The man we’re talking about here…
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So it begins. Sitting/lying on the couch, laptop in hand, words just fly. Nice not to be constrained to the desk. 2234 words in 1.5 hours. The words just flew.
Music: Peeping Tom Peeping Tom and …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead Worlds Apart
He stands outside, a desolate field, upstate New York, long abandoned. Once farmed, tended, cared for, not unlike the man himself, the field now forgotten and barren, not unlike the man himself. The clouds above one solid mass of gray, unbroken for as far as he can see; the silence above and around one solid mass of gray, unbroken for as far as he can hear. It has been a long time since he has heard anything except for the never ending thoughts in his head, unceasing and merciless, a cycle of noise that he would pay a king’s ransom to end. There is no peace in his mind, no peace for this old man, not what he expected in his old age. He has made it 60 years to this point, hoping to find some sort of solace in quiet and yet there is none to be found.
His eyes turn to the sky; the only sign of life for miles are black birds reeling and plummeting in the gray. Ravens? Crows? Sparrows. Each one no bigger than his fists clenched at his side, futile anger in his blood which causes tics and gasps when it reaches his heart, then pumping back out as unclean and impure as it was moments before. The birds swoop low and then careen back into the sky, dots swirling about his head, always dots, always dots.
His eyes turn to the sky; the only sign of life for miles are black birds reeling and plummeting in the gray. Ravens? Crows? Sparrows. Each one no bigger than his fists clenched at his side, futile anger in his blood which causes tics and gasps when it reaches his heart, then pumping back out as unclean and impure as it was moments before. The birds swoop low and then careen back into the sky, dots swirling about his head, always dots, always dots.
Yeep. It always sneaks up on me. Less than a week to go until November. I am absolutely chomping at the bit to get started, and also dreading that moment 15 minutes into next month when I realize that all the notes I’ve taken and thoughts I’ve had are not going to amount to 50,000 words, or something of any substance…. Though, this year I’ve done more prep work than any year prior, so maybe I’m learning.
Also, looking forward to that moment that happens about 4 or 5 days in when the inner editor’s voice is finally successfully shut off and I’m able to put words down no matter what I think of their relative quality.
This year, going to be using Google Docs to write this thing. The acquisition of a laptop (well, this trusty-ish Asus netbook) is going to make writing easier for sure, especially during slow shifts at Morseland. Docs seems to work well enough, even if it runs a bit slowly. Only thing I’m not psyched about is the lack of a running word count display in the status bar. But doing the whole ‘cloud computing’ thing will make it easier to deal with writing in different locations and on different computers…
So — we might actually have a setting for this thing now. We’re starting off late in our hero’s life. He contemplates all that he’s done, all that he’s accomplished, and the world is falling apart around him. It’s verging on an early-1900s post-apocalypse…. But is it all in his mind?
Yes, it is.
Phrases and sentences keep popping into my head and honoring the tradition of not starting until the actual time-to-start I am unable to do anything but jot them down as vague sketches in Evernote for later retrieval. I’ve been at this for a while and some of the older notes no longer even make sense. Here now, I share with you the current basis of this year’s Nano:
“Melville Dewey’s life & times plus ??? Decimal. The intrigue, romance, betrayal, etc. that accompanied their creation of the Dewey Decimal system.
John Decimal — his friends call him Dec. Detective?”
“He used to get his best ideas this way…..”
“they look at those photos and think ‘he had a home? he had a childhood? a mother?””
“Scene with Dui getting high and trying to create music. “The ukulele comes out.” Dui’s friends call to him to come out with them. No, he says. No. Waking up in the morning, sheets strewn about, dots all over, nothing melodic, listenable.”
“Name changes
Dewey constantly switching spelling/pronunciation of name:
Dewey->Dew-e->Dooey->Do-e->DUI”
“opening?
dots->black birds; fleeting rainbow; gray sky; his mother’s voice”
“dots
persistence of dots — failed attempts to do something with dots: sheet music, scatter point graphs, candy(hah!), braille, morse code…”
“There are safer places for my heart to be than in your hands.”
Always a tough one. Between feeling the need to sit around and do nothing in honor of any holiday and the need to go out and see friends, not a whole lot gets done. Some quick updates:
Everything is scattered. The main word doc is a mishmash of bits and pieces. I struggle to find things to write about. I can’t even figure out an “ending”…. This thing is like a big blob of pizza dough…or something. Even my analogies have left me.
But, we are at 47607. A little bit of a push and we’ll finish up. So, let’s get to it.
At 3,460 words, the story (and description of story telling) that I just wrote, and put in Lincoln’s mouth is perhaps one of the greatest literary crimes of this, or any other, generation. And I live in Rogers Park where we are blessed with crappy newspapers and horribly written blogs.
One Nano peptalk this month spoke of having terrible things happen to characters you love in order to keep a story moving. I don’t think they intended me to do anything this bad.
This is me, hanging my head in shame.
Everything I’ve read about Lincoln has said that he loved to tell stories. Often, it is said just like that: “Lincoln loved to tell stories.” The biography I’m reading now (Team of Rivals) has had a sentence like that, or that sentence, at least five times in the last chapter.
But never are there any examples.
There seems to be a universal lack of Lincoln stories out there. So I’m making one up. And it’s gonna be long.
A summary of today’s writing because it deserves nothing more:
Kate approached him, laughing to herself. Kate smiled warmly at Booth and said, “I am too.â€
Kate asked.
Booth paused, expectantly. Kate lied with a nod. Booth was just as pompous as Kate remembered. Booth exclaimed. Mr. Booth! Please, Mr. Booth. Kate asked.
“I don’t remember,†Kate admitted. “Eggs,†Booth said quickly. “It’s a gun, ‘Arthur,’†Kate whispered.
Kate asked, now completely confused.
Booth took the box from Kate and handed her another. “I gathered that,†Kate said.
Booth laughed maniacally.
Booth said.
Kate asked. The audience applauded; Kate joined in.
A lot of people (well, maybe 3 or 4 a day) are stumbling into this corner of crap accidentally, led here by innocent Google searches. They search for relevant and pertinent information concerning Lincoln, the Election of 1860, and Allan Pinkerton. Instead, they find me.
I’m ever so sorry. Hit the back button on your browser; find the Wikipeda article that probably popped up at the top of your search results. Start there.
But the show must go on, right?