Tag: love

Writers in Relationships: NaNoWriMo with your SO Days 22-25

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Should writers date writers?

I have heard the advice that writers shouldn’t date writers. This is not advice I followed. In fact, I married one. 

My SO is also a writer. He’s already got a few books out in the wild. You might think this helps us understand each other, and in some ways it does. But in other ways, we are very, very different and often inscrutable to each other. Writers are notorious for being introverted and persnickety. We are no exception. How do you make it work when both people in the relationship are writers?

SO and I are very different writers. For one thing, he has never done NaNoWriMo. But this year was different. I talked him into participating in NaNo! Sort of…

Some people write with fountain pens and composition books and some writers need robots to tell them to write. (Shout out to WriterBot!)

How to Do NaNoWriMo with Your SO

I love tracking my word counts and setting goals and in some ways can be very methodical about my spreadsheets. I track what times of day I write best, schedule when I will take breaks, and give myself daily quotas in terms of what I want to achieve in my writing that day.

This is not how my SO writes. He doesn’t count or track or anything like that. So for him, “doing NaNo together” just meant that he started a new novel at the beginning of November and has been making extra effort to find the time to work on it this month. It’s actually been quite successful.

I write almost exclusively on the computer. My sentences never come out in the order I want them, and the ability to copy paste and move things around as I am writing is important to me. SO writes ON PAPER! On paper! Like it is 1952! With a fountain pen, no less! When I try to write on paper, it’s a hot mess that not even I can decipher. 

When SO writes on paper, he writes IN ORDER! Like, the writing comes to him in chronological order. This seems like magic to me. My writing comes in fits, small snippets of scenes or lines or images that I don’t even know where they go in the book, but I do know they are not in order. I mean, this man sits down and begins by writing the beginning, and then he writes what’s next and then what comes after that. And, he does all this on paper with a pen and does not erase or scratch out anything. Like, what kind of sorcery is this, sir?!

He’s also a solo writer. His writing is very much a solitary activity, and in general he is not as much of a joiner as I am. I often tease him about being the man alone at the isolated cabin writing by candlelight, which was the case when I met him. He would write me messages (sometimes send me letters ON PAPER, I mean, not to beat the dead horse, but whaaat?) about feeding the woodstove between scenes and writing without electricity and this is just mind-boggling to me.

I find it very motivating to write with people. I love the community of NaNoWriMo. I force my friends to write with me to hold me accountable. I do writing sprints with sprinting groups and generally that outside accountability is big motivation to me. 

So, when SO says he’s doing NaNo this year, for him that doesn’t mean joining the Alaska NaNo Discord and tracking his word counts on the NaNo site. Instead, it just means sitting down with his fountain pen and his paper as much as he can in November. 

My plant, which was my 10,000 word reward, being used like a folder in elementary school, making sure he doesn’t copy my answers.

How to Date a Writer

But even with all these differences we make it work. 

Writing is like a third person in our relationship, our polyamorous unicorn whom we both adore, but who we each make out with in very different ways. The mutual love of writing brings us together, and helps us understand each other.

The key to not letting it get in the way is just that we each know that the other cannot survive without writing. We try to make sure the other gets their words in in the same way that we make sure the other eats and sleeps.

So, all month we have been sitting down across the table from each other. I set up my candle and my plants all over the place and he tries to scooch them onto my half of the table without me noticing and we each get words out in our very different ways. I make my spreadsheets and count my words and write through my nonchronological poetic fog and he fills his fountain pen and writes the scene that comes next in a composition book. 

And it’s made us closer.

Do you all have people in your life who just get it? Are there people out there who understand your need for making art? 

Here are the days’ stats for the last few days: 

Progress:

Day 22 Word Count: 0

Day 23 Word Count: 0

Day 24 Word Count: 0

Day 25 Word Count: 0

Total Word Count: 28010

Where I Planned to Be: 40000

1667 words per day: 41675

I had planned on taking the 24th and 25th off because of Thanksgiving, but this week went sideways. Hoping I am going to be able to catch up some this weekend! 

Sharing: Natural Disaster by Nika Ann Rasco

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Here’s another wordpress find that was just too good not to share, and a perfect Valentine’s Day treat.  It’s written by Nika Ann Rasco, who writes over at Chasing Rabbits.  Make sure you head over and check it out!

 

Natural Disaster

tangled up from the twist
of tornado, all the best
parts of your disaster
rest, stone upon stone.

we curled ourselves into one.
limp bodies piled into hills
of the dead, I couldn’t
unwrap all your thoughts of
me as quickly as you shake
the keys of untuned piano.

your eyes are still watching
for an unnamed god, your chin
held determined to the upcoming
wind. I got you on my back

watching moves and licking lips.
You sing the chimes from too
sore lips, cracked and chapped
my words blown out of portion.

(c) Nika Ann Rasco

Sharing: Evolve by Lyttleton

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A wonderfully evocative poem by Lyttleton over at 10cities10years, which is an incredibly interesting blog about living in 10 cities in the U.S. over the course of 10 years.  Check it out!

Evolve; or: The Divergence of Species

We can get over anything
given enough time and miles:

I was a fish with sea legs
and you a protozoon
still beneath the wave of blankets
and this was our first goodbye
of many.
I’s a goner and you’s still there
replicating like teardrops
in a bus station
where we once kissed and spread
like meiosis;
now half the man I once was.

I don’t want to be remembered
for how I’ve changed,
unless I’m your genetic match.
But you’ve also evolved
and suddenly I’m a species unknown,
unique,
extinct.

 

Evolution of Fish

Full Pink Moon

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It’s the golden hour, and all the plants are glowing as I make my way up the hill.  The sky is shocking, pink and blue and purple, as if suddenly bruising from its collision with the earth.  I want to reach up and comfort its throbbing beauty.  The turning leaves soak up the last bits of sun and radiate as if they were autumnal lanterns.  They light my way as the air turns dark.

The turning of the season and my northern-hemisphere body are at odds.  It’s nearly Beltane.  My blood wants to dance around fires throwing the cozy scarves and mittens of hibernation wantonly to the wind.  My skin is expectant with the warmth of new beginnings, and yet the gusts here are becoming harsher.  I push on.  It’s not fall for me.

As the final rays of the day tuck themselves in behind clouds and hills, I reach the well.  The very sight of the clearing tugs at something inside me.  I finger the stones, making them melt and turn to sand, as if they were an old lover who’d been waiting for my touch.

In response, I remove my shoes and socks.  My toes dig into the dirt and rocks dig back into my soles.  The breeze lifts my shirt and grazes my belly.  It’s all the impetus I need.  The wind keeps nibbling at me, encouraging me, and so I tie my clothes to the hawthorn tree.

It’s cloudy tonight and I know it’s no accident.  The moon is hiding in the shadow of the earth, tucked in the darkness of her cave as if in hibernation.  She’s just waiting for her moment.  It’s an up-side-down celebration here.  The leaves are beginning to saunter away from their branches.   The night is still pregnant with the potential of sprouts and seedlings, even as Antarctic winds raise mountain ranges of goose bumps on my skin.

I start a fire and I know you will be here soon.  I wonder how many logs and how much kindling we will need to last through the night.  The moon is flush and full.  Beneath my feet, the phlox creep further and further from the well.  The pink moss stretches its feelers toward unknown lands, testing whether those grounds hold lives that it can live.  The dainty flowers look up to the moon and howl, reflecting her full, surprised face back in their flushed cheeks.  They beam on a night like tonight.  They gather in such numbers and their blushing blazes so brightly that even the moon blushes back.

You come with logs for the fire and no words.  Before long we have our own sun flickering before us. “Ne’er cast a cloot ‘til Mey’s oot,” they warned us.  It’s not quite May, but it is time to cast our clothes.  The cold of the April wind nibbles at our skin and makes it blush, in brazen mimicry of the pink moon.  The light is deafening, and I am exposed, as are you.  The heat of the fire makes my frontside glow.  The cold of the April wind turns my backside pink.  I am round and glowing, a perfect salmon moon.

We dance in circles, falling into orbit around the fire.  I am drunk on the pollen wafting through the air, and red, yellow, and brown leaves swirl around me.  I can no longer tell whether I am surrounded by flames or trees or both.  Stars leap from the fire, embers fall from the sky.  I collapse into the embrace of the infinite.

Lost in space like this, there is no north and south, no spring or fall, only the endless expanse of new fires being lit.

 

 

Creative Commons love to phil dokas from flickr for the stunning photo!

The Decomposition of Eden (Florida. Spring 2003.)

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The Decomposition of Eden

 

 

       I want to show you this place, behind banyans and honey-suckle.  Backed into a mess of uncharacteristically sultry vinestreesgrassleaves, its wide open mouth gapes, screaming at us to enter and laughing with our delight at the same time.  It is submerged further than friendly waving palms, because it knows that everyone will settle for that idea of tropical. But not us.  As we kick through the grassy blades, mosquitoes splash out of the ground like water, as if we were full-grown children, splashing through puddles of winged humidity.  But we are not children, and our intentions are not innocent.  The fertility of decay seeps into our nostrils and seems to fill our heads with life.  Crooked vines and banyan roots hang down on all sides of us, lightning striking the ground.  The light is just right now, at dusk, to stab the canopy with a flaming sword of sunshine, orange and opening, pricking a gurgle of water.  The river runs past us, the father of the Euphrates, and you are surprised it is there, in hushed hiding.  You notice the fruit immediately, a flurry of fructifying vegetation.  Mangoes, oranges, papayas, and star fruit stretch out, seemingly seeping nectar just for us.  We eat: they are not forbidden.

I want to show you this place, which is not without its threats.  As the light begins to dim, the vines begin to slither.  They reach for us while we look the other way and hiss at us when we turn around to catch them.  They crisscross, making spun spider webs of foliage, and we have to be careful not to walk into them.  This can only be accomplished by finding a verdant seat.  There are no thistles or thorns, nothing to prickle our feet and grip our clothes, but we do not notice this absence.  We shed the coats of skins we have been wearing for so long. The bugs gather round, hesitating, spying, folding into flurries.  The mosquitoes attach themselves to your skin, and I realize I am jealous of the way they are clinging to you.  The trees swell, transformed and concealed by the checkerboard gleam descending on their branches and leaves.  It is difficult to tell in this glow which of the flowers are honeysuckle and which are angel’s trumpets.  It’s a risky mistake  to make, but the honeysuckle is tempting.

I want to show you this place where it seems like we could be alone.  It is a room of suspended banyan root walls and a tent covering of leaves.   The thick of tree trunks closes like an envelope, keeping people from reading us.  We cannot see anyone through these walls and ceilings, so no one can see us, we reason.  The horseflies come close to spy on us, coming out slowly from behind leaves and up from resting places in untouched grass.  They flood in quietly, undulating, making sure we do not hear them before continuing closer to our breathing bubble.  They tiptoed the whole way, I am sure.  We did not notice them.  To sit inside, our heads and shoulders framed by these viney gums, is to understand how our ancestors could think that they had found a place even God could not see them.  His many eyes, kaleidoscoped like the flies’, can’t be felt by tingling flesh, like the eyes of humans.  We pull blankets of leaves over our nakedness anyway.  It has become habit, by now, to cover up and blaming fingers protrude oppositely from each of us when we have a stab at the reasons for it.

I wanted to show you this place to end the arguments and it happens soon enough.  It does not take much time until we no longer realize that we are naked, and ashamed blamed digits fall to our sides.   It has become too moderate for the mosquitoes, and they give up for the night, following the sun’s example.  The grass cools the bruises on our heels and we become snake-like and god-like at once.  More snake-like looking, squirming in earth with our belly doomed to the dirt.  But we are close enough that our ribs melt together, every other rib of yours falling between two ribs of mine, and like that, we sleep.

I want to show you this place, where we can fall asleep rib to rib, where we are fooled into believing that horseflies and God cannot see us, where the honeysuckle and angel’s trumpets get muddled, and where deterioration is the formula to renew life.

Dry Flies (Thailand. Summer 2011.)

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Dry Flies

Ten eyes blink
in an unfamiliar brightness.
You both almost remember
seeing this sun before.
Some time before the darkness,
before you slept with roots and grubs,
before your premature burials,
before the prime number
of years spent waiting.

The temperature is right.
It’s your four minutes, the soil urges.
Take it. Take it.

Seventeen years this moment has
grown and molted, hid and sighed,
waited and waited to sing.

It’s not time to store for winter.
It’s time to leave empty selves behind,
clinging to bark and dust.
It’s time to shed golden skins.

Vines pause their swaying,
mangoes hold their breath,
leaf corpses don’t even rustle.
The dog day is silent.

It’s loud at first, furious and brave,
drunk with the newness of light.
It’s not a matter of legs or violins.
Bodies resound as ribs rub together.

The song becomes a whisper
as you near each other,
gentler, like a snake in the leaves.
It’s no longer for coaxing,
no longer for the eyes of the trees.

Branches are split.

Later, much later,
buttressed trees will burst with children,
nymphs will rain from their twiggy fingers,
speckled-dust life and the promise of song
will fall to a summery, shimmery floor.

But now, it’s not time to store for winter.

Creative Commons love to http://www.flickr.com/photos/pennstatelive/ for the photo of “Cicadas” etching by Marilyn McPheron.

sometimes (Florida. Spring 2006.)

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sometimes

i want things to be

different

like when

i watch you

drawing almonds

and tear drops

and flames

in the sand

or when you

enjoy copland

just that way

and you hum

the songs

that say

the things

you won’t

or when we talk

just enough

to know

that we are

different

i want things to be

sometimes