This weekend held a couple of blasts from the past. First, Mikey's cousin, Nicholas, had his sixth birthday party at Rollero. (That's the roller rink, for the non-Phoenicians on the blog.) I haven't been there in years . . . since either high school or maybe as far back as elementary school. I seem to recall a birthday party there - maybe Mike, Renee, Melissa, or Stacy on FB can help me remember who's party it was. My brain keeps saying at least one of you was there.

Anyway, the moment I stepped inside, I could have sworn I'd stepped back in time about twenty years or so. They played some of the same songs on the sound system. Same disco ball in the center of the rink. Even the benches were the same: bright primary and secondary colors on vaguely L-shaped seats. One of the guys bopping around on skates was dressed like it was the early 80's. Although, back then, I suspect his hair wasn't quite so gray. Rollero is an unchanged bit of my childhood - detached from time and floating on an asphalt sea. It's not the same roller rink I spent all that time in as a kid in Florida, but a roller rink is pretty much a roller rink.

Yes, I did put on skates and take a few turns around the floor. If hadn't had to work, I'd have been out there more. It took a little bit for my body to remember what it's supposed to do. Zac and Mikey had a good time skating. Jacob is still getting used to walking in the skates and wasn't really willing to get out there - something I understand all too well.

The other walk down memory lane was Metrocenter. Those of you not living in Phoenix, go rent Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Go on, the rest of us will wait for you to catch up. Metro is the shopping mall from the film. (Side note: See if you can spot my buddy Colin's shoes at Circle K in the movie.) Back? Okay. I worked at The GameKeeper on the south end of the mall for about three years along with my buddy, Scott.

At Metro, things have changed. Frankly, it looks like the place is on life support. Two anchors empty. Dozens of unrented spaces. The GameKeeper is long gone. The chain was sold to Wizards of the Coast back in '99 and ultimately shut down. I remember being so excited at the beautiful remodeling job completed while I worked there. Now, all those brilliant colors are hidden away behind black drapes and almost all the slots on our end of the mall are vacant. The Game Nights operating out of the old Imaginarium spot was packed, though. It looked like they had a CCG tournament going on.

The Waldenbooks slot has never been remodeled since the store closed. In a way, the whole mall felt haunted - too little life overlaid across years of memories. Ghosts of the past walking the halls unseen by holiday shoppers and teens focused on their cell phones. Some things don't change, though. Suncoast Video is still there. So is Sweet Factory, where I first encountered chocolate covered gummi bears. But too much has changed.

Strange how some places are locked in time and others die within it . . . there might be a couple of books in that thought.

Tags: childhood

The Moon, the Road, my Daddy and Me

The world is huge!

Full of black roads

Roaming everywhere.

I thump along by Daddy’s side,

Hand gripping his finger,

Pink shoes slapping.

There are rocks -

Small, medium, large -

Beside our path. I stop and

Point. Daddy names them.

Precious gems for

My word collection.

We pass two dogs. One behind

A fence, another

Across the road, tail

Lifted high and waving.

I name them for Daddy

So he knows what they are.

Noises above!

Lights moving in the

Orange-red sky

Buzzing past a white circle.

Daddy gives me “Airplane”

And “Moon.”

Nestled now in strong arms

Smell of soap on his

Shirt, comfy shoulder,

We turn for home.

The road, the moon,

My Daddy and me.

- John A. Higginbotham Jr.

11/26/09

Tags: elizabeth, poetry, writing

That sound? Yeah, it's my writing productivity for the week.

I managed to get into the war room once since Saturday. Thus, I'm raising the white flag on NaNo for this year. I'm continuing to plug away at the book, but I'm not going to stress about needing to hit 50K by the 30th. There's enough stress right now in other areas.

I've spent much of this week doling out new keys to the customers in the middle of my route. After four years, the Post Office finally replaced seven stops worth of my rusted out backloaders with brand new boxes. They did it much sooner than anyone expected too. I delivered keys on Thursday and the boxes were installed on Monday. Quite a few of my customers hadn't picked up their mail in time.

Joy and I watched the first episode of AMC's remake of The Prisoner last night. I am VERY pleased. I loved the original series - short though it was. This one hit all the right notes with me.

Tags: nanowrimo, post office, tv, writing

After a very long week, we come to Friday. I'd hoped to have today and Monday off from work. I have a couple of X days built up from working my relief day. (X days are also known as 'comp days' to the non-Postal.) However, I've run afoul of the most wonderful time of year - that period in which we may not use previously earned X days, nor may we bank them for later use. Translation: I have to work. :(

What does this mean for the novel? It means no catch-up for John. It also means the chances of me reaching the 50K goal by November 30 are very, very slim. I am not upset, really.

The Boy with the Goblin Sword is flowing nicely. I have encountered one problematic scene which will need a complete rewrite - primarily because I put the wrong character into the scene initially. I realized this last night after bemoaning how bad the scene was and despising it completely - mostly because the characters didn't seem to be themselves. Well, no wonder! How else are my characters going to react when the person they're dealing with is acting completely out of character? The rough draft looks strange because I changed who was in the scene WITHOUT going back and editing it now, but I can fix it in rewrites.

Here's where the text stands now:

13747 / 50000 words. 27% done!

Tags: aedyll, nanowrimo, writing

Previous years, I've fretted over falling behind on the daily word count. This year . . . I'm not all that worried for some reason. No, I'm not catching up, but the story is flowing nicely. The characters all feel like themselves. There are new plot elements showing up blending into the rest of the world almost seamlessly with how I imagined it. Best of all, I think I might begin to see how Winnie and Carl get from where they started to where they end up.

Will I hit 50K by the end of the month? I'm not sure.

Will the book get written? You betcha!

Seriously, how can I stress when I recently found this clip of The Wizard from Wallace & Ladmo?

 

8071 / 50000 words. 16% done!

Today, I'm posting a small taste of what I wrote yesterday for BGS. (I keep thinking that abbreviation is far to close to the one for Battlestar Galactica.) I still haven't reached Day 3's goal,but I should make good headway against it tonight. I've also been remiss in keeping my word count up on the Nanowrimo website. *shrug*

 

( Snippet under the cut . . . )

 

4511 / 50000 words. 9% done!

I am behind on my word count goal. No big surprise there - the first few days of November clobbered me hard last year too. This year was no different. In addition to the regular weekly full coverages and the monthly ones, the community college sent out catalogs this week. So, I've had two full coverages each day this week. This leaves quite a bit of mental fatigue upon getting home and isn't exactly conducive to pumping out scenes.

Which brings me to an interesting point. So much of NaNoWriMo focuses on word count, but m_stiefvater made an interesting comment the other day about how she views a novel not as a collection of words, but as a collection of scenes. I like this concept because it's similar to how I view my own writing. In fact, while I was writing OAL, I kept a list of scenes to complete so I didn't forget any of the moments I desperately wanted to have in the story.

A quick check of my writing buddies list over at the official NaNo website reveals I need to give a shout out to ordos45 and Zoe for already having hit the halfway mark. Great job, you two!

 

3412 / 50000 words. 7% done!

Tags: aedyll, linkage, nanowrimo, writing

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it's November again. Which means National Novel Writing Month is back and once again, I'm plugging away at the goal of writing a 50K word novel in 30 days.

As I've said in earlier posts, this year, I'm writing The Boy with the Goblin Sword (a.k.a. AEdyll - book 2). Winnie and Carl are still trapped in the world of AEdyll - the way home is blocked and their one hope of removing the barrier . . . well, it didn't exactly pan out the way they hoped. In the parallel storyline taking place six years later, Winnie's discovered someone is actively helping the Darkness and she's about to learn just how much worse things can get . . .

I'd intended to stay up last night and get some writing in just after midnight. However, I came home from our Fall Festival with a splitting headache. I crashed before 10pm and woke up around 3 still in pain. I did manage to get back to sleep and rest enough I didn't feel out of it for church.

Anyway, current progress bar for BGS:

 

1682 / 50000 words. 3% done!

Tags: aedyll, nanowrimo

Yesterday, I was attacked by a dog while delivering the mail. The Post Office knows this will happen sooner or later. In training, we're told that if you like dogs, you'll probably have one incident with a dog in your first three years. If you're afraid of them . . . make that nine months. I like dogs and in seven years, I've had two truly serious concerns - yesterday being the second one.

He didn't get me. I backed away from him and used the dog spray on him - twice. He got the message the second time. I also discovered how badly the dog spray canisters leak when they're old. I ended up with the orange oily stuff all over my right hand. I used a full bottle of water to wash it off and even then I made a point of not touching my face until I'd thoroughly washed my hands. As an aside, a solid scrub with the fingernail brush would have been a good idea. I still had some of it under my nails - not enough to really hurt, but the burning sensation isn't fun.

I finished the GCB read through. I can already see where I'll need to do quite a bit of clean up on this project. Part of that is going to include getting Campaign Cartographer installed on this computer so I can recreate the map of AEdyll and mark out the towns and landmarks. And then, there's the world bible that needs to be put together. But I see gold beneath the dross of this project.

Just over 48 hours to NaNoWriMo . . . BGS outline is making slow progress. This one is a little more challenging because I split the party and now have to divide the past story chapters into a Winnie part and a Carl part. Which means Winnie is getting a larger share of the writing now. It feels important to start putting some of the past into her POV because of where this storyline ultimately ends, but I don't want to completely shut out Carl's voice either. This book may end up bigger than GCB . . . and some of the early chapters may end up moving to that book when I finish the major revisions. Don't know. Too soon to tell.

Like last year, I'll be posting more frequently during NaNo than I have been - just to keep everyone updated on how I'm doing.

Tags: aedyll, nanowrimo, post office, writing

I set the alarm clock for dark:thirty this morning so I could watch the Orionid meteor shower a bit. I didn't watch for more than half and hour before going back to bed, but I did get to see several beautiful meteors. It made me grin thinking about another late night in the schoolyard at Litchfield Elementary - looking at Haley's comet through telescopes borrowed from the high school - and here I was looking at the after effects of that visit all these years later.

I made good progress on the BGS outline yesterday. I managed to throw in a complication for the characters that will be rather difficult to solve. I've also noticed I'm doing something rather odd with character introductions on this project. For the uninitiated, the AEdyll stories are told in parallel format - one storyline takes place in the past, the other occurs in the present. It's the same set of characters, so I'm having to write both who they are and who they were simultaneously. However, I find I'm introducing new characters into the present storyline before the MCs meet them in the past. I've done this with three characters so far. The strange thing is . . . I think it works - for these stories, anyway.

Tags: aedyll, memories, space, writing