{"id":6061,"date":"2009-11-18T06:20:29","date_gmt":"2009-11-18T11:20:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=6061"},"modified":"2009-11-18T06:37:53","modified_gmt":"2009-11-18T11:37:53","slug":"the-quickening-squirrel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2009\/11\/the-quickening-squirrel\/","title":{"rendered":"The Quickening Squirrel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Marta was wondering<\/a> a few days ago about writerly magic numbers: specific quantifiable targets which writers hope to achieve within some given time period. She’s doing NaNoWriMo, so of course over her head looms the magic 50,000-words-in-a-November target. But she asked what other writers might choose to be satisfied with: N<\/em> pages or words per day, or one complete draft or book by date X<\/em>, or whatever.<\/p>\n

In a long, wool-gathering post<\/a> back in September, among other things which I scavenged for the point(s) I was making, I mentioned an ambitious project by artist Rowena, a\/k\/a Warrior Girl\/Mama: to create 100 pieces of art in a 100-day block of time. It just knocked me out (it still does) that she managed to pull that off<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yes, it knocked me out, and made me very happy; although it wasn’t writing but art, it confirmed what I’ve believed for many years now. To wit: To get really comfortable doing something creative, you have to do it every single day<\/em>. None of this vaporous swoony “Oh, I must wait for inspiration to strike!” nonsense. None of those “But I just have so many things on my mind\/distractions to deal with!” excuses. Just do it. Every day<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Turns out someone else took inspiration from Rowena’s experiment: pseudonymous RAMH<\/em> friend The Querulous Squirrel.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Her blog<\/a> has always (to me) been an odd — charmingly odd — little corner of the universe. Her posts there usually but not always have presented short little fictional vignettes, and until recently she posted them on no particular schedule. Maybe once per week, maybe two or three times. Sometimes she’d go for weeks without posting anything at all.<\/p>\n

(The site exhibits other anomalies for a blog, especially one based on Blogger.\u00a0 The sidebar menu includes no archive listing, for example. You can scroll backwards and forwards through the entries using the Older Post and Newer Post links at the foot of each one; otherwise, it’s as if she’s challenging you: You want to read the site? Fine. Read it, but don’t expect me to help you. Read it <\/em>every day.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, Squirrel decided in September to embark on the same challenge chosen by Rowena: to create 100 separate works in 100 days. In Squirrel’s case, the products are little fictional nuggets: some explicitly fiction, others less certainly so, and some more or less crusty, others more or less polished.<\/p>\n

And I gotta say, it’s been exhilarating watching her do this. Dizzying<\/em>. Just last week she passed the halfway mark, and I believe she’s established an unstoppable rhythm (her occasional waverings aside — she turns even them into little ficciones<\/em><\/span><\/a>). In fact, the whole project to date puts me in mind of another sort of competition with oneself…<\/p>\n

Below, a tribute to her progress so far, in the manner of a Squirrel post: fewer than 400 words, from start to finish.<\/p>\n

Run, Squirrel. Run<\/em>.<\/p>\n

[If you’d like to read all the entries she’s done so far, the first, title “The Cough<\/a>,” went up on September 23. just start there and keep hitting the Newer Post links.]<\/em><\/p>\n

—-<\/p>\n

S<\/span>he stood on the track, alone, her breath pluming in the early-morning autumn air. Dressed for some sort of sprint, she was, in sleeveless athletic shirt and loose shorts, and her hair was tied back lest it distract her once she started to move.<\/p>\n

She wanted no<\/em> distractions at all once she started to move. She’d stood here too many times before, always allowing herself to be daunted by the distance, by the height of the hurdles, by the clock which ticked relentlessly at the foot of the empty grandstand. Damn clock — marking not just the seconds of the race itself, but the seconds of the race in the context of<\/em> the minutes of her life.<\/p>\n

She carefully positioned her spikes in the blocks. Sucked air in, blew it out, once, twice, three times…<\/p>\n

I will master this<\/em>, she thought. She was sick of knowing exactly what she had to do but not doing it. At root, it was just a matter of putting one foot after another, over and over, as quickly as she could, never looking down, scarcely looking ahead, moving fast enough that the last hurdle and the tape stretched across the track would be behind her before she even knew she was about to reach them. She’d watched others. She’d seen them stumble, hook a toe on a hurdle — and yet she’d also seen them get up, fury in their eyes, and light out for the next hurdle without hesitation. She knew that fury. She’d felt something like it every morning she shut off the alarm the first time it sounded, without actually getting out of bed; she’d felt something like it every time she’d gone cleanly over one hurdle, over two, and then come to a standstill before risking a third.<\/p>\n

Momentum, that was the key, the thing to carry her through the fury and past the false starts. Momentum. Keep moving<\/em>.<\/p>\n

She leaned forward at last, dropped to her fingertips. Her knees slightly bent. Every muscle in her lean legs and arms a coiled spring. Tilted her head back. Stared into the emptiness past the first hurdle.<\/p>\n

She breathed in. Paused. Breathed out. Paused. Breathed in.<\/p>\n

And launched.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marta was wondering a few days ago about writerly magic numbers: specific quantifiable targets which writers hope to achieve within some given time period. She’s doing NaNoWriMo, so of course over her head looms the magic 50,000-words-in-a-November target. But she asked what other writers might choose to be satisfied with: N pages or words per […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,36,105,372],"tags":[1488,1489,1490,1491,1492,1493],"class_list":{"0":"post-6061","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-06_writing","7":"category-reading","8":"category-short-fiction","9":"category-style-and-craft","10":"tag-the-querulous-squirrel","11":"tag-writing-targets","12":"tag-nanowrimo","13":"tag-marta","14":"tag-rowena","15":"tag-goals","16":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-1zL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6061"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6083,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6061\/revisions\/6083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}