Red Cedar

I’m very very close to 50,000 words right now but I cheated a little and posted 2000 words from prior writing so I have to get 52,000 words before November 30th in order to complete Nanowrimo. Still, I’m less than 4000 words away from the goal and that’s kindof crazy if you ask me. I’ve never written this much on one topic, or gotten this close to finishing a first draft of a novel. Right now I have 136 double-spaced pages and am about 2/3rds of the way finished and it’s mind-boggling to me. Which I suppose is always true of daunting goals once completed – the act of having done it can seem impossible even in hindsight.

Today I had another little breakthrough on the novel front which may turn out to be a hokey plot device once all is said and done – but we’ll see. It’s basically leading to a four part novel in which the first part is told all in conversation and internal monologue, the second part is an exchange of letters, dialogue and a little internal monologue, the third part is straight first-person storytelling, and the fourth part is three letters/notes. I know that doesn’t tell you much about what’s going on with it – but I’ve got the drafts for part 1,2, and 4 almost done and I’m starting on part three tomorrow which is some of the trickier writing because it relies on stuff I don’t know anything about – like building a log cabin by hand.

Yeah. It’s going to be a fun December as my writing slows down and I try to make a plausible backdrop for Frances – but I gotta say that as much as the nineteen-thirties sucked, it seems a lot simpler than the economic crisis of today, especially if you lived in a place where you could still grow food and tend some chickens and stuff (noted that this was not the case for most of prairies and plains people who were driven from their land due to the dustbowl). At least there’s something comforting about writing characters who you know are going to live through it no matter what’s going on around them. So it’s nice to go hang out with them, you know? Even when their lives aren’t easy.

I’m a tad fed up with reality at the moment, you see, not my personal life (which is going swimmingly) but the general political climate around us has really got me down. Right wing governments, toothless workers and a labour leadership who doesn’t seem to get that the reason they can’t rally the vote is because it isn’t the answer people are looking for. Sad isn’t it? In the middle of an economic crisis that is only bound to get worse (don’t believe the hype, things have *not* turned around as long as the recovery is “jobless”) it seems like we’re damned any which way and I pretty much feel like giving up the fight right now. Because it’s so much nicer to hang out in my imaginary world, or write songs than sit in rooms full of people who know that things are bad but are limited in their imagination for *real* change.

Somehow the labour-left has completely lost its ability to envision the society people might want to live in and the only program is election, election, election. Which is a hard sell if you ask me. I’m not sure any of us really buy it anymore and when the call is that “unions need to change” we can’t hear that either. I’ve got some articulate rant coming on this subject I’m sure…. but I’ll try to hold off until after the BCFed Convention so I can at least get through tomorrow without grimacing too much.

Novel-writing this week has been a bit of a struggle, what with late nights, meetings and work all slowing me down, but still I’ve managed to get to almost 39,000 words and 107 double-spaced pages with another eleven days left in Nanowrimo and no doubt I’m going to make the goal of 50,000. Hell, I now know I can write 10,000 words in a day if I have to…. so I could even space out from now until the end and still make the word goal without too much cursing on my part. But of course I won’t do that.

The unfortunate thing is that my novel is going to be longer than 50,000 words at first draft – perhaps double the length – which means come November 30th I’ve still got another month (at least) of first-draft writing to do. It’s a little daunting to imagine doing this every day for another month. But at least now I know I can, and that at times it’s even enjoyable to do.

In the beginning I was in a real race to get words down, but since life has intervened with other priorities, I have allowed myself to approach this whole exercise from a more relaxed place, and that allows my characters a lot more room to act and say. It’s more enjoyable even as the end seems increasingly elusive. As much as it scares me, I’m also looking foward to hacking this thing apart later and going at it a second time – there’s a lot of rich material and detail I want to either hammer in or expand on still, things I’m learning all the time about people, about the historic time period in which I’ve set my story, about the subconcious and how it fills in symbols and detail all on its own. I’ve included here another description of the project, a little more detailed than the one I posted three weeks ago….. just for those of you who wanted a bit more of an idea of the story-arc. Sub-plot details include a granddaughter who lives in East Vancouver and is a single mother and writer whom Frances tells her story to over the course of the book. The granddaughter’s story of her own disappearing lover and explorations of those on the margins is starting (finally) to form a subplot of its own which isn’t described below.

“Loosely based on the life of my great-aunt Frances who was raised in rural British Columbia in a large homesteading family. A woman whose life is already difficult because of her masculine looks and overcontrolling father, when she gets pregnant out of wedlock at the age of nineteen she is shunned by most of her community. As a way to support herself and son builds her own house and store by hand and without help from anyone and proceeds to set up the first store and post office in the community of White Bay (a fictionalized place). Her itinerant lover returns after several years of depression-era living and attempts to woo Frances once more, partly out of his own desire for family but mostly because he is interested in cashing in on her hard work. It is here she must make a decision between social acceptability and continuing to live on her own terms. The main story takes place from 1915-1936 and is set in a fictional White Bay, BC and the real Salmon Arm, BC both on the shores of Shuswap Lake.”

It has been brought to my attention that I have been neglecting this blog lately – and no wonder why! Between the last post and now I have added an additional 16,006 words to my novel, read at least three books, booked a place to get married, been engaged in negotiations on my sunshine coast home and taken a 3-day trip to Victoria. Which is sortof a lot in a 10 day period for anyone (even me!)

I’ve got lots of updating to do, then, but it seems more manageable to break all of that down into short 200-word posts over the next couple of days rather than doing one long catch-up….. so that’s what I will do! In the meantime rest assured that come the close of my novel regular blog-posting will resume – whatever regular looks like!