Hilary Moon Murphy

2680!

January 26, 2001

I can’t believe I did it. This was one of the best writing sessions I’ve had in months, and it almost didn’t happen.

Andy and I went to the Urgent Care last night with Cassie. Her breathing had gotten all raspy and funny, and she was howling and miserable and wouldn’t eat. Even though some of her cold symptoms had abated, and we were worried and wanted to get her checked out.

After we arrived in the Urgent Care waiting room though, she had calmed down and started babbling. By the time that we were admitted in to see the doctor, Cassie was flirting with the nurses and acting like anything but a sick baby. The doctor did check her out, and agreed that her breathing was raspy but told us that her respiratory infections looked a little better. He figured that the problem was that Cassie’s throat was sore from all the coughing that she had done, so he prescribed some baby cough medicine, and told us to make certain she got rest.

The cough medicine did seem to help. Cassie slept through the night last night, and when she woke up this morning she actually smiled at me and giggled a little. It’s been almost a week since my daughter seemed happy, and how I’ve missed it. When you’re a parent, you feel so helpless when your kids are sick. There’s nothing that you can do with viral infections but offer comfort, treat the symptoms and wait them out.

Anyway, by the time we had gotten Cassie fed, treated and off to bed it was 9:30. If I had not had the threat of Samantha Ling firing me out a cannon if I didn’t write, I probably would have gone to bed depressed and not written anything. But, as I said before, I needed a vacation. I wanted to get away from work and illness and worry and feeling down, so I fired up the computer and packed myself off to 1836.

Upon reading yesterday’s entry, my Clarion classmate Tim Pratt wrote:

Hilary,

Whoo! Over 2K a night, huh? I'll be rooting for you and cheering you on.

Write sloppy. Write dirty. Misspell things and don't fix them. Don't-reread what you've just written. Just hammer those keys. That's the way to do it.

It was good advice.

I’m not quite certain what happened, but somehow I managed to turn off the internal critic that shouts “Dreck, dreck!” and forces me to rewrite each sentence 20 times before going on to the next, and I just wrote. It was a scene involving Cyrus Dart (antagonist), Sarah Elliot (protagonist), and all the whiny members of the Elliot family, locked in a big argument. The characters just took over, and all of a sudden I started learning things about each of them that I did not know before.

• Dart is not in charge of his own fortune. He’s younger than I thought he was, and is at the mercy of his trustee and his older brother. I like this revelation, because it makes him a little more human of a villain, and gives me a chance to build reader sympathy for him before I start revealing his true nature.

• The Elliot family has not done any serious entertaining since Sarah’s mother died. In order to host a genteel tea party, they must first clear out all the clutter that has been stored in the parlor: printing press parts, boxes full of old copies of the Washington Guide (a book actually written by Sarah’s father) telescopes, architectural models and other odd works in progress.

  The stuff that they cleared out was interesting, and said more about Elliot family interests and eccentricities than anything I could have written in an info-dump. For the first time, I began to figure out the personalities of Sarah’s brothers Seth Alfred and Jonathon, both of whom were just names on paper before this scene.

  As the characters continued to unearth stuff in the parlor, I began to realize that I had a beautiful metaphor going on. Sarah’s family literally buried themselves in work to cover their grief over the loss of Sarah’s mother. Clearing the parlor (the favorite room of Sarah’s mother) of all of its clutter is the start of the family beginning to come to terms with their emotions and entering the world of society again.

• Sarah (who is only 15) wants to be accepted by Society, but is afraid of being pushed into Society’s mold. When her family starts arguing about whether her reputation will be damaged if she attends a tea party for Margaret Eaton, Sarah scoffs at the thought of anyone being able to corrupt her with a single meeting. Yet she also wonders wistfully what such corruption would be like. After all, she reasons, she never met a fallen woman before. Surely being a fallen woman must be more interesting than the life she leads now…

Is what I wrote last night worth keeping? I don’t know, and won’t know until after January when I start looking at what I wrote and seeing what’s salvageable. But it felt right. The characters spoke to me, and I learned new things about their lives.

Sam told me that she also wrote her 2000 words last night, so woo hoo! Let’s keep this going, okay? Ganpati-Baba tells me that I was too worried about failure, and too distracted with unimportant things to really be centered on the story. Well, I’m centered now.

This is the way writing should be. Fun, experimental, enlightening. I’m still basking in the afterglow.

The January Web Rat Name Your Own Dare! (700 Words a Day on Fire of Genius) Pre-Dare Dare Total Yesterday 14,498 8557 2680 Other Dare Participants: Anne | Jennifer | Jim | Karina | Marti | Rob | Sam | Trey

Back to Dare profiles:

Today we’re profiling Jennifer. Jennifer has completed two out of her four goals for the Dare, and is on track for all four. She’s started a novel called “Pangborn Nomads.” She hasn’t described it much, but the bits and pieces that she’s discussed in her journal really intrigue me. I hope she finishes this one.

Jennifer’s journal is full of interesting slices of life, plus observations on gaming and occasional dream excerpts. As a former tarot reader, I get a kick out of her Tarot Card of the Day, which always has something to do with the matters discussed in the current entry. Reading her journal, I get the feeling that she is on a constant voyage of self-discovery. She tries out different roles for herself, just to see how they fit, and then layers them one on top of the other. I’ve always had a weakness for journals that give you a peek at the inner workings of the writer’s soul. Jennifer’s is one of these, which is why I keep coming back.

Before I go, I should also mention that my fellow Clarion classmate J. Simon has just started a journal. It’s funny, but more than that it's really, really weird. What else can you expect from a man that organized shark attacks on all the teachers of Clarion? Don't believe that he's weird? Check out his cartoon on rhombuses and parallelograms. No, I won't tell you what entry it's in. His journal is only a few days old, so you can read through all his J-ness in a single sitting for the true J-gestalt experience. I dare you.

See you all next time,

Hmm