Sometimes I'm a mess.

Nighttime breathes cold air through the open front door--I need atmosphere. I feel like I'm suffocating. Fortunately it's not snowing or I'd be in real trouble. There's a faint chink of wind chimes filtering in.
I've been pouring over a certain scene in this story, about a young man after he loses his cousin and best friend. Wracking my brains, really. Scraping my heart out onto paper and spreading it around in different instances of emotion. I sit by the door. On the carpet. On the couch. Pace around. Something stirs, deep down, the story I'm trying to tell. I write furiously before it's gone again, a few sentences. Fragments. Thoughts.
This scene is taking forever.

It makes me miss long conversations with good friends. Barbecues. Being nine again. Nine was a good age. I didn't worry about much. Didn't have to pay attention if I didn't want to. Read a lot of books. If I lived on the beach, I'd be surfing right now. Lying in the sand. Watching seagulls. Kicking sand at ducks.
Too bad I'm not writing a story about an absent-minded nine year old or I'd be done by now.

The Day I Failed at Climbing

Jeremy and I went climbing at Devil's Lake on Saturday with a group of friends.
Like an idiot I forgot my shoes.
I would have wrapped my feet in tape and climbed anyway, but a nice girl took pity on me and let me borrow hers. I was grateful, but still. Who drives two hours to their first climbing day of the year (not to mention the first blessedly warm day since November) and leaves their shoes behind? A moron, that's who.
The rock face was slippery smooth and tiny trickles of water leaked from the crevices at the bottom, coating my shoes and fingertips. A decent grip was elusive. I managed to get up by cramming my left toes in a narrow crack and standing up with all my weight on that foot while stretching my fingertips to the next hold, a narrow shelf high above my head. In this fashion I fought my way through to the next move, and the next.

If I didn't possess a decent sense of balance, I wouldn't have eventually made it to the top. I'm not one of those who can just jump to the next good hold and hang on while their feet scramble up after. I shift my weight instead of heaving it, searching for a way to use the jagged fragments scattered over the surface of the wall like pieces of a vertical puzzle. I enjoy this immensely.

Some in the writing community treat their craft the same way certain climbers rely on their strength instead of technique and creative balance (to my quiet amusement). Climbers sometimes find it possible to maneuver a route just by throwing their weight upward ("You'll make it! Just keep going UP! Try harder!").
Writers who bang around in such a fashion rarely make it very far before giving up and starting another project.
There's a rhythm to storytelling, but at the same time more than that-- like a hundred rhythms coming together and breaking apart at once in a given moment. Every sentence, every scene pulls double and triple duty to weave conflict, setting, emotion and perspective together with the right amount of tension as the plot moves forward. The adrenaline of an idea can drive you far, but forging a story requires something more: It requires everything you have.
I have moments of focus on certain walls, where somehow in spite of the awkward holds and my cramped, stiff fingers, I'm able to figure my way through it. Adrenaline fuels my creativity, and I learn new ways to use those tiny, crimpy holds. I walk away more focused than ever, and whadda ya know-- a little stronger. Hopefully that focus will help me remember certain vital items on future endeavors.
More likely, you'll soon be reading about The Day I Climbed with Taped Feet.

The One with the Baby Shower (or, When I Get Really Mad...)

I'm very feisty. I also tend toward colorful emotional outbursts that stem from my fantastic temper. I'm learning, slowly over time, how to curb my temper and redirect the outbursts toward benign outlets, such as freewriting. Below is one such outburst, penned some time ago in the throes of anger (and really, I promise, not directed at any one entity, but the entire world in general. I generalize when I get mad. It makes me feel much better much, much faster). Now it's just amusing proof of my ridiculous temper.
I should also mention I don't hate kids. I just hate being pestered on their behalf. I have nieces, I have nephews, I have younger brothers and I love them all.

***

7 AM...

Finds me drinking tea and scanning the internet for tea sandwich recipes, ridiculing myself for agreeing to make them in the first place. I've had many tea sandwiches in my life-- no, let me rephrase. I've taken bites of many tea sandwiches throughout my lifetime. The only ones I liked in any sense of the word were at an actual "tea" in Hawaii, and I think that was because of the location. Tea sandwiches were one of the weirdest ideas conceived by women. I'm positive men did not discover tea sandwiches because they are not meant to fill you up. Case in point. Point in case. I discover in my searching that tea sandwiches are generally not supposed to contain meat, crust or normal food. Here are some actual kinds of tea sandwiches out there, right now, in the world: Goat cheese and watercress. Cucumber mint with cream cheese. Broiled fig and Gorgonzola. Watercress olive. Lavender egg (Lavender egg!! Who eats that?).
Basically, what I'm gathering here is as long as it has watercress, cream cheese and something you would otherwise never put on a sandwich, it's kosher for a tea sandwich. I refuse to make a sandwich for anyone that contains lavender. So finally, I find an idea for cranberries and turkey with Dijon and say, to heck with it. I'm making something up.

9:30 AM...

Go to the store. FoodMaxx. I hate FoodMaxx. Find turkey, bread: Check. Cranberries. These are only found at Thankskgiving and Christmas, looks like. After hacking my way through the displays, I finally find a few cans (I assume forgotten from last year's holiday season) and take one. Go home. Start making sandwiches. It is at this point I realize, this is ludicrous. I don't know who would ever eat sandwiches like this. I tried one, just to see if they're edible. They're not. Now I am convinced beyond any reasonable doubt that tea sandwiches were only ever invented because someone, somewhere was starving, and all that was to be found were a few leftover pieces of bread, some cream cheese, watercress and lavender. Someone else noted this display of sheer desperation and decided to make the idea a monument to creativity. Eventually, everyone forgot why in the world we began eating these monstrosities in the first place and made them a requirement at baby showers, teas, bridal showers, and funerals. We still make them to this day. Meanwhile, said starving person finished the sandwich, got sick, and decided to go buy a hamburger instead.

10:30 AM...

Get to the shower. I can't stay because I have to work. In fact, I should be working now, but instead I'm making sandwiches no one will survive past the first few bites.
Oh, the crazy hedonism of weekends.
Here, we arrive at one of the single most hated phrases I have ever heard in my life: "So, Jinn, when are you going to be having one of these(meaning, a baby shower for a munchkin of your own)?"
For upwards of five years now, I have been tolerating this idiotic phrase with some semblance of patience. Five. Years. Imagine someone asking you when you will decide to sit down at your kitchen table with a pair of pliers and proceed to pull one of your own teeth. To which you would reply with the appropriate rebuttal. Then imagine this same person pointing out that it is possible that it might happen at some point in your future (if you were a mental case, perhaps). Which, you have to concede the possibility, however small, does exist. Even though you would never do it in a million years. Now you have some small idea of how I feel when I am forced to face this hated question:
"So, when are you having kids?"
It's like, the single thought that goes on in the minds of everyone who knows me and knows I'm married. As if having children is all I am now capable of! (One of these days, I'm going to scream that statement, at the top of my lungs, to an unfortunate, unsuspecting soul, and then they'll all be sorry.)
Welp, you're married. Now that you've forgone the rest of the life experience, when are you having kids?
Up until this moment in time, I've managed to avoid stupid conversations about my own life choice by just saying, "I'm not ready for kids yet." A gross understatement, but it gives those people some small hope that I will, in fact, one day have kids. The possibility exists, but is so diminutive it's not even worth talking about. Today, I am done trifling.
I am in the room for no more than five minutes before the question comes out.
I put the plate of tea sandwiches very carefully on the table, turn slowly to face the speaker, and in a voice of uttermost calm, I tell her, "I am never having children."
Naturally, in the wake of this statement come the attempts to try to convince me that I am only joking and deep down, I really do want kids just like every good girl is supposed to. I ask you. Why would I joke about something like this? If I wanted kids eventually, I'd say so.
However, I now have some added ammunition that I have never before in my life been able to use, and I level it at my assailant with a scathing grin: "However, my brother is going to be having one."
And for the first time, in my life, this actually shuts them up about the matter. Triumph. I have triumphed over idiocy, for at least the next ten minutes. In the meantime, I am beating it out of there as fast as I possibly can. Jump in the car, speed out of the parking lot, and get the heck home to my cats and stories about assassins, elves and psychopathic shapechangers. And real-human food, like taquitos and chocolate chip cookies.
I will now return to my life. Thank you.

There's much to be said for 2:30 am

Jeremy said I should include pictures with my posts. He assures me it's a good idea even if they're random. Therefore...

This is a picture of my desk, lately. Cozy. Littered. Love it.

Why in the world would anyone care. Oh well.
Hey, I know. Everyone post a picture of their desk. Or a desk, if you don't have one. We'll add to the litter of pointless pictures clogging up the internet. This gives us something to write home about.

Here's what I'm considering for a prologue to The Manuscript. Considering that when I began I had no idea what was going to come out, it's not too shabby.

I give you, Prologue:

My memories are...erratic. I remember how the ocean sounded, breaking its foamy fists on the cliff face. I remember dirt and chalky rocks breaking away beneath my toes and spinning through the atmosphere, making tiny white dots on the surface of the water. My mother caught my wrist just in time, pulling me safely against herself. I cried, terrified of the horrible thought: Death in the water.
"The ocean is not evil," she murmured in my ear, caging my fragile existence inside her warm arms. I smelled her salt essence, tinged with rose oil. It was the smell of home. "It can be very dangerous, but it is not evil."
"I don't like it," I sniffed, burying my face in the soft crook of her elbow. I tasted my tears on my lips, and breathed salty rose into my lungs. "Can we leave?"
"Avoid falling into it, but do not run from its glory. Look."
I looked, and saw fearsome beauty in the glittering waters, painted pearl and jade and scarlet by the glowing paintbrush of sun that hung just above the horizon. We sat in the long yellow grass on top of the cliff and watched the sun disappear behind the rim of the world. We saw the elusive flash of green that was the sun's last light shining through the water. We watched the stars appear in a clear twilight.
"The dawn always comes," she said when I lamented the coming night. "You will live to welcome the morning."
I have lived through many nights since then. I have faced terrors more horrible than the ocean. I have faced the terror of love. The terror of destiny. The terror of loss. I have been conquered.
When I stood on the cliff edge the second time, my mother was not there to catch me.
When I fell, I didn't even remember her.
I didn't remember anything.

So. The Manuscript.

I started writing fiction at age seven. We had an old ecru-colored computer with a screen box longer than my torso at the time. You know how they were: Unattractive, heated dust magnets that required a desk the size of a dining room table to accommodate their angular mass. I sat down one night, without any clear goal in mind, and wrote a heartwarming story about two sisters finding the perfect gift. I wrote it in multiple points of view and in all three persons.
Stories often present themselves to me in this fashion. They don't come as a steaming entree, set before their recipient in satisfying, tasty glory. They come as raw meat needing to be seasoned, trimmed and cooked. Sometimes they still need to be...well you know. Dead.
This analogy is not going the way of inspiration. My apologies.
I have since learned something about the craft of storytelling, such as "finished" does not mean "revised," and when your gut tells you it's not ready to be submitted for publishing, your gut is probably right. Fortunately, my gut tells me that I'm finally getting close. The Manuscript, started at age 16, is nearly done. That's not the official title, but it's become a fitting nickname until it's deemed finished and publishable.
I had tea with the villains today (I drank the tea, they told me about their fears and ambitions). It was delightful, and very creepy. It turns out they're so much smarter than I gave them credit for, just like some real people. There seems to be a misconception about true villains among some storytellers these days, as if one can cut straight to the triumph of the protagonist without allowing the antagonist to really shine. Villains are people. They may be bullies, they may be mad with power, but they still care about something, and they can still grieve. They have their own reasons for what they do, thank you very much, and they want a little time to elaborate. Their contribution, if one chooses to accept it, is a conflict that deepens the story and makes it worth reading. My protagonists are more than willing to risk life and limb against these guys. The least I can do is listen to my villains for a few hours and allow them to tell me what they really, really want to do. I'm so glad I did.
Because when they were finished, I had my ending.

It's Sunday morning and I'm craving donuts yet again.

I keep a texture journal, in a black and white woven journal my brother Pete gave me for Christmas a couple years back. It's where I practice sensory description, using all of the senses to their full capacity. In it is stuff like:

Chicken left 3 days in crockpot. Felt like: Old fish, liquefied and mixed with mud, poured right into my lungs.

A kid who ordered a cappuccino. Colors that stood out: Dark, polished brown eyes. Actually, they were black-eaten brown. Eyelashes a thick fringe around curved eyelids.
Looked like: Polished glass marbles, with something alive inside of them.

Today, after waking up at 7 and reading from Description and Setting about sensory description by Ron Rozelle, then beginning the preliminary peruse of what I wrote yesterday (making small edits is so fun just after waking), I was craving a maple bar. We had no breakfast food to speak of (cardboard pizzas don't count), so I nipped off to the store to get a donut for me, and sausage and eggs for Jeremy. The donut was very good--in fact, I have another waiting for me when I finish reporting to you my excitement about the first. But because that's a dumb way to let you in on how much I enjoyed the pastry in question:

The first bite into a fresh donut. Felt like: Spongy, paper thin crust, miniscule chocolate icing. A big fat belly of donut in my hand. It expands toward the center as my teeth sink into it, bunching into itself as if trying to stay inflated. Chocolate icing smears the back of my teeth.
Tastes like buttery fried dough, seeping tasty fat from every sponge hole. Yum.
Reminds me of: Springtime chore days, when Nanny and Pop would bring an Albertson's dozen over: Maple bars, chocolate glazed, cream-filled, sticky raspberry-filled bars, bear claws. We ate them listening to Odyssey, watching dad get the mower ready through the front window, dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans. The Vega sat baking in the sun, which glared from arching blueness overhead, brushed with whisps of clouds and trails of jet vapors. I was always happy that there were plenty of maple bars. We washed them down with cold millk and trooped outside in our faded neon shorts and worn tennies, bickering happily.

I'm learning to pay attention to not only sensory description, but sensory reaction. Tastes and smells transport us suddenly in memory, and we realize the depth of our own character before moving on. The same applies to fictional characters: Sensory perception evokes a response. Find the response, learn from it. Eat more donuts.