Novel Ideas

“I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be.”

Nevisian-American general, economist and politician, 1st United States Secretary of the Treasury,
Alexander Hamilton, was born on this day in 1755. (d. 1804)

I have yet to see Hamilton the Musical live on stage. I’ve seen the recorded version on the Disney Channel a couple of times. It’s not that I haven’t had the chance to see it live, it’s more that I’m not inclined to spent the equivalent of a car payment on tickets to one live performance. Any performance.

I mentioned the other day that I’m cleaning out and redoing my home office. It’s a dangerous process. Not because there are necessarily any physical dangers, it’s just all the stuff.

I’ll come across a box of show notebooks or props. Or memorabilia from a trip or two. I’ll find myself losing an hour or more going through said box instead of doing the work I need to be doing and eliminating half the contents.

I’m doing this in stages because it’s not just a one-day project.

Last weekend I came across a stack of notebooks. They’d been sitting on the shelf for some time.

Turns out they were the hard copies of my Nanowrimo projects over the years.

Nanowrimo is National Novel Writing Month. The challenge is to write at 50,000 word novel in the 30 days of November. I’ve attempted it on several occasions and succeeded on a few.

My current work in progress (well, work with not so much progress) is a combination of two of those Nanowrimo years. Finishing that draft is on my list of things to accomplish this year…as it has been for the past several years.

What I found in the stack of notebooks was half a dozen or so semi-completed manuscripts. I realized there’s some good stuff in there.

There’s also some crap.

The tricky part about Nanowrimo is that you have to keep writing. You’ll never make it if you go back and edit for the perfect word sequence.

That means some ideas are not well thought out and some are just garbage that you crank out just to hit the days count.

So, I have a supply of works in progress. That’s a nice resource to have.

But I also have several more children’s books in various stages of development, or not.

Will I complete a novel this year? Maybe.

Will I complete another children’s book this year? Yes, at least one.

And, I’ll keep going.

A writer’s job is to put words together. Sometimes they’re good ones.

Sometimes they make a finished project.

Sometimes the writer gets lost in old manuscripts and doesn’t get many words on paper that day.

And sometimes he spends too much time trying to write a clever blog post.

 

Available on Amazon.

Gray Gatherings

 

I wrote last week about my choice of three words for 2024. One of my words is flexible.

As I wrote, flexible not only in life’s schedule and events, but flexible in body.

Late in 2023, in the midst of five shows a night, six days in a row, my arthritis decided to flare up in my left knee. It’s always been there, as well as in my back, and hip, and…well, you get the idea.

This time it hit with a vengeance and I’ve been using a cane any time I have to walk much further than from my chair to the bathroom and back.

It’s not an injury, I don’t think. Just a flare up from too much use and not being in the shape to use it that way. It was also probably irritated by the white substances consumed since Thanksgiving. No, not snow or cocaine. Of course I’m talking about white sugar and white flour.

So, I’m doing a few things to recover. First is watching what I consume. That’s a challenge, but necessary, for the weight as well as the flexibility. I’m also back to doing a chair yoga routine and walking in the pool at least three times a week.

The pool is a challenge because the best time for me to get there is early in the morning and I just can’t quite bring myself to leave the house at 4:30. I have some morning routines and rituals that I don’t want to give up. And I’m not going to get up at 3:00 to do them.

Although Monday morning I was indeed wide awake at 3:00 a.m., which made it very hard to stay awake at 3:00 p.m.

I digress.

All that being said, whether it was necessary or not, I’ve been trying to get to the gym in the afternoons after work. Some afternoons are more equal than others.

Last Friday I had a work meeting offsite, so rather than heading back downtown, or plugging back into the laptop at home, I went to the gym to walk in the pool.

You’ve heard of the R.O.M.E.O. Club right?

Retired. Old. Men. Eating. Out.

Check out your local Hardee’s on any given morning.

True story. My wife and I were back in Kentucky for some event at our alma mater. We decided to grab breakfast at McDonald’s before heading back to campus. We got our meal, and found a table.

As we got up to leave, at least six older gentlemen got up and moved to “our” table. Apparently we had appropriated their regular meeting spot.

Again, I digress.

At the gym on Friday, I did my usual walking in the pool. I noticed, as I have on other weekday afternoons, that there were a lot of older gentlemen there.

Apparently that’s where the R.O.M.E.O club goes after Hardee’s.

I also noticed that I looked like I fit into their age demographic.

To be fair, most were probably a little other because they were officially retired. Although not that much older and my time is coming. If you know, you know.

In the hot tub, I overheard some of the conversation. These were regulars. They were talking about another regular who was recovering from some sort of surgery.

It was an Organ Recital.

That’s the term some of my friends and I use for the gathering of family, usually older family, who sit around and talk about their ailments and what medicines they are currently taking.

I realized there I was in the midst of them. Not out on the floor lifting weights or running the track. But limping my way between the pool and the hot tub.

I think I did myself a disservice last year. As I hit 65, I accepted it. I accepted the fact that I was, and am, an older American male. I think I let it make me old.

So that’s why I hiked less of the canyon that I would have liked, that’s why the arthritis flare up is taking more out of me now that in years past.

And that has to stop.

I shared my 2023 reading list last week. I asked for recommendations. I found this on my own, but thanks to Audible, I started listening to Dick Van Dyke’s Keep Moving: And Other Tips and Truths about Aging.

Van Dyke says:

I am a child in search of his inner adult, though the truth is that I’m not searching too hard. I don’t recommend anyone doing so. That is the secret, the one people always ask me about when they see me singing and dancing, whistling my way through the grocery store or doing a soft shoe in the checkout line. They say, “Pardon me, Mr. Van Dyke, but you seem so happy. What’s your secret?” What they really want to know is how I have managed to grow old, even very old, without growing up, and the answer is this: I haven’t grown up. I play. I dance with my inner child. Every day.

Maybe instead of accepting that I am, indeed, aging, I should let my inner child out a bit more.

Trust me, it comes out often enough to embarrass my children.

Flexible. That’s what I’m working on.

While recovering from this little flare up is taking longer than I like, I refuse to let it get me down permanently.

To paraphrase Dori, I’m just going to keep moving, just keep moving, just keep moving.

See you at Hardee’s.

Available on Amazon.