It seems that journals are similar to those fun pocket maps that can be opened up like an origami, with roads and buildings precisely drawn within the folds. On this particular day, in an early morning entry I find prosaic reminders: a few words of encouragement along the lines of you can do this, and fragments of potential poems, as well as some notes about the revision that I've been toiling away on (rather sluggishly).
5am: These journals are echo chambers, talismans of hope, gestures of fidelity to a particular dream. Embedded in them are fragments, shards, the skeletal "pre-mains" of poems, the detritus of sleepless nights, and the urgent remnants of an uncoded Rosetta stone.
Monday's long rant filled pages are followed by a Tuesday entry that is more like a series of haiku as a overheard snippets from grocery store aisles are jotted down along with notes about the full moon, the blue sky and the temperature. “Wait, wait, I need to talk to fearless leader.” “Knowing how to decorate a cake isn't everything.”
Chance feels like friction: claws on felt, pips on die, color boiling over the rim of tightly sealed secrets, but chance is really the absence of gravity and the presence of something else.
Suddenly I am on the final page of a journal that has kept track of deep sorrow and reviving joy. It will be shelved as an index for the year – if years started and ended in September. I'll spend some time finding just the right tablet or empty book, weighing it, scanning its creamy pages, and then begin again. Happy New Year.
Today's tally: 3 plus hours, revised ~4400 words to ~4100, 3/4 a page of journaling, and submitted a story to a LGBTQ journal that, if selected for publication, will actually net me 25 whole dollars.
Had a good conversation with a colleague-translator about what it means to be typecast as a woman and as an [insert your favorite ethnic identity here]. In interviews, in anthologies. Talked about bilingual writing and whether or not it exoticizes the other. Realized that I frequently turn to Russian in my mostly-English poems when I write about romantic love and sexuality. Not sure why! Communicated with the organization sponsoring the mentor - mentee program I'm in, and with my mentor. Reading Sherman Alexie. Pretty beat up by my job, particularly wrestling with technology, and by the energetic three-year-old. Wish I could put my head into writing... Wondering how to make it happen with the life I have. -Olga L.
383 words. And I am not ashamed to post those paltry digits next to our wonderful multi-thousand-word writers. (OK, maybe a little ashamed. But more proud than ashamed of you all, and me, just for showing up.) Hell of a week: sprained ankle, other doc issues requiring prescription adjustments, car in the shop, bank balance precarious due to car repairs greater than cost of used car itself bought one month ago, oy vey etc, and I wouldn't be writing this busy week at all except for my pledge. Last week all these tiny bits added up nicely, and I do find I can start quickly and write even with the smallest wedge of open time. That's the lesson. Currently reading: Margaret Atwood. Who is very prolific. She must manage to write even with sprained ankles and a car in the shop, so I will, too.
Of course you had to ask which Atwood. And then I could either pretend this is merely a re-read or reveal that I had never read this book before, though I should have. Ok ok ok, its Handmaid's Tale, and it's a good, taut read. I think I ignored it because it was a feminist classic at a time I was being contrary, and/or because the movie didn't wow me, so I skipped to her other books. Mea culpa.
Shoot, this is a public blog in which I am revealing my ignorance, which is traceable "Andromeda/Margaret Atwood/had never read". I should be using the anonymous sign-in.
I shouldn't be asking such questions! It was with the best of intentions, however, because I wanted to plug her most recent trilogy of books which were very good and began with "Oryx and Crake".
Wrote an uncertain amount of minutes/hours, spread out in small chunks throughout the day. Continued working on revising and writing the same two poems as yesterday...made some progress, still lots more to do. Damn complicated sestinas. Why do I torture myself with such things? There is, however, rain, yellow leaves, bread baking, and the exhilarating freedom of quitting a shitty job.
Approximately 1500 words today. Absolutely most of those words would not have been written without this here blog challenge pledge thingy. I'm reading "The Power of Now" yep, unapologetically. And I'm listening to "All The Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr. It's excellent and makes the road construction waits on my commute to and from town a joy. A joy I tell you.
2 hours +, 2000 words. Completed the story from yesterday in a panic. It did not go as well as I hoped but I don't have anything else to give it right now.** Day two is the hardest, right?
Not much writing, but teeny tiny revisions on 2 essays which i just submitted to various places, one to a contest...because what else was i gonna do with that $20? :-/ Reading Walden. I think i'll be reading Walden forever. But then i can say i have and be done with it.
527 words on the state and plight and attraction of the Native American, as brought to you by Campbell Fry, and, without the motivation given by this challenge and Ben's devotion to the cause of the LGBTQ community (or the paltry dollars offered therefrom), and Andrea's devotion to two silly poems, and just how many words coud they be, anyway, for chrissakes, would not be. So, thanks everyone. Campbell Fry, incidentally, a bit of an ass.
Coming in just under the wire and a day late! 522 words on a new fiction project.
Taking part mostly because David Stevenson made a very sad face at me this weekend when we discussed my current writing projects. Looking forward to using the month to work on this new fiction novel/stories thing, and maybe some revision of old stuff. Thanks, Andromeda!
OK, after the above whining, I actually finished a French poem (by Villon) in the original. Then did some revisions on a poem in which (like in Villon's) the body and the soul bicker. Yay! I guess sometimes just getting it off your chest works... some kind of a release. Any time I say I have no room for writing in my life, and really believe in it, I start realizing where the pockets of energy and lucidity could be... -Olga
Read half of Ron Carlson's Write a Story. "What will help you stay in the room? Two things: staying specific and not stopping." 2 hours revising piece workshopped at BL.
261 words for a page of essay revision in which I am attempting write a braided essay. The result so far seems to be simply revising text and it's feeling pretty far from braided at this point. Any tips for a writing tighter braids?
Looking at possibilities for the chapbook contest posted on the CWLA Facebook page.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteNotes from the margin:
It seems that journals are similar to those fun pocket maps that can be opened up like an origami, with roads and buildings precisely drawn within the folds. On this particular day, in an early morning entry I find prosaic reminders: a few words of encouragement along the lines of you can do this, and fragments of potential poems, as well as some notes about the revision that I've been toiling away on (rather sluggishly).
5am: These journals are echo chambers, talismans of hope, gestures of fidelity to a particular dream.
Embedded in them are fragments, shards, the skeletal "pre-mains" of poems, the detritus of sleepless nights, and the urgent remnants of an uncoded Rosetta stone.
Monday's long rant filled pages are followed by a Tuesday entry that is more like a series of haiku as a overheard snippets from grocery store aisles are jotted down along with notes about the full moon, the blue sky and the temperature. “Wait, wait, I need to talk to fearless leader.” “Knowing how to decorate a cake isn't everything.”
Chance feels like friction:
claws on felt, pips on die, color
boiling over the rim of tightly sealed secrets,
but chance is really the absence of gravity
and the presence of something else.
Suddenly I am on the final page of a journal that has kept track of deep sorrow and reviving joy. It will be shelved as an index for the year – if years started and ended in September. I'll spend some time finding just the right tablet or empty book, weighing it, scanning its creamy pages, and then begin again. Happy New Year.
Flaubert would say that.
ReplyDeleteToday's tally: 3 plus hours, revised ~4400 words to ~4100, 3/4 a page of journaling, and submitted a story to a LGBTQ journal that, if selected for publication, will actually net me 25 whole dollars.
Had a good conversation with a colleague-translator about what it means to be typecast as a woman and as an [insert your favorite ethnic identity here]. In interviews, in anthologies. Talked about bilingual writing and whether or not it exoticizes the other. Realized that I frequently turn to Russian in my mostly-English poems when I write about romantic love and sexuality. Not sure why! Communicated with the organization sponsoring the mentor - mentee program I'm in, and with my mentor. Reading Sherman Alexie. Pretty beat up by my job, particularly wrestling with technology, and by the energetic three-year-old. Wish I could put my head into writing... Wondering how to make it happen with the life I have. -Olga L.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete383 words. And I am not ashamed to post those paltry digits next to our wonderful multi-thousand-word writers. (OK, maybe a little ashamed. But more proud than ashamed of you all, and me, just for showing up.) Hell of a week: sprained ankle, other doc issues requiring prescription adjustments, car in the shop, bank balance precarious due to car repairs greater than cost of used car itself bought one month ago, oy vey etc, and I wouldn't be writing this busy week at all except for my pledge. Last week all these tiny bits added up nicely, and I do find I can start quickly and write even with the smallest wedge of open time. That's the lesson. Currently reading: Margaret Atwood. Who is very prolific. She must manage to write even with sprained ankles and a car in the shop, so I will, too.
ReplyDeleteWhich Atwood?
DeleteOf course you had to ask which Atwood. And then I could either pretend this is merely a re-read or reveal that I had never read this book before, though I should have. Ok ok ok, its Handmaid's Tale, and it's a good, taut read. I think I ignored it because it was a feminist classic at a time I was being contrary, and/or because the movie didn't wow me, so I skipped to her other books. Mea culpa.
DeleteShoot, this is a public blog in which I am revealing my ignorance, which is traceable "Andromeda/Margaret Atwood/had never read". I should be using the anonymous sign-in.
DeleteI shouldn't be asking such questions! It was with the best of intentions, however, because I wanted to plug her most recent trilogy of books which were very good and began with "Oryx and Crake".
DeleteWrote an uncertain amount of minutes/hours, spread out in small chunks throughout the day. Continued working on revising and writing the same two poems as yesterday...made some progress, still lots more to do. Damn complicated sestinas. Why do I torture myself with such things? There is, however, rain, yellow leaves, bread baking, and the exhilarating freedom of quitting a shitty job.
ReplyDeleteApproximately 1500 words today. Absolutely most of those words would not have been written without this here blog challenge pledge thingy. I'm reading "The Power of Now" yep, unapologetically. And I'm listening to "All The Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr. It's excellent and makes the road construction waits on my commute to and from town a joy. A joy I tell you.
ReplyDelete2 hours +, 2000 words. Completed the story from yesterday in a panic. It did not go as well as I hoped but I don't have anything else to give it right now.** Day two is the hardest, right?
ReplyDeleteSo, 6000 words in two days? Don't you have a job?
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteNot much writing, but teeny tiny revisions on 2 essays which i just submitted to various places, one to a contest...because what else was i gonna do with that $20? :-/
ReplyDeleteReading Walden. I think i'll be reading Walden forever. But then i can say i have and be done with it.
527 words on the state and plight and attraction of the Native American, as brought to you by Campbell Fry, and, without the motivation given by this challenge and Ben's devotion to the cause of the LGBTQ community (or the paltry dollars offered therefrom), and Andrea's devotion to two silly poems, and just how many words coud they be, anyway, for chrissakes, would not be. So, thanks everyone. Campbell Fry, incidentally, a bit of an ass.
ReplyDeleteThey may not be many words, but they're better words! (at least that's what I tell myself)
DeleteComing in just under the wire and a day late! 522 words on a new fiction project.
ReplyDeleteTaking part mostly because David Stevenson made a very sad face at me this weekend when we discussed my current writing projects. Looking forward to using the month to work on this new fiction novel/stories thing, and maybe some revision of old stuff. Thanks, Andromeda!
OK, after the above whining, I actually finished a French poem (by Villon) in the original. Then did some revisions on a poem in which (like in Villon's) the body and the soul bicker. Yay! I guess sometimes just getting it off your chest works... some kind of a release. Any time I say I have no room for writing in my life, and really believe in it, I start realizing where the pockets of energy and lucidity could be... -Olga
ReplyDeleteRead half of Ron Carlson's Write a Story. "What will help you stay in the room? Two things: staying specific and not stopping." 2 hours revising piece workshopped at BL.
ReplyDelete261 words for a page of essay revision in which I am attempting write a braided essay. The result so far seems to be simply revising text and it's feeling pretty far from braided at this point. Any tips for a writing tighter braids?
ReplyDeleteNo writing this morning. But I had a big conversation that will, I hope, free up some emotional space for creativity. -Darla
ReplyDelete