Butterfly Mind

Tag: blogging

From Posts to “Pieces”

April 14th, 2013

Lord, I don’t know what I’ve gotten myself into. I started attending a critique group, and for the past few sessions, I’ve been perfectly content to read other writer’s work and give them what I hope is helpful feedback. But when the organizer emailed a call for submissions for next month’s meeting, I impulsively hit reply and said, “I’ll do it!” Do I have something for them to read? No.

A good friend wrote last week, “I have been reading a lot about writing recently. Specifically, I am curious about the writer’s process as I am developing one of my own.” As I attempt to come up with a piece worthy of my critique group’s time, I’ve thought a lot about her statement, reflecting on my own process. I set an alarm for 6am during the week, getting up to write while the rest of the house sleeps. But that’s not really a process, that’s just a schedule, right?

During times of deadlines, my process is one of avoidance. I have dozens of “big ideas” jotted down in Evernote, on post-its, on the lines of my navy blue Moleskine – five or six word phrases like “I am an unreliable narrator,” or “Notes under my pillow for God.” My phone is full of voice memos for those pieces. But when I think about sitting down and trying to put it all together? I procrastinate. I delay. I use my writing time to blurt out blog posts. Like right now.

A local friend and I trade critiques sometimes. We email our work to each other, then meet for lunch or coffee and trade feedback. Lesley’s advice is instrumental in my growth as a writer (as I hope mine is to hers), and thanks to one of her critiques, I tightened up a piece that was ultimately accepted. This past week, after reading the work I gave her, she told me, “I love your voice.” But the piece still needs a lot of work.

That’s where I get stuck as a writer. My voice comes through in my blurts, in my blog posts, in my “shitty first drafts,” as Anne Lamott calls them. When I start polishing, though, when I cobble together the voice memos, and the scattered notes, and rearrange and cut and organize, I don’t know how to keep my voice. The writing feels forced. “That’s why I loved Wild,” I told Lesley. “Strayed’s writing is raw, like when I blurt, yet it’s also refined. Somehow she keeps her voice through all the polishing.”

It’s a tricky transition, this progression from posts to pieces. From self-publishing on a blog to submitting for review by others. But reading about writing and setting an alarm clock, meeting deadlines for your critique group and maintaining your raw voice while refining your words, I guess those are all part of the process.
Have you ever learned a critical lesson from an only okay book?

February 3rd, 2013

A man without a wife can be lonely in a big black Mercedes, no matter how many readers he has. – Howard Jacobson

Have you ever read a book that just didn’t do it for you, but had one character, one scene, or one line that has stuck with you forever? You’re going through life, feeling sorry for yourself that you don’t have more time to write, and then BAM. You remember a line from a book you had otherwise forgotten, and you thank God you read it?

That’s how it is for me with the line above from Jacobson’s prize-winning novel, The Finkler Question. The book itself was only okay to me. The characters, meh. Kind of endearing, but kind of annoying, too. The story was not funny in a laugh out loud kind of way, but was witty, in an internal chuckle kind of way.

But that line. I have come back many times to that line. And it made the whole reading worth it.

I met with a fellow writer this morning to trade critiques, and our conversation gradually transitioned to where to submit, who pays, who doesn’t, you could pitch it this way for this publication, that way for that journal. She is far more seasoned than I am, and when I asked whether her writing contributes substantially to her family income, she responded, “It doesn’t supplement my husband’s salary, but it pays for my writing studio.” And I was instantly jealous. A writing studio! God, how I’d love a studio. A room of my own, with a window seat, and light on my face, and a door that closes.

But more than that, a designated room would mean that writing was more than a hobby. That it was something serious, that I had time to do, that I wasn’t squeezing into an hour here, a half hour there. I’ve got 17 pieces I have started, then abandoned when it was time to wake the kids up, or volunteer at the school, or shop for groceries, or meet the school bus. By the time I get back to the essays, the mojo is gone. I’m not with the feeling anymore, and I can’t finish.

At these times I get frustrated. I fantasize about having large chunks of time to focus on writing, to research, to finish pieces, to edit, to polish. I go into my head, mulling all those incomplete essays, thoughts for this one jumbling with ideas for that one, and I think, if I were alone, and didn’t have all these responsibilities, I could take care of these. I could get them out, get them done.

A man without a wife can be lonely in a big black Mercedes, no matter how many readers he has.

And then that line from The Finkler Question snaps me back to reality, reminding me what it would really mean, at this stage in our family’s life, if I dedicated that kind of time and mental focus to a life of words. Because that line, regardless of its context within the novel, is about more than the emptiness of fame and fortune, or the loneliness of the writer’s life. It’s about throwing yourself into something so deeply, dedicating so much of your attention to this passion, or job, or hobby, that you risk losing contact, sacrificing closeness, with the most important people in your life.

There will come a time in the not so distant future, when our children leave home, and there will be silence where their voices once were. Like the writer in The Finkler Question who lost his wife, I will rattle around in our empty house, with all the time in the world to write, and every room will be a room of my own. I will think of the pies I made with our daughter, of reading The Old Man and the Sea with our son, of answering their questions about sex and bad words, and I will give thanks for that single line in an only okay book. The line that reminded me to take my time, to enjoy my kids. A woman can be lonely in a room of her own, no matter how many readers she has.

The Finkler Question, by Howard Jacobson. “Winner of the 2010 Man Booker Prize, Jacobson’s wry, devastating novel examines the complexities of identity and belonging, love, and grief through the lens of contemporary Judaism.” (Publishers Weekly)
Finding focus

January 15th, 2013

Cold rain drips
into dirty black puddles.
Punch down dough!

I’m in a mood. It has been gray and gloomy for three days, and it is affecting me. Like a million other bloggers out there, I don’t have a focus. This isn’t a how-to blog, or a blog about, well, anything. I chose the name Butterfly Mind deliberately – because my mind is all over the place, and I’m working to embrace my fluttering (See There’s power in that adjective for the story). When I introduced myself to a local writing group and explained that I blog, but I have no theme, I have no focus, one writer raised his hand and said, “Excuse me? Do you really need a focus?” And I fell in love with the group.

But as my “to-write” list grows, the topics ranging from hiking conversations, to housekeeping, to memoir, to haiku, I’m feeling more scattered than even I am comfortable with, and I find myself overwhelmed and wondering “where do I begin?” Do I write about winter in Maine? Or continue the Dear Diary, story? I could write about my adventures in homemaking. Or courting my husband on the Appalachian Trail. Or maybe I should write haiku about baking bread today:

Forearms bulge
like Popeye on spinach – Push!
And turn the dough.

I’ve considered starting all over with another blog. A blog with a focus. My resolution to learn how to keep house this year has my wheels turning, and I’m thinking about writing a housekeeping blog for beginners. A blog that traces my journey through learning the basics of keeping house, and of why it’s important to make a house into a home. I even wrote out a list of domain names and checked into their availability.

My recent post, Would I know how to do this if I had taken Home Ec?, which I thought would be a total flop, stimulated inspiring discussion that has encouraged me. One reader commented that self-sufficiency at home is “one of the parts of [our son’s] education that I look forward to most.” Her thoughtful comments have me thinking its time for me to start teaching our kids about housekeeping. I even wrote “Start teaching kids housekeeping” on my calendar for this summer, once I’ve gotten the hang of it myself. And boy would that provide fodder for an amateur housekeeper blog.

But I’m still not sure. It would be an awful lot of work, and I’m not sure I’ve got the personality for it. My first housekeeping post was the most boring post ever. And to be honest, I’m not sure if housekeeping is what I want to write about. Or what you want to read about.

So why don’t you tell me – would you be interested in a homemaking blog? I would likely still keep this one. I can’t stand the thought of limiting myself to one topic. In fact, the thought of having a focus almost makes me balk and not even publish this post.

The Daily Post: Starting Over challenge and today’s Lessons from The Daily Post bloggers, which include asking readers for feedback, convinced me to close my eyes and press “publish.”
The challenge of the challenge: not editing.

December 30th, 2012

One of the most challenging aspects of this commitment to post every day for seven consecutive days has not been the writing. The biggest challenge, especially for a perfectionist, has been practicing restraint in editing.

I felt kind of ridiculous when I publicly accepted the Daily Post challenge in my “Buts” piece. I knew we would be on the road, visiting family, celebrating Christmas. Not only was I committing to write, which is challenging enough even when you’re just scratching private thoughts in a journal, but I was committing to post content every day. Publicly. Which kind of means, especially for a perfectionist, that it can’t be complete drivel.

At home, I procrastinate writing until I can get my fingers on a keyboard. And even then, I am very particular about my routine. I boil water, pour some in my mug to warm it up, and pour some over coffee, coarsely ground, in my French press. I steep it for five minutes, pour the strong black brew into my warmed mug, add 1 teaspoon of raw sugar and 2 tablespoons of half and half, then walk over to the computer, place my mug at the top left corner of the keyboard, and position my hands for typing. This is my writing ritual.

On the road, I am without these accoutrement. Right now, I am in the car, scribbling this post, in ink, on the lined pages of a navy blue soft cover Moleskine. At my desktop, thanks to the typing class I took in high school (possibly the most practical course I took in my entire 16 years of education), I can get the words onto “paper” as fast as they enter my brain. And, as importantly, I can not only set up a writing station, but can easily delete, cut, paste, rearrange, insert. Edit as I go.

In the car, my lined paper is smeared with blue ink, as is the outside of my right hand. The Moleskine pages are sloppy with arrows, cross-outs, and tiny afterthoughts crammed between already inky lines. There is little room for editing on the 5×8 pages. There is only room for getting ideas onto paper in their naked, newborn form.

Because I don’t want to use up all of our visiting time staring at a computer screen, my back to the family we see only two or three times a year, I mostly just transfer those naked words from paper to screen. So what I end up posting on the blog is raw and unedited. At home, I not only edit as I type, but I go back and re-read a piece in its entirety several times, first in the edit window on my WordPress dashboard, then in preview mode so that I can see what the post will look like when it goes live.

I’m not taking any of these editing steps during our holiday travels, and it kind of makes me die a little inside. But I’m learning the value of writing without editing. My posts are in raw form. Ideas aren’t fully developed, the finished pieces aren’t polished. They contain mistakes and are often disorganized and aren’t fleshed out as much as they would be if I sat down at my desk, with my green coffee mug at the top left of my keyboard, and actually worked on them.

But I’ve written dialog, which I never do. And I’ve sketched out little stories about people other than myself, which is, embarrassingly, also rare for me. I’ve tried new things, written pieces unlike anything I’ve ever written, simply because during our travels, I have no time to put it off. No time to procrastinate until everything is just so. I’ve had to shut down fear and overthinking so that I can fulfill my 30 minutes a day.

And so, without obstruction, the ideas flow. The beauty of this challenge is that it is teaching me which ones are worth coming back to. Which ones deserve time at my desk. Which ones are worth interpretation, with coffee and thought, rather than simple transcription from paper to screen.

I have committed to posting every day for a week in response to the WordPress Weekly Writing Challenge: Just Do It. I wrote about my stupid decision to make this commitment, and all my “buts,” here.
Buts

December 24th, 2012

I lurk on the WordPress Weekly Writing Challenges, and until now, I have not taken a single one up. This week, though, I’m all over it.

This week’s challenge, Just Do It, is to post every day for a full seven days. The challenge was issued on Christmas Eve. And my first thought was, “I’ve totally got this one. I know how to write even when I have nothing to say.” My second thought was, “But it’s Christmas Eve. How am I going to find time to write on Christmas Eve?”

And then, a string of more “buts.”

“But tomorrow is Christmas. Am I really going to post on Christmas Day?”

“But we’ll be on the road on Wednesday. When we get to my parents’ house, I’m not going to want to waste precious visiting time posting to my blog when I could be sipping wine with Mom, or talking with Dad about the time someone tried to give him an elephant.”

And the buts kept coming. Even now, I’m thinking, if I hit publish on this post, I will be telling the world, (or the microscopic percentage of the world who reads my blog) that I accept this challenge. That I will write on Christmas Day. And I will write the following day, after driving for 8 hours, with no means of posting until we get to our destination. Accepting this challenge here on my blog, publicly, holds me accountable, and I’m not sure I’m okay with that. What if I don’t feel like posting? What if I don’t have anything to say?

But. The challenge doesn’t say that each post has to be a masterpiece. If I have nothing to say, I can write about having nothing to say. The piece I wrote for the Southern Women’s Review is titled “Writer’s Block.” Why? Because the fear of submitting my first piece for publication, the fear of facing the imminent rejection that all writer’s hear about, crippled me, and I could not write.

So I began by writing about my paralysis. About my inability to write in the face of the submission deadline. And I ended up with a pretty tight piece about my Southern childhood. It was accepted and will be published in January.

I take courage from that success, and I encourage other writers to do the same. Like this challenge charges, just do it. What you write might be crap.

But then again, it might not be.
Cascades of green in winter

November 18th, 2012

You would think that in November, when the trees are stripped bare, and the mountains are gray with twiggy branches, and the ground is brown with dead leaves, you would think that the color green would be hard to find. At least, that’s what I thought, until with green on my mind for a photography project, I found it everywhere. We hiked the Cascades yesterday, an Appalachian waterfall about 30 minutes west of Blacksburg, and the stream-side trail was resplendent in winter greens. We saw mosses, lichens, rhododendron, hemlock – life, ever green, persisting beneath the naked skeletons of deciduous trees. We saw ferns, bridges and stone signs tinted green with algae, pools of green where the crashing down of waterfalls aerated the water, green M&Ms in our trail mix. And always at hand to capture words, my tiny green Moleskine, its lined pages scratched with haiku.

Water splashes
in sunlight –
scent of wet stone.

This is my entry for the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge: Green.