Maebius Musing

A post for the season, about ancestors I knew well….
I remember driving for what felt like hours(30-45 minutes), through the Big Tunnel, to the river where my great grandparents owned a cabin in Peach Bottom, Pa. I remember splashing in the river, hearing the exploits of my older relatives being impossibly ‘younger’ who swam the breadth of the Susquehanna. Continue Reading »

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I decided November, as part of my 33rd Birthday “do something different” and rededication to Druidic studies DAILY, I have joined the crazy world of novel writing. NaNoWriMo.

I do not really have a plot, I do not have a story. but I do have an image that cropped up three times now in various meditations on unrelated topics, and as I put e-pen to e-paper to type some random thing in my profile there, the image came back with a clear first few words…..Suddenly, a path of plot stretches out before my mind. Unfocused and hazy, and really only enough for a full two pages or so, but it’s a start.

And what starts, is already halfway to completion in a certain sense….so, I am writing a novel. wish me luck!!

Here’s what popped into my head. An image of a cave, similar to that I saw on a hike in New Hampshire (Nettle knows which one I mean), though larger and without the hidden alcove above…. A natural stone pedestal (broken Stalagmite?) hollowed out and full of burning campwood, re-fed by the locals daily, and surrounded by dancers vis-a-Starwood.

And eyes watching from the sidelines. The Patient. Always watching, never dancing with the others…old as the cave itself.

Got your interest piqued?!

For as long as they could remember, the flames had danced and leapt along the cavern walls. The Patient sat, for longer still, beyond the memory of those who danced, his eyes turning now to the firelight flicker, now to the shadowy depths. But it was always thus, Dancers, Doctors, and the Patient…

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Well, this month will be rather spartan with the Blog posts, but I wanted to post a picture that Summer is officially over here in upstate, NY. Yes, that is snow in our yard, taken this morning, November 8th, 2007.

( click here for full-size)

NaNoWriMo is more of a pain than I envisioned, but in one way is kinda neat. I just need to get the time set aside to actually write things. I have ideas now, it’s just finding a block of time that is NOT after 10pm to sit and type it out. I have penciled a few things at work on tablets, but more sentence fragments and ideas than actual Writing Words. (though I have another 865 words done today so far, not including this blog entry!)
For your viewing enjoyment, here are some random pictures….

Firstly, the roadkill bird we had for lunch on Saturday. Delivered fresh right to our driveay as I was outside cleaning up the porch. This represents Maebius’ first ever attempt to prepare from-whole a wild game animal. It was a rather interesting learning experience in anatomy and such. Tasted pretty good, though a bit dry and tough. Learned afterwards a better way to cook such things…

Lastly, we had friends come up from PA to visit for my birthday (I am 33 now, yay!) which is one BIG reason I’m behind on NaNoWriMo since my computer is in the “spare room” they slept in. Here is a cute pic of my boy and theirs watching TV.
Enjoy!

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The whole idea of NaNoWriMo is quite interesting. Write 50,000 words in one month.

I’m not sure I can make it due to work schedules and kid-time after work. Heck, even World of Warcraft is being put aside other than a token hour every few days, in the stress and hassle of coming up with some excuse for Not Writing.

And I think, last night, I figured out my stress. I wanted to Write a Story. I have this Plot that is forming in my brain that twists off into the future, but is not yet Written. When I sit down to type, I agonize over where to lead the current story down to that half-conceived path. I start to think in short cuts and skip to the juicy parts in my head, and thus am not really writing anything but cliche over-dramatic prose.

But last night, I realized the goal was NOT to write a 50,000 word tale of grandeur and epic award-winning novel. It was to WRITE FIFTY-THOUSAND words. It does not have to be perfect. It does not need to be coherent in any deep philosophical way….yet. It DOES need to be put down in word-form though. Editing and clean up for proper grammar and such can wait until next month. November is to Write…

It’s an interesting lesson. and now that I’ve pondered it…I am going to stop blog-posting this entry, and start continuing that story-thing I’m creating.

See you at the Full Moon!

((PS: my personal goal is 20,000 words. I’m about a tenth of the way there, and a third of the way through the month already. Wish me luck!))

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Sorry it has been quiet around here lately, there is at once little, and yet much to report on in the Land of Maebius. First and foremost, I have officially given up NaNoWriMo for a number of reasons, the least of which is feeling like a quitter so close to the end of the month. (I made it to 13,500 words, rounding it)
I have abandoned the NaNoWriMo challenge for this year in order to save my sanity. Many guides and pep-talk suggestions have indicated that the third week is the most difficult of times, when the plot falters, and the novel-in-progress just seems to fall flat of our initial giddy expectations. This actually happened to me around the second week, starting just before the New Moon posting, where I realized I just had to keep flogging along.

However, the more I flogged myself, the unhappier I became. It was not merely the chore of writing, it was a Chore itself. I wanted to participate in the challenge. I wanted to finish with something to read, and was honest enough to admit I would probably not hit the 50,000 word mark, but I wanted that Something would get written.

But what I realized instead was that for all my love of Roleplaying, and making up Character Biographies, and generally Writing Stuff…this novel challenge was not my cup of tea. I simply came to the understanding I don’t WANT to write a big long novel right now. I actually prefer little snippets of 3-4 pages of story. So dropping the challenge felt like a HUGE weight off my shoulders. Strangely, more fulfilling than actually making it to the 30th probably might have felt. It just started to seem so hollow a reward for what was noticeably causing me INSANE amounts of stress and angst. (Ask my wife, I got VERY bitter and sour, and it was not fair to the family to lose sleep and yell at my kid for petty annoyances all day, over a self-imposed challenge like NaNoWriMo)

I still have an idea that I want to flesh out, but at my OWN pace now, instead of being dictated that my evenings of fun and relaxation were instead to be spent on pulling my hair out and typing disjointed stream-of-conscious crap. It’s more fair to the story I started getting into, and much more fair to the family and friends I was getting pissy with due to lack of sleep and over-stressing. I had started to fall into a trap of staying up until 2am, playing Warcraft for an hour to settle down from the stress and agitation of writing a wall of text and being unable to sleep until I calmed my nerves. Of course then getting up to be at work around 7am….not much time for restful REM there.
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And on an unrelated note, my son requested to have his bed moved into his own room back on the 17th. as it was, he slepy with his bed pushed up against ours, so we essentially co-slept. But, after two more days of mentioning his bed in his own room, we figured it was not a passing request and moved him over….and he slept alone all week!

I got put on night-shift for work, and my son got a nasty head-cold so he moved back into our bed temporarily over the weekend, but last night he went back to his own room without much fuss at all. We were worried about “breaking the habit” of sleeping with us eventually, but are non-mainstream enough to support the Co-sleep idea for as long as he held out, or until it became a necessity.

However, just like his potty training, our fears of a protracted battle were unfounded. We would mention having his bed moved every few weeks, but would not push the issue and his saying no would be welcomed and accepted with a smile and a hug as we all snuggled in our adjoining mattresses. Then, when he was ready (and before my wife was honestly 100% ready to follow through with the action), he asked to move his bed into the other room. So he helped us tear down the frame, carry it across the hall, and used the screwdriver to put it together himself. No fuss, no muss, and he has his own flashlight which he used once or twice to come visit us in the middle of the night to make sure things were alright. But each time, he allowed us to carry him back to his room after asking for a bathroom break or a small sip of water.

It’s adorable really, and amazing how kid’s little minds develop and go »Bing« to the next stage of independence. On one hand I miss getting kicked in the head in the middle of the night. But on the other hand, it’s nice to snuggle with the wife again for a few hours.

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