How eating an orange triggered me to write this

I stood at the kitchen sink eating an orange I still cannot smell or taste because of nose surgery I had on Friday. Oranges take me some time to eat, so I always have an opportunity to scan the kitchen and entryway looking at things I see every day. Today, my gaze did not move beyond the picture of Ryan and me standing in the Himalayas. Everest is towering in the background. It brought back thoughts of “I can’t believe I did that. I can’t believe I saw Everest, in person.”

Bravery? I’d have to think so. Almost everything about that trip put me out of my comfort zone. Do I have any desire to ever climb one of those mega-peaks? I can pretty much definitively say nope. But I don’t feel as though it makes me any less brave, just maybe a little less willing to risk my life knowing the exponential rate at which life-threatening hazards increase the higher you go. Statistics show that 1 in 4 people who set out to summit K2, not as high as Everest but arguably far more technical and dangerous, will not make it. And I don’t mean just not make it to the summit. I mean loss of life.

I went to see the movie The Summit last week and watched in awe as these dedicated mountaineers pushed relentlessly for K2’s summit despite the potential hazards and consequences. During an ill-fated expedition in 2008 when 11 climbers lost their lives in a single day even with blue, cloudless skies, they continued their push in the face of other climber’s deaths.

I am fascinated by the sport because I don’t understand it. It is hard for me to imagine having so much passion for something that I would, more or less, risk my life every single time I decided to climb. But for those who live to tell the tales again and again, I do applaud their bravery and their passion for something far bigger than they. Something inanimate even as it holds the ability to affect the fate of human life.

I so badly wanted to see this movie before November 1 because it aligns with one of the supporting characters in the novel I am about to write. Over the summer, I participated in a creative writing class where the end goal was to have the first draft of a short story written. I knew exactly what I wanted to write. I had wanted to write this story for a while so that I could finally get it out of my head and out of my memory. While fiction, it still pulled in elements of real life. What I found while getting the words out was that my fascination with the sport of mountaineering would unexpectedly become a part of the story. This supporting character I created telling my protagonist that you don’t have to climb mountains to be brave.

The more I considered this short story and what I would do with it, I came to realize there was more to tell. The story was not finished at 5,000 words. Can I actually get something out that will fill the space of a 50,000-word novel? I do believe I can. This means continuing to pull in this mysterious mountaineering character whom the main character meets early in the book.

And so, in three short days, I will start the process of finishing the story I started telling earlier this year with a lot more depth and clarity. It’ll be another in a line of many brave acts I’ve accomplished this year that all began because I was given the opportunity to quit my job and muddled up the courage to do so.

After asking the question of others, I was thrilled to hear their responses to what they would do if they were brave enough to do so. Skydive, leave your life behind to travel the world for a year, dive with sharks in the open water, tell your mom you love her, be more honest, quit your job. It is something different to everyone with no right or wrong answer. My only hope is that despite what the answer to that question might be, with 2 months left in 2013, take the challenge to act.

I am only posting this below mini-excerpt for the book because it speaks a little to about what I am trying to write. Plus, I kind of like it.

If you have to ask the genre, it looks like I am, maybe a little hesitatingly, writing chick-lit. Not a bad thing, but will be interesting to see how much I love it or hate it in the end.

Bumbling over my words, I continue to talk.

“I can only imagine what it might be like to be on top of that mountain, looking down on the world below.”

He sits forward in his chair with his hands clasped in front of his face as though he is about to pray. I wait nervously for him to speak, unsure if I have offended him.

“You don’t have to climb an unforgiving mountain to be brave. I don’t know if I will ever know why my life was spared. This will be my reality within which I will live.”

“Will you give up climbing?”

“I don’t blame the mountain for my misadventures. It is inanimate. No ability to feel. We project our own savageness into something made of rock, ice and snow. As with many times before, I got lost but will find myself again. Climbing is my life. I cannot quit.”

What will the next 30 days be like?

Nothing really is original

I had a difficult time when first starting this blog. What would I write about? What would be my niche making people want to read it? I scoured the Internet for suggestions on how to start a blog, what to write about, how to gain readability, make it unique, make people want to keep coming back.

I struggled with this for a while assuming that I could not offer anything new and different. I was convinced nothing about my background was unique enough to be used. My story was one of merely the act of “growing up.” Pretty normally at that. I read this yesterday and found it interesting. Maybe it’s what I’ve been struggling with too:

“My students were middle-class kids who were ashamed of their background. They felt like unless they grew up in poverty, they had nothing to write about…I felt sorry for these kids, that they thought their whole past was absolutely worthless because it was less than remarkable.”

Thanks David Sedaris.

But then I got some good advice that helped me gain some momentum. It’s all been done. There’s not a lot in this world that has not already been written about. Maybe nothing. Granted some of it hasn’t been written about very much, but it would be difficult to not find anything about any given topic just by doing a quick Google search. So, I decided that would be the premise of my blog. Nothing is original. It’s more a matter of how you put your own mark on it.

In fact, the more searching I’ve done of other’s blogs, the more I realized how tired I am reading about happiness. A LOT focus on this. How to find it, how to achieve it. But isn’t that what I was writing about too? The thing is, though, everyone does have a different spin on it. How they achieved or are trying to achieve that inner happiness. In some ways, it’s comforting to know I’m not alone in the search.

What gets people to read your writing is not that it is something groundbreaking, new and innovative, but that it’s still your voice. You are first and foremost writing it for yourself. Others will find meaning in hearing your voice. And if they don’t, that’s perfectly fine too. Criticism is a needed, and even wonderful part of the process.

Does it mean I follow my own advice? Not entirely.

I came up with the idea for my novel, got excited, and then sat back and questioned if it was even worth writing. It’s a formula that’s been used time and time again. After thinking about it some more, maybe the reason it’s been used is because it is successful. I decided to post my idea to one of the forums on the National Novel Writing Month site to get some feedback before I embark on the 50,000 word journey.

After describing the plot, I asked for some help. Was the plot too formulaic? Would anyone, other than me, actually want to read it? I received an overwhelming amount of responses. Weird. People cared? I was thrilled with the support. They offered positive feedback on the idea and reminded me that it doesn’t matter if the formula has been used. As long as I put my own mark on it, they’d read it.

OK. Fair enough. I’ll proceed with what I’ve got regardless of what the end product actually is. It’s important to me. I care about it. Added bonus – I think I’m going to enjoy writing it. Isn’t that really what writing is all about? Remember, ego.

Welcome to my fictional world. Lucky you to be a part of it. If you read it, that is.

“All readers come to fiction as willing accomplices to your lies. Such is the basic goodwill contract made the moment we pick up a work of fiction.”
—Steve Almond, WD

The plot shell can be found on the Novel Ideas page.