Category Archives: Writing

Garden, Great Work, Writing

Flower and Leaf

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Summer                                                               Moon of the First Harvests

A torpor always follows completion of a manuscript and it set in today.  It’s a sort of aimlessness, a nothing to do so what could I possibly do sort of feeling.  Yes there is a tension between doing and not doing and yes sometimes I fear that the doing is only a way to shove aside the great fear, the dread of dying.  And, further yes, sometimes I fear that I lean too far toward the doing and away from acceptance and that the torpor I describe only underscores it.

And it may be so.  It may be that I write, garden, learn Latin, get involved in politics and family only to push back the confrontation with my own non-being.  It may be so.

Or it may be that I do these things because they are my flower and leaf, that they are the what I am.  That is my belief.  In doing these things I do what a lily does when it pushes up from its corm, strikes a thick green blade through the earth, gets to sunlight and puts on leaves and flowers.  I am this variety of human.  In this sense those things I do are not avoidance, but completion.

This time between creative efforts becomes a fallow time like the fall and winter months, a time to gather in energy and prepare for the next growing season.  Perhaps lilies, after the flower has bloomed, the seeds are made and leaf and stalk have died back wonder, too, what is my purpose now? I am not what I can be, so am I avoiding my end?  No says the older, wiser lily.  Not at all.  Now is when you become stronger, able to support more flowering.  We do not end, this older lily might say, but develop in such a way that others follow after us.  May it be so.

Garden, Latin, Writing

Files and Piles

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Summer                                                                             Moon of the First Harvest

First morning in a while that the first thing on my mind has not been Missing.  Feels good.

I plan to see Pacific Rim today.  What’s not to like about Godzilla versus giant robots?

Once I finish the putzy stuff I mentioned I have some further reorganizing of files and piles, the library and study.  Then, I will begin work on Loki’s Children.

The Latin will come back on line, too.  I’ll probably do some more translating, perhaps for the month of August, though I might read some of the works on Ovid and the Augustan period, too.

Main focus is on the garden through September which means it gets prime time.  Gotta have some heat though.  Much as I like the cool weather, the plants demand heat to produce best in this part of the growing season.

Dogs, Family, Writing

Sew What

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Summer                                                          Moon of the First Harvests

Kate’s in Anoka at an all day quilting retreat, sewing and talking.  She took along fat quarters with Halloween themes, so she’s feeling her way into the fall season, too.  Her sewing day friends come to these retreats as have a few people she knows from the now defunct Fat Quarter Quilting.  There’s skill building and a chance to get focused and make progress on a project.

The revision is on the last lap.  I’ll finish either this afternoon or tomorrow.  Then all those putzy things I mentioned a while back and I’ll be ready to move on for the time being.

Kona’s in serious decline now, most of what she eats feeds her tumor and she is listless.  This is when the vet advises euthanasia but I discovered with Buck, well over a decade ago, that euthanasia violates some primal norm in me.  So we keep our dogs comfortable, as comfortable as we can, hospice care or as near as we can replicate that, and wait with them as death comes.

Kona’s illness and decline has come when third phase issues are very present to me and at some point after her death, I plan to reflect on what she has taught me.  And all the others, too.

Art and Culture, Dogs, Friends, Great Work, Writing

A Trip Into The City

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Summer                                                             Moon of the First Harvests

When I picked up our rug from American Rug Laundry, the guy said he couldn’t believe how much dirt he got out of it.  I told him, but I’m not sure it registered, that our dogs really, really like this rug.  All of them.  And they come in and lie down on it.  Roll on it.  Transfer the sand from the Great Anoka Sand Plain to it, deep in its fiber.  As he now knows.  Not many folks let dogs on their multiple thousands of dollars oriental rugs, I imagine.

(this rug.  with favorite dog objects.  the one to the far right is a stuffed squirrel.  a big hit.)

On the same trip I took a baby quilt in to Margaret Levin.  She’s due sometime in the next couple of weeks.  Says a lot about our society that she’s in her last term of pregnancy and still running the Northstar Chapter of the Sierra Club.  Kate makes lots of baby quilts. This one used cloth made from our neighbor’s mother’s stash.  When she died, it fell to Pam who gave it to Kate.  This particular cloth was from the 1930’s.

We talked about politics, of course.  That was my entré to the Sierra Club and what I did with them for 5 years or so.  I asked her if she has the same sense I do that a cultural shift has begun on global warming.  A positive one.  She said yes, but she also said the movement thought one was happening in the 1970’s, too.  Still, you add in a Democratic President and Senate, plus the changing demographics of the U.S. population and there could be real grounds for optimism.  Whether such a shift would happen soon enough to matter? Hard to tell.

Stopped by the Northern Clay Center as well.  It’s only a block from the Sierra Club. There are a lot of able potters represented there.  I’m in the market for another tea pot since I plan to return to brewing tea from tea leaves rather than tea bags when I start Loki’s Children.  A reward for finishing the third revision.  Didn’t find anything.  I plan to look on Sunday at a large pottery show, but if I don’t find anything I’ll head up to St. John’s and Richard Bresnahan.  I’ve wanted one of his teapots for some time.

 

 

Writing
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Summer                                                         Moon of the First Harvests

Most of the day on Missing.  As I near the end of this revision, the stakes get higher for the story.  I’ve cut out a lot at the end, a whole story line in order to make Missing focus on, well, missing.  I had what I considered some exciting stuff near the end, sort of a teaser for Loki’s Children, but that’s gone.  Now the satisfaction with Missing stands or falls on its primary narrative, a missing boy and the search for him.

Myth and Story, Writing

End in Sight

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Summer                                                                        Moon of the First Harvest

I will finish the third revision of Missing this week.  There are putzy things to do after that like mark all scenes as 3rd draft revised, note all place, object and characters in the notes section of scrivener, change headings for consistency and monitor transitions.  I will also spend a bit of time considering the new draft from the standpoints of narrative coherence, focus on John and Graham and John’s disappearance and action.

(Fáfnir guards the gold hoard in this illustration by Arthur Rackham to Richard Wagner’s Siegfried.)

At that point, probably two weeks from now, possibly less, I’ll turn it over to Kate for a careful read, i.e. grammar, spelling, logical consistency, continuity.  When she’s done, I’ll see if any of the beta readers want a crack at version III.  In the interim I’ll go back to research and plotting for Loki’s Children.

 

Garden, Writing

Jigsaw

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Summer                                                           Moon of the First Harvests

Much of the afternoon spent on a single scene, had to backfill some storyline, keep the narrative coherent.  Trying to make the whole fit together feels like working a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces change shape as they go into the others.  It will all assemble, but it takes reshaping old parts to join the new.

Also picked cherries and blueberries this morning and took a video of the bees.  I’ll get it posted over the weekend.

Poetry, Writing

75%

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Summer                                                                Moon of the First Harvests

Today was an inside day.  9o degrees, 73 dewpoint.  Definitely a writing day.  I’m at the 75% revised point, so I’m looking at the end of revision III in a matter of a week, two at the most.  There are still futzy things to do after that.  Connect up separated sections, change some section and chapter headings.  That sort of thing.  Not a lot of time, but some.

Then, I’ll be ready for my beta readers, if they want, to go over this revision.  I’m asking Kate to give it a thorough reading for grammar, spelling, other technical matters.  She’s very good at that and this is, I hope, the last revision before submission to agents.

As they tackle that task, I’ll set it aside completely.  I’ll signal Greg to turn the Latin back on for the week after Labor Day and I’ll start writing Loki’s Children, the second novel in the Unmaking Trilogy.  I have a good start with material cut from Missing and a good deal of research I did while the beta readers were at work.

I’m also taking two MOOC’s at the end of the summer, one new historical methods for a new china and another on modernism and post-modernism.  Both are core interests of long standing.  Also, in September, a MOOC I’m really looking forward to, Modern and Contemporary American Poetry.

With end of the gardening and bee season chores there will be no moss growing on this rolling stone.

The poetry course will include 19th-century proto-modernists Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman.

Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Work, Writing

Whole

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Summer                                                                   First Harvest Moon

Without the Latin I’ve had considerable time to focus on revising Missing.  I’m finding the rhythm of garden work and writing very satisfying.  I can work outside in the earlier morning, then revise until lunch, and pick up the revising again after lunch and until I work out.  This means a steady pace, one that leaves me feeling whole at the end of the day.

Feeling whole means that I’ve kept up with my commitments.

There’s a part of me that feels bad about letting the Latin lie, I’ve put so much energy into it up to now, but the feeling of wholeness I’m gaining suggests I had spread myself too thin.  It may be that I’ll work on the Latin only after garden work falls away sometime in September, then drop it again in May.  I like to adjust my life to the seasons and that would be another way to do it.

 

Writing
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60% of revision 3 completed.  Sometimes it’s a slog; sometimes it’s back in the original narrative flow, or, rather, the original narrative flow as reimagined.  But in any case progress.