The Ebb and Flow of My Desk

You honor your writing and your writing self when you create a special place for your work. Bring to it all that supports and enhances your writing. Keep it clean and free from clutter. You know the old saying, that a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind. With all that mess, how can thoughts emerge without their edges catching on whatever is left lying around?

– Judy Reeves, Writing Alone, Writing Together: A Guide for Writers and Writing Groups

If a cluttered desk means a cluttered mind, then my desk is a perfect representation: always maintaining a calm, clear, productive, inviting space, but the clutter around the edges always threatens to tip the scales into claustrophobic panic.

Creative Non-Fiction (Both Auditory & Weekly): Street Musicians, Video Games, and Wandering Thoughts

This week's creative non-fiction is really meta-writing, a window into a sleepy morning trying to write but continually getting distracted.

Writing Together, But Alone First

I recently got a book from the library called Writing Alone, Writing Together: A Guide for Writers and Writing Groups. I have some ideas floating around my head for an urban writers' circle, but I want to do it right. I don't have a particularly vast amount of time to waste on something that's never going to get off the ground.

So far, though, the first portion of the book discusses writing practice for working alone—not unlike Writing Down the Bones, my perennial favorite writing book.

The author, Judy Reeves, points out what many of us know already: the key to become a real and true writer (and one who writes, no less) isn't getting published or writing something great, it's making time to write several times a week. This passage, which draws from prominent psychologists/researchers, gave me a lot to chew on:

The most important talent may be the talent for practice itself...the most important role that innate factors play may be in a person's willingness to engage in sustained training.

 Such a simple concept, but it gives any kind of artist a lot to think about.

Creative Non-Fiction (Both Auditory & Weekly): Jay Sean - Down

Despite quitting caffeine this week, I still managed to write!  While survival without my morning coffee has been painful at best, I'm hoping this little detox will do well for my health.  Anyway, without further ado, the song of the week:

I’m trying to write about the Atlantic City boardwalk , with its air hung low and heavy and thick. My body slows under its salty residue, vaporized pieces of the sea adhere to my pores. Fish and garbage and funnel cake battle for airspace overhead and the smell falls on me like someone just threw a blanket over my head in a hot attic.

Throngs of people push past one another, most of them drunk or high and just young enough to be lost in their own sea of miniskirts and stilettos. Pop music struggles to be heard, struggles for relevance in the cacophony, ends up sounding caricatured like that person in the group who just never feels heard. Except no one quite expects Jay Sean to struggle for the floor, creating a backdrop that gets lonelier and lonelier against the din, the carnival lights, the ambulance that has pushed past the revelers to collect a man who has overdosed beneath a dark and decaying pavilion.

I’m trying to write this in my head like the one person in the corner actually listening to Jay Sean, ready to nod and say “oh yeah, I got you, ‘baby don’t worry / you are my only / even if the sky is falling down.’ I was listening.” I’m writing this in my head because I’m waiting in line for the bumper cars, half-listening to my friends and everyone else’s, such a flood of conversation.

Dropped in the middle of all this humanity—the humidity, the thin and hopeful pop music, the flashing lights and bells and carnies trying to sell a seat on a barstool with a water gun—yes, this crush of humanity, I wonder how it’s escaped everyone. I want to open my eyes wide because maybe this is the end of the world. This place seems like the last sad, bombastic, completely bizarre outpost of humanity, as if beyond the light pollution orb of this noisy pier is just nothing—everything ending.

Yet everyone is going on like this is just another fun party, no impending apocalypse except maybe for that drunk girl writhing on the ground. Suddenly the haze feels too heavy, like I can’t stand, and I feel desperately lonely for a quiet night inside, far away from this carnival where everyone comes to overdose, to pay another human being to push them in a cart, to take a group picture with the casino lights smiling in the background.

Everyone still keeps talking, eagerly awaiting our turn to hand over those paper tickets for a ride, haphazardly crashing into one another as the floor and ceiling throw off sparks out of time with the music—another party.

Creative Non-Fiction (Both Auditory & Weekly): Jeff Buckley - Lover, You Should've Come Over

As in: maybe I’m too young / to keep good love from going wrong.  Too young to hold on / too old to just break free and run.

I thought I'd start off the tradition with something appropriately dramatic.

To my sweetheart, the drunk:

(pardon the reference, this isn't to my sweetheart and there's no drunk)

At the end of the week I realized my problem had sprung from a lack of music.  I had experienced chronic failure to inject it into my veins, to let it explode my heart within my chest, to open my throat wide so it could come out.  I had spent the week adrift, my feet never on the ground, my soul standing with one foot outside the door.

Now here I was, stretching my voice to reach into the playlist I’d so aptly titled “Songs I Wish I Could Sing.”  Since the house was empty I could actually half do it, experimenting with range and emotion, letting my voice bounce fearlessly off all the walls.  Even as I was relaxing, releasing, digging in and supporting these songs with the strength of my body, I was wishing I could do this for someone else.  Wondering why song, like my rawest emotions, bruised itself continuously against an invisible wall every time I tried to project it in the direction of someone I loved.

Oh, but then I thought of you, too.  Imagined you at the piano with this lovely creature of a piece that was so full of heartbreak.  I wondered, having never heard you use your voice that way, if you could—or more appropriately, if you would, if you would want to.  If you had ever experienced a desire for song that verged on...could I say it?

Music is such a visceral, physical pleasure.  Everyone I’ve fantasized myself into song with should know it, but that’s where it all collides, leaning defeated against a wall inside, somehow keeping a straight face while fighting to burst free.  It engages in an interplay like lovers hidden in a tiny room, one about to cry out, the other placing an extended index finger over that sly smile, the one that says “this is ours, don’t let them hear.”

Eventually, of course, the song had to end despite itself, despite repeating lines of “it’s never over” (my kingdom for a kiss upon her shoulder).  As it faded away into the next song it set me down firmly on my feet, the ground feeling solid for the first time all week.  

New Feature! (Music Vignettes)

Back when I was writing Words + Images, I made a strict blogging schedule.  I did this primarily to draw traffic, having read somewhere that a predictable schedule increases readership.  About the time I realized my "blog nights" were starting to control my social life and it seemed like a second job, I shut the blog down and reconsidered, eventually landing on this format.

While I doubt Mix Tapes & Scribbles garners me the same kind of Official Blogger rep, I feel better about its goals and intent.  At the same time, I do miss having some kind of structure and connecting thread.

For now, that thread is going to be a weekly creative non-fiction piece.  I'm excited because it's a gratifying genre and this feature will keep me producing small pieces of writing on a regular basis (this feels more and more necessary as novel editing progresses).

Since I talk so much about writing in here, it's apt to give my strong feelings about music a platform.  Each vignette will be told through a musical experience (clues in the post title).  I'm hoping to have the first one up sometime tomorrow (and on Sunday or Monday every week thereafter), so look out!

Volume

Somehow, in getting to my class website (don't ask how, it's on my bookmarks toolbar!), I get waylaid on an art website for someone with whom I graduated high school.  Both of us went on to earn our BFAs, but in the years since then she has obviously continued producing visual art at an impressive rate.  I haven't maintained this kind of volume.

Mind you, I am writing, but I'm not submitting to literary magazines.  I'm not monitoring Art Deadlines List very closely and I'm not keeping up with Baltimore Art Blogs to see calls for submissions.  In short, I'm not filling out my CV.  The content under my "Exhibitions" and "Collections" headings is decidedly thin.

If I publish a novel that will certainly be a game-changer in terms of my artistic self-image, but for now I'm wondering: am I doing enough?  Art requires ambition above all else, and sometimes I fear I haven't established myself in a community of fellow artists, haven't been creating at the rate I should be.

At some point, just (ha, just) having a fat manuscript sitting in my writing folder won't be enough...will it?

Lately I've met a few artists who are "just sort of living right now," which I've found to be synonymous with being happily unemployed.  And in a state that doesn't ask people to provide proof that they're searching for jobs in order to collect unemployment benefits, why wouldn't they be?  However, there's a disconnect there, too.  A lot of creative people seem to feel art will just come to them, that inspiration is innate.  In truth, one of the best things art school taught me is hard work and ambition are as important as training and talent.

When I come home from deadlines at work only to work toward deadlines for school, I end up feeling like I need down time.  I feel entitled to squeeze in an hour of gaming or television.  Even though it feels like what I need at the moment, it doesn't feel like ambition.  And while we can't be frightfully ambitious 24/7, I'm unsure where to draw the line.

How necessary is downtime to sustain productivity?  How much should we be cutting out in favor of pursuing our dreams?

And, as I've asked myself many times before: do I really have the ambition it takes to pursue a long-term dream?

At the end of the day I think I can answer yes to that last question, but it would involve eliminating some of the more heinous timesucks from my life.  Disorganization is starting to make my life feel like one big ADD adventure again, and it's time to reign it in.

As I keep posting my writing and creative journeys, I think I'm also going to return some focus to the decluttering of life and home.  Simplifying and purifying.  Because time and inspiration aren't things we have innately, they're things we create in our lives.  And I think I need to create a lot more of both.

Busy Summer

Things have been a little tough lately: lots of weekends away, the end of my online class looming close, WoW beckoning me to power through the home stretch to level 80.  So many distractions!

Tonight, I'm turning that around and putting off outlining my final project in favor of posting a little something on the blog.  Also, as I recently posted on Twitter, Hemmingway wrote 500 words per day.  500 words seems like hardly anything at all, and it makes me want to set a similar goal for myself.  However, I got to wondering, where does this leave me for editing?  Sometimes I'm doing a lot of cleanup work and might not make a net gain of 500 words even though I've written/revised that many.  This is a quandary, but on the bright side, I opened up my manuscript tonight and noticed 1000 words had jumped in there somehow!  I'm now up to 52,528.  In case you were wondering, here's the latest addition (comments welcome):

Writing Excerpt Time!

I haven't posted a writing excerpt on here for a while, and I thought it appropriate because I've been adding big chunks of content to my manuscript.  Here's something I did last weekend:

Bouncing Around, But Getting Things Done

Despite code red air quality alerts, unpleasantly hot (99°) temperatures, and a lack of sufficient air conditioning throughout my house, I made today's paid holiday hours productive ones.  This is encouraging, since the forecast is calling for highs of 103° for Tuesday and Wednesday.  Hopefully I'll be able to keep a positive outlook on life until things calm down (read: cool down) later in the week.

On the bright side, today felt more balanced than my life has in a long time.  I woke up in a good frame of mind, thinking about various professional development I've undergone lately, specifically where I've heard the words "don't fight yourself."  Clever girl that I am, I contemplated how I could apply this to my life at home, too.  I think ADD adults spend a lot of energy fighting our natures, and sometimes it's important to remember we need that energy for creating positive, self-affirming strategies for living our lives.

I'm past making excuses for my house: it has become a pit.  I love a clean, simple, orderly environment, so this makes me feel bad down to my core.  And since I've gotten behind on so much stuff, catching up seems positively overwhelming.  To make matters worse, the second I see clutter in the hallway, I tend to discount all my efforts in, say, our office.  Today I decided to be more reasonable, setting a goal of one room per day and no more.  So today I cleaned the bedroom, for real and true, and then accepted the fact that more work would lead to intense fatigue and eventually bad feelings about myself/the house/life in general.  Clutter in the hallway was okay, because it gets its own day (not today)!

This small victory really started me rolling, and after I was done I didn't go back to my reading for class (time for that later).  I took a break and played some WoW.  Then I went back to my reading, added 1000 words to my manuscript (exciting!), and took another WoW break.

I work best when my life is fragmented, likely because I lack the attention span for longer tasks anyway.  I get interrupted nonstop at work, but this rarely throws me off because, as I see it, I would have interrupted myself anyway.  My mind bounces from one thing to the next, and it's often best to preempt it if I can.  Forcing myself to work really hard on a single task (like cleaning out my basement) for a painfully long time leaves me feeling drained and often irrational.

Today, I encouraged myself to stop a task before I got super fatigued and celebrate my victory.  This left me feeling energized for the next activity, especially since I built in breaks for myself throughout the day.  In the end, I got an amazing amount of stuff done, including washing dishes, doing nearly all my reading for class this week, hitting level 75 with my druid, making my bedroom tidy and clean, and writing 1000 words on my novel.  Yay for days off from work!