NaBloPoMo is quickly approaching

November is the original National Blog Posting Month, and I definitely need to get back to writing. I'd already decided to revisit my National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) project from 2007, and I think maybe that daily blogging won't hurt.

So here's the thing. I'm all-in on this garden project right now (see this post if you don't know what I'm talking about). Is this way too boring? Or would it be cool for me to blog the garden?

I'll take requests, too. What do you want to know about me? I can't promise that I'll answer *any* question, but if the question is answerable and appropriate, I'll give it a go. You've got all month to ask, so hit the comments!

8 Things for 2008

As promised, my eight lofty, yet attainable, goals for the upcoming year.

1. Utilize my gym membership. I had a good streak going for several months, but I got out of the habit after a bout with the flu. This business trip, with the two-week hotel stay, could get me back in a good exercise routine. If I lost a few pounds, I wouldn't be heartbroken.

2. Keep my desk clean. I used to have a really, really messy desk at work. I resolved, about a year ago, to spend a portion of Friday afternoon making sure my desk was clean before I left. I've done well with that and am trying to increase the frequency of the desk purge to daily. Hopefully that will spill over to my purse.

3. Stealing this one from Zoot. I'm going to take the dogs, particularly the big girl, on longer walks. I'm sure she'd be a better dog if she got more exercise. Plus, she's getting a little chubby, which is cute but certainly not healthy.

4. Eat more fruit. If I had my druthers, I'd live on cheez-its, dinner rolls with butter, and country fried steak. With macaroni and cheese on the side. Unfortunately, that's not a sensible diet for anyone. Adding a couple of pieces of fruit might help me break the cheez-it addiction.

5. Ride my bike more. I live downtown. I work downtown. I do a lot of things downtown, and I feel pretty stupid driving around, looking for parking, when I live under a mile away from most of the things I do. Our house isn't in the downtown core, but it's an easy bike ride to get most places we go. If I bothered.

6. Give more of my time to help others. Delivering meals on wheels was so easy and so rewarding that we'd be crazy not to sign up do continue throughout the year. And I'd like to find more things we can do, as a family, to help out. Especially in our own neighborhood.

7. Finish the book. Along with exercising, that's part of my two weeks in a hotel plan.

8. Get more photos printed. Not everyone wants to look at a tiny camera screen. And computers crash. I really love the photo book I made of our wedding pictures. The next step would be to make more, like for vacations, birthdays, holidays, or whatever.

How long can I get away with this?

We're just four! more! posts! until NaBloPoMo is over, and I'm not sure who should be more relieved, you or me.

I think it's probably me, but not by much. Posting on weekends and holidays means, for me, slapdash posting with little thought or concern for niceties like sentence structure and transitions. So, for the sloppy writing, I apologize. And, as God as my witness, come December, we'll be back to high-quality writing. Most of the time. When I remember.

The other part of NaBloPoMo that has me very! happy! that we're almost done is that I don't necessarily have anything to say everyday. My life, and I assure you, I like it this way, is pretty low-key and drama-free. Sure, we have our ups and downs, but mostly we chug along, doing our work, trying to be good parents and good neighbors, keeping the damn kids off the lawn.

And that kind of life, my friends, does not make for fascinating reading.

I spent a lot of time this month trying to write a novel, and documenting that effort here. I haven't written one single word on the novel in a week, and I'm not sure there's even a remote, snowball's chance that I'll get done this month. Writing 2,000 words a day, give or take, is not how I roll. I can write 500 words a day, when I feel like writing, and then revise something I've already written, netting about 750 words a day. That works better for me.

So. Taking stock.

NaNoWriMo: not a dismal failure, but barring cheating, I won't hit the goal.
NaBloPoMo: SUCCESS! I can't say I wrote a great post each day, but I never really thought that would happen. I posted every day.

And the combination of the two? Not as daunting as I would have thought, since they involve completely different disciplines, at least in my brain. Writing fiction is much harder than transcribing my interior monologue. Journaling and essaying (if that's not a word, so what?) are much more my cup of tea, my natural mode as a writer. Fiction, however, especially historical fiction, is an effort. Sometimes it came naturally and the words poured out of me almost faster than I could type, but there was a lot of staring at the computer and not knowing what to do next.

All that's to say that I'm definitely doing both again next year.

The funk sets in

I've spent too much time inside my head, or, more accurately, too much time trying to get inside dead people's heads, concentrating on a difficult (at best) time in our history. And it's taking its toll. I'm feeling kind of ragged right now, processing the emotions that I'm mostly imagining these people to have felt. Tell you what, I don't really believe in psychic stuff, but if there are people who really can and do communicate with the dead, I don't envy them. Feeling just my own emotions is sufficient, thank you.

Which is why I'm taking a break from the Civil War today. And maybe all week. I'm going to concentrate on the decade prior for a while. When my main characters were kids, just doing kid stuff where they were. I think it will cheer me up.

Because I reached a pretty sad place last night, re-reading some of the more despondent letters.

Maybe next year I need to try my hand at chick lit.

Not what I expected

One of the odd side-effects of this NaNoWriMo mess I'm in is that I'm thinking a lot about war and battles and how they work. Seriously, I'm thinking of the battle choreography. And it's really, really hard to envision it, to have any clue if my protagonist was surrounded by people or not when he got wounded. Even after seeing the very spot, or very nearly, I'm still stumped.

I've never been a war buff. And not really much of a history buff. But that's not to say I'm not interested in history. Every time I visit Mud Island River Park, I read the informational signage, much of which includes Civil War information. I've read a few historical novels in my day, and I never hated history classes. And, well, fair enough, I was an art history major, too, but I was really most interested in contemporary feminist art those days, so really no reason to see a future interest in the Civil War.

But another side-effect, one I was discussing with my mom this afternoon, is that, the more I think about that war, it just makes me more certain that war is futile. Arbitrary. Let's put a bunch of young men in outfits, give them guns, and whoever kills the most of the other team gets to say their side wins, and that's how decisions will be made on a national (or global) basis. And looking at all those graves, all those boys and men dead just from one battle (and plenty of the dead from that battle aren't buried where I was...this cemetery only included the Confederate troops).

I just keep imagining how discouraged these guys had to be at that point. Okay, in all honesty, I don't really have to imagine this. The family letters make it clear. Of the three cousins who were in the same company, one of them, George, was a very observant and expressive writer. He made it so clear that, after nearly two years in this ugly, ugly war, he didn't really know what they were fighting for anymore.

Keeping in mind that these guys were from mid-state Missouri, it must have been a huge culture shock to wind up in middle Mississippi. The role of slavery was vastly different in Missouri (yes, these folks did own slaves) than it was in Mississippi, where plantations frequently had over 1,000 slaves per household. Fighting for King Cotton must have been a slap in the face for these apple and hemp farmers.

Not sure what I'm doing with this. But I'm agitated and just hate that, a century and a half later, we still send teenage boys and young men to shoot and be shot, thinking that's a reasonable way to decide world events. Insert some cliche about not learning history and being doomed to repeat it.

I've got a novel to write. Peace out.

Field Trip

I've bemoaned NaNoWriMo several times already this month. I've been blocked for days, even a week; I'm horribly behind in my word count. Lesson learned? Start the research early.

But I made up some time today by dragging my sweet family four hours south, to Port Gibson, Mississippi, the site of the battle that killed my 22-year-old cousin Isaac, one hundred forty-four years ago.

We saw Isaac's grave at Wintergreen Cemetery, along with the graves of other Confederate soldiers who died in (or sometime after, due to injuries incurred in) the Battle of Port Gibson. We tromped through the graveyard, looking for any sign of the woman who took care of him for the six weeks after the battle, until he died. The woman who wrote a beautiful letter to his mother, telling her the horrible, yet probably unsurprising, news that her son had died. The letter that started this book.

And then we visited Great Gulf Military Park, site of a battle the few days before the Battle of Port Gibson. I scouted around, looking for any signs of my cousins, who were members of Company B of the Sixth Missouri Infantry. Success! I found a rifle embankment with a sign that specifically states that the 6th Missouri held that position. Which meant I did what any mother would do...I made the kids lie down in the embankment and point gun fingers at me, and I took pictures. We also saw a Civil War ambulance, possibly the same one that transported my wounded cousin to his final home, a makeshift hospital staffed by young women whose husbands were likely in some other place, fighting in the same war.

I expected this trip would help me write, particularly descriptions of the town. Many of the buildings, especially churches, are the same buildings that stood in Port Gibson a century and a half ago. The Presbyterian church with the golden hand pointing heavenward on the top of the steeple. The Catholic church with the hand-carved altar rail. Several antebellum mansions. I wanted, and expected, to get a sense of place.

What I didn't expect was that Isaac would talk to me the rest of the way home. No, I don't mean in some psychic, "from beyond the grave" type thing. Nothing like that.

But he's talking to me, trying to tell his side of the story. And I need to get back to transcribing.

Hard to write

I'm not looking forward to writing this post.

Not because I'm burned out on writing, NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo notwithstanding. I really enjoy the writing. And writing everyday is fine, although sometimes I'm a little stumped as to exactly what to write.

But today I have something to write about, but it's not funny or snarky or witty or heartwarming. Just a little upsetting. By the time I get it all out, it might be more than a little upsetting.

And I feel the need to put a lot of preface here. Preface about how I love my city and I know damn well that we have crime problems and I am committed to being a part of the solution. That's why I moved to one of the poorest census tracts in the city when it was redeveloped. That's why I send my children to public schools. That's why I walk to work.

But yesterday I doubted my choices.

Because yesterday, my son told me what happened on the playground. (This is all hearsay; he did not witness the event, but he was there when it allegedly happened. So believe what you want to believe.)

A few children were playing (throwing rocks, actually, is what he told me) near the fence that borders the playground. A man was on the other side of the fence. (Maybe across the street. Details, again, are fuzzy.) He spoke to the kids. They spoke to him. He pulled a gun and showed it to them, or maybe pointed it at them.

This happened at the beginning of recess. The kids didn't tell anyone until they went back inside. (And yes, the kids got in trouble for not telling.)

My son is a sensitive, sensible kid. He was pretty damn scared afterward. Not so scared that he wanted to stay home today or that he had nightmares or anything like that, but scared enough that it showed on his face when he told me about it.

And no, the school, the teacher, no. They didn't send a note home about it.

So if you'll pardon me, I need to call the office. This is a problem. And if it's not addressed to my satisfaction, you can bet your last dime that some grumpy redheaded blogger is going to wind up on the news.


edited to add:
The principal was aware of the situation yesterday and questioned the children involved. Each child's story was different from the others; she thinks the whole thing is a tall tale. As soon as it was reported, a teacher went back out to the playground to check out the situation and nobody was nearby at all. Even though she doesn't think there's a problem or that anything happened, the principal did contact the district's security office and reported the incident, also requested patrols. I still think a note should have come home, but at least she did what was necessary. The schoolyard is bounded by a fence, and the kids reported that this man was on the other side of the fence. I was impressed that my kids knew that it was a felony to be within 500 yards of a school with a gun (unless you're the police). So I'm okay. For now.

Halfway done!

It's November 15! That means these orgies of writing known as NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo are half over! Exclamation point!


But now comes the time when I take yet another opportunity to ask you, my lovely readers, to help me make life decisions. I've got a few quandaries right now and I'm nowhere near the decision stage. And I need to hurry up. Or toss a coin. But y'all are so much prettier than even the shiniest Tennessee quarter. So HALP!


1. The singing thing. I didn't sing the September concert because I was working extreme hours at work. And then I decided to NaNo and NaBlo and train for a 5K, so I decided not to sing the holiday concert. My in-box started getting some rather flattering emails that I think were more about the group needing alto singers than my fantastic voice. And I hedged and said I'd think about it. It's been a week and I'm no closer to a decision. Should I go to the rehearsal on Tuesday and hope I can learn the music in time for the concert (Saturday, December 8)? Or should I be firm in my decision to sit out? (I do love me some holiday music...I'm torn...) I really need to let them know this week.

2. The hair. Should I keep on growing my bangs or should I cut them?

3. What should I wear tomorrow?

4. Is November 21 too early to hang up Christmas lights on the house?

5. What should I bring to Thanksgiving dinner with friends? Did I mention that the husband in this couple is a former chef? And that makes me a little nervous? Should I make pecan pie, even though it will eventually kill us all with its sugary, buttery goodness?

Thanks, everyone. Please number your answers in the comments so I know which question you're answering.

So, now what?

While I didn't reach the lofty heights of writing 5,000 words yesterday (who was I kidding, anyway?), I did get a lot done, and I'm mostly pleased with the results. When life isn't getting in the way, I've found a pretty good rhythm to the writing that seems to work.

See, fiction? Pretty much new ground for me. I took a fiction writing class my senior year of college because it fit nicely into my schedule and I needed an elective, and my friend had recommended the instructor. And I wrote a few short stories that the instructor had proclaimed to be very, very good. (Strangely, looking back, they were all in the horror genre, with cannibalism, burning at the stake, and bludgeoning being the themes of the three stories.) After the course ended, however, I never had any interest in writing more fiction.

Essays, research papers, reaction papers, sermons: those are my comfort zone. Even my blog posts, when they aren't about what I had for dinner, take the form of essays quite frequently. The five-paragraph essay, the one I learned how to write in seventh grade, is still my favorite thing to write. Except the 8-10 page research paper, with footnotes. MLA style, preferably, although one of my graduate professors told me I used APA style "with sophistication." (Strangest comment I've ever received in my academic career.)

And that means when I'm writing historical fiction, I find myself slipping into nonfiction, especially when I'm trying to include details from the era, or set up the situation with the whole Civil War thing that the book sort of hinges on.

But I've figured out that I can fix it afterward. If I just need to get those details OUT, onto the page, I'll allow myself a few paragraphs of nonfiction. But I have to highlight it and go back and fix it.

I'm really proud of how I did that yesterday. I turned two dry paragraphs about Grant's Vicksburg campaign into two pages of good dialogue.

I'm still working on getting the characters to act out their thoughts instead of just thinking them.

5700 words. 11% complete. Yes, I know the month is 43% complete. I'm behind. But I'm making progress. I just need to find a way to write 2,500 words a day.

Ask, and you shall receive

Apparently the universe read my blog yesterday. And the universe also seems to think that I needed a day to work on the book. Which is a perfectly reasonable explanation of why my son spiked a low-grade fever yesterday. And held onto the fever today. Which is why I'm at home.

Dedicated employee that I am, though, I did go in to work at 6:30 and stayed until 8, bringing work home with me, and tethering myself to computer and cell phone. I've received no less than four calls so far, which has inflated my sense of my importance at the Corporation. If this keeps up, they'll have to get me a Blackberry.

Hey, universe, I was only halfway kidding on that one.

Oh, and YouTube? With all those video clips from Grease? You're dead to me. Because that's all my son wants to do.

Universe, I'm kidding there. If he weren't watching Grease videos on the internet, he'd be keeping me from doing important things, like blogging.

If I really focus, I might get 5,000 words written today. That would be awesome.

NaNoWriMo = Fail?

If you've been paying attention to the tally in my sidebar, you may have noticed that my NaNo word count has not changed in almost a week.

I've forgiven myself, given my insane work week last week, and I'm strategizing now how I can still complete my goal of 50,000 words by November 30.

I'm 10% complete and the month is 40% gone. That's a little daunting.

I've also learned that I tend to get blocked, bored, restless, distracted, pick a few more similar adjectives, after I've written about 750 words. Which makes me a good essayist, but not so much a novelist. At least not so much a good sprint novelist.

But there are so many good reasons to keep at it. This project has been floating in my head for more than a decade. I've got so much wonderful primary source material that it should be easy. Of course, I decided to go in a much more difficult direction with the material, and this road has taken me on a much more research-intensive detour, but I've already admitted that the research is what I really enjoy most, anyway.

All this means that I've cleared my (and my family's) schedule for next Saturday. We're taking a road trip to Port Gibson, Mississippi, to look at a cemetery and to check out the scenery. It makes sense, I think, to have a look around the place where at least a large chunk of the book is set. Right? Plus, I'd like to take pictures of my late cousin-however-many-times-removed's grave. Since he, and his death due to a rather nasty wound in the Battle of Port Gibson, sets the whole story in motion.

The problem is, in all these family letters, this particular guy (who died at 22) is barely mentioned. I have letters and letters and letters from and mentioning his older brother, who was not killed in the war. That brother was eight years older, and seemed to be an outgoing, charming, and witty guy. My main guy's younger brother was much younger (I'm too lazy to walk across the room and look, but I think it's another 8 years or so), and his letters are not as well written (which makes sense, in a historical way, because he lived on the "frontier" his entire childhood, while the others lived in Virginia, so his education was considerably less than his elder siblings and cousins). (Which, when you think about it, must have been very difficult for him, to be around all these older people who seemed so much smarter and cooler.)

As a result of the lack of mention of this Isaac, I'm free to make him whatever I want. But that's a mixed blessing. I've given myself a task that kind of makes my head hurt. See, my mother and her cousin (who share the same last name but so little DNA that they're only barely related) have done a great deal of work on their family tree. This side of my lineage is very well-researched. (And my mom's cousin is a direct descendant of the older brother, the one who lived. So I feel a sense of responsibility to his character; I don't want to paint him in an unflattering light.) (Neurotic much?)

Which means I really don't want to make stuff up.

But that's what writing fiction is all about.

See my problem?

My mom and I had a good conversation about all these people and I asked a few key questions. Her answers, fortunately, confirmed what I was thinking about Isaac. He's younger than this cool group of cousins, almost a decade younger. His letters home from the war are well-written, so he wasn't dumb. But his letters are serious, guarded. He doesn't share anything, but accurately (I assume) describes where he is, who is with him, and what's happening. I don't get any sense of how he feels about the war and his part in it (he fought on the Confederate side, a whole other tangle that is messing with my head more than I should let it). And in the letter written by my main character, the woman who nursed him in a makeshift hospital where he died of his wound six weeks after the battle, the letter to his mother informing her of her son's death, the nurse reports his last words included mention of his uncle and someone named Sarah.

He had an uncle who was a General (I think, again, too lazy to cross the room) for the Union army. How interesting would it be if that was the uncle he mentioned.

And Sarah?

A girlfriend?

A cousin?

This is where you, dear readers, get to help write my book.

Who is Sarah?

I hate when he's right

Craig finally gave me a bit of a lecture last night. Not that he's unsupportive of my insane venture to NaNoWriMo, but that I'm doing that kind of irritating thing I do when I get into a project: I become singleminded.

But that wasn't his lecture. He told me to stop with the research and start with the fiction. A good point, but not easy for me, as research is pretty much my favorite activity in the whole world.

So I did what he said, a bit begrudgingly, and the next thing I knew, it was an hour later and I'd written 1,000 words, introduced a new character, and realized that I was having fun!

There's still research to do, but I've realized that I can do a lot of writing without it. If I can get to the 50,000 mark with some large blanks in the story, like there are now, I can leave the research for later, when I'm editing.

Thanks, honey. I'll admit you were right. Especially here, because you never read it.

NaNo makes me all thinky

I'm nowhere near my word count quota for NaNoWriMo (should be 1667x4=6668 at this point), but I've probably read well over 50,000 words doing research. Research I should have completed by now. That's what happens when I do no task analysis at all.

That being said, my head is better wrapped around all this stuff and I may even finish. On time. If I'm really, really good and disciplined, especially this week. And I successfully rearranged my schedule later this month to give me a chance to visit a Mississippi cemetery where the central character is buried. If I'm lucky, another character is there, too.

But here's what all this is doing to my head.

When you meet someone and they ask you where you're from, how do you answer?

Me, I say "Memphis." I don't say, "Memphis, Tennessee," or "Shelby County," or "Tennessee," or "the Mid-South." Of course, all those answers would be accurate. But that's not what comes out of my mouth.

I've met people from Texas, however, that tell me they're from Texas. It's a big state, that, so the answer is very different from mine. It's not geographic, at least not specifically. It seems to me that it speaks of a pride in place, of a heritage.

And my claim of Memphis speaks similarly, but differently. Perhaps it's a function of Memphis's place in Tennessee. Located in the southwest corner of the state, I can find myself in Arkansas or Mississippi in less than ten minutes. In all fairness, since I live seven blocks from the Mississippi River, I live closer to Arkansas than I do to most of Memphis.

If you know Tennessee geography, you'll have an idea that one can cross the state, north to south, in under two hours. Crossing the state east to west, however, takes most of a day. On the other hand, I can leave my house at eight and find myself in Missouri, having crossed into Arkansas, in under two hours.

Because of this proximity with other states, but the great distance between Memphis and other parts of my state, I don't really identify myself as a Tennessean.

(The historical research I'm doing has put all this in my head. In the Civil War, Confederate regiments were identified by state, not community. There were county militias, and those fed into the state infantries, etc. So these people I'm reading about and, ideally, writing about, talk a lot about being from Missouri, not being from a specific place in Missouri. Does this make any sense?)

So, dear reader, where are you from?

Frustrated

I've spent too much time doing research and not enough time writing. You'll see that my word count has not changed. I have, however, logged a lot of time on Google and various genealogy and history websites. And have purchased a large book of Civil War history.

It's sucking me in. I'm only posting this because I needed to come up for air. Oh, and because of that crazy NaBloPoMo thing.

Peace out, kids. Gotta write thousands of words about elusive Civil War people.

Day Two

So far I'm doing okay with the multiple disciplines. I knew the NaBloPoMo would be the easiest part, and yes, by Jove, it is. I found out the hotel in Chicago has complimentary wireless internet, so no worries even when we're out of town.

Although the goal is to write about 1700 words each day, I'm pretty happy with the 498 I wrote yesterday, especially considering that at 6:45 p.m., I was still kind of stumped. But the treadmill (another 5K!) provided me a moment to think and I got an opening sentence and a few other ideas about the novel's structure. The longest fiction I've ever written was 12 pages, typed, double-spaced, so the structure part is important.

The book is based on (inspired by?) a collection of letters that my mom's cousin transcribed. The letters are from the 19th century, mostly the Civil War era, and represent one side of communication with an ancestor of mine.

The first letter I read (they're in a binder, not in chronological order, and the binder is bulging, so this letter had fallen out of the rings) was from a stranger, a woman who volunteered at a makeshift hospital for Confederate soldiers, writing to a fallen soldier's mother to notify her that her son has died and was buried. In the letter she mentions cutting a lock of his hair to include in the letter. Her letter is long (the transcription is two and a half single-spaced pages), detailed, and beautifully written. But, as I read and re-read it, I noticed something. She really doesn't say much. She leaves a lot out. Was that intentional? Or was there not much to say? His injuries were bad from the get-go, so maybe he mostly just lay there, dying, for six weeks. I haven't decided exactly where I'm taking him, if he's really going to be part of her story.

So, at this point, Emily, a woman who is not my relative, is the star of the story. But I see the mother, Elizabeth, my great-great-going for a while-aunt? (my mom will surely help with this; she and the transcriber of the letters are the genealogists of the family) being the other star.

One complaint to my ancestors: too many Elizabeths. Very confusing. No offense to the Elizabeths out there, but good lord, I think every little girl in that family for fifteen years was named Elizabeth. It's almost like a bar bet. Two of these cousins correspond: Bessie and Lizzie. (The side of correspondence I have on those two is hilarious and impressively snarky....they would have loved MamaPopTalk.)

So I've started off a little behind on the novel writing, but I have a pretty free weekend coming up, and once I get a better grip on which letters belong to whom, and which Elizabeth is the mother, things should move a little faster.

Oh, and it would probably be clever for me to go to Port Gibson at some point. It looks to be about three hours away. Not this weekend, but maybe the weekend before Thanksgiving.

Maybe the treadmill will help again tomorrow.

NaBloPoMo, NaNoWriMo, schwaaa?

Why did I sign up for both of these? Insanity? Over-enthusiasm? Too much of a joiner? And why am I re-starting my running program at the same time?

Blog posting daily isn't that much different from what I already do. I post almost every weekday, so I'm just adding the weekends. Possibly challenging on Thanksgiving weekend, when my brother is finally marrying that hot girlfriend of his, but I'm confident that I'll find an internet connection somewhere in Chicago.

This book writing, though, requires 1,667 words, on average, every day. Given that, up to this point, I've written 100 words (go ahead, count!), it's not impossible. But given that I still don't know exactly what I'm writing about, we may have a problem. Plus, there's this prioritization that needs to happen on days like today: I need to go to the gym, I need to write 1,667 words, Survivor and ER are on. Um, yeah. It's not going to be easy. Thank goodness for TIVO.

Anyone done NaNoWriMo successfully? How did you manage your time? Did you write every day or did you have writing binges once or twice a week?

I'm going to track my progress on these three projects in my sidebar. Miles run, consecutive days posted, and word count. So cheer me on, or something. Or at least buy me a drink when it's all over.