sequel
Hiding. Hiding behind love for Haiti. Behind Glow. Behind my camera. Pretty soon I’m going to kidnap Jillian Michaels and thrust her in front of me, sputtering But my FITNESS! My CHOLESTEROL! Sophomoric failure is nothing to DEATH BY SLOTHERY! I must SHRED! Hiding from the hard work of transcribing distant voices from parallel worlds through a tin-can telephone.
See, in nine months I am supposed to will submit my second manuscript to Nimbus.
The blinking, my god, the incessant blinking. I …
I am …
Laundry. Groceries. Flickr. A paper for a client on social media and branding. Twitter, to share news of my third Tunnock's 1887 milk chocolate mallow tea cookie. Invoicing. Flickr. Researching root canals for preschoolers. An urge to hear Underwhelmed. Tax receipts. Flickr. Twenty abdominal crunches followed by five bicep curls and three minutes of jumping jacks. Or at least three minutes of considering it, from the couch.
I've been anywhere else but here.
Missy is unimpressed. She’s not one for fussing, nor for waiting. She sees a cuff of porcupine quills on a master welder. She wants to tread on permafrost moss and crash a flying beast and engage in illegal sabotage and write to Eric on coded postcards and it’s all stuck at the bottleneck of me.
She tries to help, but I'm thick as bricks.
On a crummy it’s always the broken driveshafts. Has to be put on a flatbed. If the driveshaft breaks the whole thing drops into the mud and the wheels can’t spin.
Don’t ever get stuck behind a moose. They’ll just trot along for twenty minutes in a straight line.
Blackflies wiggle and crawl. Gotta duct-tape your sleeves and shirt collars. Bandana around your ears. You get used to it.
Gil Croteau, too. He's the Crummies' navigator. Lâche pas la patate! Tout le kit!
But how do you start? With the blink, and resigned to a soft stomach.
+++
One hiding place in particular has been a thrill. A distraction, yeah, but a thrill. I'm selling a limited run of fine art photography prints now, here, and holding them in my hands is mind-bending.
I don't tend to make pretty things. I string words together and I can cook well enough, but I'm not crafty or arty as long as you don't count my font fetish and kink for the labels of British foodstuffs. But look! Tactile gorgeousness on cotton rag by a German company that's been making artist's paper since 1584.
Put a sheep's bum on this stuff and it's the prettiest thing you've ever seen. So have a look through. Every six months or so, I'll retire the existing series and replace it with a new one. I'll start shooting as soon as my book editor turns her back.
+++
The other day, Penelope and I sat at a vegetarian restaurant while the peanut butter balls eyed us nervously from behind the glass. First we dealt with the housekeeping of the second edition of The Dread Crew. Tweaks, continuity, special features. Then I gave her the next book, or at least the verbal skeleton of it. And she nodded and interjected with questions readers will ask, because she knows how to nudge, light fires. We knocked ideas around. She told me what she saw as she listened. Then I got home and she sent me an email that said OH MY GOD JUST WRITE IT ALREADY. WRITE!
sweetsaltykate to Penelope Giant moths instead of butterflies, maybe? Nocturnal, bumping up against windows? will think about it. I'll take a crack at the 2nd edition today, then you can. Will send you another version tomorrow, okay?
Penelope to sweetsaltykate Perfect, thanks. Tingling about moths.
sweetsaltykate to Penelope Yeah. I figured you to be that sort of girl.
Penelope to sweetsaltykate Goddamn it, you hacked my livejournal.
And there, just there, at that moment: I know it. I can do this. We can do this, she and I. For the first book we were foisted upon each other by fate and process, my manuscript unpolished but already complete. This time, we are collaborators. She cracks me up and I'm filled up with this... rush. It's already in there. I just need to start typing.
Every creative thing already lives inside. Every photograph, sculpture, poem, sketch, painting, story.
That's how it always is, you know, for everyone. All we need to do is find the right space, and the will, and facilitate the stretching of creative legs.
And get the heck off twitter.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Reader Comments (38)
that's not writing?
damn. but okay. you're right.
"Every creative thing already lives inside. Every photograph, sculpture, poem, sketch, painting, story.
That's how it always is, you know, for everyone. All we need to do is find the right space, and the will, and facilitate the stretching of creative legs."
and definitely, unfortunately, exactly this:
"And get the hell off twitter."
Sometimes i wistfully imagine all that I could be and do if I wasn't so set on being my own worst enemy - but I try to get over it quickly and go back to my utter and complete immobility.
it's safer that way - if a little less lucrative.
home and uncool, yes. And like alcohol, twitter goes off when you get to the bottom of it. Starts to taste like sour armpit.*
Alana, you are a twitter poet. Totally different. You need to get the hell ON twitter. The world is better that you do.*
* none of the above admonishments mean that I will get off twitter. I'm just expressing the desire. expressing is half the battle.
As for the rest, you inspire to get my saggy tummy off my sofa where it has happily resided for the winter, and try and do something creative. Maybe when Lost is over and done with....
Oh and I think I ordered through the form thing for a "home" print, but didn't get an invoice. Order again or?
So thanks for being patient... and for the enthusiasm of your 5 year old. I love that. :)
not because you need it, but because you are already doing it. living it. feeling it.
even if the words aren't on the paper, er, screen.
rock on, mrs. author and photographer and funky mama.
xoxo
WRITE!
My point? I can't wait. I just can't be patient, like I could for L O S T to come out on DVD, all legal-like, in Germany. NO. I want that book and I want it now. So the idea that a second book might be following soon is like finding out that cheesecake you ordered from the display case has a hidden core of chocolate. My inner Lucy goes *ping!* and already, I'm excited about my OWN wardrobe and my OWN tentative, new project.
How are you always on my pulse, woman?
Admit it. Your voodoo chicken feathers are showin'.
Mary, you can buy your own Penelope at masochisticeditor.com. Just make sure you don't give yours the URL of your blog. SHEESH.
Waving at you Heidi. Tell those fireflies to quit twittering. It's hampering their creative accomplishments.
PENELOPE STOP READING .... NOW. (waves hands, casts spell)
Twitter, I just can't quit you.
Yes, it's a time waster but it can do things I never thought possible.
But write, girl, just write!
The funny thing to me is that while you have writer's block you launch another aspect of making. Fine art prints. Why not?
I have a question. Do you ever feel stingy with your creative thoughts? Like...you don't want to waste them, you want to save them for later, something bigger, something better?
Oooo, good to know. I've now told my mom to get it for my birthday, and since I chronically have no suggestions on what people should get me for holidays, birthdays and the like, I would feel like a noob taking it away from under her nose. But, in nine or so months, I guess I will know to put it to use, now won't I?
Can'twaitcan'twaitcan'twait.
I just wrote a little manifesto about writing, a pep talk to Me about returning to my writerly self of yore; a more gutsy, gritty wordsmith was she. Just the other night my lovely husband asked me, brow raised, "How long *has* it been since you stepped into the studio?"
....and all those ideas flailing around in the water (along with the stray notebook or eleven) while I lie prone and listlessly twitching on the boat's deck. Buh.
(This may be ridiculously over simplistic; I make no boasts of understanding the creative process)
Would it help to begin writing Missy's story at another point than the beginning (that you've planned?)
Missy is a wily sprite. She'll ooze her way out of the weeds soon enough.
off to the gym and hoping for my own literary tipping point, even as i blink back a few tears.
nothing fatal. i'm optimistic. just a little...well, deflated, at the moment.
and no one cares what i'm saying on Twitter; I'm just 'noise'. and I hate 'noise' on Twitter.
All I can say is that at any given time, we're all on some kind of upward arc. Financially, in marriage, or in terms of personal goals. And we're all also on some kind of low point, at the same time. Financially, in marriage, personal goals. You look at my life on the blog, and you see the book, and it might remind you of your own tipping point, as you say. But you don't see all the other stuff that I don't write about. The struggles, the doubt, the digging for change in the couch, neglected piles everywhere. All the stuff I don't take care of, but should.
I know you know this already, and you don't need me to tell you that everyone struggles in ways you can't see. So I don't mean to be patronizing. But when we were so down in terms of growing our family, I kept forgetting that. So consumed with everything that had gone wrong for us, I looked at everyone walking the streets as being better off than we were. Oblivious, blessed, obnoxiously happy. They all served as symbols of what we'd lost, even though they had their own sad stories and shortfalls.
I've felt the creative sting of it too, in exactly the same way, watching others achieve something I wish I could do. Happens all the time. Being deflated keeps you hungry.
Keep going. I'm so sorry that you had shitty news today. But some other day, it'll be fantastic news. And someone else will look at you and sigh, and wish they were so blessed. Funny, how that works. :)
xo
i am not going to quit in pursuing my dream; i'll keep on with my blog, my writing, which is sometimes "writing", and with my photography, which is also, yes, sometimes "photography". but that's okay, because it's about process and going forward and believing that it will ease me along to where I want to go. and every now and then something is write is beautiful and an image i take is worthy of framing. even if I am the only person who recognizes these things.
your reply was soothing and not patronizing. i can't cry out like this at home, because, really, I'm crying about a HOBBY? so on I go.
thank you.
"I just need to start typing" - yeah, as much as we look elsewhere, it's all in the doing. Do.
It is there inside all of us. You do just need to let it out. Beautiful and true.
Congrats on the exciting things happening in your creative and professional life. They are things that keep you busy but that fill you up even as you pour yourself out.
And beautiful post on death. If beautiful is the right thing to say. You are so striking, and I am so changed when I read your words.