Tested

Puntitas has had one of those experiences that makes her think, “Fate,” “Kismet,” “punishment from on High.” She normally doesn’t hold with such truck as her understanding of matters of this type is that every moment presents an opportunity to put one’s moral/ethical/philosophical beliefs into practice, but there are times when logical explanations and the fruits of other kinds of reflection don’t quite add up.

Puntitas’ big interpreting exam was scheduled for Monday at 15:30 in a city that is three hours north of where she lives. She and a friend left her home in time to arrive at the examination site ninety minutes early, but fifty miles away from their destination, traffic came to a two-to-three-mile crawl because of an accident involving a big rig whose trailer blocked northbound lanes and whose cab was being sprayed by fire crews as Puntitas and her friend crept past two hours later.

Once traffic regained its sixty-five-mile-per-hour flow, Puntitas used her cell phone to call the number on the official exam site map, the one provided by the examining organization, to let proctors know she was running thirty-minutes late. She was too preoccupied about whether she’d be allowed to take the test or made to wait for the next cycle to notice that the area code on the map didn’t jibe with her recollection of the area code of the city she was heading toward. The person who answered her call gave the name of the right hotel, so she left a message, which the employee was diligent enough to get to the test administrators, once she ascertained that Puntitas was “one of the testes.”

At about 3:30, Puntitas’ official starting time, she received a callback. Puntitas had left her message with test administrators in the wrong city, a testing site that was eight hours south of where she was at that very moment. So Puntitas tried again, using Information to get the number to the right city. That hotel employee was far less diligent than his southern California counterpart. The best he would offer was to put Puntitas on hold for ten minutes while he found out whether such a test were indeed being administered in his hotel, then transfer the call to the banquet room, where the solemn event was presumably taking place and where Puntitas had a lovely conversation with a befuddled hotel server. She called the switchboard again, speaking again to Less Diligent, who transferred her to the specific testing room, where the phone rang fifteen times before Puntitas hung up. Since it was 3:50, she didn’t try again, believing her proctor to be out having a cup of coffee, a swim, or a pack-up prior to going home.

She decided to press on to the hotel anyway, in the hope that someone would have been scheduled after her. Her friend drove on, following the Test administrator’s map from Highway 99, to the 110, to the 9th Street exit through town in search of J Street. After driving fifteen minutes, they came to streets with letters for names—G and H or maybe M and L—but no J and the letters didn’t continue, so after fifteen more minutes, they stopped to ask for directions. Puntitas digresses to observe that convenience store clerks are a surly and vague group. After another fifteen minutes, they stopped again for Puntitas’ friend to check the big fold out map that had nothing to do with the testers, and fifteen minutes later, they were at the hotel, trying to find parking and discussing the fact that they could have gotten off Highway 99 at J Street and arrived much sooner.

At the hotel entrance, Puntitas realized that it was 5:00, that the proctor wouldn’t be anywhere near the testing room, and that there was no point in going any further. She and her friend walked down the street, had dinner, and drove back home.

That night, she emailed the testers to ask for a new time, explaining that she’d been seriously delayed by the accident and by being lost for thirty minutes. Surprisingly, the testers were willing to allow her a new opportunity, scheduling her for southern California on Wednesday. Then the testers contacted her again to cancel the offer as the ADA version of the exam was not available there.

The next exam cycle is in two years, so missing this one is a serious setback. Puntitas doesn’t think she planned poorly. She left her home with more than a reasonable margin of error. She made efforts to telephone the examiners to notify them she’d be late. She emailed to request a new date and time, and her request was granted. But to have her margin blown so incredibly and to have been given a new time only to have it rescinded tries the most ardent follower of real and rational thinking.

After some tears, sulks, and other kindred mood swings, Puntitas has decided she’ll request a new date since the reason she wasn’t scheduled for one was lack of reasonable accommodations, in this case an additional cassette, which would not have been hard to include in the standard kit or to deliver from one testing site to another. Puntitas thinks the law is on her side in this matter, but she gets extremely tired of having to take refuge in that fact, as so much of her life is shaped by the ignorance or kindness of others. This particular issue will involve more than the usual amount of effort since getting the accommodation approved in the first place involved more effort than she had expected. Even thinking about the process is exhausting. Puntitas would let it go if the next testing cycle weren’t so far away.

Puntitas reads _Transportes González e hija_ by M. A. Escandón.

The Ego Is a Fragile Thing

This has been an odd week for Puntitas. She received another book rejection. This one was far more discouraging than she expected. The letter was not a form letter, though it was as sterile and formulaic as some she’s received, and something about the specific wording gave Puntitas the impression that her manuscript was rejected because … well … it sucked.

The rejection was so discouraging, in fact, that Puntitas didn’t do any of her usual procrastination and work avoidance in order to dream up book tours and Nobel Prize acceptance speeches. She actually spent most of her time working on her big, ugly translation, a tedious editing job, and a short translation, the last of which went quickly and smoothly enough to restore Puntitas’ faith in her own abilities, a faith seriously shaken by the big, ugly document.

This week Puntitas also scanned more of the bilingual legal dictionary and started learning Trados, An overpriced application which is designed to make projects like the big, ugly translation easier, but which Puntitas has resisted because she has a good memory and is well versed in Word features like cut and paste and search and replace. Her initial efforts (thanks to the help of other translators) went well, but they’re definitely initial efforts and will probably not help much with the big, ugly translation itself.

Another factor that added to Puntitas’ general productivity was the temporary demise of her mp3 player, which allows Puntitas to lose herself in audio books while engaged in less exotic activities. Nevertheless, the yucky rejection letter was so devastating that she continued working after the device came back to life. It is hard to believe that there’s any point in developing one’s craft when one’s writing … well … sucks.

Puntitas reads _The Winthrop Woman_ by A. Seton.

Popping In

I’ve been so absorbed by trying to finish my big, ugly translation that I haven’t had much time to think about anything else, writerly or otherwise. Right now I’m catching up here because my head is fried and because I’m disheartened by the glacial pace at which I’m progressing. Self-employment (and isn’t writing a form of that?) only works when the self is disciplined and knows how to meet a deadline. I’m not sure that I can do either very consistently even when I make an honest effort. No, that’s not altogether true. It just feels extremely true right now.

Anyway, I haven’t done any non-big-ugly-translation writing, but I have done a little reading mostly in the mornings when I wake up or at night when I go to bed and yesterday when I did nothing productive to recharge the mental battery. Mostly, I’m catching up, reading a spy novel I’ve started three or four times, reading more short stories from a collection I’d interrupted, reading something light to contrast with the dry, functional writing of the document I’m working on. I’ve also gotten into the habit of starting my day at the computer with the Knopf Poem of the Day. I’ve found that so inspiring and refreshing that I’ve decided to continue reading only a poem or two everyday after they stop magically appearing in my inbox. I’ve got three or four poetry collections that I’ve bought through the various contests I’ve entered, a book by Donald Hall, and an anthology of African-American writing to cull from.

Last week, my first official book rejection arrived: a form email listing the contest winner and finalists. While it wasn’t as devastating as I had imagined, receiving the news was no exercise in well-adjustment. I felt embarrassed about having sent the book out in the first place, wondered why I wasted my time and money, and speculated on possible nonwriting jobs that might open up soon. Fortunately, that dissipated in a few hours, being replaced by the more insidious put-downs of early PMS. Hormones certainly kick start that rollercoaster of euphoria and despair.

Puntitas reads _Black Creek Crossing_ by J. Saul, _Blindspot: By a Gentleman in Exile and a Lady in disguise_ by J. Kamensky and J. Lepore, _the Spanish Game_ by C. Cummings, _Maridos_ by A. Mastreta.

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.

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.

Catching a Spark

Avoidance seems to work for me. Last night, I thought the weekend would be about Ursula and her knitting, but today that seemed too hard to think through, so I pulled up a poem that was almost done last time we met.

Again, who picked out the brilliance to leave all the crap?

I wrote it the semester I took a class on form. The only real rule on this one is seven syllables to the line. As with the sonnet, I noticed a lot of flab (irrelevant detail, needless repetition, pacing issues). I was going for a feeling of frantic chaos that encircles a core of overwhelming isolation.

Emotionally, the poem is successful, but on a literal level the action is hard to follow. The language is vague; the images develop the mood, not the actual situation; and the lack of substance weakens the impact of the close.

The second I stopped reading, I started to revise. First it was fairly superficial stuff, cutting flabby words to fuse lines, but quickly I discovered I was adding detail, filling out the story of the poem, giving it the life of setting and of character motivation. The biggest thing is that I rediscovered it’s about the significance of losing a poem that wrote itself. I remember starting with that idea, but somewhere along the way, I lost it.

The changes go into the major overhaul category: whole stanzas will disappear to be replaced by others, and new characters and a new sense of what is missing will be added.

What does work well in the version of the poem as it stands is the use of nonflab related repetition. A few of the images and lines come up two or three times, evoking some of the circular unease of a villanelle. I’ll try to keep that aspect of the poem. I’m excited.

Committing to It, Baby!

So I was knitting a sock (one of my obsessions) and listening to an audio book (don’t rumple your face: words were meant to be spoken), and it occurred to me that I finished my M. F. A. six years ago, and yet again, the Nobel Prize committee hadn’t bothered the AT&T operator for my phone number.

 

The main reason is that committee members don’t have  access to my hard drive. The second and third are laziness and lack of motivation—from my end, of course.

 

The drive does have lots for the interested: a novel, a novella, a  collection of stories, a collection of poems, and a couple of essays. A few of the poems have made it to print, about half in respectable journals. Still, I haven’t worked much on my writing until recently, and the process feels unfamiliar.

 

What I’ve done with my six years away from school … nothing for the first three or four years. The thought of reading another book that didn’t include the word smoldering or homicidal maniac or of having another pretentious conversation made me twitch. Eventually, I came back to reading again, and later still, to writing. Now I work in spurts, accomplishing a lot in short periods, with vacant voids of idleness in between.

 

Lately, I’ve decided to be more serious, and I’ve decided to approach the business of writing in a whole new way. Rediscovering a craft after absence isn’t a bad thing. Bad habits are lost. Good habits are nurtured. I came back to knitting after a fifteen-year break, and I’m a much better knitter than I ever dreamed I could be.

 

The first thing I’ll do is adopt some of the habits of a writer. I’ll write, research, or plan at least two or three days a week. I’ll work from ideas and material to encourage the muse, rather than wait around for it to come to me. I’ll post to this blog at least once a week to keep myself accountable.

 

My pet project–the one I’ll work on with small interruptions for poems, stories, and longer pieces–is a formula romance, not the novel of my official oeuvre. I started it before I thought of writing as something one can major in. It taught me a lot about developing characters, managing a plot line, and doing background work, but it’s about three chapters away from being finished, and it’s at an intermediate draft stage.

 

This is my pledge, and this is my beginning.