what dreams may come (and how to stop procrastinating on your daily writing exercise)

Do I get a prize for the longest post title ever? The satisfaction of it, huh? Man, that's lame.

So thanks to a Twitter tip from @motjustes, I came across this fabulous tool for procrastinating writers. It's called Write Everyday, and alls you have to do is click this link and enter the minimum time you want to write. It gives you a prompt and a timer. Away you go! Amazing.

I realize that someone who's considered herself a writer for a quarter-century should possibly be a little more self-disciplined. But there is not a whole lot of self-discipline about me, and it's better to know yourself (and find ways to successfully trick yourself into being a better person) than to hold yourself to impossible standards and berate yourself for falling short thereof. And so on. So that's my take on that.

Anyway, using this tool (which I learned of yesterday) I have actually written for two whole days in a row. How 'bout it?! And no, it's not great literature, but it is writing with ye olde creative bente, and just now I turned out more than 500 words before even starting this blog post. Ooh, ouch, I think I just pulled a muscle patting myself on the back. Still, it's a decent accomplishment, and one that far outstrips not freewriting 500-plus words today.

Sooo, in case you haven't gotten enough of my brain ramblings for today, you can read what I wrote from the prompt below. The prompt was, "When I wake up in the morning, the first thing to cross my mind is..." It's not the world's greatest prompt, but it still did the trick. The prompt I used yesterday was better, but being a bear of very little brain, I can no longer remember it. I may, however, go eat some honey now. Enjoy the further ramblings.

When I wake up in the morning, the first thing to cross my mind is usually the fleeting footfalls of my dream hieing itself back into my subconscious. Sometimes it takes me a minute or two to realize that I'm actually awake, so engrossed is my mind in continuing the train of thought in the dream.

In pregnancy I dream vividly. As someone who loves to interpret dreams, and has what you might call a well thumbed dream dictionary (if you wanted to be unkind, you might call it a tattered, falling apart dream dictionary), the pregnancy dreams are none too difficult to interpret. Occasionally a more obscure symbol will surface (what does my fat orange tabby cat mean to me, really, and why was I taking her to the amusement park with my husband and apparently already-born baby?) but for the most part, it's pretty straightforward.

There's no question that my brain considers dreaming heavy therapy, and discusses a lot of my issues with itself on the flickering screen of my mind. I suspect most of my dreams are about my fears, at least, of the dreams that I can remember. Some are about my joys, and a few are about my hopes. Perhaps my subconscious considers my waking brain to spend more than its fair share of time on my joys and hopes, and wants to even the score. Occasionally I'll have a dream that's more like living in an alternate reality than a dream, or one that predicts the future, if only I could realize that when I wake up instead of when the shit actually goes down in the future and I think, "Oh, right, I dreamed about this."

Perhaps two of my favorite dreams involved me beating the shit out of someone I hated - both times featured the same girl, who as you can imagine, I really, really, really did not like. (Bear in mind that I have never in my waking life beat anybody up. I do kill spiders, though.) It was disturbing, naturally, but what was perhaps even more disturbing was the fact that it was oh, so satisfying. I'd like to think that much of the satisfaction came from the fact that I would never really beat someone up, but it also could have come from the fact that I was beating the shit out of this godawful, horrible, evil person. In fact, I even hated her less after the dreams, perhaps because I'd worked out my anger so very thoroughly in my mind. Who knows?

Anyway, it's been lo, these many years since I had a violent dream like that (nine or ten, to be precise, and oh, dear god, I just realized my ten-year college reunion is coming up next summer - talk about nightmares). Nowadays they're much more realistic, except for the cat at the amusement park thing. Oh, and the recent journey through a cave and up the magical holy mountain with a good friend. Okay, maybe they're not really that realistic nowadays either. But really, what are dreams for?

songs for abigail

Today is the year anniversary of my daughter's stillbirth.

I don't have a lot to say about it, at least right now. I've written about it a lot in past weeks, and talked about it with very close friends, but right now I just find myself sort of wordless and grieving.

Still, I would like to share these poems I wrote in the days after her stillbirth. I wrote many, many poems in those days, but these are my two favorites, in order of favoritism.

Songs for Abigail

VI

Still the bells and muffle the drums;
with solemn step the parents come.
With weeping hearts and lowered eyes
they curse the day that Abigail died.

Let the trees shed their leaves in the summer field
Let the autumn harvest refuse to yield
Let the birds fold their wings and forsake the sky
The world must be broken, that Abigail could die.

Tell the mourners in a somber throng
To quiet their cries and swallow their song
Let the silence beg the question why,
of all that is possible, Abigail should die.

Stop the waves on the ocean’s shore
Stop the seasons’ changes evermore
Stop the sun in its eternal sky
Let the world mourn that Abigail has died.


III

It’s rained every day since you died.
As if the world weeps with us
and the clouds could swaddle our grief.

A hollow place in the world
echoes with your absence
the space where you should be, and aren’t.

I can almost feel on my pinky finger
where your grip should curl, and surprise me
with its strength. But your hand lies motionless.

It is hard to believe our hearts can keep beating
when yours is silent forever.
That was not the miracle I expected from your birth.

Like pulling taffy from my brain...

One of my tweeps caught me at just the right time with a 500-word challenge, so here we go.

I've been trying to figure out why I haven't blogged for a month and a half. I was doing so well for so long! It felt great to write with something resembling self-discipline and make my craft a part of my daily life. And yet, suddenly, I just dropped it.

Ultimately, it's my own damn fault. I made the mistake of telling my dad and stepmom that I was writing every day and posting much of my work on my blog. For whatever reason - entirely not their fault, for they are as supportive as one could ever hope - whenever I tell my parents about my writing endeavors, I completely lose all motivation to complete said endeavors. Weird, huh? It's one of those things I've always thought might be worth a good hypnosis session to root out, if I ever had the money to blow on a hypnosis session. (Not at the top of my priority list.)

Anyway, I should probably learn either to stop telling them about my writing projects, or to get over this weird self-defeating behavior, sans hypnosis.

Really, there's so much to write. I've got this novel that's still a work-in-progress, I've got poems rattling around my subconscious, I've got random topics to rant and rave about.

I did start going to an improv writing group recently, which pretty much kicks ass. It was fun to flex my creative muscles again. The exercises we did in that group, and my willing response to my friend's word challenge just now, make me realize that I need to rely more on formal exercises during these periods of dormancy. Maybe instead of the more intimidating and nebulous 'work on novel revisions every day', I need to set myself less ambitious goals, like 'write 500 words every day'. Now there's a novel concept (pun only slightly intended).

Because, really, I always go through these dormant periods. I don't stress about them too much, since I always come out the other side and write regularly again, but I'm starting to get to the point in my life where I feel like I need to pursue writing seriously if I want to take myself seriously as a writer. And I definitely believe in myself as a writer. But instead of treating it like a hobby, if I ever want it to be my full-time career, I should probably start adopting a more professional approach. ...Not to suck all the fun and passion out of it. But there comes a point when 'letting it flow naturally' turns into 'letting oneself be lazy'.

Maybe I'm finally starting to learn how to make passion and self-discipline co-exist. Stranger things have happened. Hell, I even finished a novel during NaNoWriMo last year, in what seems a lot like the merging of passion and self-discipline, in retrospect. Granted, there was a lot more passion than self-discipline involved, but there's no reason I can't make it work with the proportions reversed.

It's times like this that I just need to make my good old instinctive Irish stubborness work for me. Reverse psychology can be such a pain in the ass sometimes, I swear - if someone would try to argue me out of writing, I'll bet you dollars to donuts I'd have another novel written in another month. O foolish mind!

Whew! Made it. That was tough, but I definitely needed it.

Another take on Vonnegut's Seventh Rule

I was thrilled to be asked to guest post on www.fictionmatters.com:

I'm intrigued by the concept of Vonnegut’s Seventh Rule, which essentially is to write for one person rather than the whole world. I’ve never really considered writing for the whole world; instead, I find myself writing for my main character. After all, if I don’t tell his story, no one else will. And if I can tell the story to his satisfaction, I’m certain to end up happy with it as well.

(Side note: I’m rather enjoying the fact that Vonnegut would’ve hated that semicolon in the preceding paragraph.)

I think one’s instinctive audience is deeply intertwined with one’s creative process. Every (good) story I’ve written has started because a protagonist popped into my mind, in a sort of reverse-Athena-birthing, whispering urgently that they must tell me about this thing. Or I’ll get a sudden image of this person - who’s never occurred to me before - in the middle of an intriguing action, and realize I must know what happened next. Or maybe I do know what happened next, and before too, and realize that for his sake and mine, I must tell his story, now now now.

There are some great advantages to this approach, in my opinion. My protagonists become close friends of mine, because I take their stories seriously, and they know I’m listening. Writing for them helps me with characterization quite a lot, because they’re driving the story so much that all I have to do is pay attention, and a thousand tiny details come forth with relatively little effort.

It also helps me with developing other characters. Since the secondary characters are all there because they’re a part of the protagonist’s life, I tend to see them from the protag’s point of view. How they respond to the main character, and how he responds to them, helps me understand both people better. The drawback, not surprisingly, is that this can make my secondary characters a bit flat at times. But hey, that’s why we have revision, right? I’m a big believer in getting the first draft down on paper and worrying about making it great on the next go-round or twenty.

Another thing I love about this approach is that the inspiration is all wrapped up with it. Whatever inner emotion makes this character so urgent, so insistent that I tell their story, tends to be one of the main themes. Even better, since that passion is innately contained within their personality, I typically don’t have to put a lot of conscious thought into the character’s motivation. It seems natural that the protagonist’s motivation and the story’s overall themes are linked in a necessary - indeed, inextricable - way. Granted, I may not fully understand that motivation or the themes until I’m knee-deep in the story, but I just keep trusting my main character and in time, all is revealed.

Focusing on telling this specific character’s story to his satisfaction helps me to hone in on the plot, too, even if I can’t see all the way to the end when I first start jotting down the scenes and images that occur to me. If I start to get lost, or bogged down, I can turn to the protagonist and say, “Sorry, what were we talking about? I got a little distracted.” In a very real sense, the protagonist is like a guide leading me along an unfamiliar trail through the forest. It doesn’t feel like I’m making up his story; I’m listening to it, asking questions, and writing as fast as I can.

the marvelous world

(we now interrupt the story revision in progress to bring you the following poem...)

the marvelous world

stay beside me, love, for all my days and nights
hold my hands in yours, sing to me adventures
of heroes and true love and the marvelous world;
look in my eyes and tell me in wordless joy.

hold my hands in yours, sing to me adventures;
walk by my side and make me laugh to tears.
look in my eyes and tell me in wordless joy
of the infinite sky, the vast ocean dreaming.

walk by my side and make me laugh to tears;
when the storms come, I shelter in your arms.
the infinite sky, the vast ocean dreaming -
how they roil and rage, shine and sing.

when the storms come, I shelter in your arms.
we are safe in each other, fire and air in sacred flame;
how they roil and rage, shine and sing -
how the ancient earth envies our life together.

we are safe in each other, fire and air, sacred flame;
we are constant and changing, we are beauty and art.
how the ancient earth envies our life together;
the old stories are true, but never so true as now.

we are constant and changing, we are beauty and art,
heroes and true love and the marvelous world:
the old stories are true, but never so true as now.
stay beside me, love, for all my days and nights.


...And now, a little context.

There is an absolutely amazing and wonderful woman named Kate - well, I am sure there are a lot of amazing and wonderful Kates, but this one is superlatively so and has been one of my dearest friends for lo, these many years.

Three years ago, Kate read a poem I wrote at my wedding - called, perhaps unsurprisingly, true love. And now, at the end of June, Kate will marry an excellent guy named Andrew (I don't know him as well, but he seems fully worthy to be her life partner, and I can give no man higher praise than that).

To my great honor, Kate has asked me to read a poem at her wedding, preferably one that I wrote. She did give me the option to read something someone else wrote, but I love her very much and wanted to do something original as a gift to them.

So there I was, faced with the task of writing a non-cheesy poem about love, something that would deserve to be read at the wedding of one of my best friends. After about 83,000 attempts, I finally drafted the poem above. I've put it through a few revisions by now, but I have until June 27th to make it perfect, or as close to perfect as I can get it.

You can therefore see, dear reader, why your feedback is much needed and appreciated.

A word on the form - this type of poem is called a pantoum. As you may already know, pantoums are a type of poetry that originated in Malaysia. There is little structure besides the pattern of repetition of the lines - no set number of syllables or stanzas, no rhyme scheme, no scansion. It's one of my favorite forms of poetry; the repeating pattern creates this great tension, then the pattern of the last stanza provides a fantastic catharsis.

A word to the wise - should you wish to attempt your first pantoum, may I suggest you drive it with verbs. At least, that's the only way I can ever figure out how to make 'em work.

Anyway, please let me know what you think. Much obliged!

Okay, mad props to @FictionMatters...

We now interrupt this story for random homage to tweeps & Vonnegut...

So I joined Twitter not too long ago. I'm loving the interaction with other writers, getting to read other folks' blogs, discussing craft & technique etc etc. It's wonderful - a lot like real-life writing workshops, except that you actually get to choose whose writing you read. :)

Anyway, one of my Twitter feeds is @FictionMatters, who deserves some mad props for two things. First, he used Star Wars to analyze successful development of a villain's character, and anyone who can use Star Wars to explain, well, anything is pretty much awesome in my book.

Second, he recently blogged a separate post on each of Vonnegut's 6 rules of writing. Let it be known that I am a HUGE Vonnegut fan. I adore the man. In fact, I started this entire blog because I was so upset when he died, and I needed a place to vent. And in addition to a wonderfully creative and unique perspective, Vonnegut was a damn good writer. So his rules - which I had seen before, sometime in my halcyon days of youth, and then promptly forgotten - are quite useful.

So, not to steal from Fiction Matters, but for my writing friends that aren't on Twitter (join! now!), here is the list. Talk about perfect timing - I plan to use these, especially #4, to help me with my revisions to 'Mississippi'. You can read a discussion of each rule at http://www.fictionmatters.com/.

Kurt Vonnegut's Rules of Writing:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. No matter sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

Do I dare? and do I dare?

Oh, my. It's April 30th already? Interesting. Suddenly my intentions to revise 'Mississippi' in May seem a little more, well, I'll be kind to myself and say foolhardy, than they did in March.

Here's one of the problems, which just occurred to me: it's a hell of a lot nicer in May than it is in November, when I originally wrote it. And it's light out for a lot longer. I actually really enjoyed getting up early and writing, with the morning's lightening dark for company. When it's light out & I have lots of time before work, I always feel guilty for being the world's laziest gardener.

But you know, I think I can do it. The early dawns will help me get out of bed sooner, possibly. And I'll have a really good excuse for not gardening, so I won't have to feel so guilty. I think I'm going to take the plunge.

As before, I'll post my work on here as I go.

I feel like I'm on a rollercoaster nearly inched up to the top of the first hill...

Woo hoo!!!

Sometimes it's the simplest words that say it best, n'est-ce pas? :)

I'm super-stoked - I've got a freelance gig with a new magazine! It's called Alegria Living, and it's beautifully produced. Plus, my assignment is really cool; I get to tour a wolf sanctuary! Should be pretty awesome. I'm a little nervous, but also have always wanted to get up close to a real wolf, without having the whole instant-bloody-death thing involved. So this seems like a good opportunity.

I'm hoping the article will go well and they'll give me more assignments in the future. In the meantime, I'm just psyched that they liked my work enough to give me this one.

block this

Rrrrgh. I have the energy & time to write, but little to no actual creativity flowing. So frustrating. I've halfheartedly edited the start of a story, but to no avail. I've got a folder full of poetry with excellent criticism written all over it, but when I think about actually breaking into a poem, really taking it apart & putting it back together, I feel like I'm beating my head against an invisible wall.

I keep thinking about revising "Mississippi". I'm still planning to tackle it in May, but I'd sort of like to get some work done on the poetry - the ones trapped behind an invisible wall - and submit some of them to various places before I get back into the book.

I get so tired of my brain sometimes.

(snow inspired) or, my life in parentheses

So, yes, I realize the last several posts on here have followed this theme of snow. I am somewhat obsessed with snow, I admit it. And consequently am quite happy to have a snowy afternoon, the house to myself, a good beer (Boulder's Mojo Rising) and the time to write.

Ah, Nature, she is a fickle muse (a la the Tick: "Gravity, she is a harsh mistress"), much less dependable than music. When a story's influenced by a song, I can just play the song or create a whole playlist that supports that mood, like I did with 'Mississippi'. When it's location, I can travel to there (or I can't, and just don't work on that piece for a while). But when a story's weather-inspired, nature torments me in the worst way sometimes.

Once again I'm editing my snow-inspired story, and I think I keep getting distracted at the same place every time I go through it. It happened again today (well, I do have Braveheart on the TV, which is pretty damn distracting). But not before I noticed that (hey, is that Stephen Fry?) Right! Back to the blogging thing. Um, yes - got distracted, but not before I noticed that the story's rather disjointed over the course of a couple chapters. The problem is, since I keep consistently flaking out during that part of the story, I'm having a hard time fixing it. D'oh!

Evidently I'm in quite the parenthetical mood (you might expect me to ask if you noticed, but I give you more credit for intelligence than that).

Hmm... it stopped snowing. I could deal with fixing the difficult-to-fix thing another day. Tempting. (Plus, I'm kinda hungry.)

Here, have a poem:

what to do

what to do when the words won’t come?
I could tie my tongue around a tree and
climb it. I could tear out my eyes
replace them with prisms
refract – reflect –
a new point of view.
All the noises blend into harmony at one
point.
Can’t pin it on a map, no signs mark this road
so I hope to trip over it, flip a page
glance up at just this instant
see it hesitate, flash out of view –
not even a color, just a sense of color light refracted,
gone. I stand breathless struck & ringing