NaNoWriMo Started Today!

[Icey]

Hope you managed to get a little more done today!

[Kellemora]

I crossed the Winners line last night!
But am no where near done with my story.
I would pat myself on the back, but I don't want to pull a muscle, hi hi...

[Icey]

Congratulations - and gosh no, you carry on with that story!

[Kellemora]

Thank you Icey
Still writing, only paying more attention.
Made a .mobi version of what I wrote already, loaded it into the frau's Kindle, and read it in bed last night.
I like what I have so far, but it needs a lot of work. Now to work my way up to the transition to the middle part I wrote last year.
There is a whole lot I can cut, since I wrote without rereading or editing out some parts as I went.
Feels good to be across the finish line and validated as a NaNo winner!

[Icey]

Yes indeed, Gary, although I never doubted you. I wish I had the time and inspiration to get back into writing again, but next up's getting all our Christmas cards written out. It's a laborious job because we send so many, but I like to hand-write them to give a personal touch.

Maybe in the New Year then ..... or maybe not!

I hope you stick with your story. I think if you enjoy what you're doing, it'll turn out well. : )

[Kellemora]

One of my promotion consultants asked to see what I had.
At first I turned her down, because my first pass was just telling the story to myself.
But for NaNo I began adding the dialogue and retelling the story a different way, a new beginning.
She said she didn't want to see it for editing or critique, she was just curious about how I made a start, she wanted to see my first notes and long outline. I sent those to her a week ago.
Then Monday night I sent her the first 20 pages as I wrote the story for NaNo.
It almost looks like two different stories.

Received an e-mail back from her this morning. She loves the complex concept of my notes, and seeing something new for once, it wasn't boring at all, even though it was just my notes.
She placed a row of stars across the page, then went on to talk about the 20 pages I sent to her.
Her first comment was, "You don't follow your outlines much do you!"
Interesting how you started the story, and it works much better than what I read of your notes.
Gives the reader insight with subtle hints.
Based on your outline, at first I thought you sure picked a hard topic to work with.
But after seeing your new opening, it all makes sense to me now.
Better you than me, this has got to be a nightmare for you to write, but you make it look so easy.

We also have daily conversations, usually about other things, but I'm sure now she'll be focused on how I'm going to handle all the transitions from time period to time period.
Heck, that's the easy part. Later on in the story when I have so many characters to deal with, and each one talking about something different, and to each other. That's the part that will be a nightmare.

[Icey]

To your last bit - not necessarily Gary. I mean, is it a "must" to have so many different characters having their say? Could you not abbreviate parts hugely, by saying (as an example): "Back in 5 BC, it was said that ...... (whatever) happened"? I don't doubt the story's going to be a good one, since if you remember, I've read some of your shorter work and thought it was lovely, but with stretching something out to epic proportions, you surely have to be careful about not going into minute detail, for want of straying from the plot? I mean, apart from the main protagonists, there's no real need to give each character a history, unless it's an integral part of the story, and even then, corners can be cut so as to give the reader just a basic idea. They don't need a life story for each one, and even for the ones which DO need it, it's easy to reduce the descriptions and get on with the actual story itself?

[Kellemora]

I don't put my character sketches or their version of the story in my books Icey.

But I do often let each one tell the story in their own way, and then glean the best lines from each of them.

They are all telling the same story, only how they see it.
As the author, I become each character and try to see things from their point of view.
You would be surprised at how differently we may write something if we are playing the role of someone else.
Often it make me come up with some great material, even though less than 5% of it may be used in the story itself.

Even though it is me writing, a character may come up with something I have to research to find out if it is true.
I know it sounds odd saying things like that, after all, it is still me doing the writing from what I know.
But down in those recesses of my headbone, things are lurking, and sometimes it takes playing a role to get them to emerge.

How many times has someone said or done something that caused you to suddenly remember something you had long since forgotten about? You recall it like as if it was yesterday, clear as a bell, and in all the fine details. You forgot you even owned a such n such or visited so n so. It was not important enough at the time to file in your permanent memory banks. But now you wonder, how could I possibly forget something like that?

I heard many stories from my family and older relatives all throughout my life. I can't remember them unless something jogs my memory and causes me to recall the story.
This is one reason I sit down and become a character and just start writing a story from their viewpoint. It seems to always jog my memory in ways I least expected.

They say you can't remember things from when you younger than four or five. Yet I remembered many things from when I was age 3. Some because I got caught, and this then made it a trauma event, so you remember it more easily. However, some of the things I didn't get caught at, I remember as clear as if I did it yesterday. But I can't remember what I did yesterday, hi hi...

I remember riding my tricycle across my uncles front yard to my grandmothers, and going inside to steal some of her stove matches from the iron box next to her stove. Then I would hide them in the right handlebar of my tricycle, and head back home. Mom always left her pack of Chesterfield cigarettes by the old candlestick phone, and later the dial phone. I would slip one out of her pack and put it in the left side of the handlebars. Then I would ride my tricycle down to behind my other uncles garage and smoke that cigarette.

Yet another uncle caught me smoking once and told my dad. This same uncle was at our house one evening and he smoked el ropo cigars. The most nasty smelling things. Dad plopped me on the edge of our kitchen table and uncle gave me a cigar. Dad lit it. I believe they hoped I would get sick and never touch a cigarette again.
My uncle took it away from me when he saw I was enjoying it, and told me, you are not supposed to inhale a cigar. You mean it didn't take the back of your head off? he asked. I simply said, "No, but it sure tastes awful, not like mom's cigarettes."
That was dad's cue. "So you admit it then! Go to your room!"

Being sent to our room was not a punishment for us kids. This is where we wanted to be in the first place. Adjoining my room was a huge Lionel Trail Layout and I could spend the whole day in there, or building models. You name it, we had plenty to do in our rooms. The only real punishment was if we were sent downstairs to a room in the basement. There was absolutely nothing to do down there. Well, we could fold paper airplanes from all the gift wrap mom kept in there, or use up her rolls of tape making swords by taping enough paper together and wrapping it with tape. Of course, doing this would get us into even more trouble when mom found out her tape was gone.
So, we would use only a little of her tape to hold a small piece of paper to one of her basting needles. Then we could play darts until our punishment was over.
We preferred my dad (the fastest belt in the west) would just give us a licking and be done with it so we could go out and play.
Sure, it stung, but was over in a flash, hi hi... He never hit us hard, just hard enough to sting without raising welts.
But one thing for sure was, you didn't want grandpa to get after you with his razor strap, he raised huge welts, and the sting lasted for hours, which felt like weeks or months, hi hi...

Nevertheless, it never altered our course of things we planned to do, hi hi...

[Icey]

Oh what brilliant stories! I suppose that's why you can remember them so vividly Gary.

I can remember back to when I was 2. A woman who had a daughter of the same age as me used to meet up with my mum for a natter. Me and this girl used to stare across at each other. Then it became smiles, and finally, a friendship was formed. This lasted until I was 11, but then I went away to a different school, and we barely saw each other after that.

I can remember my first day at school, and even what we did during our first "lesson", which was to recite the alphabet. I found this very boring, as I knew it before I even started there.

I laughed my head off at your smoking escapades! You were a bit young to be pinching your mum's cigarettes Gary, but I have visions of you feeling pleased with your achievement! : )

[Kellemora]

I've done some crazy things as a kid. Surprised I survived a few of them.
Like the time I climbed our 100 foot tall Weiderholt Chimney.
Some of the steps had rusted off inside and you could pull them out of their slots.
Had I leaned back, I'm sure I would have plummeted to my death.
Another time I found I could toss a rope over a steam pipe and pull myself up and down.
Starting about 30 feet off the ground, I tossed my rope over something, don't remember what, and then let myself swing out over the open air away from the ledge I started out on.
I lowered myself down as planned, then realized my rope was not long enough to reach all the way to the ground.
So I pulled myself back up, but could not swing just right to reach what I had departed from.
Even if I let the rope out a little while swinging.
I was getting mighty tired so I lowered myself back down to the end of my rope.
Held my hand up as high as I could to get another couple of feet closer to the ground.
But was still afraid to let go, as I was above some short trees. I didn't know how short though.
A little ways away from where I would fall if I dropped straight down was a pile of dirt filled with spent bulbs.
I figured it would be a little softer, so got to swinging back and forth until I knew if I let go of the rope, I would land on the dirt.
Well, the best made plans of mice and men often go astray.
I didn't fall instantly as I thought I would. The drag on the rope over the top, let me down fairly fast, but at the same time not fast enough. I was on the back swing away from the dirt pile when my back went crashing to some trees.
I just turned and grabbed at the branches, then waited for the open end of the rope to follow me down.
I figured if I could hold on to the tree branch, I could toss the rope over a branch and let myself the rest of the way down.
The tree was small enough it began bending, and bending. I looked down, and where I was holding on for dear life was less than three feet off the ground, hi hi... The tree set me gently down, but when I let go of the branch, it caught my glasses and sent them airborne. I hunted for them but never found them. To much tall grass and weeds.
A week or so later when I finally had a new pair of glasses, I found my old pair, hanging from a tree branch in another tree about ten feet away, undamaged.

Never jump off a the eave of house with an umbrella, they don't do anything, except perhaps turn inside out, or the metal points stab you in the gut when you hit bottom, hi hi...
Nothing ever works the way they show it does in the cartoons, hi hi...

[Icey]

OMG!!!

More Gary, more!!!

[Kellemora]

While I was growing up, it was mandatory for each of us kids, from all families, to spend a minimum of one year working in each department. Grandpa made his kids do it, and his kids made their kids do it, so we would learn every aspect of the business.

We had to work under each of our relatives first, before we could work under our own parent(s). Mainly because that would be where we ended up, which was great for me, it was inside and partially air-conditioned, quite unlike the hot sweltering greenhouses or working in the fields.

My last job was in the greenhouses where we raised cut flowers, and along with this comes tending to the boilers, rotating the night shift with other cousins. When I worked in the boiler room, we had two massive coal fired boilers, each one over 20 feet high and about 10 feet wide. But as the younger kids grew and had to take their turn, we had switched from coal fired to brand new Cleaver Brooks boilers located in a new building built for them.

The meant the old boilers sat idle, and the old boiler room became a place for us kids to play, provided we didn't get caught that is. Between the two boilers was a metal staircase leading to the top of the boilers, it was made from rebar, including the steps themselves. There were massive doors on the front and back of the boilers to get to the boiler tubes for replacement, and to clean out the soot that built up inside.

It took a couple of years to build the new boiler room and install the new boilers, so almost no maintenance was done to the old boilers. If a boiler tube started leaking, we just sealed up the tube at both ends. And this is they way it sat when the old boilers were abandoned. The boilers were still full of water, and as more of the pipes rusted through, we had a steady stream of water flowing out the doors of the boilers and down to a huge drain. We could watch the water levels go down because of the glass water level tubes on each boiler.

One of my uncles went down to the old boiler room for something, and seeing all the leaks, and stream of water, decided to open the dump valves and empty both of them the rest of the way. Before he did this, another uncle used the area by the sliding doors to store bulb flats, he had our bulb cellars full and thought this was a good way to utilize wasted space.
Dirt from planting and watering the flats, probably over two or three years time, clogged up the old big drain. Not completely, as the running stream of water never backed up.

But when uncle opened the dump valves, he just spun them wide open, starting with the boiler by the door, and then moving to the back boiler. He climbed up to the top of the boilers to open the top to let air in so they would drain even faster. He didn't pay attention to the fact the drain now clogged up solid, all the other potting dirt being washed into it.

The water was only a little over waist high, so it wasn't like he would drown, but it was full of dirt and a lot of rust. He climbed down the iron staircase and slowly immersed himself in the dirty rusty water and made his way ever so slowly over to the doors. When he emerged outside, I don't know how to describe how he looked. From his belly down, his clothes were burnt orange from the rust, and he had peat moss and dirt clinging over it.

He came up to a greenhouse to have one of my cousins hose him off. About all this did was wash off the dirt and peat moss, his clothes were still orange. He grabbed one of the other workers bib overalls and dropped his britches to the ground. His skin was a bright orange, and everyone who saw him about died laughing. He didn't think it was a bit funny, and sent one of my older cousins to the boiler room to clean the drain.

My cousin didn't have a pair of fishing waders, so decided rather than end up looking like my uncle, he went to an outdoor tumbling basin and pushed a plumbing snake through the sewer pipe to the boiler room. Although he stayed on top of the ground, far above where the actual drain pipes were down in the tumbling basin. When the clog broke free, the water shot up and out of the tumbling basin, and nearly drowned my cousin. He still ended up bright orange, just like my uncle, only in his case, it also covered his face. It took almost a month before it finally all wore off. Needless to say, they both earned a few choice nicknames which took years for people to forget.

You may not remember, but Oscar the Grouch started out Orange, before they made him Green. So cousin was often called Oscar the Grouch. They called my uncle Harvest Moon for obvious reasons!

After all the water had drained away, guess who was told to go clean the old boiler room.

[Icey]

Well I've never heard of Oscar the Grouch I'm afraid, but I could imagine the uproar of seeing your uncle and cousin with such orange skin!

[Kellemora]

I think Oscar the Grouch is from Stress-a-me Street (Sesame Street), a PBS television children's show.

Folks don't realize how many times the characters appearances have been altered over the years.
They make a few minor changes every season, so they are not so noticeable.

Although I had to sell it when I was drowning in medical bills for the late wife.
I had one of the rare Mickey Mouse watches where Mickey had Blue Balloon Pants.
It was NOT the baseball version which came several years after.
Nor was it the one where Mickey had a red shirt and blue long pants. Although this one is fairly rare too.
In later years, using different colors for his balloon pants became common.
But of the original licensed issue, his top was black, his pants blue, and his shoes red.

Nobody knows for sure why this short run of watches was made.
Speculation claims they were for a special giveaway, and not sold.
It was tossed in a box with a bunch of fake knock-off's, and didn't look like the rest, quality wise.
I bought it for 2 or 3 bucks, and after keeping it for 20 years, sold it for 275 bucks.
The normal original ones of the same vintage only sell for about 40 bucks.
So I did good, hi hi...

[Icey]

Wow - you did!!!

[Kellemora]

Good thing I finished when I did.
We are having intermittent electrical problems, and the cable was out a couple of times.
The forest fires are getting a little too close for comfort.
Yesterday morning we could not see the houses across and down the street by about four houses for the smoke.
The rain last night, along with a shift in the wind, has made today a lot better, still a heavy white haze outside.
And with my COPD and Empysema, it is hard to breath inside, a little easier today so far.
I live off 441 near 168 on the north face of Rodgers Ridge, a foothill to the Smoky Mountains.
A fire is now under control on Chilhowie Mountain, which is between us and Pigeon Forge.
But the worst right now is in Gatlinburg, and spreading near Dollywood.
We are about half way between the river and Seymour, which is only a couple of miles to one of the fires.
There are several different ones burning. Hot embers carried into the sky drift a long ways and come down hot.
Some still have enough heat to burst back into flames starting yet another fire.

At least we are safe for now!

[Icey]

Oh wow, Gary. It's an uncomfortable situation to be in, with never really knowing whether the wind direction's going to change and if it'll fan the flames closer to where people live.

I've been reading about the tornadoes over there, but not forest fires, especially at this time of the year. What every-day temperatures are you getting for the end of November/December? The fires haven't been started deliberately have they??!!

I'd be very tempted to wear a mask while all this's on. It wouldn't filter out all the smoke, but it's bound to affect your breathing. I'm sorry you have all this to face.

Well I've just come back again after posting the above, because I had a look at google images of the Smoky Mountains area. You have some fabulous scenery! You're lucky to live in such a beautiful place.

[Kellemora]

Today is the last day of NaNoWriMo, I turned in my count again last night, and by this afternoon will be at 75k words.

We had rain all night, and the wind has shifted, so instead of blowing the smoke this way, which is what carried the fire to Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, and beyond, it is carrying the smoke all the way to the ocean.

We can breath easier today!

I see another post about the fires so will jump over there to prevent repeating myself.

[Icey]

I hope you reached your 75k words!

[Kellemora]

Sure did, my count just before the end of NaNo was 76,017 words.
I only have about 30 more pages to write before I reach the end of my outline.
Then comes the hard work!