writing skills/profession

Writing: The Problem with Digging Deep


Eric Clapton’s autobiography recently came out and it’s been praised widely for, among other things, its frankness. Mr. Clapton’s colorful past manages to be honest without injecting drama that isn’t there. But the chapter dealing with the death of his four year old son has a different tone than the rest of the book. There is a distance to the narrative that alarmed his publishers to the point that they asked him to consider rewriting it. He declined and explained that his child’s tragic accident was not something he could write any other way. That time and those circumstances were not places he could go emotionally anymore. He could talk about them. Sing the song he wrote for his boy. But to write the event from the perspective of the grieving father wasn’t possible. He just couldn’t do it.

In writing my novel I have discovered that while I can fictionalize much of the events surrounding my first husband’s illness and death and that I can write about the year that followed in a fashion, I can’t dive in to those emotions anymore. I am too far removed and just don’t want to. I wondered for a while if this was the denial I have been accused of in the past and decided it wasn’t. I am normal and what I am experiencing is normal. Grief doesn’t go anywhere really but you do reach a point where it is someplace you don’t go much, if at all. And that’s more than okay. It’s a good thing.

So, I am mining my past and my pain for the time being as I go back over the latter half of last year and when the book is finished, I won’t be revisiting that in my fiction again. I have other projects. Two of which I have already started actually. Still, “going there” as Gary Paulson would say, isn’t entirely without its redeeming factors because I think I am writing a pretty darn good book.

Time Flies


Not literally and yet literally, time flies. And it’s not about fun either. I am not always having fun. The dishes, the laundry, the child, the cat, the groceries, the miscellaneous errands. The care and maintenance that goes into the all of the aforementioned can run a considerable range up and down and around the old fun meter. There are my various physical activities (running and swimming) and mental activities (my novel, the blog, attempting to keep up with the world of literature and the news of the day – although sometimes I don’t get to today’s news until tomorrow). I have written about this before but I just run out of time, nearly every day it seems.

As I sit and type this, I can hear and feel the roof shuddering because Rob is out back in the pitch dark building a new gable over the kitchen window box because the roof is leaking and it’s pretty much winter here now. And he hasn’t time either and I don’t need to wonder why or how this happened. We merged our lives and doubled everything essentially but the time we are alloted.

So, the novel is over 31,ooo words and 108 pages and I am certain I will hit the 50,000 within a week but I will likely not be done. More like 3/4ths done. I have discovered however my novel writing style, which as I suspected it would be, is not a start at the beginning and write to the end; but more of a have a good idea where things go and write as the ideas germinate whether that is starting in the middle or rearranging chapter order as you discover that you wrote chapter 11 when it should be chapter 2. My writing is more and more consuming time. I am becoming of those people who sit in waiting rooms with their laptops open and pounding away.

Tomorrow I promise to blog more topically but tonight I am tired and there is a novel calling and a hay fever attack subsiding and my husband is back inside to be snuggled up to. Time just continues to fly by.

Lost Blog Entries and the Moon at Noon


I had this beautiful piece about Rob written this morning , but for some reason known only to the geeks at Apple Tech, the program “unexpectedly quit” and I hadn’t saved. Let that be a lesson to us all, I suppose. When I told Rob what had happened and that the topic of the day was him, he wondered if I had used the anecdote he told me last evening when we were snuggled up after just getting in bed for the night. He had apparently been 40 minutes late for a site safety meeting he is on the committee to oversee. It’s one of those committees that no one wants to take part in but they do it anyway simply because it’s a good way to rack up brownie points with the powers that be. Anyway, as Rob walked in to the meeting yesterday morning, more than a little late, he observed that nearly everyone in attendance looked as though they were having the mental equivalent of a root canal. Sour and dour and painfully uptight looking. And as he observed the situation and slid into his seat he thought to himself (with not a little bit of Virgo smugness), “Yep, bet none of you got laid this morning.” It’s moments like these – and there are many – that I know my soul is well-mated.

This morning I was so proud of myself for getting the blog entry done early because I wanted to spend the day working on my novel. Yes, I have started the Nonawrimo thing a few days early but I am am justifying this because we are taking a trip to Rob’s mom in the middle of the month and that will be a good five days of getting nothing done as far as writing goes, so I am actually going to end up two days short of the 30 days anyway. In the end all that matters is the novel, and it’s starting to actually take a shape – and not the one I had originally envisioned either.

So, with my best intentions thwarted, I was going to camp at the Starbucks and write for a bit after dropping my little girl at kindergarten. But, it’s lunch hour and the tiny Starbucks resides in the local Safeway where many people visit the store’s deli and then feel free to eat in the Starbucks sitting area. Yeah, I don’t get that either. So, there were no tables, and though I could have taken my chai latte over to the Fort library, I decided to come home and write in the office Rob set up for us a few weeks ago. Yesterday, the cat sat in my lap as I wrote but today she is angry with me for leaving her outdoors while Katy and I went to the gym. As I explained to her when we returned to find her curled up on the welcome mat at the door, this is what happens to little cats who don’t come when they are called (she’s learning but slowly).

On the way into the Fort I noticed the moon was still up. It often is. Not something I ever saw back in Iowa. I still can’t get over the sky here. Rob says it is the same sky but it just looks so different. Perhaps it is the wide openness or the latitude, but the clouds and the moon and the stars even never fail to catch and hold my attention like they were paintings in the Louvre.

What I had wanted to say today was how I love to watch my husband. In the mornings he is so deliberate in his actions as he dresses for the day. He is a powerful looking man and it fascinates me, the way his muscles move under his skin and how the light shades and shadows him. Of course, my first version was far more poetic. Rob wondered if being so often my topic he would lose his Canadian sensibilities. I am not sure that Canadians are anymore sensible than the Iowan’s I lived around all my life, but he is certainly the least affected man I have ever known. Sensible is certainly among his many middle names.

I am sorry I lost that earlier entry but I guess I was supposed to write this piece you are reading instead. Sometimes things work out better than originally planned.