October 30th, 2009
Dear blog-reader,
With little persuasion from Gail (@1mgoldstars), I have signed up to the National Novel Writing Month.
Yes. National Novel Writing Month. The aim of which is to write a novel of 50,000 words in one solitary month, starting on the 1st of November and finishing at midnight on the 30th of November.
Yes. FIFTY thousand words in ONE month. Yikesies!
That is 1,666.66 words a day. Ouchies!
So why am I telling you?
Because I was told to. Because I was informed that I will absolutely, completely need your support, your understanding and your encouragement; but most of all I will need your unmitigated scorn and your deeply withering comments if I so much as think about slacking. To quote the guidance notes ‘the spectre of looming humiliation is a very reliable muse’.
The concept is just to write; to write freely without an eye for editing and polishing; the art of the word left in the drawer, the sledgehammer of graft firmly in its place.
I have a writing plan. I have ideas. I have characters. I just have no clue what else I am doing with them. Here goes something. Here goes anything.
Yours slightly worriedly,
José
Further details can be found at the NaNoWriMo website.
If you are interested in seeing how I do, or providing encouragement/scorn, my (lack of) progress can be found here.
October 12th, 2009
I am sitting at the top of a hill, beneath a tree whose branches reach up above me into the heavens. I lean against her; her warmth and life a gentleness against my back, her skin as smooth as the cloudless sky. Dusk approaches, it’s colours the veil to night’s countenance.
I stir. There is something. There is a tug, a calling, something moves within me, a compulsion. I resist for a moment, then rise to my feet, stretching and looking about me.
There it lies, suburbia, a desert of houses in which the hill is a lonely oasis, the tree a silent sentinel. Lights flicker on in the distance. I am aware of movement and bustle, of countless lives busy in the moment but I cannot see them. They are an invisible presence in the early gloom.
I walk down the hill, each step carrying me away from solace and peace, a steady stride towards the normality of the human condition. I soon reach the bottom of the hill, walking the gentler slope past the houses. They sit there, snug in their gardens, the detritus of a day in the sunshine scattered about them; bikes, paddling pools and loungers amongst their number. I can hear the sounds of evening meals and televisions, of chatter and laughter and shouting and silence, each emanating from the open windows and front doors left ajar.
But not a single person do I see. It is as if I am the only person walking through a desolate land, as if the sounds of life have been left to convince me otherwise.
The compulsion grows in me, pulling me onwards, down streets I know towards a house my own.
The sky is both bright with colour and deep with the subtle shades of dusk, a vast span of hues and tinctures. I walk on, into the growing darkness, lights springing on from the houses around me. Strangely, there are no street lights here, the street a wall of shadows between the two rows of houses.
The compulsion grows, tugging and terse in its growing insistence. My house lies before me, the lights shining, casting a welcoming glow into the darkness. I walk up the stairs, pushing the front door open, stepping into light.
I stand, in the hallway, listening. In the distance I can hear the sounds of my family, the clink of plates and cutlery, their voices murmuring, both familiar and unfamiliar.
The compulsion is strong, an urge that ripples through my body in waves. I walk down the hallway, my fingertips trailing along the smoothness of the wall, a sudden dread slowing me as I approach the doors out on to the verandah.
The doors are glass, a deep blackness beyond. Something waits beyond, in that darkness, in that gloom. I stand for a long moment, listening to the sounds of day’s end behind me.
I open the doors, and step through, walking up to the rail, my heart suddenly hammering in my chest. I look out into the darkness, over the garden.
I am not alone. Before me stands a girl, faded into the night. And she is not alone. A boy. Another girl. A woman. A man. And so on and so forth, tens, then hundreds, then thousands. They stand there, grim pale shadows in the night, their silence a counterpoint to my thunderous heart.
They stand, soundless, insubstantial, stretching off into the distance beyond my sight; a brooding presence, a weight that deepens around me, suffocating me.
I, their only regard. I begin to drown, as if standing naked before a vast amphitheatre, fear thrumming through my veins, the air tight and cold about me. Their eyes, such open eyes, reach out to me, a pleading in their gaze, a small empty whisper of a need, multiplied by countless numbers to a crescendo of terrifying inhumane silence, a wave of insistence and demand and hope that engulfs, bringing me to my knees.
They are the dead. The uncountable, unknowable dead; their souls stretching back into the untinkable past, reaching out to me with a simple, terrifying, multitudinous plea. Panic swamps me, I scramble back towards the patio doors, a wave of wordless despair carrying me through them. I flee down the hallway, tears blinding me to my way, tendrils of hopeless abandonment and pleading reaching out to drag me back, to answer their unanswerable question.
I am out on the street now, running through shadows up the street , my feet pounding, fear and a sudden hope driving me on, up the street, towards a hill where a night-cloaked tree stands grimly welcoming against the dark, dark sky.
October 5th, 2009
The other day I buckled down and started writing the second ‘big’ story that has been percolating in my head. I wrote the intro, the scene- setter and I wrote it without stopping to correct or revise or redo. I took the (gleaned) advice of several writers I follow on Twitter and just wrote.
And I was pleased with it. I passed it to a trusted friend to read it a s a draft and she liked it too.
And then I went to see the Devil’s Violin Company performing their show ‘The Singing Bones’ at the Tobacco Factory. I was stunned and moved and in awe. The premise of the show is the telling of a story (containing three other stories within), accompanied by three musicians (accordion/guitar, violin and cello). The storyteller was majestic, translating the scenes and characters of the subjects of the story with clever delicacy; the joy, fear, darkness and humour of those tales vibrating strongly around the room.
I left, thinking hard about what I had seen, about what I had heard and what it meant for me. And those thoughts sat there, in my head until yesterday morning. I was in the shower, my place of cogitation, of daydreams and musings; and I started to tell the story, the scene I had written, aloud. I told it as if there were people there listening to me, as if I need to grab them, paint the scene, flavour the characters and locales with enticing imagery. I told the story differently to the way I had written it; it became more human, more personal, it’s tone stronger and more real. It was much, much better; it was evocative, fuller and the bathroom applauded wildly in response (it did not). I was happier with the story I had just told. And when I tumbled out of the bathroom the first thing I did was write it down.
I am still thinking about this. One of the things I value from a writer that I read is a real skill with words, but I realised, after going back and looking, that the writers I really loved were those who were skilled with words, and were masterful, enchanting storytellers. They did not just write, they did not just narrate or convey or impart, they told a story; with skill and panache and a sense of timing; timing a performer learns on the stage, or the pavement, or the dirt patch which is their arena, in front of an audience.
I have long been fascinated with storytellers; watching and listening to them in the markets and street of Africa and the East, listening to my father and brother (both talented storytellers) in their day to day regaling of their adventures, real or imagined. There is a real magic in the skill of a storyteller, and whilst my quality is yet unknown, I think it has given me a way to do this thing I call writing. It has given me an insight into the way I need to think and write and storytell that has banished the all too frequent frustrations and left me positive and eager to write.
