500 word challenge update

Just a quick update, as the writing I've done of late has been offline. Yesterday I didn't hit 500 words, and what I did write I promptly scuttled. Some days that's for the best. I'll have something up during the long weekend, assuredly.

A woman sitting on a bench

The day broke dank and overcast, not a morning for walking your dog in the park, unless your dog was the sort of chocolate Labrador that, neglecting exercise, would routinely chew the windowsills off the wall during the lonely workday. Your dog, Lolly, is precisely that sort of dog, calmly gnawing your house like chewing tobacco and spitting the moist pulp into piles for your later collecting. Facing the choice between another weekend hammering down fresh molding or walking off your dog's destructive energy,you chose to log-roll out of bed and grab the leash.

The sun, good sport that he is, chose also to rise, casting a meager glow on the damp sidewalks and bedewed grass. Lolly pads along with an eagerness that forces a quickness to your step. She tacitly refuses to acknowledge that this is anything but the most splendidly fabulous morning. The smell of earthy, ionized air, the bracing coolness, a tousling breeze--another perfect day for walking. Lolly glances back at the bobbing leash and then up toward you, wearing a goofy labrador smile. You smile back.

You've arrived at one of the park entrances, taking the fork to the right through an opening in a split rail fence. It's a civilized park, with poured concrete walkways suitable for dry or wet weather, and wide trails with multiple diverging branches allowing for walks and jogs of variable duration.

Lolly has her favorites, the trails with kaleidoscopic animal scents floating throughout the underbrush, but today her broad nose points you toward the center of the park, home to an modest gazebo. An odd choice.

The mist is thicker here, the air cooler, enclosed by woods and spotted with copses, shifting leaves batting away the sun's heat. You are warm enough from the exercise, but the chill clings to exposed skin.

Typically you'd encounter a few familiar faces, though only the diehards on a day like today, the ones wearing modern synthetics and GPS watches. All is quiet this morning, though, the thickness of the air dampening sound, save for Lolly's breathing and the tapping of her nails against the walk.

Lolly's pace slows. She's sniffing the air. "Let's keep moving, girl," you say. There's a schedule to be kept--walk, shower, off to work. You're looking around. Did everyone else hit the snooze button?

You've been to this park a hundred times, know well its twists and shadows, but now this morning you have a dogged sense that you shouldn't be here. Silly. You tighten your grip on the leash.

A glimpse of the gazebo appears ahead. A small structure, perhaps twenty feet across, with a wooden shingled roof, open on the sides save for several benches spanning its posts.

As you approach the gazebo, sun still struggling to burn off the overcast clamminess, you at last spot another person, a woman sitting on one of the benches affixed underneath. An unfamiliar face, even at a distance, but more than that, you are struck with the realization that she shouldn't be here either.

To be continued...

In which everything is JUST FINE REALLY

EVERYTHING IS GOING GREAT WITH THE 500 WORD CHALLENGE. WRITING PRACTICALLY ALL THE TIME NOW AND--
--heck, I always was a terrible liar. I fell off the wagon this weekend. Hard. I had a remarkably productive weekend and attacked the to-do list viciously, but didn't get a single word down Saturday or Sunday. Avoiding writing may well be the key to success in other areas of life.

What I do have written down, however, is quite a superb list of excuses. Easily 500 words. Care to hear them? Perhaps the one about the back injury? Compelling and vivid, I assure you.

No?

Moving along. How is everyone else doing on the challenge? I need to browse through some of the website links and scout everyone else's progress. I had a thought that in the near future I would do 500 words in comments on other people's sites. Twenty-five words on twenty sites? Seems a good idea.

I had thought as well that perhaps it's time to move from blogger to WordPress, like all the cool people (and because blogger is incredibly flat and restrictive). That would likely serve as little more than a distraction during January, however, so best push that to February. Does anyone have a favorite platform--something other than WordPress to recommend?

Funny how it isn't enough to establish good habits--they need constant maintenance. Years ago I couldn't look at someone sitting on a park bench without spontaneously thinking up her backstory and what was churning through her mind. Now? Lady on a park bench. The end. Given sufficient laxness we gradually atrophy our abilities, becoming less like Sherlock and more like Watson. Fourteen steps up to the room, you say? There were steps?

Part of the problem is how incredibly capable we become at the everyday overhead of life. I have to rub my cheek to confirm the morning shave--yes, smooth and not scratchy. Wearing pants? Thank goodness, yes. Wearing underwear? I'll get back to you on that.

Remember learning to drive? The intense attention required to maintain a relatively constant speed, check the mirrors, stay in your lane, shift focus rapidly between near and far traffic? Now we drive in traffic eating a banana while talking on a cell phone and watching nothing but the rearview mirror. Easy.

Our practiced perfection numbs us to detail. Our autopilot is so well trained as to simulate a life without us even needing to be there. My body has gone on to brush its teeth without me. I'm somewhere up in my head pacing off steps, smoking an imaginary pipe, mentally chewing upon some academically interesting bit of gristle.

Autonomic systems gradually subsume consciousness. The body already regulates temperature and heart rate independently; it is more than capable of handling the entirety of routine living. Life becomes like breathing--it goes on without our attention, but with thought and effort we can govern it. Writing demands that thought and effort.

In my pacing I now come across a woman on a bench. And I know what she's thinking.

A change in the air

Day Ten, nearly a third of the way through the 500 Word Challenge. For the remaining two-thirds I may need to change gears a bit and work on some writing that doesn't get posted on this blog. I want to focus on some fiction writing exercises that would likely be ill-suited to this format. Perhaps go with an even/odd schedule--even days for private writing, odd days for site posts; that would allow me time for more liberating free-form scribbling, which I sorely need.

No cheating, I promise--I'll report back here with progress.

One post away from becoming a hobo

A second ago I had zero. Now I have six. Scratch that--ten. Definite progress. The words are flowing easier now. Trying with music tonight. Loud music.

If only you knew how exciting this was--I've done the math and the odds of this reaching 500 words and posting before midnight...well, not something you would put money on.

You have the advantage of me. I'm staring at blank, blank screen, but you can already see the words; you know how this ends. So, do I make it? Missing tonight after a stinker as recent as January 7th would be calamitous; it could derail the whole project and send the 500 Word Challenge tumbling into a ravine.

At that point I'd have to scuttle the whole blog, drag Scrivener to the trash, perhaps become a hobo and hop trains. One can only withstand so much disappointment with yourself, especially as you are always there.

This, I'm guessing, is why people take up drink. How else do you get some peace from that chattering loon in your skull?

Three hundred words separate me from ruin. Let's notch up the music volume a bit. There's more below this, yes? More words? I didn't stop at the two-hundred mark? Because that's where we're at, and my eyes burn with fatigue. Fatigue and what I suspect is napalm in my shampoo, which seared my left eye half a day ago and still burns. Mental note to check the recipe on that bottle. Turpentine? Lime remover? Drain cleaner? I should also make sure the word "shampoo" appears somewhere on the front label as well.

I stare at screens and type all day for a living. Nothing like this, of course, but it's remarkable how much of our lives has come to typing. Ruminate on that for a while. It's coming up empty on my side but perhaps you can dredge something out of that.

Long blank stare here. You're skimming, aren't you? Such a luxury of the reader; I have to make this stuff up, with exercises to build healthy writing habits, and, like exercise, sometimes it comes easily and feels thrilling and other times it's just tedium and irritation.

Maybe you can help. Do you write with or without music? If you listen to music, does it have to be purely instrumental? When do you write? Morning, evening, at intervals during the day? Do you have to leave the house and head out to a library or coffee shop to get anything done? Can you read books during a writing project or do you need to isolate yourself from the thoughts and styles of other writers?

I think we're going to make it. Thanks for sticking with me. I definitely need to wrap this up sooner rather than later; the glow and clicking of my laptop is keeping my wife up. The difficult posts are certainly educational--it's becoming increasingly clear what works and what doesn't, and nighttime writing isn't harmonious with an exhausted household.

Do leave a comment if you're considering it--perhaps you can tell me how tomorrow goes.

Mac vs PC vs 1943 Underwood Upright

You're a writer and you're using a PC. This is a sensitive topic, I know. Writers have MacBooks, it's said. There's this sense that using Windows will hamstring your abilities, that you're attempting to ply your trade with inferior tools. I possess decades of vast knowledge on computer operating systems, including every version of Windows released, both client and server side, and I can confidently tell you: it's true. I'm sorry.

This post is not intended to explain exactly why this might be true (it's true), but rather this post serves as an act of commiseration. You can transcend the limits and deficiencies of your writing implements. We employ various tools in the physical act of writing--chisels, quills, pens, as well as the subject of today's commiserative post: typewriters.

Specifically, a 1943 Underwood upright typewriter. Owned by a bank during World War II, this black, 30-plus-pound beast became my grandmother's property (along with some chairs) when the Great Depression closed any number of banks. She bequeathed it to me. During the bulk of my teen years, I used it nearly every day.

Note first that the Underwood does not have spellcheck, nor an integrated dictionary or thesaurus. As to typing, there is no gossamer pip-pipping your fingers across the keyboard. Each key has a long throw requiring jabs of significant depth and force to smack the ink against the paper. As with a piano, you must strike using strength from your arms as well as your fingers. There is no exclamation point key; this symbol is assembled by typing an apostrophe, then backspacing (an especially resistant press), then typing a period.

And so we begin writing on the Underwood. We're jabbing at keys making a satisfying thwackety-clack, with each press the entire upper assembly trundles to the left, the carriage dragging the paper along. Ink smashes into the paper, each letter pressed like braille, the analog intensity of each stroke recorded in words.

We're thwackety-clacking along, building speed, and the deep bell rings, signaling our left hand to reach up, grab the smooth silver lever, and slam the carriage back to the right. Ding-zip-boom! The desk is trembling from the steel's weight and thundering staccato energy.

With the Underwood there's no going back, no editing, no word "processing," so we plow forward, building tremendous rhythm on the keys. Thwackety-clack, thwackety-clack, ding-zip-boom! The desk is heaving, gears spinning, ink splattering. For all the sound and fury we might be anvil-hammering red-hot horseshoes by the dozen but no. We. Are. Making. WORDS.

The sun has set; the room has darkened as we pound. We're lit by a coursing orange glow inside the Underwood, the heat and warmth of a boiler. We're startled to see our muse to the right--she's done with faint whispering, we've put her to work--her face covered in black dust; she is wearing a leather apron and plunging a wide-bladed shovel into coal with abandon, heaping fuel into the boiler's mouth.

We are making words, as in the beginning, when there was only the Word; we have tapped into the fundamental force behind the cosmos--not particles or processes but words.

Thwackety-clack.

The dog ate my 500 words

Part of establishing new habits is figuring out what works, and working 13 hours and then trying to write 500 words just before bed isn't a great idea. Lesson learned. Adjusting and adapting tomorrow to get back on track. Starting early!