What Now--Start Another One?

Just got back from my two appointments at TKC. I want to write, but the November novel is done (first draft). Can I say it's done, when it doesn't have a title? I kept thinking the title would magically appear as I went along, but it didn't. Nor did I write a deathless line of prose that contained a good title, like, "Was Tara, too, gone with the wind that swept through Georgia?"

Well, not counting titles, I can say I've written three and a half novels. Wish I could say I had written, rewritten, published and marketed one or two.

Ms. Fixit

One of my fixes worked, because now the NaNoWriMo site shows all my info, including the complete Ms so far. When I scrambled it, it didn't take, but when I didn't scramble it, Presto! I expect to wind it up today or tomorrow. The ending isn't essential at this point. I haven't even got to Pearl Harbor day yet. When I get to 50,000 or so, I'm gonna print it out and work on it.

"The world will little note nor long remember..."

For days I have been trying to update my NaNoWriMo profile. It shows that I have made no submissions and have no word count. I've checked and rechecked that I've done everything right in my submissions of word count, scrambled manuscript for verification, and novel excerpt. Still, my profile shows nothing except "Registered October 15." I may be a winner, but I may have to do without the word of recognition. I've emailed twice and posted comments twice concerning my dilemma, but as yet have heard nothing. Only four more days to go, three, really, as I have to spend Friday running to The Kirkland Clinic for scheduled tests.

Word count now stands at 45,005, and I still don't know how it's going to end.

The faster you pedal, the quicker you get there.

Thanksgiving was great, except little Reedy was sickish and not in a smiling mood. Both India and Buffy looked like America's-Next-Top-Model finalists, and Jason his usual unique self. Jed was lookin' handsome in his Banana Republic shirt. If these children only knew how lovely and smart and young they are, they'd run out and set the world on fire. Well, for all I know, they could be doing that at this moment.

Mable brought a luscious corn pudding, and later emailed me her recipe. Jed and I took some Wal-Mart potato salad, because I forgot to make some, and it was almost as good as home-made. B&J brought two pies to die for. If I had stayed longer, I would have et more.

"Et" is a good Old English word; one of those bug-eating aliens said it on a Star Trek NG episode.

Of course, over the weekend I got behind on my word count. At one point I thought, the story's over anyway, so why bother, just go back and pad it some. But then I started writing again, and--it just unfolds as I write. So now I'm caught up, 40,000 and counting.

Where has November gone? I've got it down on the computer, I guess. Writing every day is as bad as an outside job for making time speed up and slip away. Isaac Asimov said, "What would I do if told I had only six months to live? I'd type faster." Bud, that would make it seem like only six days.

Cleaning the Augean Stables

Tomorrow Jed is coming, Pat is cooking, and I've got to hit the floor running to get the house up to the state of its usual shining perfection. Satire is me.


P.S. This quilt is also in my story:

It was made about a hundred years ago or more, by Mrs. Julius Theodore Cage, Sr. (the first), Jed and Jack's great-grandmother.

The big flower bed is a solid mass of roots and rocks, under the thin layer of soil. Yesterday and today I took the pitchfork and dug enough roots out at one end to plant the bluebells. I'll go to Wal-Mart soon and get another load of garden soil, because the tulips and big daffodils have to be planted 6 inches deep. Still haven't received the snowdrops, and I guess the peonies will be shipped in the spring. Maybe by then, I can get a bed fixed for them in a sunny location.

I want to dig out the mailbox base and put soil in, and see if I can save that vine with the little red star flowers for summer, and plant the snowdrops in the box, too. Whatever comes up in the flower bed, besides the bulbs, I'll try to keep weeded out or cut down low.

This place also appears in my story.

Veggie supper

Guess what I've just cooked? Corn bread, fresh yellow squash, and field peas with snaps to eat with what Peter Piper picked a peck of. All that's missing is a big red ripe sliced tomato. I may run to the store to get one.

Today I finally opened the box of bulbs, and they're not what I thought I had received (hyacinths and snowdrops). Instead it's the tulip mix, English bluebells, and big white daffodils. I found that I was supposed to open them immediately and let 'em cool before planting, so I hung them outside and will plant tomorrow--if it isn't raining, which it looks like it's going to.

I wrote all morning. Wow! This is turning into a habit. Halfway into the book, I write the first preliminary love scene. More than halfway; I'm up to nearly 30,000 words. Some parts are just sketched out, like a synopsis, so when I rewrite, it'll probably be much longer van 50 fousand words (the "v" and "f" for "th" is a clue to one of the characters).

While thinking I had writer's block, today I wrote and wrote and wrote--and I'm nearly a thousand words ahead of tomorrow's quota. I still don't know where the story is going from here. But maybe I don't need to know. When I start typing, the words just start coming.

What I need to do tomorrow is get out there and plant my hyacinth and snow drop bulbs. Hope tomorrow is pretty and a little bit warm.

The little cedar tree that I planted in the plastic urn is plumb beautiful. I think it has grown a few inches.

Cheers from the Rich and Famous

I've had emails from several published authors who participate(d) in Nanowrimo, including Sue Grafton and Sara Gruen. Sara has published 3 books that started as November novels, including Water for Elephants, and has a fourth one to be released soon. SG and SG; hmmm, could they be the same? I don't have another clue, as I haven't read any of their books.

Today my word count is just a little over the halfway mark--or will be, at the end of the day. And my story has pfffft! hit the proverbial snag. But

We are not afraid!
We shall overcome! (Someday.)

Autumn Leaves

This may not be the most beautiful autumn I've ever seen, but it's certainly close. I remember driving through Tennessee one November when the fall colors were glorious, the temperature had dropped in the night and coated everything with ice, and the morning sun made the ice-glazed leaves blaze with color.

Today Mo and Wilder and I walked under the trees for an hour, gazing and rolling in the leaves. That is, the cats rolled; I just gazed, and picked up a load of beautiful colored leaves to carry inside. Jerry's little yellow house is framed in gold and green and red. On the other side, there's a huge perfectly shaped evergreen tree, out beyond Mark's back yard, against a setting of fiery autumn colors. The view from my deck every day gets more gorgeous in all directions. I'm so glad I live here, in one of the most attractive neighborhoods in Leeds.

But I still like to remember the Southside apartment: the brown-and-white pigeons; the little fluffy birds that looked like baby robins, that migrated through; the December day that a big bush across the alley was full of painted buntings that were all colors; the mockingbird that collected Bob's hair when I brushed him on the steps; the stray cat I called Socks who helped me hunt for Bob; the Meltons who made me come to their big house in the tornado, and when the blue house caught on fire; the bathroom floor that Jack and I put in to replace the torn-up linoleum; the night Jack and I "stole" Mus from in front of what we convinced ourselves was an empty house. And Larry Cohn's black lab named Blackie that traveled in the bed of Larry's truck. I had a lot of sad and glad times during the apartment years, wrote a lot of poems and made a lot of quilts, most of which I sold or gave away.

This morning I called and rescheduled the CT scan for November 30, the same day as the Dexa-Scan.

I finally went today for my yearly medical checkup. Everything was OK except my right ankle is infected from that fall the other day. I thought it was just bruised, but Dr. Gruman said it looks like it has some infection, so he wrote a prescription for some antibiotics--which I forgot to stop and get filled, doggone it!

Anyway, from the time I left the house this morning until now, I haven't coughed. I also slept for hours and hours yesterday and last night, so I guess the bronchitis is cured.

I still have bruises on my torso from the fall. Dr. Gruman said "Bless your heart" three times, looking at my leg and my bruises. It sounds like a lie, but he really did. I guess he's getting old and weak.

They set me up an appointment for a CT scan on THURSDAY--THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW! Confound these people! Also a bone scan (Dexa-Scan) on November 30, and a mammogram on December 12.

If I can write 50,000 words and keep up with everything happening in November, I will give myself a medal of honor. It's a good thing I'm ahead on the word count. I'll try to get even further ahead in case I have to fly to Africa or something this month. Come to think of it, I would give up the writing project if I could fly to Africa.

Hawk tales

This morning when I let Mo out and Owen in, a big hawk fluttered off the ground onto a low limb in one of the oak trees, and then flew over to another tree in the back yard. I guess he was after a chipmunk, or had caught one, I don't know which. I ran to get the camera, and of course the hawk was gone when I got back, but I did get a little sweet gum color and a nice shot of my thumb.

Yesterday after I wrote the troublesome episode and worried about it for a while, I went back and just started writing again. I can go back later and either cut it out or rewrite it to fit in. This writing every day has come to feel like my life. I don't know why I haven't been doing it all the time rather than in fits and starts. Someday I may even rewrite the 3 "romance" novels.

In nine days, I've written 50 pages, nearly 15,000 words. So now I'm confident I'll finish it, and I'm not going to talk about it any more until it's done.

Now I've got to clean up and go to the store for cat food and some of the multitude of pills I take to keep me young and mobile.

I really messed up the story today with an impossible episode, so not counting that, I'm still behind in my word count. I've really got to stick to it in the next three days, because Monday the carpet cleaners are coming, on Tuesday I've got a doctor appointment, Wednesday the month will be practically half over, and the next week will be Thanksgiving week.

Well, I had it backwards: Jed stopped by yesterday on his way TO Selma, and spent the night. He left this morning before I woke up. Last night we searched the aerial maps online trying to find our house and his school in Selma, and he will check out our conclusions today on site.

He said the flower bed does look $150-worth better than it did, and I agree. But I still want to dig up the few clumps of undesirables that Steve's crew left. The bulbs still haven't arrived, though Brecks's sent me an email about a week ago saying they were being shipped.

Have been trying to knock my sorely neglected house into some kind of shape. Now have to go to the store, etc., and then spend the rest of the week catching up on the November novel. Mary Anne has canceled Book Club Friday because of a plumbing disaster in her house, so I guess I don't have to go anywhere this week.

Almost Like Being 9 Months Preg.

I can't wait any longer--Brag! Brag! Brag!

Somehow I stumbled across Nanowrimo online. It's a nationwide project that pits everybody against everybody else and his brother, in an effort to write a novel in a month. They do this every November, and if you succeed in writing a 50,000-word novel in November, you're a winner. You don't win anything except the declaration that you're a winner. According to the originator, Chris Baty, some publishable (and published) novels have come out of this insane fiasco.

Well, the Brag comes in because in spite of the yard sale effort and being sick as a dog, I have written thousands of words of what I hope will be a good story, if not a publishable novel. Shoot, I hope and trust it'll be a doggone best-seller! When I get started writing every day, the words just flow. What kind of words, don't ask; but I'm so proud I'd bust if I didn't carry on about it a little bit.

Jed is working in Selma today, and he's planning to come by here on his way home this afternoon.

Yard sale trauma

I got up very early this morning and wrote for 2-3 hours. By 8:00 I was at the post office (had to wait until they opened at 8:30), then the bank to get change for the yard sale, and spent the day selling stuff. People will buy anything. One couple bought the overstuffed sofa and the spool bed, plus a pile of other stuff. Pat came in the afternoon and brought a purely gorgeous bedspread and pillows with matching shams that she got at Susan's yard sale last week. Neither of them wanted the set because it's yay heavy--trapunto-quilted or matelasse, king-sized. I'm going to try it on my bed tonight, and if it looks good I'll buy the set for my big bed. I don't really think it's any heavier than the cut-velvet spread that I made. The trouble with the velvet spread is that every time I wash it, it shrinks a few inches, and now it's really too short for the bed. It's cotton cut-velvet, washable but obviously not shrink-proof. I can use it on the guest room bed. The set that Pat brought is very pale green, sort of celadon.

I sold two Gene Marshall dolls and the British Bird doll, plus all their clothes. One man bought a box full of McCoy pottery. The lady who talked her husband into buying the truckload of furniture (sofa, etc.) asked if I had any rings to sell. I went upstairs and came back with six or seven rings, mostly silver with agate or faux pearls or plain glass, but also those two gold rings with tiny diamonds that I found when I lived in the apartment. The lady bought all of them, including the gold ones at $10 each. She and her husband bought so much stuff that I got sort of flustered trying to keep up with it, and I tripped and fell with that big McCoy swan in my hands, broke the swan, cut my hand and skint my knees (I could tell, because of the little drops of blood coming through my pants legs), but thankfully didn't hit my poor old head.

All in all, it was a good day, beautiful weather, many extremely friendly people, several lovely children (each of whom I gave a toy or two). One big old rough-looking man, looked about thirty-five years old, never said a word, looked glum and irritable--until he spied the toy typewriter, and he almost went into fits over it. Bought it and left, beaming like a kid with a new bicycle.

One couple spotted my framed photo of Stonehenge, and we talked about our trips to England for about half an hour--especially about the horrid English food. The man said during their trip, his wife tricked him into ordering a beef tongue sandwich, and didn't tell him what it was until he had eaten a bite. She said yeah, he turned sort of green when she told him.

While I was waiting at the P.O., Joanne Malone came in and we chatted about Arts Council doings.

I'm so beat, I just want to go to bed. But I've got several more loads to take to the basement for tomorrow.