Week 2 Peptalk (NaNoWriMo 2017)

Wow, tomorrow begins week 2 of noveling! How are you all doing?

Personally, I think I have hit the week 2 blues early. Life always seems to hit with a vengeance once the euphoria is in full swing, and the necessity of caring for a household, keeping up with distant family, work, school, or whatever is on your plate, comes roaring back demanding attention right about this time of the month.

If you are like me, and rather than catch up on sleep or word count with that lovely time change this weekend, you goofed off and stayed up later than usual, you’ll be feeling it about now. Particularly if you kept up the idiocy another two nights. And I would be very surprised but empathetic if you too have a painfully stiff neck (PSA: when the petite instructor on the TV says “you should be using 2-3 pound weights for this” do not laugh and turn to your sister and say, “we’ve been exercising for awhile, let’s try it with the ten pound dumbells we have handy.” Don’t. Just don’t) and your spouse is uncomfortably close to the region where one nation is trying to instigate a war with another by supplying insurgents with hefty missiles. Whatever your difficulty, I guarantee this is about the time it will get weird and ugly, and you will want to quit, because the lovely rapport you just found with your novel is in jeopardy, if not in shambles. Perhaps you haven’t even found it yet, but still everything else in your world has gone insane right on schedule.

It all comes down to this: things aren’t going as well as you hoped. This is where the going is tough. Will you write on anyway?

If your mind shies away from the idea; if your thoughts go galloping away from your story as soon as you sit down, and you have to rein them in, point them in the right direction, even as they squirm and wriggle and make for the nearest TV show, book, or heavens, anything at all, dishes even, so long as it isn’t your book–I’m with you. My mind can be a wild ride at the best of times, and this is not my finest hour. But after I send this message, I will continue on my story. Word by word, sentence by sentence, the incorporeal thought will become corporeal, black letters on a white page. I will write, believing I will return to edit it. I will write, believing my husband will come home to read it. I will write as an act of faith, that the difficult now will not be always. That change is possible. That thought, made manifest, can cause the world to alter, if only in tiny ways.That resolution of my own problems is a matter of time.

Happiness is in part, determined by the hope of change, and I think the fiction that inspires us taps into that hope. As we write, just as when we read, we have that hope of resolution and resonance from our stories. But stopping in the middle resolves nothing. Not for our characters, and not for us.

Persist, my fellow WriMos. However batty life has become, however terrible your story, there is still that kernel of truth in it. Don’t stop now. And I will trust in your resolution as I do my own.

 

Pre-month Peptalk (NaNoWriMo 2017)

Greetings, fellow Kansans and Wrimos!

Three days left, and then the month begins! I don’t know about you, but I’m nervous. I think I have a solid plan, after almost a month of reworking it, yet the trepidation of a new start still hangs over my head. As always.

Despite what you might think, over a decade of participation doesn’t remove the fear of failure. I am always convinced I will somehow make the beautiful novel I’ve envisioned into a sprawling, lifeless mess. And there will be days in the coming month that every word will fall flat. I know this.

But there will be other days when the words will fly, when the world will come alive on my computer screen, my characters talk, and laugh, and love in ways I did not expect. There will be days when I wish I did not have to leave my story for the mundane structure of my own life, when the adventure catches me up in euphoria, when I feel as strong and brave as these people who do not exist. Even the days I dread, when I will taste their grief as certainly as my own, and the universality of pain and loss will haunt my thoughts though the story continues.

These days only come when I am knit into my story, hour by hour, week by week. When I have allowed my mind to play in the imaginary world long enough to know the rules, when the consistent plodding of one word after another forms connections beyond conscious recognition. NaNoWriMo has always brought these moments to me, even in the years of “failure.” All it takes is for me to show up, and put down the words.

If you are reading this, I know you also contemplate the coming month. Perhaps you don’t share my concerns at all, or perhaps you are paralyzed by uncertainty. Regardless, we are all in this together. And I hope, we will all end the month together.

Check out the regional calendar. We have more write-ins scheduled in more areas than I have seen in three years of being ML for Kansas: Elsewhere; if you want to add another, shoot me a message and perhaps we can round up some others in your area. I also plan to set up regional word sprints on a weekly basis for those who can’t attend any write-ins in person.

The beauty of NaNoWriMo is not just the deadline, and the necessity of writing daily, it’s the community of other crazies writers who are doing the same thing, at the same time. We may be scattered to the far corners of Kansas, but we are not alone. You are not alone, wherever you are. Whatever your thoughts toward the month ahead, someone else feels the same.

So go on. Introduce yourself on the forums. Tell us what you want to write this year. Ask questions.

In three days, we’ll each begin to write our own stories, but our purpose will be the same. I have to say, I find that amazing. And I’m glad to share the journey with this wild, quiet region.

NaNoWriMo

Though I haven’t written a post in months, I think it is time to begin again. I have been writing in the meantime, mostly editing Leading Gambit and preparing for NaNoWriMo, with greater success than previous years. In the process, I’ve gained a little local notoriety, though no one seems to know exactly what I have done, or why I’m promoting this event. I get a lot of questions, though…

I wrote a post about NaNoWriMo here. Hopefully it is self-explanatory.

Suspended

It is ironic that at a time when I might have gained readers by increasing traffic to my site, I fell silent.

Reality has come home: my husband is leaving. He is going without his battle buddy; I can no longer help in any way the soldiers around him, many of whom I know by sight if not by name. Many with whom I have spent months in uncomfortable circumstances, with whom I have argued, brainstormed. Many I treated.

No longer. No longer their provider, or even their comrade. No longer his, with that same assurance that we’re together in the mess, shoulder by shoulder, back to back at need. Not here, not there. I chose to leave the uniform, and this is the result. We shall be separated, and this casual certainty of each other will change.

His photo hangs above my desk, an old one, from when he was a mere sergeant. It places the time firmly after we met, before his return from Iraq. If I am correct, it is his official deployment photo, created in case of his death overseas. My mother has our second set of deployment photos, when we both were newly-minted lieutenants. Soon I will have a third of his, likely with that same hint of a smile.

I know him, down to the shapes of his fingernails, the warped toe on his right foot, the moles on his back, the pattern of the hairs on his head, dark and thick on the sides, light and incorrigible on the very top. We have never been separated for longer than 3 months, in over a decade of marriage–rather than allow it, we traveled to each other, through military schools and civilian medical rotations, hours of flight, poor road conditions, lack of sleep, or privacy. Few have been the times when we could not find a way to be together for a night, for a day, for a handful of hours, eked out between weeks of absence. But this distance is too far for that. Our love must live in the lines, on paper, in our heads.

Love, they say, is largely a matter of proximity at its start. But love does not die through separation conversely. It can be poisoned, it can warp, it can become uncoordinated and awkward and out of synch between those it binds, but only love’s tenacity explains the power of heartbreak in our lives. Recovery is less a matter of forgetting than learning to love differently; learning to let go.

I fear the changes coming, as much as I try to be stable, rational, peaceful. I feel the number of days dwindle with each night, and see the signs. I have a smartphone now; every bit as distracting as I expected, but necessary if we are to text or chat while he is gone. (In itself, this is a minor miracle of possibility, but we won’t know if it works for months yet.) My malpractice insurance must be changed, for my employment contract with my primary position will be terminated in 10 days. I am working the last of my call weekends for them in 3 days. I have an address for my husband once he is overseas.

Each of these things has weight, and I am well aware of my distress in bearing them. The usual coping mechanisms of refusing sleep, immersion in fiction, and loss of focus effect everything else, and I’m struggling to maintain routine, or find joy in my schedule. I’m also plagued with headaches, as Spring brings in drastic weather fronts with vicious rapidity, and March will never be an innocuous month regardless, with Zach’s birthday at its center. I am tired, in pain, and overwhelmed with love for the one who will leave, for my children who will mourn, for the brother who left and the brother who avoids.

Joy comes gently. The beauty and hilarity of a well-written show (“Goblin”–watch it) and new music from its soundtrack that both hurts and eases my mind. A scene that haunted me until it emerged, already living, from my fingers. Sunlight and wind, and my littles cuddled with me in the hammock. The warmth of my husband’s back in our bed. Hearing my littles sing “곰 세 마리” to themselves, or understanding pieces of dialogue even when I haven’t properly studied Korean for days.

These days of waiting creep through the seconds, fly through the hours, and I watch. I am still here, as I will be when the tension adjusts again.

Two Rs

Yesterday I did not post here, though I wrote all afternoon. Instead, I had the privilege of authoring a guest post on a blog devoted to reading. The blog is called Pages and Margins, and they have reviews of books, for both adults and children, as well as posts about the philosophical and practical aspects of reading.

Inevitably, I wrote about writing to read, and reading to write. You can find it here.

 

Of Mice and Coconuts

I seem to be perpetually in conflict, if only in my head.

I have begun studying Korean in earnest over the past couple weeks, picking up various references and mapping out a loose plan that would take me through beginner level by the end of the year. If anyone is interested, I’m primarily using the KLEAR Integrated Korean textbooks, supplemented by the much less detailed Living Language program. The first gives copious background, clarifies grammar, and the workbook requires an intense amount of practice but in surprisingly enjoyable fashion. The second has better audio files, repeating vocabulary words/phrases three times each, for instance, so that I can listen to it while folding laundry, and the content is immediately useful–greetings, introductions, family members, numbers, etc.–although their brief explanations of grammar frustrated me to no end when I first began. The latter lets me begin to listen, speak, and understand, while the first teaches me why, which is always paramount to my learning anything.

However, I am now accumulating more books again–about 6 inches of dictionary, another inch of verb conjugations, flashcards, more flashcards, and I have no place arranged for these things. Worse, these are books I expect to use frequently, probably more often than the books on writing or strategy on my shelves right now, and I keep finding more resources to consider, such as Talk To Me in Korean or How to study Korean , both of which have been useful. The first prompted me to start a Korean journal and thus start exploring the language beyond my lessons, and the second explained the conjugation of Korean verbs when I tried to use the new book and realized that my previous language studies would do me no good whatsoever–verb forms for Asian languages change for reasons that don’t exist in English grammar. Both websites promise to teach me well if I follow their courses instead, but I am overwhelmed. So many options exist, and I only understand a fraction of my ignorance.

Considering our expectations regarding my husband’s doctorate program, continuing the KLEAR course faithfully would lead to completion of five full years of study prior to actually traveling to Korea, which is daunting enough. But after working this out on paper, I sat back and pondered. After two or three years overseas, what good will this knowledge do me when we return to the States? Or if we moved to Korea following the completion of my service time, what then? I am a mid-level healthcare provider, and my husband will become one also; these positions do not exist in any other country, and I’ve already experienced the limbo of practice accorded to a foreigner with a useful but unrecognized degree. Or the fear I truly do not like to name, what if I cannot live in their culture, once immersed? What if I will forever be the outsider, wishing I could fit in?

I feel like a mouse eyeing a coconut. So much effort will be required to get through the outer flesh, and then the hard shell within. Will I feast, once the meat is broached? Could the unusual richness turn my stomach, or worse, could my nibbling pace take so long to reach the heart that it will rot before I find it? Or can I fill myself to bursting, clean every morsel from the walls, and build myself a new home in the depths?

Yet I am drawn. As if the puzzle of meaning within the word changes and sentence structure could rip my mind open to possibilities I cannot imagine in my native tongue, as if the sheer differences between Anglo-Saxon expectation and Asian reality prove there are worlds I cannot see.

I’ve always loved words because they make concrete what is imaginary–the thoughts in my head can become yours, the intangible be transmitted without a touch, but it all depends on the words used, the precision of their meaning not only individually but in the pattern I choose. I have spent years understanding how to hone my choices, to bring my reader into my world, my head. I have enjoyed the idiosyncrasies of français and español in formal study, picked up a smattering of other languages on my own–Welsh, Icelandic, Russian, Slovak, German, Arabic, Hebrew–and stolen their words for my imaginary worlds without the urge to know them beyond the enjoyable or the practical.

Well. Here are purely contrary patterns, disparate thoughts. An entirely unknown world of potential meanings. Every time I am frightened by my incomprehension, I am also intrigued, because I have begun to understand this: It will not be enough to translate my thoughts into Korean, just as the sounds of 한국어 cannot be reproduced into our alphabet. Almost no equivalency exists, in meaning or in pronunciation, and the effect of trying is to render both weaker. Romanization is a crutch, a distraction from accurate speech, and it veils a greater truth–I must change how I think at the most basic level to understand.

I’ll give one example, given without much explanation in every first lesson: 안녕하세요. We translate it as “Hello,” “Good morning/afternoon/evening,” even “How are you?” but that isn’t what it means. It means “Are you [honored] at peace?” while indicating highest courtesy to the one addressed. And if you think that some part of this word (yes, it is one word) is the verb “to be,” think again: “to be” is not really a verb in Korean. It is a copula, indicating equation with a predicate (if you are confused, a predicate can be either a verb or an adjective–and yes, I had to look that up.)

안녕하다 is an adjective, conjugated into the simple greeting above. The closest translation we have is “to be at peace/well” but I hope it is obvious just how short of the mark this falls. Perhaps “subject=peace.” Do we have such a concept in English? Being is implied for all Korean adjectives in relation to the named state, but wait–if they conjugate this like their verbs, it can be stated as fact: I am peaceful. Proposed: Let’s be at peace. Questioned: Are you at peace? Commanded: Be at peace. Made passive or active, as peacefulness comes upon someone unexpectedly, or a person forces peacefulness into existence. Peace is active. Peace is. Peace =. All within one word.

Already I have run out of words to explain, but I am fascinated. Wrapped in these beautifully precise sounds and symbols lie such ideas. How can I look away? Even if the knowledge will profit me nothing, I want to know.

한국어를 배우고 있어요. 조금 할 수 있어요.

Identification

In the process of (re)watching “Healer” with my sister, I’ve been thinking about facades, and how often we use them with each other. Most times it seems we present ourselves in specific ways, not with the conscious intent to deceive, but through the unthinking urge to meld with our surroundings and avoid conflict.

I am thinking of Young Shin’s tailored account of her conversation with the woman on the rooftop, when talking to her father after the fact. It would be impossible for her to forget the deeply personal emotions she shared, the crux of why the woman listened, yet she skims over that most important detail. Why? Because relating her experience still caused her pain? Or because she did not want her father to see it?

Part of what has fascinated me about the characterization of “Healer” are the facets of personality presented by each person to others–Bong Soo is not Healer but both are present in Jung Hoo; the roles he takes on are never purely fiction, only exaggeration of specific traits, for instance–because I have noticed this truth in reality. I suspect everyone has pieces they present as a whole, depending on the circumstances.

I am not the woman I present to my patients, although she is a part of me: she is professional, confident, articulate, and kind–but she is not often personal, beyond the casual information needed to engage. She has small children, to encourage camaraderie in worried parents. She uses nasal steroids at need, for the sinus ailments the bipolar weather of this region promotes. She is human enough to be humane, but heaven forbid she have outside interests or enthusiasms, deeply-held views, strong emotions. These aspects are not needed in a small exam room, and divergence into them causes discomfort, uncertainty, even embarrassment.

LE Orison is purely literary, existing in words alone, whether stories or poetry or these blog posts. I don’t share LE Orison with many people, lest my position as a health practitioner, (formerly and in the future) as a soldier, or even as a friend or relative influence the reception of those words–or vis-versa, lest the words affect the position. Thought is edited into clarity, randomness made coherent, before the words ever reach another set of eyes. Philosophical, intelligent, admitting to background and circumstances but not limited to them, this is LE: me, with all the boring bits removed. This too, is a presentation, not the whole.

There is the mother my children know, and the me of Facebook. I am the church-going acquaintance and the probably-annoying coworker. Tonight I will go to a final party for my clinic, together with my husband, and the reality of the coming loss of that position will force me into less of the professional and coworker, more of the supportive wife, just as I will be for every activity of his unit from now until the end. In all of these roles there is truth, but not complete truth.

I wonder, when I see others’ facades. When meeting old friends, or family members long absent, there is that juxtaposition of familiarity and ignorance which often leads to a projection of personality until the edges are worn down and the irregularity of reality creeps through. Often, I can perceive the projection for what it is, but the fact of it unsettles me. Instinctively, I know that only abandoning my own pretense can lead to the understanding I remember, but honesty requires time, safety, and cooperation.

In this newest cohabitation, I have seen my sister’s Polite Stranger mode periodically, both aimed toward myself and past acquaintances, and while recognizing it is useful as a warning sign for me, that some level of discomfort exists between us in that moment, I question what mode I am using on her, and if she recognizes it in turn. What mode did I use this morning on friends I have not spoken to in weeks? What mode might I use on my husband, when his return will render him physically a stranger, even an outsider to our lives? What mode, even, have he and I adopted toward each other in the presence of others? For sharing a mode also exists–who we are before bedtime is not who we are when the children sleep, let alone around company. We were fellow soldiers, lovers, classmates, coworkers, long before we were parents.

Who shall I be tonight?

Perhaps I will be bold. Perhaps, having nothing left to lose, I will be myself. After all, it is also a date with my love.

 

 

Today

Today is one of those days–days when nothing seems to go right, when I find I am gritting my teeth over and over, despite solving a series of small issues, several of which have plagued me for weeks. An appointment which needed to be rescheduled. A work application to fill out (for the third time), in hopes of a future ER position. A prescription put in an envelope with the required paperwork for a mail-in pharmacy. Stray items put away, laundry folded, a photo framed. A request for my paid time-off submitted, to cover the lack of income from my job over the next month and a half.

Yet I want to punch the walls, shriek, sob, sleep for days. Perhaps it is hormones, perhaps a virus gleaned from a recent patient, lack of time by myself, inadequate nutrition or hydration, or some combination of the above. Perhaps it is the outcry of my abused muscles from doing CrossFit with my sister yesterday. Perhaps it is the news that a friend’s son died in an accident mere days ago, and the memory of sudden, crushing grief that I cannot spare her, or her family.

I am caught between opposites.

I am reminding myself of Hangul and figuring out the first workbook lessons, since my new edition came this morning. Strangely, the audio files correspond to the text, when both are the second edition. Perhaps now I can progress beyond those basics. The possibilities please me, but I doubt my tenacity, my willingness to get up before my littles and persevere daily. My throat hurts, and my ears cannot pick up the difference between ㅖand ㅒ. I am frustrated I have forgotten–or never learned at all–so much. Frustrated that I cannot sign up for a formal language course, and frustrated that even if we had the money, I would fail to meet the deadlines.

I love my littles, and I’m glad they are alive, but they have had so many urinary accidents today I have lost track of the number, and they have shrieked and ran through the house all morning. The older makes demands and uses baby talk in painful decibels; the younger is practicing defiance and forgets my requests before the end of the sentence. Someday this strength of personality will be essential to their goals. Someday their intelligence will not be used to destroy. Someday I will not mourn the end of naptime each day.

I want to finish Leading Gambit, to continue on with Rising Guard, but I’m afraid to read my reader’s comments as I start my edits. I want my characters to wrestle with death and grief, political exigency versus moral rights, but I fear I cannot do them justice.

I want to switch from my prescription medication to supplements beyond military objections. I want to be able to walk into a recruiter’s office with a packet of letters and forms next year, and pass without question. And yet I fear that I have become irreparably broken, that I will not meet the standard by some measure I’ve never considered, that the loss of my job in two months will damage my worth, and decrease any recruiter’s willingness to help me through the process.

Today, only my fears and frustration have weight. I don’t know why, and this too annoys me.

 

 

 

 

Flow

It’s two days before Christmas and I wanted to write a quick post, even if it isn’t poetic. There are a lot of things on my mind, and I am striving to maintain a positive regard of each.

1.) My husband is not going to the five-week course in January-February, so the amount of time he will be absent is greatly reduced. This is wonderful in that I get to keep him for longer before he goes overseas, but as my sister is still coming and my clinic is not willing to schedule me for those months, our income will be decreased at the same time as our expenditure will increase. I’ve thought of a partial solution: I’m going to request all my paid time off during that period, because:

2.) My clinic has decided that rather than put me on leave for a year, they will simply retain me through March and then my contract with them will end. Initially, this made me very sad because I have fought hard and long for this job, despite the difficulties, because I enjoy my coworkers. But the facts are that the position is underpaid and stressful, and I am probably better off elsewhere. So come March, I am free to seek out another position, which indeed I will need to do. I don’t know of any now, but I am hopeful. In the meantime:

3.) I have now had two readers go through Leading Gambit, and while the feedback isn’t detailed or professional, the response is uniformly positive. I just finished rereading it myself, and although there are certainly areas that need editing, the manuscript itself flows very well for the majority of the book. It’s a good sign when readers report they didn’t want to put it down. Heck, it’s a good sign when I don’t want to put it down! So I’ve finished my initial assessment, and I’ll begin my first edits before sending it out to my second-line critics. Thus, one of my goals while I am working less, this coming year, is to write more. Send out this work in earnest.

I have mourned this month as a time of endings, but the coming year is also a time for beginnings. My sister living in my house. Perhaps my first real attempt to publish a novel. An ER job with a reasonable shift length. There are many possibilities, to continue what I have begun, and to start anew. Time flows on.