chronicled & illustrated

It’s good to have experience. You can quote me on that.

I got caught up and slightly ahead on word count by metaphorically pasting myself to the chair and duct taping the chair to the computer. I wanted to stop every time I came up for air…but I knew from experience that this would be a very bad idea indeed.

Remembering that it only gets easier to write by using the process of writing is what helped me, yesterday.

If I stop writing because I’m displeased with the words coming out of me, then I only make the problem worse.

Bad writing is like heavy rain.
Stopping is like sitting in the middle of the deluge instead of driving out of it.
Achieving the daily word count is like driving out of the downpour into the sunshine.
Umm.
Yeah.
So Sayeth Nanth—who is, remember, in the Bad Writing phase of this process.

Onward, Warrior-Writers!

two loves,
originally uploaded by nuanc.

So now it’s time to write. I have other things to do, of course. I am supposed to be working on the update of the EPIC website.

It’s so far overdue that I’m embarrassed—even though there is no one but me upset by it or waiting for it (though my husband will definitely like it—and me —when it’s done!). As well, I accumulated other things to do while I was away. I started a small artist’s site for my son and promised him some business cards. I want to do that asap because his career is taking off in small ways and I want to give him what I can to help. And of course, those are *fun* things to do. There are other things on the to-do list as well. But none of them are crucial. They are all things that can be fitted in around whatever is most important.

So now, it’s time to write.

All the way down to Maine, I thought about three stories in various stages. First I thought about the one I had just started. I have about a page and a half written. JUST a beginning…but, the idea came to me full-fledged (a rarity!) and with hours by myself to do nothing but drive and think, I filled in a lot of what was vague. Or, I think I did. One never really knows until the writing is being done. Sometimes what is in your head, isn’t what comes out on paper and stories can definitely take sharp turns that weren’t on the planned journey.

A second story I thought about was one I did a lot of work on a year or more ago. I liked it, it seemed like a good beginning, but I never could push myself to finish it. So I thought it through. Decided what needed to happen. How I could improve the tone of the piece. I don’t even think it would take that long to have a finished first draft.

The third thing I thought about was just an idea for a story. It has to do with music and communication and ‘races’ of ‘people’ who use music for their own ends. I am not sure yet what else. It’s definitely NOT a story yet but I write down the whiff of an idea here so as not to forget or minimize it as a future possibility.

This is all motivating to me because I had just about given up on writing short stories. Novels, it seems, are my forte. A short story feels frustrating and limiting and I began telling myself that it was okay for me not to write short stories if I didn’t want to. But now…with a collaboration project in the planning stages, I’m motivated again. If I can pull off any of these ideas, it’ll please me to have gotten back to a written form that I should be able to participate in whether it’s my favourite or not.

READING: Tales of Protections by Eric Fosnes Hansen (book club this Saturday!)
WRITING: NetWorld, a short story
WEBBING: Quintessential Abstractions, an artist’s website
PHYSICALLY: lousy, I’ve got a cold
EMOTIONALLY: calm, optimistic

The Illustration: this is a layered composition made up of one of my doodles (marker and gelpens) and pages of my writing. Click on it to see a larger version on flickr.

it’s slip-sliding thru new b,
originally uploaded by nuanc.

I arrived home from my trip to Maine last night around 12:30am.

The day started off hard and just seemed to—not get worse—but just stay hard to the end. Saying good-bye to my son and granddaughter was emotionally hard. Physically I’m at low ebb with a cold coming on. I had three hours of work to get the rented house back in shape before leaving. This became complicated when I hit my head on a wall lamp causing the thing to crash to the floor and smash into smithereens. And then, an 11 hour drive.

I kept comforting myself with how much worse it not only could be but has been! I was remembering the day I left to drive home from Maine last March. It was bitterly cold with high winds and I had to muscle my luggage down a narrow set of stairs and over slippery ice to get it into the car. Then as I neared home late, late that night, heavy blinding snow made the last 3 hours literally life-threatening. Yesterday was NOT that bad and I made sure I never forgot it!

But it made me wonder what it is that makes me do that. I always compare whatever I’m struggling with with something worse that I’ve been through in the past. When I was young and hadn’t been through much, I used to compare a challenge with the time I had to give an oral report on the Algerian-French War in French! Now it seems silly but then, to give an oral report was bad enough, but to do it in another language seemed like an impossibility. And yet, I did it, (I got a ‘B’ and was grateful) so I used it for years as proof to myself that I could do impossible things!

If I can’t come up with something worse that’s happened to me, I comfort myself with the fact that it’s not anywhere near as bad as what others have been through. I clearly remember being miserable during a 24+ hour car trip with my first husband, two young sons and a mother-in-law in a small car. I was sitting in the back literally on the edge of a too small, non-ergonomically designed seat with everything in my body tired and achy. But I was thinking that it simply wasn’t that bad because imagine the poor pioneer women in covered wagons!

Can’t I just be miserable?

Evidently not. Oh, I do my fair share of moaning and groaning. I can be a real baby when sick or injured. But if it’s something I have to get through, it seems to be in my nature to mentally sustain myself with reasons why it’s not that bad. I can then realize that packing up the car on a muggy day in June is certainly preferrable to a blizzardish one in March. That a late night drive alone in familiar territory with a loving husband waiting at home to give me a warm, hearfelt embrace when I FINALLY pull into to the driveway is really just something to get through and not something to wish away. My life is and has been easy and full of many days without danger or real hardship. I know I should not forget that.

I can still feel buffeted and bruised by my day yesterday. Take a day to recover my bearings. Do blog entries. Open mail. Wash my hair. Be with my husband. And remember things like…

…when I was in Junior High School, I did a dramatic interpretation from a play called All the Way Home by Tad Mosel (the playwright’s name is not from memory but from Google). I remember little about it except that the right to do it at a speech tournament was ‘willed’ to me by one Cheryl Somebody, a tournament-winning actress who had gone on to high school at the end of the previous year. What I do remember is that the excerpt required me to sing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot at the end. This isn’t another story about hard things I’ve been through, as for some reason, doing acting wasn’t nearly as difficult as oral reports in French! My now-husband was in that Speech Class and still talks about being wowed by my sweet soprano tremolo. I tell him it was nerves he heard, but that he believes differently makes me smile, makes me happy. I’m not much of a soprano anymore but he and I still sing together at home—where I am now once again pleasantly ensconced.

three pitchers and a feather,
originally uploaded by nuanc.

Some days chickens, some days feathers.

I have no memory of where or when I first learned that expression. But when I repeat it, I say with a Texas accent so I must have heard it growing up there.

It came up today, because I am feeling that I might have only “feathers” to offer. Inspiration seems to be in short supply. Pesky outside (non-creative) issues peck at my consciousness even while I try to focus on my day’s goals. Shoo, chickens!!!

The thing is, I’m more than a little fond of feathers. I began a collection of eggs when I was in my teens and that collection led to collections of bird’s nests and feathers. I have several ‘bouquets’ of feathers in my home.

Feathers are extraordinary. The words that come to mind show just how extraordinary.

Functional. Beautiful. Detailed. Soft. Strong. Flexible. Useful.

The thought that they were once used as pens draws me to them even more. Quill. What a wonderful word!

I once used a large feather to do a faux marble surface technique on an old bathroom countertop. It turned out great but you’ll have to take my word on it because unfortunately, that was before I had a digital camera. If there’s a photo, it’s in one of the dozens of boxes that have accumulated over the years.

This post seems to have led me to the poultry equivalent of when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Whether it’s chicken today or feathers today, finding the extraordinary in life is what makes the difference between a life of full good days or not so great ones.

I leave this post with my favourite feather image.

One single feather laying on the beach, left undisturbed except for a stolen shot. I treasure this one for my own personal inspiration:

Reading: Tales of Protection by Eric Fosnes Hansen
Writing: Words of Paradise - a novel set in Canada, the US and the island of Tobago in the 60’s
Working on: EPIC’s website
Upcoming: a trip to Maine for Cadi’s 2nd birthday and to see Ty and Carson
Mood: distracted
Progress since yesterday: Got a new page done on the EPIC site

Eyes cracked open at 5:27 am today to see a thin layer of snow on every little branch outside our window. By the time I got up several hours later, it had begun to rain and wasn’t as pretty. But—as a relative newcomer to Nova Scotia—this is my record for the latest snowfall of the year.

My husband tells a story about his first summer here in Cape Breton, back in the early 70’s. He was, for a short time, living by himself in the country and because he’d come here to farm, was putting in his first vegetable garden. He woke up on the morning of JUNE 17th to find a layer of snow breaking the will-to-live of his fledgling plantlets. The short-term ending of the story is that he—having absolutely nothing else to do with his time—propped up each and everyone of the bent seedlings and about 80% of them survived the snow!

The long-term ending is yet to be written but over thirty years on, the weather in Nova Scotia has changed. Whether for better or worse, is a matter of personal opinion, but few can argue that it’s rapid and scary.

A week ago this was the view outside our window. Those are firetrucks in our driveway at 3am. It’s a tradition locally for kids to set fire to the grass and woods in the middle of which our old house happens to sit. The spring has been very dry and these fires literally made the national news because of the sheer number and the toll it was taking on the island’s volunteer firefighters. Yay for volunteer firefighers! Come to think of it, Yay for paid firefighters!

This is the second time the fires have come close to our house but the first time that I seriously considered packing up those things that are most valuable to me. I found that a worthy exercise.

One surprising thing to me was that my journals (there are dozens of them!) are more important to me than my paintings. I’d hate to lose either but found that the journals represent my history, the art represents momentary self-expression. I guess for me “chronicling” beats out “illustrating.”

What I learned:
• Keep all stored photographs in one place.
• Have a box with the VIPs (Very Important Papers): wills, birth certificates, insurance policies
• Mark files in the filing cabinet that are irreplaceable. How about a gold star?
• It takes longer than you might think to get THE most important things together.
• Better safe than sorry.

Reading: Tales of Protection by Eric Fosnes Hansen
Writing: Words of Paradise - a novel set in Canada, the US and the island of Tobago in the 60’s
Working on: EPIC’s website and this one
Upcoming: a trip to Maine for Cadi’s 2nd birthday and to see Ty and Carson
Mood: calm
Physically: achy
Progress since yesterday: this website—do you like my new beaded curtain?; the book for Book Club on the 26th