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Benhá’s Main

I should write something about Levi’s. Too indirect?

Let’s talk about our recent main character. I’m pointedly not calling this a maquette as I’m not ready to lock in too many of her characteristics at this point. Unlike most of the seemingly well conceived blurbs I’ve begun here on 1000 Days this one doesn’t originate from a character or from a situation. This idea originates from three commingled concepts: a word, a characteristic, and a setting. Resolving a physical person out of those sparks hasn’t been a necessity…yet.

The main character is a girl becoming a woman or somewhere south of twenty but north of puberty. Black hair she wears long at home but braided and wound up in the market where she works. Her skin is pale brown. Song is a place of variety, but MC is nested well inside the fringes with regards to late teen girls. Maybe she’s taller than most.

She’s not exactly orphaned, but her situation allows her–as it would her peers–plenty of freedom. Something about her citizenship in Song is questionable though. Maybe she’s adopted or a foundling or maybe her family just isn’t multi-generational in the village. Nothing Disney-cliche just thick enough the opposition could use the difference as leverage when the time comes. Maybe her father lived away from Song and married an Outy. Or maybe both her parents are of Song, but somehow estranged and that works against her. In any case, she feels fully invested in the community, as does everyone else, until she’s afflicted with dermatographia and victim turns up dead.

She works in the market. What she sells appeals to both locals, Outies, and tourists so she has a broad experience with people. She doesn’t know it, but she has better knowledge of Out than many aboard Song. Though having never been–or rarely been–off Song she thinks it smaller than it truly is.

Friends are hard to come by on Song because same aged kids are few. Space is a premium, so families tend to have no more than two children and usually far enough apart to have one old enough to watch the next. MC finds herself trailing a baby boomer pack or leading it. Which would normally cause her to be fast friends with the one other girl in the same situation but….she’s not for some reason. That could be story related or not. The boomer pack could be back story.

409 words on day 501

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Monday Night on the Back Porch

A color unreproduceable on film marks late evening. You want to call it grey or describe it as dim but you can still see reds and greens and blues. It’s certain your eyes have checked out for the day because nothing in front of you is distinct. Only the periphery is in focus but you can’t look at that. You just know.

Cicadas bunch in groups around the backyard with a loner nearby and a squak of crickets around the corner. Out front some jackass on a motorcycle revs by the house. Doesn’t she know kids are in bed?

Fucking mosquitos have found veins close to the surface near my ankles and face. A good scrape with my overgrown finger nails does the trick till it doesn’t and a second one does. Some how that scratching wells up a sneeze.

Fireflies rise up like sparks over the neighbor’s fence with the campfire smell of a recently cooked grill. A pair of inexplicable summer cousins commingling for effect.

hand held; thumb written

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Twelve Twenty-nine Two Thousand Eleven

I began this 1000 day writing habit on August 13th 2007. I recall on that day not knowing what I’d produce in the next thousand. I recall my uncertainty I’d make it through a week, but I did. I recall my next uncertainty I’d make it a month, but I did.

Then I started failing to write on one day or another. Sometimes my misses were circumstance, sometimes laxity, sometimes prideful justification. Weekends soon presented themselves as a waste of effort: a poor combination of circumstance and quality. The quality and length of writing done on Saturday and Sunday didn’t measure up to rules I don’t have for such things. Rules I still leave uncodified. Then there would be other gaps: vacations, ennui, whatever.

Whatever habit you begin wants to continue until you introduce a new habit. Try to make the new introductions positive.

So here I am. Here I am at 500 days of writing. Here I am past my 1000 day mark by 99 days. As much as I’ve accomplished and as much as I’ve learned in 500 days of writing I’m disappointed I don’t have twice as much experience at this time.

At day 500 my accomplishments in 1000 Days please me, but I’m not ecstatic. Not joyful, not celebratory.

I hereby renew my efforts to write each day. I hereby vow to write each day even when my words are crap–even when they are few. I hereby resolve to figure out the mystery of the weekend writing. I hereby swear that come 12/29/2011 I’ll not be disappointed.

263 words on day 500