Posts

Posted on

The Gloaming Scriptures

The word of the day over at M-W.com is ‘gloaming’. I don’t know when or where I first heard this word, but I’ve loved it as a word I can know and almost never use. It describes a time of day which modern people are losing to rush hour and re-runs. I like it over twilight because it does more to set the mood than its definition’s partner. While twilight describes a time of day, the mechanical action of day passed into night, gloaming connotes the sense of conclusion without complete accomplishment.

Maybe I’m drawing too much from the word’s closeness in spelling to gloom to arrive at the mood I’m explaining, but gloaming feels like a time to race in as much wood chopping as you can before night steals your vision. A time of day which requires you to stop even if you’d rather—must— continue on.

Also interesting to me is that the word doesn’t convince me each day holds a gloaming. I suspect others who know this word would agree with me that some days just skip straight to evening with no pause for gloaming. As I wonder why I think this is true, I realize it’s because I think gloaming requires a witness. If you haven’t gone outside and absorbed the spent orange and pastelled red of a sunset done, then there won’t be a gloaming that day.

xxx words on day 654

Posted on

Grumphook on the Wing

Last two day I wrote elsewhere.

Pinch 1 – Grumphook discovers an early effort of some boys to escape and flames the terraced farmland.

This scene seemed like something I could work on without getting too caught up in and easily throw away if needed. I’ll probably stick with imagery rather than delve into Grumphook’s character.

Grumphook lay sleeping in the cool mud of the pig pen she’d modified to suit a dragon. Those modifications included smashing the mill pond upstream to divert more water to make more mud and removal of the pigs via ingestion—the final pig cowered in the broken nearby shed. She heard the alert in her dreams, and for a momemt it mixed incongruosly with her rending of a fat just-sheared sheep. Her body reflexed into the air, wings shifting back before unfurling upward then than flapping down and around as if she were trying to hug the air beneath. Her legs kicked the ground in mostly the right direction with mostly the right traction. She instictively rolled downmountain to gain speed and loft with less energy. A stone chimney crashed into her left shoulder before she completely abandonned the squeeling dream-sheep.

An upslope wind bent the tops of Douglas firs as it approached the village and the dragon. Grumphook timed her climb to coincide with the favorable wind and rose into the mountain sky higher than her sisters. It didn’t take long for her to spot the cause of the call that woke her. She saw the warmth of the boys huddled near a cool rock spur. It would have been a sufficient hiding place if dragons had human eyes.

—

I was planning to go into how she didn’t much care if the boys got away or not. That she did of course try to flame them or at least scare them. But she decided to take her retribution on the village instead, so she flamed the terraced farmland.

The boys who excaped thought they had caused the eradication of their village and never returned while the village which doesn’t get razed thinks the boys were lost as well. Then maybe I can bring them back somehow. Maybe one of the boys is Gertrude’s son.

374 words on day 650

Posted on

January 10 Plots Debriefing

I said 10 plots in the first ten days. The first ten days of January concluded yesterday and the plot book was serving up Underdog—a tweaked repeat of yesterday’s Rivalry if you ask me. Initially I’d planned to do all ten this month, but this morning I’m less inclined.

Plotting this past week came easier than I’d expected it would. Adhering to the Storyfix checklist and phases motivated me to stab at my characters with real threats where in the past I’d been content to feign confusion concerning what befall them next. Certainly I’d need to go back to any of those plots to rework it if I expect to write from one, but at least now I have a skeleton to rework and an idea of the key scenes. I also have a beginning, middle, and mostly some ends. I’ve not had those three things all at the same time and in the correct order for quite some time on 1000 Days—if ever. Realizing I can do all that within a single day and for a sustained-ish period of time encourages me to do more. And to do more better.

I’m sure you read quite a bit of disdain into my notations of what master plot I would employ each day. You weren’t wrong; I was disdainful. Now done, I am glad I used that tool. I wouldn’t have come up with as much variety during the period as I did, nor would I have completed each day’s writing as quickly as I did had I not used those master plots. I would have struggled more to get the first scene down. Even still, when I read this book years ago I didn’t connect with many of the plots. I saw them as different stories—mostly unique—sure . But I didn’t then and don’t now recognize them all as master plots. For that designation I’d think I would feel an immediate sense of rightness about each; I’d gasp and say out loud, “Yes. Yes, of course. So obvious.”

Next month should be fun. I’ll have this first month under my belt and I’ll maybe give better thought to the plots I choose, better than, “Next?” This month, I’ll reacquaint myself with the plot checklist and analyze some of these plots to see where I went astray or fell short. Maybe I’ll take one and fill in the gaps a bit. Who knows?

I’m approaching my sesquiseptcentennial (only a partially made up word) and feel like I should do something special that day. But maybe that’s too much enthusiasm for numerology?

439 words on day 647