Rant, rant, rant.

It's been weeks since I have sat at the computer and tried to write, whether rewrite or compose, and I am racked with all of the self-doubt and worry that I had when I initially joined the program. I got done with the my current semester and I thought that I was due a break from the breakneck pace of revision I was maintaining over the last couple of months but I'm learning that this is quite possibly the worst thing I can do to myself.

Stepping away from the page, whether I am talking about fiction, the blog, or correspondence is not a good thing for me. At least not for prolonged periods of time. I feel like I need to completely relearn the tasks that I have come to have a grasp on over my time in the program.

Or, maybe I am overthinking this. That is possible. When I talk to Jack, he says that each new story is like learning to ride a bike all over again. There is no "mastering" that process of self-doubt and anxiety. The key, according to Jack, is to put one word after another, without thought of what the final product will be. More often than not one can't know what the story will eventually become so there is no sense of getting worked up about it until that first draft is complete. As you can see I am talking myself through this process. Giving myself a mental "hall pass" with which to wander through my imagination. I, too often, try to compose with a direction although I never wind up at that initial destination. Isn't that weird? One would think that the more I engage in this process the more likely that I could foresee what my work will become but that is not the case for me.

Okay, I think that's enough of the mental pep talk. I have a couple of story ideas I want to pursue and I just need to take that first step. Wish me luck.

A Really Long Absence

It has been a long time since I have come back to my blog and I don't know why I have internalized as much as I have but it has been a nice change of pace. I have been reading a lot lately and working on some revision but I have not come back to the blank page in a long time. I think this has been the longest respite from new work I have allowed myself since I began the program. It is a total shifting of mental priorities to go from working on new material to working on revision.

New works, for me, are blustery and full of energy and revision is a very quiet process that involves looking at the smallest details, reading aloud and dwelling on the story and the characters, trying to make them full. It is important, I believe that I come to understand this process better. I have always written in a way that avoided revision. I have been so desperate to move on to new material that I rarely spend a lot of time working on things I have already produced.

As a result of this semester, with the work on the essay and my one story, I have come to understand that the depth of story that I adore comes from revision. I will not be able to produce those swelling moments of realization in a first draft. I may come close, I may point in the right direction, but it will almost never occur in the first, or even the second or third, draft.

This process has seen me retreat inside myself and quiet the raging typist for a few weeks. It's been a nice break but I will try and be a little more responsive with my blog to keep myself from collapsing inward and becoming hermit-like.

Why Do I Try?

I don't know why I keep going to writers conferences and writing groups, they are REALLY frustrating. I went to my writers group today and met with four other young/new writers and for the most part it was a good experience, I enjoyed the company of others engaged in this craft but somewhere in the midst of everything I get this comment, "It feels too safe, too normal." I can understand if the comment was addressed towards an element of craft but it was, rather, addressed to the content of my story, to the characters who occupy it, and, I would hope without intent, to the mind that created it.

I am fascinated with ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances and I feel like if I am not playing with form, adding some supernatural element, or writing about the most traumatic thing I can think of, I am being dismissed. I don't really understand it. The point for me is to document the human condition in all of its glory and, yes, there were problems with the piece I handed into the group and I got some great feedback on it, but this isn't the first time I have ran into the issue of the "too normal, too small-towny" argument and it just pisses me off. At one point someone wrote on my manuscript, "here we are in Amish country." Give me a break.

If I am learning anything these days, it is that I need to be much more selective with my readers and who I open myself up to in terms of commenting on drafts of my writing. Plus, talking about writing is not the writing itself and I need to pick and choose the events I attend where I know people will be "talking" about the writing.

Production Levels

So I've been thinking a lot lately that I haven't been getting much done in terms of the writing, anguishing over the one story, nitpicking lines, trying to flush out scenes, and it brought me to a realization.

When in the revision phase of the writing process, it isn't going to be the blustery energy of original conception. I'm not going to fill pages with new text, paragraphs aren't going to be streaming out of my fingertips as I work on revision, rather, it is a quiet process, the opposite of blustery but powerful in an entirely different way.

As I sat last night working on my story, it came to me that what I was doing was finding the exact sense of what I was meaning to say. It was very similar to the refinement I did when working on the essay. I finally had the breakthrough that I don't need to be filling reams of paper with text, or rather reams of screens. There are going to be times where I need to sit down with the work I have already created and work at the task of refinement, specificity, etc.

I added two or three lines to the closing paragraphs of my story last night and all of a sudden it came into view, the thing that I felt missing from how I had written it before. The sympathetic element from son to father was missing because I had cut the sentimental version earlier and then hadn't done the hard work of putting it back in a subtler form that didn't lapse into sentimentality.

When I was able to quiet myself, to sit and not press against the story, but listen to it, I found my ending, at least until I revise it again.

Depth

Stories tend to spring almost full form from my mind when they are working. I'm not saying that they are polished, but there is an organic cohesion to them that is present even in early drafts. It isn't exactly an easy process, but in comparison to the revision process, it is a cakewalk.

I am currently revising a story for the third time and really trying to find the ending to it. One that expresses the proper sentiment without falling victim to the trappings of sentimentality. It is a hard process. Each time I come back to it, it shifts a little bit, the main character's understanding deepens and I am forced to look into the very heart of him, which in turn is looking into the heart of my own understanding of life. This story is a true fiction. There is nothing in my life, in terms of events, that has infiltrated this text but there is something of my understanding, my outlook that permeates it. I guess that is where it is hard for me...trying to find what is true for Jack and not true for me, the writer. The story revision is due in a couple of days and I'm hoping that the weekend affords me a couple more days to work on it. Here's to hoping!!!

Talking about writing...

is not the writing. I learned that this weekend as I went to a writer's conference in the Bend, OR area called "The Nature of Words." The readings were great and parts of the "workshops" were good but I discovered an all together unsatisfied feeling at this event. As I listened to the presenters (I went to two different presenters workshops), I became weary with the task of talking about the writing. Well, that's not true, I got sick of talking about publishing.

I signed up for these workshops because they had titles that appealed to me: Tropes, Dialogue and the Revelation of Character , Mapping the Novel: Location, Location, Location, and Voices. What I found in two out of four of these workshops is that the people in attendance are not concerned with the elements of craft being discussed but want to know what it is like working with an editor, how do covers get selected, what's the best publishing house for mysteries, children's lit, etc. It was really frustrating.

When we were on topic I got a couple of real good bits of information but I'm wading through a group of people who are raising their hand and asking, "Do I need to have my children's book illustrated before I send it to the publisher?" Which, of course, is a perfect question to ask someone who writes crime fiction.

So, I took what I could, attended the readings, which were great. I made a connection with an old professor from the University of Montana, got to see the lovely Pattiann Rogers read and chat with her, met a classmate for a drink, stayed with my in-laws and got a chance to catch up and, all-in-all, had a nice weekend but I've missed the computer, I've yearned for the keyboard and I'm excited to be sitting right back down in the driver's seat ready to begin again this creative act I love so much.

A Long Rest.

It's been a long time since I've posted anything on my blog or at least it has felt like it. The gears have changed for me a bit over the last couple of weeks as I have been working solely on revision. My production output has been little in terms of new material but I have been spending hours listening to my head and heart trying to make sense of the story I am working on. It takes a whole different form of energy to come back and revise a piece and I'm finding it quite consuming. I tried last night to work on a new piece and it just didn't work out for me. I feel like I am too deeply submerged in the world of the story I am revising and it is coloring everything I put on paper in terms of new material.

I was given the advice that I should try and connect with my material on a deeper level in terms of the heart of each of the individual characters in my story and it is consuming work. I find myself swimming around in impressions that are not my own but rather things that I think the father in my story would feel, or Jack, the protagonist. There is also the "character" of nature and the external world that seems to be coming into play in this story and it needs further development as I work away at improving what is on the page. There is some kind of push/pull dynamic happening between the characters but also the outside world. The expansiveness of the world outside versus the limited scope of a singular human life. It's been heavy lifting for a while now but I think the story is slowly becoming infused with these thoughts and it is getting better.

My advisor this term is such a gentle and compassionate mentor and he really doesn't push in any specific direction but rather allows me to discover things on my own. Like I said earlier, his advice was to try and connect with the characters on an emotional level as I had captured their "psyches." Seems vague but it is exactly what this story was in need of and perfectly timed advice.

So, I don't know how often I will be posting in the coming days/weeks but just know that the imaginative life is still alive and pumping inside me, we are just out on a cross-country vacation right now and I'll only have Internet access sporadically.

Stinkin' Mailman

I am just sitting here waiting for the mailman to arrive and it irks me that we must be like the last street on his route because he doesn't come yet. Here little mailman, mailman, mailman.

Anticipation

One would think that after almost a year and a half of sending out packets that it would get easier. It doesn't. I sent a packet out last week and I'm hoping that it will arrive in the mail today. It is so funny how often my thoughts flash back to the packet and how anxious I get for the mailman to arrive. At my old house he came around the lunch hour but here at the new house I have to wait until almost 5 in the evening before he comes. It's excruciating. Also, there are no guarantees that the packet will even arrive today and I will have to go through the entire process all over again tomorrow. Ah, patience is a virtue, right? RIGHT?

Packet is in the mail

I completed a full revision of my story and my essay last night and have shipped it off to my advisor for review. I am so thrilled. I can't believe this is my fourth packet, one or two more to go and the semester is over!!! Then, I will only be one semester away from graduating! I can't believe it.

Anyway, the revision process felt really good this time around. It wasn't a full re-envisioning of a story but there were some definite deep dives into the imagination to round out the characters I had created. I found that I fell deeper and deeper in love with them in this process. The father in my story, who was a hard-nosed kind of guy in the initial version softened and become more real in this process. The teenager, Jack, became something a little more adult, a little more sensitive, a little more realized in this draft of the story.

I'm proud of myself for buckling down over the last week and a half and really working my ass off to get all of this done. I'm hoping that the packet will be back by Monday, I'm dying to know if I am off the hook as far as the essay is concerned. I shouldn't say it that way "off the hook" because the process was very educational and beneficial to my writing but I have been working on it now for something like four months, more than that because I started formulating it last semester so it has been a six month essay. Yikes. I'm ready to lay that baby to rest.

Onward and upward.

Bittersweet Anniversary

So today is my third wedding anniversary and I am very excited to talk to my wife tonight over a very nice dinner. Grandma and Grandpa are coming over to babysit so that Tracy and I can get out of dodge and have a nice dinner amongst ourselves.

Here's the problem...

I just found out that my employment is not as steady as I was hoping. The company has been in a downturn and as the part time sales guy I might be the first to go. I noticed the reluctance in my boss' voice when I talked to him earlier today and it troubled me. So, I called him back and asked some very pointed questions as to what the current reality was in our company. He finally caved and filled me in. He is a very nice guy and he is very nervous about the whole deal but I told him that he had to just come out and tell me about these things so that I wouldn't be blindsided by the whole ordeal.

So, it looks like I am going to try and find some part time work in the meantime. I mean, why not switch positions if my job is unsteady and I don't like it anyway, right? Well, my wife's job isn't exactly untouchable right now either. There have been major layoffs at her work and she is nervous that she might be on the chopping block. I don't know what the future will bring but it is going to be interesting to find out. I need to allow myself the ability to have life change on me and not send me spiraling into a pit of self-doubt and despair. This one should be crazy though if any of this comes to light.

A Weekend with Nothing But Reading

So I took some days off this weekend after four grueling back-to-back days of writing, revising, and general brain twisting. I took some time off and just read, refilled the hopper. I pounded down this book The End of America - Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot by Naomi Wolf. Very interesting stuff paralleling our democracy with other democracies that have come before us (those that came before moved into a totalitarian or authoritarian structure). There were a lot of references to current events and how these individual events add up to a larger problem. I liked the fact that she really tried to keep it based on constitutionality. She had to involve the Bush Administration because they are the current administration but the issues she is speaking about involve all future administrations as well and how, right or left, we all need to be vigilant in protecting our individual rights.

Also, I read some manuscripts for the literary magazine I am working on. There was some good stuff in there and I'm hoping that I can leverage some votes for the ones I like. I already saw that one of the editors did not care for a piece I did, so I might have to come to its defense.

So, hopper full, I am setting off tonight to re-immerse myself in my newest story and the ever-present essay. It should be interesting. I know there is a lot of work that still needs to be done and I'm hoping that with a fresh mind I will be up to the task.

Marathon

I have been working on my writing for hours on end the last three nights and I am just exhausted. I woke up this morning and had to go back down for another fifteen minutes, my eyes straining to open. The work has been fantastic, don't get me wrong, I'm just beginning to feel the physical effects of it.

I've been telling people where I study lately. It seems to come up in conversation and so many people are baffled by the fact that I would willingly go to a hospital to study. They see it as such a morbid place to be, their own experiences coloring their impressions, but I don't believe it to be the same place they recall from their memories of mourning or stress.

I enter the hospital between 5:30 and 6:30 and I make my way down to the public cafeteria. Often there are a spattering of people at the tables, some staff, some family of patients. As I look around at all of the faces it is surprising how few sad or tearful people are there. There are families eating together, talking about their lives, the things that are waiting for them outside of the hospital doors. Oftentimes there are small children in these groups, squirming in their seats, picking at a cup full of pudding, but they are, more often than not quiet, as if reading the solemnity under the surface of their parents' calm. When they see me working on my computer I can tell that they are curious, wondering what it is I am doing in the middle of a cafeteria, typing away.

The stories I hear are often mundane, slice of life kinds of talk, but if you look closely at these conversations, really listen to what is being said you can feel these people surviving. They are doing their best to keep their sights on the things that must go on, either in the face of recovery or tragedy. While the emotional weight of their talk is not blatantly on the surface, it runs as an undercurrent in the things they say. There is often a lot of scheduling taking place, planned visits, follow up appointments, medication schedules, etc. When you sit amongst these people, I have been them, you begin to see the human capacity for hope and renewal. Hospitals are truly places of healing and that kind of energy can only be good for a writer.

Revision as Reimagining

There are two things I brought to my work session last night that I think are working very well and are a relatively new experience for me.

I sat down last night in the quiet waiting room outside the sleep lab at Meridian Park hospital and tried to think about how to approach the revision process on my new story. Two pieces of advice from this program resurfaced for me and I really tried to latch on to them. The first came from my current advisor and a conversation we had a while back. He said that you need to love your characters. Not just the protagonist but all of them. There needs to be that concern that comes with loving someone when you are trying to accurately portray them on the page. Only love will allow you to see them clearly.

As I dove back into the draft I realized that I had not sufficiently loved the father in my story. Yes, I had written him but I hadn't considered his personal situation that brought him to the events on the page. I was too involved with Jack, his son, to see him clearly. In writing last night I began to feel the father unfold before me, revealing layers that I had not considered before and I believe this process is beginning to illuminate the text and to make him a more well-rounded character.

The second piece of advice came from a craft talk at a residency in Seaside, I believe. It was about revision being more a process of re-imagining than a process of a more editorial nature. There are many gaps and holes in the story I wrote and I am having to approach the text as if I am writing a new story, imagining scenarios in new and fresh ways. It was a fascinating process because so much is already happening on the page that is informing the new writing.

It was a productive session and I can't wait to return to it this evening. I am going to be working every night this week because I cannot afford to lose a moment's worth of time. I hope that this new approach to the revision process will allow me to experience levels of my own imagination that I have yet to experience and will teach me a deeper level of what revision is meant to be.

Radio Silence

I know it is pretty typical of my to disappear from the blog over the weekends but I feel like I haven't posted in a very long time. I'll try and catch up on current events.

My packet arrived.

This is a big event in my life these days. I check the mailbox everyday once I submit to my advisor. The first couple of days I know I'm being ridiculous but, sure enough, the first day it is logistically feasible for the packet to arrive it does. And it is filled with comments that are just amazing to read.

It's nice when your reader gets your intent. Understands what it is you are trying to do and even pushes you past the line you had set for yourself. This is how it is working with my current advisor. He is such a careful and heartfelt reader and while he gives me TREMENDOUS amounts of criticism, his comments seem to be framed in a gentleness that is appreciated and so much a part of his character. I have a lot of work to do. In the letter that came with the packet I was asked to push up my next packet date by TWO WEEKS!!! This means that I have two weeks to finish a full revision of my essay and a FULL revision of the story I submitted this last time around. It's on like Donkey Kong, people!

So, that was my Friday and I promised myself I would not freak out about the deadline change and so far I am doing pretty good. Saturday was a nice day. Tracy and I got up and I went to a writer's group meeting while she putted around town getting some things done that were on her list. The writing group was good, I guess. I'm not sure if I am digging the format of the thing but I am going to ride it out for now. They read a piece of mine from my first semester here and it is a stinking pile of poo but the response I got back on it is not all that deep. There were plenty of areas where they could have dug into the story and really given my juicy feedback but I think they are worried about hurting people's feelings and it isn't the most constructive thing to have framing your feedback.

Other than that it was nice to catch up with people from the program and talk advisers, packets, reading, etc. From there Tracy and I went and had dinner with her folks. A quiet night with the in-laws. I got my father talking politics and the strangest thing happened. As I was talking with Tom, debating whether not funding the war was anti-soldier. I took the stance that because I don't feel that the war is justified, I don't think we should give it additional funding. Tom made the point that the funding is meant to stock the troops with better equipment and is for THEIR best interest. I told him I thought it was in their best interest to get out of a war zone and the only way that would happen is if we stop funding the operation. Anyway, we were going back and forth when all of a sudden I felt very present in my body. Not only did I feel present in my body but I felt like I was filling it. I could feel my spirit pressing against the boundaries of my flesh and I felt...big, not fat or swollen, but grown physically to the dimensions of a man.

In many ways I still consider myself to be the teen I once was and that is very much not the case. For some reason I felt a swelling of spirit in standing up for my own personal beliefs to someone who I consider, at least in part, an authority figure. It was great to rant back and forth, poke holes in his arguments and, in the end, realize the level of prejudice I was fighting when two statements broke from him. "If it weren't for the fucking bleeding heart liberals..." and "It's Muslims against the world." It became clear to me that the argument was over because there is no surmounting that kind of prejudice. Any idea I brought to the table would be seen as "liberal" because I am anti-war. But that is beside the point.

Growing up around people who studied Gurdjieff and the idea that one should be present in the body, mind, heart and spirit every moment possible, I became immediately conscious of the fact that I had not felt this way in a very long time. I had not felt like my body, my mind and my heart were in alignment, not like this. I could feel the boundaries of my physical form with perfect clarity. I could hear every word that was being said to me in our conversation and the room stood out in clear focus although it was night and the room half-lit. It was an amazing experience to have and I look forward to achieving this again soon.

Anyway, a long rant. Sorry about the that. Be well.

Almost Spilling Over

As I was sitting in the hospital cafeteria working on my computer, I got a flash of nausea that slowly worked its way up my throat and almost made me spill out all over the table. I held it down but was surprised by the reaction. I had gotten a serving of fried rice from an upscale grocery store on my way to the hospital and it was NOT sitting right with me. I felt like a bloated whale. I couldn't really think and I started to break out in an oily sweat. It was terrible.

I got in my car and drove myself home where I immediately crawled into bed and fell asleep. I got a lot of rest for me and I feel really good today. There has been no evidence of stomach trouble at all today and I wonder if my body wasn't just telling me to take the night off, to leave it alone and to shut down for an evening. Well, I can say that I feel better as a result of a good night's rest and I awoke before my wife woke me (our routine schedule for mornings). I feel like I lost some good time but, in the end, I got what I needed out of the evening, a chance to relax, rest and dream.

Another one down, another one down,

Another one bites the dust? Well, I hope not. I have finished my latest packet entry to my advisor and sent it off in a cascading stream of binary code across the country, irretrievable. I'm excited about the exchange this month. For one, I actually got to include some fiction writing in my packet this time around. Instead of the sole focus being the essay, I turned in a seventeen page story that I think works in this early version of the draft. Don't get me wrong, there is work to be done, but I think the story is revealing itself to me.

I wrote a couple of half-life pages last night after sending off my packet and then I decided that it was time for a nice little break and so I went to the movie store and went home to my wife. Sitting on the couch, I began to have the feeling of accomplishment, of having made it this far, of meeting the challenge I have set out for myself. Not completing it, mind you, but meeting it.

So, as I sat in the living room, feet propped on the ottoman, my dog eyeballing me as if curious as to why I was home so early on a Monday night, and my wife cuddled up under a fleece and down blanket, I began to realize something about this whole process, about the writing life, about myself.

I am a writer. I have to be. I have written for as long as I can remember and I want to write for as long as I can foresee. Nothing makes me happier than feeling like I have tuned a phrase so that it sings, not just for the music of the language, but for its placement, its perfect implication within a greater story, for its inherent truth. In many ways, words are the only way I know how to find truth in this world. I don't think there is a lot of it going around these days but I know it is out there. I know there are things in this life, as a human, as a culture, that are true and some of them are beautiful and some of them are terrible but they are there. I want to dedicate my life to finding and expressing at least one of those truths. I want to dedicate myself to the searching, the asking, the silently necessary task of making sense of this brief time we get to spend here on the physical plane. I believe I'm beginning to live my wish.

Intrusive revision

So I was working last night on a revision of my story that I'm expected to send in the next packet to my advisor when I get the feeling that instead of clarifying the text, I am confusing it, expanding it, diluting it. It's a strange position to be in when the result of your actions is having the exact opposite effect than what you intended.

How much of our intent is made clear on the page? How much of our intent actually is present in the consequences of our actions. I mean, the road to hell is paved in good intentions, right? So, when I'm working on my text and I'm trying to illuminate my characters, give them weight and depth, is my revision really working at counter purposes? Don't get me wrong, revision is absolutely the art in my work. My stories would be nothing without this process but it was interesting to me that when I dutifully sat down with this specific piece that the result was quite the contrary to the intent. Is it because I don't have enough distance from the project to really get down into the heart of it? Was I distracted and therefore making arbitrary and counter-intuitive changes?

The more I delve into the practice of writing, the more I find that I will never know the answer and for every problem that I solve, it will mutate into something new where I will have to struggle through the process all over again with all the accompanying self-doubt and anxiety that I bring to this process.

Just some food for thought.

Circular Living

I live in a circular pattern. Last night, my wife and I went to a birthday party for a friend who is getting separated from his wife. They are still keeping up appearances: hosting the party at their home, both in attendance. But it is quickly obvious that they are on the outs. There are separate activities planned for the guests, each one led by one of the couple - guys on motorcycles, girls wine tasting. Well, I shouldn't say that because I have neither a motorcycle, nor all the equipment, so I am left in the house with all of the women.

I have a terrible habit of getting a couple of cocktails in me and wanting to talk to my wife about the nature of our relationship. Last night was no exception. As we drove home (the party was an hour away from our home), I bring up our methods of communication, a subject that has been well worn, even in the last couple of weeks. It is something I think about...a lot. It is not something that my wife dwells on. She believes me to be too much of a thinker, that I do not allow myself the joys of life because I ask questions about what things mean, their implications.

I think part of this has to do with dedicating myself to the writing life. I have to ask what actions mean. I have to know why characters communicate in the way that they do. It is not a subject that is entirely fascinating to my wife. And that's fair, right? She doesn't have to ask the same questions I do, right? She doesn't need to dwell on the interpersonal relationships of failed couples, happy strangers, or odd looking vagabonds. I need to cut her some slack.

It's hard to put the thinking cap away. It's hard to stop myself from diving into the world of personal motivations and private conflicts. So, yes, I do have a point when I say to her that there is always room for improvement and it is good to talk about how we communicate. But does the conversation ALWAYS have to be about elevating our relationships and our souls to a greater plateau. Sometimes fart jokes are funny.

Playing with Voice

(A sample voice I was thinking about during lunch today)

I'm bored. I'm sitting in my office that barely escapes the classification of a cubicle and I'm watching movie trailers on my computer. I should be doing my work, calling strangers, repeating a script over and over again but I just don't have the energy to be mindless, or I have too much energy to be mindless. Either way, I'm dodging the things I should be doing. There are laminated maps of the country and individual states on the walls but otherwise everything is bland white and Ikea wood. The only place that I can go now is my imagination.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm turning into a junkie, travelling ever inwards inside myself, turning away from the things that sustain my life: my job, my friends, my family. I am distant from my own world right now because I am adrift in my own imagination. I find the landscape there more beautiful and more terrifying than the day to day monotony I am living right now. There is more potential for danger there, thus, more chance for heroism, adventure, and courage.

Here, I am non-threatening, amiable, even cheerful. But there are depths within me that are uncharted by another, even by myself. There are shadowy places within me where I dare not look lest I be tainted by the shadow, brought into its service and inadvertently destroy the beautiful things in my life. I am a killer. No one suspects me because I have not killed but I do exist inside this flaccid form. Behind these eyes, glassed over and reflecting the infinite tedium of my days, there is something dangerous inside of me that wants to break out. I can't promise that I can contain it forever but I do promise to try.

Some thoughts on revision.

As I sat down to work on the revision process for my new story, I felt something different about my writing this time around. It was strange to feel that my writing has changed over the course of my MFA program. It wasn't that I felt the draft was more complete than earlier first drafts but I did have a sense that there was a level of maturity(?) in the draft that hadn't been there before. Each time I come to the page there is something different in each new story but this time it felt significant and it felt good to feel like there was some payoff for all of the hard work I have put into this program.

Now, the revision process itself seemed very difficult this time around. For one, when writing this story I knew there were going to be some significant holes in the text where I would have to do additional writing to fill in the gaps but when I came to those places in the text it seemed a momentous task stood in front of me. RE-submerging into the text proved difficult to me. The initial visualization was difficult but this was something different. When I write first drafts, a lot of times, I can feel a subjugation of my personality and mind take place, it feels like the story comes forward of its own volition in some kind of subconscious process.

One advisor, a couple of terms back, told me that he believed that I used writing as a form of self-hypnosis that the words pouring out of me seemed to take me to place that was different from my conscious mind. The way I read that feedback then made me believe that he felt it was a negative method and that the self-hypnosis was actually cluttering my texts. I'm going to have to find the letter and reread it. Anyway, I'm beginning to think that it isn't such a negative thing at all. First drafts can be born in this fashion but the revision process needs to be the application of the rational and creative minds in order to fashion the story into the desired final draft.

I think this is where I was having problems with the text. The story is new and so there is a faint trace of that subconscious mind present when I come to it again with an eye towards revision. I believe this is where I was having a problem with the re-imagining. When I get distance from my stories I can see the form of them clearly and it is merely a matter of removing the offending blotches of clay that are still stuck to the form, possibly there is an issue of positioning the figure but these problematic elements are clear to my rational mind. I wonder if I will be able to do any significant revision of this story before it is due. Well, I have six days to find the answer.

Quitting

So, today is the first day of my quitting smoking and while I am sure I will reference that endeavor here, I have started a new blog that is dedicated solely to that endeavor. If you are at all interested in this process, you can read my new blog at www.sayinggoodbyetocigarettes.blogspot.com. Wish me luck. Today is a new day.

Completed Draft

For the first time in the last four months, I have seen a story through to an ending. With the critical essay requirement, I have been so focused on its completion, in fact, mandated to do so by my advisor, that I have not seen a story through to completion in a long time.

When that much time passes without the tangible result of beginning-middle-end, one begins to worry that there is some sort of block preventing a story from finding its way through to completion. Or, at least First Draft completion. I feel really good about the story. I'm not saying that it is a glimmering piece of prose but I am proud of the fact that there are some bones here that, with the use of my archaeologist revision tools, will be fleshed out to reveal the structure of a larger organism. I can see a thigh bone and maybe the crest of a skull so I know there is something in there, now I just have to sift through the debris and find it.

It is nice to know that I will have something that is at least passable for my next packet. I no longer have to work on completing a story, I just have to work on revision. There is something satisfying about pouring over your work once it is completed. I find myself agonizing so much at the point of creation, trying to make each word belong to the story and then I wind up getting rid of so many of them. It's a funny little bit of my process now that I think about it. I'm so strict with myself when putting one word after the other, but once I have something that I deem "complete" I can excise any one of those words, try on another one, change around their order and I don't feel the same level of anxiety. Weird. One would think that the closer you get towards a true polished draft, the stronger the need to maintain the text.

I think the main thing that influences this for me is that once I come closer to something being "polished" I can recognize the things that don't belong easier. I can smell a stinking adverb or a false emotion and excise it with a greater degree of clarity than when I am trying to birth something full form onto the page.

It's kind of been a long day and I realize that this blog post is becoming a tad rambling and I apologize, but these are the thoughts that are closing out this first segment of my homework night and I wanted to put them here so I could return to the idea later and reflect. Thanks for your patience.

Wedding Day!

I woke up this morning and realized that I would be ushering two people into their married life at 6:30 tonight. I have written and revised the ceremony numerous times and now have to settle with the fact that it is what it is. Don't get me wrong, I believe it is a thoughtful ceremony but I feel a heavy responsibility when I marry people to give their day special consideration and to channel that consideration through my words. As with writing short stories, I am trying to capture the essence of my subjects, my characters, and to be as open and honest about them as I can. I want to capture the essence of what is important in their lives and their day.

Wish me luck.

A Voice from Across the Ether

I work in relative isolation, as it should be. But every now and again I need to connect with other people engaged in the craft of writing. Today, as I sat down at work and collected my emails, I found one from a friend on the other side of the country. She is disconnected due to phone line and server problems but she took the time to reach me in her spare moments at a local library.

Her email, while short, was a nice touch to remind me that I am not in this alone. I have community. I have friends and they are as entrenched in this process of writing as I am.

Last night, I was driving home from my study session at the hospital where I have taken to writing when I was struck with a single line that felt like the title to something. That single neuron firing sent a cascade of tumbling thoughts through my brain that very quickly began to coalesce into a story. The first line was the second thought, the character was the third, his circumstances came forth and, as the night air blew through the open window of my truck, I knew I had been given a gift.

On my route home there is a Shari's restaurant, a coffee and pie house common to the Pacific Northwest, and I pulled into the parking lot at 10:30. The next hour, sipping decaf coffee, my fingers faced over the keyboard of my laptop and in the end I had four new pages staring back at me. As I wrote, the story moved and changed as it always does, expanding in parts, taking detours in others and I know that it is a living thing, that the "I" of the story is someone who is not me and I am just getting to know him.

I have been writing more over the past two weeks, the blocks I was feeling melting away under the heat of the kinetic movements of my fingers as I type stale prose. But what I am finding is something that an advisor in my program said. To paraphrase, "When you feel you have writer's block, write. Write poorly but write. When we give ourselves permission to write bad prose, poetry, etc we are giving ourselves permission to write and that will eventually unlock us from the blocks we are feeling." In no way is that as eloquently said as the original version but it serves its purpose.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand Unclench.

My back porch is half shaded around the one 0'clock hour and I found myself today with a good book and a cigarette enjoying the shade. My dog, on the other hand, chose the route of full sun. She lay on her side, black as a solar panel, soaking in the afternoon warmth. Bees made themselves busy around me, gathering nectar from a flowering vine in my yard that is supposedly related to bougainvillea. The orange funneled blossoms cascading down the vine as it grows up and falls back towards ground under the force of gravity.

The stories I was reading were touching me in all the right places, places where I believe in the possibility for the human soul, where I believe in the interconnectedness of all things and that there is no such thing as coincidence. It touched me in the place where I can believe.

I believe that life is hard. That it is meant to be. I believe that challenge is the only thing that provides growth and I believe that it is easy to compromise the soul when faced with these challenges.

I took a step back recently, a step back to a place before I reclaimed writing as my own, a place where gripy comments and inaction where the strategies I employed. Today though, today was a different day. So, I am glad that today was a study day. I've written 10 pages of new fiction, an entire wedding ceremony over which I will preside and a new section for my essay. I have been writing for four hours now and I'm just now beginning to feel the pinch in my back, the call of home, and the hope that my daughter will still be awake when I get there.

I'm hoping that I can carry over the feeling into tomorrow and next week and next month but I know now that it will return if I lose sight of it. I must simply remain engaged with the world, even when it seems impossible to do so.

Retail Therapy

Oh dear god it feels good! Last night, after almost falling asleep on myself at the keyboard, I abandoned my normal post at the hospital and made my way downtown to Powell's. My advisor had given me a list of books to read (at my prompting) and I really wanted to get started on them.

On the way downtown, I called my brother and had a positive conversation about an issue that was bugging me and was able to get it off my chest and then have a nice conversation after the fact. I felt bolstered by it. Contented that I had removed an issue from my table, at least until next time. The evening was nice and the Edward P. Jones book on tape was especially scintillating. I found a parking space right next to Powell's, helped a woman with her hand truck full of books to sell and quickly made my way inside to the Blue Room.

The Blue Room, even the room's designation makes me relax. I had the book list in hand and began to peruse the aisles, looking for books. I found about half of the books on the list, the other half will just have to be searched for online, and then I made my way to the sale racks and tables looking for other things that may spark my attention.

I found a short story collection I loved on sale for $3.00 and had to buy another copy. I figure I will send it to my friend, Brandon, who lives near where the stories are set. It was too good a deal. I found some authors I had never heard of but the covers sounded interesting and I couldn't resist as they were priced under $5.00. I walked out of Powell's with a paper grocery sack of books and about $70 poorer than I was when I entered but I felt elated, I gave some loose change to the homeless man on the street and walked down the sidewalk to my car humming a tune to myself simply to hear the tune play in my head.

On the way home, I came across an idea for a story. Actually, I had already had the idea and struggled through two stillborn versions before I decided that I was just going to come out with it. I was going to state what the story was about in the first line. So, I drove myself to a local pie house/coffee shop and asked for a quiet table where I could use my computer in relative quiet.

I was sat at the far end of a sun-room looking corridor of the restaurant. Directly opposing me, on the far wall was a group of teenagers who were discussing their elementary and junior high school pop culture influences. There was a lot of talk about the Spice Girls from the young ladies. The guys mentioned movies like Rocketman (not a bad Sunday morning goof fest, if you ask me).

I was poised, fingers over the keyboard, ready to state my case and I typed the first sentence. It was a piece of dialogue that directly stated what I wanted to write about. The rest began to flow. In an hour I had written four pages and more than anything else I have written lately, it began to feel like a story. I don't know if it is or not but I felt that way and it was nice. I called it a night after filling the fourth page and reading most of a short story from Emperor of the Air.

I packed my things, went home, talked with my wife and her friend for a bit and went to bed where I finished the rest of the story and fell off to sleep. Sleep rose quickly in me, I don't remember Tracy coming to bed, but I slept heavy and long, and, I think, I can't quite remember now because it is afternoon, but I think I slept and dreamt last night partially because I had new writers near me and books to explore once the sun rose again.

God I love retail therapy like this.

The Speed of Life

I linger at my mother's house until I am the last one there, besides my mother. It is late, the day having transitioned to night hours before and it is sultry, without breeze, as I stand in the driveway looking back at the house.

There isn't much left inside. My brother moved most of the stuff this last weekend and I'm playing sweeper, coming in for some last big loads and my mom will be moved. The family home I've known since the second grade will be possessed by strangers. They are a nice family, my mother says, with two kids nine and eleven. I'm saddened by the thought that I will never cross the threshold again, looking for my mother, celebrating Christmas, or having summer barbecues on the back porch.

Time marches on, as it always does and I chalk it up to yet another change in the long list that has occurred in the last year. The monumental force with which my life is changing takes my breath away. I can't seem to find the lull in the action and I'm getting broadsided by events that I thought myself emotionally prepared for.

So I watch the house. The big front bay window looking in on the empty kitchen, the upstairs lights extinguished and the sound of silence coming from the basketball court in the side yard. I've lived so much of my life on that piece of ground. I lost my virginity in that house. I mourned family and friends in that house. I celebrated Christmas Eve for years on end with extended friends and family, a party that gained a reputation for the best of the season. And now its over. There will be no more Christmas in that house. I'm overcome with a flush of sadness as I trace the roof line, imagine the time I actually climbed the steep pitched roof to fetch a frisbee or a whiffle ball. It's unimaginable to me that someone else gets to lay claim to this physical representation of my family, my life.

And then I realize that the house is simply a shell. It isn't the thing itself. It isn't the family, it isn't childhood, it isn't even Christmas. It is a location, a place, and the power of it is encoded in my genes, in my memory, for me to savor for the rest of my life. I will tell its life in story.

Elation like a Tidal Current

When my session finished out last night I had actually completed 11 pages instead of the 8 I was so pleased with when I posted. After writing I sat down with a Tobias Wolff collection and read a couple of stories to finish out my quiet time. As I left the hospital where I work I felt great. The night was clear and cool and I had a sense of accomplishment as I drove home with the window down.

Upon arrival I discovered that my wife was still up and working around the house. I tried to offer my assistance and then to make her a sandwich as she hadn't eaten that evening but I was met with cool detachment. There was no need for me. In fact, I felt like I was in the way a burden on her already busy and stressful schedule. There was no kiss hello, no welcoming hug, no question as to how the writing was going and so I went to make myself something to eat.

By the time my sandwich was finished I could feel my elation fleeing me like a riptide pulling away, farther and farther from the shores of my mind. In the vacuum, the empty space where I had once held joy was a cold silence, an emptiness that isolated me within myself. It was like the return of a familiar lover. I can make out the outline of this isolation, run my fingers along the cheekbone of its face as it gives a wan smile as greeting, a lover returned too soon but desperate for recognition.

And so I collapse a little and, I believe, for the first time in the months since I have been feeling this way. I pull a blanket up onto the couch and watch mindless television in silence. After a few moments she joins me but not to chat or discuss but simply takes a chair a fair distance away from me and sits with her hands in her lap.

Loneliness in the face of another is terrible. It eclipses any loneliness that is felt while truly isolated from the contact of others and I tremble under the weight of it, I don't know if I can bear the full mass of it though I try.

Finally, after a half hour of news reports, she speaks. "How was the writing tonight?"

"Fine," I say, not able to muster up a more committed response. I feel salt tears pressing for release but hold them back and my eyes itch from dryness.

"Did you get a lot done?"

"Yeah," I say and this time there is a little pleasure in the response, a small sign that there is truth to it.

"Are you okay?" she asks, finally allowing herself to admit that I am not myself.

"I don't feel good."

"Are you taking your vitamins?" she asks and I want to laugh at the question, at the sheer wrongness of her response.

"No," I say in a flat voice.

"What is it?"

"I just don't feel that good MENTALLY."

"Oh," she says, "is it school?"

"Yes, but it is everything."

"Is it me?"

"It's everything. I'm just not feeling that great about myself right now."

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asks and there is trepidation in her voice, a reluctance to open the door for me to speak freely.

"I don't know," I say, "we don't have the best track record of communicating stuff like this." I know she will take this personally but there is truth in it as well. She will take the things I say personally and I will have to coddle her, reassure her. There isn't much release in that for me. She leaves. She turns from me and goes to bed without pursuing the issue further.

I wanted her to press me for answers, to show an investment in my mental welfare, to want to help me but she left. She simply went to bed as if it were a regular Monday night. Like I said, it's terrible to feel isolated in the presence of company.

Eight Pages.

Eight pages of horrifyingly bad prose with the sparkle of an idea buried underneath and I am joyous. It's been a long time since I have felt my fingers flying over a keyboard channeling some inner movement that I often times don't understand. But tonight it happened. I think I allowed myself to write shitty prose and I had no idea what I was writing but it came and it came quickly. I know that almost the entirety of the eight pages will go away but in the course of following "Jeff" through the first part of this first draft, I fumbled upon something interesting. I came across obsession and that is always good.

It took a short story to set me off running and once I touched my fingers to the keyboard, found some semblance of a first sentence, I was off to the races. It's good for me to write poorly because it isn't the act of creation in this first draft that matters. It is only important for me to get some semblance of an idea down on the page and I will hone it and craft it until it is something completely different, but whole, in later drafts. I have to remember this.

I have been obsessing myself lately, watching Tracy from behind a thin veil of resentment and anger that is more to do with my slightly depressed self than anything I think she is really doing "wrong." I don't feel good and I'm pushing that feeling over to her, blaming her, and I can see some of that now. Eight pages and I feel a small portion of the weight lifting from my shoulders.

It's not good for me to be away from writing for too long. It isn't healthy for my mind. I need to exist on the page, pour myself out into fictional characters, know that there are other people out there who suffer and fail, live and love. It is good for me to find that there is a capacity within my soul to hold all of the good and the bad together and still be a man, and maybe someday...a good man.

Eight pages, oh thank you, God!!!

Niched

I've been ruminating on story ideas for a while now and I believe it is time to approach the page and get some of them down. I have been avoiding it for a while now and I'm feeling cowardly. Also, in avoiding the page I am allowing for thoughts of inadequacy and failure to creep into my thoughts. I have actually had a couple of moments where I have doubted the endeavor as a whole.

Here is one of those moments:

I'm meeting people in Barnes and Noble, not a bookstore I frequent but a convenient meeting place. I'm early. I'm an hour early and I'm actually looking forward to spending some time browsing the fiction and literature section of the store. Bad idea. I have my letter from my second packet with me and there is a list of short story collections that Jack sent me included in its pages. I go down the list of 10-12 books and I find a total of three. I had no plans to buy the books here having recently found a quaint independent bookseller a couple of miles from my house but I begin to realize that this is where most people by their books, at big box stores like this, if not at the grocery store.

I decide to try an experiment and look up the faculty members of our program to see what kind of exposure they are getting in this big box store. Pete: No. Jack: No. Claire: No. John: No. Craig: No (this one surprises me, being in Oregon and all). Valerie: No. Judy: Yes. David: No. I know it is a small branch of the big box, being located in an outlying strip mall attached to a mall but I begin to see how narrow of a niche we are afforded in this industry. Also, I begin to notice the sheer lack of short stories present on the shelf.

In addition, I begin scanning all of the title names and looking at the cover art and I begin to see a pattern. There are a lot of books with "shoes", "men", brand names, and other chick lit cliches dominating the shelves. The art is often of fashion items, makeup, or women in independent poses. I'm not disparaging the fact that women deserve literature of their own, that speaks to them and addresses their issues but it just begins to overwhelm me. I realize how much of a niche market I am really working in. Not just in the subject matter that I write in but also that I work solely in short stories at the moment. It was a daunting realization but tonight I am taking time to confront the page and my own insecurities and I'm hoping to write past all these troubling thoughts.

Wish me luck.

ARGH!

So it has been a number of days since I have posted here and I'm beginning to see my blog as an outlet for my various emotional overflows. I am fighting white space everywhere but here as I fill line after line with the crap rantings of a person too lazy to do the work.

I had the opportunity to work on my writing for a couple of hours last night and I pretty much did everything in my power to do anything but. I am not doing the work and the longer I prolong this phobia of the blank page, the more it grips me. I need to sit my butt in the seat and get to work but I can't seem to orient myself enough to even accomplish that!!!

How am I supposed to write if I won't even look at the screen. I have been filling my time with reading which, I guess, some would call filling the hopper, but I call evasion when it gets to this point. I have discovered some pretty interesting books of short stories in my evasion. The first is called Brief Encounters with Che Guevera by Ben Fountain and The Coast of Good Intentions by Michael Byers. Both are stunning examples of what threading one word with another can do and the power it unleashes. They are two very different storytellers but each person seems to capture the essence of place and character very well. I want to do the same. I want my words to have power and I'm just not sure how I can accomplish that when I am sabotaging myself at every given turn.

ARGH!!!

Drifting

The page seems very far away right now. In all the hours of working on my critical essay, I feel I have drifted away from stories and now, sitting in front of a blank Word document, I'm left with the uneasy feeling of not being able to write. I haven't had this feeling in a long time and I know that it too will pass, that it is a temporary freezing of the psyche and that I need to keep Marvin Bell in the back of my mind.

In listening to Marvin speak in the past he has said to give yourself permission to write poorly. Just write. It isn't going to be your best work, prosaic and beautiful, on a first draft anyway. So why do I put so much pressure on myself to make things beautiful on the first go round?

Lately, I have been caught unawares by these soaring peaks of emotion at the sight of things. I've felt the wetness of tears filling my eyes when I see small children with their parents. I feel alone in the presence of groups. I don't know what to say to anyone I come across and it's beginning to feel lonely here. I don't know what is happening inside of me but there seems to be some kind of emotional revolution taking place beneath the surface.

I wonder sometimes if it is the return of the muse, if I need to be patient and let that feeling cultivate while writing poorly. I like the idea of writing poorly but often have a hard time giving myself permission. I think the fact of the matter is that if I bring myself to the page and stay there, write trite draft after trite draft, the muse will descend through my fingers because I have left the door open for her.

Hmm, it's strange that I just named my muse as a woman. I've never thought about it before but I can almost see her hanging just outside of my reach. She is full figured and wearing linen, a coastal dress, loose and breezy against her hips. I can see her face and she is olive in complexion with brown hair that is light as she moves, brushing her ears as she moves and her eyes are open and alert, the slight tilt of the lids at the outermost corners. She is without blemish and her skin shows some light freckles, sun-kissed across the brow of her nose. I want her to say something to me but she remains walking towards me although never closing in. Her lips are smooth and soft, not wet with color but shining with a rosy hue that is a touch darker than her skin at the outline and sinking into a darker shade where it would open. She is beautiful but silent and again I am left feeling distant and alone. But I can hope that she will continue on her walk towards me and that some day, soon I hope, she will be allowed to approach and she will breath into my open mouth as I open to say something to her.

A Take on Revision

The art of revision is in allowing yourself to re-imagine the work as something other than what is put on the page. Many times, I find that I am mentally committed to the work I have done already and there is a reluctance to change what is already on the page. This commitment, this devout loyalty to the previous version can be a hindrance to finding a story's heart.

It helps to think of a first draft as an excavation site, an archaeological dig, where you have to use fine brushes and pointed tools to careful get rid of the dust and detritus that is obscuring the buried frame of a fossil. This image is helpful when the act of revision is simply a refining of the pieces already buried in a draft.

Other times it is important to think about blowing the whole site up and taking the shrapnel as the building supplies for the next draft. The pieces that have survived the explosion generally are little glistening bits that have resonance and, when reassembled in a new way, will join together like a multi-faceted gem, catching the light and shining in its new form.

I have been working on my essay for weeks now and I believe I have done a little bit of both techniques. I send it off today to my advisor in the hopes that it will be met with approval. I don't hold out for approval that it will be finished but that it will be seen as a step in the right direction. It may be that I can put the dynamite away and bring out the brushes and pointed tools for the next round of revision. Here's to hoping!

Poopy Diapers

Shea is quiet for a majority of the day, which is somewhat typical but there is something about her silence today that is unsettling. There is no way of communicating with her to see if she doesn't feel well so at this point it is all guess work. She is not running a fever though. The day is set off balance by her silence.

In the afternoon, after a day of trying to get a rise out of her, a smile or a laugh, I put her into her bouncy chair which doesn't seem to impress. Until, for no real reason at all, she begins to bounce with a big smile on her face. I'm so pleased to see her animated that I fall to the floor in front of the chair and begin making faces, cooing and enjoying Shea's good mood.

Then, the smell hits me. I am used to her smell and am not caught off guard by it often but this time there is a new quality to the smell and I pull her from the bouncy chair settling her onto my forearm with a squish. Her dress has ridden up and my forearm is covered in a stinky wetness I won't describe further but it's REALLY wet.

By the time I get her to the changing table, the smell is consuming me and I've now realized that she has made so much that it has risen up her back and over the top of the diaper. There are wet spots on her dress that mark tainted territories. I can't lay her on her back on the changing table until I get the dress off of her and do some damage control. I'm debating how this is to be done when I just decide to hose her off. It's bath time.

I strip her in the bathroom, setting the tainted garments in the sink and I clean up Shea with wipes the best I can before setting her in the tub. It takes more wipes than I have ever used before. When I set Shea down in the tub, I'm not too worried about contaminating the bath water. I scrub her up and wash her hair and when we are done Shea is back to her quiet, brooding self that has bothered me all day.

I'm disappointed that we've returned to this brooding silence but then something occurs to me that I haven't thought of before. While I will always be a fighter on the side of Shea's happiness, there are going to be times where I am going to have to do what is best for her and not what will make her happy in the moment. I don't like the idea.

I like the idea that I get to be her playmate, her confidante and partner in crime but that is not the case. I'm the parent here. I'm going to have to be the one to make hard decisions that are based on the OVERALL happiness of my child. I've never been a good big picture player but I'm going to have to learn. Yet another door opening in front of me. A threshold I will have to cross in order to be the parent I want to be but also the parent Shea needs me to be.

Productivity = Zero

I've been worthless all day. I didn't do a single thing at work but surf the Internet and somewhere around two the anxiety settled in on me. My discontent with my current employment can't escalate any further can it? I'm completely detached from any sense of investment in the job and I'm failing in the most basic tasks appointed to me. Now, don't get me wrong, I have the appearance of productivity but it is superficial, exists only on the surface and I wonder why I don't get any results. I feel myself to be a mask of a person, a hollow representation of an active member of society.

I spent the day pondering story ideas and playing word games on the Internet and I find myself unable to turn away from words. My mind is spinning over stories and themes, my essay topic and how to "go deeper" but it seems that I cannot keep myself engaged in the mundane details of living daily. I'm beginning to worry for my longevity in my current employment and it is something I need to consider as I have family obligations to attend to. Tomorrow is another day and I hope that my resolution will be stronger.

A Flickering Moment

A measured breath, a moment of silence and I dive in. One hour spent on the lawn of the hospital has allowed for a calmness to assert itself over me and I feel for the first time in many days that I am ready to engage in the endeavor of writing.

The mantra of my advisers, repeated and met with much frustration, has been "relax" and I haven't felt relaxed in many weeks, months even. Today, though, I can feel my shoulders loosen and a slackening of my chest as I sit down to the prospect of writing. Find a voice and allow it to dance across the page. Don't push. Don't play God. Listen, instead.

Where does the Time Go?

So, here I sit again on a Monday morning, wondering where the time has gone. With all my plans to focus on my essay, get some reading done and to mow my lawn, I have accomplished one. I got a little bit of reading done this weekend. I wonder how to be better at utilizing my time. I have my scheduled moments where I can focus but it isn't enough.

My mind is consumed with ideas for stories but I don't seem to find, or make, the time to get my butt in the seat. It has been bouncing around my head for a while now and I think it is time I committed to writing every day. I don't see how there is any other way to become committed to the craft. I have to have my butt in this seat every day.

So, whether it be this blog, a story, my essay, or some other piece of writing (poetry has recently become intriguing) I need to get my but in the seat every day. I think I shall start small and only ask myself for fifteen minutes. When blocked out like that it seems such a paltry amount of time. I can find fifteen minutes. Wish me luck.

Guilty Pleasure

OK, so I'm very guilty of the sin of procrastination. Last night was a study night and instead of getting stuff done I indulged myself with about, oh, eight hours of reading the latest Harry Potter book. I know, I know, I'm supposed to be all literary minded right now and focusing on my essay but I just needed the decompression. It was nice to be swept away into such a fantastical and fun world.

I got over 500 pages of it read and I should finish tonight so while I took a wild journey off the beaten path of expected responsibilities, it shouldn't sidetrack me for long. I have to say, it's been great.

Monday

My daughter is lying in my lap, feeding, my dog is at my feet, sleeping, and I am thinking about the page. It's been a couple of days since I have written. I am filling the hopper by getting some of my reading done but tonight is homework night and I'm pumped to hit the page running. I will be formulating all day about what I want to write and then, when the time comes and I sit down at my computer, I will probably write something completely different than what I expected.

I'm curious to see if my packet will come in the mail today. That would be a nice treat, to be able to sit down and read through the packet before I sit down and begin a new project. I'm really curious to see what kind of response I get on the creative work I sent out this packet. It is the rawest piece of material I have ever sent out to an advisor. I "finished" the story 12 hours before I sent it off. SCARY! My normal routine is to do a revision, a line edit, a revision, a line edit and another revision before I even consider sending it out to an instructor.

Oh well, life is full of risks.

What's funny is that a month or so ago I was told that I wasn't a risk taker. It bothered me. I'll be honest it really bothered me. I felt that I had taken many risks, especially over the last year, and to have someone tell me that I didn't really set me back on my heels. This is what I've come up with in reaction.

I am a risk taker. The person who told me that I wasn't didn't know me well enough to understand what risks I was taking. She wanted me to take her risks. She wanted to see me make the decisions she wanted to make and she thought that because they were dangerous or risky to her that they were to me. This situation directly pertained to a story I wrote. She wanted big action, big drama to be a part of the story and what I really wanted out of the piece, what I really wanted the story to accomplish was opposite of that response. It is easy to write high drama. It is hard, and risky, to write the quiet dramas that face us every day. It is hard to expose the truth of the daily insecurities of daily life.

I think I'm done with thinking about that comment now. It's bounced around for a little bit and now I think I can finally put it to rest because this blog post has enabled me to put some ideas together.

Ahhhhhh, Monday.

Where is the Art?

Life comes fast, changing every day, putting an infinite amount of pressure on me (or I put an infinite amount of pressure on me) and it is sometimes hard to find the thread that leads me back to the page.

My personal struggles with work and school are pretty mellow at this point but what is funny is that when I reach a dip in the tension, in the manic press to meet all obligations at once, my wife reaches a peak. Tracy is trying so hard right now to be everything to everyone and there are simply not enough hours in the day. Her work has exploded, throwing out impossible deadlines, month long events and new coworkers. She is swimming as fast as she can but I feel like she is fighting the undertow.

It is really hard for me to watch her experience this and I want to reach out to her and offer some kind of lifeline, a buoy on to which she can hold, but as her stress level increases, her resistance to me grows.

I think, in her mind, if she decompresses with me, if she lets go of it all and relaxes, she will stop and not start again. The narratives in our lives follow strange curves, peaks and valleys that do not flow in the same manner for each person. I feel like Tracy and I have intersected in our journey, me decompressing from end of semester, her compressing under the pressure of work and somewhere in my descent and her ascent we briefly met for a moment and were equal.

So, in taking care of the baby, trying to do the housework, maintaining my commitment to my day job and trying to help her be OK in her skin, I wonder where does Art fit into all of this. How important is making up stories?

The answer, I know, is that it is critical. With each new story I write I gain a greater understanding of what it is to be a human, a man, a son, a husband, a father, a brother, a friend. Writing is my meditation. It is my outward seeking into the world and I am a better person for it. It seems weird that such an isolated activity can teach me so much about connectedness, how sitting alone in a room can teach me about my need for my loved ones.

In looking at my life right now and seeing the stress my wife is having to endure, I love her all the more because I can recognize myself in her. I can feel her pain and wait for her, patiently, as I should. For when she stops for a moment and looks around at her life and her world. She will see me standing there, holding our daughter, smiling, and it is a picture I created. It is a picture of my devotion to her. It is my greatest work of art.

Deadlines and Reading

It is the last night before a packet must be in the mail and I am feeling nervous about the whole thing. It is always interesting to start over with a new advisor and learn their methods. I am happy that I got Jack this time around. I have been very lucky in who I have been able to work with during my program. It has been a wonderful and rewarding experience so far and I have one more year left before I am kicked out into the real world and expected to be able to do this on my own.

Reading, I think is the key here. Reading carefully and with an eye towards inspiration. My best story from last semester was a tribute to a good story I read. I read a story that I enjoyed and it sponsored questions in me that made me create my own story, made me want to write, not a rebuttal, but an associated piece that took the material from the story and twisted it a little bit. It was a great exercise. I think emulation is a huge part of being a beginning writer. I don't know what I would do if I didn't have great writers to read and emulate.

I'm not ashamed of the fact that I find inspiration in the work of others. I think there are people out there who would lash back at me and say that I am not "truly" creative, but I don't feel that way. I became infused with the desire to write by being an avid reader in my youth. I can remember how I used to devour books back then: C.S. Lewis, The Boxcar Children series, The Wizard of Oz series, Choose-Your-Own-Adventures, Roald Dahl, Beverly Cleary, etc. I read everything that I could get my hands on. The process of being engrossed in a book is one of the greatest pleasures I know. It is hard for most people to find the time to read but if they can, they should because it is one of the greatest endeavors one can gift to him/herself.

So, I read. And I've been trying to read a lot. As I go to work at the library tonight I will try and find my own voice but I know it will be more like a chorus of voices brought forth by the great works I have read in my own life.

Duh!

So, I read through the intros to a couple of essays from students who have graduated in my program a year before me and I feel so much better about what I am doing now. It is nice to know that this essay doesn't have to be the greatest achievement of dry academic analysis in the world but can have a life and energy and a touch of me within its pages.

I should have taken a look at these essays ages ago but I didn't want to freak myself out if they were way better in quality than what I thought I could produce. Silly me. The devil you don't know is always scarier than the one you do.

Silly.

Inadequate

I've begun my day at home today with feelings of anxiety about my job performance. I'm beginning to wonder if I am doing my job at all. I know I am making phone calls like I'm supposed to but not as many as I should and I'm not having the most stellar results.

I can't tell if this is merely me being unused to the part time gig and that I just need to settle in for the long haul and hope that I will become adjusted or if I really need to up the ante here and get to work.

I just can't get over the feelings of despair when faced with my days work. Calling strangers one after the other all day long is not how I imagined myself spending my life. I'm hoping that I will have the opportunity, as a result of school, to change professions and get out of this job that I have hated for three years, part time or full time.

So, this is basically a "I-hate-my-job" tirade and nothing more. Tomorrow is another day.

Air

Now that Tracy and I are in the house and mostly unpacked and my father is successfully moved down to Eugene, today is a day to take a breath. I'm coming up for air and I'm glad that today is shaping up to be a fun day where Tracy and I can both relax.

The in-laws are coming over to watch Shea and we are going to head off to a movie and lunch. Just an afternoon away where we don't have to think, move, or work. It's going to be nice. I'm hoping that when I get back this evening I will be afforded the opportunity to work on some sorely neglected school work.

All in all, it looks like the heavy lifting is behind us and its time to settle in for a chance to enjoy the rest of the summer.

One Step Closer

Having come to the library for the first time in about two weeks, I was nervous about what I was going to be able to get done tonight. I realized that I had left all of my reference books at home when I pulled into the parking lot but decided not to go back for them and to focus on what I could do this evening.

Well, I really couldn't have asked for a better arrangement because without my reference books I was left with only organizing my thoughts and I have now completed a four page outline for my 15 page paper that is due in two weeks. Normally I am not an outline kind of guy but my essay topic was beginning to get too large for me to hold in my head and by outlining it like I did tonight I am free from having to remember it all and I have a framework that I can work inside of now.

It is very exciting. I just wanted to rant for a moment about my bookish moment of victory!

And I will leave you with a quote that I think will make it to my essay. I love it.

"Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action." - James Russell Lowell

A Dream

I've just woken from a dream. It is 3 am on the eve of moving day and it is the second dream that I have remembered in the last week. I often do not remember my dreams and this one was so vivid that I felt I had to write it down.

I am at residency surrounded by all the students and faculty who I am familiar with in that environment and we are on our way to a performance piece by someone I know as a publisher for a small press. She has planned a piece that includes some of the other students, music, dance, and spoken word. When everyone goes into the auditorium, I wait outside. I can hear perfectly well what is happening inside, almost like I have a baby monitor filling me in on what is happening inside the auditorium.

Music begins playing and a student in a sing-song chant walks to the center of the room. It is theater in the round that C. has set up and it is filled with bizarre objects big and small. The student introduces C. and hands her a microphone. The performance continues and I am soon bored/annoyed with the performance and I get up and walk out of the auditorium. I go outside and sit against the wall of the building, waiting for C. to finish so I can walk home with everyone.

C. appears outside the auditorium with the microphone and she is reciting more spoken word poetry and she flutters around outside. There is a man with her who I don't recognize who bends down and is trying to smoke the crushed out cigarettes that litter the sidewalk around the auditorium.

I'm beginning to feel unsettled and I duck behind a wall to hide from C. and her friend/fellow performer. C. finds me tucked into a small alcove and winds out her performance with something along the lines of, "It isn't the clarity of expression, but the journey, the Sweet Home Alabama of it all." She plays a couple of notes on something like a large recorder or a clarinet and ends the show.

Outside, where we sit it is silent and before I can stop myself I tell her, "I disagree."

She gets a hurt look on her face and says, "Why?"

I look at her and she holds the microphone/recorder to my mouth so that I can be heard in the auditorium. In a mild, stuttering voice I tell her that I think saying things in its simplest, truest form is what it IS all about."

Her hands fall to her side and she doesn't say anything more.

The audience, my fellow students and our faculty, begin filing out of the auditorium and there is some whispered talk about being confrontational with C. about her performance. I'm embarrassed and try to stick to the shadows. I sit on a curb a small ways away from the gathered attendees.

One of the faculty approaches me from behind, Sandra Alcosser, and sits next to me on the curb. She tells me that she agrees with me and to not listen to the scolding of the other attendees.

She turns her head away from me, it is night and a street light is shining from above and behind her and her hair looks radiant. She says something in a foreign language that I can't make out and I ask her to translate. She says, "Auburn is the place where it all levels out." I wake.

(It isn't until my waking mind has been at work on the contents of my dream when I realize that Auburn could be a place because in my dream, she meant a color.)

So, that's it. That's the dream I remember. It was a fun one and it makes me wish that I could remember the contents of my dreams more often. Well, it is now 3:20 am and I should hit the hay. It is moving day in the morning.

Sure, why not!

So my wife is asleep in the bed, the house is empty of almost all our stuff (a chair here and there). Shea is dozing in my lap, sucking on my finger and I'm typing one handed to let you all know that life is good even when crazy. love ya!

Way too long.

So it has been way too long since I have thought of my poor neglected blog. I apologize for not posting over the last couple of weeks but life has been CRAZY. It has been so in the best possible way.

It started with house hunting, of which we found the one we have been looking for and we signed the offer agreement the night before I left for 10 days.

The 10 days that followed were brain-crunching full residency days filled with my literary friends, too much thinking about writing (not enough doing), visitations by T and S and the inevitable crash of a highly inspired week coming to a close so that I can return and make cold calls.

Our house is in shambles, boxes everywhere! My ability to string two words together to form a comprehensive sentence has been nil but I know in four days I will be living in my new home, content with my wife and child, loving the space and the comfort this home will afford me.

I think that is mainly what is different for me about this house that the previous one didn't have going for it. The first house I saw as T and I's launching off point, the point with which we would gain the necessary momentum with which to launch our family and now that we are moving into this house, I can see YEARS of happiness coming down the pipe at us. I can see us walking the same hallways, no need for lights, jumping up the stairs with ease and seeing the marks on the wall that will show S's steady increase in height and age.

I am excited for this. But I promise you this. This I promise you! I am done with major life changing events after this move. I am tired and I want to rest and so I am going to be content and happy in my now for a while, in my here, in my place, in my home that I share with my beautiful family.

I'll try and write more later that will describe some of the amazing things that I have learned and experienced over the last couple of weeks, but for now...love ya and I'll talk to you soon.

Mutual Fatigue

Tracy phoned on her way home from work today and, though it wasn't her intention, made me feel like a failure. I know it is my own conceptions of how this new arrangement is supposed to work that makes it feel this way and I'm responsible for my own emotional reactions but it is hard to deal with.

Shea didn't sleep very well last night and Tracy was up most of the night with her. She breastfeeds Shea at night and so I can't really support her and take the baby from her although I really want to do so. It is such a frustrating predicament. She needs her sleep in order to feel well and I can see her becoming more and more run down with everything that is going on. I am trying my best but I too am tired and I too have a tight schedule but again I come back to the thought that I am somehow failing her in supporting her.

Another thing to work on in the future.

Meanwhile, I am sitting here in the library and I'm supposed to be working on writing and it is so hard to remain focused with all of these things floating around in my head: Tracy, Shea, the move, the new semester. I'm fighting against fatigue myself and wondering, again, if I'm succeeding at anything I'm setting my mind to right now.

The white page is glaring at me like an accusing eye and I'm frozen in its gaze. I just have to remember, one word after another. Keep going...

Neeeeeeeext!

So, just when I think things are going to slow down and I will be able to catch my breath, I'm confronted with a new life event that turns everything on its ear. I'm probably moving. Not only am I moving but I'm selling my house before I have somewhere else to go. I know, it's insane.

A nice man, a neighbor of my in-laws, is getting separated from his wife and has always loved our house and wants to buy it. We need a little more space and wouldn't have to go through the rigmarole of staging a house, attending to all the minute details, not to mention Realtors, so we have decided to sell. Now, we are looking for a place that has a little more room and still offers a large lot for the dog and for our own piece of mind. It's a hard combination to find on our budget.

So, my wife and I have been driving all over hell in back, looking at properties, stressing each other out, criticizing each others driving, behavior and all around personalities in an effort to find the next great place. We shall see how we do. So, as the final page of one chapter turns to a close, I find the next chapter has a car chase! Hold on to your pants there beloved friends and blog readers. It's going to be a bumpy ride for the next couple of weeks.

Cascade.

I put my daughter on a small curved pillow, one that is supposed to wrap around her mother and support the baby while she feeds, and I put her face down with her arms over the pillow so that she looked like she would crawl at any moment. But it was the pillow that was supporting her. It wrapped around her and held her in place.

She's learning motion, starting at her legs, and she kicked and kicked until her chest was atop the pillow and then her stomach. Her balance went a little ass-over-teakettle and she was face down in the blue comforter that covers our bed. She wouldn't give up though. Even face down in the fabric of the blanket, eyes darkened by the weight of cotton, she kicked and kicked in an attempt to get up and over the rise of that pillow. Her face buried and unseeing.

I watched my daughter push blindly into the future. Not caring if that push would lead her over the edge of the bed and splat onto the floor. No, she pushed and pushed without a care to what came next and it illuminated something for me that is a contradiction in my own mind.

I've been in my daughter's place recently, pushing and pushing into the future but the difference was that I was trying to map the destination and it was getting in the way of my journey, the immediate hard work struggle I am trying to present to myself. I have been so focused on the end result, what it can accomplish for me that I'm forgetting to learn the steps to get there.

It's would be like performing on stage, the glamour of lights and stagecraft, but not learning the lines. There would be no performance because the tools that enable one to get there are completely deficient. I'm jumping the gun, that's all I will say. I'm jumping the gun and pushing past the lessons that are staring me in the face today. I need to focus on the immediacy of the moment and push through the now instead of focusing on the hurdles to come. I'll have plenty of time to run tomorrow's race.

So, I pick up my daughter, snuggle with her and coo to show how proud I am of her battle with the pillow, I pick a piece of dog hair out of her mouth, kiss her and wonder which battles she will choose for herself.

Dichotomy of Days

Today has been a roller coaster ride of ups and downs. I finished my final packet for the semester last night and I sealed it up and sent it off this morning. I should have my advisor's comments by the beginning of next week. Also, I am almost done with the end of semester evaluation busy work and it feels good to feel caught up, or at least at the end of a sprint. I have been running/pushing so hard all semester that I feel like I get to take a victory lap at the end of a long and arduous road. The morning went quickly and I felt warm and contented with myself.

Then, the phone rang.

Due to a crisis at Tracy's work, she is going to have to work from the office more and the change needs to be implemented pretty rapidly. This means that our carefully laid plans have been thrown into upheaval and we are now having to work logistics on how we are going to work and take care of Shea. It's stressful. Neither of us wants Shea to be raised by strangers and so we are having to find ways to work it out. Quickly.

When I got the phone call, I felt the iron clench of a stress trap clamping down on my throat and my hair felt tingly, like there was something here I wasn't seeing. It is an easy recourse for me to get stressed out these days and I really tried to pull up the reins on it this time. Maybe it was the afterglow of submitting my packet, maybe not, I don't know but I like to think that I stayed pretty calm through the discussion and Tracy and I decided to talk tonight.

Now, three phone calls later that have varied from we need to send Shea to daycare, to you can ask your work to go to part-time, to no, you have to stay at your job full time, to we will discuss the part-time thing when you get home.

I can't tell you what a thrill it would be for me to be a part-time employee here and then be a stay at home dad for Shea the rest of the time. I am ecstatic about the idea but, also, I am trying not to fly over the moon just yet because there are a lot of variables that have yet to work themselves out.

I have to find out IF I can go to part time in my job, IF I can pick up a regular shift at the bar, IF we can afford this, and a couple of other things. At this point, I have been in this bullshit job for three years and I have hated since four months in. I initially stayed because I didn't want it to look bad on my resume, then I stayed because I was making good money and it was helping me pay for a wedding, a house, and our new baby. Now, I really don't have an excuse. I think it takes more out of my spiritually than it provides me fiscally.

So, tonight we will discuss what is to come. I'm hoping for calm tones, passionate variables and, in the end, mutual agreement. We shall see. Either way, today has been an up, then a down, then an up, and the ending has yet to be written.

Flow

I'm sitting now in front of my computer as I have been for the last hour now and I'm waiting for something to come to me. I'm feeling drained these days and I haven't written anything new in a week. I've been working on revisions so I haven't abandoned the task but there is a story I am working on that I need to find a new ending for it and I just can't get myself through.

I took some time off of pressuring myself to write and read a short story but that didn't work and now I'm back to staring at the computer screen and beginning to doubt my abilities...again. I keep thinking there will be a time where the act of creation won't be such an anxious experience but as I come back to the computer time and time again I am finding that there is no such relief.

I decided that I would use this blog post to put words down on the page and that hopefully through this process I would free up some space in my brain so that I could get down to the nitty-gritty of the work.

What I find interesting is that on the way here to the library, I had two ideas for stories that I could be trying to work out but now that I am here and in front of the computer I am having difficulty stringing one word in front of another. I don't use the word "block" because I don't honestly believe in it.

There is working the pump outwards (creating new work) and there is priming the pump (reading, going for walks, sitting by the river) and those are honestly the only two real modes I know. I am either doing things to prep for that outward flow of ideas or I am creating. Right now, I think I'm just a little bit drained from all of my commitments and I need to prime the pump. So maybe I will read another short story and then come back to the page.

The outdoors is calling me. The evening sun is drooping lower in the western sky, the light is softening and the wind has picked up and is blowing the ash tree outside the window so that it sends cascades of light around the room like a disco ball. I will have to go outside and see if the wind of inspiration won't blow through me and fill me like an empty vessel so that I can breathe and let the words find their way to the page.