The Freefall into Failure

Sorry, NaNoWriMo.

I know I have almost four days left.  But I don't think that even my brilliant wit and clever writing (note: sarcasm) can pummel through 30,000 words in half a week.

I have failed my task.

I was not able to complete a 50,000-word novel in thirty days.  I am disappointed in myself because I was really trying to make things different.  For years now, I've had the bad habit of adopting wonderful ideas, nurturing them for a few days or weeks, then leaving them starving on the side of the road.  I wanted this to be better.  Different.  I wanted to be able to keep my promise: to deliver a finished product (albeit one that needed major editing in the aftermath).

I couldn't.  Not this time.

Granted, I had a lot of setbacks and other obligations this month, some good and some bad: my car died when I was driving to see my mom in Kentucky...we held Thanksgiving at my house and spent Black Friday with my in-laws...I've been writing and directing several short plays and skits for church...my birthday was this month (which meant a wonderful road trip to Lancaster)...

Not that any of those things are excuses.  But they provided an easy way for me to make excuses.  I've learned that practicing self-discipline takes time and committment.  I can scoop a blog post out of my brain in a few minutes, a recipe in several minutes, and a short story in a few hours, but writing a novel is a much bigger project and it does require, for me, far more discipline.  A change of venue helps - sometimes.  More coffee doesn't help.  Two adoring cats who NEED TO BE EXACTLY WHERE I AM  AT ALL TIMES don't help, either. 

The good news is: I learned from my failure, which ultimately means it wasn't a failure at all.  I have a plan for next time!  I will hash out my plot in its entirey before the month begins.  Although I had a good general idea of where I was going, I found myself adding characters and doing a lot of rewriting of the ones that I had thought I'd established.  I also changed several major plot points.  Repeatedly.  Like I didn't trust my own instincts.  Not that novels-in-process are fixed in time and space.  Ideas come and go.  I'm really thrilled about one in particular, though, that struck me like lightning while I was thinking of something entirely different: I have planned that a character who seemed like an innocent pawn will end up as a co-conspirator.  I love what it adds to the story. 

But my second-guessing ended up being part of my downfall.  It was as though I had bought a decent house that needed nothing but a paint job and some redecorating, but I decided to rewire all the electricity, replace the carpet, and update the plumbing, too.  Wasted time and effort.

I will have a flow chart, pie chart, graphs, timelines, whatever I need to keep me more focused during next year's NaNoWriMo (and as I continue to work independently on this book).  I will be more strict with myself about keeping ahead of the game.  The first week, it was easy to do that.  But ideas flowed less freely after that.  The longer I waited to sit and write, the more nerve-wracking it became when I finally did so.  I panicked.  I didn't let the story unfold as it needed to.

It became like forcing myself to like someone for whom I had no feelings, but who needed me.

Ugh.  When I did that in real life, I ended up in unhealthy relationships with guys with criminal records. 

But I digress.

I guess that I'm making progress.  In  a way.  I am not giving up on my novel. I wrote 31 pages. That's more than I've ever written in one shot in my life.   I love my characters!   I love that they've taken me on an adventure these past few weeks, and I don't want to give that up. I love that they've come alive and surprised me with twists and turns I didn't expect.   I need to make time for them.

I guess they wanted more than a month out of me!  I'm willing to give that to them.

Mission Aborted!

I should be enjoying a nice, hot cup of tea with my mother in Kentucky right now.  Last night, I was going to show her pictures from my wedding, pictures of her grand-cats, and maybe read to her a bit of my novel-in-progress.

Instead, I am in the same fur-covered pajamas I have been wearing for the past three days, my hair unwashed, an empty coffee cup next to me and my (slightly) overweight cat passively trying to shove me out of my chair.

I had planned to visit my mom last week, the same day that Princess Sandy, Destroyer of the East Coast, came to call.  While Pittsburgh wasn't hit hard (we suffered only a leaky window), apparently my route was dumped with about two feet of snow.  Although I was dead-set on going, that news, paired with my Neon's lack of anti-lock brakes and my family's persistent pleas not to risk it, convinced me to stay home.

I don't know what put it in my head, but I decided that I'd try again this week, after I voted on Tuesday.  Something in me felt that I wasn't quite ready, but I convinced myself that if it was a good time for my mom (it was), it had to be a good time for me.  It was important that I see her.  I packed a bag for an overnight stay, filled me favorite mug with coffee, drove with Ross to cast our ballots, and ended up behind my dad on the road.  He had just dropped my step-mom off at work.  We pulled over, had a quick chat, then decided Ross shouldn't need to take the bus that day.  I dropped him off at work then popped the coordinated in the GPS and headed out of the city.

There was a certain thrill to the prospect of taking a road trip on my own.  The independence, the time to think, to laugh, to sing Mister Mister at the top of my lungs...I was excited.  Ross had (lovingly) forced me to have the oil changed before I visited my sister, and, since the tech is a friend of the family, we knew he did a quick once-over to make sure the car was doing well.  I was confident.

I had been driving for about an hour and a half when my delicious morning coffee began to rear its diuretic head.  I had just crossed the border into West Virginia, and I stopped at a Sheetz to fill up the car and empty my bladder.  I pulled back onto the road.  Up ahead was a traffic light and the turn-off to I-79.  I slowed to a stop at the red light.  I noticed in my rear-view mirror that there had been a minor accident several cars behind me.  The light turned green.

My car wouldn't move.

I quickly threw on my four-ways and put the car into neutral.  A few times before, on the  coldest days of winter, the car sometimes needed some gentle urging to shift into drive.  This time, however, when I  foot off the brake, the car began to slide backwards.  Frantic, I called my father (the former trucker) and screamed that I was in the middle of a highway and my car had died.  He gathered all his strength to keep me calm, and said that I needed to get out of the car right away.  Fortunately, there was a strip of pavement between the lanes, and I carefully fled there.  My car had died between two lanes, so at least people could drive around both sides, as long as they were careful.  One particularly persistant old woman waited for quite some time behind my car, apparently not realizing that the car was unoccupied.  I finally had to wave her past. 

Things happened quickly, I am happy to report, and in my favor.  The police had already been en route to the site of the accident behind me, so they arrived in minutes.  Two officers pushed my car to the side and made sure I had someone to call for help before they returned to get the statements of the drivers in the fender bender.  After going back and forth between my dad, my husband (who was on the phone with a student at the time) and AAA, a tow truck arrived.

The gentleman who stepped out was everything you would expect: tall, lanky, tattooed, his lip bulging with a plug of tobacco.  He lit his cigarette as he peered under my car.  "Tube's bin cut.  Looks like ye ran sumthin' over, er ye hit sumthin."  He gestured for me to see what he meant. 

I could have quoted Shakespeare and he would have looked at me with the same expresssion I gave him.  "Oh," I said. 

"Dun think yer transmissin's bad, tho."

I understood that!  That was a good thing!  Transmissions are expensive!  Yes, good!

I was transferred to another, equally tattooed gentleman, who drove me to our family's mechanic, in Bridgeville.  I must have been doing something wrong when I drove out, because it took me about seventy minutes.

We made it back in about forty.

I laughed a lot to myself the way, when I wasn't peeing my pants and frantically clutching at the "oh crap" bar in the bed of the truck.  And in my head I was writing this blog.  On the upside, the driver (who actually was a very nice gentleman, despite my less-than-flattering description), thought I was still in school.  Thanks for the perpetually-young genes, Mom!

Seriously, life?  What the heck is wrong with you?  In September, I lost my third baby.  In October, I lost my job.  Now this?  Screw you, life.  I am done being pooped on.  No more poop, life.  Only good things.  My birthday, for one.  It's next week.  Don't mess with it, okay?  Let me turn thirty-one in peace.  Or I swear, I will kick your butt.  If that isn't possible, since you're really kind of a personification anyway, then I will invent words for what I am going to do you you.

I have a degree in English; I'm allowed to do that.

A Spoonful of Sugar and a Grain of Salt

Having received a new pie dish and my father-in-law's grandmother's rolling pin for Christmas, I was eager to try my hand at baking again.  I've mentioned on this blog, quite frequently, that I love to cook, but I have never been a particularly good baker.  Here are the reasons why:

1. You can taste pasta sauce or stew as you're cooking it to make sure it is turning out well.  You cannot, however, test-nibble on half-baked cookie dough as you're baking it.  Well, you shouldn't, anyway.

2. I don't like following recipes, and the science of baking strictly requires it. 

3. Baking is potentially messy.  I am reliably messy.  Therefore, flour gets everywhere. 

4. Baking usually needs specific ingredients that I never seem to have.  I didn't know what cream of tartar even was until maybe six months ago.

Still, the addition of the beautiful new tools to my arsenal encouraged me.  Instead of a pie, though, I thought I would start simple, with banana muffins.  I had recently downloaded an app for my phone that listed hundreds of recipes in a clear, concise format, and many of them looked really great!  I found a simple one for the muffins, and I checked to ensure I had everything on hand to make them.  I cleared the kitchen table off, prepared bowls for the wet and dry ingredients, and got to work, proud of myself for trying something new, and hoping to be able to present Ross with a delicious, homemade treat for dessert that night.

Not being a baker, I wasn't entirely sure what each ingredient was for.  I also didn't realize that the recipe calling for two tablespoons of baking soda was, clearly an error in translation, because that night I baked banana muffin-shaped pretzels.  As I was pouring the batter into the tins, I had the sinking sensation that things weren't right, but I hoped that the baking process would bring out the sweetness of the bananas and dates.  To no avail.  When I reluctantly tasted one of the dense biscuit-like horrors that emerged from the oven, it practically fizzed on my tongue like Alka-Seltzer.  Not even butter could help.  Into the trash every last muffin went.

I was irate.  I read and re-read the recipe to make sure that the mistake was not in my interpretation.  Nope, there is was, clear as day.  Two tablespoons of baking soda.  Foul.

Ross ended up with Rice Chex for dessert that night.

I know I can use this "life lesson" like many Christian authors do, and neatly tie it up with an applicable scripture, or go on to talk about how sometimes we blindly "follow the recipe" for a perfect life and still end up feeling like failures, but I am not doing that here today.  I am still angry that I wasted flour, sugar, bananas and an hour of my evening and ended up with only frustration and a full trash bag.  Plus, I got made fun of at work when I tried to get some pity from my co-workers the next day.

I'm not giving up on baking entirely, but I will surely be relying only on time-tested family recipes from now on, thanks very much.

(Note: the above muffins are fantasy muffins.  In my mind, I made them.  In reality, I found them on a random website.)