So It Is In Life

September 30, 2007

Thank you all for such a warm welcome back to the blogosphere.

This weekend i’ve been pretty housebound– not sure why. laziness? tired?

It’s probably more that i’m preparing for the storm… I start teaching at UCSD this week–two nights a week and two mornings, and in between those night and mornings i’m teaching at the community college. I can feel my days slowly being taken from me, feel the tightening of time, the grip of my ever-filling daily schedule. But I have to be diligent with my writing, have to remain focused.

Anyway, Friday night Ted and I stayed in and watched some television– that trashy/fun new show Dirty, Sexy, Money. I give it a season at best, but it was campy. While we watched it I worked on a new postcard:

Here is one version of it, without the gloss sprayed on.

Here is the version with the gloss. If you notice, the gloss spray seems to make the writing from the other side of the paper (in this case, the clipping/s were taken from a 1960s book about families reading to their children) come through. It has a weird affect, and part of me likes it (because another image of a man or boy has come through), but part of me is bothered by it because it kind of messes up the piece. Anyone out there do collage know what I can do to stop this from happening? I use Mod-Podge to apply the scraps of paper/clippings to the postcard, then I spray with Royalcoat Hi-Gloss Finish.

Anyway, I love making these postcards. Here’s another that I sent to my postcard swap partner in France:

Again, you can see the other side of the paper has come through! Arghh! How to stop this??

I’m sure i’ll figure it out at some point. But if anyone has any tips please email me or comment.
This weekend i’m also working on a revision of Chapter 2 of my new novel for my Writing Class/workshop. This class has been so exciting for me because it is all about making sure your first three chapters really open up the book, really help set the structure, tone, themes. The instructor talks about how in the beginning of your book there needs to be in II– an Inciting Incident– and this sets the book in motion, sets the character/s up. Then out of the II should come a problem, or problems for the character. There needs to be a goal or goals that the character is trying to accomplish that move him (and us) through the book. During the course of the book the Goal gets refined (and maybe redefined). There are little goals as well as the big goal. There are other characters who also need these goals and problems to get through. (Problem being a very loose word– it doesn’t necessarily have to be a negative ‘problem’). This is what the novel is about– the step by step of reaching their goal.

Aha! Simple, right? We’ll see…

I’ll finish with this: i’ve had this NewYorker (Aug. 6 2007 issue) on my desk since August– and I couldn’t for the life of me remember why. Then I remembered that I read it on the plane when we went to Ted’s brother’s wedding in Boston, and that I had loved the fiction piece in it. The fiction, called “So It Is In Life,” was by Daniil Kharms (that’s him in the picture above)– born in St. Petersburg in 1905 and died in 1942. The NYorker explains that “in his lifetime he produced several works for children but his writing for adults was not published” and that “It wasn’t until the late nineteen-seventies that Kharm’s playful and poetic work began to appear in mainstream publications.” The piece in the NYer had never been published in English anywhere– and it’s so strange, and comical and sad and magical. It reads like short snippets of story/ies and also seems sweetly autobiographical– the story includes short riffs on writing and writer’s block, like this one:

Today I couldn’t do anything. I paced the room, then sat down at the desk, but soon I’d rise and switch to the rocking chair. I’d pick up a book and right away discard it, and pace the room again.

I suddenly had the impression that I had forgotten something, some incident or important word.

I painstakingly tried to remember this word, and it seemed to me that it began with the letter “M.” No, no! Not with an “M” at all but with an “R.”

Reason? Rapture? Rectangle? Rib? Or: Mind? Misery? Matter?

I was making coffee and singing to myself all the words that started with “R.” Oh, what a tremendous number of words I made up beginning with the letter “R”! Perhaps among them was that one word, but I didn’t recognize it, taking it to be the same as all the others.

Then again, perhaps that word didn’t come up.

(written 1932-33). To read the entire piece, go here.

Sometimes it’s all about finding that ONE word.