Tonight I am doing something I would normally do only if I was sitting in an airport on a Thursday evening. But I’m not waiting for the last plane from Sea-Tac to Walla Walla. I’m simply tired of sitting in front of a computer. The draft of today’s (Friday, December 13th) blog is being written in cursive, on paper, with a pen. And none too prettily! I am writing this in my official journal.
My messy but official journal.
I’ve kept a journal off and on. This iteration started in December 2018. It was a month filled with the need to privately spill my guts, the month we learned that Bruce had only a few days left. Every day I made an entry, sometimes several entries, and have continued to do this for six years. I have a stack of filled college-ruled notebooks now:
Journals, from December 2018 to present.
Wow, that’s a lot of notebooks!
Do you ever go back and read them?
Once, Lily, when I was doing a writing challenge called NaNoWriMo- -short for National Novel Writing Month. During the month of November, participants commit to writing 1,667 words a day. The goal is to produce the first draft of a novel 50,000 words in length.
And did you?
Been there, done that, got the T-Shirt!
T-shirt, earned, in part, with the assistance of my journals.
How to say this tactfully- -was it any good?
Of course not! Because that’s not the point of a first draft. A first draft is for getting down the “bones” of the story. It was one of several attempts- -both fiction and non-fiction- -to get my experiences as a widow into a tangible form. What I ended up with, besides 50,000 words about experiences and thoughts and feelings, was the nucleus of a romantic suspense novel with a widow protagonist.
So was that any good?
The beta readers thought so, but I never got an agent interested beyond the sample pages attached to the query. The Evolution of Hannah Lees is having a big time-out while I work on other projects. But I digress- –
How very unlike you!
Thanks for the snark, complete with dramatic eye rolling, Lily. The thing for me about writing is, it invariably teaches me about what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes I find a way to re-work an idea and it gains traction. This kind of discovery is what keeps me engaged.
But enough about S. D. Matley’s theory of writing. It’s the holiday season! Advent Bowl presses on. This week involved Hoosegow. Randomly drawn slips tasked him to write a letter to his grandma.
You mean Mom?
I do indeed. He was also on the receiving end of “Read a Christmas story to Hoosegow.” We usually do the holiday chapter from The Wind in the Willows but this year I went rogue and read three short selections from this:
Noted in Journal: A Christmas anthology from the works of female authors.
Our favorite was Christmas reminiscences by Colette, who had the good sense to mention cats.
Some low-key tasks this week: Rotate in another Christmas CD, Rice pudding for dinner, Flowers to Gene and Nadine (former neighbors who now reside in Mountain View Cemetery). But the showstopper: Practice “Silent Night” on the accordion and serenade __________ with it in two days.
Yes, we overheard that.
I’m the first to admit my rendition was far from perfect, which happens when you don’t play an instrument for a year or two. Nevertheless, I persisted. On Tuesday I called ___________, who happened to be driving. I said Hi, identified myself by the name of a character I played in an act we once did together, and fired up “Silent Night.”
Was it any good?
Every bit as good as the 50,000 word first draft of the widow novel! But the signal on her cell phone was weak and the call disconnected before I finished.
Or maybe she hung up.
I called back a few minutes later. My friend of many decades picked up and snapped, “Who is this?!” When I told her, she laughed really hard, said she was nearly home and would call back in a few minutes.
It ended well. She did call back and I did play a recognizable rendition, to which she gamely sang along while choking with laughter. Then we settled into a long catch-up conversation.
Because that’s what the holidays are, at their best.
What a beautiful, holiday thing to do! I love it. Much warmth and magic of the Season to you, Susan <3
Thanks, Erin! Warmth, magic, and a happy Sun Return to you, too.