Torreybird

I’m kind of fanatical about using my time well. Not because I think I’m about to die, but because right now I’m reasonably healthy and capable, so I might as well make hay while the sun shines.

So I participate in this meme to remind myself, at the end of the year, what I remember of what I did.

In 2011:
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Torrey’s Amendment 28 (proposed): That person’s rights, as protected by the Constitution of the United States, do not extend to corporations or other private entities.

The actual language in Ted Deutch’s proposal writes in so many loopholes that things will actually get worse. It’s revolting. No, worse than that. It’s the fodder for revolution.

PSA: I have no sympathy for your inconvenience.

Corporations systematically work to deny you your voice in our democracy, and you’re complacent. Put a protest in your commute home, and “it’s so unfair.”

Think it won’t work? The protesters are wasting their time and taxpayer money?
Remember this next time you’re quoting “I have a dream”: MLK and Gandhi – and the thousands who marched with them – were damned inconvenient in the towns, regions, and countries in which they lived. Both were met with violence, and thousands of people said “they were asking for it.” Each of them led peaceful revolutions that millions have benefitted from, and at much higher cost than your damned inconvenience.

FWIW, I changed my route home yesterday. Yes, it was inconvenient.

I’m not mad. I’m grateful.

Here we are, the day before NaNoWriMo. Anyone else have itchy fingers? I want to write, want to outline, but I’m never sure where to start-without-starting.

So here’s my top 5 wordcount-padding strategies.

1. Avoid hyphenation. Some word processing programs process these as one word instead of two or more. See the “start-without-starting,” above: Microsoft Word counts this as one word, not three. If this were November, and a novel, I’d have just cheated myself out of 2/3 of that wordcount!
2. Avoid names such as Mike, Jane, Aloicious, Marmaduke. Not just because they are boring (in the case of the first two) and difficult to type (third), and reminiscent of Great Danes (fourth.) Avoid these names because they only add one word to your count. Why use Jane, when you could have Carrie Ann? Why Aloicious when Hunter Dowley is always referred to by both names?

   In addition, you might consider using characters’ titles. Take care, however: The Inestimable Charlene MacCaden, for example, might be ridiculous in the context of her present-day urban setting. In contrast, Mrs. G. Campbell has been known even to her mother as Mrs. G. Campbell ever since her wedding day, in Macon, Georgia, in 1934.

3. Setting is an opportunity to let the words run wild. If you’ve beaten every bush, intimately describing each leaf, you’re still doing fine. You might not have a novel, but you’ll still have won if you end up with 50,000 words of setting at the end of the month – and I bet you’re better at capturing detail, using metaphor and allegory, and creating a coherent universe than you were in October. True fact: I once spent roughly 2,000 words having two characters cross a lobby. Seriously.

   In editing, much like what can happen with setting, you can pare dialogue down to the words that move the story along. Only in November – and similar zero-draft states – can you allow your characters to discuss any old thing they have on their minds.

4. If you are a planner, you have an outline or notecards or some other means of milestoning your path through the novel, and each piece of dialogue already has a purpose. Great – but if they are having a hard time getting to the point, use the time – and the words! – to explore their own voices. Let them say it wrong, and then take it back. Let them get confused and start over again. That happens all the time in “real world” conversations, and there’s no reason your characters are any better conversers than you are.
5. Don’t stop writing. This is a “duh,” but it’s also the real truth of the NaNoWriMo experience. Here are some solutions:
1. Can’t get a chapter to come to a graceful conclusion? Write “And then the author said, ‘On to the next chapter!’” Start the new chapter.
2. Boring novel? Nobody expects an earthquake. Nor do they expect a tax audit.
3. Want to be writing something different? That’s the stuff dream-sequences are made of.
4. Stuck yourself with a solution that doesn’t work? Write what should have happened in chapter 5, with the heading of, “Here’s what should have happened in chapter 5.”

If you’re noveling this month, whether it’s your first-ever, your once-a-year, or your daily job, I send my best wishes for your savory, juicy, sweet, delicate, precise, and/or savage prose.

Did I neglect to mention long lists of adjectives?

As I gear up for NaNoWriMo, I’m dashing off little pieces-parts of stories or characters. Just for fun. Just for warm-up. Just ’cause I can’t start on the NaNo until Tuesday.

***

He was the international man of… knitting.

His fellow bus-riders knew him as that affable, though quiet guy; one day he looked upset, hunched over, and was asked quietly, sotto voce, ignorable-if-ignored, “you OK?” He looked up, startled, to reveal a particularly tricky bit of casting-on: fingertips of a glove, knit simultaneously from multiple strands of superwash sock yarn.

What they couldn’t tell from looking at his broad shoulders and just-graying hair was that his mind was just as sharp, flexible, and useful as his darning needle. But he interviewed well. His lack of words (when he had none) was generally taken as a sign of far greater intelligence and insight than he actually possessed.

Mostly, he listened.

He listened to his wife – of course he had a wife, whatever gender his wife happened to be – as he was told the state of the bank account, the state of the children, the state of politics these days, and the state of his mind. He listened to his boss, when his boss deigned to talk, and listened to the promises of doctors and pundits and lawyers. He listened to his favorite music when it happened to come on the radio, and listened to the irregular beat of the drummer of his neighbor’s son’s metal band, thankfully muffled by the insulated garage the community covenants and restrictions committee required – to whom he also listened.

If everyone has a superpower, his was not knitting, though that is what 10 out of 11 speakers at his funeral discussed at length. His superpower was remembering.

It is for what our hero, the knitter, was best, that he was killed. It was for this that he had to be erased.

So when I say, ladies and gentlemen, that better men and better women have come before you, have killed and been killed in this service, also know that there were worse, less intelligent, one-trick ponies of souls who have accomplished more destruction than you ever dreamed. You are average – you are each of them. You are the middle. And as we say (here, I point to the letters painted on the wall, retouched every year) The Middle is the Middle. Without you, the edges have nothing. They fall apart without us.

The bell rings, and the sea of average faces attend to their notes, their books, their baggage. They don’t really need to take notes in my class – I just let them keep that fiction, rather than make a big deal about the usefulness of an active brain. No, that’s not for this branch of the service, the Middle ones. That’s for classes on floor 82 of the Excelsior building.

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Hey, have you noticed how I blog more, when I have more time? Huh.

This week off was a GREAT idea, whatever the unknown, unseen consequences-to-be might be. I’ve walked on the beach, walked along Lake Washington, napped on two different afternoons, worked on writerly things (if not the actual writing, for which I am working on not beating myself up.) An incredibly disorganized closet has been cleaned out, and the craft parlor cleaned up. I’ve had a huge amount of time with my wonderful husband, and I think I’ve caught up on sleep. Mostly.

At the same time, the knife business has been pushed through some important prenatal growth spurts. Yesterday and Thursday were full of planning. Progress so far:

• business plan drafted
• pro-forma financial spreadsheets drafted
• time budgeted from now until 2012, and through 2012.

Whew. Actually, a lot of work has been done. I’m excited about it, and excited to see if our estimations are anywhere close to accurate.

OK, so it’s probably time to get back to the novel. I am at the Monkey Grind, after all, for our Saturday morning writer’s group. I’m painfully aware that I’m a significantly better writer now than I was a few years ago, when much of the novel was first drafted. Which means I can do a lot with it, right? Sure – as long as I can wade through the soggy and florid stereo instructions I wrote before, hacking back the prose with a confident editing machete.

Wish me luck! I’m going in.

Catastrophic, life-mangling change didn’t become real to me until my foster family was broken apart by a false accusation.

Six years later, I feel the aftershocks of the helplessness I felt then. It’s been triggered in the past couple of months with local uncertainties and tragedies: deaths, cancer diagnoses, and looking for new employment. Uncertainty and powerlessness are thick as the pollen in the air.

I can either be despondent – retreat from the world – or I can be motivated to do what I can.

Today, on the blog of a friend who is going through a very difficult year, I started to write how my 4 year old daughter looked at me, her mouth open, cheeks dripping from tears, when I had to explain that she wouldn’t live with me anymore.

I was supposed to be the big strong mommy who could do anything. I let her down.

When the state showed up in a big state van to take her and her siblings away, I met with the social worker, and gave them the information I collected together to make sure their next parents got the best start they could.

My face hurt from not crying, and my chest burned where I refused it sobbing.

Her brother and sisters were already on the van, and she loitered to be the last one I hugged. She spread her hands, open and empty, and said she had nothing to give me, and she cried. She squatted down next to the driveway where we put the garbage cans once a week, and picked up a rock.

It was a present for me, she said, and she put it in my hand. A present so I wouldn’t forget her.

That little stone – black, with spraypaint on one side – reminds me not only of her, but of her continued helplessness inside the foster care system. As of this writing, she should be 10 years old.

So what do I have power over? What can I help?

When I am afraid, I can write in my blog about using fear as motivation – motivation to take control over the healthiest things I do.

I can also write stories. When I write garbage, I can edit. When I am rejected, I can resubmit.

When I’m tired of writing, these days I can knit, sculpt, search for a new job, make dinner, and go to bed.

Sometimes, every once in a while, I even bake cake.