arrival

We arrived in Oaxaca at 11:35 AM today. Yeah. It was upper 70s with a nice breeze.

And I finally got to meet the other workshop participants. We had the first meeting with our facilitator and received out first official "homework" assignment. It is a diverse and interesting group of women. It did not have to be all women - it just turned out that way. There was a guy originally scheduled, but he had to back out.

I am here. My luggage is here. Everything is well!

new lesson in patience

We're still in Houston. Our flight to Oaxaca this morning was canceled, reason unknown. (Weather was cited, but it was clear and totally dry here - all signs of last night's snow gone. Oaxaca was clear and sunny and 80 degrees.)

But tonight we're in a hotel in Houston. No, not at the expense of Continental Airline; they did provide a voucher for a discount on a hotel room (we got one for $59).

The new plan is to leave at 9 AM and fly into Mexico City, from there transfer to a partner airline and go to Oaxaca. We should arrive by 4 PM.

I will write a letter to the airline after we get home. There are several issues I want to address with them. But, for now, the agents at the airport could not address these issues, I still have a week left on this trip and most of the workshop (and the facilitator is in the hotel room next door), and I don't want to spend my time being bitter.

I am still away from home. I am still away from work. I still have the option to relax. I will get to Oaxaca.

And I was able to work on a story. And finish the book I was reading and start another.

Patience. I *can* relax now and I *will* get to my destination. Different than how I had it planned, but we will get there.

flight to sun cxld due to snow

...more to come...

Right now we're stopped in Houston, where it is snowing. Our flight was canceled because by the time our plane got through the line to be de-iced and on our way, the Oaxaca airport would be closed. In Oaxaca today it was sunny and near 85 degrees.

Right now waiting to see when the airline can get us there tomorrow - IF. They normally don't fly to Oaxaca on Thursday.

So-

...more to come...

And the writing workshop starts tomorrow. But the facilitator, Ariel Gore, is here in Houston; she was on the same flight.

a new threshold

That is where I think I am standing. I have worked emotionally and spiritually to integrate creativity and exercise and - I guess - I have those down. In theory. When I remember. No really, I do - I am just not perfect. That was the personal work I was doing before integrating creativity and self-care through exercise -- or maybe the project before that -- to not strive to be perfect because, well, I'm not and we can't.

So here I am, again. On a new threshold. Except I am not sure where I am heading and do not have a vision of what lies ahead on the road. Roads, excuse me - there is not one road, I know. I need to pause a few minutes or hours and rest. And think. And just listen.

So here I sit at the computer when I should be asleep because the cab will be arriving in 3 1/2 hours to whisk me away to the airport. Once I arrive at my destination (tomorrow night), I will have the time I am craving to rest and think and pay attention to what is around and within.

This is not the post I intended to write - but here you go.

Beginnings do not require endings. Beginnings do require mindfulness and a willingness to go along.

I am willing. And I do need to get a little bit of sleep to be able to get through the airport security. Then I can catch up on my sleep and my reading and the beginnings of resting on the planes and the layover tomorrow.

So I will end this little ramble of thoughts. My next post will be from Oaxaca, Mexico.

freedom tastes like...

... mango hearts on a stick...

Today at 11 pm I finished my final job before vacation begins in a couple days. Well, a writing workshop-vacation. My only task while I am there is to sleep, meet with the other writers and our wonderful person-writer-facilitator Ariel Gore, write, sleep more, see art, see ruins, and did I say sleep. Oh, and relax. I do have a couple of personal appointments tomorrow -- but no jobs. So I don't have to wear only solid colors and have no opinions and be neutral for the greater part of my day. I can be, well, Me, in full living color and opinion laden.

photograph from Zoe Bigley
(it is not me *smile*)

* QUESTION: What does freedom taste like for you? *

returning to the work

By which I mean the work of writing.

The work of working to earn money to pay the mortgage and feed the cats and buy toilet paper is the work I have to do. And I am not complaining - I have work which pays the bills; not everyone does right now and the lay-off statistics for November were staggering. But I realized that I scheduled a heavy week last week because I felt I needed to make up for working a little less in November; and, yes, I am lucky that I have that option. And I accepted extra assignments for a heavy week the week of Xmas - in the name of making up for taking a week off to go to a writing workshop.

Yes, a writing workshop. For which we were given a pre-assignment I have not yet completed. Started: yes; completed: no.

My NaNo novel is staying with me. And, funny thing, while I was cleaning out my laptop bag to take on the trip, I came across some notes about the novel. It must have been about three-quarters into the story, based on what I read. Some of it happened, some of it did not. What is interesting to me is some ideas I had about where the story was going. As I read them tonight, I thought, "hmm - that's a good idea" or "what an interesting alternative to what I wrote in the first go 'round." Reading them I realized that I will be able to edit the 59.000+ words because there is more than one way it could have been written.

Which I knew.

And which I was just reminded of by my own hand, tonight.

Photograph by Serena Davidson
from online gallery of Performers

WRITING PROMPTS:
(a) I was lifted by ....
(b) The shifting light brought in to view...

sense of accomplishment and what's next

As I promised myself (after I reread the reminder in "No Plot, No Problem"), I am taking a little time away from the novel. I do, however, have a new writing assignment. And, as much as I hate to admit it, having an assignment is generally an asset to me actually following through and writing. Not always a requirement, but it does get my "butt in chair" as someone - I can't remember who - calls it, for the purpose of writing.

The new assignment is not mandatory, but a suggestion to do before the writing workshop I will be attending next week in Oaxaca. Yes, Mexico - or Oaxaca, Oaxaca in Mexico if I were to be more accurate.

I just read Chris Baty's (the founder of NaNoWriMo) post about the post-nano blues. I guess I planned for that in advance without even knowing it: a trip to a warmer climate for a writing workshop seems like just what's needed to stave away the blues just a little longer. I am also thinking about either starting the editing process while I'm down there, or holding off until I get back home. Because I will be writing more while I'm there -- that is the point, after all!

For now, off to bed soon. I am still catching up from the November novel writing excitement and time and I - in my usual manner - overscheduled myself this week for work, since I was working lighter the last four weeks so I could write. I forgot to build in a little break in between ending the novel and starting back up to my usual level of work. So - I don't have anything until 11:00 tomorrow morning and think I will take this opportunity to get a little extra sleep.

Watch for my post about the "new play festival" which will be happening here in Portland. I love it that Portland is such a theater town.

Picture of the Casa Colonial
in Oaxaca, Oaxaca

The End - with a sigh of satisfaction

I completed the story last night. It was all by hand, so today I had to type it into the rest of the novel - what I had completed by the end of NaNoWriMo on Sunday 11/30 (56,001 words!).

I am very satisfied with the ending. I could not have planned it out as smooth as it was written. This has truly been a humbling and exhilarating and challenging experience. I have had to just open up to the creative flow, knowing that not everything is what I would think it could be and that editing will need to be done. (Big duh on the last one, right?!) On Sunday, as I was working on something else I had to do, I could not imagine how the novel would come together in anything that was not utter forced nonsense. And just now I finished typing up what I feel is a very appropriate and plausible end to the journey the story took me on - and I hope will take others on, once I have time to work out the issues and rawness.

What a wonderful experience November was.

And I wrote 59,199 words in 31 days!

the stats

Okay, so I have to do one more (at least - hehehe) NaNoWriMo post. Just when you thought I was through with it! Here are the statistics from the NaNoWriMo website with total word count and more - amazing! (Visit the linked website for even more fun stats!)

This year, we had 119,301 authors sign up for NaNoWriMo. That's a 17.5% bump in turn-out from 2007, when we had 101,510 writers.

Of everyone registered, 21,683 of us won. That's an 18.2% win rate. If you throw out the first two years of NaNoWriMo win rates as too small to be statistically significant (in 1999 NaNoWriMo had 21 participants, and in 2000 we only had 140), you can see that we just hit an all-time high in percentage of winners. Woot!

On the collective word-count front...Together, we wrote 1,519,501,005 words. That's a 28% increase over last year, when we reached 1,187,931,929 words.

I'll be posting another blog entry this week to help all of us better grasp what 1,519,501,005 words means to humanity, and whether that many words would actually weigh more than a grocery store filled with donkeys (early results point to yes).

The top 10 wordiest regions this year were…
1) Seattle
2) Maryland
3) Germany and Austria
4) Los Angeles
5) Holland and Belgium
6) Chicago
7) Twin Cities (MN)
8) New York City
9) Portland, OR
10) London