Progress

I've made some progress on my novel this week. Yeah!!  I've had a long stretch of thinking of scenes and situations and movement of the work, but very little of actually putting words down in the documents. Last week, though, my writers group had its reunion after a summer break. This is our second year of meeting, so we decided to up the game a bit. There are four of us scribblers and after a year of sharing our work and witnessing the only man among us finish two, count 'em, two books which will come out early in 2010, we agreed we can all reach a little higher.

We are sending each other some kind of writing: good, bad or indifferent, at least once a week to keep us on task. Let's face it, there are always other things you can be doing than hanging around your desk pushing words around. There's always laundry or cooking or raking leaves, and don't forget all the wonderful stuff on television. And, most importantly, don't forget books. After all, you can not progress as a writer unless you read.  Voluminously. So, there, reading books is honing the craft. Except when it becomes an excuse not to write. That is one sin I will admit to in public.

We will continue to meet in person once a month and at that gathering, hopefully, we will have polished our bigger works through the process of sending smaller pieces each week. I would like to be finished with a respectable draft of my novel by next May. That's 7 months from now. Now that I've said it, hopefully I will have enough of the diligent student left in me to complete my own assignment.

I don't know if I would have made any progress at all without having a group to share with and be accountable to.  So, thanks guys.

Control

I play computer solitaire. A lot. I started playing solitaire when I wrote a weekly column.  I found it relaxed my brain just enough to let the ideas I had roaming around take root and form themselves into something I could write about.  Some people fold laundry or wash dishes (by hand, of course, or it defeats the purpose).  I came upon solitaire as the almost mindless activity to cook writing ideas.  My hands are engaged and minimal brain activity is required.  I've been using this technique for years now, trying to avoid any sense of competition with myself, or the game, for higher scores.   ( I do confess, I have at times succumbed to the, shall I say, addictive quality of the game, but that is another matter.)

Yesterday morning, going through my usual routine of coffee, dog on the lap, feet on the desk and reading my email and the NYTimes e-newspaper, I started my next task (don't laugh) of pulling up solitaire to get my brain in the mood for writing.  But, lo and behold!  e gads! somehow the computer decided to switch me from the easy paced, who cares what the score is, standard game to the Las Vegas version, which has a totally different scoring system, and, worse and worser! it takes away the points you have earned if you are not quick enough to add to the score.  No lolly-gagging in this cruel version.  I'd go along at my usual slow pace, because, after all this is a device to help relax my brain, not engage it in Olympic style competition.  I became agitated.  A call to my husband/computer guru resulted in me losing most of my points during the course of the conversation.  What the......

So, then it got more interesting.  He, the guru, sent me an email while we were conversing.  I opened the email and a click here and there, and voila! I had given over control of my laptop to my husband who at the time was several miles away.  He somehow (magically, I believe) wrests control of the aberrant solitaire game, waves his magic wand over the hidden waves of whatever technological wonders that makes this thing work and returns my lazy paced, who cares what the score is game to my laptop.

Yes, I was relieved.  But..... How did the game just decide to switch to the Las Vegas scoring without me knowing?   How did I lose whatever illusion of control I had over my humble laptop when my husband could just extend his reach 35 miles and fix it?  And then, when I got up from my desk chair to make another cup of coffee, my darling Frankie, (he's my small dog, in case you were wondering) hops into my seat.  Control, huh.  The ultimate illusion.

September

September is almost over and I have not added to this blog in several weeks.  You'd think after 18 years in the grand state of Texas I'd be used to hot brown Septembers, but, no, I still cannot adjust.  Stubborn, you say?  Well, yes.  Always have been and I don't see that changing anytime soon. September still means to me cooler weather, sweaters, leaves  goldening on the branch to fall to the ground in October and November, and then of course, raking a big pile of leaves and jumping into them in anticipation of the snow mounds to come in December and January.  September means new notebooks and pens, new books and back to school trying to soak it all in.  September means a fresh start after the stifling days of August.  Alas, I live in Texas where Autumn is just a fairy tale concept stolen from lively photos of other, far away places.

You'd think, wouldn't you, that after 18 years in this warm (okay, hot) climate I would have come to appreciate the mild winters -- and yes I do.  That snow that was so fun to jump in and build igloos and snow forts turns to black slush and the glamour of the white crystals that fall from the sky are not as romantic when you are an adult trying to drive on the icy and slushy roads.

So, I long for cool crisp days  with that sweet smell so different than summer in the breeze.  If you are a cynic you might say that the goldening leaves are a sign of death and decay.  But it all depends on how you look at it.  They will always be to me a promise of renewal, a new start, a glorious ending to the full cycle of the years we are given.

Most importantly, though, those magnificent trees of glorious golds and reds and oranges are beautiful.  And missing such a glimpse of heaven is my bow to the wonders of God.

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.

Alchemy

I am now part of Alltop - Top Writing News .  I mention this for two reasons:  1- because they asked me to; and 2-  because Networking is what we do on the Internet, is it not? Since writers are in the communication 'business', sharing ideas, tips, just having a conversation, a disagreement, an explanation, an elucidation, etc., etc., this being part of a circle that gets larger and larger helps shrink the world a bit.  The setting for telling stories changes from sitting around the campfire to the kitchen table and so on down through our history, but the need to tell stories is a very human.  We can cross cultures and generations at such speed, you would hope we could all understand one another better.  Hope, too, is a very human quality.

I read through a few of the other writing sites on Alltop and came across this thought on Writing Forward comparing the ancient pursuit of alchemy to the creative process:

In the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance, alchemy was a form of chemistry and philosophy that sought to turn baser metals into gold and discover the elixir of life. A more modern definition of alchemy is the magical ability to change a common substance of little value into a substance of great value.

Creativity is inherently linked to alchemy. Our life experiences, thoughts, and ideas are of little value until we channel them into something of substance — a compelling book, a mesmerizing piece of art, or a dazzling performance. Creative people, such as writers, artists, and performers, are alchemists on a quest to transform the stuff of the mind and body into something that others can experience and enjoy. (How to Be More Creative)

From what I gather, most writers churn and tumble and cook and let settle our own life experiences and the observations and confessions we have been privy to.  Whether what we have been bouncing around our brains turns into fiction, non-fiction or poetry, we have done something to those gems of memory and transformed them into something new.  And in the process, we the writer, the storyteller, the artist or the grandma telling stories of way back when to her descendants, are shaped and changed by the reflection and the re-working of the story into something that is our own. And we have to let it go, because it will be something new again to those we hand it on to.

I rather like that thought.  That if we take the stuff of our lives to create a story, a painting, a poem, we have worked it with our 'hands' the way a potter turns mud into a pitcher, or a jeweler takes a rock and turns it into a ring.  We all do that in some form, whether we label ourselves writers or not.