Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
Breaking it down.
I am definitely ready for a holiday. A real one too – the kind with more than a week off and no cel phone or computer access. Work is driving me batty, the house is an untidy mess, and all I can think about is getting food and gear organized for our hiking trip that starts in ten days. Between now and then is another few days of work, travel to Victoria, family visiting and my brother’s wedding. Lots going on including all the drama that attends such things, but at least I’ll be off work from next Wednesday and not returning to the office for eleven whole days. Wow.
Okay, so it’s not a huge break, but at least a few days without the natter of this office going on around me, not to mention an overwhelming workload. Thank-pete for headphones, I can tune out enough between now and next Wednesday afternoon to get through it.
I’m now on the third day in a row of being back at writing in the mornings and had a realization over breakfast that if I just added 600 words per day to this book project, by the end of 52 weeks I would have the rough draft of a novel. Which was heartening because writing has been feeling slow lately. I manage at least 500 words in my forty-five minutes per day, sometimes as much as 1000 (but not often) which I guess isn’t bad but have been feeling like at that rate I’ll never finish anything. After doing the math I guess I was wrong and if I persist I’ll have something to edit into a second draft in a year’s time.
I’m not sure if my process for writing these days is “right” and I’m a bit torn about trying to write in a linear fashion (start to finish) or experimenting with individual scenes. I decided to start with a few individual scenes for the sake of practicing both my character’s voice (I’m writing in first person which I find difficult but much more involved story-wise), and to see if there really is enough material for the story to be novel-worthy. I’m in the middle of the second of these practice scenes at the moment and I’m not disappointed that I started out this way. At the very least it allows me to break aspects of the story and my character down into manageable chunks without having to worry about 150,000 words all at once.
So that’s been the right place to start but I’m starting to think that after about three of these scenes I’m going to want to start at the beginning and work my way forward. We’ll see. Or this could become yet one more idea for a book that goes nowhere. I’m not really sure yet, but at least I’m writing and I’m interested in the characters I’m writing about (or “as”). I do recognize there is no single way to do this sort of thing, but I would like to figure out the right way for me to proceed so as to ensure that I actually maybe get a whole first draft written as opposed to abandoning it part-way through.
Which is why doing the math on how many words per day times 5 days per week times 52 weeks in a year made me feel a bit better about things. When you’re only at 5000 words, 145,000 more words seems a long way off. But broken out bit by bit, scene by scene, it starts to look more possible. I mean, people do this all the time judging from the number of books that make it into print, surely I can do this too?
A little check-in.
I have been all sorts of internal weirdness lately, none of it particularly bad, but not entirely motivated to write about it either. Thus silence on this blog, in my journal and at my laptop in general for the past week. Like writer’s block, except I think it might be less about not being *able* to write than not *wanting* to write. Why is that? Perhaps because I’m a little unsure of myself these days, a little anxious and down and I hate to admit that in writing, as if penning it makes it more true. So easier not to write at all.
I got up this morning though, despite misgivings about writing at all, and put 1000 words or so down on the page. 400 I kept, discarding the rest, but the upshot is that I started a second scene in what I hope might end up as a novel or novella. I’m just playing with a story at this point, writing out particular scenes to see if there is enough there to turn into a longer work, if it will hold my interest for long enough to complete. The bottom line though is that I got up this morning and wrote for the first time in about ten days, and I plan to do the same for the rest of mornings this week. Perhaps by the end of it I’ll have a whole new scene drafted, to go along with the first one. And then I can start another.
So that’s good. But it’s made me realize that a lot of my self-confidence lately is tied to this and other routines, and I suspect that this recent disruption in them, like the anxiety, is tied to quitting smoking (six weeks today). Yes, I am starting to feel more normal again, but I haven’t quite shaken particular avenues of obsessiveness (finances, weight gain, relationship) and it’s definitely wearing me down. I just want to enjoy my life right now, the fact that things are going incredibly well on all fronts, but instead I’m feeling nagged by myself all the time and everything seems like a monumental effort.
It will pass, I’m sure, but this phase has made me quiet on here because what could I possibly say that would matter to anyone? I’m too lazy to write. I can’t get my thoughts straight. Etc. All excuses to do nothing that would challenge the part of me who would rather remain unsure and thus unchallenged. A little fragile on that front. A little tired of the amount of work it all takes.
But holidays are on the horizon next week, the wedding of my brother, a hiking trip with Brian planned for several days after that. I just need to find a way to believe in myself again, as silly as that sounds, to find the excitement about my own potential that I felt only a couple of months ago. I’m hoping that some outdoor time, some new skill development (kayaking!), and reigniting my productive routines will combine to bring me back into focus. My life is *damned* good and I know it, but I don’t always feel it. Odd how that works.
Penned.
Sometimes I have a hard time forcing myself to write. Today is one of those days. Anxiety again, I suppose. A little bit of writer’s block which is really just a fear of commitment – if I start something too complex I must commit to finishing even though I’m lazy, unmotivated, don’t care to get that into right now. It’s a difficult state to blog in, or even write a letter on behalf of the union for that matter. No juice, creativity, jazz in my fingertips right now and I cast around the ideas inside me for something that is brief, to the point, spit-out-able in 15 minutes or less.
No dice, yah? No chance my thoughts are simple enough to write in a paragraph, and I have had many ideas to write about lately so it’s not a case of being thoughtless but perhaps too thoughtful – overwhelmed by the jumble of thoughts and topics. So many things I could focus on. So many things I could write about. If only the gate would swing open, the one that’s containing all these words and ideas and let them out again. I feel pent up, strange in myself today. Wishing I could have a little cave like the limpets above. I’m sure it’s all going to be okay.
Anxiety.
I thought that I was in for a bout of depression recently when I started to get squirrely with the nicotine receding from my body, but lo it was not to be and instead I’ve come down with a whopping case of anxiety instead. I sure wasn’t expecting that! But it’s everywhere on me these days, crawling up the backs of my calves, worming down the collar of my shirt, my fingers hammering against the keyboard “you can’t you can’t you can’t” like a song straight from the pit of my stomach. It’s a bad case really, and I’m not sure I can see an end to it anytime soon.
I spent most of yesterday in bed, played hooky with Brian so I could unwind my nerves from the night before. A day of napping and fucking, a good dinner, a bowl smoked before bed – you would think this a perfect formula for reprogramming, destressing, coming back down to ground. And yet I woke up this morning with the same mole of insecurity digging away back there, another hole in my rational brain. And another. Another.
I worry that the neighbours will see my dying tomato plant and think I’m a bad gardener. I’m sure that the drywaller working on our house is going to break in later and steal from us. I worry about being short of money even though I well enough to get by. I’m convinced at times that Brian is only seconds away from breaking up with me. Over the weekend I figured I was pretty much on the road to completely traumatizing my step-daughter. I’m sure that if I don’t get my friend help she is going to die and that I will be responsible. I obsess about not being a good enough person, but at the same time fret that I’m being taken advantage of. etc. etc. etc. The list goes on.
It’s amazing how illogical it is, how widespread and random the fears can be. I can laugh at them even as I list them for Brian, an unending litany that spoken outloud is nothing short of ridiculous. And yet I feel them even while recognizing implausibility. I suppose that is the nature of addiction, or simply of living in a precarious mental state – it’s not rational how the mind contorts itself, the slightest alteration in routine can wobble or warp the lens that we look through. And I’m living it again, like the depression but amped to a different frequency. I think this is better though – because at least I can articulate it, see it for where it comes out of – unlike depression which fogs me in so much I can’t peer out at all.
How lucky I am then to have a partner who has been so supportive in these last couple of weeks, perhaps slightly worried at times, but unfailingly there while I work this habit out of my system. It’s a strange time, but not awful even so, because I’ve got safety in the arms of my lover, in the warmth of my home. I’ll work it out. I’m sure I will soon.
A short story worth reading….
Over at the New Yorker, amongst the free fiction offerings (of which there are many) – check out the new Jonathan Franzen short story “Good Neighbors” which I believe is part of a collection coming out in the fall. A sardonic take on gentrification and middle class superiority, I thought I would pass it along for your enjoyment….
Red Cedar 