I haven’t even got poor Jamie out of the car yet. I haven’t brought up the murderously cold wind, the trudge across a tilled field, or the discovery in the barn.

Maybe that’s because I don’t know what’s in the barn or beyond the barn in any substantial way. I’m more like all those artists painting a small person facing a titanic valley or sprawling desert than I like to admit. Little me; big unknown.

Thus far I’ve imagined this as a portal fantasy. Jamie or Wendell back when there wasn’t a girlfriend in the story discovers her grandmother’s portal machine in a barn in France. Grandma is gone and somehow Jamie or Wendell deduce she went through the portal and needs saving. No reason to go get the cops. No reason to grab a bite to eat first, nab a first-aid kit, or a bottle of water. No reason to freak out for days wondering what happened or what to do–if anything at all. And no reason to think Grandma didn’t just step out to get a scone and neglected to leave a Post-it on the monitor.

Which means I need a myterious note, email, or communiqué. Ooo, or a dream or a feeling or a sense!

And I most definitely wrote today. Just not here. I handcrafted brainy structured sentences for some evaluation effort I’m a part of at work. I’m going to let that cover me for the bulk of today, but I wanted to cleanse my palatte with something lighter.

…but then I accidentally surfed away the last ten minutes.

A quick review of yesterday’s work shows me that structurally I’m heading in an undesirable direction because I’ve not provided any reason for the reader to continue reading. I seem to be doing some character development in a flashback with an unpresent character instead of teasing the reader forward.

I have to get the snow off the glass and Jamie looking out across that snowy French field to Wendell’s grandmother’s workshop and dimensional portal towering over the countryside.

Shit. Just writing that outloud made me want to read more. Something to stew over night here I think.

I didn’t have a plan when I started 1000 Days–at least not a plan more sophisticated than writing for 1000 days. I don’t even have that much of a plan this time around. I think I’ll stretch my fingers on the keyboard a bit and see where I can take that.

Two interruptions later…

Jamie Shaver sat crossways on the passenger’s side of an old Peugot 205 with one foot in the empty driver’s seat, another on the gearbox, and her elbow hooked over her headrest. She watched feathers of snow melt on the back window. The heater kept ahead…for now. How much longer did Wendell expect her to wait?

She tucked her attention down into a tablet and swiped through the circle of pages. The home page went by three times. Should she clean up the photo and camera app page or go find her girlfriend?

Swipe.

A buffet of wind rocked the plain white car with a spatter of ice-grit.

I’ve missed it and have been trying to figure out the best way to get back in it. I haven’t come up with a plan for writing at this stage. I’m just doing it.

In the past years of writing, I’ve gathered inspirational blurbs I’ve found on the Internet. Sometimes these were pictures, sometimes illustrations, sometimes definitions, and sometimes quotes. I didn’t stop collecting these blurbs during the time I took off from writing, so I’ve amassed a bit of a backlog of them. Well, I was always backlogged but now I’ve got an unaddressed surfeit. I don’t want to become like the kid at Halloween who hoards his stash for another day only to discover the allure of a Heath bar has staled from the wait.

However, I want to have purpose here. I want to adhere to as many of the suggestions I gave myself in my penultimate 1000 Days post. I don’t want to slip into the lazy habit of ‘just writing’. I’ve already developed that skill. I need to develop new ones, because what I’m doing now in the hour before work is more a disgrace to that hour than my worst writing ever was.

My purpose will be cumulative. Each month I’ll add a new wrinkle to the existing ones. Since I need time to figure out what those wrinkles will be I’m not going to outline anything here. What I will say is the first thing I need to do is to warm to this hour again. Right now, the best way for me to do that is to start privately journalling my family’s life. That started and stopped several years ago much like a beater with water in the gas line. Time for me to purge that line and get things rolling.

Picture courtesy of Creative Ignition.

Below the question, a paragraph explains why there are three less than a thousand gates. Apparently prime numbers were important—and known—to the pre-historic people who constructed these unusual rock towers. Below that, a second paragraph outlines a handful of other arguments: poor counting on the part of the builders, untimely conflict with neighboring peoples, lack of both human and material resources, or the ultimate decay of time. Maybe there were once a thousand. Maybe there never were. Or maybe there were never meant to be.

Along the bottom, a line of dots maps out the location of each gate across their two hundred kilometer route. In a wavering course running southwest to northeast with a single bend to the north, the dots trail across the plains over two rivers, a lake and into the mountains. An unknown number of finger touches has ghosted a spot near the beginning of that course.

“You are here,” John says.

He hefts a red Osprey Manta daypack from the ground and over his shoulders. Inside, he has three liters of water, a cheap REI rain jacket, a handful of Hammer gels, a Clif bar, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and one hundred thousand dollars neatly divided into five Zip-loc bags.

John twists his wrist to check the time. He has less than eight hours to get to gate three-hundred seven or they kill Laurie.

243 words on day 1000

I began 1000 days of daily writing on August 13th 2007. That was 1750 days ago. My original goal date was May 9th, 2010. I am almost two years late, but I am done. It’s hard to know how proud to be of this particular ending. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy and satisfied in many ways. I just can’t help but wonder what might have come out of 1750 days of consecutive writing instead of my near every-other-day reality.

I suspect it may not have been that much better. That’s not sour grapes. I think despite the later than expected completion I’ve put in about as much effort as I could have along the way. When I started I had three kids under four; I now have four kids over four. I also have one less dog, two more dogs and one more cat. I picked the eight o’clock hour to write which became school drive time and the oldest dog’s favorite time to eat and poop. I can’t blame him; developed similar habits. I started in one office alone and ended in an entirely different office which I share. These aren’t anywhere near as bad as being stricken with cancer or losing a limb, but they were niggling enough that they took a toll.

I took some breaks. I forgot occasionally. And sometimes I said, “Fuck it.” Those are the only days I regret.

There are more than a few standout efforts I like. Hartwhile, Shanty, Benhá, Grumphook, Malachi, Pixies, Terminus, Crainewood, and Bringer come to mind for threads. (There would be more if I looked.) Fanboy, dialogue pairs, 20 minutes, and 10 plots for craft.

I’m glad I took the time to play a bit with the second person. I’m glad I found some comfort in if not much success from learning about structures. I’m glad I played with maquettes. I’m glad I’ve developed a repository of pictures to inspire me. I’m glad I can use a picture to write something new I never planned to write thirty seconds before I saw it. I’m glad I could come back from breaks. I’m glad I practiced planning ahead for known outages. I’m glad I made one submission.

I wish I had learned to write for sixty whole minutes. I wish I had learned to stick with something longer than I did. I wish I had submitted more. I wish I had tried harder with first person. I wish the same of present tense. I wish I had developed a following. I wish I had written more non-fictionally. I wish I had found a thousand words a day rhythm. I wish I’d learned to be better at editing.

What happens now?

I don’t know. I’ve actively avoided thinking about the answer to that obvious question. Pointless question.

I don’t expect to stop writing, but I don’t know how I can continue in the haphazard manner I’ve been carrying on these past years. I want to do more, but I want to do much differently than I have been. I want to account for plotting time, planning time, research and thinking. I want to do something which values that kind of effort in the pursuit of a goal. I want to take a break. I don’t want to feel guilty for not creating. I want to feel compelled to write each time I do.

If I had to be concrete. If I had to start something new and different and the same on Tuesday the 1001th, I’d say that I now write at night. That I have one or two threads I can alternate between. I’d say that my week has a rhythm; not my days. I’d say there were monthly and/or quarterly goals. I’d say I bring in a partner of sorts—someone to regularly discuss my work with. A manager. I’d say there would be a checklist.

Shit.

That sounds much harder than 1000 days. That doesn’t sound like a break. That sounds like something only a fool would agree to.

Photo courtesy of boxlace.

690 words on day 999

The last couple days of near two hundred word count efforts has exhausted me, so today I’m just going to talk about what I wrote.

I came across the wagon home of the James Button character in a rather lumpy, but not terribly surprising way. An artist I follow (also for lumpy reasons) recently posted a critique request. Five people responded. One of those people had a link to her art blog and after some scrolling there I came across her sketches of James’ mobile dwelling. While some might use the word stole to describe my usage of her work, I’ll hastily point out that she had no more than a name for James Button (actually Jim—I classed it up) and his home wasn’t mobile in her drawings. So, short of a name and a wagon-like dwelling I think anything I do next will be unassociated with the original.

Anyhow, I unconciously set this in the same world as the Merriweather Balloon Boat & Mobile Market. It ain’t a stretch.

Sadly, I’m a little more proud of the fact I gave Mr. Button a goal right out of the gate than I should be. Fortunately the grandure of that amazing feat is balanced by the groggy ramblings immediately following.

My plan was to have Mr. Button trapped in a town celebrating a minor holiday with more verve than he planned for, thus he would be encumbered on his trip to bigger and better places. His eight day trip he needs to complete in six. See how I built a ticking clock in there too? Yeah, no idea where that’s going; I probably ought to think that through a bit.

Nominally I intended to send him off to the Evercott’s estate, but that may have been because I couldn’t come up with any other place in the Merriweather world to send him. It might be worth it to consider both options before I proceed. If I send him to Evercott’s I keep the story tight, but might be jumping too soon. If I send him elsewhere I may be opening up the adventure, but not getting tot he main point for too long.

The answer to that is probably in the determination of what Mr. Button might be carrying that could make his trip to [where ever] so crucial.

Photo courtesy of sjrankin.

424 words on day 997

I started this yesterday and don’t like it much.

The little hand pointed to the twelve; James Button watched as the big hand crawled from the two to the three. He wanted to be asleep in his bunk—quilt pulled over his head as a guard against the mountains’ chill—but it was Shill’s Day and the revelers still reveled. The carousers still caroused.

In any normal town, in Corriedall or Brillen in Sheviot or Wendée, even in the great double city of Rough-Strong, Shill’s Day meant elaborate but over obvious cons during the day and a dinner among friends that evening where that year’s Shill footed the bill if they dined out or hosted the meal if they dined in. The next day was a working one. Here in [some town here] James discovered Shill’s Day meant something more, but he never discovered why. He was eight days out from [somewhere fun sounding] with a mountain tangle of road called [something fun sounding] and needing to be there in just six.

Photo courtesy of Susie Blackmon.

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300 words on day 996

This morning I explored an argument’s structure. That structure isn’t quite as bulletable as Bickham’s (via Swain) outline for sequels, but it is describable. I wasn’t surprised to find a modification of the core introduction-body-conclusion structure of any essay. I was pleased to find something I hadn’t expected following the conclusion however: next steps.

I’ve not yet taken action to meld the parts of a sequel to the relating parts of an argument—I don’t know that I will—but I’m sensing strong parallels between the two. As I see it, the point of a sequel is to demonstrate to the reader that the character has become believably convinced to do something based on the events of the preceding scenes. The character effectively argues points of evidence until they arrive at a decision then they take action.

The first element of a sequel, emotion, isn’t resolving as easily as the last three elements. I don’t think it must, but it would be elegant if it did. Maybe the character’s emotions are like the introduction of the arguement. Why the character is even considering these various points of argument. That seems like a stretch and requires that I slip in the relating element for the thesis statement. An element a character might not have ahead of their thinking.

Maybe that’s the trick. Emotionally driven characters will jump to a thesis statement type conclusion ahead of any substantial arguments whereas a more practically driven character will take the time to support or undermine their own initial reaction to the the prior scene. Spend more time ahead of the thesis on emotion and very little on the argument for one character. Spend more time weighing the facts for another.

Photo courtesy of Andrew Malone.

413 words on day 992