The past few months I had been feeling like I’ve been totally stalled, accomplishing nothing, making no progress. So I sat down and looked at what I’ve actually done.
Since NaNoWriMo 2019, I have:
Written three novel first drafts (two for NaNoWriMo and one in Camp NaNo).
Completely revised Troy’s first novel after restructuring the whole series.
Completed two edit passes on the revised first novel.
Fleshed out most of the rest of the series, including partial drafts of at least two more novels.
I guesstimate that’s about 200,000 words written and more than that edited.
Yeah, there’s still a lot of editing and revising before any of the projects sees the light of day, but I’ve come a long way, too.
I signed up for Camp NaNoWriMo but I’ll be keeping track of my progress here because several of my tasks don’t have an obvious word count equivalent.
Like first up, I have to straighten out the geography of my fictional Montana town. Since I’m dyslexic, I had mentally switched from left to right about halfway down the main drag, so several things were on both the right and the left, depending on where my narrator was standing. An interesting fantasy novel could be done that way, but while this is a ghost story, the world it takes place in is normal, at least in the geographic sense.
That could take up to a week, depending on how much detail I want to go into and how many problems I uncover.
Then straighten out the scene where I discovered that Elk Flats was a Möbius strip.
Yesterday I was in central Massachusetts with a few hours to kill, so I went to Conway MA, which is where Mom’s grandfather was from. Mom’s aunt researched that side of the family years ago so she could join the DAR, so I had basic information. I was going to have a look around and take pictures of the family tombstones, maybe walk around downtown and look at the historic buildings.
I found Conway without problem–it’s a pretty little former mill town strung out along the South River. And I knew from my great-aunt’s research that our family (Maynard) was buried in the Conway cemetery.
Or rather, cemeteries. There are at least four. Fortunately Find A Grave had information about which one I wanted–Pine Grove, not Howland. Unfortunately because Conway is so spread out, I couldn’t just go out one street and turn left. It was out this street, turn onto another street, turn on another that heads back towards town, then turn into the hills again. I stumbled across Howland Cemetery by accident, but the only Maynard there is not on of our Maynards.
But Howland isn’t too far from Pine Grove, so I took a couple of pictures and moved on. Did I mention there was very little cell service back in the trees and deep little valleys? I wound up back in the center of town.
So I tried again, and this time I found the cemetery. The road appeared to end at a horse farm where an older gentleman had just finished loading some horses into a trailer. I asked him about the cemetery, he said I was on the right road and wished me luck.
Another mile down a gravel road, I finally found the cemetery.
Find a Grave had told me that treat-great-however-many-greats grandfather Daniel’s grave was “at the back in the third row from the fountain,” so I changed into my walking shoes and headed back. I figured a fountain would be pretty easy to find–except it doesn’t appear to be there any more. Just a small manmade hill with a blank area at the top where the fountain probably used to be. But Daniel Maynard is there in the third row where he was supposed to be.
Photo of headstone of Daniel H. Maynard, who is not my great-great-great-grandfather.
As you can see, the carving is barely legible beneath the lichen, but from what I can make out it’s not for the right Daniel Maynard. The dates don’t match.
And then the joke on me: when I got home and looked at my notes, I had scrambled a couple of names. Our Daniel Maynard is buried in my home town :p I wanted Timothy Maynard, who is in fact buried in…Howland Cemetery.
Lesson learned: this genealogy stuff is harder than it looks.
A bit distressed about the direction the country seems to be heading and all the random and not-so-random hate being thrown around, but also encouraged by all the good and helpful and caring people doing wonderful things. Like the neighbor who brought us eggs from her hens the first week, when we were in just-in-case isolation and the store was stripped of nearly everything. (Thanks Theresa!)
I’m even getting some writing done, though not a lot. And no art. I feel like I want to draw or paint, but when I pick up a colored pencil, it’s too much effort to use it. Getting out acrylics would take all the energy in the world right now.
For various reasons that probably aren’t very good, I haven’t been doing much art recently. But when we went on our cruise (before Corvid-19 blew up) I had time to do this colored pencil sketch:
It would be useful to me if I were to post here more often. It would give me a better record of what I’ve done, what I’ve been thinking, and other things that happen around me.
So once again, it appears that the vast majority of my reading was short nonfiction–astronomy and archaeology/paleontology articles mostly, with a good portion of health and diet research and a side helping of art history getting ready for our big trip to Spain last fall.
Best nonfiction: Smithsonian magazine
Best poetry: Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey. Seriously, if you haven’t read this yet, do it, even if you didn’t like the Odyssey in high school. Especially if you didn’t like the Odyssey in high school.
Best fiction: Troll Tunnels, the third book in Erin M. Hartshorn’s Technowitch series. (Full disclosure: Erin’s my good friend and crit partner.) This series just keeps getting better with every installment. Can’t wait for Maenad March due out later this year, and a special holiday novella featuring the trolls’ quest for a Yule log 😀 (Sign up for Erin’s newsletter here: http://www.erinmhartshorn.com/newsletter/)
Cowgirl in New England 