MetaWriting

Found my routine: Up at 6, read the paper, write in my journal, clean house until 9, exercise, shower, sit down at the computer at 10 a.m.  And, I’ve made it into all the parts of that routine exactly one day.  Yesterday. 

Today, all the nitnoid momentary dramas that seem to swarm all over my life re-swarmed me.  Had to go to the library to get something signed for the workshop.  To the tire store to get the tires rotated.  To the post office to mail my manuscript out to an agent (finally, SOMEthing involved with writing).  My knee hurts, so I don’t want to exercise.  If I don’t exercise, I don’t deserve to sit down and write.  Or something like that.  I’m exhausting myself with my own excuses, and I find myself whiny, self-destructive, and maddening.  All the stuff that irritates me about other people.

Grrf.

Was trying to remember what worked and what didn’t during that glorious 90 days when I got the majority of “Pig” written.  And the key wasn’t what happened during the time I was writing.  It was what happened before I started.  I wouldn’t let myself read.  I know that sounds stupid, especially when I read four or five books a week.  But that’s exactly it.  If I don’t let myself read, then the only way to get to read something is to write something.  Worked, too.

Mixed in with that is boredom.  Sick of myself, sick of cleaning house, sick of being the good little wife… I think I’m making my husband nervous, I’ve been so solicitous lately.  Bringing him dinner, washing AND putting away his clothes.  My usual policy is more like benign neglect, much like the administration under which my houseplants survive or don’t.  It’s worked pretty well for 26 years of marriage, which may be why my occasional bursts of excessive domesticity seem to unnerve him. 

I’ll get there–I know I will.  And then I’ll bemoan the fact that I can’t seem to get my head far enough out of the book to accomplish anything around the house.  Never satisfied… never, never, never.

Haven’t been able to get to my laptop much during these last nine days of traveling, but because I appear to have the wake-up-early gene that my husband is lacking, I’ve had plenty of time over coffee to write in longhand.  On paper.  The old-fashioned way… and the way that, if I remember right, was very successful when I was putting together my novel.  Boy, do you get some funny looks at Denny’s or the Waffle House when you sit and scribble for an hour or sometimes two…

Haven’t been able to get into a real routine, as our schedule’s been so haywire, but when I was writing “This Little Pig,” I would write ten to fifteen pages in longhand on one day, get up the next morning and process them into the computer, with minor edits along the way, which would get my brains kickstarted for the next longhand session.  Put together 55,000 words in about 30 days that way, so it obviously works for me. 

So, I got a chapter of “Finally the Weight is Over” written, just haven’t processed it yet.  So what am doing on here?  Time to get back to the book!

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.

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!