I am catching up on my posting, so today I am writing about Day 4 of #nanowrimo- Monday, Nov. 4. I logged in 7,523 words in the National Novel Writing Month 50K word challenge.
My father Vaclav Konecny wrote this for me in between working on his math solutions, and preparations to leave for Florida shortly after Thanksgiving.
Grand Hotel in Khartoum, Sudan
Life of professor Vaclav Konecny in Khartoum, Sudan briefly
On Nov. 1964, early in the morning, I landed via Sudan Airways in Khartoum, Sudan. It was a beautiful area of three cities: Khartoum, Khartoum North and Omdurman separated by the River Nile, Blue Nile and White Nile.
My future colleague Kenneth was waiting for me to give me a ride to the Grand Hotel on Blue Nile not far from the University of Khartoum. It looked like in a fairy tale; streets lined with palms, the glistening Nile with the three bridges and the British colonial style hotel.
After three days, Kenneth helped me settle down in Pink Palace with half board. I reported to the head of the Department of Mathematics Prof. Sobhy Sidrak, who had instructed me about my teaching. He instructed me to teach Applied Mathematics; it was called Theoretical Mechanics or Math of Newtonian Mechanics.
After moving several times, I ended up in an apartment close to the Pink Palace. I bought a very old car Ford Anglia. The administration of the university arranged for me everything I needed. My wife Eliska and children Emma and Vaclav at the time were in Czechoslovakia, so I had time to prepare for the first lecture.
Copyright (c) 2019. Emma Blogs, LLC. All rights reserved.
Lowell, MI – On the opening day of this year’s National Novel Writing Month 50K word challenge, I logged in 1,663 words in spite of the fact that I had to have a painful dental procedure done in Grand Rapids. I still have a numb jaw and I have trouble swallowing, kind of like those people in America’s Funniest Videos.
So, I broke up my daily writing session into two parts: morning and afternoon. My NaNoWriMo project is the completion of the Greenwich Meridian: Where East meets West memoir about our family immigration saga from Czechoslovakia to the U.S.
What helped me immensely to move this forward, was that mom Ella penned her memories in a pretty cursive in Czech in a hard cover diary with yellow roses. It has a dateline: Big Rapids-Florida, 2019-2020. Wow , and it’s dedicated to me: “To my daughter Emma.”
Mom even included a complete timeline titled “Life in a Nutshell” from 1959 to present.
Mom’s diary
Here; enjoy an excerpt from chapter “In her own words.”
I was a pharmacist, and it wasn’t that the profession was narrow and had nothing to offer, but I didn’t want to nurture vain ideas of travelling. So, Sunday afternoon trips to the dam in Luhacovice or Bystricka were the only means of breaking up the gray of ordinary days.
The first bigger trip was our honeymoon to the Krkonose mountains in the old Tatra and mother’s departing comments: “I hope the poor car will make it.”
When we arrived in Harachov, we sent a message to my parents: “We’ve arrived under Mount Blanc.” At that moment, it never occured to me that one day I would indeed be looking at the majestic highest mountain in the Alps.
After five years of marriage, we had two children: Emma and Vasek. I was working part-time in a pharmacy in my hometown Vizovice and my husband Vaclav was teaching physics in Brno. He would come for the weekend to Vizovice, because I couldn’t find a job in Brno and we had no place to stay there. We were on the waiting list for an apartment, that we got in 1965. We didn’t have a car or money to furnish the apartment. My husband found out that the president of the university in Khartoum, Sudan was hiring English-speaking professors to teach different subjects. Vaclav’s English was excellent and he got the job.
Copyright (c) 2019 Emma Blogs, LLC. All rights reserved.
I am as ready as I can be for the National Novel Writing Month 50K word challenge starting tomorrow Nov. 1 with my Greenwich Meridian: Where East meets West memoir project.
However, Halloween is not only followed by the NaNoWriMo blast off , but also by All Saints Day and All Souls’ Day in the catholic calendar on Saturday. I always go to the mass at St. Pat’s for one or the other to reflect and for inspiration.
Usually, the Book of the Dead is on display. An evening candlelight procession goes to the cemetery.
The feature photo is an optical illussion “All is Vanity” from Belrockton in Belding. It is hanging next to the “Face of Gossip,” which is on the cover of my new book “Secrets” from the Shifting Sands Short Stories collections.
Follow me on my NaNoWriMo journey to the completion of the memoir about our family immigration saga to the U.S.
I will be signing my new book at the Lowell Area Historical Museum (LAHM) on Nov. 15, 16 & 17 during Christmas through Lowell.
I have completed goal one for the April Camp NaNoWriMo which serves either as an extension of the novel challenge started in November and/or fuel for new writing.
I penned the core of “Secrets” during the November challenge reaching 56,433 words. The anchor story in the collection is “Silk Nora” inspired by my multiple visits to the Belrockton Museum in Belding.
I going through the stories for content and insights. I will be submitting some of the stories via app Submittable for reviews to magazines.
I am sending the manuscript “Shifting Sands: Secrets” (c) 2019 Emma Palova to the editor this week. Thank you Carol.
Goal 2
Camp goal no. 2 is to recast the Konecny family immigration saga. This includes the title and the cover.
Follow me on my publishing journey.
Shifting Sands: Secrets
Copyright (c) 2019 Emma Blogs, LLC. All rights reserved.
Daily insights from #nanowrimo with story excerpts
By Emma Palova
EW Emma’s Writings
Lowell, MI – What does NaNoWriMo mean to me?
I can only answer this question now that I have completed the 50K creative project and claimed the Winner 2018 cetificate.
NaNoWriMo is like a powerful fuel that you need to keep you going. You also have to keep on refueling as often as possible. It’s a gauge that efficiently measures your progress as you go.
Secondly, I have realized that there is no such a thing as a writer’s block; only slumps, slowdowns and funks around the Thanksgiving holiday and on Sundays.
Is creative activity as mysterious as we all think? Yes. You don’t know at the end of the day, what you’re going to come up with.
Is it scary? It can be, if you don’t know what your character is going to do next.
The creative project required a lot of discipline without credits or end of the year bonuses. But, also you were your own boss in determining when and how you were going to accomplish the 50K challenge.
I was amused by some of the questions on social media like: “What is your favorite writing drink?”
Mine is definitely tea, because I get a headache from drinking a lot of coffee.
Will I do it again in 2019? Most likely yes.
Would I recommend it? It depends on your writing goals. Fifty-thousand words is a nice chunk to start with.
Is it doable with kids and a full-time job? It depends on your partner on how many house chores will he or she take on.
Is writing still the most lonesome activity in the world that in the end depends on the the public’s liking or disliking? Yes.
WHAT NOW?
At the end, I committed to revision and editing, as well as writing more short stories to include in the new book “Shifting Sands: Secrets.” (c) 2019 Emma Palova.
The NaNoWriMo certificate defines a winner as:
A literal literary hero. A disciplined wordsmith.
A squirrel-suit flyer who just earned their wings…………
My sincere thanks to the staff, organizers and pep talk authors of the NaNoWriMo creative project for support and encouragement.
I will be using Pacemaker.press on http://www.pacemaker.press to further measure my progress into the publishing of the new anthology of short stories.
Excerpts from “White Nights” (c) 2018 Emma Palova
It was the gossip of the village that Joe beat his wife. He was a fourth-generation farmer on the largest farming plat in the village.
In front of the public eye, he acted as a proper man. Joe did everything that was expected of the largest landowner to do. He sat on the township board, on the school and the church boards. In spite of the gossip, he was a respected man with other great qualities than self-control.
Unlike Father Sam, he had no choice of what he wanted do. He inherited the land, so he had to farm it. When farming got tough with the dumping of the cheap apple juice from China in the late 1990s, his two brothers decided to get out of working with dirt. They went to work forthe largest milling company out by Shimnicon Corners. At that time, Joe too had to seek his soul, after beating one of them near death.
“You will never cross the threshold of my house,” he yelled that winter when they fought over the buyout money. “Where do you think I am going to get two million bucks?
They left anyways, and Joe owed them for the rest of his life. Joe sold off land fordevelopment and paid off some of the money, while making enemies with other farmers.
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Copyright (c) 2018 Emma Blogs, LLC. All rights reserved.
Lowell, MI – This morning I finished “Oceans Away” stort story and I started “Fallasburg Code.” I logged in with 47,568 words in the 50K word marathon. I would like to finish by Wednesday or Thursday depending on how the last two stories go.
This was my first time participating in the National Novel Writing Month. Many people have already completed the creative project. My major takeaways are:
Finding my optimum daily writing quota of six pages or 1,500 words. The hardest part is always the start-up of new stories, on day two usually the plot unravels, and the wrap up is on day three.
I will have a total of 14 stories in the new book “Secrets” (c) 2019 Emma Palova. There were a lot of suprises for me in this one as well. In some cases, I changed titles to better fit the story. The second book is definitely not any easier than the first one.
Is it different and how?
I added some historical fiction in stories “Silk Nora” and “Fallasburg Code.”
Do I have a favorite short story? People asked me this question about the first book “Shifting Sands: Short Stories.” In this collection it is definitely “Silk Nora” which is set in my favorite time period of the 1920s.
In this sequel, I don’t dedicate as much to immigration as in the first one. Some stories like “Secrets in Ink” still draw on my newspaper writing experience.
I would like to thank the National Novel Writing Month staff for the opportunity and for the encouragement.
Even though she was suspicious at first, Norma went for the app and diligently filled out all the fields about herself.
Paul was good looking as she requested, blonde and tall; while she tallied up to his expectations as well, brunette and medium height and weight. Their first rendezvous was in Budapest, Hungary on a boat.
Norma insisted on neutral grounds such as Europe. It was Paul who picked the capital of Hungary for their first meeting. The app set their date on a boat “Princess” floating on the Danube to explore the river towns.
The date was expensive and exotic, that’s what they both wanted for their first time together. They had separate cabins on the boat. The first night, the boat was just anchoring in Budapest and they took a taxi into the city.
Paul proudly started first telling Norma all about himself. He was a doctor of Slavic origin, who wanted to get away from the nationalistic France. Norma wasn’t ashamed of her new job of the Warhol Museum executive director, either. She worked hard to get the job studying online for her master’s degree.
Budapest at night was like a star waiting to shine on the night sky. They sat long into the night on the deck bar on the boat eating shrimp and drinking red Hungarian wine.
“Will you come and see me in Noumea?” Paul asked on the boat looking at Norma.
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Copyright (c) 2018. Emma Blogs, LLC. All rights reserved.
Lowell, MI – The day after Thanksgiving, I finished the short story “40 Hunks” (c) 2018 Emma Palova logging into the #nanowrimo dashboard with a total of 43,723 words toward the 50K word marathon. That puts me on the final stretch to the winner mark on this publishing journey.
The story will become a part of the new collection of short stories “Secrets” (c) 2019 Emma Palova. After the revision period in January and February supported by #nanowrimo, it is my clear intention to have the book published next year.
The National Novel Writing Month, an Internet-based creative project, started in 1999 with 21 participants. It has grown over the years to 0.5 million participants around the globe.
Two days ago, I found a thank you letter in my email from the #nanowrimo executive director Grant Faulkner titled:
“Thank you for the light of your stories.”
It truly warmed my heart, as Grant described writer Matt Forbes’ reaction to his home burnt by the wildfires in Paradise, CA, as well as the entire community.
His response to tragedy? To create.
“I plan to write. That’s about all I can do…I don’t want one huge fire to burn out everything that was taken in its wake, and this is the only thing I can do to show otherwise.”
You can easily gauge your progress on the dashboard widget and graph.
Editing and revisions take place later in the months of January and February.
We also went out on Black Friday to Woodland Mall in Grand Rapids, and it was jam packed. The same story was in rural Greenville. Speaking about the economy booming, it definately was at JC Penney’s who practiced Black Friday on both days, Nov. 22 and Nov. 23.
The staff was exhausted:
“We’ve been opened for the last 24 hours,” said a tired clerk in the men’s clothing department.
Excerpts from “40 Hunks”
Book cover for “Secrets” aka the Face of Gossip.
“Not, now,” he said. “They have to be on the farm as soon as Friday.”
Antonio walked inside the gas station store looking around the shelves.
“You got booze,” he asked the scared girl.
Jose straightened up from the counter and looked at Antonio.
“No, booze on the bus,” he said strictly. “When we get there, you can talk to theproducer. Not here. We’re heading out.”
Antonio grabbed Jose by his shirt and tore it apart as he lifted Jose up on his feetand dragged him against the counter.
“ I said, I want some booze,” Antonio pulled out his knife and put it to Jose’s throat. “You girl give me some whiskey or I will slash his neck.”
Avlen quickly grabbed a bottle from behind her and handed it to Antonio, who opened it and drank from it, still holding Jose.
“That’s $20,” Avlen said to Antonio.
Antonio let Jose loose and turned him to Avlen like a puppet.
“You pay her,” he said. “I am going back on the bus.”
Jose gave Avlen the $20 bill shaking his head.
“Don’t call the police,” Jose begged. “I’d get in trouble that I let him loose.”
He waved to the girl and left the gas station store. Mike was smoking nearby shaking his head.
“I saw what happened,” he said. “Do you want me to call the police?”
Jose shook his head as he boarded the bus.
“No, I want us to get to the farm as fast as possible,” he said. “You deal with him at the farm with the producer. I don’t want to have anything to do with him. If he disappears, I won’t look for him.”
Featured photo: Butterflies from the Butterfly House on Mackinac Island.
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Copyright (c) 2018 Emma Blogs, LLC. All rights reserved.
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