Didn’t think I’d make it this year. Such a relief!
chill and drear
November 21, 2011 at 11:45 (Writing)
Alvida’s Window, John Bauer
31,134. More than halfway through this year’s November Novel, and it’s not been as smooth as I’d hoped, in fact, it came close to disaster, and I almost gave up, but I managed to rescue the manuscript. Still, it’s been a tough wrestle with the pen. Was afraid I wouldn’t make the goal this year, but looks like I’ll manage it.
“The last seed
falls from the sunflower-
empty pond.
The long awaited
rattle of rain on rooftops-
Thanksgiving Day.”
- Michael P. Garofalo, Cuttings
.
the rose is out of town
November 4, 2011 at 2:10 (Art, Daily life, NANO, Writing)
The Harvest Moon, Charles Rennie Macintosh
It’s that time of the year–November–when, as Emily Dickinson said, the rose is out of town. Rain came, the air is cool and fresh and gray. It’s the writing month, the only month of the year when somehow I manage to write everyday, 7 days a week, no matter what. Every month is writing month, but only in November is it absolutely true, every day. What I want is to have 12 Novembers–to be productive all year, every day.
Lake of the Rose is this year’s NaNoWriMo book. I see it as a horror novel, but who knows how it’ll really turn out. I won’t know for sure until November 30. And maybe not even then. Writing is not paint by numbers–at least I don’t think it is, despite genre conventions. I do have an outline, somewhat, and characters, and a story; heck, I’ve even got a premise! So we’ll see. No pressure, not even a pinch; all will be done at my own cool pace.
******
“Walked for half an hour in the garden. A fine rain was falling, and the landscape was that of autumn. The sky was hung with various shades of gray, and mists hovered about the distant mountains – a melancholy nature. The leaves were falling on all sides like the last illusions of youth under the tears of irremediable grief. A brood of chattering birds were chasing each other through the shrubberies, and playing games among the branches, like a knot of hiding schoolboys. Every landscape is, as it were, a state of the soul, and whoever penetrates into both is astonished to find how much likeness there is in each detail.”
- Henri Frederic Amiel
