Kindness is and kindness does
Beginning Words: 30,172
Ending Words: 30,490
Tea/Drink: Twinings Orange and Cinnamon herbal tea
Music: Patty Griffin, "Faithful Son"
Reason for stopping: Almost to the middle of the scene, need to double check if this is what I want to be with a night of sleep
Darling in the words: None, uncertain if I am keeping this words
I will talk about today's writing, but first I want to capture something else that happened today.
Round 2 or 3, I'm losing track, of the winter storm decided to hit somewhere around 5 today. Unfortunately for me, I was at dinner, and not paying attention outside. So when I finally walked back out at 7, the roads had gone from touchy but okay to nightmare spin out variety. Honestly I think this snow was worse than yesterday's. Yesterday it was the hard, crystalline snow that just crunches down, and in places turns slick. Tonight it was thick fluffy wet snow that weighs everything down, and clumps up in tire wells and makes everything hard to do. Sitting in my living room and I can still hear branches snapping off trees throughout my neighborhood. Not the most reassuring sound.
So there I was standing, looking at the roads. I don't drive an AWD, I don't even drive a 4 wheel drive. I have my nice little four door 2WD sedan that I love and in most of the storms we get here in the Mid-Atlantic is more than enough to get me around. But once snow gets over 5 inches, I'm done. I was mentally trying to do the calculations about how high the snow was, as it kept on getting higher with every minute that pass. So I jumped into my car for what is normally a five minute ride home, figuring I should be able to make it. Forty five minutes later, I was grateful to get inside my house.
I live on the back of a cul de sac at the top of a hill. All the roads up to that point my car could handle (with a little bit of finesse). But on the upward slope of wet snow, my car just couldn't take it. The snow was too high, and getting jammed in my tire wells, and I wasn't going to make it.
Of course, me being me, I just grabbed my snow shovel and started at it, trying to dig myself out. But even with moving the snow in front of my car, there wasn't enough space to get momentum (ha, the story of my life right now), and all I succeeded in doing was helping get myself even further stuck as the snow kept piling up.
At the point of just wanting to give up, I saw the door open to one of my neighbor's house and two men came hurrying down the hill. The first man said that his son had seen my from his window and said that his father and grandfather should help that poor bear man. (I have a full beard, I get that a lot from small children, it really just makes me laugh)
So they shoveled in front of the car for a good two hundred feet, halfway up the cul de sac, and pushed as I gently tried to steer the car to a safe spot on the side of the road so that the plow truck could make his pass. Without those two men, I would still be stuck on that hill right now, and they helped because they felt they should.
So many bad things get mentioned all the time, about how people are selfish and uncaring that I forget that most people are really good people and want to help. I tried to thank them so much, but they just kept saying we were neighbors and that's the way things are. But I won't ever forget the kindness. (I am planning on making some chocolate bread, even though that is small thanks for what they gave me)
I mean I think sometimes its not about actions. Sometimes its just knowing someone is there and cares and wants to help that takes a situation that feels so hopeless and bleak and turns into something amazing.
But back to the words. I finally got a little momentum tonight. A 300 word night is a beautiful thing. I am about half way through the first scene of the chapter. Some things are clicking for me. I I keep touching on the edges of the emotions and the complicated interplay relationships of the characters in this scene.
That said, I don't think they are all the way there yet. I got another layer with the awkwardness between Ghost and Lorrin who have just started down the line of knight and liege, with neither one completely confident of where they stand in that bond. And showing this from Catie's perspective that adds another layer of her concern for her lover Ghost and what this means for their relationship, adds a dimension. I want to show that trust doesn't come from nowhere, and also every decision made impacts the people in our lives. I still need to figure out if I want to put more emphasis on Catie's full life in this scene or let the other two carry the fact that while she is Ghost's lover, she's a business owner and has interests all her own which have nothing to do with him. Because they are grown and have full lives.
Another concern, I have is that the scene is not doing enough from the plot perspective. I mean there is a lot of work going on in the characterization, and I am starting to go back through and drop world building bits throughout Catie's observations, but I just don't feel like that plot line is taut enough. It might also be the exhaustion and brain fickleness so I'm going to sleep on it, and see if the words look any different tomorrow. Hope you are safe and warm wherever you are:)
Ending Words: 30,490
Tea/Drink: Twinings Orange and Cinnamon herbal tea
Music: Patty Griffin, "Faithful Son"
Reason for stopping: Almost to the middle of the scene, need to double check if this is what I want to be with a night of sleep
Darling in the words: None, uncertain if I am keeping this words
I will talk about today's writing, but first I want to capture something else that happened today.
Round 2 or 3, I'm losing track, of the winter storm decided to hit somewhere around 5 today. Unfortunately for me, I was at dinner, and not paying attention outside. So when I finally walked back out at 7, the roads had gone from touchy but okay to nightmare spin out variety. Honestly I think this snow was worse than yesterday's. Yesterday it was the hard, crystalline snow that just crunches down, and in places turns slick. Tonight it was thick fluffy wet snow that weighs everything down, and clumps up in tire wells and makes everything hard to do. Sitting in my living room and I can still hear branches snapping off trees throughout my neighborhood. Not the most reassuring sound.
So there I was standing, looking at the roads. I don't drive an AWD, I don't even drive a 4 wheel drive. I have my nice little four door 2WD sedan that I love and in most of the storms we get here in the Mid-Atlantic is more than enough to get me around. But once snow gets over 5 inches, I'm done. I was mentally trying to do the calculations about how high the snow was, as it kept on getting higher with every minute that pass. So I jumped into my car for what is normally a five minute ride home, figuring I should be able to make it. Forty five minutes later, I was grateful to get inside my house.
I live on the back of a cul de sac at the top of a hill. All the roads up to that point my car could handle (with a little bit of finesse). But on the upward slope of wet snow, my car just couldn't take it. The snow was too high, and getting jammed in my tire wells, and I wasn't going to make it.
Of course, me being me, I just grabbed my snow shovel and started at it, trying to dig myself out. But even with moving the snow in front of my car, there wasn't enough space to get momentum (ha, the story of my life right now), and all I succeeded in doing was helping get myself even further stuck as the snow kept piling up.
At the point of just wanting to give up, I saw the door open to one of my neighbor's house and two men came hurrying down the hill. The first man said that his son had seen my from his window and said that his father and grandfather should help that poor bear man. (I have a full beard, I get that a lot from small children, it really just makes me laugh)
So they shoveled in front of the car for a good two hundred feet, halfway up the cul de sac, and pushed as I gently tried to steer the car to a safe spot on the side of the road so that the plow truck could make his pass. Without those two men, I would still be stuck on that hill right now, and they helped because they felt they should.
So many bad things get mentioned all the time, about how people are selfish and uncaring that I forget that most people are really good people and want to help. I tried to thank them so much, but they just kept saying we were neighbors and that's the way things are. But I won't ever forget the kindness. (I am planning on making some chocolate bread, even though that is small thanks for what they gave me)
I mean I think sometimes its not about actions. Sometimes its just knowing someone is there and cares and wants to help that takes a situation that feels so hopeless and bleak and turns into something amazing.
But back to the words. I finally got a little momentum tonight. A 300 word night is a beautiful thing. I am about half way through the first scene of the chapter. Some things are clicking for me. I I keep touching on the edges of the emotions and the complicated interplay relationships of the characters in this scene.
That said, I don't think they are all the way there yet. I got another layer with the awkwardness between Ghost and Lorrin who have just started down the line of knight and liege, with neither one completely confident of where they stand in that bond. And showing this from Catie's perspective that adds another layer of her concern for her lover Ghost and what this means for their relationship, adds a dimension. I want to show that trust doesn't come from nowhere, and also every decision made impacts the people in our lives. I still need to figure out if I want to put more emphasis on Catie's full life in this scene or let the other two carry the fact that while she is Ghost's lover, she's a business owner and has interests all her own which have nothing to do with him. Because they are grown and have full lives.
Another concern, I have is that the scene is not doing enough from the plot perspective. I mean there is a lot of work going on in the characterization, and I am starting to go back through and drop world building bits throughout Catie's observations, but I just don't feel like that plot line is taut enough. It might also be the exhaustion and brain fickleness so I'm going to sleep on it, and see if the words look any different tomorrow. Hope you are safe and warm wherever you are:)