Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Picking Over the Wood Pile

Our home is heated entirely by a small wood stove. We are a small piece of a century past, right here in the middle of the city. I love the feel of the heat - it's so different from the heat that comes from the flick of a switch. It's encompassing and so tangible. It's a completely sensory experience from the very start: choosing and splitting the wood, carrying and stacking, laying and lighting the fire just so, waiting for the moment for it to catch and spring to life, the smell of the smoke, the dancing flames through the window of the stove, the creeping satisfying warmth that comes from a good, solid fire as it warms the house. It is also a year-round occupation. We spend summer and fall procuring, splitting, stacking and seasoning wood. Every morning in the winter, the fire is the first order of business. You can't just start a fire and walk away. It must be tended, tweaked, fresh wood added, damped, stirred. It is always there in the consciousness on some level. Come spring, the fires are smaller, fewer, but still necessary. Mostly in the evenings, but it depends on the day. Also with the spring comes a much depleted wood pile and plans for next year's winter again.

This is how I write.

I gather ideas throughout the day. When I am not writing, my senses are wide open. I am alert to what is around me for the sake of being alert - not for the sake of writing. I'm an observer by nature, and by choice I focus on things that delight: details that may seem small or insignificant, smells, conversations, the way the light catches, the way something feels in my hands, the way things feel inside me. I put labels on things, I listen for bits of things in conversations, and try to decide the exact shade of green that new grass is. But this is not with any purpose other than to observe and appreciate. It is a spiritual and philosophical decision that happens to come in handy with the writing. Most of life is a mundane repetition of a handful of chores or obligations. Our routines do not vary much and the large and exciting events do not happen very often. Or so it would seem. It is my personal practice to look below the surface as a matter of survival. Much like the gathering of wood in the summer. I may not need it right now, but I know I will. Days will come when I would freeze if I didn't collect these lovely bits of fuel now. So, instead of growing bored with the track I run daily from  school to school, I notice two crows sitting on a wire above the street who look like they're kissing or telling secrets. I will save this, throw it on my wood pile for when I need it.

Like my fires in winter, I write every day. It is not a chore. It is not always easy, but it is necessary for me. There is the writing I do for my blog and then my other writing. I mostly write creative nonfiction. Some poetry when the notion strikes, I have tried my hand at fiction a few times and intend to continue to do so because I like the feel of failure and the challenge of doing something uncomfortable. I have a loose schedule for writing that is necessarily flexible for the sake of small children who need me. But mostly I create in the evenings, edit in the mornings. I carry a journal with me everywhere and sit and write or edit when I have time to wait - sitting at the park, waiting rooms, at the library, etc. A lot of time with school-aged children seems to be spent waiting while they do things, so I use the time. Again, a spiritual and philosophical decision. I'd rather be productive and do something I enjoy than resent the time I spend waiting on others. But my biggest chunk of writing time is in the evening.

I pick over the wood pile: the cedar sticks light easily, but burn quickly without much warmth. The maple burns hot and long, but takes longer to light. The alder, when mixed with a little cedar for kindling lights well and burns hot enough to get a good base fire burning, and then I can add the hardwoods when I've got a bed of hot coals. Then it roars. So it goes with the ideas I've collected in the back of my head. My blog posts are usually kindling. They light quickly, burn up and are done. Not substantial enough to sustain a steady burn unless combined with the harder stuff and a little more patience. Thus, my blog posts are usually quick writes, with very little active thought as I write. I usually write in the middle of monkey chaos, so I damp down my senses and concentrate inward, allowing my wood to burn a bit hotter once it has caught. My other writing - the essays, the character sketches, and to some extent the poems - usually begin with the same kindling, but I take the time to layer on the wood, to tend and tweak, to shift things around to produce the greatest burn.

I always, always, always edit. Even if it is just a comment or a grocery list. I am disgruntled easily by the green wood of cliche, misspellings, punctuation and grammar errors that have no purpose (although, if there is an artistic reason for any of the above I will let them slide) so I cull them out. They won't burn and they disrupt the efficacy of the rest of the wood. Some other green wood for me: complaining for the sake of complaining or at least complaining uncreatively, trite Hallmark-y type wisdom, obviously imitative writing. I will chuck these things aside and let them season some more: do I have a complaint? How can I write about it in a way that builds rather than destroys? Or at the very least, how can I write about it without sounding whiny? Triteness is tricky. Some things are trite because they're true and therefore repeated a lot. How can I say this in a new way that isn't insipid or overused? The obviously imitative is just inauthentic and can be spotted a mile away. I also chuck out things with knots. Those tangled ideas or phrases that don't quite catch where they are, are not quite ready for the fire. I need an especially hot fire for those and will set them aside for later.

Like all the wood on my pile, all of it will be usable at some point. It's just a matter of the season or the circumstance. I have sudden blasts of inspiration occasionally, but not usually. Even those come along the lines of a perspective shift about a particularly knotty piece of work. For example, my post The Gift of Slumber came as a result of a few days of seasoning. It was around the time that those dreadful co-sleeping ads came out and everyone was furiously writing posts for them and against them. I had some very strong feelings about the whole thing, but didn't want to be part of a herd, sound whiny or vindictive or any number of other things. I discarded probably six posts that I had started on the subject and finally chucked the whole idea aside. Then one day I was out in my garage doing something and thinking about how we think our personal experience is Gospel when it comes to raising kids and bam! I had the post I was looking for - I could address it without whining, without rehashing what 197 other bloggers were already saying, without condemning other people or elevating myself. And I could make people laugh, which is always a bonus.

Everyone has that dreaded blank page, blank screen, blank mind experience from time to time. I find I cannot write anything worth reading if I am angry. It is, for me, an unproductive emotion that chokes off any creativity or objectivity. I can later write about things that anger me, but not in the midst of being angry. These are the only times when I find I can't write. There are plenty of times I don't want to write or feel I shouldn't write because there are more pressing things afoot, but those times I write anyway and am usually grateful for it in the long run. Blog writing is relatively new to me and I am still adjusting. It is a different sort of writing as its audience is immediate. I love my readers, cherish them so much, but I don't think about them when I write because it makes my writing frozen and stilted. I solve the blank page problem by covering it with words. I just start, even if it's nonsense. I like Blogger for this because I can type a while, hate it, close it and start another until I'm satisfied. The Gift of Secret Codes was a post born out of blank page nonsense. I just crammed a lot of stuff in the wood stove and lit a match. Anyone who has ever lit a fire knows that sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.

This is getting far too long and rambling for a blog post. My apologies. The bottom line is that writing is survival for me. In one way or another I've been recording life since I could write. I have some aptitude for it I believe, but nothing to show for it but a growing pile of rejection letters and an uncomfortable blog with dear faithful readers, and reams and reams of scribblings. I have undertaken over the last year the discipline of writing, rather than just the activity of it. The regular schedule, the editing, the stepping across the abyss into sharing it through blogging and submission for publication. It is sometimes hard work, sometimes I'd rather flick a switch and have it be done for me but it's so encompassing and so tangible. And it keeps me warm.

26 comments:

  1. I think that your entry is long because the metaphor is so fitting. My husband and I have a "Cozy Heat" fireplace. We heat our home with it from approximately October to March as Oklahoma is a hot hot hot place during the summer months. I really appreciated hearing about your observational gatherings, and share many of those behaviors. But not all. Bless you, monkey-wrangler, for tending to your wood pile and lighting the hearts of your readers.

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    1. Bless you, Kelly, for your kind words always.

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  2. There was a reaLLy cool sentence about your fire, a sentence with eleven -ings; it was very very.

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    1. I need you to be my proofreader! Eleven -ings in one sentence. That's a lot, even for me!

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  3. Writing is survival. Something non-writers don't understand. I love this analogy, because, to me, writing is warmth and it is home.

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    1. It is home for me, too. Sometimes I feel all over-dramatic thinking writing is survival. I am so glad to hear I'm not alone in that.

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  4. Exactly. And now I have to find some tissue because I've got something in my eye.

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    1. Careful! Those wood chips can fly up and get in your eyes sometimes. ;)

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  5. Red Dirt Kelly, you said so well what I was trying to figure out how to say. Beautiful post!

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  6. I have a list of problems.

    A: My writing process looks a little, yet nothing like this.
    B: My writing products look nothing like this.
    C: I can't find the "Like" button for the comments posted before I show up. Consider yourselves "Liked."
    D: I can't submit a list of three things, so here's your fourth.

    You take the good, you take the bad, you take 'em both & there you have ... wasn't it Tootie?

    Oh, and so's your face.

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    1. Right you are. How embarrassing. I should always consult the Wiki before referencing pop culture. I fixed it for ya!
      RE: A&B: Of course your process and products are different, you are not me. I am not you. I could not even come close to approximating your "products", either. That's the beauty of it all!
      So's your face.

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  7. LOVE the metaphor. I have a question, if you don't mind my asking (if you do, feel free to ignore!). You've written a couple of times that blogging feels uncomfortable to you. What made you try blogging (did you start fairly recently?), and what made you decide to continue? (I must say, I'm glad you DID, but I'm curious!) OK, that was two questions. :)

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    1. No, I don't mind your asking. The short answer is that I'm a somewhat anti-social Luddite.
      The somewhat longer answer, but not quite complete one: I started blogging (less than a year ago) because I wanted an outlet for my writing while I was working up the courage to actually write. I have written all my life, but outside of a few contests in school, never for any particular audience. I liked the idea of the feedback in blogging, but oddly, that is one of the things that is disconcerting to me as well. It's all so immediate and ephemeral. It's a different sort of writing than I am used to, a different approach to writing. I decided to continue because I have "met" a few people who share the same goals as me and it's nice to be in it together. I enjoy the interactivity of blogging to a certain extent, but I think when I started I had no idea that for some it was like Facebook with longer status updates. Social media is an uncomfortable thing for me. I'm a pretty private person. I'll probably blog about this at some point.

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    2. Interesting... thank you so much! I love learning about why people do (or don't do) the things that they do.

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  8. "The green wood of cliche..." and so many other gems here. I was hooked by the full circle of fire tending, the year roundness of the whole operation, and its heat's tangibility. Then your writing metaphor made it pure magic Thanks lady! So much, This as divine. Of to glimpse your scribbled (unedited) notebooks! I'll try to resist the switch flicking over here.

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    1. Thank you, beautiful! I think you are in little danger of switch flicking around the Lazy W!

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  9. I put off reading this all day yesterday because I am still tinkering and tweaking my process post and didn't want to inadvertently cheat off your paper. But of course, there is no way I could cheat off this paper. It's so you and so brilliant--the analogy is perfect and every detail of it is so telling not just about how you write but about who you are. (For me, I think those two things are hopelessly tangled--as I'm sure they are for you as well.)

    The thing that I identified with most was the paying attention part. You say you do it as a person, not as a writer, but I think there's a possibility that the level of noticing is part of what drives us to write. I am constantly taking notes--whether I am near a pen and paper or not and when my brain gets full, that urge to write becomes a powerfully distracting itch that absolutely must be scratched. That is not to say that what comes out in those moments is stuff I'd let anyone see, of course, just that I think the noticing may be part of the compulsion, at least for me.

    Thanks so much for sharing this and for bringing the topic up for all of us to yammer on about.

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    1. You get almost enough points for the abridged "Infinite Jest"! I'm glad that it came across in the piece... the writing and life entanglement is really inseparable to me at this point. I agree with you about the noticing. I can very much relate to the itch to GET IT OUT. These things just have a way of building up and weighing one down. I suppose that's why I ever started writing to begin with!
      I can't wait to read your post!

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    2. Your points system may be a little too generous. ;)

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  10. I relate very much to what Masked Mom is speaking of, which you expressed so gorgeously. I notice. That is what I do. I notice and I have to talk and write about what I notice. I married a man with whom I spend hours talking late into the night about what we both notice. I joined a church that allows to me run off at the mouth non-stop about what I notice. I have a job that REQUIRES me to refine noticing to a razor sharp edge. I blog so that, when I notice, you will laugh, or cry. I never want, even when I write about a horrible day of pain for someone to feel sorry for me. When someone says that, I always feel profoundly sorry for having disturbed them. I really, as a writer, never want anything but for someone to say "Thank you so much for noticing. You noticed beautifully."

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    1. Amen. "Thank you so much for noticing. You noticed beautifully." Absolutely, amen.

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Thanks for reading and taking the time to say hello!