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Self-Portrait

12. A picture of you. 11/12/2010. I couldn't find any pictures of you, so I used a picture of me.

I’m guessing that whoever came up with this Picture-a-Day meme was feeling uncreative when they came up with number 12. “A picture of you.” That’s cool, I know the feeling.

Passed the halfway point early this morning. As always, the milestone word was a barn-burner. It was “and.” Makes me wish I’d been writing an incredibly long compound sentence with this “and” being the pivot point for the whole thing. But, we can’t always get what we blah blah blah.

Not a whole lot to choose from for today’s excerpt, but I don’t want to disappoint, so: Paul and Arthur have left work and headed over to Paddy O’Irish, the local faux-Irish pub. The joint is crowded (it’s happy hour!) and conflict’s a-brewing (for the faint of heart out there, fear not, the conflict is swiftly and peacefully resolved.)

“We were waiting for those chairs,” said a vaguely familiar looking 20-something to my right. He and his buddy moved closer to me than I felt was socially acceptable. I sized him up, figured I could probably take him so long as Paul took care of his friend. I was a lover, and not a fighter, and also, most of the time, not a lover. Usually it took three or four drinks before I started thinking about how awesome it would be to get into a fight, but I’d had a hell of a day, and I wasn’t above doing things out of their usual order.

“Oh, sorry,” I said. Paul started to rise, but I put a hand on his shoulder, pressed him back down into the stool. “Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?”

The guy studied my face. “I don’t know.”

“I swear I’ve seen you before,” I said, stroking my chin. I had no beard at the time, but it was useful as a thinking aid nonetheless. I snapped my fingers. “I’ve got it! You work for PackCo, don’t you?” PackCo was a box company in the same industrial park as Cola.

“Yeah,” the guy said. “How’d you know?”

“We,” I indicated Paul and myself, “work for Cola Industries.”

“Bully for you. I said my friend and I were waiting for those chairs.”

“He said ‘bully,’ Art,” Paul said, his voice full of awe. Ironic awe. “Did you hear that? He actually said ‘bully for you.’”

“I heard him, Paul.” I turned back to the PackCo employee. “Say, do you remember that wicked kickball tournament last month?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Yeah, see, do you remember how Cola kicked PackCo’s ass?”

“I don’t see what this has to do with those chairs.”

“Well, we won the Cranbury Cup. You remember that, right? Yeah. And the winner of the Cranbury Cup automatically gets priority seating at O’Irish. It says so right on the trophy.”

“I don’t remember hearing that,” the guy said.

“Oh, it’s true,” Paul affirmed. “It’s tradition. Goes back twenty years.” Never mind the fact that Paddy O’Irish opened 18 months ago.

“Sounds like bullshit to me,” the guy’s friend said.

Just then, Stella, O’Irish’s friendliest and most attractive (yes, I asked her out; yes, she said no; yes, I explained it away by telling myself that I didn’t want to go out with her in the first place) bartender approached and said, “Hello, boys, what can I get you?”

“Stella, could you explain to these gentlemen here about how the winner of the Cranbury Cup gets first choice of seating here?”

Stella looked at me, and then at the two gentlemen in question. “Oh yes,” she said, “it’s a long-standing tradition. Goes back twenty-five years.”

Disheartened, the two PackCo employees retreated to the other side of the bar.

“So long boys,” I called after them. “Better luck next year. We’re big fans of your boxes!”

Paul and I ordered Yeunglings and drank them in comfort and style.

“That, my friend,” I said, “is why I always tip my bartender generously.”

Sadness.

5. A photo that makes you sad. Mom & me, Mt. Hood, Oregon, August 9, 2008

Today’s photo assignment was a little more difficult than the rest. I looked through a bunch of pictures, and yeah, there are photos that make me sad, or remember sad times — pictures of old girlfriends; pictures of me eating ice cream cake alone on my 8th birthday; pictures of me about to make huge mistakes (e.g. moving to New Jersey.) This picture actually doesn’t make me particularly sad, but it does bring up a lot of thoughts and such. At the risk of becoming extremely maudlin: This is, more or less, one of the last times I saw my mother. Gregory was out in Oregon to drive a road rally with our stepfather, Frank, and I flew out to Washington then drove down with Mom to meet them all and hang out. We had a great time. I almost didn’t go, if it weren’t for an intense kick in the ass courtesy of my brother (thank you, G) and I learned a lesson about making an effort. Anyway. That’s really the part that makes me sad — these pictures are a testament to my own self-destructive disinterest. Know too much now? I apologize.

But, while we’re on the subject — I was looking through last year’s NaNoWriMo report card (an excel spreadsheet that does a lot of great calculations as you plugin your daily word totals) and was reading through the comments I’d written. It’s standard fare for the first couple weeks: “I can’t do this”, “I really can’t do this”, “Oh wait, I can do this.” Until November 19th, a day on which I wrote a mere 194 words. The only comment is “fuck the planet.” After that, no more comments. No more filling in optional fields. Remember when I said that bad things always happen in November? Watch this space….

Alright. So, yesterday I wrote about a drive from my apartment to work, and today, looking through pictures, I found a photo of the particular road I was writing about. I thought they’d make a good photo/excerpt combo. Oh, also, Chocolate Peanut Butter Bugles exist.

This is Scott's Corner/Broadway road in Cranbury, NJ.

Two miles further, the road made a slow curve to the east, past more fields and then into a heavily wooded area, the street cutting a path through trees that towered overhead. During the summer the thick foliage would completely block out the sun but the trees were just now starting to sprout their leaves and so the sun peeked through casting shadows across the road, causing a strobe effect that could be disorienting and distracting. I loved it, looked forward to it each day. It felt like driving through some otherworldly place, another adventure for me. Today, however, the thought of driving through what was undoubtedly a cicada-covered hell gave me pause. I slowed down, hesitated, then looked again at the dashboard clock. 11:03. I was screwed. Doomed to endure another lecture from Sharon. I hadn’t even called. I hit the accelerator, felt the engine take hold, the wheels dig into the road, the car lurch forward and I zipped in amongst the trees.
The world was immediately different. The eerie silence that I’d experienced outside of the forest was gone, replaced instantly by a high pitched droning noise that was strangely similar to a phaser from the original Star Trek series. The car shuddered as if buffeted by intense wind, it felt as if I had slowed, like I was driving through thick tar. The noise was unnerving and was so loud that it caused me to instinctively raise my hands to my ears to try to block it out. The car swerved sharply to the left and I realized what a bad idea this was to while driving 70 miles per hour in a car with shoddy wheel alignment. I dropped my right hand back to the wheel, jerked the car back to the road and drove on. With my left hand, I groped for the lever to raise the window. Even with the window closed, the sound from the trees was still nearly deafening.
I gritted my teeth, clenched the wheel with both hands, willing the car to stay on the road which wound its way through the trees. I risked glances to the left and right. The forest was alive, the trees were moving. They passed in a blur, once brown trunks now black, brown, spots of white, dotted with the fiery red of the bugs’ eyes. I drove through the living nightmare, now resisting the urge to look at anything except the road, but the road itself was coming to life. Here and there, the pavement was cracked and cicadas streamed upward and out, the crunch of dead insects under my wheels now faintly audible behind the constant hum, my car tires committing a mini-genocide that gave me some small amount of pleasure until I realized that for every cicada I drove over there were ten more live ones behind it and hundreds, or thousands, or hundreds of thousands more in the trees.
And then it was over. The stretch of road passing through the forest was only about a mile long, and though it had seemed while I was in it that time had slowed to a crawl, that I would never make it through, the laws of physics hadn’t been completely suspended. It had taken me less than a minute to make it. My car burst from the trees, into unfiltered sunlight and complete silence.

New Home

In an effort to consolidate all of the writing I’ve done and do, I’ve moved almost every post over here.  There will be dust. There will be growing pains. There might even be an agonizing scream or two. But, one can rest assured that once the dust settles and the bones stop growing and someone shuts up those voices in my head, all will be well.

Or something like that.

One Last Photo

And thus November comes to a close. With something of a whimper. It’s always a letdown, an anticlimactic ending. No fanfare. Just the end of another month. And now I have another chunk of words under my belt. Will I do anything with these words? Only time will tell…. If history is any indication, the answer is a resounding no. But, you never know, right? Right.

So, thanks to all of you who followed along this month. It was great knowing you were out there, checking in, rooting me on. Big ups (as the kids say) to Scott and Erin who have always been the most vocal supporters of this effort. Thanks to my friends who pretended to be interested when I spoke entirely in word counts and Dewey trivia. Also, to Chris and Megan and every other staff member who did all the work while I sat and wrote. And to Kim, the most amusing muse who ever mused.
~aa

And we’re done (twice)



Finished. Finally finished. Wrote the last word (“Decimal” — yes, that was by design) and went to the validating thing on the Nano site and it shorted me 8 damned words. No worries — went back and wrote something that had nothing to do with anything 45 pages ago…. And there it is.

So, hey. That’s November!

Another Backlog….

Wednesday

Thursday (in Pewaukee!)

Friday (on the go!)

Saturday (totally drained!)
Wow. What a weekend. What a nutty, wacky, crazy Thanksgiving weekend. We learned alot, but we wrote absolutely nothing. Seriously. Nothing since Wednesday. We’re at 48,010 words. Two days to write 1990 words. Should be no problem. Even have an idea to just spit out and make it all happen. The question is whether I do it tomorrow or Monday….. Only time will tell, my friends…..
Yeah.
Probably a good thing I’m not trying to finish it now.

The Beginning of the End


Actually, truth be told, the middle of the end. Crossed 47k today, which means (for those of you who are math-challenged) that there are less than 3,000 words to write. I think this story could be told in about 30,000 words, all said and done. The wonderful thing about the free-flow Beckett-esque style I took on is that everything gets said fifty different ways each time. I can’t imagine what it must be like to read this. I’d like to think that I’ll go back and rip out the 20,000 words that need to be ripped out and then rewrite the rest, but if history is any guide, it’s unlikely.

However, there is a story here. Or something. It’s fun to, after the fact, write the outline of what actually should have happened. Anybody who actually reads this draft (may God have mercy on your souls) will delight in random extra scenes (1500 words on on visiting the Chicago World’s Fair that go nowhere?) and disconnected and unfinished bits. There are still serious issues with connection. And with many other things.
But, there was very little outright word padding this year. Nobody had a dream. Nobody listed the contents of their wallet. Nobody randomly repeated things they said before. Also, I used many more contractions than I did last year. The speech is decidedly less formal. I just hope that the Google Docs word counter is accurate….
Anyhow — here is what will be (potentially) a couple of the last paragraphs of the story. Need to find 3,000 words worth of backfill now….

He once thought he had nothing left to lose, that there was nothing left to find, and there is nothing left to sort, and there is nothing left to organize and there is nothing left to fall apart. And yet, there still were. Even when he thought he had hid the bottom, he managed to sink a little more, to fall a little farther. That was the most tragic part of all. To think he had seen the worse, and then he would see something more. Then he would learn another thing, forget another thing, find another thing, lose another thing. Just when he thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did. It does. It always does.
When there’s nothing left to lose, there’s nothing left to do, but until then, he just keeps on struggling, just keeps on trying, keeps on clawing at the floor, keeps on clawing at the earth, feeling dirt replace the splinters in his fingernails, feeling rain replace the tears on his face. Feeling the dry air of his library replaced by the damp air of a devastated field, a field that has not been tended to in years, a field that has been ravaged by wind and by time and by the travesty that is Dui’s mind, by the travesty that is.
He curls up, he curls up into himself, curls up into a ball, on the floor, no, on the ground. Dirt replaces floorboard, dirt replaces everything, dirt replaces all. He feels it, dry, crumbling, moving with him as he moves, slowly sinking into the ground, he wonders if even the worms are gone, if they have survived, if there is anything at all left to find, and when he opens his eyes, it is all still there. Or rather, it is all still not there. His eyes open, lying on his side, he blinks at his surroundings, at his black and white world, he blinks in wonder and a wide-eyed amazement, thinking Perhaps I have escaped and perhaps I have finally broken free. He stretches out his index finger, and digs a little in the soil, finds it dry, finds it yielding, finds it barren, and finds nothing else at all.

The Final Week

From out of the shadows comes me. Living in the light is Chris. Go Mondays!

I suppose this final week started yesterday, but there are seven days left. And today, we passed 45k. The final corner, the finish line just up ahead. The tie in is somewhere out there, the great big wrap up is possible. Possibly.
Not sure what I’ve written today, though it’s over 1300 words. The good stuff was yesterday and conveniently, I forgot to post an excerpt. So, uh, as always, here are some words:

Dui smiled, stronger now. Estelle beamed down at him, ecstatic in his approval. She stood above him, Dui still slumped in the chair, but sitting slightly straighter, his will slightly stronger, his mind slightly clearer. He looked up at her, his eyes bright though ringed with red, puffy, sore, rubbed raw, but still bright, alert, crisp like the air, crisp like the breath that caught in his throat as she leaned down, as she leaned closer, as she closed her eyes and he knew that in a moment a line was about to be crossed, things were about to change, and that’s when Annie came back.
The office door opened, and there she was, standing, in the doorway, outlined by the late winter late afternoon sunlight, in all her glory, with all her beauty, with all her presence. Dui jerked his head towards the door at the noise, Estelle leaned back from the imminent kiss, the charge of the looming contact still in the air but dissipating quickly, fading into ozone and crushed expectations. Dui saw Annie and could no longer see anything else, his heart immediately beating faster again, his memories of Annie flooding back, his memories of love flooding in. After all this time, after all these months, there she was, unannounced, unperturbed, smiling, there. And in his head it was like no time had passed, like nothing had come between them, like there weren’t years of separation, the agony of betrayal, or ignorance, or misunderstanding, or anything between them except for the love, the partnership, the connection. And in his eyes she was all that was there. And Estelle had disappeared until she cleared her throat and Dui looked up at her, sprang to his feet, Estelle forced to jump back. She cleared out of the room, attempted to look busy, attempted to look unaffected, Dui watched her for a moment, for a brief moment, before his attention returned to Annie, only Annie.
“Hello. Miss Godfrey,” he said, the formality of the words feeling strange in his throat, on his tongue. He tried again: “Annie.” That was better, though strange in its own way.

Back in the Saddle (again)

The return of Ron! It’s been ages since we’ve had our Sunday musician/Teriyaki sauce salesman.

So, as we learned in the previous blog entry (written a scant 5 minutes ago) neglect has been the buzzword of the weekend. Lack of sleep combined with lack of interest led to a serious slacking off. Good thing Assassin’s Creed 2 came out last Tuesday. Haven’t even cracked Left 4 Dead 2 yet….
Right now I am covered partly in champagne, partly in water, and completely in shame. No, just kidding about the shame. Kinda.
But seriously — 2AM this morning, I just started typing, and before I knew it, I’d actually figured out an ending. A tie-in. An explanation. I know what caused Dui’s apocalypse, what caused his break down. And yeah, it is all in his head. Problem is I don’t know how to tie it back to the meat of the thing, and so I have this huge chunk of words that need to be at the end, need to be the end, and I’m just kinda dragging it all out to make sure I have something to write about because if I end it, it’s all gonna be over.
Sitting at 43,091 words. I don’t know what word 40,000 was. Or when it was. But, hey, what’cha gonna do? Hope to finish before Thursday.

A Backlog


Thursday
Friday (what I’ve been doing instead of writing)

Saturday
Been neglecting the blog, but then, what haven’t I been? Word counts plummeting, and thank god for the incredible surplus built up early on in the month. Still can do 1000 a day and finish. The words I did write were absolutely horrible. So here are three excerpts from these three days:
Thursday:

…stream…

Friday:

…merrily…

Saturday:

…attracted…