the inner editor

So, I got a pep-email from the NaNoWriMo folks, which sums up pretty well a good bit of the thoughts going through my head about why I feel like abandoning the silly thing I'm doing:

... because our stories are really, really bad, and we're wondering why we're sacrificing so much of our time to produce a consistently crappy book.

It all adds up to the fabled Week Two Wall---a low-point of energy, enthusiasm, and joie de novel that strikes most NaNoWriMo participants between days 7 and 14. This is when our inner editors, who largely turned a blind eye to our novel flailings in Week One, return to see how things are going. And their assessments are never kind.

The plot is draggy. The characters are boring. The dialogue is pointless, and the prose has all the panache of something dashed off by a distracted kindergartner.

I guess then, back to the keyboard with a vengance this weekend. Until then, I'll leave you with my excuse for not posting more than I have (besides becoming self conscious, unusual for me I know, but true!). In my serect life as an urban forester I have an alter ego known to elementary school children as the Tree Lady. The Tree Lady was busy this week teaching classes about the forest we live in, the forest we plant and take care of in the city. The Tree Lady forgets that you're supposed to raise your hand before you answer a question, gives out hugs and high-fives, and has real tree cookies sliced from real trees that you can see and count the rings from the tree and find out how many years it lived.

The Tree Lady finished her busy week this morning by planting trees with the kids at their school. When the kindergarteners were told they were planting trees today, they thought they would watch a video of tree planting. In reality they got to come out to the playground and see a living two-inch-caliper Burr oak be taken out of its pot, and see how very fine and tiny roots are, how they feel hairy, and how rough the bark is (because it is tough to protect the tree, like a knight's armor ;). The fourth graders posed for a picture with their teachers (say: "trees") as they grabbed shovels to fill in the soil around their Linden. Of course, most sixth graders are far to cool to be interested in such things as what roots feel like -- though, the tough guys shovel dirt with gusto and the girls are very conscientious and a few young ladies this morning stayed to work extra and planted the third grade's tree for them.