Simply Avoid Writing About Work

I am still trapped in this place where I am spending too much time writing about work.  I am trying to break out of the habit, but I seem to be struggling with it.  I think it is because, at the end of the day, writing about work is easy and superficial.  It effectively prevents me from writing about the deeper things that are happening in my life.  I think I am going to have to meditate on that for a while.  And, perhaps, simply avoid writing about work.

Into The Ordinary Day

I slept pretty well last night.  I dreamed, but now, four hours after I woke up, I don't really recall what the dreams were about.  I woke up, showed, shaved, and then headed over to Goodies II for breakfast.  I have my usual, the Huevos Mexicanos, and sat near the window, watching the scenery on a gray and cool morning. I often find it interesting just to sit and watch people, wondering who they are and what they are all about.

From there, I stopped at Chevron at Saratoga and Prospect, filled the tank with gas and ran the car through the automated car wash.  (There was a direct hit from a big bird at some point during the previous week.) From there, I came home and watched the Special Features from the Hobbit movie Blu Ray, since I'd watched the movie last night. Now, I am just sitting in the relative quiet of the living room listening to the birds on the patio chattering alone.

My main bird visitors for the last couple of weeks has been a small group of sparrows, numbering about a dozen or so, and they've been pretty amusing.  I've enjoyed their company.  I feel the need to spend a little time writing emails this morning, so I think that is going to be my next task. Beyond that, I am going to head out and shoot some pool with Don at Edgies.  It seems like a perfect day for it.

Normally, when I have some extended time off, I like to spend my time watching movies - however, for reasons known only to the universe, this holiday there just haven't been any movies that I really wanted to see.  There are a lot of loud and pretty movies out there, but I am not really in the mood for the pretty movies. I think I am craving something substantial, in more ways than one.

Ah well, let me fill the morning with some substantial email writing and maybe a substantial pool game or two, then ease into the evening. I am looking forward to the work week, largely because it is going to be a short work week. Friday is my 9/80 schedule day off, so that means I only have to work three days this week.  That will be nice.  With that note, let me head out into the ordinary day.

The Last of Fringe

I considered writing something more detailed last night as the evening began, but ultimately decided that it would not put me in the right mood to start the weekend, so I spent the evening reading and then watching the "Fringe" finale. It was excellent.  I truly enjoyed the entire run of Fringe and I'm going to miss it.

My plan this morning is simple, breakfast at the Hickory Pit, then probably a bit of a walk-about, followed by a movie.  I'm not sure which movie I am going to see, but finally we're running into a weekend where there are several options and I am sure at least one of them will be sufficiently amusing to keep me entertained.

I am planning on sitting down and writing a bit later in the day, so we will see how that goes, or if it becomes a day where I end up deliberately seeking nothing but simplicity.

Cormac McCarthy - Cities of the Plain

It was a crazy cascade of a day.  I basically worked from 6:30 AM to 7:30 PM.  I did knock a few things off the list, but a large portion of the day was spent going from one meeting to another.  Chaos carefully layered on top of chaos, with a few flying monkey's thrown in for the entertainment value.  But, even with all that, it was mostly a positive. There was one meeting during the day that was frustrating, largely because their were so many people on the meeting, and I wasn't even really sure what most of them were doing there.

I swung home for a simple dinner at about 3:00 PM, but pretty much immediately popped back online to keep working, through I did watch an episode of Ghost Hunters while I was working. I finally broke it off and called it an evening, then spent a wonderful hour on the phone with T.R.. Now, with the windows open and the fans blowing, I am settled in to unwind before calling it a night.  I reckon I'll watch about an hour or so of TV, then curl up with "Cities of the Plain" and keep reading.  I did realize the other day where the title of the novel comes from:

"And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow..."  Genesis 19:29.

Given that this is a Cormac McCarthy book, I can imagine it is going to turn out to be a bit more than a distant allusion. I read an amusing quote from him the other day on Good Reads:

"I don't know why I started writing. I don't know why anybody does it. Maybe they're bored, or failures at something else." Cormac McCarthy

There are definitely times when I have to agree with that.

Catch-Up

My writing output in June has been slim.  The month has flown by.  Work has been insane and in the middle of the insanity I flew back to SD for a short vacation, so I have not had the time or the inclination to write extensively.  However, I decided that tonight I would take a spot of time, perhaps a half hour or so, and do some writing catch up.  Rather than drop in all a single entry I am going to do a series of small entries to try and cover the sweep of life.  So, enjoy the sweep.

Confessional

I was thinking about something as I drove into work this morning. I was thinking about the confessional aspect of writing. As a Catholic, Confession is one of our central rituals – it is necessary for the salvation of our soul and our spiritual progress. Writing, as a confessional, holds a similar position in the soul of a writer. It is as necessary for the spirit of a writer to write as it necessary for a Catholic to confess. The main difference is a writer confesses all the gory details in public and may or may not be forgiven when it’s all said and done.

A Meditation on Theme In Writing

I love to write. Writing is an essential part of me. I’ve done it for a very long time. (I still have a copy of an early attempt at a short story, type-written, on the back of a form from my father’s construction business – it is one of the things that I keep as I went through my purging.) I was weaving my way in and out of work today and thought of the challenge of theme in writing. http://www.novel-writing-help.com offers up that theme is “what a novel’s story means”. I like that definition – it is more finely nuanced them the subject (Oxford dictionary says theme is “the subject of the piece of writing”).

Anyway, I was walking down the hall, weaving my way through the afternoon, and starting to slow my brain down a bit form the hurly-burly of the working world and my wandering mind turned to questions of theme in writing. Specifically, what I was contemplating was whether or not I was missing an overall theme in my creative writing. I have plenty of subjects, but what I seem to be lacking is a central theme (or even more than one). It is an interesting though to me and I might mull it around for a while. Looking backwards, at times when I have been highly prolific in creative writing, I’m pretty sure that I can see overarching themes.

It feels to me, as I sit here at my desk this afternoon, taking a brief break, right. It feels right. It feels like a lot of what I’ve been writing lately has been words without a theme. I get a feeling that there are some answers nestled inside meditation on theme, so I am going to focus on that this week and see what comes out of it. Often, when we write, we feel the need to tell a story – whether we are telling it as prose or poetry. But, it is not so much the story (the subject, the characters, the details) that we need to address, but rather the theme that underlying the story, that gives it life.

Relative to that, theme is also what makes a character leap to life on the page. The characters theme is what the character means – not who they are, not what they are, not how they are or the hundred small details that vividly draw fictional characters, but rather the theme of the character – what that character means in the context of the story. Good characters (or perhaps easy characters) come rushing at you fully equipped with their own themes. Characters like that seem to grab you and say “tell my story, tell the meaning of my story”. They are inspired, and they are inspired precisely by that theme.

Or, at least, that is what I think about theme on a Monday afternoon.

Singing, Dancing, and Writing Alone

The internet is a huge place. I wouldn’t even know where to begin guessing how many words are out there. There are millions of people writing billions of words every single day. It is pretty impressive if you think about it. With all those billions of words, why add my own?

First, I think everyone has a story to tell. It is the story of their life, in whatever form they feel like telling it. There are as many ways to tell the story of your life as there are words being written on the internet. Those words are just tiny slivers of the vast tree of life that is continually growing, continually sprawling, continually expanding.

Second, I think serendipity plays a role. I know it has played a role as I have wandered the internet over the years. I’ve found, been referred to and stumbled over some excellent web sites, with words that have enriched my life. You never know if the story you are about to tell is the story that someone is just waiting to hear, that someone needs to hear. That is pretty dang cool if you ask me.

Third, like singing in the shower, writing without worrying whether or not someone is going to read it is actually very liberating. It makes your inner censor take a back seat. I sing in the shower, I dance alone and I often write things no one will ever read. I kind of like that.

Fourth, of course, when what you write connects with someone (T.R. and I powerfully connected through an expansive love of the written word), it’s an incredible feeling. You can’t beat it. You can only write about it.

Stealing From Our Muses

I was lingering over lunch here at my desk (which is a short story in its own right) and I got to thinking about the stories we tell as we go through life. I was thinking about that point where our lives intersect with other people’s lives and inspiration flares.

There are two types of inspiration that happen at that intersection.

First, there is purely imaginative inspiration. Purely imaginative inspiration happens when something about the event or person fires a spark and your imagination creates another tale, completely removed from the current tale, based on the most tenuous of sparks. An example of this type of inspiration would be walking down the street and seeing a stranger almost stumble on the curb, which leads your imagination into a tale about a person who stumbles on the curb and pitches headlong into an alternate universe where no one believes them when they tell the tale.

Second, there is what I could call “imaginative imitation” inspiration. This takes the form of the classic “inspired by true events”, where you are sitting at lunch with a friend and they tell you the tale of the time they went to visit their aunt and their aunt’s cat attacked them without warning, sending them screaming from the house, with a tabby in hot pursuit. A simple change of name and perhaps place and a tale is born.

My question, my contemplation, involves the second type of tale. The first type is pretty clearing our imagination at work, weaving imaginary threads together to create something out of almost nothing. In those cases, I think it is pretty clear that the tale belongs to the first person to tell it.

But, what about the second type? Who does the tale rightfully belong too? The person writing the story about the cat attack or the person who initially told the story about the cat attack, or both?

What about the other areas of inspiration in our life? Who does inspiration belong to? Who should get credit? Who is the creator? Who is the imitator? At which point does imitation become imaginative theft?

As usual, I don’t have any answers, save to say that as a creative person I am often uncomfortably telling tales that do not belong to me, especially when the tale is very close to the true event. Part of this train of thought is something that T.R. inspired in me, and that is a sort of question at well. At what point are we stealing from our muses?

Searching For A Theme

I continually find myself searching for a single theme as I write. I’m not really sure what drives the desire. I keep thinking that if I can focus down on a single theme or a single subject area, I will be more productive. I am not entirely sure that is true, but it is a thought that keeps revealing itself, which may indicate my subconscious thinks it’s true. It’s pretty rare that my subconscious steers me in the wrong direction.

The challenge is I have a lot of things that interest me. A lot of things that go on around me. A lot of things that I participate in. The substance of life swirls around us constantly, the substance of life and death and everything that lies in between and interwoven. We cannot help but be touched by it as it swirls by. What I am looking for is the ability to reach out and pull back gems. I am not sure I ever had that ability. If I had it, I am not sure that I ever lost it.

So, I still find myself searching for that single, unknown theme, that weaves it’s ways through the incidents and accidents of life.

Notes From A Fragmentary World

The last week or so has been pretty busy. I’ve contemplating writing a couple of times, but never managed to find a relatively uninterrupted window. Since I didn’t seem to have time to write a longer essay, I thought I would write a series of short fragments, focusing on the variety of things going on, internal and external.

The Tucson Shootings

This has dominated the news cycle as all political sides rush to take advantage of it, a process that only seems to feed my general sense of contemptus mundi.* After contemplating the events that unfolded my observation is largely apolitical. The whole incident illustrates the difficulty of dealing with the mentally ill in modern society. The difficulty of finding the proper points to intervene, the level of intervention, and the challenge posed by dealing with individuals who may not yet have committed an act of violence, but are believed to be at risk for committing an act of violence. How do you intervene? When do you intervene? At what point do you decide to intervene? Who makes the decision? What are the rights of the mentally ill individual absent a prior act of violence? There are no easy answers, just as there are no easy answers to what happened in Tucson.

The Struggle To Find Balance In A Technological World

I was observing this week the difficulty in finding balance in our world as technology rapidly advances. We often find ourselves with access to a tremendous amount of data and sometimes the decision to embrace the data occurs in a vacuum, lacking a careful ethical and moral evaluation of the consequences, real and potential, of the subsequent data interpretation. There seems to have arisen a sense of “argument by volume”, where the overwhelming volume or amount of data serves as a substitute argument, without ever actually being analyzed and interpreted. Who is the Gatekeeper? Who holds the responsibility for interpreting the data? Is it an individual responsibility or a collective responsibility?

The Ongoing Search For Simplicity

My quest for simplicity continues, as I spent part of last week purging some more “stuff” and put together some processes to purge yet more stuff – some of it to be disposed of, some of it to be reorganized into a more compact method of retention. I had two boxes of technical drawing supplies – paper, pencils, instruments – that I used to use in the days before the rise of computers. I’d held onto them because…well, because. It was largely a perception of value, but since I hadn’t used them in years, it was obvious that whatever value they had was not a functional value – so out they went. There will be more stuff to follow.

As I read through a variety of articles, I did come across one that solved a problem I had. I have several boxes of old documents and papers. These documents are of no value in and of themselves, however, I would like to retain the data they contained. One of the articles I read on reducing incidental home paperwork was to simply get in the habit of “scan and discard” anything where the information on the document matters, but the document of itself doesn’t (i.e. bills, receipts, records, correspondence, etc.). I like that idea and picked up a basic flatbed scanner to implement it.

In terms of the overall quest for simplicity, I am often struck how one step toward the simple leads to another step toward the simple, which leads to another step…until ultimately we find the heart of simplicity.

*Contemptus Mundi

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, here is one very good working definition of it.

Contemptus mundi, therefore, is simply the recognition that the world—the human world, in all its vanity and in all the fraud hidden behind the man-made veil of science and technology—is really nothing more than our futile attempt to hide from God by stifling our desire for the good and the holy.

http://www.chastitysf.com/q_cm.htm

Daily Life: Thoughts on Writing

I haven't been writing as much lately. It has been a result of two distinct but inter-related choices this year.

The first was the choice to not multitask. Previously, a routine evening at home involved firing up the computer and then puttering my way through the evening, writing, chatting, reading the computer as I also watched television (either a regular program or a movie). When I have caught myself doing that this year I have deliberately stopped and asked the question "which do you want to do"? I've usually decided to watch the program on television. I haven't really watched any more television that I usually do, but I have "watched" the television or movie while I was doing it.

The other was the choice to focus "externally" this year more than normal. Quite often this year I've made the choice to go "out". Now, out may simply be as far as the patio or the courtyard, but more often than not it has involved wandering on weekends, both near and far. I've enjoyed it immensely. (It has also resulted in two foot injuries - the stress fracture earlier this spring and now I have a cracked callous on the my right foot, most likely caused by over-compensating for the stress fracture.)

There is also a third factor that comes into play. I am, this year, this summer, content. Content in a lot of ways. Contentment in turn means I don't feel the powerful compulsion to write. Oh, I am still compelled to write, it is just not as powerful a compulsion. What I have done this year is take a lot of notes, fragments, episodic incidents and articulate accidents and compiled them in a series of notebooks, both real and electronic, with things to write about. I am sure as the fall closes in and the weather starts to tighten with the approach of La Nina I will find myself with long sweet days to spend writing.

I am looking forward to that.

Observations: Writing In The Void

I've mentioned a couple of times that I am encountering some basic writers block. It is not that I am not writing. It is more that I am not satisfied with what I have been writing, either in terms of quantity or quality. I had mentioned it the other night in my circle of friends. I had said that felt like I was trying to write out of a void. What I meant was that I was sitting down to write, but when I reached into myself to find the story or tale I wanted to tell, I was reaching into a void. The will is there. The time is there. The words are there. The form that those words must take is not. One of them suggested that rather than trying to write OUT of the void, I try writing IN the void. So this is a run at that.

Imagine a formless place…

Inside of it dwell the many parts of our imagination. All of the things we know. All of the things we've experienced. All of the things we've found in the sensual world. They all reside in there. Periodically, a force moves through the void. This force is the will, it is spirit of the imagination. It may be a single muse. It may be many small muses working in concert. They reach into the formless place, they find the things that are stored there, and they start the process of stringing them together. Through the process of creativity they bring the forms of narrative together into poetry and prose.

A thousand, ten thousand, maybe more stories are formed and shaped and queued up to be released into the waking world through the creative power of writing. It is an inexhaustible well of inspiration. We may periodically reach in and pull something out. We may periodically find that the muses have done a very complete job of assembling the objects of our imagination into a cohesive architecture. We may struggle to write a simple sentence, a single paragraph, the most basic of narratives. We may find that the muses have delivered to us splendid garments of whole cloth, entire wardrobes of imagination. It is from this formless place, from this well of imagination, that all of the stories we have told and will tell spring.

If you find yourself temporarily bereft of a coherent narrative, if you find that the stories or poems are not quite there, just relax. Form always flows out of formlessness. The well of the imagination is never empty. Sometimes, what we simply need to do, is find our way into that well and then, simply, sit. Sit and let the strange muses and the ordinary muses do their work. Trust that they are actively assembling something magnificent. Trust that they are building vast cathedrals of splendid materials.

We are simply human. We all go through life together, we all share a common path, we all know the same richness and depth and breadth of life. Our senses each day fill to the brim with the threads of life, awaiting the simple or complex weaves that pull them together. There is stillness inside the void. Rather than struggle against it, simply relax, take a deep breath, and let the muses do their work.

Daily Life: Writers Block and a Dream in Four Parts

I woke this morning with the memory of the frame of dream, but no memory of the contents of the dream. All I recalled on waking is that the dream had four parts. I don't recall what any of those four parts were.

It was yet another beautiful California morning, nice and cool, some high clouds to the east, a pretty sunrise and a smooth commute into work. Work itself has been quiet and productive. I suspect the quiet comes because many people are probably either on their summer vacations or on an extended weekend from the 4th of July holiday.

I've been thinking this morning about writing and writers block. For me, writers block usually takes the shape of simply not being able to write that first sentence or that first paragraph. My mind moves around with all the potential ideas to write about but they just don't seem to make the trip to my finger tips to pour out on the virtual paper.

I can sometimes power through it by just sitting down and starting to write. Even if it is nonsense words or phrases or sentences, once I have physically started to write, then the ideas themselves will come flowing out down the same path. So, often what I will do is open a document and simply start writing.

"The sun is shining outside…"

"My shoes are snug on my feet…"

"My coffee cup is off white and has a US Savings Bonds decal on it, I got it from a bond drive at work a few years ago…"

As I move through the process of writing just very ordinary things I find that I can often keep flowing into writing more significant things.

When it comes to external distractions, I find that sometimes I can write through them without even noticing. Other times the external distractions serve to pull me off center and make it more difficult to putting the words on paper. That is not exclusive to writing though, I find it often happens in the office as well. Sometimes the external distractions pass by unnoticed. Other times they gain a disproportional weight and drag me to a point of inactivity as I wait for them to pass.

Daily Life: Lost Muse

Did you ever have something you were going to write get away by talking about it? It has happened to me. I will be wandering through the day the idea for a piece of writing will start germinating inside of me. I will watch the tender shoots press up through the earth and reach toward the sun. Then, I will talk about it - I might mention it in conversation, I might explain the idea to a friend, I might write about it in a note or a text or an email and suddenly - its gone. It was an idea that was expressed too early and got away. I am sure some excellent pieces have simply gotten away from me over the years.

Elusive Thoughts

There are times when I sit down to write where the thoughts remain elusive. It is as if the thoughts themselves are not yet differentiated among themselves. They are there, they are moving about in their orbits, but they remain half glimpsed under the waters of a vast and still lake, currents, whose existence is only revealed in a drifting leaf on an otherwise undisturbed surface.

I think this evening is an evening similar to one of those still pools. I am enjoying it, sitting here, just watching that stillness. It is cool outside, nearing cold. The apartment is filled with small noises. Sometimes the rush of the heater fills the air with a soft white noise. When the heater falls quiet I can hear the small sounds. The ticking of the clock in the kitchen. The slight noises the freezer makes. The miscellaneous sounds from outside.

Well, I don't want to push the metaphor to far. It has been a nice quiet night that I have wandered through, reading, watching Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles on the DVR, in conversation with a dear friend, eating ham and bean soup, chasing it down with Neopolitan ice cream and a tall glass of water.

Not a bad night for elusive thoughts.

Perhaps a night crafted specifically for elusive thoughts.

Two New Links

I added a pair of links to "The Places Rod Goes" on the right hand side (my link list).

One Minute Writer is a blog about, well, writing things in one minute. The person who runs it suggests a topic and people respond in comments or by back linking to their own blog.

American Memory is a project from the Library of Congress. Very cool - an excellent resource and a great place to explore.

Valdez Is Coming

It is a quiet evening here in San Jose. I am sitting at home, drinking a tall cold glass of ice water, watching Valdez Is Coming with Burt Lancaster, a classic western. Watching westerns is a soothing balm. There is some element in classic movies that just seems to be lacking in a lot of modern movies - not all - just a lot of them. I think a lot of it has a lot to do with the pace of the story telling. In the older movies they take more time to develop the story and characters and since I tend to be a very story driven person, that appeals to me.

It is a balmy night here. After a great pot roast dinner (make in my slow cooker, simmered all day), I took a two mile walk around the neighborhood. At the farthest point, just as I was getting ready to turn around, I ran into two of my neighbors, pushing strollers and trailing a gaggle of kids. That was a nice surprise, so I turned and walked back to the apartment complex with them.

I've noticed that lately I have been very externally focused - nothing wrong with it - just a little different. I've been writing lately, but not finishing anything. That is fine, sometimes when I write it takes a while for the writing to pull itself together into something I like. I was reading an article earlier in the day about writing - what the author described as his process of writing novels is that at first he spends time (a couple of months usually) writing about what he is going to write about. Describing thing, explaining things, writing character biographies, writing first person character material (as if one of the characters was extrapolating on something). Then, when he has written about the novel and the characters and the story for a month or two, usually between 100 and 200 pages, he finds that he knows the characters, environment, circumstances, voices, view points and motivations well enough that he begins the process of actually writing the novel. He does not so much plot the novel, but rather fills out the context the novel falls into. I thought it was a pretty interesting approach.

I think I will mull it around and give it a try and see what comes out of it. I have a novel length story that I have been trying to figure out how to tell, so we'll see what develops.