From FRANTIC to STEADY

 

As I’m rounding my fourth draft of my WIP, a novel for middle grades, I reflect on the process and how it has changed over my writing years. It’s not my “first round at the rodeo,” as the saying goes.

 

The creative process of earliest attempts, going back some years, were more intense. I would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night with a realization that there was a plot hole which needed fixing. I kept a pad and pen on the headboard and would jot it down to be addressed in the morning. In order not to wake my husband up I sometimes wrote in the dark, and blimey if I could make sense of my scribbles the next drafting day.

 

Many times, during first-drafting periods, I would realize that I had used the wrong word in a pivotal sentence and would turn the computer back on to revise. This could happen in the middle of dinner preparation or just before going to bed. Something inside me knew that if I didn’t take care of it, the insight would disappear into the void never to resurface again, and an important matter would be deserted for eternity.

 

I notice that the more times I had gone through this, the more relaxed the process had become. Drafting now is a steady and slow process. Each day’s session, once ended, stays quiet in slumber as my mind unwinds until the next day— when I go on to the next.

 

What hasn’t changed was my commitment to productivity, guarding the time I set from other incursions. A friend wants to get together or talk on the phone? Not during writing time, please. (Weekday mornings, with Wednesday being my vacay day.) Doctors’ appointments? Reserved for Wednesdays. Same for all other chores that can’t be done in the afternoon or evening.

 

In other words, I treat writing as a job. I know that for me this is the only way I can accomplish these marathons.

 

Writing no longer takes over my whole day. It has its allotted time, and the blessed focus and concentration this time brings. But today each novel drafting is a “one foot in front of the other,” “one day at a time,” to the finish line.

 

There is no universal wisdom here. Every creative must find how they work, and thus, how to work.

LUCK OF THE IRISH

When I first heard the expression “luck of the Irish,” it was from a person of Irish ancestry. Not wanting to question his Irishness or expose my non-native English, I tried making sense of it through context. That is how I managed many idioms and higher vocabulary in those years, my first living in the United States.

 

In that context, I took the expression to mean “bad luck.” Something akin to a curse following those who carried Irish genes.

 

Sometime later, another person with no Irish ancestry used the expression to point to another friend (who had an Irish father) as always lucky against all odds and in contradiction to that person’s abilities. In that context, luck of the Irish meant that Irish genes made for good luck.

 

Years after that and a much better command of the English language, I married a person whose family was Irish on his father’s side and found myself sporting an Irish surname. It was time to find out what sort of luck I had landed into.

 

This is what I found online:

"Luck of the Irish" refers to an abundance of good fortune, but its origin is often an ironic and derogatory term from the 19th-century American gold rush, used to dismiss the success of Irish miners as simply luck rather than skill or hard work. While the phrase was initially used with derision, it has since evolved into a broader, more positive expression for good fortune and the resilience of the Irish spirit.”

 

And so, Irish Luck is both bad and good. Leave it to the Irish to embrace contradictions.

      Happy St. Patrick’s Day 

“MR. WATSON COME HERE, I WANT YOU”

 ON THIS DATE, MARCH 10^TH, IN 1876…

From that first ever telephone call by Alexander Graham Bell and to this day, the world would never be the same.

 

“History was made” and “never be the same” are expressions used with abandon and lack of a sense of precision for trivial things. But when it comes to the invention of the telephone, this is, if anything, an understatement.

 

It started as an almost peripheral function, even as a few understood way back in 1876 that March 10^th was a paradigm shift, a game changer, a turning point from which nothing in the many ways we interact would be spared.

 

It started then and never stopped.

 

Look at us now, a humanity where many cannot function without phone in hand.

DON’T BE THE ONE TO TELL YOURSELF “NO”

 The above goes under the caption “BEST ADVICE I EVER GOT.”

 

Life is full of Nos.

 

First, there are your parents, who are doing their job setting parameters.

But, at some point, you become a self-directed adult, and your internalized self-setting limits work as guides.

 

Now comes the world at large, and its plenty of Nos.

No, you can’t wish for the stars before paying your dues.

No, you can’t approach others for this, that, and the other.

No, don’t you dare think you have earned a raise, a promotion, or even a foot in the door.

 

For artists, the world’s Nos are the many rejections. 😣

I’ve known many who wanted to soften the blow by rejecting themselves in advance.

“I don’t have a shot.”

“I’m not even in the running.”

“I don’t do well under such and such conditions.”

“You wouldn’t want--- me/my work. Right?”

 

I speak not only for others I’ve known, but for self. Guilty.

 

Here’s the deal: the world will give you plenty of NO to this and NO to that. You don’t need to add to that chorus. Let them sing to themselves and go on humming a better tune.