Introduced a sudden death into my floundering Nanowrimo novel and none of the characters wanted anything to do with it. My word count has declined to 500 words a day and I have abandoned my plot outlines in despair.
My tiny puppies have a new game in which they dash between my legs as I walk and try to overtake one of my feet. I am terrifid of tripping and falling on them. When my lovely older friend Aletta was dying, one of her granddaughters asked:
“What important thing have you learned from living so long? Like, spiritual, you know.’
Aletta brightened.
“Never step over a sleeping dog, not even a small one,’ she said, with feeling.
The day began cold and misty but has suddenly turned into a scorcher. Too hot to sit outdoors and read in the shade, so I am stying in the study with a long cool glass of homemade gingerbeer. My old-fashioned Salvia leucantha is flowering in velvety purple and white. A wild sweet pea is rambling through the white marguerites and throwing up lilac and mauve blooms. A cutworm has killed my surviving basil plants.
The old rambling roses, shamefully neglected are flowering profusely. This weekend the house will be filled with blue and silver bowls of crimson and pale yellow roses, the fragrance sweetening the rooms. My housemate will be working, so I shall be alone with the puppies, my books and music. I am going to listen to Schubert and browse through gardening manuals to plan out autumn planting, stretched out on the sofa with puppies tumbling around me. And I shall endeavour to get on with the writing, but will be lucky to make 30 000 words by the end of the month. Some sections of the text are not bad and I may be able to work with them. But the whole scheme needs a rethink.
Stuckness doesn’t feel like a learning curve but in retrospect it is always valuable. So long as I can push on through.
A plump blonde woman with a ruined left eye arrived on the doorstep last night to invite us to a boat outing on the dam as part of the local amateur musical society. We would climb onto a raddled pleasure steamer, an old unstable catamaran and sail around the smll dam listening to Bacharach while eating a shipboard brunch in the blazing sun.
‘Please do come,’ she coaxed. ‘It will be just like a booze cruise.’
I inwardly winced and tried not to sound too Scroogelike or abrupt when I declined. Drinking liquor at 9am on an unsafe boat on a small reed-bound dam, all of us sitting there in the heat with no shelter from the sun and listening to Burt Bacharach on an empty stomach as we wait for the defrosted and stale toasted sandwiches to be passed around… heat stroke, alcohol poisoning, death by accidental drowning, musical overkill.
Instead of going along and risking boat-rage or worse, I shall get up in the cool of dawn to garden and then make a peach sorbet with fresh mint leaves. It has always interested me that at the end of his satirical novel Candide, Voltaire offers this advice to those who have survived plagues and earthquakes and revolutions and the auto-da-fe in Lisbon: ‘Cultivez votre jardin.’
Stay at home far from the madness of war and the courts of princes and tend you
r garden. Mind your own business, take care of your small acre of earth, watch things grow and recover your sanity. Find happiness and contentment where you are, be satisfied with what comes your way. Candide is a wonderful novel and I wish I had a copy in the house.
I thought I was a writer until I read you.I write like a redneck. Maybe there’s readers for that…blue collar novels! I could write for the local Pennysaver!
Maybe you should write about the locals. The bit about the boat outing was hysterical! loved it1 Thank you. jeNN
Stuckness…love that word. It would appear that your writer’s block is quite temporary. Your flow and image is so inspiring. I just love your blog. All of it…even the dead squirrel. Sorry you had to do that, but I know about the need to bring relief through necessary violence. It is always counter to instinct and the gifts we hold so dear in living a full life. Keep on writing. I don’t want to miss a word!
When you were describing the blond plump woman I first thought I was reading a paragraph out of your novel. It read very funny, and then I realized you were describing a very recent incident, it was even better. Thanks for sharing.
I too got stuck in my writing but like you just kept pushing through and have somewhat caught up to where I need to be but it took a few days.
I love what your friend said on her deathbed, and I’ve honestly never stepped over my sleeping dogs when they are near me or in the kitchen trying to help me cook.
I love Candide, and Voltaire, and find that yes to tend to my own garden is the most valuable place I can be. Thank you for this reminder!
G~*
I, too, am suffering from writer’s block so I’m going to kill someone and see what happens. I think lots of things will start coming together now, since this person, a secondary character, will have huge repercussions throughout the story.
Your writing is so eloquent. So as not to detract from it, my comment is:
Fabulous post – loved it!