Well, the writing treadmill ground to a halt between May 16 to June 27. (I begin to see that the biggest benefit/drawback of this journal is that you clearly see the number of days you didn't write.)
My writing fell victim to a horrific work project involving a Color I Shall Not Name, Benny's last weeks of kindergarten and a two-week trip to Michigan. I actually hauled a ream of research in my airplane carry-on to Michigan and back, along with two military history books.
Nope, didn't touch any of it. There is no limit to the extent that people can delude themselves. The ironic part is that this memoir addresses the human tendency to make decisions based on the people we wish we were, rather than who we truly are and what we truly need.
Anyway, I trudge forward once more with today's journal entry:
Sunday, June 27
1) June 27, 2010. 2:33 p.m.
2) Write from 2:30 to 4 p.m.
3) Organize research and outlines for memoir.
4) Started well, but went downhill fast. Read over memoir notes and outlines. Read writing blogs. Searched through Writer magazines and selected a handful that addressed memoir. Looked at clock. A half-hour had passed. Found a neat Wired article on the Internet about how surfing the web wrecks your brain. Emailed the link to myself. Found neat blog about by a neurosurgeon called Dr. Grumpy. Emailed the link to myself. Remembered an interesting finance series that USA Today ran last year and found it. Emailed link to myself. Started to think that Wired was onto something. Found an old NanoWrimo novel about the Greek gods, sat on the floor and started reading it. Ron and Benny return an hour early at 3:30 p.m. and I only felt relief.
5) Tomorrow: Get to work early and work for an hour on prologue (I hope).
Friday, July 2
1) July 2, 2010. 1:44 p.m.
2) Write from 1:45 to 3:45 p.m., then pick up Benny from camp.
3) Work on Prologue. We're in the cab now, let's get to San Francisco today!
4) Wasted the first 15 minutes looking up quotes on adversity. We didn't make it to San Francisco, but at least we're on the plane.
5) Tomorrow: Get Ron, Christine and Benny to San Francisco and finish Prologue.
Friday, July 2, 2010
"Scattered Thoughts Diabolical and Immoral"
When you're struggling through distressing times, there's nothing like a smug quote on adversity to make you feel worse. Here are a few supremely unhelpful thoughts from great minds on the topic and my churlish responses:
1) "If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome."
— Anne Bradstreet from her 'Meditations Divine and Moral,' in 1655.
Can you imagine the moxie it must take to title your random thoughts "Meditations Divine and Moral?" If I were to choose a similar name for my memoir, I"d call it "Broodings Cranky and Self-indulgent." Did she think of the title first, and then cast around for thoughts that could live up to that title? Such pressure!
And that whole "you must suffer through winter to appreciate spring" stuff sounds ridiculous anyway. I live in San Francisco now and consider its lack of seasons a huge benefit. I don't need to shovel snow for five months to appreciate flowers. I enjoy a nice daffodil as much as anyone.
2) "Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed: for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue."
— Sir Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
I have serious problems with this quote, which looks like a fancy Renaissance way of saying "That which does not kill you only makes you stronger." Apparently if you take a nice, good person and crush her like a bundle of tarragon leaves, her virtues are supposed to shine all the stronger. I contend if you take a calm, thoughtful, nice, caring girl and give her a chronic disease, a foreclosure, some hefty medical bills and a cheating boyfriend, she won't be so nice and calm anymore. Let's add a crazy boss and a loser nephew who sleeps on her couch for three months too. I'm not saying adversity can't be a learning experience -- I think it depends on the person. If our poor Tarragon Girl was snooty, entitled and self-satisfied, obsessed with decorating her house and unsympathetic to sick people, well then a little adversity could only help. Hmm, maybe I'm proving Frank's point here after all.
Here are two adversity quotes from unknown authors:
1) "A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner, neither do uninterrupted prosperity and success qualify for usefulness and happiness. The storms of adversity, like those of the ocean, rouse the faculties, and excite the invention, prudence, skill and fortitude or the voyager. The martyrs of ancient times, in bracing their minds to outward calamities, acquired a loftiness of purpose and a moral heroism worth a lifetime of softness and security."
I was actually with this one, until it started going on about martyrs' "loftiness of purpose."
2) "Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with."
Yeah, yeah, we all know it's the speck of grit that makes the pearl, etc. etc.
So learn from these four quotes about adversity. Time to get off your sofa and go get crushed!
1) "If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome."
— Anne Bradstreet from her 'Meditations Divine and Moral,' in 1655.
Can you imagine the moxie it must take to title your random thoughts "Meditations Divine and Moral?" If I were to choose a similar name for my memoir, I"d call it "Broodings Cranky and Self-indulgent." Did she think of the title first, and then cast around for thoughts that could live up to that title? Such pressure!
And that whole "you must suffer through winter to appreciate spring" stuff sounds ridiculous anyway. I live in San Francisco now and consider its lack of seasons a huge benefit. I don't need to shovel snow for five months to appreciate flowers. I enjoy a nice daffodil as much as anyone.
2) "Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed: for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue."
— Sir Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
I have serious problems with this quote, which looks like a fancy Renaissance way of saying "That which does not kill you only makes you stronger." Apparently if you take a nice, good person and crush her like a bundle of tarragon leaves, her virtues are supposed to shine all the stronger. I contend if you take a calm, thoughtful, nice, caring girl and give her a chronic disease, a foreclosure, some hefty medical bills and a cheating boyfriend, she won't be so nice and calm anymore. Let's add a crazy boss and a loser nephew who sleeps on her couch for three months too. I'm not saying adversity can't be a learning experience -- I think it depends on the person. If our poor Tarragon Girl was snooty, entitled and self-satisfied, obsessed with decorating her house and unsympathetic to sick people, well then a little adversity could only help. Hmm, maybe I'm proving Frank's point here after all.
Here are two adversity quotes from unknown authors:
1) "A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner, neither do uninterrupted prosperity and success qualify for usefulness and happiness. The storms of adversity, like those of the ocean, rouse the faculties, and excite the invention, prudence, skill and fortitude or the voyager. The martyrs of ancient times, in bracing their minds to outward calamities, acquired a loftiness of purpose and a moral heroism worth a lifetime of softness and security."
I was actually with this one, until it started going on about martyrs' "loftiness of purpose."
2) "Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with."
Yeah, yeah, we all know it's the speck of grit that makes the pearl, etc. etc.
So learn from these four quotes about adversity. Time to get off your sofa and go get crushed!
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Treadmill Journal: Week of May 16
MAY 16
1) May 16, 2010. 12:05 p.m.
2) Write from noon to 3 p.m.
3) Write rough outline of memoir.
4) Wrote from 12:15 to 3:30 p.m. Slow going until I consumed a few cans of Coke and half a box of Cheezits. Finished rough outline, along with a theme and tentative title. Started weaving financial news into memoir's chronology and made it to November 2007.
5) Tomorrow: Get to work early and write for an hour. Continue weaving financial news into last four months of outline.
MAY 17
1) May 17, 2010. 3:50 p.m.
2) Get to work early and write for an hour
3) Finish weaving financial news into memoir's chronology.
4) Muni made me late, so I wrote during lunch instead. Finished weaving financial news into memoir's chronology.
5) Tomorrow: Get to work early and write for an hour. Work on Prologue.
Unearthing the Skeleton
So I got out my little literary whisk broom and started sifting through my research, hoping a skeleton of my memoir would emerge. And by golly, it has.
It's like a little misshapen skeleton in the back of a dusty museum . There's a title written on a crooked placard, some themes molded into a bony skull, and a vertebrae of 12 chapters clumsily strung together with chicken wire.
I know the final product will in no way resemble this outline. Annie Dillard said it best: "Original work fashions a form the true shape of which it discovers only as it proceeds, so so the early strokes are useless, however fine their sheen." Often, Dillard says, in revision you must throw out the best-written part, the part that was supposed to be the whole point: " the original key passage, the passage on which the rest was to hang, and from which you yourself drew the courage to begin."
So now I have a title, a theme, an outline and a 600-word beginning. They make up a rickety little scaffold that will hopefully support me while I build something better.
____________________________
Tentative title
"A Hill of Beans"
Tentative subtitle (just to make Fog City Writer crazy):
How three little people changed their lives and teetered close to bankruptcy as the country slid into recession.
Theme:
People can change their lives if they’re willing to take risks and pay the emotional, financial and professional costs.
PROLOGUE: Sneaking Out of the House.
CHAPTER 1: This House Won’t Sell.
CHAP. 2: Facing Reality.
CHAP 3: The Final Push.
CHAP 4: Welcome to San Francisco.
CHAP 5: The Lucky Streak.
CHAP 6: Devastated.
CHAP 7: The Great Pretender.
CHAP 8: The Bleak Christmas of 2007.
CHAP 9: The Short Sale.
CHAP 10: Goodbye Big Foot.
EPILOGUE: The View from Ashbury Heights.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Oh No, Now I Gotta Write It
So I've finished my preliminary research for my memoir project, which involved reading old blog entries, printing out a year's worth of NPR Marketplace highlights and digging up my 2007 planner. Yay me. Now it's time to write the darn thing.
To help me stay focused, I'm going to keep a treadmill journal, which I read about in an old issue of Writer Magazine. The article's writer compares it to running on a treadmill to train for a marathon. Each day you make five entries:
1) The date and time.
2) How long you will work.
3) What you plan to work on.
4) How it went.
5) When you will work tomorrow and for how long.
(Yeah, it's another goal list, and I'm the one who made fun of lists three months ago. Sue me.)
Anyway, here is my journal entry for today. Ron is taking Benny to a birthday party this afternoon at Golden Gate Park.
1) May 15, 2010 — 9:31 a.m.
2) Write from 2 to 5 p.m.
3) Spread out all my research and work on rough outline for memoir.
4) Started an hour late; walked all over the Inner Sunset lugging my computer and ended up working at home. Worked on themes, thought about the plot and outlined opening chapters.
5) Tomorrow: noon to 3. Finish VERY rough outline of book.
To help me stay focused, I'm going to keep a treadmill journal, which I read about in an old issue of Writer Magazine. The article's writer compares it to running on a treadmill to train for a marathon. Each day you make five entries:
1) The date and time.
2) How long you will work.
3) What you plan to work on.
4) How it went.
5) When you will work tomorrow and for how long.
(Yeah, it's another goal list, and I'm the one who made fun of lists three months ago. Sue me.)
Anyway, here is my journal entry for today. Ron is taking Benny to a birthday party this afternoon at Golden Gate Park.
1) May 15, 2010 — 9:31 a.m.
2) Write from 2 to 5 p.m.
3) Spread out all my research and work on rough outline for memoir.
4) Started an hour late; walked all over the Inner Sunset lugging my computer and ended up working at home. Worked on themes, thought about the plot and outlined opening chapters.
5) Tomorrow: noon to 3. Finish VERY rough outline of book.
Monday, March 22, 2010
I Love You, NPR
NPR Marketplace has provided a mighty weapon for my memoir arsenal. My memoir will cover one financially and personally chaotic year of my life: April 2007-April 2008. It was one of those game-changing years that felt like a decade, and even now in 2010 it's hard to look back and make sense of it.
The personal part of the memoir is relatively simple: I'm the main character and this all happened to me and my husband and son, so I know the material. Ron and I were talking about a major day in this year, it was the day we hit bottom, absolutely bottom. It was the day we found out that we'd forgotten a credit card bill in the moving frenzy and KeyBank had jacked up the APR on a hefty balance to 29.99% (!) We're talking a $1,000 minimum payment here. I called Ron and a panic, just sobbing over the phone.
So hell yeah, I remember that day. Ron remembers that day. But I want to talk about more than the personal side of that year. I want to talk about the broad financial backdrop that this drama was played out against. This was a crucial year for the country financially as well.
During that year, I was (and still am) an avid listener of National Public Radio's "Marketplace," which is good at summarizing the business news of the day so even I can understand it a little. I remember listening to the little podcasts on the way to work, sensing that something big was coming, something that threatened to dwarf even our own troubles. But gosh, I can't remember what story played what month, etc.
But those Marketplace angels have created something that fits my needs perfectly. They have an amazing archive of every damn episode. By Date. With Transcripts. What a find! Now I have 52 Marketplace episodes at my fingertips that aired in the year I'm describing. Just beautiful.
The personal part of the memoir is relatively simple: I'm the main character and this all happened to me and my husband and son, so I know the material. Ron and I were talking about a major day in this year, it was the day we hit bottom, absolutely bottom. It was the day we found out that we'd forgotten a credit card bill in the moving frenzy and KeyBank had jacked up the APR on a hefty balance to 29.99% (!) We're talking a $1,000 minimum payment here. I called Ron and a panic, just sobbing over the phone.
So hell yeah, I remember that day. Ron remembers that day. But I want to talk about more than the personal side of that year. I want to talk about the broad financial backdrop that this drama was played out against. This was a crucial year for the country financially as well.
During that year, I was (and still am) an avid listener of National Public Radio's "Marketplace," which is good at summarizing the business news of the day so even I can understand it a little. I remember listening to the little podcasts on the way to work, sensing that something big was coming, something that threatened to dwarf even our own troubles. But gosh, I can't remember what story played what month, etc.
But those Marketplace angels have created something that fits my needs perfectly. They have an amazing archive of every damn episode. By Date. With Transcripts. What a find! Now I have 52 Marketplace episodes at my fingertips that aired in the year I'm describing. Just beautiful.
Monday, March 15, 2010
This is on Me
So I started writing my memoir last week after some pushing and prodding from Ron and my friend Fog City Writer. Writing a memoir sounded a little daunting to me, so I approached it in my typically nerdy way with some Internet research and a few articles from my Writer magazine.
It's actually kind of fun. Truth truly is stranger than fiction, and it's easier to write about my former neighbor who sits in her garden under a camouflage-patterned banner so nobody can see her than make up a crazy-lady neighbor out of whole cloth. The world is full of weirdos, and many of them like to wander through my life.
The challenge, as I see it (and what do I know, I've only been doing this for a week) is to tease out structure and patterns out of the experiences so you're not just writing "and then this happened and then that happened and then this happened and the bird died ..." Pick a definitive time span. Find themes. Write wicked character attacks that will likely get you sued unless you change the guy's name and give him a goatee and a pet iguana. Figure out what you learned. Figure out how you changed. If you didn't learn anything and didn't change at all, pretend you did.
I'm not precisely sure what I learned or how I changed in the year that I'm memoiring (April 2007-April 2008). I'm still a little high-strung. I don't howl in frustration anymore every time I drop a piece of toast on the floor and that's gotta be a plus. I personally hate the phrase "That which does not kill us makes us stronger." Adversity does not always strengthen a person; sometimes it makes said person insecure and twitchy and uptight and prone to irrational behavior even after the adverse conditions no longer exist. Ever hear of post-traumatic stress disorder, Friedrich Nietzsche? I still have problems from a whiplash injury in 1996. No, it didn't kill me, but my neck doesn't feel any stronger. It feels more vulnerable, actually.
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