Some Wise Words

Neil Gaiman said, “We owe it to each other to tell stories.”

Word Count: 50,053

It’s over. I finished the 50,000 in a month. Of course, this is a miserable mess of a rough draft. It needs more scenes, it needs rewriting, it needs a lot of changes to make it even marginal. But I do have a purple winner’s bar.

I did this in the face of odds, too: not just work, not just my own writer’s block, but in the past couple of days, I’ve had oral surgery, a drug hangover from the Vicodin the dentist gave me, Thanksgiving dinner with various good friends, an allergic reaction at dinner (small but interesting — my upper lip swelled up like I’d been hit with a basketball), Benadryl and subsequent unconsciousness, and fascinating struggles today with the Benadryl hangover, the despair engendered by continuing allergic reactions, and the book itself.

It’s not done. I need to keep working on it. I love it. It’s going to last me a long while. But I still feel as though I had shot my favorite child.

Thanksgiving Blessings

* a loving family: blood kin back east, plus the Califamily out here

* all my other communities: church, job, online, and NaNoWriters

* Joe, one of my oldest friends, who sends me poems, smart-alec parodies, and wonderful music

* Gabriel, Spawn of Satan, Fuzzbucket Supreme

* a safe and tasty Thanksgiving dinner, with no liver in the stuffing and no celery anywhere

* having most of my books unpacked (only about 15 boxes to go)

* a really great local library system, including online catalog searching and hold requests

* the ability to appreciate all the beauty around me and express it in words

* my faithful blog readers and fans — it’s great to know you’re there

* word count: 42,148

Word Count: 40,620

I can see the finish line, assuming I define 50,000 words as the finish line. It isn’t the end of the book for sure. It will be the end of the month, though. Today won’t be a big writing day. I’m tired, for one thing. For another, I have work, followed by Thanksgiving grocery shopping, followed by the family meeting, followed by *sleep*.

Yesterday my NaNoWriMo jersey came: “No plot? No problem!” I’ll wear it to work tomorrow, then to the dentist’s office for oral surgery (yuck), then if I’m up to it to the cafe where the local NaNoWriters meet with their laptops and their giant power bar.

Another goodie in the mail: the book I’ve been waiting for. It’s a powerful text on suicide motives, based on years of close study and interviews with survivors of serious suicide attempts, including a lengthy study of a young woman who attempted suicide in the same horrific fashion my character did. (Mine succeeded.) These case studies go a long way past cries for help or swallowing five aspirin. These people really wanted to die, and they chose very effective methods to achieve that end. But even the best methods can fail and leave you (for example) with your face shot off, unable to speak.

I’m including an Afterword with suicide helpline numbers and some other sources of support. If I’m going to write a book about suicide, I have a responsibility to show it truthfully, unglamorously, and to make sure even fragile readers are protected — insofar as I can protect them.

Word Count: 35,306

An amazing night of writing: intense, passionate, almost ecstatic. I finally went to bed around 3AM, but kept waking myself with mini-nightmares. At 4 I woke screaming and screaming with a major nightmare. My father was coming out of his grave to strangle me. Unfortunately realistic imagery there.

Word Count: 30,466

It’s nearly 8:30 on Saturday night. So far my weekend has consisted of housework, sleep, seven loads of laundry, a few essential errands, sleep, petting Gabriel, and wanting to sleep. However, I’m planning to do a marathon tonight, nap, church tomorrow (I’m one of the readers — a selection from the Old Testament), and a marathon tomorrow afternoon. Then I have a short week. Then I have three days to finish, and may God have mercy on my soul.

November 22, 1963

To most of us, this date in history carries one overwhelming meaning: the assassination of John F. Kennedy. But far away in England another eloquent Irishman was also dying. In memory of C.S. Lewis, let me offer these quotations from his work.

“Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness.”

—The Problem of Pain

Our imitation of God in this life — that is, our willed imitation, as distinct from any likenesses which He has impressed upon our natures or our states — must be an imitation of God Incarnate. Our model is the Jesus, not only of Calvary, but of the workshop, the roads, the crowds, the clamorous demands and surly oppositions, the lack of all peace and privacy, the interruptions. For this, so strangely unlike anything we can attribute to the divine life in itself, is apparently not only like, but is, the divine life operating under human conditions.

— The Four Loves

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or al least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

—The Four Loves

Change of Seasons

Last Wednesday, I first noticed a tinge of green, the color of an unripe apple, here and there on the hills. I had to look twice to see the faint undertone. Now the hills look like watercolors with soft washes of pale green highlighting the faded straw. Each day, the tide of verdure grows stronger, and last year’s grass looks more and more like foam on the cresting wave.

Of winter. This yearly miracle isn’t spring freeing a land locked in ice. It’s winter come to soften a land baked hard by summer.

Coming Soon to a Democracy Near You. . . .

It’s the classic totalitarian nightmare. No freedom, no privacy, constant surveillance, people living in fear of the government that is supposed to serve them. How would you like the government to read your e-mails, tap your phone, track your finances, examine your medical records, and invade every aspect of your private life without a search warrant? Or, to put it more broadly, would you like your Constitutional right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure to be flushed down the toilet?

Yes, it’s really being proposed. Democrats are shocked and sickened. Conservative Republicans are appalled. (Even William Safire, former Nixon staffer, is against this measure.) Libertarians are foaming at the mouth. (No smart-ass remarks.)

But you can do something. Click here to send a fax to your President. If you don’t tell him directly, he’ll find out your opinions by eavesdropping. Legally.

Remember, John Poindexter Is Watching You.

Losing Brave Eyes, Part 2

What I do now is go on without courage. What I do is honor those who have been fighting fear longer than I have.

Do you have to be so melodramatic? Just shut up about it.

Whose voice is that, telling me my feelings don’t matter?

Don’t make such a big deal. Just ignore them and they’ll go away.

Yes. Well. I’m not so sure numbness is the most desirable state.

Maybe one reason I’m aware of this now is that I’ve been trying to go beyond the boundaries. When I wasn’t trying anything new, I didn’t need to test my courage. I didn’t have to feel how terrifying it is for me to *start* something. Gradually I let my life shrink and shrink until it became unendurable. Then I broke through, with roughly the same emotional consequences as breaking through layers of glass and stone would have to my flesh. No wonder now I’m sore.

One thing: it’s important to follow through and do it anyway. If I can break through my own fear and reluctance, I have all the joy of freedom. It’s just the threshold that’s hard. The more I let it stop me, the more painful and constricted my life will be. But if I can keep pushing on through, then I’ll have a history of success. I’ll know I can do it, and that’s half the battle.