by Bianca Spriggs
Contributing Ace Writer
The game is afoot. No more Ms. Nice Novelist. I have almost twenty pages of material I did not have on Sunday. This is really happening. I’m almost a fifth of the way through my minimum number of words. I am at Third Street Stuff for their all-nighter write-in which is supposed to start at 11 PM but what can I say, if I stayed home any longer, I’d have settled into reruns of Salon Takeover (Tabatha Coffey is my hero) and been completely unproductive. I can’t afford to get behind.
So, this week. I promised I’d let Ace Readers know how I’m doing…I think once a week is okay, right?
I have been remarkably in good spirits. I have managed to juggle my full time and two part time gigs all week, have eaten and bathed regularly, and have discovered the merits of a morning double shot of espresso. Let’s face it, the lattes are nice, but it’s really the black stuff I’m after, so, I don’t need more than a dash of cinnamon to get me going.
No temper tantrums (yet), I’ve been sleeping well (so far), and not completely disgusted with what is happening on the page. Because I know the merits of writing everyday, I don’t take much convincing that this is a good exercise in discipline. And like I said, I’m almost a fifth of the way through.
Here’s what I’m learning so far. I am a mad scientist. I am a puppeteer. My characters are little slivers of myself acting out on one another and concocting all kinds of reactions to the situations I’m putting them and I can only surmise that this is good. I’m not terrible at dialogue either, I don’t think. It really just takes warming up, or tuning up. I’m trying to remember how 14 year olds talk to one another…but it’s fun experimenting.
I don’t feel like a foreign exchange student anymore, but now like I have an alter ego. My inner novelist does everything completely opposite to my inner poet. For instance, I write to music. So far it works well with somebody like Ben Harper on in the background or Fiona Apple or Bjork. Hip-hop, I tried, but I think the speech just throws off my inner interpreter to the universe. Soulful and stirring melodies seem to work well, so (shrug) I’m going with it.
Also, when I’m doing poems, unless I’m editing them, I like pretty much absolute silence and solitude. Probably because I feel more inclined to sample the words aloud and feel the cadence in my nose, mouth, throat, and diaphragm. Writing with these characters and situations (I refuse to call it a plot thus far), feels more like a social gathering…a house party where I’m kind of being a bit of wallflower but enjoying myself nonetheless just people watching.
My only real worry right now is that the dialogue may be carrying the weight of the exposition as this point, but I believe I will worry about that later when it’s time to temper and tamper with this thing next month. For now, I’m in a warm cafe with a cup of earl gray next to me with the perfect amount of soy milk and honey. Ben Harper is doing a wonderful cover of “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” live in my earbuds and as soon as I click ‘Publish’ on this note, I’ll be cracking my knuckles and going to the big screen.
Third Street’s open all night and so am I. (Insert Beavis and Butthead chortles here)
P.S. Wanna know where Lexingtonians are holding up in the national scheme of things? There are I think, something like 354 of us logged on officially for the challenge on the site. This came from one of our members today on a forum post (talk about community coming together):
jrb says:
Lexington Wrimos as a whole are reaching the half-million mark, which turns out to be just over 0.1% of the total of all Wrimos everywhere. That may not seem like a lot, but did you know that we’ve written more words than Ithaca, NY, Reno, Nevada, Miami, FL and the entire country of Italy?
Italy!!
So write on, Friends, and let’s go after India next. They’re only ahead of us by about 15 thousand words!
