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

November 30, 2021November 30, 2021 Jaclyn1 Comment

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

February 14, 2014February 1, 2022 JaclynLeave a comment

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

Writing Roulette Results

January 26, 2014February 25, 2022 Jaclyn11 Comments

She came dressed in nothing but the dust from butterfly wings and had dragonflies in her hair. She shimmered with a silvery arctic sheen that barely covered her skin. He wondered even if it was her skin. He’d been in the mental hospital for so long that he wondered if humans had evolved this way, perhaps the climate was changing so much that people on the outside were developing ashen skin, burning in the sun until they came off on your fingers when you touched them. He wanted her on his fingers like that, burned or not.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said. When she spoke, bumble bees came out of her mouth, whispering against his cheeks and wrapping him in honey. They rested on his shoulders and chest, pollinating his skin. He was hooked immediately.

“I’ve been here for years.” He looked around to see if other people noticed her. He didn’t trust his own eyes any more.

“You should have come sooner.”

“Why are you here?”

“Don’t you recognize me?” Her hair was white, long, silky strands, stronger than steel and he was caught in it. Her eyes fluttered. The bees which swarmed him tugged at something in the back of his mind, but she was too strange. Her tongue curled and he was sure she was part insect.

Suddenly, her poetry came rushing back to him.

“Callie.”

Yesterday I posted a prompt about using various plot generators. I wanted to share with you a little taste of what I came up with. This came from one of the 5.1 million plots that Big Huge Thesaurus generated. It was so inspiring as a prompt that it’s become a much, much larger (and still unfinished!) project. I’ve shared the beginnings of it with you. Has anyone else used any of these prompts? What did you come up with?

Creative Commons love to Mr. Greenjeans on flickr for the amazing artwork. Thank you!

Sharing: Evolve by Lyttleton

January 24, 2014February 1, 2022 JaclynLeave a comment

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

Sharing: “And Your Soul Shall Dance” by Garrett Kaoru Hongo

August 23, 2013 JaclynLeave a comment

And Your Soul Shall Dance

Walking to school beside fields

of tomatoes and summer squash,

alone and humming a Japanese love song,

you’ve concealed a copy of Photoplay

between your algebra and English texts.

Your knee socks, saddle shoes, plaid dress,

and blouse, long-sleeved and white

with ruffles down the front,

come from a Sears catalogue

and neatly compliment your new Toni curls.

All of this sets you apart from the landscape:

flat valley grooved with irrigation ditches,

a tractor grinding through alkaline earth,

the short stands of windbreak eucalyptus

shuttering the desert wind

from a small cluster of wooden shacks

where your mother hangs the wash.

You want to go somewhere.

Somewhere far away from all that dust

and sorting machines and acres of lettuce.

Someplace where you might be kissed

by someone with smooth, artistic hands.

When you turn into the schoolyard,

the flagpole gleams like a knife blade in the sun,

and classmates scatter like chickens,

shooed by the storm brooding on your horizon.

Garrett Kaoru Hongo (1982, p.69)

Making Love to Clouds

April 5, 2012 Jaclyn17 Comments

I did not flinch when I saw her, though I knew she expected it. My face did not mirror hers, eyes pulled wide, lips forced apart by the sharp intake of breath she could not control, brow clenched upwards by a mind which could not believe.

A small breath of air made its way from my lungs, but my lips could not form her name.

Her eyes moved away from mine to the ground. She did not want me to see her this way, I knew, and she would rather have never seen me at all than to meet me like this.

Her hair, which I had never seen down in all our years together, even through sleep and childbirth, fell in front of her face, intentionally hiding it. In the darkness, it was hard to tell the two apart, now that the night of her straight hair had spread down the length of her body. It was the blackness of her face from which I could not take my eyes. Not the decay of her skin, crawling into strange formations as it fell from her flesh, nor the worms escaping from within her and being more eager to return to her to feast, but the pure tar of her face. It had been one of her more powerful features, lighting the sky with its whiteness, its power making men run for cover.

“Do not look on me,” her words were loud, quick. I wondered if she knew I had been chasing the young nymph which had just passed her, giggling melodically, curls and young breasts bouncing teasingly around the corner. I wondered if it had been long enough since her death, or if it ever would be.

“I miss looking on you,” I offered.

She scoffed under her breath. I could hear the tightening of her hard face through the darkness. It was a sound I had not forgotten.

She crossed her arms, jagged elbows sending small bolts of lightning at the ground. In the light, I could see a cockroach on the ground, near her dirty, bare feet. It was the first time I understood her shame in being seen in the underworld. Her usually tidy, glowing dress looked like what a peasant mortal would wear. Instead of her usual shining shoes, her small, sharp feet, were caked in dirt, and being eaten. I wondered if it was difficult for her to walk with the same poise that she had always carried.

“Please,” I said, knowing she would notice that my voice was not that of a god, but of a mole. It did not happen often, but I knew she always noticed when I lost my composure. “We will never see each other again. We are lucky for just this moment. Please, just look at me.”

“I-” It was not often that she stuttered. Her uneasiness grew to fill the small confines of the underground cave in which we stood.

Maybe she also feels as if it were my fault.

Perhaps she did not recall her last days, after the birth of the fire. The way she screamed as the flames came forth from her womb burned my insides also. The tears that sparked her electric face for days afterwards as she whimpered in pain each stung me as well. And I could no longer live forever when her immortality was taken away.

“I am not the same,” she said, her voice beginning to crack. I knew she would not cry. I struggled in the darkness to see better the prickly lines of her long body and face, the points of her nose, chin, and hips.

“I know,” I said. I still missed looking on her.

He did not know.

I could see his misty face, churning with emotions — for me! If he knew, he would not be taking the time to steal a few moments with me before his return home.

He moved towards me and I was within his arm’s reach. I moved away.

“I know,” he repeated, taking a small, determined step forward.

That was the moment when the memories flew past me and I was forced to turn and look at the decaying wall. This gave my unruly mind free reign in recalling my memories, but at least I did not look at his face.

The tree came back to me first, but I knew that did not mean I loved him more. The nights I had stolen away with the tree in a forced, hushed passion were just easiest to remember — there had been so few. Always after dark. Embracing without kissing. A dainty removal of his own splinters. All so the clouds could detect no signs when I returned home. The splinters were my favorite part, even then.

But there were more nights — since the beginning of time, in fact — with the clouds. After all, what is lightning without clouds, or clouds without lightning? The best nights were always the ones spent over tropical islands — hurricanes and our children, the thunder, the rain, and the tornado, were all conceived from the swirls of our passion on nights like those.

So, when I first realized that I was having the fire child, I stopped seeing the tree. I had no doubts about who fathered it. But, then again, neither did the clouds. Perhaps that was the most painful part of the ordeal: the clouds trusted me so much that he was sure the child was his.

“I am sorry,” he tried. I knew he was fumbling for words, and it made me want him to hold me.

“I am as well.” But I stayed cold. Who would want to hold a sack of maggots?

“If I had known what would happen –“

“You should not apologize.”

“It was my fault,” he said.

“It was not your fault,” I insisted, my voice rising with tension.

“I should not have–” he stopped.

I could hear him turn, his arm brushing chunks of dirt off the crumbling wall, and return the way he had come.

Creative Commons Love to Liamfm on flickr. Thank you!

The Decomposition of Eden (Florida. Spring 2003.)

February 12, 2012February 25, 2022 JaclynLeave a comment

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.)

February 11, 2012February 1, 2022 Jaclyn5 Comments

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.

Making (The Netherlands. Winter 2002.)

January 16, 2012 JaclynLeave a comment

Making

love to god

was only making.

Before there was

night or day

he came to me

and did not make eye contact

while he sculpted

my clay body to form

the mountains, continents, and seas.

I tried not to breath

as he brushed

ant hills off my stomach

and trimmed me,

leaving trees only

where they looked best.

He still had not spoken

when, finally

content with my form,

he made

and he left

me silently,

to give birth.

The jackal was first.

Though I knew he was not

pleased, god returned,

always pruning,

never speaking.

I bore turtles and fish,

snakes and lions, and

man.

I’ve stopped waiting for his return, but

his marks are still on my mountains and seas.