It’s been obvious that my blog’s winding down - as are so many blogs I read.

For me, it was the emotional work of this past winter. I had my words disappear for awhile while I was dealing with a rough patch. Happily, I seem to be working free of that: please join me in knocking on wood, crossing fingers, warding off the evil eye, and other superstitious juju.

But a barometer of feeling better has been my urge to blog, and I am having blog posts show up in my head recently with some regularity.

I’ve not been writing them, thinking “Oh, that’s silly, your blog is over.” And I don’t seem to want to write a post that leads to another, and then there’s a furious month or two… and then it shuts down because I’m too busy.

Busy is about to start for serious. Tate’s going to start kindergarten: full day. When I’m able to find a job (more superstitious juju, pls) I’ll be a working mom, and this time with a novel to revise. Plus, I’m now on a committee for one organization, and a board of directors for another… so there’s all these chores that will get squeezed into my not at work time, and I’m just too lazy for all of that.

I’ve had people suggest I’m not lazy -  but really it’s just that lazy, for me, often looks like work. It’s just whimsical, self-directed work. When I get going on something, I might as well be asleep for all the outside world matters or is able to intervene; and if there is time, I will find something to learn about/obsess about, etc….

If there isn’t time, and my interests are intriguing, then the dishes will sit in the sink and I will ignore the kids.

“MOM! MY HAIR’S ON FIRE!”

“Mmm. Shhh, okay, I’m trying to work this out…”

“MOOOOOOM!”

“*Please* stop whining!”

….So part of not blogging is because I’m worried that I’ll end up blogging when I should be doing any number of other things. ‘Course, the other side of not blogging is worrying that I’ll start doing it again, and then, just when I get rolling, stop-and-feel-neglectful.

I enjoy The Bloggess. She is rude, funny, and humane.

This site may amuse you.

Over the past few years, as life circumstances have changed, I’ve found myself drifting. I’m not great at drifting; I flail and get frustrated and impatient. I like a wee side of control on my life plate and not having a five year plan of any sort is hard for me. My five year plans of late have been either in error or cancelled due to unforseen circumstances, and novel writing isn’t something I feel I can plan on. So I’m learning to let go.

Trying to learn to let go, at least.

*

I remember the summer after Tate was born sitting on the porch at Mole Hill with a friend. My family was close by and coming for dinner later. I was laughing and holding the baby, who was sleeping, and the older kids were playing in the pool. I’d been gardening. Neighbours dropped by the fence to talk and the world hummed around me. I thought that this was it; we’d made it.

Sure, there were life stresses! But they were mainly the stresses of a life I loved, and in that love I experienced a feeling I’d only recently discovered: fear. I was suddenly confronted with common fears I’d never had – fear of time passing, of illness and death, of growing old and the kids growing up. I had fear that I might ‘get hit by a bus’  and miss out. I’ve never stressed much about these things as a kid, maybe in part due to a misguided belief in my immortality. But in the ”we’ve arrived!” moment I grieved the time passing - in a way I hadn’t grieved other moments I’d deeply loved and experienced fully while they were happening.

The difference, I think, was that the moment was a culmination of efforts. I’d been working for that moment for many, many years with those around me pulling also at the oars.

I was a kid like Marcus in Nick Hornby’s “About A Boy” –  a dorky earnest hippie kid who decided that tribe was necessary in order to relax and enjoy life. In that moment that summer, I felt like we’d done it; built family and tribe in a great loose conglomeration of individuals and places.

Suddenly, there was something to lose.  

*

It wasn’t much after that that life got complicated again, as life does. We’ve lost things and gained things. The moment passed, as moments do; but with it, I lost (and am perhaps still grieving) some of my Marcus motivation.

If my life to 31 was about figuring out how to be with people in place, it has moved on. That 12-year old hippie dork motivation can’t be the drive and focus for me anymore; still important, it’s not gone, it’s just not central to my learning and exploring. I suppose drifting is about searching for another emotional motivation to focus my drive.

Of course, fiction may be it: that fiction is complicated, sometimes painful, and definitely uncertain right now is no different than the fluctuating interpersonal work I was doing in my early twenties. But I’m having trouble envisioning how supporting it is going to work come September, since these days there are other demands than there were in my yoot. So I’m drifting, trying to be open to a stirring of self, waiting for pull one direction or another. Right now, I feel like I’m starfishing through space, not seeing what planet I might aim for.

While spinning I’ve noticed something odd: this drifting has, over the past year or so, been pulling me out of words. Non-fiction words, at least – I have written a novel over that time, so it’s not like I’m completely dry.

But it’s the more everyday words that have been running slower. Online comments, posts, tweets, screeds, and Facebook status updates, for example.  I used to have to work to constrain to reasonable levels, but these days they’re sort of elbows and knees awkward on the page. Simple conversation and small talk also seems awkward on my tongue – I run out of sentence before I get to the end of the thought.  I feel a bit like that Star Trek episode where they discovered an alien race who spoke only in mythological reference -  I’ve gone vague.

It’s a little ironic to spend so much time in considering communication as a possible life path and then realize you’re having a hard time finding words in the day to day.

I’ve attributed to it at times to negative things – stress, depressive anhedonia, anxiety, lack-of-confidence, being out-of-culture. But by itself, without me poking at it for explanation, it’s sometimes quite pleasant. I simply don’t have anything to say.

I think that’s me, with fewer tribal attachments. Maybe the next part is growing up, working; the 12-year old hippie dork now 35 and aiming the energy into other pursuits. 

That’s fine, if strange.

Though I’d still like a pursuit I can envision a five year plan for.

There’s only one ms left out there now. Most are back – and all in all, it was a successful query run for me, where success means agents were intrigued and interested and positive but didn’t know where/how to sell it, or it wasn’t right for them.

I know I should get together my list of the next 25 agents, the slightly-more-likely ones that are probably not getting quite as many queries per day. That was the plan. I also will query the Canadian agents – I didn’t apply to Canadian agents, because there are so few, and I had hoped there’d be some clear notes on this book like there were with Eureka.

However, I am weary. There aren’t any suggestions, which makes it hard to know if there’s anything I could do to make it more likely I’ll succeed. And I have a new project.

I really hate this marketing part. I’m finding myself in a pretty good frame of mind overall about writing as my heart’s calling and clerking for the money in some capacity. Still, I find a rejection, even a positive one with a side of encouragement, is putting me in an emotional hole and the work of climbing out of those holes makes me tired and takes time.

On Q today, Jian interviewed Stephen Ashton, a Tofino district councilor, about preventing corporate chains from getting a toehold in Tofino. On the Q blog, the vast majority of respondants support the idea. You have a few who say “Let the market decide” – but really, the market is happy to have child labour, 7 day work weeks, and slaves, and an individual “voting” with their wallet makes far less of an impact than individuals voting their feelings, for the simple fact that when you’re in a given system, you are somewhat forced to play the game. If everyone’s children are doing labour, and that’s the only economic way to pay for supper, withholding doesn’t work. Similarly, when tourists have only local businesses to chose from, the money stays local.

I say, let the market decide this way: Unbrand Tofino. Or rather, brand Tofino with Tofino, and that means no corporate chains. Then anyone who can’t go 24 hours without WalMart, Tim Horton’s, or McD’s can decide to vacation somewhere else.

And I will go to Tofino, and be so bloody happy to have gotten away from it all.

The thing you’d have to do to make it feasible: grandfather existing outlets and  make dispensation for energy sources that are more or less the only options. I might also consider allowing banks, although going for more local (Vancity, Coast Capital, other Credit Unions)  might be a solution. Because those banks really are making me tired, what with the fact that our government is underwriting their own version of subprime and they keep eating profit hand over fist. But banking reform – well, that’s another post.

Today, M. came by and the kids played in the watery afternoon sun in the backyard while I dug weeds and started clearing the space for my garden.

I’m going to spend a lot of time digging weeds, I think. I have a little garden started – a few strawberries, a blueberry plant – but I need some things before I can commence in earnest. A better spade; some compost from the city; some sand; an edge trimmer that works. I’m going to grow carrots and potatoes, limit myself to one tomato plant – since I’m not a canner, and no one in my house but me likes raw tomatoes – and maybe against the shed wall where there’s a lot of light, try a pepper. They’ve never worked in the past, but I won’t let that stop me.

The kids decided they were going to play farmer, inspired by a long stalks of grass-to-seed they found and chomped between their teeth. So they imagined pigs and chickens, cows and sheep and goats. They fed and slopped the pigs; Ripley declared that he had a gold medal in milking.

At some point, they all switched into horrible southern accents, somewhere between the Texan oil-patch, Wise Guys, and a speech impediment. “Eh. Yo. Pardnah. Digja wanna me to meeyulk da cow?”

I had to hold onto my laughter to enjoy more. M. asked – “can you talk like that, Arwen?”

It is therefore my fault if the children start calling each other “l’il lady.”

Ah-yup.

So, Great Ideas Are Brewing! Yessss. Excitement to start anew! Hurray!

Only we were hit by this cold/flu thing - mine came with added hubris, because I thought I’d missed it entirely. Also, the wholelympics thing. Also, random disturbances in the force. However, tonight would have been a great time to start.

Only, no. I’m playing a Twitter app, and watching movies.

That works, too. Going to have to start SOON though. Wednesday, I’m looking atchoo.

So here I am, at the beginning again. INSIGNIFICANT HOLY is out, and so far the notes have not had an eye toward rewriting, so I just have to keep sending and hope that someday, my prince(ss) of an agent will come. In the meantime, there is life to live.

Having given up on the idea of “Not Writing but Instead Being Sensible” as a beautiful dream I once had, I went through an abbreviated version of my normal end of project doubt. I always think it’s unwise to continue allowing myself this dangerous and time wasting hobby, and try to convince myself to give it up. It’s practically a ritual now: an attack of the “Why am I doing this? What the hell? Am I crazy?” I know that I’m not the only one who has this attack, but I think it happens to different people at different times. Some writers it gets mid-project, some before they start. And some not at all. If I’m going to have it, I’m lucky that it comes at the end, but at the same time, it is FULL OF ASS.

However, when you’re sending out, you’re involved in the least fun part of not being sensible. The only cure for the angst is the fun of a new project.

SO! I’ve now written 3 novels- 2 standard, 1 three-day – and 1 play, and I thought I’d document the process of how I start a new big project.

1) Stewing

Generally I have a few obsessions wandering about in my head at any given time. Opinions, ideas, things for which I would like to receive grant money to study; they usually have some open question or questions, some what if, that I find interesting. Whatever what ifs are most interesting to me right now tend to become part of what I’m working on, although that can go different ways: structure, plot, theme, environment or character. I need to have something(s) to draw a story from. It’s important for me, at least, to understand my current obsessions so that they fit. What am I going to be thinking about anyway – which “whatifs” could I use to make into something interesting?

However. I most importantly need a character. Characters only ever come to me through writing, and that’s really a butt in chair proposition. I need to just write. Writing exercises are a good thing for me: I sometimes write short stories just to see if I can meet someone. I think Insignificant Holy worked because the writing exercise that spawned Verona was the right exercise at the right time. She showed up and grabbed me. 

2) Sketches

Once I have obsessions and character, I have to kick the story around somewhat. This tends to be a combination of things – plotting (which will probably go out the window, but you need to have some idea which way you’re setting out, even if by midday you’re off in a different direction), and writing exercises/snapshots around details of the novel.

I kicked Eureka around for a good year or two before sitting down to write; it was a deeply plotted and considered novel. I was going to write a play, y’see, but it just didn’t come out that way.  My 3 day novel was a combination of character and issue and ended up a very mild mannered soft boil mystery – I was going to do something around the idea of a dispassionate, average, untroubled main character dealing with complex externalities. There was my whatif. I found my character when she was dealing with her husband’s death. I sort of feel that I didn’t do right by her: the novella turned into a soft boil mystery, some of the interesting whatifs died, and she became more of a cartoon of herself.

Well, it was three days.

Anyway, Verona’s story sketched up more quickly, and I think that’s the best plan for me. It tends to keep me honest. I do need a couple sketches and a loose plot, even still. If this goes well, and I keep getting excited, then eventually, I’ll get so far as…

3) Chapter One.

The first chapter for me is the proof. Either it works, or it doesn’t. If I’m not driven to write a second chapter, and instead futz around researching or reading or fretting, the project’s doomed.  I’ve had a few ideas slide back into the story file because they’ve  just not caught – maybe I’ll take the whatifs for a spin at some other time, with some other characters, but if my main character fizzles through chapter 1, she or he isn’t for me.

4) Everything else

There’s another “break point” for a novel for me – my very first attempt was a crime drama back in 2001, with an interesting super villian – and I walked away at 20,000 words. I’ve realized this is significant.

20K is usually about the end of Act 1, in an 80K novel. (I tend to write 80K novels). In the novella, it was sooner. That transition, between Act1 and 2, is where you go from dating a book to committing to it. It’s like the end of your first year of dating someone, when it stops being new and starts being a serious relationship.

I think I’m pretty good at knowing (both in relationships and novels) before the end of the first year/first Act whether something’s working out for me; so if I get to that 20K and things are difficult, I tend to push on.

It’s hard, looking at the long middle space where the real depth is, to feel up to the challenge. I’ve exhausted the thrill of chasing the whatif, and the character is no longer this exciting new stranger here to titillate me. Now, the buckling in is required. I think, as with relationships, having a sense of humour about the thing helps.

***

So, I’ve started a new project. It’s in step 2 – I’ve got my obsessions lined up, I’m a number of sketches into development, there are at least 2 characters who I can work with, and I’ve got a rough plot. Very plotty sci-fi novel: but I still have to work that first chapter through to see if it works. I’ve been sick this week; will have to get there next.

Fun link: Code Organ analyses the site at an URL to translate it into music.

The blogs that live at Geckotemple with the same install of wordpress don’t sound the same, so theme is at least analyzed, and maybe text?