He just keeps rollin' along.

I can't find Crazy Horse, can't find Hoffa, and Amelia's missing somewhere out at sea. I hope they're happy, having a party; Elvis is serving them up green apple martinis. I can't find my watch, can't find my wallet, so how in the hell am I supposed to find the one that I love...

Somehow, even knowing that it was coming doesn't make it easier. Knowing that he needed it didn't stop the pain. I'm not sad that he's better now. I don't regret all those years with him. I wish I could have been there, though. I'm scared that somehow he knew what was going on and knew that I wasn't there.

Is it bad that I thought of him like a father? Or an uncle, I guess. Or a brother. I remember when our cats died it was sad, but this feels different. Harder.

Good-bye, Boy-O. Miss you already.

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."

So let us melt, and make no noise
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

...

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

-- John Donne

<3 spadeALLcross

So It Begins

I feel like, over the now-year-and-a-half that I've used this blog, I've probably used this title already. But if you'll look at your hand and pick out one specific flake of skin that's probably dry and itchy in this dry weather, you may note that its size is congruent to the size of my caring about using a title twice.

I don't know if that paragraph made sense to you, so to sum up, basically I don't care.

Tess, Ben, Guido, Gus, Martha, Mitchell, and Tamara hit the 50,000th word at almost exactly 10:00 EST last night. In case you were curious, the word was "noise" and it was in the middle of a sentence (I didn't even finish that sentence, either, by the way). The scene that I was in the middle of building was one where Tess and Ben woke up to find themselves in...shall we say...compromised positions. [Possibly] needless to say, if I ever do go back and edit that novel, that scene will be cut out.

The past thirty days of nigh nonstop writing have driven me to pick up some...strange habits. I'm discovering more and more how crippling they are, how detrimental to the continuation of a happy, scholarly, and sane life for me. I hit "apple + S" whenever I stop typing anything. Anything. Including this blog. I've tried to save this website somewhere on my hard drive probably four times now. Also, I would write an ellipse like this...then backspace so that it looks like this..then hit space so my complete ellipse looks like this.. and I feel dumb. (Try this in Word and you might better understand why someone who is trying to get as many words out of her document as possible would do this strange exercise.) I wince whenever I press the "delete" key, and then I count the words I'm deleting and then try to quickly retype that same number to make up for lost ground.

Secret's out: I've gone 'round the bend.

This month was such a great experience. I was a part of two "regionals," meaning I affiliated myself with two "home" locations. The one I focused on was my school region, as that was the one I could most easily participate in actively. We had a Municipal Liaison, a person who's on staff at NaNoWriMo and is in charge of regional pep-talks and write-ins. So I got emails from my two MLs, from program director Chris Baty, and even a few from famous writers who had been persuaded by NaNoWriMo to contribute to the cause. These emails alone would have made the month for me.

But what I loved most of all was the camaraderie. I felt like I was a part of something. The girl in the room next to me got into NaNo too and we kept each other going at times when each of us wanted to quit. In fact, she and I wrote out last 1500 words together and pressed "submit to win" at the same time, and then did crazy dances around the lobby, banging pans and cookie sheets together. And I got to know some of the other people in my region too. I could only go to the online write-ins because I don't have a car and no one would have been able to drive me, but I learned what other people were writing about, the characters that were giving them trouble, the sticking points they had hit, and the tactics they used to boost word count.

It was a really thrilling month. However, I definitely can wait for next year. That will not be a struggle for me.

I have a lot of other stuff to write about, but this took longer than expected, so I'm going to have to put the rest off for a while longer.

<3 spadeALLcross