Jennifer Melzer's Blog

Time distorts even the greatest legends, making them soft and malleable, turning them into doddering, soft old men who pamper children that bribe them toward kindness with milk and cookies. And though Odin reveled in his role as Jul Father, taking great pleasure in the jolliness his very spirit brought to children of all ages, he never forgot his most important role: riding at the head of the hunt on Sleipnir, steel glinting in the moonlight and a legion of dead soldiers in his wake.

Ellorine’s dancing feet are a curse upon all who wear them, but first that curse fell upon Ellorine, though they say it was not entirely Ellorine’s fault.

It wasn’t her fault she flirted with Mayavar’s consort at the ball, anymore than it was her fault he flirted back, and when he asked her to dance, what was she supposed to do? Turn him down?

In a rage over the humiliating slight, Mayavar cursed Ellorine’s shoes while the pair swayed cheek to cheek across the dance floor, and when the song was done Ellorine danced her way right out of the ballroom.

She danced through the city, shuffled along the streets to a tune none but her could hear, then pirouetted straight through the front door and all around the cottage. She couldn’t sit down, anymore than she could stand still long enough to take off her shoes, and though she was frustrated and exhausted by the time the next morning came, she could not stop dancing no matter how hard she tried.

Day and night, night and day, Ellorine danced and danced until the painful blisters on her feet began to burst and bleed. She danced even as her muscles cramped and spasmed, and after her bones began to break, she stumbled and shuffled and tripped and flounced because no matter the agony she could not stop dancing.

When at last Ellorine died after thirteen straight days of dancing, the blood soaked shoes were taken from her feet and given as gift to Mayavar, who left them atop her consort’s tomb, a reminder to anyone else who might think to humiliate her.

Death played spectator to her sport, and she always felt him watching her, but they both knew the thrills she sought were far better temptations than the needle she used to sink into her arm. If Death was going to catch her, she wanted to embrace him like a lover and go down knowing she’d made the choice to live.

The people gathered around her body, awed and heartbroken, dumbfounded and silent. She’d been their protector and guardian since well before a good many of them were even born. They knew not who felled her, for none was brave enough to confess to committing a crime so dark and heinous the punishment would be far worse than death. The truth would out eventually; braggarts rarely kept such horrific triumphs quiet long, and when word got out whoever it was would be sorry they’d ever been born.


 


In the meantime, they would collect what they could from her body. Meat for eating, fat for oil, bones for needles and structures and weapons, scale and hide for armor. Not a single ounce of her would go to waste.


 


That was what she would have wanted–to strengthen and protect her children even in death.

And so she took back Excalibur, descending into the lake once more. She would sleep within the lake, guarding the greatsword until the next worthy king came to claim it, though she knew as she closed her eyes it would be hundreds of lifetimes before she woke again.

I was excited to do NaNoWriMo this year, but not excited enough to try to find a way to push through the storm of unexpected crap that decided to wreak havoc on my life near the start of week two. If you’ve been paying any kind of attention, you probably noticed I stopped updating around Day 5, and haven’t updated since.

There are any number of excuses I could offer. Swamped with work, overwhelmed by real life circumstances that ran rampant through my days and nights for a few days. My heart wasn’t invested in it enough to find a way to carry on. All of those excuses fit, and I’m sure they’re all valid to some extent, but the last one feels the tightest if I’m being completely honest.

I’ve tried to explain what I’m going through as a writer to the people I talk to writing about a few times, and I just haven’t been able to articulate it as well as I could because I can’t truly articulate it for myself. There’s a part of me that wants to tell a story, and I want to tell it so bad I can taste it, but I haven’t fully wrapped my head around the story I want to tell, so I can’t actually write it. I’m not getting any younger, so the pressure to write something… anything… is often incredibly high–and stressful–but like I said, I’m getting older by the day, so why would I waste time that can be spent doing other things I love trying to write something I’m just not feeling.

So, I will not be adding anymore NaNoWriMo posts at the this time, and unless I wake up at 3AM from some kind of earth-shattering eureka that convinces me I could write 50,000 words in 15 or 10 or even 5 days, I will probably not attempt to finish out the NaNoWriMo season. I’m okay with that for the first time. No guilt or self-abuse over it, just a sort of peaceful calm that I will write when I’m good and ready to write and not a moment before.

For those still out there writing, I’m rooting for you always. I hope you can finish your novel, or at least meet the 50K goal and feel good about what you’ve accomplished!

“Don’t give up,” Sissy said. She held out her offering to the old forest god, a part of her trembling inside, both in fear and anticipation. Every day, she’d come to encourage the god, to remind him that there were still people who not only believed, but needed for him to be real.


 


He didn’t reach out and accept her gift, he never did, but Sissy bent down and placed the flower on the alter between his legs.


 


“I’ll be back tomorrow,” she promised, and then she hopped down and skipped off through the cold, wet grass, occasionally kicking melted chunks of snow and watching them skid through the wakening blades.

What happened to day six, you ask? I should have posted my update yesterday, you say?

Well, you see, what happened was I only wrote 251 words on day six because I found myself busy doing other things that were equally important to me that took precedent. I’ve discovered a lot about myself as a writer recently, and one of the things I realized is that this process shouldn’t be harrowing and stressful on levels that make me unhappy. So, I didn’t stress over it because what will happen if I fall behind? Nothing, really. At least nothing harmful or life-altering or even all that stressful. I will either make it up and catch up, or I won’t, and that’s okay because I’m not doing NaNoWrimo to hurry up and write as many junk words as possible over the next remaining 23 days. I’m participating because I want to reestablish the daily habit of writing in my life and remember why I started writing in the first place over thirty years ago.

I mostly know the answer. I started writing because I love stories. I especially love telling them, and while it’s nice to make money with the stories I tell, it’s even nicer to feel good about them.

So, I wrote yesterday. I didn’t meet my projected goal, but I still wrote, and right now that’s the real goal for me.

Here we are, five days in, and I’m still going strong, though today felt like a bit of a slog. I sat down this afternoon to get my writing done and it felt like it took forever just to write a thousand words. I managed to make my personal goal, though I didn’t surpass it nearly as much as I have been the last couple days. Today’s final word count was 1,769, and I’m just about done with chapter four.

My total NaNoWriMo word count at the end of Day 5 is 9,510. I still feel pretty good about what I’m writing, though I am still questioning the voice for my thirteen year old character. She’s been through some stuff, and that often hardens kids and matures them, but I find myself wondering how relative it will be to other thirteen year olds. Either way, I’m going to keep going, see where the story winds up when all is said and done.

Tomorrow night, I’m considering going to my very first write-in. Can you believe I’ve been doing NaNoWriMo for ten years and I’ve never been to a write-in? Social anxiety does that a person, but my favorite husband has to work, and I’ve got nothing more exciting to do yet, so I’m seriously considering it. I will keep you posted on what I decided, and if I go, I’ll write all about it on Thursday!

Hope you’re on the write track this NaNoWriMo season!

Four days in a row, and each one I’ve done slightly more than I did the day before, which is looking promising. I’m not judging what I’m doing right now… well, mostly. I’m just writing every day, which feels kind of nice. Every once in a while, I ask myself whether or not a thirteen year old girl would think this way or that way, if she would say something like that or act a certain way, then I think about myself at thirteen for a second and realize every thirteen year old is different and I can worry about it when I’m done with the first draft.

Today I managed to write 2,140 words, finishing off Chapter Three and launching into Chapter Four. There’s some Intriguing stuff going on, from the haunted painting causing a whole lot of creep to some serious nightmares that are giving even me, the writer, the creeps!

I think this is the first time in a long time I haven’t felt really pressured (by no one but myself, of course,) to perform and hurry up write, write, write, and do so much every single day like it’s some kind of competition that will destroy me if I don’t finish on top every single day. I’m just writing for the sake of writing, and that feels nice.

What has Day 4 brought to your keyboard?  Are you still on track? Have your characters surprised you at all? Has anything unexpected happened that you weren’t planning for? I’d love to hear all about your journey, so feel free to leave a comment to let me know how you’re doing.