I'm supposed to be working on page one of Echo, which is due for submission next Thursday for the conference I'm going to in March, for the purpose of tearing it apart, and rebuilding it better. I started there, but have strayed, and am working on Fountain of Swans instead, or rather researching flowers so as to fill in details, which appear as ____ in Swans.  I really need a book which tells what flowers existed (where common, and in what form) in which countries, during particular centuries.
In my defense, sort of, the reason I switched over to research is, that as I was working on Swans, I had the great desire to fill in people's names, but I couldn't remember Spain's real name off the top of my head, and if I get up to find the notebook I wrote it in, I know I will instead go watch the movie I rented, and not be working at all.  Oh but that doesn't explain, why Swans instead of Echo, that, oh that is because I don't know what the heck I am doing. I don't know how to fix it.  (and anyway, the first page of Swans is also due for the conference for the same purpose, only difference is I wont need to submit that page till the end of March.

    I was called by some local ladies for a critique group, but though my time availability seemed to mesh with theirs, they haven't called me back.  Perhaps it was because I said my work is probably YA, perhaps it was because I sounded like an idiot on the phone. ?   Probably both. :)  Oh well, still working on it, just moving forward very slowly.  Feeling a little twinge of energy trying to uncurl from sleep and burst forth, it keeps saying, "spring?.....isn't it almost Spring?"  I keep telling it no not quite yet, I point out the enormous amounts of snow all over the yard, and the lovely windchill. But the voice is naive and wistful, soft and earnest as a small child's, and will not be dissuaded, not persuaded.

  Which reminds me, I know not to use alliteration, (or rhyme), I've been soundly told, it isn't part of "good" writing, not if you want to be taken seriously.  That's really just too bad (probably mostly for me, and my own ambitions), for being informed, doesn't seem enough to change me.  No, the sister of the voice that insists that it is indeed almost Spring, wraps her hands around such sentences, clenches her fists tight and wont let go.  She says that is what she loves best, that is why she is here to begin with, and that it will not be a matter of pulling them away from her kicking and screaming, for she is the one who will conquer in the end and take no prisoners, if I don't let her be. So, so far, I'm letting her be. And letting the alliteration be. And she smiles at me and shakes her head yes.

And that is an issue that I am dealing with in my attempt to edit my writing, it likes to be (what to my mind is) poetic.  I don't hold to true sentence all the time, I break off, I fragment, I go by feel, by those voices, and I don't want to surrender that. But I also don't want my work/me verbally massacred at the writing conference. (which is set up so that no one knows whose work is whose, so that they can freely verbally massacre our work, to more fully be able to help us.)

looking ahead

 

 

I don't usually share dreams, I mean the kind that take place at night, but this one still lingers.  I was to board a caboose.  Why? I don't know.  There were no cars in front of it, just the caboose. (sounds like me.) And there were no windows except for the the ones that looked forward in the direction the train/caboose was facing.  I went inside, surprised to see that from the inside there appeared to be a row of windows on each side, and in the back. I took my seat (lone passenger.) and as it moved through the snowy landscape, past trees, homes and farms, I watched the images moving on the windows, and noticed something odd about them, that what was happening on the right was a mirror image of what was happening on the left.  It made me feel slightly dizzy as I quickly looked back and forth trying to understand.  And I did, the windows in the front were true windows, all the rest were mirrors, though they didn't reflect me or the interior, they only reflected the forward view.  They did so from side to side, and also what I thought was a back window, looking to where I had been, that too was merely an opposite reflection of where I was going.


I hope this means that even when I feel like I'm making zero progress, (like now) that I am still moving forward, that it is all in essence, forward. 

wow did I miss a whole month?  No January posts.  It was a stressful month familywise, with the 13 year old not being keen on doing his schoolwork, and not turning it in even when he did.

But that is all in the past now, I'll take the Anne of Green Gables attitude, February is a new month, fresh, with no mistakes in it yet.

I turned 40 this past week, and though I had been thinking about it for the past 6 months, trying to prepare myself, it still feels odd, and not quite right, not really true. 34 sounds good, more possible. 

I've got to wrestle the camera away from my husband and son, and start doing the picture and post thing again.