to get any decent shots of them! The best part was the sound. The captain of the boat cut the engine and we would hear SPLOOSH! as they came up out of the water followed by a WOOSH! as the air came from their blow holes. Everything was perfectly silent except for these soft, remarkable sounds.

4) View of the water and the rain forests in Tobago (see above)

5) Sparkling snow shadows in my yard when there’s fresh snow fall and a full moon!

Bonus Answers:

• Any woman giving birth
• Driving past London landmarks like Buckingham Palace, Big Ben and Westminster Abby while coming home from the theater in a cab
• Niagara Falls (an AMAZING amount of water goes over those falls!)
• Fall leaves in New England in any *good* year

Thanks for the mental trip down Impressive Memory Lane, Sherry.
NOW I’ll go read your answers.
Here’s Helen’s blog where Sherry got the meme

View of Little Tobago
Originally uploaded by nuanc

I started off this month with a feeling that I had enough NaNoWriMo experience that I might be able to offer other people tips on how to get through it. I actually have evidence that a couple of people did get a little encouragement or a helpful message at the right time from these tidbits, so that’s good. I like that. You don’t do something like this 5 times without learning something.

But now, the 26th of November, I’m bushed! I do not feel chipper anymore. I do not have the energy to make little graphics for the blog or to even think up anything helpful to say to anyone. If I had any energy, I’d go looking for tips just to help me get through the next few days. I don’t know if my age is showing or if blogging every day has added just that much extra work or if it’s that short story I masochistically decided to begin over the weekend, or the other dozen things I could name that have nothing to do with writing. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. November is almost over.

I’ll get through it and I’ll get my winner’s certificate for what it’s worth, but this experienced Wrimo will be positively plodding her way to the deadline!

Illustration: I took this shot of my older son and my stepson with their heads together while on a superb vacation in Tobago

The 21st day of NaNoWriMo and all I could think about today was Christmas! It literally took over my writing time. I got about 500 words written.

Maybe if I hadn’t been ahead on the word count, I would have buckled down and concentrated on what I should be doing now. But as the word count has been good for the last five days or I let other things crowd in and take over.

I live far away from both of my sons and farther still from my mother and sister and brother. Getting together for Christmas has become a big hassle! Last year I decided that to have my sons, granddaughter, husband and me descend upon my sister and mother for the holidays was just too much. If any of us had our own home there (in Houston), it would be different, but we don’t.

What I would most like is for my sons and grand-daugther to come to my house, but at the moment that isn’t possible. Neither of them have passports and they live in the States and I live in Canada. I have to go to them. So considering these two parameters, I decided to take matters into my own hands and find a nice vacation rental in a beautiful place, invite my sons and that way we could have Christmas under one roof without causing more work for some third party.

Nice plan. Didn’t work. After spending hours online looking for that illusive perfect vacation rental, my younger son told me, “Honestly, Mom, if you are asking me what I want to do for Christmas, I’d have to tell you that I want to go to Houston.” He went on to say that it was important that my mother and sister see his daughter before she gets too much older. They haven’t seen her in a year. So what’s a grandmother to do? I sprang into action in the other direction. Back to Houston.

But I was still determined to have us all under one roof.

Unfortunately finding a “vacation rental” in the big city of Houston isn’t easy. I couldn’t find a thing that was near our families.

In desperation, I put two ads on Craigslist, one for a short-term (very!) rental and the other for a pet/housesitter. Guess which one paid off? No contest, is it? The pet sitter ad just came through for us.

We’ve been offered a truly gorgeous home in a nice location for almost the full amount of time we wanted. Our pet is an 8 year old greyhound who, we just found out, sleeps in the master bedroom. Eeeu, major drawback! At least it’s a king-sized!

It’ll be an adventure but I’m already feeling 100% better, just knowing that I’ll have a kitchen to cook in and a place to invite family over. In fact, I’ve already started inviting people for our first night in the house to help us make Christmas decorations for our tree. Once they get a load of the tropical plant-surrounded swimming pool with waterfall and koi pond in the back yard, we won’t be able to get rid of them!

Tomorrow, however, I have to remember that it is still November, so it’s back to my novel.

[Santa's little elf up there is Cadi LAST Christmas]

fathers go to war
Originally uploaded by nuanc

My dad died on November 20th. I think. But I’m not certain of it. It is one of those dates that really seems as if it SHOULD stick— forever and without a doubt—in my mind, especially for someone like me who is basically good with dates and details. However, it doesn’t. I know what this is about. I have a mental block. I don’t want to remember it. If I remember the date, I have to also remember the details of that week and other things that my mind will immediately associate with this part of November such as when John Kennedy was shot and sometimes even US Thanksgiving which wasn’t always the best holiday for me.

Both John Kennedy and Corey Shepard—these good, interesting and smart men—have been gone a very long time. I was pregnant with my second son when my dad died and he is now 27 years old. But it will always make me sad that they died young and unfinished.

We are smartest when we appreciate life even through all the hardships and challenges and sad days that are rougher than others.

Yesterday I got a rejection letter. It was a wonderfully personal and NICE rejection letter. But it still hurt. I’ve always said that they’re like getting kicked in the shin. It’s a sudden unexpected sharp pain that doesn’t last long, then it’s sore for a little while and then you move on and don’t think about it much. Today, it’s still a little tender.

Small wounds and large, we sometimes just have an achy day to get through.

Isn’t 8 a lovely number?
I didn’t have time to write yesterday. I mean…I DID have time to write my novel; I didn’t have time to write my blog post.

That’s good, right?

November 8th is my husband’s birthday. We were out all afternoon with an EPIC Board Meeting—not a chore at all, but instead an enriching experience to be with such fine people!—and then to Youth Peer for some minor business and then to our Film Series where we watched a well-done film called Pierpoint-The Last Hangman (based on the life of Albert Pierpoint who was a hangman for the British government from 1933 to 1955). Then we came home where Barry fielded calls from his kids and step-kids and had cake and presents.

But before all that, I wrote.

I’m finding that 1700 or so words comes extremely easily. It’s that being behind scenario that makes the writing hard. I knew that of course, but I got behind so fast this year that I forgot what it was like to be able to do under 2,000 in a flash. Two thousand in fact, may be the best average daily word count for me. Sometimes it’s hard to get to 1000 but once past that, I’m into it and will easily go over the goal without knowing it. Makes sense, I suppose. Up hill is harder than down hill.

Ideas are flowing more smoothly. However, I did, lying in bed last night before drifting off, begin to worry a bit that there’s no plot. I guess that’s a late-night kind of thing. If the plot’s not taking hold, then I have control over that. But where I am now—in the middle of the beginning—it’s easy to feel lost in the multitude of words and not be able to know what the WHOLE is like. That’s okay. It’s November. Time to write, not to know.

Later~~~

I have to get my cool back so I can write today.

I’ve been searching through my computer looking for files that are lost.

I’ve never been a tidy person. Try as I do, my actual paper files are not organized perfectly. I’m always behind on filing things and even I cannot remember whether I filed car insurance papers under “I” for insurance, “C” for car or “H” for Honda. But for all that, I can usually find things.

This morning I was searching for business cards I made in August or early September. I have a folder for these things. It’s labelled: EPIC/logos, letterheads, business cards. But they aren’t there. Sheesh! I can find other things I made at that time. But these are simply not where they are supposed to be. It’s so completely frustrating!

If I can’t rely on my computer to keep the things that I’ve filed in the place I tell it to file them, what the hell can a slightly disorganized person do?! I would ordinarily assume that I’d just wasn’t paying attention and that they’d gone into an alternate graphic folder but, no. I can’t find them. And it seems even more mysterious because there are five files, one for each Board member! How could five separate files disappear?

Sigh.

Anyway, I have to give up because I’m using all my writing time to search for files that aren’t essential right now. I just kept thinking that I’d find them, because I know they have to be there! Writing time is dwindling as I have a dentist appointment this afternoon. No end to the fun today!

Yesterday went pretty well. I continue to feel that I’m setting everything up and am not sure where the plot threads are, much less where they are going. But I seem to remember that this is First Week stuff. You have to get everyone in place and the backstory related without simply plopping it on the page in one huge dollop and you have to introduce the main characters and give them a setting that the reader can visualize. It’s not the most compelling part of writing a novel. That’s the problem. But that’s also the beauty of doing so much writing in a month. Get this set up (mostly) out of the way in a week rather than a YEAR at which point, most sane people would say, “Chuck this! It’s never going to go anywhere!”

I’m still slightly behind on word count and it doesn’t look promising that I’ll catch up today, but you never know.

Sorry for the missing computer folder rant. I needed it.

UPDATE:
The word count is now on track (though God Knows if the writing I did today is worth a single dnaldo (currency of the country Dnemz in the novel I’m writing).

And, more importantly, the files were found. They were in a back-up folder in the backcountry of my computer. I don’t how that happened but I found them not through any of the dozens of Searches I did but in Recent Files—though it was at least two months since I did them. Anyway, computer, it seems I owe you and apology. You kept my files and for that I’m grateful. That I can’t find them is, I admit, my fault, not yours. I’m sorry.