Continued writing and musing over language

11/04/11 12:51p
What comfort there was in simply typing in the date and time for starting one's writitng. It gave one just a little something to say, when the ordeal would begin over trying to write 1667 words at one sitting. It had to be done quickly or one would have spent even longer getting the task done. She had been tossing the question back in forth since her writing session of the previous day. Would she or wouldn't she go ahead with this Nanowrimo challenge?

The day she started - that had only been the day before - she'd gotten through the writing ok, but just barely. When she'd done she was sure this had been a foolish consideration for someone who was really an artist and not a writer. Someone who enjoyed writing, as a side activity and as a private activity for keeping her own counsel and her own history. Most all her writing had been non-fiction. Fiction writing had never interested her because she had assumed she had no fictional stories to tell. It was the idea of being able to do it that she found so intriguing. How magical to just be able to make up a story on the spot, or to just sit there with pen or keyboard whipping out a story. Idyl reveries they seemed.

But certain ideas had come alive - of possibilities previously hidden. There had been that discovery about writing that bird story, bad as it was. What fun it had been to get lost in a train of thought that just kept welling up - from where? An idea would present itself as soon as one had put down a silly anything for the main character. This story that had been purely an experiment for working within the confines of a handheld digital device and a writing place in that shared cyberspace of the day. The experience had opened the door to something, perhaps wakened the genie. Now she was torn whether to follow this seemingly huge divergence from the path she had been on. It seemed just to crazy.

Why did she think she needed to give anything up to do this? Did she think this would be changing who she was? She would only have to give up at least two hours a day to write on a daily basis. This was such a concentrated focus that was needed to do this. That was one of the problems about it. On the other hand it was also what was so engaging - to have to stay that focused became a very satisfying feeling once one had made it through that quantity of words.

When she'd finished the previous day's writing she'd been sure she would not continue. But then she found that her internal voice continued as if she were still writing. She was relating her observations in the third person, as if they were happening to someone other than herself. That was a strange experience too. Too intense. The idea of returning to the typing the next day for that intense writing focus/experience/mode, from which she had not yet even been able to shake herself, just seemed impossible oversaturation to cope with.

In the morning things felt different. She found herself a bit eager to try another stint. It was late by the time she got to it though. The day was half over. Now she would have to be sitting typing with not much of consequence to say. It would be another two hours before she could even consider any of the other things she was supposed to be doing. The zest to get going with this writing work had been unmistakable though. It was there. It need not be decided. She could just take this one day at a time. She could quit anytime she wanted. She need not trouble herself with deciding. Why did she feel she needed to decide anything?

1:23p stop for word count - 665 words

She may have discovered another way to do the writing. Stare out the window as she typed. It was after all touch typing. Oh but she could not resist looking and self -correcting as she went along. Still, writing in this way was more like talking. Perhaps not as fast. This seemed no different than how Helen Keller had to speak - by spelling everything out by hand. Helen Keller had had to do it into another person's hand.

There were so many ways to communicate. Every language or communication method seemed to come with a different processing method. One felt like a different person if one spoke in a language foreign to one's native tongue. It felt like one took on a different identity when one changed languages. Languages were infinite if seemed. There was the mystery of the digital machines - they seemed to be able to do such magical things. If you really looked at it though, they were just complicated extensions of morse code. All the instructions, formulas, processes, actions, functions they performed were just elaborate enormous patterns written out in ones and zeros. This way they could be conveyed by electrical impulses.

The birds spoke/sang/ made their songs and knew each others meanings. "Food here", "danger there", "stay away from our babie", "this is our tree", "I'm the boss of this branch, you sit at the end of it!", and on it went. Everywhere she looked there seemed to be language. Everything had a telltale sign that might be relevant to some observer, depending on that observer's desires, needs, or impulses.

Was language only language when there was someone to understand it? But who was to say when that someone would arrive on the scene? Something could be scribed on stone for millenia before being discovered and perhaps also understood. Here was the old chicken or egg question and the old tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it question. She had long ago decided that since there was no way to prove that a fallen tree's sound might not be captured somehow in its future, its potential for the sound to be witnessed meant it made that sound (or perhaps not!) This was like Shroedigger's cat. She would have to look up that question again to better describe that analogy.

1:47 pm 1057 words

She would have to start keeping a list of the topics that came up as she typed madly away. The littlest interruption would lead her away from her train of thought. Who knew when she would pick it up again....

She thought she might as well try writing a little deer story as she had imagined the day before. And what about a deer poem? That was too hard for fast writing.

Seeds of A deer poem?
Three deer stood in the November woods
Doe, buck and fawn
Fawn mostly grown now
Buck feeling the time to seek counterparts
A chance to joust with others
Doe rustling the ground for any remaining green
It might be another snowy winter
Summer had been so wet
Last winter had been so much snow
Snow had come so early this year
Oddly this far north had been only a dusting so far
Apples had been plentiful this year though
Was this a year that many would stay on the trees
as if to be Christmas decorations?
They probably rotted less if they stayed on the trees
Instead of falling to the ground.
Why were there years when the trees were decorated
Through the winter with their fruits?
Were those regular life cycle patterns of fruit trees
Or patterns caused by weather conditions?
What lay in store for the deer family
As each considered its questions?

No, one could not write a deer poem when time was crunched like that. The poem was neither a poem nor a story - just a musing, though not amusing.

And now she was reaching her limit with the day's writing. Checking the word count had just made things worse. It became a matter of wishing this activity were done and over with. How much more did she have to write? Would it be better just to set a timer and know that one had to keep writing til it rang? Which torture was worse? Counting the words kept one too conscious of that aspect - kept one distracting from just saying something. If one set a timer though it could be too easy to drift into idyl thinking and forget to write. No, she did not think she would have to much problem with that.

The main problem was what was the point of this if one were not going to write anything that would be of relevance to anyone else? What was the point of writing a load of crap? But then how different was it from going out in public and running into people and just enjoying the interaction. There were not many earth shattering revelations going on in such activities. One just mingled with other people and exchanged greetings, bits of news, gossip, information one might want to know or share. Mostly one liked to see people. One needed it. That was how one was made as the creature known as the human being. She believed that Man's innate nature was as a social creature who most enjoyed being in the company of other beings. It was the language thing again somehow. She had to think more about that - this language thing and what that all meant....

2:13p 1592 words

She obsessed - where was this all leading to? Where should it lead to? She still had no idea. Could she make any kind of plotting and character outlining be part of this hurried harried writing process? That seemed like it was something requiring more visual or tactile planning. Well she'd managed to almost get through two days of writing this quantity of words and at least getting out a few musings/reflections of certain ideas. They seemed to be ideas that she often considered.

There was the problem of the name for here protagonist. So far she had referred to the main character constantly as 'she'. Somehow this gave the writing a fictional air for her. It made her feel as though she were writing some sort of fiction. It also made her writing take place in a dreamlike place. But she was getting tired of that name 'she'. She was hearing it too often. The sound was playing over and over in her head. She would surely have that thought or process earworm again tonight. And, as her mother would say, "'She!' Who is 'She'?". This admonishment had been given throughout one's childhood whenever one spoke about another person without stating their name beforehand, referring to them by pronoun instead. It was considered doubly rude if one did it in the presence of that person. Of course her mother was not always aware that she herself committed the same offense. And now she found herself passing on the same admonition to the children she encountered, or, if she found herself misusing 'she' in her conversation, she would play the part of her mother, and speak it to the listener of herself, as if she were her mother. There was a reason for names. All these 'she's' were too confusing. Which she was doing the talking? Which she was one referring to? Such things would not matter if one knew there would only be one 'she' in the writing, but already several other 'she's' had come up. Names were needed. One could not simply give these 'shes' numbers or letters to keep them straight. They were not inventory. They were not objects. They were beings. They needed something with beauty and soul, something one could identify with, that one could relate to. One could not relate to a number or a letter. Of itself a number or a letter had no intrinsic meaning. It was something used to form different arrangements that then held the meaning. A number perhaps held more meaning than a letter in that respect, but because it was such an abstract quality it just did not hold that social meaning that spoke to a person.... Was this all about language again?...

2:36p 2051 words 3-4 pages
12:51 - 2:36 = 1:45 (1 hour 45 min - c. 2000+ words) ok