So much of my working times these days are spent figuring out where the voice went: where it's hiding, if it'll ever come back, if it ever existed. Right now, a spirit of experimentation: do I need to balance the timed (TSBMR, newsletter, Attendance Cards, intended Project500) with something of a more open-ended duration? Only if I can accept that "open-ended" doesn't mean "never-ending.”
Yes, you've seen (variations of / upon) this post before, once last night, once this morning, and now here, at morning's end; third time's a charm especially when a.) I find that I do, indeed, like writing these throughout the morning and b.) to arrive all the way back to how I started this experiment last week so I can kick myself in the ass.
One of those days, already.
Recovery from a rough night with NuHerbie (hence this morning's shittier-than-usual Attendance Card; I've been awake since 0300) continues. Went out of CGM range at around 0100, then stayed out of range, but NH was still pumping insulin – doing it so well in fact that when I finally made the decision to get up and figure WTF, I was, according to fingerprick and my blood, a teetering 56: nothing that 15g of carbs via gel and a handful of caramel popcorn (ok that was probably stupid but fuck me I was hungry) couldn't assuage and send me surging to 264 by breakfast, crashing back to 56 post-run, and now, after correcting via similar methods to the early morning, 241, 225, 202, 196...)
The definition of insanity being / welcome to day-to-day T1D.
Thinking: once MainFictionThing is done, I need to abandon all ideas from before my grandfather died and write from a zero point; a deepening conflict between the writer that started this FictionThing and the writer that's (allegedly) finishing it – though I am taking one final hail mary to see if that does the trick. Whether or not I get there is another matter: everything we create is, after all, a reflection of our past, present, and future – for better or for worse / consciously or un–.
The day / one of those days(?) awaits.
MacroParentheticals0138 – featuring the return of the audio "I am the voice in your head" editions(!) – is out and on its way to subscribers' inboxes, 0139 and Shard003 blank pages templated and set for composition and headscratching. Returning, finally, to MainFictionThing with an understanding that part of its challenge is maintaining my interest in and keeping a sense of surprise – both for me as the writer and for the eventual reader – while working with a pre-defined (or as close as I allow it to be) form and genre. The day’s run, leaves, and visits lie ahead until they lie behind.
sitrep/20230930
Tomorrow's newsletter's written, the first Shard (weekly 100-word microfictions exclusive to subscribers) done. Next: deciding whether or not to continue the "I am the voice in your head" editions of the NL: while it's not a ton of effort, it does impact how long I can work on the writing, so I'm still weighing that one. A lot depends on how my voice is doing in the morning.
MainFictionThing remains at a standstill but I'm chipping away at the brick wall in front of it, a little light peeking through. I think I see what I'm trying to see which is maybe what it wants me to see?
Grandfather on road to recovery, out of hospital and in his (rather swanky) resort/transitional care. Fridge stocked with Ginger Ale, football on the TV. He's set.
The hanger is real: multi-grain cheerios and a shot of bourbon do not an excellent dinner make.
Compiling a list of times I haven't felt a pervasive emptiness in the last 14 years and it's rather paltry and I don't know what to do with that other than state it for the public to myself record.
"give it all..." (maybe, probably)
Next newsletter taking shape – thought I still have to decide on the main essay/ramble, but it'll come to me, probably.
For some reason – idiocy / punishment gluttony? – I decided it would be a good idea to resurrect three abandoned projects as my sides (I take Wednesdays and the weekend to work on these side things, with the goal that they be as different from the MainFictionThing as humanly possible). Still have to decide on a final form, but I do want to have some kind of "mainstream" (read: not my usual weird shit though still, probably weird shit – just written in mostly complete sentences) series / world to revisit over and again. This trio might be it, them, maybe.
Balancing a desire to write something in this space every day (these do, if nothing else, provide me a way to work on something else when I'm stuck in the main something) and to save it for Sunday but I keep coming back to Annie Dillard's words in THE WRITING LIFE:
Consider these words to be thus given, spent.
or, how i tried to accept the chaos
Too much of my time has been wasted in a fruitless and deleterious effort to impose (too much) control over the chaos of my process: need to accept it, let it come, let it do its thing... trust it (within certain bounds – bounds, not shackles and a plastic bag over its head). Feel like I started my journey there this morning: once I resigned myself to its embrace (instead of attempting suffocation), MainFictionThing finally – thanks to an assist from Oblique Strategies: "What wouldn't you do?" – inched forward. Recording this here as much as a record of the morning's events as a reminder to myself. Will start a new "Note to Self" tag for these kind of posts. (Turns out I already did.)
Speaking of Oblique Strategies: someone needs to make an Obsidian community plugin for these. I use an app and then copy and paste into my working Canvas, but it'd be great to be able to create an OS card for the boards...
SitRep: MainFictionThing
The good news: I still like everything I wrote nearly a year ago. The bad: I've been trying to figure out the next bit since then. If nothing else, I know that what's there isn't all there is – I've got plenty laid out around it, though I'm in the midst of another narrative case of South Park's Underpants Gnomes (phase one = collect underpants, phase two =..., phase three = profit / section one = works, section two = ..., section three = works). I sometimes wish that the sentences and rhythms and constructions and permutations that sounded good to me didn't sound good to me; it'd make things so much easier. Alas.
Peake / Robinson: synthesis
Finding my way to something in the MainFictionThing by having a document open on the Infinite Canvas based on the Reveries section of Mervyn Peake's TITUS GROAN (currently reading and loving: Gormenghast will be the first fantasy series I've completed): the internal thoughts of all the characters at Titus's birthday breakfast before the next turn happens. Useful exercise even if it's doubtful that I'll use it in the final thing, find the rhythm of characters' thoughts, etc etc.
Combining with something Kim Stanley Robinson said in a recent City Arts and Lectures episode : that the novel (paraphrasing here) isn't a tool for self-expression but rather a way to get inside the heads of your characters, of other people. Playing that up here – not that I'm writing a novel – at least I don't think I'm writing a novel but who knows: maybe this is the inversion of the seven-year paragraph – or maybe a brief flash of getting somewhere before it all comes to a(nother) halt. Whatever it is, I'm going to run with it until I fall flat on my face.
sat/20221203
Finished Pelecanos's THE TURNAROUND last night: so very, very good. For some reason, in spite of my passion for crime fiction and THE WIRE, and having had Pelecanos on my radar for years and years, this was only the second of his books I've read (the other being the second Spero Lucas novel, THE DOUBLE); it will not be the last – nor will it take me as long to turn the pages.
Loved this, from the backmatter:
As a result, perhaps – of both the emotional pull and tug of THE TURNAROUND and of Pelecanos's remarks above, I'm redoubling my efforts to break through the brick wall of the MainFictionThing, which is most definitely in the crime fiction mold – though via my own "chamber writing" (Principle 07) interpretation of said mold.
impromptu / veer
A call from a great friend lent a much-needed comfort to my present consternations; thanks JL.
Following a rousing moment of creative inspiration / result of perspiration at the conclusion of the workday with MainFictionThing, I was greeted this morning with a brick wall. Veered off into AnotherFictionThing for awhile. Benefit of having multiple things going at once.
(Question remains with Another: where do I start? (At the beginning, wherever that is...))
Also considering a new little weekend challenge for myself on non-newsletter weekends like this one though it won't start for two weeks. Recording here so I don't forget which I probably will do anyhow.