This is Not About Writing

I work at a day job that can be … challenging. That is a really polite way of saying my job involves dealing with difficult people, people I would normally avoid, if given the chance.

The less polite way of saying it is that I have to talk to some of the most ignorant, angry, deluded, and sometimes even insane people I have ever had to interact with. I have been screamed at, sworn at, and that’s not the half of it. I have had some of the most unspeakable vicious things said to me by people who either felt justified in saying it (and they never are) or just didn’t want to miss the opportunity to anonymously degrade someone that they will never have to face again.

Are they all like that? No. I talk to people who have legitimate grievances, and fixing their problems is a joy. But they are rare, and some days I think they just might be extinct.

In a regular day at a regular job, you encounter these people every once in a while and you think, wow! That guy was NUTS! That chick was CRAZY! They must be outliers. Thank god the world isn’t full of ’em!

But this job of mine can really shake your faith in that assumption. I start to feel overwhelmed, that the majority of people in the world ARE that nuts, ARE that crazy. A creeping sense of hopelessness that gets hard to shake.

And then I head over to TED. TED lectures are nothing new to the Internet (though if they are new to you, you’re in for a treat) but they are always startling — in the research being done, the discoveries being made, and the philosophies being explored. But more than all of that, they are INSPIRING.

Looking to renew your faith in our so easily damnable species? Check out out some of the videos. See what human beings can do, what they dream of doing.

I didn’t realize how much I needed a mental pick-me-up until I learned about behavior and big cats (and not giving up), about how a guy struggling through dark times found a way to remember how to celebrate the small joys of life, and how improv and creative work affects the brain.

There just might be hope for us after all.

So, this isn’t about writing. But I can’t write without hope.

 

Laughing All The Way

Today the plan had been to do a few grown-up tasks in the morning and then get on to some writing. I doubled my week’s word count on Tuesday and I had high hopes that I would get another 1,000 words under my belt today.

But I didn’t.

What I did do is get my finances in order (I track my transactions in a Mac application called Moneywell) and then set about working on a resume and cover letter for a job that popped up. This took far longer than it should, both tasks, and while I tried to decide whether or not to head out to write or stay in, I ended up chatting away with a friend who lives out of town.

And then obsessing about one of my cats.

Looks like I’ll be bringing him to the vet in the next day or so. He’s not behaving normally, a sure sign that Something Is Up, and best looked at quickly. Fingers crossed, good vibes, as neither of us has the energy for something serious.

Not that any of this has anything to do with writing. But I more than doubled my goal for this week. Next week I’m shooting for 3,000 words. I feel like I’m back on track again.

These are all vague, unsatisfying sentences. Then again, I feel vague and unsatisfied. It’s like I get one part of the house in order and the other side falls apart. Where is the balance? Where is sense of control? As always, I strive for a structure that would guide me through, day-to-day, but no tools to built that structure.

See that? I’m writing and I’m still not happy.

All I can do is laugh.

This isn’t about Writing

I am indulging this afternoon. I went out this morning to do some errands a morning of errands, which included dropping off books to the used bookstore only to bring home more books, the opposite of what I was trying to do, and came back home absolutely frozen. After our sweltering and unseasonable May, June has been a wet and cold disappointment. I looked at my fireplace and thought, why the hell not?

So I have it blazing while I bake cookies for the Canada Day writers BBQ we’re having. (Randy, if you are reading this, you are invited! Not sure if Sylvie has sent out word yet!) and while I melt into a puddle of luxuriant warmth, I’m sipping at a bottle of homemade white wine and eating cherries. Cherries! I feel like I should be spread out on a leopard-skinned chaise waiting for the Cabana boy to return.

The cats have quite taken to the heat, too. Greyson is curled up on the ottoman for the papasan chair and Babs is curled on the love seat with me, disproving Mom’s theory that she wasn’t a heat lover.

And the cookies? So good they would make your Momma cry. Mmm, mmm, MMM!

As you may have gathered, I’m not writing. And I’m not worrying about writing,

Sometimes you need a day off.

Back to my book!

Kitten Break

The one on the right? Greyson. I’ve had him since he was a kitten and he’s been through as much with me as I’ve gone through in the last little while. He was brought to a big old house with another cat and a dog, lost the cat due to old age/ill health, lost the big old house and the dog in the break-up, and is now with me in my basement apartment.

And the little guy was lonely.

After four months in the new apartment, I decided to get another cat. The one on the left? That’s Babs, short for Barbara. (Yes, a Batman theme.) She is an absolute doll, a little bit too blond for her own good at times, but affectionate and open and playful.

Sometimes too playful. I didn’t want to wait too much longer to get another cat, because I worried Greyson would start being one of those cats who prefers his solitude to company — at least so far as felines go. He loves people company and was spending much of his waking moments howling to be let upstairs, driving everyone (especially me) nuts. But maybe l’m already too late.

The first week went well. Some play fighting, some grooming, and everyone was on the bed at night. After about five days, though, the play fighting started to get rough, get growly. Babs had found a way into some unfinished walls in a store room down here, where she’d taken to sleeping. That meant Greyson could ignore her, but I worried she would just end up hiding in there and coming out to eat. So I closed off the room and now it’s all big happy-fun-fighting in between napping and eating. Greyson really wants to groom her, which she puts up with for about five seconds unless really sleepy. She’d much prefer to be hanging off his neck.

So Greyson, while obviously more relaxed (he lounges now, the way he did in the old house), doesn’t seem to be entirely happy, either. He’s yowling differently, not as long and loud, more questing, but still yowling.

Babs is indifferent to his potential unhappiness. She’s the kind of cat (has probably HAD to be the kind of cat) that makes a space for herself wherever she may be and likes it just fine, thank you, and aren’t I just the prettiest thing anyways?

Now I don’t know what to do. Greyson is just about caterwauling for the upstairs again, which means that this whole thing was pointless. It may just be that he will never be happy down here, especially knowing that my folks are in the upstairs apartment, a fact he knows only too well because he’s been up there all the time before. At the same time, he was downstairs alone with this sad little face in my apartment for eight hours a day when I was at work.

What do I do? I can take Babs back to the shelter. I have about two weeks left to decide. But the shelter is over-flowing. These cats need homes. I wouldn’t try with another cat. That would be too much for Greyson. And is Babs even happy here? Is it a matter of choosing between lesser unhappinesses?

Still, I like the shot of the two of them in my office window. There’s potential here, right?

Right?

Sober Math

So I’m sitting here, thinking about the mathematics of my life, about how if I’m lucky I’ll have another forty years on this globe.

Forty years. Seems like forever, but I’ve nearly been there, done that. It’s not forever. It goes by shockingly fast, a doppler effect you can’t appreciate until your halfway through it.

And I invariably look at how long it’s taken me to write what little I have written. I do the math because I’m a masochist at heart, intent on torturing myself. They say ideas are cheap. Dime a dozen. I used to horde them when I was younger, as though they were in short supply, finite, perishable. But as I get older, the more I write, and I know they are everywhere.

But it’s not that they are cheep like dirt, like pebbles you collect at the beach. The damn things are dandelion seeds: quick to take root, quick to blossom, quick to take to the wind and start all over again. The fields of my mind are thick with the tangled weeds of stories and instead of running out of fields, the space just gets bigger until I can’t see the border anymore. I’m not even sure it’s in the same country anymore.

And me and my old, rusty lawnmower? We ain’t gonna make it through all that grass. Not in one lifetime, anyways.

In moments like these, I get resentful. At myself, at the world. It just feels so unfair to work at anything else besides writing. But at the same time, my track record when given stretches of time has been shit. Getting better at it, but still.

At the same time, I feel like I’ve reached a plateau. I have a (completely unfamiliar) sense of confidence in my writing. Not that it’s gold shat from a unicorn, or anything of the sort. God knows I need to take a pair of shearing clippers to the stuff. But just a slow growing faith, newly kindled and very precious.

It’s terrible. I dread and I hope, a pendulum that never stops swinging. And I’m running out of time.

At The Beach

Can I just wax poetic a moment about how glorious it is out here?

Summer has come roaring onto us a month early and no one is complaining. Sudburians, used to fickle summers that sometimes don’t even have the decency to arrive, take to summer madly and fully, stripping away our clothes, donning ridiculous sunglasses and acting like it’s the last summer we’ll ever have.

It was after a week of such weather, still ensconced in my bathrobe in homage to Towel Day, when I received a text from a member of my writing group asking me what I was up to today. “Writing,” I replied, “and cooking chicken wings. You?”

An invitation followed. “Let’s go out and write.”

So here we are, now, sitting at a picnic table under a gazebo. Ramsey Lake stretches out before us, trimmed by a small beach filled with happy swimmers and a green belt of mature trees and soft grass. Birds are singing, chipmunks chattering, and voices carry across the wind, laughing, squealing, shouting.

Did I mention the gazebo has five double outlets along the support walls and free wifi?

I think I’m moving here. Full time.

In fact, I’m already imagining my perfect work week as the fabled, full-time writer. Mondays would be spent on the patio at the Laughing Buddha, near the power cords of course, sipping Keith’s White Ale and enjoying spicy hummas or sweet potato fries. Tuesday, the beach, set up to write the afternoon away in the shade. Wednesday would be at the main library, to write new words and to research. Thursday of course would be the Fromagerie, with an exquisite cheese platter and a pot of Assam tea. Fridays? Not sure. Sylvie suggested Old Rock, the coffee shop in the downtown, but it’s small with little room for much in the way of computers and scribbly things. But that day could be spent at Chapters, where I could have good coffee, sweet nibbles, and the be able to pursue the bookshelves for the latest treasure.

Wonder what they’d think if I came in there on an iPad to buy books. 😉

Anyways, back to work.

Omnivorous and Opportunistic

I am in a strange and happy little place this morning.

I have put the kettle on, brewed a pot of Lady Grey tea, a dark pekoe tea with hints of orange and, for most, entirely too much sugar. My nose is remembering the scent of breakfasts past, of a toasted english muffin slathered with natural peanut butter that goes from too-solid to slippery, uncontainable, dripping off the corner of your mouth faster than you can work your tongue around it, seconds after it hits the warm surface of the crumb.

I may make it today. I may not. I don’t know yet.

I have been on a reading binge. I have noticed this trend as I’ve gotten older. Not just binge reading, but binge anything. I go through phases like this, where I only want to do one thing and damn the rest. Writing is always in the background, though, a silver thread that never leaves the fabric, but the other colors wax and wane, brighten and dull all around it.

It might be a taste of something. Pop, especially Coca Cola, is something I’m terrible about. I will go weeks without drinking it except for the odd glass and then I will consume it like am gulping air, can after can, until it no longer tastes good but strange and metallic and unsatisfying. But it might be a kind of food, like freshly-made salted popcorn or creamy and rich homemade macaroni and cheese. If I don’t make it, I think about it, and other food, no matter how good, will not appease me. When I finally do make it, I gorge, satiate myself, and move on, it’s hold over me gone.

It might be sleeping, where the body just wants to lay down, to stretch, to slumber.  I can’t get enough. But now the pendulum has swung the other way, and I find myself struggling to go to sleep at the right hour, for the right number of hours. So like today, I am awake too early and sipping my tea, waiting for the caffeine to lift me up the rest of the way. I have never learned to sleep in.

It might be fiction and if it is, it might be a type of fiction, either form or genre, that I favor over all else. It might be non-fiction, like writing how-to books, or it might be just general information on any topic that’s struck my fancy, randomly discovered when I wasn’t looking. Fiction turns me inward, non-fiction turns me outward. I should try to find a balance, but instead I just swing between the two.

And that’s where I am. Reading binge. Non-fiction. The inspirational and the historical. I am halfway through the second book of Glen Cook’s Black Company series, but finding my attention pulled in several directions. Instead, I am finishing Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down The Bones (one of the few books I read and reread, finding something different and personal each time I do), enjoying a skulk through the halls of 15th Century Italy, and flirting with the philosophies of Buddhism. I am an omnivorous and opportunistic reader; perhaps spring has wakened the hunger?

I’m journaling, too. More than usual. Which sounds to my ear as if I mean that is a bad thing, which it isn’t. At all. I reconnect when I journal, either here or in a book. I am grounded. I am safe, and aware. And this all feeds back to writing, strengthens the silver thread and brings alive patterns in the larger cloth. A word written is never wasted.

But I should finish, should put on clothes, finish the tea, brave the early morning before it isn’t all that early. I’ve groceries to buy for two nights worth of special dinners. Since when did I become a hostess? This is a new, unexpected development. But good. Only, it means I have to take care of my time. Words may not be wasted, but time certainly can be.

Illicit Sundays, Playing Hooky

Hooky is only hooky, I suppose, when one does it without permission. But having planned ahead and given away my shift, I am now doing what I’ve been fantasizing about doing for about a month now — getting an extra day off.

See, that’s the burden of shift work when you have low seniority. Sure there are stat days, where you get the extra cash for having to work, but while everyone else on the planet (it seems) gets a long weekend about once a month or so, you never do because you don’t have enough seniority to get that day off with pay. And those long weekends matter! Not that today’s day-off will give me a three-day weekend or anything, but I am luxuriating in it all the same.

But today isn’t just about taking the day off. There is another reason — the Script Frenzy launch party! This runs from 1:00 – 4:00 pm today at a local indie bar, The Laughing Buddha (very nom-nomable, with incredible hummas and stone-baked pizzas and lots of imported beers to choose from, including this outrageously tasty raspberry beer from Belgium). I wasn’t planning on going, originally, because I would have been working. However, the shift bid has dropped at work, and cross referencing my seniority with the shifts available has been a deeply depressing exercise. I am assured of a start time of around 3:30 or 4:00 pm unless something miraculous happens. What this means is that I will, almost completely, miss all of the special events for Script Frenzy this April and will end up doing it alone.

Again.

So I thought, “Fuck it, I’m going to the opener!”

It’s a meet ’n’ greet, where there will be a mix of veterans and newbies alike. I’m hoping to finish my treatment today as well as socialize and have a good time.

(Although, to be honest, what actually sold me on giving away the day at work was that damned raspberry beer! I’ll post a picture later. A friend at the last writer’s meeting had one to celebrate her good fortune, and the smell of that beer just would not release me. Bought one as well that night and decided, YEAH, going to the Buddha for script writing fun and raspberry beer.)

More blogging to come. I’m on a chattable upswing again. Trying to keep the personal stuff to my own journals, but I have random writing-esque, book-esque topics churning around in my head that will only have this blog as their collective outlet. Sorry! *grin*

A Whole Lotta No Writing

(Yes, you would be correct. Since this post is decidedly not about writing, I will not post a link to it on Twitter.)

Started the day finishing the critiques for the writing group. Tomorrow is “crit night”, though it may be more difficult than we suspect; we were under the impression that there was a meeting happening next week that would preclude us chatting up a storm but it turns out there will be a movie presentation starting at 8:00 pm. Anywho…

Then, after some frustration with The Saboteur, I switched over to some breath-taking God of War 3 gameplay. Yes, time wasting, hours spent on non-productive tasks. But sometimes you need a day, yanno? This was the first “weekend” where I didn’t really have to go out (for very long) and spent one entire day in lounge-wear — denim jeans and contact lenses need not apply.

After lunch, I plowed through the remainder of Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Dart. I’d been reading it a long time now, partly because I’ve been doing a lot of non-fiction reading, but also because it’s a big damn book. So big, so much fantasy, that I’m putting off the book I was going to read next, The Name of The Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, for a little sci-fi in the form of The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin. It was so good. So good that in my book journal I basically babbled about how much I liked it and that I would have to come back to learn anything useful.

And then, a bit of banging on the door of Mount Olympus before some more Big Bang Theory.

Just me and the cat and a beer. Happy St. Patty’s Day!

(At least the Blog is the right color.)

Taking it Easy, Making it Fun

And here I thought I had gotten back on track with my posting! (Though somehow I have messed up my MacJournal. All the fonts are defaulting to super-tiny, eye chart squintiness. Weird. Anywho.)

I am at the Sudbury Public Library for the Monday night write-in. When once we shivered against the wall of windows, wondering why the heat wasn’t coming out of the vents, now we broil under a sun that sets an hour later than it used to set. We begin blinded — I was wearing my sunglasses indoors and had no choice in the matter — and we end in relief, with gentler dusk light and cooler temperatures.

As for the words … not bad. I had about 400 words or so before I realized that the scene I had originally written to occur where it was simply cannot go there anymore. And why? My heroine asked a simple, obvious question. “Where is my father?”

And he’s not there. And there’s no good reason for him not to be there, unless he was not nearby at all. Which will happen, but later, not now. *sigh*

So now I’m blogging, because it’s been a while, and I have a teeny window above the MacJournal program showing an old episode of Iron Chef. (Apple and Chocolate battle, for those interested. For Valentine’s Day in Japan, women buy the men chocolates, not the other way around. S’cool.)

In truth, I’m taking it easy. After a moody couple of days, I’ve seem to discovered my pep again, and I’m enjoying the personal buzz. I’ve also spent some time at work play-writing. I’ve been using Take Ten For Writers by Bonnie Neubauer (who writes these terrifically fun writing prompt books with this punch, playful graphic design) and Writing the Life Poetic by Sage Cohen (a gentle, welcoming introduction to poetry, which has always been an indecipherable art to me but one I want to put to use more often in my prose). I play with the exercises in one of my Moleskine notebooks, just a little soft-cover slip of a thing. It’s all play, but so much fun! Even my Moleskines and other notebooks … I just wanna get crazy and funky with them, instead of being all prim and proper, writing in between the lines. Wanna break out the markers, the water-color pencils. Maybe it’s springtime having this effect on me?

I’m a very guarded person. Sure, I may act loud sometimes, I may have the big laugh, the weird joke that comes out of no where. But despite a very public blog (that no one reads, thankfully!), I’m a private person. I second-guess myself. I hold back. I’m better about this than I used to be, but it’s still an issue I struggle with. I still clench when I should let go. And worse, it creeps into my writing. It’s like a steady calcification, the bones fuse together and every movement, every word is stilted and gnarled and painful.

Ah, but when I find that flow, I am leaf, watch me soar!
(Yeah, not mine, obviously, but perfect here — stolen with much love from the great Joss Whedon.)

And I find that flow most often when I’m playing, when I forget the process. When I am working on something big, like a novel, I try to micro manage it. I try, often without success, to hold it all in my head at once and it gives me a creative headache. I am least likely in that precious state of flow, when I am working on a novel but I can get there if I stop thinking so hard about everything.

Which is why I’m turning once again to Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. I have it in the pocket edition, so it’s my portable creative-zen-writing bible. I’ve been re-reading it again, and it’s helping to center me back to where I need to be. Back to the now, not the then or the will-be.

More to come. I think it may be a spammy, journally weekend for me.