Who me?

Wow! Here we go again. Another meeting of the insecure writer's support group!Group I'm glad I posted at least once in between first Wednesdays. And yep, I still struggle with insecurity about writing and just about anything else. I will tell you what I'm good at though - I'm good at faking it.  Right now I need to fake it because that is the only way I can sustain myself until I get the internal weather I'm hoping for. For I am the sky not the weather. I know I'm okay with all my wounds and scars. My basic goodness is intact like the sun, but it is being clouded by doubt and pain right now.  So I put on positivity like a rain coat and get out there. 

I'm happy to be doing NaNoWriMo again this year -it really helps. Because I need the word count thing I am using it to count 20 thousand words on last years novel, which will give me a proper, if messy, first draft. The other 30 thousand will be on a new YA called Caribou Dreaming . 

How are you all doing?

Dear Journal - navigating the complicated opportunities of the internet

Dear Journal,
Today is the last day of the NaBlo challenge and I have kept my promise to you. I have posted every day in October. It hasn't been a hardship - unlike those gearing up for the much more rigorous NaNo, beginning tonight at midnight - I've been able to cheerfully attend to my duty. And it has been helpful. To me I mean, but hopefully to others as well. To write daily about my revision progress (or sad lack of) has kept me inspired and interested in this very intense practice.
I think I might continue to do this, but not on a daily basis. One thing I've been considering is the moving of my Friday Challenge. I like working on Friday's, makes me feel like I've earned my week-ends, but others in this world seem a bit more loosey-goosey about it. By that I mean - they don't get around to the blogs so much on Fridays. Many of the blogs feature light material on Fridays - top tens, sillies, etc... I want my Friday Challenges read. They are my most relevant posts for people struggling or rejoicing in the writers' life. So I may move them to another day - I will let you know, journal, and also you readers!
As to getting around myself in the challenge - I did initially but then I stalled, as did many others I believe. For me it has become more and more important on THIS blog to pay attention to the community of writers. I am interested when I'm wearing my Living the Complicated Simple Life hat (it is straw of course) in bloggers who write about canning, knitting, chickens, photography and other assorted things, but on this one - I want to know what people are doing to drive their writing forward. And so most of the various challenges don't address that in a way that is satisfying to me. Some do! Alex's Insecure Writers is one - and I will be posting this Wednesday with great excitement - checking out the posts of other insecure types and generally having fun.
How about you all? How do you sort through the myriad of opportunities on the web to find which ones suit your needs?

Odds & Sods - For those of you Burrower fans - I'm over there today talking about what I'm reading and its relevance to Hallow's Eve. Come on over and dive into that conversation. And for those of you who want to see what I'm up to with my contemplative photography - head over to Living the Complicated Simple Life.

It rains...

My NaBlo posts are in the form of letters to my journal about my revision process. Along the way, I'll include Home-Made Revision Workshop posts, and my Friday Challenges.


Dear Journal,
It is raining raining raining raining.  The wind is whipping the last of the leaves from the branches. The chickens are staring balefully from their hatch-door, the dog lies sleeping - dreaming of his youth. 
Today I am going to look into my sacroiliac - no I'm not - I'm going to look into the nature and design of the sacroiliac to see if I can find ways to work with tiny triangle of intense pain. I want to understand its hinge qualities and how it works with the balance of the back-bone. I want to delve into the beautiful symmetry of the human body and appreciate how I'm constructed and how I can support that structure.


As well, I plan on following my own Friday Challenge when it comes to the pow-wow chapters and see if I can gently redirect my story, or bring it into line with the rhythm I'd begun.  


Oh and finish the tunic I've been knitting for three days.


I have people to call who will still be sleeping in other time-zones and a few fences to mend.


Hope you're having a good Sunday - a day to catch-up, redeem yourself physically, creatively or just to put some worrying tasks to bed.


The rain doesn't seem to care.

Dear Journal, time for a Home-Made Revision Workshop post!

My NaBlo posts are in the form of letters to my journal about my revision process. Along the way, I'll include Home-Made Revision Workshop posts, and my Friday Challenges.


Dear Journal,
I think it is time for another Home-Made Revision Workshop post! This has been the lost week for me, but I'm feeling pretty good - so I'll dip into my main resource - The Artful Edit - by Susan Bell - and see what happens. I think I'll just go serendipity wise - every bit of it is jammed to the gunnels -

(The outer edge of the deck where it meets the gunwale (pronounced "gunnel") at the top of the topside. The rail sometimes is raised to stop waves and provide a toerail. this expression means as full of a boat full of fish could be! )

with pithy instruction - so we'll just let the fates direct us on this cool lovely October day. I'm going to a random number program - be back in a jiffy.

The earliest technical usage for jiffy was defined by Gilbert Newton Lewis (1875–1946). He proposed a unit of time called the "jiffy" which was equal to the time it takes light to travel one centimetre (approximately 33.3564 picoseconds).^[2] It has since been redefined for different measurements depending on the field of study.^[3]

Who knew that's what 'jiffy' meant?  I just thought it was an expression of the fifties invented by suburban mothers. Well I did!

I went here - http://www.random.org/ and put in the range and got the number 192. Now I'm opening the book - the suspense is unbelievable, isn't it?!

The topic on 192 starts on 191 and it is about editors as censors and usurpers. this is in a chapter on the history of editing which is bloody fascinating and which everyone should read. On page 192, Bell discusses how Emily Dickinson ran into an editor's squeamishness. Bell says:

Her poem "I taste a liquor never brewed" was first printed in 1861 in the Springfield Daily Republican. In that paper, the first stanza read:

I taste a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not Frankfort berries yield the sense
Such a delirious whirl.

Bell goes on to tell us that the poem wasn't written that way. Her stanza more brazen and forthright. Here it is:

I taste a liquor never brewed---
From Tankards scooped in Pearl ---
Not all the Frankfort Berries
Yield such an Alcohol!

The editor turned to common punctuation instead of Dickinson's wonderful dashes (sorry Blogger won't let me), added some words, a rhyme (pearl/whirl) and made it all too ladylike.
Dickinson's response? "...how one can publish and at the same time preserve the integrity of one's art?"

After a bit more discussion involving Hemingway and his editor Max Perkins, Bell states "It is bad enough for an editor to prune provocative phrases or ideas from a writer's work out of fear they will offend; when writers do this to themselves, one might wonder why they write at all."

And that is the pith that I want to run with in today's revision workshop. How do we stop ourselves from our own censoring while revising. It is the edge of the sword blade - on one side the fear of being overly precious with our writing and on the other, our desire to be liked and accepted getting in the way of our truth.

I can't tell you the freedom I've felt, co-existing with great sorrow, at my father not being able to read my writing any more. I know that sounds harsh, but he was such a huge influence and some of it not so good - I never wanted to fret him, and frankly, some of my real honest to the bone writing would fret him. I find myself elevating others into that inner censor and I must work hard to rout them out and write what is true for me. I'm not talking about revealing family secrets or anything like that - just that my style might be offensive to a dad raised in a different time. And I fully own that it might not even be remotely true - as I'm sure he censored his tastes from his children as much as we to him. It is that inner Dad I must deal with and it is somewhat easier now that I know he can't read over my shoulder. (and if he can, I don't want to know about it!)

So, for those of you in the revision process - have a look at what you hold back on and why. I'm not asking you to change from a style that suits you to one that doesn't because it is edgier etc... I'm merely asking you, within the context of the work itself, are there things you are self-censoring? I will be asking myself that over the next while.

Later lovelies! Only two more posts in this series - it has been good for me, hope it has for you.

And here is a photo from my contemplative practice - this week's assignment - texture.

Friday Challenge - letting your writing lead

My NaBlo posts are in the form of letters to my journal about my revision process. Along the way, I'll include Home-Made Revision Workshop posts, and my Friday Challenges.




Dear Journal,
I've been thinking about something the past few days. Oh yes, I've had plenty o'thinking time. I did revise one chapter yesterday - have three to go - and I was not happy. It is the old pow-wow chapters again. They were muddy right from the beginning - I've struggled and struggled and you know what? Struggling is a bad sign. Sure, we're all going to have bogged down bits, but if they continue to be problematic then there is a point when one has to stop spinning one's wheels and have a good HARD  gentle look. So that's what I'm going to do today. I know that things happen in the pow-wow chapters that have to happen but maybe they don't have to happen there. Or in the same way. 
How I approach this is going to be the meat of the Friday Challenge. I'm not going to go into my manuscript all savage and destructive - ripping and tearing (cutting and dumping). I'm going to believe that my writing has some intelligence and that if I go in very gently and listen to it - look at the shape of it when it is on track and see what it tells me about the story. The thing is - the chapters I like have a certain rhythm and the ones I don't like - well, they don't have that rhythm - they are sharper, harder, more expository than I'd like. The chapters I like are somewhat slow, they gather slowly like rain clouds - they don't storm across the sky. The other ones are staccato, quick and shiny. I'm not sure I'm capturing this but that will be the exercise. 
For the Friday Challenge - find a piece of writing that isn't going the way you'd like, that you are struggling with, and instead of bulldozing it - see what it has to tell you. Go gently here and there, asking it if it needs a different location (either in the world of your book or in the novel), another character, or less hurly burly, or more hurly burly. I'm going to think that this obstacle-laden struggling part of my book is like my back right now - telling me to slow down and listen to it - not medicate it but to see where it is functioning best. 
While you do this, keep asking your writing what it needs to be true. Allow yourself to be surprised by what it might tell you.

And I'll see you tomorrow.    (photo taken in Cape Breton near the ferry at St. Anne's)

How our stories shape us and how we shape our stories

My NaBlo posts are in the form of letters to my journal about my revision process. Along the way, I'll include Home-Made Revision Workshop posts, and my Friday Challenges.


Dear Journal,
I just realized that this is the anniversary of my second marriage. A marriage that is, in fact, still ongoing - well, only in legal terms. I haven't seen the guy for thirty years. We got married on October 27, 1979 - in Zeballos, British Columbia. It was raining and the loggers (of which he was one) were on strike. It was always raining - somewhat like Ken Kesey's book 'Sometimes A Great Notion' and the town inhabitants were often on strike or in a wobble (a one dayish strike). It was the wild west, isolated, populated with eccentrics trying to make their fortunes before their bodies broke down, or the police came to get them. Like that. 


The husband and I had met in Ottawa a number of years earlier and we'd taken up together, as was the style. He'd followed me out to the east coast and then I'd followed him (with two kids and a dog) to the west. The town was excited about the marriage. People usually didn't get married in Zeballos. They usually got married 'down island' or back in Ontario or wherever they were from, but my intended's family lived on the Sunshine Coast, and mine were from Ontario, and besides - mine weren't coming, as I'd already had one marriage in the decade and they wanted to see if it was going to last. My sister came, and close friends - all of whom ended up staying and hooking up with various brothers and cousins and buds of the original guy. Like I said, it was that sort of time and place.


I didn't mean to write about this. I meant to write about my sudden urgency to get back at it - back at my revision. I've been dipping into Susan Bell's The Artful Edit, and, as always, it has me fired up. But - I think there is a reason that I noticed the date and what it meant. True, the novel I'm revising, was inspired by something that happened to my estranged husband. Not to go into the details, which would be unkind of me, he got involved in an accident which led to him suffering a stroke , which was, in turn, followed by cognition problems. His story is much wilder than the one in my book - no one would believe it true but it is - and that doesn't matter so much for this post. What matters is that I asked myself in 1992 - when it happened - what if? What if I were still living with someone who wasn't quite themselves anymore? What would be the true and good thing to do? What if a marriage develops a crack in it that isn't because of drifting intentions or bad choices, but because of an externally constructed accident? That question led - these twenty years later - to the book I'm writing. It is about a marriage and what family means. I think I'll get back at it, while I remember its genesis.

 I'm the one in the hat and pinkish sweatshirt and I'll let the women be anonymous.......not sure who the dude is.......Libby, my lovely dog. in front of the General Store in Zeballos

Dear Journal - a look into the dark side

My NaBlo posts are in the form of letters to my journal about my revision process. Along the way, I'll include Home-Made Revision Workshop posts, and my Friday Challenges.


for pictures of our trip please go to my non-writing site - Living the Complicated Simple Life


Dear Journal,
Well, I'm truly drugged up to the gills but it will just be for a short time until this stops reacting to whatever it is reacting to (my back to the rest of me I mean).
I'm not writing, revising, or doing much of anything that requires much concentration. I won't take any drugs tonight (Tuesday) so that tomorrow (today!) I will be clear and bright for my clients. I'm seeing a few. Then just one or two the rest of the week. 
So...when we go there - to the dark side - what do we find? Sometimes I'm aware, in my writing, that it is an effort not to make everything turn out hunky dory for my protagonist. Even if I throw crap loads of meanness her way, I try to even out her karma-odds and make it all more up than down. I'm working with this - I think it comes out of my work as a psychotherapist. But even there, it isn't MY duty to make everyone cheer the heck up. I'm just to point out the options, find out what the person is after, and counsel them or have them analyse how they might do things differently.
Over the years, I have made a big effort not to translate their pain into 'learnings' and I'm sure glad I don't. Because, quite frankly, I don't much care what I've 'learned' over the past year. True dat. Maybe I will, in the golden glow of years down the line, but right now, all I know is that I'm still kicking, still wanting to get up at least one more time than I fall down, and still wanting to know how this translates to art - if it does!
I'll be back in the saddle by the weekend. In some way.
Later lovely dudes and dudettes. 

Here's a gratuitous photo.

Dear Journal - down for the count

My NaBlo posts are in the form of letters to my journal about my revision process. Along the way, I'll include Home-Made Revision Workshop posts, and my Friday Challenges.


for pictures of our trip please go to my non-writing site - Living the Complicated Simple Life


Dear Journal,
The weekend was an absolute mix of heaven and hell - nirvana and samsara - bleak and beautiful. My beloved step-dot shone in her first mystery weekend. She outdid everyone's expectations and was not only a wondrous actress, but more importantly when spending time in tight quarters with crazy middle to old aged types - a true fun presence. The plot went well, Keltic was gorgeous as usual. 
But moi? I drove halfway there on Thursday to stay overnight with Linder in Merigomish, with step-dot and K. in car. I already had a bad back, the rain was fierce and so it was tense driving. My back went out in a way it never has before. Slept badly at Linder's though the food and conversation was, as always, brilliant fun. Linder drove the next day as I was too gimped. I got through the Friday night scenes by staying somewhat still and by having K. tell the crowd that my sore leg WASN"T a clue. 
I couldn't sleep at all Friday night - the pain was unrelenting. K. called an ambulance at 5:30 AM. They got there in ten minutes and took me to the nearest hospital. There I met a lovely doctor who gave me a shot and some pills. Apparently my sacroiliac is on fire. Got back to the hotel in time for rehearsal before breakfast but I was written out of scenes and spent most of the day on the couch drifting in and out of sleep watching weird television shows. Mostly cooking I think. I went to the dinner and the dance feeling much better and managed to do what I had to - then back to the couch (I had to sleep sitting up somewhat so the bed was out and too disturbing for K.) Then L drove us all back to Merigomish and K. drove me back home and her husband came and got her (my car). Everyone was dear as anything. But this report is it. I'll try and write something tomorrow but now, it is back to bed and trying to get into see my acupuncturist etc...
What did I learn? Remember dear journal, a writer can use any experience. I learned that there are doctors in tiny away places who are skilled, kind and blessedly still there. I learned that like those people I've read about, if I'm eaten by a bear, I will not pass out, how ever much I want to.
Bye now.
jan

Dear Journal, I still like you, I do!

My NaBlo posts are in the form of letters to my journal about my revision process. Along the way, I'll include Home-Made Revision Workshop posts, and my Friday Challenges.


Dear Journal,


As you read this, I'll be wending home from the Keltic, tired and happy. It is about a seven hour drive so when I get home, I'll be ready for bed, not more writing. But I'll attack my revision with new vigour and verve and other v words I'm sure.
Hold tight! I still adore you. I'm not mad that you are constantly reminding me of my pledge to get this revision done. I know there will only be 8 more days of revising to finish this before the month does. I might not you know. Finish it. Oh, I'll have the point of view changed and a good part of the edits done but finished. I just don't know.


See you soon. I'll bring you a present.

nablowing me down!

My NaBlo posts are in the form of letters to my journal about my revision process. Along the way, I'll include Home-Made Revision Workshop posts, and my Friday Challenges.


Dear Journal,
I know, I know, what's the point of writing in here if I'm not actually revising. But journal, every once in awhile I have to do these all encompassing other things. Right now for instance, I'm not writing this. It is Saturday morning and I am in the dining room of the resort in Cape Breton and I'm in the middle of a big scene with a bunch of people.  It will be both fun ( the view from the dining room is ocean in four directions and I'm not kidding) and funny (I'm Ninette Beazley, my pal,Edna Peach will be tap-dancing drunk and well that's just a bit) and still, work! For which I get paid.
I can tell you that I had a great meeting with my editor the other day and the changes are being made. Characters are getting the axe, focus is being pulled, language pared, weeded, exfoliated, trimmed and yes, topiaryized. 
See you soon!
Jan
Here's some postcards I made last year at the Keltic Lodge!

Dear Journal - a Friday Challenge

My NaBlo posts are in the form of letters to my journal about my revision process. Along the way, I'll include Home-Made Revision Workshop posts, and my Friday Challenges.


Dear Journal,
A straight-forward challenge for today. Find a project that you keep telling yourself, and probably others, that you want to finish. Figure out what is REALLY holding you back. Make a decision - that you will complete it - or you'll drop it with relief. If you decide you are going to finish it - draw up a plan to do so. You are allowed to change it as you go, but start with a plan of attack.  Here's mine:


I want to write a book about how women coped in the depression with putting food on the table, raising families, doing laundry, maintaining gardens, or just plain surviving. I have done some research on my paternal grandmother and I have enlisted five other people to research their grandmothers but it is going slow. I'm going to put the word out one more time and then decide if I need their help or can do it another way.

OKEY DOKEY - see you later... this is a picture of my great-great grandparents - the baby - that's my grandpa and it is his wife who I want to write about!  Oh, and that house is a soddy I think. Manitoba!

How can a girl be in three places at once? Watch me!

My NaBlo posts are in the form of letters to my journal about my revision process. Along the way, I'll include Home-Made Revision Workshop posts, and my Friday Challenges.


Dear Journal,
Today is a very special day. The protagonist from my two mysteries (The Rock Walker and Earth Bound) Kitty MacDonald, is  Under the Tiki Hut , Carol Kilgore's wonderful blog. She is sitting on the beach discussing her life as a RCMP officer assigned to some very interesting places in Nova Scotia. Please go over there and if you don't know Carol, you should! I'm jealous Kitty gets to go and I, well, I have to slog on here at home. Ah well. I'll be back and forth as I can, to answer emails - although it is a BIG WORKING DAY FOR ME!


As well, I have a presence today over at Burrowers, Books & Balderdash, where I'll be discussing weeding and writing. No, not reading and writing - weeding and writing. Come on over and check out what I have to say.


So, not too much more to say here today but check out my creations on these two great spots!
I'm off to Keltic Lodge, Cape Breton, for a Halloween Murder Mystery with my company, Catchword Productions. I'll post ahead so as not to miss one day of NaBlow Me Down and Tie Me Up Festival Extravaganza Event. When I get back, I'll report on the weekend and how it might relate to my revision process - remember 'nothing is wasted on the writer' - that's a Fishism only I'm not Fish, I'm Jan or La Banan so it is a Bananism. All credit to the wonderful Ally McBeal show!

fishism
	a) Meaningless intellectual jabberish produced by white males (in their thirties). b) words of wisdom by Richard Fish (character in Ally McBeal tv-series) Richard Fish: You're not who you are, you're only what other people think you are. Fishism. Richard Fish: Make enough money, and everything else will follow. Quote me

at 1:09 AM I write this

My NaBlo posts are in the form of letters to my journal about my revision process. Along the way, I'll include Home-Made Revision Workshop posts, and my Friday Challenges.


Dear Journal,
I'm writing this at 1:09 AM. I'm usually asleep by now, but due to emotional shit storm, am unable to sleep. It doesn't happen very often, but when it does it is fierce. I was just out on the back deck looking at the stars and listening to faint meowish noises that I think are raccoons. 
I decided that since I can't sleep I might as well write to you. 
I'm wondering if it is possible for me to take this emotional pain and transform it by using it in my novel.  As a meditater. I know that I can and should bring everything to the cushion. To not deny any emotion or perception I have but to transform it into the path of bodhi, is a basic instruction. 
The content of my anguish isn't of importance. I'm not going to air it here and I know that the content or the story that I tell myself about the content isn't the thing. The thing is that I know in a day or two I'll feel some relief from it. I know that every emotion, no matter how debilitating, has a beginning, a middle and an end. If it were elation I was feeling it would be the same thing - though probably I could sleep!
So if the content, the so-called facts, about my mental state isn't the thing - what is? Is it that I recognize that all over the world people are agonizing over lesser or greater situations? Or that by transforming these feelings as accurately as I can, to the page and to a different set of circumstances, I can portray an individual's pain in such a way that readers will recognize the truth of the portrayal and have some relief with their own particular sleepless nights? Or if not relief just pure understanding that we are all one - in our joy, our pain, our numbness?
The essence of pain, of suffering, is difficult to capture, to recreate, even to remember. I'm not sure if I can even think of it when I'm midstream. It is more a howl than words. Howl is what Allen Ginsberg called his most known work. Not to be too beat, too existential, but that sums it up for me right now. Howling off the back deck in the half moon to unknown beasts lurking in the trees.

a bit of Howl:

who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music,
who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts, who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology,
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish,

Home-Made Revision Workshop - Clarity - pitfalls and peaks

My NaBlo posts are in the form of letters to my journal about my revision process. Along the way, I'll include Home-Made Revision Workshop posts, and my Friday Challenges.




Dear Journal,
It is a Monday and you know what that means? You don't? Me neither, except I always have the faintest whiff of 'new day, clean notebook' on a Monday. After all, it is when we start diets, new jobs, the school week and so forth. I realized, after reading my little sticky note at the top of all my NaBlo posts, that I intended to continue the Home-Made Revision Workshop series. It is kind of hard to tell, since all these letters to you, dear journal, are about my revision process, but the idea was to go to other sources - especially the amazing book, The Artful Edit, by Susan Bell. So here goes.


Today's workshop topic is clarity. We all, as writers, know how important clarity is, but many of us have a stunningly different idea of what it means. Here is what the Oxford Dictionary has to say:

• the quality of being clear, in particular:.
• the quality of being coherent and intelligible:for the sake of clarity, each of these strategies is dealt with separately
• the quality of being easy to see or hear; sharpness of image or sound:the clarity of the picture
• the quality of being certain or definite:it was clarity of purpose that he needed
• the quality of transparency or purity:the crystal clarity of water

Origin:

Middle English (in the sense ‘glory, divine splendour’): from Latin claritas, from clarus'clear'. The current sense dates from the early 17th century

Is that clear? I do like that its origin was 'glory, divine splendour' and isn't that just so? If you use words that are fresh, metaphors that aren't tired, and people understand what it is you mean - how glorious is that?

Here is what Susan Bell quotes on Clarity from Somerset Maugham "[A cause] of obscurity is that the writer is himself not quite sure of his meaning. He has a vague impression of what he wants to say, but has not...exactly formulated it in his mind, and it is natural enough that he should not find a precise expression for a confused idea." 

In other words - if you don't the hell know what you mean do not expect others to, and if they don't, call them dunderheads! (that is a Jan Morrisonism)

I know where my prose is lacking clarity because I get overwhelmingly sleepy when I read it. And it isn't the sleepiness of being bored, although I imagine that is in there, it is the sleepiness that comes from trying to wrestle out a meaning that hasn't been articulated or understood by the originator - even if I'm the originator! It happens to me in therapy sessions too, and when it does, I know the client is spinning themselves a story, so I take it as my cue to stop them and ask them to make their point more clear. 

Revision is where we sweep away anything that doesn't enrich our story. We make our points clear because we've removed the debris or furbelows and lacy bits surrounding those points. If we do clear the non-essentials away and we are still baffled - back to the drawing board.

I started a contemplative photography course last night. I've taken it before, taught by a teacher of this teacher, but I've drifted and want to be brought back to the practice. This is a good way to do it. It is also helpful as cross-training for my writing practice. In contemplative photography - you have the initial flash of perception and you try to form the equivalent. Part of that is to recognize what caught your eye - where the perception begins and ends. That is what we are doing when we are clearing for clarity. If I am walking in the woods and a flash of colour grabs me, my next thought might mess it up - oh, if this leaf is good, so must the green bits around it be, and that weird shaped stick, and so on. I think I do this in my writing. I want to relate my perception on a woman who is being made to understand the real meaning of connection by her crazy circumstances. Along the way, two bachelor recluses show up, and I am entranced by them (and my clever birthing of them!). I need them in the story but I don't need them to be a big deal. I need to cut away all the cleverness and just show how they are part of what woke my protagonist up to the various meanings of family.

Two things are happening when I do this - one is to rid the writing of superfluity, the other is to expand the parts that are essential. Shrink and expand - over and over again - like the diastole/systole of our heart's contractions.

One of the biggest traps for writers on the road to clarity, is the desire to be subtle. We want to be thought of as very clever and that means we sometimes obscure our meanings even from ourselves. I will say no more on this. Just hunt the obscure down and make it clear. You will get when you've gone simple and when you've gone ornate - keep to the middle path.

OK, dear journal, now I must get into my car and go meet with my editor. I am going to discuss some of the paths I wish to take my manuscript down. I find it is very helpful to say these things out loud - to you - to her and to my writing and non-writing pals. Feedback is essential.

Today's picture is clear. I am revising my pow wow chapters and so thought this might be helpful!

The Strangest Things are Happening...

My NaBlo posts are in the form of letters to my journal about my revision process. Along the way, I'll include Home-Made Revision Workshop posts, and my Friday Challenges.


Dear Journal,


What a glorious day! Sorry I took so long to get to you, but I lay about in bed reading a very fun book, called McCarthy's Pub by Pete McCarthy - a delicious and hilarious ramble through Cork by a fair funny lad. Then I got onto my cushion and meditated for an hour. 


My plan today is to revise two of the ten chapters I have left (to change from 1st to 3rd); walk with my pal, Marion, and Hoagy; go to Peggy's Cove with Marion; and clean up this dumparooni a bit before the lad and I head out to celebrate a dear friend's 80th birthday. Not a bad day, all in all.


Yesterday I worked on three or four chapters (I'm not sure). I have some major changes going on and once I've decided on them, I can't just change the point of view - no, I had to go in and change how things went. Of course! And I'm happy with it. I made my protagonist a little more selfish and stuck - especially in the affair she enters into. Initially, it was some sort of idyllic romantic dream - a very sweet guy, and poor Libby, tragically left with a brain-injured husband and wanting some love. Nope! That is all gone. The guy is a sweet guy but Libby isn't a sweet victim. She cold-bloodedly seduces him because she wants sex without ties. She resists all intimacies with him and he is left irritated and baffled. Things will change later on, but I'm afraid her awakening won't include acceptance of her lover - maybe some amends will be made, but really he is not going to be part of the bigger picture. 
One other aspect of the novel that I want to enrich, I've talked about a fair bit, these past few posts. I have the skeleton of it but I want it to take up much more room. And that is how Libby learns from the land by walking on it, and by the medicine woman, Teesa, who takes Libby in hand and gives her an education on Native healing techniques.
This is tremendously exciting to the writer in me - this is where revising turns into art, as opposed to copy editing. 
My biggest problem, dear journal, is something I've mentioned before. I am in a hurry and this won't do. Speed is aggression, that I know for a fact. And I don't want to be aggressive with this story. I want it to be born when it is entirely ready to be born. And so, I must work with my mind, my longing to be published before I start getting my old age pension. Never mind, I tell that ambitious voice, this will be worth it, if you just slow down and take all the time you need.
And now, I'm off to work on my two chapters. 
And for you, journal, and my dear readers - a photo I took the other day.

Friday Challenge - listening to the land

My NaBlo posts are in the form of letters to my journal about my revision process. Along the way, I'll include Home-Made Revision Workshop posts, and my Friday Challenges.




Dear Journal,
I have been completely struck reading Sharon Butala's contemplations on land, how easily we can get disconnected from the earth, from the wild. How to remedy that? I feel a deep pervasive sorrow that even though I think I am a person who has an abiding affection for nature, I've let it become rote, I've become casual and off-hand with my connection to it.  I've taken it for granted.
In my therapy practice, every client gets one piece of homework that is the same as every other client - and that is that they walk daily, near trees, and without companionship except for perhaps a well-behaved dog. When they notice they are worrying, fretting, planning the future, regretting the past - they are to instead notice their sensory connection to nature, and to their bodies. They are asked to bring their attention to what they can smell, what noises they hear, how their bodies feel moving through space, their feet landing on the path or side-walk. They are to lose their minds, and come to their senses.
I often give younger clients a suggestion to read Bruce Chatwin's Songlines - itself a contemplation on the natural goodness of walking, on healing nature and being healed by it.
I think this needs to be a more important voice in my novel. I am feeling my way towards it - it is in the book - in many different ways - how the protagonist finds herself abandoned by what she had depended on - a solid if sometimes empty marriage; a job that in itself had meaning but with which she had become cynical, an easy sense of material wealth. And how she finds instead something that doesn't seem to fit initially - a bothersome much bigger family, connections that want her heart not just her mind, work that is difficult but demands every aspect of her - engagement in all aspects of her life. And how this comes to her because she walks this land she had no understanding of - how the land teaches her.
So, dear journal and dear readers, the challenge for this Friday is to aimlessly wander in nature this weekend and listen to what it has to tell you. Clear your mind of any other agenda item - as you would if you were meeting a dear friend after a long absence. And listen. That's what I'll be doing.

 the land that speaks to me the most.