Reading: Jack of Shadows by Roger Zelazny
Also reading: The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, Vol. 2: The Door to Saturn
Writing: The penultimate chapter of my novella, Gates to Illvelion
Listening to: Tangerine Dream stuff
Month: July 2022 (Page 1 of 2)
I sat down to work on my fiction this morning, but I ended up doing a lot of writing in my notebook instead. Some fragments/thoughts about the morning walk with my daughter (something that’s becoming our daily ritual), some thoughts about plot structures (and the manuscript I am editing for a client), some thoughts about my own works in progress and what plot structures they follow, and then I took a bunch of notes on the Michael Moorcock system for writing a novel in three days.
I’d read about Moorcock’s system before, but today I felt like copying it down into my writer’s notebook so I could internalize it. Not that I’m planning to write a novel in three days, but I appreciate the way Moorcock breaks down how to structure and think about narrative. I especially love his idea of generating a list of fantastical images that employ paradox as a way to make something memorable and interesting (ex. “The City of Screaming Statues”).
Anyway, I didn’t work on my fiction at all during my morning “writing time.” There’s a part of me that says, “Wasted time!” and beats myself up for not adding words to my manuscript. But there’s the other part of me — the idler and reveler — who thinks mucking about in the notebook is both fun and necessary to my creative life. All the things I wrote in the notebook will help me later on — whether it’s later today or tomorrow or next week — giving me food for thought regarding my fiction work. Not “productive” in the strictest sense, but productive nevertheless. Sometimes I need to approach my writing “sideways” — not head-on but through the alleyways of my writer’s notebook. These alleys and byways set the stage for my later productivity in the manuscript. So it feels like I’m slacking, but really, I’m turning over the compost heap and making the fertilizer.
Even now, I still worry that I’m being followed by the bee. It’s in my hair, just waiting to come out.
(This fragment was occasioned by the morning walk I took with my daughter. A bee or strange fly followed us from our driveway all around the block, past the wild blackberry bushes, around the school yard, and even down the sidewalk as we ran furiously from it. It kept wanting to nest in our hair. Maybe it liked our shampoo. To get back into the house, I lured the bee into the backyard while my daughter dashed through the front door. Then, she opened the sliding glass door in the back and I rushed in. Despite being inside again for two hours, I keep thinking the bee is with me.)
Since summer began, I feel like I’ve been busier than ever. Should summer be this busy? When I retired from teaching in June, I hadn’t realized that I would need to start work right away, and that my usual “summer vacation” was a thing of the past. How foolish! Of course I’ll have to work in summer from now on, and not just work on my fiction, but work on my freelance career. Summers will be like any other season.
But perhaps this summer has been busier than I expected simply because I’m not used to it, and once I get used to the rhythm of my new work life, I’ll find summers can still be a respite from the hurly-burly. Maybe. It’s all uncharted territory, isn’t it?
I think that’s what’s making this summer so stressful: I’m in uncharted territory. I’m fearful. I’m worried. Maybe I’m not actually that much busier than normal, it’s just that everything has taken on an added weight of importance. No longer is freelance editing something I do on the side; now, it’s something I must do to eat and pay the mortgage. Summer’s freedom is weighed down by this new responsibility. Perhaps, after a few months, this uncharted feeling will abate. I hope. I guess even if it doesn’t, I’ll get used to it. I don’t want to trade this new adventure for my old way of life, but I do have to start accepting that being on an adventure means a lot of discomfort. Like Bilbo going out his door with Gandalf and the dwarves. There’s that tension between the comfort of Bag End and the excitement (and fear) of the open road. I want both, just as Bilbo did.
Figuring out a daily schedule has been the hardest part. Between summer school for my eldest, and swimming lessons, and birthday parties, and fireworks, and all the rest of the summer stuff, I haven’t been able to find four or five hours each day to get my work done. Every day is different, every day is a jumble of activities. I need to figure out how to settle things down and find a schedule that works. I suppose this trial and error is part of the adventure too.
Listening to: Michael Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto in D
Reading: “Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Drinking: Magners Cider
My reading list grows ever longer. The Coleridge came about because I was rereading How to Be Idle, and there’s a little anecdote about how Coleridge probably got the idea for the poem after walking in the countryside and taking some opium. Does not surprise me. I hadn’t read “Kubla Khan” in awhile, but reading it again was fabulous. Very DCC RPG in a lot of ways.
Other books currently reading or in the queue: The Two Towers, Labyrinth (yes, the movie novelization), On Lying in Bed and Other Essays (by G.K. Chesterton), Jonathan Hickman’s run on Avengers, and Jack of Shadows (this one is in the queue). Plus, I have about a dozen more I really want to start reading in earnest. Too many books. I really need a week off from everything just so I can read. It will never happen, but a girl can dream.
Can I get back to daily blogging? Would it be worth it? There’s a part of me that thinks, “What’s the point?” since nobody really reads my website, and the time devoted to daily blogging might be better spent elsewhere (like soliciting new editing clients…), but then I think about the joy I get from hitting “publish” and seeing my blog post go live to the world. Sure, nobody will read it (except my husband, maybe), but there’s something satisfying about being able to write a few thoughts, ramble a bit without any direction, and then hit publish.
I have loved the act of blogging since I first discovered it more than fifteen years ago. I have always preferred blogs to any of the other social media that have sprung up afterwards. Yes, I do have a newsletter (I’m on Substack like everyone else), but the blog is a different kind of space. It’s more intimate, somehow. And it’s a lot more like a playground. I’m just doing whatever, no pressure or purpose other than to muck around. I’m not doing this blog to make money; no monetizing or ads or anything like that. I just want to write and explore and post it for other people to see. Even if no one sees.
Maybe daily blogging wouldn’t be worth it. Maybe I should be doing something else, something more “productive.” There’s an argument to be made that I should spend these fifteen or twenty minutes a day working on my fiction instead. That’s probably the most persuasive argument against daily blogging. I love to write fiction, and I should always be doing more of it if I can. I have novels and series that need finishing. I have readers who are waiting for new books.
But—
As much as I love writing fiction, blogging uses a different part of my brain, a different writing muscle, and I want to use that muscle. Blogging has a way of helping me with my fiction. It gives me a chance to get words down on paper, to open the floodgates so to speak, so that all of my writing — fiction, nonfiction, journaling, copy writing — becomes easier. There’s this weird phenomenon where words beget more words, and more words beget even more words, and if I’m writing on the blog, suddenly I’m writing more fiction, and if I’m writing more fiction, I suddenly have words I want to add to the blog. Instead of the blog taking away from my other writing, it almost ends up feeding it.
Time, of course, is the most precious commodity, and there will be days when I don’t have enough time to let all the words out that I have bubbling up inside, and so I guess on those days, one type of writing will be sacrificed for the other. Maybe some days I only blog or I only write fiction. But I gave up my teaching job precisely so I could have more time for writing, and even though time is still scarce (I have young children, after all), I have more freedom now to use my time as I will. Even if it’s just for five minutes, I can use that time for blogging.
It’s not really the time that matters anyway. It’s the desire, the will to do it. If I say I want to blog everyday, then I can do it. If I say I want to write fiction every day, then I can do it. Even one minute is enough.
I think that’s why I want to start blogging again. It’s another way to write, another way to get words on the page. And words beget more words, and more words, and more words. For a writer, that’s a good thing.
