Three Angels

I learned to swim in the Congress Hall pool in Cape May. I wanted to, very much, so I could go into the ocean above my knees. For years I'd watched other people go in up to their necks, or swim along parallel to the beach. Best, bodysurf--I knew I could do it, if I could swim!
(So similar to writing, really...)

All week I have been longing for the sea, more than usual. I have a lot to think about right now, but that didn't seem why. Sometimes the only way to figure out how you feel is to jump. So this morning I drove down to Asbury Park and let things happen.

The boardwalk goes through town after town and you walk for miles before realizing it--and so I did. It was pretty empty. The beaches had sprouted lots of umbrellas, so it seemed everyone was crossing the boards rather than strolling. Oh yes--I chose to stroll, and not be all pointedly exercise-y. Exercisers passed me, arms pumping. Go ahead! Be that way. Me and the beach grass moved slowly, as the breeze would have it.

I walked back up to AP for the beaching. Cheaper--$5--and wide open. Just me and my towel. Pretty off the grid behavior among all the beach chairs and umbrellas. Back to the sand.

The tide was super low, so the waves broke on the beach; if you stood close to shore, they broke behind you, and you had sudden thrills of salt spray pelting your back. A serene, rolling ocean coming off a storm somewhere--you could feel that provenance in the verve of the swells. Maybe that was why all the children shrieked every time a wave pulled up out of nothing.

No body surfing, or parallel swimming. Just floating over the waves, sometimes getting a face washing.

I didn't shriek, but I did stay in until my teeth were banging so hard I was afraid I'd bite my tongue off. That's what you do, of course. You stay in...

Oh! Oh. Here it was, the need, what I came to think about. Here, when I stepped on this broken clam shell, or was pinched by this crab, or stepped off a ledge into a small cold pool. A few things--one being the story I am nervous in. I realized what I was writing about the other day and was so taken aback that I haven't written a word of it since. Am I really ready for that one?

You're an ocean girl.

Some things are too private to write down, even in one's own blog. Let me just tell you that no one minds if you cry your heart out on the beach in AP. It's that great there.

Two guys were selling pit bull pups, 5 weeks old, on the boardwalk. Three little angels, zonked with sun. All sorts of feelings came up as I touched their perfect heads. Several possible scenarios played out in half a second. But I'd already made some decisions, enough for one summer day. I didn't buy them.

Not Quite Back to the Drawing Board

I leave Paris tomorrow for New Jersey, for home, and to get back to work. Though I have been working all along. The habit is so ingrained that I can't miss a day without some form of scribbling; it is my hand that takes over, it is a dog that needs its walk.

I have written in England and France with the lift afforded by a new place, and happily I have been gripped with a craving for excellent books. Oh, I always am, but I cannot always sink into the lusciousness of reading in my own odd and private way, nor can I be subjective and strange about it. At school I need to be dispassionate to some degree, and instructive, rhythmic, on a deadline. This private reading though--I have been overcome with the luscious feeling I had when I was a girl. This is one of the best aspects of the trip.

The stimulation began when I read The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion. I have resisted it until now, and suddenly I had to have it for the plane. Before, I couldn't bear to read of Joan's grief; nor could I manage reading about the death of her only child (not in the book, after all), to have that fear stoked by a great writer. But it carried me across the ocean and got in bed with me at night at my friend Tom's house. I realized why I'd wanted it--her prose. I remembered it as being mordant and stark. It still is. She has such a strong distinct style that it nearly trumped the subject matter. Nearly.

I'd forgotten her tropes, the repetition of sentences or phrases, the predilection for beginning sentences and paragraphs naming the street where she lived in a particular year, the 1950s diction when speaking of the publishing and film industries ( a tic that sounds dated now, rather than ironic). All of this is intact, and her book would be recognizable as hers within a page. I read such a stylist for the style--it is an exercise in swimming. Lines stick. How long has it been since I read Play It As It Lays, or Slouching Toward Bethlehem? Decades. Yet I remember lines--lines that prove shape is meaning. Her is my line from his book: "He waited every night to eat with me." It encapsulates the entire book. It is particularly shaped for maximum poignance. He waited. What he did. Grief belongs to the remembrance of action, not thought.

The next book--a fantastic treat, all the more because I didn't know it. Sarah Salway gave me The Pilgrim Hawk, by Glenway Wescott. Oh, I fell for this one instantly. It is exactly my favorite kind of novel; short, compressed in time (an afternoon), the plot set completely by character, unguessable, and lifting up and up with gorgeous sentences. I completely lost myself to it and read it in my own weird way of reading, skipping to the end just after I found I loved the writing at the beginning, rereading some pages five times before moving on, sleeping on top of it, forcing myself to stay awake to be with it, and so on. My girl habits. I bow to this book. It is deeply creepy and mysterious, passion written about dispassionately. What is the truth about that dispassionate narrator? That was what hurt me after all; how often everyone is forced to be dispassionate, when it is never true. The narrator is a failed novelist--that is his dispassion. That, too, is a grief, but when portrayed so excellently, it is curious. I am curious.

Last night I couldn't sleep even for a moment. Over and over I turned, thinking of major shifts. When I couldn't bear the consequences I imagined I jumped on the Ipad and ordered books. Today I returned to an English language bookstore three times (Parisian hours!) to buy more books for the plane. I am checking out to check up, stay up. Writing, too. Am I cool, dispassionate? I don't know.

No Touches

An all day drive with three animals, heavy rain, and a GPS with nutty ideas. 
Not a writing day.

The first day in two weeks that I haven't touched my book. I'm feeling as though I should visit it now, just to maintain continuity, but I am tired, and having not worked, chances are I'll look at it and see problems I shouldn't see right now, doubt sentences that aren't meant to be questioned at this stage. In fact, everything may be fine--but I'm not meant to judge yet. I'm not at that stage.

So much of getting through piece of work is knowing at what stage you are and not wishing you were further along. Maybe it comes of being twelve, a whole long year of twelve, and wishing you were older. That's a wish, though. You still have to be twelve for as long as it takes; 365 days. You have to finish the first stage of your book, as long as it takes, before you can move to the second. The first stage can take 50 drafts or none. The first stage is figuring it out.

Then on to stage two. Writing. That comes after figuring it out, which maybe was also writing--but not the same kind.

Stage three. Better writing. This is when you translate all the creepy, cloying, sentimental, dumb sentences into literature. Fun! 

Stage Four. Out the door/in the drawer. Show people or not. But it's ready to leave the desk.

Stage one is a toughie, because it can take a long time. I think of writers, big writers, who I've heard say took eight or nine or ten years to figure a book out (and maybe hundreds of pages tossed), and then one or two to write it. Who doesn't want that eight, nine, ten years to go faster? Who doesn't wish for it all to be figured out shortly after you have an idea?

(Looking back, you can always see why it took so long to get through stage one. You hadn't gone deep enough inside yourself, or you were focusing on the wrong aspect, or you needed the right person in your life et cetera. It's often a matter of personal development more than it is a matter of ability. You have to grow up enough to understand your own idea. A twelve year old can be as intellectually quick as anybody, a math genius, a phenom in many arenas, but a twelve year old is a kid. A kid can't write Anna Karenina. Writing is for adults. Most people take a while to get there--past age 21.)

When I don't get a touch in during a day I am anxious that I will slip back down the tunnel into darkness. I get muddled about the stages again. Usually what I'll do is to jump to Stage Three, better writing, and doll up a few sentences. That can feel good for a little while, but it can also go very wrong, and become a channel for doubting every sentence. It's much better to sit down and have an honest think about where I am. To wait until I can really suit up to even look.

Can I resist opening the file? If it were cookies, I'd throw them out. I can't throw out my computer, though. Dammit! I think I've just made a case for being an adult, which, after a day like this one, means going to bed like a twelve year old.

Monday Morning

There are always workmen on a Monday morning, somewhere nearby, doing something loud. 
There's a sense of staring over, of this week I will make life better.
(This week I will write 6000 words. This week I will not eat any wheat or sugar. This week I will do yoga every day.)
There's the relief of getting past Sunday, and its hookiness. A formal feeling comes. (To adapt Emily's loveliest formulation.)
There are the leftover projects begun on Sunday--an impulsive trip to the garden center, a vision for dotting the deck with unusual annuals, a handing over of the credit card, getting only part way done with the planting. 
There's the to do list. 
There are events to look forward to and events to decline. (There is a determination to remember who you are.)

There are ideas for many pieces to write, and the discipline to make note of them but stick to the project at hand.
There's the gratifying time spent with the appointment book.
There's a twinge of free floating panic.
There are the dogs, and the liberating belief that they don't know what day it is. 
There is beginning and continuity.
There is a faint presentiment of failure, and a counter determination to reframe it.
There's the pleasure of solitude in contemplation of one's own time.
There's the frustration of time being claimed by duty.
There is the moment to get to work.
The workmen have been at it since the dawn of time, after all.

Writing at Mother's

I am staying with my mother for two weeks, specifically to work, the idea being that I can put in many hours a day without the interruptions I usually have at home.
It sounds simple, but it isn't. It is my mother, and it is my writing. Can the two be in the same place at the same time?
"I hate your voice," my son used to say to me. I understood. There's nothing quite like your mother's voice. For better or worse, you're sensitive to it. And yes, sometimes hate it--particularly when it is calling up the stairs. Particularly when it interrupts.
At this point in my life, I can recognize the flash of rage, and neutralize it. My mother is old and she's not going to change now. I will miss her when she's gone--if she dies first. I want to spend time with her. But is this a place to write? Really?
So many writers have gone to live with their mothers to get their work done. I am thinking particularly of Gustave Flaubert, Flannery O' Connor, and Eudora Welty. How did that go? Did they struggle to maintain an equilibrium? Did they feel supported? Did they offer support? Did they ever feel undermined, if only by the past?
One thing I do imagine; that living with their mothers put them in touch with some deep feelings.
I speak for myself, but I find it both difficult and compelling to be with my mother and writing at the same time. The fantasy of no interruptions is a laugh. She moves around the house, and I know exactly her gestures and expressions, and that knowledge comes with waves of associations. Do I want to go ahead and think about about them or do I spend energy tying them off? Then there are all the things I want to do for her before I go back, as well as the day to day of dishes and laundry. She's very independent, but I feel like I should keep her company. And we have my two dogs and one of my cats, her two dogs and her cat in the house--with all their many needs and desires. It's complicated!
But I have gotten lots of work done. It never feels like much in a day--I always think I have written nothing--but it adds up. I am still inside this book, feeling it, and haven't yet stepped outside and judged it or thrown it out. The large plot I had in mind is naturally breaking down to the smaller step by step moments that move the whole shabang forward. My back and shoulder are in incredible pain from this table and chair, but something's happening.
Once I pressed Flannery O'Connor on a student. She came back to me saying she didn't know what to make of it--was it even fiction? It was so much like her own mother. Oh. That wasn't the part of the stories I'd focused on, or what I was thinking about FOC. Suddenly whoosh! I could see where she got her sense of humor, where she'd need it.
My mother is relatively easy to be around, but she's still my mother. She's nervous that I'm writing about her. No, I'm not. I'm staying with her. That's a whole different story.