Writing in the moment

July 23, 2014

My writing schedule changed today. The early morning was spent adding posts to my two blogs. I started a new Pilates class at noon, then must-do errands. I did manage to write from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. During that time, I revised a poem I started at retreat in Grand Lake. The end product:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Naked Playhouse

A perfect, barren wood hole. Unborn, secret, living. The peepiest peep hole. Sunburnt face rolling over smokeysmooth wood, every curled, smooth piece. Dog barking to pop radio, peeing an imaginary territory far away. I want to mark every inch. I jump, I skip, I somersault, yelling to no one and everyone, this place is mine and only mine! My daddy built it from nothing just for me!

My naked memory playhouse. My daughter wants to see my dream. Off we go, listening to 80's pop radio. The playhouse is gone. I dream, taste the logs, hear dogs, feel music. My only regret that day was not rolling naked among the logs, marking my territory, among the logs my very own carpenter sanded just for me. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This poem is a true experience. Writing about "real life" at the retreat made me realize that I might never be a memoir writer, nor a writer of personal essays. I feel uncomfortable, and anxious, when I write true to my life. I love the freedom of fiction writing too much!

Anyway, I carried my purse notebook when I was out and about yesterday. I am like a fly on the wall, listening, looking, feeling other's experiences. Of course, when I write these down it is strictly from my viewpoint. Nonetheless, I keep each purse notebook snippets. These are true experiences I had yesterday. Here are a  few snippets from my notebook:
________________________________________________________________________________
Target. Waiting in return line. Long line. Cashier is rude. Does not bode well for me. My turn. Clerk questioned me about poster frame return. I told her it didn't fit. She told me it had scratches on it. I said, yes, that's also why I'm returning the frame. Her look--pure disgust. She snapped at me 'cause didn't have credit card out to complete return. Could not bring myself to tell her that I also didn't come home with one of the items on my receipt. Felt powerless. Shrugged it off, got a cart, and went shopping anyway. Found exact picture frame. Yay!

Petsmart: Running thru store. Frozen food in car. Cool day, tho. Cashier and I talked about the rude people at the nearby Target. She said she was happy because at least the Target experience wasn't just happening to her.

Rec Center: Frozen food still frozen. Sitting down waiting for my card. Very efficient place. Picked-up much needed fitness schedules. Pilates therapist said my knees have healed and I am good to go. Can hardly wait to tone-up and  lose the 10-plus pounds I gained over the last three months. Ugly picture of me on membership card.
_________________________________________________________________________________

The thing I like about notebooks, or iPhone Evernote, is that I can write anywhere I go. Some of my snippets are in the exact moment; and, then, the rest of the memory I jot down in my car. All of these notes are kept in a folder. If one of my characters comes across a similar situation, then I can just refer to my notes. I tend not to use the experience that happened to me. I just riff on it.

It's 10:00. Novel writing time.

Clean desk; clean schedule

July 22, 2014

First day back to my writing schedule since the Lighthouse Writers Workshop retreat. Back at home, this desk is my very own retreat!

I spent the first half hour revising a poem I wrote in Grand Lake. The rest of the hour was for going through all the paperwork from the retreat and organizing it into three piles: writing advice, interesting books to read, and, finally, all of my little paper scrap notes. These notes may, or may not, have a place in my current writing. I keep every note, character sketch, scene, and phone writing. I never know when the notes will come in handy, so I keep them all. I also learned about Evernote from a fellow writing camper. It easily synced across all my devices and has it's very own dropbox. Love it! Wonder if my paper scraps will go away now. It's a dream because it probably won't happen. I'm too used to scratching on whatever piece of paper is handy. However, it will be nice to write on my phone again. The Compositions phone app is gone now because it doesn't sync at all.

For the next two hours, I transcribed all retreat scene revisions. I also took out unnecessary adverbs and adjectives. My sentences pop without the useless repetition of these modifiers. Just for fun, try taking out some of these ubiquitous modifiers in revision. I'm sure you will be quite surprised at the result. Thanks to Karen Palmer for the idea.

The writing life yielded three very productive hours today.

#Grand Lake Retreat Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Besides reading and revising my own work, I spent the yearly retreat writing character sketches and reading
poetry. I also paid particular attention to campers dialogue, including my own. My old Denver writing group told me that "I need to write dialogue the way people speak."  For a week before the retreat, I wrote down much of what I said. Turns out that I speak in monologues, which is so sad for the people who have to listen to me. I still believe that the family in my newest novel, "Funny is Not Enough," do not interrupt each other often because the mother character hates anyone interrupting her, though she is the queen of interrupting others. My novel turns around control, which brings out all of the character's idiosyncratic and inconsistent behavior. It's fun to see what these characters will do next.

Here's the rough synopsis:

Funny is not Enough 

Violet moves back home with her parents as she waits for her Peace Corps assignment.  She expected to go immediately in to the Peace Corps after graduation, but life had other plans.  During Violet’s year long stay back at home, she comes across scrapbooks, diaries, and other mementoes of her mother’s past.  Violet knows that her mother, Jennifer's, life must have been an extremely unusual life, or else her mother's past was a fabrication Jennifer needed to reinvent herself. Violet had always challenged her mom to write a memoir, but every time Jennifer started to write her feelings would overwhelm her and she simply could not write her story. So Violet takes it upon herself to clandestinely research and write her mother’s story in one year, having no idea that this plan would take both her, and her mother, on another path altogether.

Read this blog about the writers retreat:

http://lighthouseblog.org/2014/07/21/what-happens-in-grand-lake/