bleckblog: musings of a community college english teacher

Today was my first commute of the fall in the rain, in both directions. I nearly got clobbered by some idiot in an old Ford, going around this one corner where he squeezed me toward the curb. It was at that point that I decided it would be a good idea to cut my ride a bit short, so I trimmed a few miles from my typical route. Given that it was dark made that a good idea as well. Otherwise, though not wholly dry, I was plenty warm, but snow is supposed to be coming in the next few days. I don't know how much, but that could put a serious crimp in my riding as long as the ground is slick. I've been looking at studded bike tires and will be getting some soon. Here's today's words for nanowrimo. I've made it over the 10k mark, which is okay, but still has me behind schedule by about 2000 words. I guess that's not too bad, all things considered. Still, it will only get harder to make time and find something to write about, because so far the story still stinks as far as I'm concerned. If you read it, let me know what you think.

Keep in mind, today's entry, as with all these entries, is part of a hoped for 50,000 word "free write." That's why this is rough, rough, rough. And maybe no good whatsoever. Such is writing and life.

20 November 2005

B------,

I was disappointed to hear about your recent exchange with Alexis. Yes, we both are painfully aware that she is not your “mother,” that she came into your life, when you were quite young, and quite frankly, in need of a mother, and that she is simply your step-mother, and that Roddy is your half brother. Believe me, we wanted to adopt you, to get your away from your mother so you would have a better life than you did, but as I noted previously, the two of us decided against that, mostly because we worried what it might do to your mother and how that might harm you as well. So, you can see, despite what you tend to think, we had your best interests at heart with each decision we made about the way we would be a part of each others’ lives.

12/17/05

Hey B------,

I find myself going off on something of a tangent here, maybe providing more direction to the narrative. We'll see how that plays out. In the September 2007 College English, there's an article about plagiarism that uses a passage from this blog to examine the issue. I'm not sure I like how I come off, and I don't remember her contacting me, though I think she probably did. I'm somewhat working through my response through this fictional persona in my nanowrimo attempt. I'm going to have to see if I've written anything else about plagiarism in my blog.

I've caught up, if today were yesterday anyway, then I'd be caught up with the word count. So far, I think what I've done sucks. It might be a little better than that, but not much. I think I'm not creating clear voices for each character, but since this is a first draft, a rough-rough-rough-rough draft, I'm okay with that. Every now and again, a semblance of a plot line creeps into my mind, and promptly creeps out again, but I'm also okay with just getting some sense of the primary characters down. Little by little, bit by bit, I'll slog on and see what happens. Today's bit follows:

I wrote hardly anything yesterday, so I'm already behind on my word count, but here it is:

The same is true when it comes to Roddy. Because we grew up spending so little time together, and because of the differences in our ages, I have never felt that I knew him, or know him now. As you indicated, when I was visiting in the summers, he was off at a camp somewhere. But I don’t think that matters as much as you think. More important, at least as important, is the difference in our ages. A dozen years is quite a gap and I don’t know that we would have been close were we to spend each day of my summer visits together. What interests him is not of much interest to me, and I suspect that what interests me is also of little interest to him.

A Seattle area bicyclist was shot the other day while on his commute home from work. He is recovering nicely it seems, but it's unsettling. Apparently some idiots (can they be anything else?) thought it would be fun to shoot him as he rode his bike. Here's the details from the cyclist's, Peter McKay, blog, which the media seems to have missed so far. Clearly, some people are just fucked up in the head. There's no other way to explain it that I can see.

Here's the first words of my novel. I've decided, for no good reason other than I want to, to develop the story in epistolary form. I have no idea how far I can take it or if it will work, or how well it will work if it does work, but I made my word count for the day. I haven't blown it yet! Here it is:

1 November, 2005

Hello Father,

Beginning tomorrow, I'm going to try to crank out 50,000 words of a novel in the course of the month. If I do this, I'll be a "winner" in the National Novel Writing Month competition. I'm considering this something of a 30 day, 50,000 word free/forced writing session, the same sort of thing I have my students do at the beginning of class each day, based on the advice of Peter Elbow. I've been thinking about what sort of story I'll be working on, how I'll frame it, what point-of-view I'll take a shot at, all the sorts of things a novelist needs to consider. If you give it a try, let me know how it goes. I think I'll provide a collection of links, but I've noticed traffic is down a bit of late, since I've stopped writing about Larry Craig. (I wonder if anyone will be dressing up at the disgraced senator tonight for trick or treating?) I hope you'll read and feel free to give me any feedback you want. My hope is that at the end of the month I'll have something worth revising.

This is me and my shadow cruising up a not so steep hill in the Palouse region outside Spokane, along Valley Chapel Road, climbing the hill toward home after turning around at the chapel itself. You can also see, in the shadow, my holding up my phone to take the picture. I was able to get in a 43-mile ride late yesterday afternoon and it was beautiful. I was nearly clobbered by a woman in an SUV just three miles from home, but it was an otherwise wonderful afternoon ride. It wasn't too cold, somewhere in the mid-50's, the sun was out, the wind was all but nonexistent and there was almost no traffic on the road and I got home before dark. Riding doesn't get much better than it did yesterday.