Now that inspiration struck me like a lightning bolt on top of my head with regard to 2018 NaNoWriMo, it’s time to start pre-working aspects of the story. Because once November hits, it’s a mad rush to spew forth as many words as one can before the magical thirty days are over.

My story takes place in two time frames – one, during the summer of 1984, and two, present day. I’ve decided on a high school girl gang of four, some privileged, one not, and one in-between. There will also be at least two high school boys, the objects of the girls’ attention.

I love doing this kind of story, where the characters are not the same as they were as children. (Who is? It’s a great place for a writer to go.) Right now, I’m concentrating on the younger cast of characters, trying to assign them traits and physical descriptions, all the while sketching out the in-between years to explain later behavior.

There are many tools in books and online regarding character development. (I’m pretty sure the final product will not even resemble what I’ve come up in my head these next few weeks. After all, these are sketches, not masterpieces!) One I like to use is the twenty-questions method. I’m not sure where I found the original – probably at the San Francisco Writers Conference. Each character answers the same twenty questions. This really aids in developing very different characters.

Then I like to grid off all my characters (usually in a notebook situation, so I can see everyone at one time). One set of grids might answer the questions “What do I want?” and “How will I get there?” or “What am I afraid of?” and “How can I get over this fear?”

I can be visual, so I might actually sketch a map of where the characters live, or draw a prominent house. This helps get a sense of where the characters are in daily life. I’ve used Pinterest to post photos of characters or neighborhoods or anything else I find I might need.

All of this preliminary sketching crystallizes the characters in my mind. They become more real, making it so much easier to write about them (quickly) when November rolls around.

At this point I’m super excited! I’ve yet to finish a novel during November, but I do get enough information down, making the next edit easier to do.

Believe me, you don’t have to have a plan (I’m definitely NOT an outliner) but having the characters in concrete certainly helps in getting the story to gel.

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It’s never too early to begin plotting for NaNoWriMo. (I know. This priceless gem from me, the pantser.)

It all starts with a blank piece of paper, or in my case, a page from my Hobonichi. (See above.)

Now that I’ve relocated and am semi-settled (just have the tail ends of remodeling to weather through), I’m beginning to sort out where my creative pursuits will fit in to my new retired life. I haven’t completely figured out my bead room (the hardwood floors need to be refinished before I can make final plans) but I have located my notebooks. (YAY! Me!)

While on my morning walk/run yesterday, an idea came to me out of the blue. I figured out what to write for the yearly NaNo project! I know, I can barely believe it myself. My novel will be based on the short story, Runners, which was published in Medium a couple of years ago, and is featured in my Shorts chap book. (Check either one out. Or email me and I’ll sign a copy and send it to you.)

I even have a title. (I’m trying to refrain from the overuse of exclamation marks, but I’m so excited.) It will be called Running To, as opposed to running away. Like the short story, it will take place here, in the foothills of the Front Range.

That’s about all I got to yesterday on my walk, because about halfway up the mountain, I ran into this:

Yes, that’s exactly what it looks like. It’s a bear. I was momentarily knocked off balance, which is why this picture looks so crummy. It took a few seconds to regain my composure and whip my phone out. By that time, Yogi Bear had high-tailed it (amazingly quickly too) across the road and onto a driveway and I wasn’t going to follow him for a better shot. Dude. I’m not that crazy.

So today I will take that blank page and fill it with ideas regarding a beginning, a middle, and an end. I’ll try to figure out why my protagonist ran away, and what and why she is running to.

I speak from experience when I say NaNoWriMo is so much easier if you have a plan. It doesn’t have to be a full outline. You don’t even need an entire cast of characters. You just need a beginning, a middle, and an end, and one person’s struggle.

Here we go!

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I recently moved to Colorado, which is a homecoming of sorts. No, I wasn’t born here. I’m an Army brat, meaning we bounced around from state to state, wherever my dad was stationed. But when we landed here in Colorado Springs, that was it for my dad. He loved it. It was so much better than where he grew up in northern Minnesota. It was better than California or Arkansas. He retired here. I spent most of my formative years growing up here (thus the back story line in Finding Cadence), and I’m the oldest, so Colorado is all my sibs know.

I gave up my NordicTrack incline trainer when we moved. No room for it in our downsized little house, plus I figured with all the sunny days here (243+ per year, compared with Detroit’s 180), I’d enjoy my walking/running outside. That’s where I’ve been, enjoying a morning walk in this beautiful Broadmoor neighborhood, trying to keep from getting any bigger as we eat out most nights because my kitchen remodel isn’t yet complete.

I think a lot when I’m walking. It’s funny when you come “home.” So many old feelings rush back, even decades later. When I write about such things (as I did for Cadence), it’s a surface scratch revealing just a part of the emotion. When you live it, the emotions are overwhelming.

I think how I couldn’t wait to leave this one-horse town when I turned 18; now I’m back where I started.

It was a few days before I could walk by this school in my neighborhood. For this is where it all began. And by “all” I mean where I learned to love to write.

My mother sent us to this small, private Catholic school for a few years. If there is one belief I shared with my mother, it’s that we both thought education is extremely important. We both wanted our kids to have the best. I attended grades five, six, and seven in this school. (Truth be told, I’d have rather gone to public school but what can you do? I didn’t have a say.)

It was a tough school back then, run by a stereotypical nun, a la Sister Mary Stigmata aka The Penguin of The Blues Brothers fame. The nuns used rulers as disciplinary devices and I’ve seen many a student being dragged around by the ear. The bus driver was mean too. (Are you kidding? We didn’t live in this highbrow neighborhood, we only went to school here. We had to take the bus.) He rarely let us off where he was supposed to, instead “forgetting” and stopping the bus a half mile away. There was a really mean red-headed girl in my class who hated my guts and wanted me to fight her, goading me every so often. I’m wasn’t one who was a glutton for punishment (I had younger sisters who could kick my ass) and somehow avoided getting punched at school. Despite all these challenges, I liked the place, but I liked going to school. Didn’t matter where it was or what it was, I liked to learn.

There were some lay teachers too, and in seventh grade I got one who liked me. (A lot of teachers liked me. I’d always been ‘teacher’s pet’ material.) I liked her too. She saw past the shy, the awkward, and the athletically unappealing. She encouraged my love of words, and for that I was grateful. I somehow made it to the Colorado state spelling bee that year; although I didn’t win, it was thrilling to go to Denver to compete.

I’m fairly certain a lot of the kids (besides the mean read-headed girl) hated my guts for being the pet. I’m only human. I wanted the cool kids to like me. So when a bunch of them approached me to write a story – about the teacher – I agreed. They wanted something titillating, something way, way out there. They wanted me to write the worst things I could think of, and I did. It was a horrible story, terribly executed, one full of lies and vulgar words, but one that the cool kids really liked.

(I have to insert here that no one twisted my arm. I did something awful, to someone I really admired and who seemed to take an interest in me.)

Well, I’m the type of person who can’t do something awful without getting caught, and that’s exactly what happened. Not long after the “story” was written and released to the general seventh grade public, I contracted the chicken pox and spent two weeks at home. During that time, my desk was raided and Sister Mary-whatshername got a hold of my epic tome about the seventh grade teacher.

She was not amused.

As soon as the contagion had passed, I was ordered into school with my mother (where was my dad? Viet Nam? I can’t remember), where I was confronted by my poisoned words. Then I was expelled. Then my siblings were told not to return.

I don’t know what happened to the story. I can’t remember any of it except for the swear words I’m sure I didn’t know the true meanings of until much, much later. (I was developmentally delayed in that department.)

It was the end of the school year, so no big deal. They passed me into eighth grade, but I didn’t have a school for the fall. I hoped against hope that I’d have to attend the local junior high a few blocks away. (That’s exactly where I went in August.)

My mother didn’t speak to me for three months. She was that pissed. She took away my pens and paper. Yes. She was that pissed.

Eventually I started writing again. (It’s kind of hard to keep paper and pen from a kid in school.) In fact, I wrote for the school newspaper in my new junior high, where the advisor/teacher liked me just as much as the seventh grade teacher had. (Mr. Elliott. What a dreamboat!)

I learned a lot from this experience. I learned you can push the envelope in your writing, but you have to do it with tact. With style is even better. You don’t need a sledgehammer with most readers. You don’t need crass.

Yes, this is where it all began. And this is where it continues.

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I am still in the process of unpacking and getting my new house set up (no kitchen yet, but we’re making progress!), so writing – as in actual chapters of a novel – is on the back burner. I’ve yet to find my notebooks! I’m anticipating a mid-September time frame for return to normalcy.

I’m not much of an athlete (don’t my high school chums know it!), but I have committed to at least ten miles a week of walking/half-assed running.

This is monumental for me. I’ve just moved back to Colorado, where the air is thin and nearly everything is uphill. I’ve just now, after three weeks, started running (if you can call it that) about 25% of my four mile walk. That’s downhill, of course. Are you kidding? It’ll be a few months before I graduate to uphill running.

When I walk, I only carry the cell phone so it can track my statistics. I don’t take calls, I don’t text, I don’t listen to music, or the witty repartee of podcasts. (I might take a photo or two, that’s it.) That’s because in addition to being nearly uphill to everywhere, the roads are twisty, the sidewalks are sparse, and the lawns are full of wildlife. I have to keep my wits about me just to stay alive.

Plus, I’d rather just walk/run in silence, or only with the noise of the natural world in the background.

So in the quiet, I can hear the chimes of the Shrine of the Sun. I can watch the magpies fighting each other for road kill. I can smell the piney aftermath of the hail storm of the century. I can peek at my neighbors’ houses, which are all mega-gorgeous. (We have the smallest, plainest house in the best neighborhood, what a coup!) Most of all, I can think!

So here are my random thoughts, along with random photos:

  1. I can spot a texter-and-driver from a half mile away. There’s that nearly imperceptible sway from the center of the lane. If they’re aiming at me, I’m heading for the grass.
  2. People are nice here! They say “good morning” or wave. You don’t want to speak or wave to pedestrians in Michigan, but in Colorado, do as the natives do.
  3. You must really watch out for wildlife. Bunnies abound. Deer too. Today a doe and her fawn came at me full bore down the street. This startled me, so I stopped. Then she stopped. (The fawn kept going, until it stopped too.) What do you do? You can’t shoo away a wild animal that weighs more than you do! Especially a mother-wild-animal. That would be suicide. So I waited a bit. A minute later, she crossed the street to continue on (obviously she had somewhere to go – in a hurry), and then the fawn followed. I continued on.
  4. The best time for outdoor exercise of any type in the summer is before 9 a.m. That’s because it gets brutally hot at 9:01 a.m.
  5. It’s really beautiful here. Not just pretty, but beautiful. I’d nearly forgotten.
  6. It occurs to me that a lot of things I have written about Colorado are true, even though I haven’t lived here since 1974. Perhaps a person’s memory is truer than you would think. Maybe slices of life are buried under decades of events rushing past you. Maybe I should think of some other places I’ve been, write about them, and revisit them?
  7. I’ve shaved off 11 minutes of time since I’ve gotten here. How can that be? Some days (especially the days about two weeks ago), I’d start out and think I was going to die. (Dude. That uphill mile.) I would plot out how to make a 9-11 call with my cell phone number still in Michigan. But it’s easier now. No 9-11 unless a mountain lion jumps out of a driveway.
  8. I find I miss my characters and wonder where my notebooks are. (I found my external hard drive (YAY!) but the nuts and bolts are in notebooks.
  9. Finally, there’s that chill in the air, so slight, but it’s telling me that fall is coming soon. I’d better find my long pants before it gets here.
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If you are reading this, know that I am on the road between here and there (or there and where I will be), and I will be disconnected for a few days. That’s because my husband, son, and I will be caravan-ning our way across the country to what I hope will be my forever home.

This is the new chapter of a new story (or maybe a new chapter of a continuing story, who knows?), in a place and time where life will be somewhat carefree and full of time for editing.

Or it may be more of the same, of scraping the edges for bits of time for my art, or waking up in the middle of the night (as I did last night) and fretting about what was left unaccomplished. Let’s face it folks, I’m not getting any younger, and time is limited.

So I’m sitting here in my nearly empty, almost echoing house waiting for the last donation place to come by and scoop up the remains of my leftover life. Try as I may, it was difficult to shed my possessions, and I’m not sure I was all that successful. Earlier this week, we said goodbye to a 16′ container crammed with stuff we haven’t used in months (hint: maybe that stuff we could have lived without).

I bought so many UHaul boxes, I was featured on the UHaul Instagram account. I feel personally connected to the nice young man who collected my money for what I’m sure is hundreds of pounds of cardboard and bubble wrap. He must be laughing all the way to the bank.

Wednesday morning, the piano movers came and took the Steinway baby grand. (I highly recommend Modern Piano Movers. They moved my son’s upright from Michigan to San Francisco – professional all the way. It’s all they do, move pianos.) It will be a few weeks before I hear my husband stumbling over Chopin.

I packed up the rest of my wire and jewels the next day and put the (massive) stack of bins near the back door. Next came the paints and canvases and brushes. I pulled out a few markers and pencils for my backpack and put the rest away. My hands feel weirdly empty and uneasy.

We get another rental truck Saturday and will load up what remains, and will close on the sale of the house Monday. Then it’s off to the open road right after. We’re heading west.

I haven’t gotten much editing done in these last few months. I’ve been busy not only packing, but selling stuff, throwing away stuff, donating stuff, and giving away stuff. But my mind is always plotting away. I have notebooks and my Hobonichi to keep track of new ideas. As soon as we get the office set up in the new house, I can begin the process of putting it all together.

Yay! Just in time for NaNoWriMo! 🙂

There’s something bittersweet about closing the old chapter. There were ups and downs back there, mostly ups. I’ll miss the friends I’ve made here, my daughter (as problematic as she is), and my granddog babies. I’ve spent 14 years loving this house – after all, this house was the catalyst for writing Finding Cadence. It features prominently in the story. (I recently picked up a copy and read a few pages. Even though I believe this to be my best work so far, I can see how far I’ve come in story telling.)

But there’s something exciting about beginning a new chapter too. I’m a pantser writer, and I start each chapter without very little plan, allowing my characters to take me away. Sometimes the landscapes are mundane and boring, but sometimes I find myself coming to places I’d never thought I’d wander into.

Here’s hoping my new chapter in life leads me to the unexpected and the exciting.

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I used to be highly enamored of the Internet.

What a great place, right? Finding old friends, making new friends, staying current with the world. Learning so many new things. The Internet of twenty years ago was full of bright, shiny stuff. I know I felt like a kid at the carnival with a hundred dollar bill (which, back when I was a kid would have been too much money to spend in one day).

At one point in my life, the Internet and my friends on it dominated my entire day. If I got up at a certain time and logged on to a certain site, I could be assured of finding certain people with whom I could commiserate and share. This was clockwork, people. And if I had insomnia and went back to those sites, a different set of people would be on. We would tease each other and ask questions both deep (what is the meaning of life?) and mundane (so you think your snowstorm will hit here tonight?). We would share the secrets in our heads. Those people would set off something in my brain which compelled me to create. It was intoxicating. It was positive. It was as close to Nirvana as anyone is going to get on earth. It was a love affair of epic proportions, that cut into the time I needed for the rest of my life.

Ah, but nothing stays the same.

Lately, and by this I mean the past few years, I’ve seen the ugly side of the Internet. I might be the only one with this opinion, but I can’t stand it anymore. I love words; I love ideas. I love talking and sharing. I especially love seeing the other side. I love to puzzle things out to a solution (much as I despise math and the word “calculation” causes palpitations).

Now, though, the civility has flown the coop. Miss Manners must be spinning in her grave. Red hot emotions cause people to act, say, and type the kind of sentences one wouldn’t yell in a crowded movie theater. It’s not just the potty mouth language that upsets me, it’s the artful twisting of the vocabulary that is not meant to inform, but to inflame. (Shame on you, news media, which we should not now regard as “news” but as commentary and editorial.) If you don’t agree, you get screamed at. People will gang up on you in a tidal wave of indignation. You’ll get boycotted and lose your job. (Not just celebrities, either. I have a story that will curl your hair, but for later…) You can threaten harm and puncture hearts by mere keystrokes. It’s insanity.

I’m all for the freedom of speech, but I’m also for respect. I’m not a Pollyanna, but I crave positive vibes. I will listen to your side, to any side, but don’t refer to me or my friends as stupid, and especially don’t deride me or them behind my back – and on the pettiest of reasons, because we don’t agree. Because while the Internet is vast and you might be good at hiding your words, and I’m no computer bad ass, I can still stumble upon your opinions and if I look just a little harder, can find the rest of you.

And so I’ve been turning off the negativity. So I’ve been weeding the patch, so to speak, on my social media platforms, even though I really don’t want to. Because some of the chief offenders happened to be some of my biggest pals from 15-20 years ago. Finally this spring, after the sale of the business and getting the house ready to sell, I just turned off nearly completely. I started working with my hands (most satisfying), painting and drawing, and writing in a journal and in my many notebooks (because I can’t trust myself near my laptop with WiFi, not yet). I can’t change the world, but I can make my little piece of it relatively happy and without a trace of random hatefulness.

This is a short term measure. Just when I start feeling good about myself and humankind, I’ll hit up Twitter or Facebook for a hot minute, which causes me to retreat in haste and chastise myself for being so naive. Nothing OUT THERE has changed for the better. After my short term disgust, I’ll sit back and wonder about my friends who wrap themselves in half-truths and hate. How did they get this way?

Ugh. This is the part of the Internet I truly despise.

People. Don’t do this unless you want to stay sane. Step away from the screen. Go outside. It’s sunny where I am, but even if it’s not, there’s always something to see. Keep your righteousness, but go out there and find something. Find love. Find fulfillment. Find something real.

And so I will be out there, in the Real Life world, looking at Real Life things, like the roses blooming at the driveway gate, or the smile on that adorable baby’s face, or the amazing color of the sky this afternoon. I guess I’ll peek in every once and again, because for all of its pitfalls, you can’t find better information than online. Plus, you know. I’m an addict.

🙂

I might change my mind at some point. We are all entitled to change our minds.

And I’ll keep writing, because right now it’s one of the few things that’s keeping me positive.

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I’m currently editing/revising my first draft of last year’s NaNoWriMo. As any writer who has participated in this WordFest can tell you, spewing the words is one thing, making a meal out of word salad is another altogether.

Personally, my one bad habit is making everyone sound the same – like ME. This is a terrible habit, one you want to shed or change or eviscerate before your story reaches anyone else’s eyes. But, it’s a habit that makes sense. We write from our own experiences, viewing the world from our own lenses. It can’t be helped. My voice is opinionated, yet even, smart and sassy, but not necessarily mean. Unfortunately, human nature dictates that someone’s got to be the bad guy. Someone has to bear the burden of tragedy. Someone has to hide despicable secrets.

Three chapters in and I’ve noticed all of my characters are sounding alike. (They ARE sibs, but still… There’s a giant age gap between oldest and youngest, meaning these are different people by virtue of being in different generations.) I’ve decided it’s time to shake that baby up but good.

The second run-through in a NaNo project is for adding a bit more color, purpose, or to throw shade here and there. AND to get the first draft to the point to where it’s interesting and makes sense. I’m not there yet, because in the first pre-draft writing, I didn’t want to make the angry sib a complete asshole. (Because I’m writing as if looking in a mirror – I’m not a perfect person, I’m often harsh, but at the end of the day, I AM NOT a complete asshole.) After careful consideration, I’ve decided she’s the one who has too much baggage to unload. She’s the one with the unbreakable mean streak. She can’t be reasoned with – at least, not in this particular story. She’ll end up swimming in her bile while the other sibs find redemption or answers or closure.

It’s difficult for me to take on the persona of an unreachable, unchangeable person, one who is mean. Fortunately I have many models from Real Life to study and use as adaptations to my angry sib.

Plain Jane writing is like driving along the Redwood Forest (pictured above) at 60 mph without once getting out of the car. Yeah, they’re trees, yeah, they’re beautiful, yeah, they’re tall. Better writing is parking the car, taking a walk, and realizing that every tree, every path, every sky is different.

So now I’m off to take a walk in my head.

Happy writing~

🙂

 

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