– Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way Every Day

I don’t think I’m yet in the process of recovering my creative self, but I’ll get there soon. I do still write, have been writing, but it’s been very sporadic, only about once a week lately. But I’m feeling something bubbling beneath the surface, and i’m hoping that I can bring it up soon. I believe I can.

It’s been a season of change. End of a relationship, end of an era.

I’m in my early 40s and wondering where did it all go, and where am I going from here?

I’ve been feeling like I’m learning to walk and talk again. Or going through puberty. Awkward, insecure, doubtful, emotional. I rescued a lost dog a few weeks ago and can’t get it out of my mind, but someone told me recently that I’m projecting, synthesizing the dog and myself (not that I didn’t know this, but to hear it from someone else stung and, of course, made more sense).

My teaching semester is coming to an end, and i’m partly relieved. It’s been a trying semester. But also partly sad. I love my Creative Nonfiction class. The students there are gifted, talkative (for the most part), opinionated. I love the energy of our workshops, the excitement in their faces upon hearing that your essay moved someone, the disagreeing, the challenging,  that we are dissecting and explicating and encouraging someone’s piece of writing– scary and exhilarating. I’m recalling my own days in workshops in undergrad and grad school–the nervous lump in your throat when you go up for workshop. The relief after. The walking out of the classroom into the cool night. The putting away of the piece for a few days then returning to it.

I want to take each of the writers in my class and shake them and tell them to not give up, to keep writing, to be serious, to try new things, to read read read, to write every day, to trust their creativity. I want someone to shake me up too. To tell me all of these things. To get unstuck. To pull me free.

I have a thousand reasons why I’ve been away for so long, each one more elaborate than the other.

Let’s just say it’s been several months of change, good and bad. But I’m ready to start again, and what better way to start than with a new publication!

You can now purchase a Post-Card of my short-short, A Thousand Marilyns, from Post-Card Press! They are a fairly new lit journal that makes wonderful postcards of short-short fiction and poetry.

My piece is based on a true person, which I’m hoping at some point to turn into something bigger. Novel, bio/memoir, who knows?

In any case, I hope you’ll buy the post card and support this lovely new press! Purchase it here, heck get a subscription; you’ll get one postcard of poetry or fiction each month! And, they make great fun gifts to send to someone (remember that thing called snail mail?).

More blog posts to come, I promise!

I can’t talk about the trial/case, or give details (I’ve been sworn!) but suffice it to say that all is not resolved in an hour, like on Law & Order (and there’s no Chris Meloni to be found!). Still, it’s been very interesting–who knows, maybe a book will come out of it???

There are certainly no shortage of characters when you hang around a courthouse.

Speaking of… of course my book is getting major neglect right now, though I’ve been sketching out ideas and scenes in my journal.

And summer is two thirds over! I think I have maybe a month left? Yes! A month to the day and I’ll be driving to campus. All those plans I had for a creative summer (writing, reading, making stuff…) are a bit hazy now.

Wahh, wahh, wahh! I’ve still got those four weeks, right?

Julia Cameron, in her book The Artist’s Way Every Day says:

Creativity is inspiration coupled with initiative. It is an act of faith and, in that phrase, the word “act” looms as large as the “faith” that it requires. When we do not act in the direction of our dreams, we are only “dreaming.” Dreams coupled with the firm intention to manifest them take on a steely reality. Our dreams come true when we are true to them. Reality contains the word “real.” We begin to “reel” in our dreams when we toss out the baited hook of intention. When we shift our inner statement from “I’d love to” to “I’m going to,” we shift out of victim and into adventurer.

The premise of BB is simple: you come in, I read a prompt from my black box of prompts, and then we write for a set period of time (within an hour). After the time limit we then read our pieces aloud. No critique, just listening.

I’m so glad to be back. It makes for such a rewarding hour, especially since it’s on Tuesday; it helps to ease me into the rest of the week.

If you’re someone who has trouble finding that time to write then definitely join or start a group like this, or, hold your own private, one-person Brown Bag writing hour. (I recommend using Judy Reeves’ A Writer’s Book of Days !)

I also love finding/getting my own prompts. Sometimes I’ll find them online, on a writing webpage, but most of the time I take lines from poetry or prose and use those as prompts. For example, here are some past prompts:

Write about Food and Comfort (from James Merrill’s Poem “Maisie”)

You became so attached to the objects of our home (from David Plante’s The Pure Lover: A Memoir of Grief)

This week’s prompt also came from James Merrill– I think all of the prompts I’ve used are from his book From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976. (of which I have a first edition!).

Here is the prompt:

The street, if it ends at all, ends here (from “Light of the Street, Darkness of Your Own House”)

I’ve even used the title of the poem as a past prompt–which made for some great writing from everyone.

Here are some lines from the brief scene I wrote during that Brown Bag session:

There were no real streets on the reservation. No side walks. Nothing that indicated where one yard began and the other ended. No stops or starts. In this way we were all connected.  The warmth from the oven of one home was felt in the chest of someone in the next . The rise of bread, the sinking of hopes. An open window carried voices, songs, welcomed anger, provided temporary escape for regret.

If you’re in San Diego, come to Tuesday Brown Bag– every Tuesday 12pm to 1pm. Or Thursday Writers held at Lestat’s West Coffee House. More info here.

And definitely take a look at James Merrill’s poetry. It will inspire!

Yesterday had a great time at the Blazing Laptops Write-a-Thon to support San Diego Writers, Ink– the non-profit writing organization that I’m a part of. (you can still sponsor me! I really did write for 9 hours!). I’m offering a homemade collage postcard or collage book mark to anyone who sponsors $10 or more.

At the Write-a-Thon (which I did/teamed up with my BFF Kelli) I worked mostly on my novel. I did try a few of the prompts that were given out during the day but the bulk of my writing went to a new chapter. I drank a lot of coffee! Now that I’m off from teaching and have basically no real work for the summer (a good thing? a bad thing?) I’m ready to dive back in full time on the novel. As much as I had fun yesterday, I have to admit that being in a room full of people and trying to seriously write was difficult. I’ve always been one who needs quiet and my own space to write in.

Don’t get me wrong, I love being in the company of other writers and creative people, but I really cherish my office and how I can close the door and be in my own world in there. It helps that it has a terrific view of the Coronado bridge and some of downtown San Diego. I can’t remember if I’ve posted pics of the office here, but I’ll post some soon just in case.

The scene I was working on yesterday had several characters (most of them minor minor) talking– the main character of the book (or one of the main characters) was describing a scene where a bunch of Hollywood suits comes to his reservation to talk about the upcoming filming of a movie– and I realized that when I’m writing dialogue I need to ‘talk it out’ while writing, which was kind of hard to do in a quiet room of 20 people! I practice the dialogue that I write to see how it sounds, but I couldn’t really do that yesterday! arghh! I guess I’ve always done this but it seemed much more obvious to me yesterday because I couldn’t do it.

It made me think about writers who are good with dialogue– who are they?

I suppose Hemingway is considered a strong dialogue writer.

I like the dialogue in the new Nicole Krauss book, Great House, too. Though for me it’s always been about the interior monologues of her characters.

I’ve always thought Joshua Ferris was a master of dialogue (though he’s a relatively new writer).  Read his NewYorker story The Dinner Party to see what I mean.

Here’s an excerpt:

“They come in,” he said, “we take their coats. Everyone talks in a big hurry as if we didn’t have four long hours ahead of us. We self-medicate with alcohol. A lot of things are discussed, different issues. Everyone laughs a lot, but later no one can say what exactly was so witty. Compliments on the food. A couple of monologues. Then they start to yawn, we start to yawn. They say, ‘We should think about leaving, huh?,’ and we politely look away, like they’ve just decided to take a crap on the dinner table. Everyone stands, one of us gets their coats, peppy goodbyes. We all say what a lovely evening, do it again soon, blah-blah-blah. And then they leave and we talk about them and they hit the streets and talk about us.”

“What would make you happy?” she asked.

“A blow job.”

“Let’s wait until they get here for that,” she said.

She slid her finger along the blade to free the clinging onion. He handed her her glass. “Drink your wine,” he said. She took a sip. He left the kitchen.

He sat on the sofa and resumed reading an article. Then he got up and returned to the kitchen and poured himself a new drink.

“That’s another thing,” he said. “Their big surprise. Even their goddam surprises are predictable.”

“You need to act surprised for their sake,” she said.

“Wait for a little opening,” he said, “a little silence, and then he’ll say, he’ll be very coy, he’ll say, ‘Why don’t you tell them?’ And she’ll say, ‘No, you,’ and he’ll say, ‘No, you,’ and then she’ll say, ‘O.K., O.K., I’ll tell them.’ And we’ll take in the news like we’re genuinely surprised—like, holy shit, can you believe she’s knocked up, someone run down for a Lotto ticket, someone tell Veuve Clicquot, that bastard will want to know! And that’s just the worst, how predictable our response to their so-called news will be.”

“Well, O.K.,” she said. “When that happens, why don’t you suggest they have an abortion?”

He chewed his ice and nodded. “That would shake things up,” he said, “wouldn’t it?”

“Tell them we can do it right here with a little Veuve Clicquot and one of the bedroom hangers.”

“Delightful,” he said. “I’m in.”

“He’s O.K.,” he said. “They’re both O.K. I’m just being a dick.”

“We do this, what—at most, once or twice a year. I think you can handle it. And when they have the baby—”

“Oh, Christ.”

“When they have the baby, we’ll see even less of them.”

“Holiday cards. Here’s our little sun-chine. See our little sun-chine? Christ.”

“You aren’t the one who’s going to have to go to the baby shower,” she said.

“How much you wanna bet they buy a stroller?”

“A stroller?”

“A stroller.”

“A stroller,” she said. “To cart the baby around.”

He put cheese on a cracker. “For to cart the baby around in, yes,” he said.

“And you, if you had a baby, there’d be no stroller, right, because it would be oh so predictable? Absolutely no stroller?”

I have just one more day of giving final exams– next Wednesday– and then my summer begins.

Summer, for me, equals:

finishing current draft of novel (updates to come)

reading (my book list to come)

movies (what’s a summer without movies?)

making stuff (did I mention I’m going to take a class on how to use your sewing machine?)

travel (maybe?)

work– oops, nope! no work/teaching for me this summer! (good or bad thing?)

Here’s a good thing: poem, Summer Trips, by Jonathan Greene

Summer Trips

As a child sequestered in
the back seat on a long journey,
exiled in one’s own world,
a refuge. Deep sleep naps.
Ice-cream stand oases after
a long stretch of highway.

A whole year of work
brings us this week at the beach.
The Devil’s bargain parents made,
a contract that renews every time,
weary after the nine-to-fives,
they unlock the front door.

“Summer Trips” by Jonathan Greene, from Distillations and Siphonings. (c) Broadstone Books, 2010. From The Writer’s Almanac.

Finished Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff. I loved the information about Egypt and Cleo and Mark Antony, but I was missing dialogue (the book is serious nonfiction). Still, Schiff impressed me with her knowledge and Cleo impressed me with her sheer tenacity.

My office at home is looking like one of those NYC apartments where the reclusive tenant saves every newspaper, magazine, letter,  leaflet and flyer. I’m too embarrassed to post a picture of it.

I cut the tip of my middle finger off and it hurt. Ok, it wasn’t really the tip, more like the corner of the tip. But it still hurt. For a couple of days I had to wear one of those splint-thingies so that I wouldn’t bump it on anything, but it definitely made it seem pretty drastic (but if you know me, you know how melodramatic I get with just the sniffles). And then I had to learn how to type without using that finger, which a couple of days ago I finally mastered. But now the finger is healing better and I can pretty much use it, only I have to re-learn how to type with it. Arghh!

While I was in the Emergency room Ted brought me Nicole Krauss’ Great House to read. I absolutely loved The History of Love and have been wanting to read this. It doesn’t disappoint. I read about 50 pages in, but I’m also reading another book so I may have to put the Great House aside until then.

Speaking of books…though I’m not finding, or rather making, the time to write as much as I should (I think that I somehow didn’t get the gene for discipline…), the little bits, spurts of writing that I’m doing I’m pretty pleased with. I’m loving working on two characters that I’d only been sketching out, or had only been on the periphery so far– the young female English High School Teacher with the secret stash of lipsticks in her desk drawer at school and the Shivwit Indian boy, Limpie, whose POV is told entirely through an essay he’s writing. It’s funny how developing these characters more and letting them lead me on this journey has sparked such new energy in me.

Ted‘s out of town for a week visiting his mom and then our new niece, and the cats, Betsy and Jack, are so neurotic (i’m fine though, thanks for asking)! They are completely underfoot. Betsy sits with me while watching TV, her head resting in my lap.

On another note, I’m obsessed with this website Instructables–have you seen it?– from which you can learn how to do anything from how to tie a tie, how to kiss, to other more craft-oriented tips such as  book-making, how to knit, make mosaics, origami, and my recent obsession: how to make linocuts.

I really really would love to have a letterpress machine, but this linocut thing looks a bit simpler (and less expensive). See the samples of what you can do below.

Many of the how-to’s have step-by-step photos and videos. Check them out, search for how to make or do just about anything.

Watched the last episode of TCM’s Moguls and Moviestars– the epic documentary series about the rise and fall of the movie studio system. It was completely fascinating. I couldn’t help but feel for the movie stars and studio heads when the studios started crumbling around them; not to mention the footage of the old studio land that was sold off.

Went to a fantastic reading Friday night at The Ink Spot. James Meetze (in the picture) read from his book of poems DAYGLO of which Rae Armantrout says “James Meetze is, in some sense, a ‘landscape poet,’ except his landscape includes ‘FA-18 Hornets’ that ‘boom above the freeway / as eucalyptus leaves rustle.’ He has a feel for his hometown, which is also mine. In fact, San Diego, with its ahistorical ‘Dayglo’ pastels, best glimpsed in passing from a freeway, is where we all live now, somehow, or soon will.”

Ryan Murphy (a friend from grad school!) says “Dayglo is a conscious artifact…”

Indeed, his poems took me back to my days growing up here. The beaches, the sunsets, the valleys and malls. But also they look at Southern California, and San Diego especially, through the eyes of someone who left here and then came back. They speak about beauty and warmth, of Eucalyptus trees, freeways and fluorescent lights, but also separation, isolation, regret, disappointment.

I’m particularly taken with the first two lines of the poem “To Make You Surfer”:

In all the movies about California youth,

we are made to believe in gold everywhere.

Rob in EW

My letter was regarding a fantastic review they gave Mark Richard for his new book, House of Prayer No. 2, A Writer’s Journey Home, a memoir.Richard’s been compared to Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and I feel like he could be a distant brother to the late, great Barry Hannah (Airships is his masterpiece).

If you’ve never read Mark Richard please please search him out, especially the book I mention in the letter, Charity, which features, in my opinion, one of his best stories, “The Birds For Christmas.”

We wanted “The Birds” for Christmas. We had seen the commercials for it on the television donated thirdhand by the Merchant Seamen’s and Sailors’ Rest Home, a big black-and-white Zenith of cracked plastic and no knobs, a dime stuck in the channel selector. You could adjust the picture and have no sound, or hi-fi sound and no picture. We just wanted the picture. We wanted to see “The Birds.”

You can read the whole story on Boldtype.

House of Prayer No. 2 also has a fantastic cover by artist Michael J. Windsor

I’m almost finished reading the book I spoke about in my previous post (The Prince, The Showgirl, and Me) and I’m eying a stack of books by my bed. Which one next? The Pure Lover by David Plante? Model Home by Eric Pucher? A Case for God (got this last Christmas but still haven’t read it!) by Karen Armstrong? Great House by Nicole Krauss ? I absolutely loved The History of Love, her last book. I’m thinking I might start with A Case for God; every time I see it on my shelf I think about pulling it down and reading it. I’m compelled yet maybe intimidated by it. Time to do it!

In addition to reading, though, I’m finally getting back to the book I’m writing. It’s not a lot of time, three and a half weeks, but more than I usually have so I’m hoping to make some more progress. Lately I’ve been writing chapters involving a brand new character in the book–Limpie, a 17 year-old Shivwit Indian boy– well, he’s been in the book since the first chapter but I’m finally telling his story, as it were, in his chapters. His story actually comes through by means of an essay he’s writing in school, and so pieces from his essay, which read like letters to his teacher (he’s writing this essay as an extra credit assignment over the summer so he can graduate from high school), are in between the more traditional narrative. I’m finding so much heart and humor in Limpie who originally was going to just play a very minor part in the book.

Finally, I’m hoping to do some more creating–with my hands, but not just typing up my novel. I’ve got a few projects I’m working on or planning. Stuff to do in my little craft station out in the garage. One project involves these little freckled doll heads. I’m thinking of doing something like this. It involves plaster of paris! Unless someone out there has better ideas?

I’d also like to do something with these orange guns. Not sure what, though. Or maybe something with these cool old iron-on transfers from the 1940s (this one is of Van Johnson). And then I have all of those beautiful old window frames with the glass in them that I’d like to play around with.

Sigh.

I can’t believe it’s my winter break (and Christmas!). Cannot wait to get to some serious writing again, and reading.I’d like to read a book a week… can I do it?

Right now reading this terrific little book, The Prince, The Showgirl, and Me: Six Months on the Set with Marilyn and Olivier. It’s the journal entries of a young British man, Colin Clark, who was the 3rd Assistant Director (read: Go-Fer) on the film The Prince and the Showgirl, which starred (and was directed by) Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe in 1956. The book was written in the mid-90s and I’m enjoying the hell out of it. I think Clark was in his early 20s when he wrote the journal entries; they detail the day-to-day antics on the set. The problems with Marilyn, her lateness but also her vulnerability. She was a wreck on set but for some reasons when they looked at the dailies (that’s film talk for the footage shot every day) she was amazing. His journal entries are incredibly frank; he suspects (quite often) that Marilyn is high on drugs or alcohol, and says so often. But still through all of the trouble and anguish he has a deep admiration (not to mention lust) for her.

Clark also talks about Olivier’s frustrations, his marriage to Vivien Leigh, the parties, with sly hints at the director/star’s sexuality. Arthur Miller is an imposing figure as well.

The book is a hoot, full of hysterical (and historical) tidbits about the shooting, and especially the Brits impressions of us and our ‘Hollywood’ doings.  Not to mention it’s really helpful for me as the book I’m writing takes place on a film set/shooting in 1954, albeit in America; but still, the way a film is shot (not chronologically) the amount of people on a set, the terminology (though have to make sure they’re not British terms), etc.

Here’s one particularly funny (or is it tragic?) passage from his diary. Well, it had me in laughing throughout:

MM (Marilyn) doesn’t really forget her lines. It is more as if she had never quite learnt them–as if they are pinned to her mental noticeboard so loosely that the slightest puff of wind will send them floating to the floor.

This is very disconcerting to the other actors. Like going down a familiar staircase and missing a step, MM is suddenly not there. She can be in mid-speech, and then she gives a little frown, her lips part, her eyes look puzzled, and she stops. She doesn’t say “Oh drat, what is the next line?” or anything. She just stops.

You can see the trailer here.

Apparently there was a BBC documentary made about the book/film. Which you can see some of here.