Geese flying south, workmen, landlords, painting & selling a boat painting, painting on location vs. painting from a photo...
11/18/11
10:09 am
She found she was not going to be able to write facing the sunny window. The sun was now at such an angle that the writing could not be seen on the machine. She had had to move her set-up into the shadow and turn so that she could not see out the window. Her sunny window view was one of her favorite parts about working on the Nanowrimo writing challenge.
That morning while sitting up in bed contemplating the day and getting up for it, she caught sight of a flock of geese in V formation. They flew from east to west across the top of her line of sight in the south facing window and when they were a distance away they turned south. This was not a huge flock. She had never seen them overhead that way or from such an angle. The line they created was just like the standard kids' drawing for flying birds - as if the flock was one huge drawing of a kids' flying bird. She wondered where that point was that they had turned south.
She had written a list that morning or the evening before of things she might write about that day for the challenge. Nothing from the list appealed to her yet. She had to remind herself of her mother's unintended advice about her grandmother being able to write about the most ordinary things and make them interesting. This had not meant to be advice, but was a simple observation about her grandmother's ability. That her grandmother could do this so easily, further meant that her mother was a reluctant writer herself. There was such a high standard to set oneself against. It was unfortunate that people just assumed they could not do the things they so much admired in others, assumed they did not have the ability, and assumed that it was a god-given ability rather than something one wanted to do and worked at doing.
The workmen had returned and unloaded more equipment and material down below. There were just the sounds of idle chatter. Perhaps they were waiting for a delivery of supplies. She could hear the beeping of a truck backing up, but could not tell where the sound came from.
This same work crew had been working on another building the landlords owned that she had been passing on her way to the library when she was going on foot. Just the other day as she got near the house she could hear loud singing coming from the house. The front door was open. On the stairway just inside the door was the larger of the workman merrily painting away at the stairway trim while singing lustily along with the song playing on the radio. His singing had been very cheerful. He'd waved his paintbrush at her in greeting. Whether it was just general friendliness or that he recognized her from previous work they had done where she lived, she did not know. She wondered what kind of entertainment they would provide.
At the supermarket the previous evening she had run into an acquaintance who had worked for the landlords for many years. She told the friend how much she liked being at this apartment and having them for landlords. The friend said, "They are wonderful people. I love working for them. I love coming to work. And their son who now owns the business is just the same." She was so glad to hear this. She had felt this from the time she'd first met them. She had wanted them as landlords ever since. This had not been possible until there had been a suitable apartment opening and until she shared her living space with one or less cats.
Meeting them was serendipity. One year several years ago, she decided she would make a painting of one of the boats in one of her many harbor photographs, with the purpose of seeing if she could then sell that painting to the boat's owner. She believed she did this just as a test or a challenge - to see if she could set out to paint something that might be of interest to a particular individual, (who she did not even know yet), and follow the action through to finding out who the owner was and then offering to sell them the painting. She did not remember on what basis she chose the boat she chose from her many harbor photos. She believed these had been new photos of the harbor she had taken just for the project.
She thought the project could be done very quickly. Usually when she went out to paint a harbor scene on location, it took just a couple hours. Why was it such a longer and more complicated process to work from a photo? It was agonizing. One struggled so much to get the proportions right. When one painted on location, one had to struggle as well, but because one knew the daylight was limited, that the subject could change at any moment, one had to just do it and live with whatever the result was. A boat was either constantly changing its position on the water when it was moored, or if at the dock it might soon be completing its business there. One had to work quickly when working on location.
It was such a different feeling to paint at a working waterfront in other ways. There was always the banter of the workmen and the fishermen as they went about their business. They always seemed to enjoy their interactions. They joked, exchanged gossip and news, told stories, exchanged information. They enjoyed their comraderie. They enjoyed the physicality of the work. And they enjoyed the machinery of it all.
11:09a 970 words - break
11:54a resume
She was dragging in her motivation to continue writing. It often happened this far in. This day especially, as she had several other projects she needed to get working on.
Large cloud formations were passing low overhead through the brilliantly sunny sky, from west to east. They were pulling up into little curled over peaks at the top much like the peaks that formed when one whipped cream to make fresh whipped cream from scratch.
The workmen had returned with more equipment. This time they had set up the scaffolding. It stretched past the bedroom windows of the apartments along the south wall and reached almost to the roof. She had spoken to them from the window and found out the basics of what she could expect. They would be starting work at 8 am. Once they got the crew together, the work would take 4-5 days, to shingle the whole south side of the roof. The singer was the one who did the talking, still in good cheer. She told them she hoped she would not have to rescue anyone.
The painting of the boat she had chosen from among her photos to paint, had been of one belonging to her landlords' son, though when she painted it she did not know any of them or even to whom that boat belonged.
Working from a photo was often a rocky start for her. She hated the struggle and frustration of getting the proportions just right. It took a long time to get the basic structure down accurately. Much of that time she almost raged with her frustration. It seemed almost impossible to keep straight how lines related to each other. Her perceptions kept getting confused over what she was looking at. Was something tilting up or down? How big was this in relation to that? Finally a drawing would take shape, to make sense, and she would regain her equilibrium. The drawing had been too large for her to scan at that stage on her equipment. She thought she had been able to at least take a photo of the drawing and that it must be somewhere in her photo archives.
Once the drawing was done one had to put watercolor to it. This was always scary. It was very easy to make a wrong move with the paint that might not be able to be repaired. Many pigments were staining and the paint was mostly transparent. The strokes easily showed as pigment set up or stained the paper. One had to make one's brushstrokes form a pattern that integrated with the design and did not interfere or attract attention to themselves over the whole image. The texture of the strokes was not the star of the image.
When she finished the painting she called friends of hers who knew the boats in that harbor. She asked them who owned that boat. They told her who the owner was.
She called the fellow and told him what she had done. She said that she wanted to offer the painting to him for sale, and that she was asking for a certain price but because she 'was hungry', that price was negotiable. Yes, now she remembered, she had taken on this project because she needed some income and wanted to see if she could earn income this way. She had realized working on it that she probably would not do this again. She did not like doing something just for the income. It just was not enough of a reason and it did not feel right. She needed to do things because she wanted to do them or because someone wanted a thing done and she wanted to do it for them. Even that was tricky. It did not seem right to do something just for the price. It did not feel right to get paid for something one did not want to do. It was not fair to the purchaser to be giving them something one was not behind oneself. Did one want surgery from a surgeon who hated performing surgery?
It was not, however, this bad for her. Mostly she hated the anticipation of getting to work on a project and the agonizing initial part where nothing seemed to be working out or making sense. It also came up when one reached a design problem and did not know how to resolve it. If one did not have coping strategies for these situations, which always seemed to come up, the going could be very rough. Alternately things could be too easy, too routing, to the point one was not learning anything, not improving anything, but simply executing a set of steps.
The boat owner was very receptive and told her his mother might be interested in buying the painting. She would soon be returning from her winter down south. He would pass on the message.
Who contacted who(m?) first she could not remember. They easily made a deal about the painting that they were both pleased with. It almost seemed as if the best part of the whole thing was that they met each other. This was when she saw that she would like to rent an apartment from these people and have them as landlords. They seemed like people who knew how to run a business while also taking care of their customers. They enjoyed their work. They were down to earth, no nonsense , and good natured.
12:58p. 1894 words
Friday, November 18, 2011
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Sleeplessness, coffee, cups, and blue calico china...
Sleeplessness, coffee, cups, and blue calico china...
11/17/11
11:21 am
She was starting her 'Nanowrimo' writing later in the day than she had been. She had gotten up later that morning because she had woken in the middle of the night and taken several hours before being able to get back to sleep. When she woke in the middle of the night it had felt as if it might be early in the morning at an hour that one could reasonably get up for the day. No, it had been much earlier than that. If she got up then, she would have found herself napping for hours during the day.
It had been one of those nights she sometimes had, where lying down was too uncomfortable. If she sat up in bed, for some reason, she was usually able to fall asleep. One could not sleep sitting up without one's head falling over, so this was not a completely viable solution. Her strategy was to try to maintain this back and forth sleeping pattern long enough until she was sure she could lie down and fall right asleep. The process took quite a while.
Nothing was coming immediately to mind that she wanted to write about. She had not made notes of things to write about. She sat there hoping something would come up.
She had made the same breakfast as the previous day, since that had been so tasty - the veggie bean salad. The instant coffee this time had creamers from McDonalds in it instead of the instant powdered kind. These little containers said 'coffee creamer' on the package rather than 'half-n-half', and they said 'needs no refrigeration', though she kept them in the fridge. What were they actually made of? This coffee left a more acidic after effect in the mouth than she thought it did with the instant creamer.
She had gone to a committee meeting the evening before. It seemed to have gone well. It had been a small group - only about half the committee members. They had been able to discuss amicably and constructively the plans for an immediate fundraising activity. They had talked a bit about the other planning efforts they needed for the yearly event that was their purpose.
She had had to have a ride to and from the meeting because of her fear about her car. Her friend tried out her car in the parking lot and felt the car was ok to drive, that the brakes were what one called gentle brakes. She would have a lot of grocery shopping to make up for all the days she'd been making do. One thing she wanted now was an extra container of grated cheese as a back-up supply. She wanted other supplies like this on hand for those times when one did not know if one could get out shopping. More canned beans, more instant creamer, more kneckerbrodt, One could always keep an extra unopened package of cheese on hand. This was sounding a bit too obsessive. One would always have to worry about using up the food before its sell by date, and then going through a restocking cycle again.
That evening she'd gotten a call from a friend who had worked with her at the bakery. They had kept regularly in touch through the years. She had been wanting to talk to this person to get advice about her car brakes. No, he told her, this tire repair would not at all effect the brake lines or the brakes, but check the brake fluid. That could be low and/or leaking.
Several years ago he had moved out of NYC to rural NY and had been loving being there. He was glad not to be living in the city anymore, though his work took him there often. She had a hard time believing this because she knew how much he had loved the city. And here he was telling her how much he loved the city. She thought it was a good thing he was realizing this. Whether he could or wanted to do anything about it was another matter.
The landlord's contractor crew had just dropped off some gear down below that they would need for working on the roof. They had shingling and gutter repair to do above some of her windows. Last winter there had been huge icicles hanging off the roof and gutters that were positioned exactly over the propane tank. Not only did they look like they could fall down and pierce the tank, they dripped water over the tank which then froze into a thick ice cap. She never knew how the fuel man safely broke through that ice cap to refuel the tank. She just hoped she would wake in the morning before the workmen's ladder with a workman on it was up outside her window. She did not want to be getting out of bed in full view of them. She would have to tell them to rattle their ladder in warning, as she had no intention of sleeping in the dark of a shade covered window.
12:23p 844 words
What else had she thought of telling about? No, she had not thought of telling about anything, at least not that she could remember now. ...
She had had another idea for what to do when there was nothing to write about. Look around the room and arbitrarily pick something and ask some questions about it. This might either give a little story to tell about that thing or it might trigger an association. Whenever she thought about this strategy - she had a few times- she always had a stock item that came to mind as the object one would look around the room and fall upon - such an obvious object, and in this case she had already told about it in certain respects, but not really. The coffee cup.
In her case she had two coffee cups by her side. One held the coffee, or what was left of it, and the other, a deep blue cobalt cup, started out in the morning with hot water. That was empty now. Though she loved the deep blue cobalt china cup, deep blue was not a good color for black coffee. Black coffee, she felt, needed to be drunken out of a light cup. One somehow did not get the proper feel of the black coffee - of its body - if there was not seen in a light colored cup. Glass cups were also terrible for black coffee. There the light shone through the coffee and made it seem thinner than it was - it took away the feel of the coffee's body. Coffee with cream went well in a dark cup, but she had not thought of that when she'd fixed her coffee this morning. Her favorite coffee cup - seemed like years since she'd used it though, and why was that she wondered - was a blue calico mug. The inside was white and the outside was a lovely cobalt blue glaze calico pattern. This china was earthenware though so it did not hold up well. It cracked and broke easily and the glaze crackled.
She had first come upon this china in a homeware or gift shop in Philadelphia when she was going to art school there. It came in blue or brown patterns and was made in England in Staffordshire. Was that also the pottery brand name? It had existed a long time, though she did not know its history. She did not remember how she got her first piece, whether she had perhaps bought herself a mug or a teapot. She loved tea and teapots back then and had collected a couple. That Christmas when she went home to her family for the holidays, she asked for some of this china as a Christmas and/or birthday present. Her family gave her quite a bit of it. She thought she had made a still life painting that winter with her new coffee pot in it.
Her sister took on the job of replenishing the calico mugs through the years, since they broke or degraded so easily and quickly.
She just remembered why she'd started using these cups instead of the mugs. It was easier to drink hot liquid from the cups because of their slightly belled shape and thinner lip. It allowed the top surface to cool just enough to sip it right away.
1:02p 1403 words
The blue calico china mugs broke so frequently, often because a cat had knocked one off the table or the counter, and making pieces of broken china which of themselves were so pretty, that she had made art pieces out of some of it. One mug had broken cleanly in half. Inside this mug she had painted a miniature imaginary landscape panorama. She loved the idea of another world being inside the cup - like the peephole sugar Easter eggs she used to get as a child. The two halves of the cup were meant to be positioned slightly apart so that one would look through the broken opening, as if through a door or a window, to the view inside.
During that sleepless session she had again toyed with the idea of perhaps taking in the stray cat that had adopted the house and which the house's residents had adopted. The woman downstairs out back who put out food for all the animals had been seeing to it that this cat was well fed, along with a few others who would only dart in and out quickly to grab a bite. This cat was very friendly though. No one knew where it came from. It was an orange tom cat. The lady downstairs was making sure he could sleep in the enclosed porch and that he got in and out of the porch. There was a cat door as well. Each tenant was only allowed to keep one cat. This lady had a cat who was on its last legs. Sir Orange would be a perfect replacement, but she had said she did not want another after the old cat.
1:32p 1687 words
11/17/11
11:21 am
She was starting her 'Nanowrimo' writing later in the day than she had been. She had gotten up later that morning because she had woken in the middle of the night and taken several hours before being able to get back to sleep. When she woke in the middle of the night it had felt as if it might be early in the morning at an hour that one could reasonably get up for the day. No, it had been much earlier than that. If she got up then, she would have found herself napping for hours during the day.
It had been one of those nights she sometimes had, where lying down was too uncomfortable. If she sat up in bed, for some reason, she was usually able to fall asleep. One could not sleep sitting up without one's head falling over, so this was not a completely viable solution. Her strategy was to try to maintain this back and forth sleeping pattern long enough until she was sure she could lie down and fall right asleep. The process took quite a while.
Nothing was coming immediately to mind that she wanted to write about. She had not made notes of things to write about. She sat there hoping something would come up.
She had made the same breakfast as the previous day, since that had been so tasty - the veggie bean salad. The instant coffee this time had creamers from McDonalds in it instead of the instant powdered kind. These little containers said 'coffee creamer' on the package rather than 'half-n-half', and they said 'needs no refrigeration', though she kept them in the fridge. What were they actually made of? This coffee left a more acidic after effect in the mouth than she thought it did with the instant creamer.
She had gone to a committee meeting the evening before. It seemed to have gone well. It had been a small group - only about half the committee members. They had been able to discuss amicably and constructively the plans for an immediate fundraising activity. They had talked a bit about the other planning efforts they needed for the yearly event that was their purpose.
She had had to have a ride to and from the meeting because of her fear about her car. Her friend tried out her car in the parking lot and felt the car was ok to drive, that the brakes were what one called gentle brakes. She would have a lot of grocery shopping to make up for all the days she'd been making do. One thing she wanted now was an extra container of grated cheese as a back-up supply. She wanted other supplies like this on hand for those times when one did not know if one could get out shopping. More canned beans, more instant creamer, more kneckerbrodt, One could always keep an extra unopened package of cheese on hand. This was sounding a bit too obsessive. One would always have to worry about using up the food before its sell by date, and then going through a restocking cycle again.
That evening she'd gotten a call from a friend who had worked with her at the bakery. They had kept regularly in touch through the years. She had been wanting to talk to this person to get advice about her car brakes. No, he told her, this tire repair would not at all effect the brake lines or the brakes, but check the brake fluid. That could be low and/or leaking.
Several years ago he had moved out of NYC to rural NY and had been loving being there. He was glad not to be living in the city anymore, though his work took him there often. She had a hard time believing this because she knew how much he had loved the city. And here he was telling her how much he loved the city. She thought it was a good thing he was realizing this. Whether he could or wanted to do anything about it was another matter.
The landlord's contractor crew had just dropped off some gear down below that they would need for working on the roof. They had shingling and gutter repair to do above some of her windows. Last winter there had been huge icicles hanging off the roof and gutters that were positioned exactly over the propane tank. Not only did they look like they could fall down and pierce the tank, they dripped water over the tank which then froze into a thick ice cap. She never knew how the fuel man safely broke through that ice cap to refuel the tank. She just hoped she would wake in the morning before the workmen's ladder with a workman on it was up outside her window. She did not want to be getting out of bed in full view of them. She would have to tell them to rattle their ladder in warning, as she had no intention of sleeping in the dark of a shade covered window.
12:23p 844 words
What else had she thought of telling about? No, she had not thought of telling about anything, at least not that she could remember now. ...
She had had another idea for what to do when there was nothing to write about. Look around the room and arbitrarily pick something and ask some questions about it. This might either give a little story to tell about that thing or it might trigger an association. Whenever she thought about this strategy - she had a few times- she always had a stock item that came to mind as the object one would look around the room and fall upon - such an obvious object, and in this case she had already told about it in certain respects, but not really. The coffee cup.
In her case she had two coffee cups by her side. One held the coffee, or what was left of it, and the other, a deep blue cobalt cup, started out in the morning with hot water. That was empty now. Though she loved the deep blue cobalt china cup, deep blue was not a good color for black coffee. Black coffee, she felt, needed to be drunken out of a light cup. One somehow did not get the proper feel of the black coffee - of its body - if there was not seen in a light colored cup. Glass cups were also terrible for black coffee. There the light shone through the coffee and made it seem thinner than it was - it took away the feel of the coffee's body. Coffee with cream went well in a dark cup, but she had not thought of that when she'd fixed her coffee this morning. Her favorite coffee cup - seemed like years since she'd used it though, and why was that she wondered - was a blue calico mug. The inside was white and the outside was a lovely cobalt blue glaze calico pattern. This china was earthenware though so it did not hold up well. It cracked and broke easily and the glaze crackled.
She had first come upon this china in a homeware or gift shop in Philadelphia when she was going to art school there. It came in blue or brown patterns and was made in England in Staffordshire. Was that also the pottery brand name? It had existed a long time, though she did not know its history. She did not remember how she got her first piece, whether she had perhaps bought herself a mug or a teapot. She loved tea and teapots back then and had collected a couple. That Christmas when she went home to her family for the holidays, she asked for some of this china as a Christmas and/or birthday present. Her family gave her quite a bit of it. She thought she had made a still life painting that winter with her new coffee pot in it.
Her sister took on the job of replenishing the calico mugs through the years, since they broke or degraded so easily and quickly.
She just remembered why she'd started using these cups instead of the mugs. It was easier to drink hot liquid from the cups because of their slightly belled shape and thinner lip. It allowed the top surface to cool just enough to sip it right away.
1:02p 1403 words
The blue calico china mugs broke so frequently, often because a cat had knocked one off the table or the counter, and making pieces of broken china which of themselves were so pretty, that she had made art pieces out of some of it. One mug had broken cleanly in half. Inside this mug she had painted a miniature imaginary landscape panorama. She loved the idea of another world being inside the cup - like the peephole sugar Easter eggs she used to get as a child. The two halves of the cup were meant to be positioned slightly apart so that one would look through the broken opening, as if through a door or a window, to the view inside.
During that sleepless session she had again toyed with the idea of perhaps taking in the stray cat that had adopted the house and which the house's residents had adopted. The woman downstairs out back who put out food for all the animals had been seeing to it that this cat was well fed, along with a few others who would only dart in and out quickly to grab a bite. This cat was very friendly though. No one knew where it came from. It was an orange tom cat. The lady downstairs was making sure he could sleep in the enclosed porch and that he got in and out of the porch. There was a cat door as well. Each tenant was only allowed to keep one cat. This lady had a cat who was on its last legs. Sir Orange would be a perfect replacement, but she had said she did not want another after the old cat.
1:32p 1687 words
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Breakfast, Philbin's interview on the radio, the turkey drawing class...
Breakfast, Philbin's interview on the radio, the turkey drawing class...
11/16/11 10:41a
It was one of her sister's birthday. She would call later.
Breakfast had been another interesting concoction. She had for so many years usually fixed some variation of bread and cheese for breakfast. This had started because she had discovered that coffee could be drunk black if one had something like cheese to counterbalance it. It was the same with wine. This morning she had prepared mixed frozen vegetables steamed in a splash of vinegar and a splash of water. These were then mixed with canned rinsed kidney beans that had been lightly mashed. She dressed the whole mixture with her favorite ranch dressing, 'Paul Newman's Own'. She had a collection of partial take-out packets of these dressings from all the side salads she'd been having at her visits to the local McDonalds.
With her car down again, at least that she believed, she had not been able to get out to McDonalds either. She missed being able to go there where one could sit in the midst of people coming and going about their day, and possibly run into people one knew. Where she lived there were so few places in which to do this. One could go to places where only a certain socio-economic strata of the population would go, but she preferred a broader range of people. She often yearned to be back in New York City for this reason. Ever since moving here she had had the yearning for NYC. That was 19 years ago.
She loved the greater access to nature that she had where she lived now - that it could be right outside her window, and that she could step outside and have much more nature than she'd had in the city. She had always been able to find nature in the city though, so perhaps her assessment of
11:05 a break 11:32 resume
Just now there was a bluejay who had landed on the roof ridge across the way, then down to the branches of the tree next to that house as if it were scoping out something of great interest to it that lay between the two houses. It hopped from branch to branch going a bit lower each time until if finally swooped down past her window level and out of her line of sight. He had perhaps been after a tasty peanut. One of her neighbors set food all around the house for all the animals. The animals often carried away the food and sometimes ended up having to drop it because other animals were trying to steal the morsel.
*Another idea for how she could have fictionalized her journal - write it from the point of view of an animal, either a pet or a wild creature, observing her.
What she had liked about her Dad's writing advice was the idea of creating and compiling a collection of pieces on various topics one knew about. Such a collection could be a good resource. It was a like an artist's 'morgue'. Commercial artists and illustrators used to keep files of images of different subjects and objects. They used these for reference in making their pictures. She had developed quite a morgue over the years through her weekly lessons. She felt she had to keep the subject matter for classes constantly changing and rotating because each student only liked a few subjects. She kept the subjects loosely related to the calendar. She often wished she could get away from subject matter but she believed that would be too big a leap for the students. She felt they had to have some emotional relationship to the subject matter for them to accept the lessons. Perhaps she was underestimating them?
There was something satisfying about working with the calendar. It brought the classes, the art making, into a social communal realm. It made it more of a shared activity - a way that people could join together for a little while yet also be individual. That was what she probably liked best about her teaching work.
12:05 p break - 12:09 resume
She had interrupted her writing to turn on the radio for the news. Just a little interruption like that broke the train of thought. Now she had to think of what else to write about. She had had ideas that morning but had not made notes of these ideas. She would wait for them to pop up again as at the moments she did not care to go digging through notes from the previous days. The radio had certainly been useful the other day when it had triggered something to write about.
Last night there had been a radio interview with Regis Philbin who was about to step down from his long standing talk show. He had wondered a similar thing that she had wondered. Just two weeks after stepping down from his radio job, Andy Rooney had died. To her the connection seemed obvious. Philbin's cohost had pointed out to him on the show when he'd brought up this question, that Rooney had actually said long ago that he would die when (or if?) he left the show. Here Philbin's cohost said that Philbin had never said such a thing, so he should not even consider this would happen to him. Philbin spoke in the interview as if he hoped a different format or venue in the entertainment business would happen for him. Perhaps he needed a new challenge. He also told how so long ago it was a marine colonel who had admonished him that he could pursue anything he wanted and to go out and make it happen - but he had to know that he wanted it. What Philbin had wanted was to be an entertainer on television. He had lacked the confidence or belief that he could be that, until this Colonel had almost chewed him out for not going for what he wanted.
12:28p 996 words
This morning she had woken to the phone's ringing. It had been a young woman asking about getting a painting of her boyfriend's lobsterboat done. Now this needed to be considered. The woman had then immediately left a message about another idea - her boyfriend's lobster buoy design and color combination were unusual - perhaps a painting of that might be more unique she asked.
12:34p break to listen to radio show?
1:12p resume
Another thing that had intrigued her in listening to Philbin, was that he did his show extemporaneously. There was no script. He never knew where things were going, how things would turn out. He walked a tightrope every time he did his show. This too was what he'd wanted.
She had drawn turkeys with the group in kids class the day before. Everyone seemed to enjoy it. There were some new people. Whether she could expect them again she did not know. Sometimes people popped in because they happened to be in the library and/or they had happened to notice the flier. In this case the flier announced the class would be drawing turkeys that day. The kids were now on the lookout for the fliers because she had always played a guessing game with them as to what the day's subject was. They had learned though that the poster on the front door usually gave the topic away. She would have to think of a new guessing game.
She told them they would not be drawing 'hand' turkeys, something she felt was too safe, too known. They seemed disappointed. When they'd struggled through drawing the traditional puffed up turkey and had worked quite awhile at coloring their drawings, she told them they could draw 'hand' turkeys if they wanted. Then she told them she would not be taking photographs of any 'hand' turkeys though, not unless they were done by five year olds. They made quite a variety of turkey drawings. She wondered later whether she should be offering more simple projects like 'hand' drawing. She had seen that even this skill of tracing around one's hand was difficult for some.
1:41p 1357 words
She could not remember what else she wanted to write about. The last stretch of the daily word target could be hard to get through. If she were a talk show host like Regis Philbin what would she do without a script? She often had to do this in her classes before hand if people came early. She would want to be setting up but always felt a responsibility to somehow engage them. One could not just leave people sitting in a room to wait without involving them while one went about one's business in this situation. She could feel their waiting, their restlessness, and it distracted her from being able to focus on setting up what she needed. Sometimes one just had to juggle both though.
There were two things that she used to engage the group immediately. There was the learning of their names, though sometimes she forgot to do that if they had somehow gotten off her usual routine. There was the guessing of the day's subject. With that could also come a brainstorming of possibilities within the subject. As she fielded answers from the kids she wrote them down. The subject had been turkeys. They had all known this. She did not even take guesses from them. Instead she told them to say the day's subject all together when she raised her hands. After that they brainstormed the designs and shapes that could be drawn in the borders of their papers as decoration. One young child usually would not speak in class, but this time raised a hand and said 'Christmas trees'. The kids were thinking too far ahead, but that was the power of Christmas.
Did it matter that this writing was no longer taking just a few hours? She had taken several breaks within the session this time. She believed that she had gone this far into the challenge and gotten through that wall, that she would see it through to its end, even if there would be no real purpose for what she ended up with, and even though she had never been quite comfortable with the voice and namelessness issues. Her Dad had said she could give a name to the subject, just go back to the beginning and do it. She however felt there would be much too much to change. So much of the writing had been an exploration about the very issue of this namelessness and the sound of this voice. Now she wanted to see what became of this situation by the end. She did not know.
2:07p 1790 words
11/16/11 10:41a
It was one of her sister's birthday. She would call later.
Breakfast had been another interesting concoction. She had for so many years usually fixed some variation of bread and cheese for breakfast. This had started because she had discovered that coffee could be drunk black if one had something like cheese to counterbalance it. It was the same with wine. This morning she had prepared mixed frozen vegetables steamed in a splash of vinegar and a splash of water. These were then mixed with canned rinsed kidney beans that had been lightly mashed. She dressed the whole mixture with her favorite ranch dressing, 'Paul Newman's Own'. She had a collection of partial take-out packets of these dressings from all the side salads she'd been having at her visits to the local McDonalds.
With her car down again, at least that she believed, she had not been able to get out to McDonalds either. She missed being able to go there where one could sit in the midst of people coming and going about their day, and possibly run into people one knew. Where she lived there were so few places in which to do this. One could go to places where only a certain socio-economic strata of the population would go, but she preferred a broader range of people. She often yearned to be back in New York City for this reason. Ever since moving here she had had the yearning for NYC. That was 19 years ago.
She loved the greater access to nature that she had where she lived now - that it could be right outside her window, and that she could step outside and have much more nature than she'd had in the city. She had always been able to find nature in the city though, so perhaps her assessment of
11:05 a break 11:32 resume
Just now there was a bluejay who had landed on the roof ridge across the way, then down to the branches of the tree next to that house as if it were scoping out something of great interest to it that lay between the two houses. It hopped from branch to branch going a bit lower each time until if finally swooped down past her window level and out of her line of sight. He had perhaps been after a tasty peanut. One of her neighbors set food all around the house for all the animals. The animals often carried away the food and sometimes ended up having to drop it because other animals were trying to steal the morsel.
*Another idea for how she could have fictionalized her journal - write it from the point of view of an animal, either a pet or a wild creature, observing her.
What she had liked about her Dad's writing advice was the idea of creating and compiling a collection of pieces on various topics one knew about. Such a collection could be a good resource. It was a like an artist's 'morgue'. Commercial artists and illustrators used to keep files of images of different subjects and objects. They used these for reference in making their pictures. She had developed quite a morgue over the years through her weekly lessons. She felt she had to keep the subject matter for classes constantly changing and rotating because each student only liked a few subjects. She kept the subjects loosely related to the calendar. She often wished she could get away from subject matter but she believed that would be too big a leap for the students. She felt they had to have some emotional relationship to the subject matter for them to accept the lessons. Perhaps she was underestimating them?
There was something satisfying about working with the calendar. It brought the classes, the art making, into a social communal realm. It made it more of a shared activity - a way that people could join together for a little while yet also be individual. That was what she probably liked best about her teaching work.
12:05 p break - 12:09 resume
She had interrupted her writing to turn on the radio for the news. Just a little interruption like that broke the train of thought. Now she had to think of what else to write about. She had had ideas that morning but had not made notes of these ideas. She would wait for them to pop up again as at the moments she did not care to go digging through notes from the previous days. The radio had certainly been useful the other day when it had triggered something to write about.
Last night there had been a radio interview with Regis Philbin who was about to step down from his long standing talk show. He had wondered a similar thing that she had wondered. Just two weeks after stepping down from his radio job, Andy Rooney had died. To her the connection seemed obvious. Philbin's cohost had pointed out to him on the show when he'd brought up this question, that Rooney had actually said long ago that he would die when (or if?) he left the show. Here Philbin's cohost said that Philbin had never said such a thing, so he should not even consider this would happen to him. Philbin spoke in the interview as if he hoped a different format or venue in the entertainment business would happen for him. Perhaps he needed a new challenge. He also told how so long ago it was a marine colonel who had admonished him that he could pursue anything he wanted and to go out and make it happen - but he had to know that he wanted it. What Philbin had wanted was to be an entertainer on television. He had lacked the confidence or belief that he could be that, until this Colonel had almost chewed him out for not going for what he wanted.
12:28p 996 words
This morning she had woken to the phone's ringing. It had been a young woman asking about getting a painting of her boyfriend's lobsterboat done. Now this needed to be considered. The woman had then immediately left a message about another idea - her boyfriend's lobster buoy design and color combination were unusual - perhaps a painting of that might be more unique she asked.
12:34p break to listen to radio show?
1:12p resume
Another thing that had intrigued her in listening to Philbin, was that he did his show extemporaneously. There was no script. He never knew where things were going, how things would turn out. He walked a tightrope every time he did his show. This too was what he'd wanted.
She had drawn turkeys with the group in kids class the day before. Everyone seemed to enjoy it. There were some new people. Whether she could expect them again she did not know. Sometimes people popped in because they happened to be in the library and/or they had happened to notice the flier. In this case the flier announced the class would be drawing turkeys that day. The kids were now on the lookout for the fliers because she had always played a guessing game with them as to what the day's subject was. They had learned though that the poster on the front door usually gave the topic away. She would have to think of a new guessing game.
She told them they would not be drawing 'hand' turkeys, something she felt was too safe, too known. They seemed disappointed. When they'd struggled through drawing the traditional puffed up turkey and had worked quite awhile at coloring their drawings, she told them they could draw 'hand' turkeys if they wanted. Then she told them she would not be taking photographs of any 'hand' turkeys though, not unless they were done by five year olds. They made quite a variety of turkey drawings. She wondered later whether she should be offering more simple projects like 'hand' drawing. She had seen that even this skill of tracing around one's hand was difficult for some.
1:41p 1357 words
She could not remember what else she wanted to write about. The last stretch of the daily word target could be hard to get through. If she were a talk show host like Regis Philbin what would she do without a script? She often had to do this in her classes before hand if people came early. She would want to be setting up but always felt a responsibility to somehow engage them. One could not just leave people sitting in a room to wait without involving them while one went about one's business in this situation. She could feel their waiting, their restlessness, and it distracted her from being able to focus on setting up what she needed. Sometimes one just had to juggle both though.
There were two things that she used to engage the group immediately. There was the learning of their names, though sometimes she forgot to do that if they had somehow gotten off her usual routine. There was the guessing of the day's subject. With that could also come a brainstorming of possibilities within the subject. As she fielded answers from the kids she wrote them down. The subject had been turkeys. They had all known this. She did not even take guesses from them. Instead she told them to say the day's subject all together when she raised her hands. After that they brainstormed the designs and shapes that could be drawn in the borders of their papers as decoration. One young child usually would not speak in class, but this time raised a hand and said 'Christmas trees'. The kids were thinking too far ahead, but that was the power of Christmas.
Did it matter that this writing was no longer taking just a few hours? She had taken several breaks within the session this time. She believed that she had gone this far into the challenge and gotten through that wall, that she would see it through to its end, even if there would be no real purpose for what she ended up with, and even though she had never been quite comfortable with the voice and namelessness issues. Her Dad had said she could give a name to the subject, just go back to the beginning and do it. She however felt there would be much too much to change. So much of the writing had been an exploration about the very issue of this namelessness and the sound of this voice. Now she wanted to see what became of this situation by the end. She did not know.
2:07p 1790 words
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
A father's advice on writing.
A father's advice on writing.
11/15/11 8:21p
It was a very late start for her with her writing challenge - she was starting in the evening instead of her usual morning session. This was her main teaching day, when she taught a morning class and an afternoon class. Last week she had not managed to write at all that day. She would at least give it a try or see if she could do half a day's writing quota. This was a relentless pace to keep up with - the 1667 words a day needed to fulfill the 50K words of the Nanowrimo challenge, which was supposed to be a novel for National Novel Writing Month.
She had hit a wall the previous two days and somehow managed to break through it just last evening. She was finishing up when her Dad called. He wanted to know if she had decided to do 'that writing thing'. Yes, she told him - she was doing it. Good. He'd been thinking a lot about it and he had some ideas for her that he wanted to tell her about. He seemed so excited to be able to advise her on this. When she had first told him about it he had just gotten back from having been in the hospital for heart surgery - a heart surgery that he'd needed to go back in for second time a week later. He had immediately warmed up to this writing venture and had given her advice about it then.
Here he was with a more extensive version of the same advice. In his view 'the writing thing' was not the Nanowrimo challenge but simply to get serious about writing. He was having a hard time allowing that she had decided to try to stick it out through the challenge, even though they both agreed it was foolish in many ways. She had gotten this far and wanted to see what else would come up from going through in this manner proscribed/prescribed. There had already been several good results from working this far through it , that she was reluctant to give up half way through. She would have to try a few more days to see if there really was no more growth in store from doing it.
It almost seemed like her enthusiasm about doing it and learning what she was learning from it, affected others she told about it. Just the way her Dad had warmed up to the subject even though he was just home from the hospital. It had provoked him to think more about it and share his ideas with her, as if it was awakening his own desires to pursue writing, but even more, she wondered if perhaps he should have been a teacher. He was so passionate about this. He always had to teach all the kids things about everything. They did not usually like it because he could be such a heavy handed teacher. He always needed to show how to do things, or to explain how things were. This did not allow for the view of the one being shown,
8:47 pm guess - 500 words (actual 522!)
The first point of his advice was, just as he'd told her the first time, that one first needed to build the habit of writing on a daily basis. One needed to do this at the same time of day every day so that it became second nature just to write. It was preferable to to do it in the morning. That was when one was fresh, and one's ideas could flow the best. It also meant that other things in one's day would not get in the way and crowd out the writing work. If necessary one should rearrange one's schedule to accommodate this new writing schedule. One should write no more than 500 words a day. He told her to sit down and write a list of all the things she knew about - places, people, things, skills she had, etc. etc. He said there was a lot she knew about. This would provide a big pool of topics to write about. He told her he wished he'd thought of this when he was thinking about getting further into writing. Every day choose something from the list and write about it. Having a list of things she knew about would leave her free to write easily. He said that writer's block was caused by writers getting stuck with writing something they knew nothing about.
Whether that was true she did not know. Her wall, or block, was because she suddenly doubted what she was doing and therefore could think of nothing else to say, or that she was willing to say within the context. Then she suddenly found things to say again. She had discovered there was loads to write about. But she had also suddenly not wanted to write about anything much. It was hearing something intriguing on the radio that reminded her of things and got her wanting to tell about these things. One had to find a way to want to write things when it felt like one did not want to. One needed to work through one's passing moods. One did have to look at why one did not want to and acknowledge that but one did not always have to indulge those passing feelings. They could be a kind of self sabotage at work.
9:17p 910 words
She was reaching her limit for the day of what she felt she could write, though she had not yet reached her quota. Her Dad had gone on to tell her how writing essays about the subjects on the list would grow into a portfolio of pieces that overtime would tell her own story. At first she should make her priority to be getting the stuff down on paper. Once the habit of writing consistently was established she might find she wanted to improve her writing. She could do that then. She might find that some of the pieces would fit with each other to form larger pieces. She liked the idea of a portfolio or collection of pieces very much.
For now though she was done for the day. The rest would have to be made up the next day.
9:29 pm 1056 words
11/15/11 8:21p
It was a very late start for her with her writing challenge - she was starting in the evening instead of her usual morning session. This was her main teaching day, when she taught a morning class and an afternoon class. Last week she had not managed to write at all that day. She would at least give it a try or see if she could do half a day's writing quota. This was a relentless pace to keep up with - the 1667 words a day needed to fulfill the 50K words of the Nanowrimo challenge, which was supposed to be a novel for National Novel Writing Month.
She had hit a wall the previous two days and somehow managed to break through it just last evening. She was finishing up when her Dad called. He wanted to know if she had decided to do 'that writing thing'. Yes, she told him - she was doing it. Good. He'd been thinking a lot about it and he had some ideas for her that he wanted to tell her about. He seemed so excited to be able to advise her on this. When she had first told him about it he had just gotten back from having been in the hospital for heart surgery - a heart surgery that he'd needed to go back in for second time a week later. He had immediately warmed up to this writing venture and had given her advice about it then.
Here he was with a more extensive version of the same advice. In his view 'the writing thing' was not the Nanowrimo challenge but simply to get serious about writing. He was having a hard time allowing that she had decided to try to stick it out through the challenge, even though they both agreed it was foolish in many ways. She had gotten this far and wanted to see what else would come up from going through in this manner proscribed/prescribed. There had already been several good results from working this far through it , that she was reluctant to give up half way through. She would have to try a few more days to see if there really was no more growth in store from doing it.
It almost seemed like her enthusiasm about doing it and learning what she was learning from it, affected others she told about it. Just the way her Dad had warmed up to the subject even though he was just home from the hospital. It had provoked him to think more about it and share his ideas with her, as if it was awakening his own desires to pursue writing, but even more, she wondered if perhaps he should have been a teacher. He was so passionate about this. He always had to teach all the kids things about everything. They did not usually like it because he could be such a heavy handed teacher. He always needed to show how to do things, or to explain how things were. This did not allow for the view of the one being shown,
8:47 pm guess - 500 words (actual 522!)
The first point of his advice was, just as he'd told her the first time, that one first needed to build the habit of writing on a daily basis. One needed to do this at the same time of day every day so that it became second nature just to write. It was preferable to to do it in the morning. That was when one was fresh, and one's ideas could flow the best. It also meant that other things in one's day would not get in the way and crowd out the writing work. If necessary one should rearrange one's schedule to accommodate this new writing schedule. One should write no more than 500 words a day. He told her to sit down and write a list of all the things she knew about - places, people, things, skills she had, etc. etc. He said there was a lot she knew about. This would provide a big pool of topics to write about. He told her he wished he'd thought of this when he was thinking about getting further into writing. Every day choose something from the list and write about it. Having a list of things she knew about would leave her free to write easily. He said that writer's block was caused by writers getting stuck with writing something they knew nothing about.
Whether that was true she did not know. Her wall, or block, was because she suddenly doubted what she was doing and therefore could think of nothing else to say, or that she was willing to say within the context. Then she suddenly found things to say again. She had discovered there was loads to write about. But she had also suddenly not wanted to write about anything much. It was hearing something intriguing on the radio that reminded her of things and got her wanting to tell about these things. One had to find a way to want to write things when it felt like one did not want to. One needed to work through one's passing moods. One did have to look at why one did not want to and acknowledge that but one did not always have to indulge those passing feelings. They could be a kind of self sabotage at work.
9:17p 910 words
She was reaching her limit for the day of what she felt she could write, though she had not yet reached her quota. Her Dad had gone on to tell her how writing essays about the subjects on the list would grow into a portfolio of pieces that overtime would tell her own story. At first she should make her priority to be getting the stuff down on paper. Once the habit of writing consistently was established she might find she wanted to improve her writing. She could do that then. She might find that some of the pieces would fit with each other to form larger pieces. She liked the idea of a portfolio or collection of pieces very much.
For now though she was done for the day. The rest would have to be made up the next day.
9:29 pm 1056 words
Monday, November 14, 2011
Hitting the wall of writer's block, meals, stories on the radio, selling art on the street, & work as a bakery clerk...
Hitting the wall of writer's block, meals, stories on the radio, selling art on the street, & work as a bakery clerk...
11/14/11 3:24p
She was starting her writing so late today. The morning had been spent preparing for and teaching her adult art class at the library. Since she was going through such ambivalence over the writing work, she knew the day before already that she would not be able to bring herself to work on it before class as she had the previous week. She knew there would be time to do it in the afternoon. Whether she would go to the Nano 'write-in' session at the library she had not yet decided. She thought she probably would not. She wanted to be able to do the necessary house cleaning in anticipation of the students who would be coming the next day. At least she knew she would give the writing another day.
It had come to her in the morning that she'd felt so depressed with her disappointment about the writing because she believed she had to give up the project, having determined it was foolish and wasting time. This morning she realized she did not have to give it up even though it might be foolish and a waste of time. It had been so good to have this project that could be tackled on such a daily basis.
She had told her mother what she was going through with it. Her mother described how she used to marvel at her own mother and father's ability to sit down at the typewriter and quickly write out full page letters to whomever they owed correspondence to. That mother could write about the most ordinary events of a day and make them sound fascinating.
She would try to remember more of the minutiae of a day and tell about it, if she had nothing else to write about. One could not just make it 'sound interesting'. One had to find what was interesting about it.
Breakfast was becoming quite a different routine because her usual staples had run out. She wanted to go shopping but was unsure about the state of the car's brakes and had not taken the time to make arrangements to have the problem looked at, or even to stop to ask someone who might know, whether the problem could have been caused by the recent tire repair, and could it be driven if the pedal was going down to a certain level that felt lower than usual.
She'd had to have instant coffee instead of ground coffee. On the rare times she had instant coffee she used the powdered creamer. Her strongest associations with this kind of coffee were of community gatherings. To taste that kind of coffee brought back associations of being at a community gathering.
She also used to have this kind of coffee so many years ago when she did painting and drawing at a fishing village waterfront dock. The little store there had such coffee available for everyone. She would fix herself a coffee and go out to draw the boats of the working waterfront. Sometimes she would do watercolors and oil paintings of boats by request.
Her main breakfast meal had been canned kidney beans mashed with ranch salad dressing and served as a spread on rye crisp crackers. They were called 'kneckerbrot' in German - loosely translated as crackerbread. She could remember this from her childhood, as her mother would often get it. They would eat it with thick butter and coldcuts, or cottage cheese with fresh chives sprinkled on top. Now she herself often kept it on hand for the times when she had run out of other things.
4:01p
She was tiring again. She felt what she was writing was too boring. It was practically putting her to sleep. she was still writing without being willing to write what she would normally write if she were doing her journal by hand. She wanted so much to put her head down and fall asleep. She was down to typing with one hand so that she could rest her head in the other hand. How was she going to make it through?
Would it hurt to have a look at how much she had done, to see how much she still had to do for the day?
4:06p 724 words
4:41p she was still crashing and practically napping all this time. Her head would fall forward when it lost its balance as she slipped off into a temporary sleeping state, dreaming of kneckerbrodt.
4:43 - she would have to take a break.
6:07 p resume
Supper was a large red potato sliced and sauteed in olive oil. This she had sprinkled with parmesan cheese and a touch of vinegar. Meanwhile she sauteed frozen whole greenbeans til browned and soft. She had added these to the cooked potatoes and sprinkled more grated cheese over the dish. Finally she tossed it all with cesar salad dressing. She found it very tasty. Perhaps now she could think of more to write about. She could at least tell about the dinner.
The radio was telling a story about a former German financier who, upon losing his job, had decided he would go into the mobile fast food business. He had bought a converted van and did the research on what it would cost to make and sell sausages from this van outfitted to cook and serve on the streets. He was now selling this food outside the building he used to work in. People lined up to buy his specialty food for their lunch. His children were upset at first that he was doing work that seemed such a step down from his previous work and role in life. He told how he'd had to tell them it was not the money one made in life that mattered, but how satisfied one was with what one did.
Hearing this story she felt nostalgic for those times years ago when she used to take her little cart laden with her greeting cards and notecards, and sell them on the streets of New York City. She had been sporadic about this work as sometimes she would do some freelance officework which would often last months at a time. When she had first started out with it, she was making handpainted cards. They were artwork done on large cards rather than any subject matter one would expect for a greeting card. No Happy Birthday or Congratulations. These had been quickly drawn brush and ink drawings of angelic faces, cats, and horses. Those were the subjects she could draw easily enough to turn out in a spontaneous manner that would also be completed quickly. She still had a few of these first experiments in the business of card making. She had stopped doing them once she realized she was selling them for too low a price for how lovely she thought they were. She felt they should not be sold at that low a price. She wondered what would have happened had she gone on making and selling art in that form.
Several years before that she had tried making up some miniature landscape paintings to sell in the streets of New York City. They were made for the purpose of selling, rather than as something she had simply decided she wanted to make. She would lay these out on the sidewalk on a colored cloth, or hang them on a little board display. She tried various locations throughout the city. She may even have tried going into a few businesses to try to sell them directly to people.
One place she went to sell these at was outside a bakery in Greenwich Village. This had been a place she liked to get herself a special treat every once in a while. She had long ago forgotten what that treat was. There had been a fellow set up with a large array of framed artworks outside this bakery. He mostly sold the artworks as prints rolled up in tubes. He did this on weekends. She had become friendly with him and learned a bit about his business. He was a photographer and also sold his own photographs in this manner. He introduced her to one of the bakery owners. He gave her advise making a poster for her display and gave her permission to sell outside the bakery.
She had forgotten how much later it was when she was walking in another part of the city and came upon another outlet of the bakery. She went in for that favorite treat. The store had just opened. The same owner was there and greeted her. Did she want a job? She went to work within the next few days. There had been plenty of troubles with some of her coworkers. One was an old school retail food clerk. The rest were young people, some of whom were immigrants who could barely speak English. The old school retail clerk always seemed to snap up all the sales. The clerks had separate sales drawers in the cash register. This was either so the boss could tell which clerk made the most sales, or to keep each clerk responsible for their own sales errors. Life was often miserable working in that store with that clerk who so often pushed to grab all the sales.
Soon she was able to transfer to that bakery in the Village. This was much more to her liking. She made friends there. One of these coworkers was still her friend 35 years later. They had had the privilege of waiting tables in the cafe at the back of the bakery. She had worked six years at this bakery. It had been here that she'd started trying to sell those 'art' cards. She would offer to show them to her customers in the cafe and sell them on occasion in this way. When she finally left that job she had gone taken this art to the streets again.
This summer she had received an inquiry from someone who had bought one of those first little landscapes from her. The person told her that she had come into the workplace and shown her paintings. This person still had that little painting and had sent a photo of it to show her. She could remember the painting and could dimly remember going into that business to try to sell her little paintings. However at the time the inquiry came through, she had been too preoccupied with other projects to be able to return the communication. She needed to follow up on this. She had found it so touching to have this person and the forgotten painting of long ago reappear.
There were other instances where her artworks reappeared in her life.
7:12p 2522 words Hah!!!
11/14/11 3:24p
She was starting her writing so late today. The morning had been spent preparing for and teaching her adult art class at the library. Since she was going through such ambivalence over the writing work, she knew the day before already that she would not be able to bring herself to work on it before class as she had the previous week. She knew there would be time to do it in the afternoon. Whether she would go to the Nano 'write-in' session at the library she had not yet decided. She thought she probably would not. She wanted to be able to do the necessary house cleaning in anticipation of the students who would be coming the next day. At least she knew she would give the writing another day.
It had come to her in the morning that she'd felt so depressed with her disappointment about the writing because she believed she had to give up the project, having determined it was foolish and wasting time. This morning she realized she did not have to give it up even though it might be foolish and a waste of time. It had been so good to have this project that could be tackled on such a daily basis.
She had told her mother what she was going through with it. Her mother described how she used to marvel at her own mother and father's ability to sit down at the typewriter and quickly write out full page letters to whomever they owed correspondence to. That mother could write about the most ordinary events of a day and make them sound fascinating.
She would try to remember more of the minutiae of a day and tell about it, if she had nothing else to write about. One could not just make it 'sound interesting'. One had to find what was interesting about it.
Breakfast was becoming quite a different routine because her usual staples had run out. She wanted to go shopping but was unsure about the state of the car's brakes and had not taken the time to make arrangements to have the problem looked at, or even to stop to ask someone who might know, whether the problem could have been caused by the recent tire repair, and could it be driven if the pedal was going down to a certain level that felt lower than usual.
She'd had to have instant coffee instead of ground coffee. On the rare times she had instant coffee she used the powdered creamer. Her strongest associations with this kind of coffee were of community gatherings. To taste that kind of coffee brought back associations of being at a community gathering.
She also used to have this kind of coffee so many years ago when she did painting and drawing at a fishing village waterfront dock. The little store there had such coffee available for everyone. She would fix herself a coffee and go out to draw the boats of the working waterfront. Sometimes she would do watercolors and oil paintings of boats by request.
Her main breakfast meal had been canned kidney beans mashed with ranch salad dressing and served as a spread on rye crisp crackers. They were called 'kneckerbrot' in German - loosely translated as crackerbread. She could remember this from her childhood, as her mother would often get it. They would eat it with thick butter and coldcuts, or cottage cheese with fresh chives sprinkled on top. Now she herself often kept it on hand for the times when she had run out of other things.
4:01p
She was tiring again. She felt what she was writing was too boring. It was practically putting her to sleep. she was still writing without being willing to write what she would normally write if she were doing her journal by hand. She wanted so much to put her head down and fall asleep. She was down to typing with one hand so that she could rest her head in the other hand. How was she going to make it through?
Would it hurt to have a look at how much she had done, to see how much she still had to do for the day?
4:06p 724 words
4:41p she was still crashing and practically napping all this time. Her head would fall forward when it lost its balance as she slipped off into a temporary sleeping state, dreaming of kneckerbrodt.
4:43 - she would have to take a break.
6:07 p resume
Supper was a large red potato sliced and sauteed in olive oil. This she had sprinkled with parmesan cheese and a touch of vinegar. Meanwhile she sauteed frozen whole greenbeans til browned and soft. She had added these to the cooked potatoes and sprinkled more grated cheese over the dish. Finally she tossed it all with cesar salad dressing. She found it very tasty. Perhaps now she could think of more to write about. She could at least tell about the dinner.
The radio was telling a story about a former German financier who, upon losing his job, had decided he would go into the mobile fast food business. He had bought a converted van and did the research on what it would cost to make and sell sausages from this van outfitted to cook and serve on the streets. He was now selling this food outside the building he used to work in. People lined up to buy his specialty food for their lunch. His children were upset at first that he was doing work that seemed such a step down from his previous work and role in life. He told how he'd had to tell them it was not the money one made in life that mattered, but how satisfied one was with what one did.
Hearing this story she felt nostalgic for those times years ago when she used to take her little cart laden with her greeting cards and notecards, and sell them on the streets of New York City. She had been sporadic about this work as sometimes she would do some freelance officework which would often last months at a time. When she had first started out with it, she was making handpainted cards. They were artwork done on large cards rather than any subject matter one would expect for a greeting card. No Happy Birthday or Congratulations. These had been quickly drawn brush and ink drawings of angelic faces, cats, and horses. Those were the subjects she could draw easily enough to turn out in a spontaneous manner that would also be completed quickly. She still had a few of these first experiments in the business of card making. She had stopped doing them once she realized she was selling them for too low a price for how lovely she thought they were. She felt they should not be sold at that low a price. She wondered what would have happened had she gone on making and selling art in that form.
Several years before that she had tried making up some miniature landscape paintings to sell in the streets of New York City. They were made for the purpose of selling, rather than as something she had simply decided she wanted to make. She would lay these out on the sidewalk on a colored cloth, or hang them on a little board display. She tried various locations throughout the city. She may even have tried going into a few businesses to try to sell them directly to people.
One place she went to sell these at was outside a bakery in Greenwich Village. This had been a place she liked to get herself a special treat every once in a while. She had long ago forgotten what that treat was. There had been a fellow set up with a large array of framed artworks outside this bakery. He mostly sold the artworks as prints rolled up in tubes. He did this on weekends. She had become friendly with him and learned a bit about his business. He was a photographer and also sold his own photographs in this manner. He introduced her to one of the bakery owners. He gave her advise making a poster for her display and gave her permission to sell outside the bakery.
She had forgotten how much later it was when she was walking in another part of the city and came upon another outlet of the bakery. She went in for that favorite treat. The store had just opened. The same owner was there and greeted her. Did she want a job? She went to work within the next few days. There had been plenty of troubles with some of her coworkers. One was an old school retail food clerk. The rest were young people, some of whom were immigrants who could barely speak English. The old school retail clerk always seemed to snap up all the sales. The clerks had separate sales drawers in the cash register. This was either so the boss could tell which clerk made the most sales, or to keep each clerk responsible for their own sales errors. Life was often miserable working in that store with that clerk who so often pushed to grab all the sales.
Soon she was able to transfer to that bakery in the Village. This was much more to her liking. She made friends there. One of these coworkers was still her friend 35 years later. They had had the privilege of waiting tables in the cafe at the back of the bakery. She had worked six years at this bakery. It had been here that she'd started trying to sell those 'art' cards. She would offer to show them to her customers in the cafe and sell them on occasion in this way. When she finally left that job she had gone taken this art to the streets again.
This summer she had received an inquiry from someone who had bought one of those first little landscapes from her. The person told her that she had come into the workplace and shown her paintings. This person still had that little painting and had sent a photo of it to show her. She could remember the painting and could dimly remember going into that business to try to sell her little paintings. However at the time the inquiry came through, she had been too preoccupied with other projects to be able to return the communication. She needed to follow up on this. She had found it so touching to have this person and the forgotten painting of long ago reappear.
There were other instances where her artworks reappeared in her life.
7:12p 2522 words Hah!!!
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Depression over writing with nothing much to say
Depression over writing with nothing much to say
11/13/2011
10:36am
She was lagging in being able to jump right in with non-stop writing. This pace of continually having to turn around in the cycle of the new day to start the writing work all over again felt as if it had hit another wall for her. She was wearying this time. How quickly one's moods shifted. But she was trying. She would see if her mood shifted just by starting.
There had been no problem getting ready for the day, though she had not been rising very early the last few days. She sat down to write very soon after breakfast. She typed some reminder notes in hopes of getting a flow going. It had seemed as if she had written all she needed to say on the previous day, so her expectation was that there could not possibly be anything left to say this time. Nothing much besides the work had taken place in her life the day before, so she had nothing much to tell.
She remembered that her plan had been if there was nothing to write about in terms of insights, reflections, and events, then she should work on making up stories. she was dreading to try this. A strategy to possibly use to work up to making up a story for the foxes for instance ( one of the themes for her art classes), was to lay out the 'who, what, where, when, where, how, and why' for a picture she had just made. One could then start by considering some possible problems the character(s) might face. As one dreamed up the possibilities, one might be drawn to one of these over another. Or would just arbitrarily go with one of the possibilities and start. Was this not like life itself? Life presented a situation and one had to make up where one went with that situation, how one dealt with it.
The foxes...... no, she would put that off for the moment.
10:58a break
11:41 resume
Was it Mama Fox or Papa Fox?
Were the two kits brother & brother, sister and sister, or brother and sister, or, only and foundling/adopted?
What problems might this family or the individuals have?
The parents might have concerns with
get along
communicate well
share the work load
pecking order - power/status - who is boss and when
find food
find shelter
keep the young safe
keep themselves safe/ keep danger away
survive the weather - same as shelter?
respond to enormous changes from effects of nature
cope with loss and sorrow
death of spouse
death of child
pleasure of bounty and abundance
All must deal with:
Flaws and strengths of the individuals.
Advantages and disadvantages of their habitat
Problems in the environment
The kits might deal with
getting along
games they played
who was boss - pecking order
loss of a parent or both
loss of a sibling
disappointment
obeying parents
staying safe when parents are out
learning
sharing food
how to hunt
how to fight
what is dangerous
how their world works
And then there might be the relatives, friends, and neighbors.
Here was a list of possibilities. She was not yet ready to go off on a make believe tangent about foxes. It still felt like it was for another day or another medium. She was unwilling to play with the foxes further. At least she had a list of idea starters. They looked like very basic ideas that could be used with many other subjects. She found herself adding a few more things to the list.
12:03p
The problem with noting the time periodically was that one then should not be inserting more text into the writing that came before the time notation.
This day's writing seemed so disjointed. She feared she had hit that wall. She was balking at even the thought of expanding on the things on the two lists she had going. The act of writing had been going around her head too much. She needed some distance from it. Another reason it was so different to type on this machine than to write by hand was the difference of speed. Presumably writing by hand was slower. She was realizing she could not keep up this non-stop pace. She was again doubting the purpose of thiis challenge for herself. She doubted whether she herself would be willing to reread seemingly endless questions and observations of this process of writing in this manner. No matter how much she tried, she did not seem to be able to write without stopping to reflect. She would have to deliberately slow down the typing pace, so that she could get a true stream of consciousness going. No that was impossible. There was no way to catch all the thoughts. and how could there be a writing piece that was crafted stream of consciousness. a writing that was supposed to be a fictional stream of consciousness? a writer would have to be so good at matching one's writing to ones thoughts that they knew how to imitate stream of consciousness because they had observed and captured their own extensively.
The evening before, she had watched a movie about Winston Churchill and his wife, that took place on the eve of World War II. He wrote extensively - 2000 words a day of articles and speeches that he was constantly putting out. Much of it was dictated to his secretary who then transcribed it. He also wrote by hand.
She had been watching another movie over the past few days, about Philipe Petit and his project to walk a wire between the World Trade Center twin towers. She was intrigued byt his thoughts about being an artist, poet, writer, juggler, wirewalker, and actor. He earned his living as a street busker. This work also financed his bigger projects. It was magic to watch how he spoke - his hands mimicking his words the whole time performing a mini dance of whatever he said and all in a flowing style. They were enchanting to watch. She wanted to do that. She had been thinking for years now how she could combine her visual arts work with her impulses to perform for audiences. That was part of what drew her to the teaching work. She often wondered if that was not what she most wanted about it. Was it the teaching or was it the making of some kind of performance art that involved acting, movement, and image making?
She had no dreams of grand projects the way Philipe Petite and Christo did.
Christo was another artist she found fascinating. He too financed his large projects with his many small related art creations. They both dreamt up large wondrous events or magical moments for many people to witness. To participate in the witnessing was to be awestruck at the wonder one was seeing.
12:39p
She ached to stop writing. It felt like she was spinning her wheels. She felt like this was going nowhere. Her heart was not in it this day. But that was part of the process. She had to get through and hopefully more ideas would arise later. She was rebelling against having to rush out thoughts, having to lay them out without properly forming them. Her list of thoughts to explore in writing, to explain, just felt like too much trouble to go through at the moment.
It had hit her the evening before that she could have used the first person in this writing. All she needed to have done was to write diary or journal entries as insets, much like letters that were inside of novels. It seemed too late to change to that format at this stage. Besides she wanted to see what it was like to carry something through in one manner at such length. It this 'novel' turned out to be about nothing, than so be it. Could this be considered a spontaneous novel? She wondered where she could find other examples of such a novel.
She did not read much fiction anymore. The last fiction she could remember reading was the Patrick O'Brien seafaring series about the Master and Commander. Those had taken her away to far away lands, high adventure, another historical time, other ways of life, intrigue, human nature. It was saad to reach the end of the series. Such series with their engaging characters made one wish one could tell stories like that just to make more of such wonderful experiences for people - to sweep others away in a magic the way one's self had been swept away. To be able to move people the way one had been moved
1:04p
She was creeping along word by word. She was worrying ahead of time. If she was this uninspired this day, how would she find anything to write about on the following day? She was trying to hold herself up to the precedent she had set the previous week. She feared it was unrealistic though. Perhaps it was foolish to start an ambitious project that one was not really sure of why one was doing it. That one did not have enough reason to do it, enough belief in its reason for being. She needed to find that which was most important to her. That had been the struggle with her artistic purpose all along. She still had not gotten clear on that. That question drove her crazy. She went around in circles with it.
Why was she an artist? What did she want to do with art? What did she want her art to do? This was not a matter of arbitrarily deciding with a flip of a coin. She had set aside the little figure inventions she'd been quickly turning out almost daily. They had gone by the wayside the past few days as she'd gotten involved with this writing project and then set about working on her commissioned work. She suspected that it was more because she wanted to move on to the next step with them - to do larger works from them - but she was not yet set up for that.
1:16p yay! she'd reached the word count.
much later:
6:15pm
The afternoon after her writing session had been tortured for her. She did not even know what she'd spent the time on. She had hoped to be able to return to the writing to get a little bit ahead for the following day, even though she really had nothing she wanted to write about.
Mostly she had been caught up in feeling depressed at her suspicions that her chosen writing goal was a mistake. It was pointless. She had felt that in the beginning but then gotten so swept up in the effect it had had on her that she ignored her misgivings. She believed the drama and excitement of it. She felt a fool. She had so wanted to carry this through.
She had, however, learned the power of setting a doable yet challenging goal, to take place over a significant time span, presuming that that engagement was what caused these good effects. She could apply this to something else. Here, though, she was nearly halfway through the challenge, halfway to the goal. She would have to give it at least a few more days. Perhaps things would change.
Another idea that she remembered she could have done to turn her own diary or journal keeping into a fiction, was simply to add a fictional character with whom she might carry on a dialogue, an argument, as events and thoughts moved through the days. She had remembered this from a friend's writing. Was it too late to switch to introduce such a form? Probably. The spell of this particular place of nowhere in particular would be broken.
6:31p 1976 words
11/13/2011
10:36am
She was lagging in being able to jump right in with non-stop writing. This pace of continually having to turn around in the cycle of the new day to start the writing work all over again felt as if it had hit another wall for her. She was wearying this time. How quickly one's moods shifted. But she was trying. She would see if her mood shifted just by starting.
There had been no problem getting ready for the day, though she had not been rising very early the last few days. She sat down to write very soon after breakfast. She typed some reminder notes in hopes of getting a flow going. It had seemed as if she had written all she needed to say on the previous day, so her expectation was that there could not possibly be anything left to say this time. Nothing much besides the work had taken place in her life the day before, so she had nothing much to tell.
She remembered that her plan had been if there was nothing to write about in terms of insights, reflections, and events, then she should work on making up stories. she was dreading to try this. A strategy to possibly use to work up to making up a story for the foxes for instance ( one of the themes for her art classes), was to lay out the 'who, what, where, when, where, how, and why' for a picture she had just made. One could then start by considering some possible problems the character(s) might face. As one dreamed up the possibilities, one might be drawn to one of these over another. Or would just arbitrarily go with one of the possibilities and start. Was this not like life itself? Life presented a situation and one had to make up where one went with that situation, how one dealt with it.
The foxes...... no, she would put that off for the moment.
10:58a break
11:41 resume
Was it Mama Fox or Papa Fox?
Were the two kits brother & brother, sister and sister, or brother and sister, or, only and foundling/adopted?
What problems might this family or the individuals have?
The parents might have concerns with
get along
communicate well
share the work load
pecking order - power/status - who is boss and when
find food
find shelter
keep the young safe
keep themselves safe/ keep danger away
survive the weather - same as shelter?
respond to enormous changes from effects of nature
cope with loss and sorrow
death of spouse
death of child
pleasure of bounty and abundance
All must deal with:
Flaws and strengths of the individuals.
Advantages and disadvantages of their habitat
Problems in the environment
The kits might deal with
getting along
games they played
who was boss - pecking order
loss of a parent or both
loss of a sibling
disappointment
obeying parents
staying safe when parents are out
learning
sharing food
how to hunt
how to fight
what is dangerous
how their world works
And then there might be the relatives, friends, and neighbors.
Here was a list of possibilities. She was not yet ready to go off on a make believe tangent about foxes. It still felt like it was for another day or another medium. She was unwilling to play with the foxes further. At least she had a list of idea starters. They looked like very basic ideas that could be used with many other subjects. She found herself adding a few more things to the list.
12:03p
The problem with noting the time periodically was that one then should not be inserting more text into the writing that came before the time notation.
This day's writing seemed so disjointed. She feared she had hit that wall. She was balking at even the thought of expanding on the things on the two lists she had going. The act of writing had been going around her head too much. She needed some distance from it. Another reason it was so different to type on this machine than to write by hand was the difference of speed. Presumably writing by hand was slower. She was realizing she could not keep up this non-stop pace. She was again doubting the purpose of thiis challenge for herself. She doubted whether she herself would be willing to reread seemingly endless questions and observations of this process of writing in this manner. No matter how much she tried, she did not seem to be able to write without stopping to reflect. She would have to deliberately slow down the typing pace, so that she could get a true stream of consciousness going. No that was impossible. There was no way to catch all the thoughts. and how could there be a writing piece that was crafted stream of consciousness. a writing that was supposed to be a fictional stream of consciousness? a writer would have to be so good at matching one's writing to ones thoughts that they knew how to imitate stream of consciousness because they had observed and captured their own extensively.
The evening before, she had watched a movie about Winston Churchill and his wife, that took place on the eve of World War II. He wrote extensively - 2000 words a day of articles and speeches that he was constantly putting out. Much of it was dictated to his secretary who then transcribed it. He also wrote by hand.
She had been watching another movie over the past few days, about Philipe Petit and his project to walk a wire between the World Trade Center twin towers. She was intrigued byt his thoughts about being an artist, poet, writer, juggler, wirewalker, and actor. He earned his living as a street busker. This work also financed his bigger projects. It was magic to watch how he spoke - his hands mimicking his words the whole time performing a mini dance of whatever he said and all in a flowing style. They were enchanting to watch. She wanted to do that. She had been thinking for years now how she could combine her visual arts work with her impulses to perform for audiences. That was part of what drew her to the teaching work. She often wondered if that was not what she most wanted about it. Was it the teaching or was it the making of some kind of performance art that involved acting, movement, and image making?
She had no dreams of grand projects the way Philipe Petite and Christo did.
Christo was another artist she found fascinating. He too financed his large projects with his many small related art creations. They both dreamt up large wondrous events or magical moments for many people to witness. To participate in the witnessing was to be awestruck at the wonder one was seeing.
12:39p
She ached to stop writing. It felt like she was spinning her wheels. She felt like this was going nowhere. Her heart was not in it this day. But that was part of the process. She had to get through and hopefully more ideas would arise later. She was rebelling against having to rush out thoughts, having to lay them out without properly forming them. Her list of thoughts to explore in writing, to explain, just felt like too much trouble to go through at the moment.
It had hit her the evening before that she could have used the first person in this writing. All she needed to have done was to write diary or journal entries as insets, much like letters that were inside of novels. It seemed too late to change to that format at this stage. Besides she wanted to see what it was like to carry something through in one manner at such length. It this 'novel' turned out to be about nothing, than so be it. Could this be considered a spontaneous novel? She wondered where she could find other examples of such a novel.
She did not read much fiction anymore. The last fiction she could remember reading was the Patrick O'Brien seafaring series about the Master and Commander. Those had taken her away to far away lands, high adventure, another historical time, other ways of life, intrigue, human nature. It was saad to reach the end of the series. Such series with their engaging characters made one wish one could tell stories like that just to make more of such wonderful experiences for people - to sweep others away in a magic the way one's self had been swept away. To be able to move people the way one had been moved
1:04p
She was creeping along word by word. She was worrying ahead of time. If she was this uninspired this day, how would she find anything to write about on the following day? She was trying to hold herself up to the precedent she had set the previous week. She feared it was unrealistic though. Perhaps it was foolish to start an ambitious project that one was not really sure of why one was doing it. That one did not have enough reason to do it, enough belief in its reason for being. She needed to find that which was most important to her. That had been the struggle with her artistic purpose all along. She still had not gotten clear on that. That question drove her crazy. She went around in circles with it.
Why was she an artist? What did she want to do with art? What did she want her art to do? This was not a matter of arbitrarily deciding with a flip of a coin. She had set aside the little figure inventions she'd been quickly turning out almost daily. They had gone by the wayside the past few days as she'd gotten involved with this writing project and then set about working on her commissioned work. She suspected that it was more because she wanted to move on to the next step with them - to do larger works from them - but she was not yet set up for that.
1:16p yay! she'd reached the word count.
much later:
6:15pm
The afternoon after her writing session had been tortured for her. She did not even know what she'd spent the time on. She had hoped to be able to return to the writing to get a little bit ahead for the following day, even though she really had nothing she wanted to write about.
Mostly she had been caught up in feeling depressed at her suspicions that her chosen writing goal was a mistake. It was pointless. She had felt that in the beginning but then gotten so swept up in the effect it had had on her that she ignored her misgivings. She believed the drama and excitement of it. She felt a fool. She had so wanted to carry this through.
She had, however, learned the power of setting a doable yet challenging goal, to take place over a significant time span, presuming that that engagement was what caused these good effects. She could apply this to something else. Here, though, she was nearly halfway through the challenge, halfway to the goal. She would have to give it at least a few more days. Perhaps things would change.
Another idea that she remembered she could have done to turn her own diary or journal keeping into a fiction, was simply to add a fictional character with whom she might carry on a dialogue, an argument, as events and thoughts moved through the days. She had remembered this from a friend's writing. Was it too late to switch to introduce such a form? Probably. The spell of this particular place of nowhere in particular would be broken.
6:31p 1976 words
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Writing, and words.......
Writing and words
11/12/2011
10:37 am
Getting up for the day had been good for her. She felt she'd gotten back on track the previous day. Feeling like that usually carried over into the following day and affected how she felt upon rising it seemed. Still, she wondered whether she was being overconfident in believing she could maintain such momentum just because it felt so strong at the moment. Did one really have to learn to pace oneself or was it ok to go with the ebb and flo of inspiration, mood, motivation? She was always examining just what the factors were that caused her own impulses of motivation.
The previous day she had completed more than the quota of words she needed to write for the Nanowrimo writing challenge of writing a fresh novel during the month of November in a minimum of 50 K words. Her's was still a dubious novel since the only way she'd been able to that quickly come up with an idea for a novel was to write what was in essence her own daily journal but in the third person, a so far unnamed third person, but a 'she'.
She had so far been unwilling to define who 'she' was, even though this created problems in differentiating between the main 'she' and other 'she's that arouse in describing incidents involving other females. They would usually be initially referred to by the noun describing what they did in life, their role, or sometimes their name*, for instance if the person were an author whose work she was referring to.
Neither had she been willing to be specific about certain objects and tools. There just seemed to be certain things she did not want to be specific about yet, if ever. She had seen how this lack of specificity put the writing into an imaginary alternate reality for her. This was how it became fiction for her. This was how she could feel she was meeting the rules of the challenge. Initially this had just been a way to meet the rules. It was a surprise to find how this made the universe of her 'novel' almost instantly become a magical world.
One of the most enjoyable things about writing was that it transported one. To sit writing a story, to make up a story, to make up what the characters did, was exactly like playing with dolls, or playing pretend as a child. The field of play, of action, instead of being a dollhouse or one's room, was the paper. The words tumbled out like tiny characters as they endlessly formed and regrouped while also leaving evidence on the paper of the imaginings, the story, that was going on in the inner vision of the writer. They were worlds of existence always paralling each other somewhat but each spinning outward to go on to live their own lives. The papers with their words, their tracks, could go on to the hands of other people who might then be somehow affected bythem. Their creator could have no way of knowing how far a writing could reach - how far forward in time it could reach. The creator on the other hand, so much liked this form of activity or play, that it was most important to continue the act of imagining and writing, that the previously written was only dimly remembered. There was only so much one could think of, attend to, remember, at any one time.
11:16am
She had often had the conflict as an artist of just why was one doing something, painting a particular painting for instance. She had to have compelling enough reason to follow through on executing a thing once the newness of it had worn off. She liked to churn out ideas, but she was still so ambivalent about why one made art. So ambivalent that she had been doubting for so long whether she was really an artist. She knew she had a certain skill level. She knew others liked what she made, they even wanted what she made. It had never seemed to be a problem to make things that others liked. The problem was in wanting to continue doing it after a vein* seemed to be exhausted.
The 'vein' she had been following for over 15 years now, had long ago seemed played out for her. She felt she'd carried it out far enough and had lost interest in making more art in that theme, because she knew how to do it. It was now just a matter of carrying out known steps. There did not seem to be any further discoveries for her. It always felt like doing so was to be jiggling in place on puppet strings to give people a temporary pleasure. It felt like the work was almost just a service that people could buy. Was there anything wrong in giving pleasure in one's work? It was more than that. She felt she herself had no more to learn from this work. That was its problem. She knew how to do it, She could do it. Because there was nothing new for her in it, she had outgrown it. She needed to move on.
The occasional art commissions she agreed to always weighed her down with such dread. There might be things to learn from this work, but at a cost far higher than anyone could understand. She had never been good at refusing commissions because she hated having to say 'no' and to feel the potential disappointment. *
11:43am
She doubted the value of anything she learned from doing a commission. She was creating a work that would only be of interest to the commissioner. Often the reason the work was wanted seemed at such cross purposes with her values and beliefs. She felt as though her making the art was her sending the message that she held different values and beliefs than she actually did. Was it a kind of lie?
And yet, was it not a lie to be unable to say 'no', because one could not bear to be displeasing to someone in any given moment? These were questions she needed to face. They caused too much inner disharmony to be good. Inner disharmony would not hide inside forever.
11:52a
For now she was continuing with building on the most important things. She would continue in the faith that answers would come to her. Questions would resolve themselves. If she could continue developing the strengths, the things that intrigued her and fed her soul, there would reach a point where there was simply no room for the other and it would be a simple matter to leave it behind. She had to keep her desire and focus on that which moved her the most, that which she loved the most.
11:58a
She had strayed so far from trying to do that continuous writing practice - writing furiously non-stop. She was pausing to reflect. The past few days there had been enough to tell and that she wanted to tell, that she had just gone ahead in that method. This might mean the writing would take longer than if she did not pause. That no longer mattered. That would be a skill to develop at another time. Now she just wanted to do this writing to see if she could carry it off. No, that was not why. It was because doing it had such a powerful effect on her. Of course it was too soon to know how lasting this effect would be. It was certainly giving her a renewed sense of purpose.
It was different than writing by hand in her journal. She was doing that as well. There she got to write in her own voice. Sometimes she had to retell her stories that she'd just gotten done writing for the writing challenge. Was it because her writing challenge she was actually putting out for others to read? Because of that she was leaving out chunks that she would normally write in her journal. Almost since she'd begun her journals she had wanted to be able to share parts of them. She could never go backwards to prep the writing to go out. It would have needed to start out in somewhat readable form.
The writing she was doing now was at least legible in that it was typed. It was unedited, which made her cringe to send it out like that. Once the challenge was over she could resume daily writing with a more critical eye and send that out. First she had to see all there was to learn from completing this challenge. Just the act of taking on this kind of challenge, one that required daily extended work and had something to show for that work was immediate positive feedback. This was a strategy that could be applied to other goals.
12:17p
She had read recently how valuable it was to learn in public. ...She wanted to look further for that reference and to think on that.
12:20
The time was drawing near that she felt done saying what she wanted to say. It was too close to the time it took to do her quota that she was losing focus about it. She wanted too much to check to see how far she had gotten. Perhaps one of these days she would set an alarm and write until the alarm went off.
12:22p
It seemed she had spent too much time pausing in reflection. She was not yet up to the word quota. She might have to return to writing non-stop, to practice that, even if it resulted in too much filler writing. She could not bear having to restrict what she wrote, to restrict her habitual phrases. There had to be a way to properly practice continuous writing. What exercise could one set up for oneself that would teach one to write continuously. She could not think about that now. She could not stop to find the right word. She wanted to use the Piglet voice and simply say over and over again, "oh help" said Piglet. but to even stop for punctuation - yes that was part of the problem with continuous writing, that she was stopping for punctuation and she was always back tracking to fix the characters she had reversed. She had never learned how to type fluently in that way. This too would have to be a separate practice. A practice where one forced oneself to type slowly and carefully at a rhythm that one could keep up. Then over time one could build up the speed. First one had to consentrate on flow and rhthm oh it ws aching not to be able to correct. one could not correct when on epalyed music. the music would be out ther and hear by others. the only way was to practice the phrases until they were mastered then go bact to combining them into larger changes until those were mastered. the one might be in a position to play improvisionally with others. this had been an example of trying to write slowly without correction.'
12:42p
She still wanted to work at reducing the word deficit remaining. What could she write about. This often happened to her while writing her journal. There were so many times where she found herself wanting to write but she could not remember anything else she wanted to tell. She had told all of the previous day's incidents that mattered to her. In this case she would just write 'what else'. She had never tried the method of just scribbling. No, that was not true. She had done that - scribbled nothing - so that it was in effect drawing that looked like writing. What was it about that kind of mark making that was theraputic? She suspected it had to physically feel like writing rather than drawing because the meaning of that motion held deep significance. It was a different form of communication than the making of images. In writing there was an extra step between the forming of the characters and lightening speed with which one constantly reassembled them to form the communication. One made an image by manipulating materials until they resembled at some level what they represented. Both writing and image forming dealt with symbols and symbol making. The extra step in writing was that a relatively small set of symbols were combined to form a communication, a message, a meaning. Whether or not this was an extra step - perhaps just a difference.
12:57p
She wondered what else she could ponder to knock out another chunk of that word deficit. She never wanted to do again what she'd done the other day when she had written a double quota at one sitting, just to make up what she had missed the day before. That had been too intense and had set her back in other ways. To fulfill this challenge she would have to build in for the times she would have to miss her quota. The double teaching day was the most problematic. There had also been the extra problem of having to deal with the car repair that day. Yet, that had been a reminder of the wonderful timing that often took place in the seemingly accidental nature of events.
The next subject she'd worked on with her adult art class had been 'foxes'. What about that idea of writing little stories around the subjects of her monthly art class lessons? She kept forgetting about that idea as she got carried away with writing this journal in the voice of 'she'. That voice now reminded her of Rumpole of the Bailey and the way he frequently said to himself about his wife, "She who must be obeyed." She should come up with some stock dialogue lines and insert them whenever she needed to pause to think. Was that what the chorus of a song was? If this could be done in a song, why could it not be done in writing? Rumpole often recited poetry. She knew no poetry to speak of and just a few lines of songs here and there. She had never been able to learn song words. As a child she would just pretend to sing the words and would sing sounds instead. She still did that if she needed to. Here she wanted to say 'hmmm' in her writing but that would require changing voice.
1:14p 2429 words
What else could she write about? She was reluctant to try a story about the foxes. That sounded like too much to get involved in at the moment. She had also had the idea that she could use the word quota to brainstorm story line ideas. At the moment that too felt too hard to do in this non-stop fashion she was barely trying to fulfill.
Three foxes - a parent stands with two kits peering out of the foxhole. That was the quickie painting she had made that day. The parent and one of the kits looked out at the viewer. The middle kit looked a bit to the side to his right. What had caught its eye? Was the viewer of the painting the same being that the foxes looking out were looking at? Still no story but at least a mention of a possibility of one.
1:23p 2581 words
If she could just go a little further she would be caught up. She did not think she had explained her insight over why it might be important to give form, to actualize more ideas. She had so often questioned whether ideas were worth all the trouble it took to give them form, to bring them out from the inner world and give them a real existence. She was always questioning this because she had to decide whether she could maintain the motivation and emotional energy required to see something through to a further level of execution. That was more because she judged the execution held no further experience, growth, or pleasure for her. Perhaps she needed another way to give form to ideas that she did not want to carry through. They could be expressed in seed form and put out there for others to do what they wanted with. The insight she wanted to express was that any idea or thought was like a being or creature in that when it met the outer world it went on to interact with it in its own manner. Its creator/originator could not control that. Thoughts and ideas had their own lives if given it.
1:42p 2792 words
11/12/2011
10:37 am
Getting up for the day had been good for her. She felt she'd gotten back on track the previous day. Feeling like that usually carried over into the following day and affected how she felt upon rising it seemed. Still, she wondered whether she was being overconfident in believing she could maintain such momentum just because it felt so strong at the moment. Did one really have to learn to pace oneself or was it ok to go with the ebb and flo of inspiration, mood, motivation? She was always examining just what the factors were that caused her own impulses of motivation.
The previous day she had completed more than the quota of words she needed to write for the Nanowrimo writing challenge of writing a fresh novel during the month of November in a minimum of 50 K words. Her's was still a dubious novel since the only way she'd been able to that quickly come up with an idea for a novel was to write what was in essence her own daily journal but in the third person, a so far unnamed third person, but a 'she'.
She had so far been unwilling to define who 'she' was, even though this created problems in differentiating between the main 'she' and other 'she's that arouse in describing incidents involving other females. They would usually be initially referred to by the noun describing what they did in life, their role, or sometimes their name*, for instance if the person were an author whose work she was referring to.
Neither had she been willing to be specific about certain objects and tools. There just seemed to be certain things she did not want to be specific about yet, if ever. She had seen how this lack of specificity put the writing into an imaginary alternate reality for her. This was how it became fiction for her. This was how she could feel she was meeting the rules of the challenge. Initially this had just been a way to meet the rules. It was a surprise to find how this made the universe of her 'novel' almost instantly become a magical world.
One of the most enjoyable things about writing was that it transported one. To sit writing a story, to make up a story, to make up what the characters did, was exactly like playing with dolls, or playing pretend as a child. The field of play, of action, instead of being a dollhouse or one's room, was the paper. The words tumbled out like tiny characters as they endlessly formed and regrouped while also leaving evidence on the paper of the imaginings, the story, that was going on in the inner vision of the writer. They were worlds of existence always paralling each other somewhat but each spinning outward to go on to live their own lives. The papers with their words, their tracks, could go on to the hands of other people who might then be somehow affected bythem. Their creator could have no way of knowing how far a writing could reach - how far forward in time it could reach. The creator on the other hand, so much liked this form of activity or play, that it was most important to continue the act of imagining and writing, that the previously written was only dimly remembered. There was only so much one could think of, attend to, remember, at any one time.
11:16am
She had often had the conflict as an artist of just why was one doing something, painting a particular painting for instance. She had to have compelling enough reason to follow through on executing a thing once the newness of it had worn off. She liked to churn out ideas, but she was still so ambivalent about why one made art. So ambivalent that she had been doubting for so long whether she was really an artist. She knew she had a certain skill level. She knew others liked what she made, they even wanted what she made. It had never seemed to be a problem to make things that others liked. The problem was in wanting to continue doing it after a vein* seemed to be exhausted.
The 'vein' she had been following for over 15 years now, had long ago seemed played out for her. She felt she'd carried it out far enough and had lost interest in making more art in that theme, because she knew how to do it. It was now just a matter of carrying out known steps. There did not seem to be any further discoveries for her. It always felt like doing so was to be jiggling in place on puppet strings to give people a temporary pleasure. It felt like the work was almost just a service that people could buy. Was there anything wrong in giving pleasure in one's work? It was more than that. She felt she herself had no more to learn from this work. That was its problem. She knew how to do it, She could do it. Because there was nothing new for her in it, she had outgrown it. She needed to move on.
The occasional art commissions she agreed to always weighed her down with such dread. There might be things to learn from this work, but at a cost far higher than anyone could understand. She had never been good at refusing commissions because she hated having to say 'no' and to feel the potential disappointment. *
11:43am
She doubted the value of anything she learned from doing a commission. She was creating a work that would only be of interest to the commissioner. Often the reason the work was wanted seemed at such cross purposes with her values and beliefs. She felt as though her making the art was her sending the message that she held different values and beliefs than she actually did. Was it a kind of lie?
And yet, was it not a lie to be unable to say 'no', because one could not bear to be displeasing to someone in any given moment? These were questions she needed to face. They caused too much inner disharmony to be good. Inner disharmony would not hide inside forever.
11:52a
For now she was continuing with building on the most important things. She would continue in the faith that answers would come to her. Questions would resolve themselves. If she could continue developing the strengths, the things that intrigued her and fed her soul, there would reach a point where there was simply no room for the other and it would be a simple matter to leave it behind. She had to keep her desire and focus on that which moved her the most, that which she loved the most.
11:58a
She had strayed so far from trying to do that continuous writing practice - writing furiously non-stop. She was pausing to reflect. The past few days there had been enough to tell and that she wanted to tell, that she had just gone ahead in that method. This might mean the writing would take longer than if she did not pause. That no longer mattered. That would be a skill to develop at another time. Now she just wanted to do this writing to see if she could carry it off. No, that was not why. It was because doing it had such a powerful effect on her. Of course it was too soon to know how lasting this effect would be. It was certainly giving her a renewed sense of purpose.
It was different than writing by hand in her journal. She was doing that as well. There she got to write in her own voice. Sometimes she had to retell her stories that she'd just gotten done writing for the writing challenge. Was it because her writing challenge she was actually putting out for others to read? Because of that she was leaving out chunks that she would normally write in her journal. Almost since she'd begun her journals she had wanted to be able to share parts of them. She could never go backwards to prep the writing to go out. It would have needed to start out in somewhat readable form.
The writing she was doing now was at least legible in that it was typed. It was unedited, which made her cringe to send it out like that. Once the challenge was over she could resume daily writing with a more critical eye and send that out. First she had to see all there was to learn from completing this challenge. Just the act of taking on this kind of challenge, one that required daily extended work and had something to show for that work was immediate positive feedback. This was a strategy that could be applied to other goals.
12:17p
She had read recently how valuable it was to learn in public. ...She wanted to look further for that reference and to think on that.
12:20
The time was drawing near that she felt done saying what she wanted to say. It was too close to the time it took to do her quota that she was losing focus about it. She wanted too much to check to see how far she had gotten. Perhaps one of these days she would set an alarm and write until the alarm went off.
12:22p
It seemed she had spent too much time pausing in reflection. She was not yet up to the word quota. She might have to return to writing non-stop, to practice that, even if it resulted in too much filler writing. She could not bear having to restrict what she wrote, to restrict her habitual phrases. There had to be a way to properly practice continuous writing. What exercise could one set up for oneself that would teach one to write continuously. She could not think about that now. She could not stop to find the right word. She wanted to use the Piglet voice and simply say over and over again, "oh help" said Piglet. but to even stop for punctuation - yes that was part of the problem with continuous writing, that she was stopping for punctuation and she was always back tracking to fix the characters she had reversed. She had never learned how to type fluently in that way. This too would have to be a separate practice. A practice where one forced oneself to type slowly and carefully at a rhythm that one could keep up. Then over time one could build up the speed. First one had to consentrate on flow and rhthm oh it ws aching not to be able to correct. one could not correct when on epalyed music. the music would be out ther and hear by others. the only way was to practice the phrases until they were mastered then go bact to combining them into larger changes until those were mastered. the one might be in a position to play improvisionally with others. this had been an example of trying to write slowly without correction.'
12:42p
She still wanted to work at reducing the word deficit remaining. What could she write about. This often happened to her while writing her journal. There were so many times where she found herself wanting to write but she could not remember anything else she wanted to tell. She had told all of the previous day's incidents that mattered to her. In this case she would just write 'what else'. She had never tried the method of just scribbling. No, that was not true. She had done that - scribbled nothing - so that it was in effect drawing that looked like writing. What was it about that kind of mark making that was theraputic? She suspected it had to physically feel like writing rather than drawing because the meaning of that motion held deep significance. It was a different form of communication than the making of images. In writing there was an extra step between the forming of the characters and lightening speed with which one constantly reassembled them to form the communication. One made an image by manipulating materials until they resembled at some level what they represented. Both writing and image forming dealt with symbols and symbol making. The extra step in writing was that a relatively small set of symbols were combined to form a communication, a message, a meaning. Whether or not this was an extra step - perhaps just a difference.
12:57p
She wondered what else she could ponder to knock out another chunk of that word deficit. She never wanted to do again what she'd done the other day when she had written a double quota at one sitting, just to make up what she had missed the day before. That had been too intense and had set her back in other ways. To fulfill this challenge she would have to build in for the times she would have to miss her quota. The double teaching day was the most problematic. There had also been the extra problem of having to deal with the car repair that day. Yet, that had been a reminder of the wonderful timing that often took place in the seemingly accidental nature of events.
The next subject she'd worked on with her adult art class had been 'foxes'. What about that idea of writing little stories around the subjects of her monthly art class lessons? She kept forgetting about that idea as she got carried away with writing this journal in the voice of 'she'. That voice now reminded her of Rumpole of the Bailey and the way he frequently said to himself about his wife, "She who must be obeyed." She should come up with some stock dialogue lines and insert them whenever she needed to pause to think. Was that what the chorus of a song was? If this could be done in a song, why could it not be done in writing? Rumpole often recited poetry. She knew no poetry to speak of and just a few lines of songs here and there. She had never been able to learn song words. As a child she would just pretend to sing the words and would sing sounds instead. She still did that if she needed to. Here she wanted to say 'hmmm' in her writing but that would require changing voice.
1:14p 2429 words
What else could she write about? She was reluctant to try a story about the foxes. That sounded like too much to get involved in at the moment. She had also had the idea that she could use the word quota to brainstorm story line ideas. At the moment that too felt too hard to do in this non-stop fashion she was barely trying to fulfill.
Three foxes - a parent stands with two kits peering out of the foxhole. That was the quickie painting she had made that day. The parent and one of the kits looked out at the viewer. The middle kit looked a bit to the side to his right. What had caught its eye? Was the viewer of the painting the same being that the foxes looking out were looking at? Still no story but at least a mention of a possibility of one.
1:23p 2581 words
If she could just go a little further she would be caught up. She did not think she had explained her insight over why it might be important to give form, to actualize more ideas. She had so often questioned whether ideas were worth all the trouble it took to give them form, to bring them out from the inner world and give them a real existence. She was always questioning this because she had to decide whether she could maintain the motivation and emotional energy required to see something through to a further level of execution. That was more because she judged the execution held no further experience, growth, or pleasure for her. Perhaps she needed another way to give form to ideas that she did not want to carry through. They could be expressed in seed form and put out there for others to do what they wanted with. The insight she wanted to express was that any idea or thought was like a being or creature in that when it met the outer world it went on to interact with it in its own manner. Its creator/originator could not control that. Thoughts and ideas had their own lives if given it.
1:42p 2792 words
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