KICK OFF!

Hello Everyone ~

I’m not sure where to put this, whether I am introducing myself or just checking in. I think I’ll start something new. Oooo I’m only a few minutes short of time to write!

I’m in Ashland and I would like very much to meet with other writers at some point, whether to “write in” or just to talk. This is my third year doing NaNoWriMo and I have yet to get my bottom out the door and meet any other writers. I would really like to do that this year, if only a few folks or only a couple of times. I went to one “meeting” last year at Star Bucks. I went on the wrong day, at the wrong time. Do you know? There was no one else there! That is the extent of my gregarious and outgoing social life with other writers.

I’ve been writing all my life - literally. Before I could actually write, my mother used to write my poems down for me. She would then stick them in whatever book she was reading/researching/messing with. We still find them occasionally. “I Love a Moon” by Edwina, age 2” jammed into the margin of “The Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius. I went to a very progressive Elementary School. When my mother causally mentioned that I really couldn’t spell, my teacher gasped and informed her that they wouldn’t dream of stifling my creativity by making me slow down and consider something as unimportant as spelling. She said, “there will always be someone to check her spelling.” We like to think that she was prescient and channeling the concept of a computer spell-check as opposed to whatever else that might have sounded like. I might add that the public Junior High where they dumped me at the tender age of eleven was not a bit impressed with my creativity.

For much of my life I considered myself a “poet” as opposed to a “writer.” I’ve published a lot of poetry. I lost count somewhere, but it is in excess of 300 (I think.) I taught poetry writing on a college level as well as in various wacky ways with kids from three to eighteen. I taught Creative Dance for years, where I always used poetry as a cross-over. The two subjects dove-tail beautifully. I spent fifteen years as a senior editor and poetry editor for a nationally syndicated large press periodical. There is no reason why being an editor should inhibit your own writing, but it does. When I retired, I decided I was going to write prose. I find that I’m quite able to write prose, and write it and write it and write it . . . My first NaNoWriMo “novel” is currently a trilogy with a prequel. Of course, it isn’t finished yet, so who knows, there may be seven or eight volumes before I’m done. I stole a description from Tad Williams and refer to it as “The Bloated Epic.” This year I have sketched a plot. I haven’t any illusions that my characters are going to be impressed, feel any reverence about that pre-sketched plot or make any effort to stay inside it. If it helps me in anyway to ever get to “THE END”, however, it will be worth it.

I guess it’s too late to suggest a “First Night” meeting & write-in. I think it would be hysterical to try to meet and start writing at midnight on Halloween in Downtown Ashland. It’s hard to find somewhere to STAND no less set up your lap top, or have a conversation. You would have to scream to be heard, “YES! I’M WRITING A SERIOUS POLITICAL COMETARY HAVING TO DO WITH THE MATING HABITS OF THE EMPEROR PENGUIN WHICH I DISCOVERED DURING MY YEARS IN ANTARCTICA WITH THE PEACE CORPS.” You’d be screaming this directly over the top of a devil who is being bitched at by his Goth girlfriend who thought he was flirting with the Blue Fairy in the corner and a several Vikings who are jumping in the air and hitting their stomachs together causing them to inadvertently impale you again and again with their fake horns, skoling their beers and slopping them all down their chins, stomachs and your shoes while the band “Twistitnspin” plays their hit “Lip Schtick In My Morning Bloodbath” just a few decibels above the 85 that will cause Noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL). It would be interesting anyway.

Here is another great visual. We could do this any time. Go down to one of the bars that has a real old fashioned bar and commandeer the entire bar, set the laptops up on the bar and all commence keyboarding 100 mph without looking up. Probably everyone wearing all black would help this one along.

In truth, for meeting, I would suggest the Black Sheep. This is because, being a pub, they have more of a British mind set and are perfectly happy for you to sit there and talk, or write for hours. Lots of other places want you to eat, drink and be merry, but do it in as little time as possible and then get your keister out of the chair so another paying customer can put theirs in. I write at the Black Sheep quite often. I write in a notebook (real paper) rather than lap top, but there are always folks with lap tops there as well. Day, of course, is always quieter than night.

I can’t tell if folks were being factious about the weather being excellent. This actually is exactly the way I like it best - dark, cold, misty and foggy. Yum. I’m so glad they have chosen November for NaNoWriMo, it is the best writing weather and Ashland has the best November’s of all.

I have to say, I am CRAZY about the idea of finishing under the auspices of the Bard. Turotuico, you be brilliant! I would bet that they would let us finish in the Elizabethan Theater, particularly because they are dark so there won’t be sets in there. If not, then I suggest the Bricks, between the Elizabethan and the Bomer theatres. The sun shines beautifully there, if it is shining anywhere. Someone call the newspaper and we’d get publicity for NaNoWriMo and OSF both. Besides, it would be so perfect. I mean, since the spirit of the greatest writer in the English language happens to BE here, why not use it/him? I also write on the bricks, for exactly that reason.

Well! Happy Halloween! Happy Samhain! Happy NaNoWriMo Kick-off! I hope we can get together at some point. I hope if people do get together I can make myself go. I hope if I do make myself go, that I go on the right day at the right time. You know what Emily Dickinson said, “Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul , , ,” Looking outside at the perfectly ghoulish Halloween that is shaping up out there, makes one want to picture this with a vulture . . . hey, they do have feathers . . .

Best of Luck to all ~
I go by Winnie ~ Edwina (Ed-WIN-AH. Not Edweeena.)
and Dryad (Dry-add) ~ which ever you prefer. You can even call me late for dinner. If I’m writing, I won’t come anyway.
----------
"Shakespeare didn't sit in Stratford and hope." ~ A. Bronwyn Llewellyn