A long, hard look into a semi-reflective surface

The keyword for today is "doubt." So many things are in flux. The play, my writing, even my financial security is a bit up in the air at the moment.

I went with it for a while. Sometimes important things become clear in moments like these, when all the surfaces in my life seem to be made of sand.

And a tiny revelation did come, concerning my NaNo project. I was describing the book to a friend the other night, and then started to explain the Baranatalo book, from which some of you have read excerpts here on the site. Even I could feel how passionate I became when discussing this project instead of the one I'd set aside for NaNo. How that same passion was missing when I was describing the outline of the newer project.

"Why aren't you writing that book?" My friend asked.

I explained that the rules of NaNo do not allow for works already started, and since I have 25,000 words already on paper, blah blah blah. I don't think I sounded very convincing. Even to myself.

The NaNo project is theoretically a fun book. I think I would enjoy writing it and that people might enjoy reading it, but what I realized today is that I do not need to write it. The other book—the strange man who spends page after page alone in his apartment—this is the story I have been coming back to ever since I was nineteen.

This is the one that will not leave until I get it onto paper.

So I'm sort of bowing out of NaNoWriMo, although I'm still setting myself a 50,000 word-count goal for the month. That should be plenty to finish the first draft of the piece, and let me move on to the editing, reshaping and polishing that I know it will need. I think I'll keep updating the word count on the NaNo site, just to get the camaraderie and competition aspects that NaNo provides, but I will stop short of declaring myself a "winner" this time around, even should I meet the goal, since I don't want to cheat.

It feels like the right call. It feels good to have made a decision.

*****

After resolving the writing issue, I decided to ignore the other mysteries I currently face and do something productive instead. So I made a fake dust-jacket for a book of poetry, to be used as a prop in the play.

Something ironic about designing the cover for a book which does not exist when I should have been creating an actual book instead, but it was cathartic to throw myself in, and just build something.

Here's what it looks like, before we beat it up tomorrow to make it look old and forgotten:


Tomorrow, the Moon answers more of your questions! Don't miss it! And don't forget to submit queries of your own to the email at left.

NaNoWrinKle and tech week doubts

So they don't have the handy-dandy status bars this year, at least not that I've seen. If you click on the link in the sidebar, though, it'll tell you that I have a paltry 1300 words completed after four days of NaNo.

Sadly, even this is an overstatement. They are once again the wrong set of words. My guess is that I'll start getting words on paper for real on probably the sixth, which is more or less when I started last year.

*****

Tech week on the show started today. For non-theatre folk, this is the week before a show opens, when you typically work the show on the actual stage and figure out the lighting and sound cues, adjust the blocking to fit the space, and begin running the entire show, in order, in the costumes or clothing you'll be wearing for the actual performances, with props in hand. These rehearsals are often long, arduous affairs, and tech week is also commonly called "hell week."

Usually, a show is already on its feet by the time this process begins. We run it again and again to iron out any last glitches or to make a choice stronger, more realized. For this show, however, there are still pieces we have to run with scripts in our hands, still blocking issues across the board. The show has been plagued with bad luck and problems from the start, but I feel a panic right now that I am not used to feeling this close to an opening.

Perhaps I will elaborate on some of the bad luck at another time.

And still, I think we can pull this off. Crushingly optimistic, perhaps, but it may also be that I have no choice but to believe that the show will open and that people will like it. No choice but to believe that we will know our lines and move when and where we are supposed to and deliver the lines with all the spontaneity, high stakes, and realism we need to carry the pieces across. And I try to remind myself that I am frequently told that I am an incredibly harsh critic when it comes to something I am involved in. Just ask anyone from my former band.

I myself am in six different short pieces. Trying to assess things objectively, I'd say three or possibly four of them are where they need to be, or are close enough that polishing over the next five nights could get them there. One of these is a monologue, and entirely on my shoulders. Two have been worked enough, and the other actor talented enough, that I think they can play correctly (in spite of how they might have played tonight). Of the ones I still feel unsure about, one is designed to be presented as a cold reading, so that's more or less ready to go, too, such as it is. Which really only leaves one gigantic question mark in the mix: the full ensemble piece which features all six actors and closes the evening.

Right now, my gut says to throw my weight, energy and time into the five that are closest to being ready. Those are all scenes which feature only one other actor each, so I can afford much less to slip up or let the other performer down. We'll be on our own up there, and whether it's the scene that involves kissing a fair maiden or the one where I nearly get into a fistfight with a man over a game we are playing, I want to make sure that I give the other actor what they need to make the scene seem true.

*****

Wow. I had no intention of writing about all of this tonight. I guess it's a difficult thing to wipe away a nine-hour rehearsal.

Still, I could have sworn I sat down to write about my lack of progress on NaNo. I'm sure I intended to try to say something positive to any of my readers and fellow NaNo-ers who are also feeling discouraged by their current word counts.

Because thirty days is really a good chunk of time. So is the twenty-five days which remain. Anything can happen. So long as we are setting aside the time and trying to push through the difficult parts, we can still find ourselves later in the month crossing the finish line, exhausted and flushed from our labors, with a tiny curl at the corners of our lips that says we have been victorious.

Advice, I suppose, I should also try to take to heart where the play is concerned. Even though the window is smaller, there is still a lot that can still happen to make this show special.

*****

Moon Topples, Advice Columnist is still waiting to help you with all the problems you might have in this world (or others*). Send your queries and quandaries using the email address in the left sidebar (rather than leaving them in the comments) and I will ponder your difficulties as if they were my own, solving them so easily that you will feel a little silly for considering it a "problem" in the first place, but not in such a way as to make you feel bad. I would never do that to you, Blogadviceseeker.

I plan to begin answering the questions I have already received later this week.

*Offer excludes Jupiter. Jupiter knows why.

Phoctober the finished

Well, it's all over, our happy time of Phoctobering. Should I still have a blog next October, I expect we can do this again. Looking back at the month, I see that I personally posted more than one hundred images, and provided almost 150 links to other sites' Phoctober entries.

It was a reasonably global event, as well. We had entries from five different continents (damn you, Antarctica and South America!) as well as some ardent posters from right here in America. We were treated to English gardens, Parisian streets, leaves and trees from virtually every place currently experiencing autumn, snow, rain, fog, sunshine, clouds, bottles, whales, paintings, music and scores of other things. It was really delightful how much everyone shared.

Even more inspiring to me personally were the reports from some of the other blogs which seemed to indicate that they had fallen in love with photography all over again as a result of Phoctober. I cannot express how cool I think that is.

Phoctober was conceived as a way to trick myself into blogging every day again, as I used to. I had some nice shots sitting around, and figured it would be a cake walk to fill thirty-one days with images. I was wrong about that. It was more difficult than I could have realized, but having completed the month I feel like I have accomplished something. Nothing big, maybe just a little thing that I find personally enriching. And I seem to enjoy blogging again.

So I want to thank all of you who did a post yourselves, or more than one, or even just came by to look at the pictures. Joiners, lurkers, those who left comments: all of you have made this something far nicer than it had any reason to be.

Next year, I expect we'll have an official Phoctober badge, and perhaps something a little more structured in terms of how links are set up. And I hope we'll have some of you who thought about posting but did not joining in.

We now resume regular blogging. Hope you guys are okay with mostly words for a while.

*****

NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo both begin today. A month of writing for yours truly. I leapt into my NaNo project last night as soon as the bells chimed midnight (okay, there were no actual bells). I speedily spat out five or six hundred words.

They were the wrong words. I am starting again. I may do so three or four times. I know it's all about the word count in NaNo, but I need the foundation to be strong if I'm going to be able to write a novel in a month.

I never got very far with outlining, but I have spent a fair amount of time thinking about what I want the novel to be, what it should say and do. I have answers to some of the questions and none at all to others. Once I have answered a few more, the real work begins. The other questions will answer themselves in the writing.

I am, weirdly, not nervous. Last year I did not get a chance to start until the sixth, and finished in about three weeks. I tend to write pretty quickly, so once the ideas have taken their shapes, I know I can get the words onto the page and begin building this thing, this work, this novel I have inside of me.

It's a genre piece, about people who would most commonly be called superheroes. Specifically, it is the memoir of a formerly costumed man with abnormal abilities, who is now retired from the whole racket. I don't want to say too much, as there are things I do not know about the plot, and also things I would rather not reveal to someone not perusing the actual manuscript. My hope, though, is that it will be fun and thinky and all sorts of good things.

My further hope is that it will be fleshed out and written in a clumsy first-draft by the end of the month.

For others plunging themselves into NaNo this year, I offer a quote from Ernest Hemingway that helped me a lot last time around: "The first draft of anything is shit." Not really a Hemingway fan, but he kind of hits the nail on the head with that one.

NaNo asks for 50,000 words in thirty days, which breaks down to 1667 words a day, or about 70 an hour. This is more than a word a minute throughout the month. Whether you've personally enlisted for this folly or not, I hope you'll come by to wish luck upon me and my Bloggeagues also undertaking this immense, uh, undertaking.