A Moment of Everyday Magic (or, Getting the Right Notebook)

I’m taking a creative writing course this semester. It’s cool in some respects, but not cool in others, and the not cool part for me is the fact that every week we have an hour and a half lecture during which I learn approximately nothing.

Seriously.

To be fair, this is not entirely the fault of the professor/class. I’ve taken a fair few creative writing courses in my college career. I also started writing when I was five. I also spend/have spent a lot of time talking to writers and publishing industry people about writing. So while I’m sure that for people with different experiences, this lecture is engaging and productive, for me it means 90 minutes of spacing out, writing notes to myself, and staring blankly at the weekly handout while my equally-bored friend doodles on her notebook beside me.

(Sometimes we pass each other snarky notes, but that’s beside the point.)

Recently, I decided I needed to take matters into my own hands. This is my last semester of college, dammit. I want to get something out of this. I talked the matter over with my creative writing tutor (whom I very much like); she was sympathetic and suggested a few ways I could maybe make use of the lecture period, but also acknowledged I might just have to suck it up the rest of the time. I appreciated the input, but it was still a pretty bleak outlook. I thanked her for her suggestions.

And as soon as my meeting with her was over, I went to Barnes & Noble to buy myself a freaking writing notebook.

It makes me sad that I need to do this. At the same time, it’s really the only solution I can find that gives me any sense of satisfaction. If I have to sit in that lecture hall listening to professorial pontifications for an hour and a half each week, at least I’ll spend that time writing. Writing fiction. Writing something that I might actually be able to use.

But purchasing a writing notebook isn’t as straightforward as it sounds. I didn’t know what I was looking for, exactly. I had envisioned grabbing a simple, spiral-bound notebook, but every such notebook I found in the bookstore looked so…flimsy. And the sturdier ones were pointlessly pricier. I didn’t need one with my college’s name embossed on it. I didn’t need one for five subjects. I didn’t need one with graph paper.

Then I saw it.

You know how it happens: You’re in a store (usually a bookstore) and something just leaps off the shelf at you and cries, “ME! You came here to get ME, didn’t you?” In my case, the leaping object was a “Decomposition Notebook”—based on the old composition notebook style, but made from recycled paper, its charming cover printed with bees and honeycomb. There were lots of other composition notebooks like it, but this was the one. My notebook. It was so obvious.

Except…

I frowned at the price tag. Did I really need to pay $6 for this thing when I could easily get a comparable notebook for less than half that price? It wasn’t like $6 was going to break my bank account or anything, but still, that was two cups of chai right there. Why did this notebook need to be special anyways? Wasn’t I just going to scribble all over it?

I hemmed and hawed, but time was running out, and I had to get to class. Deciding that it didn’t really matter what notebook I had and that I could spend the extra $3 on chai, I put down my notebook and picked up one of the flimsy spiral-bound ones. I trotted up to the counter, fumbling in my bag for my debit card.

“Sorry, can you move to the next window down?” the cashier said, just as I’d pulled out my wallet and opened it.

“Oh. Uh, sure.” I started to close up my wallet again when my attention was snagged by the pocket I use to keep gift cards. And what should I see but a Barnes & Noble gift card, on which I happened to have about $8 remaining.

Fate. Providence. The Universe loves me. I spun about, dashed down the stairs, swapped out the flimsy thing for my notebook, and bounded back up, gift card in hand. I was going to get that notebook AND have chai to go with it.

And thus it was that I got the perfect writing notebook to use in my not-so-perfect writing class. I’m breaking it in today by picking up my 2012 NaNovel where I left off. Hopefully, I’ll get something new and interesting on the page.

Boo freaking yeah.

NaNoWriMo 2012: Sunday Check-In #4

Words to be written today: 1667
Words written today: 3003
Total word goal so far: 41666
Total words so far: 38003

Still behind, and still catching up! Woot!

Also, guys, I have a confession: I’m kind of falling in love with this book. That’s not something I say lightly—the last time I felt this excited about drafting a novel was back in the spring of 2010 when I was finishing up the first draft of Unfamiliar Spellings. NaNo 2010 had some delightful characters, but it lacked the forward momentum I’ve got with this one, and NaNo 2011 had a cool concept/plot but characters I never really got a handle on (as I mentioned, writing a story with characters I don’t love is…ugghhh, like pulling teeth).

But even in its ridiculously messy first incarnation, NaNo 2012 has it all so far (to me, anyhow): I’m genuinely interested in these people, and stuff keeps happening! Like Unfamiliar Spellings, Shadeshock has this marvelous feeling of certainty—that while I may not be able to see more than a few yards ahead of me at any given time, there’s plenty of story ahead if I just keep going. Which is awesome. And also strange/interesting, given that both stories take place in the same alternate universe, albeit about 100 years apart. (As my friend Nat pointed out, maybe the lesson is that this universe is just a sweet spot for me?)

Anyhow, enough rambling (you only came for the excerpt, right?). Usual disclaimers about NaNo drafts apply (particularly the disclaimer about historical accuracy—it’s NaNo, which gives me an excuse to make stuff up until I have time to do proper research). And while I’d normally include a bit of context, I think this excerpt is fairly self-explanatory:

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Arthur took a moment to look over his companions. One, Orson Wilkins, was a stolid man of 40 or so who had not spoken a word in the four days that Arthur had known him. Arthur supposed the trenches had rendered him mute—he’d seen it happen to several men in his own battalion. The other, Brian Yates, was a fair, freckled lad (not much older than Arthur) with a thousand-yard stare. His eyes, wide and pale, looked out into nothingness with a kind of mad serenity that Arthur both feared and envied. He sometimes wondered if he held that gaze whether he might somehow acquire it as well, but every time he met Yates’ eyes, he found he had to look away. The experience was too damn unnerving.
The orderly accompanying them to Scotland ushered them aboard the train and into a compartment. Yates moved mechanically, not seeming to take in any of his surroundings, and Arthur took it upon himself to help load Yates’ meager luggage into the rack above the seats.
“Thanks,” said the orderly, after they had fitted all the trunks into their allotted space. Arthur tried to remember his name. Something straightforward and so very English sounding. Corporal Smith? Johnson? Williams?
“You’re welcome,” he said, with a polite smile. Since Yates was still standing, Arthur maneuvered around him into the corner nearest the window and sat down so that he’d have a view and a wall to rest his head against. He lifted his rucksack into his lap and began to fish around inside it for his book.
“So what’s your story?” Corporal English asked.
“Sorry?” Arthur looked up from his bag.
“You seem right normal to me,” the corporal continued. “Past two days, I haven’t seen you do or say a single mad thing. Not typical of the lot we get.”
“Right,” Arthur said. “Well, I’m sorry to have confused you. Shall I put on a serious face and wrap my tie around my head and tell you about my mother the Faerie Queen?”
For a moment, the man just stared at him. Then he let out a chuckle and reached out to gently push Yates into a seated position.
“Can’t say I’ve ever had someone joke like that on this ride either,” he said. “You know, I don’t believe you’re mad in the slightest. Or shell-shocked. Or whatever it is they’re calling it.”
It was the sort of statement that ought to have pleased him but for some reason did exactly the opposite. Arthur inhaled and forced a smile. “I suppose that’s for the good men and women of Craiglockhart to decide,” he said. “Speaking of which, can I ask you something?”
“Go ahead.” With Yates and Wilkins and their luggage all safely stowed, the corporal flopped down into the seat across from Arthur.
“Who or what is ‘Halse’? The doctor mentioned the name just now, back on the platform.”
“Dr. Halse, probably. He works at Craiglockhart.”
“Do you know him?”
“No. Met him just the once, in passing.”
“How would you describe him, based on that?”
“Hmm.” The orderly tilted his head to the side, looking up towards the ceiling. “Agreeable. Energetic. That’s about all I can say.”
Arthur nodded, fished around in his bag until he came up with the book Uncle Abram had lent him—a copy of Tess of the d’Urbervilles—and resolutely buried his face in it, determined to avoid further conversation with Corporal English for as long as the 8-hour train ride would permit.

NaNoWriMo 2012: Sunday Check-In #3

Okay, I KNOW it’s not Sunday anymore. But I wrote most of this post yesterday in the wee hours of the morning and just ended up too tired to finish it. Better late than never!

Words to be written today: 1667
Words written today: 1667
Total word goal so far: 31666
Total words so far: 26689

So yes, as predicted, last week’s sleepless craziness curtailed my noveling activities—but it’s Thanksgiving break now (yayyyy Thanksgiving) and I am determined to catch up! Anyhow, here is another excerpt (usual disclaimers about the suckiness of NaNoWriMo drafts apply, obviously). For context:

Thanks in part to the events portrayed in last week’s excerpt, Arthur has been temporarily relieved of duty, which means that he’s no longer leading a scheduled foray into enemy territory. Instead, his fellow officer and new friend Emre will be leading the attack. Arthur is immensely frustrated and worried. First of all by the fact that he won’t be there to keep his men safe, and secondly by the fact that Emre (who’s currently making Arthur very…er, confused, on a number of levels) will be leading the trench-capturing attempt instead.

Arthur spent the next few hours lying on a makeshift cot in one of the commandeered houses in P’tit Auberge, staring listlessly at the ceiling. He felt he ought to be doing something productive with his time—sleeping or reading or writing letters or conducting some kind of experiment for Martin to make fun of later on. But the apathy gripped him and pinned him to the cot while his thoughts whirled. Other soldiers came and went in the hall outside, but he didn’t even notice that someone else had entered the room until he heard a voice.
“Arthur?”
Arthur looked up and then quickly propped himself up on his elbows. Emre stood in the doorway, one hand on the doorframe, his thin dark brows drawn together in concern.
“You all right?”
“Yes,” Arthur said. He swung his legs around to hang over the edge of the cot and tried to comb his hair with his fingers—basically doing anything he could to not look like he’d been moping here on this cot for the past several hours, even though that was precisely what he’d been doing. “Yes, I’m quite all right.”
Emre nodded as though to say, Yes, of course you are. You’re just as all right as the rest of us are, which is to say, not at all. He stepped into the room and shut the door behind him.
“Listen, I wanted to ask your advice about something.”
He didn’t understand it. How had the room become so much smaller now that the door was closed? Emre’s presence seemed to radiate out to fill the space, and Arthur felt uncomfortably warm. He realized he’d been lying there in his jacket and boots all afternoon and set about pulling the jacket off so he’d have something to do besides looking Emre in the eyes.
“I—“ Emre began, and promptly cut himself off. He made a couple of noncommittal noises. “Damn it, I can’t think of a good way to phrase this, so bear with me. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I know you’d do a better job of this than I would.”
“You’ll be fine,” Arthur said. “It’s a pretty routine affair, and you’ll have machine gun cover like always.”
“Routine for you.” Arthur glanced up. Emre was smiling so wryly that he looked more ill than amused. “The only forays I’ve led are on paper or in my mind’s eye. There are a thousand little things I can’t know. I’m as green as they come, and I know it. The men know it. I don’t know what Sharpe is thinking, assigning me to this.” He paused, picking at invisible bits of lint on the sleeve of his jacket. “You mind if I sit?”
“No, of course not.” Arthur scooted sideways, and Emre sank heavily onto the cot beside him. The room had become even smaller. Arthur felt like every molecule of his being was aware of the other man sitting there, staring at his hands, absentmindedly picking at his fingernails. Having shrugged off and folded his jacket, Arthur began unlacing his boots so he’d have something to do.
“You said you wanted me about something?” he prompted.
“Oh. Right.” Emre cocked his head to one side, looking towards the window on the other side of the room. The weak light of late afternoon painted pale highlights across his cheeks and the curve of his neck. He seemed to struggle to find the words before he blurted out, “You know the rumors about you, right?”
“Rumors?” Arthur repeated. Something hot and unnamable bubbled uncomfortably in his chest.
“About your hunches,” Emre said. “I’ve heard the men talking all afternoon. They don’t want me leading this either. They say it’s because of your hunches.”
“What about them?” Arthur muttered.
“That they’re accurate. Pure dead accurate.”
Arthur tilted his chin down and rubbed the back of his head, then ran his fingers through his hair to comb it back into place. Emre waited in patient silence.
“A few times when I was a kid,” Arthur said at last, quietly, “I’d be out walking, and I’d get this…this feeling. Dedham’s a perfectly safe place, so it only happened a couple of times. But each time, it was like this force pushing me away from the place I’d been standing. Almost like a voice telling me without words, ‘Something bad is about to happen here.’ Once, I was walking with my sister when that feeling came over me. I dragged her off the road and into the nearby woods. Maybe fifteen seconds later, an automobile came hurtling over the crest of the hill and crashed in the ditch right where we’d been. Another time, I was heading home from school and I had this sudden…I can’t explain it, but I had this urge to climb a tree right next to the footpath. A deer walked by a few moments later. And I was still watching her when the hunters in the wood shot her. If I’d still been down there, it could have been me they hit instead.”
He couldn’t believe it. As the words poured out of him, Arthur seemed almost to watch himself from a distance as he told his deepest secret to someone he’d known for a little over a week. But Emre was…Emre. It made sense, even when it made no sense at all.
“At any rate, I didn’t realize it was anything more than couple of peculiar moments until I got out here. I figure,” he added, “it’s because my chances of dying are a whole lot higher.”
“Well damn,” Emre said with a smile. “And here I was hoping you’d have some concrete advice for us mere mortals.”
The phrase “mere mortals” made Arthur’s stomach turn.
“Look, Emre, I need to tell you something else,” he said. The words poured out of him, as though now that he’d uncorked the bottle the wine could not stop flowing. “Did Sharpe tell you why I’ve been relieved of duty?”
“He…told me he was concerned you’d developed neurasthenia.”
“I don’t know. God, I don’t know what’s happening to me.” He rubbed his eyes and then pinched the bridge of his nose. “D’you remember Corporal MacGillicuddy? Did you ever meet him?”
“No,” Emre said softly. “I saw his name on a list of the dead. Was he a friend?”
“Of a sort,” Arthur mumbled. He was silent for a moment, then continued: “He was the NCO who took me under his wing when I was a greenhorn like you. He showed me the ropes. Taught me what to listen for to identify different kinds of shells. I captured my first trench with his help. Never would have got far without him.” He swallowed. “Well, as you know, he died a few days ago.”
“I’m sorry,” Emre said. He reached out a hand to touch Arthur’s shoulder, and a prickling warmth spread down across Arthur’s back at the contact.
“So am I. Only, I saw him yesterday.”
Emre frowned in confusion but didn’t speak. Arthur realized that was one of the things he appreciated about Emre—he left space for you to work out your own thoughts without assuming things or asking questions.
“I saw him yesterday, in the trench. And not in a ‘I wished that he was alive and wanted to see him so I thought I saw him’ kind of way. I didn’t fucking know he was dead.”
The tears came out of nowhere, so fast that he didn’t even realize what was happening until his face had screwed up and a painful tightness had swept up through him and into his throat. He put his face in his hands, clenching his teeth and trying to control the hiccupping that shook him. The hand on his shoulder tightened.
Arthur collected himself, and Emre waited.

NaNoWriMo 2012: Sunday Check-In #1

NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO NANOWRIMO

Hi guys. Apparently I’m excited, or something. We are now four days into NaNoWriMo 2012, and the stats stand thus:

Words to be written today: 1667
Words written today: 1859
Total word goal so far: 6667
Total words so far: 7068

So WOOT for being ahead of schedule! 7068 words is great…but 7068 words of what?

To tell you the truth, I’m not quite sure what this novel is yet: historical fantasy? YA fantasy? Alternate history? All of the above? The working title is SHADESHOCK (shout out to John, Mark, and Olivia for helping me figure that out). For those of you who’ve read UNFAMILIAR SPELLINGS, it’s set in the same universe, but nearly 100 years earlier (a fact that, as you may recall if you read the chapter epigraphs, is very significant from a legal standpoint). I’m having a blast revisiting this world in such a different way—it’s a story completely unlike Albert and Julia’s, but I still get to throw in all these cross references between the two. So much fun. Anyhow, here’s the working synopsis I’ve got posted on my NaNo profile at the moment (given that I’m a pantser, it’s sure to change, but just to give you a vague sense):

France, 1916

2nd Lt. Calibor Arthur Tildon was born lucky. There’s a reason his men trust an 18-year-old officer to lead them, even in horrifying trench conditions with the constant danger of self-destructive magical weaponry—he’s clever and resourceful, with a sixth sense for danger and a knack for being in the right place at the right time.

But that was before Arthur had a conversation with a dead man. Before his beloved friend, Emre, killed himself with a magic-infused grenade. Before Arthur realized that not all the people he sees in the trenches are alive.

Questioning his own sanity, Arthur is diagnosed with shellshock and shipped back to England. But as it becomes clearer that the ghosts aren’t figments of his imagination, all the psychological treatment in the world won’t answer his questions: Why are the ghosts of soldiers haunting him? What do they want? And, most painfully, why is Emre’s ghost the only one he can’t see?

With the help of his skeptical sister Lena and their little brother Septimus, Arthur will have to navigate the shady and fraud-ridden world of spiritualism and magic to get the answers he needs. But with an angry medium, a greedy magician, and an army psychologist on his trail, Calibor Arthur Tildon may have gotten himself into more trouble than he can handle—and his lifelong supply of luck may finally be running out.

So there you have it! I’ll also just say that, so far, this novel is literally the first time in my writing career (that I can recall) where (DUN DUN DUN) I have written characters who are attracted to each other the moment they first meet.

*le gasp*

But actually, guys. This is a big deal. Normally, I eschew romantic plotlines altogether, and if I must have them, the characters in question are always good friends before they consider being anything more. And I’d intended that to be the case in this instance as well…but…nope. Just a lot of UST, right from the get go in their very first conversation. I figure this exception probably has to do with the constraints of the plot, but since the plot is a fluid thing, WHO KNOWS WHAT WILL HAPPEN. For now, however, the tension must stay unresolved.

At any rate, that’s what I’m up to this month. Hopefully, you’ll hear from me on Thursday. In the meantime, though:

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P.S. For those of you who are doing this crazy NaNo thing too: *fistbump of solidarity* What are you writing this year, and how’s it going out there so far?

It’s that time of year again… (or, “NaNoWriMo Will Eat Your Soul, But You’ll Be Happy”)

NANOWRIMO IS COMING! NANOWRIMO IS COMING!*

I can’t believe it. My fourth NaNoWriMo (and my 6th one-month writing challenge, if you count my Camp NaNoWriMo participation for the past couple of years). By this point, there’s little question of my ability to get 50,000 words in a month—it’s just a matter of making sure I get them.

But this year is a bit more nervous-making than previous years. Et pourquoi, you ask?

1. This semester is the heaviest academic workload of my college career (i.e. most reading and most time spent in class).
2. On a related note, I’m taking five courses instead of the usual four.
3. I’m the president of my school’s NaNoWriMo club, so I’ll be organizing write-ins on top of doing my own writing.
4. I’ve got two other sets of extracurricular commitments.
5. Most importantly: I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M WRITING ABOUT YET (I’ve had several ideas so far, but not one that’s really jumped out and grabbed me by the front of the shirt, so to speak).

This song basically sums up my feelings:

And every year, I inevitably end up having the following conversation with my father:

Me: Daddyyyyyyy, I have so much to dooooooo this semester! I have to [rattles off list of commitments]. And on top of that, there’s NaNo in November! It’s going to be SO MUCH WORK. I’m going to DIE.
Dad: (with a mixture of amusement, concern, and slight annoyance) You know, you could skip NaNo this year.
Me: O.O HOW COULD YOU SAY SUCH A THING? NO. SACRILEGE. CANNOT SKIP NANO.

I don’t blame my dad for hoping I might forego noveling madness in favor of normal academic madness. I’m sure if it were my kid whining to me about self-imposed nonessential stress, I’d be offering the same advice. But the truth is that no matter how much I complain, no matter how much I naysay and worry that my grades will go down the toilet, or that I’ll never sleep, or that I’ll spend the month as a basket case, I somehow emerge—exhausted, triumphant, and with grades intact—on December 1st. And honestly, that’s kind of the best part. All the stress makes victory feel like that much more of an achievement, and as the NaNoWritis song puts it:

But I’ve gone through all of this before
So I know what November has in store
If I’ve done it once, I can do it again
‘Cause it feels so damn good when I finally win

It’s my last chance to do NaNo in college. My last chance to prove to myself that I am capable of doing this. And I’m doing it because I love it.

So here I go!

How about you, dear readers and raptors? Leave a comment and let us all know if you’re noveling too this November!

*If you’re new around here and don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, click here!