February Made Me Shiver

Its been more gray than usual here in North Texas---- reminds me of the endless winters I spent as a kid on Long Island. February meant snow--   momentarily fresh---then quickly old,  covered in the soot of car exhaust and tire tracks.  February meant  boots and cold toes and shivers and  knitted hats and red noses and rosy cheeks.  It meant  coming in for hot chocolate of scalded milk and Ovaltine or the little packets of chocolate powder with tiny marshmallows.  It meant chicken noodle soup and play time getting just a bit longer as winter kicked up its last hurrah. February meant back to ordinary time.  Days of routine now that Christmas and New Year's were weeks behind us.  February was the lull before the whimsy that is March. February is the time to get some work done.

Oh.

Whatever New Year's resolutions we might have made and broken by now are fading into the 'good intentions' stack that gets larger and more cluttered like the back of my closet each year.

We need to have times between the highs and lows of the Christmas season and the lovely, rainy days of Spring.  Time to get our rhythm back and settle in a little deeper to where we find the core of who we are, and hopefully, carefully, sometimes tediously, produce the work that has been waiting to be discovered and pried loose.

February is often the time when Lent begins, which itself is a time of reflection and preparation for Easter.  February means days of deep reflection, without which we cannot hope to produce anything worthwhile.

Writing, at least writing where you have to drop down several levels and dig around in the dark places to find some gems, is hard work.  It is contemplative work.  We need to be able to step into places that are not always comfortable and safe.  We cannot live the whole year in a February state of mind, but I am grateful for these quieter days where the weather and the ordinariness ready me for the soul's work of what I have decided to devote my time to.

Creative Process

I've had a request to write about the 'creative process' sitting in my suggestion box for several months now.  Mea culpa. When my spouse (who got me started on this adventure) pointed out that I have not yet answered the request for a blog on Creative Process,  I countered with my argument that I write about the creative process all the time.  But, I am informed, I need to be more direct.  So, here's direct.

The 'creative process' is a bit of a slippery fish.  It starts early.  In infancy.  In very young childhood.  In all the reflection and memories and dinner table anecdotes that happen at every holiday and family/friend get togethers.  The creative process takes shape in sitting around with friends and  having a beer or a cup of coffee.  We cannot help but engage in the creative process if we tune into life at all.  It is a default setting for anyone with a brain wave. But for those of us who want to take the raw materials that life hands us and turn them into something more, we pay attention, tune in, remember just a bit more acutely than others.

What if we would like to capture that process on 'paper' though?  Turn the process into something a bit more tangible, like a short story, a novel, an essay?  That's where the work comes in.

And it is work.  It is a re-shaping,  selection, a series of decisions about what to include and what to leave out.  It cannot merely be a rambling, every detail re-telling of some long ago event.  That's what unedited video cameras are for, and no one really wants to spend time with unedited video.

In order to take the raw materials of life and turn them into something resembling 'art' we must ruminate, cogitate, write, re-write, edit and edit again before we present the stuff of life and transform them into a gem that we would like to share. We must 'cook' our thoughts and pay attention to our dreams, where we are off guard enough to let some whispers through. Whether we write fiction or non-fiction, imagination and selection are essential.

In a recent article, Digging to China, I wrote about playing in the mud.  In the creative process you have to get a little muddy-- you have to feel the dirt ooze between your fingers and watch as the worms wriggle to freedom.  You have to slap the mud into cakes and have enough imagination to believe they are hamburgers or cupcakes or mashed potatoes or weapons to lob at your brother.  You have to not mind getting messy and dropping down into that experience.  You have to 'make believe' as most young children do naturally, whether what you are aiming at is memoir or the next great novel.

The creative process is not some mystical whoo-whoo encounter with a muse.  Many of us wish it were.  Many of us would like to take dictation from some higher elusive being than slog through memories, create or re-create characters, situations, events.  Many of us would like to wake up in the morning and just type out a fabulous dream that is a little gem ready for publication.  Some writers do seem so gifted.  Most of us, I'm afraid, have to work a little harder and do the digging the old fashioned way.  When we get to the place of exotic treasure and work it into something we are proud of it does feel like we dug all the way to China.

Digging To China

We played outside all summer when I was a young kid. We'd wake up, eat some Cap'n Crunch,  drink lots of milk, lace up the Keds and go out.  I grew up in one of the baby boomer towns on the eastern edge of Queens where it seemed as if everyone on the north side of the Long Island Rail Road tracks went to St. Clare's and had several children per family. We didn't need to ring anyone's doorbell. Kids were out. Playing. Running. Biking. Making up stories and playing out parts. The family on the corner had twelve children so there were always three or four available for Red Rover or Mean Aunt Mary.

Mean Aunt Mary (though I didn't know it at the time) was a way that we kids played out the sometimes confusing dynamics of  our large families.  There was always the very nice, meek, loving Mother in our little dramas, but Mean Aunt Mary was a permanent resident of this make believe world.  We played these parts out in the cellar stairwell in my backyard.   Anne, one of the twelve siblings on the corner, and I took turns being the shrieking, punishing Mean Aunt Mary or the loving Mother who coddled us and gave us grape lollipops.  We would have denied that either of these two characters had any resemblance to our own family members.  It was all make believe. Psycho-therapy at no cost and at its purest.

Digging was another way to pass an hour or so in the summer. Just digging.  Seemed as if every yard (except for the yards of the fussy parents) had a bit of space for the necessary act of playing in the mud (worms and all after it rained) or digging to China.  No, we did not have child sized garden tools.  We had worn down silver plate serving spoons that were a few generations old before they took on the role of spade in the less than perfect lawns of my little town.

Sometimes we'd drag a garden hose over to the plot and make a fine mess.   Dirt under the fingernails, seats of shorts covered in grass stains and mud, shirts used in lieu of towels for the excess mess that our little hands created were all part of the sights and scents of childhood.  My mother had enough good sense to know that this was important, or at least inevitable. Before supper, she'd just run the tub and soak a few of us with Ivory soap and washcloths till we were ready for some more fun, like catching lightning bugs in baby food jars when the sun went down.

We never did dig all the way to China, but we had fun trying.

Waiting for the Muse

I've been working on a novel for quite a while now.  I received an email about writing a 50,00 word novel in one month---- the month of November, no less--but it would have to be a new work.  I did consider it, thought maybe this would be a good way to shake up my brain, get in touch with my intuition, banish my workaholic inner editor.  But, but----it's not that I'm procrastinating, it's that I have devoted so much time, so much living with the characters that I am discovering--- shaping and writing the words, yes, but there is another process at work here.  This process is something I have glimpsed, even grasped in my writing before.  Then, like a dream, a shot of steam, a billboard on the side of the ride that we drive by too fast to read, it is gone. I don't want it to be gone. I want it to stay around, have a cup of tea with me, drop ideas and dialogue into my head and let me think that these flashes of brilliance are my own.  You know when you are having a great conversation with intelligent people and the energy escalates and makes everyone just a bit smarter, as if the group IQ just shot up the scale?  That boost in intelligence, sadly, often disappears when the conversation winds down, but it was there like an energy field or a host of angels or--- to borrow an ancient personification, a muse.

I want my muse to move in with me, infuse me with great ideas over morning coffee, hover about inconspicuously when I sit in front of my laptop and open my documents.  I want her to whisper to me while I sleep so I awaken eager to get my fingers dancing over the keyboard.

But--- well, I suppose I have drawn an ornery sort of muse.  A moody muse.  A muse who gets mad at me when I await her dictation.  My muse who wants me to work, to grapple, to dare, to jump into the messiness of life and come up with words that are buried just below the surface and sometimes buried deep-- deeper in the mine than I can comfortably go.  But that's it.  Writing is uncomfortable.  Writing asks us to be brave and risk putting our selves, our souls, out there for the world to ignore or scorn or if we are so blessed, to read  and see that we have hit some truth of human nature.

Still, after all this time, I want my muse to show up because words just flow smoother and truer when she sweeps in.  So, muse, wherever you are, I'll put on the kettle and set out some snacks, so please stop by and whisper something wonderful.

Legacy

Sitting on the cool basement floor, legs splayed on the blue linoleum squares, my knees hold the cover of a large colorful book. I lean against the boxy yellow bookcase that holds childrens books when I am not bent over examining a picture or outlining the shapes of words with my small fingers.  Mom is doing laundry in the back room, the basement door opened to let in the breeze.  Blossoms from the apple tree float down the concrete stairwell, itself the location of many games.   The breeze smells sweet, the jalousy windows have been turned open letting in the air and the occasional noise of a passing car or people walking past the house or birds calling to each other.    My thick 'mink blonde' hair is held back from my face with a barette.  I wear pale cordouroys and a pink cardigan with pearl like buttons.  Mom has tied the laces of my black and white oxfords securely so I don't trip. The oversized childrens books have been well used by the time I get to treasure them.  There are crayon scribblings from older siblings, and many which I myself have added.  We don't think of this as desecrating a book, no, it is much more like being part of the book, part of the story that the books tell. They make their mark on us and we return the favor.

My grandfather's collection are housed in the more serious bookcases. I touch the paper wraps on the hard covered books, the smooth feel of heavy paper, triangles bent and yellowed where they have caught on a table, or been jostled in the carrying, seem to my young mind to give these books a weight of seriousness, an entry into a world bigger than my basement library, bigger than my backyard covered in fallen blossoms, bigger than the smell of fresh laundry on clothesline that looks like a tree in yard.  For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, the collected works of Poe, Dickens and Shakespeare are some of the titles that intrigue me.  I plan to read these works someday when I am big like Mom and Dad.

On its own table sits the king of books: an ancient Oxford Dictionary.  The inside of the leather cover is done up in a faded paisley and the pages have been swept with gold paint on the edges re-iterating the importance of this formidable work.  Through the years I open this book with great curiosity, with a sense of stepping into a large and brilliant world where ideas are born and lives are shaped.  From time to time I would retreat to the basement with a blue fountain pen and a marbled notebook and copy words and definitions of words from that great book.  Being left handed, I felt pride at the ubiquitous blue stain on my pinky, because, well, because that was witness to my love of words and writing them.

I never met the grandfather whose books now lined the basement of our house.  But I learned something of him through stories.  He was printer, an editor, a writer, a speaker, and of course, a reader.  He obviously loved books because this is the treasure we inherited from him.  This is his legacy to me, a fellow lover of words, of the texture and smell and sight of books, of the way words sound on the tongue and their history, their evolution through the languages of humanity.