A cloud over November
Something crazy happened last night.
I met another person with my last name.
I have never met anyone with my last name. That's how rare it is, at least in this state.
Also surprising is that he looked like my father.
Three years ago Dad died on Nov. 4th. I was four days into Nanowrimo - trying to bounce out a 50K novel in 30 days.
I took my computer to the ICU waiting room and typed away in a corner while comforting family and friends and seeing my extremely sick father for 20 minutes at a time and hearing tragic news, over and over again.
My book was about a girl who loses all feeling in her body except for the soles of her feet. She starts to run - away from her town, away from her family, everything. She runs out into this desert and she's starving but she can't even feel it. She starts seeing the seven stages of grief personified in different situations out there, mirages really, and she has to navigate them to survive.
I never locked a good ending on this and the manuscript has sat, untouched, on my computer. I got to 50k words that year, but lost the following year, and the following one, still preoccupied with Mata running in the desert.
This year I decided that to win, I had to move on from this story. I had to drop her. I made a new character and a new outline that had nothing to do with grief and I went to the kick-off party last night with all intents of absorbing good energy for this writing-heavy month ahead.
And there in the corner was a man sharing not only my father's last name, but his nose and his occupation.
I came home and geneology-searched until I was exhausted, but can't find anything on the internet about my Grandfather besides the date of his birth and the date of his marriage, and he was estranged so my father never spoke about him anyway.
I don't know what this says about anything.
I guess I can move on from my dad's passing to some degree, but just as he will always be part of me, he will always affect Novembers. It just so happens to be the same month where people all over the world are trying to write novels. Maybe somewhere down the line I can see this as a blessing instead of a sadness that envelopes me every time I start a novel.
I met another person with my last name.
I have never met anyone with my last name. That's how rare it is, at least in this state.
Also surprising is that he looked like my father.
Three years ago Dad died on Nov. 4th. I was four days into Nanowrimo - trying to bounce out a 50K novel in 30 days.
I took my computer to the ICU waiting room and typed away in a corner while comforting family and friends and seeing my extremely sick father for 20 minutes at a time and hearing tragic news, over and over again.
My book was about a girl who loses all feeling in her body except for the soles of her feet. She starts to run - away from her town, away from her family, everything. She runs out into this desert and she's starving but she can't even feel it. She starts seeing the seven stages of grief personified in different situations out there, mirages really, and she has to navigate them to survive.
I never locked a good ending on this and the manuscript has sat, untouched, on my computer. I got to 50k words that year, but lost the following year, and the following one, still preoccupied with Mata running in the desert.
This year I decided that to win, I had to move on from this story. I had to drop her. I made a new character and a new outline that had nothing to do with grief and I went to the kick-off party last night with all intents of absorbing good energy for this writing-heavy month ahead.
And there in the corner was a man sharing not only my father's last name, but his nose and his occupation.
I came home and geneology-searched until I was exhausted, but can't find anything on the internet about my Grandfather besides the date of his birth and the date of his marriage, and he was estranged so my father never spoke about him anyway.
I don't know what this says about anything.
I guess I can move on from my dad's passing to some degree, but just as he will always be part of me, he will always affect Novembers. It just so happens to be the same month where people all over the world are trying to write novels. Maybe somewhere down the line I can see this as a blessing instead of a sadness that envelopes me every time I start a novel.
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