Before you comment on how writers cannot write without living, and cannot live without writing, I just want you to see this wink here: see?
I am just having fun with false dichotomies. Doesn't the title provoke a stronger response in you than "how I plan strike a balance between writing and spending time with the kids this summer"?
So anyway, as many writers with school age children have commented on their blogs recently, summer time poses a question for us. Should we continue to write? Or should we take time for our children?
For example, The tollboothers exhort us to take a break and enjoy our summer. I agree. Kids grow up in the blink of an eye. Summer is a time to be enjoyed outdoors, with a leisurely attitude. (Nat King Cole is singing in my head right now: "roll out the hazy, lazy, crazy days of summer....") There is a certain rhythm and cycle to life; and taking a break is very much part of that.
But I know I can't take the whole summer off from writing. Not possible. Not even conceivable. What I plan is to carve aside an hour in the morning (as the kids read or draw or do quiet desk things) and an hour in the afternoon (as they get their screen time) to write.
I'll let you know how that works.
I've been working on my MG novel for longer than I care to remember. Some writers can tell you how many revisions their books have gone through; I can't. I am one of those who revise on a rolling basis. But recently I did make myself do a once-through revision, to make sure the big picture details are in place, that characters don't disappear, that threads don't get dropped, that details stay consistent.
This week, I've made use of the forced time away from the novel by my trip, to do another once-through, big picture revision. I anticipated the work to be smooth, with minor changes here and there. After all, I'd done so much of the detail revision last time.
Ha! Right.
Things are never as easy as I want them to be. There are a number of places in the book where the emotional flow doesn't feel right. Somewhere at the back of my mind, I knew which direction I should take, thank goodness. I hate those times when something doesn't read right and I have no idea how to fix them.
But knowing what direction to take and actually writing the scenes that take those directions are two separate events. Oh how I've fought the decision because I know how long it takes for me to get from first draft to polished: very, VERY long. And since most of the book has clawed its way through so many revisions, I was hesitant to introduce new passages that I know would read much more awkwardly.
Can't I just pretend I don't see the flaws? Can't I just switch around some sentences and replace some words and call it done? After all, I am getting ready to send out a few partials and a full. I need to get the baby out the door!
This morning, I finally took the plunge and re-wrote some of those passages. I am resigned to the fact that I'll have to hang on to the manuscript for a longer time before the new passages gel and mature. But I know, in my gut somewhere, the book will be better for it.
Even if the new passages take me to completely new places and I have to rewrite the entire second half of the book.
[An anguished NO escapes me...]
[the graffiti man is anguished by revjim5000]
The worst thing about my body thinking we're on the other side of the globe is waking up at dawn and staying awake for hours. I don't do 2 a .m.; or 3 or 4 for that matter. Yet it'll be a couple of weeks before I adjust.
Mining the experience for my writing seems like a logical choice, except that at the wee hours of the morning, my mind is in deep fog. I don't know when John Updike wrote his poem, Tossing and Turning: while still tossing and turning in his bed, or afterward. But it's a poem I relate to very well right now.
Tanita Davis chose this poem for last week's Poetry Friday. I am a little late to the party, but here is a snippet:
...
Yet we turn each time
with fresh hope, believing sleep
will visit us here...
can only end, around a corner
we do not know
we are turning.
Go read Tossing and Turning by John Updike in its entirety at Tanita's blog.
After two weeks of traveling, reunions, and sleep deprivation, I am now back to packing school lunches, pulling weeds, and hyper-miling on familiar routes. The mundane, the necessary, the ordinary.
When I was preparing for the trip, I was worried about the upheaval of my routine, about losing my daily flow. Now that I am back, I miss the unexpected, the dramatic, the heightened emotional state.
Real life, filled with contradictions and opposites.
Contradictions by Marcin Wichary on Flikr
The clock on my computer says 9:42 a.m., my body says it's close to midnight and time to sleep. Where is that second cup of coffee?
coffee by Kwerfeldein on Flickr
When I picked up Natalie Goldberg's book on writing memoir, Friends From Faraway, I wasn't intending to write a memoir, not seriously anyway. Neither did I realize the title was a saying of Confucius. The poem, from which this line is taken, loosely translates to:We learn, and practice what we learn.What joy.Friends arrive from faraway.What happiness.[It is a lot more elegant in the original;)]Coincidental or not, this is the book I am reading as I return to my childhood home, reminisicing with family and old friends, reconnecting to the language of my youth. Every trip I've taken since leaving home twenty five years ago has taught me something about my family and myself. This trip is no different. And as with other trips, the process is filled with nostalgia, moments of epiphany, and occasionally, sorrow. The thoughts and emotions from this trip will work themselves out in the next months and years. Maybe I will be writing a memoir after all.
My nomination for the Independent Bookseller of the Year has been posted at The Shrinking Violets Promotions. Please go check it out and link to the post or comment to be entered into a chance to win a prize.And don't forget to support indie booksellers!
The family-reunion genre may not have the classic story arc; the characters may seem to act in ways that defy story logic; the conflicts don't often resolve in satisfying ways. But it is characterized by moments of grace and sacrifices, compassion and stubborn optimism.
From Natalie Goldberg's Friends From Far Away:
It's a simple idea really; eac a lot of peaches, you'll become a peach. Read good books, ones that are well-written where the author cares, thinks, is willing to feel the aching texture of the world and of this own rough mind and you are at least a third of the way into the practice.
Like in a good novel, flashbacks and back-story should be kept to a minimum during family reunions, and only if they can be seamlessly woven into the narrative.
More from Friends from Far Away:
In real life get out of the way when a person with a gun is running down the street, In your writing life step in front of his path, let him shoot you in the heart.
What you fear, if you turn toward it, will give your writing teeth.
