Life is precious

'There is a space between the setting of the sun and the fall of night that we all long for, twilight, dusk, that singular moment of ambiguity and mystery. We don't know what color it might be, what time of the day it really is, and we cannot call it night yet— all this, only for a moment and then it is gone.'

Twilight by Ed Org.

Kindness is needed now.

In a world where you can apparently be anything now, be kind to all.

Sad, but true.

Never think you've seen the last of anything.

— Eudora Welty

"He is my household's guardian soul; He judges, he presides, inspires All matters in his royal realm; Might he be fairy? or a god?" — Charles Baudelaire, The Cat

Les Fleurs du Mal

 

It's done for this month. I might work on another 3 days before I stop for Thanksgiving Holidays. And then get back to work on the Monday after. I am going to be cooking and doing some shopping this week, visiting the boys some. The Nano stat chart kept saying I would finish today and they were right. The chapters are pretty consistent in page numbers, which most of the time took two days of work to do. Sometimes 3. I just kept focusing on the chapter each time and never thought beyond that. One chapter at a time. 

Unfortunately, laughing, NANO does not a book MAKE. It is far from finished. But it really helped me catch up after losing October to no more than a single chapter. That hurt. I am not a 50,000 word a month writer normally. Those writers are Nora Roberts and Stephen King, who do their 10 pages a day, for so many days a month without fail. I could name about 15 other NYT writers who do that and at least 20 other writers who come close, who often make other lists. Some people do approach writing just like a 9-5 job. Most working writers are always writing though, you can count on that. They write daily. They don't wait for inspiration or to feel good, etc. In other words, when they get going in the morning or night, they sit down and write and write for hours and hours at a time. That's why NANO is good. Habit. One word at a time. One page at a time. Habit. Creating a habit. Committing to work. 

My son has a running coach. He wanted to run a marathon, which is 26.2 miles. He had to work years for that. He spent a few of those years with a running coach. They still run together. It might surprise people that I spent money in 2021 with a therapist in order to reclaim a creative process that I once possessed and lost. Because any creative process takes a kind of belligerent commitment. I relearned that commitment is inspiration. It's not about time, but about the art, the creative act. Committing to the act of creating your art, whatever that may be. Because this is how I make meaning. This is how I am fulfilled emotionally as a person. And yes, sometimes it is a struggle. While NANO is a more visible goal that you are sort of sharing with countless other writers, it's just November, 30 days. And then it's over and writers have to keep working. 

I have always felt that art, which is my writing, unlike many other jobs and chores that take up part of our lives, is different, it requires nearly all of me to make it happen. NANO teaches you that. To do your work, some other things will be sacrificed. I already know TV, Movies, things like that are what I once sacrificed the most and now I know it's social media, too. Because I am going to read, and talk to my children, and take care of my house. I am going to exercise and garden in the spring and summer. But leisure time is small and precious. NANO teaches you HOW to choose, too. 

I often think of NANO as an exaggerated state of creating where IF you really want to finish your art and have a life of art aka writing, you can figure out in NANO what you can do and not do, not only in writing but in life as a writer. That's the kind of tool NANO can be. Most people laugh at NANO. A lot do. I used to. I never could finish a NANO. I never even kept the drafts in the few NANOs I did long ago. Garbage. But then last year I understood what NANO could really do, that it was an opportunity for some writers. 

I always like what John Irving said about writing: Half my life is an act of revision. NANO teaches you that, too.

NaNoWriMo Update and some rambling thoughts.

I always knew that if I ever wrote stories, they would be fairy tale stories and purely fantastical fiction or really Romances. The Goblin Market and the Pre-Raphaelites, Coleridge, Victorian novels and yes, Victorian fantasy influenced me. A. S. Byatt's fairy tales and novels. Angela Carter's fairy tales, especially The Erl-King. Even Gothics would play a part. The Bronte family, who really wrote brutal novels about love, almost horror, certainly fairy tale-ish. I remember China Mieville talking about Jane Eyre and how brutal a novel it was. Jane was practically starving her entire life and few people had been kind to her. She ended up marrying a brutish, spoiled man who had committed all sorts of offenses and their love could only completed after he was fully punished. Blind, the first wife dead. And then there was Heathcliff and the two Catherines, and all those other unpleasant or awkward offspring. Dickens was full of murder and brutal people. Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White haunted me in more ways than I can write here. Hawthorne, Melville, Hardy. What can I say. All these stories have, though not officially fairy tales, "fairy tale things," really. It would always be fairy tales for me. It would be about people, love, superstitions, maybe magic, and death. It would be about the weight of history. Because I understood the importance of geography and history. Ordinary girls would have to wage wars against extraordinary things to survive. And because I was southern, family would always play a part. Rambling thoughts this morning. I am almost finished with Nano. I have almost written 50,000 words in November. Good words. I never write really bad first drafts. I don't like them. I never use them. But this book is far from over. And of course, revisions will be done. I had to ask myself why now and not before? It was pretty easy to answer. This is very hard work and I just could never commit to this kind of life while my parents and Johnny were alive. They took up too much of my emotional capital. It's just that simple. And it's not even deeply psychological or frustrating, because I chose them over writing all the time. Writing a novel is a selfish act, it's not democratic, and sometimes it's not even sane. People who write for money do it better. I know this personally. Writing for a living makes sense. A job. I just pretended I was writing for money again, and I had a deadline and it was a job. And I will continue to do this job until the day I can no longer do it. Smiling.

My NANO word count today is 46,311 words at present. Because I am working and it will change.

Alice in Wonderland

 

There is no doubt from simply viewing this image that it was created in the 1960s. Everything about it screams counterculture. Jansson, regardless of this image, was an incredible talent, but this Alice is not a favorite. I collect Alice everything.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll 

illustrated by Tove Jansson, 1966

Why I am Silent Most of the Time.

It's time to consider most data, journalism, magazines, and politics to be exploitive. EVERYTHING that works to exploit for money or power, etc. rather than solve challenges and problems, rather than open discussions without shouting messages and preaching, for the common good of all people, is not productive, no matter which side of an issue it takes. We have come to a crisis point in history and social exchange where even good people are exploiting any issue, trivial or serious, as an expression of their momentary feelings or power plays in order to diminish one side or another, one view or another, and it's all an exercise of polarization. Fragmentation. Demoralizing and impotent. Because true change is problem solving and you can see it. It's not theory. While theory was once valid, it is now a serious handicap in polarization and diminishing "the other." Mistakes are always made in history, people. Mistakes are made now. Our brains are story telling processors, they are not always logical. Most days I cannot discern the lines between those seeking justice and those seeking revenge. Righteousness and sanctimonious posts, essays, and literature fill our lives in every single arena. We know a fascist when we see it. That's an easy one, because a fascist is working against democracy and often expresses his/her way as the only way. But everything else is kind of nuanced. When your way is the only way, pause.

I don't do culture wars or identity struggles anymore. This is probably the one and only time I will ever mention any of this. My timelines and blog, outside this one post, is free of any exploitation and sanctimonious messages. I am not silent in life just because I am silent here. I am committed to change and problem solving, but I do it in my community where it really happens in people's lives, through charities and hard work. I posted this because I have seen data used in magazines I once respected as exploitation. I have read interesting nonfiction full of the same, and I can hardly pick up a novel now that is not preaching at me. Book bans have come to mean more in the news than the fact that third graders are failing all across the country. They can't read well. They comprehend less. Discussions of mass killings catch the headlines when every single city is full of people facing death by gun violence from people in their own neighborhoods. We are a people living in fear and off fear. Gloom and Doom. Well, despite all this messiness, there is a whole lot of good in the world, a lot of beauty, and a reason to hope.

I don't live in the past, though I know it has a weight on me, that's evolution and geography, and yes, history. But I also don't live under the weight of futures that do not exist, and may never exist. I don't live in despair, and neither did my parents who existed during the Great Depression and World War II, who had none of the privileges I do. I don't barter in misery or seek validation here. It's entertainment and where I do find information or check out friends. I am an ordinary person, really, flawed, yes, a list of life's mistakes a mile long. I don't have a perfect life or a perfect face. I'm kind of plain and chose never to dye my hair. I am odd, too. Too blunt. Catholic in my thinking though I am highly flexible. I do value logic and a sense of humor. I value mercy and forgiveness as much as I value truth. Knowledge and data is not wisdom. Facts can be manipulated. Culture and trends pass. Morality even changes. And I am finished preaching.

Books I have Reread at least 5 times in the last 7 years. Amazing

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black

Persuasion by Jane Austen.

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Our Mutural Friend by Charles Dickens

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

The Quick by Lauren Owen,

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Rook by Sharon Cameron

Great Expectation by Charles Dickens

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier

Moby Dick by Melville

Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

Short Stories by Faulkner

Short Stories by Hemingway

Possession by A. S. Byatt

Book 1 and 2 Paradys by Tanith Lee.

City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff VanderMeer.

Wonder Tales Book by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Thorn Jack series by Katherine Harbour

Winter Rose by Patricia McKillip

Swordpoint by Ellen Kushner

and anything by romance writers Loretta Chase, Lisa Kleypas, and Laura Kinsale.

Happy Birthday Colin Lyric.

 Colin at the Memphis Zoo.

dave mikey nance reading nick land's critique of the left and mark fish ...

Creating means making mistakes.

 

Creating is messy. You should see my writing desk on a regular working day. Messy. Messy. Messy. On Friday afternoons, I stop and clean it up. All my little messes. To makes messes in the creative process is to make mistakes. To be wrong. To fail. I have been making mistakes in art and writing my entire life. Some of those mistakes are in print. Laughing. As I got older and more experienced, I began to think of creating anything as "big mistake-making adventures" which will involve a lot of destruction along the way. That's why rewriting and starting over and just working regularly are so important. You are going to write so many words that you will never use or paint or draw so many things you just don't like. Some creative acts are even traumatizing. Laughing. When I was young, I used to sort of deny my mistakes or try to rationalize them or work to cover them up. Now I just relish them. Fear of making mistakes, of being wrong, of failing, IS ABSOLUTELY the "creative mind killer." My best advice is not to ignore mistakes, defend them, fear them, or leave them uncorrected in infinity. Make them. Learn from them. Use them. But creating means making mistakes.

Nano Stats: 10,923 words

NaNoWriMo 2023 begins today.

You write. That’s the hard bit that nobody sees. You write on the good days and you write on the lousy days. Like a shark, you have to keep moving forward or you die. Writing may or may not be your salvation; it might or might not be your destiny. But that does not matter. What matters right now are the words, one after another. Find the next word. Write it down. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

— Neil Gaiman on writing