Flotsam

Those of you who were reading four years ago may remember my first idea for a reality show. Long before “Sexy Pioneer Times” and “Red Hott” (sexy communist collective, remember? From each according to his abilities…to each according to his needs…), there was “Writing with the Stars.”

Now, for some reason it didn’t catch on, but I thought that you might like a little glimpse into the Glamourous Life of a Writer, even if I don’t have Mindy Cohn or a lesser Kardashian learning the trade alongside me.
Also, this is an easy way to take a few pictures and pretend it counts as a post. Let’s begin!

I was surprised, after my last entry—all those many months ago—to realize that there were those among you who assumed the Crazy Person’s Bulletin Board was not a LITERAL bulletin board, but rather a metaphor for an organizational chart of the mind. Oh ho ho!

Now, I inexpertly edited out the text on all of those little squares, so as not to ruin the book for you (though, SPOLIER ALERT: Simone lives), but imagine them all filled with vaguely nonsensical bulletpoints. Each square was supposed to represent ONE chapter. (ONE! ONE, GODDAMNIT.) Alas, most have morphed sinisterly into two. For instance, the three green pins you see represent the first five chapters. Now I call the squares “sections,” which doesn’t help. The red KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON postcard my mother sent me from London was originally calming, but now I read it as shrill and desperate, appending an invisible AS ROME BURNS to the end.

A green pin denotes material which I would happily send to print, having been subjected to my editorial rock-tumbling as much as it ever shall be. I won’t go into the other colors in detail, because of the weeping, but just know that they all have their own meanings, and that the further away from green they are…well, the red pins, specifically, give me a Marnie Reaction. (The sort of reaction Marnie got whenever SHE saw something red, complete with AWOOGA! AWOOGA! horns blaring, etc.)
Let’s move along before I have to get out the paper bag again.

Here is where the magic happens, or doesn’t, as the case may be:

Doesn’t that look peaceful? It’s my office, otherwise known as the corner of Simone’s room. Since she has slept in our bedroom for her entire life, and all of her toys are in the dining/play room, “her” room is merely where her clothes, changing table, and diaper bin reside. And now, it is also where I do my Creating. Ah, diaper bin! Such an inspiring smell!

My office has my beloved Poang and sidetable, and the CPBB, and a door that closes so that Simone isn’t distracted by my presence in the apartment. It has at least one cat, often more. It has piles of paper, including the old calendars from Simone’s NICU room. It has lists, an outlet for my laptop, a phone, and a copy of 50 Cent’s book, which Scott got me as a sort of inspirational joke. This book is bound in leather-esque with gilded pages and a satin bookmark, like a bible. I laughed and laughed when I saw it, but—ahem—have found a few snippets of surprisingly apt advice inside. Mostly though, it is in my office because of the hilariously hardcore back cover, which I keep as a Strengthening Talisman, to be looked at as required:

See? Are you not overcome by simultaneous urges to giggle and growl? I find I do my best work this way.

Speaking of which, here I am, doing it—or at least pointing tiredly at the CPBB:

Yes, that is a headscarf. Don’t judge me.

As far as the effects my approaching deadline and resultant hermitude have had on the rest of the family, well, Scott has had to take over all weekend childcare, but for Simone it is mostly business as usual, only with more pajamas:

Stirring a pen in a broken toy aquarium that she has set atop an unplugged air-purifier—I miss her a lot these days, but she seems to be keeping busy. While I was trying to pee this morning, she managed to finish a whole new bathtub installation, involving a spoon, a small baby doll, a Playmobil cow (though she calls it a horse, which may have relevance), toilet paper, and an empty shampoo bottle. It is difficult not to envy her artistic prolificacy.

My time is up. I miss you all. And sunlight. And bathing. I couldn’t do this without you, you know. Just in case you think I’ve forgotten.

Saxby Chambliss, everyone! May Schmutzli spare you!

Lately, I am working seven days a week in a frantic dash to meet my deadline, and those days seem to blur together and slip away from me, leaving no time to leave the house (last week I ran errands Monday morning, and next stepped outside on Saturday night), much less update my Bushel of Logorrheic Online Gibberish.

I write in my head as I try to fall asleep, and I wake in the morning visualizing my Crazy Person’s Bulletin Board (It has little squares for various sections! With colored pins to signify their degree of done-ness!), surprised to find my jaw clenched. Last night I even had a writing dream, similar to the waitressing dreams of my youth. These aren’t nightmares, or even particularly dream-like: no animals walking on their hindquarters or appearances by elementary school classmates. No, these are ordinary dreams, in which I do my ordinary work. I used to work a dream shift waiting tables and wake up, exhausted, to do the same thing corporeally. When I taught SAT prep I would explain equations in my sleep, step by tedious step. Now as I slumber I write a few lines, or worry over a paragraph, or contemplate the epilogue. I revise and look over my manuscript thus far.

This is not what dreams are for—a fact of which I have advised my subconscious on multiple occasions, though it never listens. In high school, in bed at five a.m. after a night of abandoned-factory-dancing, my dreaming mind would replay the evening in detail, like watching realtime footage of an event I had already experienced.
Perhaps my creative muscle is so strained during the day that it cannot come up with anything diverting at night, but boy, would I like a break. If I am going to revise in my sleep, couldn’t I do it in a Swiss cafe populated entirely by fancily attired goats, or while reclining beside a naked and fondue-bearing Jon Hamm?

This brings me to the other reason I haven’t been posting much: to spare you my inappropriate angst. I seem to be in a perpetual swivet, as my dearest friend would say. Her latest post deals with just that condition, ending with a poem that aptly reflects it.
I am never without worry or work. I worry about what I’ve written and what I haven’t. I worry about finishing a draft far enough before my February deadline to allow for the distance necessary to a clear-headed revision. I work in spurts and longer stretches, half-listening to my family, feeling driven and inadequate on both fronts. I have no desire for food, alcohol, television, or pants that zip and button. I don’t want anything except More Time, and maybe a lavishly outfitted king-sized bed to sink into at the end of the night. Alas, neither of those things are on offer.

People, I am writing a book that will be published. It even has a publication date, on which it will be available in stores: August 10th, 2010. It has a cover—or a mock up of one—that I love, and seeing that cover for the first time smacked me boneless with awe. How lucky am I? So, SO lucky. I would not want to be anywhere other than where I am right now (unless it were a few weeks further from deadline.) I am doing just what I’ve always wanted, and sometimes honestly cannot believe I have stumbled into this life.

Writing a book is the most consuming, exhilarating, terrible, wonderful thing I have ever tried to do. It is also a little like walking around with a partially corroded car battery in your stomach. I’ve never done anything this ambitious and difficult, or that I cared about this much, and that is a terrifying combination. Believe it or not, some of that fear is because, not in spite, of my gratitude. I hold books in such esteem, and have loved so many of them so well for so long, that I take very seriously the opportunity to contribute one of my own.

I got six months, which, it turns out, is not much time, even when you have a Crazy Person’s Bulletin Board and a plan. For one thing, books are more slippery than essays, and have a devious hydra-like quality: no sooner have you finished one chapter than a new one, TOTALLY NOT ON THE BULLETIN BOARD, springs up to take its place. If you are a Slow Writer, as I am, six months seems slimmer still. Even with my new Orpheus-inspired policy of DON’T LOOK BACK AT ANY COST! FORGE AHEAD! EDIT LATER! I have days where eight hours of effort produces a scant handful of sentences.

This isn’t always the case, of course. Over Thanksgiving, I wrote 5000 words in two days, a record. Scott and Simone went to Iowa to see the in-laws, and I stayed home to work. On Thanksgiving I wrote for 13 hours, had fishsticks for dinner, and fell into bed at 2:30 in the morning spent but delighted. It wasn’t easy, and I’d started the day by passing the kidney stone that landed me in the ER the day before, but overall, it was a Happy Thanksgiving and did wonders for my morale. I accomplished more in those two days than I have in the 11 since, and sometimes I wish I could send Scott and Simone away for a bit longer. Here I am, wishing away my own daughter! Why don’t I just cast her out to sell matches in the snow?

My husband was laid off last week. He has a few months to find a new job, and if he doesn’t, we will be in ominously euphemistic Trouble. I made exactly enough from this book to afford the six months to write it, with childcare. After my deadline I’ll resume freelancing, but will be lucky to make enough to cover MY half of expenses. Scott’s lay-off ought, really, to be the thing weighing most heavily on my mind.

But it’s not. Instead I write, and walk around looking mad and disheveled, muttering darkly that it’s not a coincidence that “write” and “writhe” are separated only by one letter, or threatening to take up some nice, restful career, like bricklaying or gerbil husbandry.

It helps to remember that we all do this, all the time. We complain about our kids, when there are women who will never be able to have them, or we complain about our homes when the vast majority of the world’s population live in spaces a fraction the size of an average house. If we could only complain about things that everyone has, we’d have nothing to complain about at all—though I suppose that would mean we could complain about that, and I’m sure we’d find a way to do so. I feel immense relief when I read others talking about the brutal, soul-searing nature of writing a book. When Cormac McCarthy was quoted saying “I’m not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.” I thought “Oh thank god! I’m on the right track, then.”

Kyran—who is just finishing her own manuscript—observed in a recent entry that “The emotional climate is completely different, but the physical tension is weirdly similar to the way it felt two years ago, when we were about to lose our house. I guess in the body, stress is stress.”
And I guess it is. I have felt as much stress at times during the past few months as I did living the events I am writing about, and have certainly whined more than I did during the entirety of Simone’s NICU stay. I suspect this is because in the NICU there was nothing I could, or was expected to, DO.

So I’ve been absent partly because I’m busy, and partly because all I can think about is DEADLINEDEADLINEBOOKBOOKBOOK, and I’m afraid you’ll all detest me by February if I don’t keep my stupid mouth shut. But I miss talking to you, and I will try to do a better job of carving out space for non-book things, even if I am currently having trouble remembering what those things are. I am reminding myself of my own excellent advice from back in October, that I needn’t take perspective so far that I get sucked into a relativistic swirl of shame and desperate, overeager gratitude. But this, like everything else, is very much a work in progress.