An Excerpt; NaNoWriMo Day 4 November 2012

As many of you know all of my writing focus is going toward NaNoWriMo this month. 

Today’s post is an excerpt from whatever this thing is that’s being created over the next thirty days.  Are you writing for NaNoWriMo too?  Share your experiences with  me!

Character: Johnny

…I put the daisies down next to her headstone, like I have every year since I was a small child.  Accompanied by a rock and a note from Gram.  She’s getting to old to come out here on her own.  I sit down and toy with the grass, stroking it like an abandoned dog.  Plucking the random weed here or there.  Digging the dirt from between the words, polishing without polish.  It’s a ritual that helps me come to that place where I feel like it’s ok to talk to the dead.  If I just wanted to talk to her I could do that, but today is different.  Today I need to see the truth of what he did with the evidence buried beneath my feet.

I lie back, stretched on her grave, arms forming a pillow beneath my head, and look up into the bright sky.  They tell me she died at midnight.  To me it always felt like morning.  Morning is when my mother died in my memory.  Morning is when they told me.  So I always come at the same time, ritual.

Feeling for her memory deep inside of me, the way she used to hold me, the sound of her voice.  I close my eyes and extract it until she’s sitting next to me.  Johnny boy, she’d call me, stroking my hair.  Johnny boy tell me what’s on your mind?  Bantering back and forth at such a young age I try to recall the words she used, the inflection of her voice, things I never thought to think of until they became more creations and dreams than actual memories.  The creation of my mother’s voice echoes in my head…

30 Days Makes A Habit

Today we write.  We write for freedom and for love.  We write for the song that’s buried in our soul.  We write for our mothers and our fathers, sisters and brothers.  We write to be forced to turn off the touch pad that becomes a nuisance.  We write for our aching bodies and bleeding hearts.  We write because we can.  We write because we’re alive.

It never felt so good to be in a place like this.  Chasing a dream, ending up in a better place than you had aimed for.  I look around me and all I see is love.  I see manifestation of the possible.  I see focus and drive.  I see me.

What do you see?

It’s time for NaNoWriMo to begin in less than 24 hours.  For the first time I will participate.  Not only will I participate but I will throw myself into this in unimaginable ways.  Ways that I cannot yet tell you about because, well, they are unimaginable.

I’m posting this mini blog for self inspiration.  For a reminder of my commitment.  For the thought of public humiliation as a muse for days where writing will feel like a curse.  I’m also posting this for you, members of the blogiverse; readers and writers alike.  What challenge can you or will you take on and conquer during the month of November?  30 days makes a habit.  Let’s form new ones together.

I’ll end this one with my favorite quote from the NaNoWriMo team, “In November, embrace imperfection and see where it takes you.”

In Pursuit Of A Great Perhaps

Tradition. Belief. Artists. Couture. Gothic. Steampunk. Beauty.

In all things I find an unrest quite unlike the disposition I was raised to believe in.  A swelling under the surface.  A shift.

Mindfulness and spirituality override the doldrums of creationism. The masses now feeling the need to create and connect while distancing, never touching.  Forbidden is the unknown; keeps us awake at night.

I don’t want to find myself gone again, lost under restraint, placed between breaths.  Being alive is no longer enough.

Join me in the pursuit of more, yet consciously less.  Perhaps and enough.

You have joined the epically disturbed masses. Welcome.