weekend stories

This weekend was incredible. Just after my last update, I started reading the NaNoWriMo forums, and discovered that many fellow nano-ers were meeting in a coffee shop at that very moment. (2pn on sat afternoon). It was to celebrate the halfway mark. I was surprised at how few of the people there (including myself) were not yet at the halfway point. I could taste it though–21,000 words as of that afternoon. I’m going to have to pick up the pace in order to finish on time.

I was also surprised at how many nano-ers were festies. With one exception, everyone I talked for any length of time to at this thing was renaissance festival employee, or had been in recent history.

In the reading department, I heard back from DrFrag, and he won’t let me read any more of his novel than he’s already posted online. Oh well. This weekend I also began re-reading Vurt, by Jeff Noon, which I’ve always considered one of my favorite novels. I’m not finding it as instantly successful as I did the first time I’d read it, but the prose is beautiful, and it is still remarkable for many, many reasons.

Sometime last week I started getting The Writer’s Alminac in my email inbox. In general, I think he picks some awesome poetry. And the factual information is quite interesting as well. Anyway, I found out today that they’re published on the weekends too! (Which means that I had three poems to read this morning.) There was also this quote from writer Chinua Achebe in his book Anthills of the Savannah (1987).

. . . [It is] the story that
can continue beyond the war and the
warrior. It is the story that outlives the
sound of war-drums and the exploits of
brave fighters. . . . The story is our escort;
without it, we are blind. Does the blind
man own his escort? No, neither do we
the story; rather it is the story that
owns us and directs us.

Obviously, I’ve been thinking a lot about story lately, and this struck me as quite interesting. I’m at the point in my novel where I have to decide if there are going to be warriors… or if it’s more of a detective type thriller. I can’t quite decide. The scope of the novel will depend on my decision.

One more thing about this last weekend: Last night, Laura, Nate, Jason and I went to this art show/gallery that my brother was in. He had a wall of his stencil/collage art hanging. It was in a tattoo shop, and they had a DJ. It was pretty awesome if you ask me, and I ran into a bunch of old mutual friends. I bid on two of his pieces, and am not quite sure when I’ll know if I won them.

3 Replies to “weekend stories”

  1. please, for my sake, never use the term festie. are you trying to say that they’re diseased?
    anywho – hope your word count is coming along wonderfully.

  2. oh, but you are diseased, my dear. All of us festies are. The sad part is that some of us were born with this disease… all the symptoms without any of the exciting contagious parts.

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