Day 9 NaNo 2024

 

Notes: When I finished Day 5 of NaNo, I had a total of 11,040 words. I was not able to keep up with any notes this week, mostly due to the election. When I was not dealing with that, I had to go to the doctor for my six month check up, buy groceries, and deal with how I felt about the election. I managed to spend some time thinking about it, what I felt had happened, and how I really felt about it. I also had to deal with other people who needed to talk.  From there to now, I have written some decent words, the last two days doing just enough to finish scenes and get to a point where I wanted to stop a bit and read. So it's Day 9 and I have a total of 14,356 words. I have not posted this previously but when I get to the end of Part 1 in this book, I will be revising again. I try to revise and write new words every other day and I have managed to do that. But it's getting smaller as I struggle with developing character and put in a lot of other little details. I can't just have notes. I have to have it in the text. I don't want this draft to be too rough as I will be disenchanted with it. I have to see part of my vision. I cannot do crappy first drafts. I won't finish. I won't use them. This is a psychological thing, of course, but it is the way I work. However, I am working and will continue to post my notes here. I just feel I am going to end up with about 25,000 words for the entire month and not 50,000. Laughing. But I knew that. Today I only wrote about 380 new words, and yesterday I think it was only 640 words. So now I am winding down as I get into the story. My goal for NaNo was to create a new beginning for the old draft I had and I am doing that. So pleased. WORDS: 14,356 words MUSIC: I am still on Line of Fire by Junip. Remember my songs are for certain scenes and points in the draft. They are not just sound. Food: Blackeye Peas and Cornbread. A plain chicken sandwich. Lots of tea and water. Where: Working at my desk. Also in notebbok. Feelings: I am fair. I have not felt good today. I am crashing from the election. 

Dancing on the Gorgon

This is. And thou art. There is no safety. There is no end. The word must be heard in silence. There must be darkness to see the stars. The dance is always danced above the hollow place, above the terrible abyss.

— Ursula K LeGuin

#thegorgon

My Statement on the Election of Trump Nov 2024

Part of me cannot believe this has happened. It's so against logic and good and common sense that I find myself bewildered. But if this can happen, (and it did) anything can. And I mean anything. And if you don't think this is a major earthquake for the US and Europe and even more, you are sadly wrong. So wrong, that I have pity for you. There will be consequences. It is not only tragic for us, but for the world. Trump is a pathological monster. He will seek revenge as all pathological narcissists do. His fractured ego will drive him. And perhaps, you are all going to see what 'good country people' can really do while they are failing. Half the American voters in this country are obviously desperate, fearful people hoping that populist ideology will fix or mitigate their pains from modernity. It will not. The past will not provide anchors that these people want or alter the course of technology. I am a long arc personality. That's how I see history but we are facing some serious challenges in our quest for freedom and fairness. As it has been in all of history, a backlash is upon us. We are a country split in two. We are in the middle of a war of ideas where one side of the nation truly believes their way of life is under threat and the other side does not, but all of us are shaky when it comes to the same things, our homes, our jobs, our families, our children. This was not an election won on economics or common sense, but on cultural ideas alone. But no one is really winning on these cultural debates. It is a scrabble on the lawn. I am not naive. People are going to get hurt in this scrabble over identity, abortion, religion, and immigration and this is partly due to the fact that the cultural Left has dominance and the cultural Right feels under attack. But cultural identity politics is not something you can simply put back in the bottle and plug the top, not even with laws and cranky conservative men on the Supreme Court. But it does create weaknesses for us and democracy, what I call soft powers gone amok and the spoiler country is Russia. We are living in an unpredictable environment regardless of our cultural beliefs. And Russia is powerful and motivated enough to ruin any geopolitical stability. They have, in the Ukrainian War. People often look at that war as nothing to do with them, especially in rural areas in our country where people are struggling against change and culture. So far, by his actions and words, Trump has cast his influence with Putin. And I could say that all narcissists envy other narcissists and Trump wants to be feared like Putin, but it's much more complex than that. Russia doesn't care about our democracy or our liberal scrabble on the lawn over cultural issues. Neither does China. The strain of our scrabbles may become cracks where Russia and China actually find ways to alter and bring a halt to our march toward progress. It is going to get messy and we are going to feel its pain. That said, in some ways, despite our setback from this election, I am still hopeful. Think about it, the Ukrainians are suffering and dying every day against a huge power— for freedom and I do not believe, for a moment, that populist ideology will help the half of this country that prefers Trump over the reforming, centrist ideas of the Biden led administration. These people will get up today and think eggs and chicken prices will go down, taxes will be lower, that radical thoughts coming out of universities will be crushed, that liberals will be deterred from what they call killing babies. It simply won't happen. Because one thing is clear, we all want to be free and we all desire the ability to make free choices. That drive is more powerful than Trump or Putin or the pressures of China and the religious revenge of Islamic terrorism. In psychology, there is a certain 'anxiety' that comes with freedom, with rest, with democratic success. This is what we are all experiencing. This is what Trump has exploited, what every authoritarian exploits. No amount of economics will solve a crisis that is based around cultural change. We are going to fight it out and work to build a new civic culture in the future. I have often said here and in many other conversations that while we are always walking in the shadows of the past, we are moving forward into the future and the future wins. Change is as inevitable as sunrises and sunsets. But so are conflicts and even bigger wars. The 20th century taught us that. I want the Left to know one thing from this, bottom up is always better and for years now we have been working from above. Remember that. You cannot force people into a future they fear and do not understand. You have to ease them along. This will not be popular but it's pragmatic and realistic. It doesn't help, really, knowing any of this now. At present, I believe we all feel a little powerless and disgusted. I know I do. But I don't want liberty to fail. As long as we have some sort of liberty we can fight and make anew. We can make meaning. We can rise. We will face The Gorgon.

Do the deed and find purpose, joy, and peace in the doing.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

          — Theodore Roosevelt

Day 4 NaNo 2024

 

NaNo Note Day 4: Wow, I have made four days with some pretty interesting writing. Today I mainly revised for hours and hours, trying to set something up that was necessary on the heroine. Since it's mental illness, it was not that easy. Because some is subtext and it's what she does and how she does that shows it. — HARD WORK. I also felt I could not move on until I had established this personality. The image is Frederic Leighton's painting of a young woman and the heroine looks like this and she ends up in a pale blue dress like this. She has emotional issues. But they are hard to write. One never knows how to really describe mental illness in a book. Many authors go a bit overboard with this but I realized from research, that things are a bit more subtle.Also these are not personality disorder issues or anything moving into serious psychological issues. They are mainly anxiety disorders and one issue I will not name. I attempted this in an old book of mine and well, I felt it often made the heroine look meek or weak or something similar and I had no intention of repeating that. But I think they are similar heroines. They are both very courageous human beings. There is nothing like being fearless when you are afraid. That's a brave person. It took me three hours just to wrangle with the scene to get it right, to nail down her situation and how the MMC reacted to it. I know I will go over it a dozen more times but for now I can move on and I did, writing 1500 very rough words for the next scene. This I will revise tomorrow into some manageable form. I am not an author who can do really crappy drafts. I end up not using them at all. So I have devised a scheme on how to write every day (normally 5 days a week) and finish a book revising mostly as I go so that I have a really good draft of the story. We learn a lot about the MMC too. I had to revise and revise his scene. I had to put several little things (important details for future) in place. I have notecards for these little things. Because they will make sense later in story. I like my characters. More on them later. WORDS, 1803 total. Most of them so crappy I have to revise ASAP to go on. SONG: Line of Fire by Junip Food: Cream of Wheat for Breakfast. Slice of Toast for snack. 5 Popcorn Chicken and Asparagus for main meal. Tea. Water. Feelings: I am stressed over the Election more than my WIP.

Day 3 NaNo 2024

 

Day 3 Notes: What a day! I had a serious of other tasks to complete today before the Monday work week began. Time fell back and I still got up at the same time, only it was too early. I tried to go back to sleep. I ended up getting up and working some, but broke for other work, just catching bits and pieces of time to write on WIP. At lunch at 10. Day was long and crazy. I did manage to do exactly what I wanted to do. I repaired the ending just as I wrote yesterday and created a new conflict thread and raised the tension. I fleshed out the female protagonists dilemma and interiority. Strong foundation. Pleased. There are some weak sections. I highlighted them for revision later. The next two sections are critical. Songs: Continuation of Iris by Goo Doll and Hurdy Gurdy Man by Donovan. Same day stuff. Where: Writing at my trusty desk for good luck. Food: Baked Potato, Grill Cheese, Half Hamburger Patty, Zucchini microwaved. Tea and lots of water. 4 big bottles. Feelings: I feel a lot better about the text today than I did yesterday because I revised and added nearly 2000 words to existing scenes. That's how I roll when I am working really well.

Day 2 NaNo 2024

 

Note: Day 2 NaNo: This was a day where I had to incorporate three sections, just a little over a good paragraph a piece from the old draft. That's not as easy as one thinks. It's just not copying and pasting, because the situation and scene it is placed in is nothing like the other and not even the same people and the conversation needs so much more than was never even conceived of when I was writing the previous draft. It was here that I introduced my main protagonist, a young woman (girl) of 18. In a month and few days, she will turn 19. She is named for the flower in the graphic, as her mother had a similar name. We also see the place where she works and what she does, and some of her challenges. This piece is filled with conflict and raises a lot of questions and I see myself revising it before I even finish NaNo. It's that important. The characters are being developed, the situation posed. It was extremely difficult work to place all these details naturally. I floundered at the end. The last 100 words are just not that good. Revision is needed as soon as possible. I want a sharper ending that shows a new conflict growing. I see this in my mind now and have made a comment of it on a post note. First thing I do tomorrow. Words: 2387.: Hurdy Gurdy Man by Donovan. Iris by Goo Goo Dolls. Food: Breakfast Eggs and Biscuits. Tea. Supper: Turkey Sandwich and some Ruffles and French Onion Dip. Water. Where: I wrote at home at my favorite writing desk which is a big trestle table I bought when 18 years old with my own money. Feelings: This is a lot of damn work and I must be crazy to do it.

Day 1 NaNo 2024

  Note, Day 1 – This year's Nano is rewriting and revising a broken draft from last year. Much of it must be rewriting as many chapters were lost. I changed MMC, too which was a shock. Piecing together what I could keep is more difficult than rewriting I think because it is never in its origin form and is altered to fit the new draft. But I worked on all that "puzzling" and "plotting" and "planning" before NaNoWriMo began, creating an outline with copious notes on how to proceed. Challenging but not impossible. Other significant changes. It was a contemporary now it is a historical which means 90% of what I wrote is rewritten for that change alone. Summary: Never do NaNo and a crappy draft without a plot and lots of other work on story. It will change. Current image: Dragon. This book is a dragon I must slay. Words: 3289. Very good words. Planned. Rehearsed in head for days. I wanted this beginning. Song, Birds by Imagine Dragon and King and Lionheart by Of Monsters and Men. Food: Baked Potato and Grill Salmon. Lots of water and some tea. Never got out of my pajamas. Where: At home at my writing desk on my Apple Desktop. I feel good about it but have a headache.

Florence + The Machine - Only If For A Night (Ceremonials)

(for my mother who died in 2009)

And I heard your voice

As clear as day And you told me I should concentrate It was all so strange And so surreal That a ghost should be so practical Only if for a night And the only solution was to stand and fight And my body was bruised and I was set alight But you came over me like some holy rite And although I was burning, you're the only light Only if for a night

Sigard the dragon slayer

He was expert in sword-play, in throwing a spear or hurling a javelin, in shield-work, in archery and in riding, and many and varied were the arts of chivalry he had acquired in his youth. He was a wise man, having foreknowledge of future events. He could understand the language of birds. 

     from a description of Sigurd the dragon-slayer

    The Saga of the Volsungs, ed. and trans. R. G. Finch 

Writing quote from Jeff VanderMeer

I also devote a lot of time to learning technique. When I’m writing a novel, even one like this, if I’m reading another novel, I might plug in a technique I just saw used by somebody else in an unusual way. And then take it out again. Just to see how it works.

      — Jeff VanderMeer

Lady of the Lilacs painting by Arthur Hughes

Lady of the Lilacs, by Arthur Hughes

(painted for Charles Lutwidge Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll

Favorite Quotes

"Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning." 

              — C. S. Lewis

Ariel in the Cloven Pine

 

Ariel in the Cloven Pine Paul Vincent Woodroffe, 1905

Fairies in trees are part of my own personal mythology. Like dryads, it pushes them into a botanical existence. In trees, they thrive, sleep, rest, refill their magic.

Camus Quote

"The true horror of existence is not the fear of death, but the fear of life. It is the fear of waking up each day to face the same struggles, the same disappointments, the same pain. It is the fear that nothing will ever change, that you are trapped in a cycle of suffering that you cannot escape. And in that fear, there is a desperation, a longing for something, anything, to break the monotony, to bring meaning to the endless repetition of days."

— Albert Camus, The Fall

Yearning.....

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh...

            — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Writing quote by Sylvia Plath

 "Write to create a mood, an incident. If this is done with color  and and feeling, it becomes a story."

              — Sylvia Path, journal 1959

Quotes

“She tastes like nectar and salt. Nectar and salt and apples. Pollen and stars and hinges. She tastes like fairy tales. Swan maiden at midnight. Cream on the tip of a fox's tongue. She tastes like hope.”

                              — Laini Taylor

The Embrace by Wilhelm List

The Embrace by Wilhelm List

But what about The Fly?

There is a flower that Bees prefer—

And Butterflies—desire—

Emily Dickinson.

Illustration for The Conference of Birds by Attar of Nishapur

 

Habiballah of Sava for The Conference of Birds 

by Attar of Nishapur aka Farid ad-Din Attar.

Desire

“Sex is our deepest form of consciousness. It is utterly non-ideal, non-mental. It is pure blood-consciousness.... It is the consciousness of the night, when the soul is almost asleep.” — D. H Lawrence

Barber's Adagio: Students and supporters play to protest closure of musi...

Romantic Love

 

🎨 Richard Borrmeister

If there is one thing I have learned in life, is that love is grand. Desire. Love is pretty much everything. All kinds of love. Romantic love is beautiful, even if it doesn't last. Remember, nothing last. All things end. I often live on the memories of the romantic loves that I have experienced, all of them, but mostly my marriage. I want to say that 'we fall in love many times in our lives if we are lucky.'

Love is a bit of a mystery to many people, but it possesses certain ingredients. 

It takes meeting someone, noticing them, feeling an interest, and then it takes two, both people expressing that same interest and attraction. Desire again. Sometimes curiosity helps. Love does not thrive properly if proximity does not feed it, and for that matter, some good experiences too. Desire leads to touching. Intimacy is critical.

Somewhere along the way, if love is thriving right and if attraction wins over ego, a firm commitment happens. Each person wants the other person's happiness. Desire grows. Love manifest itself in a visible form. This is best if the two people are independent and emotionally mature. 

But what makes Love and Passion last? Years and years and years of desire. That's compatibility. If two people are not compatible in most issues, love can die. This is why I tell people, if you value a good conversation with your lover, that's a big plus for the relationship. Good communication feeds love, because life is not just about falling in love. There is a reality of pain and stress and suffering outside the realm of love and desire. Also, people change over time. They may discover new loves and desires which alter a relationship. Some relationships survive. Some do not. But nothing negates what people once felt for one another when they first fell in love. While love fades with disappointments and absence, love is really stronger than one can understand.

I'll end this little post on love by adding that one of the gifts that modern people possess is the ability to experience what we now call Romantic Love. It was not always so. As cultures have evolved over time, fairness and love and passions have developed into an ideal Romantic Love, even for many very ordinary couples. But it not so for all people in this world. Some cultures have not evolved enough. For some of these people, love and desire leads to unhappiness and even tragedy.

If you can love, do so. Be happy in the doing of it. 

What I am Reading Next

 Reading this for the pleasure of language and a wildly new take on a situation. Longlisted for the Booker.

3.6 rating leaning up as it was sad, and not as good as Maugham. Smiling. Beautiful language. It did not move me emotionally though. Reading books is so subjective and even shadowed by moods. I could pick this book up and reread it next year and feel completely different. That's why books are forever. That every read is a new experience.

TRUTH

"Aeneas carried his aged father on his back from the ruins of Troy and so do we all, whether we like it or not, perhaps even if we have never known them." 

  

                         — Angela Carter

Beowulf, Basilisks, Dragons and Serpents

 Not much time for writing here as I have offline writing to do, but these are some of the books I am reading for research. I wanted to post them while I did my brief social media this morning. I slept in and now I need to catch up. Laughing. I have four editions of Beowulf, but I really like Swinton's version as it has side by side translation and I needed that. I wanted to read Tolkien's version just because it's Tolkien and the other work is on monsters and dragons and basilisks and serpents of the Classical and Early medieval eras. 

Junip - Line of Fire

Howl fan art

It's strange what a novel can do sometimes, or where it might lead. For example, lots of fan art. This one is from Howl's Moving Castle. I am a big fan of Howl's Moving Castle and of Howl and Sophie. I also like bird people, which is a very old fantasy of mine.

          art by Dani López

Re-enchantment

“The essential ingredient in a temenos is the perimeter that marks out the space, whether by a wall, a fence, a hedge of flowers and bushes, or some rocks that only imply the full perimeter. Having crossed the border, we find ourselves in a special place where certain things happen, and other things do not.” 

 — Thomas Moore, The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life

SYML - "Wildfire" [Official Music Video]

Of Monsters And Men - Wolves Without Teeth (Official Lyric Video)

Open my chest and colour my spine
I'm giving you all
I'm giving you all
Swallow my breath
And take what is mine
I'm giving you all
I'm giving you all

I'll be the blood
If you'll be the bones
I'm giving you all
I'm giving you all
So lift up my body
And lose all control
I'm giving you all
I'm giving you all

You hover like a hummingbird
Haunt me in my sleep
You'll sailing from another world
Sinking in my sea, oh
You're feeding on my energy
I'm letting go of it
She wants it

And I run from wolves, ooh
Breathing heavily
At my feet
And I run from wolves, ooh
Tearing into me
Without teeth

I can see through you
We are the same
It's perfectly strange
You run in my veins
How can I keep you
Inside my lungs
I breathe what is yours
You breathe what is mine

You hover like a hummingbird
Haunt me in my sleep
You'll sailing from another world
Sinking in my sea, oh
You're feeding on my energy
I'm letting go of it
He wants it

And I run from wolves, ooh
Breathing heavily
At my feet
And I run from wolves, ooh
Tearing into me
Without teeth

And you can follow
You can follow me
You can follow
You can follow me

You hover like a hummingbird
Haunt me in my sleep
You're sailing from another world
Sinking in my sea, oh
"You're feeding on my energy
I'm letting go of it" she once said

And I run from wolves, ooh
Breathing heavily
At my feet
And I run from wolves, ooh
Tearing into me
Without teeth

And you can follow
You can follow me and
You can follow
You can follow me and
And you can follow
You can follow me
You can follow
You can follow me

Juvenilia

(Something I wrote as a teenager, a very young teenager, around thirteen or fourteen years old.)


Poe In Allegory

Amid the cool dark of endless space
A single crimsom flame does race.
Behind it across an ocean of blue
A haunting shape does pursue.
This shape gains speed with the light of day.
In the cool of night it loses its way.
While it moves across the sky,
The shape falters and asks itself why
It pursues a thing it will never possess,
And why it does not pause forever to rest;
Yet, always in the light of day
The shadow moves faster along its way!

Alas! Night is a time for stars and dreams.
Life is not what it is or what it seems.
There is no shadow, only the glow of the moon,
And the warmth that it brings never too soon.

                                     Copyright © 2024  Madly Jane

Kissing

"...Praise the deep lustrous kiss that lasts minutes, blossoms into what feels like days, fields of tulips glossy with dew, low purple clouds piling in beneath the distant arch of a bridge.... Let the tongue, in its wisdom, release its stores, let the mouth,tired of talking, relax into its shapes of give and receive, its plush swelling, its slick round reveling, its primal reminiscence that knows only the one robust world."

Kissing Again Dorianne Laux

A reminder

I am going to be rather hard-nosed and say that if you have to find devices to coax yourself to stay focused on writing, perhaps you should not be writing what you’re writing. And, if this lack of motivation is a constant problem, perhaps writing is not your forte. I mean, what is the problem? If writing bores you, that is pretty fatal. If that is not the case, but you find that it is hard going and it just doesn’t flow, well, what did you expect? It is work; art is work. Nobody ever said it was easy. What they said is: "Life is short, art is long." 

Ursula K. Le Guin

Iona by John Duncan

 

Iona by John Duncan. Symbolism and one of the pieces of art that always inspires me. Especially Duncan's use of color and expression. In a certain story I've read, Iona is the protagonist in a myth about a young girl who fell in love with a god. When I heard her story I thought I'd like to fall in love with a god. Of course the more I read and understood, this was a perilous path to choose. What would it be like to be human in presence of the divine. Any divine. Despite Iona's tragic circumstances, this was a topic that I love. It haunts me. 

Backstory: Around the age of 10, I started writing little notes about another girl who has had various names over the years. A young girl, ordinary in all ways but very clever who falls in love with a god, who finds her annoying most of the time. This was my fantasy. My dream.  Part of my paracosm. While my friends wanted to be Cinderella or Snow White or some heroine of a TV show, I wanted to struggle with a god and make a life. Some of this might have been my early, much too early, understanding and knowledge of death and how it shadowed my early life.

I was only seven years old when I realized that all  gods, whatever, were probably the fantasized needs of human beings. I was crushed at the time to know this. By age eight I had relaxed into this philosophy, but it wasn't like I could have a conversation about it with my friends or my parents, although I tried to explain it to my mother several times. I did explain it to my third grade teacher, which led to some unintentional consequences for me and yes, a new understanding of myself. I was never the same. This teacher influenced me greatly and was a wonderful mentor in early life. I always thought of her when I thought of gods and mortals. I still think of her.

Love is forbidden between gods and mortals. This theme is told over and over in literature. Why? That is one of the things I wanted to know, too.

Fall Notebooks

 

Writing is lots of hard work. Reading and Studying is too. I bought these and 3 dozen Traveler's notebooks for organization. Everyone knows I love flowers.

Wildflower Explosion.

 

 Images © Lucia Leyfield 

This is something I want to do. Nature journaling and doing watercolors of my flowers from my garden. I started one a few years back but got distracted by life. This time I have planned better. I have already purchased lots of watercolors, etc. But I just love how Lucia Leyfield designed her pages. She has a website, and is on IG if anyone is interested. I first saw this image on Twitter. No one knew who the artist was and then they made a search. I had too, but I did not see all of Leyfield's page due to time and circumstances, so I missed this entry on her workshop. One can buy it to learn and paint along.

Roman History Notes

 Written by Titus Ursus, Primus pilus of Legiō IX Hispana, in the third year of Hadrian's reign (*120 AD). 

"This will probably be the last papyrus and my last note. Our legion was ambushed in the wild realm called Caledonian Forest and was almost completely annihilated. Half of my first cohort is all that was left of the IX legiō. We were pushed into the marsh and we will probably die here, fighting bravely to the end in the name of Rome and the Emperor. We were attacked by a demonic pack of the barbaric Picts. They looked more like wild beasts than humans. Some of them were dressed in animal furs, painted with strange runic signs... others seemed to be two-legged wild beasts. They tore us apart as if we were made of paper! I saw our legatus and my brothers in arms being eaten alive, I will never forget their screams. The barbarians attacked us unnoticed, quickly and with wild fury, then disappeared in the fog. Mainly at night. Our shields, swords and armor were no use here. The enemy we face seems to be the ancient wrath of some dark gods we have awakened. We should never invade these lands. I hear demonic howls, they're coming! They're coming!" ⠀

Beautiful writing is...

“Beautiful writing is more than pretty prose. It creates resonance in readers’ minds with parallels, reversals, and symbols. It conjures a story world that is unique, highly detailed, and brought alive by the characters that dwell there. It offers moments of breath-catching surprise, heart-gripping insight, revelation, and self-understanding. It engages the reader’s mind with an urgent point, which we might call theme.”
           ― Donald Maass

I am alive . Good night.

 

Good night. 

I am still alive.

So grateful

That I can even smile.

I am here. 

What do I love?

“The mind I love must have wild places.”
              ― Katherine Mansfield

YUNGBLUD - I Was Made For Lovin’ You (from The Fall Guy)

Added to the writing soundtrack. I love this cover of Kisses' song. So good.

Cleaning up and making a routine

One can't really understand the stress I have been under due to illness and also predicament. For example, I had a medication adjustment by my personal physician which finally put me in the ER two days before my June 1 birthday. Then I was gardening on June 11th and some insect bit me and I got severe hives, angiodema, and a rash, which after two weeks put me in an Urgent Care clinic so I could get steroids. I stopped up my bathtub drain with repeated oatmeal baths. Laughing. Before that was over, a young girl I knew (22), (TRAGIC) who was indigent, committed suicide, and weeks later after being on life support, donating her organs, and being put in the county morgue, her family didn't have the money to bury her so I paid to have her cremated to keep her out of a pauper's grave. That was May and June and part of July. What a nightmare.

On top of that my writing coach and I decided I needed to change the setting of my story and create a more complex fantasy feel while keeping the found family dynamics. This means major rewriting. REWRITING. After yesterday, with all the political nightmares, I decided I needed a break from everything. 

So I am reading some genre fantasies, so I can immerse myself in a wonderful and complex worlds and maybe learn something from the experience while being entertained. I am going to break from social media while I read with exception to posting comments on the book. I just can't take it anymore. I need to clean up all my writing and work rooms, three of them and then develop a routine. One can't write what I need to without a routine.

And my son made me some sausage pinwheels because he knows I am unhappy. Food helps.  

This entire year has been strange and full of challenges.

"It is human life. We are blown upon the world; we float buoyantly upon the summer air a little while, complacently showing off our grace of form and our dainty iridescent colors; then we vanish with a little puff..." — Mark Twain (Elizabeth Donaldson 2002-2024)

Elizabeth, in my opinion, died on June 23, but was put on life support in order to be a donor.

WIP Day 2-4 Revision Notes

 

   

EDIT September 1, 2026. NONE OF THIS I KEPT. NONE. All is in a cardboard box. I did not even keep the setting or names. Laughing. Process is never known to reader. The draft I started at NANO is what I have continued working on. But anything before November 1 2024. Also due to retina issue, I did not work in 2025 but maybe a day here and there. I started back work in summer of 2026. NOW.

I've had some busy days working out the reverse outline and making notes and deciding what is to be done on the WIP. I will never do another NaNo project in my life. Laughing. It's messy and ridiculous and while it gave me a great idea, well, we know what they say about ideas. They are a dime a dozen. It's not a book. It doesn't look like a book because I have torn it to pieces. Think of it as a cake that is just a wish and all the ingredients are sitting on the kitchen counter but the bowl is empty and the oven is still cold. I had to stop, take a deep breath and make a list of how to approach it all because there is so much good material and so much bad material and yes, as I wrote earlier in the year, before illness overtook me, I am really rewriting the book. 

That's okay. I have done that many times. It's been long established that writing is rewriting. That's not an issue for me at all right now. The issue is what to put in the bowl. What kind of cake am I making. With a little help from a friend, I managed to organize how to approach this kitchen counter covered with ingredients and decide what to throw away and what to keep and if I wanted to reimagine the story in a few other ways. I did.

A reverse outline is a masterful way to look at your story when you know it's too long, has too many characters, and maybe even too much plot. I was taught this method, with a few special details by my first literary agent. She's long gone now, and if she were alive, I might have called her and cried a little. When Alice went. through the Looking Glass, the world was reversed. Nothing made any sense and she encountered lots of nonsense, including that wonderful poem, Jabberwocky. But Carroll was very logical and mathematical and in this sequel to Alice in Wonderland, he approached some clever ideas. It's my favorite of the two books, the one I reread over and over.

So I am baking a cake. Only I have to get everything proper together or I will end up with nonsense, once again.

How I came to realize what to do with the book, you know, what kind of cake it is, well I made lists of books I loved, books I have reread over and over, and all the things I loved about those books. Then I made lists of my gifts and weaknesses as a writer and followed that with lists of the things I felt were really wrong with the book and had been since Day One of NaNo. I got very cold and logical. I put away my feelings at times, because this time next year I want to be completely finished with this project. Since this is my revision draft, I am guessing it will take me six months to put all the right ingredients together and another six months to polish and edit it. If I am lucky....I've been so ill this year, I just hate to make predictions on what life will bring me.

But this is the plan.

One thing big changed. This is now a Historical Fantasy. I have completely changed the setting. This was the boldest thing I have ever done when revising a draft. I feel good about this for many reasons. 

Second big change. I am writing a full outline and doing character sheets, something I always did when working previously but not done on this NaNo draft.

And the one before....

And the one before....

And that is why I do not have a finished book. NEVER AGAIN will I be in this mess. Unlike Alice, I know exactly where I am going this time around.

Art work by John Tenniel from Through the Looking Glass.

RIGHT NOW I HAVE TO FIGURE OUT THE DETAILS, THE WAY FORWARD, AND THE MECHANICS OF IT. HOW TO DO IT.

July WIP Day 1

 

Due to life, (laughing) I am behind schedule on the WIP and will have to work all July to catch up with work. Work. Work. Work. So the other day, I decided to make a schedule of what needed to be done first. I can't believe this year. I was writing so well, until the middle of March and since then I have been ill every month with something different, the last being bitten by some unknown insect while gardening (ants are suspected) and I've had serious hives and rashes since June 12th. It's hard to accept that this happened, but I still am taking medication for persistent hives right now. Now I have to get back on track. I started last Friday, looking and reading the work and making decisions on what I needed to do and in what order. I feel shaky coming back into this 2023 Nano Project but better late than never. I've hardly written a word for three months. Scary. I just want to make this note on the blog, because it's an important day for me. Making a renewed commitment to the work.

Gothic Vampire

But there are yellow bruises on my body

And violet stains

Though no white vampire came with lips

blood-crimsoned

To suck my veins!

— Théophile Gautier

This is what many on both sides have done.

“Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.” ― George Orwell

My swamp Rose Mallow this very hot June morning.

 

Rose Mallow (swamp)

This is true for me.

The author & naturalist Andrea Barrett once said: ''I’ve never known a writer who didn’t feel ill at ease in the world. Have you? We all feel unhoused in some sense. That’s part of why we write. We feel we don’t fit in, that this world is not our world, that though we may move in it, we’re not of it. Different experiences in our lives may enforce or ameliorate that, but I think if they ameliorate it totally, we stop writing. You don’t need to write a novel if you feel at home in the world. We write about the world because it doesn’t make sense to us. Through writing, maybe we can penetrate it, elucidate it, somehow make it comprehensible. If I had ever found the place where I was perfectly at home, who knows what I would have done? Maybe I would have been a biologist after all.''

(Terri Windling posted this on her Facebook)

The toddler in June

 

Another June, long ago. 

I haven't changed much and yet, I am someone else other than this child while retaining the child.

My brother was several years older than me so our lives were very different in many ways.

I love summer. I love the heat. It started here, in the delta of Mississippi. 

“One night you will ask me for something I cannot give.” 

          ― Gavriel 

              from Holly Black's The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Iris Murdoch on how she composes.

IRIS MURDOCH on how she composes.

"Well, I think it is important to make a detailed plan before you write the first sentence. Some people think one should write, George woke up and knew that something terrible had happened yesterday, and then see what happens. I plan the whole thing in detail before I begin. I have a general scheme and lots of notes. Every chapter is planned. Every conversation is planned. This is, of course, a primary stage, and very frightening because you’ve committed yourself at this point. I mean, a novel is a long job, and if you get it wrong at the start you’re going to be very unhappy later on. The second stage is that one should sit quietly and let the thing invent itself. One piece of imagination leads to another. You think about a certain situation and then some quite extraordinary aspect of it suddenly appears. The deep things that the work is about declare themselves and connect. Somehow things fly together and generate other things, and characters invent other characters, as if they were all doing it themselves. One should be patient and extend this period as far as possible. Of course, actually writing it involves a different kind of imagination and work."

(This is how I work. No one ever said it better. Right now I am sitting quietly and letting it invent itself.)

June 1 2024

"And then one fairy night, May became June." — F. Scott Fitzgerald

        P.S. This year is a very important birthday, for lots of reasons, not about numbers, but desires and goals. However, the number is symbolic and my ambitions have been rearranged, and many of my feelings changed. It was indeed a fairy night and all the nights to come will be fairy nights, too.

I miss Graham Joyce

“Wonder has no opposite; it springs up already doubled in itself, compounded of dread and desire at once, attraction and recoil, producing a thrill, the shudder of pleasure and of fear.”
          ― Graham Joyce

Wood Speedwell, Veronica (lilac colored)

 

Wood Speedwell, Veronica family, lilac

wildflower

This is one of my favorite wildflowers. I adore this bloom. The color, everything. I've seen it before in my Twitter feed. I stole it. Laughing.

Lion confronting a dragon, 1505, by Domenico Beccafumi of Siena.

 

       Lion confronting a dragon, 1505, by Domenico Beccafumi of Siena.

Revisions Part 2

 

Image is of Lewis Carroll's revisions.

It's May 12, and I have not really completed any revisions. I was ill much of April (better now) and spent the time examining content. In other words, I became my own editor and I decided I would probably end up rewriting everything I had written. Laughing. But that is how it goes sometimes. Some scenes I will keep most of what I have written in dialogue and things like that. I have made some major changes in content. I felt the book had too much plot, especially along two subplots and I wanted to focus these threads and tighten the manuscript. So my manuscript on paper looks a lot like Lewis Carroll's and became smaller, which is a good thing. My reader was so disappointed he did not get to read, but he knows me and I gave him the usual talk on "why read something that is going to be gone soon?"

Needless to say, I moved some scenes, all this happens around the last third of the book and the first third, the last third being a mess and the first third being deleted completely. 

People around me weep when this happens. But I never do. It's hard, but I do know when something needs to be rewritten. Revisions are really about rewriting. No, let me brutally honest—writing a novel is 85% rewriting, at least. And that is where I am at now. I love this part. Smiling. I do. I see the book for what it can really be now. Its potential. Its purpose. Its plot, its themes, and the characters are developing into the people they need to be. It's a beautiful moment, but it's so much work. Writing is so much work. But this is a good place to be. I am sighing. I can see the book I want. I can see my vision. We, as writers, never fully write our visions perfectly, but we try to get as close as we can to what we wanted in those early days.

And so now I just keep doing the work. I show up. I write and write. I stay in the story.

Staying in the story is the key thing here. Because it's such a messy process, I work to organize all the time. It helps. I am so tired right now. So very, very tired.

SYML - Where's My Love (Acoustic)

Attempting to add all songs from the updated playlist. As of this date, May 11, I have not updated the list on the blog, deleting songs I no longer use. I am going to talk how I use music when writing. It's plot centric, a device I used long, long ago and have decided to continue with this novel. In other words, I can look at my song list and see nearly every scene in the book. A person who does not know the plot will not be able to see it. But my lone reader can and also my friends who have followed me as I work. This allows me to stay in my story, but there are also other many benefits for me as a writer when working on such a complex story.

Happy May Day, 2024

 Ballerina rose.

Can we forget?

To want to forget something is to think of it

— French proverb

Revision and Rewriting

"During periods of frustration and hold-up you must think of yourself as Edmond Dantès during his dungeon phase."

Bernard T. Joy, Twitter

Faulkner and Modernist scholar

Revision and Rewriting the WIP

I don't know what I am doing. This is not the book I want to write anymore. It has changed in my mind or perhaps I have changed. See Nano 2024. Because that is when I found the story.

The Dragon Slayer

The Dragon Slayer by Franz von Stuck, 1913