Shopping downtown; crawling inside the ex-gay mind

Photo: walking downtown, about 3:40 p.m.

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One of the things I hate about using the bus to get around town is that the drivers on my route tend to run early. They're not supposed to. There's a stop a few paces from my front door. The bus is scheduled to arrive at five minutes past and 25 minutes to the hour. Frequently I will step through the door precisely five minutes early, only to see the bus zooming past. I could call headquarters and they would make the driver turn around, but then I would have to face the surly cur. And by that time, what's the use? It's a waste of time for hundreds of other people depending on the buses to run on schedule.

The upside about missing the bus in good weather is that walking downtown isn't so bad, about 25 minutes if I follow the tracks. That's what I did today. One of the benefits of not having a car is I get more exercise.

One of the difficulties is planning. There is no bank machine convenient to where I live. There's one 20 minutes away, but I might as well go downtown where the shopping is. I rediscovered another small grocer there today; it used to be a produce market with a butcher next door, but they recently knocked a door between and expanded to carry dry goods, dairy and bakery products as well. Add to this the fact that we have an excellent bulk food store on the main drag, The Flour Barrel. I suspect I can nearly avoid ever shopping at the supermarket. If I have a grocery list ready every Thursday when I head downtown to deposit my cheque for the week, I can pick up all the bulk items and quirky groceries I can't buy at Angelino's. Of course these kinds of places always have their quirks. For example, the downtown grocer doesn't carry peanut butter, which means I'll probably have to buy it from the variety store across the street for some atrocious price, but I'm not a PB addict, so I'll survive.

The bulk food store is not as big as some, but specializes in grains and baking products. It carries the rye flakes and wheat flakes plus other ingredients I need for making granola cereal. It also offers the widest assortment of dried fruit I've seen anywhere. Walking up and down the store past bins of fruit and nuts, I contemplated starting some fruitcake. I better get on that.

And I discovered today: dried cantaloupe is delicious! A healthy snack to distract me from sweets. I heard melon doesn't contain many nutrients, but it's better than popping candy, and tastes just as good. A vegetarian told me dried apricots provide a good iron supplement. Not fresh, mind you; they're not concentrated enough.

So I need to buckle down and write more words this evening. One of the hard things about writing good characters is you have to think like they think. I need to climb inside Trent's brain and convince my self again there is an omnipotent god who decrees homosexuality is sin. Part of me wants to jump up and down crying, "I don't believe this!" but then I start to make fun of Trent, which doesn't serve the story's purpose. I have to tell the inner troublemaker to shut up and wait.

The ex-gay ministry taught us to not to be ashamed of our sin; it emphasized the grace of God, a free gift given to everyone regardless of sexual orientation. Yet while we learned that God loved us the way we were, we had to avoid acting on our feelings. It was like looking at something sideways. Always twisting. Fighting an enemy out of the corner of your eye.

Oddly, that sounds like the way I still battle depression and anxiety.

NaNo: 30,000 or close enough

*Gasp.* My NaNo word count fell behind on November 6, and I've been struggling to catch up ever since. I just did it, writing 4,127 words in a single three-and-a-quarter hour marathon. That pretty far outshines all my previous personal records.

It was particularly interesting because the main character in this chapter was a new one. I had planned to introduce him somehow, but without much development. Sitting down to write tonight I thought the novel could use a little excursion. Then his life story started taking form in my head and materialized about as fast as I could write it. It illustrates the kind of experiences that people in the ex-gay movement might have had, a story which is quite different from my main protagonist's.

I hadn't even anticipated "catching up" tonight. My total count is actually 29,617, just short of 30,000, which would be today's target, but it's close enough to celebrate.

I just love when inspiration hits like that! This subject matter is much richer and more responsive to my attention than what I chose last year. I remember forcing my way through at least half of it without feeling the story had anything to give me. This time, the characters continue to surprise and please me at every turn.