With hope in my heart and sense disconnected from my head, I set out 30 days ago to NaNoWriMo amidst the chaos and boxes that was and continues to be my life. By the 18,444th word it became clear that something had to give.* And the truth is that while I have reaped amazing benefits from my past NaNoWriMo experiences, it’s also true that in the end what I generally have to show for it is 50,000 words of disconnected mush that I never want to look at again because I’m so burnt out from forced writing jags. And while I was falling behind on wordcount, I was actually enjoying my story this year, remembering how to have fun with my writing and not take myself so damn seriously (here’s a hint: the story begins when the landlord who is actually an ogre eats our heroine’s parents), and so I made a conscious decision to stop pursuing the 50,000 words by November 30th goal, and to just keep writing the story. Plodding, but more or less coherent, and a little every day.
And then I promptly stopped writing anything at all for two weeks.
But now I’m back, and my new writing goal is to form the habit of writing. I think I’m finally at a place in my life where I’m ready to do that. And here’s a blurb from my current story, The Girl Who Climbed Madcutter Mountain and All She Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt. I hope you enjoy it!
—————————–
“Once upon a time there lived a Dying Queen who wasn’t yet dying,” Higgledy began. “She had just given birth to her greatest accomplishment, her heart’s prize and life’s blood, twin sons. They were identical in every way except all of the parts you could see and a few of the parts that you couldn’t. And the twin boys were, of course, perfect in every way imaginable-”
“This is my favorite part,” Piggledy confided.
“They were both structurally sound and wide of breath and strong of pulse and pancreas. And then the Dying-but-not-yet Queen’s trusty footmen held the babes out the window of the tallest tower just as the clock struck three, their footsies dangling in the gusting wind-”
“That’s dangerous!” Ofelia interrupted.
“Of course it’s dangerous,” Higgledy agreed. “Being born is dangerous. Living is dangerous. In some cases, breathing is dangerous. But it doesn’t stop us from doing those things, does it? From taking life by the short-hairs, from breathing in that sweet pollution, from setting off in a wagon train to California and eating our dead friends to survive when things go very wrong, from riding those waves even though 20 people a year die from shark tooth related injuries, and from dangling our babies out the window of the tallest tower in the kingdom to prove that they’re real.”
“And it was made that much more dangerous,” Higgledy continued, back on message, “because the ones doing the dangling were footmen who, while just as trusty as they were when I mentioned them a few seconds ago, were also completely inebriated from the many, many ceremonial toasts made just prior-”
He interrupted himself when he saw Ofelia’s censorious look. “All very proper and a matter of tradition, of course,” he assured her. “But there are twenty-two of them. And it’s a sign of status, you see – the more trustworthy you are considered to be by the royal family, the more drinks you will imbibe.” He continued with the story.
“As I said, being dangled out of the highest window of the tallest tower by the trustiest and therefore the most sloshed footmen in all the kingdom in the largest windstorm of the past thirty years as an infant barely three hours old is quite dangerous, yes. Also, cold. They didn’t really have a choice, though. It was a sacred law, put into motion 100 years or so prior, on account of Queen Agnes the Sly. A different queen, a non-dying but long dead Queen. She once ruled the kingdom with an iron tongue -”
“Iron tongue? What does that mean?” Ofelia asked.
“She didn’t enunciate. May I continue?”
“Of course,” said Ofelia, who was quite enjoying the storytelling even if she wasn’t sure she entirely believed the story.
Higgledy mumbled his way back through, “ruled the kingdom with an iron tongue,” trying to find his place in the story, then smiled as he found it and continued. “from the sinking of Salista right up until the Chicken crisis of seven aught nine.”
“Three hundred years,” Piggledy offered. “I had to memorize the poem as punishment for taking the last biscuit at dinner,” he explained. “‘Twas a hundred and a hundred and a hundred once more, that Agnes the Sly did rule us all o’er.’” he recited in his most official tone.
“Three hundred years, yes,” Higgledy resumed. “The bitch wouldn’t die.”
“That was the name of the poem,” Piggledy said.
“Sly Agnes suffered from a number of debilitating syndromes and afflictions, you see. Not just the inability to enunciate but also a fear of penguins that kept her indoors most of the year, a third eye that could only see the future – which could make it extremely confusing for her to get around – and two left feet. I mean that literally. She also became obsessed with having children, but flatly refused to take a lover of any sort.”
At this Piggledy let out an embarrassed titter. Higgledy shot him a look and continued.
“It’s speculated that her refusal to have intimate relations with anyone sprang from her aversion to being breathed upon. Often she had her closest servants wear scuba masks, just to be sure that no breeze of carbon dioxide mixed with a fine mist of saliva would drift her way. Regardless. Conception was inconceivable. Agnes refused to adopt an orphaned waif, take a firstborn as payment, bargain with the gods, consort with witches, or any of the usual methods for procuring oneself a child when the traditional means is not possible or desirable.”
“In frustration, it is said, one of her advisers threw up his hands at her obstinence and said sarcastically, ‘Well, I suppose you could just wish real hard.’ Expecting a reprimand or even execution for his impertinence, no one was more surprised than he when she instead awarded him land and title-”
“Vizier of the Southland,” Piggledy offered. He then recited, “‘She smacked his mouth and. Gave him the South land.’ It’s in the poem.”
Higgledy nodded. “Scholars disagree upon whether the smack referred to in the poem was a kiss or a slap, but given what we know about her reticence about the act of making baby and swapping air with another person, I think we can assume it was the latter.”
“She slapped him and then awarded him lands and titles?” Ofelia clarified.
“Agnes was a terribly impetuous woman,” Higgledy offered. He then resumed his story. “She awarded him lands and title and then proceeded to Wish Real Hard. Next thing you know, she has a baby.”
Ofelia gasped. “You’re lying!”
“I’m not. Queen Agnes the Sly gave birth on the 17th of April to a healthy, 9 lb, ten fingers and ten toes, totally invisible baby.”
“Aha,” Ofelia said, catching on immediately.
“Only it wasn’t just invisible, it was also elusive and occasionally, airborne. That’s how Agnes explained it, anyway, whenever someone who wasn’t her tried to pick the infant up from her crib.”
“‘There she goes again,’ Agnes would say. ‘Princess Gladys, lighter than air, she slips right through your fingers. She must not like you.’ She executed eleven governesses before the child was even 16 months old, all on the premise that the invisible flying tot didn’t like them well enough to stick around and let them care for her.”
“That’s terrible!”
“That’s royalty. And it gets worse. She also insisted upon extravagant celebrations every time the babe hit another eency milestone. Sitting up. Rolling over. Crawling. Breaking the sound barrier. The Kingdom was bankrupt, also before the babe was 16 months old. That’s actually why Queen Agnes stopped executing governesses around then – she couldn’t afford them. Or the executioner, either.”
“Worse, that was the year of the bird flu pandemic.”
“I’ve heard of that,” Ofelia offered. “We had that, too. A bunch of people got sick.”
“No, a bunch of birds got sick,” Higgledy corrected. “They eventually recovered, but not before all of the insects they hadn’t been eating tore across the countryside, eating all of that year’s crops and leaving the people to starve. And of course the castle had not only wasted most of its stores with the countless feasts in honor of the princess, it had also sold most of the rest to the Elephantii people across the Sea in exchange for gold that was then used to buy gifts for the Princess, and of course, her mother.”
“Why didn’t she sell it all back for food?”
“She didn’t want to. So the people got hungry. And then they finally, at long last, got angry. It was a long and brutal war.”
“It was a hullabaloo,” Piggledy offered.
“And then some,” Higgledy agreed. “There was revolution, and eventually the Chickens seceded, which upset everyone mightily.”
“‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’” Piggledy intoned sadly. “‘Why? Why? Why?’”
“They never did come back, you know,” Higgledy explained. “Despite many attempts to atone and compensate. Eventually, after much bloodshed, Queen Agnes the Sly was held accountable for her crimes of excess.”
“And for lying to her people?”
“About what?”
“About having a baby.”
“That wasn’t a lie.”
“Come on. You really expect me to believe that there really was an invisible baby?” Ofelia was indignant.
“Most people felt that way, too. Queen Agnes was beheaded, which I suppose she deserved regardless, as much as anyone ever deserves to be parted from their own head. Not counting, of course, the millions of people who willingly walk around headless all day long, but that’s in more of a figurative sense, usually. And that’s when they finally heard her, crying for her mother. The invisible princess Gladys.”
“And sometimes you can still hear her, in the night, when the wind is just right and the moon is the only light for miles around,” Ofelia jumped in theatrically.
“So you’ve heard the story before,” Higgledy observed. “We should get moving.”
“But that isn’t fair. I thought you were going to tell me a story about yourself.”
“I just did. Life is short. Stories are long. So we must pick the best ones to tell.”
“But that wasn’t the story you started out to tell me at all!”
“It wasn’t?” Higgledy said in a bored and distracted tone, already moving off down the path.
“He digresses. He’s very good at digressing,” Piggledy whispered proudly. He had just in that moment decided not to be called Bob anymore, because Bob didn’t rhyme with Higgledy and he felt a rush of fondness for his sibling.
Ofelia wouldn’t give up that easily. She hurried up behind Higgledy. “You started to tell about the twin princes, but you barely got past when they were born.”
“Well, that was the important bit, wasn’t it?” Higgledy said. “Being born is the most courageous thing anyone ever does.”
———————————
*Although I must confess that my amazing friend Renee – also recently moved and facing similar challenges and more – actually managed to NaNoWriMo victoriously for her third year in a row. And finished early. You go girl! I’m so freaking proud of you!
Geek.
