From the Desk of a Blocked Writer

Uh oh.

I had the best of intentions to write after work last night.  I wanted to write.  I arrived home, ate a quick meal of Sunday leftovers, curry and naan bread, threw on my jammies with fuzzy slippers and fired up the computer.  I plunked my notes and the pages of ‘Burden’ on my desk to continue on.  In all of that aspiration, I spent a full hour gazing at a blank screen, mocked by the slow blinking cursor.  Admittedly, ‘Burden’ is a slow moving train and I’m really still listening to the sisters for the crux of the story, of why they appointed me to tell it.  Certainly there is a purpose, as with every story, the characters want and/or need something.  

I am six pages into their lives.  It wavers back and forth between the present and the past to highlight the behaviours and believes of each woman.  I think.  I hope.  Honestly, I am having a bit of trouble tapping into Judy’s personality because at first she’s such an asshole for lack of a better word.  It’s hard for me to write her meanness, her lack of humanity and her coldness.  I accept the challenge of course and understand it comes from somewhere but I’m still waiting to hear.  As for Helen, she’s endured a lot growing up alongside Judy and so she’s coming from a completely different perspective.  I feel myself on her side and I need to straighten out and be objective and be fair to my characters.  Not favor one over the other and I feel like Helen is soaking up my empathy at a rapid pace and I’m saving my disdain for Judy. 

Maybe this is why I hit a brick wall last night.  I tried to work out the block, determining whether or not it was just because I was tired from a long haul at the day job, or if my desk is too cluttered, or maybe it’s just my noodle is messy.  Whatever it is that caused me to fall flat on my face, hindered my creativity for a whole night.  I worry it will spill into today too.  I’ve been writing steady for a long time and it was actually painful to be mute, to be without one single thought or flash or note scribbled.  I tried music and pacing, I tried reading my pages aloud, and nothing.  Finally I closed up shop, watched a bit of TV and allowed myself to breathe.  I glanced once more at the pages when I crawled in bed but I didn’t want to jinx myself, get a sudden burst of thoughts and disrupt the night’s sleep I desperately needed.  So, I tucked into Elspeth’s book, her self-published gem, ‘Sole’.  I am grateful to her vivid characters for making me forget my writer’s ache and entertaining me to the point that even when my eyes were heavy and close to sleep I was still squinting to read.

I don’t expect a lot to happen writing wise today but I think I’ll continue to fill the well and see what happens.  I have Zumba after work so perhaps the hip shaking exercise will loosen some of the resistance.  Tomorrow evening I am attending the book launch for ‘Fallsy Downsies’ by Stephanie Domet at The Carleton.  I finished it yesterday on my commute home.  I savored the pages to extend my time in the story because I loved it so much.  If you’re looking for a good read, buy the book and meet Lansing Meadows, follow his tour.  I am hoping the launch and reading will further inspire me and help me get back on track with ‘Burden’.  Right now, I feel like it’s a big old mess.  But, I’ve been here before and I’ve come out the other side in one piece, overcoming obstacles and achieving some sort of success in the name of finishing something. 

I hope my uh oh turns into a yee haw soon.

In propinquity,

Nic

Minority Myself

Minority Myself

a minority myself

I encountered

a poet

who mattered

with a body of

uncompromised

writing

images juxtaposed

lovely and risky

free of literary despair

a minority myself

I long to make

comparable

statements

be shackled by the

sheen of relevance

write words

                plentiful

                inimical

                astute

                sparse

                affecting

                earnest

to devastate

to altercate

to overwhelm

to equivocate

to enunciate

to augment

a minority myself

I swing for the fences

scrawling

what happens

with a temperate pen

with an authorial ego

with an anorexic heart

for me first

then for you

convinced I belong with

my contemporaries

and in your conscious

**

Day two where I should be fully focused on writing but I picked up a bit of a bug or something and ended up in bed at 8:30pm last night.  I have Zumba class tonight so I am making every effort to settle my stomach and drum up some energy.  I don't like to miss it, the session only started last week and I paid for it.  I am hoping after my soup and some something from a kettle I'll feel more like myself.  The goal is to make it through the work day and Zumba.  Fingers crossed.

Along with my story scribbles and looking forward to Word On the Street this coming weekend, I penned the above poem.  A wee Tuesday offering.  Is it Friday yet?

In propinquity,

Nic

Page 51

I decided to do a writing prompt today since it’s been a full day that I wrote the first 1001 words of ‘Too Much To Contain’.  I was busy yesterday at work and then went straight home to get ready for the first my first Zumba class of the fall session.  For the next 11 weeks, that will be my Tuesday night.  I did also stay up last night for the first episode of Sons of Anarchy but midnight is too late for this gal to stay up on a work night.  DVR will be it from now on.  

Today’s prompt was to take the closest book to you, turn to page 51 and make the first sentence your first line.  The closest book to me was ‘The Best of American Poetry 1988-1997’.  I turned to page 51 and found myself in the middle of a poem called ‘Garbage’ by A.R. Ammons, the line:  in your end is my beginning.

Here’s what I wrote (in poem form, again):

Page 51

in your end is my beginning

the sway of your wide-spread panic

a catalyst to compose my courageous soul

a Heartslave no more to an artless saboteur

unobstructed by the confines of strict margins

in your end is my beginning

a grave and liberating righteousness

sweet shock of escaping a miserable condition

to proceed from nowhere is an unnamable light

to advance without apprehension is peace

in your end is my beginning

in my beginning you end

**

That’s what ten minutes gave me today and while writing that I got a flash as how to begin writing the last scene of my story.  Crazy how that happens.

Back to work.  Back to scribbling.

And, on this anniversary of 9/11, remember to remember.  Remember to love and be peaceful.   Remember to be gracious and kind.  Remember those gone too soon and those left behind to mourn.

In propinquity,

Nic

Hallelujah

This morning was one of those days where reading the newspaper was more a delight than a stress.  Of course, the first story I saw was unavoidable, Kate Middleton is expecting!  It was only a matter of time.  Before I could read any bad news, and Canadian news outlets seem to be rife with it, innocent children being killed, and political unrest … you get the idea.  But, I didn’t make it to any of those headlines because I came across an article that appealed to my inner geek.  To be truthful, I actually tend to get my good news first because I read the Arts section first.  This morning there was a wonderful article in The Chronicle Herald, ‘Malleable Hallelujah interpreted by many’ a piece that can only refer to one artist and one song, ‘Hallelujah’ by none other than Leonard Cohen.

Author Alan Light wrote a book, The Holy or The Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley and the Unlikely Assent of Hallelujah.  A song so profound, with such a long illustrious history of performances and renditions required an entire book on the subject.  I must have this.  It will be mine.  It details and deconstructs its genesis, its turbulent beginnings in 1984 when the poignant song was rejected all the way to its world-wide celebration.  Sounds like something I can get behind.  Have you ever heard the version recorded by the late Jeff Buckley?  It’s absolutely stunning, masterful and in his stylistic choir boy melodiousness, conjures emotion right up from the pit of my stomach and tears from my eyes simultaneously.  Of course it could also just be the brilliance of the song.  It matters little who is performing it, it always incites a similar reaction except that when Jeff Buckley’s voice sounds it’s more akin to a spiritual event.

‘Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord

That David played, and it pleased the Lord

But you don’t really care for music, do you?’

Timeless.  Extraordinary.  Poignant.  And can you even comprehend now that this song is so revered, that it was rejected right out of the gate?  Astounding.

Which brings me to this new poem that developed from thinking about Leonard Cohen:

Dirge

Dance me to the end of this poem my love

hold my gaze with your time-worn notions

rent out my battered core for benevolence

I no longer know how to read your thoughts.

We should rejoice at a hand’s light stoke

against a blazing cheek when the urge strikes

but you don’t really care for me, do you?

Writing this is nothing more than my subtle nature

rising to greet your lips when the song goes silent

but madness settled in to postpone the inevitable.

I still hear your voice sometimes when I dream

in full conscience and joy I retrieve you

beyond the periphery of mournful verse.

**

Today is Tuesday and is apparently the day of Nicole’s International Forgetfulness.  I left my house for work this morning without everything essential for me to make it through my allotted hours behind my desk.  In addition, I left my cell on the kitchen table as well as the stack of holiday greetings that needed to be mailed.  I ran back, two separate trips, to collect everything I needed and still managed to make it to where I needed to be on time and deposited the mail safely in the box.  Sheesh.  When your day starts out in a rush it seems to set the tone for the rest of it.  I feel like I have evened myself out a little bit.  If only the program I used for work would cooperate now.  It makes for very frustrating transactions when the tools needed to do your job aren’t sharp, you know?

I look forward to the end of my day, a Zumba class with friends and a good night’s sleep before my vacation day tomorrow.  No one should have to work on their birthday.

So long, Marianne.

In propinquity,

Nic