A Light Inside

back.from.rome.so.tired.must.sleep....

I am not feeling particularly coherent today. You wouldn't either if you woke up yesterday at 3 AM Central European Time (6 PM PST), spent 12 hours in airplanes and another three in cars, went to bed over 26 hours after rising, slept eight hours (till 5 AM PST) and spent most of the non-travel time in typing and doing laundry.

This is not one of my normal posting days and this post is therefore gratuitous, so maybe the need to be coherent is only moderate anyway.

Italy: Three cities, 26 churches, one school, several ruins, two gelaterias, about one pizzeria for every day of the tour, innumerable miles walked and two blisters to prove it, zero pickpocketing experiences, flabbergasting amounts of beauty and history, over five hundred photographs ... Reports coming. I journaled through the experience, even after starting NaNoWriMo (which made for a grueling combination).

NaNoWriMo: Began just after nine in the morning CET (12 AM PST) Sunday, November 1, at the front of St. Peter's. Amassed 32 pages in my little notebook over the next five days and wrote another 19 on the flight home. Typed it all up yesterday and this morning and discovered I'd written 10,386 words: 384 more than I'd needed to stay on pace.

I might be ahead on NaNo, but am rather behind on the Google Reader items and emails and catching up with people (and laundry and music practice and reading for book club and sleep). Do pardon me. I'll get there when I can.

As a human, as a Christian, as a writer, as the daughter of an artist, as an American, as a woman who thinks cheese is second only to chocolate in the list of greatest foods--Italy holds all sorts of interest for me. When I come back, I plan to have pictures and stories to share.

NaNoWriMo begins just days into our trip. The thought of 1667 words per day makes me nervous--but less so since yesterday. Not convinced of my capability, I pulled out my non-NaNo story, picked out a plot point, and in less than an hour wrote 1683 words. I can do this! Provided, of course, that I do not give in to the frequent temptation to stop.

I admit, shamefacedly, that one of the things I'm looking forward to in Rome is a short break from the internet. At the bottom of Jennifer F.'s scorpion story (linked yesterday), I found the link to her post about 20 things learned in a week without her computer. I empathized with much of it. Full-time connectivity makes procrastination simple. I can find almost any information I want immediately. I get caught up in link-hopping. I agonize over how to respond to a perfectly normal email or whether I should comment on a blog or post a status update on Facebook ... and then I think I don't have enough time to do everything that needs doing. My internet time needs some rules. I hope to come back with some.

In case you don't want to take a break from the internet while I do, here are some things to keep you busy:

Baptist pastor Michael Spencer talks over the new possibility of reunification between some Anglican churches and Catholics. That news brought tears to my eyes. "One of the most bold steps in reuniting the church any of us will ever see", Mr. Spencer calls it. I agree.

I love wordplay. I've also discussed a lot of theology in my time. If you don't mind a little light-hearted theological word-gaming, enjoy.

Are you in the mood for spooky things over Halloween? Best go check out The Hog's Head. They're watching scary movies this week. I say "they're" instead of "we're" because I don't watch scary movies, but I might pop up in the comments if I have time and ideas.

Tyler Stanton doesn't really have a million peeves yet, but he's working on it. Hilarious.

In plain English, my response to this idea reads as follows: Yes, please! (Hat tip to CMR.)

If you need a laugh and don't mind not-so-plain English, there's always Engrish.com.

Likewise, icanhazcheezburger. I like this one.

In Rome I hope to see excellent Catholic art, some of the best there is. Here is some of the worst there is.

Still bored? There's always David Bowie. I'm going to try not to picture that next time Lou puts on The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust.

Borrowing a little life-philosophy from Pollyanna today, I am glad. I am glad that I live in the land of cold and rain.

I am glad because we have no tarantulas. In discussion with friends the other night, I learned that tarantulas jump--high and far--and that they migrate across the highways in such large groups that signs have to be placed warning drivers to watch for them. If you don't watch for the tarantula migration, and actually drive into it, you can spin out on spider guts. That's bad enough, but then you're stuck in a spun-out car and the tarantulas are still walking. When do tarantulas migrate? I am never going to Flagstaff at that time of year.

I am also glad because we have no scorpions.

Hat tip to CMR for the above link, which is one of the funniest stories I've seen in a long time. It's sympathetic laughter--the same basic experience could happen to me any day. It wouldn't take a poisonous stinging insect. A wolf spider would do just fine.

At first I planned to give this post a picture of a tarantula or scorpion, but after several minutes of gagging and shuddering over the images I found, I decided not to subject all of you to them.

Eleven days till the starting gun is fired for NaNoWriMo. Much less than eleven days until our major plane ride to a foreign country. Last week was busy, this week is busy, and everything is going well ... I just wish I could tell my adrenaline levels to cut back for awhile.

Waking up at six-thirty from troubling dreams the past three mornings, and having sleep paralysis episodes when I try to go back to sleep: Not helping.

Email people who might be affected by my being gone ten days--go to the store for anything we need to take--fret over whether to make copies or take the whole chant book for the schola I just joined--flutter unproductively in and out of plans for NaNoWriMo--somehow manage to schedule my busiest weeks of the fall for right before departure--wonder if I'm actually accomplishing anything or just imagining myself busy ...

Breathe.

If I weren't overthinking every last thing I do, it wouldn't be so stressful. Nor would everything take so long. I wonder what the remedy is for overthinking?

Ah well. In just days, all I'll have to think about is how beautiful St. Peter's is, and whether I can work any of the glories of the city into my interstellar novel.

With innumerable writing resources available on the Internet, I could put off actually working on my novel preparation forever.

Down with distraction! Having only a week and a half to plan, much of which is going to be busy, I broke down and actually used one of those character sheets that various writers recommend. This one appealed to me because it asks me to write in the character's voice, but there are others:

Tricia Goyer's
Epiguide.com's
A shorter one found on Associated Content

Or, if you prefer, there are exercises (I wouldn't be much on the New Age undertones, but the exercises themselves look interesting.)

I have copied the character sheet into a document. My protagonist had already written all of her answers, but I have other characters to get to know. Her brother is a little more apathetic, and I haven't gotten around to speaking with her best friend yet.

After coming up with several potential story concepts and thinking far too hard about which one I should choose for my first year's NaNo novel, I picked one plot--the one I thought I could get fifty thousand words out of. I wrote a synopsis, came up with the structure of the first scene and several others, and thought myself set.

Last week my interest in the story snapped. The problem with that plot was that it dealt with issues, and I remembered that I really hate it when novels try to deal with issues. Beyond that, I'm just sick of talking about issues. Living in a college-town like Bellingham means living surrounded by very strong and often very immature opinions about issues of all sorts, and those opinions accost you everywhere--picketers' signs, boulevard campaigns, shop-window posters, bumper stickers on every third car. That's without reading the newspaper or having any particular relations with the school. I hate that. I'm tired of having everyone's opinions forced on me all the time. I want to be left alone.

Pardon the rant.

At any rate, it's possible that I'll switch back to that story when November 1 hits and I'm faced with writing fifty thousand words from a half-envisioned fantasy universe and a very loosely outlined plot. My goal, however, is to fill in the blanks as much as I can, hopefully accruing a little more confidence by then. This idea is more cheerful. I like cheerful. I do not like stories about How Life Sucks. If I wanted those, I'd read the news.

NaNo has me so excited that I'm doing little things like double-checking my notebook to make sure it has enough pages to last me a week, arranging and rearranging my Author Information on the site, and flicking into my notes regularly to keep them turning in the back of my head. I should go work on those right now.

I'm at The Hog's Head again today with a post about St. Hedwig of Silesia, namesake to Harry Potter's owl:

"In the Roman Catholic Church, today is the feast day of St. Hedwig of Silesia, after whom Harry’s owl is named. Jo Rowling’s character names are well-known to be aptly chosen, and Hedwig is no exception. Here are a handful of [what I thought were] interesting and potentially relevant points about St. Hedwig:"

(read more)

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After a spring and summer of tomato, eggplant and pepper plants growing in our south window, I finally moved them outside today. Recent frosts had destroyed most of the leaves close to the window, and the harvest had mostly ended. Here are a few pictures from their prime:




The eggplant never made any eggplants (argh), but it made several nice flowers.