Tag: writing

The best laid plans – turning up to do the writing

I sat down earlier this week at mapped out my plan for this post. My mind was clear on what I wanted to cover. In theory, at about 7 o’clock yesterday I should have made it to my desk bright eyed and bushy tailed, raring to go.* Yesterday.

But as it turned out, that didn’t quite work for me. I didn’t make it to my desk at all yesterday. I missed it. All day I was thinking about when I would be able to make it back to my dad’s old office chair and I just didn’t.

I’ve been thinking about why. I wanted to be at my desk. I sort of knew what I was going to be writing about. I just didn’t turn up to get it done.

Is planning for me?

I don’t always take the opportunity to indulge in the luxury of planning. A lot of the time I just sit down, power up the computer and jump straight in. A bit of thought as I go about where I move things around, but no first, second … third drafts.

You may have noticed this. I hope you don’t mind.

I have to admit that I do feel a shade guilty about rushing through. Sometimes.

Other times – for the most part – there’s that rush of adrenalin that comes of writing under pressure. There are days when I just love that.

My plan for this post was all about being tired after a series of deadlines. There was plenty of writing under pressure and this week I was pretty much over it.

Dominos and cards

One of the things I did get done this week was submitting (at last) the assignment for a Cert IV on Project Management I’ve been working on. There’s a (slight) irony that I didn’t manage to complete it on time, I suppose.

Another thing was collecting my form for enrolling in a PhD with its signatures from my proposed supervisors and walking it across to the office that processes the applications. Once I get started I will have to be meticulous with my planning throughout the years it will take me to get to graduation. My life is going to be a delicately wrought schedule.

I am not going to insert an image of a house of cards here.

I am not.

I suspect it is the most appropriate image.

I’ve also had some work done on my house that is going to lead to more work. Seriously. It is how it is: you get one thing fixed and then all the other repairs and improvements on the list-that-never-ends start up a clamouring chorus that will not be ignored.

I had actually been doing well at ignoring the list for quite a while but now I’ve given it a little bit of attention…

I’m not going to insert an image (appropriate though it might be) of a line of dominos.

No, I am not.

Not a line of tiles lined up and waiting to be tipped into a cascade of falling pieces.

Dominos in step sequence from double six to double blank
Step by step

As dominos requires that the double six – the dog tile – begins the game, I guess it is the first in a series of steps.

Recharging

My notes for this post include plenty of points about drained batteries and emptiness.

I was – I have to admit – exhausted by the end of the week. My flutter-by mind just wanted to find some verdant spot and sit in the sun.

There were moments during the week when I did manage to have a bit of that.

Admittedly, on Tuesday that ‘verdant spot’ was the built environment of Perth Cultural Centre. I took a few minutes to just sit and observe the world passing. I listened to a man playing the marimba at the soundgarden outside the museum. Such complex and beautiful melodies.

When he left, a child took over. The sounds simplified, melody was no longer the thing. I had to head for home but I could have listened for hours.

Stools and a pigeon at the PCC
A favourite spot for world watching

Turning up

The good thing about this week is what it has shown me about myself, where I’m at with books and words and work.

My life is about deadlines. It is how I’m programmed. I’m hard-wired for them – even if that wiring sometimes seems to short out.

I need to turn up in order to get them done. Sometimes I need to walk away to be able to get them done. Taking a break from the desk is ok so long as I go back to the desk. (Caveat: sometimes the desk doesn’t need to be the desk…)

Submitting my project for the Cert IV, taking the walk from Arts to the Graduate Research School, starting the huge project that is ‘the house’ each brought the idea of balance to mind.

Looking down the barrel of a project as big as a PhD means I need to be tracking how I’m going with the deadlines in my life. I’ve been thinking about that – especially how to keep the reading and writing that will be a part of it in balance – has been part of my musing for a while now.

The thing to remember is how much I like it once the words are flowing.

Planning is all well and good but the best thing is the doing. Settling in to get the words down (and then playing, cutting, reshaping) is the best bit.

Turning up is the thing.

 

*I must find out what animal is the source of that phrase. At some point. Later.

Writing … spaces and places – conditions for writing

My plans for the day have just changed. I’m now working out how to best spend the time that has opened up.

This is, obviously, a bit of a furphy. The time will fill itself without any help from me.

There are the usual suspects. I have plenty of regular chores and errands to fill in the space. There are also some tasks that were deadlined during the week that I need to finish off.*

Spaces

One of the big things that I need to take care of is sorting the space where I write and study.

After intensive writing weeks, like this one just past, my space tends to look a shade wrecked. It’s not at all photogenic at this point.

Looking around now, there is a considerable amount of filing and shelving to be done. You may remember that I’ve been buying books. (I’m always buying books.) They need to be stamped…catalogued…shelved. The danger there is that I might stop to read them. There’s definitely no time for that. Even with that bit of extra time, there’s no time.

I will HAVE to work on my space at some point this weekend. That’s a given, but I don’t want to waste daylight on filing and shelving. That’s the sort of thing I like to do at night; in that settling down time while I’m waiting for the world to calm itself and become quiet.

Once my space is sorted, I enjoy the work I do when the world is sleeping. Writing into the night while I’m on holidays is one of my favourite things. I ease into the ideas and words. I don’t worry about distractions or obligations.

Small desk set up with laptop, reading lamp and notes
Writing in the still of night

The important thing I need to remember, though, is that night writing needs to be balanced. It needs to be relaxed. I need time freed up around late nights so they are manageable. (I do still need to sleep…)

In the deadline frenzy of this week I made the mistake of engaging in some pressured night writing. It’s not something that works for me. This week’s late night (in the midst of a couple of days of annual leave) was disastrous. The result: a missed deadline. Lesson learned and noted. Night writing can’t be panicked. Not for me at least.

Places

I’m a fan of working ‘elsewhere’. It’s not just the chaos of home that drives me to be somewhere other than my study. Finding a spot and settling myself into it is part of the fun.

Of course, there are times when I seem to wander aimlessly looking for the spot. That’s a risk that needs to be mitigated on a regular basis. I need to run my own interventions some days…

Once I find a spot to be the spot for a chunk of time, it is worth it.

Picnic bench at The Whaling, Flinders Bay set up as a writing desk
In the sun by Flinders Bay

This found space was just delightful. I was in Flinders because a friend had whisked me away from the debris of a broken heart. Angst of those days aside, working at this bench felt so good. The writing was for my day job and for uni. Even so, it was pleasurable. It was a beautiful space to be. The sun on my face, the wind in my hair, the sound of water lapping on sand…I won’t go on.

I often find that the spots I choose for writing feature water, in one way or another. I lived in inland for a couple of years. I liked where I was and I was happy there but the absence of ocean and river were disconcerting. Whenever I went home to Perth I would head straight to the ocean ‘just to check’. I still choose routes that take me along the river or coast – even if it adds time to the journey.

The plan

It’s time to run some of those errands, do a bit of the family thing and then stop by the water on the way home. I fancy working on some bits from the scrawl and perhaps add to it.

I can see the spot now. It’s quiet, it’s beautiful and, as usual, there’s the possibility that there will be pelicans or maybe even a dolphin.

 

*I met one with a minute to spare. Literally. The date stamp on the submission receipt is 3:59 for a 4:00 deadline. That was cutting it a shade too fine. Even for me.

A trio of lectures – feeding my mind, filling the well

Deadlines are coming at me from all directions. They’re flying in thick and fast … and there’s no dodging them.

I’ve been a touch frantic in the past week. This, perhaps, explains how a whole mug of tea ended up on the study rug rather than by the computer. Perhaps.

As I’m not known for my coordination, it is possible the rather promising brew was always doomed.

The present collision of deadlines is unusual.

I am no stranger to the intersection of a few due dates but the current fortnight is a doozy.

My response? Set-up to-do list, remember that fretting about timelines makes me tetchy (sorry, loved ones), catch up with friends, remember to enjoy the sunshine and fresh air, sit on a couch by the window in a favourite cafe and write while waiting for an appointment,* take in a few lectures.

Pakenham St trees
Remembering to enjoy the sunshine

Why? Breaks that require me to stay alert and give time for reflection and planning are more helpful than simply ‘switching off”.

I find that if I choose television as a break activity I struggle to get back to working effectively. Engaging with other people and ideas creates space between one set of tasks and the next. So does the processing time that driving across town allows. I gather I’m not alone with this.

The bonus: once I’m on campus I find I am ready to focus and I tend to be quite productive. I think I’ve made that observation previously.

It was tricky, but I made it to three lectures this week. I’m glad I did.

The Bodleian and the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays

Wednesday was Pip Willcox’s talk for UWA’s Institute of Advanced Studies: ‘for Harry, England, and … everyone: the many lives of the Bodleian First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays’. Pip Willcox is Curator of Digital Special Collections at the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. She gave an account of the Bodleian’s ownership of a specific copy of the book, the physical features of the book, and the project to digitise the Folio.

It’s probably no surprise that I’m a book geek. I find the history of books as objects – and the history and process of creating books – fascinating.  I wanted to make it to the lecture as soon as I saw the abstract. The story of this particular copy has drama and intrigue. I wish I had time to go into the details.

The digitised product Willcox was speaking about looks to be a wonderful resource. The project website is still available at http://shakespeare.bodleian.ox.ac.uk and the digitised version of the folio is available at http://firstfolio.bodleian.ox.ac.uk. I can’t wait to have some free time to get in and look around properly.

Bresnick on Blake, Goya and Kafka

Thursday brought another presentation sponsored by the IAS featuring the composer Martin Bresnick, Professor of Composition, Yale School of Music. The title of the talk was ‘Listening to Images, Hearing the Text: new music that engages the visual and the literary’.

Bresnick spoke about his work as a composer – particularly in relation to the development of his multimedia piece developed from ‘For The Sexes: the Gates of Paradise’ by  William Blake and his response to Francesco de Goya’s ‘Caprichos Enfaticos’.

The evening included a live performance of ‘For the Sexes: the Gates of Paradise’ by Lisa Moore. The combination of music, spoken word and a projected animation of Blake’s illustrations of the poem was intense and visceral. It left me wanting to go back to Blake and read more by and about him. I’ll also look out for an online version of the multimedia piece. Not just yet, though. I need time and space for that.

The recorded  extracts from ‘Caprichos Enfaticos’ were powerful, and disturbing. Again, I want to go back to look at the full piece. That will definitely be down the track.

There wasn’t time for a performance of the third billed piece, on Franz Kafka’s ‘A Message from the Emperor’ but Bresnick’s account of the piece was intriguing. Something else to look into … again, at a later date.

Qaisra Shahraz on Building Bridges

The final lecture in the trio was an author talk by Qaisra Shahraz on ‘Building Cultural Bridges through Literature’ that was sponsored by the UWA Centre for Muslim States and Societies.

Shahraz moved to Britain from Pakistan when she was nine. She writes novels and has a commitment to building bridges, using literature to celebrate diversity. Identifying as as British, Pakistani and Muslim, Shahraz spoke about how each of these identities is important to her as a person and a writer. Reading from her novels, she shared a world that is alien and familiar.

This third talk came as a welcome change of pace. Making the dash from work to uni didn’t appeal and I was tempted to cut my losses and head home. I’m glad I braved the freeway at peak hour.

I walked away with a copy of her first novel. I’m afraid it will linger on my shelf before I get a chance to read it. I will want to take time and not be distracted by other things.

Even if I’m tempted … I must resist for at least the next few weeks!

 

Playgound
I need time to play

*The window in question for this particular post was at Bread in Common. On Saturday morning the sun was streaming in, the sky was clear. It was perfect for writing and working out a plan of attack for the weekend and the week ahead.

 

On a rainy day – the comforts of weather and writing

My day has begun with – what I consider to be – one of life’s pleasures: listening to rain fall against a window.

Being snuggled in bed with no immediate call on my time helped. Following it up with tea in my favourite mug and some vegemite toast that the dog was happy to share made it better. Now I’m watching clouds scud past the neighbours’ palm trees.

I’ll be honest, I don’t fully understand the love affair Perth has had with palm trees.

Jacarandas? Yes. Cape myrtles? Ok. Palm trees? Why?!

I know it’s probably just me.

I know I digress.

So, a rainy day in Perth at the end of a  busy, rainy week. The city continues to experience the below-average rainfall that we obsess about but there have still been  plenty of opportunities to listen to falling rain and run to cars through showers. There is more rain forecast for the week ahead.

My (purported) excess of umbrellas has been vindicated.

Progress with the scrawl

All in all, my project of working through the scrawl is coming along nicely. I’ve been fitting it in around various commitments and projects: the day-job …  a Cert IV I’m working towards … family.

This week I turned my attention to what my family refers to as Jo’s dead head, a gift from my sister for my 25th birthday. A bit tattered after nearly twenty years of abuse, the dead head has come in and out of my writing process. Using it in fits and and starts is no doubt what has helped it survive. I do not always treat it kindly.

Cloth covered journal
My ‘dead-head’ journal

There were notes in there from conferences in 2009 and a master class in 2013. I’ve typed and filed them at last. Scraps of ideas and lines of poetry have been sorted and culled as seemed necessary late into the night earlier this week. The recipes for Pineapple Chicken (yum) and Mrs Allen’s Chow Mein (not sure about that one) are still where they were. So are the reading lists I’ve been building up. At least the book is no longer bulging. It could take another refill.

After the clean-out, I have a couple of pieces that I think are worth working on. It is more likely that they will be worked on as I add them to the other bits and pieces that I’m pulling together as I work my way through the scrawl. Getting them out of the relative safety of the dead head means I can put them side by side with other remnants of the scrawl.

What to do with material liberated from the scrawl?

It is taking a while to work through everything. As well as dealing with the notebooks there are also far too many files that have needed to be cleared out. My shredder has come in handy.

My notes from a grad dip I didn’t finish (from 1992-1994)? Gone. My notes from staff meetings? Gone. I can almost see where I’ve been. My undergrad essays – desperately naive as they pretty much all are – all managed to make it back to their shelf. I expect their day will come.

If I had been more methodical, more systematic as I went along then I wouldn’t have this accumulation of writing debris. Perhaps. I could possibly still find myself needing to review and cull. I am sure that is the case.

Liberating material is necessary for a number of reasons. Here are four:

1. Space. There simply isn’t enough and I need to make some room. Imposing order and excavating material is part of establishing space.

2. Projects. I am working towards signing up for a PhD. I have a topic at hand, the forms are in … I’m just waiting for the next step. Sorting my environment is essential before I immerse myself in a six-year project.

3. Process. Working through the scrawl has been a part of my writing practice since … forever. Certainly around 1990 but I think I used to do this (on a smaller scale) when I was still in high school. I have a memory of a stenographer’s notepad from when I was in Year 9.  I called it a graffiti pad. It was angst-ridden and I loved it.

4. Retreat. Once it is all ‘done’ –  when I have pulled together the last bit from the scrawl and the files – I think a weekend of just the words pulled out from where they’ve been hiding and some fresh pages will do nicely as a treat. I’ve always ‘stockpiled’ notes and then written when I could pull together a reasonable chunk of time. Those chunks have been variously regular and scattered. A retreat is a chance to start afresh.

In the meantime, I’ve been making pretty good progress. I must nearly be there. If I’m lucky I’ll be able to listen to the rain as it falls while I work … and venture outside to splash in a puddle or two during breaks.

It sounds like bliss to me.

Two puddles on footpath in park
Puddles are a joy

 

 

A familiar dance – processing time is not always procrastination

My desk is tidy. Well, when I say ‘tidy’ I mean the half of the L-shape that is devoted to ‘technology’ is organised. I’ve washed and dried my hair. I’ve made my fingernails look a little less ragged. I’m about to finish my third mug of tea for the morning.

This is a dance I do. It would be quicker if, like the dog, I could just turn three circles, sit myself down and settle into the business of the day. For the dog that business is dozing. For me it is a to-do list.

This weekend’s general list includes emails, start week one of a mooc – before week two arrives, read articles for a research project, draft some notes for a talk I said I would give, complete essential chores, ignore non-essential chores, spend some time with family and friends, go for a walk  – preferably by the river where I’m confident there will be pelicans and I’m hopeful there will be dolphins.

Striking through

I do like crossing off items as they are done. It works for chores, projects, ideas that are acted on. I’ve been able to pull a couple of cards from my projects list in the past few weeks. They were among the smaller projects but it still feels good to have moved them to the ‘done pile’.

I also like to cross through titles in lists, verses in stanzas and paragraphs in prose. I can end up making a fair mess of any given page. For the most part, I’m comfortable with some untidiness on the page. There comes a point, though when too much mess becomes too fraught.

Making space

My mini-project of revising old notebooks – the scrawl I mentioned a couple of weeks ago – is in full swing. Putting sentiment to one side, some of the scrawl must give way. Space is at a premium.

The focus of today’s attention was made of recycled paper bound with string in a corrugated card cover. I liked the book when it came to me, but it has its quirks. The threading on the spine makes it hard to keep open. The texture of the leaves entices. It promises more than struck-through notes and drafts. I’ve always been aware that I didn’t choose as wisely as I may have liked when I started out with it as a place for early workings.

One draft is dated ’98, so this book has been hanging about for a while. All but one of the notes in this particular notebook have been acted on. Most of the worked on pages have been folded to show they are finished. On balance, I have to admit not that many pages have been used. I’d like to start over with it. I think the remaining leaves can be repurposed.

Old notebook made of recycled paper with corrugated cover
Step 1: Initiate
struck through pages
Step 2: Check
ready for reuse
Step 3: Repurpose

Repurposing and renewing

My habit of making lists and roughing out brainstorms of ideas is a useful strategy. It makes for wonderfully productive days. This was especially the case when I worked as a teacher. I had a holiday routine that involved reviewing the lists and notes I’d made during term. If pieces of writing weren’t finished I’d work on drafts and commit to finishing things off. Not all holidays allowed for the routine to be evenly productive but there was certainly a rhythm to the process that helped it along.

I’ve had to modify the way I approach lists. Sometimes there is too much time between the note of the idea and the point of writing. Well, too much time in being up to pick up with the reason for making the note. Sometimes they just have to be repurposed. At at other times, the note is as vivid as when first written.

Looking through a poetry file today, I saw a poem I finished in 2001. It’s ok but not for sharing here. The point about the poem (‘Faithless’) is I first noted the opening line in my first year teaching. That was 1992. In the years between the note and the poem there was little shift in the intent of the idea I hoped to explore.

Other ideas and images need to sit for a while – steeping like tea – before they are ready for use. There’s nothing worse than tea left for so long it becomes bitter and unpalatable. That said, even stewed tea is good for the roses.*

A rueful acknowledgement

I can be quite precious about notebooks. I let them kick around for decades, long enough to end up looking tatty and disreputable. I don’t often attack them with scissors. This poor stablemate was doomed from day one. Happily, I think it has a promising future now it is free of its binding.

I’m sure the next notebook taken from the scrawl for review will fare better. In fact, I doubt many of the notebooks in the scrawl would do as well if I attempted to repurpose them.

*Ooh. There’s a poem there. What luck!

Filling the well – inspiration, creativity and productivity

The idea of ‘filling the well’ is one of the best things that I took away from working through Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way (Pan, 1994).

It is years since I worked through the book. I remember making myself all sorts of commitments at the time. The one that has stayed with me is ‘filling the well’. If I’m drawing from the well then I need to make sure it isn’t going to run dry. I also need to make sure I can get to it. That’s pretty obvious. It makes sense.

Part of me would like to hunt out the notebook where I worked through Cameron’s exercises. I’ve no idea of where to begin to look for it now, though. It’s too long since I’ve seen it. There might be a chance that I jettisoned it in one of my (thankfully rare) I-must-not-hoard-this-clutter purges.

To be honest, I don’t need the notebook in my hand to remember what is in it. Especially for the ‘filling the well’ exercise. I know what, who and where I identified as keeping the well I draw from fresh.

Why am I thinking about it now?

This has all come to mind because this is the week of the medieval and early modern studies symposium that I try to get to each year. Many of the topics are often out of my direct area of expertise. Sometimes it’s hard to shift my schedule around, but it’s always worth the effort. It is one of the events that come up that I move my life around to be able to get to.

While most of my commitments from ‘the way’ have slipped into (fond) memory – morning pages and regular ‘artist dates’ used to be regular features of my creative life – making the time and space in my life to get to the symposium has stayed.  It is part of my filling the well.

The symposium brings together a lot of the elements of the list I came up with for the exercise: what – medieval and early modern literature (and now history), where – there are some places which help me focus on getting down to work, the UWA campus (and the general area of the river and King’s Park)  is one, and  who – my original list included individuals but also acknowledged how being a part of a community of writers is important to me, the symposium reflects (and creates) a community of scholars and writers that I enjoy being a part of.

Invariably, my understandings are deepened or my awareness extended by the papers given and conversations had at the symposium. There will always be something new that I will want to look up, even if just to satisfy my curiosity or find a point of clarification. I find links to my work – academic and creative – that I would never have thought of or, if I did, would have come about much later. Sometimes I find that I walk away with a bunch of ideas and images that will end up in a poem or a story. It all makes me happy.

In the past couple of days I’ve had the good fortune to participate in a master class on chivalry and the first day of a symposium on emotions and warfare in writing in the medieval and early modern period. It’s all been fascinating. I’m looking forward to today’s programme – most of which will be completely new to me. There are some poems being discussed which I’ve looked at a bit in the past – Andrew Marvell’s ‘Upon Appleton House’ I’ve thought about but done nothing with, the Alliterative Morte Arthure I’ve dipped into – but the other papers look like new territory. I can’t wait.

Not in the least distracting
Not in the least distracting

 A funny thing about the well

As I’ve been writing this a new idea has come to me for a spot of research (that I possibly should leave until later, because I already have a few projects on the go). I think I’d like to look at moments in medieval romances to see when knights ask for water. There are a couple I can think of where they stop in mid-fight to drink – or ask to be allowed to drink. I wonder how much work has already been done on that.

Perhaps there’s a poem/story that I want to work, too. But it will have to wait until later…