Of NaNoWriMo, and of NaNoWriMo
Nov. 6th, 2011 12:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thulcandranThe hardest thing about writing fundamentalist kids is trying to remember how we talked, back then. No such thing as the word 'yeah,' or 'cool,' unless you're talking about the weather. No swearing, of course. Stupid is not permissible. Gay... you don't even know that there is a word for gay. You don't know what sex is-- no, you don't even know what the deal is with adults. You don't know that marriage is really about love. You don't know, really, what love is, from quite a few memories of mine. Something like it. God is love, of course. But I suppose that menas you don't really know what God is, either. Love is good, God is good, God is love, God loved you before you existed, and you love Him, of course, so you obey your parents.
In thought, and in deed.
And when you don't, you break His heart. I'll give them that, there was no 'you go to Hell if you disobey' threat, we were Baptists, and lived beneath the certainty umbrella that savied once, saved forevermore. What God has in His hand, none can remove, and all that jazz. But you were born innocent, and chose to sin.
Also, there's this. You are saved by your belief in Jesus, when you were Baptized, when your pastor dunked you entirely underwater-- for me, somewhere in the timeline around five or six years old. I don't remember the age, though if I looked it up, I do know that I was baptized the day before Hurricane Edward hit. I remember seeing the stormclouds roll in, across the horizon.
Edward was also the name of my teddy bear.
And kings, which I knew for some reason.
Anyway. The point I was thinking of was this-- if you are saved by the belief in God's grace, then you know that your belief is all that anchors you to that grace, and you will wonder, all your thinking life, if you have an inquiring mind, anyway, which most of us tend to, if you Really, Truly believed in God's grace, or in Jesus. Did you? Because your eternal destiny depends on it. And if you doubted, if you were not fully focused on that day when the water swallowed you...
Best not to dwell on it.
So I'm working on NaNoWriMo, and I'm trying to write in the voice of Ricky, a nine-year-old boy raised in a Fundamentalist church that meets in the empty Congregationalist church, since the Congregationalists meet in the bigger chapel now, and two hours later. They have to get up a little earlier, but they don't mind. (Yes, this is realistic. The local Baptist church meets in a vacant church building, I walked past their sign yesterday on my way home from work and was shocked, SHOCKED, because it was Bible Study and on a Tuesday night. A Tuesday! I ask you, what is this world coming to? What kind of Baptist church holds Bible Study on Tuesday nights? Everyone knows it's supposed to be Wednesdays.)
So it's hard, trying to remember how we talked back then. I remember certain things very clearly, but I don't remember... talking. I remember the 'worldly' neighbors (they went to a Lutheran church), and the other... worldly... neighbors (they didn't go to church at all). Their son was named Timmy. He made television references all the time, and I only got most of them ten years later. "Cop Timmy is my name, and crime-fightin' is my game!" And then he would laugh, and we would kinda go "...?" My mom yelled at him once for playing something worldly on the piano she had dedicated to Christ. Poor kid, he must have thought we were from another planet or something.
We didn't say 'mom,' though. Mommy and Daddy. But when we were talking to them, at least to my dad, we said "Yes sir," and "No sir." I really could not tell you why. It took me years to realize how weird that one was, too.
It's harder to write than I thought, though, the childhood of a seriously fucked up kid in a holy, holy family. Who knows? Maybe it was good for us.
Anyway, you guys should get fiction, too, so I'll throw in some of the NaNo-- I've also got a parallel line, about a college student named Dave. I rather like him.
---
"'You'll love it,' she said. 'You should get out more,' she said. 'You won't even know he's there!' she said!"
Sara glared at him, probably justifiably. The music was audible on the other side of the wall, bass shaking the walls and porch ever so slightly. He thought he heard someone, or a few someones, singing along. This was not unexpected. They were probably off-key, and off-tempo, and he would not be surprised if none of them knew the words. His mind was torn between being glad he could not hear them clearly, and wishing he could, to confirm his biased anger. Righteous anger, that was the word he was looking for. Sara seemed to be saying something. He stopped shaking his figurative cane at the party-goers to listen.
"I mean, if you'd just try to relax - they're not all bad kids, Dave!"
"I am relaxed," he told her, reflexively, through gritted teeth. She didn't even have to raise an eyebrow.
(She did anyway.)
"Look, if you head on in you'll probably find quite a few of them willing to hang out with you. No matter how many times you say you have no desire whatsoever for human interaction, I will stil have trouble believing it. You're just in one of your Moods, and it's not that bad, and if you have a drink and sit down with Kendrick and I, you'll be having something resembling fun, anyway, in no time."
The argument had been over before she came out, he knew, and he followed her back into the lit, too-warm room without much more resistance than a resigned shrug.
The beer was cold; it suited him, in the rather suffocatingly hot house. Sara was dancing to the bass - no, he realized, her rhythm was aligned with the higher melodies. He could barely hear them. Her movements filled the gap in the song well enough; he leaned against the wall and watched her spin, twirl, dip, alone in that dim spotlight between the broken lamp and the shaded window.
No, parties were not his thing, and never would be, he suspected, no matter what his girlfriend claimed. But he could have stood there all night, and endured the drunkenly giggling trollops, the yet more drunken louts, the rather poorly balanced and far too loud sound -- all night, through a pounding headache, to watch her dance there, like the flame of an undying candle in the darkest night.
The sky was beginning to shift - stars faded, as the East drew a glow in the farther rim of the horizon. He watched the window as it went from velvety, star-studded black, to a deep blue, profound it seemed to him then, mysterious, and then yet again, to a lighter blue, like the marvelous swallow's feather that Sara wore in her hair betimes.
She leaned on him now, grinning. Dave grinned back at her despite himself, raising an eyebrow in that overly serious way that always made her laugh. He laughed then, too, to see her laugh, and pointed to the window, which had by now turned to a pale, nearly sky blue.
"Oh, it's almost sunrise," she said, following his gaze. "Don't you have class early tomorrow?"
He shook his head. "Not until noon. But we should go soon, all the same. Things do seem to be winding down."
"Alright, yeah," she said, twining her fingers through his. "Let me go find my purse, I think Shawna had it when we came in." He followed her unresisting, through the house, as they looked for the elusive Shawna. Eventually she turned out to be on the back lawn with Mike and Leann, and told them the purse was in the front closet.
So they trekked back through the dewy grass, up to the darkening house, as the dawn began to light up around them. People were mostly sitting, or laying, around and the music was quiet, now.
"Hey, have you seen Mike?" A tall boy Dave vaguely recognized came up to them, his eyes bleared.
"I think he's out back with Leann and Shawna," Dave told him, gesturing towards the back door whence they'd come.
"Alright, then," he nodded. "What 'bout Kendrick and Zach? They were, they were right up with me, just, ya know, a secon' ago..."
Dave shrugged. "I'm sure they'll turn up. We're heading out, though - see you around."
The tall guy nodded, waved them off distractedly. Sara beckoned from the door, purse in hand, and he shoved his own hands in his pockets and followed her out. He always wondered if it was sexist or overly protective to want to walk her back to her dorm, but there were idiots and assholes a-plenty on this campus, and she never had complained about it.
At the door she gave him a kiss, whispered something into his ear that made him laugh, and disappeared up the stairs. He put his hands back in his pockets and walked off towards his own room in the gathering daylight, whistling under his breath.
In thought, and in deed.
And when you don't, you break His heart. I'll give them that, there was no 'you go to Hell if you disobey' threat, we were Baptists, and lived beneath the certainty umbrella that savied once, saved forevermore. What God has in His hand, none can remove, and all that jazz. But you were born innocent, and chose to sin.
Also, there's this. You are saved by your belief in Jesus, when you were Baptized, when your pastor dunked you entirely underwater-- for me, somewhere in the timeline around five or six years old. I don't remember the age, though if I looked it up, I do know that I was baptized the day before Hurricane Edward hit. I remember seeing the stormclouds roll in, across the horizon.
Edward was also the name of my teddy bear.
And kings, which I knew for some reason.
Anyway. The point I was thinking of was this-- if you are saved by the belief in God's grace, then you know that your belief is all that anchors you to that grace, and you will wonder, all your thinking life, if you have an inquiring mind, anyway, which most of us tend to, if you Really, Truly believed in God's grace, or in Jesus. Did you? Because your eternal destiny depends on it. And if you doubted, if you were not fully focused on that day when the water swallowed you...
Best not to dwell on it.
So I'm working on NaNoWriMo, and I'm trying to write in the voice of Ricky, a nine-year-old boy raised in a Fundamentalist church that meets in the empty Congregationalist church, since the Congregationalists meet in the bigger chapel now, and two hours later. They have to get up a little earlier, but they don't mind. (Yes, this is realistic. The local Baptist church meets in a vacant church building, I walked past their sign yesterday on my way home from work and was shocked, SHOCKED, because it was Bible Study and on a Tuesday night. A Tuesday! I ask you, what is this world coming to? What kind of Baptist church holds Bible Study on Tuesday nights? Everyone knows it's supposed to be Wednesdays.)
So it's hard, trying to remember how we talked back then. I remember certain things very clearly, but I don't remember... talking. I remember the 'worldly' neighbors (they went to a Lutheran church), and the other... worldly... neighbors (they didn't go to church at all). Their son was named Timmy. He made television references all the time, and I only got most of them ten years later. "Cop Timmy is my name, and crime-fightin' is my game!" And then he would laugh, and we would kinda go "...?" My mom yelled at him once for playing something worldly on the piano she had dedicated to Christ. Poor kid, he must have thought we were from another planet or something.
We didn't say 'mom,' though. Mommy and Daddy. But when we were talking to them, at least to my dad, we said "Yes sir," and "No sir." I really could not tell you why. It took me years to realize how weird that one was, too.
It's harder to write than I thought, though, the childhood of a seriously fucked up kid in a holy, holy family. Who knows? Maybe it was good for us.
Anyway, you guys should get fiction, too, so I'll throw in some of the NaNo-- I've also got a parallel line, about a college student named Dave. I rather like him.
---
"'You'll love it,' she said. 'You should get out more,' she said. 'You won't even know he's there!' she said!"
Sara glared at him, probably justifiably. The music was audible on the other side of the wall, bass shaking the walls and porch ever so slightly. He thought he heard someone, or a few someones, singing along. This was not unexpected. They were probably off-key, and off-tempo, and he would not be surprised if none of them knew the words. His mind was torn between being glad he could not hear them clearly, and wishing he could, to confirm his biased anger. Righteous anger, that was the word he was looking for. Sara seemed to be saying something. He stopped shaking his figurative cane at the party-goers to listen.
"I mean, if you'd just try to relax - they're not all bad kids, Dave!"
"I am relaxed," he told her, reflexively, through gritted teeth. She didn't even have to raise an eyebrow.
(She did anyway.)
"Look, if you head on in you'll probably find quite a few of them willing to hang out with you. No matter how many times you say you have no desire whatsoever for human interaction, I will stil have trouble believing it. You're just in one of your Moods, and it's not that bad, and if you have a drink and sit down with Kendrick and I, you'll be having something resembling fun, anyway, in no time."
The argument had been over before she came out, he knew, and he followed her back into the lit, too-warm room without much more resistance than a resigned shrug.
The beer was cold; it suited him, in the rather suffocatingly hot house. Sara was dancing to the bass - no, he realized, her rhythm was aligned with the higher melodies. He could barely hear them. Her movements filled the gap in the song well enough; he leaned against the wall and watched her spin, twirl, dip, alone in that dim spotlight between the broken lamp and the shaded window.
No, parties were not his thing, and never would be, he suspected, no matter what his girlfriend claimed. But he could have stood there all night, and endured the drunkenly giggling trollops, the yet more drunken louts, the rather poorly balanced and far too loud sound -- all night, through a pounding headache, to watch her dance there, like the flame of an undying candle in the darkest night.
The sky was beginning to shift - stars faded, as the East drew a glow in the farther rim of the horizon. He watched the window as it went from velvety, star-studded black, to a deep blue, profound it seemed to him then, mysterious, and then yet again, to a lighter blue, like the marvelous swallow's feather that Sara wore in her hair betimes.
She leaned on him now, grinning. Dave grinned back at her despite himself, raising an eyebrow in that overly serious way that always made her laugh. He laughed then, too, to see her laugh, and pointed to the window, which had by now turned to a pale, nearly sky blue.
"Oh, it's almost sunrise," she said, following his gaze. "Don't you have class early tomorrow?"
He shook his head. "Not until noon. But we should go soon, all the same. Things do seem to be winding down."
"Alright, yeah," she said, twining her fingers through his. "Let me go find my purse, I think Shawna had it when we came in." He followed her unresisting, through the house, as they looked for the elusive Shawna. Eventually she turned out to be on the back lawn with Mike and Leann, and told them the purse was in the front closet.
So they trekked back through the dewy grass, up to the darkening house, as the dawn began to light up around them. People were mostly sitting, or laying, around and the music was quiet, now.
"Hey, have you seen Mike?" A tall boy Dave vaguely recognized came up to them, his eyes bleared.
"I think he's out back with Leann and Shawna," Dave told him, gesturing towards the back door whence they'd come.
"Alright, then," he nodded. "What 'bout Kendrick and Zach? They were, they were right up with me, just, ya know, a secon' ago..."
Dave shrugged. "I'm sure they'll turn up. We're heading out, though - see you around."
The tall guy nodded, waved them off distractedly. Sara beckoned from the door, purse in hand, and he shoved his own hands in his pockets and followed her out. He always wondered if it was sexist or overly protective to want to walk her back to her dorm, but there were idiots and assholes a-plenty on this campus, and she never had complained about it.
At the door she gave him a kiss, whispered something into his ear that made him laugh, and disappeared up the stairs. He put his hands back in his pockets and walked off towards his own room in the gathering daylight, whistling under his breath.