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Blog started in Jan 2005: 1st entries for Write in Every Genre. Then the REAL ME begins |
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It Hurts When I Stop Talking Sometime in Fall of 1998, when a visit from Dad was infrequent, and primarily at the mercy of his 88 Toyota making the 50 mile journey, I was being treated to lunch. The restaurant was my choice, I think. Sisley Italian Kitchen at the Town Center mall was somewhere my dad had not yet tried, so that was my pick. Either I was being treated to the luxury of lunch and adult conversation without my husband and 5 year old son in tow, or that's just how the moment has lodged in my memory. The more I think about it, they probably were there, but enjoying the Italian food too much to bother interrupting. Daddy and his lady friend at the time, Anne, came up together and made a day of it with me and the family. We were eating together and talking about some of my scripts, stories, coverages, poems and other creative attempts that really were not seeing the light of day. I think I'd just finished a group reading of The Artist's Way and was in a terribly frenetic mood over my writing. I think I'd just given them an entire rundown on a speculative Star Trek script. My Dad asked me point blank, “Why don’t you write it?? Anne agreed. It sure sounded like I wanted to write it. Why wasn't I writing seriously? It's what I'd set out to do when earning my college degree in Broadcasting many years earlier. Heck, I should, I agreed non-verbally. “I will.” But, I didn’t. Blogs can be wild, unpredictable storehouses of moments, tangents, creative dervishes, if you will. I'm getting a firmer handle on my creative cycle. My mental compost heap (which is a catch phrase from Natalie Goldman or Julia Cameron - I can't think which, right now) finally seems to be allowing a fairly regular seepage of by-products. That may be a gross analogy, but I give myself credit to categorize my work in raw terms. It proves that I'm not so much the procrastinating perfectionist that I once was. Still, I always seem to need prompts and motivation. Being a self-starter is the next step. My attempt to keep up in the Write in Every Genre Contest at the beginning of the year seemed like a perfect point to launch the blog. |
| Waiting for a Train to pass, I am on my way home. The bus is a local line so it makes every stop, but it is just another five more miles til my stop. This is a complete cheat already on my Lent promise that I will give up being noncommittal to my writing -- mean ing I intend to write every day. Best is full chapters of the memoir. A poem even; but I did tell myself that the easiest public documentation would be at my blog daily. |
| Waiting for a Train to pass, I am on my way home. The bus is a local line so it makes every stop, but it is just another five more miles til my stop. This is a complete cheat already on my Lent promise that I will give up being noncommittal to my writing -- mean ing I intend to write every day. Best is full chapters of the memoir. A poem even; but I did tell myself that the easiest public documentation would be at my blog daily. |
| It makes me wonder if a correlation or pattern exists between the natural "slowing with age" (READ AS: real physical activity) and the motivation in someone's heart. If you were a member of my imaginary expedition team, would you take the raw data of my blog posts, and consider their frequency, their purposefulness: whether I am writing entries that are insightful or just silently raging, and measure them against ... I don't know ... whatever the control group for "productive" writers looks like Then report back to me -- Is our expedition doomed? It was slightly more than a year ago that I made an entry regarding my husband, and included more personal information than I would usually disclose. Yet the title, including the word "vomit" must explain what it was. Temporary violent illness. Not a reflection of my true self or even close to the truth of our love. The use of factual details has often been a scary thing for me, even as I consider writing a memoir. Perhaps It was important for me to just let some ugliness show, as proof that I could go there; share from that place. It is a little shocking to me that I could have written this less than a week following our wedding anniversary, but I do know it was informed by a decision by a grant-making entity that we were not able to receive their assistance due to my husband's continued inability to work. I was more pissed at the charity group than at my husband, really. But my long-time partner is not stupid. We now find ourselves in a better pole position if you will. We can do the happy dance on that harsh turn-down memory since he has started working by driving locally for Lyft. And we divested ourselves of reliance on storage. We have less, but in choosing that, we have more, as well. So days away from Valentine's Day, I do not look for special treats. Instead I am looking forward to just recommitting to what our passions truly are. I am hoping he and I both can write and be honest or at least inform some powerful fiction with reality. |
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