Category — writing

I have no idea who this dude is, but WOW does he deserve a tip of the Nap Hat:

…Next time I'm thinking I'm not able to get comfortable enough to sleep, I'm going to see this guy admonishing me in my mind.  

Also, remember the cool Nap Infographic I found on some random site a while ago?  It was way too huge to post in the main body of anything, but here's a link — really cool stuff!  And I did get some attribution info for that, and definitely ought to post it, since wow is that a really well-done piece and must have taken for-freaking-ever to do:  It was originally posted at Patio Productions, here.  And I am a bit of an asshole for not mentioning that sooner, but you know what?  Such is life.  I *am* a bit of an asshole sometimes, unfortunately.  ;)

And speaking of, it's time to get some fecking fiction writing done, because wow have I been awful about that lately, and I have a massage scheduled for this afternoon (I'm definitely realizing how marvelous those are for keeping the computer/hockey demons off your neck & shoulders!) and so I can slouch and drink coffee and type furiously with impunity this morning, so I'm gonna!

This, I think, falls under "Blogging nobody wants to read" — Sometimes I wake up and I'm not sure what to think, what to do, and then I sit down and write for a while and EUREKA, I HAVE IT!.  That's what happened today, and though I'm sure no-one probably cares about the process, I can't just throw that writing away…that would be like painstakingly determining your exact favorite color and then forgetting the whole process so you could go back to wearing read.  (BLACK, my favorite color has been black since I first could recognize the shades of it, and my favorite shade of it is the one I can stare at a moment and lose all sense of surface; it's a color that conveys depth, that makes it seem as though everything you paint it with can dissolve into infinity at a moment's notice.  What's yours?)

Anyway, overt honesty below the cut.  Perhaps if you need some of your own, mine will rub off?  Or perhaps you'll waste ten minutes reading about someone else's insecurities and life-pathness.  Time will tell!  ;)

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The point is I love this book so hard. And we live in a world moved somewhat past it now, a world it had a part in creating, which makes it all the more fascinating and recursive. The novel creates an almost unique emotion, of genuine fear and doubt and longing for something to be real at the same time as being grateful it is not, of dread and wonder. And maybe, whatever that feeling is called, it’s what the horror genre is always trying to bring us, from dark, cold places just out of reach.

via Rules for Anchorites – House of Leaves and the Found Footage Film [one last time!].

Cat Valente (once again) does a perfect job writing something I've wanted to write and couldn't get to: A review of (one aspect of) the book House of Leaves.  Which can't be given stars because they aren't up to ten stars yet.  This book should get ALL the stars.

I agree with her completely, but especially on this point: If you're a writer, or any kind of lover of horror or good plotting, you have to take your hat off for this book. All the way off. And do a slow clap. Because that shit is awesome.  I just read it a little while ago, and I'm waiting for it to settle before I re-read it, but it's saying something that I've been anxiously looking forward to the re-read for, like, months already.  I can't remember the last time a book did that to me…this one is just jaw-dropping.

But, um, don't read it if you scare easily, especially in the coming-unhinged-from-reality sense.  Seriously, just don't.  I slept with the lights on for weeks, and I don't scare easily, and I finished the thing with a huge rush of Thank-God-my-mind-is-intact, that-really-could-have-messed-me-up-for-years.

Cool Tools: Writing Tools.

1. Cool Tools is an amazing blog and everybody should read it, even though it’s usually about tape and shovels and stuff* more so than writing; however

2. HOLY CRAP BETWEEN THREE BUTTERY CRACKERS, that’s a gobsmackingly useful PDF. I think I will print it on Tyvek and sew it into all my clothes.

*my house, and my Amazon wishlist, are FULL of their recommendations. I bought this tape because they said to and it is the OLYMPIAN TAPE OF THE MFING GODS. Listen to these people. About everything, apparently. :)

I had one of those tiny physical moments yesterday that explodes into a psychological OH YEAH DUH … that was a moment, literally an otherwise meaningless moment in the shower, of refocusing.

Life is powerfully, powerfully distracting, especially as you slam into full adulthood and all the filters that kept out various influences are removed.  This isn't oops-too-much-RSS-browsing distraction; this is full-on fight-or-flight-level hardcore psychological distraction.

Some examples:

• Faced with the insecurities of providing for yourself and others, of economic wibbly-wobbliness and the suddenly finite number of years before retirement, you throw yourself into working and saving money (easily 80h/wk, all told)
• Faced with the heady freedom of being allowed to do anything you can legally get away with, you wind up "trying on" hobby after hobby, filling your free-time and emptying your wallet on lessons, equipment, outings, and materials, all for things you'll probably hardly ever do again;
• Faced with the daunting task of raising a child "correctly", you throw yourself into planning activities, events, and lessons into every possible moment, as well as into cooking and cleaning things into an acceptably perfect childhood environment;
• Faced with the sudden relative lessening importance of social activities (what? I'm old enough to party all I want and now partying doesn't mean much anymore??) as well as, for some people, the sudden ease of actually pulling it off (wait, I used to find this scary? ha!), you grab any opportunity to go to a gathering, eating up your evenings and killing your attempts to wake up early and do stuff;
• Overwhelmed by the 80-hour work weeks, the pile of clamoring social engagements, the kids, the house, the classes and outings, you retreat into television for hours or days at a time, often finding yourself too exhausted to even get dressed if you don't absolutely have to.

…And welcome to adulthood.  ;) 

When I was young I thought, of course I'll be a writer, writing comes easy to me and I love it.  But then…was I going to write instead of working and saving money?  Hmm, no.  Write instead of parenting?  No way.  Write instead of going out and doing stuff?  Well, that one was easy when I was a bored and scaredy kid, but this weekend I can literally go to three parties and a SolidWorks design class and free-diving in the ocean if I want — all with people I like. 

When I found taiji I thought, oh, THIS is the thing; this is the perfect physical component to my philosophic life, the mental components of which are of course reading and writing.  I love taiji like I've loved few other things; I often think that if I had nothing else but a life of constant taiji, space to write about it, and some pretty trees to look at, that'd be great.

But when to practice?  At home, with the kid bouncing around and things begging to be cleaned?  At work, in the five minutes between meetings?  Making the time to get to class once a week is epic difficult, though I do it, doggedly, but far too often without having practiced at all in the in-between.

And when to write?  I get up around 4:30am, but the writing, it turns out, takes more than just getting up. 
More often than not I surf blearily, drinking coffee and trying to gather my thoughts and the day's plans, until it's time to head out for work.

I never wanted to admit that I couldn't do everything, that I was going to have to say no even if something sounded awesome, involved a really cool person, or I'd never done it before.  But you just can't have everything all at once; if you want that nice retirement plan and health insurance, it's going to cost you big-time, as is the perfect kids' lesson-plan and the clean house and oh yeah, the novel and the black-belt.  There are sacrifices, and some of them really suck.  Welcome to adulthood.

But the important thing is to make these decisions as consciously as possible, I think.

So this weekend, that's what I'm doing — I'm refocusing things.  I'm putting some recurring plans in place, for writing and practice, that will get absolute priority…even from work, and cleaning, and parenting.  (To clarify regarding a common misconception:  no, more parenting is not always better; kids need time and activities to themselves too.  It's just up to the parents to schedule that so that it gives us time as well — and that's no mean feat.)   

This weekend I re-remember what's most important, and I state clearly to myself what I'm willing to bend for (work emergencies?  Sudden opportunities?) and what I'm not.  This weekend I re-invent my Super Picky Schedule to be super picky about the things I want out of life too, not just the things I feel responsible for. 

And there's another element to Refocusing:  The Present.  By acting intentionally rather than responding to pressures (i.e. all the "faced with"s from the list above), you bring your focus into the moment more.  …Make no mistake, this is probably why a lot of people don't do it.  Swimming naked in the Now can be a lot less comfortable than a nice ride in a pre-built boat that just goes where the waves push it.

But this is life.  It's not about being comfortable.  We all get to sleep sooner or later…  ;)

…By Ralph Waldo Emerson.  I copied some of this for a friend the other day, a friend who isn't as happy with "thick" reading as I am, and he made me realize that if you sift through the rather dense weave of old language and dense arguments with your fingers, you can pull gems out of Emerson that will make anyone's day. 

This is a list of the best sentences, if you will, from this excellent essay, with my adjustments and occasional commentary in brackets and elipses.  It's less a collection of quotes, and more an outline of the piece.  If you like it, please understand that the whole tangly mess is brilliant and wonderfully worth it to read and you should do it no matter how long it takes you; but for some geniuses like Emerson, even skimming the bones of his thoughts are marvelously good for ours, so I offer these here for the time-stripped and classics-averse to enjoy too.

• Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost

• Great works of art…teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility…most…when the whole cry of voices is on the other side.
  

• We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.  …but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.

• Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.  [I want that on a T-shirt.  In Chinese.]

• Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the [self-reliance] of every one of its members. … The virtue in most request is conformity.

• Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. 

  [There's a great part right after this where he describes a churchgoer asking him when he's young, essentially "how can you trust your impulses when they might come from the Devil?", and his answer is, "I don't think so, but (quote) If I'm the Devil's child, then I'll live from the Devil."  For Emerson, self-reliance meant having the guts to be what you were created to be, and having enough faith to not doubt the usefulness of your own creation.  <3!]

• Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, — else it is none.

• I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.

  [Italics mine.  An excellent example, perhaps one of the best, of a positive argument from existentialism!]

• It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

• The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character.

• But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself.

• The sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows.

• [There are some bits that just can't be condensed...the "foolish consistency" argument is amazing, but it's all or nothing...]

• Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing.

• Be it how it will, do right now.  [If that's not Zen, I don't know what is.]

• Always scorn appearances, and you always may. The force of character is cumulative.

• That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke's house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact, that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason, and finds himself a true prince.

  [Fascinating that we don't seem to have a story like that nowadays.]

• What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? 

  [This one I put in just for sheer gorgeousness, and to point out that science has informed beautiful literature for a long long time...this whole section is a great example.  And by the way, the "power" he's referring to here is Spontaneity or Intuition, if you were curious. ;)]

• The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure, that it is profane to seek to interpose helps.

• Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say 'I think,' 'I am,' but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. 

  [This, and what follows it in the text, may be my favorite bit.]

• [Only Life] avails, not the having lived.

  [In the original it's "Life only avails", but that antiquated construction confuses the point for some people.  I love, love, love this one; I think it's the greatest wisdom one could possibly carry forward into growing old.  Only Life...not the "having lived".  It's sort of a restatement of my Higher Law #1:  Keep Trying.  Only said much, much better...but there's no shame at all in being jealous of Emerson I think.  (Well, he would think there was.  But he dead.  ;)]

• I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

• Henceforward I am the truth's. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal law.

• The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism; and the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides.

• Prayer that craves a particular commodity, — any thing less than all good, — is vicious.  [AMEN!]

• Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will.

• Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him.

• Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other.   [Fascinating point, which he supports with arguments later on; for example, "The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. ... He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun."]

• Great men…leave no class. He who is really of their class will not be called by their name, but will be his own man, and, in his turn, [a] founder.

• Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long…They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is.  But a cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property, out of new respect for his nature.

• Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.  [These are the last two lines. ;)]

*One last comment — Emerson refers to "man" and "manhood" throughout this piece, and others.  I believe his sexism is ignorance, and further I firmly believe that if I had an hour with the man, I could talk him right out of it, because he was obviously a clear thinker and a believer in honesty and universalism of principle.  Hence, it doesn't upset me here like it does in some other writings…in the time he was writing, to say anything else (he/she?) would have been pretty literally unthinkable; it would have been such a huge point as to require a separate essay.  But it is worth meditating on how this wasn't that long ago, really, that freedom and education and uprightness and full life meant, literally, "manhood".  And that not only doesn't it mean that today, but I can openly write here about it, throw my education around and furthermore, openly threaten to kick anyone's ass (or perhaps flash my tits at them) who disagrees with me.  Viva las modernity.  ;)

I know I owe Comments, and besides that I owe Emails and Snailmails and various Adminnings — but I also owed Sleep, BIG time, and now that I'm caught up with Morpheus I owe Writing, and badly enough that Writing is who I'm paying today, even barring everybody else.  (Well, I'm also paying Housework, at least minimally, but this is because Writing doesn't have the ability to make me run out of clothes — yet — sorry Writing!)

(For a week and a half, I've been shorting myself on sleep like it was some kind of contest…4,5,6 hours at night, zero or one naps — basically naps when I was going to fall over otherwise — day after day after day.  Yesterday I got to the point where no matter how many naps I took — one was an hour, too — I just kept feeling more tired; I was done.  I stayed up until past 3am for a work/social thing, and then passed out until almost noon today…and now I feel better, finally.  WHEW.)

But I promised Morpheus I would be better.  Our relationship is perhaps more fraught than most; sometimes I worry he'll actually just give up and leave me for good.  (Sometimes I wish he would, too.)  Still, you work with whom you've got.

OK, back to writing this story about dream-wizards who, having mastered access to the ZPF, can talk to each other cross-continent…it's not going so well, really; I suck at setting, I think…but it's all learning. 

(I've had some great thoughts about time-travel, which are really making me want to write my time-travel novel.  But it's not ready yet, not exactly, and if I dove into it it would need all kinds of time and devotion and work that, while I'd love to give it, I also am giving to other writing first (I'm honing my skills by writing short-stories for now, especially since I have access to a fantastic critiquer who helps encourage me to publish; and lord knows the novel stuff requires access to those skills too). 

Still, I am excited as hell to write a time-travel novel…the philosophy of space and time is one of my favorites.  And I think I can actually do a world where time-travel is coincident with Presentism, the Simultaneity of Eternity and General Relativity.  ::drooooool::)

Staying in for most of today and writing…writing everything, seemingly, as I have a lot to catch up on.  Final edits done on one story…hopefully finishing the one I'm 2/3 done with…got a flicker of an idea for the next one…and a few more poems, which I'll spare you.  ;)  There's also another song forming in the wings of my brain, and this excites me greatly — I've only ever finished one song before, but it's awesome and I love singing it and I've been eagerly awaiting its sibling(s).  (Yes, yes, at this rate I'll cut an album when I'm 75.  So what? I'm hoping that gives me time to get over my crippling mic-shyness too!) 

I'm also just one line away from my attempt to write an additional verse onto the end of an old protest-song I learned recently…it's a great song, but it badly needed an update, so I took it upon myself, and it's been educational and shockingly hard, even though rewriting lyrics has always been something that I love to do…my early worship of Weird Al wasn't just because he was weird and still cool (much more of a feat back in those days than now)…but because he was making a living doing something I did when I needed a bit of mindless writing fun.

This land is your land
This land is my land
Except for Ford Field
And Garbage Island
Except the Ren-Cen
Is owned by GM
But this land was made for you and me*

…Yes, of course I tend to rewrite for Snark.  Who's surprised??  (The one above won't make much sense unless you know some stuff about Southeast Michigan, by the way, so don't worry if you don't get it.  Local snark.  ;)

So, the big thought / lesson-y thing for today is a master is just someone who's put in 10,000 hours of practice.  The 10,000-hours estimate comes from somewhere else I don't remember, but it sounds right.  Ten thousand hours is 600,000 minutes, or about 417 days straight.  And I would amend that "practice" means a certain quality of practice, too.  In kungfu training, you throw a kick or punch x number of times for practice, but only the ones with good form count — and if your teacher is properly strict about it, then if you throw a bad one, you have to start over counting from 1 again.  Mine, who is more forgiving than some, stands there saying One…two…eh, do two again…okay, three…no way that was four; start over.  One…two…nope, one…one…two…etc.  I think a master is someone who's done at least a solid year of that.

I think the reason so few people who could write, do write, is much more about fear than talent or lack thereof.  Ten thousand hours of practice…of facing the horror of the crap you wrote the night before, of wading through it again and again, of letting other people read it when you think it's perfect and realizing that it still sucks…

Writing has come hard, lately.  It's hard to find the time, and the guts; the bravery to face the real emotions that need flaying and pinning to paper, and the concentration to actually do it all the way through.  But it's been easier since I started realizing…what I'm committed to here is not "writing the bestest novel ever", nor "making a hundred million whuffie" — it's to "getting ten thousand hours of real practice in before I die".

Present tense practice.  Neither the suck produced in the past (and oh, there are mountains of it) nor the suck or glory produced in the future, are actually the point.  The point is, did I wrack up another hour of real practice today, or didn't I?

(Yes I did!)

*this is not the one I'm working on today…

…Just sticking this here…  ;)

#

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one woman in her time plays many parts,
Her acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the shy school-girl, with her sandwich
And solemn morning face, creeping like a snail
Determinedly to school. And then the lover,
Turning like tornado, with an arrow aimed from
Every suspicious eye on her. Then a mother,
Full of desperate needs and calloused to the bone,
Fierce in love, deep and quiet in long fear,
Seeking the bubble home and haven
Even in abusers' arms. And then the matron,
In fair round hips with stained apron hung,
With eyes like storms and hair of silver wire,
Full of wise recipes and hopeful patience;
And so she plays her part. The sixth age shifts
Into the frail and housecoat'd doyenne,
With spectacles on strings and knitting on hand,
Her youthful dress, well saved, a world too busty
For her shrunk shoulders; and her high proud voice,
Turning again toward childish whispers, pipes
And creaks in her sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Okay, so sleep was extra mean to me yesterday. 

In the morning, I napped, but faded in and out a few times (and as many people will tell you, a broken nap is nowhere near as good as a whole one).  Then I followed that with a 1.5-mile walk in the shin-deep fresh snow, an hour of Sanda (now with extra pushups!), the 1.5-mile walk back (still nobody had shoveled, grr), and then did the shoveling for my place, since I was so covered in snow by that point that I knew if I took off my coat and gear, I wouldn't want to put the sopping stuff back on.  I was wiped.

I tried for an hour and a half to get my afternoon nap, and kept getting interrupted by various dumb little stuff.

Then a half-hour before naptime yesterday evening, a (far-too-honored-to-be-ejected) guest came over and stayed for an hour and a half!  Augh!

I laid down afterwards, stared at the back of my eyes until the timer went off, and was near tears when my husband came to wake me from my "ten more minutes".  My boy put his foot down and told me I'd better stay in bed, and–here's a funny part–almost as soon as he said it, before he even left the room, I closed my eyes and was out cold for six hours, until 4am.

I woke up feeling weird…rested, but dizzy and disoriented (probably didn't help that I was fully dressed, including a hoodie with full pockets), and with a swollen tonsil.  I stayed up until my morning naptime, laid down…and slept right through the alarm, for an hour and a half.

[What is it with an hour and a half??  Is 90 my unlucky number this week or what?]

Then I woke up feeling…well, more normal.  Suddenly I'm sore from all the exercise, which I take as a good sign.  I still feel a bit slow, but better, including in the throat.

I'm wondering…perhaps I shouldn't have indulged that urge I had the other day, to write a poem composed entirely of post-it notes left by the denizens of Dreamland, on the mirrors of who knows how many human beings?  (I have a thing about mysterious post-it notes…don't ask.)

Maybe they were a secret?  Or copyrighted…? 

;)

Anyway, perhaps to exorcize the bad sleep lately, here's the poem (under the "read more"):

UPDATE:  Did in fact get 2 good naps after posting this!  Maybe that exorcism was actually necessary…? 

Post-it Notes from Dreamland…

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