August Rush

So I am going to write a movie review... I haven't had much luck with these in the past, I usually cannot remember all of the great details that a good movie review needs to have. However, I recently watched a movie that moved me more than any movie has for quite some time. So I feel a great compulsion to share my thoughts with the world at large. (Or at least whoever happens to read this, which is admittedly not many.)
August Rush is first and foremost, a fairy tale. Unabashedly, it takes us through the fantasy of an orphanage-raised boy who dreams, as most children in such a place do, of finally finding his parents. Whether or not he does in the end is almost never in doubt. It is almost never unsure of whether or not this movie will have a happy ending. Nevertheless, the tension and suspense are far greater than anything I have ever witnessed in a cinematic experience.
But first, I suppose I really should outline more of the story before I give away the climax.
Evan Taylor hears music, feels music all around him. "I believe in music like some people believe in fairy tales." And he believes that this music originates with his parents. Despite the taunts of the bullies who live in the boy's home with him, he continues to believe that if he can only learn to make the music he hears that he will somehow be able to call to his parents and they will return to him.
Through flashbacks, we learn that his mother and father are two very gifted musicians who meet only once on a magical night where music brings them together. His mother plays the cello in an orchestra, and his father is lead guitar and singer for a rock band. One night, they each have absolutely amazing performances, seperately of course. The magic of cinema however melds these two performances together into what has become one of my favorite tracks on the movie soundtrack as it jumps back and forth from the formal concert hall to the dark and smoky club joining classical Bach with a heartfelt rock ballad that really must move anyone with the smallest love of music.
After their respective concerts, the two musicians, still dazed with wonder at the intensity of their performances are dragged to a party by their friends where they meet on the rooftop where they have both gone to escape the crowd and ponder on the wonder of their music. In a beautifully directed scene, they meet, talk briefly and then, to the sound of a street performer playing Van Morrison's "Moondance" on a harmonica they fall instantly in love.
The next morning, fate intervenes to seperate them. He by his bandmates, she by her controlling father. He never knows that he has fathered a child, but continues to pine for her, even writing a song about her which is another great track on the soundtrack cd.
She carries the child to term, but before giving birth is hit by a car and when she wakes up in the hospital, her father tells her the child has died.
Both parents fall into a depression, and abandon their music. Meanwhile, Evan grows up in the boy's home, hearing the music and hoping for a chance to play it for a large enough audience to call them back to him. Eventually, he runs away from the home and makes his way to the city where he does finally get a chance to learn to perform music. Robin Williams plays an eerily insane character who is easy to love, hate, and fear simultaneously. "The Wizard" is a sort of modern day Fagin who teaches his youthful gang to panhandle for money by playing music instead of thievery.
Eventually Evan is discovered by someone who is able to get him admitted to the Julliard school where he writes the August Rhapsody as the piece of music that will finally bring his parents back to him. His innate musical genius is such that he is even given the opportunity to have the New York Philharmonic perform his work in a concert in Central Park.
Although the final climactic scene is largely predictable, I found myself holding my breath with watering eyes as Evan's music crescendoed. I think it is the music as much as anything that allows the dramatic tension to be preserved, and which keeps the viewer invested in the final scene despite its formulaic happy ending. As his parents make their way through the crowd, drawn by the music that they have both been hearing throughout the eleven years of their seperation one feels almost to shout at them to find each other, and to find the wonderful, sweet and talented son that neither of them knew that they had.
In the end, the ending is happy; and that is no surprise. But I was left breathless by this wonderful movie. Most of all, the soundtrack is the driving force behind everything good about this movie. I have nothing really bad to say about it. It is a movie that I will not hesitate to watch over and over again, if only to listen to the wonderful music.
If you have any love for music at all, or would like to, then you must take the time to watch August Rush.
You will never be able to listen to music in the same way again.

Monday May 19, 2008 - 11:11pm (EDT)

© 2008 Tyler Willson. All rights reserved

Sue and The Bureaucrats - An Excerpt

(No new news here, just another excerpt. Enjoy!)

"You have a bit of your father in your eyes son, the way you looked at me just now. Not the crazy mad kid that I have raised for all these years, I figger that comes from your ma. But the cold hardness of a man who has faced his fears and found himself stronger for it. You got that in you, you know?" Sue was not so sure he did, but not wanting to contradict the sheriff now, simply nodded."Alright, enough beating around the bush. I was following your pa one night just before you and your ma drifted into town, he had left the saloon early and headed for the hills. I think I was able to catch him unawares because I didn't follow him directly. I watched which direction he rode and made a guess as to where he would end up in the pine bluffs just north of town. He was taking the trail, which goes all the way around the bluff, so I just cut across and went straight up and over, cutting the distance in half. Even so it was a close thing. Had I come upon that clearing thirty seconds later, I would have just ran into a scary old man in the darkening evening." The sheriff took off his hat and rubbed his bald skull with a handkerchief. Sue was surprised to see beads of sweat forming all over the man's head. Once again he was impressed with the great weight of dread this man inspired in people."I rode over the top of that bluff and down into a wooded valley just off the trail. I tied my horse to a tree and set off on foot towards the trail, hoping that I would be able to see him as he passed so I could get an idea where he was headed. But then I saw a flash of light off to my left, and..." here, words seemed to fail him. He appeared to struggle with himself for a moment, then continued in a shaky voice, as if he disbelieved the words coming from his own mouth."Kid, I tell ya', that light was not like any light you have ever seen. It wasn't from a campfire, or a candle, or a lamp. I even traveled to the city once and saw some guy light one of them new 'lectric lights, and it was nothing like this. This was a cold white light that seemed to come from the sky, like a star was leaking light down on just this one spot. And in the spot where this light hit the ground stood your pa." He shook his head, but continued nonetheless, his eyes boring into Sue's with an intensity that excited and alarmed him in equal measure."He was standing in that light, and talking to someone, just like I am talking to you right now. Then he reached out his hand and made a little gesture, and the light was gone. I was so dumbstruck by what I had just seen that I must of made some kind of a noise, and his head snapped around and found me hiding in the brush at the edge of the clearing. At first, he looked mad, and I figgered that my time on this earth had reached its logical conclusion. I thought of reaching for my gun, but my arms wouldn't move. After a second, he smiled, that grim humorless smile of his, and waved me over to him. Just like I couldn't draw my gun, I couldn't resist his invitation. I walked over there, and he laughed, and held out his hand as if to shake it. I was still too scared to move, so I didn't shake his hand. Then he spoke to me." The sheriff shook his head, and a nervous laugh escaped him. "Just like we were old pals and I hadn't seen him just talking to a strange light from the stars. Asked me how my family was doing. What do you think of that?" Sue shook his head, not quite sure what to think. The sheriff continued: "I couldn't really answer any of his questions, just sat there like a fool with my mouth hanging open, and then, out of nowhere he asked me if I ever met an alien before. I wasn't even sure what that word meant, and I told him so. He laughed again, and asked me if I had ever met anyone from another planet. I was still pretty perplexed, so he pointed to the sky, and said 'from the stars, up there. you ever meet someone from the stars before?' Well, to tell the truth, I still had no idea what he was talking about, and I guess he could tell that by looking at me. He laughed again at my confusion, and then he reached out and clapped his hand on my shoulder. 'Sherriff, I think you may be the first man I have met on this planet who has had the guts to even try to figure out who or what I was, let alone follow me off into the darkness. I want to tell you a few things, and it is important that you try to remember them word for word, since you ain't gonna understand most of what I gotta say. Pretty soon I am gonna disappear. Shortly after that, a lady and her boy are gonna show up in town looking for me. When they do, I want you to make sure that they stay in this town. When that boy becomes a man, he is going to be a lot different from his peers, and he will need a little nudge in the right direction. I need you to give him that nudge. Bring him to this spot, and give him this guitar. If he is the person I think he will be, the rest will come natural to him. Can you remember all of that?' he asked me, and I stood there with my mouth gaping open until he laughed again, and slapped me on the back. 'I knew you could. I guess there is no reason for me to stick around here. You remember what I told you and make sure that boy gets here when he is ready. Don't bring him too soon, or too late. I think you are the kind of man that understands what I am trying to say. Have a good evening!' he smiled friendly-like at me, and then walked back to the center of the clearing. He pulled something small and silvery out of his pocket, and poked at it with his finger a few times. Then the light came back, shining right out of the sky just like before. He turned around, tipped his hat at me, and then dissapeared." sue stared at the Sheriff, trying to guess the meaning of his words. Was he putting him on? Of all the folks in town, only the Sheriff had never ridiculed him for his station in life, for his name, or for the strange things he did or said. Was he finally joining them in creating some hugely extravagant joke to ridicule him? Yet watching the play of emotion across this hard frontier lawman's face he didn't think so. This was a hard man, one of the hardest he had ever known, and yet he was scared to the core at the memeories he had just spilled. Not scared for his life, not scared for his soul, but scared like a person who just realizes how small they are in the grand scheme of things. The way a man will feel who has been raised in a city when he is first confronted with the wide openness of the prairies, or a towering rock tower in the desert. The feeling a man gets looking down from a great height. It is not fear of death, it is fear of the unknown, fear that forces exist in this universe much greater and more powerful than anything our pitiful intellect can imagine. As Sue pondered this, another thought entered his mind. While the fear in the eyes of this man he had known for so long was strange and discomfitting, none of the things he had told him in themselves caused him any fear at all. Quite the opposite in fact, as he pondered the thought of people who came from the stars, or who called down starlight from the night sky and then disappeared into it, he felt a twinge of familiarity, as of a forgotten dream suddenly remembered. Excitement rose in him as he realized that this crappy town, and the hundreds like it that he had wandered through with his mother were as small and insignificant as he had always thought them to be. Suddenly the universe had promise, and the future held hope. Suddenly he was on his feet. "Let's go! Take me there now!" The sheriff nodded, as if this was exactly what he had expected. Tossing back the rest of the whiskey in his glass, he pushed back from the desk and stood up. "Alright son, let's go and see what it is your pa left for you."

© 2007 Tyler Willson. All rights reserved

Who would play Sue?

(Photo is Christian Bale in "3:10 to Yuma" )

If I was casting actors to portray my characters, I would have to choose Christian Bale to portray Sue. Mostly because his character in "Batman Begins" has pretty much the same attitude at least when the movie opens and he is in prison in Asia. He fights because he is pretty much pissed off at the world, and being as pissed as he is, he is pretty good at fighting.
Of course, nowhere in my novel does Sue get training from a secretive Ninja master to polish his skills. Instead he stumbles on an interdimensional trip across the universe in pursuit of his father who "gave him that awful name." (Who of course, would be portrayed by Johnny Cash, were he alive to do so!)
Here is another small excerpt. Presented sans explanation.

Sue was about halfway through the bottle of whiskey when Mama Lisa and her girls came in. Residents of the local house of ill repute, they were on the prowl for customers and they quickly fanned out through the bar. One perky redhead fixed her interest on the scowling young man drinking intently near the doors."Hey there, care to buy a girl a drink?" she flounced down on a chair and latched on to one of Sue's arms. He looked sideways at her, his impaired brain working out a response. He decided to be surly, and instead of responding, slid his glass in front of her and sloshed some whiskey in it. Undeterred by the unfriendly response, she giggled, a high pitched laugh that rippled throughout the bar. "What kind of a girl do you think I am? I don't drink whiskey, at least not this early!" She snuggled up against him, and spoke quietly in his ear. "How about a nice glass of wine? Wine always makes me feel friendly..." she left the implication hanging there in the air, hoping this young boy was not already too far gone to catch her meaning."Don't seem as though you need much help in that area." Sue snapped, reaching across and recovering his glass. He tipped it back and drained it in a gulp and did his level best to ignore her. She decided to take another tack."I don't remember seeing you around here before, what's your name?" she trilled at him, one hand twirling his hair idly. Sue started at this question, and quickly checked to see if she was trying to make a joke. Apparently deciding she wasn't, he answered with the same surly tone."I don't have a name." The girl's eyebrows raised in curiosity, and she decided to pursue this line of questioning further."Aww come on cowboy. Everybody has a name. What does your Mama call you?" now more interested in this apparent mystery than in her pseudo romance she had pulled back slightly and was looking intently into Sue's face. However at the mention of his mother, Sue's face darkened even further, and he decided he had had enough of this game."Never mind my mama. I think you need to find someone else to harass." he snapped and scooping up his glass and bottle disentangled himself and moved away to another table. The girl, being a professional could tell when a man was not interested in what she was selling, and instead of wasting her time trying to change his mind she moved on to more fertile pastures. Two miners just off shift at the local gold mine were competing for the attentions of another of Mama Lisa's girls at a nearby table and she determined to help them resolve the conflict by offering herself as a consolation to the loser. One of the miners was immediately more than happy to abandon the battle and turned to the redhead."Decided you want a real man tonight instead of a boy?" The miner laughed, wrapping one arm around her shoulders and pulling her close against him."He didn't really seem to be in the mood for company tonight." she shrugged. Then added "and he wasn't too sure what his name was. Poor little guy..." she giggled and snuggled up closer to the miner. The other man at the table laughed out loud and said in a voice purposely loud enough to carry to the other table."I know why he's so shy about his name. I would be too if I had his name..." and then leaning towards Sue's table to ensure that he caught the next few words, "...or should I say 'her' name?" he guffawed at his clever humor, and the two girls, well trained by Mama Lisa tittered out of habit although they didn't really get the joke. Sue, on the other hand knew exactly what the man was getting at, and felt that familiar rage rising in his chest, felt his face and neck turning red."I hear tell his daddy was a big man, but when he was born he couldn't stand that his little boy was such a girly little thing, so he named him Sue and then left town before he had to face the shame of having thrown such a disappointing little whelp." the miner was on a roll now, and the girls were still giggling uncertainly, although they had begun to sense that this conversation was quickly passing from harmless fun into something dangerous and ugly."Aww, forget about him. How about that drink you were going to buy us? Let me go get a bottle of wine for us all to share." the redhead tried vainly to redirect the conversation, adding her trademark lamely "wine always makes me feel friendly, if you know what I mean..." she pushed herself up against the miner, hoping that her advances would distract him from his apparent aim of picking a fight."Besides, he's just a kid. I don't care what his name is. Let's go back to my place and have that wine." Her attempts were futile. The miner had seen the reaction his words had caused in Sue, and had decided that it would be good fun to release some energy by pounding on this apparently soused teenager for a little while."Yea, its a good thing you didn't take him back to your place Sally, you might have been embarrassed when he asked to try on some of your frilly things. I hear she likes that kind of..." the miner's insult was interrupted by a whiskey bottle at high velocity that impacted his head directly between his eyes. It shattered and splattered all four occupants of the table with shattered glass and whiskey. The girls screamed and instinctively deserted the table and made a beeline for the doorway. This wasn't the first bar brawl they had encountered, and they knew that once drunk men started swinging, it was no place for a lady, even if she was a working lady.To his credit, the miner took the whiskey bottle to the head rather well. He was of course stunned, and the alcohol and blood dripping into his eyes stiung and blinded him but nonetheless, he had the presence of mind to grab the edge of the table and fling it up in front of him as he rolled out of his chair onto the floor. This unthinking reaction served to save him from Sue's follow up attack as the chair he had been sitting on impacted the table where the miner had been split seconds before. The miner scrabbled at his face trying to regain his vision while rolling away from the table and trying to get to his feet. For a split second he remembered the rest of the story that had been related to him about this kid named Sue, the part that warned that he was a powder keg when provoked. But more pressing matters than reccolections of ignored warnings were at hand. He had regained his feet just in time to meet Sue's flailing attack. Fists windmilling and feet kicking wildly he waded in to the miner to exact vengeance for the earlier insults. However in his blind anger, he forgot the miner's companion who had rolled to the side and recovered much more quickly. As Sue flailed at his partner, he picked up a chair and swung it at Sue's back. Fortunately for Sue, the swing was badly aimed and timed and he had bent to aim an uppercut as the chair struck. Still, it knocked Sue off his feet and the miner quickly followed his surprise attack with an attempt to plant both of his hobnailed boots in the middle of Sue's chest. Sue rolled out from under his attack and lashed up and scored a hit on the man's groin with one foot. He groaned and hunched over, giving Sue an open attack on his face, which he took immediate advantage of, windmilling both feet in a lashing attack on the man's face. One kick landed squarely on his jaw and broke the bone with a soft crunch. He collapsed uncouscious to the floor. Sue struggled to his feet, only to be met immediately with a flying tackle by the first miner. He was driven to the plank floor and his breath was knocked from his lungs. Feeling his advantage, the miner's hands found Sue's throat and he quickly got a grip and began squeezing. Sue panicked, feeling consciousness quickly slipping away and his hands scrabbled at the iron grip of the miner while his feet tried to inflict damage where they could. The miner had too much of an advantage however, and black spots began appearing in his vision and his flailings weakened until blackness overtook him.

© 2008 Tyler Willson. All rights reserved

NaNoWriMo2007 - Day One

Why a picture of The Man In Black? Where have you been? Look back a few days to see where the inspiration for this story comes from...
NaNoWriMo started last night. Midnight Halloween eve. I even stayed up to be there and start typing at the first possible minute. This turned out to be a horrible mistake. I should have left the house at least, whether or not someone was agreeing to meet me there. Sitting home on the couch watching the Halloween episode of MASH where Norm from Cheers gets a pool ball stuck in his mouth was not exactly the inspiration I needed to get started. Add to that the fact that I was insanely tired and somewhat let down about NaNo so far this year and I get waking up this morning to fear and loathing.
Perhaps the year two curse that I managed to avoid last year was not gone, just biding its time. Here it is, one year late but no less potent for its tardiness. Nonetheless, here is the first few paragraphs that I managed to hammer out before giving up and going to sleep at 1:30 AM.

He was big and bent, gray and old yet the tall stranger with a scar down one cheek and one glass eye stood out among the frontier villagers like a god among men. All of the men deferred to him, and the women tittered and giggled at anything he said, or didn't say. By and large, he was silent, simply observing the work around him with a wry grin. Nobody was sure exactly who he was and where he was from, although there were some whispers that he was a wealthy merchant from far away San Francisco. So far in his time in this small frontier town he had done nothing but sit all day in the saloon playing poker, smoking cigarettes and sipping whiskey. Although he had a canny way with the cards, nobody could say whether he won more than he lost; only that he was obviously not a greenhorn and obviously not hurting for money. What everyone agreed upon, although nobody actually would have voiced was that he was terribly frightening. Even the local toughs who were wont to harass anyone new in town until they had proved either unentertaining or dangerous had given him a wide berth, even tipping their hats politely as he passed. There was a solemn coldness about him that gave no doubt but that whatever the townspeople or life in general could throw at him he could handle, and most likely had done so before. He carried no guns or any other weapons that were easily apparent, and truly needed none. His freezing glare alone was generally sufficient to make any man have sudden thoughts of his own mortality.

Nobody had invited him to the barn-raising, but he showed up nonetheless. He seemed to be amused by the activities going on around him, but with no apparent desire to join in. Normally, anyone who showed up at a barn-raising event was expected to work as hard as everyone else before joining in the festivities afterwards, but Elijah Graves seemed to be the exception to that rule. He watched the men as they worked together to raise the four walls of the barn, watched as they fastened the roof joists in place, watched as they cleaned up and prepared for the pot luck supper. Only then did he move from his place to get a plate of food and return to his seat.

Charity Austin was in a foul mood to begin with, and had no expectation that an evening surrounded by local townsfolk would improve it.

"Mother, I really do not feel well. Might I go home and go to bed early?" she asked plaintively, averting her eyes.

"Charity, we have discussed this. It would not be proper for a young lady of your status to be traipsing through town at this time of night all alone. You will be patient and leave when your father and I are ready to go."

Her mother answered her request without even glancing at her. Her eyes were full of her husband, sitting on a rocking chair next to the mayor and sharing a laugh at something the man had said. Charity breathed a deep sigh, and resigned herself to her fate. Her father was pushing hard to be selected to the town council when the next position came open, and her dislike of these primitive frontier gatherings was nothing but an obstacle to such aspirations. The lump in her stomach only got heavier when she spotted the group of girls standing behind the plank tables serving food to the townsfolk. The were all chatting gaily with each other, looking sideways at a group of young men who also did their best to pretend that they young women did not exist. Charity quickly looked away before any of them made eye contact with her. The last thing she needed was another confrontation with them like last week. Her mother seemed to be oblivious to her status among the girls in town, and was constantly pushing her to be more sociable.

"Dear, isn't that little Jenny Cushman over there?" Her mother indicated the apparent leader of the group of girls; a stunning petite blond with piercing blue eyes and a laugh that had apparently captivated any man within hearing distance.

"Yes mother, that is the girl who embarrassed me in front of the entire school last week." Charity replied bitterly, refusing to look in the direction indicating. Her mother either ignored the remark or didn't care.

"You should go see if you can help her with the serving. She seems like such a sweet thing. Perhaps you two could become friends?" Her mother asked pointedly.

Charity was under no such illusion, either as to the possibility of befriending the mayor's daughter, or the reasoning behind her mother's question.

"Mother, she made me look like a fool in front of the entire school last week. Don't you remember the note that Miss Johnson sent home about it? After you suggested that I ask to be her study partner, she gave me the wrong book to read and when I stood to read lines from it I found out that this book was nearly pornographic! I thought that the teacher was going to have a heart attack!" Charity could still feel the heat of the stares of her classmates as she stammered through an apology to the class for what Jenny had insisted had been a practical joke that Charity had tried to get her to participate in.

"Yes dear, but that wasn't her fault. You really should get to know her better." She grasped Charity's shoulder and pushed her gently in that direction. "Go ahead. I am sure she would welcome your help."

"Mother, I will not!" Charity hissed, trying to keep her voice low. "That girl is a snake!"

"Charity Austin! I cannot believe the words that I am hearing coming from your mouth." Her mother's wide eyes expressed her apparent shock. "Then we shall go speak to her together. And you can apologize to her for being so uncharitable."

Rising to her feet, Mother grabbed Charity's hand with an iron grip and set off towards the serving tables. Charity resisted, but her mother was unstoppable when she had her mind set, and she certainly did not want to attract any further attention to herself by causing a scene.

Elijah Graves was beginning to bore of this party. It had definitely been interesting to see the primitive building techniques used to construct the agricultural structure earlier in the day, but as soon as the social activities began his interest began waning. He had finished the food on his plate and was finishing a very satisfying after dinner cigarette. The hard cider that had been served with his meal was just beginning to give him that mellow, relaxed feeling that he so enjoyed and he didn’t want to waste it on these strange, petty people and their confusing social antics. He handed his plate to a passing girl who blushed and nearly dropped her load of dirty dishes by trying to execute an extravagant curtsy with her hands full. Standing up, he wandered off towards town, barely acknowledging any of the people he passed with a slight nod of his gray head.

© 2007 Tyler Willson. All rights reserved

No quite as highly anticipated...

Two days 'til NaNoWriMo.

Strange how I am not as stoked as I was a couple of weeks ago. I am still excited to begin my story, but not really sure that I will have the drive that I did last year. Still, I can't wait to see where the Boy Named Sue ends up travelling with the Infamous Space Pilot Ace Pedona and his Techno Idiot-Savant Sidekick The Tinker...

I am thinking that this book will encompass both Sci-Fi and Fantasy worlds, since I was reading some fantasy stuff the other day that really sounded like fun. Not the kind of fantasy that takes itself WAY too seriously, nor the kind that you must be a genius like Tolkien to write. More like the Myth Inc. type of stuff. Fantasy that allows characters to cast spells and travel through dimensions, but not so stuffy that you get bored reading the descriptions of the incantations.
To use a Sci-Fi phrase that I picked during NaNo last year: Hand-Wavium. The most powerful element in the literary universe. You don't describe every detail about how that anti-grav propulsion unit works, neither do you divulge the history of magical inter-dimensional doorways. You just "wave your hand" and it works. I get bored reading (and writing) overly detailed explanations. I just want to get on with the story.
So don't look for anything like that in my stories. I explain enough to make it somewhat plausible, place it far enough in the future (or far enough away from reality) that you can't really question it, and run with it.
I guess this is a lesson I learned from writing a novel by the seat of my pants and worrying more about wordcount than quality. Writing a story for me is more about discovering a new story that I have never read before than it is following a set path. Although I do take some pains to create an outline, once November 1st hits, I rarely if ever stick with it. It just kind of takes off and I follow it. Hopefully it tells a story that is at least fifty-thousand words long before I get bored with it. This has happened for the past two years, but the first year more than last year.


OK, speaking of getting bored; I am bored with my NaNo ramblings. So I will call it quits for today. But I will be back, just after midnight on October 31st, to post my opening paragraph.
I know... you are on pins and needles. (If anyone is actually reading this, you just might catch a faint whiff of sarcasm there...)

Diapers and Real Life and etc...

I should write about changing diapers. I should, but I don't think that I will. Perhaps I will just change the diaper instead. I mean, my lovely wife has been home all day changing diapers, among the other five thousand tasks she does each day. Why shouldn't I take just one of them off of her shoulder once in a while.
OK, so no thousand words today. Just a couple dozen about real life. Worry not, next Wednesday night, at the stroke of midnight I will leave real life behind and begin writing in earnest. Then, a thousand words in a day will be a slow day!
Happy NaNoWriMo!
(Oh, but I have written something recently. I haven't counted the words, and it took more than one day as well as some help from a fellow Wrimo, LazyM of the Austin Penguins.)
www.geocities.com/tweetywill/affiliate07.html

Friday October 26, 2007 - 04:41pm (EDT)

© 2007 Tyler Willson. All rights reserved

One Thousand Words...

One thousand words. This November, I will be trying once again to write Fifty Thousand Words in Thirty Days. Also known as National Novel Writing Month. (Also known as NaNoWriMo). For anyone with a calculator, you can easily figure out that this means I must write no less than an average of 1667 (rounding up due to a repeating decimal) words each and every day in order to succeed. This sounds pretty easy at first glance, I mean it is no big deal to type that much in one e-mail for some people. (And you know who you are don’t you? Of course that is better than those who are not yet aware that they can actually type in an e-mail message and think that hitting “Forward” is the only way to communicate via computers and the Interweb thingy…) But typing that much EVERY DAY is something just a bit different. Realize that if you have one of those days where you are busy from sunup to sundown, and never have time to sit down at the keyboard and hammer out your days allotment you will find yourself then next day having to type 3334 words to catch up. Then after two days of non-contribution you will be facing a defecit of no less than 5001 words. Now typing 5000 words in a single day is something that is seriously daunting.
Of course, the savvy Nanovelist has learned to take advantage of the occasional lazy day at work and any sporadic bursts of creativity to pad the daily average whenever possible. On some days the words just flow and you can curse your fingers for being so slow that you can’t keep up with the story as it unwinds directly from your imagination. You have hours of time to do nothing but sit and type and you pass that sixteen hundred sixty seven word mark before the carpal tunnel pain even begins in earnest. In a situation like this, do whatever is necceesary to avoid stopping. Keep typing till the well runs dry even if you have to bring your laptop in the john with you. (True story my friends…) These moments of literary feasting are what will carry you past the days of famine.
Writer’s block is what the world generally calls this situation, but sometimes it is worse than that. Sometimes it is merely what we like to call Real Life. Meaning your space interceptor squadron is just about to run down that wily and dangerous smuggler once and for all and your three year old informs you that he has to use the potty. Now this is a serious dilemma. If you put down the keyboard at this moment, you may lose momentum and forget where you were. Precious moments will be wasted as you struggle to find the groove you are in after taking care of this supremely important human need. Of course the consequence of delaying a request from a small human like this who is still learning that it is possible to exert some control over such functions is much worse than failing to remember how you were going to corner the bad guy. So you push back from the keyboard only to discover that this small human has also yet to learn the difference between “present tense” and “past tense’.
So when you finish cleaning up the “past tense” all over the floor and finding new clothes for the aforementioned human being in training (which of course were not in the drawer where they belong but rather in the dryer since this particular human being in training confuses present with past quite regularly these days) you pop in a Blue’s Clues video for him and get back to work. After staring at the screen, re-reading your last couple of paragraphs looking for that dropped thread of thought you finally place your fingers on the keyboard and….
The two oldest kids begin screaming as if a whirling vortex of time and space is about to consume them and banish them to a far corner of the universe. Of course, the real problem is much simpler: he is holding a pencil. Not just any pencil, but THE SPECIAL PENCIL THAT SHE GOT FROM HER KINDERGARTEN TEACHER ON THE FIRST DAY OF HER FIRST YEAR OF SCHOOL AND IT IS MY SPECIAL PENCIL AND HE IS GOING TO RUIN IT AND HE WON’T GIVE IT BACK TO ME AND IT’S MINE MINE MINE!
Of course this particular writing utinsel has spent the last four years stuck in the penci and pencil holder on the counter next to the phone. In fact, she had, up until her brother had the temerity to actually touch it, forgotten about its very existence. However, now that he has touched it the spell of forgetfulness is broken and SHE MUST HAVE HER PENCIL RIGHT NOW!
She lunges for the pencil and her brother, suddenly equally enamored of this precious artifact from Ms. Hunt’s private collection yanks it away, the jagged edge of the broken lead missing his eye by mere fractions of a millimeter. Then the sister gets a hold and the real fight begins. I am sprinting as fast as I can to break it up, nightmares of Child Protective Services grilling me about how I allowed my child to lose an eye settling in a lead ball in the pit of my stomach. My voice cracks as I try to match their squealing in volume, threatening dire consequences which that same social worker from the earlier nightmare would be very interested in hearing. Then it happens, the struggle for ownership is simply too much and the Dreaded Event occurs. No, the perfect eyesight which I have thanked heaven for so many times remains intact. But The Precious Kindergarten Pencil gives way under the strain of two equally frantic children and snaps in two.
To my son, this event is nothing more than an annoyance. He only wanted the pencil to poke at a bug out on the front porch in the first place. Now that it is broken, he is content to choose any of the other fifty pencils in the holder to torture the poor unfortunate cricket that he has captured.
On the other hand, my daughter is instantly mortified. Death is the only fair sentence for desecration of an artifact so precious and rare.
After calming the trauma of losing such a rare possession (which we soon found was not THAT pencil anyway, after she finished crying) I can now return to my story. Once again, I re-read the last few paragraphs, stare off into space as if I can actually see the small fighter ships converging on the crippled freighter from here in my living room, I place my fingers on the keyboard…
And my dear wife comes home. Naturally, this is a joyous event always, and always will be forever and ever and ever (I am not sure she reads this stuff that I write but you never know…) and ever… I jump up and cheerfully greet her with a hug and a kiss. Or at least I try to convey that emotion without removing my fingers from the keyboard and smiling.
“Oh, I see you are working on your novel. How is that going?” She asks, her smile masking her real emotions every bit as well as mine.
“Pretty good, I am really on a roll here, I should be able to pad my average and have some breathing room for the next few days.” I say, hoping that she catches the implied promise that I will not be pining for the keyboard for at least a minute or two if she will only let me finish this part right now.
“That is great dear. Only… I had kind of hoped to spend some time with you tonight…”
As I save my file and close my laptop, I reflect on how difficult it can be to actually type that “easy” one thousand, six hundred, sixty seven words each and every day of the month for a full thirty days. Real Life is truly the worst obstacle to overcome when attempting to create a new world from nothing more than imagination.
Oh well. There is always tomorrow, when she has a hair appointment. That should give me at least a couple of hours of uninterrupted typing…
(After all that, I have only written 1400 words. See what I mean? Not as easy as it sounds!)

Monday October 15, 2007 - 03:48pm (EDT)

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