Writer's Block and going coastal

I just read a book, "How to write a lot", I think. It tersely pointed out that academic writers, especially dissertation writers--unlike novelists and poets, except for all in one november novelists--do not suffer writer's block, they just don't write. I won't repeat the justification for this cruel maxim, but I accepted it.

This means it is much easier to own the guilt about not writing. Usually when things in life seem preoccupied with sucking, I write. But there. I shape sonnets, make lists, hang couplets. My concentration is sucked. It got sucked after the professional poise and all those notes and points I'd studied got sucked, it almost seemed, by that spooky conference calling phone device. What the world around me wants, it pulls it out of me like the vacuum cleaner I've been wishing for, because now there are more carpets.

When I pace around with spiral notebooks shedding, when I look around now and see that I must have been using the hole punch in my sleep because there's confetti on the rug, I wish my dustbuster wasn't futile. Oh, futile, yes, like trying to use the eraser tip of a pencil that isn't fossilized yet, but will be in a year --or a day after you bite the end of it. Futile like the paper itself is grammar school soft like a newspaper, but with faint blue lines traced across at the wrong angle for my fingers to comfortably caress the book and the fat slippery red pencil. Those school pencils had no eraser on the end, and the enamel paint flaked horribly and the wood sustained teethmarks wonderfully when chewed. Who can pass handwriting class without a good pen and notebook? when the lines snag and tear with the newly sharp soft graphite, or they appear already faded, like a penciled note-- forgotten or washed once or twice? (I got a "U," which means unsatisfactory.)

I apologize to myself. I will congratulate myself for all writing and all thinking that helps me make progress to my full time writing space. Going from way too much to do I have enough to do it. Oh, never before has a sentence I've written needed more punctuation for clarity. Metaphysically, materially, and here. New lap top. Snow tires. Roll up the rugs for now. There is always enough stuff to put on the floor.

"There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come--the readiness is all."

1260 Words-Daily Habit

Since I spent the last several weeks developing a binge writing habit, rather than training myself out of it, I'm glad I took a good week long "no writing" break to recover from my cold, my exams, and my old binge writing self.

Off to a good start this monday morning, thanks in part to fall backwards. My sweet husband-- who is keeping a writing schedule with me--woke up first. He went straight to the futon with his laptop before discovering that it wasn't really early, it was stupidly early. He came back to bed for a couple of hours.

Hmm, it isn't even 8:30 yet, and now I'm taking a break to let myself know that I obviously have more to say than I think. The three sentence note I meant to make about a page (yep, just one page) of Clarissa turned into three paragraphs and lots of words. And I ended up sticking her in a bathroom stall on a college campus reading all the sharpie responses to her rape confession. (I wonder if this is the sort of thing my committee members have been gently cautioning me against--the bathroom stall thing. I don't know. I'm the one who was working crisis intervention for the D.V. and date rape problems on my big-ten campus. Am I being flip, or am I the real girl, here?)

I won't worry, yet. I have a good team of editors to coax me out of the bathroom stalls if they find me skipping class in there.

Who knew the marker wouldn't mark the silver poster board as well as the gold?
Who knew I would respond so well to the manic marker schedule of gridded blocks in gilded boards.

I love to do lists.

I'm glad I have to rewrite the silver board, remind myself what I have to write today, to procrastinate the writing.

Honestly, I already wrote a paragraph and a trailing sentence.
But no breakfast and its almost eleven.
Too often it's impossible to congratulate myself on to-done things even though I'm already rewarding myself with hot chocolate.

Hmm, binge writing. It's not why I skip breakfast, but it's a good reason not to. I'd like to gently write four pages a day, and then read and make notes or do work for three or four hours.

But no, it's two or three days of deadline enhanced draft making, section structuring, or paper writing. Six or seven hours at a time. No overnights, mind you. But early mornings and many cafe trips with printouts and pens. And then two or three days time two or more of days of nearly useless scratching and skimpy task mastering.

I suppose I get as much done as I might, when the wind blows in, and I make less a mess of myself and my papers than some writers I know. But, as in everything, I wish I had a smoother pace.

On the other hand, chocolate and peanut butter banana smoothies have a good pace, too. And egg and tomato tortillas are all about binge writer breakfasts for fast breaks between layers.

Big Screen

My computer screen is many inches wider. It suits my eyes, I must say.

I'm working. I'm only posting here now so that I don't feel like it's yet another detail I'm letting slip by.

I'm retaking one of my exams in two months. Between then and now I'm studying like a fiend and writing for a couple of conferences.

Both conferences are to present the same research which is the first part of my dissertation work, but I'm also trying hard not to jump the gun on the diss because I still have to pass this exam. In fact, if I blow it I don't get to write the damn thing. So, to the calendars, work schedules and white board to-do lists. Franklin Covey would be proud.

Well, no. Good old Franklin would be clucking his tongue and advising me to buy a larger planner with more inserts. But some people don't understand the draw of dollar store goods and the challenge of rectifying sub-par school supplies.

Oh, but a tip for the masses. Before you give up your plastic tubs, milk crates or cardboard stackers. Don't buy file cabinets until you can shell out money for good rollers or have the space to hide away the big metal industrials that file well when not squishing toddlers.

I am posting because it puts off the edits I need to do before printing a copy of this proposal and getting in the car to go.

To go. I'll get a coffee to go and custard tarts for my committee.

A manicure on arrival.

A stack of books waiting for me at a friend's house. Fresh books. Yummy.

And then a hotel with all necessary accommodations prearranged.
And shopping at Target. I need toothpaste. T-shirts. T-minus.

Oh, so nervous to do this exam. Three hours of driving for two hours of testing and then three hours back. I'm not thinking about the three hours back. All I have to think about on three hours back will be, this exit? change for bridge toll? coffee at casablanca?

Ohhhh.

Indy 500 words: The Great Race and time eraser

NWA cancelled part of my flight, both ways. It's not that I got in twelve hours late, it's that I got in at midnight with a three hour drive to make. It's that the lateness involved a four hour layover in overstimulating O'hare airport (which has a museum store kiosk of creams and books instead of a shop full of cool toys. Oh woe is the he, the kiosk boy).

Yesterday, was almost a total write off, but I got lots of sleeping done. And it's always good to go back to where you came from, Indianapolis, and see how far you've come. (Or you realize that you've been away so long that you could never find your way around alone. Sometimes I'm like the girl in Labyrinth, when they move the lipstick arrows on rocks around. Where, oh where, is David Bowie.) And then, sit down to dinner with your gorgeous great Aunt Mary only to be told, in that stoic understated tone that is supposed to go with that Indiana accent that burbles up in me as graciously as a southern drawl, that I "have done a lot." Most ninety year olds don't seem to know what they are eating for dinner. Aunt Mary knows everything.
And I think you have to manage more than your first four years in "the middle" to be able to articulate the kind of reserved warmth and courageous caution that comes with Indiana talk. Even reading Vonnegut and James Whitcomb Riley from early childhood cannot replicate, I'm sure, the long term effect of living in this dialect.

Aunt Mary gave me a beautiful crystal bowl for my wedding last year; it is a family heirloom, I think my first one aside from my desk, her kitchen table, from Great Aunt Ida who wasn't really my aunt. A year after my marriage, I was prompted by my mom to tell this sharp eyed delicate about my recent work at the shoe museum. Everyone loves Aunt Mary; everyone wants to please her. I told her about my volunteering as her sparkling eyes filled me with pride like I was an heirloom bowl. When I told my Mom last year, she already knew what a "docent" was. So did smart Aunt Mary. Later on, she pulled out some photocopied pages with some underlining and notes added in her tiny beautiful handwriting. It's provenance, said my Mom, proud either of the fancy word or the fact that my family contributes heavily to my research files as much as my recipe book. I wonder if my Mom realizes that she will one day command the same respect as Aunt Mary.

Indianapolis is so detestably in the middle, but I love being in the middle of rooms filled with my family. Too much soggy pasta casserole, cheap beer and bad floral dresses. This what I come from. The midwest. The Nascar zoom around the track, and the hoosier all-star squeak on the court. A line of pace car princesses. I drive my own race car, now. I don't dribble, I just travel. I never drop the ball and my pit stops lube me up and rotate tires in record time (unless the airlines get to cancelling flights.)

We finally got into the Buffalo airport ready to find our car and speed across the border towards our lonesome cats. The car park attendant was chatty. Responding to a strange typo on our parking vouchers, he immediately connected the confusing word to the American government getting "worser and worser." In Boston, yep, I might expect random political ranting from the workers. But in Buffalo, so close to two hour line ups for security check points, I was surprised. I decided to soothe this rebel in a box by sharing some wisdom passed down by my Aunt Mary's photocopies. My great, great Aunt Martha used to say, "If there's no apples, there'll be punkins. He always makes it right some way." The parking man took our voucher and said he looked forward to the pumpkins.

The other thing my Aunt Martha is remembered saying: "Honey, crying is mighty hard work and mighty poor pay, I'll tell you." Well, Aunt Mary, I've done a lot of that, too. Maybe just enough to fill that bowl with tears. But on the other Indiana side of my family, another Aunt insists I'm related to Johnny Appleseed. Whether or not he was doing the lord's work or was "improving" the land for steep profits for himself and homesteadders, if there are not apples, you'll be a pumpkin by midnight at the buffalo border.

My saying: "Roaming free with the buffalo might get you trampled."