Stop, Rain and Start Again

So, this NaNoWriMo thing? Done. I finished 50,000 words yesterday, got the badge and the virtual goodie bag.

One spiky detail, embedded in the laurels I'm about to sit on: the story itself is only half way through.

In the meantime, Bali is becoming more and more of a sauna: humid heat like blankets wrapped around my chest. Clouds, sometimes a rumbling of thunder but no rain. We are in the purgatory before the wet season. We walk about with a sheen of sweat on our shoulders, and each breath is too short, incomplete (but that could be just my hay-fevered self...)

I take this temporary discomfort - and any other that may haunt me - and pass it on to a random character; how is that for an added benefit of writing?

Similarly, I close my eyes and type - and in the story it begins to rain. Not any rain: a deluge, a flood; leaving the world clean and clear. 

The Codeword Oracle

It is well understood that in a phrase like 'getting that story out' the key word is "that". We all know we're not talking about just any story, but that story.

I won't keep you in suspense (although a good writer would): I am not writing that story. Maybe next time. This time, I'm writing something fun. To give you a hint, I had to really stop myself from relying on a dwarf purple dragon to bring the heroine her evening mead.

If this kind of book doesn't write itself, I thought to myself, what will? Because I need every possible help. And I get it not from: memory (unreliable), imagination (stilted, fickle), but from: friends; yakult; Moona (sole- and soul- reader) and Kira with whom I discuss character's names. I also rely on the phone, not to ring.

I am weaning myself off the internet (but not tonight) - and kindle. The only thing left in my bag is a book of Codewords; I solve several every day - and guess what? Sometimes they give me hints about the book. For example, the last two words a few days ago were "say" and "ice" - and the people in my book made a prompt u-turn to get to a glacier and do something extremely important and exciting on ice...

This is unreasonable fervour, some will say, what if the last words are "write" and "end" - will I put the pen down and spend my day on YouTube? Or "syphon" and "sanity"? You get the idea.

Apart from acting as an occasional oracle, this Codeword whim has become a bit of a torch-in-the-dark. I'm getting better, slowly - and a sensational thing started to happen: sometimes I see a word, fully formed, perfect, although there are no letters or clues there - only empty boxes and code numbers. In the same way the day might come when I will see a book, fully formed before it's written - with characters and actions, with words and comas and the right geography.

Then I won't feel like I'm skidding on ice (!) every time I get towards the middle of a phrase. And when I finish my premonitory Codewords with "Xenon" and "cashew" I will know exactly what to do.

The Story of Us

As I was saying. Since announcing that I was writing a story (i.e. longer than a blog, and about other people than me - and my family, pets and bugs) - so as soon as that became modestly known, I discovered something entirely unexpected and fascinating.

People started dropping into the conversation the fact that they too had written a novel. Or were writing a novel. Or had tried writing a novel. Or would be writing a novel. A friend said he was writing not one, but three. Almost done, almost done. Someone else was on the verge of hiring a ghost writer to finally tell the story that had been nibbling at his insides since that night in Peru...

And I had no idea I was living among writers!

When I first had a look at the NaNo site, there was a lot of (pep)talk about getting that story out... the story, they said in lyrical terms, that we all hold hidden deep within us, like a magical pearl and so on, cue the violins.

A few days later, I am startled to agree - we are all writers. We are all struggling to get that story out. Businessmen I know write spy adventures. Teachers are half-way through trilogies. Consultants try their hand at erotica. I now know for a fact that everyone - from landowner to hairdresser - is writing their memoirs. We self-publish amply and routinely, by the sounds of it. We have been taking part in the National Novel Writing Month for a decade. And naturally, we all have blogs.

What a revelation! What a society of writers we live in! Is it progress, or an anomaly? Do we read less, but write more? And if we write more and read less, do we ever wonder: who will read us?

The Lit-Up Room

Now that we have established some new directions for this blog (i.e.writing books; but also Bali, as well as - let's face it - the frilly-shrilly, eternally boring me-me-me) something staggering happened:

After 3 months, 21 blogs and 1200 page views, I received one comment. I get a wealth of hugs and kindness, undeserved really, up in Facebook Square, but now an actual comment On The Blog! Hurrah! Thank you Chayya. In return, I am sending you a moment from my day:

I see a blog as the equivalent of a ground-floor room: the lights are on, the curtains open. People pass by, some might look in. All is as it should be - and on occasion, someone calls hello.

November

After most of October and half of November I must admit: I dropped the Bali blog-ball (let's call it a 'blob') and it went rolling under the sofa. I haven't looked yet.

I quickly realised that if I kept the magnifying glass on Bali we would all be drowning in geckos and yoga news. We would marvel at butterfly wings and commiserate about the traffic. Then we would all feel a bit jaundiced, a bit off ...and say in unison ENOUGH - followed by a very long list.

Excerpt from the Enough List.
Enough:

- insects
- white men with long hair, unkempt
- motorbikes
- surfers (riding on motorbikes, surfboards attached to their tattooed right thigh)
- rice paddies
- tattoos of ethno/mystic stuff. Dragons and roses. Sanskrit quotations. Che Guevara. The Holy Grail.
- yoga masters and how-(much)-to-become-one
- Bintang beer, big and small
- bamboo poles
- meditation posters
- cheap sarongs
- spas

Let's then congratulate each other for narrowly escaping the above, and then I'll tell you what I've been doing instead.

Biggest things first? I started buying wine. This means three things - the hundreds of thousands required thanks to the currency itself are losing their restraining power on my brain. I know now: it sounds like a lot, equates to much less. Just like some people. (Miaow.)

It also means that I located the places where wine is (slightly) cheaper - part of the Bali-becoming-home plan. And finally, it means I'm desperate enough. Let me pour myself a glass before I tell you all that stuff (as a frog hops gently under my feet and onward, to a chlorine bath in the pool). Frog and I both refreshed, we may proceed.

I'm doing NaNoWriMo. Nano-what? you will exclaim. Deep breath: National Novel Writing Month - which apparently has been going on for aeons (yes I can be ever-so-slightly unobservant on occasion...) has two simple rules:

1. Quantity vs quality - the target is 50,000 words (which is less than a half of a novel...) - these words, because they promise not to read, can be "blah-blah-blah-blah-blah" typed ten thousand times. Easy.
2. New project - don't give us an old school essay. Start your own Game of Thrones.

At the end, a robot counts words and - provided you have written your 1,667 daily portion -  you are Declared a Winner. And then? Nothing. They allow you to slip into oblivion with a virtual badge and your own unbearable novel. By that stage you are so sick of writing your daily blah-s and so exhausted from endless NaNo pep talks and webinars on 'getting your story out' that you can't even write a half-decent letter to Santa.

In conclusion: BONKERS.

Having said that, I am 30,000 words in. I have never been so deep into any project - not even the ones I finished. I am writing a YA adventure story with a quest and some love drama but alas, no British wizards or sexy vampires. It's so easy, I suspect it is carrying me along. It will probably be read by one person (Moona) and will get one good review (his); especially if I also cook that thing he likes on the night he finishes, and buy a bottle of wine...

I have much more to say but I'm waking up at 5 to write my novel; so send me some pep-words and virtual hugs (one can never have enough of those) and, in the expat language of Bali (yep, straight from the Enough List): "Peace, dude".

Side by Side

Sunday morning, we are sitting in a cafe staring at breakfast (black coffee, fruit-and-muesli, eggs) - when someone outside stops the traffic and three trucks pass by, to loud jumbled up percussion. The trucks contain people: crowds of them crammed together in ceremonial whites - and I look up for a moment then just keep crunching my granola, half asleep.

What?

This is when I am having the following thought: here, now, everything is normal to me. It is the only possible world.. A year ago today, in Pakistan, things were also normal, no: more than normal: they were only way they could be.

But put the two worlds together and you see how barmy the whole lot truly is - well, let's! Why not? What can happen?

In Pakistan, the third day of Eid: the slaughter of sacrificial animals continues.  Placid goats tethered to trees, panicked bleating from the back yard, blood in the dust.

Bali:  muesli with coconut shavings and tropical fruit. Three yoga teachers having breakfast, two women and a man. They wear sun-faded, minimal clothing and talk about their parents’ new lovers. They sit in a half-lotus position and use words like 'chakra', 'spiritual' and ‘being in a good place'. The man has long hair, a ponytail, sand in his beard.

In my deranged morning moment, I kidnap them from their green-gloop power smoothies and beam them to a courtyard in the Punjab, which is after all under the same relentless sun. There I dump them in a gathering of bearded men sweating in their shalwar kameez. Goats, a cow, a camel even, are held to the ground, an imam is praying over their heaving flanks. Long knives catch the sunlight and burn into flesh.

Is that the beasts screaming, or the yoga teachers?

The Guardian

There must be lots of them around, we see them occasionally darting across the walls. In fact, they replace the three garish pictures quite beautifully (the ones that came with the house and we couldn't bear; the ones we grabbed and stashed behind the wall) - well now instead we have a perpetually-changing gecko mosaic - much better. Call it 'Geckorama'.

Kira and I agreed that we are not afraid. There are much, much worse, unmentionable critters (shhh...  cockroaches, especially the flying ones).  No, geckos we like, especially since they will eat any of the unmentionable others.

Sometimes they hunt and when they do we turn off the TV and watch THEM instead. We saw a little guy take out a dozy wasp twice its size. It leapt and got it mid-air and dragged it under the TV table. I would love to say that fierce buzzing was followed by crunching sounds but no, we heard nothing. We just sat there in eerie silence, pointing at each other and the dark undertable.

Then there are the noisy ones I was telling you about earlier, the ones that use the family lamps for their propaganda.

And finally there is the Big One, the one we know as The Guardian. He can be found in the highest corner, under the roof - but only at nightfall. There he sits, and here I sit, looking up but not quite underneath; if he falls - which I know he won't! unless we consider a monumental paw-glue collapse, or paw-er failure - I wouldn't want him to plop onto my head.

So, where was I? Yes, we sit together companionably, with me telling him stuff and him doing that statue thing, those eyes wide and alert, that make me think Either he knows exactly what I'm on about Or he's wondering if he can stretch his jaw enough to swallow my head.

Except two nights ago, when - after some wind and black clouds and rising pressure and rustlings in the rice field - a booming rain pummeled the ground. And guess who scuttled indoors straight away, to hide behind the curtain?

Wimp.