Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
Plot synopsis
In the last two days I’ve managed to get six thousand words towards my 50 000 word goal. As Brian points out – this puts me at 12% done in the first two days which is somewhat heartening when I’ve still got 44,0000 words to churn before the end of the month. Lucky me, today was a flex and Nanowrimo started on a Sunday this year, which has allowed me to get a jump start knowing that there will be days in the month where I will be able to write very little.
Now, I’m not saying that these are 6000 really great words that I will keep in some future incarnation of this project – but on the other hand, my characters are already doing things on their own that I haven’t previously mapped out. And I always love it when that happens. It’s as though the story is already out there in the ether and my task is to pull it into some coherent order on the page. Not a simple task, but I’m detached from it on some level. My characters simply do things and I’ve got to record it with the best possible language. Hard to explain and after 3000 words today I’m a little written-out.
Rough plot synopsis here:
“Frances Eberhardt lives in her small community of White Bay, BC as a woman on the margins of belonging. Instead of shutting herself up forever when she becomes pregnant out of wedlock, she forges ahead to build her own home by hand and the first store in her isolated community. Despite the difficulties of the Great Depression and the advances of an unscrupulous lover she never loses sight of the life she wants. Told through a series of letters, flashbacks, conversations and points of view, the story of Frances Eberhardt is partially-inspired by true events in an unnamed BC town. “
A month of writing
It’s both National Novel Writing Month and National Blog Posting Month (in what nation I’d like to know since these are both international events at this point – when do we get to use International rather than always defaulting to the US?) I’ve committed myself to the 50,000 words that it takes to complete NANOWRIMO and have got off to a start this morning with 120 words so far! But can I also commit to posting something on this blog every day in the month? We’ll see, I’m not as committed to that but surely I can come up with some quip or quote every day. I’m trying to kickstart my writing process a little bit and for the first year in a long time I’m not too busy to participate. So let’s see how this goes.
To start out with a quote from Rilke that has resonated with me lately – “if one feels one could live without writing, then one shouldn’t write at all”. Agreed. Agreed.
Some things I've read online lately
A short list of some interesting articles I’ve read this week:
- The most honest assessment of marriage I’ve read in awhile from the Obamas (of all places)
- A rather creepy short story with a Lolita-like turn at the New Yorker
- An interesting article on why the Internet might be making us more biased – also at the New Yorker
- Why some people believe the National Post is about to fold momentarily
- An interesting and amusing article about smoking cigars in a Cuba on the edge of capitalist transformation at The Believer.
A short rant about the flu vaccine.
I’m not getting vaccinated against the swine flu. Really. It’s true, and I’m tired of people asking me and then arguing with me about it. It’s not as though I’m out there arguing for people not to get it, but I’ve made a decision based on my own health history and weighed out that the benefits of getting the vaccine don’t outweigh the risks.
At work we got a notice a couple of days ago letting us know that the flu clinic will be arriving on our doorstep in a couple of weeks and if we wished to participate we could get vaccinated for swine flu, seasonal flu, and pneumococcal all at the same time! For only a low, low price of $72. This, in a system with “socialized” health care – the government pays for the delivery (through clinics) of a product for which we pay full cost to the companies that produce it. You would think if governments really wanted to emphasize the importance of such things as vaccines they would provide them free of charge, but this has less to do with what’s important to us (the citizenry) than what’s important to them (those string-pullers at the top).
Just to be clear, I’m not a conspiracy theorist on this stuff by a long shot – but I do believe in collusion among class forces as a natural outcome of capitalism. Those at the top want to stay there, and it doesn’t matter at who’s expense. Politicians are sold hysteria by pharmas and just to ensure they don’t get caught out they pass it on to the public with the help of the media. It’s not as though doctors are uniformly for vaccination. In Britain, for example a full 50% of doctors don’t support routine vaccination (that is vaccination in healthy/not-at-risk populations).
About twelve years ago I had a flu so bad I thought I was going to die – high fever, delerium, basically unconcious for hours at a time – and granted, it was an awful experience. As awful, if not more than what I hear swine flu can be. It’s true that I don’t want to get sick like that ever again, but there’s a chance the vaccine could make me that sick too (a co-worker here got creeping fascitis from a flu clinic at work a few years ago and ended up hospitalized as a result of the shot, another co-worker got the shot just as she was coming down with the flu and got sicker than anyone else she knew at the time)…. and instead I’m washing my hands obsessively and gargling nightly (a public health nurse told me that gargling can kill H1N1 while it’s still incubating in the throat and before it gets into your system to make you sick). So there. I’ve got better hygeine standards as a result and that’s going to protect me against a whole lot more than the swine flu vaccine,
Considering who you wanted to be
Firefighter, archeologist, mad scientist, doctor, nurse, prime minister, teacher, writer, movie star, policeman. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, the encouragement of grade one ambitions most likely thwarted by bad luck or practical considerations once coddling questions disappeared. Left in an over-stuffed room to paw through the shelves and wonder what serendipitous material you might knock up against in the absence of what you once had. That confidence of direction which allowed you at the age of three to proudly tell everyone that once grown up you would be a singer in a restaurant, because the sagging dinner act you saw during a trip to San Francisco was the most glamorous thing you had ever seen and you saw nothing ridiculous in the declaration. If you really can grow up to be whatever you want, why not a declining voice in a smoky pasta bar? Seemed as good as anything else, until you saw Dennis Lee reading “Ookpik” at the public library and came home believing that you could fill scribblers full of rhymes like his with no effort (He’s never locked in the zoo. He lives in a warm igloo.) and attempted to do just that. Which lasted until the time mother took a university course and came home talking about the pygmy tribes of Africa, put a copy of The Forest People on the bookshelf and anthropology entered your vocabulary. Study other people, far away places, a little like archeology but without the bones and dirt? That sounded okay, got tried on for awhile and sounded impressive to adults (every kid wants to dig up dinosaurs, few want to study other cultures). But then, they always said you were a good arguer and People’s Court was your favourite show so you started watching every law and court drama on television you could in preparation for becoming a lawyer. Perry Mason was dated, but everyone listened to him and it was rumoured that lawyers made lots of money. Which carried you through into a first job at the local A&W, getting stoned before or after work and wondering if what you wanted ended here. And was it enough to live the rest of your life on?
Red Cedar 