Grace Notes

Sure then I’m here! Digging for apples, yer honour!’

`Digging for apples, indeed!’ said the Rabbit angrily. `Here! Come and help me out of this!’  (Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland)

I’m looking for a scene.  I started my first novel with a writing prompt at a seminar– I don’t remember the prompt but what popped to my brain was a woman holding tight to a miraculous medal and praying for a miracle.

That little scene of desperation, of pleading, of praying for a miracle, was the beginning of something. Since there is no story without a problem, something to conquer or work through, something to change, that is, I needed to discover what was upsetting her.

That woman clutching her miraculous medal stayed with me, moved in with me, so to speak.

Soon I had her walking against the wind in lower Manhattan, waiting for a train on a lonely subway platform and arguing with God.  Bit by bit her struggles revealed themselves to me.  Soon I had a name, more scenes,  more characters and a few subplots. Soon is not really the right word, it took a long time for things to shape up and a story to develop. But it started with a scene that promised a conflict.

That’s what I’m looking for now.

You might tell me that the world is full of conflict, problems, characters with something to solve. And you would be right. Various characters offer themselves up, but so far nothing has stuck to start my next novel.

So I’m digging for apples.

I thought NaNoWriMo (November is National Novel Writing Month) would be a good place to get my engine going.  I needed to produce  more that 1600 words a day to finish the 50,000 by the end of November.  Last year the challenge was a great help to me in moving my novel forward.  This year I hoped  the discipline of churning out that many letters on a page each day would help me find my next character or scene.

I started the month out with  more words than the daily goal, a tiny bit of insurance against the slacker days. But, I petered out. Not a surprise. I am a slow writer. I dip and dabble. Try out this and that. Ramble on  typing all sorts of stuff that makes little sense. That, after many years of trying to discover my rhythm as a writer, is how I work.

In one of my many ‘how to write’ books, a bestselling author said she never began a novel without having first figured it all out in her head and written an extensive outline. If I waited for that I’d never get anything done, and that includes writing out a grocery list.

I’m the kind of writer who discovers the story as it is being revealed to me. I don’t know how it’s going to end or who is going to show up. I don’t know what my characters are going to say until I see the words pop out on the screen  from the tips of my fingers.

As I was making my attempt at the daily word count for NaNo, I discovered something. Sometimes writing gets in the way of writing. I was digging for apples, but I was digging in an empty field. (Really, I do know that apples don’t grow in the ground, but that Lewis Carroll was never restricted by mere facts).

Boy, oh boy, I’d really like a nice juicy apple to bite into. Hey, isn’t that what got Adam and Eve into all that trouble?

I was in need of a new wireless keyboard.  So, hubby and I visited the local tech stores and set about evaluating the right fit.  The right fit for Frankie’s back, that is.

Frankie is my puppy.  Well, he’s three years old, but he is my puppy.  He started out as my dog, because he was a tiny little thing.  My husband wanted a real dog.  But I wanted a substitiue baby. We were empty-nesters and I wasn’t ready for a completely empty nest.

I became Frankie’s mother when he was a wee three and a half pound ball of blonde fluff.  He attached himself to my motherly heart when I first held him.  I mean, he rested his cute little head over my beating heart and he had me.  I was in love.  Now this was the first time I had fallen in love with a puppy.  We had had other dogs in the family over the years but they really belonged to the boys.  I was a caretaker, not their mother, or mommy, which is what I am to Frankie.

Silly, huh.  I used to think so.  But love changes everything now doesnt it?

Full disclosure: I have no resistance to cute. Each of my kids figured that out when they were toddlers. Look cute and Mom will melt.  Not the best parenting technique, but they all turned out to be loving and kind adults, so I suppose it’s not the worst parenting technique.  And cute, they are all still cute.

Anyway, back to Frankie’s back.  In the first weeks of Frankie I had taken on the habit of holding him a lot.  A whole lot.  So, when I sat down to work at my desk, I picked Frankie up and placed him on my lap.  I had already gotten in the habit of working with my feet up on the desk, wireless keyboard in lap, and back tilted in an oh so dilettante way that no one would suspect I was working.  This was not the first time I held a baby while writing.  When Katie was little and I was in grad school, she would attach herself, legs around my waist and arms around my neck and I would write terms papers reaching around her little body while attempting to pull off a scholarly bluff. Precedent. I already told you, I have no resistance to cute.

Frankie grew.  From three and a half pounds to somewhere near 17 pounds.  He’s still little, given that he is half Dachshund and half small poodle.  He still fits nicely in my lap, but the keyboard has to fit on his back and balance comfortably for both of us.

Hence, the quest.  We purchased a lovely solar powered model yesterday.  When I tried it out this morning, it did not fit properly on Frankie’s back.  Kept slipping. So, return and exchange register here we come.

Later that day: a keyboard that fits Frankie’s back and my lap, feet up on the desk.

Now back to the novel I’ve been coaxing out of the ether.  Frankie, are you ready to work?

I’m kinda liking hibernation.

I’ve got my feet up on my desk, keyboard in lap, soup simmering on the stove and a fresh cup of coffee at hand.

It’s day four of being confined to the house because of an ice storm in Texas.  The rest of the country has been covered in feet of snow, but so far we have escaped the wrath of winter with only a slick covering of ice and now a fresh falling of powdery white to cover and keep the streets frozen. Still, Texas is pretty much closed for business. My son in Boston doesn’t want to hear about not being able to drive on the ice.  He keeps shoveling the white stuff onto piles that are taller than he is, and standing on corners waiting for buses while the wind chills him to several degrees below zero.

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