Idle LJ Idol musings...

Hunting for an approach is at least half the fun.

In Week 1, it took me a couple of days to find a story that would work, and along the way, I jotted down notes about a number of ideas and a handful of first lines that didn't go anywhere.

Between work and the ATA conference in New York, I don't have a couple of days this week, so last night I assigned my subconscious the task of coming up with a concept for Week 2, and the result is promising (at least in the cold, gray light of this Houston morning)!

My departure point was the phrase "the Old Corps," much beloved of older Marines, who use it to describe a time - specifically, the time they served in the Corps - when the men were tougher, the training rougher, etc. than is the case for latter-day Marines.

That, in turn, reminded me of the story Marines like to tell in this regard, to the effect that on the evening of November 10, 1775, at a slop chute called Tun Tavern, in the city of Philadelphia, the first Marine to have been recruited by Captain Sam Nicholas was enjoying the tankard of ale he had received as his "enlistment bonus" when a second fellow, carrying two tankards of ale, sat down across the table from him.

"Can you beat that!" said the second fellow, wiping his lips after nearly draining the first tankard in one swallow. "That fellow over there," he said, pointing at Nicholas, "promised me a chance at travel and adventure, not to mention service, in this new outfit - he called it the 'Continental Marines' - and said I'd earn a bonus of two tankards of ale for signing up."

Some say the first Marine curled his lip, gave his new companion a disapproving look, and said, "You new guys have no idea how things were like in the Old Corps!"

There are basically two schools of thought about the "Old Corps." The first holds that, indeed, today's Marines are a bunch of sissies compared to the Marines who fought in 'Nam, or with Chesty Puller at "the frozen Chosin during the freezin' season" in Korea, or on various islands in the Pacific, or at Belleau Wood during World War I, and so on, back into time. The second maintains that while times and circumstances change, the basic stuff of which Marines are made doesn't, and that there is no "Old Corps" or "New Corps," just the one "Marine Corps." It's this latter group that tells stories like the one above.

And then, out of left field, Halloween impinged on my thoughts and an idea was born: a story along the lines of A Christmas Carol, except instead of Ebenezer Scrooge and taking place at Christmas, it'd be a bitter old Marine veteran who believes in the toughness of the Old Corps and taking place on November 10.

But this is a theme that is entirely too long for an LJ Idol entry, so maybe I'll play with this idea and see if I can wrap it around the impending NaNoWriMo madness in November.

As a shorter subject more tractable for LJ Idol, I was struck with the idea of a young Marine on his way back to his barracks late on Halloween night, feeling discouraged after having been the butt of a "barefoot, uphill, both ways" Old Corps lecture from his girlfriend's visiting uncle. At the bus stop, waiting for the next bus, our hero meets a figure costumed as a Continental Marine, who proceeds to undo the psychic damage that had been inflicted earlier in the evening, and then vanishes mysteriously, leaving the reader to conclude that our hero had conversed with a benevolent ghost.

By this time, I had awakened and kept turning this idea - and variations of it - around in my mind for so long, that I debated going upstairs to start writing something in the middle of the night, but...

I have yet to despeckle yesterday's 6,500 words and there are another 2,000 or so words to translate today, followed by a packing session, followed by travel and a translator's conference during the rest of the week, so with prudence being the better part of maintaining an even strain, I forced myself to go back to sleep.

I feel a bye coming on, but looking at what I've written above, I feel as if I'm at least halfway there.

Cheers...

The plate is empty...

Today's word count turned out to be more along the lines of 3,200 target words, which cleaned the plate right off and left only a bunch of invoicing to do before leaving for New York tomorrow.

Ideas kept floating around in my head, even while Galina and I traveled up toward Natalie's neck of the woods to pick up the Ford and I drove it home. I am so struck with the USMC story that I find it impossible to think of anything else, except that from time to time, I wonder if the subject might not be somewhat too... I don't know... marginal? uninteresting? Dare I say, "Old Corps"?

(And as I write that, there bobs into the foreground the notion that, mayhaps, one might write it in a way that might make it interesting?)

I'm still leaning toward a bye but, quoting Fats Waller, "One never knows, do one?"

Tonight: packing. Tomorrow, up at oh-dark-thirty.

Cheers...