Dear Diary...

{Never underestimate the tag art from a can of peanuts -

this is probably one of my new favorite journal pages....}

I've been a journaler for a long time and have the shelves full of tattered bindings to prove it, but it's always been a struggle for me to get beyond a shallow ramble when I write... This blog series at A Holy Experience encouraged me lately and I thought I'd share. 

It's funny how each time I sit down to write, trying hard to listen for my Redeemer's voice, the Jason Mraz song 'Lucky' plays through my head! 

". . .Do you hear me? I'm talking to you

Across the water, across the deep blue ocean

Under the open sky, oh my, baby I'm trying.

Boy I hear you in my dreams

I feel your whisper across the sea

I keep you with me in my heart

You make it easier when life gets hard. . ."

He's there.

Hi There, 2009!

(I got a new journal/planner/sketchbook - and a new skirt!!)

Also, you may have noticed the delicious new layout that my sister gave me. Isn't it lovely?? I wasn't allowed to have a sneak peak - it was all surprise. Ah, she knows me so well! It's up to me to get the sidebars all filled in again. That shouldn't take very long.

As if that were not enough, my socks were knocked off to open this VERY unexpected present. May I tell you how many months we three, my mother, my sister and me, have been drooling over Alicia Paulson, aka PosieGetsCozy's book: Stitched In Time.  

Oy, it's lovely! And has inspired a few things, which you'll see later...

Happy New Year!

THE END!

Yaaaaay! It's over, the story didn't turn out half bad and, since my stack of library books has been sitting quite lonely for this whole month, I am dying to get my hands on some real fiction! But I think that I may sit here for a few moments more, petting my pretty certificate... 

Wordcount Wednesday

This is the last Wednesday of Nanowrimo and I am glad. Maybe it's the (fading!) cold speaking. Maybe I really need an outline of some sort to make it sanely over the finish line. Maybe it's knowing that there is fresh cornbread dressing in the fridge downstairs - patient, crumbly, buttery, sage-y goodness.

Wordcount? 42,737. I'd really like to have 45K before all the relatives arrive. Dr. Wicked's Write or Die is my friend.

Excerpt? Meh. This far in, things are lucky to get spelled 'tairs' and 'he' instead of 'the'. (Also, I want to know when the sinister hotel manager got so attractive? This comes of seeing too many Paul Newman pictures!)

(Okay, well not this side of him - but I love these goofy poses!! <3)

Wordcount Wednesday

While I was at my sister's, I fell a little behind on my word count and told Nephew #1 (he's 8 and just beginning to get this reading/writing thing) that I couldn't come play video games until I finished my words.

A: I know some words! How many do you need?

S: Two hundred.

A: ...I don't know that many words.

But it was so sweet of him to offer! And while we're talking about it, let me tell you, that kid can tell a story! He told me a full epic series about some guy and his spaceship (which kept breaking) fighting off whole armies of aliens and robots. I loved the ending where the guy goes through several battles, fighting left and right (complete with hand-planes!) and then comes home to crash right on the landing pad...and no one ever knew he had done anything. I thought it was pretty funny. Maybe while he's here for Thanksgiving I can copy down one of his stories, just like my aunt used to do for me!

Wordcount Wednesday Thursday

(It's at 20K now, but the widgets won't cooperate.)

This week I've had a lot of fun skunking my characters, dousing them in tomatoes and then not giving them the dessert they wanted. In return (they must be very forgiving characters!) the real mystery of the matter is finally appearing. If I mean to tie it up in 17 days, some action had best come soon!

It must have been a bad night in the kitchen, was all that I could figure, and continued in preparing my little snack only a little more disturbed than before. Suddenly, as I was spooning a glowing amber gem of apricot jam out of its ribbed glass jar, a horrible little chill went up and down my spine. I froze on my stool with the spoon at half mast, holding my breath and listening.

Funny how these little spooks can come upon us in the dark of the night, when we are all alone with no one within distance to say "hello, did you hear that?" and then laugh together when it turns out to be the cat. Funny how they make our hearts pound and our lives go still for just a moment, while an unexplained cart goes rumbling down our road. Surely you have had such things happen to you? I guess that I was lucky that there *was* indeed someone there to laugh with, though I hd not known it a moment before.

As I sat there, poised and listening, I suddenly thought of my father back in Oak Grove and how very very much I could have liked to been there just at that moment. Then the hair on the back of my neck rose straight up and I'm sure my eyes were as big as saucers as I heard the back kitchen door squeaking open. In fact, I caught my own reflection in the copper bottomed pots above my head and the sight of myself looking so silly shook me out of it and into the role of watching a figure slip into the room behind me.

- randomly chosen excerpt

A Moment of Truth

This is the awesome wallpaper that I downloaded from the Nanowrimo forums. (Since Laura has to cope with seeing it for a month, I let her pick. Wasn't that sweet of me? ;) ) I thought that all the little notes were cool and that I might try to follow them through the month, letting my villain appear on the day suggested (still not sure who he/she is...), reading a bit of poetry on Day 5... Well, yesterday and today happened of their own accord! It's 2AM, do you know where your character is? Yes, mine's in the kitchen giving a haircut because I'm still up and trying to catch up from a really fun family reunion. Wake up and treat myself to a breakfast of >cringe< doughnuts (yum!) and then go to write. What's that? Grab a treat?? Yes, little Calender! 

Wordcount Wednesday

"Once upon a time, there was a girl. Forgotten and weary of the wind that blew ticklish strands of pale amber hair onto her nose, she sat in the corner of the only place as forgotten as she was that she knew. Did that make any sense to you? It didn't to me either. Her name was probably Alice and she probably wished that an old Victorian mantle mirror would whisk her off to wild and wacky adventures involving flamingo cricket sticks and hedgehog balls. In fact, she would have been content with the Victorian mantlepiece alone, but as it was, our Alice was really much too old to fit into a mantle mirror, much too big to fall down a rabbit hole of any sort (rather, getting stuck before she even began, with elbows and knees caught on poplar roots and her skirt snagged on a earthling rose bush, by nature painted neither red nor white but orange."

- From the crazy opening

"From the front, the way that most people are introduced to the Bronnydd, the timber frame entryway reaches out in a most friendly and beguiling manner. A bellhop would take your bags, and, depending on your degree of eminence, the manager might come out to usher you inside, smiling all the way. If you arrived in the afternoon daylight, the cool dark interior of the hotel might render you a bit disoriented, but that is half of its charm. Before your eyes adjust, the other bodily sensors take their turn. Breathe in deeply and catch those earthy nuances of cedar and pine. Feel the comforting solidity of a well mortared stone floor beneath your feet. Allow you fingers to take delight in the smooth curves of the manager's desk as you lean against it to get your bearings. Do you hear that ripple of sociable chatter, drifting in from the piazza where teacups clink in turn? Drink in the precious silence guarded by granite walls nigh three feet thick. And what is that? The cozy crackle of a flame spitting on the hearth. Yes, there it is. Turn and see it lighting up a pair of deep leather armchairs, one with a book of poetry resting on its yielding arm. Someone has left their hat there too, a turkey feather stuck gaily in the rim."

- From the 2nd person stage. Things are more normal now that we've got our setting! But sadly, unquotable.

Happy NaNoWriMo!

(The banner is old, sorry!)

I went in this year head-first and plotless. Wish me luck! Track my (slow and painful) process here:

THE END

(screencap shamelessly stolen from my sister's 366 stash)

And that was that. 

Mission Verse Novel completed and now on to other things. What else can we accomplish? I'd like to do another one children's fairy tale style, with rhymes that roll off your tongue. Later. Right now, I'm cuddling with a cute pup, listening to the Singing in the Rain soundtrack in the other room and dreaming up half a dozen circular garden themes inspired by our Sunday drive.

See you later!

Word Count Wednesday

(Going to the library on a rainy day.)

21,067 / 25,000 (84.3%)

"Weaving around parked cars
and moving vehicles
which honk rudely
as he rodeos a string
of heavy buggies
toward the store.

Heaven help us if he isn't
a grocery cart cowboy.

Every evening, he goes out
and gathers up the herd,
corralling them from the
wild and various places
a grocery cart is apt to wander.

Pushed against the curb,
one leg over a speed bump,
foraging dandelions in the cool
shade at one side of the building,
playing newspaper stand,
leaning sleepily against a lamp post
where the june bugs and bats
begin to gather as the summer sun goes down.

Whooping, he drives the last
of his steers into their fringed cave.
We catch his eye
when he locks them in
and, wiping his hands
on the green twill front of his apron,
comes grinning."

(Check out our new bookshelves. Ingenuity is at work in this new house! :P)

Practically Poetry

Wordle is fun. :)

Word Count Wednesday

15,084 / 25,000 (60.3%)

I'm a little behind - but we are half way through!! This week, I forced my character to choose between plums and blueberries. May be the cruelest thing I've done yet.

Sentiment is allowed
to tarnish choices,
when it comes to
favoritism, I think.
With the grit of blueberries
on my tongue, I see
grandaddy's hand,
leathery, spotted,
bent with old Arthur.
It cradles seven berries,
we stand beneath their shade.
Ages old, they tower
above our heads,
mine tangled and twelve,
his bent with years,
bowed with history.

My family has no history
with pies - blueberry or
otherwise. The greatest
hope the fruit had to look
forward to was being
layered over vanilla pudding
stirred for so long by
grandma in her housecoat
or being tossed lovingly
over a brightly enameled
bowl of home churned ice cream
(also vanilla and sometimes
butter pecan)

Most of our baskets
are emptied on the
road towards home,
some are taken casually
with home grown radio
on the front porch steps,
but the best are devoured
with relish on the bridge
beside our grove,
watching the current
ripple over mica and fairy
crosses and raccoon tracks
from the night before.

Mmm, yes - blueberries,
with all my heart!

For me, it's plums. There are a few in the kitchen calling my name. Since this week stunk so bad, here's a real artist for you!

“i thank You God”
e.e. cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;
and for everything
which is natural which is infinite
which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;
this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:
and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Word Count Wednesday

10,026 / 25,000 (40.1%)

In the 10 thousands! Yoohoo!

It is getting harder to pick an excerpt for two reasons:
a. 2nd week tends toward writing, just for the sake of wordcount, which deteriorates the quality. :(
and
b. The plot thickens. Paragraphs get lost and out of place on their own. Poor wittle paragraphs...

A flashback:

All the trees
had bark too thick,
the soft barn wood
was just the trick.
I giggled and scratched
my imaginary beau's
initial alongside
mine (with a backwards
L, that always gave me trouble
- the ballet teacher abandoned
the old "L is for left"
routine with me
and just slathered
both rights in red paint.)

If David had seen it,
he would have been mad.
Not only that -
but he would have told
Mrs. Pritcherd so,
standing barefoot on those
smooth wood floors,
akimbo and a hand
in either pocket.
(he took on a Huckleberry
Finn guise in those days,
though I wouldn't let him
wear the ragged hat)

M L
loves
D

Just D.

Maddie refused
to do hers too
- it looked so deep,
so big, so bad.
Well fine.
- That proved her love
was not as deep or true
as mine and David's
and to make it up,
she would have to
serve the tea.

(Maddie and I
always had tea
in the hemlocks
at two o clock
on Wednesday
afternoons
served from an old
tin pitcher with sides
of scarlet bean blossoms
for our hors d'oeuvres.
The dogs would
never partake
and this irritated us
to no end.
The dogs replied
that David and Steve
didn't have to drink their tea.
They had the excuse
of being invisible,
we said, adjusting
our cinnamon fern
feathers. Dogs, however
were entirely real
and must not be rude
to their hostesses.
If they were
we would give them a bath.
And we did
eventually.
In tea.)

Getting decidedly prosy here. :)

Augverno 2008

My friend Mary Beth (from WritingAnotherStory) and I are taking our love for Nanowrimo and our life-goals of writing a verse novel and putting them into action this month!

Word count five days in:

4,118 / 25,000 (16.5%)

This is the first night I've been done before eleven! Yay!

Plot: something along the lines of The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty.

I had intended to post full excerpts here, but with/without edits and all, it's a merrible tess. This is one of the better parts so far though:

On just such a rainy day,

thick with mist

soft in air,

turning my valley

shades of blue

and of green

that go beyond any

words in my head.

Cerulean, maybe

Bottle green but

warmer, thicker,

softer in the infant

shades of cinnamon fern

and the first tiny palms

of tulip poplar.

But, no, older than that

Old like the Indian mounds

aching with grass

that we pass on the

main road to town.

Old like campfires

and strong mountain women

gathering nuts to

feed their children.

Like dinosaurs even.

Like music, it is --

hundreds and hundreds

years worth of music,

rising together,

called by the rain

from the depths of these red hills.

I stand at their feet,

the tall wet grass

soaking my skirt

clinging to my bare legs

until I have to tug

to make it let go.

But for now,

I let it cling.

Looking down

my sandals are gritty

with soil, looking

as much a part

of the burr-weed

and star-eyed asters

as two feet of clay.

Looking up

beyond the soaring

incline of glowing

rain-drenched greenery

up to where the cotton

clouds rend and sky

comes through, though

you can scarcely tell

it for the sun, ribboning

down in lemonade rays,

looking as much a part

of heaven as Daniel

and his sea of glass.

There is a verse --

you've heard me

quote it before --

in the Psalms of David

(the ruddy shepherd-poet)

that talks of God

reaching down

and at His touch,

the mountains smoke.

I know this

I live it.

Standing here, with

the blue mist around

my ankles, I pray.

If You would touch

these mountains,

Lord, if you know

the stars by name,

If I mean more to you

than the sparrows

that sing so sweet

You would not

forget me here,

beneath the pines?

[mine - no copying]

Back with more later. For now? Bed! Or life. Or that knitting project that's supposed to be felted in a month.... Yeah, that.