action / reaction / solitude

in

Perhaps the return to mowing the in-lawn was more beneficial than I thought, especially since I seem to have abandoned podcasts for audiobooks and, in this second grand mowing, managed to listen to all of David Lynch's - not David Lunch, as I usually type it – CATCHING THE BIG FISH. Fascinating to read/hear how many of my work habits – or, rather, the ones to which I'm trying to return – are from this book I picked up in a Salem, MA used bookstore more 15 years ago:

And then you go to work. The idea just needs to be enough to get you started, because, for me, whatever follows is a process of action and reaction. It's always a process of building and destroying. And then, out of this destruction, discovering a thing and building on it... Then it's a matter of sitting back and studying it and studying it; and suddenly, you find that you're leaping up out of your chair and going in and doing the next thing. That's action and reaction.

I've got the chair(s) and now I need to relearn how to allow myself that time and space – and to not fill the space I do have with pointless trivialities; as Don DeLillo reminds us, "A writer takes earnest measures to secure his solitude and then finds endless ways to squander it."

THE SHADOW SCRAPBOOK (1979)

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The latest addition to the collection, a first edition of Walter Gibson’s THE SHADOW SCRAPBOOK. Here’s the title page, signed by Gibson:

Gibson, on his writing days (which produced 282 +/- of the 325 SHADOW issues (plus comics) that Gibson, as Grant, penned):

I was turning out first drafts at a rate of four pages an hour, each page running over 250 words. That meant a little over thirty pages in an eight-hour day, or better than 8,000 words. At that rate, I could finish a 60,000-word story in less than eight days, but I never wrote one that mechanically. Usually I was slow in warming up or took a few too many breaks, so I felt lucky if I got beyond twenty pages on the first or second day. But once the story was rolling, & didn't care about the hours. With a few breaks, _ would work up to ten or even twelve hours a day, hitting as high as forty or even fifty pages.

I generally started around nine o'clock on the morning of the first day but seldom worked steadily until five or six o'clock. I might take the afternoon off and finish my stint in the evening; or go out in the evening and put in a few hours after I came in around midnight. In the latter case I wouldn't begin my second "day" until about noon, which would push the third "day" even further ahead. A few more hours of extra work would push the following "day" still further on, and there were times when I slept so late that I didn't start until early evening but kept going until the following dawn.

The whole book is available via The Internet Archive; stoked to have a physical edition –the signature makes it even more wonderful. Will add more from it as I peruse and read.

re/visit :: CATCHING THE BIG FISH (Lynch, 2006)

in

Though I've endlessly perused Lynch's ode to TM-infused creativity in the 15+years since I last read it, this was my first time re-reading it in its totality or, rather, having David Lynch read it to me while I drove in circles on a lawnmower (THE STRAIGHT STORY part of my days) which gave it a whole new life.

Apparently my fragmentary thinking – and my efforts to stay there – has/have been around for a long time:

It would be great if the entire film came all at once. But it comes, for me, in fragments. That first fragment is like the Rosetta Stone. It's the piece of the puzzle that indicates the rest. It's a hopeful puzzle piece...

You fall in love with the first idea, that tiny little piece. And once you've got it, the rest will come in time.

(These are my perpetual efforts to remember that final sentence.)

Recommended, wholly, just as it was 17 years ago – and especially worthwhile as an audio book, like Rubin's THE CREATIVE ACT: there's something about having both Lynch and Rubin speaking to you, whispering in your lone ear, lying in a field. Essential to the creative library.

Other note: I always have to type David Lynch twice, as I invariably type David Lunch the first time.