Show, don't tell

Photo: Ziggy and me.

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Last night we sat up until 5:30 a.m. just talking.

The neighbours upstairs were noisy this morning; the little kids were carrying on temper tantrums, screaming and banging their feet above my futon in the living room, so I didn't sleep very soundly. Now my brain feels parched. I don't intend to write any NaNo this evening, which means I'll have more catching up to do this week. Tonight is euchre night and I'm looking forward to catching a bus downtown a little early, in time for some chicken wings at the -bar before euchre starts.

ghostsandrobots wanted to see the famous Eramosa River. The sun obliged by coming out for an hour this afternoon. We rambled partway along both sides before coming back. Then Zig packed her things and headed home.

There will be more weekends like this one. A five hour drive is not much on the LJ scale of distances. Next time we'll be able to skip the initial jitters. Next time hopefully I'll meet writer00 and Jude, too. In the meantime it feels like I found the little sister I never had. The meeting didn't present any surprises. Ziggy was precisely what I expected, but the luxury of many hours simply hanging out together let us go a lot deeper and further.

My poor head has used up all its words. I just want to sit still. I could almost lie down and fall asleep. Daytime naps are a rarity for me. But I'm in the right mood to relax, be around people tonight, and focus on the simplicity of a hand of five cards, enjoying the company and not necessarily having to say anything.

Last night something prompted me to pull out and read a short story I wrote in 1995, called Unnested. It was written in the midst of the most desperate month of my life. We had been talking about the writer's adage: "Show, don't tell." In that piece I accomplished it better than ever. In my NaNo I have been more explanatory about my protagonist's inner workings than I would like to be. It's better to give hints of what he's thinking than to tell it all. Unnested was written the better way, but its 10 or 11 pages were carefully crafted over several days, whereas this novel gets blurted in blocks of two or three thousand words at once.

Zig told me there will be time for reworking it later; for now the challenge is to put the story down.