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Blocking Re-Writer’s Block. Keep the Faith. And the Moocow.

January 9, 2010

I have written several posts in the past about blocking writer’s block.  (If you are interested, these can be found by clicking the category “writer’s block” from the ManicDDaily home page.)

I am extremely lucky that I don’t typically suffer from writer’s block.  I can usually write something. The quality of that something may not be great, but I can put words down on the page.   A harder problem is re-writing.

The wonderful glow that comes from a first draft, or even a first edit, is generally not available in the hard, repetitive, slog of revising a major project.   When one first writes something, one often feels happy simply at finding coherence, flow.  For someone who grew up before the days of the computer, there’s a wonder simply in seeing one’s thoughts set out in typeface (rather than scribble).

But as one’s investment and expectations grow, the re-writing can become onerous.  Questions plague every re-writing session.  They tend to run along the lines of:

1.  What else can you cut?   (It’s still too wordy, boring.)

2.  Have you cut too much?  (You’ve squeezed all the life out.)

3.  Are you really making it better?

4.   How can this take so much time?

5.  It was a dumb idea to begin with.  (And that’s not even a question.)

6.   Maybe you should just quit.  (After all this time?)

Avoiding the burden of extensive revision is one of the joys of a daily blog.  (While you have to worry about coming up with something all day long, at least you know you won’t have much time to re-write it!)

But if you are a attempting a novel, a story, even a poem, you usually have to rework it quite a bit.   And, unless you are lucky enough to have a deadline and an editing staff, this process simply takes as long as it takes (often long enough for you to get thoroughly sick of it).

Sometimes you have to cut out whole sections, sections that you have labored over for weeks, sections that you had a particular love for.  (These may be the most suspect.)  You will feel a bit like you are working on a  crossword, and a whole corner needs to be erased.  (Only, frankly, you’ll likely feel much much worse.)

For me, the most important rule in re-writing is simply to keep faith with yourself.  You must be open to cutting, but if you constantly question the worth of your entire project, you will not be able to go through the hard slog of making it better.

Perhaps the concept is not worthy of James Joyce.  (But remember, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, begins: “once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road…”  This, though recognized as great prose now, undoubtedly took a fair amount of ego and faith on Joyce’s  part.)

Even so, you must accept that you write about the kinds of things that you write about.   Even the moocows.  (Especially the moocows.)

Try, at least, to make your writing the best that it can be before giving into the urge to throw it away.   (Even then, keep the moocow.)

Categories: writer's block, writing
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Winter Sonnet- Trying to Cool Down

January 8, 2010

Winter Light

Yesterday, I posted a poem “Porch” which was, at least a bit, about remembering summer’s warmth in winter.  Here’s perhaps a truer winter poem, about trying to cool down (emotionally) out in the cold.  It’s a sonnet, written in a Shakespearean rhyme scheme.  For more on sonnets – wintry sonnets, Spenserian sonnets, rhyme and meter in sonnets, click on the links, or check out the poetry category from the ManicDDaily home page.

(Reading note–in my poems, pauses come with punctuation and not, necessarily, at line breaks.    Thanks for reading!)

Winter Light

The corn bent down in broken-spined decay
as she thickly squelched her way to what she hoped
was fresher mind, clear of a stuffy day
spent in a house where all resolve had moped.
In movement, mud, cold, steely winter air,
she sought to shed the skin of that day’s self.
She’d bitched at him;  she knew she wasn’t fair,
but his acceptance of their place upon life’s shelf
tore anger from her ribs like leonine jaws.
It spewed, it spattered, stained everywhere she walked.
She knew regrets to come should give her pause,
but his patient face made self-possession balk.
So she labored through the frozen field of corn
waiting for redemption to be borne.

All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson.

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Poem Wishing For Warmth – It’s Going On Somewhere

January 7, 2010

Porch

Porch

The porch pulled them to its side,
invited nestling upon shaded planks,
recalled cool soft times, clover in fields,
the day she cut his hair, and then they picked
out smooth flat stones,
and lined them along its surface, thick with
years of knobby deck paint.  Against it,
the stones shone like perfect moons to plant upon
winter table tops, reminders
that nights sown by fireflies
were going on some where, some time.

All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson.

(If you prefer elephants to porches, check out 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson on Amazon.)

Categories: children's illustration, poetry
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Between a Rock and a Hard Place – Learning From Sookie Stackhouse

January 6, 2010

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Between a rock and a hard place.  A universal locale.  One we’ve all visited.  Where some of us even live.

One reason I’m enamored of the Southern Vampire series (Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood novels) is that Sookie frequently finds herself in such a position.  (Frankly, even being in one of her vampire lover’s arms is such a place, given the marble musculature, and all that business with the fangs.)

One of the series’ most classic rock-and-hard-place moments occurs in Altogether Dead, when Andre, chief aide-de-camp of the Vampire Queen of Louisiana, demands a blood exchange with Sookie to ensure her loyalty to the Queen.  (Another thing I like about the books is their complete silliness.)  Before Andre can force Sookie to take his blood, the dynamic and debonairly handsome vampire Eric Northman appears, and persuades Andre that he should be the substitute blood exchangee, since he too is a minion of the Queen of Louisiana.  Eric then must convince Sookie that exchanging blood with him is her best shot, the lesser of two evils.

What a dilemma.  Sookie must choose between the dry, calculating, mean, Andre and the super-sexy, protective, and ruthless but loving, Eric Northman.  (Did I mention spoiler alert that Eric is also wealthy, constantly giving Sookie things like a new driveway, a new coat, and a new cell phone?)

Talk about escapism.  Sookie’s choice between a rock and hard place is a bit like a choice between Death Valley in a heat wave and a cliff jump into an exhilarating stream.

In the non-fictional world, unfortunately, our hard choices tend to be a bit more murky (a choice, say, between this sick feeling in our stomach and that sick feeling in our stomach), and it is hard to embue them with a sense of excitement.

Note that my mention of stomach feelings.  This may be because I tend to view a decisive step as something that turns my stomach (in the aforementioned sickly way), rather than churns it (with a feel of adventure).  The problem is that I seem generally convinced that there is an absolutely right choice, and that that choice, undoubtedly, hasn’t even crossed my mind.  This aggrandizes the making of a decision in an awful way– I am not only deciding an immediate issue; I am being subjected to a test–of my decision-making capacity, my wisdom, my worth as a human being.

Since I’m still in New Year’s resolution mode, I ask myself what to do about this problem.  How does one turn the spot between a rock and a hard place into a forward-leading path?  Okay, scratch that.  How does one turn it into a place where one is not simply banging one’s head?   How does one recognize that the spot between the rock and hard place is sometimes located in one’s own cerebral cortex?

Back to the Sookie Stackhouse model:  she is an example of forthrightness and aplomb, but she is also beaten, shot, or bitten, on nearly every other page.   She also has (i) this wonderfully delicious blood, (ii) valuable telepathic abilities, and (iii) a great figure, all of which seem to mean that she can indulge in a fair amount of righteous an extremely vocal indignation whenever she is faced with a hard decision, and always be totally forgiven.  She is a good enough character that she suffers regrets, qualms, and remorse, but, generally, once she makes a decision, she learns to make the best of it.

I don’t want to be shot or bitten; and I have no idea of the quality of my blood.  (I’m also out of the running for Sookie’s other two enumerated qualities.)  So, that leaves me with …regrets, qualms, remorse (I’ve got those covered)…making the best of it.  The best in this case has nothing to do with perfectionism.

Good old Sookie.

(Caveat—I’ve never seen the TV show True Blood, but only read the Charlaine Harris novels.   Sorry for any spoilers or differences.)

(P.S. Click the link to see Sookie, Eric and Bill Compton as turtles,  or as elephants.

(Post-Script – if you like elephants, check out 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson.)

Categories: children's illustration, elephants, Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire Mysteries
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“Connecting the Dots” on Terror – Going Through the Motions

January 5, 2010

I find myself unaccountably depressed tonight.   That is perhaps not accurate–my depression can probably be accounted for by a number of factors—a difficult and contentious day, stress, hormones, age, cold feet.   (I only turn to the comfort of my fabulous hot water bottle in the middle of the night.)

Then too there is Obama’s speech on terrorism,  the continuing failure of U.S. intelligence agencies to “connect the dots”, the continuing sense that while we bicker here, allowing the assignment and/or avoidance of blame to take precedence over doing a job correctly, plots are hatched, terror and destruction are planned.

I don’t particularly blame Obama.  He’s not the guy directly dealing with the “no-fly lists,” or taking calls at the U.S. embassy at Nigeria.  But that doesn’t make me feel a whole lot happier or secure.  One problem is that it’s hard to believe that this is an issue that can be solved simply by putting more systems in place.  The lapses don’t seem to arise from problems with protocol so much as attention, alertness, intelligence, in the truest sense of the word.

There are inherent difficulties:  planning and executing an attack appears to be a whole lot more exciting than working in a comprehensive and general way to stop attacks.  (I don’t mean the foiling of a specific attack;  almost every single James Bond movie ever made demonstrates how exhilarating the foiling of a specific attack or specific villain can be,  especially if the villain is surrounded by scantily clad women.)

But what about the many possible amorphous attacks?  The few hundred thousand, or more,  villains?   The lack of scantily clad women to attract and hold the attention of attack-foilers?  (Perhaps this is one reason to support the installation of body-scanning devices as part of airport security.)

People have a hard time with big numbers, long-term risks, lists of names (even for a state dinner).    It is mind-numbing to try to connect dots where there are tons and tons of them, and yet, no clear underlying picture.   So many bodies, so much shampoo.

There is a failure of attention throughout societal structure, a lot of going through the motions, even when the motions don’t actually do the job.  (Note the S.E.C. and bank regulators.)   The situation reminds me a bit  of the feeding machine in Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, which spills soup all over Chaplin’s chest, but still, observing its routine, extends a dainty napkin only to Chaplin’s lips.

The feeding machine is unthinking.  But sometimes people are so dulled by the stimuli and repetition of modern life as to also become unthinking.   They are bored;  they become careless.

I think of several New York City cab drivers I have had lately who actually read the newspaper while driving.   Seriously.  They unfolded the paper over their steering wheels, and not only looked at it while the lights were red, but when traffic was slow (which, in NYC, meant most of the drive.)

I sat in the back seat feeling terribly nervous, but did not say anything, at least not,  “put away that newspaper.”

These are attitudes that are going to have to change.

Categories: New York City, news, Obama, Uncategorized
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Old/New Source of Alternative Energy (Heat) – The Hot Water Bottle

January 4, 2010

Hot Water Bottle (Remembered)

I’m all for solar power, wind power, and other renewable alternatives to fossil fuels.  But during last night’s bitter cold, which was especially frigid in Battery Park City (where I live), the prow of the stationary ship which is Manhattan, I discovered an eminently traditional, and yet not fully tapped, form of alternative energy (i.e. heat).  The hot water bottle.

Seriously.  It was terrific. Better than wool socks.  (Maybe not as good as a nearby warm body, but warm bodies don’t necessarily put up with cold feet other than their own.)

As a caveat, I should say that I keep my apartment relatively (my kids say, ‘extremely’) cool (my kids say, ‘freezing’) in winter.  Besides trying to keep my carbon footprint to a toeprint, I find hot air heat too dry.   This means that I basically turn all the heat off at night.  (Okay, so maybe my kids are right.)

But last night called for measures beyond wool socks, a down comforter, and even a nearby warm body.

I have to confess to a past prejudice against hot water bottles, their rubbery exteriors so (potentially, at least) slimy and nubbly.  Besides my innate repugnance, my only personal experience with hot water bottles was in Mussoorie, India, a town in the foothills of the Himalayas, bordering Rishikesh (the hang-out of Maharaji Mahesh Yogi the Beatles’ guru)  and Dehra Dun (a favorite locale of Rudyard Kipling).

Mussoorie, though a very nice town, probably sounds more romantic than it is, at least when you are there alone, as I was.   It was green, hilly, and, on the small main road had a small boy who ran alongside a single thin wheel which he propelled with a stick.   On a clear day, there was a tower you could climb where you could supposedly see Tibet.  (I was not there on any clear days.)

Other than that, all I remember about Mussoorie is that it was very cold at night and that in my guest house, a remnant of the Raj, guests were distributed hot water bottles after dinner.  These, a sickly blue green, were covered in a worn crochet of thick bright red and purple yarn;  up by the corked top was a dog-eared yarn flower.

My memory of these hot water bottles is somewhat muddled by the baths in that same hotel.  The tubs were portable, small and tin, just about big enough for a squat.  When I came back to the hotel in the late afternoons, there was, next to the little tin tub, a very large aluminum tea kettle coated in an even larger quilted tea cozy.  Though the water in this kettle was close to boiling (depending upon when one came back to the room), there was only enough to fill the very cold noisy tub to the depth of an inch or two.  I remember taking all baths in at least one wool sweater.

Unfortunately, the crochet-covered hot water bottle and the tea-cozy-covered bath water became inextricably linked in my mind.  As a result, I always thought of hot water bottles with a shiver from the waist down.

Until last night, that is, when my husband, in response to the buzzing cold of my feet,  found a dark red hot water bottle in the back of a bathroom cabinet, and filled it up to the brim.

What a revelation!  My own little heat pillow.  My own little adjustable portable hearth.   At virtually no cost!  Using minimal fossil fuel!

Okay, so, it sounds silly.  But it also seems a useful paradigm for reducing U.S. energy consumption.    Heating one small actually used space, as needed, instead of the nonstop heating of a whole apartment, or house.  A helpful idea even when oil has not yet gotten back up to $100 a barrel.  (News alert—it went over $81 today.)

No crochet required.



ps- if you prefer paintings of elephants to hot water bottles, check out 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson.

Categories: Environment, New York City
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Dreaded End-Of-Vacation-Sunday Night

January 3, 2010

It’s that dreaded-end-of-vacation-Sunday night.  A sick feeling drips from the back of my eyes into the center of my stomach.  Dread.  Anxiety.  Stress.   I remember suddenly all the things I was sure I would have plenty of time to do over the last few days, and simply didn’t.  What?  Do?  Remember?  Care about?

Uh-oh.

So now it’s back-to-work-Sunday-night, and any glow of vacation has somehow transformed into an ulcerous slow burn.

It’s a feeling that is probably nearly universal.

I’m guessing that even Barack Obama, as he heads back from Honolulu to DC, feels a certain queasiness.

Janet Napolitano has undoubtedly been feeling it for days.

And what about all the other people I spend virtual time with?  Is Robert Pattinson happy to be going back to LA after a holiday at home in London?  LA is certainly sunnier.   But it was announced today that he is supposedly in the top running for an award for Worst Actor of 2009 (a “Razzie”), so he can’t be feeling too great.

What about all those students going back to school?  It may be fun to, like, see friends, but getting up and going to class where you’re not allowed to text, talk, or sleep, is, like, a bummer.

And the teachers.  It’s probably pretty difficult to imagine “bright, shining, morning faces,” when you know you are going to be faced with glum, sullen, sleepy faces, and possibly, a metal detector.

In New York City, the discomfort of this end-of-vacation-Sunday-night is compounded by a vicious, flesh-biting cold.  (Which, frankly, casts all those narratives about the wonders of frigid vampire embraces into serious doubt.)  Who is going to be able to stand to even go out tomorrow morning?  And why won’t it just snow three feet and close the City down?

The only person in my world who seems truly untroubled by the dread of this Sunday night is my little old dog, Pearl, depicted below.  And even she seems to be having trouble sleeping.

Wakeful Pearl

But not much.

Not So Wakeful Pearl

If you like elephants as much as dogs, check out 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson.  Thanks.



Categories: children's illustration, dog, Robert Pattinson, Stress
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Happy New Year! Happy New Colored Pencil Set!

January 1, 2010

Happy New Year/Happy New Colored Pencil Set!

For those who find the above picture too bland, too animal-less:

Happy New Year/Happy New Pencil Set with Owl and Nest!

All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson

Categories: children's illustration
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Plan for the New Year! Less Martyrdom! (I’m Realistic.)

December 31, 2009

St. Lucie (Francesco Beda) (1521)

It’s terrible to be a martyr.  I’m not referring to someone like Saint Lucie depicted above with her eyeballs on a platter, or Saint Agatha, shown below, with the lopped-off breasts on a platter.  (Renaissance painters of saints seemed to really like platters.   And breasts.)

No, what I’m talking about is a self-professed and not completely willing martyr of a modern woman or man who, like me, bites off more than she or he can chew with the expectation/hope/desperate wish that someone will swoop to the rescue, and, for example, unasked, grab the six bags of groceries dangling from the martyr’s wrists,  carry said groceries home, and, while unpacking them, clean out the fridge.  (But quietly.  Any cleaning out of the fridge must be done in a manner that expresses no criticism of any stale, moldy, or long-expired food neglected by said self-professed martyr on said refrigerator shelves for the last twelve to eighteen months.)

I should note that I am discussing martyrs here in preemptive self-defense.  My original plan for this blog was to list several things I wish I’d said less often in 2009, and several  things I wish I’d said more often;  what I then scrawled down were some incredibly whiney and selfish-sounding phrases.  This process led me to come up with a resolution for 2010, which is simply to be less of a martyr; that is, to stop agreeing to things, or at least quite so many things, that are not really so agreeable, and to stop waiting for outside rescue; to stop being so squeezed in other words.  (News alert to ManicDDaily:  it is extremely unlikely that your boss will ever tell you to go home early so that you can write a better blog!)

While this resolution sounds a bit solipsistic, my hope is that it will actually lead to more  robust generosity. (You’ll notice that both Saint Lucy and Saint Agatha are not painted as squeezed, wizened, or anguished, but as fulsome, buxom, peaceful.   I take this as meaning that it is better to make a direct, clear and intentional sacrifice, than to feel endlessly chipped away.)

So, keeping the big anti-martyrdom resolution in mind, here are the whiny lists:

Six Things I Wish I’d said Less Often in 2009

1.  “I’ll get that to you tomorrow at the latest.”

2.  “Don’t bother.  I can handle it myself.”

3.  “Let me pay.”  (Again!)

4.  “I don’t really eat sweets.”

5.  “You take it.”

6.  “I’m sorry.”

Six Things I Wish I’d said More Often in 2009

1.  “I won’t be able to get that to you till the end of the week at the earliest.”

2.   “I’d love some help.”

3.  “If you insist.”

4.  “Yum.”

5.  “Why don’t we split it?”

6.    “I’m sorry.”

I’m not going to be able to do without No. 6, the apology.  However, while the apologies of the martyr sometimes seem ubiquitous,  they are, in fact, conspicuously tardy, or even absent when the martyr is truly at fault.  (It is really hard for martyrs to ever acknowledge being truly at fault.)    So, I guess what I’m aiming for is a shift in the depth of the apology.  (Maybe a better word is self-awareness.  Hmm….)

At any rate, have a very happy new year!   Thanks so much for reading!  And keep your eyes on/off the platter!

Saint Agatha (Orazio Riminaldi) (1625)

(P.S.) Note that I say “less martyrdom” and not “no more martyrdom.”  Ha!

Categories: Blogging, Stress, Uncategorized
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The Dark Side of Carpe Diem – A Villanelle

December 30, 2009

In the last couple of posts, I’ve written about carpe diem, or carpe decade (using a symbolic date, such as the turn of the decade, as a goad to long delayed action).  But here’s a villanelle about the dark side of carpe diem, i.e. impatience!   A demand for action is pretty useful to impose on one’s self, but not perhaps, on someone else.

If you are interested in the form of villanelle and how to write one, check out other posts in that category from the ManicDDaily home page.

Right now

Fretful insistence marking the brow,
she pretended to ask but her tone commanded.
I wasn’t like her no way, no how,

still I’d spent the day as her little hausfrau,
wiping the dustless as she demanded,
fretful insistence marking the brow.

“That letter’s ready, could you take it now?”
“The post office’s closed.” (Take that for candid–
I wasn’t like her no way, no how.)

Besides that, I was much older now
no longer a child to be reprimanded
fretful insistence marking the brow.

“Still, take it,” she said, “take it right now.”
My heart felt her will like a bird that’s banded,
but I wasn’t like her no way, no how.

“We’ll forget it, if you don’t do it right now.”
Her right side frozen, she passed it left-handed,
fretful insistence marking the brow.
I wasn’t like her no way, no how.

All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized, villanelle
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