The meditations of G.B. Lindsey

This is Sacramento's Korean War memorial obelisk, in Capitol Park.

I really like the look of it.

It has sharp, clean lines that make it soar upward and seem taller than it is. It is also broken down the center on all four sides, an imperfect and ragged edge that draws the attention immediately. The top is sheared off as if torn. Every surface is covered with photographic images. There's something warm about it, but I'm not sure what. Maybe the color. At the base is a circle of lush grass, surrounded by concentric circles of pale gray paving stones. There are stone benches along the edge, and on one side, stone placards dedicated to different military units.

The defining moment for me concerning the Korean War was the fact that until my junior year of high school, I didn't know it existed. This shocks me, still. I grew up watching MASH with my parents, but at the time, I thought the war in question was Viet Nam, and the person in charge of setting was just really bad at approximating the tropics.

It's chillingly sad that in my case, the nicknames for the Korean War were so accurate.

Today there was a veteran sitting on one of the stone benches, talking. Whether anyone was around didn't seem to make a difference in his tone or the content of his speech. He said something that struck, and stuck:

"People keep wishing me a Happy Veteran's Day. Happy Veteran's Day, they say. Veteran's Day is not happy."

I don't want to philosophize about my visit today, or try to force it into some cosmic uber-meaning. Just that he's right. Why in god's name would you ever wish someone a "happy" Veteran's Day? It does not roll off the tongue. It does not evoke grins. It's not a celebration at all as much as a meditation on experiences that, hopefully, most of us cannot understand. It's recognition of people like him, who understand now whether they want to or not, and of other people who never came home.

He said more. "When I had to wipe Steve's lips off my eyebrows, that was not happy."

We often glorify war. We trivialize things and try to give them cosmic meaning. We make it about warriors and honorable death. It's hard, maybe impossible, to handle otherwise.

I'm honestly not sure what I'm trying to say here about my visit to the memorial today. Every time I try to analyze, the result is unsatisfying and vaguely insulting. I want to celebrate the people who fought and sacrificed, but true "celebration" seems inappropriate. I'd want to wish happiness, but I don't feel it's my place today. I guess I'd like to not analyze it, not try to find any higher meaning. Instead I want to acknowledge that it HAPPENED, that people fought, that it brought out the best in some and the worst in others, that I cannot understand what any of them went through, and I'm very grateful that I can't.

No war should be forgotten.

Regarding Star Trek Into Darkness. (Don't worry, I will break for spoilers...)

Torn. Liked it, was fun... but I find, as was pointed out by a dear friend, I have trouble when whole scenes/lines from the original series are cannibalized and then used in ways that can't possibly have anywhere near the same impact, simply because this particular crew hasn't earned it yet. Which is fine. They haven't been together all that long, it'll come. And I do have faith that this new crew will build its own poignant legend as most of the others have. There's a lot of power in this ensemble, and they have one thing that I have found makes the experience: in-depth and well-written character interaction (for the most excellent example of how this succeeds, please watch ST: The Next Generation). I'm talking about individualized characters bumping against each other and reacting in ways that are not only appropriate, but evocative of MORE interaction, more plots. They feed off each other and the whole thing becomes this beautiful cohesive whole that goes way deeper than the plot-of-the-week.

But. We ARE dealing with a revamp of my absolute favorite original Star Trek film here, so I'm afraid I cannot look at this film without a little bit of :/

And here we go with the spoilers. ( SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER )

Tis November, NaNoWriMo month! (That's National Novel Writing Month, wherein writers are challenged to write 50,000 words in 30 days.) In fact, it is the end of November, when most people are either scrambling diligently to reach their quota or sitting back and enjoying that gorgeous word count table and the beautiful "WINNER!" bars next to their names.

This would have been my third year in a row participating.

I cannot stress enough what a great idea NaNo is, because above all else, it gets people writing. It certainly did for me. It loosens up those cords binding the words in, shutting down voices. You know, those barriers that say things like, "That'll never work, it doesn't make sense, don't even bother starting." NaNo brings people together in support and friendly competition. And it results in a WHOLE LOT OF FIRST DRAFTS.

The first year I did it, it was a revelation. What came out of it was 50K of culture, scenery and characters set in the realm of death omens, namely the Black Dog and the souls designated to fill the role of harbinger for the rest of the world. I haven't done too much with it since, but I am so proud of it, and it's a universe I am chomping at the bit to explore in more detail.

The second year, while more prolific (I wrote 60K with time to spare), was also disturbingly sobering. I wrote a coming of age tale about a gay boy and the best friend he's secretly in love with, driving from California to Yellowstone National Park the summer before college. The story, drawn heavily from my own trip to Yellowstone that summer, was in and of itself not the problem. It came out (no pun intended) very readily, and I liked my characters and where they went, in the real world as well as metaphorically.

The reason I decided not to do NaNo a third time in a row came out of this second try, however: As freeing as it is to just write and write and write, no self-editing, no redrafting, just hit that 50,000 mark and then you are allowed to look at it a second time... Such a method ended up being detrimental to my particular writing style. I found myself tossing down as many words as I could in order to reach my daily quota. Never mind if those words actually had a real place or purpose in the story. Never mind if they were just restatements of the adjectives that came before. The stressful part turned out not to be meeting the word count so much as coming back later and realizing that, had I been allowed to write in my normal manner, I would not be back chopping out a third of what I'd spent a month putting down.

I know we are taught not to self-edit as we write, but frankly, it works for me. Only rarely does it stopper my writing. It does not slow my process but rather enhances it: I go back and reread what I've already written in order to glean more knowledge about the places I have yet to go, the scenes I am gearing up to write. In this sense, it helps that I do not tend to write a story's scenes in order. I will write the beginning, then something two-thirds of the way through, then the end, then right after the beginning, then the middle, then... You get the idea. If it comes into my head, I get it down before I forget it, regardless of where it is slated to end up in the story's timeline. Ultimately this method assists me in keeping themes arcing strongly and teaches me more about my characters and the world they live in. One would think this method would lend itself well to NaNo; when there is no rule concerning writing in order, a person can just go crazy. Fly. Erupt with a tide of storytelling.

Not true. For me, it turned into another way to not actually write. And by that I mean "write substance".

This year, I bowed out. Next year I may come back to NaNo, because goodness knows it's a wonderful way to flood the brain with ideas. Get things moving. This November, though, I needed time to work as I work best: producing something ultimately less wordy but that I can nod at and call quality.

How are you all finding NaNo? Does it work for you?

~~

Random Writing Exercise: Try another method of writing. If you always write consecutive scenes, try writing the ending of your story first. If you tend to write all over the place (like me), trying writing a story in order, start to finish. If you edit as you go, try just writing straight up (no editing until you're done) and vice versa. Challenge yourself, just for this one story. How does this switch inform your style of choice? How does it cramp said style? (I know a lot of writers with a lot of different writing styles. We can always stand to learn from the styles of others, whether they work for us or not.)

Congrats to my little sis, who voted in her very first election tonight!!! *claps*

Don't ever let someone make you feel like you don't have something to offer. The reverse of this is called "respect".

Another thing: If you ever feel completely out of your depth in terms of something you really want to do, RESEARCH. The more you know, the less frightening and unattainable it is.

Dingo went in for surgery two days ago and came back yesterday minus one left front limb. As it was the limb that sported a particularly heinous bone cancer, this is a good, good thing... though also a bad thing.

Bad because it's so strange to see him like this, and to see those big ugly sutures (no bandages, not deemed necessary in vet world, better to air it out apparently, which I'm fine with). Good because now the extremely painful bone growth is GONE.

*cheers with low energy*

He's extremely tripped out on all his meds and therefore very loopy, but doing well. He got up on his own last night and stood there with assistance, looking thoroughly weirded out about the whole thing, and eventually sat down again. But it was lovely. According to the vet, he's ahead of the curve (was already trying to get up the same day as his operation), and the surgery itself went perfectly.

They are going to take a closer look at the growth now that it's off him and hopefully get us some more detailed information about the type of cancer and how advanced it is. It could be a completely different type of cancer than first suspected, a less aggressive form, so that's what we're hoping for. But even if it's not... at this point it's good to know we've done this for him, even though it is simultaneously distressing.

Recovery-to-bounciness time seems to be about 2-3 weeks.

Right now, he's wearing a white tank top a la this (minus the grubby) and sacked out on his giant memory foam cushion. ^__^

Aw, nenne! Thank you for brightening up my livejournal with the pile of gifts! *monster hugs*

...tis a rather blustery day! Driving has been a bit on the hazardous side due to Random Branches in the Middle of the Road. The power went out this evening and they weren't expecting to get it back online till 9:30 PM, but it suddenly popped back up around 7:30 so I don't know. Either way, yay, as my laptop battery isn't all it could be.

Writing has been almost nonexistent this week, mostly because I started a new job. Having been unemployed for the last year and scraping my bill payments together by house- and pet-sitting pretty much non-stop, I am extremely glad of steady income. But the schedule is kicking my BUTT. I need to get used to waking up a whole lot earlier, and more importantly, I need to get my writing brain in gear on much shorter notice. Luckily this is a job that works an entirely different section of my brain; I had a job a while back that basically sent me home after work to sit on the couch and stare dully at the wall. Good for money, not good at all for creating anything.

But it's good to be employed again. ^__^

~~

Random Writing Exercise: Write a scene from your antagonist's POV. Doesn't have to go into your story or even get mentioned anywhere. This is just to get to know the other side of the story, as it were. Motivations? Lack of motivation? Give your antagonist a well-rounded moment, because it can only help your protagonist's development.