Category Archives: Writing

Dogs, Family, Writing

Sew What

1 Comment

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

Leave a comment

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
Aside Leave a comment

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

Leave a comment

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

Leave a comment

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%

Leave a comment

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

Leave a comment

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
Aside Leave a comment

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.

Garden, Writing

Working At Home

Leave a comment

Summer                                                                      Solstice Moon

The revision of Missing has picked up some momentum.  The Loft class canceled and I’m not doing Latin in the late afternoon, so I can capture all that time.  Staying in the flow with it helps a lot, too, as does having gotten into the second half of the manuscript.  I have a clear vision now of what I want to change and how to guide the narrative, so it’s easier than at first where I decided on material to cut out, changes in certain characters and storylines.

Today is the beginning of the second phase of the gardening season, fall planting.  I’ll put in kale, chard, carrots and beets which we’ll harvest in September.   This has been a satisfying season already and appears likely to continue.  Foliar sprays and drenches tomorrow.

Art and Culture, Writing

Theater

Leave a comment

Summer                                                           Solstice Moon

Though slow to get there, we’ve now seen shows in the Wuertle thrust, Dowling studio and McGuire proscenium platforms at the new(er) Guthrie.  The Wuertle, of course, conserves the old Guthrie’s radical proscenium thrust stage which pushes the performing space out into the audience. (see picture)  This design the Guthrie shared with Tyron Guthrie’s other major theatrical location, Stratford, Ontario’s Festival Theatre.  It was, and is, a compromise between theatre in the round and the traditional proscenium stage, like the Guthrie’s McGuire.

The Dowling studio recapitulates the old lab theatre over on 1st avenue in the Warehouse district.  Even more so than the old lab and the thrust stage it puts performer(s) and audience in a very intimate space.  We saw the Iliad in the studio last month, a one person performance by Stephen Yoakam.

The proscenium presents a play up and far away from the audience, performances with a barrier to the audience, the “fourth wall.”  Each platform has its virtues and its drawbacks. The thrust and the lab try to break the fourth wall by enclosing the stage itself by seating, trying to place the audience almost in the action of the play.  And, if you attended any theater at the old Guthrie by the Walker Art Center, you may remember actors rushing up the aisles to get on stage, or actors at times stumbling off stage and apparently into the audience.

Live theater and live music share the ephemeral nature of their productions.  Finished, there is nothing that remains but a script or a score, neither alive as the performance just was.  Yet live music can now be reproduced in 5 or 7 speaker stereo in your home to a remarkable level of fidelity.  You cannot see the performers, no, nor can you hear some of the subtle harmonics (or so they tell me, but with only one good ear, I can no longer tell), but the experience is very close.

Not so with live theatre.  A play on television or filmed as a movie is a dead thing, a different event altogether from sitting with the actors, breathing the air they breathe and watching them, flesh and blood, as they transform themselves into something or someone else.