Mall Trek

My mom's dog has retired to his bed and the cloud bank that built while I was out has crept close enough to make the hallway and room giving off this one a black blankness, save for the window and the shiny bronze magnolia leaves visible through it. YouTube on this laptop doesn't sound much better than the Walkman I had in high school.

Earlier it seemed like it was going to be a nice enough day for a ramble over the concrete paths to the local mall and I set out with the intent to pick up a sweater against chillier days later this week. When I was younger, the mall was the place to daydream--either about who you could be (it was the 80's--i was loud and tacky) or what would you be when LJ was firmly behind you. There wasn't much on that side of town, just the mall and a couple of parks.

Now, the mall sits across the street from Wal-mart and languishes. It happened to the center of town and it spreads outward, a slow silence and irrelevance. At one point, the low lights, empty storefronts and carpet meant that I passed through a section in silence, living an undreamed emptiness. After the cold front storms the coast, I'll take myself through the old center of town and see what I can of the places that I remember.

I do remember that I like the clouds and the way the sky opens over the flatness, without quite washing us away.

The Deal Is...

Yesterday I started a scene that I hoped to use to sop up several of the 50k that I'm supposed to be writing as part of my NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) novel. Before I was well started, doubts started hammering in. Then I stopped writing and the fetters fell away.

We all know what we're supposed to do with doubts. Ignore them, lock them up, throw them out; do anything with them other than pay attention. I wanted to do that and just keep going. I was planning on getting t-shirt at the end of November and there are badges, too (for those of you don't know, I've been a badgeaholic since Girl Scouts). I've done this for several years now and there is NOTHING ELSE GOING ON IN MY LIFE RIGHT NOW. This should be easy.

It was easier, as it turns out, to listen to the doubts. To finally hear the criticisms from my current and former writing groups about my lack of clarity and emotion, to hear the Pumpkin King's concerns about the general lack of interest that my plot inspires, and, finally, to hear the reality underneath all of those writing manuals. Writing well is difficult and it requires skill and attention and drive.

The deal is that I'm lazy. That working for nothing (on the miniscule chance that I'll ever be published) no longer inspires me. My characters don't speak to me and the plots don't unspool like a movie in my head. Pushing myself toward publication and revision just left me frustrated.

I like to read. That should be enough.

Monday Morning, Quiet

There are always so many little things to be done that the pressure of them builds like a storm front while I'm at the keyboard. November, with it's novel frenzies and holidays, is the nicest time to light the candles and open the windows, but the hardest month in which to take a break.

I'm reading my typical stack of things this month, including an old Andre Norton nove (Quag Keep), but not making as much progress as I'd hoped. I started the month with a complete rejection of the fantastic--who wants to go into the forests that have been so thoroughly mapped in the past? And yet, the parks they have become are comfortable.

Part of me would like to eschew a month of novel writing for a month of trying out the tasks I set before my characters. What would it take to walk from the Gulf Coast to Houston on foot? How long would it take? A caravan of novelists hiking through Texas would be a blast. Perhaps at the end of a month, there would be something left over to write about without the hollow feeling that's following me this year.

Fantastic October

While putting off the inevitable typing that breaks the Novel away from perfect conception and into rough physical text, I'm working with my photos from RenFest and Halloween to recharge my 'fantasy batteries.'

This time of year in our part of Texas when the days don't beat down your doors and windows and stalk you through the den and into the cool holt of the library.

Instead, they lure you into the familiar sand of parks and festivals, until part of them is ground into you, mingling the dust of the page with that of the ditch and byway and the trips made thereon. We were in the Arboretum yesterday when I sat down on a bench over an empty streambed and let my feet hang over the edge. I was looking for some of the hidden things we'd seen the day before at the fair, the creeping things that were underneath the tangles or the slow things that were paused in the sun. We found a row of turtles along a bench, stretching and shoving each other off stiffly to float among the pine cones in the shady water a few feet from our bench.

There were no leaf falls the way we'd been getting them, the stiff breezes that cleared out the first of this year's falling leaves with an brief interlude that lacked only a fiddle to set us all twirling.

It was the opposite at the festival--fewer leaves falling, but plenty of music to set people spinning. Then it was Halloween and we were lighting candles and plugging in pumpkins and handing out chocolate. Everything grinning and flickering--a holiday of shadows and scurrying and cautious laughter.

With the passing of October, Fall continues to feint at us. A formal edge glints along the coming seasons and the novel curls deeper in its burrow, safe for a few more hours from the clatter than will scare it forth.

Untrodden Territory

Although it's 90 degrees outside, Halloween is this weekend and I've been looking for something spooky to read. Yesterday, I happened upon an inexpensive paperback of Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness and a few shorter stories. After a hurried phone call to my favorite Pumpkin King (Is Lovecraft gory? Scary? Will I ever sleep again?), I picked it up along with a new Esther Friesner collection (Fangs for the Mammaries--suburban vamps of indeterminate sparkle-itude) to take the edge off should it prove too frightening.

Sadly, it's more familiar than frightening. Standing on bleak plains and looking out into darkness matches up with my experience of being out of work for going on two years and feeling the thunder of countless hours of bad news shuddering from the screen in front of me. So...yeah. More depressing than scary.

Perhaps this is something that I should have read earlier. Despite the utter restlessness with which I find myself approaching the text, the slow pace eventually calms me and then something chilly sighs beneath the words. Despite the raw places these stories poke, I'm entranced by their mystery.

NaNo Countdown

So...what's up with you? I've been speeding through partial books lately, not really finishing anything and distracting myself with reunion depression, Ren Fest merriment, and Halloween decorations. Most recently, I've been gearing up for NaNoWriMo, during which I plan to draft my first YA novel.

Since I'm going to be doing NaNo, my other novel draft is going to be on hold. I'm drafting three chapters this week and then putting it aside to answer the profound fantasy question "How did the gold get in the rat?" You may have encountered this phenomenon yourself. Giant rats roaming the countryside of Questland, just strong enough to give your adventurer a bit of treasure and a bit of experience before he or she roams away from the village and into the wilds. How did all that coinage get in those rats and is it the reason they're so large, slow, and mean?

If that doesn't sound like a YA story that's because it didn't start out to be one. However, the character who seems to be the voice of the novel was younger than I at first imagined. While I'm a fan of adult fantasy (meaning that not written about teens, typically), this seemed like a good time to take a break and try out a different voice. I'm surrounded by excellent YA writers and have had the good fortune to meet others at our local convention and, while I'm not on their level, they are inspiring as writers and they seem to have fun with their characters.

The great thing about NaNo is that it gives me a chance to not take myself that seriously--this is basically a writing footrace and you're encouraged to have a good time while banging out 50,000 words during the month of November.

Since I've been lackadaisical this month, my Halloween post will be all about RenFest--with pictures! Meanwhile, back to the serious draft.

An Old Time in the Hot City

This morning we ended up in Old Town Spring, which is a created remainder of an old rail-road town just north of Houston. It's full of antiques and food and quirk, just as you might imagine. We were looking for chocolate, but we've been blessed with a cool front this weekend and we both realized as we got out of the car that it would be nicer to poke around than to go directly for the chocolate.

His first priority was coffee and we ended up in one of the larger buildings not far from the beginning of the shops. The floor was wood, the windows lit narrow shelves of ceramics pressed into tight aisles. Everything smelled of coffee and the breeze pressed us further in. As I wedged myself carefully into the aisles, my mind leapt back to Brownwood and my Aunt Lois' house. Scent memory and place memory swept the table clean and threw laced images over the solid present. The wooden floor shifted and I was balanced in the past and present for a few seconds.

Since then I've been thinking of the surfaces below my feet. Wondering whether the concrete underlying the carpet is porous to the place or whether it's too hard to take impressions. I have since I was young wanted to live in a museum, in a place that is caked in poured concrete and glass and I wonder if I wanted to leave no impression on my surroundings, to live somewhere that I would leave with as little impression as a tourist leaves a museum. That can be accomplished without living in a concrete house--there is no impression that can be left on time itself that I know of.

Part of the dearth of book-related posts lately is that I've been reading about how to read and fussing with writing and with finding the purpose to gear up for submissions and continue lengthier drafts. There is something deadly sometimes about reading about why someone else reads and what he or she finds important. It can make books and lines seem inert as you struggle to conform your reading to theirs. Another reader's opinion by necessity forces yours to slide off unless they are similar enough to yours to allow you to substitute your impressions for theirs and their insight for your own.

My mind was starting to feel rigid and today, for a few minutes, it was permeable. Permeable and bouncy like the wood beneath me--the way a good novel should be, allowing the reader to slip into the cracks, snag on the ideas, and ultimately polish the words with use and thought.