My Monday journaling page which I haven't posted until now!
Monday, November 28, 2011
Outside my window…It’s almost December already, just two more days, and it is surprising to look out my window and realize that it isn’t raining. The sky looks calm, with its unmoving clouds of light grey. Like someone who has cried all their tears and is now still and calm, listening to their own breathing, in and out, as they find they can cry no more. Why is it that rain and tears will always be compared as one? There are times when they seem very alike, when it feels like the clouds are crying down all their sorrows, but rain isn’t always like tears. I love rain, there is something so very beautiful about it, as if it were washing away all the dirt and grime and leaving the world clean and new once more. My very favorite short story by G.K. Chesterton is about looking at rain in that way; as a cleansing shower. There is something so very peaceful about listening to rain falling outside your window, listening to it falling on the rooftop and on the pond outside. There is nothing better than a hard rain shower, except we are always trying to avoid it. We ruin it by tucking ourselves under umbrellas and throwing coats over our heads so we are quite miserable if we get wet for all of our attempts otherwise. Next time it rains I think we should all walk out our door, throw up our heads and let the rain just fall down on us. Revel in the rain itself, go “singing in the rain”. Except it wouldn’t be that we were in love so we didn’t care how wet we became, it would be because we were in love with the rain itself, but enough about rain. It’s December, it’s not rain we’re peering out our windows hoping to see that’s snow. Snowflakes all white and sparkling and beautiful coming down, I wonder if we’ll see any soon?
I’m reading…a book by Georgette Heyer, which by the way I would really love to go read right now. I am beginning to want to start reading more Agatha Christie’s. I challenged myself, you know, to read all eighty-seven of her books. Just the fact that she had written eighty-seven books simply called to me, the fact that there were so many books by this author that I hadn’t read was like a challenging flag calling me to battle. I suddenly longed to be able to say, quite carelessly, “oh yes? Agatha Christie? I’ve read a few of her books…all of them I believe.” I printed out a list of titles and have been working my way through them, highlighting as I go. I think my currant count was thirty-four but I shall have to go back and count again, it’s been a while. My favorite is still “The Secret Adversary” mostly because of the main characters, Tommy and Tuppence. For me to love a book I must love the characters, I think that’s why my stories are always very character driven. Little to no plot (plot has always been a struggle for me) but my characters! They have my love, I love focusing on their personalities, their likes, their dislikes, little odd things that make them truly themselves. It’s interesting thinking about different people and what makes them unique and their own beautiful soul, and it’s because I love writing on that strain, my stories have always been very focused on the characters rather than on anything else.
I’m thinking…prepare yourself now, for this is the time where I am going to go off on a ranting monologue on NaNoWriMo. Once started I may never stop. You have been warned! First of all NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. Best start at the very beginning you know. 50,000 words in a month, now that is a very large goal. For myself I set a smaller goal, half of the 50,000. I wanted to get to 25,000 words by the end of November. I have really never written that much on one story, and I’m almost there! Yes, dears, I know only two more days till December, as I have already stated above, but I only have 3,000 more words. Quite easy, really. Oh my! And I think this is the most I have handwritten on one thing before! I have been handwriting a lot on it, because we are on the road so much these days I have taken advantage of that and whenever we got in the car to go somewhere I would bring along paper and a pen and write and write. I really think this has been very good for my writing. The point of NaNoWriMo is that you write your first draft of a novel in a month without editing. To simply get yourself writing in large amounts and do your fanatic editing afterwards when you had actually gotten beyond that first paragraph. Which may not sound hard, but it is very. There were so many times I wanted to go back and use the backspace key unreservedly, and I must admit, there were a few times I did. I couldn’t help myself. Some of it was just too much for me, I had to change and erase. The inner editor forced me to do it! That nagging little editor just wouldn’t let me get past that paragraph back there, where I completely messed it up and so *hangs head ashamedly* I went back, and I changed it. I am a bad girl, I know, which is why the goal I set for myself was 25,000 rather than 50,000. Perhaps, who knows, next year I might make it to the full 50,000!
