Peg Kerr's Journal

My mom, like many other moms, will occasionally send me things she thinks might interest me: recipes, articles, and once in awhile, a book. I'm only 58 pages into the latest offering, a book entitled A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life: Acedia & Me by Kathleen Norris (she also wrote The Cloister Walk), but Mom, you really hit the nail on the head. I think this one may be a life-changing book for me.

Here's a review, which gives you a synopsis of what the book's about:

The discovery of a long-lost word in the stacks of a monastery library is a fabulist's dream. It could solve a puzzle, undo a spell or transport the finder to a new realm.

Kathleen Norris strives for all three in Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life, her latest exploration of divine grace and human purpose. Like her 1997 best-seller The Cloister Walk, the new book maps her spiritual journeys as a writer and a Benedictine oblate. The "marriage" in the subtitle, her union with fellow poet David Dwyer that ended with his 2003 death from pneumonia, takes Norris into terrain that will be new for her fans and appealing for novitiates.

Since her lonely adolescence in Honolulu, Norris has lived in perpetual ebbs and flows, from fervor to despondence, from creative burst to blockage, and then back again. "Monastic writers have always emphasized that maintaining a life of prayer means being willing to start over," she writes. "Just when I seem to have my life in balance – I am picking myself up out of the ashes."

But wherefore and why the recurring lows? Norris found an answer 20 years ago on a Benedictine bookshelf that held "The Praktikos" by the fourth-century Christian monk Evagrius Ponticus. Best known for his scholarly work on the early Church's list of eight bad thoughts or temptations, Evagrius wrote that "the demon of acedia – also called the noonday demon – is the one that causes the most serious trouble of all."

"Acedia" dates back 2,000 years to Latin (accidia) and Greek (akedia). It literally means "absence of caring" but runs deeper than contemporary apathy and describes a paralyzing soul-numbness. As Norris delved into its history, she found that acedia was dropped when the eight bad thoughts became the seven deadly sins. But the word burrowed into the collective psyche and surfaced in literature over the centuries, through Dante and Chaucer to Aldous Huxley, who wrote an essay on "Accidie," and even Ian Fleming, whose From Russia With Love notes, "Just as, in at least one religion, accidie is the first of cardinal sins, so boredom ... was the only vice Bond utterly condemned."

Acedia & Me is the author's attempt to restore not only an archaic word but the age-old notion of sin as culpability. She treads carefully around contemporary depression, stating that "while depression is an illness treatable by counseling and medication, acedia is a vice that is best countered by spiritual practice and the discipline of prayer." Depression is something that happens to you. Acedia is something you do to yourself, and your only way out of it is your own willpower. . . In a section on "Acedia and Vocation," Norris writes that this vice is an occupational hazard in fields involving protracted repetitive work where "the labor is long and the rewards are slow to appear." High-risk groups include monks, writers, athletes, scientists and married couples.

[More at link above] I find this concept (which I had never even heard of before, in all the years I have been trying to learn about depression and its relation to writers block) to be fascinating, perhaps liberating. What I have often experienced in my life seems to be exactly what Norris talks about in this book. It isn't just depression, it does spring from my inner thoughts, and it does affect, even destroy my writing, and yes, for me it has been very much a spiritual issue. How fascinating that the monks who first wrote about it identified it both as a demon (think of all I've written about the demons holding up the bitter glass) and a bad thought--I think of everything I've learned about cognitive therapy in my ongoing battle with depression.

I look forward to reading the rest of the book.

A lot of thoughts have been swirling through my mind in the past month or so, and I've been thinking about trying to catch them and set them down in a post.

This past year, frankly, has been hard. Rob's layoff, the private medical stuff that Elinor Dashwood isn't talking about, the constant worries about money, and the return of my clinical depression. Through it all, I have done my best to keep the family going and to allow us to thrive, even, and there have definitely been bright spots, too: the joys we experience every day in raising two such wonderful girls, taking my bike outside for the first time in years, the miracle of the karate patron who gave me a scholarship so that I could continue to study, my loving partnership with Rob that has stood the test of hard times and feels stronger and more committed than ever, the support of my family and friends, including you, my dear friends list, my posse who always watches out for my back.

Yet, I still experience day-to-day life as a struggle, and the dementors have been extremely difficult lately. The new job is, hurray! a new job, but it certainly isn't bringing in the return we were led to expect (the recession is affecting sales at Rob's new store), and we are still on the extremely tightened belt budget. I experienced a real nosedive in my mood yesterday and sat down to write about it, to figure out what was really going on. When I actually ennumerated all the factors dragging down my moods, I came up with a list of about fifteen or so. What's more, I realized that many of my usual coping mechanisms for dealing with my depression when it gets bad were not available to me: no cell phone, so I can't call a friend, my computer at home is dead, so I can't easily do the computer stuff I enjoy or email. Dead broke, so I can't go out for a dinner (which I dearly would love to do after all the struggles to feed my family a meal they'll deign to eat) or a movie. I feel guilty of being too extravagent if I buy a lousy cup of coffee for myself. After almost a year of it, this sucks.

So it's no wonder that my mood was so low last night. I dutifully kitted up for sparring and went to the dojo and warmed up--and then I had to leave, because I just couldn't stop crying. I can't spar when the depression gets severe. Crud.

So: the various thoughts I've been mulling over the past several weeks. Some of it came from the retreat, some of it from various things I've read, conversations I've had, or insights that have come, particularly through the soulcollaging. THAT has been a great new tool, besides being lots of fun.

1. One thought I got from an article my sister sent to me. I can't remember the exact train of thought, but it lead to a question: imagine what your life would be like if you were not depressed. What would be your concerns, your goals, your joys, your day-to-day activities? What would you think about and try to do then? Once I started thinking about this, I realized how puzzling and strange this thinking felt. I suppose I feel about my depression as Gregor says Miles thinks about security considerations in Lois McMaster Bujold's Barrayar books: that would be like a fish thinking about water--it just never happens, because the water is always there.

2. Sister Josue at the retreat advised me to start listing my gratitudes every day. I've been doing that, and it has been helpful.

3. I picked up and skimmed a book in a gift shop (too broke to buy it but I took notes) by Gay Hendricks, called Five Wishes (Author's website is here). He encountered someone at party he really didn't want to attend, and they had a conversation which Hendricks called life-changing.

Imagine it's forty years from now, and you're on your deathbed the stranger said. Now, imagine that you look back at what you regret that you didn't get to do during your life. What would those regrets be?

Gay Hendricks thought about this. "I suppose . . .I would regret it if I didn't have a loving relationship with a woman who I adored and who adored me, and if I never had the opportunity to build a life of creativity and passion together with her."

And why is that important to you? the stranger asked.

As Hendricks thought about that, and explained, he started to understand what was holding him back, some communication issues that were present throughout all his life.

Good said the stranger. Now, turn that into a goal, in the present tense.

"I . . . want to have a loving relationship with a woman who I adore and who adore me, and to build a life of creativity and passion together with her."

Good said the stranger. Now, where are you on achieving that goal?

Gay Hendricks thought about that. The stranger smiled. Get busy

So I've been thinking about that, ever since skimming the book. I thought about my relationship with Rob and with the girls. No, I couldn't see them as a regret. I have built a loving partnership with Rob, and despite my own insecurities, I truly think that I have been a loving and good mother to the girls. They are turning out well. This dovetails well with what Sister Josue told me to do with my gratitudes. I do realize that I have much in my life to be happy about (which makes the depression particularly insiduous and annoying, of course, that it insists on sticking around, even when all sources of happiness have not been leached from one's life.) Note, the serendipity of discovering this book the same week that I am thinking about trying to visualize a life without depression. Gay Hendricks is getting at the same quality from a different approach: imagine how you can build a life where you can look back with no regrets.

Well, what about the writing? Wasn't I always saying that the fact that I have stopped writing fiction is a big regret of mine?

So I thought about it. No matter whichever way I thought about it, the only thing I could think that I would say as a regret about writing on my deathbed would be, I regret that I never wrote a beautiful book that truly moved people, that changed their lives.

But I don't need to say that. I have written a book I truly think is beautiful, that has changed people's lives.

And that was this week's blinding insight, friends list. It's true: I never wanted to write fiction to make a pile of money or win prestigious awards. It would have been nice if it had happened, but those goals never drove me. Maybe the reason I've stopped writing fiction isn't because I've lost my creativity, or because I'm too busy with the kids or I fritter away too much time on the Internet. Maybe I've stopped writing fiction because I've already achieved all that I wanted to achieve when I started writing.

Let me tell you, that is a very new thought. I will have to cogitate about that for awhile.

4. The last piece in all this is what I learned at the church service about Fiona's Mexico mission trip. The church went to the orphanage Casa Hogar Elim, which is run by a remarkable woman all the children call "Mama Lupita." The orphanage began in 1986 when Mama Lupita took in four children of an alcoholic father who had abandoned them (the mother had died), even though she had four children of her own. She kept taking in more and more children, somehow making ends meet through donations. She has made it her mission to turn these orphans' lives around, giving them food and education in a neighborhood where many children suffer horrible poverty. She never turns any child away. Mama Lupita can certainly look back on her life on her deathbed and honestly say, "My life truly made a difference for so many people."

I need to do some more thinking about the questions Gay Hendricks asks in his book (see his website here). My thoughts are hazy so far, but there's definitely something there, something about helping children, promoting literacy issues, environmental concerns. Something about wanting to travel a lot more. And there's definitely a STRONG message of I would definitely regret it if I spent forty years of my life typing paperwork for attorneys in insurance litigation--that's something I absolutely must address. I need to think more of what it would be like to live a life free of depression. I need to do more soulcollaging cards.

I need to get the damned computer fixed so I can use my iPhoto program to make more soulcollaging cards.

Edited to add: This post reminds me of one of the poems in Edgar Lee Masters' cycle of poems Spoon River Anthology, the epitaph for Fiddler Jones:

Fiddler Jones

THE EARTH keeps some vibration going
There in your heart, and that is you.
And if the people find you can fiddle,
Why, fiddle you must, for all your life.
What do you see, a harvest of clover?
Or a meadow to walk through to the river?
The wind’s in the corn; you rub your hands
For beeves hereafter ready for market;
Or else you hear the rustle of skirts
Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove.
To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust
Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth;
They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy
Stepping it off, to “Toor-a-Loor.”
How could I till my forty acres
Not to speak of getting more,
With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos
Stirred in my brain by crows and robins
And the creak of a wind-mill—only these?
And I never started to plow in my life
That some one did not stop in the road
And take me away to a dance or picnic.
I ended up with forty acres;
I ended up with a broken fiddle—
And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,
And not a single regret.

She sat perched on the edge of the chair, fidgeting a little, in the well-appointed anteroom, which was decorated with tasteful paintings on the wall and an aquarium stocked with colorful tropical fish. She knew that the fish were there to keep people from becoming nervous, but even knowing that didn't help enough. After a short wait, she was ushered into his office. A junior flunky politely offered her a choice of soda or water or coffee, but she refused. She didn't think she could have raised the cup to her lips without the trembling in her fingers becoming totally obvious.

There were pleasantries at first. She expected that, and did her best to sound natural as she replied to his polite inquiries about the day job, the family, a recent vacation. Perhaps if she just pretended to be confident, she could finesse this interview without getting too embarrassed. The trouble was, she didn't think that she could convincingly assume an air of insouciance, particularly when all she felt was sheer terror at having to face him and admit the truth. Then he leaned forward a little, looking at the papers on the desk in front of him, and she felt a frisson of dread.

"I was so pleased with your progress the last time we visited," he told her. "The Wild Swans was--well, it made me very proud." And she believed him. That, perversely, was what made facing him now so awful. He paused, looking at her expectantly, and she realized he was giving her a chance to respond. She murmured a rather disjointed thanks, something to the effect that she was quite proud of it, too. She hoped he wouldn't think she sounded like a ninny. She also hoped he wouldn't see how wretched admitting this made her feel now.

"So tell me," he said, picking up an elegant fountain pen and holding it poised over the papers in front of him. "What have you been working on since our last meeting?"

She looked down at her hands, clenched together tightly in her lap. "I was--I had started another novel. About--about an ice palace. The St. Paul Winter Carnival ice palace, you know. The central character is the architect designing it. And it's--well. Well. About--about summer and winter magic." She cursed herself inwardly for her own stammering.

He waited, but she volunteered nothing more. "That sounds promising. It could be quite interesting, indeed." Another pause. "But you are not finished with it yet?"

Slowly, she shook her head. "No, I'm not." She heard the leather of his seat creak as he sat back, looking at her. She couldn't bring herself to look up to meet his eyes as she added faintly, "I--I don't think I'm going to finish it."

The pause that followed was very long indeed. "I see," he said. Was he angry, she wondered anxiously? Was he surprised? She couldn't tell. She could feel her palms starting to sweat. "Then--what are you working on now, Ms. Kerr?"

She could hear the faint ticking of the elegant clock on his desk. How was it possible to hear that over the thundering of her own heartbeat? Couldn't she just keel over out of sheer nerves and end the agony of this interview that way? She took a deep breath. "I'm not working on anything right now," she said, surprising herself with the steadiness of her own voice. Fleetingly, with an enormous effort, she finally raised her gaze to meet his. "I don't think I'm going to write any more novels, sir." Inwardly, she cringed. There. She had said it.

"No more novels?" Slowly, he turned the pen over in his fingers. Tap. Tap. "May I ask why you do not think you will be writing any more novels?"

She opened her mouth and closed it again as a wave of shame swept over her. Tears prickled the corners of her eyes. Oh, no. No. I swore I would not cry. "It's--it's just so hard. It's very difficult." She cleared her throat.

"Difficult." The very flatness of his voice made the inadequacy of the excuse clear.

"I'm just--well, I'm just so busy. Ferrying the girls around. Keeping up with everything. And I try to write--I try to write, and nothing comes." There were other reasons, of course. The frittering away of her time on the internet. The time spent reading junk. Why mention it? She already looked stupid enough as it was.

"But you try."

"Well. I did. I did, for a long time. Eventually--eventually, I stopped trying, you see."

Tap. Tap. "If you do not write your novels, Ms. Kerr," he said with infinite gentleness, "no one else will write them for you."

His very gentleness made her feel even worse. I will not cry. "I know that, sir," she ground out through gritted teeth.

He pulled the calendar before him forward and named a future date. "I will see you for your next report then."

"But--but I won't have anything to report," she said desperately. "I told you. I've stopped writing novels."

But he was already writing her name down on the paper, and he raised an eyebrow. "We shall see, Ms. Kerr. We shall see."

If you stopped writing for a long time--and I mean a LONG time, on the order of several years--and then managed to start again successfully, I would like to hear a little about your experience. Why did you stop? What did you need to resume? What prompted your resuming? Did you fret about not-writing when you were not writing? Were you afraid that you had given it up for good? When you resumed, how long did it take you to have faith in yourself?

From The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon:

It was a clear, moonlit night a little after the tenth of the Eighth Month. Her majesty, who was residing in the Empress's Office, sat by the edge of the veranda while Ukon no Naishi played the flute for her. The other ladies in attendance sat together, talking and laughing; but I stayed by myself, leaning against one of the pillars between the main hall and the veranda.

'Why so silent,' said Her Majesty. 'Say something. It is sad when you do not speak.'

'I am gazing into the autumn moon,' I replied.

'Ah yes,' she remarked. 'That is just what you should have said.'

Such a simple little scene, deftly sketched in just a few paragraphs. One can see it--the moonlit garden, the ladies gathered, talking softly, the flutist, the Empress, and Sei Shonagon, looking up at the moon with a melancholic air. The ladies described--once living, breathing people--have been dead and dust now for a thousand years, and yet the words on the page immediately brings them to life for us again.

Shakespeare understood this to the core, and examined it at length in the sonnets. From the ending of Sonnet 18:


. . . Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this [the sonnet] and this gives life to thee.
.

I read a story years ago--and damn me for not remembering the title or author--which started, very simply, by describing a man, a simple laborer, who died in his sleep one night. The rest of the story is a straightforward account of how his presence is erased from the world. He had no children. His simple possessions are sold and scattered to the winds. The story tells of a gathering of friends twelve years later, eating dinner at a common inn. In the course of the conversation, one says to the other, "We went there with that fellow we worked with long ago--what was his name, John Josephson--" and the conversation goes on from there. And that the narrator tells us was the last time that John Josephson's name was ever spoken by another human being.

The years speed on, and then another forty years or so later the narrator focuses on something, a written record--I don't remember what it was, a written ledger, or a Bible in a church. There is a storm (or was it a fire?) and the book with John Josephson's name (or was it his signature?) is destroyed. The page is soaked, and the ink runs, or perhaps it is burned. There are five letters left in his name, then three. Then one. Then the last letter is gone, as is John Josephson from all human memory.

[Anyone remember that story??? Title and author???]

I have been thinking about the ice palace book. Well--sort of squinting at it out of the corner of my eyes without trying to look at it directly. I have been wondering, rather gloomily, whether I should just admit facts and remove all reference to it from my user profile page. I haven't worked on it in months. It was going well, and then it wasn't going well, and then it all seemed to dry up. I do not know whether I made a mistake in talking about it in this journal--did that somehow suck all the creative juices out of it, keeping me from actually writing it? Is it just that I am so busy with the kids and my job, and the fact that I am not writing is an inevitable reflection of the busy nature of my life, or am I just making lame excuses for laziness, lack of talent? Am I not working on the book because I am depressed, or am I depressed because I am not working on the book? Screw the cause: I am very very very depressed, and I haven't been working on the book. Not for a long time.

And yet, and yet . . .

I am not entirely divorced from it, it is not entirely dead for me, because I am struggling with the same things Solveig is struggling with. I always knew that there was much going on in the book about permanence, impermanence. Solveig is horrified by Rolf's quest for immortality, but she understands it, too, because, like Jack, she wants to create something that will last. I type insurance paperwork for a living, and she designs shopping malls; like me, she sure as hell isn't getting what she needs from her day job. She gets irritable--just as I do--by those who try to convince her that since she's mothering a child, she should accept that as her gift to the future. No, Solveig says, and I say--I want to do something, make something, that will last. We both want a life's work that will matter, long term, that will stand for years to come. She ponders this as she designs an ice palace which will melt, but which she hopes will live in memory, just as I ponder my writing. I have my paper journals lined up in neat rows in my office. What will happen to them when I die? I have thought about this--Rob will have the right to read them if he survives me. The girls can read them after they have reached the age of twenty-one, and they will inherit them. In my deepest anxious craving to be remembered, to matter, somehow, I wonder if they will ever be read by anyone else, people who never have the chance to meet me. Will the words be interesting--enough to last? Will anyone give a damn?

What do I have to say for the ages? Will my life be remembered years, decades, even centuries later, like Sei Shonagon, like Shakespeare, like Jane Austen, like Tolkien, because of the words that I wrote--words about my own life, or my fictional creation? Or will I be erased inexorably by the remorseless, relentless, hand of Time?

I do not know what to do about the ice palace book. I seem paralyzed about it, and when I permit myself to think beyond the blackness of my depression--which seems just about impossible these days--I am in a rage, absolutely fucking furious at myself for being so blocked.

The fury does not help. It is not a spur to action; it just makes me feel worse, if I possibly could.

But beyond that, even, there is still something there about the book that is connected to me, to my deepest concerns, so I guess it's not dead yet--even if I can't figure out how to grasp it and shape it and make it work--or if I can't somehow force myself to do the hard slogging work to bring it into being. Whatever the cause.

God help me.

(Or maybe I should just switch to sonnets.)

Laurie WInter did a tarot reading for me on Sunday, as she has done the past several years. (I don't know which deck it was, sorry). I have mixed feelings about tarot. I don't fear them as instruments of the devil (Tim Powers, for example, despite having written a novel all about the power of the Tarot, will not allow a deck in his house), although I am at times a little uneasy about them. I guess I treat them, as Kij has said, as something that might open a window of thought that might help you to think about your life in a different way. I have known writers who have found them to be at times helpful to use when thinking about their books.

The question (which I didn't tell Laurie) "What do I need to know about getting the ice palace book going and moving toward a full, confident, successful writer's life?

The Signifier: 2 of Pentacles, showing a woman on a tightrope, holding a pentacle in each hand. "Balance or focus." Oh, yeah. I laughed when I saw that. That's what I'm all about, definitely.

Situation Surrounding You: King of Swords, reversed. Cruel and crafty, untrustworthy, crafty pig-headed. This could be a person, but no one sprang to mind for me. It felt to me instead like writers block, like the pig-headed stubbornness of my back brain to produce words when I ask it to.

Recent past: 7 of Wands, showing a man standing on a hill, with wands pointed at him from the foreground. Being prepared for whatever comes, you've picked your high ground. Forces are arrayed against you, but you operate from a position of strength.

Bridge or barrier: Ace of Swords. Shows a sword, surrounded by flowered garlands, but the sword pierces through them. Attainment of power or goals. insight/mental/mind, "cutting through the crap."

Near Future: Page of Wands. She stands holding a tall wand with a crystal at the top, emitting rays. Firecrackers at her belt. Harnessing available energy. It felt like a card showing "focussing," which was hopeful, suggesting getting in touch with whatever-it-is that makes me write well.

Root: 5 of Pentacles. Shows a ragged man in the snow, facing away from a stained glass window (the five pentacles are in the stained glass). Another hooded woman lies huddled in the snow under the window. Not taking help available, turning away, choosing to step outside, do it my way. It felt like writers block again, the feeling of being out in the cold, not making it on my own. The writing has felt impoverished in the past.

Goal: 6 of swords, reversed. Shows a man in a boat with swords in it, floating without his guidance into a cave. Trip to higher consciousness is advised. Reversed it means you have doubts about obtaining your goal. I asked her, "Doubts about achieving it or doubts about wanting to achieve it? "Excellent question," she replied.

How you see yourself: Chariot. Balance again. About not driving (the driver is holding a lyre rather than the reins). He is focused on his art, rather than the journey, driven at high speed. This felt like another balance card, and the feeling of being slightly out of control. Interestingly enough, it was the only major arcana card in the entire reading.

How others see you: 8 of swords, reversed. This is a scary looking card, with a bound blindfolded woman surrounded by cards, but since it's reversed, the meaning is respite from fear, new beginnings, freedom, release. A very hopeful meaning.

Hopes and fears: 10 of cups. Happy family, surrounded by abundance. Home, joy, familial bliss, contentment of heart, peace, respect from others.

Up until this point, I had felt that the reading was moving in a very hopeful direction. I had been blocked, but somehow I was going to get focused and move in the right direction. Then Laurie turned over the last card.

Outcome: 6 of pentacles, reversed. Shows a man holding a scale, with hands reaching out to him. Reversed, it means unstable finances, frustrated plans, jealousy can cause harm.

I stared at the card, disappointed. Rats.

Laurie suggested that since there was only one major arcana card, this might be interpreted as a very short term reading. Perhaps the last card was a caution, rather than a prediction. Jealousy, I thought, and laughed a little. I told her how I had sat next to Jane Yolen at the signing, and there had been a long line at the table for her to sign (serendipoz probably had at least fifty books for her) and nobody had one of mine. Yeah, I have to beware of jealousy, of comparing myself to others; it will only make my frustration/dissatisfaction about the progress of my career worse.

Comments, especially about that last card?

Have been thinking about the ice palace book, and why I haven't been working on it. Figured some stuff out today. I found myself thinking, with more than a twinge of impatience, that I seem to be able to come up with more reasons not to be writing than any writer I know. ( More )

This is awfully discouraging.

Peg

This book needs a spine. It needs a plot. I haven't worked it out, yet. Actually, it feels like I am still short several key ideas which are necessary to structure it. Is what I'm playing with too similar to what I've read before? Is my thinking too simplistically dualistic? Can I ever write a sentence again that doesn't clunk? Am trying not to panic. Panic is ridiculously premature. One should wait until one has written, oh, say at least seventy pages, and THEN panic.

(I have a Far Side cartoon hanging on my wall, which shows a sheep sitting at a desk in front of a typewriter, throwing papers into the air in despair. The caption reads: "Forget it! Forget it! Everything I write is just so much bleating!")

Took the girls out for several errands today--more than they really wanted to run; they were pretty limp by the time we got home. I took them to see the Little Guy's house. They were extremely intrigued and made me promise to bring them back in the summer time, so that they could leave him a note.

Stopped at Patina, where I bought two votive/tealight holders with beaded shades, and four simpler votive holders, in the same warm brown. They're all burning in my office now.

I love my office. The candleholders are exactly what I've been wanting for several years, and look lovely against the wood paneling. Up around the ceiling, I have a row of art postcards, and fairy lights hang over them, around the entire room. With the fairy lights on, and the candles lit, it feels warm and cozy.

But it's cluttered. Um, really, REALLY cluttered. (I realized this anew when I came to the regretful decision that none of the candleholders could go on the desk, as it is too hopelessly strewn with papers.) I looked through some books on Feng Shu while I was at Patina and thought about it a bit, as I was trying to figure out where to perch those candleholders. Lots of Feng Shu I suspect is pure nonsense--I guffawed out loud at an illustration which explained how to cleanse unhelpful energy that lurks in corners by ritualistic clapping. Still . . . there are all those papers, and they feel oppressive. The pencil sharpener has been broken for at least two years. The books on top of the desk were research for the novel before the last one; I haven't opened any of them in ages. One of the bookcases is stuffed with software boxes for software I don't use. The cupboard over the computer monitor is full of back up disks so old that I haven't stuck them in the disk drive in years. There are paperbacks on the shelves that I don't expect to ever read again.

It's time to clean this office. I need to get rid of the stuff I accumulated writing the last two books, to make room for the stuff I'll accumulate writing this book. I'd like to get something to store my CDs that isn't so ugly, and that doesn't threaten to fall over. I need to clear off the shelving.

But what the hell do I do with all this stuff I'll be clearing out? I don't want to stuff it into the basement. Can I really bring myself to throw it away? (I'd better not do so in front of Rob, as he will object strenuously if I ever try to get rid of ANYTHING that might be useful at least once in the next twenty years.)

Well, I can start tomorrow. Since my computer will play DVDs, perhaps I could watch Lord of the Rings and clean/pitch at the same time, thus satisfying two impulses simultaneously. Perhaps I can be more ruthless while distracted.

And maybe it will be easier to come up with some way to structure the book once the desk is clean.

Part of me darkly suspects this is all merely an excuse to keep me from actually starting to write the book. Domestic chores look unbelievably alluring when the back brain is balking. (I can't write. I think I'll do the laundry/scrub the floor/file my paperwork/paint the bedroom.)

But I did do several pages of brainstorming/writing tonight, so I suppose I shouldn't feel too guilty. I just don't know how I'll be able to use it, or whether it will produce anything useful at all. Too soon to tell. Aargh. Creative angst.

Peg

I have decided to write a novel.

I have written two novels, and both have been published. Since finishing The Wild Swans almost exactly four years ago (the afterward to that book was dated August 30, 1998), I started another book, a prequel to Emerald House Rising, which peetered out after about seventy pages of manuscript, and a novel collaboration with kijjohnson. That latter project is still a viable project, and it's well written and a lot of fun, but we have had to set it aside for the moment because Kij is finishing another book up under contract.

So, in the four years since finishing The Wild Swans, I have finished one short story. I have not managed to sell it.

I have been writhing and agonizing about this for some time. Today, abruptly, as a result of various conversations and threads of thought, I have decided to start again. Like Mr. Earbrass, who sets the date that he begins his next novel (for him, it is November 18 of alternate years) I am setting the date that I am beginning my new novel, and it is today.

I have set my goal for the first week: brainstorm. So I lit my writing candle for one hour (while the candle is lit, I am not allowed to answer the phone or go on the Internet, or do any other avoidance behavior) and brainstormed, writing down anything and everything that interests me. I also identified various stories that I have been moved by in the past, and tried to pinpoint what I liked about them.

I do not have to dream up my whole novel in one hour. After my first hour of brainstorming I have, however, decided one thing about my new novel: it will be about a character who, in the words of Pamela Dean in her afterward to Tam Lin must choose between a heart of flesh and a heart of stone. The novel will be devoted to what leads the character to making that choice.

Well! We have that settled. We'll see what comes out of tomorrow's brainstorming session.

I don't know how this will work with my LiveJournal. I will continue to be public about the process, as long as it works for me, but if talking about the process keeps me from DOING it, I won't. We'll see how it goes. I don't intend to post any of the actual fiction in progress here, however, but will instead run it past the faithful beta readers who helped my on my last books.

Cheers,
Peg

Well, the interviewer who said she would get back to Rob today never did. I have to say, this doesn't look good at all.

On the bright side, however, Rob spent some time giving the support post in the kitchen a massage with the power sander, AND NOW THE STOVE FITS FLUSH AGAINST THE WALL!

Scarfed down most of Edward Eager's Half Magic today. Why have I never read Eager until now?

From kissaki's journal (which I found through epicyclical): "You know . . . there is no such thing as writer's block. There is only spaces of free time between writing." Useful.

My post from last night has spun off into another thread in mahoney's journal; I've posted a reply to her.

Listened to another interesting interview on NPR's All Things Considered on the way home from work, this time with Colin Firth. If you have RealOne Player, you can listen to it here (If I've set this link up correctly, that is), or you can get it at the ATC website (May 24th). They were interviewing him because of his part in the forthcoming release of The Importance of Being Earnest. Fascinating. I've followed his career with interest ever since his appearance in the the BBC Pride and Prejudice as Mr. Darcy. He was speaking about what inspired him to become an actor; it was seeing Pascal Field [sp?] as Thomas Moore in Man for All Seasons:

"This was something new, because there was a paradox to what he was doing in that it it was so utterly true, it was so unadorned, and how can it be true? It's acting, it's false. I mean I know we're all trying to be true, but there was something so expressive of integrity in what he did. He was portraying a man who doesn't have an acting bone in his body. And that was the thing that gripped me the most. It's not in anything he seemed to be doing physically. It's not in anything that one might, in the crudest sense, call acting. It just is there in his eyes; it's there in his voice; it's there in his stillness. And I think that that was the thing that I most wanted to pursue."

YES. That's it, that's what I want to get at with writing. He goes on:

"Whatever convention you're working with, and whether it's pantomime or however broad the comedy is, it's still important to look for a core of truth, of reality. It doesn't have to be Truth with a capital 'T'--but you are representing a human being, whatever you're doing. If it's comedy, it's going to be funnier if it's rooted in truth.

Yes. That's it. That's what I want to do as a writer--whether I do comedy or something else.



Oh: and before I forget, I've meant several times to post this bit for all the Jane Austen heroes I love:

Darcy has passion,
Wentworth won't quit,
Brandon's romantic,
And Tilney has wit.

Edward is honourable
And quietly domestic.
Reginald's young
And I bet he's athletic!

Cousin Edmund is brotherly
But Knightley's no brother
So, why should I choose
Either one over t'other?

Since I'm many women
All rolled into one
I'll choose my heroes
For maximum fun.

Life is uncertain
And full of vexation.
I'll take them all
In sequential rotation!

G.Kay Bishop, 1999

Cheers,
Peg