Still Trying to Get My Act Together.

Today, I decided to clean up my writing room. Last summer I made a habit of cleaning it every night to make sure that I would have a nice, welcoming space in the morning.

As I worked to clean the room, it was clear how much I had neglected this space... AND my manuscript itself. It took me about three hours to clean the room and I swept up so much dust that I gave myself an allergy fit.

But now it's nice in here.

When I moved in, I decided to make the nicer bedroom the writing room because writing is more important than sleep.

Maybe This is A First Step

I haven't posted over here in about three months. I haven't posted over here since the Bush Administration. The sad terrible news is that I haven't worked on my book since then either. I have done some other writing-- there was a nice essay commissioned for the State Department. Technically, it's writing and I am proud of that work, but I have terrible neglected my real work.

I've travelled a LOT. I've been to Ghana, Uganda, DC, Atlanta (twice), Pittsburgh, Chicago and Nebraska. In short I have spend a lot of time flouncing around looking like an author, but hardly anytime being a writer and I am deeply worried about this.

I've got a sabbatical right around the corner. The plan is to hunker down and do my thing. I was hoping to go to an artist colony because I work well in that sort of semi-seclusion. The bad news is that I didn't get into MacDowell and Yaddo waitlisted me. So I am waiting to hear from VCCA. I've also got a possibility in Colorado. In short, I am down, but not out.

I wonder if I am doing the right thing by accepting that I won't get any writing done until school is out the first week of May. About mid-way through January I just made that decision and decided to stop beating myself up about it. I never encourage anyone to put their writing aside. I always say just make a little time-- even if you just get an hour a week. So mabye I need to listen to my own advice? For a while, it was really helpful to know that May 5 was around the corner and I would be free to work on The Silver Girl then. But now, even though may 5 is closer than ever, I feel sort of bad about my choices.

So maybe writing here is a start to getting back into that groove. I won't write today. I can tell you that right now. I am going to work on cleaning the apartment, working out, and finding a NEW apartment. But I'm going to get back with it. I promise.

Keeping on Keeping On

The forward march is still happening. I woke up today without a specific writing agenda. I just put the pen down and the story took over. It's all long hand, so it is surely a mess, but it feels good.

Shall I invest in a spiral notebook? Yes, yes, yes,

Moving the Story Forward!

Keep yourself moving forward
Originally uploaded by Sec xi Linh

I decided that this weekend, I was going to push the story forward. I have had my characters stranded on the brink of a moment of truth for about a month now. I deicded to take a break from my pattern of enriching the back-story and just push the characters further up the timeline.

I am happy to be able to report that for the most part, it has been successfull. I wrote about ten pages of the fateful parking lot scene, when all the major characters are on stage at the same time.

I did it mostly in long hand, to keep me from erasing large blocks of text. That is a way that I have discovered that I blocked myself. I write, then I highlight text and delete it. When I write longhand, I don't do that. If I don't like it, I may start on a clean page, but when I calm down, I still have access to whatever I had written originally.

I need to go back and improve the scene I wrote, but I am not sure if I should save that for later. The improvement needed is that I need to make the scene more atmospheric. As it is now, it's like the characters are talking and acting without any encumberence from the face that there are in a public place in the middle of nowhere. I need to flesh that out. However, I think I am going to keep pushing forward. It's hard from me to figure out when I am hiding from the story and when I am improving it.

Also, FYI, I posted a short chapter of the story on my other blog
And, Ron, posted a video of me reading on facebook.

What I have to show for my weekend.

The weekend is over, so it's back to the day-job priorities. I am really really pleased with the work I did. I'll share a couple of paragraphs. It's pretty cool to think that it al grew out of unpacking a single sentence. Here's a little sample.

It’s not right to say that my daddy taught me to love cars. I was
born that way. When I was just three months old, sick as a dog with colic,
daddy rode me around in the Lincoln until I went to sleep. I would wake up
crying that high pitched miserable cry and daddy would get out of bed, go to my
rooms, wrap me up in a couple blankets and we might spend the rest of the night
driving around the city while Mama slept. It wasn’t just the wind from the
windows that soothed me, though I still like to drive with the windows open,
even in winter. I liked seeing that I was going somewhere.

Around that same time, Raleigh bought me a baby swing from Sears and Roebuck. He and my mother put it together when a flathead screwdriver and an Allen wrench.
They finally got it upright and sturdy and waited for me to start crying so they
could rock me to sleep in the pink and white contraption. I was a sickly
child, so I cried all the time. At the first whimper, Mama and Raleigh
scooped me up, strapped me in and started the swing to rocking. My whimper
morphed into something more in the category of a howl. Daddy was the one
who rescued me, told them to give it up.

While he and I were cruising all over southwest Atlanta, down by Niskey Lake, even winding through the beautiful paths at West View Cemetery, Mama and Raleigh were takingthe baby swing apart and fitting it back in the cardboard box.

All thatback and forth did nothing for me. I needed forward motion and the quiet
hum of a well-tuned engine.

When I was twelve, my dad took me out for my first driving lesson. Or course I had been behind the wheel even as a little bitty girl. It’s illegal now to drive a car with a three year old in your lap, her little palms on the wheel, but in the 1970s nobodycomplained. I can still remember stretching my hands grip the steering
wheel, Daddy saying “There you go girl. There you go.” When I was
twelve it was time to take things to the next level. It was time for me to
become a real driver, although the state wouldn’t allow it until I was sixteen.

Not bad, considering its humble beginnings...

Please grow

Please grow
Originally uploaded by BAD BAB

I took the ball and ran with it, regarding that little sentence "I have been driving since I was twelve years old." It ended up being a five page monologue from the point of view of Chaurisse's dad explaining why he wants her drive and why he chose driving as his profession. I am pretty pleased with this turn. It may well be a chapter by itself.

Moving forward. Slowly, slowly. But it's happening.

Unpacking

I haven't been over here in a while, because I haven't been working very much on the novel. My job and other responsibilities are interfering with my head time-- so what else is new-- but I am learning not to be so distressed over it.

Today is Saturday and I have three things on my whole agenda: work on the novel, clean up the bathroom, and go to the gym for an hour. I think that's manageable.

I have been sort of unhappy with the work I have done in the last six months. I know that part of that is my other issues peeping through and another part is that I worked three years on the first 200 pages, so of course the recent ones are going to seem thin in comparison. To make matters worse, I am teaching a literature class this term so I am doing close readings of really masterful works which are really showing me that I am not getting deep enough into my own stories.

I feel like these recent pages are like Sarah Palin in the debate. Deep enough to fake it, but not truly layered.

Anyway, on to this paragraph which opens a chapter.

I’ve been driving since I was twelve years old. The day after my sixteenth birthday, I’d taken my drivers exam in the Lincoln and parallel parked it like a professional. The examiner congratulated my father and Raleigh. “This little girl drives like a grown man.” At the time, it was one of one of the happiest days of my life. At 9 am, I’d been to the orthodontist who used a special pair of pliers to remove y braces. At noon, we were off to the DMV where I navigated the course while running my tongue over my smooth, straight teeth. By 5pm, I was driving Daddy and Raleigh to the Galleria for dinner at The Upper Crust, where we stuffed ourselves on designer pizza, bread sticks, and cheesecake. Raleigh slipped the water a $20 in exchange for letting me order champagne sweetened with grenadine. Daddy ended up driving home while I rode in the backseat, laid out with my head in Uncle Raleigh’s bony lap.

This morning when I took a look at it, I realized that A) the timeline is too crazy for a single paragraph and B) there is a lot to unpack in the first sentence. "I've been driving since I was twelve years old."

So I got up, made a little breakfast, and thought about the circumstances under which Chaurisse learned to drive so young. And, lo and behold, her father's back-story started revealing itself. Her dad is a chauffeur and he loves cars, but I have never thought of why. It occurred to me that when he is taking his twelve year old daughter out to learn to drive, he would tell her why driving is important and reveal more of his past.

So, that's today's plan.