Day 4: Junk Food and Writer's Block

Prepare yourself, writers, NaNoWriMo is not for amateurs. I can't imagine what all the poor writers committed to writing 50,000 words are feeling right now. I'm having a hard time with my 500 words a day pact. My story is about Lydia, a little girl whose best friends are ghosts. I've done alright with the background story and the character quirks, but now I have to actually invent some sort of plot, there needs to be conflict! Introduction, rising action, climax, falling action and denoument. Isn't that right?

My dinner diet of cheetos followed by breakfast/lunch of cheetos and a luna bar cannot be helping me. What a terrible idea to keep a food journal when you're stressed out. It reads "hello glutonous, overworked and unimaginative swine. You could make yourself a spinach salad, but there's a bag of peanut butter chocolates right next to you, and really, won't they do? P.S. Your writing sucks. Love, indigestion and doubt."

I'm determined to keep this up. I want to continue this project next week by starting a new story or creative writing piece again. I have to tell myself this uneasy, worrisome, daunting and inopportune task I've assigned myself is good for me.

Beatitude Road

Here is the poem I wrote the first week into the project.

Beatitude Road

Lorine, I came here to find you.

There is a civil city unrest

and I feel guilt to even whisper.

I sought to hear you--

calm, cool voice like good earth, silt.

I imagined us walking together

double-button coat,

thick glasses and stockings

side by side

with black leggings, gray jacket,

my red hair.

I was not expecting

to see

scouts,

little boys in search of cattails,

leaves with insect bites,

smelling flowers that have

begun to dry up.

The further I walked beside you,

smelling the same air,

“fish, fowl, flood”

I was met with other neighbors--

a cardinal

stopped me in my tracks,

puffed out as if to say,

“This is my path! Who sent you?”

Sparrows zipped in

and out of reed beds too quickly

for me to tell whether there were

multiple birds

or one

flitting, with an identity crisis,

he thinks he is a woodpecker.

I walked all the way to the bridge

and stopped

asked you which side

owned the prize view.

The right, sun setting blaze orange

behind the telephone lines

leading to the industrial park

beyond the marsh fields,

or the left,

the river bend that curls

around the woods to the beaver dams,

the heron perches,

the grandfather bluff?

Lorine, I brought you a coffee,

a gift for our walk together

I pray I listen well enough

sipping slowly on this marsh mocha

while hearing your stories,

heeding advice.

You tell me to listen to the red-winged blackbirds,

find the joy in their song.

So, seven birds I counted

all pluming in one tree

while I stood watching them

they sat watching me.

Their liveliness inspired me

and I felt the heartaches of my own worries

dissipate.

Look--

a heron and an eagle

soared past our shadows

making an invisible helix before the heron

gargled out a surrender

and waited patiently, blue neck in the tall grasses,

several geese

waded undisturbed nearby.

Now perched,

the eagle screeched a few night notes

-goodnight maple, sumac, elm-

Few padded footsteps, heels covered in field dust,

the trail exit ahead

I walked feeling like the air was different,

my troubles, not so weighted

like the mud we had to cross.

I breathed blessings

on my walk with Lorine.

Day 1: Chicken Soup, Chili Curry, and Cemetaries

First day into the week of not eating out and writing creatively each night. I've set myself a goal of at least 500 words a day so that by the end of the week I'll have at least a 3500 word short story.

Today I woke up late but managed to pack my lunch with some homemade soup. When I arrived at work, I remembered that the new sales manager was starting today, so most of my morning ended up helping to prep him for coaching his team. I didn't mind the partnering, it allowed me time to get to know him a little. However, when the store manager asked me to take him to lunch for the day and he didn't want to visit our pathetic food court, there went my "no eating out" plan. I ate my sub sandwich thinking well, tack on another day, too late now.

After a long, somewhat stressful day at work, I came home rather crabby and overwhelmed. Not helping matters was my desk piled high with tossed about mail, shopping receipts, computer and camera cords and bags of cough drops and chocolates. My desk chair was mounded with sweaters I ran out of room for, stacks of leggings, dress pants, and work shirts I kept meaning to hang up. Then there was the floor around my desk! Bags of possible Christmas gifts, old lunches, shoes, and a beach towel that never made its last hoorah. Joe came home from the grocery store ready to start dinner. I sulkingly went to the kitchen and tossed a bell pepper and some zucchini on the counter which Joe offered to chop. I threw the chicken in the microwave to defrost and measured out 3 cups of rice. After barely talking and lumbering around the kitchen, I apologized to Joe and said "just give me 10 minutes to clean up my room," threw some curry chili sauce in a pan to boil and at least reorganized my purse so it wasn't overflowing with 1o lipglosses and 5 bottles of hand sanitizer.

So the night was saved. Joe and I ate a chicken curry dinner and while I picked up my room he ran a movie back to the store. Then we agreed to each spend an hour at our craft. I FINALLY finished my 500 words and it wasn't easy getting started after not writing for so long. Part of my story takes place in a cemetary. Here is my criteria for writing, based off of National Novel Writing Month's (or NaNoWriMo) website. I will write everyday at least 500 words, and after the day is over, may no longer go back and edit my previous work. NaNoWriMo isn't about writing great literature, it's about writing lots of literature! The goal is to get writers past the worries of starting something, revising it, torturing yourself over plot and fluidity. Instead, if you decide to change genres halfway through the tale, so be it, and I hear pirate sci-fi is a genre now. Hmmm...

I did find this video from NaNoWriMo's site uplifting.

http://www.viddler.com/simple_on_site/112ef5ee

Writing 101

Ok, here's how I came to be sitting in my room struggling for an hour and a half setting up the first blog I've ever done that wasn't mandatory. Two weeks ago, my boyfriend, Joe, and I are having coffee on our four year anniversary and we've spent the better half of the evening discussing the things that prevent us from doing our passions, mine being writing and his being music. I'd been reading that bestseller, The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin, and was both inspired and irritated by how simple she made her narrative of a year's worth of change seem. Sure she had her ups and downs, but not all of us have book deals and literary agents to keep us going. But we agree to take charge of our free time and spend it on our passions by eliminating watching TV and movies for one week. One week to jumpstart a change in our "go-to couple activity" and spend that time doing other things like our passions.

It didn't seem difficult. The only time either one of us complained was when we were eating lunch or dinner alone. Typically, we would have sat in the living room watching either the discovery or travel channel. So, for one week, I spent my time listening to Jumpa Lahiri's "Unaccustomed Earth" on cd. Joe listened to the radio. I spent time on my days off taking long walks in the marsh and channeling Lorine Niedecker. I spent time in the library reading poetry and by the end of the week did write one new poem.

Newly energized by the challenge of changing one thing for a week, we have decided to continue doing so, hoping it will lead us further towards our passions.

This past week, we gave up drinking alcohol, and I also committed to walking 40 minutes a day. I'll tell you now, with the ever changing Wisconsin temperatures, the whole walking thing is easiest when you have a dog. As I do not, I borrowed my boyfriend's sister's and that made that task much more fun.

So, here's why I now have a blog. This week we have committed to eating at home for one week, absolutely no take out! I am also going to keep a food diary to better observe what I am eating. And I, in addition, to honor National Novel Writing Month, have argued back and forth with myself enough times to say "what the hell? give it a try!" and am committing to writing for one week every day. Instead of a novel, I'll write a short story. And I plan to document our "Passion Project" in this blog. Here goes nothin'!