author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

This'll be short because I'm tired. It's been a long dang Saturday, full of Stuff. Stuff, as you know, is made up of Things. Today's Stuff consisted roughly of two Things, which I update for you as follows:

Thing the First: NaNoWriMo update. Nothing at all written yesterday. Some 2200 words written today. Sticking with the notion that some representative of each of the previous chapters shows up in the current chapter, most of them in response to an ad that Martha's father takes out in the town paper.

Maggie Eirenholdt had blown into town some few months before Lucille but about a year after Ben. She was, she said, on an extended vacation -- at least, that was the story she'd given her family. But the long and the short of it was, she was putting distance between herself and everyone she loved as a defense mechanism, both for herself and them.

"It all went wrong. And it's this thing's fault." Then she alarmed Ben momentarily by pitching the tiny computer against the wall. She put some heft into the throw, too. Any team on any town's recreational softball league would have been proud to have her. The machine hit the wall at about twenty miles an hour then rebounded, skittering, across their table, narrowly missing Ben's coffee by inches. Finally the computer rattled its way into the corner formed by the floor and wall beneath their booth.

"Ouch," Ben said mildly as the machine hit his exposed toes.

Maggie retrieved it. "Sorry. I'm just so angry, and that thing wouldn't break if you took a sack of hammers to it. Sometimes I think that's the only good thing that's come of owning it. I get an indestructable punching bag to vent my frustrations on. Of course," she said, letting her fist fall into a lifeless open palm atop the computer, "I'd have a lot less frustrations to vent if I hadn't bought the thing."

Also, it's no coincidence they're all meeting up in this one town that no one can place on a map, where night mists blow up out of bone-dry days and bring with them crowds of half-heard voices. It's definitly no coincidence the shop showed up here.

Thing the Second: Skating update. This evening I took myself off to the nearest roller skating rink. That would be Skate City in Westminster. Guess what? I still got it. To the extent that I ever had it, I do in fact still have it. There were two reasons I got fooled into thinking I'd lost it somewhere along the way:

1. Skating on city sidewalks is no fun.

Also,

2. My skates appear to be falling apart.

And also,

3. I appear to be falling apart.

And that is all. Good night.

Today's topic: Why Niki Is So Effing Sore Today. (Don't worry -- this story is totally safe for work. All activities were legal and rated G.) It'll probably be a long post, or at least long-ish, so let's go ahead and talk NaNoWriMo briefly.

I'm behind again, but only tolerably so. Returning to my original 2k per day routine will get me to 50K on time. The real question is, what to fill those 2k per day with? I've gotten stuck on Bitsy and Camerie; the old man from the store shows up and drives them to the land of the dead, but what happens there and why it's so important that Bitsy go I'm not sure.

But the thought occured to me that I hadn't yet written a chapter in which someone tries to return an object to the shop. So I started in on that a few days ago. A 20-something computer hacker name of Lucille is waiting around for the shop to appear so she can do just that. She's got illegal access to all sorts of closed circuit monitoring cameras and a fancy battery of programs to automatically spot anomalies in the footage. And she finally gets what she's waiting for. The shop quietly appears during the predawn hours in what had been a blank gray brick wall:

"What do you want to bet," Lucille said to the open air, "that the pawn shop owner will swear this store was here when he moved in?" Or at least that it had been open for years upon years. Lucille knew how these things happened. She'd grown up on the stories of similar miracles. And this was the miracle she'd been waiting for.

She was alone in the room. She got no answer, and she expected none. But her phone did gently vibrate in her right hip pocket. She ignored it, watching the storefront shape itself into existence. She watched the door open. An elderly... person; Lucille could not hazard a guess towards the person's sex... stepped outside with a broom and a watering can. She, or he, calmly watered the flower box. Inside, anonymous green shoots were pushing their way toward the sky. She set the watering can down on the corner of the flower box then set about sweeping the stoop and the sidewalk. There was a stoop now; Lucille cursed herself for not noticing this small transformation. Yes, the person with the broom had to step down, sweeping first the top cement step then the next and then the next. Then they swept the sidewalk with brusque, practiced strokes that said I don't much care where the dust goes so long as it settles somewhere else.

Only once the woman, or man, had gone back inside, only once Lucille were satisfied that no further changes were forthcoming, did Lucille take her phone out and look at the message that had arrived. Anomaly: Camera 62, 04:16 AM. "No shit, Sherlock," Lucille said. Then she flipped the phone open and made a call.

"Yeah," she said. "Yeah, it's happened. Well, that's for me to know, isn't it? OK, fine, yes, just messing with you. Four-fifteen Davinger Street, right next door to the pawn shop. Yes, I know. Yes. That's the point, isn't it? It wasn't going to be like another frikkin' J. C. Penny's, was it? Right. Put on your wakey face and meet me there."

Lucille snapped the phone closed and held it to her cheek for a moment, thinking hard. Then she slipped it into her right hip pocket. From her left, she drew a small blue ring box. (Her pockets were huge. She liked cargo pants for their capacity.) She flipped open the box and gazed at the ring. It was inlaid all round with a pattern reminiscent of wind currents or perhaps ghosts passing down an empty byway.

"This is for you, Elizabeth," she murmured.

Then she put on her coat and left that place, locking it up behind her as she went.

I wrote that Tuesday. By today, Lucille had become part of a small cabal of people who have all lost family to the shop's questionable merchandise, and the plan is possibly to return the objects all at once together with a little bit of exploding lagniappe tacked on. Maybe. In any case, "Elizabeth" is Bitsy. Whether Camerie is still in the ring, I don't know.

Yesterday's writing introduced Ben Willingham, Martha's father. (Martha was the gal in the first chapter, the one who bought the vampire dress.) Yesterday's writing happened at the Baker Street Pub on 28th Street. And I got a bit of a wild hair. I decide I would rollerskate there. All 1.4 miles of the way.

Like I said on Twitter, this was probably my first time in rollerskates since well before the kids online started deriving terms like "lollerskates" and "lolrus" from the original acronym for laugh out loud. (I suspect "LOL" was already a thing when I last circumnavigated a rollerskating rink, but that the LOLcats phenomenon hadn't yet taken off. The original Happy Cat had not yet begun requesting Cheezburger.) I've ice-skated since, what with Boulder being possessed of a fine seasonal ice rink, but it's been a long while since I had wheels on my feet.

What brought on this sudden nostalgic wild hair? Well, a few weeks ago I got introduced to roller derby.

As you know (Bob), I've been following Havi's blog The Fluent Self. Havi Brooks is one of the most compassionate writers I've ever read on those subjects that bring out the self-loathing in me: procrastination, avoidance, the inability to "just let it go," and so forth. She is on a mission to eradicate, or at least reduce, that toxic societal tendency to find ways to blame people for their own suffering. I took her telecourse "The Art of Embarking" and it was pretty damn magical.

And then I read that she would be in Boulder. Very soon! For the Divide and Conquer Roller Derby Championships. Because she sponsors a roller derby team. So she was going to take the opportunity to teach a Shiva Nata workshop in Boulder.

I cannot explain Shiva Nata better than Havi herself, so go read the "sponsors a roller derby team" link and let her have her say.

It fell off my radar, and by the time I remembered it, it was all sold out. But I emailed myself onto the waiting list, and within hours a spot opened up. So on Thursday the 10th I walked down 30th Street to the Alchemy of Movement dance studio and spent two hours laughing, flailing, laughing some more, and feeling my brain go ping.

Really, that workshop deserves its own post, and this post ain't it. This post is about me getting inspired to dig my skates out of the closet. So. Actually meeting Havi for the first time and then spending two hours deconstructing patterns for their individual parts and putting the parts back together in interesting ways -- that all had an effect. Mainly the effect was to make my brain go "Why not?" at the least provocation. (It also had my brain completely overthinking the lyrics to the sea shanty Havi taught us in the last hour of the workshop. "Who are my 'rolling kings' and what are they 'heaving away' at?" Because that's what Shiva Nata followed by a 15-minute walk does. "Hot buttered epiphanies!" Indeed.)

So when Havi suggested we come out the next day and root for the Rose City Rollers, indeed, my brain went, "Why not?"

Which is how I ended up on a bus to the 1st Bank Center (formerly the Broomfield Event Center) for 2:00 PM on Friday, November 11th.

I watched the first three of the four bouts scheduled that day. It was awesome. I'd never seen roller derby before. I know this much about it: it involved women on skates, it involved physical contact, and, if Jim Croce was to be trusted, it involved an asthetic skewed less toward lingerie and more towards "built like a 'frigerator with a head." Apparently I was wrong in thinking lingerie would be entirely uninvolved; many participants wear fishnet stockings. But other than the occasional mention of a product for keeping your hiney shiny (what is this I don't even), the play-by-play announcers made no mention of body parts except when describing whose elbow slammed into whose side and who got a forearm penalty and who had just demonstrated phenomennal agility on their feet.

By the time the Rose City Rollers came out to play, Havi had invited me via Twitter to come find her, so I got to root for her team right alongside her and pester her with my newbie questions. "So, how exactly does one score points?" "What does the stripe on that one gal's helmet mean?" "What's up with the lines on the ground?" She was exceedingly patient. She was also totally rocking the purple wig and rainbow boa constrictor plushie.

Watching roller derby also had the effect of sending me on a trip down memory lane. Anyone remember the roller rink Phil's Big 8 in Metairie? Right under the clover-leaf ramp from Causeway onto Jefferson Highway? I went to so very many birthday parties there. I participated in all the floor games and won my share of free Cokes off the two-lap races. For the longest time, I thought the J. Geils Band song was called "Free Skate" because the DJ so often played it upon reopening the floor. During the free skates, I would zip through the crowd, zig left, zag right, and imagine myself in some competitive event in which I'd have to take down my opponents by clashing my wheels with theirs.

And there were these skates in my closet that I hadn't worn for at least a decade. Well... why not?

(I mentioned to Havi, "Watching this makes me think, 'Dude, I could do that!'" She said, "You totally should!" Then she introduced me to Juno, who was sitting next to her on her other side, and Juno introduced me to the Rocky Mountain Rollergirls Derby Days. As soon as NaNoWriMo is over, I am so there. My roller derby name will be "Fleur de Beast." Mwahaha.)

So this is why yesterday I got the bright idea to put on my skates. For, as I say, the first time in more than a decade. And to attempt to skate the 1.4 miles from my house to the Baker Street Pub. I was unreasonably optimistic.

I had this vision of me whizzing down 30th in the bike lane, texting to Twitter as I went: "Hee. I'm on my lollerskates. :)" NOT HARDLY. Being a decade out of practice doesn't just mean my endurance was no longer up to speed. My balance was also out of whack. It didn't help that I'd probably never skated with a backpack on before. There was no question of doing anything with my cell phone while skating. I windmilled and jerked and whoopsied my way down 30th, falling down at least three times and acquiring a gorgeous pre-adolescent-style skinned knee on the way, before putting my shoes back on at maybe the half mile point. It was a disappointing experience. I walked the rest of the way to the write-in in a bit of a funk.

But I couldn't help but notice that the newer sidewalk that starts around the big Barnes & Noble at 30th and Pearl and continues on past Walnut was so very wide and smooth...

On my way back home, I sat down on a parking spot bump in front of Karlequin's Game Knight and I put my skates back on. And I kept them on all the way home from there. I didn't fall down again, either.

It's starting to come back to me.

But that's why Niki's really, really sore today. Ow.

Bleeaaarrrgh. I'm tired, I was sick, I only got some 900 words done today, here, have an excerpt.

Immediately she had a dilemma. The amazingly tiny mini-laptop didn't appear to be large enough along any axis to admit a CD. Perhaps it needed an external drive? Maggie was on the verge of calling the clerk for help when her fingers tripped a release switch and the computer extracted what was unmistakeably a disk drive. It was pretty skeletal, for sure, but it was a CD-ROM drive for all that. She snapped the disk onto the flat spindle, then, doubtfully, pressed the button that had released it in the first place.

The CD-ROM drive retracted into the computer's body with a jerky motion. Maggie watched, expecting the drive shelf to stop at any moment. Once half the disk was inside, that was surely enough for the drive to read the disk, right? But the disk shelf kept on going until it had retracted completely. The outside of the computer was smooth and the disk had entirely disappeared, without even the faintest sound of disk destruction, into a space that was patently too small for it.

Maggie stuck around to install and run as many of the OEM disks that she thought she'd have use for, and all the programs ran flawlessly. But it was the impossible insertion of that first disk that decided her. She had to have this machine.

Did I mention I have no idea where this year's novel draft is going? Also I'm having acute attacks of "Why am I writing yet another new first draft? Why am I not seriously editing an existing draft? Why am I not trying to get a book published yet?"

1. Because it's November.
2. Because it's November.
3. Because ... I've wasted a lot of non-Novembers up to now.

The question of wasting no more non-Novembers will have to wait until December. For now... it's November. And I have this story to create out of pure nothingness.

So I'm trying to take the advice I am preparing to give to the whole Boulder region come Week 2: When in doubt as to which option to choose, choose them both. Write the scene both ways. Write continuations to both scenes. All the words count toward your 50K, and they also (by some mysterious alchemical process) count toward your figuring things out. Because, as I discovered last year, you don't know what you're going to write until you've written it and read it.

So since I didn't know whether to continue with the vampire dress storyline or cut out to the shop keeper telling her story, I did both. And I suppose tomorrow it'll be continuing the vampire dress plot or starting a new magic-item-leads-to-adventure/disaster plot. Depends on what's in my head at that time.

Here's the shop keeper on choices, responsibility, and free will, and at some tiresome length too:

Believe me when I tell you there is nothing I could have done. And don't you tut-tut at me like that -- I'm far too old to put up with such clucking from my own parents, let alone random people who walk into my shop. And, trust me, you've got nothing on my father. At least, I think so. It's been so long; my memories of home and hearth are foggy. I think I had a father. Once. In any case, if I did have, you weren't in his league.

But no, listen. I am under certain constraints. Anyone who can pay my price may buy what they will; I am not allowed to interfere. I cannot interfere. The thing about stories is, characters have to have agency, right? What's the use of a story in which no one has a choice and no one stands a chance? Even you, even you have a choice. You paid my price, and so you get my words. Did you think those were for sale? No. Everything has a price tag, everything is stamped with its particular UPC. Trust me, you can pay it. And you want to. Look, don't worry about it -- it will become clear to you later. You will have no regrets. Well, I wouldn't, were I you.

But that's the paradox, isn't it? In order to allow His creations free will, God, Who can do anything, cannot choose what we would have Him choose. If it makes you feel better, perhaps it is better said that He must not. And I am no God. I am less powerful. The choices I cannot make -- to refuse the sale, to hide the dress, to chase poor Martha out of the shop or simply lock the door after she disappeared into the dressing room -- I really can't make them. I owe my livelihood and my existence to -- a contract, say. Call it a contract. I, the undersigned, waive my ability to interfere in my customers' choices; in return, I get many hundreds of thousands of years of life in an infinite multitude of multiverses and an inventory that takes care of itself. And absolutely no responsibility for those things I cannot control: no moral responsibility for my customers' selections, no liability for the disasters they may incur, no obligation to accept returned merchandise.

The most I can do, as you have seen, is offer my wares without asking for money, and throw in word or two of advice. Not for free -- nothing, as I have been at pains to tell you, is for free. We bartered, did Cathy and I. I gave a thing if she accepted the duty to use it. I asked for her willingness and gave a thing in return. Oh, it was nothing said in words, but the exchange happened nonetheless.

The shop takes care of my needs and it exacts my obedience to the clauses of our contract. If that bothers you so much, go out yourself and do something about it. Martha's still out there. That poor boy may not be her last conquest. Go make yourself useful and stop scolding me.

Or go across the street and buy me a coffee. Even that will be useful. Pay you back when you return. What else am I going to do with money?

Oh, make your choice already. You have choices, isn't that enough for you? Why must you flaunt what you have that I do not by dithering? Choose, and go.

Don't look to me to make this easy.

Today is an exercise in self-forgiveness. Some days, none of the stuff on the Big Scary Checklist get done, and then it's 9:30 PM and I'm tired. And beating myself up for getting nothing done doesn't help. Like, what, tired-and-guilty is better than just plain tired?

So. I hereby officially forgive myself for not writing today.

I did other things. For one, I did my Wednesday morning volunteer reading for AINC. I do three and a half hours of reading for them each week. On Wednesdays, it's 54 minutes of employment ads from varying parts of Colorado, and the recording has to be uploaded by 2:00 PM. It actually takes more like an hour and a half because I have to gather the reading material from several newspaper websites and then sort out the ads that don't have verbally tranmittable contact information. (Phone numbers are good. Email addresses are good. "Click here to apply" is not so good.)

Why, by the way, am I so reluctant to acknowledge how this task screws with my day? I guess I'm in denial here. I don't want to admit that this hour and a half has to come from somewhere. I mean, it would be nice if I could pull it out of a pocket dimension and magically have 26-hour Wednesdays, but I can't. And so it's an hour and a half I can't spend writing, it's an hour and a half of my productive energy for the day, and it's even more time taken because afterwards I sort of need a break. And I just need to take all this into account when planning the shape of my Wednesdays and my expectations thereof.

Lori and I tried out a couple restaurants up here. Lunch was at the Avon Bakery & Deli, whose bread really is just that fantastic. And dinner was at China Garden inside the Lodge at Avon Center. It was more expensive than I had remembered, but the food was delicious and the portions were generous enough to feed us for lunch tomorrow.

I had a good long afternoon walk along the riverside path, mildly regretful that I didn't have time to do the four-mile hike all the way to Edwards. I went as far as that townhouse campus that's just west of Nottingham Lake, where I settled down on a pillow-like boulder at the foot of what looked like an ex-bridge (which will be a completed bridge again in the near future, if the active construction crew across the river was any indication) and read some more of Cameron's Walking in this World. And it was just as well I didn't go any farther, because by the time I got back to our room, I was exhausted. That was pretty much the energy expenditure that all but guaranteed that the productive part of my day was over.

I wish I had more energy in a day. The stuff listed here ought not to have eaten up my day's allotment of potential. But "oughts" are sort of useless, because they aren't "is."

This morning I woke up dreading today, knowing that I needed to work on my short story and feeling scared of it. And the fear won the day, which makes me sad. But in the fear I recognized an opportunity for monster watching. "Monsters" is how Havi Brooks, whose blog I have become quite fond of, conceptualizes these fears and blocks and inner obstacles. You should read the whole post linked above, but here's the nutshell edition:

When you're working on a stuck or sitting with a hurt or working through the layers, you eventually discover that your stuck just wants to protect you.

Your monster means well. It's just going about it all wrong.

Your monster is small and vulnerable and fuzzy. And it just wants to know that you'll be okay. And that's why it makes itself so big and fierce — to scare you into letting it take care of you.

And once it knows that you know, it can turn into something else.

So I tried to have a little chat with my "stuck" in the safety of my Morning Pages. I called it "Dear little fearing monster," and I asked it -- asked myself, really, but writing dialogue is more fun for me than writing angsty internal monologue -- what precisely its goal here was.

As it turns out, it's trying to protect me from the ineviteble blow of finally discovering that I can't actually write and every success so far has just been a fluke and I'm not really a writer which means I'm not really anyone at all.

Dear little fearing monster comes from the family Imposter Syndrome. It's a family that many writers become familiar with. I see successful writers bemoaning it on Twitter with a frequency that is both depressng ("You mean it never goes away?") and heartening ("You mean even the big kids feel that way?"). I am in good company here.

So I had me a chat with this scion of that familiar family. "Dear little fearing monster! In protecting me, you're not letting me write. You're so afraid I'll find out I'm not cut out to be a writer that you're not letting me be a writer. In attempting to protect me from this bad thing, you're actually making the bad thing happen."

"Well, that makes sense... but what if I do let you write, and you write something that's no good?"

"I'll revise it."

"But what if you can't revise it enough? What if it'll never be any good?"

"I'll never know. I'll just keep revising it, or, in a pinch, put it away temporarily and move on to the next story. You can't prove a 'never'; you can only create one -- by deciding never to try."

(I say things like that a lot. For instance, my rote response to anyone who argues against encouraging would-be writers because, they say, some people aren't cut out to be writers and really just shouldn't try. People really do say that, and I find it rage-inducing. So I've got my response down to a slogan: "The only way to prove a person will never make it as a writer is by getting them to stop writing." Of course, the rage-inducing naysayers then like to say that anyone who can be so easily discouraged doesn't have what it takes to make it as a writer anyway. Because apparently they think that only the invulnerable deserve to survive? Only those with skin two inches thick have anything to say worth hearing? Really? How convenient to bullies, then, that no blame accrues to them, but only to their victims for being bullyable! Gah. This would be the point at which I am obliged to remove myself from the presence of such compassionless pieces of excrement, lest I do them a violence. Besides, it's not them I'm talking to. I'm talking to my colleagues, to my friends, to the walking wounded: "The only way it can be true that you'll never make it as a writer is if you stop writing. And even if you do stop writing today, you can always pick up the pen tomorrow.")

To make a long story short -- and I'd better, since the original conversation went on for two full pages of longhand, even without parenthetical asides -- I gave the monster job security. I gave it permission to keep scaring me. But I told it to change its method. That old refrain of "But what if today you try to write and discover that you're no good?" It's no longer allowed. I am taking it out of that toolbox and throwing it off a cliff. The replacement tool is, "But what if you never write again?"

My little monster has full permission to nag me with that question. And I will respond to that question with, "Nonsense. Look! I am writing now."

That was this morning at about 9:00 AM. Thirteen hours later I haven't written all day, and my monster is concerned. I would like to reassure the dear little thing that a day without writing doesn't mean no writing ever again. Tomorrow, unlike today, the AINC reading can be done late in the evening, so I have no reason not to go straight from Morning Pages to story.

But "tomorrow" doesn't appease the monster. The monster knows I said "tomorrow" yesterday, and see what happened?

But look! I am writing right now. And now I will take what I wrote and paste it into my blog editor, and send it out to meet the nice people of Internetlandia.

Hello, Internetlandia! My monster says hi!

Still not done. Still not done. This story isn't easy. It ought to have been easy. Why is it not easy?

So I read it aloud to my writing class last night. And I got some great feedback. I also got a big honkin' case of Doubt and Uncertainty. Like you do.

I mean, look. The narrator's back-story with the monster at the end of the book. Did it actually do something before, and if so, how'd it get reigned in again? Or did it just threaten really loudly, and if so, how, in the absence of some tragedy to remind the narrator that This Could Happen Again And It Will Be Your Fault, do I raise the stakes? Why is every option flawed? Why does every single idea fail to satisfy? Also, everyone's right--the shrink character is one character too many. Maybe replace scenes 6 and 10 with phone calls between the narrator and the lover. When in doubt, condense characters. But what does that make the scenes do now?

The last story I wrote was easy and it came out beautifully and it sold on its first time in the slush. Why can't this one be easy?

Excuse me, I'll just be over here whining.

(In better news, my writing classmates agreed that the connection to the Stevens poem isn't glaringly obvious, not even to those who are familiar with the poem. And they suggested a line from stanza 1 for a title: "The Only Moving Thing." I think it works.)

Sometimes a day just kinda gets away from me, and I just get nothing useful done. The typewriter doesn't come out. The short story scenes don't get written. And then it's 11:30 PM and I'm sleepy and it's so very easy to think, "You know, screw it. I'm going to bed. Writing can happen tomorrow."

But there's always another 15 minutes.

My laptop is coming to bed with me, and I'm going to poke at the half-formed scenes in my head before I lose consciousness.

Is December over? Yes, along with 2010. Did I finish a new story draft or revise-and-submit an existing story? No. Am I feeling ashamed of myself like a shameful little shame-filled thing? Why yes, I believe I am.

Only that sort of feeling never got a person anywhere without its being scrapped for parts first. Those parts turn out to be "motivation to do better" and "recognition of what it takes to do better."

So. January 2011: The month of doing better. Now with New! New! New Year's Resolutions!

If I weren't so persnickety about "meme" has a definition, effing learn it I'd call it a "meme." But I won't, being persnickety about such things. ("Persnickety." Hah. It is to chortle. How about "vehement and rageful like unto fire"? That's better.) Instead, I'm calling it a list of New Year's Resolutions for Writers. I posted it as an Examiner Hot List today, probably making it a bit more prescriptive than it ought to be. Now, I'm gonna post the personal version here.

I resolve to...

1. Devise a writing schedule with great specificity, and stick to it.
2. Come to each scheduled writing time with work-in-progress intent.
3. Investigate publications local to me.
4. Volunteer some portion of my writing time pro-bono.
5. Decide on a Big Goal and begin working toward it.

On the other hand, I'm not going to entirely waste writing time this week. This week takes up far too much January for that. Some work will get done. Also some concrete thinking; the above list is great, but only as a vague outline. As a blueprint, it lacks actionable instruction. I'll be working on the blueprint this week. I'll just be working on more of a chaotic schedule until my return to Boulder, is all.

All for now. More later. Happy New Year!

I've been participating in NaNoWriMo since 2002. How many times have I written a new novel draft? You do the math. Then add a conservative one or two for the trunk novels that I peck at from time to time on no particular schedule. This "don't bother getting it right; just get it down" thing, I have done it a lot.

So you'd think that by now I'd have learned all there was to know about "don't bother getting it right" and "just get it down." You'd think.

Apparently you'd be wrong.

This past week has involved a lot of uncertainty. Lia and Jet light out on the run after escaping Montrose Manor--then what happens? Then, apparently, we spend a lot of time changing motel rooms and arguing... until we finally stumble upon the next possible plot point. Both Jet and Lia spend time with no-good guys they've gotten involved with for dubious reasons, and this goes on for several nights... until something finally kicks loose and I know how the "everybody dies" scene comes together. After that, Jet spends a lot of time in Uberreality (only it's not "time," because time and space aren't real) keeping herself to herself and avoiding all contact with her colleagues and employers... until I finally realize exactly what Chender is up to and what their Employer's reaction to this is and how Jet's next assignment will lead to her own personal There Is No Spoon moment and...

And here's the thing. Sometimes you just have to send your characters out into the formless primordial stuff of story, not to live the plot they ought, but rather as your avatars in the fiction mines, trying to find the next piece of plot. Sometimes you just have to spend 5,000 words writing three nights of arguing and fighting in a motel room, knowing that not a single word of it will make it to the final draft but writing it anyway, because there is no other way to find out what happens next.

And I knew this. But I didn't really know it, not until today. This past week I've been coming back to the book with great reluctance, unwilling to write another non-plot-moving 2,000 words of "And then Lia went for another walk in the desert, and looked at the pretty cacti and the red sandstone rock formations, and nearly got bit by a snake, and 'Michael' met up with her again and they exchanged some witty banter and unresolved sexual tension, and then Lia went back to the motel room and had an argument with Jet, and then Jet went out and had another date with Mr. Totally Wrong Who Might Be Useful, and..." This sort of reluctance is new to me this year, because this year I am determined to finish not just 50,000 words but also the book by November 30. I don't reach "The End" in a timely manner if I'm constantly writing time-waster scenes on my way to the next brainstorm. But I've gotta.

Today it paid off. I opened a brand new blank scene, and, unwilling to start flailing around at Jet Grieving In Uberreality And Being Very Antisocial For, Lacking A Better Phrase, Several Days... I started jotting down the lines that Jet's Employer would say when Jet finally consented to listen. And then I started filling in Jet's thoughts between them. And before them. And suddenly I was writing an actual scene with pacing and movement and revelation and reaction.

And now I know what happens next.

See? It works! But I really need to spend the entire three hours of tomorrow's write-in writing down What Happens Next, because it feels like my characters sure spent a lot of November fishing in the primordial ooze.

But they didn't waste that time. It really was time well-spent. And now, I hope, I really understand that. In my 9th year of NaNoWriMo, it's really about time.

If this were Earth, I would say that days passed. But time is only fiction, and what passes is only me. The eternal now contracts around me to a point shaped like Lia's bedroom. I wrap myself in my human shape, so that I can bury my head beneath the crimson-gold-paisley quilt and breathe her scent where in lingers in the ivory sheets. A copper hair lies upon one of the pillows; I don't touch it, but lay beside it so that its breadth magnifies in my blurred vision. Each moment that passes is the same moment, and each breath I take is the same breath. And yet with each breath the scent fades, and my ability to furnish it from memory fades as well.

As I curl around the pillow, clutching it to my tightly, the voice of my Employer echoes about the room, bouncing off the fictitious walls that are my awareness and my being. Jetta. Speak to me, Jetta.

I hug the imaginary pillow tighter and say nothing.

Jetta. Please come back. You are needed.

Mondays are often hard. (This has come up before.) I get home from my morning shift at the farm, I take a shower and a nap, and then if I get anything else done in the day I'm lucky. Usually I take care of whatever I feel strongly obligated to do, like a load of laundry, but the things I want to have done for my own sake often don't get done at all.

Add to the general Mondayness that the novel is at an "I don't know what comes next" place, and the motivation to write decreases further.

One of today's obligations was to write up a regional email--an email that goes out to everyone in the Boulder region--on the occasion of NaNoWriMo Week 4 starting. These weekly emails usually contain a round-up list of events for the week, reminders about extra special events or about the ongoing book drive, and some little rah-rah pep talk about writing novels.

Since it's Week 4, I wrote about what to do when "The End" feels far too far away: Skip right to The End and write it first.

After sending the email, I let more time pass until writing today at all felt futile. It was already 11:00 PM - what could I possibly get done before the end of the day? Besides, I had no idea what to write...

"Hello, Niki. This is Your Own Advice calling. Yes, yes, I am off to visit your friends like you suggested, but it seems I've forgotten my keys and my wallet, so I had to come back for them. And while I'm here, I thought maybe I'd offer you a little help with your daily noveling task."

So I set a timer and wrote one of the end-of-book scenes while it was ticking.

As it turns out, it really is good advice. It can come home to visit any time.

And this is where I give up.

I have tried. I have tried as hard as anyone from any world can try. Since the beginning of memory, I have fulfilled every one of my assignments faithfully and to the letter. I have not questioned them. I have set my conscience aside, making every Adjustment required of me regardless of my personal feelings. If I have not obeyed every tradition to the letter, I have followed it to the utmost according to its spirit. But it is not enough. It will never be enough.

Yes, I got involved. I began to care. When reality ceased to hold my interest, I found love in a dream. And why not? Am I not assigned to the dream often and often? Don't get attached, Chender said--damn him, damn him forever--or it will impact your assignment. But it didn't--I did what I was sent to do, every time. Except now, when I can't figure out what it is. Even when I am awake, my Employer tells me nothing. And in the dream it seems all guidance is gone. This, after every attachment has been broken, every tie loosed. Look at me! Every day I practice forgetting her. Every night I ignore the loneliness. I have given myself entirely to the assignment--and still there is no guidance. You give me nothing.

So I give up. I take the lapis stones in my hand, letting them fall on my palm into different arrangements, trying out of habit to see clues in demonstrations of random chance. I clench them in my fist until the pressure against the flesh of my palm is painful.

Then, one by one, I swallow them.