Powering Up To Go ROW

It’s time for Round Two of the ROW80 challenge.  I’m looking forward to it with hesitant anticipation.  It seems like I never stopped.

That’s probably because I never did.  And no doubt neither did many of you.  We joined this challenge to help ourselves (learn to) live like writers.   We were tired of trying to race through month-long challenges that left us gulping air at the end of our participation.  We came to the ROW80 for the very reasons that Kait Nolan created the Round of Words, because we wanted to live through our writing career…  certainly enough to enjoy it.

This session, if I didn’t wait too long to get that post to Kait, I will be acting as a sponsor for fellow ROWers.  This new responsibility as well as my assessment of my successes and failures during the last round inspired me to pick less vague and (hopefully) more attainable goals, while ensuring that I am still urged to try more.

Tomorrow evening, I will post my goals for this Round of Words as well as my scheduling layout for this blog and my other page A Garden of Delights.  One of my goals for this round is to slowly merge these two blogs into one: A Garden of Possibilities.  It seems the most fitting, if a somewhat bad pun on my name.  But sometimes closing doors opens up a world of new opportunities.

For tonight though, I’m going to take a walk along one of the paths I have left free for trespass and see where it leads me.  Tonight, I am going to go to sleep and pretend this computer does not exist.  Tonight I’m going to peek into the shadows of my own stories and relax with them for no other purpose than to just enjoy myself.  I’m taking an evening off.

I invite you all to join me.  But if you want to stay up and meet some other ROWers (something I highly recommend you do on occasion) here is the linky where you find them.

Tuesday Snippet and Talk on a Walk

Sunday we went for a nature walk.  It seemed good way to ramp up our outdoorsy muscles for the hikes from our pre-parenting/pre-homeowner days.  And I had an added hope that it would boost my worldbuilding for CTSS.  I’ve been struggling to envision the trip from the Hastor estate Merris Freehold to the seaport city of Darshailia  for a while now.

George W. Vanderbilt Park in Greenville has a unique feature I needed to consider–stone walls.  Created from an old farm (originally known as Sherill House, that had long been owned by the Vanderbilt family…  [funny how their name keeps showing up in NYS history–even funnier the name Sherill, which invites embarrassing stories about a bus driver, motorcycles and midnight trips to Denny’s during the years I lived in Troy])…

Into the End, Last Words

I stood out on the deck a few minutes ago.  The sky, so very clear, was a liquid black… almost like the ink in my purple pens.  The stars were bright; I could see the shadowy edge of the Milky Way and a planet or two–Venus and Saturn I think, but I would need to check.  And the night peepers were singing their hearts out against the  unusual stillness.  Usually there are dogs barking, or neighbors’ trucks, or cars racing down the road…  even the occasional owl or coyote in the distance.

Instead, it was quiet.  Even with the songs of the peepers (be they tree frog, cicadas or crickets, I know not), the night feels silent.  Like a curtain falling…

I think that best describes my feelings right now as this round of ROW80 comes to an end.  The curtain falls…  The set is being cleared for Scene II, but no one wants to get up and head out for refreshments or to visit the restrooms.  We know it’s not a full intermission yet.

And so many questions are left to be answered.  What caused the hero to stray from his quest?  Will the maiden find her true love, and will they live happily ever after, despite the hero’s best attempts to woo her to his side instead?  Why does the little dog keep running away behind that sparkling barrier?

We hope for answers in the next Act, but we know in our hearts that they will be transitory.  Each answer leads up to a new question.  But we don’t mind either.  The process is where we find our pleasure, watching the chase, seeing the duelists en guard, even watching the weeping villain at the end…

So how did it go?

Great.  I’d like to say “great” at least, though as my last check-in proves, things weren’t perfect by any measure.  And I completely backslid these last few days on certain things, such as typing, so there is little to report were I so inclined.

I’m not anyway.

I’m just here, watching the curtain fall, a bit breathless…  Who knew that Act I would be so powerful, so energizing…  that every second would be spent at the edge of my seat wondering if perchance the great city would topple and the land be scorched raw by the carelessness of the marauders?

And now we know that all have survived, some a bit scathed by the experience, but stronger, more determined to go forth and conquer…

Now I sit in my seat, squirm just a bit because the cushion is sticking to my leg.   I wonder if I dare rummage through my purse for a peppermint and start to when someone a few aisles back coughs, dropping the bag to the floor and nearly spilling the contents into the darkness.   The lady next to me kindly joins me in my search for my belongings.  I thank her, and she smiles back.  We’ve all done this sort of thing at one time or another, I realize.  But I’m still horribly embarrassed by my foible.  Still, mint now in hand, I resume my seat…

Ready.

Eager.

Waiting for Act,…I mean, Round II to begin.

Until then…  read the playbook of characters here at the linky.