The Joy of Art

I am enjoying my new groups of students this semester, if only for the fact that I have a stolen moment here and there to draw! I am busier than I have ever been, flying around the school to three different classrooms, one of which is filled with 33 students (and a Drama class at that...33 actors!). My room is an absolute mess, with piles of miscellaneous papers everywhere on my desk and smears of paint and glaze on the tables,  I'm planning each lesson on the whim (valid material though!), but I actually have time to talk with the kids, to circulate, and discuss art, and get to know each other, and actually enjoy what I am doing here and there instead of just babysitting. THAT is lovely.
And nicest of all, I get to draw. It is hard teaching art and never having time to art for oneself. I, personally, tend to doubt that I have any artistic sensibilities at all, until I have a moment to pick up a pencil and remind myself, hey! you're an artist! Always nice to remember. I am quite happy with this eye I drew....Not perfect, I know, but I like it. I didn't realize I could even do such a thing - I don't generally draw in pencil but paint instead after a quick sketch! But, I'm developing my skills. I do, after all, only have Art 9 under my belt as an art course I took.
As for another art form, I'm thinking it is time to sit down with a nice hot cup of tea and plug away at my story. I enjoyed my drawing, and sometimes I think I'd love to illustrate my own book. Wish I could take an art course! But now it's time to make a story, or there will be no scenes to draw. Hmmm...where did I leave off?

Full of Glee

I have mostly banned myself from television...except I have discovered the wonders of watching tv online! I have always enjoyed the luxury of just sitting down and zoning out for a while on other people's lives and problems...but hated having to be committed to doing so at a certain prescribed time. Now, it appears most networks are offering online versions of their shows within 24 hours of their being aired on tv, which works perfectly for me. And of all the shows out there, I am finding massive enjoyment in Glee! I don't think I have enjoyed a tv show in a long time, perhaps ever, as much as I enjoy this one. Which is bad...because it takes away from writing!
I experimented with the first person viewpoint today...I'm not sure what I think yet. If I can do it well, it might work. But if I can't, it sounds juvenile. I suppose I'll just have to keep practising...tonight wasn't the best night to try new things though, because I'm in frustration mode.
I do not like offering my services as an accompanist, only to have practise sessions booked short notice and then wait around for people who, in the end, neglect to attend!
But tomorrow is Friday, and then the weekend arrives. I just need to get through the next week, and then it's smooth sailing, and time to really buckle down on my book! And, of course, Christmas baking.

Work, Not Play!

I'm sitting at Starbucks...not for the coffee (although I couldn't resist a triple-grande soy latte!), but for the atmosphere. Billie Holiday and Vince Gueraldi sounding from the speakers, the whirring of coffee grinders and steamy "chhhhh" spitting from the milk frother...perfect amount of background noise and warm colours to make for fruitful writing session.

I thought I'd try something different today...as much as I love sitting with my dog snoring logs beside me on the couch, I've developed successive kinks in both sides of my neck over the last two weeks and thought, for the sake of a fully mobile neck, I'd better find a table somewhere to set myself up. As the dining room table offered no inspiration whatsoever, and distracted me to the nines with all the clutter, I got in the car and drove to the one other place in town that makes me feel all gushy and warm and cozy - Starbucks. I am the first to admit, their coffee is not great. It comes across as rather generic, like everything is diluted in flavour to appeal to a mass of uncultured coffee tastes, and then filled with sugar. Thus my need for three shots of espresso. But in atmosphere, it wins the golden star. When I'm writing, atmosphere is key. 

My coffee is nearly finished, and I know at some point I'll have to migrate home and put some dinner on the stove. Spaghetti maybe. Or maybe I'll be really lucky and it will be made for me! 

I find this whole writing thing difficult....mostly because no one truly understands the amount of emotional, physical, and psychological work it involves. It is my THIRD career...I teach high school, music at the conservatory, and I write. How many hours a week is that? But it doesn't have a set amount of hours of prescribed times those hours must be logged. Nor does it pay, up front at least. Perhaps to some, then, it seems more like a hobby. But it is far from this! I am not playing, I am WORKING. If only everyone saw it that way.

And, if only it didn't make me so incredibly aloof! All I think about is writing, when I'll write, what I'll write, what my characters will choose to do today, how much I'll get through in a day...I'm going CRAZY! Fine with me...except it tends to eclipse everything else. 

Now, it must eclipse my blog as well! I have an hour until I've been out of the house for an unreasonable amount of time. Time to get writing!

Snowy Slush and Late Night Mush!

There is a winter wonderland of slush outside, and my desire to merrily sing Christmas tunes has been sated. There's just no rejoicing to be had when you're sloshing around in scummy looking wet snow! But it started out rather majestically...come January, when the deep freeze sets in and sticks the snow to every living and inanimate object, I'll probably wish for the changeable nature of slush! Till then, bring on the sunshine. And sleep...can't wait to curl up in my flannel sheets tonight because, (what else is new?) I'm pooped.
More success writing tonight. It appears I need a good 2-3 hour window to be really productive. By the time I finish searching for that word that's on the tip of my tongue but just won't come out, or research whether or not 18th century France had ice boxes, it takes 3 hours to get a good chunk of writing done. It frustrates me that I can't have that much time each night of the week! And, when I do, by 10:00 Bailey is staring at me to rub her, and let her out to pee and then put her to bed. Yes: I communicate with my dog. In fact, I know all the different tones of her barks like a mother does her babies cries! Right now she's guilt tripping me with the biggest sighs I've ever heard emitted from an animal. They can be roughly interpreted as: "I don't understand why daddy is in bed sleeping, and I'm not!"
I feel like I've made some really great progress on the story. My characters are developing on paper (they're already developed in my head), and they're actually getting places geographically and emotionally...the story is slowly unfolding! Nola's 6-year old self is firmly esconced in France, elements of her character being revealed through her actions (like galloping a pony through a field to her mother's chagrin)...it's a whole new story. To explain further, I started this whole idea on a completely different bent, at a later date than 1782. It was so EXCITING and I loved it...but it needed more background. Then, adding the background with flashbacks made it too choppy and felt the pace of the narrative was lost. So all those flashbacks and now an entirely new book on their own, a prequel in a sense to the original story, now book 1 in what will inevitably (because, as you can see, I'm wordy) become a multivolume saga!
Amazing how you start with one thing, and it ends up completely different in such surprisingly pleasing ways!
I just kick Bailey off the couch before she falls asleep again...when she gets to that stage I must physically drag her off while she gives me the evil eye (ha, should have put me to bed sooner, mum!). She'll hang 3/4 off the couch before finally relenting to drop a foot to the floor.
I'm hoping to pull some passages soon (all those flashbacks) from my first manuscript into this new one, the first attempt sitting at about 30,000 words right now, and that will hopefully boost up my word count drastically. I'll never make it to 50,000 by the 30th in order to (try to) win this NaNoWriMo competition, but I'll keep trying! No matter what, progress is progress, and if I continue this pace past the 30th, I'm guaranteed to finish the book sooner (and get published?!!!!!!) than if I had never bothered to enter the contest at all. Amazing what a little competition will do.

Novel Word Count: (drum roll....) 11,098!

Snowy Days and Sundays = Writer's Best Friend

Finally, success! The snow began to fall this morning, and a feeling of luxurious timeless descended on our house. There's is nothing like being at home, knowing you don't need to be anywhere else, to do anything but what you love, while you watch the snowflakes fall from the sky and alight on the ground.
I spent three hours of my day in the kitchen covered in flour...up to my elbows in pastry and yummy meat filling for homemade meat pies. According to my mother, I have inherited my grandmother's knack for pastry, and it just so happens my husband is a pastry lover. I cracked out my Australia Women's Weekly meat pie recipe, and off I went! A delicious treat well worth the elbow grease.
I also (and I must say, most importantly!) managed to sit for huge amounts of time and write away. I feel great knowing I've accomplished some writing today, and have boosted my wordcount up 2,000 words from yesterday! THAT is what I love about Sundays, and snowy days. I can start my week on good footing, reading to dive in Monday night from where I left off today. This is good - very very good! I can go to bed content, frustrated only that the weekend has come to end, but happy that it was fruitful.

Novel Word count: 9,786! 

Confessions of an Inquisitive Child...

Each author has an ish...mine is description. I delight in finding the perfect words to describe a situation, taste, smell, sight, or feel...but sometimes such descriptions require confessions of a rather embarrassing nature, that elicit less than favourable responses in others.
For instance, my first host father in Germany was an epicurean sort, who love good cheese and wine and lavished his rotund figure with it on a regular basis. He often travelled around Europe collecting delights, such as mounds (and I do mean mounds) of Swiss chocolate for me to try (one of every bar, some enormous...which I proceeded to polish off within a week) and Petit Ecolier cookies from France. Most memorable of course, was his trip to Paris, from which he brought back the best of aged brie and camembert. I thought this wonderful...until I tasted it. All I could say, is that it tasted like dirty gym socks. Most took this to mean I had, at some point, sample dirty gym socks and found the flavour comparable to that of camembert. What I meant to say is, it takes like what I IMAGINE dirty gym socks to taste like...you get my point. Word choice is everything!
Tonight, I attempted to describe the unexpected, bitter flavour of Seville marmalade to a 6-year-old during the 18th century, who is from a place where even just a plain orange would be hard to come by. And, for some reason, ear wax came to mind. I have had this thought before...when I was 11 I had open heart surgery, but was terrified of being put under with a needle, and didn't want gas either. I had (and still do) a particular hatred for black licorice because it tasted like the flavour left in my mouth from sleeping gas, when I'd had tubes put in my ears several years before. So, I opted for a liquid anaesthetic. All I can say is, it tasted like earwax.
Now, don't give me that look! Everyone always cringes when I say this, and I know what you're thinking. Do you eat earwax often? But I know you know what I mean. Surely, most of us have, at some point, had a little tickle in our ears, and dared to plunge a digit inside to expunge the itch. Then, without thinking, you later put your finger in your mouth, to floss your teeth, or pick out a popcorn kernel, or likc your fingers because you (very naughtily) ate some crap-packed orange cheesies and they're just finger licking good. And you get this horrible taste in your mouth, bitter, and realize it's ear wax.
Surely, I'm not the only one who has done this? Goodness, someone's even written a book about it!
Well, there you go. I confess: I have tasted earwax. But I know I'm not the only one.
What other strange confessions will my attempts at description elicit?

Novel Word Count To Date: 7,662

Thick as Molasses...

I feel like a fly who has made the mistake of landing in a drop of molasses...the more I flail the more thoroughly I become stuck in the stickiness. As hard as I try to spew out words for fluency's sake, my brain moves in slow motion and my feet keep getting stuck on sticky words. I am watching my word count slowly climb (which is great), but the gap between what I write and the projected output to be successful in the NaNoWriMo competion continues to widen (not so great).

Then, after writing not-so-successfully, I open up my blog and wonder, does anyone actually read this? Does anyone really care about this journey I'm on? Even if they did, would they even know where to find me? I am perplexed. I write for the sake of writing, for putting pen to paper (figuratively) to satisfy my own impulses and inclinations. But, it would be nice to know that my blog exists out there, somewhere beyond my living room. But maybe that's not the point...maybe all a blog really is, is a process. A venue to vent, without constantly self-editing in fear. Writing for writing's sake, with the added bonus that someone might actually read it and care.

There is hope!

Today's Word Count: 7,190

Location, Location, Location!

I just spent a wackload of time preparing my office as a comfortable writing space, hung pictures on the wall, tidied up the shelves... I finally emptied the plethora of boxes in my closet full of junk I'll never use but somehow accumulated: quarter-full jars of dried up acrylic paint inherited from my crafty grandmother, bits of paper I'll never scrap with but can't get rid of because they "remind me of when"...I put all this work into creating a comfortable, organized, calming and inspiring work space, and here I am sitting on the couch in my living room, in the middle of everything, and happy as a clam. I read once that Stephenie Meyer, author of the Twilight Series, sets herself right up in the middle of the action, and is perfectly content despite having her three boys running around her. Others, like John Wilson, a young adult fiction writer from Lantzville (whom I met with for advice at the beginning of my journey to becoming a writer), locks himself away in the upper floor of his guest cottage/garage, blinds shut, noise-free, and barely emerges till it's done. "Welcome back" is his wife's customary greeting after these month-long withdrawals from all but the written word. John's author friend in Ontario has no troubles waking at 5am and driving to some Torontonian suburb for a school visit. As his early departure saves him from the worst of the morning rush-hour traffic, he arrives early and plunks himself at the local Tim Horton's until it's time to migrate towards his eager young readers at the nearby school. I've tried Starbucks, personally, but unplugged always seem to take the seats with the outlets, which doesn't seem fair to those of us attached at the hip to a device requiring an electrical current.

So, location. There really is no perfect location for every person. It's as personal a choice as your preference for certain brand of chocolate bar or cut of underwear. The best place to write? Where you feel comfortable, where you can sit and go "ah" and just focus on the task at hand. For me? It's anywhere my loved ones are. Right now, my goofy lap-dog Doberman is sitting next to me on our extra-deep love seat, sharing my knit blanket, sawing logs as I click away on my keyboard. It's even better when my husband joins us, as he is now, reading his book or playing video games (as long as he remembers to wear his headphones). The best location for me is where I'm at ease.

Oh, by the way:

Today's word count: 6,615

(a dismal day...NaNoWriMo deficit now 9,000 words! But, progress nevertheless...)