MetaWriting

No, I’m not climbing down off the writing horse, I’m dismounting the highly-paid professional nag for a while, and going to give this writing thing a real shot.

I’m in the middle of a non-fiction book proposal for a funny, irreverent look at my gastric bypass surgery.  I don’t think I’m just a one-note wonder, either–there are a lot of other areas I’m interested in, from writing a piece on comparative religions for the vaguely interested to writing a book on dealing with abuse in later life.  From the horse’s mouth, so to speak.

The world is full of possibilities from here–and I’m going to grab every one I can.  Being fired may just be the best thing that ever happened to me, as long as I use it for fuel for my writing fire.  My aim?  I want to be sitting on Oprah’s couch a year from now touting my new book, and saying to my recent ex-boss through the camera, “So, how do you like me now?”

Oh, and I don’t say this often enough–but thank God for my husband, Rick.  If he weren’t here, fully behind every move I make, I wouldn’t stand a chance.

Actually getting some writing done these days, and not just revising “Pig.”  Got four new poems to present to the workshop tonight, and a couple new ones that I’m not going to present ’cause I don’t have time.  Got fascinated by the word “sussurus” while I was in OK City–mostly ’cause I was always in a crowd of people I didn’t know.  Got two poems out of it:

Sussurus One

Voices rise and fall in waves,
a soul-shattering sussurus of sound,
one voice after another cutting through
the clattering cacophony.
Alliteration’s agility agonizes over ambient airwaves.
Noise pollution puttering, sputtering over
people’s passionate partaking in
parties of pundits.

(Note:  didn’t say they were good, just said I was writing.  Sometimes it’s not what you write, it’s that you write.)

Sussurus Two

Sussurus of sound sweeps in waves–past me, through me,
lulling me into just another molecule of voicery,
making sense only to the proximal,
the distant distal sinister as always,
shushing the nearer into further confusion.

Love mornings - my energy levels are high, my writing spirit (smarmy I know) is high, and I feel like I can accomplish things.

Did get my eight pages in for this last week, although I missed the week before.  I’ll have to get my pages revised while I’m in Oklahoma this week - means I need to take a couple of the chapters with me to this conference.  I’ll probably just throw the whole manuscript in my suitcase.  I’m depending on having a lot of free time… which I should, but more likely in the mornings than in the evenings.  Which is, for me, a good thing.

Looking forward to getting away for a few days.  When I get tired of it all, I can go to the room and go to sleep… or work on “This Little Pig.”  Or walk.  Or something.  Also want to go see the memorial for the OK City bombing. 

Waiting on the e-mail server to jump back up at work, and taking a lunch break at the same time.

Visuals from the morning walk - I love the nascent oak leaves,  fragile green, so young they seem to shiver on these chilly March mornings.  They are at their most beautiful now, before they darken, all gloss and muscle over the summer months.

Wondered whether squirrels feel the cold the way we do…

Got eight more pages of revisions done this weekend–yahoo.  I know, I know, I know!  I’m just doing the minimum to get by.  (I hear your voice inside my head–can you hear mine?)  But that’s what it takes sometimes.  Just do what has to be done.  I’m kind of white-knuckling this whole getting back to writing.  Making myself do it until it’s done.  

I had decided I would get the book making the rounds the minute I got the first fifty pages done, but I realize that I can’t.  What if they got back to me three days later and said “Send the whole thing!”  There I’d be, with a couple hundred pages of revisions to do inside a week.  Bleah. 

Got the first eight pages of This Little Pig edited this weekend.  Think I’m going to re-inflict the novel on the workshop.  Not because I’m so much interested in critique (sorry, guys, if you’re reading this).  But it gives me a deadline to get the next revisions done.  And I’m deadline-driven, to say the least.

Am also working on a short story tentatively titled “Addressing Gods Anonymous.”  I’m really pleased with the concept–a 12-step group for gods who are trying to break the deity habit, but so far, I’m not so pleased with the execution.  Started with one god - Erma - as a talking head, but I think I need more.

Knee’s hurting-can’t sleep-that’s why I’m writing this at 1:30 in the morning.  Think I’ll go try again, though.

Since I began my new job at [editor's note: removed the name of the university - see June 8, 2006, post] two months ago, my home office has steadily gotten messier and messier.  Just run through, get the bills straightened out, and run back out again.

That was part of the excuse I’ve been using not to write… “How can you expect to accomplish anything in the midst of all that chaos?”  So, today, I removed the excuse.  My office is now de-messified.  Now I just have to write, right? Right!

Drove my husband to the hospital this morning to have an endoscopy done–just part, I thought, of the “I’m 50 and I don’t want to die” testing that any reasonable human being does.

With Rick still out from the anesthetic, the gastroenterologist came and told me the results.  He said “Every inch of his stomach lining looks like raw hamburger meat. He has hemorrhagic gastritis.”  So how does one of the most phlegmatic men I’ve ever known end up with a full-stomach ulcer?  Aspirin. 

Rick had a heart attack at 47, and has been faithful about taking what the cardiologist tells him to take, when he tells him take it.  The heart attack was almost purely genetic–he doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke.  So I’m sitting here railing against fate.  The medicine that’s keeping him healthy heart-wise will kill him if he doesn’t stop taking it. 

Today sucked.