raybear | Entries tagged with writing

I went running this morning, the second time this week, I've been going about twice a week in the past two weeks. I'd like to get up to three times a week, but hey, I'll take two. It's two more than zero, which I was doing before. I've taken SAMe every morning since February 22nd, which means its been about a month. I swallow 400 mg every morning, and sometimes on an afternoon when going to work seems hard, I take another 200 mg. Today, I took the extra 200 mg in the mid-morning. I'm doing a lot, I'm doing better, but sometimes I catch myself in the lie -- that even though I tell myself it's about managing and coping, parts of me still think its about curing. So I get down on myself when its still there. I know lots of things, that is different from feeling them, believing them.

There's a difference though, which is that I'm actually feeling separate emotions, not just a grey white-noise of numbness over all things. I am sometimes gentle with myself. I'll keep at it.

Last night I started to really put together all the organizational bits and pieces of the writer's retreat packet and I'm so jazzed about this, I can hardly contain myself. I want to send out the packet RIGHT NOW, but I'm still waiting on parts from other people. Including, um, myself. I did write up my seminar description, but I want to revise parts of the story I'm sending in too. So. Excited. I get all buzzy and jumpy and tingly. Writing about it makes me think about it and I'm feeling it again.

Yesterday while doing work up in Evanston, I stopped by the inferior branch of Binny's (it's smaller and mostly seems to deal in hard liquors), which was perfect for being inferior because the random wine with which I am in love (and also is currently on sale) was fully stocked and I bought two more bottles, one to share at the writing retreat. I wrote about it already, the Dehesa Gago 2005. The other week, I also bought the Dehesa Gago 2003 and a white wine, Baso, also by my new winemaker boyfriend, Telmo Rodriguez. I was ready to live in sin with him and birth all his babies, all based on his skills alone, but then I googled him and check it out:

He would be easy to love.

I just realized my brunch tomorrow is a birthday brunch, so I should go get a card and maybe a gift. It's friday, so I'm wearing jeans and a tight t-shirt that says "Don't Get Caulky". And there's a picture of a caulking gun.

I have been buying a lot of wine. It's sort of ridiculous. I also bought my first bottle which required me affix a label and write "do not drink until at least 2008". I don't really have a proper cellar, but I think the back dark corner of my pantry will suffice. Maybe. I might look into buidling a mini-cellar in the basement. We'll see how long the obsession lasts, or rather the minor mania attached.

I am still obsessed with bordeaux from st. emilion. In fact, the You-Must-Wait bottle is one of those. I have another one and a half I can drink sooner. The half bottle isn't opened -- it's an actual half (demi) bottle. I'm sort of obsessed with those too. I also have a half bottle of a sauvignon blanc, a half bottle of sauternes, and a half bottle of a sauternes-esque newish wine. I also have more regular bottles, two california wines, a zinfandel and a petite sirah, which is strange for me, as I am usually a french snob. So yeah. I have been buying a lot of wine. Especially considering I am the only person in the house drinking it. Maybe I should invite people over more often. Hey, now you know I will serve you good wine.

Last weekend I was drinking a different bordeaux -- 2003 Chateau Puygueraud. It was ok. I don't remember anything remarkable about it. Which means I will probably forget about it and buy it again. No, hopefully not, that's why I'm writing all this down, right? To prevent that?

And I am currently drinking this spanish wine that I'm totally in love with: 2005 Dehesa Gago (from the Toro region). It goes POW in the beginning, all dark and fruity, practically effervescent, then it disappears (where does it go?), but then it comes back in your mouth and has a dry finish. And then you want another sip. And another. And another. Which is dangerous, cause this wine is 14% alcohol, a little higher than usual. I want to buy another bottle to take with me to Ojai next month.

Oh yeah, I'm going to Ojai next month. For a weekend writing retreat. I am super psyched. It will be 72 hours with 4 of my favorite writers (my antioch clan) in two adjoining hotel rooms with kitchenettes, with breaks to swim in the pool and look at the mountains. I should have done this in early February. Next year. I will go somewhere sunny and relaxing and creative in the darkest part of the year, both weather and mood-wise.

Hello, March, you are a month I never remember because I'm so busy recovering after everything sucking for so long. Welcome!

I wrote at work tonight. Like creative writing. That is rare. Now I'm all hyper.

If I was a torch singer, I would roll around on the piano at the end of the night and close out my set with "One For My Baby." But only if I could sound like Dianne Reeves while doing it.

Oh, and I think I've decided on going to San Francisco at the end of June for a week-plus, in honor of my birthday.

Oh! Oh! And this is my new user icon that I made from a photo by

broqued. From our adventure with

keetbabe and

dommeyourass up to Racine, Wisconsin, to eat the world's best chicken sandwich. And then shopping at a department store's 85% clearance sale. B and I got matching sweaters! We haven't appeared in public together yet. I never did write about that. I think because that weekend was the ice storm and seeing Babel and the Oscars and I just never got around to it.

I will stop this entry before I embarass myself...more.

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

[by Charles Bukowski]

I used to try and argue with this poem even though I loved it, but now I don't, I just accept its flaws.

I fought a dragon once, he had sharp purple scales and his tail was 40 metres long (he was british) and his head was his body, I mean, his head was huge. But it was a dragon.
"The books got us wrong," he said, before launching into his story about the inability to find work in an economy that does not favor entrepreneurship and real capitalism, but instead wastes money on those who produce nothing but babies, and I tried at first to argue but eventually rolled my eyes and walked to the other side of the bar, because there's no changing those people's minds.

This past Saturday was January 6th which is also known as "Ephiphany" and I didn't really put it together until yesterday that it was aptly named for myself, as I had two realizations and given that I am prone to hyperbole (sometimes referred to as "drama queen"), I could easily call these realizations an "epiphany". Although, I don't know, maybe the one about parental stuff was epiphany and the second one about writing was just bullisht -- I'm still trying to figure it out.

See, I realized I hate my novel. I said it outloud at one point while walking around: I hate my novel. It felt liberating to say aloud, in this quiet way, apropos of nothing, not in the middle of a tantrum or beating myself up for not being productive way. I don't just hate writing it, I hate thinking about what the fck the two people are doing and why anyone would care and how they are seeing the world and why I should look at it and how to connect all these bits of chapters I've been forcing myself to write for the past 2 months. And I immediately thought, ok, this is ok! I just need to make my novel something I don't hate, something fun and interesting to me again, like it used to be, and then I will get back into it. And it was ok.

Except, a few days later, it's not. I still hate it and maybe I loathe it more with each passing minute. I see other books being published currently that have similar characters and/or themes and I sigh and get angry at myself for being slow. I see cover articles of magazines featuring guys who could be my main character. It just all seems too late, time to move on.

But then again, this could just be Naysayer Me talking. Maybe it's easier to hate it because then I can not finish it, and not finishing it is what I've sort of been doing all along anyway. Maybe I should start a new project and see if that feels better. Though I suspect the new project will feel good and great for awhile, then I'll start to hate that too. Then I could go back to this novel. Except honesty, would I do that? Or would this be another Unfinished Raymond Project forever in production?

Or maybe I should just fucking churn out 100 more pages and end the fcking thing cause it's just really a first draft and put it in a drawer for awhile and let myself pout and hate it as much as I want while this draft is done. What's today, January 9th? Ok, I'm going to write 100 pages by the end of the month. I don't care if one of the chapters is a flashback about alien abduction and another chapter is a character listing all their sexual exploits. I'm just going to fucking finish something, even if it becomes a bizarre polemic in the loose form of a novel.

Forget inspiration -- I think anger and disappointment turns out more pages. The beautiful song of a muse is fleeting and hard to hear, but the spring of rage inside carried at all times can be tapped into at anytime.

Hi.

( ... )

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Chuck Berry sing to us one more time
You'd never know it, but buddy I'm a kind of poet.
so you want to be a writer?
(no subject)
Could it be that I was born without a clue to carry on?
I have been digging underground.

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Entries tagged with writing

Chuck Berry sing to us one more time

You'd never know it, but buddy I'm a kind of poet.

so you want to be a writer?

(no subject)

Could it be that I was born without a clue to carry on?

I have been digging underground.