In The Garden Living an RPG Life

Whew! It’s been a long time it seems. I’m not counting NaNoWriMo though it’s a significant amount of writing. I’m thinking about the incidental writing I started on 100words.com, that exactly 100 word post we are supposed to create. I’ve found since I started that practice (and let it slip for a while) that I like the idea of using the form to write stories. There is just enough room in that many words to create a complete, if very short, story. There’s room to establish place and time and person. There’s room to finish with some emotion. What there isn’t very much room for is build up to action, character devleopment, maybe a couple of other things.

I decided that I would pursue the story idea by setting up a single situation that has a beginning, middle and end: crossing the street. You must admit there is a lot of potential for all kinds of things to unfold in such a storyscape. I already published a few for the month of February. I’m going to keep it as my theme for this month and see how it goes. In another place I did something similar, writing one hundred words at a time to create a story. I hadn’t been able to squeeze the whole thing in a single hundred words, though. Ended up with, I think, three hundred. Still very short.

I know I started a knitting theme here and I haven’t dropped it. Knitting is both a practice and a metaphor, though. The blog is where all gets knitted together into a single garment. Kinda like the knitted shirts in the story. Don’t ask me which story! There are a few versions. The one I know it by is The Seven Swans. I watch on Jim Henson’s The Storyteller as some smaller number of ravens, three I think. Anyway, the point is that I see those finished garments as somehow representing aspects of themselves that the boys had lost or forgotten with the death of their mother and father’s remarriage. Or at least that’s what came to me just now! I hadn’t given the idea a single thought before this moment. Wonder why now?

Meanwhile, I have to start dusting off my writing since I decided that I am applying for an MFA in creative writing. This is almost out of the blue, not quite. Remember that call to adventure Chris Baty posted on the NaNoWriMo site? That’s all it takes. Someone putting out a call that resonates with me at the right time and “poof!”, it all comes together. Kinda like being an overnight sensation after working at it for twenty-odd years. I’ve been gradually going public with the decision since moving too fast usually had the result of pushing me into my fear zone and not letting me out. Almost got stuck in there earlier today. I was feeling like I was just dreaming of something that I couldn’t have, wasn’t qualified for, when I got into conversation with a friend, who studies art. There was something about sitting with her and just talking that got me seeing what it means to be a writer. No, strike that: what it means for me to be a writer.

First of all, it finally registered that I prefer writing to anything else. I will write, albeit posts in forums, when I will only dream about knitting or quilting or any of the other creative things I do. I used to complain that my drawing journals filled up with words faster than with drawings. I guess I’m letting go the idea that I will have drawing journals anymore, right? Nope! In fact, the way I knew that this decision was probably not just another daydream is the way other elements in my life stepped back in importance. Suddenly all were willing to serve the writing in a way I’ve never experienced before. That’s the experience I hold onto when I am in doubt.

The hardest thing in the process may be defining myself as a writer. And then again, it may not. There may be no hard thing in the process, just things I haven’t addressed yet. I’m trusting my greater self here. It’s not let me down before, so I don’t expect that it will this time. I just have to remember how to hold my mind in patience. There’s lots of stuff to do between now and whenever I send the application in. My plan is to make the January 2009 application date (and yes, I will triple check that that’s the right date). I was briefly considering November, but that’s saved for NaNo. Who knows! Maybe writing a novel every November is what I’m meant to do with my life. It wouldn’t be a bad purpose.

OK. That’s enough catching up for now. Gotta write more stories.