From the Window

I have turned our upstairs room into an office. This makes my husband happy since I’m live in clutter and he can’t tolerate it. I have never set out to be a person who clutters and I really don’t like it, but it seems I get busy with other things, and never get around to do anything about it. Besides, I know where everything is right now. What would happen if I organized everything? I would probably never find anything I need.

But to get to the point of this blog—there is a big window upstairs that faces the back yard. It is right at the top of the stairs. When I look out from my desk, I see the tops of trees and can watch as they change with the seasons. Right now, the tree right outside the window is a gorgeous rusty red. Often, I go to the window and look out when I run out of ideas for writing.

My husband has made a wonderland of the back yard, mainly with found treasures. He walks several miles a day and in his wanderings he finds people’s discards. He’s found several items of clothing that are like brand new. He brings them home, throws them in the washing machine and the dryer, then he wears them. He’s found enough winter hats and gloves that we had quite a stash to give to a group who was collecting warm winter things for kids in the city.

He also finds decorative items that he incorporates in the back yard landscape. Right now, there’s an old bench, graying from age, sitting out there and a big wooden disc painted sun yellow, its rays flowing out. He’s also brought home a bird bath and a sign that says “Welcome to our home.” I do hope anyone walking by with the intent of ripping us off doesn’t take that to heart.

He’s built a platform for the corn he feeds the squirrel family. He had to make it high enough that Annie can’t get to the squirrels while they eat. Mulan can reach the corn and since she will eat anything, she makes a feast of it, given the chance.

Some of the stuff he finds is pretty kitschy and I often tell him enough is enough, but it makes him happy to have that stuff in the yard and it gives me a good laugh. That is, as long as it’s in the back yard where no one else can see it. The day he brought home a blue and yellow balloon bouquet and put it by the front porch, I drew the line. I told him those balloons were probably intended to celebrate the birth of a baby boy and since we are both too old to be having babies, it looked pretty silly. Finally, when the neighbor crossed the street and, laughing, asked if we had some news, he agreed to get rid of the balloons. 

Sometimes when our two dogs are out in the yard, I watch them play with each other. Our little dog, Annie, is a bundle of energy. Mulan, the collie, is older and moves pretty slowly, so her play isn’t too energetic. Still, it’s fun to watch Annie try to get Mulan involved in a jumping and running game. If Annie gets too bored with Mulan, however, she’ll go off in search of the squirrels who run up a tree and chatter, taunting her. 

I’ve traveled a great deal in my life and I enjoyed every moment of it, but right now, I’m happy to look out the big window that allows me to see the ever-changing landscape in the back yard.

 

 

 

 

NaNo and Me

I’ve ignored my blog for several weeks because I decided to participate in NaNo this year. NaNo, for those not in the “No,” is the yearly novel writing exercise that takes place in November. Some of my friends have participated in it and I understand a couple of people have produced best-selling novels out of the NaNo experience. The point of the exercise is to write 50,000 words in one month. Those 50,000 words, unedited, are to be the first draft of a novel.

 

In the past, my attempts at fiction writing have all been failures, even though I’ve taken two classes in the genre. I start out okay, but by the third or fourth page, I sink into the quicksand of directionless plot lines and confusing character development. This happens when I try to write a short story. As I started the NaNo project on Nov. 1, I asked myself how I was ever going to develop a 50,000 word novel if I couldn’t even make it through four pages of a short story. I persevered, though, writing every day, trying to develop the two characters, a husband and wife, the best I knew how.

 

I was more than 2,000 words into the story, with my main female character brooding alone in a coffee shop. She is an amalgam of several women I have known, one of them my first mother-in-law. Her name was Virginia. I liked her a lot. She was a wife and a mother of four. By the time I married her son, the family lived in a suburb west of St. Louis in a beautiful ranch-style house. She had a maid who did a lot of the housework. Virginia, like the women who came of age when I did were expected to conform to certain expectations. However, by the time I became an adult, things were changing quickly. Even so, I still saw a lot of unhappy women stuck in marriages, living in houses far from anything but other houses like theirs. I don’t know if that happens so much now, but I do know there are women who are unhappy with their lives as they try to find meaning in what they’ve settled for. I also know my own children and their families live in suburban developments cut off from any kind of community life. However, the women my sons married are active and don’t confine themselves to the house. My character has married a good man, who is a professional and provides for her. Still, something is lacking and she can’t figure out what it is. Thus, the brooding.

 

At the point I quit writing, this character had decided to take a walk out of her suburban development to the little shopping center nearby. There she goes to the Starbuck’s and sits alone, hoping no one will want to strike up a conversation.

 

So I got this far when I started getting updates from NANO. As I read these updates, I began to feel like I had joined a cheerleading camp for writers. I’ve been writing poetry for a long time and I’ve never spent a day co-writing my poems, or, for that matter, my blogs or anything else I write. As far as I know, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Edith Wharton, and Joyce Carol Oates never invited others to be a part of their writing experience. Not until an editor got hold of their work, anyway. I began to get a little nervous about what I’d gotten myself into.

 

In the meantime, I got word about some poetry contests that I needed to enter right away because deadlines were coming up fast. I turned my attention to preparing poetry for the contests and away from my story. The story was still in my head, but I didn’t have time to get it down on paper.

 

Then the final blow came. I got an update from NANO the other day asking for donations. I’m not sure what the donations are for. When I click on the web site and try to find out who the money will go to, it’s pretty unclear. I’m retired, living on a limited income. I’ve already donated to my own cause of writing by buying a new computer last summer and paying entry fees for contests.

 

So, for now I will abandon my NANO project and keep it in storage until I can get back to it in a non-NANO month. I will continue to work alone in my cluttered upstairs room when I can the tops of trees out of the big window and where I can shut out the world. I wish the best of luck to those are forging ahead. I do hope at least one of them can get a best seller out of the project.