Shitty Rough Drafts

I thought that because I've attempted to restart my writing habit a number of times only to fail, that the best thing would be to go back to the beginning. In the beginning, my blog was for daily writing adventures. It wasn't supposed to be agonized over or perfected. It was to be purely rough draft. It was supposed to be a "keep the pen moving" effort.

A writer is really someone who can never quite give up writing. The evidence is overwhelming against me. I must have a half a dozen notebooks for different purposes, although those purposes are often fuzzy and cross the lines somewhat. I always have a journal. I have one notebook for when I manage to work on something from Natalie Goldberg's, Old Friend From Far Away. I have another one that I bought because it was cheap on sale and it captures my wilder moments. So, I am simply confessing that I am a writer and I can't give it up. I might as well make some sort of forward progress. I have two shitty first drafts and who knows how many hefty beginnings. It seems that my biggest problem is revision. When it comes to revising a novel with a minimum of one-hundred-fifteen-thousand words, I'm overwhelmed. I bog down in what to add and what to slice and keeping track of all my thoughts. But I do worry that I will die with shitty rough drafts on my hard drive. Worse, I worry that my computer will die with shitty rough drafts that aren't saved anywhere else. Obviously I have a problem. I might need Writers Anonymous.

Yesterday, I took Anne Lamott's, Bird by Bird to work with me. She makes me feel so good. I laugh until my sides hurt. I have read and reread this book so many times through the years. Or, I just pick it up for a laugh. I thought that would be the best way to begin again, with Anne's guidance and humor. I needed to remember turning my critics into mice, picking them up by the tail and dropping them into a mason jar. I had to draw a bracket around her paragraph about her mind having conversations with people who aren't there. For me anything that happens or is going to happen is the cause of an imagined scenario. And sometimes even a revised scenario. And sometimes, I'm even smart enough to remember that I never get it right before the fact. Some of these are just sketches. Sometimes I even color in the lines. I talk to a lot of cops that way, too, if I think they might have seen me do something stupid or if I see a cop do something stupid. I was just having a conversation in the bathtub with my employer over a hoped for position. I hate to look for another job. He'll never know.

It is this kind of imagination, this all consuming constant story creation, with my mind forever lost in its own little imaginings that must be the hallmark of all who are driven to write. When I was tiny, my grandmother was always saying that I would lose my head if it weren't screwed on. Others said things that weren't quite so nice that implied the same spacey approach to life. She saw it, she just didn't know what she was seeing.

I used to think I loved to write but I never had a story worth writing. I would agonize over it for weeks at a time. Why I thought I could love to write if I didn't have anything to write about is a mystery. I would cook up a novel idea and lose it in creating an outline. In truth, I feel that way again now. But I had one profound moment, years ago, when it dawned on me that I have been making up stories constantly every day of my life as far back as I can remember. They may not be interesting, but I've dreamed up millions of them. I think the problem is the blank page. Seeing a blank piece of paper makes me think I have to write something great. Well, shoot that mouse! If I can just manage one sentence, tarnish the page, I'm halfway there already.

I was going to write about lunchboxes because Anne uses remembering school lunches as an assignment. I was going to tell how all my friends had the coolest lunchboxes and that was back in the day when they were still metal. What I really wanted was a Wyatt Earp lunchbox. I never had one because I usually went home to eat with my Dad. But when he was out of town, I had to take my lunch like the normal kids. Talk about being up against the fence! And since I made my lunch, I had to write my own name on the paper bag, if I was fortunate enough to have a lunch bag sized bag.

That would have been boring anyway. Or, should I say, too.

Hush! This is a secret and I am not telling anybody that I am blogging again. I am also going to work on my writing again which is why I am beginning by blogging. I expect this to be boring and bad. But my topic today is reading.

My reading habit had become too lax. While cleaning the house recently, I noticed my piles of books, those piles that shift from here to there around the house but have not changed much over time for quite a few years and continue to collect dust. They are all good for me to read, edifying, but have failed to hold my attention and so they sit. Each has a bookmark sticking out of one end wherever I finally lost interest so totally I could never bring myself to open it again. If a good book lands on the pile, it isn't long before it's gone. With fall looming and silence in the house, I was suffering a terrible hunger to read. I knew that I need to devour books, fun to read books, books that are not good for me to read before I could feel mentally healthy. I took a trip to the library to solve the problem three days ago.

I felt right at home the minute I walked in the door. The carpet hasn't changed, the old sweet scent of books, of old paper and ink, of read text, was perfect perfume, an elixir for flagging spirits. I began by going directly to the front desk. In the back of my mind, a fear had begun to fester that they would kick me out if they saw how long it has been since I last checked out a book. It is time to confess that I prefer to own my own books, but books have become quite pricey of late. It turned out that my library card had expired one month and one day before I came back. It wasn't as bad as I had feared it would be and I needed a new card anyway because I'd lost my old one. A new card on my keyring and I was ready to find some books.

Fortunately, the fiction section is the first room beyond the lobby. History, though I love it, was off my list--too good for me, too edifying, too likely to collect dust. I began reading titles and immediately saw one I ought to read. Out of habit, my hand responded to the impulse, I reached for the top of the spine. But froze--do I need another good for me to read book that I will drag through? I managed to pull my hand off the top of the book and walk on. I needed a book that would grab me! I even managed to get all the way around to the other side of the first row of shelves, scanning titles and authors and muttering, "No, not that one," over and over, before I saw the first promising title--a book I hadn't read by an author with whom I had no previous acquaintance. Perfect!

What is more, this particular title concerned me. It is remarkably close to the working title of my WIP, slow progress. If you are a friend of mine, you may remember that title is, And Fair, Fierce Women, borrowed from a poem by Robert Burns. This book's title is Fair and Tender Ladies. Too close, too close. It fulfilled the requirement that the book must grab me. It grabbed me so fast that the cover was open and I was reading in less than a second. It is an older book, published in 1988 and I am stymied as to how I could have missed it in the past.

My search resumed and I went into the next room and began at the end of the fiction section. The next one that grabbed me was not so unfamiliar, I just don't remember reading this particular novel before. It is, A Gift of Sanctuary by Candace Robb, a medieval mystery, and if I am lucky, the library will have the whole series at some point. That's what I hate about libraries.

Then I did something that is totally out of character for me. I made myself leave. I did not continue until I had an armload. This is fortunate now that I am living alone and unemployed. With no interruptions and no schedule, I might be totally out of control if I have some books that aren't good for me to read. I am a confessed book devourer. I can resist going to the bathroom for hours when I am reading a gripping story.

I checked out, I went home and immediately began to read. I read until 4:00 AM. I resumed reading with my early afternoon coffee the next day. I read straight through, into the second day, until the last page had been turned. And then . . . and then I reread parts. Both were excellent, but especially Lee Smith's. I would be reading still had I picked up six books instead of only two. Besides, this means I get another whiff of library perfume and more wear on my new library card. This is always good for my spirit, to get out and go to either a book store or a library. This is where I come alive.