According to some of the things I’ve read, one of the most enjoyable parts of NaNoWriMo is the sense of community and the pleasure of sharing the experience with other WriMos in the area. Perhaps I’m missing out. I know I haven’t talked much about NaNoWriMo this year – not on the blog and not to many people IRL either. Still, it was an interesting experience for me, and I’m proud to say that I’ve managed another 50K words of utter rubbish in under 31 days. No, you will never see any of it.

If I’m feeling honest I would admit that I had a much more detailed plan this year, and that the result of that was a marginally better story than last year’s story. That makes sense. At least this year when I hit 50K words, I still felt like the story was going somewhere. It’s not done yet, the story, I mean, but there are so many other things to do in the world, I’m not sure if I want to finish it, or just declare victory and move on.

I had a harder time finishing this year than last year, that’s for sure. I had thought that planning a relaxing trip to Hawaii would give me plenty of time to type away, but instead, it was harder to make the decision to write rather than explore, and by week three, I was at a huge deficit. More than anything else, this year taught me that I will probably never write a publishable book. When I think of the time investment that author friends have put into a single work – I get the itch to go snorkeling, surfing, hiking, skiing, just about anything. This exercise certainly gives you some appreciation for the sweat and determination that goes into creating books.

Speaking of books, I’m dying to tell you about a book that hasn’t come out yet, but which I’m really looking forward to. Now that I’m done with the WriMo stuff, it will soon have a post all its own, but in the meantime, check out author, Greg Crouch’s blog about China’s Wings, the pilots who flew over (through, really) the Himalaya during WWII. Tom and I got to hear a preview of some of these stories over dinner one day years ago at Hans’ Basecamp, and given the teasers in the blog, I can’t wait to get my hands on the published result!

I had the good fortune, a few months ago, of running into Lynne Joiner, an Emmy-award winning journalist and author who was visiting Yosemite and had the kernel of an idea to write a story about the people living and working in Yosemite after stumbling across one or two employees with an interesting history. She told me about her idea, and I told her I thought it was a wonderful subject. She’d just finished writing a book, Honorable Survivor, and planned to spend the next months traveling and promoting it, but thought she might return to the idea in November. Well, it’s November, and she’s just finished another quick trip to Yosemite during which she stopped in and met with me briefly, rekindling my own excitement for the idea.

There are so many interesting people living in Yosemite, from all backgrounds and walks of life, who are assembled in Yosemite because of what Yosemite is, and because of the love of the place. I’ve already started contacting a few of the people I know who have interesting stories, and I hope the project will continue to grow. There are the legendary people in the park, of course, the Julia Parker types. But Lynne admitted that she was as interested (maybe even more interested) in the stories of the housekeeping staff than in the stories of the executive teams. NPS is conducting an oral history project, that I know far too little about, but is probably an amazing source of stories about people. NPS is interested in how the perception of Yosemite has changed over time, and have been interviewing people with a long history of the park for their “I Remember Yosemite” project, which is also fascinating, but this book could also be a different beast, something more inspirational that sets your mind to wandering through possibilities. What happens when where you are becomes more important than what you do to earn money? Maybe it would be start to expand the conversation Po Bronson started in his book, “What Should I Do With My Life?” beyond merely what one should do in terms of a career, as Tom suggested all those years ago. Who knows?

There is so much potential there. It’s set my mind spinning – who else should be in Lynne’s book?

Of course, it isn’t a book yet. It’s not even almost a book – she still has to pitch the whole idea to her agent, so who knows if anything will come of it. But I’ll keep my fingers crossed, and hope for at least a few teaser articles about some of the people who make this place such an interesting community.

It’s a cold almost-November day, 40 deg and raining, and everywhere I looked this morning, there were photographers, with their big cameras on tripods set up next to the road, wearing their rain gear and happily snapping away. Serious photographers are a unique bunch here – it’s like they bloom when the skies turns dark and cloudy, the rain starts to fall, and other people are grousing about the awful weather. But it’s easy to understand why. The clouds and fog skirting the big cliffs make them seem that much more majestic and mysterious. And no one, not even Ansel Adams, has seen just exactly this play between the clouds and the light. Heaven.

My own morning’s photographic exploits were more modest, and more furtive. There was a tiny dusting of snow at the top of our neighborhood this morning, hanging in the changing leaves along the side of the road, and I stopped to snap a photo out of my car window. (The visitors might stop randomly in the middle of the road for deer or bear, but me, I stopped for a couple of snowflakes. I need to remember to be more patient when others see something photogenic. But, for the record, I did check behind me to make sure I wasn’t on a blind corner, took only 2 quick snapshots and was moving again before anyone else came up behind me.) Snow on the ground. Ski season is coming up fast.

Over breakfast, I read Tom’s copy of TUNA News, by a nordic ski group out of Utah. Lord knows why we get their publication – something Tom did at some point. There is new ski gear in the catalogs we receive daily in the mail, and I’m contemplating new AT boots to go with the big plans I’m making for this ski season. I’m always excited about snow, but this year I’m preparing for long weekends in the high country, in Tahoe, or if I’m really ambitious, over on the East Side. October 22nd was my 4th Boulder Day, and it seems like a long time, but I finally feel like I’m in the position to get back into ski shape. The first few years after the boulder event, I just didn’t feel like I could take the pounding, and last year there were so many house projects that we didn’t seem to be able to find the time. This year, everything is coming together.

I’m now on day 20 of my new fitness program, and already starting to see some results. I’ve lost some weight overall – just a couple of pounds – but between fat loss and muscle gain, I can see some significant differences in the way that my body looks, and those pants that were getting too small are starting to feel comfortable again. Most importantly, I’m feeling stronger than I have in a long time. Years. Long enough that I’d forgotten what it was like, and what it’s like, is good.

The program I’m on is only 30 days long, and so I’m shopping for a new program. I checked out the Mountain Athlete program because, that seems pretty sport-specific. Lots of functional movement and sport-specific exercise. Tom mentioned a guy named Eric Cressey who is well-known for building strength. Tom also thinks that between us, we know enough that I could probably design something good for me without spending a bunch of money – which is certainly true – but for some reason, I work out a lot harder when I’m on someone else’s program. So, I’m still shopping (and taking recommendations if anyone has them), but committed to finding something in the next few weeks.

A serious program might have to wait until after our vacation to Hawaii though. Can you believe it? After years of planning mountain vacations and family vacations, Tom and I are finally headed to the beach, just the two of us. Running on the beach, surfing?, hiking near Haleakala, exploring the Road to Hana, resting, reading, and relaxing. I’m looking forward to the change of pace.

The other new season that is just around the corner is NaNoWriMo. Last year, not only did I finish the challenge of writing 50K words during the month, not only did I enjoy spending hours typing up a story that no one will ever read, I also managed to learn something in the process. Naturally, I’m excited to do it again this year. November is only two days away.

Lots of new things starting for me. New season. New fitness level. New commitment to play. New exercise program. New NaNoWriMo challenge. Life is good.

The great thing about books, real live paper and ink books, is that in addition to sitting on your shelves collecting dust, sometimes they call out to you, to just take a quick peak inside, for old times sake, or to jog your memory a little bit. When you listen to them, sometimes there’s a forgotten treasure waiting for you.

I don’t remember now for sure which book it was that I pulled off the shelves of the Valley apt. bookshelves. I want to say that it was the book about writing short stories, which would make sense since I’ve been listening to many of the New Yorker Fiction Podcasts lately, and have been thinking about short stories. But, whichever book it was, I was pleased to find some interesting reading, and something else.

Back in December of 2008, we got a wonderful Xmas present from two very dear friends of ours – a jar of homemade Elberberry jam and a card that went with it, lovingly prepared and shared with us. The jam is long gone, but the card – the card survived in a book about short stories. And it was wonderful, nearly 2 years later, to find it, and be reminded again of the card-creators-jam-makers that made them both.

The Card always brings a smile to my face. The inside reads:

“Wild Organic Naturally-grown and ripened Elderberries Hand-Harvested in the Woodchuck Country of the Southern Sierra at the Peak of their Flavor; Refined Natural evaporated cane juice from Environmentally tilled tropical plantations cultivated by Happy, Documented Legal Immigrants paid a Fair Living Wage (but a wage that does not support large families which would contribute to the problem of overpopulation over-taxing the Planet’s Resources); Dextrose and Citric Acid produced by Caring Chemical Engineers who are Members of Union of Concerned Scientists, using lab apparatus – made only from 100% recycled and certified “Cradle-to-Cradle” technology and materials; and Sustainably Harvested, Naturally-Aged Fruit Pectin from Old-Growth pectin groves.

Our unique, Special Issue October 2008 Vintage of Hoffman Mountain Wild Elderberry Jam commemorates five consecutive years of high-standard first ascents on the southern escarpment of Hoffman Mountain on the western slope of the High Sierra. Nourished by plentiful organic fertilizers (Bears are common in the area), harvested beside the Little Rancheria Trail by itinerant adventurers, gently simmered with love to the peak of perfection in the charmingly quaint stone-hearth Country Kitchen of the Old Climbers’ Home in Mill Valley, California, these Elderberries are guaranteed to bring a wild reminiscence of tumultuous Sierra Autumn Sunrises to your family’s table.”

And that is why digital books, for all their convenience, are not as good as regular books.

I know, everyone else starts this game in January, but now it’s May, which is really a time of beginning things, and I can’t even remember if I made New Year resolutions, much less what they might be, so I’m starting again with a couple of goals for myself.
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I finished!

During the month of November, I and more than 32,000 other people around the world each completed 50,000 words of fiction. This was just over 19% of the people who signed up. Collectively, according to the NaNoWriMo stats, the word count of everyone who participated and uploaded their writings to the NaNo web site is 2,427,190,537. That’s a lot of words.

It literally took me years to decide to take the NaNo challenge. Tom and I picked up the No Plot? No Problem by Chris Baty a long time ago during one of our random book store wanderings. It’s a fun book, and it suggests all kinds of fun indulgences you can expect to treat yourself to during your novel writing month – like a handy stack of snacks next to your writing spot (for energy), getting your spouse to do the dishes, etc. It also promises strange and crazy things like, if you write enough, your characters will start to do unexpected things. I wanted to know how that worked.

Only a few days before November, I was thrutching through a list of possible ideas for a novel, with no particularly appealing prospects, when Tom suggested that I write about a society that doesn’t sleep. He’d started a short story along those lines some time ago, although he had little more than a character and a set up.

I took that idea and over the course of a month developed it into a dreadful, going nowhere story with flat characters who I ultimately didn’t like that much. It’s not that the idea didn’t have potential, (I still think it does) but hey, I haven’t written any fiction in years, if I ever have, and it sucked. That’s OK, and I learned a lot.

I learned that a 50K word novel isn’t really that long, and I shouldn’t have been afraid of running out of story before I hit my goal. I learned that it’s easy for me to make things difficult for my characters. I enjoy it. I learned that I have a nasty habit of qualifying my speech/writing – as in “I learned that I might have a tendency to qualify my speech/writing a little” – which is great for word count, but makes for crappy writing. And I also learned that they weren’t kidding. My characters really did start to do some unexpected things. It works like this: you have this idea for what you think your character is going to do in the next scene, but by the time you get around to writing it, you realize that he/she would actually respond in a completely different way. So, then off you go, shooting down some previously unplanned avenue. It was wonderful.

For the most part, I held off on the snacks, but I did reap the benefits of having my spouse take over many of the household chores… I mean the ones that he usually does anyway. I’m generally terrible at domestic chores. Have I mentioned before that I’m crazy lucky that I married Tom?

So, now that I’m done, I’ve decided to simply close the door on that particular story. No, you can’t read it. I still like the idea, and maybe certain elements will find their way into other NaNo projects in the future, but this particular effort falls into the burn-it-now category. I’m not committing to doing this again next year in any way, but I also wouldn’t say for certain that I would wait a whole year before starting up some other little story. As experiments and projects go, this one was sheer fun.

There. I did it. I pushed the little sign up button on the NaNoWriMo page and now I’m basically committed to writing a 50,000 word novel next month. Hoo boy.

Part of me is really excited about the challenge, and another part is wondering what the hell the first part is thinking. First of all, it’s not like I don’t have plenty of other projects on the table, or more productive things that I could be doing with my time. Second, 50K is a really big number. Big enough that I can’t really picture it in my head. Third, I’m taking a week off in November to attend a conference, and I’ll be too busy absorbing conference stuff during that week to write much, so I’m already missing a quarter of the time that people have to write. I went to the NaNo forum, and unlike (it seems) many of the people posting there, I don’t feel compelled to write all the time (unless you count journaling, and I don’t). I don’t have a story bursting inside me that needs to be told. In fact, I don’t relate to ANY of the items on the “Are you a serious writer” thread. “Would rather write a scene with two main characters having sex than have it” – are you NUTS?

Wait, what is this about?

National Novel Writing Month is a challenge to devote the time to write 50K words that all point in the same direction. 50K words amounts to a short novel, but apparently, it’s a good goal to shoot for. According to the website, last year, in 2008, they had an all-time high completion rate of 18%, of a total of 119,301 participants from around the world, so it’s difficult, but not impossible. There’s a website where you can enter your word-count, and if you make it to 50K, you win. There aren’t any big prizes on the table, so even though it would be impossibly easy to cheat, there isn’t really any point to it. It’s all about personal satisfaction. And bragging rights, if you’re into that.

That said, I was surprised to find out that the National Best-Seller, Water for Elephants, started out as a NaNoWriMo novel, and the media kit has a decent list of published authors who participate. With nearly 120K participants last year, and growing, at least I have a lot of company in this craziness.

So, why am I doing this?

Well…

Tom and I picked up the No Plot? No Problem! book a few years ago, and there were two things about the event that caught in my head, and have been rubbing around in there since then. The first is: that it’s all about word count, not quality. No one ever has to see what I’ve written (don’t even bother asking to see it – the answer is no), so it’s a great opportunity to try to shake my somewhat overactive personal editor and just type. That sounded like an interesting exercise. You could even take it as personal development, if you wanted to.

The second thing is that these writers talk about having characters come to life and direct the story. That seemed like an interesting experience too. One that might be fun to have.

That’s it. I’m not sure that these two things make up for the vast array of reasons to do something else with my time in November, but I pushed the little button. I might as well enjoy the ride.

One of the odd consequences of living in Yosemite, and also of being part of the marketing department, is that my face seems to keep showing up in funny places. I get a chuckle out of it, usually. Part of me is certainly flattered at the attention, but it’s also hard not to be self-critical.

As part of a photoshoot I participated in while I was working at the Mountaineering School, my picture was taken while I was hiking – or pretending to hike, rather – out on Old Big Oak Flat Road with El Capitan in the background. That image, for a short time, graced the cover of the activity brochure, and is now on the front of several Pepsi vending machines. My Pepsi machines, my friends tell me, are in the Village Garage, at Housekeeping Camp and maybe some other locations. Unfortunately, I’ve never really liked that picture of myself, and it’s a little disconcerting to run into such a big image of myself. I’m glad that the two machines in front of our offices have pictures of other people.

While at YMS, I also had a chance to go snowshoeing with Tom Stienstra, an outdoor columnist for the SF Chronicle, TV personality and guidebook author. Between that and his continued close relationship with Kenny, who now works only 15 feet from me, he recently decided to publish a story about me in the Chronicle. It is a story about the accident I was in nearly 3 years ago, and my subsequent recovery. It was interesting to work with an experienced journalist and storyteller, and to see the process that he went through in terms of preparing for an interview and then writing a story. Unfortunately, the online article generated a bunch of pretty negative comments, which I thought were either petty, immature, uninformed or a combination of the three, but they still left a bad taste in my mouth.

Some nice things have happened as a consequence of that story too. One was that another writer, Bill Katovsky, who is working on a book entitled Return to Fitness, contacted me about putting a short sidebar about me in his upcoming book. Again, I had the opportunity to witness the writing process of a professional author. The methods and styles of the two men are very different, but each time I was amazed to see the sometimes subtle, sometimes sweeping influence on the story I would have told, making it more dramatic and/or fleshing out details.

Another thing that surprised me was that someone who had recently been in an accident and had injuries similar to mine contacted me to find out about my experience with recovery. I was happy to report to him that so many of my issues have gotten better over the years. But most interestingly, to me, was the number of old friends who got back in touch with me after reading the article. Reconnecting with them gets me thinking about other phases of my life, and the cool people I’ve met.

I’ve gotten back in touch with some friends over the last year, since my sister-in-law, nieces and nephew convinced Tom and I to get Facebook accounts. Facebook is kind of a strange service. On Facebook, I am friends with old High School classmates that I hadn’t been that close to, even then, and co-workers that I rarely interact with in real life. And when it comes to HS friends, the day-to-day updates don’t seem to come close to filling in 20 years of radio silence. Still, I love it. I love getting little messages about what people are doing – just random news and noise from their days.

And then there are the actual conversations! I just got back in touch with my orchestra teacher from high school and she reminded me that at one point I was upset that my dad wouldn’t let me get a job. “School is your job”. I don’t remember that at all. School is an awesome job. Getting to hang out and learn things all day – I wish I’d been more appreciative when I was younger. I wonder what else I’ve forgotten.

I wonder if some day I’ll stumble back across this post and think back. Oh yeah, remember those silly Pepsi machines with my picture on them? Those were the grand old days in Yosemite.

I’ve been thinking about storytelling lately – to the point that I’m ready to commit to writing a NaNoWriMo novel in November (although who knows how committed I’ll be by the time November actually rolls around). So, I was especially interested when a conversation with an accomplished film-maker turned to story archetypes.
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There are a lot of amazing TED talks out there at this point, but this has got to be one of my favorites. Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of the best-selling book Eat, Pray, Love, shares a new perspective on the creative process that goes back to the Greeks and Romans. It’s the idea that the creative energy comes from Somewhere Else – a creative daemon or genius that comes to work with the artist on her projects. She talks about how this idea helps her to approach her writing with a more positive and healthy mental outlook and tells us incredible stories of the creative process of the poet Ruth Stone. It’s only 18 minutes long. Watch it.