I did not write this for you

Gratuitous Boob Shot

I like you, of course. Maybe. Sometimes. Usually.

I love it when I can prompt you to comment. Commentary is quite addictive, actually. I have to resist the temptation to write things purely for the hope of comments. 

My aim on these pages it to please myself.

Verbal masturbation you might call it.

A vent to release the mental steam.

A space to mark a sort of intellectual/political/cultural/trivial passage through my thoughts.

To walk through the world with blue feet.

To Re-Read or Not To Re-Read: How to Resurrect Old Plots

I’m writing. Sort of. I’m really trying. I’m sitting here in front of the computer. My hands are on the keyboard. Words appear on the screen as I type. But there is no doubt that I am stuck. I have been for a while. There are words, but no story. Words, but no satisfaction. Words, but no fire. Not even a spark or a fizz.

I want a new story. The old stories don’t quite hold together. They are the bits and pieces of my learning process. Some better than others, none complete, all missing Something.

And then I have a brainwave. 

I think of my favorite story that I’ve written. Then my mind wanders over to my favorite bit from another story. And KAPOW.

These stories have nothing in common. Well, not really. Their protagonists share a certain clumsiness and curiosity. But that’s it. One is full-on, urban fantasy. One is more, what? Magical realism, I guess. Reality plus some subtle fantastical falderal.

Am I rambling yet? Yes? Ok, I’m getting there.

I can’t put the stories together. No. But I can lift that favorite element from one, and pour it into the pot of the other. I can skim off the detritus that rises to the top, and maybe, maybe I can get a good stew out of the whole thing.

Here’s my question for you, You thinking-, writing-, creative-types:

Where do I start?

Should I treat this story like a fresh idea, plotting out the parts and writing anew, with only my memories of those earlier plans to fertilize the growth of the new story?

Or

Should I go back and reread those earlier stories, taking clippings here and there for pieces that might somehow be revived and grafted together into something new?

What would you do? One of these approaches, or something different? 

Conversations with Bob Watson (my creative unconscious)

DANI: Bob. I know you’re in there. I know you’re mad at me. I’ve been busy out here. I’ll be here in just a minute and we can play. Ok? Bob? BOB?!

BOB: …

DANI: Oh! There you are. You startled me a bit. 

DANI: I see that you’ve been, um. Decorating. Interesting. 

BOB: Well, when you never call or write or visit, I have to have some kind of outlet, don’t I? So I’ve started doing a little embellishment here and there.

DANI: My cerebral cortex has been feeling a little itchy lately.

BOB: Yes, that’s probably the plush anatomical zombie hearts spattered with mud that I left in there last week. They tend to get a little rank. 

DANI: Bob.

BOB: I know what you’re thinking.

DANI: Well, I hope so.

BOB: [nodding]

DANI: Bob. You can’t just go around embellishing the inside of my brain. That’s just—

BOB: MAKING YOU CRAZY! I know! But where else am I supposed to put all this stuff if you don’t come to let some of it out onto the page once in a while?

DANI: …

DANI: Bob.

BOB: Yes, Dani?

DANI: I’m sorry, Bob.

BOB: Me too, dear. Shall we do a little writing?

DANI: Yes, I think that would be a very good idea. 

~~~

Many thanks to Sarah for posting a link to Lisa R. Cohen’s exercises for Writer’s Block over on Twitter a few weeks ago. 

Mom's Trying to Work

An excerpt from the not-a-journal a couple of weeks ago…

Taking the kids to school is often anticlimactic for me. After the flurry and noise and rush of the morning, I’m left in a quiet car or a quiet house. This is a lovely thing, but always surprising and often disorienting. I pat my pockets like an old man looking for the glasses on his forehead, wondering just exactly what I’ve misplaced or might have forgotten. Surely SILENCE isn’t the culmination of cereal, showers, toothbrushing, shoe-tying, lunch-packing, don’t-be-lating?

“Mom’s going to work” means that she can be found hunched under her desk lamp in the corner, scribbling in a notebook or squinting at the Mac in between loads of laundry and loaves of bread. 

From the Archives: On the State of the Union

President Obama delivers the State of the Union Address this evening. I’ll be there, with popcorn, for a lot of good reasons, both civic and personal.

Below is a transcript of a post from January 2008 which explains why I’m a State of the Union geek. Please note that the tally of years is up to sixteen now. 

Love you, babe.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Politics, Personal

According to the U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 3

“[The President] shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”

I celebrate the State of the Union Address today, not so much because of any political motivation, but because the (generally) annual speech to the joint houses of Congress and to the nation and the world, coincides with a more personal event for me. Thirteen years ago, my partner and I set off on our first adventure together.

It started on a Friday. We worked in the same lab together, he a molecular biology grad student, me a biochemistry undergrad. Chatting over epi-tubes one Friday morning, we planned a lab-group outing. A performance art group was presenting a new piece that night on campus. I was on my way to class, and so he said he’d pass along the event to the other members of the lab group when they came in. We agreed to meet at the theater 15 minutes prior to showtime.

I showed up a few minutes late to find him waiting outside the door to the theater. Alone. He shrugged, and said that he guessed everyone had other plans. I learned later in the weekend that he had completely neglected to mention the plan to any of our friends or colleagues. We watched the show. We went out for coffee. The time we spent together stretched longer and longer. The sub-zero nighttime air of the desert in January did not deter us from ending up on the roof of the Chemistry building in the middle of the night to look at the stars. We ended up at a different coffee shop at five a.m. And not a thing had passed our lips but conversation and food.

Our waitress happened to be another chemistry student. She was due to get off work at six. We cooked up a hair-brained scheme to go to Tucson all together when she got off work. (Tucson was a four or five hour drive from where we were, across the desert and one state line, and none of us had ever been there). We waited, but she backed out, begging fatigue. Undeterred, we climbed into his truck and hit the road.

There is no rational explanation for why we did this. It was really rather stupid. For both of us. For a lot of reasons.

We spent the day in Tucson, driving around, eating again, and then drove back home late in the afternoon. Sleep-deprivation makes the next couple of days a hazy blur for me, but by the time of Bill Clinton’s second State of the Union Address in January of 1995, after a dizzy weekend, we were firmly Together.

And though we were married in July a couple of years later, each year we tend to note the passing of the state of the Union with a little bit more nostalgia and enthusiasm.

So here’s to us babe, and our Union. May we bear witness to many more presidential speeches together.