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February 18, 2006
A real writer knows how to get on top of the desk
Sometimes it happens. The desk looks like a storage facility. I've been planning to start work on my next opus in March. On my mental planning worksheet, I'd intended to get a few things done and under the carpet by now, like the GST (quaterly tax on pencil on paper and nibs and so on), stock-up on household goods so that no one would ask me to go down to the supermarket to get toothpaste when I was in the middle of serving a character their just desserts, be nice to everyone so that they can forgive me later--by making them 3-course meals right now, eat icecream, write lots of microfiction because my short-shorts will have to take second place soon, plus of course, clear that desk.
First, I have to clear around the desk, and that is when I notice how my bookshelves are filled with the books I was going to read two years ago. This is the reason all the books I intend to read now are still on the table--there is also the stash that I was going to read yesterday over there in the corner next to the coffee table that I bought from Nipoon. It's one of those art pieces that I could afford only because I knew Nipoon and his wife Namonita. (I tried to put these two names in a story and it didn't work out).
So I decide that the books on my shelves should go in the corner and those in the corner should go on my shelves and some could go on the 'donate' pile. While I am doing this I open my drawer--and find, ohoh, all the notes and stuff that I used when I was stuck on my last oeuvre. I read them through and most of is like reading about someone going off to the crusades.
While I am doing this I have a call from one of the Vegie Curry Man stalls saying that I need to bring up the sign they've left behind; pronto! Luckily, after some deliberation, it is sorted--Shani from the Chai Tent can divert here and pick it up. Meanwhile the 16-yr-old son of this writer is lying in bed groaning about his headache--why doesn't he learn about keeping tidy hours and eating properly? It seems to me at this point that I should clean out the whole house, or at least start on it, because who knows when I'll be able to be a downtrodden mat again!
I manage to empty out my bottom drawer and throw out a few story iterations (what's my secondary storage hard drive for anyway, but to store more effectively in triplicate, so I never have to look at old versions... and rest in the comfort of knowing that they are there, mouldering quietly in space).
My favorite non-writing magazine, Wired, goes at the bottom of a pile beside me. I add--Bomb, a few issues of the New Yorker and Harpers (issues with favorite writers). It's hard to move books into the corner pile because I am tempted to read as I go. I rescue a Granta (Truth & Lies). A few other Granta books try to come for the ride. And here is a Richard Brautigan, Watermelon Sugar that I scored from Amazon about 14 yrs ago because a critiquing partner said my prose was somewhat similar (at that time).
I realize that I have only got 3/4 way through a BASS 2005. Got stuck on the Stuart Dybek story 'Breasts' My husband loved it but I waded... So I put the '05 and '06 versions together with the O Henry Prize Awards 06 that I got only recently. I throw out my old journals, the workbooks, the visual diaries, my final year project in multimedia design.
I lie on the floor and consider what-next. Already 5 pm and no writing has been done--this hasn't happened in yonks and I feel as if I've got out of bed on the wrong side. Since I rolled off the mattress at an ungodly hour--my husband woke to do the St Andrews market gig at 4.30 am and my eighteen-yr-old eldest son got up at 6am to do the Sustainable Living Festival at Federation Square--I heard him sprinting from the gas tanks to the refridgerated van to the commercial kitchen; in and around the garden to the storage rooms and back into the house, door slamming slamming slamming, I haven't stopped a moment, inbetween doing my writing and fixing up stuff for the business during my 'breaks', yet I feel I'm not enough--otherwise why would I feel let down by my efforts?
The next day, I say this to the person who comes to do cleaning in the Vegie Curry Man kitchen, who shall remain nameless--because he is an important poet in the community and his peers would give him a hard time if they knew what he did for a second job. Anyway, this person is also a very wise person and we have great philosophical discussions because he is also a Sufi Master.
I tell him that I feel dissatisfied by everything, my writing included. He says this is good and compares it to the process of giving birth. A child that is just born, he says, does not look so good; one must fix him up, wipe the blood off the body and wrap the body in nice perfumed blankets before an introduction to visitors. This is not quite what I experienced at birth (he excused himself for being male and not an expert on birthing) but I get the metaphor. So long as the dissatisfaction is not for material things, he says, it is good. Something to reflect on: how to get on top of the desk and be happy!
Next: Extensions to my writing excercise:-- Longa Stronga Donga (an advertisement that can be seen while travelling the Hume Highway--for sexual apparatus)
Posted by girija at February 18, 2006 10:27 PM