something to read this time

I'm still not really sure where my novel is going at the moment and writing has been slow this week. So last night, after a conversation with Tim about a bill recently passed in Utah that would allow prisons to use a firing squad in situations where lethal injection isn't available, I wrote what I suppose would be called  a scene along the same train of thought. It was refreshing to write something that's outside my current box. I'm fairly pleased with it, as morbid as that might sound, and I thought I'd share it for my post this week. It's not at all graphic but if this topic isn't your cup of tea you might want to skip.

[I have no intention or interest in starting a debate about the death penalty or the way in which it may be carried out so please don't make this a platform for an argument.]


***


     I never imagined it ending this way, my life.
     I'd known the "how" for a month but I'd never really pictured it. Strapped to a chair, legs, arms, head, staring at a wall with a slit in it just big enough for the rifle barrels. I don't think it's something I'd have been able to imagine before being brought into this grey room.
     There's no panic, just a sort of wonder.
     I wonder about the men behind the rifles, maybe women. How many wished the prison had been able to obtain the chemicals for a lethal injection so they didn't have to be here. How many didn't care.
     My lawyer had wanted me to care, to fight. In thirty years there had been unnumbered chances to fight. I bet she knows the number. But I hadn't cared when I wrecked that train. I didn't see why I should be allowed to care now. I hadn't imagined it this way, but I wouldn't argue.
     173. It should have been 174 but few things end the way we expect them to. I chose this seat when I flipped that switch and pushed that lever forward. I think some part of my mind must have known that then but I didn't dwell on imagining this moment. It was supposed to be 174. Today it would be. It would be quick, but a death thirty years slower than planned.
     Nothing comes out the way we plan. 174 plans, interrupted, all but one put eternally on hold. I think that's my legacy in life, ruined plans. The people behind the rifles probably had plans for today before the drug manufacturers held up their shipment.
     The straps press into my skin. The chair arms are cold. How long will my arms bear the pattern of the restraints? I wonder if I'll get to see, after. I can still taste the banana pancakes I had for lunch. They put the bananas in the batter instead of just on top. That was nice. The two taste completely different.
     I wonder how much longer. Maybe there's a problem. Maybe one of the riflemen got a call that his wife just went into labor. I don't mind.
     How many others will sit in this chair and see this slit? Jason, Kobe, and Ben are all on the row, others must be too. Kobe's still fighting his. Jason told me to tell him how it is. Maybe they'll have the chemicals again by the time their afternoons come around.
     I don't think any of them would imagine this either.
     It's quieter than it's ever been in thirty years. Even at night you could always hear the other guys breathing, muttering in their sleep, crying. The steady step of the detention officer pacing the floor. There might be a shuffling behind the wall but I feel like I've pulled inward, all I can hear is my own pulse. I wonder if that really is what waves sound like. I've never been to the ocean. I was headed there once, but I never made ---

let's go see the chickens!

Nanowrimo is going pretty well. I'm clocked in at over 6,000 words right now, averaging about 3 pages a day. Now, that's nowhere near what I need to be writing to hit 50,000 words by the end of the month but I'm not really stressed about that. Writing this much this consistently isn't something I usually manage. Sometimes I'll have a day where I write ten pages but it's usually dry spells in between and it's learning to write through those times that this month is really helping me with. Hitting the 50,000 words would be cool, but there are other lessons and habits that I can pick up regardless of what my final word count is for the month.

That being said, for the most part writing has been pretty smooth sailing thus far. I had a pretty good idea of where things were going and what was happening next but now I've exhausted that [and my notebook along with it] and I've hit a slow period where not much is going on. I realized this rather abruptly on Tuesday and the question has been sitting in my brain since then: what do we do? My characters are stuck in a mandatory waiting period which could ultimately work well for pacing purposes or it might be best to do a literary "five weeks later" [did anyone else hear that in the SpongeBob narrator voice?] and jump to when things start happening again. The latter may be what I go with in revisions, who knows, but with the context of the quote I shared from Neil Gaiman last week I'm pushing forward to see what might become of this slower time. I'm trying to figure out what could be meaningful about it for the two characters who are currently able to do more than lie in bed.

Last night I decided to go see the chickens. The dialogue seemed to be stalling within the group so I thought, let's take a tour, and the first place we're going is to see the chickens. It's not the most exciting thing, though one has already scared the living daylights out of Kamdon - he may be scarred for life - but you have to start somewhere before your characters can tell you what they want to do. I think I might keep "let's go see the chickens" as my little mantra for situations like this where I have a sense of where the story is going, long-term, but not in the immediate present. It's just weird and funny enough for me to remember what it means and remember to loosen up a little in my planning.

Speaking of planning, flights have been rescheduled and Emily [from high school - I'm not referring to myself in third person] is coming out on the second week of December! I'm excited to hang out during the holiday season. It'll be cold, but hopefully pretty!

I've been watching Gilmore Girls for the first time since the whole thing is now available on Netflix. So, in closing, I will leave you with possibly my favorite scene thus far. The dialogue from this show plus cats? You can't lose.

a change in plans

Daylight Savings went into effect this week and now it's entirely too bright in my bedroom in the morning. I'm sure it was this bright over the summer but that's something you get used to as the sun gradually comes up earlier and earlier every day. In the last few weeks we were waking up to dim light that has been replaced with what feels like a glowing neon rectangle. I really need to invest in some blackout curtains but I waffle on that idea because they're kind of expensive and we live in an apartment where installing such things would probably be against our contract or something. I saw another apartment that had taped construction paper to their kid's window, presumably so they can take naps during the day. Necessity is truly the mother of invention.

I know I said I wouldn't be posting this week but due to a sudden dental emergency, my friend was unable to fly out to stay with us this week. We're working on rescheduling but the week goes on regardless.

This has freed up some time for writing, which, honestly, I haven't done very much of this week. Yesterday I got a bit sidetracked making a "cover" for my novel along with actually creating the look of the marks that are so central to the story. [The official NaNoWriMo website claims that authors with "covers" are 60% more likely to reach their word count. This may have backfired a little as I spent all of last night working on this and didn't get any writing done.] There aren't that many simple character languages out there so I've Frankenstein-ed a few together. I'm not sure if I'll ever actually use the marks as illustrations in the book but it's good for me to have a reference for descriptive purposes.

Marked is my working title. 

It gets pretty annoying to constantly refer to a story as "the novel."

The original drawing is actually flipped horizontally. 

I had to change it because Mona's Malmark is on her left wrist. 

*face-palm* 

Despite my slow start to NaNoWriMo my notebook is getting heavier, a tactile indication of progress that might be my favorite thing about writing stories long-hand. The difference in weight between a blank notebook and one that's been filled is much greater than I'd think a little ink would account for. I think the stories themselves make them heavier.

I follow Neil Gaiman on tumblr and he's been getting a lot of questions about NaNoWriMo but this has been my favorite response so far.

Writing the "boring bits" is something I this most writers have a hard time with and I'm right there with them. The pacing of a story is so important and writing a "slower" scene freaks me out sometimes because I worry that it's boring and bland and this is the point where people will put the book down and never finish it because it's awful. I've seen a lot of opinions that books should never have these "boring bits" in them, that your exposition should always be action packed and engaging. I get that we should avoid writing essays in our novels but I love that Neil points out that you don't have to add explosions to scenes like these. It's about finding the meaning in a scene and bringing it out through dialogue or someone a character does. It doesn't have to be big, it just needs to mean something. Most authors lose around a third of the text from a first draft in revisions. You cut the things that don't mean anything, that aren't important, and you're left with fewer, but more powerful words. If we try to create that kind of power even in a first draft, imagine how much better a concentrated final draft would be. Power in stories comes in action scenes, dramatic moments, but also in little conversations, small acts. So we write those "boring" scenes and we make them mean something.