underestimated (star draft 1)

is almost like trivialized, nearly like passed over,
not quite forgotten but the feeling is not so dissimilar.
In the heart of a long circular star trail is a thousand
more stars in what may seem like a flashing grand
cluster but is, in fact, strung out in space line, millions
of independent ever-distantly burning suns.

A sun needs no reconciliation–it only glows and burns
and moves, like all the other stars bobbing like lanterns,
never feeling the missed view of a lone observer light
years away staring upward at the panoramic sight
of star trails moving faster than words, thought and sound,
knowing only it is the center which planets travel around.

Star as icon.

c.2008 clk

Status Report

For those of you wondering about my sporadic blogging and where I might be with the novel…

After NANOWRIMO I stalled a bit, mostly because I was trying to figure out if I really wanted to shift the entire POV of my story. I’ve not written in omniscient POV before so I have to admit I was quite daunted. Thankfully though, I have started meeting biweekly with two talented writers  to talk about our books, critique each other’s writing, spur each other onward, talk agents and query letters and to infuse each other with the spirit of enthusiasm.

I took the plunge a few weeks back and began the rewrite of chapter 1. I handed the draft over to Anjali and Laura and whew! The new version sat well with both of them so I’m going to start the task of rewriting the 250 pages I have so far. It does work better, but I have to perfect the technique so it isn’t too confusing to the reader when I flip around from character to character. There is more depth in that I’m able to provide greater richness by showing the thoughts of minor characters as well as major characters–solving some of the issues I had with telling too  much historical information. Being able to switch briefly into the head of the slavemaster or the haruspex  lets me show the world a bit easier and at the same time I can impart valuable information about my main characters. It feels a little awkard to write, only because I’m unpracticed, but for the for most part, there is an incredible freedom in being able to write like a god, with knowledge of everything that happens and the ability to unveil whatever I want or shadow the things I want to keep hidden.

Once I get going again I’ll think about Friday Snippeting again–are there still a few of you out there sharing bits on Fridays?

Regardless I want to make an effort to post regularly again. Hopefully spring will hit New England soon and the energy that comes with the sun and the greenery will also add new life into my writing. Today I realized that little plans are pushing through the leaves near the driveway. When Joe and I were in Provincetown this weekend we saw snowdrops and crocuses here and there in the little white-fence picketed yards. I’ve seen robins and cardinals and so I’ll just keep my fingers crossed that the snow coming tonight and later this week will be the last of the season.

Lingering Motivation

I taught today–a class on creative problem solving for writers. It’s a subject that I’m very passionate about and while I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not an expert on craft (POV, dialogue, setting and the like–I need THAT same sort of help myself), but I’m 100% at home on helping people dig deep to understand their own cognitive abilities. Today I spent a good 6 hours doing just that–helping writers figure out how to dig deep into their own ideas to generate more possibilities. My course is geared toward writers in progress, helping them learn new tools to further plots, characters, etc. for stories they are already working on. It’s right up my alley and part of the work I did in developing my thesis on critical and creative thinking.

Every time I teach a course like that I come out of it thinking, WOW. Not wow because I did anything in particular, but WOW because I spent so much time with other creative spirits. I learned about their books, talked about their struggles and hopefully gave them tools to help them overcome problems in their writing. I love that feeling. It’s a high that goes beyond that of the chartreuse and champagne cocktail that one of my favorite bartenders served me up tonight. It’s a high that will carry me much farther, into my own writing and creation.

After the course, when my husband was driving me home, I mentioned that I already was paid for teaching that day. When I peeked at the check after the class, I felt a sense of shock–shock at the amount, not because I wasn ‘t worth it (oh I think I am) but shock because it seems so strange to get paid for something that I LOVE so much. In my entire life I have never equated money with the things I love to do. Usually I am the one forking over the dough to do those things I love.

I’ve always been thoughtful to look for work in marketing and PR that I would enjoy and that I would be good at, but I can’t say that I have ever had a job that I would keep if I won the lottery tomorrow. Except for the type of work I did today. Teaching my own ideas and helping writers to overcome the hurdles they have in their everyday writing. And in turn, being able to spend my time in the company of creative types. Oh yeah. I would do that regardless of how much or how little someone paid me.

My husband thinks I’m crazy. Maybe I am. I think that when I touch those places I feel happy. I feel inspired by the words of others. I feel satisfied that I might have helped another writer propel themselves toward greatness. And I feel excited about sitting down at my own blank page and moving forward.

That’s MY brain on drugs.

The Sickness

I wish that I could say it was a writing sickness of some sort, but no, it’s just plain sickness. Second time in less than a month, which makes me quite unhappy indeed. My husband finds my pitiful forlorn-ness rather cute but I’m just not good being miserable.

Being sick also forces me to do something else that I’m not terribly good at. Taking naps.

Ever since I was a little kid taking naps was something I hated. I was always afraid I was going to miss something. I would pretend to nap when I heard my mother coming up the stairs to check on me and as soon as she would leave I’d pull my book out from under my pillow and start reading. There wasn’t enough time for books, in my opinion.

I still feel that way. Being sick means that I have a hard time staying awake. Even sitting here blogging a bit has me starting to feel weak and womply. I imagine I’ll start and finish this over a long period…a bit here and there because sitting here is tough. I just have so little energy and barely any focus.

For the entire weekend I’ve spent the majority of my time on the couch, feverish, wracked with coughing, with my husband so graciously bringing me juice and ginger ale. He makes me food I can’t taste and runs to the store to buy me kleenex when I run out. This luckiness in finding the nicest guy is a two edged sword. I’d rather be spending the day doing something fun with him, not relegated to the couch, half asleep while he cooks me chicken soup.

I try to read but sadly, reading requires a bit more brainpower and energy than TV does. I rarely watch TV except for a few specifically Tivo’d shows and when I’m sick. Reading puts me to sleep nearly right away but I can manage TV for a little longer. Possibly because it’s actionable and movable and can arrest my visual senses in a way that black words on a white page tend to blur together for me when I feel like this.

So I watch TV and bad free movies on Comcast, feeling miserable, but even worse, feeling guilty.

Yeah. Guilty for being sick. Guilty because I had to cancel the writing workshop that I was supposed to teach yesterday. Guilty because I sleep instead of reading (oh my I have a book pile so high right now that I’m dying to go through). Guilty because I watch TV instead of writing on my novel (although I did manage to write a freelance article this weekend…the editor will most likely cringe at my codeine cough syrup coated words but I did spit it out over the course of yesterday). And even though tomorrow isn’t here yet, I already feel guilty because I’m going to have to call in sick (actually call in to say I’m working from home) for the second time in less than a month (was out for a week with the flu just three weeks ago).
This is where my husband lovingly tells me that I’m crazy. I wasn’t even born Catholic! I shouldn’t feel guilty for not reading or writing or working. I should just be sick and do my best to sleep it off.

But oh, that pillow…it doesn’t really call my name. Heaven forbid if I miss something! Oh wait, some things, like the 98 minutes I spent today watching The Covenant are probably worth missing…

No Longer a “Silent, Shrinking Maiden”

I am very excited about this book coming out soon!!!

LeGuin, one of my favorite writers, decided to tackle one of my current favorite places–ancient Italy. She’s delving back even further than I am in my book about Apicius, however, giving voice to Lavinia, who is unspoken in Virgil’s famous epic.

From Publisher’s Weekly: In the Aeneid, the only notable lines Virgil devotes to Aeneas’ second wife, Lavinia, concern an omen: the day before Aeneus lands in Latinum, Lavinia’s hair is veiled by a ghost fire, presaging war. Le Guin’s masterful novel gives a voice to Lavinia, the daughter of King Latinus and Queen Amata, who rule Latinum in the era before the founding of Rome. Amata lost her sons to a childhood sickness and has since become slightly mad. She is fixated on marrying Lavinia to Amata’s nephew, Turnus, the king of neighboring Rutuli. It’s a good match, and Turnus is handsome, but Lavinia is reluctant. Following the words of an oracle, King Latinus announces that Lavinia will marry Aeneas, a newly landed stranger from Troy; the news provokes Amata, the farmers of Latinum, and Turnus, who starts a civil war. Le Guin is famous for creating alternative worlds (as in Left Hand of Darkness), and she approaches Lavinia’s world, from which Western civilization took its course, as unique and strange as any fantasy. It’s a novel that deserves to be ranked with Robert Graves’s I, Claudius. (Apr.)

Virgil was wildly popular during the time in which my book is set. Apicius was a boy when Virgil died while traveling with Caesar Augustus to Greece. Apparently Virgil had ordered the book to be burned after he died as he knew he would be unable to finish the tale. Caesar defied those last wishes and ordered it published (some scholars speculate that Aeneas is actually a representation of Augustus), and it was then that the story took life as Rome’s national epic, symbolizing the mission of Imperial Rome, exemplifying piety and virtue and delighting audiences throughout the empire. It is likely that Apicius would have had Virgil’s writing read at one of his many parties.

The book comes out on April 21. I can hardly wait!

Can Writing Help You Lose Weight?

Julia Cameron thinks that it can. Her latest book, The Writing Diet–Write Yourself the Right-Size, touts the idea that when you are creative and you focus your efforts on “counting words not calories” that you can also lose weight in the process.

I’m a sucker for:

1. books on writing
2. books on creativity
3. any combination of the above that might result in a skinnier Crystal

Granted, up until now there has never been a #3, but those of you who know me, know that I am a little bit of a health freak in that I am working toward being as healthy as possible through diet and exercise. My father’s six-way bypass this summer, coupled with a bad family history on both sides and a high CRP level have made me a bit obsessive about making sure I’m working toward being as healthy as possible. Weight has become a secondary focus, mostly because it carries so many expectations, potential failures and the stigma of society that ends up distracting me from what is actually important–overall health. If I can look at the big picture, I figure, weight loss is a given.

I find myself both intrigued and annoyed by the premise set forth by Cameron. Her books are mostly a regurgitation of the first book she did–the Artist’s Way, which is a brilliant piece of work that any person who wants to be creative should pick up and follow (including those damn Morning Pages…I can attest that they change your life). I find myself admiring her success (because I too want to find that same path as a teacher of creativity) and then again, I am always frustrated that overall, there seems to be so little innovation in the majority of her books. It’s always the same thing in a new package.
This book, however, takes an oddly unexpected path for Cameron. Or does it? Essentially it incorporates the two main things she has advocated in the ten or so books that stem from the Artist’s Way–morning pages, developing a walking habit and artist’s dates, which, in this case, are “culinary” artist’s dates.

I haven’t read the book yet, but I’m prepared to be a little underwhelmed, and at the same time, intrigued enough that I might be convinced to try again.

Try again?

Not the Writing Diet again, but her formula in general. When I was studying for my Masters, I had the choice of following her 12 week Artist’s Way program as one of my projects in my core Creativity class. I was blown away by what I discovered when I got up at 5AM and spilled out my guts onto three pages of a big artist’s notebook. I filled four of them during those twelve weeks. I also became much more positive about my life in general, more social, more productive at work and I came up with and executed on the idea of the Plum Ruby Review. I often find myself wishing I could manage that again (and I know, if I just set my mind to it, I could) but ohhhh my sleep seems so precious these days.

Realistically, I would need to get up at 5 AM to write, go to the gym at 6AM and then return and get myself going by 7AM. That means hitting the hay every night at 9:30-10, which is tough for me. My husband’s schedule is a later one and especially on cold nights it is hard to yank myself up before 7AM lately. Especially when Project Runway starts at 10PM.
Excuses, excuses!!!! These days I seem full of excuses (oh the humanity!). Perhaps re-reading the typical Cameron formula will motivate me once more. After all, this time the book does marry my writing life with that of my other goal–becoming healthy.

Synchronicity (which I often talk about on this blog) is coming full circle. I’ve been driving myself toward reworking Cena Apicius. I have a creativity article due on March 1. This weekend includes an all day write-in at one of my favorite places, Grub Street. And next weekend I’m teaching a Grub workshop on creativity for novelists in progress. (If you are in Boston, check it out!) Everything is coming full circle again when it comes to my writing and my creative goals. My hiatus is rapidly moving toward a close, which makes me feel energized. Creativity always begets creativity and I’m excited to jump back into things.

And well, if writing can also help me lose a few pounds, I’m willing to give Cameron a try.

….

Totally off the subject…I hope you had a chance to check out the lunar eclipse tonight. Nothing like Nature knocking us over the head and showing us how incredible she is!

1909 Footage of Mark Twain

Wow. That’s all I can say. Wow.

Check out this link to see silent film footage taken in 1909 by Thomas Edison at Stormfield (CT) at Mark Twain’s estate. Twain is shown walkng around his home and playing cards with his daughters Clara and Jean. The flickering is due to film deterioration, but this is the only known footage of the great author.

I Am Coveting:

this wonderful but pricey lamp (woe is our defeated American dollar!!!!) from Dutch company Studiomeiboom:

via Neatorama.  

Struggling with POV

I’m about halfway done with the first draft of my Apicius story. I have been feeling pretty darn good about those 50k words…loving the way that it looks printed out into 200 nice white pages. So imagine my chagrin when I received this feedback from my workshop instructor:

 I know you’ve struggled a bit with your point of view decisions and that at one time Sotas’ sections were in Apicius’ point of view. But I was wondering, as I read these pages, if you wouldn’t be better off with an omniscient point of view. I don’t usually suggest an omniscient POV because I feel it’s tough to pull off in contemporary writing, but you’re not writing about anything contemporary, and much of this already feels like an omniscient POV.

She goes on from there to explain a bit more, but that’s the core of it. Wow. That’s not just editing–that would be a major, MAJOR, re-write.

But even as I read those words, I knew that most likely she is probably right. It might solve a whole slew of issues I have had about getting close to certain characters. I’ve struggled because it meant that I had to create side stories for characters that weren’t, in my mind, really the core of the story. It’s hard to have the main character be without a POV, but I feel strongly that Apicius shouldn’t have a POV in the tale. It would, in my mind, destroy the ending for unsuspecting readers. And so, telling the story from the POV of his cook (Thrasius) and his body slave (Sotas, for those of you who have read snippets) was the option, but the thing is, it’s not THEIR story…and yet, if they were telling it, in many ways it had to be.  I suppose I could have told it first person, past tense from just the cook’s POV but I didn’t want a first person POV book…it didn’t seem right to me.

And so perhaps I’ll explore this whole omniscient thing. I think she’s right…that I’ll be able to show access to all my characters thoughts without going into great depth, but by doing so, giving even greater depth to the main story–that of the rise and fall of Apicius.

I am going to  do as she suggested and read up more specifically on authors who have pulled off omniscient POVs well.  The Gormenghast novels I’m reading are a start. She also mentions Willa Cather and Virginia Woolf. Other suggestions?

For those of you who have read my snippets…what do you think?

Infinitely Reading, Writing…and Living

One of the authors on my massive lifelong booklist is Mervyn Peake, and in particular, his Titus novels, more oftenly known as Gormenghast, although that is only the title for the second book.

I’m absolutely amazed that I made it to nearly 37 years old and never knew about these books. I’m an avid fantasy fiction/horror/sci-fi reader and have read all the greats, or so I thought. Wow. I’m only a few chapters into the first book and I’m blown away by the characters, the quirkiness of the story, the strange darkness that permeates the pages, the castle which seems alive and above all, the talent that Peake had in putting all this down on the page. Wow.

The story isn’t really fantasy as there are no magical elements but it is strange and dark…almost edging on gothic or pre-steampunk. It’s a story that is just plain different. It’s strange, fantastical, unexpected, beautiful, cold and warm at the same time and I find myself anxious to read a lot more this weekend.

This morning I came across a post from John Eaton on the wonderful Reverse Thinking blog, about getting back the sense of playing infinite rather than finite games, a theory posited by philosopher James P. Carse in his book, Finite and Infinite Games. Essentially the theory is that “a Finite game is played with the purpose of winning (thus ending the game), while an infinite game is played with the purpose of continuing the play.” Adults play finite games…with a real beginning and end and particular rules for a particular purpose, while children play infinite, make-believe, never-ending games just for the fun of it.

I immediately thought of Gormenghast and my penchant for reading extremely long, rich, character-driven books (did I mention I bought War & Peace over the holidays so I can tackle that as well?). As an adult living in the finite world, these escapes into another world are my way of touching upon that infinite game, or the hope of playing the infinite game. I disappear into the make-believe, seemingly never-ending book, just for the fun of it. In doing so, I feel wonder, excitement, contentment, desire, interest and an incredible sense of the creative spirit.

I love the idea of finding a way to move beyond just diving into big books (and writing them!) and to change my overall thinking toward the world around me from finite to the infinite. For being a creative soul, I’m terribly rules based. I have parameters and I get nutty when people step outside those boundaries (it’s ok if I do, but when others break the rules it makes me anxious and frustrated). I need to think more about the world around me as a game, rather than a duty, a chore, a habit. I need to follow some of Eaton’s advice:

In finite games, people pretend the rules were fixed by Society, God or Evolution and cannot be questioned. It is only ‘unreasonable’ people - rebels, spiritual giants, geniuses - who rebel against the rules and create new ways of life. Beliefs are just implied agreements not to question the rules any further.

Here’s what to do if you want to start playing infinite games:

• Become child-like (or ’silly’) again
• Be guided by what your intuition tells you, not by what other people think
• Question the rules for everything
• Break up routines
• Assume that the reverse could be true for anything you are told
• Break away from the frustrating games played on you by others
• Do the opposite of what people expect
• Laugh more and speak less
• Live in the moment
• Dance
• Make more time for ‘aimless’ play
• Reduce by at least 25% the time you spend on chores
• Do things that are enjoyable for their own sake, not for reward
• Ask ‘What if…..’ more and more

This advice drives to the core of what a good creative and critical thinker should already know but may need a bit of nudging to completely implement, especially if it is in the realm of the greater paths of one’s life. How many times have I advocated these particular bits of advice when it comes to a writing exercise or finding a way to think out of the box about a particular topic or idea? And yet, it comes to me now at a good time, when I find that parts of my life are rote, frustrating or ridiculous. Time to take this advice and slap it right back at me. How can I better look at the world as a game, a game that will, as Carse advocates, free me from the worries that often plague me when it comes to finite outlooks, actions and situations?

I’ll be picking up the Carse book soon, but this .pdf outlines the finer points of his theory.

What about you? How often do you take an infinite approach to the world around you?