On advice given about daily writing; an argument about art, commerce, and commercial; and observations on continuous writing ..

On advice given about daily writing; an argument about art, commerce, and commercial; and observations on continuous writing ..
11/07/2011
9:00am
This morning she had not managed to make much of a list of thoughts that had come up for her to maybe write about in the day's continuous writing session for her Nanowrimo endeavor. She had an art class to teach later that morning. It was quite a surprise for to find herself waking up early, presumably again because of the time change, and thinking about getting to work on her writing session. Was she going to be able to fit it in before having to leave for her class? If not then, when would she get to it? It was already a stretch to be writing the necessary quota of words on a daily basis. Falling behind would not suit her. She did not understand why she was so far taking this challenge seriously. No, she had not committed to it. But she was captivated by it. Was she learning from it? Perhaps the main thing she was learning so far was that at least one aspect of this she could do. She might not be able to invent a story that long, or write real fiction, but certainly she could concentrate on writing for an extended time period. But she already knew that. There was just this whimsical challenge to see if she could write that overall quantity of words. Crazy.

She'd been foolish and told her dad about the project the previous evening. His response had been twofold. He began immediately giving her advice about writing. He felt that the goal of 50 K in 30 days was far too ambitious for someone who was not used to writing on a daily basis. He said the goal should be 500 words a day. Otherwise there was far too much danger of getting overwhelmed and giving up too soon. He also felt one would not be writing anything of any quality at the Nano pace. He conceded that there was a benefit from having to write continuously for extended regular time periods. And yes, writing daily was very important for improving one's writing.

His words of apparent common sense were still with her the next day. They spurred her on in one sense - in wanting to prove him wrong. Though she agreed with him that this writing was not likely to produce anything of value. She had argued that this was almost more of a meditation or a practice, and not meant to produce much beyond discovering one's capability to create such output. It was a bit like testing oneself with a marathon run. It was just to see if one could do it. Did one have to have a real result from it if one was learning along the way and enjoying the process? She knew she was stretching mental muscles in doing this. That she was now sitting here even earlier than the previous morning's session, which had already been earlier than the one before that, and she was again fully dressed for the day, something she never did, had to count for something.

Why had there been no thoughts she could list ahead of time this morning. She'd prepared her little scratch card and had it at her breakfast setting, ready for any ideas. There were just a couple. Perhaps it was because she still had the previous day's list, which she had not referred to in the writing, relying just on memory to feed her subjects. The short chat with her dad had prompted her reflecting on one of their many arguments on matters of the nature of things, philosophies, the role of an artist. She had planned to write about some of those subjects, but now it seemed to complicated to have to think about, to have to keep straight, to have to explain views properly. It was one of the real problems of writing this way that she disliked. One could not stop to think things through. One had to keep going. She did not like that. Anything requiring real thinking needed to be cast aside for the moment and hopefully returned to later. Did that mean one thought it out ahead of time and then tried to capture it from memory in one's writing session?

One of the big arguments with her Dad that first or second year in art school, had been that she had decided she did not want to do commercial art. She wanted to do fine art, whatever that meant. Her dad argued that all art was commercial art. They could never properly define to each other what they each meant by these terms commercial and fine. He assumed she understood what he meant by commercial art - he meant that all the art of the old masters was done as commerce. She meant that she did not want to do art whose purpose was to sell things. She believed the old masters were not making that kind of art. They were making art that dealt in lofty ideals. She did not have as much of a problem with whether or not art was being created in exchange for value, as an act of commerce. He did not seem to get her point and could not get her to acknowledge that the old master art was commercial. They had been almost hollering at each other about this. What he had not seen was that yes, that old master art was used to sell something. Only many years later did she see that the arts of that time were created to sell the status of the commissioner/patron to his desired audience, or to sell certain ideas to whatever segments of the world they needed to reach. In that respect it was not only a commercial exchange but also an advertisement or a commercial. A commercial or advertisement was how she had understood the term, the word 'commercial'. He had not realized that was her understanding of the word. To him commercial also meant aspects of commerce.* (define further).

9:43a

Why had she gone to art school? Why had she wanted to go? Her parents expected her to go to college.
9:44a break - 9:58a resume

The break in writing caused an interruption of flow. How to return to flow, what little there was of it?

This writing crush also seemed a bit like being a deer caught in headlights - one froze. Rather than being able to think properly and invent freely, one just froze from the pressure to continually write something. It was aggravating to have this compulsive desire and intention to say something meaningful rather than just to say nonsense, to have this expectation that only meaningful things should come out of one's writing. Alternatively there was a pleasure in just moving one's fingers across the keyboard and watching the letters come out on the screen. It was a similar pleasure to write by hand. There there was more rhythm and dance in how one's hands moved. It was more like drawing. Just the act of making marks was a pleasure. That the marks would also mean something, would be a communication, was that just icing on the cake or truly its primary purpose?

She had to stop again as the time to prepare for the morning's class came closer.
10:06a 1224 words
4:50 pm resume -

She found an unexpected moment to continue the writing, though much later in the day. Where were those thoughts that had been rattling around? She was at the library now, waiting for the weekly 'write-in' for Nano. That would start in over an hour. She had used the library's machine earlier in the day, and thereby used up most of her allotted machine time. It was a different matter to have a limited time frame in which to write. Not the same as trying to write as quickly as possible, but having an open ended time frame in which to write as much as she could stand to write.

She'd packed up her tiny notes written on scraps of card in a larger sheet of paper so that they would not get lost in her 'fiction & Nano' folder. This packet also held the business card of the woman running the 'write-in'. What was a 'write-in'? She had assumed she could come with questions and perhaps just to check in about progress on this project. Now it occurred to her that a 'write-in' was for sitting an actually writing. For that one would need to bring one's own machine. Her machine was not up-to-date enough for that. It would be enough she hoped to raise her questions and report on her progress.

She still found herself holding back on any ideas that required careful thinking through. It was difficult to reconcile having to leave that aside for this project. Perhaps the ability to think out while actually writing would develope over time. Why did she think she absolutely had to write in that continuous writing manner? When she'd told her father about this he mentioned that there was some school of thought about this writing practice - he referred to Guy DeMaupasant and then said there were other names but he could not think of them at that moment. So she wanted to find out more about this.

What were the questions she wanted to ask the 'write-in' leader?
a) Did this count as 'fiction' to write in third person, and a nameless person at that? Did that automatically make it fiction?
b) The whole question of why she should be doing this, when there was no real intention to go beyond getting those words down in that time frame. (Though she realized the experience was constantly bringing up new thoughts and possibilities, so one could not know where it would lead.)
c) Was it ok to have no real plan in mind - to have this be a completely made up on the spot exploration?
d)Surely she had more questions but the mind was blank for the moment again.

5:12pm - no word count for now.....