Writing and Stitching

This week, our impromptu reading group started Bird by Bird.  We are reading and discussing the Introduction and the first two chapters right now.  On Sunday I read this week's chapters and found this E.L. Doctorow quote ringing through my head all week:  "Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."  Finally, today, I sat down and did some writing about it:

I know I must force myself to write bird by bird, just the bits I can see in the headlights before me. But I think, like that car trip, I'm going to need to know where I'm going. I think I haven't finished things in the past because I started wandering from my original story line and got lost. So this week I've been toying with that driving analogy, and I've come to a few conclusions:

•  I only need to write the next part, what I can see in front of me.
• Like heading out on a trip, I need to know where I'm going and have some idea of the route I will take so I'll know what the next part is.
• Like a road trip, I won't know--and don't need to know--the exact details of each part of the road before I get there. I will see those as the road unfolds before me if I just keep moving forward.

So, I will need some planning, some sketchy ideas of what my ending will be and at least some of the major scenic viewpoints along the way. But I don't think I actually need to know nearly as much of the story before I start writing as many of my books and classes have led me to believe I need. So, some light planning, a road map with thin and wavering red and blue lines, and I should be good to go, jumping back in with just writing the next bit.

So where does stitching come into all of this?  After writing that bit above, I went to wash my lunch dishes.  I found myself still mulling over this bird-by-bird, write only what you see in the headlights idea.  And then I realized that writing is just like embroidery.  No, really, it is. 

When I plan an embroidery project, first I have a general idea.  "Spring" or "birds" or "autumn leaves."  Just like having a story idea.  The next thing is to start fiddling with design elements, deciding what I want the final product to look like, what colors I want, what cloth and thread and beads will be used.  Then I get the basic design--the outlines of major shapes and some sort of border to give me boundaries--down on cloth.  And then I begin stitching.  I stitch the big shapes in outline first. Then I start filling in the sections, first the main sections of the design then the smaller bits.  Finally, I put in the final details--knots and dimensional stitches and beads--to polish it up and finish it off. 

This works for me.  I always end up with a finished product I like, although it never looks quite like what I envisioned when I started.  Also, somewhere in the early middle stages of an embroidery I start thinking that it's awful.  It's never going to work, it's going all wrong, I don't know how to make it into something I want it to be.  But I calm myself down and just keep going one stitch at a time, one small section at a time... You get the picture, right?  I just can't believe I never saw the analogy before!  Stitching and writing, threads and words.  It is the same.  I can even see a little bit how to create the sketchy outline for writing the way I do for stitching.  I can see that this can work for me.  I just really can't believe it took me this long.

Moving Merrily Onward

Okay, maybe not so merrily. I feel clunky and uninspired still, but I know that will go away once I can get myself back into a normal routine of writing regularly. Meanwhile, while I work toward that routine, I am slow and sludgy and draggy. And yet...And yet there is a story building in my head. It's a Greenvale story--Greenvale is my made-up city on a bay on the shore of the Pacific and has a university and a lighthouse and a thriving art community. It's a great place even mostly unformed as it is now, and a few of my story nuggets are going to be Greenvale stories.

So I am still left with the question: Why am I so resistant to writing? I can't stop thinking about writing and my stories. My head is filled with all of it all the time. So what's the problem? What is holding me back, keeping me from actually doing it? I think there's a lot of worry that once I really try I'll find out I'm not actually good at it. I've had positive feedback in the past on both my fiction and other writing, including from professors and other teachers. But I find a quiet, whispery worry in the back of my mind that warns that those situations might just have been flukes and that I won't be able to repeat my success. That whisper is accompanied by another that tells me that my years of not doing a lot of regular writing have probably dried up my talent so I have nothing left to actually put down on paper.

I don't think those whispers are actually telling me the truth. At least, my rational mind doesn't believe them. But I am somehow letting them thwart me even though I know they lie. Part of my plan to overcome them is to keep writing about all of this here. Maybe someday this will even be useful to other writers and creatives who are caught in the same sticky trap.

Now, though, I am going to do one thing. I am taking one step. I am going to post this and then get out my Lesson 5 papers and finish my D&L. By tomorrow, I plan to be able to write here that I'm ready for the next phase.

Fingers crossed...

Write some more

Today I read Robert Lee Brewer's "Poetic Asides" blog. He interviewed poet Cherryl Floyd-Miller, and she said: "Write! And then write some more. When you feel like you truly (((can))) *quit* writing, then you should quit ..."

It seems almost an answer to what I wrote on Wednesday about toying with the idea of quitting. Don't do it unless you feel like you actually can. I don't feel that way, so I am definitely not quitting. I am still a writer.

Renewal

It's spring. Time for spring cleaning. For me right now the thing that needs to be cleaned the most is my mind. I have been wallowing in depression and dreariness for months now, and I'm ready to stop.

I am still working on the Holly Lisle How to Think Sideways course. I'm way behind in the lessons, but I am going to keep moving forward. I think it's a good system, and I refuse to give up.

I've toyed with the idea of giving up, thought that maybe I wasn't meant to be a writer. I thought maybe if I was really meant to be a writer it would be easier to actually just sit down and write; if I was really a writer I'd just be doing it. So maybe I wasn't meant for it and should just stop trying, stop yearning and hoping, stop beginning again and again. But I have this quote in front of my from Christina Baldwin: "We do not choose a vision; we are not given a longing, unless we are also given the ability to fulfill it."

I can't walk away from it, even though I'm not really doing it right now. I can't stop thinking about writing. I can't stop thinking of story, of the people who live in my head, of things that I might want to put into my writing. I can't stop thinking of new stories, bits of dialogue, descriptions of places. I can't stop turning things I'm looking at into descriptions in my head, trying to figure out how I would write the scene to make it most vivid. I think this actually tells me everything I need to know. I can't stop. I can say that I'm going to stop, but I can't actually manage it. My brain won't stop sending the ideas and thoughts and compulsions.

So, how to turn ideas and thoughts and compulsions into a regular writing habit that will move me forward and get me to finish stories and create a real writing life? Not fully sure on that one yet. But I'll keep you posted. I'll probably be writing here more--I thought checking in with page or word counts and progress updates might be useful for me. The writing here will probably become more personal, more about what I'm doing with my stories rather than about writing in general. If anyone is still looking, I hope you'll like that ride.

Moving on up

My word count as of this evening is 11,052. Yes, I'm still behind. But I've made my 2,200 word goal and then some both yesterday and today. I'm feeling really good, really proud of myself. For a little while there on Thursday and Friday, I was really feeling like giving up. I really felt like I just couldn't do it this year, just wasn't going to make my goal. But I'm doing it. And I am going to make my goal. And I need to find some way to take these lessons with me into the other eleven months of the year so I can reach my dream of being a working writer, a published author. And yes, I'm sure I want to do it. Because while the dream of writing and the writing life is exciting, I can actually say that I also want to write, need to write, love to write.

I feel like there are other things I want to say. Unfortunately, my brain is full now, and I'm pretty sure I'm not making sense. That's okay, though. There will be time for making sense tomorrow...