Writing requires that you live close to the bone…

You know you have written something good when it makes you shake.  When others read it and admire it and you, and you shake.  My writing group pal exhibited shaking behavior this week when I told him how great his latest chapter is.  Thank you, he said, fists up to his chest, and then a shiver.

I know that shiver.  It happens when you have made it through to the zone and something good has come of it.   You have done this thing you always wanted to do and you may have even done it well.

In order to write well you have to pull apart the layers between yourself and your true thoughts and emotions and allow access to your memories and experience.  You have to enter your own subconscious.  And yet, we know what is on the other side of all those layers.  I know how scary that place is.  It is where I run out of excuses for being who I am and who I am not.  It is where I keep my tears and rage and where everything I ever did wrong is still standing there with its tongue out.  It is where snarky won’t save you.  Sarcasm can’t help you.  Anyone and their words can get you there.

I hate that place.  I love that place.  And when I go through there, it is hard, but it is always better when I reach the other side and enter the zone.  I have laid down my weapons and I am ready to parley and it is so very quiet, finally.

I have read Chogyam Trungpa.  I have been on a mediation retreat.  I understand the value of looking past whatever keeps you from the real for however long it takes.  I believe in the value of stillness.  Without frequent solitude, I begin to be afraid that I will not find my way back there.  I know I have to quiet my mind and breathe and let my mind be at ease.

What I did not understand is that writing would require me to live there most of the time.  And now some days I go around trying to scare up my bitterness and sarcasm, they who have served me so well for so long, and I find they are exhausting companions.  I cling to their familiarity, even while they keep me from what I love most.  Eventually they die of exhaustion and I find myself right there in the place of my old real self, ready to write, all heart and naked bone.

And anyway I am losing the knack and the need for protection.  So I keep writing and try to listen for the story.  Because what I find when I let go of my illusionary protectors, is that my characters are waiting for me and they will guide me through if I will only listen to them.

© Margaret Grant and mag offleash, 2011-2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

Aidan Powell, my new favorite muscian

What I love about this guy is how much he loves the music.  Enjoy.

 

8 year old covers Train, Hey Soul Sister! – YouTube.

Seventy sheets wide-ruled…

Today I got four notebooks at Staples for two bucks.  Fifty cents each.  What a bargain, what a treat.  Blank paper, wide open and empty except for the possibilities.  I love them.  They are wire bound with card stock covers in a range of colors, wide-ruled because I am a big hand, seventy sheets each so it doesn’t take too long to fill them up and begin a new one all over again.  I can be this happy again in only seventy pages.

I write by hand in my journal and use my Mac book for the real writing.  Did you hear what I said, real.  But my journal is who I tell everything to and these seventy pages hold my life.  I have kept a journal since I was ten or eleven years old.  Once when I was home from school sick someone gave me Louise Fitzhugh’s, Harriet the Spy.  I have kept a journal ever since.  No one has read it, that I know of, except for once.  In eighth grade English class and for a reason I forget, we had to switch seats.  Everyone got up and moved and left their books and notebooks on their usual desks.  A classmate was reading at the front of the room, and yet something made me turn my head to see Randy Begins (I still remember his name.  I can still see him) slowly turning a page of my hardback composition book.  My journal.  I stood up immediately, although this was forbidden, and with my eyes down and quietly, I walked to him, closed the journal, smiled at him, picked up my journal, and returned to my borrowed seat.

As far as I know, in more than forty years, Randy Begins is the only one ever to read my journal.  I didn’t even get in trouble for leaving my seat.  I was right.  He was wrong.  Give me detention, I don’t care.  Just don’t read my journal.

© Margaret Grant and mag offleash, 2011-2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

Writing wardrobe…

I thought you might be interested in what I wear when I write.  I know that I would be very interested in hearing the same from you.  Whenever I am invited anywhere or have to show up somewhere and look respectable (fortunately this hardly ever happens) the first thing I think of is, “What will I wear?”  So it matters to me, I guess.  First of all as I write this be aware that it is about twelve degrees Fahrenheit outside and I don’t crank the heat too high, since it is required from early October through the end of April most years and it ain’t free.  My study has only one small heat vent and because there is a lovely view, my table is next to the windows.  The floor is ancient, deeply sloping pine and it is a corner room with three windows.  The house is over 200 years old.  You begin to see.

Little dog is wearing her own coat, of course, short but dense.  On top of this she wears a polar fleece jacket.  She is sleeping and has gathered her wool blanket against her guts, so she can’t be too cold right now.  I typically write on my laptop set on a wooden table.  The laptop is a Mac book with an aluminum casing, classy but freezing.  So I wear fingerless mittens with long cuffs because one cannot, absolutely cannot bear the feel of freezing aluminum on the delicate underside of a human wrist.

Of course, whatever else you wear, you cannot type with your muffled wrists resting on a laptop if you have a button on your cuff.  It goes, “scritch, scritch” every time you move, so no button cuff jackshirt.  And if you’ve ever lived in a cold climate, you know that you must have a close-fitting layer next to your skin at all times.

In order to be able to stay here and write to you then, I have on an oversized wool sweater over a Polar fleece zip pullover, Polar fleece pants, long underwear top and bottom, thick wool socks, and sheepskin slippers.  Oh yeah, and the fingerless mittens.  If I am feeling chilly I add a muffler wrapped around my neck.  Most of the winter time, this is enough.  There is always that down vest, hanging on the back of my door…

Fortunately, I love the cold weather – really love it.  Nothing makes me feel more alive than walking outside in life-threatening weather and surviving it.  But when I am outside, I keep moving.  Inside, sitting down and writing is cold, lonely work and I hope you appreciate the sacrifice…

© Margaret Grant and mag offleash, 2011-2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

Not there yet…

I searched on line for the latest thoughts on the acceptable word count for a novel and found it to be 70 or 80k to 100k for most genres.  Agents and editors are used to seeing manuscripts that are too long and most of what I read urges writers to be more succinct.  While I find it reassuring that I have at least achieved that, it leaves my story, at 37k words, less than halfway complete.  Dandy.  I have printed out the latest draft and am fighting the urge to toss it on the table and say, “Fine, I don’t have anything else to say about this story, so forget it.  I’m done.”  Because I know this story so well, it is difficult to truly know what pieces of it should be expanded upon.

Working with the input of my writers group I have eliminated one period of time in the story that was just not as strong and did not lead anywhere.  So now the story is stronger, but shorter.  Perhaps the thing to do is set it aside for a little while and then read the entire piece from start to finish and see if I can find the holes.  I may also ask someone else to read it.  I am at the point in my writing where I could use some solid, objective professional feedback.

Maybe I will try to listen to my characters and see who feels like they have more to say.  Maybe someone feels left out.  I hope I can trust them and listen…

© Margaret Grant and magoffleash, 2011-2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

Zero degrees and sunny…

Went out early to walk in fresh powder snow that fell all day yesterday.  It is clear and cold, finally, my favorite time of year.  The long trudge through the snow, discovering coyote tracks, and the cold have settled us, little dog and me, so that now she is sleeping and I am clawing my way toward focusing on writing.  I need about 4k more words on my novel, most of which need to reveal the main character in more depth, which some how is very challenging for me.  I think she is more risky, closer to the bone.  When I try to think about her, my brain cranks the wheel sharply away, nope, not there.  So I wait for her to come to me and don’t push her.  That’s supposed to work, I guess.  I’ll let you know…

© Margaret Grant and magoffleash, 2011-2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

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Thirty-four degrees and snowing…

I have a stockpile of things to tell you.  Give it time.  The snow slides from the roof today, the pipes shake inside the walls.  My dog is hungry.  Here.  Here now, is the truth of it.  I’m writing to you because I rattle around this house every day while outside December tries so hard to be winter that it breaks my heart.  I have a novel in progress, poems that do not wait.  I work at home, alone, writing.  The greatest challenge for me is to walk the slow road from sorrow, find the shards of my focus and good intentions along the way, and reassemble them.  Misfortune has landed me here, in this tiny study, with the time to write.  In order to write anything at all, I have to accept that.  Then I have to forgive myself and the world when I write anything good.  It is new for me to seek out others like myself, but truly, what is there to hide?  I have waited for this moment all my life, the one where I can say I am a writer, and have it be true.  But first, here is where I will clear the cobwebs from my brain, achieve clarity, and amuse.

© Margaret Grant and magoffleash, 2011-2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.