author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

I'm breaking my promise. I wasn't going to do any blogging that didn't have something to do with actual progress on an actual manuscript. But life throws us for unexpected loops, and this makes no sense in the context of writing, not really.

The image featured here, courtesy of Google Maps, shows my home. My parents' home, actually, but I grew up there. Eighteen years I lived there. Every time I visit, I stay there; I sleep in the bed that I probably wet as a very young child, stare at the ceiling that sheltered me, listen to the same annual peeping of nesting purple martins in the eaves, start at the same creaks that once I believed were made by "baby bugs in the walls, calling to their mothers for dinner." That's it, right under the pink arrow with the dot. Home.

The bit in the white circle is the Bonnabel Canal Pumping Station. The Bonnabel Canal runs off into Lake Pontchartrain, a bit of whose south shore you can see here.

You've already heard about Katrina, right?

The good news: My Dad's OK. Mom, who evacuated to Hot Springs, has heard from him. He's been working hard all night at Touro Hospital, so he's tired, frustrated, and unhappy, but he's alive. And WDSU video shows UNO pretty dry, even if Robert E. Lee Blvd. and Paris Ave. is flooded up to the eaves. Dad's office, near Robert E. Lee and Franklin, is closer to the one than the other.

The unknown news: We're unsure about the status of family members last heard from at St. Tammany Hospital. We think they're OK.

The bad news: The pumping station circled here no longer has a top. I wasn't clear on whether it was the storm surge from the lake or the winds in excess of 150mph that blew its top off, but according to Dad, it's gone.

I imagine that if the pumping station succumbed, my childhood home fell like a house of cards. Either the wind took the gabled roof, or the water leaping the banks of the canal rushed into the back yard. In any case, the message I left on my parents' answering machine last night when I was still panicked with casuality predictions and cell phone silence, the one that just says, "Dad, I love you," I don't think anyone will ever listen to it. Thankfully, it's because the answering machine is gone, not because the people who own it are.

But still. Home. Is probably. Gone.

Somewhere in Metairie or maybe out in the middle of Lake Pontchartrain, a big Rubbermaid bin full of Dr. Seuss books and other childhood favorites is floating away. If anyone finds it, give it a good home.

The crayon scribbles in One White Crocodile Smile? I did those.

Eked out another 500 words, mainly about climbing around in the old gasworks and looking at the skyline across Lake Union. Spent an absurd amount of time scouring Google:Images for just that view. Found it.

First time I visited Gasworks was the summer of '94, my first summer in Seattle. I started my Freshman year a quarter early for reasons I can't quite remember now. Glad I did. Had a couple months' run-up time to get used to campus and dorm life before the autumn wave of incoming Freshmen overloaded the system. Anyway, my floor's Residential Advisor led us all on a July 4th walk down the bike path to the Park, where pretty much the entirety of north Seattle gathered to watch the fireworks going up from across the water. I don't remember the show that well, but I do remember that was also the day of my first Dove bar. Some of us helped out a vendor (again, memory here is hazy) who in turn gave us free product. That was some good.

On the other hand, I can't tell you about my first time going up the Space Needle, because it hasn't happened yet. Typical: we tend not to do the touristy things that happen where we live. Hey, I never did the Jazz Fest until this year, despite spending the first eighteen years of my life in New Orleans. I never did the river tour in Grants Pass. And I still haven't done Six Flags/Elitch Gardens here in Denver. It's almost like we don't actually experience where we're living. Or maybe we're too busy experiencing it from the inside to experience it like an outsider. A tourist might rhapsodize about the view from the top of the Space Needle, but can he tell you about a candlelit Beltane ritual held inside the gasworks?

Not that I can tell you much about that, either. Stupid disintegrating memory.

Yesterday: 300 words on the novel and no web design.

Day Before Yesterday: No novel work. Lots of web design.

Conclusion: My weekend was, on average, only one day long. Can I have a refund?

I have forgotten more about Seattle than I'm comfortable admitting. For instance, the walk down 7th Avenue to the bike path that leads to Gasworks Park. Does the bike path actually T-bar 7th, or is there some street negotiating between the two? How long does it take the bike path to get right down to the docks? How much concrete distance between the Wall Of Death and the water? Aaaargh!

And the sad thing is, I had a chance to refresh my memory back when John and I visited his sister. They went to a gaming session at a friend's house in Wallingford; I walked into the U District from there. I walked around the house on 7th Avenue. But did I go to Gasworks? No. I decided to visit campus instead. I puttered up and down Suzallo-Allen Library. Curse my studious streak! Curses!

(At some point, meanwhile, I'm going to start talking about the novel I plan to write come next National Novel Writing Month, and how it is not going to be a Jasper Fforde rip-off, I swear. But about that, more later.)

Hey, wow, this entry spans the gamut of Abstract Categories, don't it? Maybe I should stop pickin' em.

Finished the manuscript mark-up today. Reread all the separate notes I've taken along the way. Total completely illegible notes about which I have absolutely no idea: One. Total notes indicating problems I still haven't decided how to resolve: Fifteen or so. Total notes indicating problems for which I have solutions, but whose solutions I don't feel I can implement until after I figure out those fifteen or so mentioned last sentence: Pretty much all the rest of them.

Sometimes, stories just happen. I watch them unfold in my head and I write them down. Those kinds of stories are very little trouble to write. But sometimes I have to decide which way a story goes. I have to consider the consequences of each idea and figure out which idea results in the better story. Those kinds of stories are hard.

Guess which kind this is. Go on. Guess.

So the second half of today's session was taken up by me talking to myself on paper. "Rethink ending: what is proper effect of the 'exorcism' spell?" "Split up Sasha's first two spells into different scenes, or no?" "How exactly is Uncle Matt necessary to the resolution?" I don't think I'm going to get any of those answered without a long walk and a nap first. Luckily, I'm about a mile and a half's walk from home, and I'm very good at napping.

On that note: If you're in the Boulder area, do stop in at Cafe Bravo's for caffeinated beverages (some with little tapioca pearls at the bottom) and lunch things. Tell 'em the gal who hogged the leather couches all Tuesday morning long sent you.

Spent an hour running down my list of accuracy/consistency concerns and looking up stuff. I have a whole bunch of Firefox tabs open now. Did you know...

• ...that it's the "Sea-Tac" International Airport but it's the town of SeaTac? Check the hyphens. *sigh* Consistency is all I ask!
• ...That the bar "Flowers" in the Seattle U. District has the same street number as the house in which I lived during my college years (and in which I'm locating my main characters)?
• ...that it's bloody impossible to find a straight transcript of a commercial airline's flight attendants' "safety features" speech? I'm reduced to looking up as many different versions of the "airplane humor" email forward as I can find, and inferring the original from the overlap.
• ...that a typical United Airlines flight from Seattle to Denver utilizes a Boeing 757-200? I have no idea what Frontier use, because Frontier won't tell you until, presumably, after you've entered credit card information.
• ...that a Boeing 757-200's Vne (never exceed) speed is expressed, not in knots, but in a maximum percentage of the speed of sound?
• ...that 2001 was a truly, truly sad year for pop hits?
• ...that, because I know you just can't get enough of this stuff, the tooth of extinct Carcharocles megalodon (freakin' huge prehistoric shark dino thing) was three to four inches long?

Spent another hour doodling out a timeline. Some of the best novel-plotting advice I have ever run across can be found here. Yes, that's a link to Teresa Neilsen Hayden's Making Light blog; specifically, to commentary posted by Jo Walton to an open thread. Some of the best literary conversations you've ever read go on there. Anyway, the point is, go there, read what Jo has to say about finding plot, and then page down for more goodness about writing novels and avoiding scammy publish-on-demand outfits.

If you do, you eventually get to my real point, which is, timelines. Scott Lynch says, "Don't forget that the characters off-stage should be taking action simultaneously with the characters currently on the page." Damn good advice, that. Secondary characters are not just loafing around backstage waiting for their cues. They're pursuing engineering degrees and helping mom to raise a passel of younger siblings and teaching this year's youngsters the laws of the sea and terrorizing the Puget Sound.

Not all at once, of course. Timelines! Time is what keeps events from happening simultaneously and getting all muddled up thereby.

Revelation of the evening: I have no idea what the main character's mother is doing in this timeline. She exists mainly as a menacing motivation factor in the main character's flashback allowance. I guess maybe she is waiting for her cue.

Damn. I have a lot less novel written than I thought I had.

I know where to get Yule logs now. I mean, on years where I'm not lucky enough to happen to be traipsing down the railroad corridor after tree trimming day. You do this. You talk to these guys, you drive down and wander about their yard, you show 'em which piece of tree you're interested in, and they charge you a couple bucks. Or not. If you're not too keen on getting a perfectly round and smooth birch log, if you pick an interestingly gnarled piece of "junk wood," maybe they'll tell you to just take it away and Happy Yuletide to you.

My piece of junkwood is burning very nicely. I wish I'd taken a picture of the whole ensemble before we torched it. It was a feat of architecture. Two layers of grocery store firewood interlaced with newspaper with the Log on top and then a bunch of holly and cedar draped over it and the last charcoal scrap of last year's log at the bottom, then one little splash of brandy and one little match. Phoom! Fire.

And the fruitcake is pretty darn yummy too, I gotta say. We took it out of its cognac cocoon and began devouring it. Oh boy. You people who don't like fruitcake, I don't get you.

Round about five-thirty we're going to get in the car - those of us who are here and awake at five-thirty - and head out to Red Rocks for the annual "Drumming Up The Sun" event. This is where a whole bunch of area Pagans stand around in the amphitheater making noise until the sun rises, at which point everyone makes a lot more noise. Then they head off somewhere and have breakfast. This year, I plan to actually get to Red Rocks before everyone else leaves. I have much better directions this time around.

Not a lot of writing (or editing) getting done tonight, though. I like to spend Solstice night on those activities with which I want to fill the coming year, but right now my brain is mush. And there are guests over. Mostly we're sitting around watching my husband, John, play "Rogue Ops" on his new X-Box (early Yuletide gift to himself). Sedentary stuff like that. If I make it to five-thirty without dozing off (again), I'll be doing pretty dang good.

I mean, productivity? You've got to be kidding...

Wow. Not a heck of a lot of novel gets edited in an hour and a half. I got through about... three pages. Three well-marked pages, and lots of accompanying mustn't forgets in my notebook.

I have realized that A) the first scene in my novel sucks, but B) it has to stay, so C) I may end up utterly rewriting it.

This must be why the fate of so many 1950s-era story drafts was to end as a crumpled-up ball on the floor. Not unlike the fate of several clinically depressed writers, sadly enough.

Well, more tomorrow. I'll be getting on a plane and heading off to Seattle. Which is fortunate, because the first scene in this novel involves a plane taking off at Seatac. I mustn't forget to notice exactly how the preflight briefing speech goes, exactly what Seatac's geographical relationship to Seattle is (with reference to I-5), and exactly how (and whether) the name of that aiport town is supposed to be punctuated. ("Sea-Tac"? "Seatac"? "SeaTac"? Er...)

In a way, that means my vacation is a paid vacation. I would be more jolly about that fact if I knew I actually would get paid, of course. But, as noted in the previous entry, you don't get contracted pre-novel until after you've novelled pre-contract. Whee!

In other news, I've started working on the definitive PDF template for archiving Neverending Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Stories. And I finally got a working cron job in place on that site and scheduled to prune the deleted items list every morning at five past midnight. Yes, it's procrastination, but it's productive procrastination, so shut up.

I'm still at the hotel in Tempe, but I won't be for long. The car is all packed up. All that's left is for me to get my own happy ass in there along with my bookbag, laptop, printer, humorous back-support pillow ("The Witch Is In") and print-out of a new short story to mail to SciFiction.

I'll be driving on no sleep and a heck of a lot of coffee. As I type this, the hotel staff are making their way down the halls dropping off copies of the USA Today—just to give you an idea of what time it is. (Heck, those of you who pay a little attention have already read the datestamp on the blog entry. Duh.) WFC2004 is some ten hours over and done. And you know what I just found out? I can get internet in my room. My window faces ASU campus, and if I'm sitting over here at the desk, I can sometimes connect to SSID "asu_tempe". And sometimes I can even stay connected for a significant amount of time.

It seems to be more reliable with the window open.

My last act before leaving this hotel room for good is to start my novel, remembering the wise words of one of the WFC panelists (whose name I have shamefully forgotten): If you can't put in your four hours a day, put in a few sentences at a time, several times during the day. Do what you can if you can't do more. And so I have put down a little over 300 words of the opening scene which begins the outer story that frames the inner one.

I'll be hitting the road soon. Next stop: Flagstaff. I'll try to pull up in range of a wireless signal there, type a few more hundred words on this novel, and blog about it. In any case, the goal is to get home in enough time to get a good night's sleep before—eek!—opening the polls tomorrow morning. That is - in 27 hours. 27 hours until election day! You had just better show up, is all I'm sayin'.