Where to write? At work, with speed and subterfuge.

**No lambs harmed.

I do the work for which I'm hired. A jacket (or "jacket" since it's rectangular, plastic, flat) is placed in my hands and I study every word and image; I evaluate spacing; content; the overall look of an ad or brochure or whatever.  I am a good copyeditor, editor, proofreader and rewriter.

But there are lulls in the workload, and while I'm not going to flourish a feather pen from my pack, adjust my velvet cap or post "Room of One's Own" on the office door, I can "sneak in" writing time. Legitimately. But always with a bit of guilt.

So what.  Guilt doesn't harm a first draft, which can be massively sloppy and incomplete. The point is to get the blood roaring, wake the dragon, blow on the live spark. Once an idea starts to show itself it wants all of itself to be shown and will summon the artist in more legitimate moments of repose to give it its due, to refine and whittle the first draft over and over and over and over.

Sometimes I'm settled in an individual office rather than a cubicle. Because everyone looks busy at a keyboard I am able to hide writing, though for extra insurance use the acting exercise of memory retrieval. Recently the memory I retrieved was of Googling a recipe. I was specific. Looking in later, one of the kids in Traffic might have asked, How was the rack-of-lamb with a persillade of olive oil, garlic cloves, smoked paprika and whole rye bread crumbs?

I thought parts of the above paragraph were voices crying out in the wilderness of a borrowed office, but I lopped them off the poem, many drafts later (writing at home). I let the poem drift.  

It can be helpful, in fact, to force myself to thunder out a draft while at a keyboard at a job because speed and subterfuge numb my conscious mind and the first draft may be usable (as a first draft). What about you?  Do you write at work?  Where do you write? 

**re: the lamb. I eat very little meat and don't cook it at home. Little Lamb, who made thee?

Getting work rejected, again: it's okay

I have written two short story collections, maybe three,  given the new work that surprised me in 2010 and old work I found. 

The new work is six stories I wrote. I thought I was done with fiction, but I wasn't. The old work is stories my mom had held onto, pre-1989.  I'd thought they were lost long ago, then looked more closely at the contents of one box a month or so ago. Talk about voila!

Okay, so let's say I have three short story collections waiting to be published. When will it happen?  What does it mean that they are not published? My stories aren't sparky happy fun fun fun fun. I wish they were.

When I started writing I was convinced I had to produce art--"art." I hadn't yet read Flaubert's travel journals or Madame Bovary but the idea of creating the work so carefully each sentence is a craftily laid tile of a mosaic was in the ballpark of what I thought I should do. 

I'm not saying I was pretentious. I was ambitious; also working out my style. Making my way without workshops and classes. I really struggled with the burden of classicism, of thinking I should write about Oedipus and Jocasta, not a twenty-something in a Hollywood laundromat.

The laundromat won.  Each time I write I write as best as I can.  And still my short story collections are rejected by the few competitions I enter (NO-FEE competitions). I'm not really complaining, just wondering when, if ever, I will figure it out.

What do I think I'll figure out?  That I should give up? 

These meditations are brought to you by the University of Pittsburgh Press' Dru Heinz competition. The press announced this year's winner on Friday. It wasn't me.  I hadn't expected that it would be me, but of course I hoped it might.

It's hard. It's hard for everyone. Who knows anything. Every so often someone will contact me about one of my stories or poems to thank me. That has to be enough.

To tell you the truth, it is.

Yet More on Perfectionism: meds & poems & fear

I remember my post here about Kristin Prevallet's [I, Afterlife].*  I was sleeping maybe two hours a night by Fall 2008, and searching the streets of Manhattan for one prescription for one antidepressant I knew would help. Of course I had no insurance.

The story had a happy ending with me getting the pills (outpatient), and accepting, finally, I had to stay on them, or similar. Between the meds and being laid off, more woolly baa-ing sheep have frolicked in my bedroom in the past two years than romped in my crib (of the variety harboring infants).

Enter perfectionism, Stage Right.  My past two or so postings, by me, showed me refusing to finish one novel and two novellas, my perfectionism being a manifestation of a fear (of not being perfect or "God's perfect child" as Barbara Wilson wrote in her memoir God's Perfect Child about her Christian Science childhood).

Back to the pills.  Now that I had them I where should I store them?   I've debated--since I my twenties--delivery systems to guarantee I took daily vitamins.  Why not buy a rectangular Monday-through-Sunday pill box available at my friendly pharmacy? I'd been studying them over the years but found one far too capacious for my puny intake; another just not cute enough or too plastic or the wrong color or colors.

The above debate ended a few months ago. On a Sunday morning I shook out seven antidepressants and slapped them on the dusty top of my cranky refrigerator, then ingested one. There were six left, each of which disappeared into my waiting mouth, one-at-a-time, Monday, Tuesday and so on through Saturday. The system is no fail and has helped to regularize my vitamin takeage.

When interviewed on Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg said:

I remember I was thinking, yesterday in fact, there was a time that I was absolutely astounded because Kerouac told me that in the future literature would consist of what people actually wrote rather than what they tried to deceive other people into thinking they wrote, when they revised it later on. [Ginsberg]

Of course Ginsberg is referring to our Utopian future in Shangri La.  On the Road was a ten-year edit.  Ginsberg's poetry wasn't "automatic."  I continue to write and print out, edit, input, print out, edit, rewrite, edit, print . . . my poems and stories. And of course there's me and my pills.

I know I'm not the shining light of the poetry world, fiction world, of pretty much any world. Maybe I'd have published more earlier if I were less fearful (because that is what perfectionism is, fear . . . of mistakes, scorn, dismissal...). 

Regardless of output which is no measure of quality, I'd have lived less fearfully if I was a bit more of a perfectionism conqueror. A less fearful life?

Who deserves anything less. 

*Click on the link to read Lovingarms's posting on Kristin Prevallet's [I, Afterlife]

I'm Writing Faster (Redux): Release perfectionism

Grow a pair [of patron saints or spirit guides or good flesh & blood critics or muses or . . .].

To follow up on my posting of Saturday (I'm Writing Faster: The Force That Won't Take No for an Answer), my epic outburst  --epic for Sarah Sarai-- of fiction began when I let go.

I had decided to add my two novellas to my short story line-up and so hadr to complete the two novellas, both of which had been hanging around for years because I was unconvinced they were ready to go into the world. Thank all creatures of Heaven I didn't have children! They'd be forty years-old and living on cots in my kitchen!

Who ever knows. Maybe the novellas are still unready, or never will be but each made a good case for its adulthood and maturity. I pushed myself to make decisions about characters and situations and folded the novellas into story collections; each  (A Vote for Ross Perot and From the One Side of Heaven) is the finale of its own (titular) story collection (which I submit when there is opportunity).

Please understand. My reason for writing today's posting is to encourage you: Let go of perfectionism. Grow a pair [of patron saints or spirit guides or good flesh & blood critics or muses or . . .]. Yes, I was working on a novel, those novellas and touching up this or that story, but fact is I generated only a few new stories in the past ten or so years. Yes, I wrote poetry, and as some of you will understand, Poetry Saves Lives. The Future Is Happy (see Tab on this blog). Still.

My hope is to step up the encouragement and advice here. To help. To be of service. My list of complaints about the poetry world, the literary world, academia, politics, institutions and Times Square at rush hour defines endless and eternal.  So what.

Please feel free to backchannel or post a question about writing.  I'm not able to fully change my cranky nature; even so I can help you.

Keep writing.