Dear neglected,

Dear neglected, dear blog, dear--

How have you been? Are you having a happy holiday season so far? Are you enjoying your solitary trek through this long December? We should catch up -- it's been too long -- maybe get coffee or Chinese noodles, the good kind that are supposedly authentic. I'd like that.

I've been too busy for you. I've been selfish, I know. I haven't made time for you. But you've been too busy for me too. Or maybe that's just the line I tell myself to get by, that you're having another life, that you and other friends are updating and chatting, swapping RSS feeds and laughing without me. Facebook says you're in a relationship now; your new girlfriend looks nice, but I still hate her. I heard you've won awards, traveled the country, the globe, got a new job that doesn't actually suck. That's great, that's all great, it's amazing how much you've done when I've not been around.

I've been teaching.

It sounds so small when I say it.

Everyone tells me it's a noble job, but it feels small. The way people tell a bride that rain on her wedding day is a sign of good luck not a sign of miserable weather on the day of her celebration.

You ask what I'm doing now and I reply I've been teaching, and you reply  Oh really? Teaching what? (you've always been good with the follow up). I tell you it's creative writing and intro to composition, all at the college level.  That's great, you say. That stuff is really one of those building blocks.

Building blocks. Basics. Boring. One of those classes you were forced to take but didn't in a million years ever want to take.

Did you know, you say, I graduated from that school, the one you're teaching at. Now it's my turn to say Oh really? That's kind of cool. I smile.



But those are my problems, not yours, so instead I ask what you're doing now.

You're working for a DC think tank. You're writing code for internationally focused government organizations. You're months away from a high tech Ph.D. You're starting a consulting business. You're living in Portugal. You're meeting and greeting stars on Broadway, you're giving your business card to Sigourney Weaver. You're building engines for cars so advanced they don't even exist yet. You'ved moved to the East Coast.You've gotten married.You've had a baby, would I like to see pictures?

It's been too long.

I was reading my poetry students final portfolios today. And there's something about poetry, and those who are beginning to practice it, that is so raw and truthful and so fucking honest. And it really tripped me up. It got me agreeing with them that yes, there is something about poetry that is just so ... fragile. It shouldn't be any more fragile than any other form of writing -- after all, it's words on a page. Poetry should be no more fragile than the words its made up up. But it is. Our friendships, our cares, our complaints, our successes, our failures, how we communicate or don't, should be no more fragile than ourselves. I'm not fragile. I've worked hard to not be so. But our friendships are perhaps more fragile than I would have imagined. And they break softly, quietly, under the strain of a thousand days and a thousand words not said.

Because if you think I could be forgiven for this, I wish you would.

--No, not those of you whom I told to fuck off over the years. The crazymakers, drama queens, and liars, I've excised your from my life for a reason. I don't want your forgiveness. I don't miss you. I don't miss your drama. I don't miss the regret that inevitably came from hanging out with you and going along with the flow. I don't miss you lying to me about your other girlfriends, I don't miss you lying to me to make yourself look like a better person than you really are -- if you're mean behind your friends' backs, then be mean; if you're petty, be petty; if you're a sleaze, be a sleaze; just be honest about it. I don't miss you telling me btw, I'm single this weekend and expecting me to lie to your boyfriend, your fiance, about about what you did while visiting me in Chicago. No, for you I hold firm with my assertion that you should fuck off.--

The ones from whom I want forgiveness are the ones whom I just let ... drift. The ones whom I accidentally neglected and now I don't know if the connection still works, if the link remains unbroken.

Getting my mind around getting it done

I am a slow writer.  At least, I think I am.

I can write quickly if I must.  I usually write 20 page research papers in under 36 hours.  Okay, sometimes I go over deadline and it's 72 hours.  Someone once told me that a good formula was an hour a page plus one to proof read at the end.  Though that formula wasn't true when I was in college, it has been for the master's program.

But for fiction?  I churned out a story, 3000 words, start to finish in about seven hours one night at Odyssey last summer.  It had some problems, but it also had a beginning, middle, and end.  Then I let my subconcious tackle the edits and problems of that story for six months, finally sitting down to redraft.  I've been redrafting for the past 30 days.

I'll get stuck.  I'll take a bunch of notes.  I'll find something else to do (most likely not writing). Then the perfect phrasing or situation to get me unstuck bubbles up in my mind the next day.

It's taking forever.

And I'm looking for ways to make it happen quicker.  There has to be something better than a sentence or single idea bubbling up per day.  Come on, lots of bubbles.  Let's think carbonation here.

It's not just the revisions (although they're worse than anything else).  I've been putting off first drafts as well.  So I started reading Eat That Frog! a self-help book about time management.  Although, as theLiz told me, reading a book about how to not procrastinate sounds like a great form of procrastination.

Just read this interview with Julie Duffy of StoryADay.  It is indeed a month long write-a-story-each-day challenge.  Sounds intense.  Sounds like the pulp writers of yesteryear (but hold that though, it's tomorrow's post).  Sounds like something I'd really like to do.  Sounds like my sloooooooowness would either get kicked out or get me kicked out.  Hmm.

Duffy's advice:

Finish. Finish every story. Even if it's dragging and you hate it, learning how to work through that and get to to the good bit is all part of the craft. Just starting stories will never get you anywhere. Learning how to craft your ideas into finished stories is what it's all about.

I need to get over the starting and get on to the doing and the sticking.  Sticking with the doing.

Bestselling author Jenny Crusie writes:

There is a time before I begin a book that I panic. I can’t remember how I did it before, the first fifteen books must have been flukes, I don’t know everything that’s going to happen in the story, I don’t understand the characters, I’m a fake, the book is going to be a disaster, and my career is over. The fact that I do this before every book is not a comfort.

Then she found god collaging.

Hmm. Thanks -- tempting -- but no.  I'm already waist-deep in unfinished arts-n-crafts projects, I really don't need another excuse to buy and/or collect more of that stuff.  Although the whole panic notion does put me in mind of this absolutely spot on cartoon.

Is it really as simple as Ann Aguirre makes it out to be?  Find a group of people who want to write five thousand words a day and then you all write five thousand words a day?  She makes caveats that finding the right group of people is important -- and lordy do I know that: those groups where we all slacked off and secretly rejoiced that we'd failed together instead of failed alone, yeah, those groups weren't very helpful.  But she's big on there being no magic in the system.  There's no magic time, no magic aura, the stars do not align.  She just goes.  Does.  Is.

I guess I just need to go. Do. Be.  Get off my stupid starting block and keep going without tripping on it.  Of course, Aguirre's method is for the first draft, not the revisions.

Does your style slant toward slow or fast?  Slow and steady or (worse) slow and sporadic?

What processes and advice have worked for you?

Doh!

I had the absolutely most awesome idea for a story while driving home today. By the time I reached my apartment, the idea seemed utterly stupid.

I hate when that happens.

I'm going back to wallowing in ice cream and "Mercedes Thompson" novels (written by Patricia Briggs).

The journals are ready to go to their new home

Congratulations wrtsmith, you're the owner/adopter of a rather large bundle of literary journals and magazines! Contact me and I'll box and ship you the book-booty.

Yesterday evening, as I (unsuccessfully) trolled the internet for inspiration for my next speculative short story, I realized that not all questions can be answered with a Google-search. Shocking, but true.

That's when I broke down and bought the art book I blogged about on Sunday. I doubt it'll arrive in time to give me an idea before my next self-imposed short story deadline but it will arrive before I go to "camp."

Is it odd [bad] that I'm thinking of this six week summer workshop as camp? Summer camp for writers. Trekking off into the wilderness (or neatly kept university grounds) of New Hampshire, it'll be just like when you were a kid, except much more exhausting and without the arts and crafts made of Popsicle sticks (I hope).

So, in an attempt to get a spark of an idea to catch into a short story to have ready before camp starts (and with my inspirational art-book not set to arrive for 5-9 days), I decided to try the opposite tack:  boil down a full sized idea into a tasty reduction sauce.  Hey, it works for making a nice sauce-glaze-type-thing to go with steak, why not on a story?  (And I just realized I never posted for Jud the incredibly-tasty-and-not-too-involved steak recipe of my father's.)

I don't know if I'll be able to create a story line that's short enough (and complete in 6000 words) out of the opening of the novel I started writing in December/January (and then gave up on when semester started). But, if nothing else, the exercise is making my prose much more concise.

I'm finding that when I think I have all the time and space in the world (a 80,000 word novel) I write way too much.  Maybe I should attempt to turn everything into something smaller than it really is.