It's December and we have no snow

Despite my comments to the contrary, I ended up doing NaNoWriMo.

I started my novel on November 18, and in fact made the 50,000 mark. On the 30th, in fact, writing 8600 words that day.

It's a draft I'm so far happy with. Space science fiction,  near-ish future. Per my usual NaNoWriMo habits, it's currently "trunked", pending finishing at a later date. It doesn't have a title. It has a lot of plot kinks to work out. But the bones are there, and that's pretty cool.

 

Setting and Soundtrack

So I already discussed this in Theme Song: my actual 2013 NaNoWriMo project (as opposed to my original idea) is taking place at the Jersey Shore. And if you mention that reality show to me here in this space, so help me....

But yeah. Nostalgia city.

What is that called, anyway?

So, I got an email from CampNaNoWriMo that they're "cleaning out the cabins" or whatever in anticipation of the July session. I groaned a little, thinking a number of things. Isn't this camp motif being taken a bit too far? (I, being the antisocial person I am, opted out of cabins) Isn't July too soon? Do I really want to do this again?

Then I thought, well, I could write my memoir, but fictionalized. I don't mean with like, added superpowers or anything; just filling in blanks and telling a story that isn't entirely mine, but with some of my details. I've actually had people (well, my grandmother) tell me that I've had an interesting life. I dunno. It's my life. Obviously I'm enamored of it, but that's not necessarily a commercially reliable thing. I like a lot of things that were not commercially successful, like     and the movie Push (which you should watch if you haven't).

Then I thought, wait, what the hell is that called? It's not properly a memoir. Nor is it properly a novel. There's the "autobiographical novel", which sounds all well and literary, but not really waht I'm talking about. Here's a list of Top 10 Infamous Fake Memoirs, but it's really kind of boring and doesn't really get juicy until #8 (A Million Little Pieces which, working at a library, I saw some of the fallout of that "reveal". Including a woman in her 70's who slide it across the counter with a disgraced moue, saying "I am so disappointed." I then had to read it, of course. So, lady, disappointed? In what, that he wasn't actually a degenerate junkie scumbag? This is another one of those books I'm a bit shocked and perhaps appalled that my grandmother has read, like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) and #9 (Love and Consequences, which I had never heard of before and sounds hilarious). I actually keep waiting to hear that Dave Pelzer actually made all of his shit up. People steal A Child Called It all of the time, and I'm unclear as to why. Pointers? Rolling papers? It certainly isn't "inspirational", though I suppose perhaps it's intended to be.

But, I digress.

I'm coming up with my own name for "fictionalized memoir" or "autobiographical novel". And that, my friends, is "moirvel". Say it with me. It's a bit like "marvel", which every life is, of course (*cue the rising music*). I wondered about novoir, which sounded like it should have to do with noir, which my writing only has when I wrote some short stories for my coworker. Memnov sounds like a Russian chess player or perhaps nuclear scientist (or both!)

Nope. Moirvel. I'll make the tshirts if you want 'em. 

My Process

My process, such as it is, tends to be rather private.

Or, at any rate, I'm not really social while I'm writing. When I'm really into it, sleepwalking the dreamscape of my inner mullings, transposing them onto the page, I don't want to be bothered. I don't want to talk. I don't want to be interrupted.

Sometimes I listen to the same song, over and over. For the mood I'm in, or the emotions it evokes, or the memories it dredges up from that subconscious I try to mine while I'm awake. For The Last Song, there have been a few songs: "One", covered by Warren Haynes at Bonnaroo. "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?", covered by Nirvana. A lot of Nirvana in general. "Everlong", by the Foo Fighters, both the acoustic version and the regular album one.

I remember the first time I heard the acoustic version of Everlong. It was on the radio, probably Rat Rock, and I was driving home uncommonly late one night. Had I gone to see a movie? That seems likely. I was in my Honda, a 1992 five speed hand me down from my dad, with its Grateful Dead Space your Face sticker in the rear passenger window, and the Shrinky Dink fish, fishing lined to the rearview mirror. It was summer, so all of my windows were down (I eschew air conditioning, for one, and it had also broken in said Honda a year or two previous on the return drive from Cape Hatteras, NC), and it was the dewy, overcast pink skied Jersey Shore summer that happens sometimes, where it isn't raining and probably won't, and the next day will be a completely clear, perfect, humidity free beach day where the edges of everything seem just a little bit sharper, and you probably forget to apply, or reapply, your sunscreen. There was nobody else on the road, and I slowed down. The limit on the back road I drove was thirty, but I didn't want to get home before the song was over, and I dipped to twenty five, twenty, dropped it to second gear. I'd kicked off my flip flops and drove barefoot, toes curled over the top of the gas pedal, right hand on the gearshift. When the song was over, I turned the radio off. I didn't want to hear any other songs, any commercials, any other voices. I didn't want the spell to be broken.

So, when I listen to songs on repeat, or listen to a certain sequence of songs on repeat, I don't want the spell to be broken. I want to sustain it for as long as possible, make it as complete as possible. I don't want anybody in the room to remark upon my musical choices. I don't want anybody to ask me what I'm doing. I don't want a phone, or social media. I'd prefer Elka not have to go out. I don't want neighbors. Just the words on the page (text on the screen). Just the characters of my making, living their lives, thinking their thoughts, feeling their feels.

Smutception

Look, a Fifty Shades Generator! (totally raunchy and ridiculous and NSFW or whatever the hell. But if you're online at work, I salute and envy you. I can kind of go online at work, but it's mostly to look at stuff on Amazon [for when people are all "I'm looking for a book. I don't remember the title or author. The cover might be blue? It came out last year. Maybe it has 'nights' in the title'?" Some of these I magically know {the above is Blue Nights, by Joan Didion}, but seriously people? If you don't remember anything about it, how the fuck do you know you want to read it? Pick something else! AT RANDOM. It'll be just as good. Or bad. {But that reminds me, I wanted to read Slouching Towards Bethlehem by her. So thanks, guys!}])


(You can rent paperbacks on Amazon? Oh what the hell. Go to the fucking library.)

I Remember

I remember September 11. Of course I do.

Have I commemorated September 11? No, I don't think I have.

Or maybe I have. I didn't post, repost, or share any memes on Facebook. I'm not sure that's the way to go. I read articles about the Search and Rescue teams that were there. I looked at pictures of the dogs from those teams who are still alive. I read a book by one of the forensic anthropologists who worked there, for weeks, to identify the dead.

September 11 was not a personal tragedy for me. I was very lucky; I didn't know anybody who died. As an American, it unsettled me, it scared me, it made me wonder how the world would be. It's made air travel horrible. Through war, it's killed a lot more people than those who died on that date. It polarized a presidency, and it was such an affront, such an unspeakable thing, that even now people have a very visceral reaction to its mention. You can still buy the t-shirt, though.

September 11 (which I never call 9/11, by the by. I'm not morally against it; it's just the way my brain settled) is something like my generation's Pearl Harbor, JFK. I can still remember the surreal footage of my life, how I found out, when I first saw those smoking towers against a blue sky, on a small television atop somebody's dorm fridge. It's impossible to forget.

I'm not really sure what factors have to come together to instantly crystallize an imagine in your mind, full sensory, to be played and paused like a film of your life. Some memories are more vivid than others; frequently the bad ones, I think? Is it the adrenaline dump? Is it the certainty of inexorable change?