The Arrival

Astrid spotted the girl from a distance. She was wearing the tell-tale blue scarf they had agreed upon. Astrid watched for what seemed like a long time, long enough for the newcomer to edge into the idea that she’d been already been abandoned here in a strange place. She waited for the beginnings of panic to appear, the pavid countenance so familiar in her own brother. Both were absent in his only daughter.

That didn’t mean the rest of the dreaded family traits weren’t buried underneath the heavy brown coat and layers of who-knows-what underneath that made the young woman look somewhat like a long and slender bell with a homespun scarf wrapped around the handle. What Astrid could see of her face was classically beautiful—large dark eyes, high round cheekbones, smooth skin, full red lips. How unfair that her brother’s child be such a beauty. Well, maybe it wasn’t unfair to the girl’s mother.

When the young woman finished searching the crowds she picked up her single suitcase with purpose and headed for the ticket counter. Even with all the layers and the pull of the heavy bag she moved with liquid grace. Astrid noticed she could follow her scarf though the crowds, not just because of the intense blue, but because the top edge moved above the heads of most of the other people.

Astrid sighed and then straightened her backbone a bit more and started to follow the bobbing blue. She was terribly jostled, and delayed, while the willowy young girl continued to move away from her, past the ticket counter, continuing on. The distance between them increased. Where was the child going?

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Generated from: AWAD (from a past unknown date) - pavid (PAV-id) adjective Timid; fearful.

Life's Ups and Downs

It's a new world out there. It's seems for every upswing, there is a downfall. Dh got a new long-term job, but it calls for a new high-quality cordless drill. Cha-ching. It used to be cheaper to buy rebuilt batteries for these cordless units than to buy a new drill. Not anymore.

Dh's pickup goes in for repairs, and $500 later the gas tank falls apart, just after the top half of our new (used) carpet cleaning machine he's hauling in it blows off into the middle of the highway. (Dh rescued it before any damage was done to the floor machine. The pickup he limped back to the mechanic who yesterday finished replacing the fuel pump.)

The shimmy in my car turns out not to be unbalanced tires, but a ruined drive shaft. But we were blessed. Not only because the problem was discovered before the drive train fell out from under the car on the road, but also because the mechanic neighbor down the street who alerted us to the problem knew where he could get his hands on a drive shaft from a same-model vehicle recently junked. Otherwise, we couldn't have even ordered the part. They are next to impossible to find.

We filled two of the three empty rental units this week; I'm not sure what the down side of that will be. Estimated taxes, rising landlord insurance packages, and vehicle tags coming due, I'm sure. Not to mention groceries.

Snippet

She let the main door swing shut behind her and tested to knob to be sure it was still locked, then stood for a few seconds to allow her eyes to adjust. She closed them to help the process along some and let her mind conjure up what the place must have been like when it was truly a house and not eight tiny apartments crammed into a house.

Their hallway was the only place she knew of on the island that was dark. Sun and salt leeched and bleached everything else in sight, except for the alley-like sliver that led to their apartment.

It made perfect sense.

Rather than having the smell of freshly brushed teeth, the air here was full of old cooked cabbage and thick, burnt dust. She hated thinking about what scurried along with her that she couldn't see. Serena had no reason to suspect there were bugs or rodents. They had not seen any in the four months they'd been here. Still, her imagination demanded some leeway.

She slammed the apartment door closed and leaned back against it as though she'd just evaded a person in hot pursuit.

"Pearson!"

Serena slid her backpack from her shoulder and dropped in to the right of the door. She pulled her tam from her head and sent it sailing for the coach. By that time the tabby had made his way in from the bedroom and was about to twine through her legs when she picked him up and scratched under his chin. Together they went over to the green brocade drapes and with a single tug on the string, the material slid away from the window in its own cloud of dust and let the sunshine slant onto the honeyed hardwood floor.

"Let the sun shine in! How was your day?" The cat purred in response while she made her way to the kitchen to find her mother's usual note folded in half and standing like a simple white tent against the deep blue of the tablecloth. She put the cat down and reached for it, then decided to have a snack first. Too much pent-up frustration. She might just as soon tear the note up as read it. No sense in making a bad day worse.

Attitude Adjustment

He started to sing as he tackled the thing that couldn't be done, and he did
it.~Edgar A. Guest, It Couldn't Be Done

I've been tackling my house (in general, my laundry room in particular) with the wrong mindset.

There are some jobs that I do that I know are going to take some time and a whole lot of effort, but I don't mind them because I like the results. Cooking a good meal is one of them. Learning (which unfortunately doesn't come as easily sometimes as it used to) is another. With housekeeping, the results seem temporary at best, and under- or un-appreciated at the worst.

So what.

I'm not sure why I have such a bad attitude when it comes to this. I'd like to make a few guesses.

• I used to find routines and and predictability boring. I think there is a certain set of habitual actions that go into keeping order.
  
• I don't like jobs for which results are invisible. To dust where there was little or no dust seemed a waste of time and that together with the fact that I tend to overlook details meant it took an inch of dust to get my attention.
  
  I exaggerate. A little.
  
• I'm just not good at it. Anything for which we don't have a natural ability will take extra effort and concentration to become proficient doing it. I'm just as resistant as the next person struggling to tackle a skill they don't particularly enjoy.

So enough with the negativity. I have to change my mindset about this job I'm tackling, this purging of things unwanted or unnecessary. No more drill sargeant mentality and dread. I need to put on some good dancing music and keep my focus on my goal and dive in to clearing out the laundry room tomorrow. Then do it again next week with a different spot. And again the following week, and again and again until I'm good at it, and in one of those previously hated, but now oh, so coveted, routines.

I may just surprise myself and my family with what I can make happen.

Discoveries

I am way too nice to my characters the first time around. I'm noticing this with just about every piece I revise. My drafts have little tension. The major conflicts are there, but I don't pull the rug out from under people enough.

I guess it's good that I have to give conscious thought to making life difficult for people. My family always thought I came by it naturally! :)

So, now that I know this, do I try to be meaner during the first draft? Or do I just write, confident that the inventory will make me adopt a mean streak? Efficiency (getting it right the first time) means hammering out what I hate to do early on. Effectiveness (completing a draft) means just getting the story down.

I guess I'll find out in November which one I'll go with.

Procrastination--isn't it grand?!

It's Happening!

I am soooooo thrilled.

I got serious about working through the novel revision for Storm Front using my notes from the Novel Revision Retreat along with the new book out that summarizes everything more neatly than my notes.

I ignored the groaning Resister that was telling me it was way, way too much work to fill in the big holes and have what I needed to really do the preliminary overview of the novel (my 2005 NaNo manuscript). I started stewing on what the story is about at its core, where it needs tension and how to get it in there, and voila! The pieces started coming in from everywhere--at the oddest times. I know my son thinks I'm developing a nervous twitch. "Oh!" followed by a scramble for something to write with and on during a period of total oblivion to everything and everyone around me. I think he asked me for a new car during the last episode.

I am so excited about this manuscript now. I think about it while I do dishes, while I'm scrubbing stains out of clothes, and often when I'm half awake/half asleep. The thoughts are like popcorn. They started slowly at first, but now the temperature is just right and they are exploding like mad.

Now I need to be sure I do what Leonard Bishop advises in Dare to Be a Great Writer and show up daily for this thing--even if it is for only moments scattered throughout. It's easier to stay in the world that way, and not have to re-enter after losing the feeling to a period of stagnation. This will be difficult once dh is back home, but I am psyched. I am finally past the preliminary inventory of the novel and am ready to move on to the deeper items like characterization and imagery.

I do love editing. I'm crazy, I know, but I love putting in the intricacies that--if I'm lucky--the reader will enjoy but never notice.

The Week in Film

I meant to read this week. I read the newspaper if I was lucky. I think I need to get new glasses before reading is going to be the draw it used to be for me. I have several good books lined up to read. I can hear my first eye doctor explaining to me that when your eyes strain to read, then your head is quick to tell you "this is way too much work" and your inclination is to not read, even if you've been a voracious reader in the past. Glasses are on that ephemeral list of things that we will get around to "some day."

So being hungry for somethng creative, and being blocks away from a $1.00 Red Box, Hap and I watched a new movie just about every night. Sometimes two if we had nothing else to do. I found myself becoming a critic, more apt to analyze how I felt about the film when it was finished and then going a bit beyond that and trying to figure out what did work and what didn't. You can learn all kinds of things from film that can carry over into storytelling on the page.

So much I wanted to do today didn't get done. I wanted to plant some seeds--I have some Cypress vine seeds that I've been trying to get in a planter for weeks. But this morning I had a stomach-churning sinus headache. Later, when I finally killed it and got out and about to do all the things that needed doing, I noticed cottonwood fuzzies in the air. The next few weeks won't be kind ones, allergy-wise.

Dh is home tomorrow afternoon. It's time to start thinking about dinners and a "normal" schedule. The pickup is fixed (or it better be for the price) but the rentals are not full yet, which I'd really hoped for before he got home again, but oh, well.

So I guess going off to see a movie at the theater by myself counts as a "Fill-the-Well Friday" activity. And it's still light. Maybe the tail end of dishes and laundry and cleaning bathrooms and floors can wait for dark while I get some seeds planted.....

Begin

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius,
magic, and power in it. Begin it now.” -Goethe

This, along with Darcy Pattison's recent blog entries, have me convinced that I need to be creating. I also need to be submitting. Where, oh where, is the balance? I know how good I feel when I've put some creative time in. Perhaps that will lay the groundwork for the persistance, courage and sheer will to get my stuff "out there."

Here goes:

Serena paused on the step for a moment—but not too long—and watched clouds simmer in the sky. There was wind aloft, dragging thin cirrus clouds in one direction, while the winds that blew her hair into a wild tangle sent lower cumulous clouds tumbling toward the north. The watery air reminded her skin of swimming in the dead of summer when the water was bathtub warm. For the first time this spring the buildings and cars and people all took on a hazy look, as though they moved behind a film.

Still the metal doorknob was cold beneath her hand. Her key twisted easily in the lock. This was the only home they’d had where she hadn’t had to push, pull or twist the key in some special pattern for the lock to release. Here a flick (key) and twist (knob) brought easy success. The contrast between the world out there and the one that was hers wasn’t lost on Serena.

It was all she could do to move forward into the anonymous darkness of the hall, instead of turning around on the stoop and right there in broad daylight, indulge in a throat-searing, attention-drawing scream.