pen ink river

I found what's below in an interview with Wendell Berry in the July 2008 issue of The Sun magazine. It is something to take to heart, those of who have privileged the writer's life over other paths and journeys:

Berry says:

"You need to realize...: you can lead a perfectly good and satisfactory life even if you're NOT a writer. When I figured out I could be perfectly happy and not be a writer, I became a BETTER writer...I don't think you ought to let your happiness depend on writing...The unhappiest people in the world may be the ones who think their happiness depends on artistic success."

Well said.

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NANO DAY #17
Saturday morning, rainy, fog, gray. J. back from his week in DC. We are off to look at houses with a realtor in a couple of hours. I’d like to run errands, stop by the library, maybe see a matinee or make a nice dinner, finish my Kate Atkinson book. So I’m taking at least the morning off, possibly the whole day, from novel-writing. I hate to say this but all that seems much more interesting and fun to me than sitting around adding more words to a shitty novel that will never make it out the running gate. Bad attitude? Or realistic? After reading the interview with Norman Mailer in the most recent Paris Review, I’d say the latter. I guess I am ready for a change...

NANO DAY #18

Low-word count day here as it’s a Sunday morning after a bad night of sleep with wheezing and feeling like I am coming down with a cold. I know that’s no excuse but, between that and the ongoing PMS, I just don’t have the fiction-writing drive inside me today. Sometimes feeling unwell in the body trumps everything else.

Yesterday, I finished One Good Turn, Kate Atkinson’s wonderful (second) Jackson Brodie "mystery" novel. I’m not sure assigning this novel to the Mystery section (as the library has done) does the humor, irony, complexity, and biting social commentary of her work justice. She’s just so good. It makes me want to throw in the towel re: writing even mildly decent fiction and get a lot more honest and real with myself about what I am and am not going to write from here on out.

Meanwhile, the galleys of my poetry book are arriving by priority mail Monday or Tuesday. I have to make sure to make time to celebrate and feel excited about that because, really, it is a milestone and I do feel proud. I did it—thanks to my tenacity and doggedness and a great deal of feedback from L. and B. in our chapbook on-line class. It is still hard to believe I am such a beginner, returning to seriously think about writing poetry barely two years ago and already, to have this book. After all those years struggling with fiction, the rejections and then the eye-opening lesson in all that dreck that is the Tin House unsolicited manuscripts pile. I think I already know the answer about me and fiction—actually, I’ve known for quite some time but remained somehow unwilling to speak it to the world—was that it? Or is it even more difficult and complex, something about me feeling that IF I admit I don’t want to do this—for a ton of carefully considered and defensible reasons, somehow it marks me as a failure. In whose eyes? My own or some other outside of me I shouldn’t be listening to anyway? A voice I should have exorcised long ago?

Still, I’ll continue with NaNoWriMo just for the hell of it. I have to be able to crank out another 10,000 words in the remaining days. Maybe I’ll even have something to show for it by the end. Not that anyone would want to read it!

NANO DAY #19

I think today I’ve finally concluded? realized? accepted? that (of course) I am writing a novel that is more like a collection of linked stories. Which is fine. And what I really loved about many books I read including Joan Silber’s book, Ideas of Heaven. It’s also a way to have more characters who may or may not have to be related (something I love about Kate Atkinson’s books) and a way to tell a story like a kaleidoscope or a necklace, images I used when I was first thinking about doing NaNoWriMo. And it is the kind of fiction I often prefer to read and therefore what kind I should be writing. So maybe my NaNo mess can actually be pared and edited into something, in spite of all my negative feelings about its shapeless idiocy the past week and that this was only an exercise in piloting me back to poetry.

And more realizations. (Again, these have been known for a while but I guess I was in denial or some state of refusing to accept them?

I am not a plodding, plot-driven person. This happened, then this happened, then that. Or what if Mr. A decided to do X to Ms. B and then run away with Mrs. C., what happens then? For some reason writing like that bores me. Not able to fool with the nuances of language enough? Not poetic enough? Not fracturing and bending narrative to stir up questions enough? I don’t mind reading books that do that. Far from it. But the stuff that I learn from, that intrigues me, that I guess I would say are some of my all-time favorites—Ulysses, Proust, Beloved, Michael Ondaatje’s work, Denis Johnson, even Alice Munro—that material hardly follows a straight line.

So a good NaNo morning as I inch close to come kind of end. I suppose if I get to 50K before November 30th, I can keep adding more or go back and see what is salvageable and could work as a coherent whole from what I’ve already done.

NANO DAY #20
I woke, made coffee, wrote in my journal, drank more coffee, worked on the NaNo pages, updated my word count, drank more coffee, and am now turning to the rest of the day. There is sun down south of here in the Willamette Valley; soon, it’s supposed to make an appearance here.

I suppose it feels like an even longer month, a long, lonely novel-writing slog, when you don’t approach this like a party and go to NaNo events and interact with people from your NaNo home region and have a passel of NaNo buddies and, in general, make this Something to Remember rather than the basic Nothing it’s turning out to be for me. Not that I anticipated anything much different. I’m not a socializing writer. I have my routine and then move on to whatever is next in my day. I don’t have a tribe to turn to for therapy or angst-sharing about whether or not I’m doing the work. Even if I did, I’m not sure I would. That said, it would be good to have a handful of friends to call and chat with about this writing life and work. I think that is what could be had by joining a real, functioning writing group here in Portland. I’ll wait and see if the Attic workshop morphs into anything like that. I suppose there’s always placing a note on Craig’s List.

It seems this NaNo is just another excuse to party for some of the participants. To feel connected to and part of something that a collective we are doing, have done, and can wear the T-shirts to prove it. One more attempt to bring together (Internet-enabled) like-minded souls. Except it’s not for me. Because, if there’s one thing that I’ve learned this month it’s that getting to the 50,000 the word count isn’t the problem. I have written, am able to write, have made writing the priority in my life. One of the big issues for me is the why. Why do I think I want to do this? What am I trying to prove? And to whom? And for what? Seems that after my NaNo sessions nearly every one of these twenty days so far, I’ve also spend some time reflecting about these concerns. Soul-searching some might call it. More realistically, it’s an attempt to figure out why something that (increasingly) comes easily to me (the words, not necessarily all the other novel subtleties) is something I don’t enjoy or find fun. I think it’s because I only like the words, that I maybe even hate all the mechanics, all those other novelistic nuances and subtleties. I know, this month we are only supposed to get the words down and out and counted up. And I have obviously done that. But to what end? Is that what my lesson in all of this is? To practice letting go of outcomes? of achievement? Of adding this as another notch on the resume belt?

It seems this NaNoWriMo might be best suited to those who say they want to write (and maybe even do want to write) but never find or make the time. And those who need a kick in the pants to just do it. And those lucky who have a great idea with lots of momentum and energy and need to get it down fast as possible so that it can then become what it is meant to be under revision. And let’s face facts: most of the 50,000 word novels written by would-be novelists this month will suck. Won’t go anywhere. Never needed to be written in the first place. And I definitely would have no interest in reading them. There is (I agree) something to be said for sticking with a project. That, indeed, was a lot of the energy in Chris Baty’s book, No Plot? No Problem. Participate, stick to it, have something to show at the end that says you stuck do it and met your goal. All well and good in terms of the perhaps-Zen-like, in-the-moment, unattached-to-outcomes element of such an endeavor. Not so great in terms of foolishly wasting precious time I could be devoting to other projects, work, etc. Maybe I’m sounding like a tedious 50-something here, what with this obsession with efficient use of the time I’ve got in the “rest of my life”—rather than going with the fun, the flow, the living in the moment. Unfortunately, I’ve been there and done that and it’s in large part why my first book of writing (albeit poetry not fiction) hasn’t come out until now.

I guess thought it would be a useful exercise for me because of the Inner Editor on Vacation part. And, in light of that, it has been. But mostly what I’ve discovered are two things that actually seem in opposition to one another: (1) While it’s relatively easy for me to amass words, that once started and committed to daily writing practice on a subject or even a project, they tumble out. (2) Still, I mostly don’t have any interest in sustaining the interest or drive or energy to figure out to shape them into a novel anyone would ever want to read.

Read my lips: I am not a novelist. Now, can I just accept this fact and (finally, definitively, once and for all) move the hell on?

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DAY #13

You meet your destiny on the road you take to avoid it.
- Carl Jung

That was the peace quote in my e-mail this morning. Much food for thought.

I should be typing these words in one of the rooms at the back of the house because that’s where the sun is pouring in its early morning light, most welcome after yesterdays Sturm und Drang. One cat is on the back of the couch, his perch so he can look out the window at the passing people and cars; the other is curled up in an African basket underneath the coffee table. It’s a much better morning than yesterday and all because of the abundant light.

I actually did two NaNo sessions in one yesterday so, technically, I’m free to have a day off today. Again, I reworked a piece from earlier so it was far from a challenge. So what I’m planning is to do another session this morning, post-cereal and shower. I also need to go through and list all the various chapters I’ve made up in the order I have them to see if 1) there is any narrative flow and sense as to what follows what and 2) figure out what gaps and missing scenes I need to fill in. I actually rather like what feels like a bit of random juxtaposition of these various non-linear bits.

I was noticing that Kate Atkinson does something similar and to quite a strong effect in the novel I’m now reading, One Good Turn. Shell start in a character’s present moment, let’s say Martin the mystery novelist. Then travel back to a field trip to a prison with his writing group, then back to his days at school, then a scene with his agent and finally, back to the present where she has him meet up with Jackson, her main character and now-ex detective. I don’t know about her other readers, but I happily follow her along. I guess its because she gets inside these quirky, flawed people and offers them up with both tenderness and humor.

Anyhow, I am hoping to be surprised and not thoroughly depressed and/or disgusted by what I notice as I scroll back through the 104 pages I’ve somehow already amassed! Novel-in-a-month. Wow!

DAY #14

I wrote for a couple of hours with cold hands and often shivering because I didn’t bother to change out of flannel PJs or to turn on the heat. It must be colder outside today as it stayed about 59 degrees in here in spite of the gas fireplace. Maybe I was able to keep going because I was writing a scene with a campfire in it. Or maybe I lost myself in the continuous, fictional dream as I think John Gardner calls it. All I know is that now its time for a banana smoothie and a hot shower. After that I’ll decide if I want to crank further beyond today’s 1900 words.

It is absolutely great to have the evil Inner Editor on vacation—and necessary for a crazy project like this novel-in-a-month. Otherwise Id have to be worrying that I have at least three narrative threads going at once, all of them flailing about and nowhere near resolved. If I followed every one down its primrose fictional path, I’d have a (most likely unreadable, uninteresting) novel the length of War and Peace. But all that is OK because this is a rough draft, its impossible to write a finished novel in a month, and isnt it with revision that we truly figure out which story we are meant to tell?

It has evolved that it works better for me to dive in, almost helter skelter, into some writing every day and then figure out where it might fit after the fact. Crazy quilt. Necklace with differently-sized and colored beads. An olio, isn’t that the crossword puzzle word, the one that means a stew or cooking pot, a miscellaneous mélange of things? Pick which metaphor for this project works. Of course this means, at least for now, there are many jarring jolts in the flow of the overall book. Big stuff like point-of-view shifts (whose story is this anyway?) and yet-unclarified timelines (just when is this particular scene, chapter, section taking place anyway? and did they really have mobile phones back then?)—that sort of thing. Egregious errors of basic writing craft let alone the requisite attention to detail, but what the hell? Were after word count and not anything that makes any sense, right?

I continue to be amazed at how much writing I’ve done over the years. I have been taking this writing life seriously for quite some time! I suppose I could be distressed that more of it didn’t “go anywhere.” I guess by that I mean getting something published, even though much of what gets published doesn’t sell and isn’t read by much of anyone and ends up on the remainder shelf. Of course, it may be simply that my fiction isn’t good enough. Truth to tell, I find what I write a little boring at times but then I have no desire or inclination (as of yet) to change that.

So maybe I should head back into therapy to sort out why I seem to have had trouble bringing these projects to a satisfying completion. Not that that would mean publication either. Assuming, again, that is the end game in all of why we sit here, typing away, trying to make new worlds with words. I have to resist feeling like a failure because I’ve accumulated all this material and it remains vague and shapeless, incoherent at times and likely full of cliché. If the only thing I get out of this November novel project is acknowledging how much hard work I’ve done to become a better writer over the years, then that will be a good thing.

Also, an insight that occurred to me yesterday: I couldn’t be successfully writing poetry if I hadn’t taken the time to apprentice myself all these to better learn how to be concrete and specific, how to self-edit, how to manage the flow and energy of lines and paragraphs in prose. I may not want to be a novelist, I may no longer care to write (let alone read) short stories but all of this hard work has not been for naught.

Later after more writing:

Maybe it’s the shivering that makes a person stick with the words and do a yeowoman’s extra word count duty on a blustery Wednesday morning. Or maybe it was the sex scene. The first graphic one I’ve let into the novel. I haven’t sorted how much of a sexy, sexual sub-text I want this novel to have. That’s one of the many narrative threads that, for now, is all clouded up. Just keep writing, right, and then when the shapeless blob reaches 50,000 words (which also, hopefully, means some kind of respectable end) then see what plot lines jump out and need further developing, see which characters you really want to spend more time with and learn more about, including all the secrets.

I have too many characters in the draft so far, too. Or at least too many differently-named people to keep track of, and who may or may not matter to the advancement of the story. Today I did a party scene and that required a crowd of attendees. Or so I thought. It will be interesting to read this all through at the end and see what jumps out, what zings. And if, God forbid, I want to continue working with it.

Apparently, there is NaNoEdMo for editing and revision in March. Yikes!

One other item worth noting: a while back, I wrote the following in the “current projects” section on my website, about something I planned to do in 2007:

I’ve returned to my many writings-to-date about the anthracite coal region of northeastern Pennsylvania—where I grew up—as springboard for maybe a new poetry chapbook, Meander.

In many ways, that’s what this near-two weeks of NaNoWriMo has been for me, a revisiting of ideas and themes and fixations about home and exile, about the idea of returning and what repercussions that might have. It seems without meaning too, or even conciously, I’ve begun to work on mining my writing about the place where I grew up.

DAY #15

The halfway mark.
Today was diving into the VISTA house pot luck hippie dinner scene and Hank and Irene taking their first walk down to the river. I should have put on some vintage Neil Young for inspiration but, instead, I worked away. Two+ hours with the laptop on my lap and me sitting in front of the couch with the gas fire roaring (can gas fireplaces roar?) I meet the daily NaNo word count short one word. And Hank has finally begun to woo Irene. If it can be called wooing when you go from a shared joint to the back seat of a junker car.

The NaNo advice that came via e-mail this morning was to jump around, write whatever scenes appeal and worry about how they all fit together later, which is exactly (mostly) what I’ve been doing. I have gone back a few times and looked at my current line-up to see if in any way, shape, or form, it might be said to flow. But I haven’t dwelled on that. Move on, type more, go for more word count. I’m at 37,567 words and 128 pages as of today. Of course, I also went back and looked at the 233 I’d amassed on my grad school novel way back when. A brief skimming through the various sections and I wanted to puke. No wonder no one wanted to publish it. So much of the writing totally sucks. There is something to be said for the wisdom one acquires with age and the continued, so often humbling practice of working with words.

Walter Mosley is definitely right. If you show up and spend a couple hours writing, sooner or later you amass a book. Of course he writes ones about a great character, Easy Rawlins, and his don’t suck and need years of wrenching revision like what I am working on now. But I have been showing up and we are now halfway through the month of November. At this point, I suspect I’ll easily make it to 50,000 words. But will it be interesting, populated with engaging and complex characters? Readable? Will it actually have a coherent plot line or two? A climax? A conclusion?

In the next fifteen days, all that remains to be seen.

NANO DAY #16

Today, Friday, Day #16 of NaNo, past the halfway point, I don’t feel like writing. I’ve been awake an hour and did my journal, found a poem on the Nation website that I read and liked yesterday (before leaving the mag in the rack at the Kennedy School for someone else to find and read) and bought our tickets for our 2008 pilgrimage to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Today was the day the first category of our membership was allowed to buy and I wanted to get the jump on good seats.

Very rainy outside this morning. This may be my day off from walking, too. A good day to be in the kitchen making soups, listening to the radio or CDs. Chopping carrots and celery might be just the rhythm my imagination needs in order to get a feeling of where in this damn novel I need to fill in the holes, and where I need to dig deeper.

I can already feel that Irene needs more obsessions—like Jackson Brodie, the main character in Kate Atkinson’s latest books. He’s got his listening to all the soulful country girl singers like Lucinda and EmmyLou and Trisha, moving to France, the basic melancholy dreariness of life once you get to be of a certain middle age. Right now, Irene isn’t fully formed in many sections of the so-called novel. She seems to me to be simply out there, wandering, reacting, mostly observing. Maybe she could be learning Italian—why? Or Meanders little literary angel trying to put her already-read magazines in public places where others will find and perhaps be enlightened by then? Or leaving books to be found—wasn’t there some project that actually encouraged people to do that? Not unlike the “find a red book” treasure hunt that was part of the Wordstock Literary Festival. I’ll have to muse on this more.

As well as ask myself, does this story really need to be told? If yes, why? And why me to tell it? And if yes, whose story is it? what is it really about?

I went through the whole mess a few days ago, charting the rise and fall of action, the connecting between one chapter and the next. I can see it’s easy to lose sight of what you’re accumulating particularly when you are in crank-out-the-words mode. I’m not quite ready to waste printer ink and print out the whole to-date draft. Maybe next week.

A crow is perched on a thick black wire that runs to a telephone pole. Another flies off into the tree across the street. Cars going down 22nd have their lights on, to pierce the gray of this day. I drink my smoothie and ask myself, what would Irene do? But maybe that’s the issue. Maybe I can’t inhabit Irene.

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NaNo Day #9

OK, it’s Friday. And I really and truly did have to go out on errands first thing to see if the local dry cleaner over by the post office on Killingsworth, could get J.’s shirts done by Saturday as he needs them for his trip to DC next week. And, never one to do only one thing while I’m out and about, (especially these days of trying not to drive too much) I also headed up to Acme Mirror on Alberta to get a piece of glass cut and installed in the carved teak frame I got at The Monkey and the Rat a few weeks back. They’re closed on Saturdays which is why that minor project has taken so long. And then I headed out on my adventure to find Joes, formerly G.I. Joes, a sporting goods/outdoor mega-store, to buy another pedometer as mine has gone MIA. All that took about an hour. Then, upon returning, I had a message to call Sharon, the editor of the poetry anthology about bridges that my poem will be appearing in. So I did that. Then, finally, after a few pieces of vegie/cheese corn bread for inspiration, I turned to the novel words.

Earlier this morning, I reviewed some of the pitfalls often experienced in Week #2 of NaNoWriMo in No Plot, No Problem earlier this morning, I had already (tentatively) decided that I might not pick up where I left off yesterday because I was so bored with it and that, to energize myself and continue with the writing, and I might need a character coup. As Chris Baty describes it, a character coup is when you are bored with all your main characters and decided to abandon them or maybe even literally kill them off and let a stranger, quirkier minor character take the lead instead. Which is what I did.

I opened up a file with notes from way back when—a very sketchy freewrite of Irene leaving a bar and going to a cemetery—and started to type. I let Lance Franklin into the scene and now I’m thinking I may just turn the whole damn shapeless sweater mess into the serial murder comedy J. wanted me to write from the beginning, the one about a guy who is killing off everyone who had higher GPAs than him in the high school class so he can be #1 at the next reunion. The good news is I cranked out about half of the daily quote just rambling on about this and that. I may see if, post-lunch, I get a second wind and feel like further fleshing Lance out.

Not to jump the gun—because this NaNo is about the process not the product, let’s not forget—but I have pretty much (already) come to the conclusion that I really do not like working on a novel, that it isn’t my strong suit when it comes to writing. I seem to quickly lose my interest and desire to figure out the whole ball of wax that is creating believeable characters you want to learn more about, have do things, get into difficult situations in which they are forced to make decisions, etc. etc. J. thinks it is because what I’ve been writing is too autobiographical; he may be right. He also says it’s because I can never (have never been able to) envision a story’s ending. All of this is part of why I turned to poetry in the first place two years ago when working on the Gordon book. Shorter projects, ones where you can get a sense of completion, where the sound, word, phrase, line, stanza, syntax, and music are paramount not whether Lance would leave the Mountain Inn, go to the cemetery and stick a knife into Irene. I’m not saying there aren’t characters in poetry or story lines. Just that something different works for me when I’m working with the words that will become a poem.

Still, I’m going to keep going. My word count inched ever so slightly above 20,000 words today. That, in and of itself, says something I guess. That I am good at touch typing? That I know how to use the word count feature on MS Word?

NaNo Day #10

Saturday. Sun’s out. I see smoke from a chimney up the block so maybe that means it’s cold. It’s J.’s last day home before he goes an American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in DC all next week. There’s a big sale over at the outdoor store formerly known as G.I.Joe’s. We have library books and dry cleaning to retrieve, raking to do, a walk, and an afternoon reconnaissance of the Wordstock Book Fair down at the convention center so I won’t feel so overwhelmed going there alone for my poetry workshop at 4 pm on Sunday.

Who in their right mind would want to stay indoors and write?

After much PMS-induced carping and pewling in my journal pages, I moved on to the words. Today was mostly a cut-and-paste, stream-of-consciousness session. Nothing artful or crafted that’s for sure. I started with an old file of scatterbrained notes, added some narrative to get a character moving from the kitchen to the back porch, then using a “found text”—a very brief story written by C. back in 4th or 5th grade, moving into juxtaposing Irene’s self-indulgent, mixed-up psychic state with some news reports from Afghanistan and Iraq.

So, 1500 words later, I’ve sewn one more square in the patchwork crazy quilt that is my (likely unreadable, uninteresting) NaNoWriMo novel, that’s for sure. I would almost prefer shapeless sweater; at least it’s an item of clothing you might be able to wear. I think that’s probably the best I’m going to be able to do at least for this hormonally-challenged NaNo Week #2. Ramble on, to quote an old Led Zeppelin song.

Meanwhile, here’s something serendipitous and crazy: the theme of Fred Piscop’s November bonus crossword (for those of us who subscribe to the the New York Times puzzle online) is National Novel Writing Month. Guess the event is on the dominant culture radar screen now!

NaNo Day #11

Sunday morning and I got a late start with the NaNo pages because of this and that. I wish I felt more interested in my project. But even if I were working with different material, and a completely different cast of characters and plot line, I don’t think I’d be getting into this. I think writing a novel—at least a traditional-style, linear narrative—just isn’t for me. I’ve known this for a while and it’s a large part of the reason I switched over to memoir and poetry study a few years back. But this experience of showing up to confront the novel demons every day for a month is bringing my insight about the kind of writer I am home.

I suppose I am continuing to do NaNo in spite of this realization partly to prove to myself I can begin and complete, that I can make it to some kind of “ending” because I never did that with my grad school novel-in-progress. But what I have to remember about that project is that, indeed, I went back at least twice and thoughtfully analyzed why that project fizzled out above and beyond the fact that the story itself was boring to me and the process of writing a novel un-fun. Maybe now, once I’ve made it through NaNoWriMo, I can finally put that experience to rest. And move on.

What I also have to remember is that whatever writing I stitch together as part of this NaNo process won’t be for naught. While the NaNo pages might not hold together as a credible novel that anyone in her right mind would ever want to read, the pages can and will be seeds for other writing including poetry. Witness what happened with my poem, Sara’s Eyes. It pretty much grew out of my free writing about Irene and her obsession with an Afghan woman in a New York Times photograph. This was the scene I added to the NaNo novel’s word count yesterday as I work to deepen Irene’s character. I’m sure there will be other passages that I’ll return to and mine for other creative work.

NaNo Day #12

Today’s NaNo themes have been chapter titles and recycling. Since the structure of my novel is, for now, a crazy patchwork quilt, it makes little sense to finalize what section will end up being where. This story is jumping around in time and in and out of the minds of several of the characters, hence the 3rd person omniscient point of view. I have chunked the 88 or so pages into three parts and then tentatively numbered and named the sections (of wildly varying length and completeness, I might add) that I’ve plunked into each of those.

I have had that song by Lesley Gore—it’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to, cry if I want to, cry if I want to, you would cry too if it happened to you—in my head for days only I keep changing the lyrics to suit my situation at the moment. [By the way, what is it in that that last line?] My version for today goes something like this: they’re my words and I’ll use if I want to, use if I want to, use if I want to. You’d use them, too, if they were written by you. So that’s what I’ve done with a bit of editing, tweaking, additional writing, and deleting. Of course, I doubt I have another 22,000 words in the coffers to add to this crazy-ass project so I’m sure I’ll be back on the chain gang slogging away in the matter of a day or two. But for now, I’ve decided to do this.

And just because inquiring minds do want to know what it really is and because the Internet and google make everything literally at our fingertips in this sea of information that, one day, may drown us all, here you go:

IT’S MY PARTY Lesley Gore

Nobody knows where my Johnny has gone
Judy left the same time
Why was he holding her hand
When he’s supposed to be mine

It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to
Cry if I want to, cry if I want to
You would cry too if it happened to you

Playin’ my records, keep dancin’ all night
Leave me alone for a while
‘Till Johnny’s dancin’ with me
I’ve got no reason to smile

It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to
Cry if I want to, cry if I want to
You would cry too if it happened to you

------ LEAD BREAK ------

Judy and Johnny just walked through the door
Like a queen with her king
Oh what a birthday surprise
Judy’s wearin’ his ring

It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to
Cry if I want to, cry if I want to
You would cry too if it happened to you

You know, this Golden Oldie just might be more relevant to some of the story lines in my novel, Personal Effects, that I could have suspected from the fragment that I kept singing to myself. Maybe I should think about changing the title?

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NaNo #5

This morning’s peace quote is from Basho:

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.

Just another manic Monday, to quote a Bangles song I used to be most fond of way back when. Up early to drive J. downtown as he had to take luggage and then get a rental car for his three days down in Corvallis this week. Then back here for more caffeine, then a phone call and saying yes to an early lunch plan that began a half hour earlier then expected but luckily just as I was finishing up some edits to 1900+ already-crafted words.

This so-called novel is, right now, a bit of a patchwork quilt. I have taken a number of bits I had, added new fabric, then temporarily joined and spread the mess out to see where there are holes and in what ways, if any, they should be more permanently pieced together. There’s still so much to figure out, to do! A lesson I learned long ago about morning and distractions played its hand this morning and now, half past noon, I’m almost ready to shift into errand-running mode so I can get back here, do a few household tasks and then, if I’m lucky, feel this day’s second creative wind.

I think that is what I will do. Go out for a bit, then start the day over. I feel scattered and a bit out-of-focus. There’s still time to make good on this writing day yet.

One thing worth noting from the file drawer cleanup over the weekend:

It was good, even encouraging, to read comments on my fiction from the teachers I’ve worked with over the past ten years. They were pretty much unanimously complimentary. I suspect that’s a good bit of why I’m feeling OK about adding the novel material already worked over as more beads on my creative necklace. I worked hard on it way back when, had the courage to have it read and critiqued by strangers. Rather than toss it out, or belabor it more, or start everything from scratch.

A painter friend reminds me that, in this, I’ve already learned things, which is a large part of the zany goal of working on a novel in a month. And that I miss poetry. And that my old work is of good enough quality to mesh with the know. All important things.

I also skimmed another of the volumes about the writing process that I found on my bookshelves as part of unpacking after the move. No major revelations, no rocket science or contributions to understanding the origin of the universe or stars but a few decent bits of advice about the percolation process that is so key to a creative life. I think the author, a Bonni Goldberg, is correct in reminding those who word with words to spend some time figuring what aspect of the writing process you privilege. For example, I think I give more value to the creation of new material rather than the research, the mulling, the freewriting, or the revising of earlier drafts. Which would then mean (according to her ideas) that I am stressing myself out all the time by discounting those other necessary aspects which I am doing, happily and quite regularly, as part of my dedication to the writing life. Another how-to book that can join the pile of books to be sold to Powell’s or Browser’s in Corvallis but still, useful to spend some time skimming it as this Monday edged from afternoon into dark.

NaNo Day #6

It’s noon, I’ve had my low-cal tuna sandwich for lunch, the dishwasher’s loaded, and the trash is out at the curb. Now if I could just stop eating the Paul Newman’s Championship Chip cookies I foolishly bought at New Seasons yesterday afternoon. Or maybe the cookies are part of a necessary reward I somehow need now for showing up and starting the day typing away at this keyboard, adding more words to my NaNoWriMo count. Today I pretty much went right from the coma of sleep and crazy, disconnected dreams to writing. A sentence came to me that would allow me to shift from ending of yesterday’s scene to the beginning of a new one. Once I dove in with that, the words flowed.

What did I notice or learn today? Maybe it’s the sign of a fictional amateur but digression into memory, into scenes that have nothing to do with the action at hand, seem to be popping up for me more and more I wrote. At least, that’s the way the story wanted to go today. I think it’s partly because I have lots of source material, much of it somehow lodged in my psychic memory from when I worked on these ideas four or five years ago in 2002 and 2003. As a result, I’ve begun to notice that, as I am shaping scene—stringing words together in sentence after sentence to describe a setting, or report a conversation, and hopefully advance the story line as well—I am thinking something like, haven’t I already written about this, before? And lo and behold, in my fairly organized source material and previous files, I might find a shard of something to keep me going, inspire a free write or send the chapter off into an entirely new direction.

Because of the NaNoWriMo “no revising, keep on writing” mantra, I can let myself explore, even digress, without fretting at this stage about whether or not it actually makes sense or fits in, both elements of novel writing that, I think, have paralyzed my forward progress in the past. What a blessing and a relief. Very freeing to experiment and fool around, rather than fuss. I also like that I don’t have to have much of an idea of where I am going to begin my writing the next day. There is comfort in knowing that 1) I am going to show up 2) I am going to write and 3) By the end of the time I’m spend writing, the story will have inched forward in some fashion.

This morning I returned to the necklace metaphor I came up with for this story way back when. My original idea was to let myself simply string together differently shaped and crafted bits as I go along, seeing them for the individual lovely beads that they all are rather than worrying if they add up to a coherent something. I think it suits the kind of writer I am to work this—less plot-fixated, more poetic and non-linear—especially when it comes to longer narrative/prose/fiction. I even have a necklace as a model: a gorgeous strand of vintage Mardi Gras beads from when they threw glass ones to the crowds. I think I will wear it when I go to hear Krishna Das this eve. The trickiest part so far with the writing this way is figuring out how to structure it in a single document. I also had to go back through all my work days and re-do word counts. I just realized (re-noticed?) today that Microsoft Word has a tiny feature that counts the words and shows me the running tally at the bottom of my document. Duh. Now, with today and double-checking my arithmetic, the tally-to-date is now (finally) accurate.

So a bit of first thought, best thought and I was off and running this morning. And I even have notes for what I think I’ll likely work on tomorrow—the rest of the cabin cleaning scene and lunch at the Burnt Woods Cafe. Now it’s time to turn into housefrau and deal with changing the linens, putting the rest of the trash out on the curb, and folding and putting away yesterday’s batch of clean clothes.

NaNo #7

Today I think I will be noveling (is that a real word?) in two parts. My morning shift was fixing a huge hole in the narrative I realized at the end of yesterday’s marathon session: I’d made no mention of the box of dead Hank’s ashes which would surely be a presence in his house as his son and ex-wife started to clean out his personal effects. So, this morning it took a 574 words or so to start the cabin cleaning chapter differently and add Hank’s ashes as a presence, watching over them, as Miles and Irene go about their cleaning, sorting and packing up work. Since whatever I turn to next is likely to be unrelated to the cabin scene, I’m going to head out on errands in a bit. When I return, if the fog has burned off and it’s sunny, I may go on my walk to the co-op and back. If not, more words, I suspect.

Anything noted or learned this morning? It’s awfully cozy (and easier on the back) to sit and type seated on the couch in front of the gas fireplace. And it’s pretty darn easy to accumulate close to a third of the NaNo daily word count simply by returning to earlier material, fleshing it out, filling in the holes. I think this is what is meant by setting an intention for one’s writing work for any given day. Today I knew I had to deal with Hank’s box of cremains (as they are known in the death industry), that this was an object that couldn’t be MIA until the revision process. In fact, if anything, I probably need to write about it more.

NaNo #8

Simply by typing along this morning for about ninety minutes or so, I reached the daily word count. Have I mentioned yet that, unfortunately, what I’m writing totally sucks? I can already tell (even with my critic on temporary vacation) that there’s no dramatic tension, no crescendo of narrative development, that the dialogue between the mother and son as they drive to a diner is flat, and I’m definitely not selecting the most illuminating, original, to-die-for details to best depict each and every scene. Still, the word count amasses. I begin to think I’ll have no trouble getting to the 50K word count. More likely, I’ll lose interest in the project, idea, story, characters before then. Because I’m in a bit of that place now. This in spite of letting my fingers to the talking this morning and keeping my evil inner editor at bay. I edited a letter that my main character found while packing up a dead man’s files from his desk. I had two characters move boxes from the back of an SUV to a post office counter. I had them enter a diner and described the stools and booths. I stopped just before I’d actually have to have some interesting, dramatic interaction between several characters. It will be interesting to see if I begin here again tomorrow or avoid what I don’t know (don’t care to explore and find out?) about the people who, so far, have shown up in this book.

Since beginning this project a short week ago, I have noticed a pattern. The day afterthe days when I crank, when I really push and have ended up with a word count above and beyond the requisite 1667 goal, I seem only able to squeak out a tiny number of words, 500-600. There may be a lesson in this if the pattern continues for the rest of the month: stop before you burn yourself out on a single writing day so you have reserves and a desire to keep going when you return the following day. Which is a maxim I remember Jack and others talking about in grad school. And something I’m sure I already felt certain I learned other times I worked on short stories and my grad school novel. Oh well, here comes the insight yet again. Some of us take a while.

What else? There is something to be said for just plugging along and not caring if the details mesh rather than contradict one another, that the timelines are in synch, that what you’ve already made happen fits with who these characters are, what their desires and engines of purpose seem to be. There remains a part of me—and this is not a new insight, rather one I had at least five years back, the one that led me back to poetry and shorter pieces—that does not like the on and on and on process that is writing a novel. I really do prefer to begin and complete, begin again and complete. I don’t mind the revision process with a poem, where you might come back to it after a time and hear a sound differently, alter a word choice from the previous draft that now, for whatever reasons, clunks.

But the novel-as-a-form and novel-writing process feels more like an ordeal to me, what with its length, its unwieldy structure, its humans you have to care about if you want to have your reader identify with them or at least be amused by so you don’t bore yourself silly while moving them around. Maybe I’’ve always been a sprinter and not a marathon kind of gal. And all of this is perfectly OK. It’s part of why I wanted to do this NaNoWriMo in the first place, to compress my sorting out the kind of writing I prefer in the short, efficient span of a single month. And why I’m doing these daily blogs, to try and chart what I feel I’m learning, what insights are bubbling up. Not that I expect any surprises; I already have a pretty good idea of what I’ll conclude. I guess I’d just like to make peace, once and for all, with the whole open-ended blah blah blah indecisiveness as to what kind of writer I truly am. And then to get on with that.

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NaNo#2

Today, second day of the National Novel Writing Month's November marathon, I learned that it takes me somewhere around (at least?) three hours to get to the requisite daily word count. This is pretty much just letting myself type out the scene/story as I'm envisioning it, trying to slow down to get all the details, and yet not worrying or fussing about the language or whether it fits perfectly with what I've written before. I love having my Evil Inner Editor on vacation. It does seem fairly easy to run with an idea (this morning's came do me during my morning journal pages: have Irene make French toast!) and I seem to accumulate 800-1000 words easily then have to push myself to go beyond.

I see on the Portland home region NaNo bulletin board that many participants are getting together for Write-Ins here and there. Maybe this is something the younger generation feels the need to do—a group as support and comfort while you write. I don't think I need this. All these years I've been trying to make writing my priority seem to finally be paying off. I wake up, show up at the page, begin the writing for the day. Of course, it helps that I don't have a job and that I can neglect pretty much all of my normal responsibilities (even stay in PJs all day) if I want to and with few consequences if I do. But haven't I also created a life with this space, this time, this openness expressly for this—to have my creative work be my focus, to be what I mainly do?

Today the morning journal pages that I often rail against and have lately wanted to stop doing were actually of use. They helped me clear out my dream-clogged brain, I think, and gave me a few moments to just let my writing hand ramble, away from the novel story line, into whatever words popped out. I might spend some time these November afternoons going through the old AM pages notebook—I think I'm up to #38. Way back when I started a database to log what might be useful as source material in all fo them. Getting back to that would also be useful as I can then throw away anything in the notebooks that is self-indulgent, foolish, embarrasing crap. And eliminate yet another bin from the stacks currently stored in the basement.

I have to remember balance in all of this as well, to take the month-long view rather than live for the short intense bursts. And to keep up with all the rest of what it is I do: Walking, reading, listening to music, cooking, eating. Getting out of the house.

NaNo #3

I've had cold fingers while working on my novel pages this morning. It is November, after all, and there was a frost again overnight. I may have to get those fingerless gloves before this marathon is done. After about an hour of shivering, I finally decided it was time to turn on the heat.

Today was an easy slog with many more words than needed added to my tallky because I mostly edited a lengthy section that I worked hard on a while back and the prose was in pretty good shape. At this point, I'm trying not to worry about whether or not all this "fits" with the book. I'm just writing, accumulating, trying to focus on what seems to be logically next in the progession of the story. And so far, the judgmental vitriol of my ever-critical inner editor has remained MIA.

My neck aches from sittting these two or three hours in a straight-backed wooden chair. And with probably the wrong angle for my typing fingers, wrists, and elbows, too. Tomorrow will be more of a challenge. My goal today is to use my puttering around time for thinking about the arc of the story, how to deepen the characters, where the story is really wanting to be about. I can already tell I have too many, possibly competing threads. So far, there's the story of Irene and her going home again. Why has she done this? Why now? And what happened wherever she was before to prompt this. There's also a thread about Irene and her ongoing, perhaps secret relationship with Hank to the exclusion of their son, Miles. Which then leads to the whole why would Hank behave like that and why would Irene keep it secret from Miles. And then what surely must be awkwardness and estrangement between Irene and her adult son. There's also the budding relationship with Andy who is either much younger (37 or 38 to Irene's 52?) or her age but a deadbeat she knew back in high school and now is finding cosmic consciousness with. Is Andy the Lost Soul she is excited to save? Is he simply her anti-Hank?

And how much narrative to locate in each place? So far, there's Meander, Pennsylvania which has mostly dominated the first 35 pages. And there has to be an Oregon Coast Range bit, too, to deal with the cleaning out of the cabin. And then there's Ithaca, where Hank grew up, where Hank and Irene lived together with Miles then Irene as a single mother after Hank took off, and where Hank now has requested to have his ashes scattered.

So is this a tale of Irene and her son? Irene and her failed relationships? Irene and her inability to find peace with herself? Lots to explore, much to question, much writing to do to try and body forth answers.

NaNo#4

Sunday morning, the day after the clocks go back to standard time. For some reason, that time switcheroo always messes me up sleep-wise. Anyhow, it's a foggy morning here in Portland and J. and I both upstairs working in our side-by-side rooms. I seem to have less inspiration and energy to pump out story and thus words this morning. I think I know where I want this next chapter to go but I don't quite have the scene figured out yet, or the objects and people to follow around. I managed to get through 500 words describing the VISTA house where Irene meets Hank. So that's something.

Now I feel like I need to take a break and think about where this is going next. Back to the present moment or is every other chapter going to alternate between present and the past? The beauty of getting far ahead on the word count is that I can do this without guilt. I don't think it's going to break my stride, either. If anything, getting away from the keyboard for a bit—to run errands, walk, some cultural stimulation—might prime the pump. I really cranked the first three days. Now I need to slow that pace and steady myself for the longer haul.

Posted by peninkriver at 09:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This about writing and perfection (among other things) uttered by Leonard Cohen in the course of the recent film about him, I'm Your Man:

"If it is your destiny to be this laborer called a writer, you've got to go to work everyday. But you also know you're not going to get it every day. You have to be prepared but you really don't command the enterprise. Sometimes when you no longer see yourself as a hero of your own drama, expecting victory after victory, then you understand deeply that this is not paradise, and somehow we're—especially the privileged ones—we somehow embrace the notion that this veil of tears, that it's not perfectable, that you're going to get it all straight. I've found that things became a lot easier when I no longer expected to win."

Posted by peninkriver at 09:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Another day of not wanting to turn to words, to express myself, my self, well, whatever it is I have been turning to express these years of exploring this—words, writing, the writing life, a writer's life, whatever it really is. I suppose this could be simply a low-grade February depression in response to the return of ice (this morning) and now clouds and rain (now). But the part of me that is trying really hard to give up self-delusion now that I'm in my 50s is saying something different, in a voice that's mostly muffled but constant: whatever this is, it isn't enough. And with that, whatever I thought I had to say or wanted to say seems to have gone silent for now. So my quiet life, my life with breathing room, with space and time, with room to focus, a life that's rejected faux busyness in favor of attempts at the authentic, and honesty at the expense of getting ahead—well, something's gotten lost or derailed and I find myself not very good about sorting out what it is. I may believe, as I state on my web site, that words are all we have. But right now, at this point in my life, somehow words aren't enough. Moratorium time?

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We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
—E. M. Forster

A friend is working on a panel about “Late Bloomers” for the Associated Writing Program’s annual conference, this year in Atlanta. By this, I think she means folks who come to their writing careers and/or get published and recognized after forty. Our back-and-forth e-mails got me thinking about what such a term means, and whether or not it really is applicable to so many who truly embrace writing and the writing life—at young and older ages.

To me, late implies time passing—as does the word blooming—as if there is a before and after somehow, an inevitable progression. A flower follows a cycle, blooms, the blossom drops and dies. I wonder, instead, shouldn't we see creativity and art as part of the flow of our lives, something we inhabit and do, rather than arrive at as a destination?

For a host of reasons, many of us take longer to do what we want or feel we are meant to do in life. I returned to a focus on writing at in 1988 when I was in my early 30s; that seems young now, looking back. I moved on from extramural classes to the master’s program at SUNY/Binghamton, getting my degree in 1994. But only in my 40s, after other life priorities shifted or changed, was I able to make writing my daily focus. And still that journey has included more workshops, classes, and writing teachers and mentors. Surely, life intervenes time and again, even for writers who start out of the gate running showing promise when they are 25 years old.

Are the potholes any different for a late-blooming writer than a youngster? Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes I think there are more potholes the farther away you live from New York City or if you are outside the college/university writing scene, as I have chosen to be. Still, I think an increasing number of writers (not just later-in-life ones) are doing their work outside of academia. Many can't afford to plunk down the tuition money for MFA/MA programs. Or they aren't willing to go into debt for a degree that won't necessarily get them very much in the end. This may make it even harder to market oneself, or to break into the journals especially the ones associated with colleges and universities—we all know connections are the name of the game in that writing world.

I also wonder if publication a good way to measure who is and isn’t arriving to the writer’s life late? Publishing is a major crapshoot. I have had some success in my “late blooming period” (a fellowship, publications). Still, these successes, while encouraging, are a reminder that the competition to be "discovered" let alone successfully published—and read by more than your friends and relatives, books not immediately remaindered, etc.—is fierce. Some of this is a direct result of the industry the AWP itself has worked to create—so many writing programs which has led to many more writers at a time when fewer and fewer people are reading and buying books. The longer I work at this (and possibly the older I get) I find I am writing more for myself and less for any hope of recognition or the attentive eyes of the world. I know young writers who've come to this same conclusion. We do it for the love or because we can't not write. And hope to find a few readers along the way who like and appreciate our work. Anything beyond that is gravy.

I suspect blooming only happens when we stop talking about whether it's early or late and simply sit down and do the work. In the end, isn't that all that matters?

Posted by peninkriver at 09:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I believe this is a quote from a Charles Bukowski poem about writing. I ripped it from a New York Times Book Review but forgot to note the attribution:

...often it is the only
thing
between you and
impossibility
no drink
no woman's love
no wealth
can
match it.
Nothing can save you
except writing.

I can relate at times to the sentiment but, really, why is that a poem?

Posted by peninkriver at 09:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A poem I love by W.S. Merwin, from Flower & Hand published by Copper Canyon Press.

Berryman

I will tell you what he told me
in the years just after the war
as we then called
the second world war

don't lose your arrogance yet he said
you can do that when you're older
lose it too soon and you may
merely replace it with vanity

just one time he suggested
changing the usual order
of the same words in a line of verse
why point out a thing twice

he suggested I pray to the Muse
get down on my knees and pray
right there in the corner and he
said he meant it literally

it was in the days before the beard
and the drink but he was deep
in tides of his own through which he sailed
chin sideways and head tilted like a tacking sloop

he was far older than the dates allowed for
much older than I was he was in his thirties
he snapped down his nose with an accent
I think he had affected in England

as for publishing he advised me
to paper my wall with rejection slips
his lips and the bones of his long fingers trembled
with the vehemence of his views about poetry

he said the great presence
that permitted everything and transmuted it
in poetry was passion
passion was genius and he praised movement and invention

I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can't

you can't you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don't write

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I was so hopped up, excited really, about sending off the MFA application to Warren Wilson. Dutifully got my ducks in a row: the requested transcripts, the forms off to the recommenders, the personal essay polished, the portfolio edited and printed in triplicate. Now, facing a two-page "reader's response" to a book I've recently read, I'm freaking out. Every book I pick up seems hackneyed, less-than-stellar, so-what dull—everything from Jane Hirshfield's newest After, The Collected Poems of James Wright, Below Cold Mountain by Joseph Stroud read and loved several months back, and the Essential Haiku edited by Robert Hass.

Is this just hunger and hormones talking? Or has my beloved cat's departure four days ago shaken me up enough that clarity and doubts are doing battle inside my head?

A day of rain, sun, rain, sun, rain, sun, no rainbows. A day of drops of rain shiny on the blades of grass and me looking out windows, peering into thickets of blackberry, into the hold of the fallen log pile, along the sides of the driveway as I head out and down the hill for my 30-minute walk: where is he? why can't I see him? find him? where is he? how can he be gone? Is this simply grief ecllipsing the pitiful inadequacy of words?

Posted by peninkriver at 05:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From his newest book, A Man Without a Country:

"The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something."

And these quotes from Saul Steinberg, whom Vonnegut calls the "wisest person I ever met in my entire life" --

"There are two sorts of artists, one not being in the least superior to the other. But one responds to the history or his or her art so far, and the other responds to life itself...what you respond to in any work of art is the artist's struggle against his or her limitations."

Posted by Nancy Flynn at 01:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sunday morning finds itself midway through a sky of cloud and pale white-gray. I'm in a similar place, betwixt between, waiting to leave my hideout to hole up in one in a hotel instead. Wrote about winter this morning, this winter, what strangeness and, in some ways, emotional hell it has been. Finished an essay by Louise Gluck and, yet again, felt what? disgusted? bored? basically not that interested in her analysis of poems by Oppen, Berryman and T.S. Eliot. Do I brush off work like this because I wish I'd been able to be one of the anointed, part of the academic, scholarly life? But, if I'm honest with myself, if I look deeply and see what moves me, it was never that, never critiquing literature. Under the Oberlin Buddhist influence, my writing shifted pretty early on to a preoccupation with questions of the spirit. I suppose I could blame this on an influence of the Beats, the San Francisco scene meets Whole Earth Catalog and Mother Earth News. But Rilke was there too, and Thomas Pynchon. And Lao Tzu's Tao te Ching. I have long been a meaning-seeker, a scribbler striving to understand my place in this life. Why would that change now, at 50? Why would I be envious at all of those who pontificate from the dais of the academy? I have never been someone who wanted to kowtow to that, to play to the posturing and all the political games. It was bad enough when I worked at Cornell.

More and more, I guess I just want to express myself. To take up my fountain pens, the Aurora with its black ink, the Conklin with blue-black and a beveled barrel, the sleek green Waterman, present to myself upon my first real publication of a short story. I want to take them up and try for my own heroic witness to how we live, we dream, we die. Yeah, technique is important and I have been a good doobie, into the classroom trenches, learning about anaphora and disgresio, the need for space and breath and even silence in a poem. Reading essays by established—maybe even Establishment—poets and writers, I have to keep in mind that churning out thoughts and words is what they are doing to earn their livings. To keep up appearances. To play the writerly academic game. To get paid. I wonder how many would envy me my luxury of time, tall trees, and quiet. I wonder how many would trade to sit at my cherry desk with a palette of filled fountain pens. I wonder how many are honest, how many even care to know their truest selves.

Posted by Nancy Flynn at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The temperature dips into arctic chill territory for this part of the world and I can feel it, this house with corners that leak like a seive. I change the desk blotter this morning—the old one ratty with cat footprints and watermarks—and re-read the card I keep handy (rarely look at), Kerouac's essentials for modern prose. Some fun, funky stuff. Keep track every day the date emblazoned in yr morning and Like Proust, be an old teahead of time. Teahead, there's a word you don't see that often these days.

Then I re-read Ginsberg's Mind Writing Slogans the doug fir branches and wind chimes a chorus behind his words with the rousing wind. There is some comfort in knowing how many (most?) writers struggle. To be reminded of these words from John Keats:

"What quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in literature?...Negative capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason."

That's what my week has been: an irritable reaching. Can I only recognize it now seeing Keats' words? Seems every day I came to my writing desk wanting objectivity and conclusions, resolutions and recognition, to know, once and for all, what is good, when the work is done, is good enough. In the pea soup of my solitude and my hormones, I not only lose sight of but downright give up on the mystery. Everything is mistake and aggravation. Nothing sets or settles right. I suppose these ups and downs are inevitable, come with the territory. But it sure does a body ill to sit here day in and out and feel worthless, useless, talentless, uninspired, soulless. With me it isn't so much negative capability as negative incapacitation. Irrational striving. As if I can bend the forces of creativity, hell, even the universe to my own petty tyrannical will. You think by now I'd recognize the signs and be able to better deal with this. You think by now I'd remember the pattern and wake up.

Posted by Nancy Flynn at 08:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Alone here, possibly the first day in four months that at times felt like a black-hole forever. My cat's on my lap, eager for me to court the muse and get back to work. But I feel like I've forgotten what my work is, maybe even why I have set up my life to be focused on doing this. Why is it always so hard? With all the work of the past seven years, by now I should be over the hurdle of how to get started, able to conquer my sloth and entropy and know how to buckle down and focus. An artist friend in Baltimore said she too loses her way between projects, between shows. Her big thing is diving into the work, and when that's going well, that's what matters, what brings her back to the studio, the canvas. Why do I feel like I have to clean the garage, the closet, and the guest room before I can have the luxury of doing that? I've spent months tiptoeing around my own routine in my own house, aware of another person and not wanting to what? show my true colors? blast Mozart's Magic Flute to the rafters while he slept? My issues with my routine, my problems are so often my own making. I wonder how many other artists and writers continually struggle with that.

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