My Own, Personal, Cyclic Universe
Mood:
lyrical
Topic: Writing
I need to learn how to create my own Emoticons. There have been a couple of times now when I haven't been able to find exactly what I'm looking for in the list from which I get to choose. Today's Emoticon would definitely be Dreamy. I went to sleep last night anticipating a snow day today where I could work from home, writing for the tarot project from the couch with Kaija on my lap and a fire in the fireplace and Hurricane Chili (even though today's weather has been dubbed a "winter event," NOT a hurricane) bubbling in the crockpot while brownies baked in the oven.... I'm writing about Pele, goddess of fire, volcanos, lightning, and dance, and about how anger, like lava, if properly released, can be a creative force. (For the purposes of the tarot project, I'm having to ignore the fact that Pele's anger and her seduction of her sister's husband led to her banishment from her native Tahiti and her eventual destruction in Hawaii, but those aspects are still working on me somehow.) I've been thinking about her for a few weeks now, and I think I'm close to saying what I want to about her. Part of me was really looking forward to spending today doing that deep, reflective kind of writing that approximates poetry. I wanted to get my first, complete draft done and then spend the afternoon making each word earn its place on the page. (Marc sent me his novel last week, and when I was preparing my comments on the synopsis and the first few chapters, I reread the beginning of Noah Lukeman's The First Five Pages and it made me want to test my skill with strong nouns and verbs.)
Add to that the fact that I had an idea for an aubade last night before I fell asleep, and all I want to do today is play with words. (An aubade is a poem that in some way addresses the morning, sometimes welcoming it but more often wishing it away because the arrival of the morning sun usually means lovers must part.) I have never been inspired to write an aubade before, so this is an exciting urge. We'll see how long the excitement lasts once I start struggling with the actual writing, though!
So, of course, at 6:00 a.m. when I needed to call Sudie to find out whether she wanted me to drive in to work, there was not a snowflake to be found. So long warm puppy. So long cozy fire. So long dreaming of red lava while I looked out the window on a world of white. The snow started as soon as Kaija and I stepped outside for our morning walk, and then let loose as soon as I hit the freeway. Now the snow has turned to the drizzle they promised, but it has not yet begun to freeze. And the work of the day has been anything but creative--end of year inventory of books, following up on marketing projects, fighting STILL with BellSouth aka the New AT&T to get the voicemail system set up so that I have my own mailbox.
It's the first day of February, which usually makes me really happy because that is the beginning of my birthday month when all the planets are all about me. Like Lorelai Gilmore, I do require a week of festivities celebrating the date of my arrival in this life, but with Valentine's Day and our marriage (elopement) anniversary (our wedding anniversary is in July, just so I get a little attention mid-year!) all lined up in that week, I don't have to work very hard to make sure my birthday is properly acknowledged, leaving energy to find other days in the month that can be all about me. (Yeah, right.)
This year, though, the first day of February means I'm a month into 2007 without having solid plans for this particular trip around the sun mapped out. I haven't heard anything in a few weeks about that major writing assignment I am still hoping to land. I realized this week that I created the biggest intention around that particular project that I have ever created, and it's hitting me now that my power to manifest possibilities in my life may still have limits. I have been going through these phases of super optimism where my universe expands and phases of deflation where I simply can't maintain that same level of enthusiasm that I carried and fed steadily for more than two months. Luckily, the deflation phase is replaced pretty quickly with another optimism phase, but at this point, I think my family and friends are pretty scared to ask me if I've heard anything. I myself have been afraid to blog because I've been on such an emotional rollercoaster and completely focused on the outcome of this particular decision over which I feel less and less control.
On days when I've had excess energy--when I wanted to do something more to improve my chances of joining that project, and there was nothing more that I could do--I have made some progress with my personal writing and goals. One Friday night when I had hoped to hear something and hadn't, I went straight to my computer after my walk with Kaija and sent out a short story to Glimmer Train. I had finished the story more than a year ago and made a plan for who I was going to submit it to and in what order, and then I never sent it out except to have some friends read it. Now it is under consideration by someone who might actually be able to publish it. On another night when I could not sleep, I spent several hours researching science writing, and found two national organizations to consider joining--including one that has a mentor program--as well as summer conferences, lists of Master's programs, and information on how to get started and salary expectations based on whether you are a freelancer, a science beat reporter for a newspaper or magazine, or a public information officer for a university.
On top of that, I went back to my Scanner Daybook that I started last summer when I read Barbara Sher's book Refuse to Choose: A Revolutionary Program for Doing Everything That You Love and, going with the Random Acts of Passion Model, I created my fifteen-month calendar and a list of fifteen mostly writing-related goals that I intend to achieve beginning this month and ending on April 30, 2008. On that list of 15, I included reaching my goal weight, getting a passport, and planning my first International trip (somewhere other than Canada or Mexico!). I also want to figure out once and for all what I'm doing with Your Mileage May Vary and have a first draft of my next book finished. I have goals for science articles, for poems, for the number of queries I'll write, and for classes I might teach. I figure these goals will be portable, achievable from any state in the country, and stable, regardless of whether I get to join the major writing project on which I've set my sights. I am also going to make the goals public--handing off copies of my list to my parents and Chad and maybe even Marc if I decide to take him up on his offer to exchange work now that he's feeling confident in his own project--so that someone can always ask for an update and help keep me motivated.
Maybe tonight I'll try my hand at the beginning of an aubade. I do like to try new things....
Thoughts captured by Kristine
at 12:01 AM EST
Updated: Friday, February 2, 2007 12:01 PM EST
sad
crushed out
surprised
silly
chillin'
on fire
mischievious