Around the Block

We can't go back, can we? So springing forward would seem to be our only choice, and since that vernal equinox a few weeks ago signaled the official end of the winter that wasn't, I'd better get springing. The Thousand Excuses have played me well. I've added a page to a short that I will finish, even if I continue to dislike it. It's one of those "seemed like a good idea at the time" stories, based on a real incident in a short newspaper article from a couple winters ago. I guess the challenge to me is to find the angle that will make it feel like a good idea again. I'll explain.

During a very cold and snowy winter, one day an old couple was found outside, in their back yard, dead on the ground in each other's arms. It appeared, best they could tell, that the woman had slid on ice and fallen, and her husband, in an attempt to lift her and carry her in, had suffered a fatal heart attack. Did she freeze to death in his arms? Was she already unconscious, or did she lie there terrified, unable to move as her husband died inches in front of her? What prompted her to go out into the cold in the first place?

Now that story could be written as the sweet but tragic romance that a certain very successful author specializes in, the old lovers dying in each other's arms. But being as I tend to lean more toward the macabre, or at least the darker side, possibly with a bit of twisted humor, I tend to think there might have well been something more there than those romantically inclined discoverers saw in the clutch of the wizened lovers. Or were they still lovers at all?

It isn't as though I've hit a block. I just go to it, write a bit, and find myself not grabbed by it yet. Lazy writing, of course, is the culprit. I could just plow through the obvious story, finish it, and put it someplace where ants would devour the syrup. Something, though, in my twisted mind won't let me do that. So I pause, think of the devious turns, the little niggling annoyances that might have added up to a moment of something diabolical. Yes! But what, exactly? I'll think about on the drive home, in the shower, in the garden, tomorrow at Tara.

A couple of blog posts this past week have discussed writer's block and what it is--or isn't. I'm in agreement that it isn't. Chuck Wendig is most emphatic that it is a lie (#4 of 25) writers tell themselves. Banish it! Rachel Lewis has never succumbed to it, although she's slogged through the occasional writer's mud, and haven't we all? As every writer knows, some days are easy, the words soar, characters surprise, and we end a session at the computer almost buzzed. Other days are like, well, knowing there's a way out of the forest, the mud, over the wall, but we don't see it, so we pull one. word. at. a. time. until our wheels are back on solid ground and we're rolling again.

I'd like to say that I do that on a daily basis, but I'll admit to just staring at the wall, or the bog, for days on end. Not that I'm doing nothing. Always thinking about it. Always churning the cream looking for the butter to solidify. But I don't see that as being blocked. Lazy, sometimes, self-indulgent, sometimes, and sometimes just allowing for space to let the good stuff surface. I've reached a place where so many characters needed to come together from where I'd placed them in their various perils that I felt I had set loose I group of unruly schoolchildren. I knew where I wanted them, but getting them there in a natural, logical way eluded me. I wasn't blocked, just challenged. Sometimes weeks went by, I'd push out pages and scrap them all.

The thing was, is, that I never felt I was blocked. maybe I'd hit a wall, but a wall can be got around, or over, or dug under. It may take time. It definitely takes, no, requires perseverance. If we don't acknowledge that, if we beat ourselves up because it isn't easy, or give up and blame it on writer's block, we just aren't doing our jobs. Sometimes the walls are many, almost as though a maze has been thrown up around us. There's that story to finish, going back to querying that novel, or deciding to shelve it and move on, or not to shelve it but still move on, and, oh yeah, establish a presence on the various social media, and, and, and...

The cortisol soars instead of words. So many walls, so little time. I know, I'll go pull some weeds, plant some perennials, take a walk, have a drink. But then it's back at the keyboard or yellow legal pad. One wall at a time.

I do wonder how that old couple will have ended up dead in each other's arms in the snow and ice. I'll know soon, and I'll share it. Somehow, I think it wasn't as pretty as it looked. I just need to work my way around that little wall . . . around the block.

What's your way around the walls, around the block (which, of course, doesn't really exists, does it?)

Another Year: Moving On

Another month gone, and with it, another year. So do we pause to look back or to look forward, or just pause? (With a month between posts, pausing doesn't seem to be one of my major challenges.)

I look at the past year the way I always hope to look back at an airplane flight, that is, uneventful in a good way. We made it through what has not been the best of times for anyone relatively unscathed. We had no highlights, no trips, no vacations, but we also had no traumas, no tragedies, and all the storms that hit all around us even had the good grace to pretty much pass us by. My garden flourished and it was sweet to watch it grow (never mind the forest of weeds.)

I seem to have been on hiatus from the pursuit of the professional writing life, although not entirely. As reported, I sent out a few queries, gathered an equal number of rejections, and returned to hone the manuscript again. I said all that before. Yet, it is amazing me how going through again is showing me so many places where I read what I thought was polished and shake my head. Perhaps my destiny in this life is not to be a published author, but a constant craft-worker and mentor, reader for other writers. I find as much satisfaction helping other writers as I do in my own work. Or could it be that it's just easier? I do know I will go through the manuscript to the end, again, and then I'll send out more queries, and more. But I also know that I might never see this picked up, and that's okay, too. I'll work on something else, or not.

In the writers' community of a particular website, a question was raised about throwing in the towel--does anyone ever feel that way. Of course there were many variations on the fairly consistent answer, which is "NO, NEVER." Or "Well, I feel like it, sometimes, of course, but never could." "I'm obsessed." "I can't NOT write." Funny, but throwing in the towel, giving up, sounds to me like there's a fight involved that one might give up on. A fight to what? Get published? (Yes, for many.) To just keep writing? (Yes, for most, in the face of rejection.) Maybe I'm lacking a fighting gene, but I just don't feel that. I write because I like to, just as I read because I like to. It's a beautiful craft. Sometimes it's even art. I would paint, if I could, or compose a choral symphony. But I write, and while I've done it my entire life, and continue to do it, I don't feel I MUST, or I HAVE to. I'm not compelled (though I do take it seriously, approach it as a professional, and would be ready to meet the deadlines and commitments, should the project find a home with someone who believes in it as I do.) I can waste hours happily on TV, the Internet. And then I write. Give up? When swimming, if I stop to float on my back and look up and the clouds or stars, am I giving up on swimming? I'll turn over and do more laps, just to feel the surge, the body mechanics of the breast stroke. Or, wait, have I then given up on floating to watch the sky? No, no giving up. But no fighting, either. No towel to throw in. Just do. (Thank you, Yoda.)

Oh, and Happy New Year.

Enjoying The Journey

We begin a journey with a destination in mind, or, if we remain mindful of Lao Tse, with the journey itself being the ever changing, expanding, shifting destination, and where we arrive at the end, just the end.

When my partner and I planned a month in the British Isles several years ago, our advanced planning consisted of booking a hotel in London for the first few days, another in Dublin for the first and last of five nights in Ireland, another in Edinburg for two nights. Those we booked in advance thinking it might be difficult to wing it in a major city. Other than those points, the rest of the trip was by auto with a general but loose itinerary. Each day we'd look at our options, set out, and take the back roads to unexpected places. We blew a tire outside Blarney and got a very local side trip to a nearby garage. Every day was discovery, some wrong turns, and some amazing surprises. We would find a town in an area we wanted to explore (the Cotswolds, the Lake District, a drive over a desolate highlands moor to an oceanside town in Scotland) and stop, find a B&B or hotel in time to explore the town on foot, find a pub for a pint, have dinner in whatever place the innkeeper said was best for cheap local food and fun, and then loosely plan the next day. We hit the high points along the way, walked the steps that Wordsworth walked above his lake, explored Yorkminster at dusk, found an ancient stone circle atop a misty mountain, just us and the sheep. The point of the trip was never getting from London to London by way of Ireland, Scotland, and points between. The point was the points between, as satisfying as the destination itself proved to be.

Not long ago, Nathan Bransford, literary agent, blogged about when dreams become expections. His post is here. It had particular relevance to me because, at a very ripe age, I've embraced the reality of the odds of publishing success, and realize that those dreams are just that: dreams. Sure, I'd love to find an agent who loved this novel and sold it to a publisher who sold the movie rights, the movie and novel filling my empty coffers as I churn out the follow-up. But those are dreams.

Many of us writers, authors, persevere in the face of impossible odds with a sense of pride at maintaining the Sisyphean task. Some of us keep preparing, perpetual students, practicing, reading, studying the craft as an avoidance mechanism for actually attempting to write the novel, or, if written, take it to the next step. What's the point of being serious when the odds are only slightly this side of insurmountable? The point is the journey. The point is how the paint is applied to the canvas, the words put down on the pages.  The point is the doing of it. And in the journey lie the surprises, the discoveries, and, yes, the disappointments and wasted side trips.

But they are never wasted, are they? Otherwise we'd never have explored the tiny village green surrounded by charming Irish homes, shops, and pubs, colors of Easter eggs, while waiting for the auto repair. We'd never find the unexpected twist of plot when a character does something on his own that changes the direction of everything. Or the frustration when the discovery adds depth to the total experience for us, the creators, the voyagers, but ends up on the cutting room floor. Or, as now, when a very good reader points out some holes in the opening, long put to bed, and it's back to revising again. But in this detour, I find myself back on the journey, new discoveries laid out in front of me.

And so we persevere. Would I like to be finished? Of course, but what is finished? The last step before the first step of another phase, project, or jouney. I Ching says, over and over, perseverance furthers. And so it must. Because the end of the journey is always, at any stage, at any place, just ahead, the next town, the next revision, the next book, in the cloud of dreams. Dreams can be goals, and they should be. But if they become expectations, the journey sours. Maybe I'm placating myself. These be not easy times. But I honestly think I'd rather enjoy the road than fly over it. If I find Xanadu, so much the better.