Day 5: If Dewey

If Dewey is a normal boy, raised in the suburbs outside of Seattle, and not of the river brethren in Pennsylvania, what do I need to know about him and his family that I didn't know before?

1) What are his earliest memories, and do those relate to his being gay?
2) What religion is his family? Why do they react so strongly when he comes out?
3) What relationships did he have with other kids growing up, since his hometown is far less monotype than the river brethren community would have been?
4) Does he have favorite foods?
5) Does he move to Seattle to go to school, but is cut off financially, and so must fend for himself (causing him to move into the house)?
6) Does he pick up an odd-job at the Farmer's Market?
7) Could the farmer's market be a more central crux? A new, downtown market, something Muriel is helping to start? Something that connects them all from Day 1?
8) For that matter, is Chigger a closet-case?

I wonder if the story does become more about creating family than about the individual senses of loss the earlier drafts focused on? I've always like the knotty elegance of three.

Something to consider when I open the story again - tonight? tomorrow - and see what I can find. And thanks again to Leslie Pietrzyck for jump-starting me back into Dewey's world.

Day 4: What About This?

Last night's class was such an unexpected treat. I say "unexpected" only because I am still reeling from jetlag and culture shock back at the office. "Such a treat," I say, because Leslie, our instructor, took us through a number of exercises (we writers call them "generative prompts" because we're fancy) that broke down our expectations about writing, and narrative, and connectivity, and then helped us rebuild them in unexpected (there's that word again) ways.

It got me thinking. Since I've been feeling this real reluctance to publish 150 words of my own, precious, pre-born prose each day, might it be freeing to simply complete a "prompt" a day -- something more free, more unhindered, expectation-free?

There are plenty of places to find prompts online and on the shelf of writing books I keep near my desk.

Maybe that's the trick?

150 words a day, completely unexpected, completely free?

Day 3 - Relief

TODAY, I'm off the hook. I'm taking a class at the Writer's Center tonight--a 2 1/2 hour course designed to shake up my creative mind and get me writing.  

So I'm sure to generate well more than my required 150 words. Whew.

Day Two - Family Myths

On my father's side of the family, we have a story that has become something of a myth.

Over forty years ago, my father's brother and his wife, lifelong Presbyterians from New Jersey, adopted three Inuit siblings from Canada.  It may have been three Eskimo siblings from Alaska, but the details were something woven into my childhood, as were the lives of my three older cousins Carol, Larry, and Vernon.  We saw each other each Christmas and Easter, and spent a week every summer in a rambling, salt-crusted house on the Jersey shore.

Over the years, it became clear the my aunt and uncle had a difficult, and charged relationship with their adopted kids.  Carol, the eldest, fought haggard and shrill with Aunt Betty; one year, when we visited, Carol showed my older sister and I her room.  The walls were covered in an angry scrawl of red and black permanent marker, a list in Betty's handwriting of the many, many things that Carol did wrong.  Two years later, we visited Carol at a short-stay mental retreat at the end of a long line of evergreen trees.  She was quieter, then, duller.  We took her to a silver-clad deli for an awkward lunch.

Day 1 - Part 2

For the record, I did write a whole passel of new words (is "passel" even a word?), and began a major revision to The Tree Museum that I'm quite excited about.  

The idea (tossing 3 characters, focusing much more closely on one character's journey, and weaving into two of the existing characters to explore what makes a family in a fractured world) feels right, and has been gestating for months. 

It came to me very clearly in Barcelona one morning, post-the wedding when FAMILY, in all its full-cap glory, was so brightly at the front of my mind.

Wish me luck.

Day 1 - Category Unknown

When she first entered the office, she was relieved by how mildly grubby it was.

-Wow.  Day one, and already, I'm having these massive misgivings about posting writing online.  The above sentence could be a re-opening of the Muriel story, but as I was writing it,  I felt, pretty powerfully, that I should not be posting these pre-writings, personal writings, fictional writings online.  

I've struggled a bit with the whole online thing of late anyway.  As lovely as it has been to connect with folks re: Facebook while in Spain (no internet in Morocco, until we found a cafe, by which time we'd decided that the disconnection was worth more than checking in), I've also been feeling as if the clutter of it all -- life -- is one of the reasons (excuses) I haven't been writing.

Should I keep these "150 words" to myself each morning?  Will I even stick to it without the potential embarrassment of a "no-show"?