A New Month / A New Novel: NaNoWriMo

Two years ago, in November,  just after I started my blog, I wrote 50,000 words that almost came together as a novel. That was my first NaNoWriMo experience. It was good to find out that I was capable of putting that many words together around a mostly coherent, semi-cohesive story. I still work on making this blob of words into a form that works as a novel, and it is still in the cat herding, jello nailing stages. Most of the pieces are there and moving toward a conclusion that has yet to materialize in a workable form.  I struggle cheerfully with it now and then like a 50,000 piece jigsaw puzzle sitting on a table off to the side of part of my mind that writes. I have consolidated the scattered pieces into 4 or 5 main groupings that still  need to be connected in the middle and finished off in satisfying way that has yet to appear.

Last year I made a half hearted start at NaNoWriMo, but my life was too stressful and overwhelming at the time. I never really got started. This year I am fairly stress free thanks to a great new job and feeling of optimistic creativity to go with it. So I am embarking once again on the journey of 50,000 words. This also will fulfill one of my goals for 101 in 1001, writing the first draft of a new novel, killing 2 birds with one novel (these are strictly metaphoric cats, birds and jello; no real animals or gelatin products will be herded, nailed or killed in the making of  these novels.)

Today I am off to a good start. I will be posting my efforts as pages, but I warn you they will be rough and skip around some as I will write the pieces of the story as they inspire me. Each piece should be between 1000 and 2000 words and may be posted in batches. I will appreciate any feedback or ideas as long as they are thoughtful and constructive. I will try to maintain my once a week pace for blog entries this month, but the novel will definitely come first.

 

 

Another Year, Another Journal, and a Dream Poem

The year contained in this journal has been like last of a long struggle. I have finally reached surface from the dark, chill of abyssal depths. I am still adjusting to the light and air, but things are coming into focus. I have a new job that allows me to be an effective educator which reduces my stress and lets me be more positive and balanced in my creative moments. I am, as usual and forever, battling my negative moods, but I have relieved at least one source of distraction. As I start a new journal I feel it will be filled with less with stress, and more with wonder and possibilities.

From an observation of my work as a teacher of dreamtime children.

“Field Concerns for Medical Gladiolas.”

Her voice followed

the  butterflies of her hands

dancing  up the curve of her

experience

and away into the future

“That’s what my teacher called it.”

The distant butterflies transformed

bright leaves drifting back

loosely settling

in her lap.

A New Calender To Fill Up

This is the cover from my calender from July 08 through July 09. This year was a mix of many ideas and moods a lot of them frustrating and disappointing. I am now just one month into a new calender, and have yet to put a blank sheet on it for doodling (no long boring meetings). Already it has been eventful. I have quit my old job and as a result I got to finish my August with circus camp, which was totally inspirational. I got to meet a one armed juggler and family counselor who juggles bowling balls, and I get a few days off before I start my new job this week. A job that I hope will give me a lot more inspiration and joy. last year had some dark and desperate times almost all of them job related. I am hoping that the change I am making will make a huge difference in my creative life. It is already having a good effect on my outlook. Thursday is my first teacher in-service and potluck meeting with parents. For once I am not dreading paperwork days and multiple days of meetings in which I have to listen to the word from on high and not so high. I am in charge of the preschool, but I aim to invite children and parents into a learning collaboration. I think in this new coop school setting it will be possible. I know this year will be full of challenges and adjustment, but I am really looking forward to working with children and families and not having to prove that I am doing something by entering data and checking boxes. My documentation this year will be photographs and works of art, language samples and videos. The challenges will be how to cram it all into a tiny classroom and the time that I know will seem to short for all the ideas we want to explore.

Why I Write Poetry/Getting Inside Another Cocoon

“I am mainly preoccupied with the world as I experience it, and at times when I would rather be dead the thought that I could never write another poem has so far stopped me. I think this is an ignoble attitude. I would rather die for love, but I haven’t.

“I don’t think of fame or posterity (as Keats so grandly and genuinely did), nor do I care about clarifying experiences for anyone or bettering (other than accidentally) anyone’s state or social relation, nor am I for any particular technical development in the American language simply because I find it necessary. What is happening to me, allowing for lies and exaggerations which I try to avoid, goes into my poems. I don’t think my experiences are clarified or made beautiful for myself or anyone else, they are just there in whatever form I can find them. What is clear to me in my work is probably obscure to others, and vice versa. My formal ‘stance’ is found at the crossroads where what I know and can’t get meets what is left of that I know and can bear without hatred. I dislike a great deal of contemporary poetry—all of the past you read is usually quite great—but it is a useful thorn to have in one’s side.

“It may be that poetry makes life’s nebulous events tangible to me and restores their detail; or conversely, that poetry brings forth the intangible quality of incidents which are all too concrete and circumstantial. Or each on specific occasions, or both all the time.” —Frank O’Hara

I found this here, and thought it was pretty close to the way I feel about poetry, only I am not as driven to it as Frank O’Hara, and I find more good in contemporary poetry (Though much of it alludes me) and the past is alright some of it inspirational, but much of it a little too dramatic and not enough momentary for my taste.

I feel like poetry should represent a way of feeling and perceiving in a moment as we all live life moment to moment each in our own little cocoon of senses and thoughts. Poems are an attempt to reach out like a little tube that can slide into other cocoons and communicate on more intimate level. Anyway parts of  O’Hara’s reasons for writing and the reasons he disavows line up with my reasoning pretty well. I am not out to make a grand statement or be famous, and I think that any poet who is is really searching too hard for disappointment. There are many easier and quicker ways to fame and glory. Poetry to me is one moment explained well from my point of view in a way that might connect to someone else enough to continue a real conversation. When I read poetry I find that much of it does not speak to me, but when I find a poet that speaks to me, it is like that person is speaking to the inside of me, breaking into my cocoon and whispering to my deepest self.

Summer Teaching and a Great Book

Summer Teaching

I have started full time at my summer job of keeping my little friends busy and safe. All I have to do is pay attention and go with their flow, and all is well. No paper work just being there for children and providing what they need. They have decided that Dr. Suess is great and have me reading the story of the pale green pants with no one inside them every day. We also have a great box project going, where each has their own special box and I provide materials for them to decorate it. There is one that has his moments, but I am definitely reaching him already after just one week so I feel pretty solid. So many calm moments of children just being and doing what is natural to them — learning about their world. Why do teachers think we have to interfere so much in children’s lives? Curriculum, I don’t need no stinking curriculum. I just need to pay attention and have a few ideas and some interesting materials. The children do the rest.

Short and Vague Review: 2666 by Roberto Bolano

I just finished a facinating novel by Roberto Bolano translated from Spanish, called “2666.” It is about so much that I could not tell you what it is about. It is written in the form of 5 novelas with vague connections to each other, some stronger than others. In the end I got the feeling that somewhere out in the future it all makes more sense, or maybe not. It is not very important. Like any good novel, for me, it was living a life in another skin, or experiencing the world from a slightly shifted dimension. I come back a little changed with a fuller understanding of life as a human being. Also I feel a little disoriented, like I only got some of what he was saying and maybe some of what he said by accident. I think the really good writers are not able to know all the levels contained in their work. There are shadows and reflections that are cast that they are not able to see. There are so many combinations of characters and symbols that interact with the reader that they cannot know what chimeras will hatch. I always come out of novels like this as if I have gone to a foreign country and my mind has not yet assimilated all of the strangeness and time of a different land. That is how I know it was a well written piece. It shifts my perspective and I see more of the human experience. The scope of what I have read has to linger because I am unable to process the whole experience on a conscious level. I am sure that bits of this novel will resurface in poems and dreams for a long while to come.