Avoidance and Discipline

You’d think, after having talked myself out of bed earlier than my body really wanted to agree to; after having poured the coffee (thank goodness and my mother-in-law for the programmable coffee maker) and filled the cat’s water dish; having sat down and woken the computer, I would be eager to write. This was the point, after all: a quiet house, Me Time.

The trouble, of course, is that creativity and plot solutions and crystal-clear scene envisioning and beautiful words aren’t as easy to flick on as the computer or the coffee maker. This morning, after squirming in my chair, staring out the window (look, a goldfinch!), and idly scrolling through the extant 15 pages of text (of which a solid 30% is notes to self or otherwise trashable), I thought, Well, darn it, the magical orb of inspiration is not glowing. I’m not going to write after all. Maybe I’ll just check my calendar. I’m sure there’s some event requiring me to drive a child somewhere that I’ve forgotten. Or maybe I’ll just draft that product description of that thing I’m going to sell on Etsy one of these days. Or maybe put down that line of a poem that popped into my head the other night (or was it while walking yesterday?).

Haha, Self! That would be writing. So instead of opening an entirely new, BLANK document when all you have is one lonely line of poetry, why not consider the plight of the heroine before your eyes? Just get her to the part where she sees…yeah. That’s all you have to do. Well, now that she’s there, you might as well let her…yeah. And remember how you were going to have her…? Why don’t you let her finish that up, and then she can…

A Rediscovered Country

It has been three years since I declared Two Swords “finished,” and several months since I shredded a banker’s box full of old notes, drafts and critiques. The characters I once knew so well have receded in my memory if not in my affections. So as I sat down to write the sequel-story that has been rattling in my brain for a long while, I was disturbed to find that the imaginary landscape I once knew in every detail had become fuzzy. As in, how far is it from one manor to the next, and how far is each from the border, and from the capital? If Character A is wandering through the forest in such and such a place, is she on her way home, or just out for a daily stroll?

Granted, these details are not critical in a first draft, but I did feel I needed to get my bearings. Hurray for a little foresight, or nostalgia, or whatever instinct caused me to save a couple of maps I once drew while working on TS. The former haunts of the imagination come back just as if I were looking at a photo of a place I actually lived years ago.

Even better, I suddenly feel that I’ve rediscovered a much broader land: the place where writing is an excitement and joy, something to do for my own pure pleasure. I was beginning to think I’d been shut out of that country for good.

The Gentle Art of Self-Deception

I caught myself at it today.

Walking tends to put me in a contemplative mood, and as I strolled through the graveyard this morning I thought of my writing work, and how I am not (any longer) one of those writers who chains herself to the desk in search of inspiration. No, I wait for the lightning to strike, build up the electric charge deep within, and then…boom! So to speak. On the other hand, I am entirely aware of how I need to be in the storm (so to speak) of reading, connecting with other artistic people, and wanting to create, if I want to be struck by said lightning.

To that end, I have been working through Sage Cohen’s Writing the Life Poetic, once assiduously, now sporadically. (My attention span is, alas, shortish.) I have been doing her exercises in a handmade journal (smooth stardust paper, aquamarine fountain-pen ink), and while enjoying the tactile and industrious sensation, yet feeling less and less certain of the ultimate purpose.

Here’s the undeception: If I write by hand in a journal, I am making notes. I am playing around, no stakes, no commitment. I’ll get around to writing that poem…some day. Only when I sit at my desk and face that hard blank  computer screen does it become real work, requiring commitment, revision, sharing. Acceptance, rejection, complete indifference?

I do believe this is what I’m afraid of.

One for the Happy File

In “Love Languages” theory, my love language is words of affirmation. A kind word or compliment will feed me for weeks. So I was tickled to find an unsolicited review of my fledgling ebook, and to find it positive.

The two sentences that made my day: “This book was a light, fast read and overall I enjoyed it…I would like to see more in depth, longer stories by this author and will probably pick up anything she writes on the hopes that she will only improve with time.”

Sure, there was also some helpful criticism; I am sufficiently distanced from the work, after four years, that it didn’t sting. In fact, I pretty much agree.

Shucks, I might just feel like writing now.

Five Fat Files

I’ve been musing on this concept since last week’s women’s Bible study. In her book Life Management for Busy Women, Elizabeth George discusses the idea of creating “five fat files.” The goal is to choose five areas for growth and learning, and then purposefully start researching and developing oneself in those areas. It didn’t take me too long to come up with a preliminary list. Though the idea sounded gimmicky at first, I think the concept is sound. Whether or not I actually create physical files (or computer files), the list will help to focus my time and mental energies. Here are my five:

1. Writing—developing my skills for personal fulfillment and inspiring others
2. Education—considering its meaning and purpose, and how my kids can best develop their own talents and skills
3. Textile arts—developing my skills for personal fulfillment and helping others
4. Music—developing my skills for personal fulfillment and inspiring others
5. Gardening and Environment—expanding my knowledge, creating beauty, living a more healthy lifestyle and better caring for God’s creation

This should keep me busy for a while. What five areas would you choose?

Power of Drudgery, pt. 2

Sanity is a Chimera of Relativity

I always said you’d be crazy to hand-wash
dishes in this day and age and with a family
to boot who would have satellite TV and a whole-
house entertainment system and no dishwasher?
I mean you have to eat. And then the clothes dryer
broke and here I am a month later stubbornly refusing
the inconvenience and expense of the repairman or
the expense and inconvenience of a new dryer
which will only break again and somehow I’ve found
a rhythm to clipping clothes to the line and a peace
in not keeping one ear open for that dreaded buzz
which means hurry before they wrinkle and after all
I never claimed to be anything but crazy and the simple
honesty of the labor gives me this chance to compose
poems in my head.

Gifts

One thing I’m still trying to learn is patience, and how the finding is not always in the looking, but in waiting and in faith. My writing has been in so many ways a struggle for the past couple of years (purpose? desire? quality?); and though I keep telling myself to listen and to wait, these things are very hard to do.

One thing I already know is that life is not a series of accidents or coincidences. So I accepted the gift that was friend Kim’s invitation to help her out with a writing workshop for teens (haven’t done one of these together since last summer). Yes, I worried that the teens would sniff me out for a phony. And I felt nostalgic but detached (admit it, Self: guilty) when Kim mentioned a character of mine whom I haven’t thought of for a long time.

Then a funny thing happened. We each began working on a “character collage”—cutting pictures from magazines to represent a fictional character. As I flipped through a Victorian accessories catalog (oh Kim, where do you get these things?), my mind went to a woman character in a tale that I’ve picked up and set aside dozens of times in the past two and a half years. Silly me, I thought she would show up as a child of the dark ages in Revolutionary America (ok, there’s time travel involved). How had I not seen that she once knew Tennyson, and would latch on to Victorian dress and jeweled hairpins? Lo and behold, I was busy thinking through the story again, reshaping, reinventing, reinvigorated.

Where does it go from here? That is the question I can’t allow myself to ask. As Kim herself would say, I have to “follow the whisper.” And enjoy the gift.

Books, Hats, Hamsters

Books
I finally found a book to chase the winter blahs—Thrones, Dominations by Dorothy L. Sayers and Jill Paton Walsh. A little of Lord Peter’s sparkle is gone—a function of his age or of the book’s being completed by another author?—but the book is striking the right balance of intellect and entertainment for my present mood. I have fresh intentions to go back and read the other Lord Peter titles I’ve missed.

Also, on the recommendation of my sister, I picked up Fast Ships, Black Sails, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. This is a collection of sci-fi/fantasy pirate tales from such luminaries as Naomi Novik and Garth Nix.

Hats
I’m pleased with the latest creation—an interpretation of a friend’s Paris original. This one is for another friend’s upcoming birthday, but I’m seriously thinking of opening a shop on etsy. If I had all the time in the world to write, sew, crochet, would I enjoy these activities nearly as much?

Hamsters
After wondering for the past couple of days why the new hamster kept making pitiful squeaking noises, we have solved the mystery. Just before bed last night, Number-One Daughter discovered the four tiny pink hamster babies. Now we know for scientific fact that the gestation period of a hamster is not less than two and a half weeks, as the girls only bought her three Saturdays ago. Can’t wait to see the reaction of Princess Two, who was already asleep when the discovery was made.

Exciting Things

1. Learning Connections
As in, after I read Mark Kurlansky’s The Story of Salt with the kids, then found the adult version, Salt (which Number-One Daughter insists looks and sounds like a novel, with that kind of title); and the day after I read about how salt was used for embalming in ancient Egypt (different grades for different classes of people), the kids and I started reading a book about ancient Egypt (100 Things You Should Know About Ancient Egypt, by Jane Walker) and found a spread about embalming which of course mentioned salt. Oh, and it happens that Number-One Daughter is studying ancient Egypt in school right now, and had only a day or two before described (with relish, at the dinner table) how the embalming process required that the brain be removed through the nose with a hook, and the organs placed in jars. Yep. Read that in the book, too. I’m pretty sure learning is taking place here, a lot of it mine…

Or how about this one: One night, in a book called Animals Under the Ground, by Phyllis J. Perry, Princess Two and I read about the kangaroo rat, and how it lives in the desert but gets all the moisture it needs through the seeds it eats. A little later the same night, Number-One Daughter and I found this passage in Scott O’Dell’s The King’s Fifth:

…[F]rom a pocket in her skirt she took a small, ratlike creature, with long back legs, and held it up in the palm of her hand.

“What is it?” I asked.

“An aguatil. It lives in the deserts and never needs to drink water. It does not like water. Its name is Montezuma.”

I doubted her story but it was true. In the days to come, when horses and men thirsted, this ratlike creature thrived, getting by some means from the seeds it ate, the water it needed.

I also found it handy to have Animals Under the Ground nearby when the younger two and I started reading The Wind in the Willows, for the photos of moles and badgers. Have I ever mentioned how much I love books?

2. New Yarn Store
Friend Jill took me to her new discovery yesterday afternoon. A lovely, old-fashioned storefront, dangerously close to home, filled with gorgeous yarns of every shape, color, texture. Heavenly. I bought a small ball of rainbow-colored wool that was just enough for a baby-sized beanie, and some variegated green supersoft cotton of whose possibilities I am still dreaming…

3. Impending New Releases
In 2 weeks: the Percy Jackson movie
In 8 weeks: Megan Whalen Turner’s latest book featuring Eugenides, the Thief of Eddis, titled A Conspiracy of Kings. Love, love, love these books.

4. Return of the Scrabblepoem Challenge
That’s right. Stay tuned for the official announcement, complete with rules, coming this Friday!

The Power of Drudgery

So yesterday during my pre-dawn writing time I stared blankly at the blank computer screen, the blank journal page. Apparently the great epic whatever had not entered my brain as I slept. Sigh.

In the afternoon I set myself the task of untangling a jillion yards of yarn from various skeins that had decided to have a party in the yarn basket while I wasn’t needing them for something else. (This little piece of self-torture is part of my seven-year cleanout of the house. Yes, we have been living in this house for seven years, which may not seem long to others, but is longer than we’ve lived any one place, ever. It is pretty dreadful what can get stacked, piled, jumbled, and forgotten—especially in the basement, especially when one has three children—in seven years.)

My fingers were untanglin’, my ears were filled with the soothing and lovely sounds of Ann Heymann’s Celtic harp, and my mind wandered off on its own thing. Which turned out to be latching onto a line for a poem which has been floating around in there for some time. The magic that happened was that another line joined up with it, then another and another, until, yarn tangle made neatly into several little balls, I just had to go type up those lines and begin shaping them into a poem.

Metaphorical, ain’t it? Perhaps only another writer could understand just how good it felt to get those lines out of my head and onto the hard drive. Sigh.

Hey, I feel pretty good about getting that yarn straightened up, too.