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Another Word of the Day Story: Bivouac

noun:
1. An encampment for the night, usually under little or no shelter.

intransitive verb:
1. To encamp for the night, usually under little or no shelter.

Van Morrison is crooning another round of “Moondance”. It’s been playing on repeat for hours. The damn CD player is broke. What can you expect from a second-rate beater purchased from a chop shop in Tucson. It was damn lucky the car has even made it this far.
I’m turning out of the parking lot. Another day of work done, some freelance ‘jack-of-all-tradesing’ that has kept the car full of gas, my landlord off my ass, and enough change to buy Saltines and tequila. Bad habits both of them.
I’m not much used to the forest. Taller than builders, but none of the glass. Don’t really care for it. I always speed until I get to the lights of the town. During the day it’s small and not worth caring about, barely more than a gas station and a Home Depot, but at night it almost looks like Phoenix. No Carl’s Jr., though. It’s a damn shame, but I guess it doesn’t matter. That shit’s too expensive anyway.
Highway is always crowded. I’m not a fan. Can’t speed, can’t lag about, can’t even flash my brights when the signs are too small to read. It’s better past Newburgh. Not that many people go past that. It’s usually just me and a few 18-wheelers with Quebec plates. What the hell are the Canucks transporting all the time, anyway?
My exit. Last one before a long drive north. I’ll head that way one of these days. Me and my car will bivouac in Quebec for a bit, pretend we got the Oregon trail backwards. Probably wait till summer first. Car already grumbles about the cold. Landlord thinks he’s got me in a lease too. Whatever.
Not sure where I’d go after that. Keep going farther, one bridge at a time. We’ll see how that goes. Right now I’m just gonna enjoy the last few city lights. Might as well. Never know when you might not make it outta the forest.

Before there was Servusamanu there was…well a lot of things, but also The Secrets!

The Secrets is both a few seasons worth of (free!) podcasts and a series of pdfs dedicated to becoming a better writer, getting published, and, perhaps most importantly, having a career as an author. Both are written and presented by Michael A. Stackpole, perhaps best known for his Star Wars novels. Personal instruction from a highly regarded and highly successful author is usually hard to come by, The Secrets is easily the single most complete resource I’ve found for all aspects of writing from designing worlds, creating characters, pacing a novel, getting it edited, finding a publisher, negotiating the world of agents, and having a…career…doing the whole process over. The podcasts do tend towards fantasy and science fiction writing (No surprise there), but I’ve found the advice invaluable even outside of so-called genre fiction.

As someone interested in the future of writing and reading, Stackpole’s opinions on trends in the industry are especially noteworthy. I intend to post in the future on using technology like facebook/craigslist/twitter/ipods-iphones-Kindles as a means of delivering writing. In the mean time I suggest listening to the fifth series of podcasts: on the future of publishing .

Recently I’ve taken to exploring micro-fiction, defined by me, as complete stories less than 1000 words. I was initially skeptical about either writing or reading anything of that length. Writing fiction that short has certainly been very difficult. You really have to narrow down your focus on exactly what you want to say, exactly what character you want to portrait, and exactly what story you want to tell.

Entirely separate, I created a twitter account. Twitter is a social news and messaging sites. You can update it (create twits) over email or text message. People who subscribe to your twitter get these messages instantly. It’s been used in the past for on-the-spot reporting, especially of tech conferences and political events.

It wasn’t long before I considering combining this ‘new’ type of fiction with this new technology.

However, the average twitter message is less than twenty words. Even with a succession of twits, fiction would be limited to maybe 100 words. I initially wrote off twitter as a new and novel means of delivering stories, but the idea remains intriguing. It would certainly be a good way of enticing readers with a first paragraph or summary, but I feel there may still be a use for it as the means of delivering complete stories, it just remains to be seen what enterprising author can manage to write entertaining vignettes of that length.

I currently have a twitter name, but no stories to release. I’m trying to drum up some discussion of the idea though. I may write something soon. I’ll make sure to post the relevant information whenever that project (one of ever so many) comes to fruition. In the mean time, what are everyone’s thoughts on this?

http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=twitter&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

A few of my writing notes on the town of New Paltz, New York.

Two hours north of New York City hides a village with cosmopolitan aspirations as great as the Gotham city itself. On the map New Paltz is noteworthy only as the closest exit to Poughkeepsie on the Thruway and the home of a McDonalds on the drive north to Albany. Despite its outward obscurity, it’s single crowded main street could be called the home of humanity. A college town, academic and optimistic. A hippie enclave, anachronistic, spiritual, lethargic. A farmtown, simple, peaceful, quiet, dull. An art community, pretentious, educated, cultured. A single street, as old as America and then some, is home to all the world and a population barely over 12,000. We don’t even have a Subway.

What a small, rainy little town. A few intersections and you’ve run yourself right out the gate. Corralled between a bridge, a school, and a highway, a handful of small-town bars, tourist-trap new age stories, and a dozen pizza places carve out a living, mostly at the largesse of the resident college population. Summertime restores the recession and colonial charm, at least until the weekend when the town again overflows with gawkers and tourists looking for the charm their own towns sold to Walmart decades ago.

I nearly ran drove into a cluster of wobbly pedestrians at the crossroad of 32 and 299. Friday and Saturday night bring out the town. These students wander about lackadaisical, tired, often inenbriated, and with a bad habit of crossing against the walk-signs. It doesn’t help that my destination is the same parking lot shared by the local frat houses and that Friday night always features a beer pong tournament in my spot. Hrmph.

From the lookout at the top of Minniwaska and the Mohonk range you can see Hudson Valley as a patchwork of farms and forest. A quick jaunt down the roller-coaster inspired Highway 44/55 leads to a well-regarded German restaurant. A left turn from there connects to Highway 299 which, after a charming vignette of pumpkin patches, apple orchards, and corn fields, becomes the main street of New Paltz, a small college town featuring the charm of a vibrant artist community and the convenience of Thruway 87 (North to Albany, South to Newburgh, Harriman, and New York City).
Water Street Market, a cosmopolite collection of shops featuring jewelry, clothing, a cheese shop, and a quaint upstairs restaurant can be found immediately upon entering New Paltz. Beyond that the shops on either side of the town center are especially entertaining. Especially noteworthy are The Gilded Otter, a restaurant that brews its own beer, The Bistro, a highly regarded stop for breakfast and lunch, P&Gs, a local sports bar loved by college students and locals alike, and, much farther down the road, Rocco’s Pizza which is a national treasure.

The snow becomes sludge at the end of the sidewalk. The wind blows down from the mountains with little care that my jacket has holes, my gloves are covered in frost, and my boots are sitting in the trash four miles back. What a wretched state of affairs this little Podunk hick-town is. It’s only saving grace is a pizza place every 50 feet and a few good bars.

Any visit to New Paltz requires at least a casual tour of the Campus. SUNY New Paltz, a liberal arts college of approximately 6,000 undergraduate and 2,000 graduate students. Voted hottest small state school by 2008 Kaplan/Newsweek, it well-regarded especially for students pursuing careers in teaching and education. Also noteworthy is the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art which hosts a vibrant collection of photography and world art.

Word of the Day is a little writing exercise I occasionally task myself with. I log into dictionary.com, go to the word of the day, and then write something using or about that word. Sometimes it’s a poem, sometimes a short story, sometimes just a little vignette. It’s been a useful exercise and tends to be a lot of fun. I wrote this particular article long before it got onto Wordpress, but the word of the day for this post is:

Limn: –verb (used with object)

1. to represent in drawing or painting.
2. to portray in words; describe.
3. Obsolete. to illuminate (manuscripts).

An interesting word.

The student sat beside the man-made pond and watched the geese sail aimlessly around the green algae that covered the surface. A stack of well-worn books sat precariously beside him, threatening with each gelid breeze to crumble onto the ground and crush the frosted grass. The student ignored them with frigid indifference.
He cautiously grabbed a drawing pad from the top and conjured a pencil out of his curly hair. His fingers limned the ducks and their irreverence, crafting beaks from parchment and sketching ruffled feathers with the side of the pencil. He moved onto the algae.
Flickers of crystal began to strike the page, leaving moist stains and faded charcoal. The student looked up. His cheek fizzled and he was retreat from the blizzard. Slowly and with a heavy sigh, the student closed his tablet, bowed to the ducks, and walked to class.

Hopefully this will be the first of many examples. Enjoy!