and another one bites the dust
NaNoWriMo: an annual phenomenon in which normally relatively sane people write 50,000 words in thirty days or less, then immediately go to the grocery store, buy $9 worth of cookies from the natural foods aisle, and eat almost ALL of them in 24 hours.
Note the wild, headlong, 5k frenzy that comes from getting a good whiff of a finish line. Also, note November 20: it is easy to tell that this was free-mocha day at Starbucks.
No overachieving for me this year. I'm calling it a month, a wild, exhausting month - only one party left to go (which, in keeping with the rest of this year, promises to be the largest TGIO this region has ever seen by far) and a disjointed and strange skeleton of a novel which I still, incomprehensibly, like a great deal. I can see now what its final shape will look like, when/if I get motivated to finish it; right now, it really is time to leave the d'Hanna family alone for a bit while I move, build a barn, fence 20 acres of pasture, tend to the business, contemplate Christmas, and maybe eat a few square meals!
Accomplishments of the month: Learning how to WRITE again - getting to the point where 2k is an easy day, and I want to return to the story night after night. Also, writing a halfway-decent sex scene. ;) (Having finally tried my hands at both, I am convinced: YA love is much harder.)
Things sacrificed: Reading (still only halfway through my own book, the only one touched this month!), video editing projects, laundry, cookie baking, most non-writing related socializing, lots and lots of sleep.
Favorite lines:
"I am sure she will write back with alarming speed and opinion."
"I bring books into the tavern - the worst sort of patron they know, as one is not likely to get drunk off of Harlan’s Fifth Law of Political Theory - and sit in the quietest corner I can find, because there’s nothing like an alehouse to serve up a cocktail of misery, anger, frustration and defeat, seasoned with an occasional shot of jubilation and a desire to impress. "
For dramatic OOMPH, the opening line of one chapter: "I've been dreaming of the day I die."
For laughs: "According to the priests, there have been nine great miracles in the history of the world. The first, of course, was the rising of the Imagi out of the Nairnen sea, because people simply do not first come into the world standing six feet tall, having lived underwater with fish since the dawn of time."
And, "We push our way through the streets, even though Bright is sure the world has ended and Wren is hell."
Because I am incapable of writing a book without a loving reference to a snarky pony in there SOMEWHERE. ♥
Favorite line out of context: "Nothing says love like facial hair," Swift says.
(Bwahaha! I swear it really does make sense.)
Favorite NaNoisms:
"Adrian is waiting for me when I arrive, with his hands thrust in his poat cockets."
"Gulls sour high over the city..."
"I know I ask a lot. You have every right to confuse me."
"I must swallow my bride and walk out of the house."
And an excerpt:
Adrian
It would be a slight overstatement to say that I have my suitcase packed when the Gatherers arrive. Instead, I have half a suitcase full of clothes, and half a suitcase of empty space I don’t know how to fill. I have never left home before. I don’t know what there is to take, what you’re supposed to leave behind.
It is a sharp, clear day. Nairne has a way of being cruel even in summer; the sunshine cuts straight through you and breaks your heart. It couldn’t be any more different than the night I last saw the Gatherers, a night that lives in my memory more as an emotion than an image. I know it was raining. I know Gilda Lunn sobbed and carried on next door. What I remember is the lines in my father’s face, the grief, the weight of a separation that yet to happen.
It’s been over five years. I’ve been waiting for a long time.
“You could have gone yourself,” Murray tells me. He’s sitting on the opposite side of the shop, not really working, but watching me watch the door. The word is going around that the Gatherers were sighted in Alder yesterday. Alder is almost a day’s ride north of here, but it’s even less hospitable than Aiken. “You could have gone years ago.”
I shake my head. “Couldn’t have left them.”
“They left you.”
“That’s different.”
“Don’t see how.” He’s looking at me like he’s never seen me before. Like I haven’t been working in this same spot across from him for the past three years. “What are you doing with the house?”
“Sold it.”
He raises an eyebrow. I elaborate, “To the moneylender. He won’t take possession until I leave.”
“Gods above, d’Hanna. If Kenn and Aisling knew that Darragh would be darkening their doorstep…”
“But they don’t know.” My voice comes out flat. I frown, and bend over the mirror frame I’m carving. It’s not like I believe people rich enough to buy silver actually care what the frame looks like; surely they’re more interested in admiring themselves. But I’m rather proud of the design, anyway, with all the curly vines and fleurs I can’t get away with putting on sensible furnishings. And there’s still no one in the streets.
“So why didn’t you go last year?”
“These things take time. I didn’t know what to do about the house. I didn’t know about Merill. I didn’t have any money. They’d have taken me, sure, but it’s better this way.”
These are all true reasons. There is another reason that is truer than all the rest, though: I’ve been afraid. I am still afraid. The worst part is, I don’t know what I’m afraid of, what exactly I’m hoping for. What if the Gatherers come and say my magic is strong and I must swear my oath to king and country? What if they don’t?
For a few minutes I carve in silence, while boys play in the streets and raise my hopes with loud voices, while Murray sits in the slanting afternoon light and says nothing at all.
“What are they going to teach you in that big city that you can’t learn here?” he asks at last.
I think this is Murray’s way of saying he’s going to miss me. “Politics. History. Law and philosophy. Sciences. How to swing a sword. And that’s just the bit I don’t care about.”
“You think there are others there with heads like yours?”
“There must be.” I have to believe this. In my mind, Lassar is teeming with Empaths, who of course understand each other perfectly. “I just want… I want to control it. I don’t like it.”
“Most lads newly Turned sing a different song. What wouldn’t they give for a bit of Imagi in them.”
“They don’t know.” It comes out fiercely. I put down the chisel, and consider my aggression. “They don’t have a bloody idea what it’s like. I never asked for this - I don’t want to walk around with their sadness, or anger, or jealousy or lust or whatever else they happen to be feeling at the time. They ought to be able to lie to me. It’s their right.”
“What do you think a College can do about it?”
“I don’t know. Something more than I can.”
Murray sighs. When I look up, the light from the window has turned him into a silhouette. Dust motes from the sawdust float in the air between us. Murray’s a good man. The fact that he’s pining for me before I’ve even left is a twist in the gut, an ache I didn’t even know I had.
“I’ll come back someday,” I say.
“They all say that.”
“No, I will. I’m going to miss this.” I gesture at the shop, the bulky skeletons of tables and chairs and infant cribs, rough-hewn boards planed smooth to the touch, cabinets that bear my initials carved discreetly in corners. Also, the things I can’t point at: the companionable silence. The way the shop is isolated from the busy street, and yet I can still hear the sea. “It’s been - it’s been like a home to me. And I’m grateful, glad you’ve let me learn this, because it’s something I want to come back to. I didn’t have that before.”
Murray gets up and walks past me. He ducks his head and mutters something about sawdust in the eye. It’s not; I know because his tear slides down my cheek.
And then the Gatherers are here. I hear the shouts. I run to the door and they are sudden memory, Lassarian blue, hooded cloaks, horses wearing fine leather and silver and magic. Everything has ended, and everything has begun. I will leave Aiken with a half-full suitcase and a half-empty heart.
Oh, November. You are a glorious and exhausting thing.
Note the wild, headlong, 5k frenzy that comes from getting a good whiff of a finish line. Also, note November 20: it is easy to tell that this was free-mocha day at Starbucks.
No overachieving for me this year. I'm calling it a month, a wild, exhausting month - only one party left to go (which, in keeping with the rest of this year, promises to be the largest TGIO this region has ever seen by far) and a disjointed and strange skeleton of a novel which I still, incomprehensibly, like a great deal. I can see now what its final shape will look like, when/if I get motivated to finish it; right now, it really is time to leave the d'Hanna family alone for a bit while I move, build a barn, fence 20 acres of pasture, tend to the business, contemplate Christmas, and maybe eat a few square meals!
Accomplishments of the month: Learning how to WRITE again - getting to the point where 2k is an easy day, and I want to return to the story night after night. Also, writing a halfway-decent sex scene. ;) (Having finally tried my hands at both, I am convinced: YA love is much harder.)
Things sacrificed: Reading (still only halfway through my own book, the only one touched this month!), video editing projects, laundry, cookie baking, most non-writing related socializing, lots and lots of sleep.
Favorite lines:
"I am sure she will write back with alarming speed and opinion."
"I bring books into the tavern - the worst sort of patron they know, as one is not likely to get drunk off of Harlan’s Fifth Law of Political Theory - and sit in the quietest corner I can find, because there’s nothing like an alehouse to serve up a cocktail of misery, anger, frustration and defeat, seasoned with an occasional shot of jubilation and a desire to impress. "
For dramatic OOMPH, the opening line of one chapter: "I've been dreaming of the day I die."
For laughs: "According to the priests, there have been nine great miracles in the history of the world. The first, of course, was the rising of the Imagi out of the Nairnen sea, because people simply do not first come into the world standing six feet tall, having lived underwater with fish since the dawn of time."
And, "We push our way through the streets, even though Bright is sure the world has ended and Wren is hell."
Because I am incapable of writing a book without a loving reference to a snarky pony in there SOMEWHERE. ♥
Favorite line out of context: "Nothing says love like facial hair," Swift says.
(Bwahaha! I swear it really does make sense.)
Favorite NaNoisms:
"Adrian is waiting for me when I arrive, with his hands thrust in his poat cockets."
"Gulls sour high over the city..."
"I know I ask a lot. You have every right to confuse me."
"I must swallow my bride and walk out of the house."
And an excerpt:
Adrian
It would be a slight overstatement to say that I have my suitcase packed when the Gatherers arrive. Instead, I have half a suitcase full of clothes, and half a suitcase of empty space I don’t know how to fill. I have never left home before. I don’t know what there is to take, what you’re supposed to leave behind.
It is a sharp, clear day. Nairne has a way of being cruel even in summer; the sunshine cuts straight through you and breaks your heart. It couldn’t be any more different than the night I last saw the Gatherers, a night that lives in my memory more as an emotion than an image. I know it was raining. I know Gilda Lunn sobbed and carried on next door. What I remember is the lines in my father’s face, the grief, the weight of a separation that yet to happen.
It’s been over five years. I’ve been waiting for a long time.
“You could have gone yourself,” Murray tells me. He’s sitting on the opposite side of the shop, not really working, but watching me watch the door. The word is going around that the Gatherers were sighted in Alder yesterday. Alder is almost a day’s ride north of here, but it’s even less hospitable than Aiken. “You could have gone years ago.”
I shake my head. “Couldn’t have left them.”
“They left you.”
“That’s different.”
“Don’t see how.” He’s looking at me like he’s never seen me before. Like I haven’t been working in this same spot across from him for the past three years. “What are you doing with the house?”
“Sold it.”
He raises an eyebrow. I elaborate, “To the moneylender. He won’t take possession until I leave.”
“Gods above, d’Hanna. If Kenn and Aisling knew that Darragh would be darkening their doorstep…”
“But they don’t know.” My voice comes out flat. I frown, and bend over the mirror frame I’m carving. It’s not like I believe people rich enough to buy silver actually care what the frame looks like; surely they’re more interested in admiring themselves. But I’m rather proud of the design, anyway, with all the curly vines and fleurs I can’t get away with putting on sensible furnishings. And there’s still no one in the streets.
“So why didn’t you go last year?”
“These things take time. I didn’t know what to do about the house. I didn’t know about Merill. I didn’t have any money. They’d have taken me, sure, but it’s better this way.”
These are all true reasons. There is another reason that is truer than all the rest, though: I’ve been afraid. I am still afraid. The worst part is, I don’t know what I’m afraid of, what exactly I’m hoping for. What if the Gatherers come and say my magic is strong and I must swear my oath to king and country? What if they don’t?
For a few minutes I carve in silence, while boys play in the streets and raise my hopes with loud voices, while Murray sits in the slanting afternoon light and says nothing at all.
“What are they going to teach you in that big city that you can’t learn here?” he asks at last.
I think this is Murray’s way of saying he’s going to miss me. “Politics. History. Law and philosophy. Sciences. How to swing a sword. And that’s just the bit I don’t care about.”
“You think there are others there with heads like yours?”
“There must be.” I have to believe this. In my mind, Lassar is teeming with Empaths, who of course understand each other perfectly. “I just want… I want to control it. I don’t like it.”
“Most lads newly Turned sing a different song. What wouldn’t they give for a bit of Imagi in them.”
“They don’t know.” It comes out fiercely. I put down the chisel, and consider my aggression. “They don’t have a bloody idea what it’s like. I never asked for this - I don’t want to walk around with their sadness, or anger, or jealousy or lust or whatever else they happen to be feeling at the time. They ought to be able to lie to me. It’s their right.”
“What do you think a College can do about it?”
“I don’t know. Something more than I can.”
Murray sighs. When I look up, the light from the window has turned him into a silhouette. Dust motes from the sawdust float in the air between us. Murray’s a good man. The fact that he’s pining for me before I’ve even left is a twist in the gut, an ache I didn’t even know I had.
“I’ll come back someday,” I say.
“They all say that.”
“No, I will. I’m going to miss this.” I gesture at the shop, the bulky skeletons of tables and chairs and infant cribs, rough-hewn boards planed smooth to the touch, cabinets that bear my initials carved discreetly in corners. Also, the things I can’t point at: the companionable silence. The way the shop is isolated from the busy street, and yet I can still hear the sea. “It’s been - it’s been like a home to me. And I’m grateful, glad you’ve let me learn this, because it’s something I want to come back to. I didn’t have that before.”
Murray gets up and walks past me. He ducks his head and mutters something about sawdust in the eye. It’s not; I know because his tear slides down my cheek.
And then the Gatherers are here. I hear the shouts. I run to the door and they are sudden memory, Lassarian blue, hooded cloaks, horses wearing fine leather and silver and magic. Everything has ended, and everything has begun. I will leave Aiken with a half-full suitcase and a half-empty heart.
Oh, November. You are a glorious and exhausting thing.