The Writing Moment
My writing moment came yesterday afternoon. I awoke in a grumpy mood yesterday morning and was in full curmudgeon mode before my first cup of coffee.
Some of it could be put on my reaction to some of my wife’s comments. I was feeling sour about my novel in progress. First draft was finished and now I’m reconciliating, slicing, and dicing. It mostly went well, but sometimes a section was encountered that forced a gag reflex.
My SO was preparing for her book club meeting. She always takes that as seriously as doing a doctoral thesis or presenting a business plan, devoting time, thought and energy to the exclusion of many other things. Extra effort was going on this time because she was the moderator. She owned responsibility for driving the discussion.
The book was A Friend by Sigrid Nunez. Each month, one member selects a book for the others’ reading and discussion. My wife suggested this book to another book club member. She’d read reviews, and after reading it for book club (twice, because she was the moderator), she raved about the book, author, and the author’s glittering literary career. Nunez is serious about writing (yeah, like most writers are not, right?) and has an impressive career.
My wife raving about Nunez’s success settled poorly on my wounded writer psyche. I’m not usually like that. I generally am just as enthusiastic as her about these things, or even more bullish on writers and their works and rewards. But circumstances threw dark shade on my own writing efforts, and her comments dropped me into a place where there’s little light.
That happened in the morning. Vowing to myself to do better and get through this, I went off to the coffee shop to slog through writing requirements. I knew there was a problem with the section I was editing, but didn’t know what it was. Then, pop, pop, pop, three epiphanies about the what-and-why arrived. Those epiphanies energized my writing and pulled my spirit from the gutter and set it on top of the world.
I’ve through those moods and endured that kind of writing low before. Nothing new. Nor is it something that other writers haven’t experienced. Happy I’m out of it.
Time to write — and edit — a little bit more, at least one more time. Cheers
Wednesday’s Theme Music
Time for electric Elevens. Yes, we’re on the 11th of Jan, 2023. Coming up on the month’s halfway point of the new year’s first month.
Little has changed for me and it feels depressing. I’m sipping coffee in hopes of elevating my mood. Don’t know why I’m down but I can speculate on reasons. Could be the fog, rain, and wind swirling around outside. Wind sounds like it’s planted someone right outside the window to make ghostly woooooo noises. Writing the first draft and working on it to improve the story could be depressing me because it feels like there’s so much more still to do. Maybe it’s just the news and its unchanging flavors of death and politics, and the ugly, jaundiced textures that infuse it. Or, it could be that I’m in a rut and it wearies me, looking up the rut’s same walls. Probably just my time of month, when hormonal changes bring out my dark side. I could also chalk up to SAD, one supposes. Reminder to self to not make any impulsively stupid decisions today, because this will pass, brother.
Wednesday has landed on us. The fog has moved back and up, so I can see more world. Chainsaws and chippers drone and sing, informing me of another tree’s demise. Outside, it’s 42 degrees F again though it feels like 33. Flat white clouds with a tincture of gray have overwhelmed the sun. Sunrise was same as yesterday, 7:39 AM, but sunset has inched a few minutes back and will now be at 5 PM sharp.
Two songs compete in the morning mental music scream stream. The Neurons have me hearing “Just My Style” by Gary Lewis & the Playboys from 1965. Okay. The other is “Self Esteem” by the Offspring from the middle of the 1990s. I can guess why The Neurons are doing this to me. The same lines keep repeating, from one and then the other. First we have the bass delivery, “Don’t you know that she’s,” followed by the rest of the band singing “Just my style,” from the first song. Then the Offspring sing, “The more you suffer, the more it shows you really care, right? Yeah.” Both have been featured in this space before. I’ll flip a mental coin for which one is today’s theme music.
Time to drink up this coffee and pretend it’s a day. Stay positive! Test negative. Rise above yourself, I tell myself. I’ll suggest the same to you. Let me end this whiney scree. Hey, look sunshine! Too slow — it’s gone. Keep an eye out; it’ll be back.
Cheers
Monday’s Theme Music
Sunshine coats our southern and western views. Huzzah, my spirit shows. A cup of coffee is served in celebration.
This might be part of recent weather pattern. Calm, sunny mornings. Winds begin gamboling. Then they start raging. By early evening, rain begins. The rains and winds intensify and slam us throughout the night. They fade away with morning.
Not bad for us. We’re on the edge of the atmospheric river slamming California. Stories from the mountains’ south side are about floods and wind destructions, miracles of lives saved, the tragedy of another death. The other cities just a short distance north and west see little of this. While our monthly and seasonal rain levels surge and our cisterns and dams fill, those other places, such as Medford, fifteen miles away, remains behind on their precipitation levels.
This is 2023, Monday, January 9. Sunset has moved back to 4:57 PM. Sunrise keeps yesterday’s schedule, coming in at 7:39 again this morning. It’s 40 degrees F beyond my windows. Letting a cat in (or was it out?), my nose finds that wintry smell has departed from our place. Today’s high temperature will be balanced out at 54 F.
Today’s theme music sprang from DIY projects. Three projects are lined up. As I walked around and considered them, and the steps I’d take to research them and get them completed, I thought, I’ll find a way. That’s like my motto for 2023 so far. Last week, while editing and reconciliating the novel in progress, I ran into a problem. I will find a way, I told myself, but I knew it wouldn’t happen that day. Anyway, I ended up with that as some lyrics being sung in the morning mental music stream. Eventually a song by Tesla, “Love Song” from 1989, was identified. So here we are.
I remember this song from the regular work and shopping circuit my spouse and I followed in the 1990s. This song was part of the heavy rotation of the stations I rotated through, depending on our moods and what we were pursuing, and the time of day. NPR with “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” and “Car Talk” were part of the weekend’s rotation.
Ah, the morning coffee is done. I’ll be on to other Monday things now, if you’ll excuse me. Stay pos, test neg. Here’s Tesla. BTW, this is the first time I’ve seen this video. Although I knew Tesla was part of the ‘Hair Metal’ movement, I’d never seen them and their appearance surprised me. They got the hair, they got the moves, they have the sound. Looking back like this is fun.
May your Monday be terrific. Cheers
Road Dream
Had four remembered dreams last night. I’ll only post one.
I called it the road movie dream. The movie was done in black and white and reminded me of the old Cosby and Hope road movies. Three men traveled with me, and from cultural and fashion clues, we were in the 1950s, maybe the early 1960s. The three I traveled with were all RL friends who have passed away.
Our primary travel was via a huge ocean liner. A photo was taken of the four of us before we boarded the ship. Then, dream shift, we were walking off the ship at a foreign port and walking through a city. A large, old-fashioned typewriter was dropped out of a high-rise window. My three friends jumped aside and then congratulated one another that it had missed ‘us’. They turned around to discover it had struck my foot.
Next, we learned my foot was broken and was in a cast. We’re getting off the ship back at our home port. We come down the gangway to its bottom where our photo is again taken. We then learn that I completed a manuscript on the ship during the trip, using the typewriter which had broken my foot, and sold that manuscript. The book is being published, and my road movie ended with me holding up the book, surrounded by my three friends.
Michael Seidel, writer 