My 1st Story

NaNoWriMo's 1st story campaign.  Writing matters.

Camp NaNoWriMo July 2013

As you can see from my spiffy new badge, I will be participating in Camp NaNoWriMo this year.  (That's short for National Novel Writing Month.)  Basically the goal of Camp is to write a whole novel in one month.  It sounds intimidating, and believe me, I'm feeling pretty intimidated.  However, because I am a deadline sort of person, I thought this would be fun.  Never mind the fact that I will be on vacation for two weeks out of the month.  I want to challenge myself as a writer and so the saying "you'll never know if you don't try" is hanging over my head like a conscience.  Besides, I keep telling myself, it's summer.  This is the perfect time to try it!  (Just wait until the real thing in November when I have school, ugh!  That will be a challenge.)

I'm counting on the support of friends and family and other people who are just feeling generous to keep me going when I want to quit (and believe me, that will be often).  One of the best ways we can be successful, says the program director, is to make our goals very public.  Well, okay then, check.  Even if no one reads it, at least it's on the internet and people have the ability to know what I'm doing this summer.  My facebook and possibly my blog will be smeared with complaints of writer's block and battle cries of inspiration.  At least everyone will know what that's all about.

The last thing I have to say for no one's benefit but my own is a quote by Denis Waitley: "Goals provide the energy source that powers our lives.  One of the best ways we can get the most from the energy we have is to focus it.  That is what goals can do for us: concentrate our energy."

Glass Castle

Music is my one of my biggest inspirations.  Occasionally I hear a very special song that inspires a scene or idea in my head and I write about it.  Sometimes the idea stands alone, sometimes it fits in with a project I'm already working on.  This particular poem of mine I wrote a few months ago, long before my brother introduced me to the song Castle of Glass by Linkin Park.  However, while I didn't write the poem after being inspired by the song, together they tell a similar story, and it's my hope that my readers will see the vision inspired by both.

Glass Castle

The girl sitting on the wall

With her arms around her legs

What is her story?

What hidden horrors does she escape

By staying after school?

She curls in the corner,

Being unobtrusive

She looks up at passerby

She walks through the halls

Trying her best to disappear

Trying not to catch an eye

No one spares a second thought

For one so evanescent

No one glances back to say hello

Why does she insist on loneliness?

What keeps her in her castle?

Hidden away, unreachable

By the outside world

Secluded from the land out there

Enclosed inside a crystal shell

She floats above the clouds

In her bubble of imagination

Spirited away on winds of thought

Away from this crooked world

Where she doesn’t belong

Reflection on Walt Whitman

Reconciliation by Walt Whitman

Word over all, beautiful as the sky,
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost,
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil'd world;
For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin--I draw near,
Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

How powerful is this poem, this simple declaration of human love and forgiveness.  If only all the world could take such a stand and be reconciled with all its wrongs, it would be a better place.  For time can make the tensions fade and have us forget the opposing views.  And in the end, forgiveness is as simple as that.

The Death of the World

That evening, the stars started to turn to dust as the world began to decay.  There was no stopping the cloud that was consuming the planet.  It was a cloud of darkness and despair that had been ever-present since the beginning of time.  Up until that point, they had always found ways to contain it and pretend it didn't exist, little pockets of good and happiness in that desolate world.  However, the time had come when they were no longer able the hold back the darkness.  There came a time when the consuming evil that had always been lurking in the back corners of their minds marched to the forefront of their conscious and broke loose.  Thus began the death of the world.

Bus Stop Zombies

We wait alone

Or in packs

Silent, saying nothing

We stand apart from others

Not acknowledging their existence

Nor they, ours

We sit secluded

Not paying attention to the world around us

Observing from a distance

Others watch us seated there,

Dead to the world

Others talk while life goes on

Yet still we say nothing

The look in our eyes,

Tired from morning

Weary from work and school

Others laugh and make conversation

We don’t make a sound

The doors open to let us out

I walk alone

In solitary existence

Until someone breaks my shell

A lone voice says my name

Pulling me from the land of the dead

And a boy sees me

Says hello

I don’t answer him

I walk on by without a word

Then I stop and wonder

Who am I to pass on  by

A familiar face I know?

How do I keep walking on

When someone made a connection?

It’s too late now to fix the past

What’s over is what’s done

Yet still I wander on

Oblivious to all

Because that is all I’m capable of

I am nothing more than a bus stop zombie

Ordinary Magic

Today is the most wonderful day ever
A woman has baby formula in a plastic bag
Today it is beautiful
A girl wears crystal dangly earrings
The sun is shining
Three little children and their mother sit down
The air is clear
A light blue car the shade of the sky drives in front of us
The sky is bluer than hope
The bus rumbles along the street
The birds are singing
A music store van is right outside the window
Trees sway happily with the thought of coming spring
An orchestra plays in my earphones
The girl I met yesterday with purple hair gets on
The bus driver lowers the lift for a woman with many bags
I hear a sad song
But today is wonderful
Today is a beautiful day
Today is ordinary
Today is plain
But today is today
And suddenly, in the midst of everyday life
I find beauty