posts tagged ‘live experiments’

  1. Marina’s Painting– NaNoWriMo Day Four

    November 4, 2011 by Lidia-Anain

    This post is the fourth post in a four post series, if you haven’t read Day One’s entry you can do that here.

    *** Note *** This post is part of a live experiment. I’m making an attempt to complete NaNoWriMo; the goal is to finish a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. Instead of just writing 1667 words a day and letting it sit on my computer I thought why not share with my readers the first few days of this process. Which leads me to this statement…

    …This is unplanned & unedited writing…

    …This process scares me and excites me. Let’s see where it goes…

    Marina

    Chapter Four

    Afternoon of July 25, 2011

    Several hours after passing out from exhaustion on the chaise in my studio I woke up feeling extremely refreshed. I hadn’t slept like that in months. Not one thought ran through my head as I slept. The peaceful sleep allowed me to regain the strength I had lost while I slept the night before. My batteries felt fully charged as I sat up, but it wasn’t until I looked over at the canvas I had focused on before falling asleep that I felt a full charge of electricity run through me. It had been a blank canvas when exhaustion had taken me out earlier but now, there was Marina, my grandmother, painted in all her glory on the canvas with the most lush wilderness of reds, yellows and oranges behind her. I looked down at my hands and sure enough they were stained with colors. I found myself energized by my own madness. Unafraid that I was back to my old tricks of painting during blackouts. Was I ready to see the part of myself that I had run from all these years – the “it” that I had inherited from her?

    I rose from my resting spot, walked towards the window and looked out at all the beauty nature offered. The colors, the shapes, the depth, the contours, the movement, and the energy that I saw outside my window – could I give all that up? Would I give that all up? “It” was going to overtake me just like “it” had once overtaken my grandmother slowly bringing down the curtain on all the colors, the shapes, the depth, the contours, the movement, and the energy that her life had once been. Once “it” took over her life faded to black so that she could truly see. As a feeling of emptiness began to grab hold of my soul, I remembered how that one passage in The House on Mango Street would always help me cry then would set me right.  I walked over to my wall of books in my studio to look for it. (more…)

    Filed Under: prose & fiction | Tagged: , ,

  2. Marina Sees Her – NaNoWriMo Day Three

    November 3, 2011 by Lidia-Anain

    This post is the third post in a four post series, if you haven’t read Day One’s entry you can do that here.

    *** Note *** This post is part of a live experiment. I’m making an attempt to complete NaNoWriMo; the goal is to finish a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. Instead of just writing 1667 words a day and letting it sit on my computer I thought why not share with my readers the first few days of this process. Which leads me to this statement…

    …This is unplanned & unedited writing…

    …This process scares me and excites me. Let’s see where it goes…

    Marina

    Chapter Three


    Morning of July 25, 2011

    I looked down at my right hip, there was a fat mosquito feasting on me where just a little fleshy skin was exposed. It was busy enjoying a hearty meal when I quickly slapped my hip delivering death to it. I was partially grossed out by how the blood made my skin look sick but I was glad that unlike the fleas in my nightmare this fly I could control. What a nightmare? I had to push it out of my mind. What was going on inside of me that I had lost my sense of center? Yesterday had been a great day right up until that moment when I sat down with my cup of coffee. Yes, that time of day always was when I usually needed to medicate but one day of missing my medication had never caused this much upheaval in my life?

    Shaving my hair bald? I hadn’t done something that self-loathing since the time I tried to overdose on diet pills. That was truly a time when I had nothing of my own to fall back on. Recently dropped out of college, my boyfriend of two years telling me he was moving out of our townhouse, and work at the hospital was becoming unbearable on the night shift working with two people that knew absolutely nothing. That was a dark time in my life and when I had found Dr. Wesley; she spent two years helping me find my normal. I was a perfectly balanced woman when I met Erik and he was the perfect addition to my life with his kindness, humor and patience. He was the Valium to my Cocaine – yeah, not the Ying Yang analogy most people use when describing their relationships. He literally was Valium that calmed my Cocaine like soul down helping me suppress my inner demons for the last ten years. That’s exactly why had I no idea what caused me to even think that I had nothing of my own in my life? (more…)

    Filed Under: prose & fiction | Tagged: , ,

  3. Marina’s Nightmare – NaNoWriMo Day Two

    November 2, 2011 by Lidia-Anain

    This post is the second post of a four post series, if you haven’t read Day One’s entry you can do that here.

    *** Note *** This post is part of a live experiment. I’m making an attempt to complete NaNoWriMo; the goal is to finish a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. Instead of just writing 1667 words a day and letting it sit on my computer I thought why not share with my readers the first few days of this process. Which leads me to this statement…

    …This is unplanned & unedited writing…

    …This process scares me and excites me. Let’s see where it goes…

    Marina

    Chapter Two

    Dawn – July 25, 2011 

    The comforter covered my entire body but the heat “it” was producing inside of me was more than enough warmth especially that hot summer morning. My body was stiff from the run “it” had taken me on but the aches in my muscles were nothing compared to the pains in my heart. Restless isn’t strong enough to describe the sleep I had just woken up from. I don’t even want to think back on the dreams that ran through my mind last night. There couldn’t be a message in those horrible images. I lowered myself deeper into my covers wanting to escape from “it” and myself. I was in bed scared of “it” and disappointed in myself. Those images. Those horrible images I didn’t want to think back on wouldn’t stop replaying in my head.

    Nightmares start off like most things in life innocently enough without expectations or intentions then evolve. A sweet dream involving my mother, my husband, my sons and myself house hunting. You might think why would we be house hunting with my mother but that was something we had once done when the circumstances of life had forced us to live with mother. That had also been a dream that started out well and turned into a nightmare but it never was a haunted house of horrors. A beast of a house with ghosts of present and past foretelling what? My future?  (more…)

    Filed Under: prose & fiction | Tagged: , ,

  4. Marina Runs – NaNoWriMo Day One

    November 1, 2011 by Lidia-Anain

    *** Note *** This post is post of a live experiment. I’m making an attempt to complete NaNoWriMo; the goal is to finish a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. Instead of just writing 1667 words a day and letting it sit on my computer I thought why not share with my readers the first few days of this process. Which leads me to this statement…

    …This is unplanned & unedited writing…

    …This process scares me and excites me. Let’s see where it goes…

    Marina

    Chapter One

    Evening of July 24, 2011

    I looked outside through the sliding glass doors at the beautiful garden much of which I had planted with my own two hands. I thought about how not too long ago the red and yellow rose bushes weren’t even big enough to be noticed yet now they extended the length of the back fence. I rejoiced in the fact that my children had already settled down without me asking, the dishes from dinner were done and I would be able to enjoy dusk in my garden for once. That time of day always is when the woman inside me awakes with a smile followed by incessant dialogue. I slowly brought the cup of coffee to my lips as I stared at the two-story tall sunflower in the neighbor’s yard. I swore that the face of the sunflower was mocking me. I took a long sip from my coffee before I headed upstairs to answer what the voice in my head had asked. (more…)

    Filed Under: prose & fiction | Tagged: , ,