3 posts tagged “nanowrimo”

I expected to be stressed. I expected to have sore fingers. I expected to not get much housework done.

I didn't expect to learn anything new.

I was wrong.

I've had an idea of writing a young-adult novel about Robert E. Lee for years after being a guest at a wedding that took place at the Lee-Fendall home in Alexandria, Virginia.  When I was contemplating a subject for the NaNoWriMo it didn't take me long to decide to write the novel that had been sitting in the back of my head for a decade.

I lived in Alexandria for 8 years and still visit it about twice a year. My daughter loves it because of the old-timeyness of the Old Town area - she and my son were even born at Alexandria Hospital. I had a dear friend, Frances Lide, whom I recall using names like Fitzhugh, Lee and Fendall in everyday conversation. Still, I never really cared to learn anything about Robert E. Lee or his father, Henry Lee III (aka Lighthorse Harry).  That Robert E. Lee was leader of the confederacy was enough to make me cringe.  Why would I want to know more about someone who fought on the side that wanted to keep slavery? It went against all of my beliefs.

So, to write this NaNoWriMo novel I've had to research the Lee family.  So much that I actually am beginning to care about them.  I feel sad for Henry's wife, Robert's mother - she was a single mother for most of the time she had children.  I feel embarrassed for Robert's dad - he incurred so many debts that he was sent to jail and lost his home and finally died in exile.

I'm beginning to understand Robert's reasons for fighting whichever way his home state fought. Loyalty was very important to him.

When I lived in Alexandria, I visited Christ Church a few times, usually with out of town guests.  I remember telling  people that  Lee and Washington worshiped in this church, but  at the time was only playing lip service to the facts.  Now I feel kind of goosebumpy that I've been to that church as well as Robert E. Lee's boyhood home (that is no longer open to the public).

I still don't agree with Lee's choices of what to support in the Civil War, but researching his young life has given me a perspective I'd not had before and given me an insight into his character.  He was a living breathing human being, not just facts from a dusty old history book.

Thank you NaNoWriMo.  I've gotten far more out of the experience so far than I ever expected to.

Last night I had the oddest dream I've had in a long while.  I was visiting my past self, complete with narrator,or guide (like in A Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful Life). 

That's not the odd part though. As I watched myself and listened to the narration, I didn't recognize any of it. It was not my past. I knew none of the people or places in the dream. Through the entire dream, even though I was playing along as if it was my past, I knew it wasn't.

In the dream I'd befriended what seemed, on the surface, to be a homeless person.  He dressed like a homeless person would dress, and had a shopping cart full of his belongings.  We stood on a platform of a subway station; someone (the narrator perhaps) began spewing disparaging remarks about and to the man. As I stood there I knew that the man was my boyfriend, so I walked up and hugged , then kissed him. He said something about moving out of his house and having to leave his things behind for a while.  Then he was gone and I assumed he'd gotten on the subway train.

I saw that he'd left his belongings - a blow up mattress (inflated), a backpack, a bundle of clothes and a cell phone. I worried that someone would steal his things, but left them there because it was too much for me to carry up the stairs and there was no elevator.

When I returned, everything was there except for the mattress. I went to the subway office and told them that someone had stolen my boyfriend's inflatable mattress.  The man in the office looked a little sheepish, and said that he thought it was a discarded pile of junk, so had taken the mattress for himself. He took it out of his file drawer, now deflated and in a ziplock bag, and handed it to me.

I then got on the subway train and returned the mattress to my alleged boyfriend who was surprised that I had been able to get it back.  He then inflated the mattress and we lay on it together, just snuggling, all the while I was wondering why I was there and whose past I was living.

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I have my ideas of why I dreamed it. I think that I incorporated many fragments of posts from various blogs I've been reading lately (including, sadly, the Sentra guy) into the dream.  My NaNoWriMo novel is forcing me to do a lot of research on a historical character I've never particularly liked. I think that that plus having recently seen the movie "Click" which reminded me of "It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol, my mind just jumbled it all up into a slightly disturbing, yet interesting dream.

Today I feel like my brain is being stretched and smushed. I joined the multitudes in the NaNoWriMo endeavor by beginning a novel that probably should only be a semi-long story at best. I'm s t r e t c h i n g  o u t  the words so I might get somewhere close to 50,000 at the end of the month.  I've also been doing the x365 project where I have to write about a different person I've known in the number of years I've been alive - for me that's 50.  So between trying to get a lot into 50 words and trying to stretch less than 50,000 words into that amount, I'm kind of feeling faint (and this was only the first day of the NaNoWriMo!)

Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Maybe.