lafayette

I need to start writing notes for my nanowrimo this year. If the computer situations don't improve, and I don't have access to one everyday, I might not be able to participate, which sucks. It really helped my writer's block for a time last year, I need that again.
I really want do it this year...
Going for a trifling historical romance this year, because as they say, quantity over quality.

rah rah rah.

Oh god, I wrote my own eulogy when I was 15:


Rachel never lived. She breathed, she stumbled through every day, but she never lived. She was a writer, an artist, a photographer, but she wasn't ambitious. Her lips were always chapped, her hair was always messy. But she was nice. She didn't know how to love, but she didn't know how to hate. She was never angry, just silent or sarcastic. She never trusted anyone, but she didn't let it show. She thought there was something better for her, but she wouldn't admit that, especially not when she was told this.
She collected underwear and chewed her nails. She took an anti-depressant and had an anxiety disorder. She never kissed a boy, or even a girl, she never held hands, and for certs, she died alone. Her only vanities were her eyebrows and her legs. She never shared her feelings, for fear of being hurt. The only things that made her cry were fucking up and hurting peoples feelings. She wanted so badly to believe in love, but wouldn't let her guard down. She hated lifetime television for women, feet and abortion. Insecure but self sufficient. So pathetic she wrote her own eulogy. Funeral so unattended that she had to read it herself. Dead.

It's a writing exercise, actually, I got it out of writer's digest.

Wrote this several years ago, just found it in old files...

She wanted to keep the shuttered windows in the rambling coach open, because she felt better if she could see the countryside flying past her. But her companions pulled their embroidered mantel about themselves and closed the windows with a stiff look of satisfaction.

Not being able to see her surroundings she felt as if she were tumbling into an unending abyss. She took solace in the rough solidity of the rocky ground beneath the coachs wheels.

1. The romance novel about Cicely, the civil war widow. research Union post war, Missouri because it was Southern sympathizing & not as affected bythe war. For simplicity. I'm not writing Gone with the Wind. I'm writing, like a full length avon novel, woah. heh.

2. Viola, working title, End of the girl; a clinical case in self Armageddon, research mental health and modern Mafia. Aside from that I really just need a plot and a lot of fleshing out.

3. I need to swipe what I can from With Magdeline(11,000 words+!), my failed nanowrimo, but I have no use for the better stuff unless I write another less crappy vampire novel.

4. Need to steal what I can from Lilith/Lucien story. Rework it into a similar story, getting rid of the cheesy crap Needs a plot badly, It's not really logical. I wrote it when I was 14, but it honestly was finished in my mind and nearly so on paper, I have to give it a chance.

5. The Countess & Andre is workable as a mystery, I think more than anything else.

6. This "novel" needs plot.

7. And this one needs logic.

Nothing else is more than a drabble.

This is continued from here, though not directly. There should be something in between.

It was months later, dressed in a solemn colour, that Andre ran into the countess again. The moist air that accompanies spring mornings, leaves a wet kiss on the garden gate, obscured Andre's view and led him to believe he was alone at his father's grave. A woman's heels on the rock path stirred him, made his heart race, made him blush. His anxiety in the real world versus his operatic calm. He was so hot he removed his coat and turned to leave.
She was standing there watching him.

Relevant excerpts from older notebook. Using myself as an example for writing.

(august 24 `02, day before my birthday)
Sad sounding music, each note devastating, feels like an internal crash of thunder. Heavy feelings, like my heart is anchored in my stomach. I want to dance, but I want to be held at the same time.

I really want to be held, in the dark, at that stage of sleepy when you're too out of it to think of how bad life is. When you're melting into a dream.

(August 27 `02)
Rachel sat very still. Thinking about all the things she doesn't understand, the universe, math and human relationships.
She stared at every line and crack in the skin on her hand, concentrated on every thread of her bedsheets and tried not to think of life or death. Or feel small or stupid.

---

I long for this surreal clarity on paper. Words that are more like a memory than fiction.

Overly dramatic display of emotion, running out of prayer while everyone else's heads were still bent. Crying so easily in the bathroom, white knuckles as I gripped the rose coloured tiles.

I didn't immediately realize what I was referring to, with that last paragraph, but I remember, I ran out during prayer at church and hid and the bathroom and cried, I was 8, at least, and I was crying because I never got to meet my grandma Winnie

Before guns were invented the sound of a tree falling in the woods in an ice storm resembled nothing more than itself. Now, a tree falls, and we duck for cover.

Do words flow so easily, from my brain, from my fingers, to the pen, to the page, but what words are these, just words, put together in a certain sequence making a coherent thought. Without words, how could there be coherent thoughts? This troubles me.

Should I let myself flow like my words?
Like a stream. Like an optimist.
Going

with

the

flow.

Write your words down, lay them down. Entertainment is a string of meaningless words, somehow forming a story.
This alone proves to me that there is a God.

Emotions are too amazing not to be divine.
Thank you, God.

Seems inadequate now.
But also like I'm lying in a pile of perfect.

An intense paranoia, brought on by muttered words I cannot understand, and clearer words that make no sense out of context.

Drinking from the light rays in cognac pools on the pale rug, almost something feasible.

Pressing my hand flat against the aluminum foil on my window in the winter. It's so unnaturally cold. There's something hollow at the center of my entire being.

A surreal sound comes to me through the thin hollow wood panel door. A sound like a very fat fish dropping into a very large body of water. I hear it echo like the ripples across an endless abyss of ocean.

That's everything from my most recent written diary that is not too personal or depressing to type out. Some of it was intended to me writing notes, or practice just to feel the pen in my hand, but none of it is coherent enough to be worked into a story.

a quatrain:
A buxom flower bud,
red oker around a blush of pink,
a drop of dew like a shard of glass,
quivers like a harlot's wink.

and a haiku:
A chihuahua sings
She has a good singing voice
She sings of love lost

On a mid morning ferry ride,
A body washed up on low tide,
who, no one knew,
so into the stew,
Our appetites she did bide.

One day, in a far away, primitive land, the natives were dumbstruck by the arrival of a four wheeled beast that regurgitated three seemingly unharmed me and a monkey named Chico.

---

They exchanged glances & phone numbers beneath the neon lights.
She blew her nose into his necktie.
He never called her.

---

A half eaten bologna sandwich fell out of her faux-fur coat pocket. She was so embarrassed.
Everyone in the dark theatre turned in their seats, ignoring the playactors on stage and focusing their unmasked horror on the pinched nosed socialite, her sticky coat and the smelly sandwich that she attempted to hide in her right shoe. It was more comfy than a Dr. Schoells insert. She cooed slightly and the attention went back to Mary Lou naked in the water tub on stage.

I suppose madness lends itself to writing, and anti-depressants must supress it.

There of visions in my head of something I want to describe. Skin like coffee with cream, lips like toffee. Feelings it's hard to put into words. I want, I need something to inspire me, a prompt, a plot suggestion, even something ridiculous. Something you'd like to see written. I need inspiration. Give me a subject, a scene, a character, a feeling, give me a challenge. Please.

The gloomy gray sky left surreal sun rays spotlight the high grassy fields in the distance. It was peculiar because Imelda could trace the rain's path by the velocity of the clouds and the downtrodden grass in the far meadows and yet where she stood was peculiarly bright and hot. It was days like this that she went fishing and the sun left it's brand on her like the earth was a ranch and she was a wild horse caught suddenly by a surly fellow with red mustaches. She stuck her tongue to her hot skin and felt it heat up. It was a splendid day for skinny dipping in the pond, feeling the fish nibble at her nubbly bits in the mossy scummy waters.

(hee hee)

The way Hedrick ate artichokes was surprisingly sensual, his lips pursed on the buttery budding vegetable, the line of his blonde mustaches and the way his fingers afterwards. Imelda had never paid attention to how someone ate artichokes ere she met Hedrick. Her heart fluttered and she lost her appetite.

It's the books that I want to emulate I really love. I notice errors more than anyone else in my family, I think because I want to be a writer, and every book I read is a study, works of fiction are research to me. I try not to make errors, even in my journal, looking back, they're rampant in entries written when I was sick, drunk, or using Jenny's computer. Her keyboard vexes me. I learned a lot when I was writing With Magdeline, a lot about my own errors, my own shortcomings. One thing really drives me mad, I can't write. I'm not saying that I don't occasionally write something that's pleasing, I'm saying that when I have a pencil in my hand, I cramp up, in my fingers, my stomach and my heart. Writer's Block is like heartbreak. My only experience in love is with words.

Part One here.
Part Two here.

Part Three:

I laid back on the cement stoop for a while longer, letting the cool hard surface against my face dry my sweat. I felt dirty, a film of grayish nicotine that I longed to wash off. My keys were heavy in my hand, I missed the keyhole several times, leaned my forehead against the gilt gold door knocker for balence, fell forward slightly as I opened the door.
It was dark downstairs. These are hours I remember acutely, retelling and retelling to the police detectives later. But I wonder sometimes, if what I fancied to be true, what the police planted in my alcohol wearied mind and what really was the truth weren't at all the same things.
I dropped my keys on a glass plate in the entryway, I expected to find her lying under a chenille throw in our living room. If I close my eyes, I can still feel the texture of that throw, softly between my fingers, all those Friday nights before, when I'd slipped it off her shoulders.
The living room was dark and empty.
I was ashamed. She loved me so unconditionally. Trusted me so entirely. I wanted her to catch the smell of another woman on my naked skin. She acted so ignorant. What if... another what if... So many nights, squinting at the lamp light when my touch awakened her. Smiling completely, always, "I love you."

I came home late, the air was damp, it condensed on my windshield, I sat still in my car for a moment, my palms sweating on my keys, leaving a metallic smell. Everything was surreal, I was tired from dancing in a crowded basement club, cigarette smoke clinging to my sweat. I felt like I was on a medicinal downer, locking my car and walking in the full moonlight. It lit the two am sky like it was dusk or dawn. I smelled the air, the dank familiar smell of fish, I licked the perspiration from my upper lip, sat down on my porch step, took off my corduroy jacket. Tried to come to my senses. I felt hollow. I remember precisely how I felt. Like the moment would be ruined the moment I opened my front door. And for a moment it didn't matter how many girl's lipstick marked glasses I'd drank from, how much I smelt like vodka, cigarette smoke, Charlie Red and metallic dead fish. That the humidity frizzed my hair, that I was vulnerably imperfect, that she'd look at me and call me kitten and immature and perfection. That I'd take my tired frustrations out on her with messy, dark and heavy sex.

I'm getting my perfectly misshapen writer's fuck finger back. :)

This town smells like fish when it rains, it's a detail that you never think of until the odor hits you again, and you have deja vu. It's reliable and insignificant. I only remember it now because the night my story begins it rained, and it was humid, and the night I sit here it is the same.
The town is flanked by a river, but we rarely think of it because it provided putrid fish and foul watersport.
When it rains and we smell the river we have sore memories of gangly childhood romps with our fat relatives in their hot pink bathing suits and their cruel children, mucking through the murky water getting leeches on the back of our calves and stinky mud under our toenails.
Swimming and fishing have been banned since my seventeenth summer. There was a serial murderer who threw his victims in the river. We found out in the worst way how preservative the clay sand of the riverbank is.

Of course, this same river is still the town's water supply.

I love this. I wrote it in the dark driving home one night, it smells like fish when it rains, and we live near the arkansas river. that much is true. it almost has a donna tartt charm, and i wrote it before I'd ever read donna tartt.

Sir Abascus Fruitpuddle gave his young daughter a wholesome smile, almost too bright for his grey pallor and black whiskers, but when the light shone on him correctly, you could see that indeed, his teeth were yellowed.
She looked at him, used to being petter and fawned over by other men, slightly shocked by this behaviour coming from her father.
Had Abascus ever smiled before?
Maybe so, most definitely, before Deliliah's birth, she thought romantically, maybe even when he wed her mother.
But, she recalled, he and her mother were never wed, and he certainly had not smiled the day he married his present wife, the notable and holy Lady Togfockle, Lisbet by name and 'Dipsy' to her closest friends. Namely a number of young Italian men with moustaches and high cheekbones with names like Giovanni and no titles but things one calls a dog on the street.
Delilah was actually not supposed to know that Abascus was her father, her mother told her when she was drunk and Delilah heard it gossiped in the kitchen when she was beating the rugs on the line.
The smile was quickly gone, and she soon feared that Abascus, her own father, planned to do to her what other men had planned before, without success. They didn't call her Lady Iron Pan because she was a clever cook.
But she saw now that the smile had been a look of relief as he had passed gas like and dog and one of his eyes was blind and that he probably had not seen her at all.

This is from the same period as the other one. Might actually be two years ago...

The slightest pressure, her cold fingertips on an otherwise warm afternoon, as they walked, in a merely platonic manner, down the drive to where she'd left her father talking to a little man, a general, or major, or merely a soldier who wore jewelry.
It made him stop, rather rigid, and watch her out of the corner of his eye, hoping, finally, that maybe she would be the one to become his wife, as he thought as he looked at anything wearing skirtsm even oncem a scotsman, with a red beard. Then he remembered that she was ugly, and continued walking, but gave her own hand 'the slightest pressure', as it were, in reassurance.
Upon returning her to her father, who had visibly cooled from his rather foolish anger, but remained blotchy and breathless, he said quick goodbyes, remembered to put his lords and ladyships in the correct places and walked off down the dusty trail without raising a speck to his flawless boots.

Later that evening as the ugly girl, Lucinda, recounted the tale to her sister, Isabel. in a shaded corner of an already bleak room, she cooed that the man, Horatio, was desperately handsome, when in fact, he would hardly have caused Isabel to turn her head had it been she and not Lucinda in that clammy hot room while father attempted to woo old Missus Wallowpick and her poodles.

Horatio, the sallow faced nephew of the obese, powdered and oftentimes intoxicated Missus Wallowpick had engaged Lucinda in a heated discussion about beard grooming and lace slippers, subjects dear to both their hearts.

It was unfortunate that as she asked to feel Horatio's beard he inquired over the lace of her slipper and her father looked up from Missus Wallowpick's poodles that Lucinda's hand should shift against Horatio's cheek, and his lips should part.

I remember when I wrote this, maybe a year ago, in the back seat of the car. I had been agonizing, because everytime I wanted to write the term the slightest pressure was all that came to my mind. It went on like that for months, literally, and mommie finally suggested that I start a story with that line.

( more notes )

My mom is home, she read my No and she thought it was fantastic. I'm not going to go fo a rewrite in December because it's fairly low-interest unpublishable in the biz, but I might steal some of the good bits for my first romantic novel, and maybe I can go for that over the next few months, take it a bit slower, but definitely set a deadline for myself... it helps. I WANT to write something really brilliant and respectable. I honestly do, like donna tartt brilliant, like bestseller brilliant (a lot of best sellers aren't brilliant), BUT I'm not brilliant, and it doesn't work that way. Maybe I'll have a brilliant novel in the works for years while I'm becoming a famous romance novelist, like danielle steele famous. *giggles* I'm BETTER than Danielle Steele, of that I am confident.

I need a connection in the biz, be what I need. Someone who KNOWS what sells right now. Right, because I can write crap when I need to, look at idori, where I'm writing about my nanowrimo. It might inspire you to be a better crappy writer.

mwahs and such,
rachel