Monthly Archives: August 2015

Heading, Captain?

31 Monday Aug 2015

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Had the opportunity and pleasure of attending the New York Airshow at Stewart International Airport yesterday, family in tow.  We had a great afternoon, and let’s face it, folks. An airshow isn’t an airshow unless you’ve been out in the sun for four hours. There is little shade on an airport runway unless you are one of the lucky folks who’s family member is a serviceman and can sit beneath the wing of a C-17.  If you forgot your sunscreen and plenty of water, then you’ve forgotten what it means to spend a long time outdoors. But I digress…

Being in the company of those Marines and Airmen brought so many things back to me, the foremost was deep thanks for what they do, day in and day out, unseen, unknown, and forgotten when our government runs out of cash. The little wanna-be Marine in me wanted to thank each and every one of them personally for their service.  My grateful words will be largely unseen here, but it’s all I have at the moment.

Something else it brought back to me was what would my life look like today if I joined the Corps back when I was young, unmarried and pre-child?  Would I have lived a life fulfilled? The life I dreamt of the first time I saw a squad of Warthogs fly overhead, then dreamed about marching in formation beneath their screaming engines?  Would I have been happy becoming the lean, mean, killing machine I wanted to be, back in those days?  Would I have kept on writing? Would my creativity have survived and still meant something to me after my tour was done?  There is no way for me to know what would have been, and that goes for every aspect of my life, which I’m not going to examine in detail here. That’s not what this place is for.  All I know is what is “now.”  Here and now. What I choose to create or what I choose to procrastinate and run away from every day.  The choice is mine, each and every hour, all those hours between daily life, chores, the mundane, the “day job”, the mid-life.  What will I choose to create, and what will I choose to throw away, forsake, ignore, run away from?

If the answer does not manifest more writing (and not the blog stuff and the email stuff, I mean actual conjuring of a story or poem that wasn’t there a minute ago), then I either have to change the answer or live with the consequence. And no whining!  There’s no place for whiners in the Corps, or in the world of art.

Darwin’s Moon

27 Thursday Aug 2015

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Notes from the desk of Indigo Vales:  I completed (yes? completed?) a flash fiction piece that comes from a photo prompt at my beloved HoW.  I find I do very little writing that isn’t cathartic unless inspired by the prompts found there. I hope that as I increase my reading diet and continue to bend my back to the writing wheel each day, there will be less blogging and more “real” writing.  It is a goal. A vague one.  I haven’t actually created a publishing goal lately.  Am I in a position to create and state one right now?  *Notes empty coffee mug. Distracted. Will come back to that.*

In my excited state I shared the story with my spouse who said (to paraphrase) “Good writing, where’s the rest?”  So now I have to decide what to do with the rest of the piece. Is there enough of a tale to tell about Volusia and her friend Darwin? Does she ever decide to get her passport and travel to Cambodia and see the temples beneath the moon? Will she stay in love with her life, her freedom, or make the biggest mistake of her life and fall in love? What happens when a young woman uproots herself from her lavish family to see what happens when she throws herself at the footsteps of the world?  Um, looks like there’s a rest of the story there…  But I wanted to write about Niko, who is still stuck at the bottom of a crater, grievously wounded! How will he get out?  Does anything interesting happen to him if he makes it back to his village?  Less of a story there, no matter how much I enjoyed writing about his dilemma.

All I know is, it’s going to be a busy day here for my family. Some life-changing times going on. I believe there’s going to be some river-sitting and beer drinking in my future this afternoon, and tonight, and tomorrow, and I shall bring the laptop along with me and see if I can coax any words to come along.

August 26

26 Wednesday Aug 2015

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Notes from the desk of Indigo Vales:   The business cards are here. (Notice that sentence not written in italics, all caps, ending without exclamation?)  I watched their progress as they made their way across the country, leaping from post office to post office, to finally here in my fingers. They’re shiny smooth and blue, quite pretty.  But the print was much bigger on the screen, and I have to squint to read the address.  It appears I am going to need make the typeface bigger and re-order them.  BUMMER!

No writing to speak of lately, but the clock says there is still time to make progress before heading out to the “day job.” As I tried to drift off last night, Darwin explained some things about the moon to Volusia, so I am looking forward to writing that (scene? dialogue?)  I was afraid I would forget as I usually do when ideas come during the night, but this one stuck. (Along with some disturbing dreams which I have no interest in trying to decipher.)

Goals:  Write To-Do list, work on story, try not to get distracted.

Thoughts for the day: If your boat is leaky and you’ve been reading your charts upside down, who’s fault is that?  How long you gonna stand there, ankle-deep in it trying to figure out which way you’re gonna go?

The other thought is this: Keep the promise to your story.

Another Learning Writing Day

23 Sunday Aug 2015

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So writing is contingent upon reading.   And no work can ever be produced if you neither write nor read.  This is old news. I’m not reporting a newsflash from the Great Beyond.

My reading habits are improving, going from not reading anything to reading the same books over and over to reading things I’d never looked at before. I have the fortune and blessing to be surrounded by writers, authors, and editors who DO read and share their favorite tomes. My eye, right now, is on “What makes it a great article, a fantastic story? What was it about that piece that got it published?”  My job is not to mimic that story or article.   My job is to make sure it’s good enough to go out into the world.  I used to run around panting “Get published! Get more published!” Submitted material not quite on a whim, but not exactly with enough behind me to have a real chance.  This is evolving.

Full disclosure: I don’t plan on reading the classics or what’s on the best sellers list right now. I don’t plan on becoming a literary fiction aficionado. That’s not who I am. I do plan on reading a broader range of stories so I can practice sitting still, letting my mind focus on the words unfolding, holding everything else at bay, and enjoy the story.

Learning how to keep the arse in the seat, keeping the mind focused down here on the page instead of on the trauma going on all around me, ALLOWING what’s real to rise up and seep out onto the page (which takes a lot of bravery), is my daily job.

Did I just say that?

Thin Hours

21 Friday Aug 2015

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Heavy rain in the morning dark woke me.  A little bit of lightning and thunder. Old coffee in my cup and the hours are too thin to hold everything I need them to.

Today is a work day. I open the store which means I would have had to have gotten up at 4AM to get any kind of writing done before heading in, but I did not. I am thinking about the last two days, drinking old coffee and watching the time. I made a promise in my personal journal to bring my best mind and focus and self to the job today. I will have a chiropractic visit afterwards because I haven’t seen him in weeks. I will come home and make dinner and leave what’s left for the rest of the people in this house who also live here.  And then I am going to close the door and come back to the little story that wants me to finish. I want to see how it ends. If she will stay with Mr. Darwin or if her dreams will carry her out the front door with a smile because she was hungry enough to find the rest of the world.  State a goal for the story, then? Finish the first rough draft. I think there’s enough now to do so.

Till then…  cardinals are pipping outside the window. Trucks roll by loudly on damp asphalt.  And this wasn’t such a bad way to begin a morning, looking forward to a writing night instead of a writing day.  Maybe another storm will roll through while I’m at the store so I can watch it wide awake instead of barely conscious.

Notes on the Writing Day (so far)

19 Wednesday Aug 2015

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I think I slept for three hours. Got up, did some “stuff” and then got down to some writing.  There are 150 other things I could and should be doing around this house, but I opted to plant my ass and type. Something. Anything! I did not write in my personal journal this morning, that came later, actually.

What I discovered today is this:  I don’t have to write it all at once. The story (or poem) doesn’t have to make sense on the first take. I can write small words and replace them with a better, more descriptive noun or adjective LATER. I wrote three pages (stopped in the middle to get some thoughts out of the way) and then returned to the blinking cursor.  This is what writing should feel like, and it feels better knowing it will be there when I get back.   I can’t write a good, interesting, read-worthy piece in one sitting.  I can’t stay up all night and pretend the midnight oil (and beer) will somehow light the way. It surely doesn’t. A happy, rested body and mind finds the right words to read for inspiration and then compose. I am learning to trust that I will come back and not leave ragged bits to flag in the wind.

Another thing I discovered is that there are very few poems coming to my Inbox by way of Poetry.org  that resemble romantic love poetry.  You can’t write “good” until you’ve seen “good.”  I compare them to some of the stuff I’ve written these last few years I think “Oh god, really? Where have I been?”  I’m seeing it every day, plastering pieces of it upon myself to carry around with me through the work day, and it’s sticking.

But the time marches by.  The kitchen is trashed but at least the laundry is washed (but not folded yet.)  Time to put away the words for now.  I won’t feel so distracted by them while running around slinging auto parts because I know they will be there when I get back. It seems I’ve learned how to keep covenant with the promise of words.

Super-Early August 19th

19 Wednesday Aug 2015

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This post is the result of a venti caramel macchiato at the local book store.  There were some things I wanted to get done tonight, and I wasn’t too worried about the caffeine keeping me up all night.  At this point, I wanted to share a few thoughts before hitting the sack.

Got some good advice from a writing friend about business cards, so I designed and ordered them tonight. It was fun. More fun probably because the house is quiet and I could think/process what I wanted.  Excited for them to arrive and now I just need to find places to share them.

In other not exactly news but more under the category of “thought”, I am in conversation with an author whom I greatly respect regarding that thing they call MFA.  This conversation and thought process is in the earliest stage, and at the moment I am enjoying the crass thought of calling myself Mutha Fuckin’ Autha…  Yeah…  I like dat. However, there is a price to pay for it, and is it the right thing for me?  I’m a woman in the riptide of mid-life, and I’d like to not be wasting my time, effort, energy, hopes, dreams, and ca$h on a program that’s not right for me.  I believe participating in an MFA would be of benefit, but to what extent? There’s no fear here, do not misunderstand. I can apply and they can shoot me down and I won’t cry or lose heart or the desire to write. Nothing can take that away.   I can apply, be accepted, they can critique me down from here ’till the cows come home, but it still doesn’t answer the questions inside me:  “Is this the right thing at the right time; Is this the best thing for me and my writing path?”  Some might say, hey, you will never know until you try. I respect that. And it’s part of all those writing veggies I plan to throw into the juicer and see what comes out into my glass.  Too sweet? Too bitter? Or “Why the hell did I put garlic in this?”  Eventually the right recipe will be clear.  And then we’ll see something!

Here comes 2016

19 Wednesday Aug 2015

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Is it too soon to make plans for next year?  There are good plans (like writing and submitting work) and plans for things that I know must come, the saddest of all which I do not want to explore here at the moment.  Some plans have to be put off for now, but they hover in the distance like a storm cloud we can’t tell which way its going.  These are the thoughts I had while holding a 16-month planner while browsing at the bookstore.  “Words To Live By,” featuring the box designs called Primitives By Kathy.  As I held the book, my Inner asked “What’s to come? What’s to come by my own hand and by all those things outside of my control?  And what are all those things within my control that I can note in this planner, set goals, make things happen?”  I put the book down (as is my habit when confronted with anything I have to get deep with, but I’m learning to overturn that habit quicker.) I went back to the planner for another glance at the pages, interested to see that the New moon and Full moon are still an important part of our dates and planning.

So the house is quiet now. The menfolk are down for the night.  My office is trashed because I did not put any effort here today, and my Inner is muttering about the mess.  I think I’m going to be up for a while…

Today’s reading haul:  “The Sun” and “Harper’s” magazine.

August 16

17 Monday Aug 2015

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And that is how you do that.  By the seat of one’s pants when one decides at the last minute, “Hey. I haven’t submitted any material today. Or this week.  Or lately. What’s the hold up?”  And one polishes a flash-y thing, fills out the form, and sends said piece on its way.

The title of the piece is “It’s For You,” sent to the New South Journal.

WOOSH!