It’s time to start really focusing on my novel. I’ll be back in April!
A Scene From The Back Story
This scene will not take place in my novel but it’s part of the back story of a minor character that is in my head and just needs to be written. Maybe then I can let it go and write a scene that actually WILL see the printed page.
Thunk. Her backpack made the sound of an overripe watermelon falling to a warped wooden floor. She looked over her shoulder one more time, and then jumped, catlike, lightly looping her fingers through the chain link fence, the toe of her right sneaker propelling her up the fence, more quickly than she’d thought possible, distracting her from any thought of falling. Adrenaline was a good thing.
The morning was still dark, helping shroud their secrecy during the most difficult part of their quest. Gregor had gone first and then she had thrown over the ropes, each tied to a bulky, well-padded black bag. He pulled each up and tied it off to the fence. Once the top of the chain link fence was crowned with the five bags she tossed her pack over before the climb.
Stopping at the top, Addy straddled the fence and took a minute to brush back the locks of her blond waves that had escaped from her pony tail. Without speaking she squinted toward Gregor in the dark of pre-dawn morning and gently moved the first bag off the top of the fence. She held it against her body with one arm, gently tugging the attached rope with the other. When she felt the return tug she lightly dropped it, leaning as far as she could without losing her balance, into Gregor’s waiting arms.
As soon as she heard the last bag hit his arms she felt the first tug of anxiety in her stomach: a small knot of nothingness taking the shape of a question mark. She couldn’t chicken out now. Gritting her teeth she quickly grasped the top, pulled her leg over, kicked to propel herself and jumped off the fence, tucking before hitting the ground and rolling upon impact.
“Where do you want to start?” he asked as if they hadn’t just driven two hours through the darkness only to get themselves and their equipment over a fourteen foot chain link fence. The fence surrounded Crystal Meadows, the abandoned amusement park turned artist commune north of Chicago.
Addy put on her pack, picked up her camera bag and two lens bags before she took three long strides up the incline to the left before surreptitiously looking over her shoulder to see him picking up the bags to follow.
The path glinted only a little, just as she had imagined. The dirt track turned mosaic path was one of her most vivid memories of coming here with her mother as a child. Especially as evening fell and the mirrored pieces reflected back the colors of the sunset. She could almost feel her mothers hand in hers, walking back to the car after a day on the rides the artists still ran for the children of the potters and painters, sculptresses and poets who claimed the commune as their own.
She started to drop and unload the bags in front of a large wooden-planked door. Gregor knelt and unpacked his tripod and light gauges. “We have a few minutes before the sun starts to come up, how the hell did you find this place?”
“My mom. She’s a painter,” she always hesitated when talking about her absent mother, “She was one of the artists who took this place over in the sixties,”
As was their way since the first time they talked, that day in the darkroom, Addy and Gregor exchanged few words. She still wasn’t sure what the hell she was doing here at the commune on a crisp autumn morning. She did know, but it was hard to get her brain around. The idea was to get some work done before the commune was open to the public, it was the only way to have uninterrupted time and perfect lighting, and then leave around lunchtime as if they’d come in with the usual Saturday morning visitors.
Her thin fingers were reluctant to come out of the pockets of her black hoodie but the excitement she felt charge through her as she reached for the ancient lock made it worth it. 1-2-3-7… She turned each wheel, loving the click that resonated in her left palm as each dial made its way through the numbers. The satisfying clunk of the lock popping announced her success.
Gregor, who had been standing quietly behind her, reached out his right arm to push the huge door open once she unhooked the lock from the chain.
“No,” she placed her hand on his forearm, “I’ve got my first shots planned but I need the shock and surprise to be real,”
He backed off, understanding better than anyone that Addy thought through every shot, every set up, as if it were the most important photograph she’d ever take. Her careful planning and meticulous process was the reason she’d gotten this project and she was going to make sure it was her best work.
They worked quickly, she instructing him without words, to set up the larger camera on the tripod with a wide-angle lens and gel filter with slightly rough points around the edge to hopefully catch the light. Or at least that’s what Addy hoped. She hung her Canon from her neck, rethinking her initial shot, checking her settings and again looking through the lens.
Checking her watch and standing on tiptoe to see over the stone wall surrounding the area she planned to shoot she noted that they still had a few minutes.
“Here,” he held out a thermos to her and she gratefully took a few sips of the coffee, “What do you need?”
“Just a second set of eyes. I’ve been thinking about and sketching the shots I want to take for real but the goal of today is to just see if it is going to work,” she reached into the back pocket of the jeans she lived in when shooting and began to unfold a piece of lined notebook paper. She had drawn a crude diagram of the area behind the door with various X’s and notes about angle, shadow and settings, “If you could get these from the wall once I get the initial ones that would be great – no flash,” she reached out and looked at the antique camera he used.
Rocking from her heels to her toes and back Addy took another few sips of coffee before pulling her zipper up even further and shrugging off the cold.
“No nerves,” Gregor’s whisper in her ear shocked and calmed her at the same time. He reached for the thermos and she handed it to him with a smile, “You know this is going to be everything you want,”
She felt the heat creep up her neck and lick at her cheeks. Was he talking about the conversation in the darkroom? Or was he alluding to what she hadn’t been able to get out of her head since then? She thanked the Universe that it was still dark.
“Ready?” She locked eyes with him as the sun peeked over the horizon, “Stand here and slowly push the right side of the door open?”
“If this is a weird princess’s tea party tableau I’m going to be very disappointed, Adelaide.”
But it wasn’t. He pushed slowly and Addy saw everything she had remembered from those childhood trips and, more importantly, from her musings about what the site would give her during the dawn.
The old carousel stood, regal but broken, with horses and unicorns in various states of decay. The poles attached to nothing, the top having been removed as part of a scavenge when the artists initially started raising funds for the property. Luckily someone had thought to keep the rest. Instead of the hood, a strong but superfine filament was weaved in an imperfect canopy over not just the carousel, but the entire area. From it, at random intervals, hung long strands of glass beads and raw crystals, swaying slightly in the light breeze, throwing a colored confetti of various shades over the concrete cracked floor, the horses, and the broken glass that seemed to be perfectly scattered and piled around.
Addy didn’t miss a beat. She immediately began shooting the wide angle and then dove in and snapped endless shots of the ground, the crystals, the light on the ground and anything else that caught her eye.
Gregor focused on taking the shots she’d requested, more aware than ever of her artist’s eye, “When was the last time you were here?”
“When I was fourteen. The summer my mom…” she didn’t finish. She couldn’t. Not because she didn’t want to, but because she didn’t know. Sure, there were all kinds of theories, and the police had come up with the one that was considered “most likely”. As if that gave she and her siblings some peace. It didn’t. And it had destroyed their father.
As the sun rose, the colors changed. Addy moved to try and capture just the edge of the the glass curtain and get, in the background, the portion of the stone wall surrounding the area. She just wanted the part that was crumbled and allowed a view of the valley below – filled with an iridescent mist as the sun kissed it good morning.
Gregor stopped and leaned against the wall lighting a cigarette and taking a long drag. He saw Addy set up the shot and then watched as she stopped, looked down at her camera, hands busy, eyes intense, assessing which settings she needed for the next shot she had planned but clearly satisfied with the shot she’d just captured. He watched her walk over to the other side to take a few more of the carousel, horses dappled in the crystal colors of sun through glass, and saw her stop. Slowly, she walked toward one of the horses, the one in the most shadow. It wore a shawl of rich dyed sunlight. Reds and blues, a deep purple and amber making up most of its cover. Reminiscent of a church in the early morning she knelt and shot up, getting the angle somewhat awkwardly but he could tell it was going to be perfect. He jotted a note to himself on the back of her diagram before taking a few shots of her as Addy kneeled, looking up and assessing the next series, half of her face masked in color.
Find Someone You Trust And Tell The Story
Yesterday I spent several hours with a friend. S and I met two years ago through NaNoWriMo and while our relationship was first what I imagine to be a typical new NaNo friendship (we met up for write-ins twice weekly) it slowly grew. After NaNo we wrote together and then those morning writing dates turned into coffee and story telling and movie reviewing and music suggestions. And, poof, the next thing we knew we were friends. Since that NaNo we have written together, shared the joy of the birth of her son and spent a ton of time together talking, laughing and sometimes writing.
Yesterday was the first time we had seen each other since I came up with my novel (or, more realistically, since it wedged itself into the folds of my brain). It was also the first time that I talked through the entire story of it, out loud, including the stuff that probably happened before the actual novel but of which I am trying to be cognizant because it has its place in the story (or at least in my head while I’m writing it). I told her about characters. I told her about personality traits. I told her about other characters’ back stories and how one scene I wrote (that may not even have a place in my novel) knocked off my socks and makes me want to write that story instead. That would be fun. But I have to put it aside.
I talked for hours about everything in my brain and, it was tough. Because S is brilliant. And has a brilliant project she’s working on. And she told me something about it yesterday that still has me reeling. But, despite her brilliance and her ability to craft stories like no one I’ve ever met, she seemed to connect to my story. And she liked it. And this was incredibly validating.
After hanging out it was like my brain was recharged and suddenly new ideas popped up. While some will just be there and nowhere else, some I’ll explore as scenes and who knows, some (definitely one) may end up in my first draft.
While it was scary to vomit up all the undigested bits of my story and share the entire experience with S at first, it allowed me to envision the scope and really think about how to tell the story so that it works. This was a very informal telling, but it was still a good place to start.
So there’s your challenge. Nice and easy. Find someone you trust, be it another writer or not, buy them a cup of coffee, and tell your story. It wants to be heard.
Filed under My Second Novel, On Writing, Writing
The Unveiling
I’ve been reading some writers’ blogs and notice that many don’t simply write about their process but also share some of the aspects of their novel to illustrate what they plan on doing. This might be a strategy I want to use but I’m so afraid to tell too many people about the idea… I don’t know why I’m so weird about it since I have no problem fiction and poetry here. The novel? That’s a whole other story.
So, to attempt this I’ve decided I’ll dip my toe in the water by posting part of what triggered my idea. I’d be interested to see if this sparks anything for you writers out there… and at some point later this week or early next I’ll share the initial brain cyclone that left in its wake nothing but the idea for a novel.
But I’m not telling you any of the story yet… that wouldn’t be any fun.
Filed under On Writing, Writing
One Word
In 2006 I spent 18 days of July at a hotel in D.C. where I partook in a boot camp. It wasn’t for health and fitness, though, it was for what would eventually become my job when I left teaching. Each day, at the end of training modules and the very end of the nightly closing activity we would sit in a circle and “check out”. Checking out can consist of many things, answering a question, sharing something that resonated or, much to my dear friend, M’s displeasure, one simple word.
M is one of my dearest friends – we were each others rocks during those 18 hellish days and nights. And while she is one tough cookie, I would catch her freaking out, albeit nearly imperceptibly, as the activity or day came to a close.
“Could we not do the one fucking word thing?” she’d joke. Sort of. M hated it.
And our lead trainer, S, loved it. “I want one word about how you’re feeling after today,” and that was it. M would think up her word during the training and then jump to say it before someone else did (no repeats).
Amazingly, you can learn a great deal from a group by framing their experience in just one word. I do it when I train and my members love it. We did it in D.C. and it was really telling to see just what people had to say. We were usually under the same umbrella. The days of the diversity training (especially grueling) I think someone’s word for how they were feeling was “suicidal”. When asked how we felt about public speaking after a full-day session with a really cool presenter people were “prepared,” “empowered” and “confident.”
While I love M and we usually agree, I have been converted to the way of one word.
So… what’s that have to do with writing? Well, I went to that writers’ group last night. Like actually went; I didn’t sit across the street eating pizza and then walk around the corner to drink beer. I was a little nervous at first and had a few moments where I thought I might have to leave but, well, I recognize when my anxiety is unnecessary. I’m a big enough person that I can admit it.
The group is way different than I imagined. Far less formal, way more accepting. I often make assumptions about groups and my constant role as “the outsider who everyone likes but still always feels like she’s looking in,” – sheesh, I should be saving this shit for my therapist later today. Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised.
There were a few low points… we did a ten minute prompt write on a craft-based exercise and I didn’t get to where it needed to be – I should have dropped right into the action but being me I needed to set up the context. I was mortified when I realized that everyone was expected to share, and more mortified when the group leader said, “So, what’s the subtext?” I was less mortified when I found myself laughing and saying, “Yeah, I didn’t get there,” and he smiled along with me.
And, quite honestly, there were some cool aspects of what I wrote. So I’ll tuck them away and see when I can use them as inspiration or in a larger work.
I loved listening to other people’s take on the prompt… it was so open that each writer could achieve the goal but write something completely different. There were some really cool pieces, my favorites were by women in the group who nailed it. One wrote about a glass of water on a windowsill and the other about a couple arguing about a car. But, because the exercise was about subtext, that’s not what it was about at all.
After the group had to leave (the place was closing early), I thought I’d forgotten my scarf so I went back down and ended up getting invited to go out for a bit after. It was a nice way to spend some time with people. The water glass woman, D, asked us to listen to a piece she’d written and we offered feedback. I loved the dynamic of the feedback and how we sometimes agreed, sometimes disagreed but found common ground in that every reader is going to bring something to the table that shapes their opinions of your work. It’s up to you, as the writer, to decide what you’re going to compromise on.
I’m definitely going to make this a regular Tuesday night thing when I can. Writing at night is weird to me but it will be good to see the difference in what I turn out. The group is also engaging in two other projects that I’m excited about. An anthology and a blog of women writers.
And so, I give you this.
What’s one word to describe this thing you’ve spent months fearing, Nancy?
Welcoming.
We See What We Want To
Filed under Writing
