Crenellated Flotsam

I’m okay, I guess.

Yesterday my sister and I went to her daughter’s home (my niece Rachael’s) to spend Thanksgiving with her and her son, Greggory. Adding to the pathos were Greggory’s paternal grandparents, Will and Mary. Mary is (partially? wholly?) Indian, so I guess that was traditional enough. Will is her second (?) husband, and they’re the parents of Rachael’s ex-husband, but like to visit their (only?) grandson on occasion. Greggory is about thirteen.

So we’re all related by blood or marriage or something, and that’s about the extent of our commonality. It occurred to me that we’re what’s left over after all the real family and loved ones get together. The high point, for me, was Will and Mary’s forgetting to bring a card table so two people got to eat off an ironing board. That, and Will is (was?) a minister (Episcopalian?), so grace no doubt had more effect than were I to have said it.

It wasn’t bad. We talked a lot about phones and stealing lumber from construction sites (Greggory’s wanting to build a skateboard park in his back yard).

I struggled and got out a couple thousand more words on Big Train Show. I may finish, but maybe not. It feels so much like I’m writing just for the sake of writing instead of creating anything, that I’ve little heart in it. Unlike Kicker or The Reader’s Emporium, this story isn’t all that gripping to me. I had some interest going in, but maybe not enough to carry me through to the end. I’m quite jealous of all the other wrimos who are all bubbly and excited, wishing I felt any of that this year. I’m glad for them, and for the efforts of all those who labor to make NaNo work, but I just can’t get connected this year.

Not to NaNo, not to anything. I just am.

I hope everyone who looks here has, or had, the nicest of holidays. It’s not right to be ungrateful the rest of the year, so I hope in addition to cherishing and remembering those things that make your life so joyous you can take with you the idea that this shouldn’t be a one day a year thing.

Please be kind to those around you, remembering always that they’re probably doing the best they can.

I treasure you all.

Too busy catching up on all the shit I shoulda been doing the last six months to even think of writing. Haven’t been thinking about the novel, that’s all been pushed aside by worries over collection agents, plumbing, hiding so I don’t get caught as a fuck up.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

I was reading a post from a woman who claimed to eat only those eggs laid by organically fed, free range chickens. This got me to thinking…

First, I should probably admit that in my younger days I read a great deal of science fiction. In many of the stories I enjoyed, the future was bleak, the earth overgrown with skyscrapers, with trees and wood long gone, and hamburgers and bacon a thing of the distant past. These people ate pills or synthetics, but that was rarely the point of the story.

Anyway, like I said, this egg eating woman got me to thinking. I have absolutely no facts on which to back any of this up, and have never farmed. My notion of “free range” chickens is based on nostalgic whimsy, movies, and some recollections from my mom (who grew up on a farm). I’m a city boy.

I’m sure that egg growers use horrifically efficient methods. I’m sure chickens nowdays live their entire life caged in one cubic foot pens stacked fifteen high and are continually fed chemical laden food pellets. These chickens, I’m sure, have never tasted sweet clover, poppy seeds, or an earthworm. They’re little more than egg producing machines, and I think they do a pretty damn good job of it.

Free range chickens, on the other hand, I picture as spending their days strolling around, chatting with their friends, taking long baths is pristine water, and generally primping themselves for rooster visits. At the end of the day they waddle back to a comfy straw nest and lay an egg which some rosy-cheeked girl will pick up the next morning and carry gently in her apron.

So I get to thinking about the poster’s proclivity (if that’s the right word) for these eggs. There’s no doubt they’re better and healthier, but I wonder how practical they are, now that we’re in the 21st century. I wonder why we don’t *all* have these delicious eggs, and it occurs to me that we can’t.

There are close to three hundred million people in the US alone. If half of them have one egg a week, that’s 7,800,000,000 eggs a year. I have a feeling we’ve outgrown the ability to feed ourselves through romantic means. Not only do I not know anyone willing to give up their cushy office or technical job to wake up at six to feed chickens, I’ve met several people who’ve *had* that life and have chosen, instead, to become assistant underwriters or filing clerks.

We’re creating an elitist culture, here, based on food. The only way we can produce enough omelettes and pancake batter, french toast and egg drop soup is to manufacture eggs the way we’re doing it. It’s fucked for the chickens in the cages, I admit, but last I saw they had a brain about the size of my thumbnail and, after dealing with heart and lungs and producing massive amounts of chicken shit each day, I’m guessing there isn’t much brain power left for aspirations and sorrow.

I may not like it, but we no longer have the room or people to individually cater to chickens just so we can eat guilt-free eggs. I remember reading someplace that without the farming efficiencies of the last fifty years, this planet couldn’t support the people we have. One of the reasons in the explosion of population is because we can eat.

And to return to a quaint way of farming would be to sentence a billion people to starvation.

So if you enjoy organically fed, free range chickens, fine. I had one at a restaurant and it was tasty, just like chicken. But I think it’s absurd to take pride in showing off that you’re rich enough and elite enought to afford to eat better than the world allows.

I’ve reached the halfway point, not only in words but also the ides of November. I’m still battling a cold, still scared shitless about my future, and still not doing anything to improve my lot in life.

But the novel may be emerging. I’ve really been neglecting blogs, both mine and others, of late, as well as forum postings. I’ve been living in a dream world, too, so between everything, I’ve been remiss about keeping this and everything else current.

This past weekend our LA group was challenged by the group in Santa Barbara to see who could write the most. The results were painful, with most of the five LA writers having weekend totals of over ten thousand. I did much less than that, as did everyone in SB, but had a personal victory of sorts.

My novel, or writing, had gotten bogged down. I was never sure exactly what scene would next occur, what would happen next, so I was filling pages describing every inconsequential action. I jarred myself out of that momentarily over the weekend, and the plot began inching forward. Yesterday I got stuck again, but this morning I think I have the start of some plot.

I’m concerned, perhaps needlessly, about the number of characters I’ve introduced. This is why I edit. I don’t know as I need two or three people all serving the same role in the story, so I may be doing some compaction later on. Among the curious things to pop up is that Dina, the woman who works at the carnival and whose case Sid finds to start the novel, is dropping to the background, and Luther, her expected evil boyfriend, had yet to make much of an appearance at all.

I’ll see how it works out, but I’m the process right now of introducing other characters, ones I hadn’t expected. I have a hunch I’m nowhere near the middle of this story.

No, I don’t have much progress on anything to report, but I’m tired of neglecting my blog. I know everyone who visits must be crestfallen to see no new entries.

So here’s this one.

It rained overnight, but that’s not the point. It’s done now, so I’m getting ready to pack up and ride buses and meet with some wrimos in a nearby town. I’m still not feeling well, so I won’t be kissing anyone.

As if.

The novel continues. I have story ideas, but the writing isn’t often feeling inspired. I need to get away from truth and realism long enough to let ideas flow and prosper. I need to sit down and get into a groove, something that’s been very elusive this year. I’ve been writing tons of dialogue, and I don’t know why. It’s almost as if I’m afraid to say anything in exposition any more, fearing the “telling” criticism.

Today I hope to get Sid and Dina to finish up one adventure and to go on to the next. They have things to chase, and the Big Train Show has been mentioned right in the text!

For the first time, I smiled while writing.

It may have been a mini-breakthrough, one of those things I rely on when I craft my novel. I’d figured on the item Sid found to start the novel being returned to Dina and her boyfriend getting upset with Sid. Maybe some jealousy thing. Instead, as I was getting ready to write that passage a (currently) unknown minor character stepped up and said something, the kind of thing I hadn’t planned on, but the exact thing I kept talking about in my tips thread.

Let things happen. At this point I’m trusting my sub-conscious to know what it’s doing. The whole thing may be a sub-plot, or it may be the main story’s arc, I don’t know yet. I’m even less sure about what constitutes a sub-plot than I am about what a chapter is.

But I just love it when a line pops into my head, one that can change everything. At first I resisted it, but then talked myself into accepting it. It may or may not be what that minor character would actually say, but it’s the exact type of thing that makes me want to write. I can clean things up or let them play out, depending on how this newly found twist plays out.

(I’d say I can’t wait to find out, but I immediately started another thing going on, the introduction of the Big Train Show!)

This is the kinda thing that bugs me. On the news just now they said “A new warning for those who take vitamin E. Taking massive amounts may increase your risk of death.”

Um, excuse me. Not sure about everyone else, but I have a *certainty* of death. Reminds me of one of my favorite lines from a doctor interviewed on TV years ago. As he put it, “We don’t save lives, we postpone death.”

Oh, yeah. The novel. Gotta get back to writing…

I being optimistic about that 3, but I’m no longer wishing to die so I’m back to normal.

Life is so sucky right now I’ll just blog about my novel, which is also sucky. This happens every year, and every year when I’m done and go back and read over it I can’t tell the good parts from the ones I thought were sucky.

That may not be a good thing.

I hammered out Sid’s Amazing Blimp Adventure (Chapt 4 on the Big Train Show website. I was going to save it, but I needed to get it in so I could refer to it later. Actually, so far I think I’ve done little *except* bring things in that I needed to establish so I can build on or refer to them later. A lot of this novel writing feels like laying groundwork for wonders yet to come, and I don’t yet see any brewing wonders.

I *do* know the next thing I need to do: introduce Luther Jack. That should take a couple hundred words. Then, well, I don’t know exactly what happens next. To be truthful, I don’t know what will happen for the next thirty thousand words. I have a climax I’m writing toward, but the huge hump of the middle of the novel is a bit intimidating. I want to show Sid being challenged, questioning his contented life (which has yet to be shown, so the transition will be … forced), and should probably come up with two or three things for him and Dina to do, to show her influence on his life.

Then I can get to the train stuff.
Wish me luck!