Missing the Deadline

I’ve been away from this blog so long that I’m not really sure where to begin. The book is the best place.

After finishing my editing job and learning to type with an elastic splint on my wrist, I came back to the poetry with a vengeance, planning to make a July 31 first-book contest deadline. I missed it.

The problem wasn’t lack of material, but its excess. I’ll start by explaining (probably not for the first time here) that my poetry collection is a reworking of my thesis, with some new material added. My thesis was a little over a hundred pages long. A lot of it wasn’t particularly good. One reader wisely advised that I remove the weaker poems. I agreed, but I didn’t cut anything because I honestly had no judgment about which poems were stronger and which were weaker.

Over the last few months, however, I’ve become a much better reader of my own work, so I was able to delete some poems and set others aside for revision, cutting the number of pieces in my poetry directory from about ninety to about fifty, but what I discovered this week is that, when push comes to shove, I still have some anxiety.

Thursday morning, I put the finishing touches on a few more poems. I added a stanza to the one that prompted me to read the Popol Vuh. I finished completely revamping one that I had been on the verge of cutting altogether, and I tweaked a little here and there.

By lunch time, I was ready to put the individual poems into one large file, compile the table of contents, and send the whole thing off. Since I haven’t used the TOC feature in this version of Word and since I thought it would be easier to do things the slow, plodding, and less error prone way, I made the table of contents out by hand. That means typing up the poem titles, pasting in the leader dots, and filling in the numbers. My book was divided into four sections. I panicked when Part 3 began on page forty-three. That panic turned into a real tizzy when I realized I had eighty-five pages worth of poems.

I had spent so much time figuring out how to organize the poems that I couldn’t think of another way to put them together into a poetry sized book. Then I started thinking about what to cut from each section, and all the old uncertainties about which poems were better and which were worse came back to haunt me. I went away to read for a little while and clear my head, but I fell asleep, not waking up till after my deadline.

The following morning began with a little moping and much self-pity. Then I decided that would get me nowhere, so I focused on the fact that I’m a few pages short of having two books worth of poems. I have more poems in the rough draft stage, and I have a couple of ideas for poems,, so I can get a couple of things up to snuff. If I can bring my total number of pages up to at least ninety-five, then I can shape that output into two books without any problem.

Over all, I’m happier than expected. Two manuscripts in the mail is better than one. But not being done is still something of a blow. the more short-term consolation that I’m holding onto now is that I have no excuse for not sending poems out this fall.

Puntitas reads _Tempted_ by M. Hart and _Fallen Idols_ by J. F. Freedman She’s taken yet another break from _The Secret Magdalene_ by K. Longfellow,, and she’s having trouble finding the motivation to get through _The Shack_ by W. P. Young, who would not be happy to hear she put him down for _tempted_, about a man who lets his best friend have sex with his wife.

Trying to Get Back to Work

During its productive phases, a writer’s head needs to have room to forget the world is out there. It needs the world to find material and to verify it, but once the mind starts the process of turning emotions, impressions, and ideas into linear text, it needs to know that the world is unimportant enough to detach from.

Lately, my head has been a mess. My dad has been ill. Walking pneumonia, high blood sugars, and shingles—all of these conditions need to be attended to, and all are the source of concern (he’s not a young man after all), but because he’s active and generally healthy, none are reason for alarm either. He was given an antibiotic for the pneumonia and responded beautifully. The only problem was that his blood sugar, which he ordinarily manages very well, went through the roof, so he had temporarily to take a second diabetes medication while his body dealt with the pneumonia. Then as he was finishing up with the antibiotics, he developed shingles, which are supposed to be even more painful in the elderly.

I’ll preface the next set of comments by saying that my tendency toward the dramatic comes entirely from my father. I have no doubt that he felt miserable, and I have no doubt that he felt fear. There were several days when I felt fear for him and for myself as well. But mustering sympathy without indulgence or snappishness was quite the feat because he was a difficult patient and a perpetual reenactment of Camille, each cough and twitch prompting what in his mind was a moving death-bed scene, the phrase “one-way ticket to the other side” figuring prominently on the script.

Since he coughed and twitched by night as well as day, he soliloquized and managed stage property (kitchen utensils, doors, television remotes, and other noise making devices) whenever the spirit moved him, which meant that no one else slept very well for about three weeks.

Finally, he’s back to good health. We’re expecting the prognosis to be official later today, when he goes to his last follow-up appointment. Everyone’s been sleeping for a week, and the one-way ticket to the other side comes up only when lawn mowing and other chores are mentioned in his hearing.

The first week of my father’s illness, I was concerned, as much by his health as by my mother’s inability to distinguish between his real complaints and those brought on by fear or a need for attention. After that, my sense was that things were under control for him, that he twice needed to go back to the doctor for a med adjustment, and that less drama would probably make him feel better. Still, the niggling uncertainty that I could be mistaken had a way of pushing other thoughts aside, especially as I felt increasingly certain that the drama was the product of an ever growing fear.

my concern for myself during that and subsequent weeks was that I wasn’t sleeping well and was having greater trouble focusing at work and at the computer. Fortunately, I had few jobs during those weeks. I was able to do a little writing, and I did a little revision. But I got almost no work done on either my big translation or editing project. This week, when my dad is going about his normal routine, I’m incredibly sleepy and exhausted. I’ve done a lot of editing, but some days are more productive than others, and I’m suddenly experiencing lots of wrist pain, which I’ve been treating by taking OTC antiinflammatories and resting the hand. Yes, for most of this ordeal, I’ve been unable to knit much or to type except when necessary, so the two things that can help me keep my head on straight have not been available to me.

The only real writing news is that I reread some poems and was happy with the revisions. I’m still tweaking the really long one, but I’m thinking that it’s good enough and close enough for my purposes now. The other longish poem I’ve been working on a lot this spring is frustrating me. The last time I worked on it, I noticed a gap about three fourths of the way through, so I added some back-story. Then I read it about a week ago and thought the back-story was not necessary. Confused, I sent it to a friend of mine for her to walk through her reading of it with me. She’s very good at that, so I’m sure that will help. Finally, I did read one poem, where the revisions did not help. I’ve made some changes, so I’ll need to reread it again.

Puntitas reads _The Soul Thief_ by C. Baxter, _The Secret Magdalene_ by K. Longfellow, and _At Some Disputed Barricade_ by A. Perry.

Counting Down

After much wasteful procrastination, Puntitas has had a productive weekend. She wrote a new poem last night, one of those poems that come of themselves with a little prodding, the kind that can stand and walk and speak in telegraphic sentences when they’re born so they can go into the mail with minimal nurturing at home, and today she has gotten over the last of the hideous hurdles in the damn poem she’s been working on forever—well, off and on since Easter more or less.

Both poems have been interesting experiences. The one I wrote last night was inspired by the Independence Day celebration, which has always struck me as far more Dionysian in nature than Halloween or even Carnival. I’ve never quite been able to explain why that is, but eight years ago, when the good home schooling Mennonite neighbors argued over whether to let their screaming five-year-old go ahead and light a Fountain (Mom was for allowing her in order to teach a lesson about obedience and parental judgment while Dad objected on the grounds that the resulting emergency room trip would ruin the party and spoil all the food), I came close to putting it into words. This year, with all the forest fires and talk of global warming, I found the perfect context. I didn’t write it out there and then because my mother and I were having such a nice time laughing at the neighbor’s silliness and munching on big pieces of fresh fruit, that getting up for the note taker only to tune her out seemed crass. Later, of course, the moment was gone, and I didn’t know if I could recreate the piece.

Sunday night, when I did write it out, the poem was different from what I had imagined. While I remembered the general movement of the piece, I didn’t remember all of the elements that got me from the opening image to the climactic ending. I also didn’t know how to prepare for the final image and overall conceit without giving it away or making the poem feel like a riddle. What I did instead was to suggest the conceit in two places and organize the details to do the rest of the work. I won’t know whether I pulled it off until I read the thing relatively fresh.

One pleasant surprise was the closing image. I couldn’t use the one I had planned and was floundering around for a direction to take the poem when I read what I had and realized it was already somewhere. I did a little tweaking to make the ending less abrupt and went back to work on making the conceit stand out enough. Then I was done.

I hope it’s as complete as I think it is the next time I work on it. There is one image I really like, but I’m nervous about it not quite blending in with the rest of the poem. I can tie it into the general conceit, but that may be more trouble than it’s worth. I’ll just have to wait to decide.

The other poem has been a struggle. I’ve stuck with it because I really like its potential. I like the idea, the images, and the general narrative arc. Done right, it can turn out to be an excellent piece, but maintaining a balance between exposition and metaphor, resisting bathos, keeping two ideas separate while using one as a conceit for the other—all have been extremely difficult for me. On top of all of that, I’m not sure that I have the right life experience to write it. It’s about marriage, and I’ve based it on conversations with and observations of some of my married friends, but having never been married or involved with anyone for a long period of time, I’m nervous that I may not be true to the speaker’s feelings.

During our last tussle, I did some rearranging. That made for a stronger draft, but it also created a massive gap that called for the speaker’s history and a link to both the present situation and the metaphor for her marriage. Since then, I’ve been researching the linking details and thinking about how to integrate them into the details of her history.

Today’s mission was to fill in that gap even if the work was far from polished. The gap has definitely been filled. Again, it’s a matter of waiting a few days to read the poem fresh and have a more objective sense of how to direct my revisions. At this point, I’m thinking it would be helpful to have someone read and comment on it. I’ve got one or possibly two people in mind, and depending on the next round of revision, I may ask them.

I think the next time I work on my book, I want to read the really long poem. The last time I read it, I thought it was just about done. The changes I made involved cutting out excess in the final section. I was only concerned about an important transitional point, where too much snipping could affect pacing.

Puntitas reads _Quiller Salamander_ by A. Hall and _The Zookeeper’s Wife_ by D. Ackerman.

The Accomplice’s Witness

I spent my day reading a book about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Though I enjoyed it, the book didn’t compel me as much as one of its secondary characters did.

The book focuses on Mary Surratt, the first woman to be executed by the U.S. government for her role in the plot to kill President Lincoln and other government officials. One of the sources heavily drawn from is the memoir of Louis Weichmann, a civil servant for the Union, friend to Surratt’s son (also a key conspirator), resident of Surratt’s boardinghouse, suspected conspirator himself, and witness for the prosecution.

Weichmann’s story was definitely where my interest drifted as I read, and now that I’ve finished the book, he is what I think about. His detractors say that he was part of the conspiracy or very much informed and that he wasn’t tried along with the others only because the prosecution needed his testimony. From the snippets in the book, I can very much believe that. His proponents say that he was a naive but observant outsider who may have been brought into the fringes of the group for use as a possible scapegoat, and I can believe that too.

My own guess is that he was a little of both. I’m imagining him as a straight-laced geeky guy who likes, but doesn’t always “get,” his wilder “cool friend.” A lot of the things he sees and hears probably rub him the wrong way, but since the people involved are his friends, he’s probably not understanding what has no context for him: not quite making sense of stray bits and pieces, jumping to conclusions, or blowing things out of proportion. There’s probably a point at which he does know, but denial, the loyalty of long association, the fear of unemployment or possible prosecution, the excitement of being involved in something so clandestine, the overwhelmed wishfulness that it’ll all just go away—all keep that knowing at arms length, far enough from the surface of his awareness to convince himself he doesn’t know. And then that knowing reaches out and grabs him hard, forcing its reality into the center of his brain, whether that be in the ah-hah moment he describes, in which the pieces fall mysteriously and obviously into place, or a panicked instant of confrontation, in which a truth he’s put off examining suddenly becomes a set of consequences he must live through. This is the classic conflict of a character in a novel.

What makes this person additionally compelling is that he spent the rest of his life justifying his actions. I’m going to try to read his account of the events. I’m wondering if I’ll find him as compelling as Clifford Larson’s portrayal.

Puntitas reads _The Garden of Last Days_ by A. Dubus III and _The Assassin’s Accomplice_ by K. Clifford Larson.

Indirect Observation

The one positive aspect of my hiatus from all things productive is that, when I read the poem I’m now revising, I noticed the long expository passage reminiscent of high-school science textbooks now mostly blends in with the rest of the piece. I say mostly because the clunkiness happens in the transitions from one stage of the process I’m describing to the next, but the language of the process itself is in keeping with everything else.

To make that happen, I had to brutally cut some lines that I liked and I had to move some things around, which worked amazingly well. Now I’m at a point where I want to add a section (one or two medium sized stanzas, maybe fifty to a hundred words).

The research is a bit tricky, however, involving the sort of detailed visual observation I can’t do myself. I’ve emailed a friend for help, and I’m going to try the web, which I’m not hopeful about in this case, but then again, it’s helped me out when I haven’t expected much. My mother is also extremely good at making just these sorts of observations, so I’ll have to ask her as well.

Getting material secondhand like this is tough. It involves preparation, learning as much ahead of time to identify what exactly I want to know, to figure out whether and how I can get someone else to make the observation, and to be able to ask the questions that elicit the information I need.

Picking the observer is important too. For all that writers spend time in their heads, they need to be genuinely and actively interested in things that happen outside themselves. Some people aren’t.

I had dinner with two friends last night. I met them twelve years ago, but one went subradar a few years later. Then she and the other crossed paths at a café, and a few calls and meals later, the friend I’ve kept in touch with said, “Let’s go out for Japanese food,” and “Let’s call ….” so she filled me in on our friend’s most recent doings, and over vegetarian sushi (which tasted appallingly like fish—must be the way the rice is cooked), my friend kept conversation going with prompts like, “I was telling Puntitas about your job,” or I did it by saying, “So you’re a newly wed.” The friend who had filled me in had given me very few details. As I got them myself, she said, “Good thing Puntitas is asking all those questions. I didn’t ask anything.” And sure enough, as the conversation went on, the one who didn’t ask tended to stop what I thought was a flowing conversation to digress into her own thoughts and ideas, not a bad thing, just a difference in interactive styles.

Puntitas reads _Twelve Sharp_ and _Lean Mean Thirteen_ by J. Evanovich, _Bound in Blue_ by M. Belle, and _The Garden of Last Days_ by A. Dubus III. She has put _The Secret Magdalen_ on hold.

Trying to Get into the Groove

As is evident from the number of books I’m reading, I’m not being particularly productive. I’m starting to get more sleep, so I should be able to focus a little better, but it’s too hot or too cold or too uninspiring to get anything done. I’ve got a translation to do in edition to my editing job, and I’m on a sock making jag, which is really not conducive to anything fruitful.

I did make some changes to my really long poem. I tried something that works with prose and am hoping it works with poetry too.

The last time I read the poem, I thought it was fine except for two places. In one, I didn’t go into enough detail about a crucial point. In the other, I had too many details and not the right sort.

So what I did was go to those sections only. I added details to one and cut them from the other. I just read the stanza or two before and after to get the general rhythm, made my changes, checked for some consistency but didn’t stress, and that was it.

Since I haven’t read the piece in a while, I don’t have a clear memory of it in my head, so I’m hoping that, when I read it again, the changes will feel right.

I really need to work on something else now. Maybe a cold glass of water ….

Puntitas reads _the Friday Night Knitting Club_ by K. Jacobs, _Invisible Monsters_ by C. Palahniuk, and _The Secret Magdalene_ by K. Longfellow.

Planning a Recovery

Three weeks ago, I started waking up after only five hours of sleep, and I had severe neck pain. It’s not the pulled-muscle, pinched-nerve sort of pain that comes of lying in a chiropracticly insalubrious position. It’s the definite physical ache produced by tension, and I haven’t had it this bad since the thesis.

I’m not really sure where the tension is coming from. Work is bad, but it’s been bad for a long time, and in May, it was less bad than in previous months.

My home life and my relationships with my friends are going well.

The editing job is coming along. The best descriptive phrase for that is “fits and starts.” Two days last week were incredibly productive, but other days have involved no progress because I’ve been too sleep deprived to hold two thoughts in my head all at once.

The poetry manuscript is at a standstill. I did work on it a little last week, but again, because of the lack of focus, I don’t feel I’m in a position to work on it.

Fortunately, things are starting to improve, and not a moment too soon. My focus at work was so bad on Tuesday that I had already decided to find someone to cover for me the next day, but I had a good night’s sleep (eight hours, one block of three and another block of five), so I was able to think clearly enough to work my own appointments and take other measures. I’ve started sitting up straight because my mother read a medical advice column on the evil effects of bad posture on the neck and back. I’ve contacted the person who gave me the editing job to let him know that I will be getting the second manuscript done by August 1. I’ve spent the week reading, knitting, and generally relaxing in order to ease the tension and improve my likelihood of sleep.

The neck pain hasn’t been as bad this week, but the five-hour-sleep days are still going on, but I’m hoping that I can catch up a little over the weekend.

Puntitas reads _In the Woods_ by T. French and Books 1 and 2 of the _Blood Ties_ series by J. Armintrout.

Back to Normal

The last week and a half has been one of those up-and-down periods for me. One reason is that I’m finishing up my period, so the last ten days have been all about hormones, mood swings, and sweet-and-salty cravings. Beyond that, I’ve had some real stresses and some real joys.

Stressor 1: I accepted a freelance editing job, which I’m enjoying but which I charged waaaay too little for given that it is long (two manuscripts totaling 35,000 words).

Stressor 2: It’s taken me longer than expected to get the hang of my PDA. Forty-five pages into the first doc, I’m finally feeling some of that second-nature element with the device kicking in.

Stressor 3: Even though I’m making faster progress on the job, I’m still way behind schedule. My original goal was to finish both manuscripts by July 1, with the option of notifying my contact by June 15 if the second one would be delayed. I decided this weekend that I’ll have to contact him to give myself an extra month on the second doc.

Stressor 4: I realize I’ve got some manuscript deadlines coming up for my own work (poetry book contest postage dates), and I still have a couple of poems pending.

Stressor 5: Because of the state budget crisis and the Republican tendency to support big business and not much else, part-time teaching positions at my university will be scarce, so odds are, I won’t be doing much of that next year.
Stressor 6/Joy 1: I got the results of my interpreting exam, the one that involved exotic yoga positions as memory aids. I did not pass (surprise, surprise), but I did incredibly well given my horrendous performance. Each exam has eight or nine scoring areas. I passed at least six per exam, and most of my fails were borderline fails.

Joy 2: I decided to put more energy into posting pictures of my finished objects on my blog, and I bought more yarn to celebrate that decision.

Joy 3: Amid all the stress, someone lent me a nice relaxing book that made me laugh. It also put Janet Evanovich back into my good graces because I enjoyed the book and because I liked her comments on writing about ordinary heroes (made in an interview at the end of the recording). Note to self: avoid J. E.’s romance fiction at all cost.

Joy 4: Two friends and I took a trip to the beach over the weekend. We left Friday afternoon, returned Saturday night, and had a great time. I even met a knitting buddy.

Joy 5: I got some ideas for writing material, and I confirmed some other material I’ve already used.

I’m finally feeling myself again now that the hormones have leveled out. It helps that I’ve decided to delay the second editing manuscript in order to give myself time to work on my own stuff. For a change, I’m not at all bothered by the relative paucity of appointments (paying jobs) for the month of June.

Puntitas reads _Ten on Top_ by J. Evanovich.

The Mechanics

I’m having one of those brutal reminders of the importance of little things. I’ve taken a break from my manuscript in order to work on an editing job. I decided to do it on my PDA, not my desktop, partly to hone my PDA skills, but mostly to give myself the option of working somewhere other than at my desk.

While I’m enjoying the comfort of working from the plush recliner in my bedroom and while I’m looking forward to spending part of my day working on the patio, I’m feeling frustrated about the general slowness of the work. The work itself is not challenging. It’s a combination of basic research, a little imagination, and a lot of attention to detail. In and of itself, it’s coming along just fine. But after an hour or so of work, I check the time and am surprised to notice I’ve made so little progress.

I’ve used the PDA often enough and have become proficient enough that I can do most things without going to the help menu. I manage most features smoothly, but I still haven’t quite gotten some of the navigational things that make moving around the text a breeze. I have improved over even these last three days, but the work isn’t second nature, like it is on the desktop machine.

Part of me thinks that I would get more done if I were at the computer. Typing is so second nature to me that it feels like thinking, and using both Word and my screen reader is so comfortable that I’m hardly aware of either.

Like most people, I started by writing by hand. Since most things had to be typed eventually, I’d write a draft by hand, roll a sheet of paper to the platen, and revise as I went along. An avid note taker, I could write at a pace that matched my thinking for those days when I just had to get it out, but most of the time, I wrote at a slow to moderate pace, which gave me time to work out exactly what I needed to say. I rarely do that any more, but every now and then I find myself in a position where I have to reach for plain old paper. I wrote a couple of the poems in my manuscript that way. One even got published with minimal revision.

Then I wrote on the typewriter. As my typing speed and accuracy increased, I could focus less on the physical act of writing and concentrate more on the creative act of composing. While I was able to do that for certain relatively short, formulaic types of writing, it wasn’t something I could sustain for very long, though, thinking back on it now, it’s amazing that I could sustain it for as long as I did.

For a while, during one of my seriously blocked eras, I composed by speaking into a tape recorder. Then I typed or wrote it out by hand, in either case revising as I went along. That was great for certain things, and I was able to sustain the energy of a piece for much longer.

Eventually, I moved on to electronic devices. First it was the self-contained word processor, then WordPerfect in DOS, and now Word in XP. As I write this, I remember that the word processor printed on narrow cash register tape, so I had to type out the finished product those first few years. Even so, being able to delete, add, and move text around was such a wonderful, freeing experience (finally to say exactly what I wanted to say) that I first became unblocked, then became more blocked than ever.

With each new technology, I had to learn to write in a new way, not only to become competent at the mechanics but also to adjust the way I conceived and revised a piece of work. Lacking that second-nature fluency with the mechanics, as I am now with the PDA, is oddly disorienting even when competence is good.

For now, I’m going to keep plugging along with the PDA. Working in the comfy chair has been fabulous, something I don’t want to give up. I’ve have to run the file through Word when I’m done, partly to give it the last once-over, but partly to do a few things that my PDA may not be able to do. I’ll break the manual out next time I’m feeling patient and eager to learn.

Puntitas reads _Leonardo’s Swans_ by K. Essex.

Fear and Procrastination

Fear has so many odd manifestations. Yesterday I finished my long poem, one of the few truly new ones. It turned out to be nine pages. I spent much of the day fiddling around on the web, not returning to it until three hours into my computer session. It’s done I think though several weeks from now, I suspect I’ll have to do some tweaking.

Today I spent six hours searching for the right sock yarn. I was hoping for a double-knit weight in mostly cotton, but I’m thinking pure cotton (for toe, foot, and heel) and pure acrylic (for cuff) can work too.

I did that because today is the day I had set for myself to read the last finished poem, one that is three pages long and is also new. Finally, I read it ten minutes ago, and it really is mostly done. All of the pieces are there, except maybe for one that should go in around three fourths of the way in. Most of the language is working, so most of the work to be done is surface level stuff, but the long technical section in the middle is still hard to follow and still sounds like an excerpt from an encyclopedia article. Additionally, I may need to build more of the speaker’s history into the poem, and I will delete some details that seem to come out of nowhere.

Thinking in concrete terms like that is so much more manageable than putting off reading a draft that, after weeks of work, may be awful. That’s the terror of the process, confronting the possibility of failure. What complicates it even more is that the fear generates energy. Some people clean house. I spent my weekend recreating a lace pattern from a shawl that gets wider and wider in order to make a shawl that gets narrower and narrower. I spent the weekend dwelling on the fact that several people my parents’ age have died recently. I spent my weekend mustering up the courage to sue my current employers. The energy generates more fear.

Just reading the poem after so much procrastination is a relief. I’m trying not to dwell on the fact that I’m not quite at the tweaking phase (well, I’m tweaking, but not making small changes to the poem), and I’m trying to focus on the fact that I managed to make the previous piece not-sound like an encyclopedia article.

I definitely have work ahead of me.

Puntitas has been too unfocused to read much of anything.