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Missing Mrs. Wilson

I woke up this morning, excited that it’s Wednesday. I have logged over 6300 words for my NaNoWriMo novel (which will most likely turn into a very long short story, but that’s okay). I thought a quick post on Wednesday’s word would be a nice little break.

After my laptop warmed up, I clicked on over to Wordsmith.org. Today’s word is nihilarian – one who does useless work.

That’s a terrible stream of words for a writer to read smack dab in the middle of week number one of NaNoWriMo.

***

Writing every day for 30 days straight isn’t useless. I know that. What is useless is my right and left hand that keep typing the letters b-o-l-t every other paragraph. Bolt here, bolt there. He bolted again. He’ll get whiplash from all that bolting if my fingers don’t stretch a little further and start typing something different, like bound or hightail it or even just walked away.

What isn’t useless is the strikethrough tool, which lets me keep all those repetitive words, plus the choppy scenes they describe. I wish I had used strikethrough on the first day of NaNoWriMo. I wrote a lovely opening scene with an elderly Mrs. Wilson as she got out of bed at midnight. Then, later that day, her rise at midnight seemed unimportant and took the story in the wrong direction. I hesitated to use strikethrough, since that felt like cheating, like I was padding my word count. So, I deleted about 700 words on Mrs. Wilson instead.

I’ve missed her midnight spirit ever since, which brought home one of Chris Baty’s tips for – and benefits of – finishing NaNoWriMo: ignore the delete key. A NaNoWriMo first draft is a smorgasbord of ideas that hopefully, but may not, go together. Don’t delete anything, because 1) you’ll cross that 50,000 word mark before you know it (and won’t that be a feat!), and 2) the scene you save may turn into another story later on.

I’m hoping Mrs. Wilson didn’t take my cut personally, and she shows up in her slippers again at some point.

 

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The Importance of Shades of Gray

I love this week’s theme on Wordsmith.org: eponyms.

Today’s word, as quoted from Wordsmith’s site:

manichean. adjective: Of or relating to a dualistic view of the world, dividing things into either good or evil, light or dark, black or white, involving no shades of gray.

ETYMOLOGY:
After Manes/Mani (216-276 CE), Persian founder of Manichaeism, an ancient religion espousing a doctrine of a struggle between good and evil.

***

I heard it or read it somewhere: writing is a solitary act, but it cannot be done in isolation. If you’re not a writer (and of manichean tendencies), you might think that sentence contradicts itself. Writing is, or it isn’t, a solitary act.

But, I find, in writing, there are no black and white, right or wrong answers most of the time.

Two writer’s whose blogs I frequent, Linda Cassidy and Cathryn Grant, both posted this week on the subject of genre descriptions and the struggle to find the right category for your novel. Linda posted a link to AgentQuery’s genre descriptions, and, though my novel is several rewrites away from being agent-ready, I could relate to the struggle of choosing a genre. AgentQuery starts out by comparing the job of classifying a novel to the question, “Where are you from?”

I’m from Wisconsin. Well, really I was born and raised in Texas. So, I’m from Texas. Right? I’ve lived in Wisconsin long enough, but my heart is still….

You get the point. It’s a tough question that only I know the answer to, and the answer isn’t one or the other. In the world of genre categories, nothing is clear-cut either. Genre descriptions overlap and interweave and can drive an author mad.

My struggles with my work-in-progress henge on my resistance to rewrites. I’ve been sitting on the premise that a rewrite must go from beginning to end and back again. After several encouraging comments from other writers on a recent post of mine, I thought, okay, I’ll break it down, piece by piece, and address those parts that don’t work. But until I read Linda’s and Cathryn’s posts, I stared blankly at the story and wondered, which parts don’t work?

What does all this have to do with queries and categories, you ask? Let go of the linear, and hear me out.

Linda’s and Cathryn’s posts, and AgentQuery’s descriptions, gave me pause and shed a new light my novel. I asked myself, in what genre would my story fit? I came up with an answer of what I don’t want, and then my mind flashed through several scenes in need of fixing, or deleting. That may be a minute part of the writing process for some authors, but, for me, the experience was like a jump-start.

In the last several months, I’ve connected with a number of great writers online, my own mini virtual salon. In this online community of writers, our experiences overlap. One writer’s struggle highlights my own, but in a different way. Even if I read others’ posts that describe steps and struggles in the publishing process that are well beyond my reach, I learn. When they comment on my posts, I grow in the same way as a writer who might be sitting in a cafe, sipping coffee with my colleagues, reading our work face to face. As a mother of two young children with little time to write – much less, time to get out for coffee, alone – I cherish these relations and their dialogue.

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flash fiction: Losing My Focus

It’s Wednesday. Are you ready for the word? I’m not., but I’m committed to giving it a whirl.

From Wordsmith.org, Today’s Word:
peremptory. adj. dictatorial. expressing command or urgency. not admitting any question or contradiction.

I admit, I went to a thesaurus in search of connections: dictatorial – bossy – overbearing – high and mighty.

***

I walked into the house carrying a bushel of fresh picked apples. A waft of Yankee Harvest candle overcame me, which was then overpowered by a stream of staccato jazz violin — Stephane Grappelli, her favorite. I don’t know any other violinists, but I know Grappelli well. He’s her “pick me up” music she plays when cleaning house or scrubbing dishes or ignoring her lingering doom.

She meandered down the hall, like a skeleton in jeans. The apples were heavy, and her appearance shocked me. I dropped the bushel onto the floor harder than I intended.

“Careful, Maggie! If they’re too heavy, ask for help.” Even in a state of decline, her peremptory voice commanded subservience.

“Sorry, Mom. It slipped.” I slipped. She hated it when I reacted too strongly to her thinning hair and gaunt face. When I visited, I forced myself to look her straight in the eyes, zero in on her amber irises, watch her pupils shrink and grow with the changing light through the window. Only when she turned towards the kitchen, and I followed, was I allowed to study the sharpness of her shoulder blades. My heart fell.

“I picked two bushels of Macs and Paula Reds, mixed. Those are good, right? How many apple crisps are we making today?”

“Paula’s are good, Macs will do. I need ten crisps. One for the Johnson widows down the street, three for the church bazaar, five for St. Vincent DePaul – soup kitchen’s open tomorrow. And, one for you, my sweet.” She looked over her glasses at me, straight into my anguished face. “Get that expression off your face, Maggie. Only smiles in this house today.”

I swallowed hard. “Yes, Mother. I’ll go get the other bushel.”

She hollered from the kitchen as I stepped through the front door, “And, don’t drop them this time, missy!”

Behind the open trunk of the car, I broke down. When she told me of the cancer six months ago, she declared it a minor disruption. She demanded I see it the same way. She refused to listen to my fears. This apple crisp bake-off is a tradition. I knew it was coming. But, I hadn’t prepared for the wrench on my heart.

I gave myself exactly one minute to fall apart, then I wiped my face with my sleeve, put on some lip gloss, and straightened my hair. I picked up the bushel and balanced it between the bumper and my legs. Then, I slammed the trunk.

She was standing in the front doorway.

“What’s taking you so long? We’re on a schedule here, and you know how long it takes to peel those apples.”

Her sharp tongue whipped me into a staunch laugh. “God, Mom. I’m coming! These apples are heavy.”

“So is your hand when you peel them.” She eyed me up as she held open the door and I slid past. “Let’s try not to take out half the flesh when you peel the skin away this year. Got it?”

She slapped me on the bottom and sent me marching into the kitchen.