My mantra is going to be … slow and steady. Slow and steady. That, and a strict ban on second-guessing and deleting all, and I think this will be a good month.

Word Cloud from Day 2 Text

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She knew immediately that she made a mistake. The moment she stepped out into the empty street, everything felt wrong. The stillness of the air. The quiet. The heavy heat that wouldn’t break. But the door had locked behind her, so she had no other choice left but to begin the walk home.

She walked briskly, eyes darting to survey her surroundings. Nothing. She wondered when her instincts had become unreliable, the inner compass that guided her safely gone askew. She passed the pub, now closed, no evidence of the raucous that had occurred just an hour before. The salon with its empty chairs eerily lit all in a row. She approached the intersection of Walker and Main. Another decision: stick to the main roads, or take the shortcut on the backroads?

Her stomach sank at the corner. She went up Walker and wondered if wrong decisions were exponential. The convenience store was open. She saw the lone clerk before he saw her. She caught his eye just as she passed, and she said a quiet goodbye to civilization without looking back.

The tree marked the alley, the hidden path behind all the Victorian houses that hid their unsightly secrets. She pushed through the smell of garbage like a cloud of smoke as she took a right at the tree. A bottle smashed before a bolt of black crossed at her feet. A cat. She gasped for breath, and then exhaled slowly to control her pounding heart. She took a step, then another, then picked up her pace. She was close now.

She began to relax. Her decision was almost redeemed; soon she would walk into her house and lock the door behind her. Five houses to go. Three houses to go. A figure ahead. She strained to see what it was. A shadow in a hooded sweatshirt. Her whole body tensed, her fists clenched. Two houses to go. He was three houses away. She planned her reaction. Knee to the groin. Elbow to the throat. She reached the gate to her backyard, and fumbled with the latch. Just then, he passed. A drunk teen staggering home.

* * * * * *

“So you’re mad at me because I talked to Sharon tonight?” Mike said, breaking the silence that lasted from Elm Street to the 105.

“I didn’t say that,” Christine replied in a flat tone. She stared past the dashboard into the never-ending darkness beyond their lights.

“Oh yes you did. With your standing in the corner with your arms crossed all night. You were a fucking billboard for your misery.” He accelerated up a hill, just a little too fast.

“I was just uncomfortable.” Her stomach rose into her chest on the downhill, and she closed her eyes to ease her motion sickness.

“Yeah, like you are every time we go out. When does that stop? When do I get the old Christine back?”

She wanted to remind him that he cheated on the old Christine, but she knew the script to that conversation, and she didn’t want to go over her lines again. She had no idea when the hurt would go away, if it ever did.

“I don’t know.” And she didn’t. Mostly, she didn’t know why she always adopted a conciliatory tone while Mike got to be angry and resentful. She only felt bad for trying to make it work, since it proved to be so damn hard for both of them.

His breathing slowed and their speed leveled off. He wasn’t angry anymore, she could tell. She could just make out his expression in the moonlight, and he looked tired. Sad. And she knew it was that look, the glimpse of him vulnerable in his weathered face, sunken in his broad shoulders, that bound her to him inextricably.

She uncrossed her arms, the defensive stance that she found herself in most of the time, and sunk into the seat. They were almost home, but she was in no mood to fight off sleep. She felt his hand brush along her arm to find her hand. And as she dozed off, she wanted to hang on to the answer, to remember something about being soft.

But back to my failed attempts. In 2008, November happened to be the month we were moving from San Francisco to central Pennsylvania, which turned out to be a bad time to write a “novel” with no discernible plot or shape. I learned that driving cross country is not conducive to writing a book for me.

In 2009, November happened to be the month I started a new job, so I was busy struggling with getting up early and ironing and dressing myself. It took about a week to realize that 50,000 words was not going to happen.

This year, I’m hoping to have more success. There are a few things in my favor:

• I actually have a story idea! And it’s one with enough substance and action to write 50k words about.
• I’ve started talking about it. To people not in my head. So I’m hoping it creates some accountability.

Things that are not looking so good:

• I’m still me. And I happen to excel at procrastinating and making excuses. In fact, I could probably writing a 50,000 word excuse for my life circumstances before I could finish a short story.
• We’re hosting Thanksgiving this year for the first time for family in our first home. So I’ll likely find “projects” around the house to work on.

But I’m committing to finishing NaNoWriMo this year. This week is pre-season, and I’m hoping to spend some time each day writing about 500 words a day about anything and then outlining my story.

It was the day she saw the world in blues that she picked up a box of crayons at the Longs Drugs on the corner. She went in for a water to help her on her walk home, and as she walked to the back of the aisle towards the refrigerator, she passed by the magazines and paperbacks and coloring books. The thought of a fresh pack of crayons and an empty coloring book was immediately irresistible. She was sure it was the only thing that could bring her out of her dark mood.

She paid at the register, and started the last leg of her trek home. In a cruel way, it made sense that her car didn’t start that morning. She had been waiting for one more thing to go wrong this week, to complete the trifecta of shit that was her due. Billy left her on Sunday. “For good,” he said, with a slam of the door and gunning of the engine. She didn’t much care anymore, except that he hadn’t given her any money this month. It was no surprise, then, when she woke up before dawn on Tuesday, that the lights did not flicker on to greet her. She drank cold coffee from the day before and sat looking out the kitchen window, watching the sky change from a blue-black to gray to pink, wondering if such a transformation could ever happen to her, and when.

She felt giddy on her walk home, her step lighter than it had been all week. It was silly to have spent $5.45 on crayons and a coloring book when she didn’t make enough tips this week to pay the electric bill, but she was tired of worrying. Instead, she quickened her pace, to get home while there were still a few hours of sunlight, so she could better stay within the lines when she cracked open the book.

She laid down on the cinnamon shag carpeting, ignoring the musty odor and crumbs. The 4 o’clock sun came right through the front window to light her pages, and the first picture she opened to was of a girl wearing a bonnet sitting by a pond. She opened the 12 pack of crayons, the cheapest ones in the store, and peered in at the primary colors.

She frowned. There was a tiny gap where the 12th crayon should be, its small absence large in the tightly packed box. The blue crayon was missing.

She looked back at the picture of the girl by the pond, and wondered what it would be like for her to be in a world with no blue. Then she grabbed the yellow, and started filling in the sky with bright light. She made the sun a fiery orange, the girl’s bonnet and dress red, her hair a soft brown, and the pond a vibrant green. She pulled the page from the book, and hung it on the refrigerator. As it darkened outside, she could faintly make out the girl by the pond. She looked out the window at the pink sky, and back to the girl surrounded by yellow, and smiled at the lack of blue.

I figure this re-purposing of my buried writings aligns with the original intent of this blog as a space to practice writing regularly. So I’d like to put up more creative pieces when inspired, add the occasional rant, and generally avoid the habit I have of starting a new blog every time I have a new idea.

Top aides in the McCain camp expressed frustration at what they perceived to be Sarah Palin “going rogue.” In recent appearances, Palin has been off-message, or freestyling, if you will.

So . . . what you’re telling me is that the person you picked for being “maverick-y” has now gone maverick, and you’re mad about it. Really?

Perhaps had Palin actually been vetted by the McCain campaign, they could have better anticipated that their witless VP pick was going to be primarily interested in her own success.

The best quote from the imploding campaign:

“Her lack of fundamental understanding of some key issues was dramatic,” said another McCain source with direct knowledge of the process to prepare Palin after she was picked. The source said it was probably the “hardest” to get her “up to speed than any candidate in history.”

My mom said the other day that she was thinking about not voting for McCain anymore because she was disappointed in Sarah Palin’s appearance on SNL. While we may disagree on a number of issues, including that I think that the only redemptive thing Sarah Palin has done is appear on SNL, it is a pretty bad reason to not vote for someone. And a human one, since we are often fickle.

Perhaps there are conservative intellectuals out there, though I’m still not sure that’s not an oxymoron. (To be fair, I am newly in love Kathleen Parker and Christopher Buckley). I don’t know who they are because a) I am a liberal, and b) all the conservatives that get airtime are assbags. Limbaugh, O’Reilley, Couture, Hannity – these are the douchenozzles I associate with the mainstream right. These are not people that I would want to represent me in any way.(To be fair, I don’t exactly want to be affiliated with Keith Oberman either).

When I’m not in the grips of total rage or crippling fear, I actually pity conservatives. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a fiscal conservative, or a libertarian for that matter, and have to be lumped in with the Jesus freaks and hicks. In fact, if I were a fiscal conservative, I would demand that the leaders that are supposed to represent me stop using social issues to manipulate DUMB people, and actually create small government. But since that will never happen, I would keep my fucking mouth shut and vote McCain in silence, in deep fear that my smart friends will find out and think I’m retarded.

As a liberal, the craziest people I get lumped in with are tree huggers. Due to my proximity to Berkeley, I’ve seen these people crying over trees on TV, and they’re downright adorable compared to the racist assholes screaming at Palin rallies. I’ll take latte-sipping over lynching any day. So, to all those conservatives out there who wonder why liberals think you’re idiots (and if you’re wondering, you’re clearly not an evangelical), you’re simply guilty of being connected to the worst this country has to offer.

One of the  most loathsome groups in America are the social conservatives. I think they are sheep that should be brought to slaughter. Short of that, they should be rounded up and dropped off in some red state, where they could all live together in an M. Night Shyamalan-like 1800s society.

Among the many reasons I hate the social conservatives is their hypocrisy. The group of folks who say it’s unpatriotic to question your government’s actions in war are the same who think they have a right to say that women shouldn’t have a choice and that homosexuals shouldn’t marry. The same people who blindly believe that our government is spreading freedom and democracy abroad want to limit personal freedoms at home. The social conservatives care about protecting gun rights, but not freedom of speech.

I’m reminded of the scene from Religulous, when a young evangelical protester says with total sincerity, “I don’t hate gays. God hate gays.” For her, there is no contradiction in holding both the belief in an all-loving, all-forgiving God while also believing that God hates whole groups of people.

There is not room in 2008 America for people who are against the founding values of our country – liberty, freedom, and tolerance. It’s time to take back our country from those who are anti-choice, anti-gay marriage, anti-education, anti-science, anti-technology, and anti-intellectualism, and who support politicians that want to limit everyones’ rights.

It’s time for rational, intelligent people to wield their power.