Indulging in a Bit of Good, Old-Fashioned Stream of Consciousness

via Flickr”]Sign of the time

Image by FotoRita [Allstar maniac

Lately I’m suffering from extreme lack of creativity in blogging. Of course, it doesn’t help that it’s turning into one of Those Times. You know. The ones when all petty irritations converge on a point, namely your nerves, and suddenly all the drama of the Furies comes gushing out of your mouth upon the heads of people who only sort of deserve it. Like school nurses who seem incapable of accepting that all your kids have really bad allergies/colds, and the plethora of Other Symptoms means it really isn’t contagious pinkeye, and why are you making me come pick up my daughter from school, which causes me to have to skip nap for another sick child and go get the third one from school early so we can go to a stupid doctor appointment to be told that guess what, your kids have ALLERGIES??????

Uh…excuse me while I go plunge into the creek to lower my blood pressure.

Also this week, Nicholas has officially crowned himself The Worst Sick Child I’ve Ever Had. I remember when he was a baby, shaking my head and calling him a Drama King. Up to then, we called Julianna the Drama Queen, but she’s had to relinquish her monarchy. Julianna, I told Christian, at least had reason to pile on the drama.

The last two nights, Nicholas has been up 7-8 times per night. Last night was actually better, because at least he wasn’t screaming pathetically, “I need tih-oo!” every time he woke up. (Tissue, in case you aren’t fluent in Toddler-ese. And lest you think I am overstating the case by calling it screaming…take my word for it. I’m not. Sunday night, every time I almost fell asleep, I’d be yanked back to consciousness by the sound. Nerve-shredding, I’m telling you.

Last night was better, without the screaming. A big improvement, although being awakened by the sound of your door being  banging against the door stop is no fun, either. I’ve learned two things the last two days:

1. When Nicholas grows up, he’ll be the classic “bad patient.” Just saying.

2. I must do everything in my power to ensure that Nicholas never gets sick again. EVER.

In between sick kids, flirting with being sick myself, finishing up a teaching gig in another town, preparing for three public speaking engagements in the next 6 days (each of them a separate topic) and the usual attempts to write, I’ve found myself floundering on the blog. I don’t know if everybody’s just overwhelmed like me now that school’s started and the fundraising and football seasons have begun, or if I’m actually losing your interest, but my stats have taken a hit the last couple of weeks.

If you’re a blogger, you know that leads to serious self-questioning and an obsessive search for ways to FIX IT! So I’ve been trying out some new blog carnivals/memes, some of which I like quite a bit.

The only trouble is, I abandoned most of my old memes a few months ago, because the time I was putting into going around visiting other people didn’t seem to be translating into any significant bump in hits. I got the sense I was seeking new readers unsuccessfully while not really serving my own readership or being true to myself. So I took the plunge and found, gratifyingly, that my stats didn’t suffer for it.

And now I wonder if trying to push the meme thing again is why I’m struggling with both inspiration and stats.

Anyway.

My goal every day in writing is to have a point. And if you can’t tell, this post really has no point. I just gave myself permission to do some good old-fashioned stream-of-consciousness Journaling today. You know what else? It didn’t take very long to write. What do you know? That qualifies it for yet another meme I haven’t visited in quite a while. Now, what image shall I use to sum up this fractured, useless post?….

Published in: on September 20, 2011 at 5:06 am  Comments (15)  
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Satisfied With Where I Am

“I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.”
                                    -Philippians 4:11-13 (NIV)

“I believe I possess the happy knack…of adapting myself to every kind of society, whether high or low. …And though it is a gift of nature, constant study has enabled me, I flatter myself, to make a kind of art of it.”
                                       -Mr. Collins, from A&E’s Pride & Prejudice

Does anyone else think that Paul and Mr. Collins sound an awful lot alike? ;)

File:Peace and contentment.gifThis Scripture quote has been popping up in my mind a lot lately, mostly because I don’t have that sense of contentment in all circumstances. In fact, I pretty much never feel it. I’m always looking for something more, or different, than what I have. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the gifts…I just keep looking for more.

As many of you will remember, I set everything aside in November to attempt to write a novel. It didn’t go well. I have the whole world and story laid out in my head—even outlined on paper, really—but getting to the next step is excruciatingly difficult. I can’t come up with the first sentence, and even though I know I just need to write something, that I can fix it later, my brain is seized up. I just know it’s not good enough.

In part, this is because of a continued, demoralizing failure to place the last novel…and more, because I have this growing, horrible feeling that my stories are too old-fashioned for THE MARKET…a market (or at least, an industry) full of suave, modern women who want their stories to be “edgy” and “sexy” and reflective of modern culture, which views sex as casual and my world view as repressive.

And so, I’ve spent the last month and a half chasing down nonfiction writing projects, trying to avoid having to get back to work on this novel. I keep praying for inspiration to start, but nothing is ever good enough. I second-guess.

Definitely not content.

And yet I began 2011 with a wildly successful (if not terribly productive) writing week. I have half a dozen projects lined up, clamoring for attention, and at least half of them already have a publishing home. And I woke up this morning at quarter of 5 from an incredibly detailed, incredibly vivid dream that, although it had some of the usual nonsensical jumps that dreams always do, nonetheless contained an entire plot for another beautiful love story. I woke up all fired up, thinking I could outline this new sucker and abandon the behemoth in process.

I have much to be grateful for, and I know it; I breathe my heavenward thanks every time they impress themselves upon my brain. I just wish that, like Paul, I could learn the art of being satisfied with it. Because I have this horrible feeling that I’m more like Mr. Collins: pretending to be comfortable wherever I am, while in reality, all I want is more than I have a right to ask.

Published in: on January 10, 2011 at 6:24 am  Comments (8)  
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7 Quick Takes

___1___

I’ve heard about this one before, but I’ve never seen it on a video. A HS football player with Down’s, who gets to score a touchdown. This is a terrific 45-second video that will make you smile.

___2___

Here’s the blog post it came from; read it or don’t, I don’t care; it was really the picture I wanted to share: a mother, apparently an elected official in Italy, who’s brought her newborn with her to work.

___3___

File:Trumpet 1.jpgOnly the child of wedding musicians would go around the house humming “Trumpet Voluntary.” And then get excited because he hears Daddy playing “Jupiter” from the Planets downstairs. And sing the Mass of Light “Alleluia” as he brushes his teeth. Why doesn’t this kid open his mouth at church, again?

___4___

Simcha Fisher wrote a post this week that speaks for me 100%. And I’m sure she speaks for pretty much every one of my mommy readers, too. This woman’s amazing.

___5___

If dreaming about a lost baby means that you’re neglecting a goal or project that’s important to you, then what does it mean when you dream that you have the lead in Fiddler On the Roof, and it’s time to get to the theater for the performance but you realize you have never cracked the book open for the last act?

___6___

I started an online class on writing synopses this week. And it’s slightly less scary than I thought. Hopefully soon I’ll be writing more query letters.

___7___

And hopefully soon I’ll get over my freaking out and start writing the next novel, instead of researching to keep from having to start writing. I don’t know where to begin, you see; that opening is the most important part and I know if I get it wrong, I’ll be correcting the manuscript for months years to come. But the good Lord’s been whispering in my ear that I’m not going to find the path till I strike off through the woods. Maybe I’ll hit it for NaNO Month…

Have a great weekend, folks!

Published in: on October 8, 2010 at 5:09 am  Comments (8)  

In Search of the bon mot

I suppose it’s writer’s block.

The swirling of ideas without focus. The blank brain mirroring white screen. The missing vocabulary. The onslaught of clichés…the inability to come up with a single fresh thought.

And vining around writer’s block, self-loathing. The inner critic who says, There’s no market for what you want to write. You’ll never land an agent, because you write trite tripe. The culture has moved on. Nobody’s interested in love stories anymore unless they’re loaded with toilet humor and sex.

When I began the novel submission process, I knew this day would come. And knowledge gave me a certain power over the voice of self-defeat…at least, for the first week or two. But momentum only lasts so long. And as I feel myself slowing, slowing, it gets harder to keep the pedals turning, until at last, the very thought of writing a blog entry on a Monday morning makes me think I’m unworthy of the gift.

The great thing about writing both music and prose is that when I stall out on one, I can shift to the other. Trouble is, even the music is about words right now. Texts are the bane of my existence. Oh, for someone to collaborate with, who writes gorgeous texts that make us rethink all our inner clichés!  Right now I feel like I’m methodically pulverizing my head against a titanium wall. (How’s that? Did I freshen up a cliché?)

Oh dear, here I am, writing about writing again. But this is what’s on my mind.

So I’m going to turn the tables on you. I want you to jar me out of my paralysis.  Since you are my target audience, I’m going to draw on your collective wisdom. Can you answer either of these questions for me?

  1. Think romantic comedy. Not Ghosts of Girlfriends Past romantic comedy (really some raunchy moments), but While You Were Sleeping and Return to Me romantic comedy. What books/authors have you read that echo those kinds of stories—with or (preferably) without humor?
  2. Here’s my song refrain…I’ll take a risk and set it out there, in the hopes that someone can inspire me with a good Scripture passage and/or focal point for the verses, which cover six or seven pages of scribbling and still haven’t come into focus:

Rise up, rise up singing
Leave behind all that bound you.
Christ is risen,
There is nothing now that can harm you.

Published in: on April 26, 2010 at 5:39 am  Comments (2)  
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Sung, Spoken, Secret

“People don’t really talk like that, you know.”
 “No, but they think that way.”
            —-Diane Kruger (Abigail Chase) and Nicholas Cage (Ben Gates) in National Treasure.

What I love about writing is that it lets me communicate in poetry without sounding self-important and condescending. Never in reality could I talk about a filigree-and-marmalade sunrise. People would look at me as if I’d picked up a spear and donned a breastplate and helmet with horns—and rightly so.

And yet I notice that some things that work in speech don’t work on the page. For one thing, if we wrote out all the dropped “ng’s’s, we’d look like a bunch of hicks, even though that’s how we speak every day. I’m sittin’ down, havin’ a drink.

On a deeper level, I’ve found that I cannot write characters who talk about God and faith and belief explicitly without them looking like religious freaks. And despite the depth and passion of my religious convictions, I do think that is a bad thing. There is an inevitable tension between the things of earth and the things of Heaven, yet the Church exists within the world. It can’t operate in a separate reality. Which of course, was true even when Jesus was treading the dusty paths of the Middle East.

The point is that, in reality, in the context of a discussion with friend or family—or in a blog post, for that matter—I can speak simply about the ways in which the hand of God has touched my life. But frame the same words in quotes and attribute them to a character in a novel, and suddenly they look holier-than-thou. This is why I can’t read Christian fiction. It’s too preachy. I tune out.

And yet change the context one more time—place the images and the insights into a song or hymn text—and suddenly they reach depths in the soul that we didn’t even know were there.

This is what I love about writing. The written word allows us to express both what is thought, but unspeakable, as well as the spoken, but unwritable. Liturgical texts, in particular, can make my breath catch. I live in awe of the great text writers—Dunstan and Cooney and Farrell, to name a very limited few—who are able to catch the essence of faith and use it to pierce the soul. I aspire to write that poetry…I receive the occasional gift from a wandering Spirit…but I’m not that good at it.

There’s a danger in striving for eloquence, though. Eventually, it becomes too self-aware. The process of blogging, though it is an expression of myself, also insulates me from exposing my innermost emotions. Everything I write is honest, but it comes out through a filter—the filter of what is appropriate for public consumption. The more direct forms of written communication, the ones that should be most heartfelt (like a message on an anniversary card, for instance), suddenly feel far too intimate. Or perhaps it’s just that there doesn’t seem to be anything to say that I haven’t said a dozen times before. The writer in me recoils from insipid, sentimental words, no matter how true they are. It feels contrived.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this…this post has been hiding on my NEO for weeks, and with that last paragraph, it veered off in a wholly unexpected direction. Perhaps the point is simply to acknowledge reality, and let it all stew for a while longer, in the hopes that I’ll eventually come to a satisfying, literary kind of conclusion. If so, I’ll be sure to share a spoonful.

Published in: on September 6, 2009 at 2:31 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Inspiration, Insomnia

I had forgotten.

The creative process is a consuming one in any form. I tend to get my brain wound up, and then, even if my entire being is crying out for rest, I can’t get to sleep. It can happen after critique group, it can happen when I have a new article assignment or an idea for a blog post—even after scrapbooking. But nothing fuels my insomnia quite like writing music.

Writing music winds my soul into a tightly-coiled spring. I get music stuck in my head anyway—for days and days on end. When I’m working on something new, it’s weeks and weeks. Words and melodies rocket in circles in my head, preventing me from dropping off to sleep. They percolate so persistently in the background that even after I do fall asleep, they crouch in readiness, waiting for a change in sleep state—and then the music starts up again, like an alarm clock. I wake up, and the problem I haven’t yet solved sets my blood instantly to boiling again.

Even the obsession of prose writing, which is a pretty consuming fire in its own right, seems mild by comparison. I’ve been blessed to find writing gigs on topics I really care about, so those projects can keep me up at night, too. But for the most part, I’ve learned to overcome that obstacle to rest. Not so with music.

Caught as I have been in a long musical dry spell, I had forgotten all this. I’ve been puzzling about it this week, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it happens to me because the function is different. Magazines are read and discarded; a blog post is read but not usually revisited. Even a novel doesn’t usually warrant a second reading, unless it’s Austen or Tolkein or Rowling. But music—at least, music for worship—is meant to be experienced again and again, working its way down to the very core of those who sing it—until it takes on a life of its own—until it no longer belongs to me, but to the people of God.

It’s a humbling, overwhelming thing, to feel called to write this music. And hard. At least, words are hard for me. The music itself is pure joy. Even in music school I was a freak. I never minded theory, and after I started writing I became a theory nut. Fresh, unexpected chord progressions, voice leading, part writing—I glory in that stuff. I’ll stick my fingers in and dig in to it like Julianna does to her applesauce.

In the week since returning from NPM convention energized and inspired, with all the creative floodgates open, I’ve had a lot of trouble sleeping. Combined with Julianna waking up whining for water and Nicholas wanting to eat in the middle of the night, I am one tired mama. But even so, I’m grateful. Dry spells are good for puncturing my pride when it gets over-inflated. They remind me that inSpiration is a gift, not a right, and that the music isn’t mine. It comes from outside me, flows through me, and is given in turn to others, in the hope of making the world a better place.

Published in: on July 19, 2009 at 12:37 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Reflections on Text and Style

July 7, 2009: I began the day with “O God Beyond All Praising” and ended it with “Rockin’ the Runway,” which is essentially Contemporary Christian/Praise & Worship. In the middle I worked on my own hymn text, so while I stood at the concert tonight singing, I was also analyzing the texts.

Many of these songwriters—unlike me—are quite prolific. I envy them that; I love writing songs, but I wrestle constantly with text. For communal worship, I don’t want to speak in the first person, nor do I want to use the wagging finger “you.” And these days I insist on the syllables matching from verse to verse. I try to console my frustration by focusing on Stravinsky’s philosophy: the greater the limitation, the greater the art.

But the songwriters I heard tonight follow a totally different set of rules, and their music works for worship, too. The rules for CCM are a lot more relaxed, more tied to the spoken language. There’s something visceral about this music, the beat and the riffs and the way the words live so close to the heart, like the prayers you breathe and feel, but can’t find the words to say. These writers say them for us. Hymn texts are very elevated; they raise our sights—P&W grabs us right where we are. Detractors of either style of music could use this paragraph as ammunition, but the simple fact is that both styles are powerful, and prayerful, and I love them both—and everything in between.

For hundreds of years, the music of the Church was art music—medieval motets, the incredibly dense textures of the Renaissance, the long, drawn-out, (unusable) high Masses of the masters, and so on. Composers used popular tunes—drinking songs, even—as the basis for their sacred music, but not in their original form; they were always altered to suit the liturgy.

In the post-Vatican II world, popular styles have again been lifted from the culture and adapted for sacred use. In my lifetime we have traveled from the much-derided folk style through the music of the Jesuits, to the Haas/Haugen era, and beyond. The “new” music is P&W and Contemporary Christian. That all this has happened and continues to happen in less than 35 years illustrates just how rapidly the changes are occurring. Unstoppable, by the way, and thank God for that. There’s room for all musical styles in worship.

But I’m writing this at 12:27 a.m. and I am totally shot…must get Nicholas to go to sleep…must sleep… sleep…sleep…

Published in: on July 13, 2009 at 7:09 am  Leave a Comment  
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The Muscle That Is Exercised

Several years ago, a liturgical songwriter I admire made the comment that he hardly ever wrote any music anymore. This is a man whose gift with words, and his music in general, are really powerful, and it made me sad, wondering what caused his dry spell.

That was before Alex was born. At that time, I practiced flute a little, and I spent an hour a day writing music before I allowed myself to work on my novel. Inspiration struck at all times and in all forms, those days. I had to keep scratch paper, a pencil and a pen with me to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

Every child and every developmental stage increases the amount of attention and time that I spend mothering—which is as it should be. But the final result is that pieces of me that I once considered immovable have now been laid almost completely aside. Flute practicing, for instance. I play at church, and a little during lessons, but that’s about it these days. And writing music. I’ve spent so much time and energy on prose the last three years—because I’ve had obligations to meet, to editors and critique groups—that I’ve had to let the rest of it slide in order to meet my obligations as a wife and mother.

I miss playing flute. While I was warming up for a wedding a few weeks ago, I was horrified to discover that I could not play B to C# without hitting C natural in the middle. My pinchers simply refused to coordinate with each other. I must have sat there for fifteen minutes going back and forth, B-C#-B-C#, driving my husband and everyone in the wedding party, who were taking pictures, berserk.

Even more acutely, I miss writing music. As much as I love prose, writing music is still the most fulfilling part of my creative bug—the one that makes my heart swell and my throat constrict. But inspiration strikes rarely these days.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately, and I realized: the creative muscle you exercise is the one that produces.

The solution, however, is not as simple as the problem would suggest.

The inspiration for prose comes from day to day life—from parenting three little ones, one with Down syndrome, and all the challenges and triumphs thereof. Musical inspiration, on the other hand, comes in the quiet, comes through a well-nourished reflective life, and there’s precious little that that when parenting little ones. And it’s not like I can just find quiet and poof, there’s music. Sometimes there are long, frustrating “quiet” periods in which I spend time but accomplish nothing. That doesn’t happen to me with prose, probably because I have so many projects underway at a time—but that assurance of productivity is why, with my limited time, I’ve focused my efforts there.

Once again, I’m navel-gazing. It might be a waste of time, except that I’m self-analyzing surrounded by a jungle gym covered with netting, foam wrappers and bungee cords…and approximately six gazillion kids, all screaming at the top of their lungs. So this is as good a use of time as any. Well…it might be better use of time to go climb around in the jungle gym with Alex. Hmm…

Hmmmmmmmmm….

Besides, while I was writing I came up with a strategy for spending some time at the piano this afternoon. So there!

Published in: on June 30, 2009 at 9:01 am  Leave a Comment  
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There’s nothing quite like a deadline…

As of ten minutes ago, I’m more or less done with my short story. I have one more question niggling the back of my brain, and I’m waiting for the all-seeing, all-knowing perspective of my critique group to help me find clarity. But with or without their response, I will be finished with my story tomorrow.

 

What brought on this quick end to a months-long ordeal? Simple: Tomorrow is the deadline for a competition that is just perfect for “The Third Day.” So, for better or for worse, by midnight tomorrow it will be all over.

 

Come to think of it, I’ve always done better knowing there was a time limit. Otherwise, I could tinker forever. Even today, I look at Beggars’ Queen and itch to fix things, tweak word choices—and it’s been published for two years!

 

There you go, people. The answer to writer’s block, to procrastination, to lack of self-confidence? DEADLINE.

Published in: on April 29, 2009 at 2:29 pm  Comments (1)  
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Procrastination

It’s psychological, I’m sure of it.

 

I’m so insecure about this short story that I keep clicking from place to place on my desktop, trying to put off writing the blog post about how I’m procrastinating finishing it.

 

Am I blocked? No—the darned story was “finished” eighteen months ago. But we all know what “finished” means. It means, “I have written a beginning, a middle, and an end, and fleshed it out. And now I will commence tearing it to shreds and re-seaming until it disintegrates from wear.”

 

“The Third Day” is too long for the inspirational market, and neither I nor anyone I asked to look at it came up with a way to shorten it. So I decided to rework it for the literary/mainstream market. I went back in to smooth and flesh out the transitions, and in the process I added a thousand words. Then I took three days off and started at the beginning for one last revision—the one in which I polish word and phrasing choices.

 

And that was when the procrastination began.

 

I have no confidence in my ability to tell a story to the literary market. I second guess every word choice. (And triple- and quadruple- and quintuple- guess.) Is my tone too colloquial? Or do I sound like I’m trying too hard to break into the literary market? What about references to God? Will they doom my story to rejection in a mainstream/literary market? Is the point of the story too obvious for the literati?

 

I could not come up with satisfactory answers to these questions, so I decided that the story must need more time to stew. So I set it aside and worked on a retreat presentation. And I blogged. And Googled. And did blog visits. And Facebook. And email. And picture organizing. And (gasp!) flute practicing.

 

But eventually, I had to own up to the truth. I was procrastinating. So for the last ten days, I have been crawling through the 18-page manuscript, one painful paragraph at a time. I have never (and yes, I do think the italics are warranted) had so much difficulty finishing a manuscript. Have you ever spent half an hour working on one sentence?

 

This morning I “finished” the last seven pages in an hour…which should tell you that I have yet another painful revision headed my way. But I needed to send it to my critique partners in time for meeting on Sunday, so there you are.

 

And in the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that since I began writing this post, I have nursed, made three phone calls (but hey, they’re very important—I was calling legislators!) and played around on my blog. Clearly, I still have plenty of procrastination left in my bag of tricks.

Published in: on April 21, 2009 at 12:38 pm  Comments (2)  
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