That title also happens to head one of my favorite poems written by Thomas Hardy. In it, he reminisces about, and immortalizes, his final years with his wife before her death and laments that he could have cherished their moments together more while they were taking place.
My title sums up the end of a different type of journey, however, namely, the finishing of another book. And now I am enjoying the calm but richly full feeling of fulfilment and that accompanies the completion of any accomplishment. It strikes me, though, that no journey, be it literal or metaphorical, ever really ends, for there is never an ultimate destination beyond which we can no longer move. All roads lead somewhere, but they also all lead back to where they started, opening up even more possibilities on all sides.
So now, I stand here at the end of this long walk, seeing lots more road ahead of me, as well as all the different other directions I might have headed off in. For writing, like roads, is never final. There is never a "last word," or a true "The End." Words are audible and visual forms of energy. And if words should ever fail us, like the energy that enables the flower or the tree to mesmerize us, they won't die but simply lie in wait for the next traveler upon which to attach themselves.
Like a cat moving along through underbrush unwittingly gathering seeds and other bits of potential new plants, I move along gathering ideas. For now, I will pause and take stock, assess and reevaluate. And then, before too much more time elapses, I will pick up my walking stick and set out anew to see what awaits me there along the many secret paths which are, as long as I am able to travel them, all mine and mine alone.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1530989876
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Saturday, July 26, 2014
Unhappy Endings
Sometimes, I go back and reread some of my writing, and I come away thinking that my themes might be construed as sad or even depressing. While I am fully aware of it this, and many cases, it's not actually intentional. But as most writers know, a piece of writing can start out in one tone and quickly veer off into another, with no help whatsoever from the writer other than what his or her unconsciousness contributes along the way.
Water flows downhill and always seeks those egresses that are below it. That doesn't mean that some of kind of deterioration happens along the way. In actuality, the water may even become enriched by whatever it picks up along its downward fall across rapids or as it snakes its way through woods that crest a hillside. Story plots often behave in much the same way, quickly taking a plunge at the first sign of a low spot, and then rushing on toward the sea, which, in this case, is represented by a stack of pages or a computer file that constitutes the whole body of thought gathered finally in one place.
Here's the thing: writers are constantly advised to "write what they know." And in my case, there haven't been all that many happy endings in my life to draw experience from. So how can I write about something that I'm not all that familiar with? Sadness, on the other hand, in the form of suffering, death, disruption, abandonment, rejection, tragedy, and any other manifestation of loss in between...yeah, THOSE I know a lot about, so it's not surprising to me that my stories would assume an aura of loss, sadness, or misfortune.
For a writer, the actual act of writing is an exercise in exploration. For as we type or write, we discover new things about the world, about other people, and about ourselves. Sometimes, too, we remember things that we might have thought long buried and forgotten. But the act of writing requires an expenditure of energy, and energy, as we all know, is everywhere at once, filling the large and the smaller spaces equally, and in this case, insinuating itself into the tiniest crevices between our buried thoughts and impressions, often bringing them back into the light without warning.
How often have I sat here writing when, all of a sudden, a sentence or a phrase pops out at me in full print that I didn't consciously compose but that seemed to materialize out of nowhere, small shards of memories I'd suppressed or that were crowded out by more immediate concerns. And if they happen to be sad, then that's where the catalyst of that phrase lived for a very long time before it decided to become part once again of a greater whole.
While writers expound often upon events of the past, the actual act of writing is happening now, in real time, giving new life to old impressions and bits of tales generated from experience and perception. I envy anyone who is able to tack a happy ending on to his or her stories. But I suspect that, more often than not, loss and sadness, which seem to leave much deeper and more indelible tracks on the human soul, are much more familiar to a much larger audience.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1530989876
Water flows downhill and always seeks those egresses that are below it. That doesn't mean that some of kind of deterioration happens along the way. In actuality, the water may even become enriched by whatever it picks up along its downward fall across rapids or as it snakes its way through woods that crest a hillside. Story plots often behave in much the same way, quickly taking a plunge at the first sign of a low spot, and then rushing on toward the sea, which, in this case, is represented by a stack of pages or a computer file that constitutes the whole body of thought gathered finally in one place.
Here's the thing: writers are constantly advised to "write what they know." And in my case, there haven't been all that many happy endings in my life to draw experience from. So how can I write about something that I'm not all that familiar with? Sadness, on the other hand, in the form of suffering, death, disruption, abandonment, rejection, tragedy, and any other manifestation of loss in between...yeah, THOSE I know a lot about, so it's not surprising to me that my stories would assume an aura of loss, sadness, or misfortune.
For a writer, the actual act of writing is an exercise in exploration. For as we type or write, we discover new things about the world, about other people, and about ourselves. Sometimes, too, we remember things that we might have thought long buried and forgotten. But the act of writing requires an expenditure of energy, and energy, as we all know, is everywhere at once, filling the large and the smaller spaces equally, and in this case, insinuating itself into the tiniest crevices between our buried thoughts and impressions, often bringing them back into the light without warning.
How often have I sat here writing when, all of a sudden, a sentence or a phrase pops out at me in full print that I didn't consciously compose but that seemed to materialize out of nowhere, small shards of memories I'd suppressed or that were crowded out by more immediate concerns. And if they happen to be sad, then that's where the catalyst of that phrase lived for a very long time before it decided to become part once again of a greater whole.
While writers expound often upon events of the past, the actual act of writing is happening now, in real time, giving new life to old impressions and bits of tales generated from experience and perception. I envy anyone who is able to tack a happy ending on to his or her stories. But I suspect that, more often than not, loss and sadness, which seem to leave much deeper and more indelible tracks on the human soul, are much more familiar to a much larger audience.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1530989876
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Cell Division
I admit it: science was one of my favorite subjects in school. And yes, I even liked dissecting dead animals. SMALL dead animals, you understand. Nothing bigger than a fish or a frog. I drew the line at a bird. Even then, I loved birds too much to want to see inside a dead one. Besides, my cat had shared that privilege with me himself on more than one occasion, so I needed no extra help in that department. That said, another aspect of science that I loved was biology, learning how things came to be, how they grew, evolved, developed. And once again, I can liken the craft of writing to a very basic biological function: cell division.
All writing starts with an idea or a small piece of an idea, genetic material, if you will. And slowly, over time, that idea starts to grow, with each bit of material dividing and subdividing again and again until the whole mass reaches a tangible identifiable form that comes to be known as A Story. Then, the process of accretion, as Isak Dinesen called it, begins, and the story starts pulling in what it needs to survive. Detail, background information, explication, narration, dialogue, reference materials, etc. etc. etc. And not unlike those blob-like creatures sent here from outer space in those wonderfully sappy 1950's sci-fi movies, The Story's mass enlarges, continues to grow and move about inside the writer's head and within his or her own experience, pulling in as much new material as it can which enables it to get even larger, until...until...
It hits the page or the screen with a loud SPLAT! And there, the writer's job is to tame it, to bring it in line, trap it within some predefined boundaries that transform it into something that readers won't run madly from.
I've nurtured three such creatures during the last few months, while a fourth is growing and feeding as I write.
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Release the River
Working at an assisted living facility awhile back provided me with the opportunity to view life and its intricacies through the eyes of elderly people who were simply living out their final years as comfortably as possible. One man, who wasn't as old as the typical assisted living resident is but who had issues that warranted round-the-clock monitoring, told me something interesting not long before we parted ways. He said, "You see far, and you feel deeply." Later, when I thought about it, I realized that he had never had very much to go on to be able to form that opinion of me. And I was, needless to say, touched by his spot assessment of me.
I don't think there is a writer alive who could do what we do if he or she did not "see far and feel deeply." Writing is as public a display of emotion as is standing on a street corner screaming or crying or on a building ledge getting ready to jump. While it certainly is a more quiet and a less overtly violent endeavor, it is no less deep and no less sincere.
I will go out on a limb here as far as to say that pulling words from our brains is sometimes, if not usually, physically painful. It certainly can be draining, as is evidenced by anyone who has seen a writer push himself or herself back from a desk in sheer exhaustion. Writing is risky business, especially once the dam breaks and the words come tumbling out, not to be contained. We have no choice but to allow them to cascade down, as there is no hope of damming them up again until they've spent themselves and are nothing more than a trickle. And then, even if we do manage to block its path with a rock or a branch, whatever seeps into the ground is lost forever.
Or is it?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1530989876
I don't think there is a writer alive who could do what we do if he or she did not "see far and feel deeply." Writing is as public a display of emotion as is standing on a street corner screaming or crying or on a building ledge getting ready to jump. While it certainly is a more quiet and a less overtly violent endeavor, it is no less deep and no less sincere.
I will go out on a limb here as far as to say that pulling words from our brains is sometimes, if not usually, physically painful. It certainly can be draining, as is evidenced by anyone who has seen a writer push himself or herself back from a desk in sheer exhaustion. Writing is risky business, especially once the dam breaks and the words come tumbling out, not to be contained. We have no choice but to allow them to cascade down, as there is no hope of damming them up again until they've spent themselves and are nothing more than a trickle. And then, even if we do manage to block its path with a rock or a branch, whatever seeps into the ground is lost forever.
Or is it?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1530989876
Saturday, July 12, 2014
Words as Seeds
Gardening can be a funny thing at times. You plant something and it grows into what you thought it would; but other times, something else entirely comes up. Maybe a few wayward gloriosa daisy seeds got mixed into the marigold seeds, or the morning glories came up part morning glory, part moonflower. That's nature for you. Not always perfect but always always interesting.
Take the volunteer plants in the compost pile. You toss potato peelings in there, along with a few dead and shrunken pumpkin carcasses. And the next year, voila! The best potatoes and pumpkins you ever ate growing there unbidden, undrafted. One year, a small tomato plant appeared in a pot of soil on my porch, and not knowing what it was but allowing my curiosity to best me, I let it be...watered it, monitored it all that summer, until the characteristic blossoms emerged followed by tiny green fruit. And ultimately, I was rewarded with the sweetest most delicious miniature yellow pear tomatoes I've ever eaten. And that's nature for you.
And then there's another type of seed that isn't sold in packets or out of bins at the grain store. And you don't plant them in soil, which means none of the backbreaking work of tilling and feeding new ground in the spring when the earth is more muckhole than paradise. These seeds you simply scatter across a sheet of pristine paper or a shiny glowing screen, and then you sit back and let them take root.
Like their biological and botanical counterparts, they need regular feedings and watering. But these are again accomplished, not by conventional means, but rather by surrounding the naked seeds with imagination, pulling the soil of other ideas firmly up around their delicate stems, and then watering them as needed with tears and sometimes even with blood, a rather unorthodox approach to gardening, to be sure. And at the end of the day, after the tilling and the planting and the watering are done, you'd swear you'd put in a day's work in the broiling sun, slapping mosquitoes away and wondering if it is indeed all worth it.
And each and every time without fail, it is.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1530989876
Take the volunteer plants in the compost pile. You toss potato peelings in there, along with a few dead and shrunken pumpkin carcasses. And the next year, voila! The best potatoes and pumpkins you ever ate growing there unbidden, undrafted. One year, a small tomato plant appeared in a pot of soil on my porch, and not knowing what it was but allowing my curiosity to best me, I let it be...watered it, monitored it all that summer, until the characteristic blossoms emerged followed by tiny green fruit. And ultimately, I was rewarded with the sweetest most delicious miniature yellow pear tomatoes I've ever eaten. And that's nature for you.
And then there's another type of seed that isn't sold in packets or out of bins at the grain store. And you don't plant them in soil, which means none of the backbreaking work of tilling and feeding new ground in the spring when the earth is more muckhole than paradise. These seeds you simply scatter across a sheet of pristine paper or a shiny glowing screen, and then you sit back and let them take root.
Like their biological and botanical counterparts, they need regular feedings and watering. But these are again accomplished, not by conventional means, but rather by surrounding the naked seeds with imagination, pulling the soil of other ideas firmly up around their delicate stems, and then watering them as needed with tears and sometimes even with blood, a rather unorthodox approach to gardening, to be sure. And at the end of the day, after the tilling and the planting and the watering are done, you'd swear you'd put in a day's work in the broiling sun, slapping mosquitoes away and wondering if it is indeed all worth it.
And each and every time without fail, it is.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1530989876
Thursday, July 10, 2014
A Certain Clarity
Ah, the blessed relief that is the ideal summer day, the kind that warrants no loud buzz of artificial cooling or the annoying whir of fans, and that allows nature's sounds in. Gone, for the time being anyway, is the mirror-clouding haze of humidity, the dampening of sound, the slowing of the senses. In its place, a masterpiece of a day, in which all is clearly defined and unmistakable in its purpose...each leaf delineated against the ones beneath, below and above it...each bird song a top-forties-chart-worthy melody...the pond a blue that not even the sky could aspire to.
A wind hums in the trees as I write, providing the melody into which the distant sound of a lawnmower cannot intrude, with my wind-chimes adding their own melodious notes. Nature has arbitrarily decreed this day perfect, and who am I to argue? This is clearly a time to rejoice, if only within my own sphere of experience, in the tiny innocuous niche that I occupy.
This rejuvenation that comes out of the west via the ever-moving air masses imbues all that it touches, my own spirit included, with a new vibrancy, and reawakens my instinctive curiosity. I spy new depths among the greenery, new shapes which were hidden to me before, see new hues among the sun-drenched petunias, screen all of my sensory impressions like a 49'er to get at the jagged gleaming bits.
This is a day made for writers, for those processors of words who can take something like this and make others see without needing to utter the words "oh look!"
A wind hums in the trees as I write, providing the melody into which the distant sound of a lawnmower cannot intrude, with my wind-chimes adding their own melodious notes. Nature has arbitrarily decreed this day perfect, and who am I to argue? This is clearly a time to rejoice, if only within my own sphere of experience, in the tiny innocuous niche that I occupy.
This rejuvenation that comes out of the west via the ever-moving air masses imbues all that it touches, my own spirit included, with a new vibrancy, and reawakens my instinctive curiosity. I spy new depths among the greenery, new shapes which were hidden to me before, see new hues among the sun-drenched petunias, screen all of my sensory impressions like a 49'er to get at the jagged gleaming bits.
This is a day made for writers, for those processors of words who can take something like this and make others see without needing to utter the words "oh look!"
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Along a Journey
I suppose it's normal along any journey to come upon roadblocks...bright yellow tape marked, not with the words "police barrier---do not cross," but rather with something along the lines of "inspirational barrier--do not venture beyond this point." I read somewhere that distancing oneself from a piece of writing for a day, or two, or maybe even three, is actually good...good for the soul, good for the thought processes, and good for the motivation.
It's like any other trip I've taken. I come to a spot that doesn't look very familiar, and a sort of fear grips me that, if I venture any farther, I may reach a point of no return.
There is always, ALWAYS, that fear in writing...
So there is nothing else to do but to stop and ponder which direction I should proceed in once I get my steam up again. For there are usually many such directions, as many sometimes as there are sunbeams; but usually, if I wait long enough, one seems to beckon just a tiny bit more loudly, more insistently, than the others, just a wee bit more persuasively, and that is the one that I must undoubtedly take. Funny, too, how that presents itself at times. For when I get to the roadblock, I can't always see all the possible paths leading beyond it and away from it. It's like they're camouflaged by a dense riot of weeds and other unruly growth in a profusion too thick to be hacked through at the moment. And if I wait long enough, I usually don't even have to resort to that, can leave my pen sheathed, for the path that finally does open up does so as clearly as if it had been there all along and I just wasn't seeing it.
Then (and I've done this early in the morning when I first wake up), I say, OUT LOUD, "Yes, that's it! That's the direction I should go in from here on out!"
Until, that is, the next roadblock looms into view, the next bright yellow tape, the next tall hedge that I can't quite see beyond...
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS/
It's like any other trip I've taken. I come to a spot that doesn't look very familiar, and a sort of fear grips me that, if I venture any farther, I may reach a point of no return.
There is always, ALWAYS, that fear in writing...
So there is nothing else to do but to stop and ponder which direction I should proceed in once I get my steam up again. For there are usually many such directions, as many sometimes as there are sunbeams; but usually, if I wait long enough, one seems to beckon just a tiny bit more loudly, more insistently, than the others, just a wee bit more persuasively, and that is the one that I must undoubtedly take. Funny, too, how that presents itself at times. For when I get to the roadblock, I can't always see all the possible paths leading beyond it and away from it. It's like they're camouflaged by a dense riot of weeds and other unruly growth in a profusion too thick to be hacked through at the moment. And if I wait long enough, I usually don't even have to resort to that, can leave my pen sheathed, for the path that finally does open up does so as clearly as if it had been there all along and I just wasn't seeing it.
Then (and I've done this early in the morning when I first wake up), I say, OUT LOUD, "Yes, that's it! That's the direction I should go in from here on out!"
Until, that is, the next roadblock looms into view, the next bright yellow tape, the next tall hedge that I can't quite see beyond...
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS/
Friday, June 20, 2014
An Awesome Mandate
There are as many metaphors for words as there are stars in the sky. No, that's not quite right. But sometimes it seems that way. For are they not individual units of building materials, from which larger edifices can be constructed, larger shapes fashioned? Words, ideas in themselves, could be said to pave a path toward other more complex ideas...Or, words can be pieces of lumber used to support the weight of an ever-expanding story...It occurs to me, too, that words could be likened to the stones in a rock wall, going nowhere and everywhere at once, leading to magical places and things, but without giving away too many of their secrets.
Is that, then, the writer's job, to link those building units into something recognizable and thought-provoking, intriguing and, hopefully, inspiring? Thus, are writers not builders as well as word-linkers, or jewelry-makers, joining bright baubles together...or weavers, intertwining thoughts into larger tapestries? And are not words as organic as the minerals that flow up from the soil through a tree's roots and gives it life and vigor and longevity?
Words ARE eternal...once spoken, they cannot be unspoken...once written, cannot be unwritten but merely destroyed or refashioned, through the vestiges of them that remain in the minds of those who remember such things...And are not stories the things we all build through all our lives, and that await the teller or the chronicler to render them eternal?
An awesome mandate that...
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS/
Is that, then, the writer's job, to link those building units into something recognizable and thought-provoking, intriguing and, hopefully, inspiring? Thus, are writers not builders as well as word-linkers, or jewelry-makers, joining bright baubles together...or weavers, intertwining thoughts into larger tapestries? And are not words as organic as the minerals that flow up from the soil through a tree's roots and gives it life and vigor and longevity?
Words ARE eternal...once spoken, they cannot be unspoken...once written, cannot be unwritten but merely destroyed or refashioned, through the vestiges of them that remain in the minds of those who remember such things...And are not stories the things we all build through all our lives, and that await the teller or the chronicler to render them eternal?
An awesome mandate that...
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS/
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Heart Wrenching
The words come hard sometimes, like pulling weeds that just refuse to part with their roots or their small seemingly inconsequential places in this world. I dig down deep below my words, below their roots, and still, I am not at the end, I am not at the place where they began. That would take shrinking myself down to the size of a verbal microbe and plunging into the deepest recesses of my memory whose many doors are no longer all open to me. It means digging up rocks whose large ends are always the most deeply buried, teasing me from the top, saying "We're small...you can dig us up," until I try and find that, the deeper I go, the bigger the rock. And then I abandon the effort in disgust and walk away.
Words are like that, and the ideas they organize themselves into...rocks whose small ends show until I've broken a sweat digging, only to find that the big end, and sometimes the gem hiding inside, are too deep, and there is no getting at them, and so I must let nature, and my life, continue to pile even more experiences and memories on top of them, leaving me no choice but to move on.
But couldn't I get at them from the side, I wonder, dig down through the softer soil and then horizontally to the gem? I could, but that might mean ignoring those small seemingly insignificant words that are closer to the surface and that beckon less ostentatiously or lie there awaiting the sun's touch to glint their meaning to me. I might miss them, though, while I dig, blinded by the sweat in my eyes, failing to see the pebbles of greater meaning tumbling into the hole, gone forever.
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS/
Words are like that, and the ideas they organize themselves into...rocks whose small ends show until I've broken a sweat digging, only to find that the big end, and sometimes the gem hiding inside, are too deep, and there is no getting at them, and so I must let nature, and my life, continue to pile even more experiences and memories on top of them, leaving me no choice but to move on.
But couldn't I get at them from the side, I wonder, dig down through the softer soil and then horizontally to the gem? I could, but that might mean ignoring those small seemingly insignificant words that are closer to the surface and that beckon less ostentatiously or lie there awaiting the sun's touch to glint their meaning to me. I might miss them, though, while I dig, blinded by the sweat in my eyes, failing to see the pebbles of greater meaning tumbling into the hole, gone forever.
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS/
Saturday, June 14, 2014
Funny...
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine read the first short novel I'd published and told me that she was going to pass it on to her son-in-law who is an editor at a large publishing house. I was skeptical at first, and once again, I allowed my fear to cancel out what should have been joy at knowing that she thought my work good enough to show to this man. When I hadn't heard back from her after a few weeks, I decided that he'd probably taken a look at it, had decided that it wasn't worth his time, and she was just too nice to hurt my feelings by telling me so.
As it turned out, that wasn't the case at all, for about a week ago, I got an email from him that she forwarded to me in which he informed me what he thought the book needed. He also told me that it had promise, was well developed, and well written, and he had just three problems with it: it's too short, and I should expand and elaborate more upon two key sections of it in order to grow it into a full-length novel.
Having nothing to lose at that point, I replied to him directly to thank him for his time and his suggestions and to ask if he'd consider my book again if I were to develop it into a novel. I am now awaiting his reply, as I have other projects to work on in the meantime. I may, however, just go ahead with expanding it, and then seeing if I can publish it elsewhere if I either don't hear from him and I do and his answer is that he wouldn't be interested.
I suspect that I should be seeing this as valuable information, for I doubt that many writers get this kind of impromptu unsolicited feedback from any editor. And if he feels this strongly and actually took the time to share his thoughts with me, then I'd be foolish to ignore his suggestions and just let the project lie there unfinished.
It seems that I have resolved my own dilemma simply by rehashing it out here in this blog. Funny how that works...
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS/
As it turned out, that wasn't the case at all, for about a week ago, I got an email from him that she forwarded to me in which he informed me what he thought the book needed. He also told me that it had promise, was well developed, and well written, and he had just three problems with it: it's too short, and I should expand and elaborate more upon two key sections of it in order to grow it into a full-length novel.
Having nothing to lose at that point, I replied to him directly to thank him for his time and his suggestions and to ask if he'd consider my book again if I were to develop it into a novel. I am now awaiting his reply, as I have other projects to work on in the meantime. I may, however, just go ahead with expanding it, and then seeing if I can publish it elsewhere if I either don't hear from him and I do and his answer is that he wouldn't be interested.
I suspect that I should be seeing this as valuable information, for I doubt that many writers get this kind of impromptu unsolicited feedback from any editor. And if he feels this strongly and actually took the time to share his thoughts with me, then I'd be foolish to ignore his suggestions and just let the project lie there unfinished.
It seems that I have resolved my own dilemma simply by rehashing it out here in this blog. Funny how that works...
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS/
Behind a Tree
If I'm not careful, I will fall into the same rut with this blog that I have during the past 10 years or so with my handwritten journals--I'll simply forget to write in it, and after awhile, it will cease to matter. Actually, entire stretches of time can seem that way--as though they don't matter. But truth is, they do, and it is during those stretches of inactivity that I feel the guiltiest, because I am not doing what I feel I should be doing, and that is writing.
In all honesty, I don't know many writers. In fact, I know very few, and I've never been privileged enough to know any serious writer that intimately...the type of writer who writes no matter what, when writing is the last thing that he or she wants to do, the type who won't survive if he or she doesn't write, in both an economic and a spiritual sense. As with so much else in my life, I only have my own experiences to go by, so that I can't know if or when other writers come up against walls like this, and because they feel that it's not going anywhere, they simply stop. Am I behind a tree again, such as the one an old college professor of mine told me once that I have tendency to get stuck behind? "When you're behind that tree," he said, "you stop, and you look around it, but you don't go any further." Is that where I am right now, behind a tree, looking around but not daring to move past it for fear of what lies beyond it, again???
It's not really such a bad place to be...behind a tree. I love trees, and I feel safe when I'm near one, especially one of those giant ones that has been here for what seems like forever. And other than during a lightning storm, what better place IS there to be than behind a tree?
That, in itself, is an interesting concept. For how does one actually end up BEHIND a tree? Does a tree have sides, a front, a back? And how does one know which is which, which is the front, or the back, or the side? I've just always perceived trees as having bottoms and tops. I've never seen trees as having sides, fronts or backs. So in effect, whenever I seem to be behind one, I may very well be in front of it, or at least on the side, so that the way before me is clear and unobstructed. And no matter where I'm standing with regards to the tree, it really doesn't matter in the end, for no matter where I start moving away from it, I will be moving in a new and unexplored direction.
So once again, it's more of a case of simply taking that first step, as it has so often been in my life...that first step...often the hardest of all to take as I move away from my comforting and protective tree toward the unknown...
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS/
In all honesty, I don't know many writers. In fact, I know very few, and I've never been privileged enough to know any serious writer that intimately...the type of writer who writes no matter what, when writing is the last thing that he or she wants to do, the type who won't survive if he or she doesn't write, in both an economic and a spiritual sense. As with so much else in my life, I only have my own experiences to go by, so that I can't know if or when other writers come up against walls like this, and because they feel that it's not going anywhere, they simply stop. Am I behind a tree again, such as the one an old college professor of mine told me once that I have tendency to get stuck behind? "When you're behind that tree," he said, "you stop, and you look around it, but you don't go any further." Is that where I am right now, behind a tree, looking around but not daring to move past it for fear of what lies beyond it, again???
It's not really such a bad place to be...behind a tree. I love trees, and I feel safe when I'm near one, especially one of those giant ones that has been here for what seems like forever. And other than during a lightning storm, what better place IS there to be than behind a tree?
That, in itself, is an interesting concept. For how does one actually end up BEHIND a tree? Does a tree have sides, a front, a back? And how does one know which is which, which is the front, or the back, or the side? I've just always perceived trees as having bottoms and tops. I've never seen trees as having sides, fronts or backs. So in effect, whenever I seem to be behind one, I may very well be in front of it, or at least on the side, so that the way before me is clear and unobstructed. And no matter where I'm standing with regards to the tree, it really doesn't matter in the end, for no matter where I start moving away from it, I will be moving in a new and unexplored direction.
So once again, it's more of a case of simply taking that first step, as it has so often been in my life...that first step...often the hardest of all to take as I move away from my comforting and protective tree toward the unknown...
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS/
Monday, June 9, 2014
A Gray Day
Either my mood matches the day or the day matches my mood. I've never quite known which it is. Maybe it's neither, or maybe it's both. One thing I do know is that certain days seem to lend themselves more efficiently to the writing craft, and I spend far too much time deliberating this rather than actually setting words down. (I would once have said setting words "to paper," but in this technical age, that no longer applies, at least not in my case, and I feel that something's been lost there along the way.)
In any case, there aren't many days anymore when one of the first things I do is NOT to put something down SOMEWHERE...be it the fits and starts of a story, a bit of blogging, an email, or one of my nature columns. Whatever it is, I am always writing. And in the spurts between those attempts, some futile, some not so much, I am reading, which only adds to the confusion some days. Reading has an uncanny way of taking me in an entirely new direction from where I am presently at along some point in a composition, and that can be dangerous, especially if the story and the writing are engaging enough to take me that far away.
My reading tastes have always been pretty eclectic, and I have finally reached a point where many people were some 150 years or so ago when a book, ANY book, was a thrill to work through, if only for the simple joy in the act of reading itself. As time went on, literary tastes became more specialized and narrowed to the point where, nowadays, many people read, sadly, only one or two types of books. And I know a woman who, when asked what she reads, replies, "Oh, I read large-print books, because they're easier on my eyes." Duly noted.
But I digress. I rarely go to libraries anymore, which is, yes, quite sad, so I must do something about that. I usually don't have to, though, because I always have quite an assortment of "found" or "otherwise obtained" books kicking around that I slowly work my way through, and there is no rhyme or reason to it at all. Here's an example.
I just finished reading "Concubine," by Nora Lofts, concerning the partly fictionalized account of Anne Boleyn's treatment at the hand of Henry VIII. Now, I'm reading another oldie but goodie entitled "All the President's Men," by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, which is the historic account of the Watergate break-in. I was not closely attuned to that event while it was actually taking place, but as the old saying goes, "better late than never." And this aptly illustrates my point about how a book can take me far far away from the moment, as this one certainly has. I'm back in the 1970's, a time when I was first married and raising my first child, and it is a gross distraction from where my "writing mind" is at the moment.
But that's how a writer's (at least this writer's) mind works...it's in a thousand different places at any one time, and the trick is always to get back to square one, and the RIGHT square one, which is where I was at when I decided to take this latest little side trip.
Now where was that again?
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS/
In any case, there aren't many days anymore when one of the first things I do is NOT to put something down SOMEWHERE...be it the fits and starts of a story, a bit of blogging, an email, or one of my nature columns. Whatever it is, I am always writing. And in the spurts between those attempts, some futile, some not so much, I am reading, which only adds to the confusion some days. Reading has an uncanny way of taking me in an entirely new direction from where I am presently at along some point in a composition, and that can be dangerous, especially if the story and the writing are engaging enough to take me that far away.
My reading tastes have always been pretty eclectic, and I have finally reached a point where many people were some 150 years or so ago when a book, ANY book, was a thrill to work through, if only for the simple joy in the act of reading itself. As time went on, literary tastes became more specialized and narrowed to the point where, nowadays, many people read, sadly, only one or two types of books. And I know a woman who, when asked what she reads, replies, "Oh, I read large-print books, because they're easier on my eyes." Duly noted.
But I digress. I rarely go to libraries anymore, which is, yes, quite sad, so I must do something about that. I usually don't have to, though, because I always have quite an assortment of "found" or "otherwise obtained" books kicking around that I slowly work my way through, and there is no rhyme or reason to it at all. Here's an example.
I just finished reading "Concubine," by Nora Lofts, concerning the partly fictionalized account of Anne Boleyn's treatment at the hand of Henry VIII. Now, I'm reading another oldie but goodie entitled "All the President's Men," by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, which is the historic account of the Watergate break-in. I was not closely attuned to that event while it was actually taking place, but as the old saying goes, "better late than never." And this aptly illustrates my point about how a book can take me far far away from the moment, as this one certainly has. I'm back in the 1970's, a time when I was first married and raising my first child, and it is a gross distraction from where my "writing mind" is at the moment.
But that's how a writer's (at least this writer's) mind works...it's in a thousand different places at any one time, and the trick is always to get back to square one, and the RIGHT square one, which is where I was at when I decided to take this latest little side trip.
Now where was that again?
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS/
Saturday, June 7, 2014
The Kaleidoscope Effect
Sometimes, a writer's thoughts, mine anyway, tumble about like the pieces of colored plastic inside a kaleidoscope. No matter how often I turn the end of the tube, the shards never regroup into exactly the same configuration, and my mind's eye must adjust to the new image and what it implies.
They're not like snowflakes, over which I have no control, nature sending water droplets down from the clouds through a swath of cold air where they crystallize and fall to earth as something we must bend our backs to. No, it's not like that at all. For the colored bits ask nothing more of me than to try to make something of them. And rather than my back bending, my mind must bend around them in as many directions as possible until it begins to recognize a pattern, a way to make sense of it all.
The trick is not to try to achieve any particular pattern but to let it assume its own, and then comes the deciphering, the translating, the refashioning from random shapes to words to coherent sentences that take the small incongruous pieces from inconsequential matter to ideas loaded with meaning. It's no small feat, this, which is why the writer's work can be as demanding and draining as the moving of stones or the hefting of tree trunks. Those colored pieces are heavy, which is the greatest irony of all.
Thursday, June 5, 2014
Bragging Rights
All the writers' manuals and markets, as well as websites devoted to the writing craft, have one thing in common nowadays: they strongly advise writers to employ social media as a valuable tool to promote their work. So that's what I'm doing here now--adding a link to my Amazon profile and list, albeit short to date, of my work. Writing is like any other type of artistic endeavor, as there is no point to doing it if it's just all going to end up in a drawer or file cabinet or obscure desk-top folder.
I started writing when I was 16, and a sophomore in high school. I'd read a biography of Phyllis Wheatley, a black slave girl who happened to have been very well educated and who went on to write poetry. And in typical impressionable teenage fashion, I thought, "If she could do it, why can't I?" I still have the original copies of all those very bad poems I churned out that first year, and I won't ever attempt to polish them, for they're a chronicle of my first efforts at a time when life held precious little else to look forward to.
Later, as a young mother who lacked the self-confidence to go out into the world and forge a path for herself, I stayed home, took care of my children, and wrote, much of which ended up in the aforementioned drawer. And later still, during my years as a non-traditional college student pursuing an English degree, I wrote even more; and it was about that time when a local newspaper editor who had, in the past, noticed my frequent letters to the editor, called to offer me a correspondent's job. Those years allowed me to become comfortable producing copy for the public eye, and I eventually went to work for a small local newspaper company as a reporter, as well as a weekly columnist for the very paper for whom I'd served years before as a correspondent. I soon tired of reporting, though, as I'm just not the inquisitive type. I'd much prefer to work from imagination than with cold facts that can't be manipulated, and that's why I love fiction. It's not unreasonable to say that, once embarked on a fictional journey, it sometimes takes you in a whole different direction than you anticipated.
That said, here's my brag: https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS
I started writing when I was 16, and a sophomore in high school. I'd read a biography of Phyllis Wheatley, a black slave girl who happened to have been very well educated and who went on to write poetry. And in typical impressionable teenage fashion, I thought, "If she could do it, why can't I?" I still have the original copies of all those very bad poems I churned out that first year, and I won't ever attempt to polish them, for they're a chronicle of my first efforts at a time when life held precious little else to look forward to.
Later, as a young mother who lacked the self-confidence to go out into the world and forge a path for herself, I stayed home, took care of my children, and wrote, much of which ended up in the aforementioned drawer. And later still, during my years as a non-traditional college student pursuing an English degree, I wrote even more; and it was about that time when a local newspaper editor who had, in the past, noticed my frequent letters to the editor, called to offer me a correspondent's job. Those years allowed me to become comfortable producing copy for the public eye, and I eventually went to work for a small local newspaper company as a reporter, as well as a weekly columnist for the very paper for whom I'd served years before as a correspondent. I soon tired of reporting, though, as I'm just not the inquisitive type. I'd much prefer to work from imagination than with cold facts that can't be manipulated, and that's why I love fiction. It's not unreasonable to say that, once embarked on a fictional journey, it sometimes takes you in a whole different direction than you anticipated.
That said, here's my brag: https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS
Monday, June 2, 2014
Reading to Write
There was a time when I read whatever I could get my hands on simply for the sake of reading...to absorb information, expand my body of knowledge, and travel to places that I couldn't otherwise afford to visit physically. At one point, I started keeping a written record of the books I'd read, and sometimes, I averaged between four to five a month, and some months less. This isn't nearly as fast a pace as some are able to maintain; and recently, as my eyesight ages along with the rest of me, it has slowed even more. And after staring at this computer screen almost all day and nearly every day, sometimes I can't even do any reading beyond what I've done here.
When I do read now, though, I find that I am reading as much to improve my writing skills as simply to absorb knowledge. I have also come to the realization that learning how to write through reading happens subliminally. As my mind scans and processes words, sentences and paragraphs, it is also storing them all away for future reference, not from an informational perspective but from a purely structural viewpoint. I have, in other words (pun intended), learned without even knowing I was HOW to write, how to craft sentences and paragraphs, as well as how to assemble them as so many puzzle pieces into a coherent account, be it fictional or not. All of that stored information is now resurfacing to my consciousness where I can make ready use of it to move ahead with fiction writing. I no longer need to refer back to my mental writing guide files and "search" for how to construct a meaningful sentence or which word to choose to replace one that just doesn't move me.
From that I have deduced that all those years I spent reading were not for naught. For I am reaping their benefits now through my own work. So if I had any advice to give an aspiring writer, it would be to READ, READ, and READ. And when you're ready to put those first few words down, you may be surprised to find that it will be a lot easier than you thought.
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS
When I do read now, though, I find that I am reading as much to improve my writing skills as simply to absorb knowledge. I have also come to the realization that learning how to write through reading happens subliminally. As my mind scans and processes words, sentences and paragraphs, it is also storing them all away for future reference, not from an informational perspective but from a purely structural viewpoint. I have, in other words (pun intended), learned without even knowing I was HOW to write, how to craft sentences and paragraphs, as well as how to assemble them as so many puzzle pieces into a coherent account, be it fictional or not. All of that stored information is now resurfacing to my consciousness where I can make ready use of it to move ahead with fiction writing. I no longer need to refer back to my mental writing guide files and "search" for how to construct a meaningful sentence or which word to choose to replace one that just doesn't move me.
From that I have deduced that all those years I spent reading were not for naught. For I am reaping their benefits now through my own work. So if I had any advice to give an aspiring writer, it would be to READ, READ, and READ. And when you're ready to put those first few words down, you may be surprised to find that it will be a lot easier than you thought.
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS
Sunday, June 1, 2014
My Reality
Do you ever have one of those days when everything outside of yourself is so perfect that you can't help but wish that everything inside was just as perfect? Today is one of those days, at least for me. Outside, the weather is what you would call picture-perfect...cloudless blue sky...bright sunlight bathing the leaves that seem to have unfurled overnight this year...light breeze...70 degrees...Who could not love such a day? Certainly not I, but then, for one brief moment, I turn inwardly, and there it is--my reality--and it is nothing like the day.
Oh sure, I could make it like the day. I could sit here trying to convince myself that all of my many problems and issues have no power over this day, that no matter how much I rant and rave (inwardly), the sun will continue to shine, the clouds will stay away, and the day will glow. For nature, as has been said, really doesn't care much about me or my issues, and everything around me existed long before I got here, so I am but a blip on its radar screen. It will persevere with or without me.
But once again, that would take yet one more enormous effort of the will on my part to achieve, to pretend, for the remaining hours of this day, that all is as well within as it is without. So is that really what it's about, getting up each morning and facing each day with a renewed resolve not to allow reality to spoil the view? If nature, and all this beauty around me is indeed a balm to the soul, then all that means is that my soul needs a lot of balm, and that the underlying issues will never go away and will need perpetual tending.
I've come to the conclusion that everything I do is but a way to offset the inevitable, which is that someday, all this will end. When my mother died 12 years ago, I spent the next several years grasping at whatever I could that simply FELT good, or at least that felt better than facing the truth that she was gone. I bumbled about for a long long time dabbling in whatever eased the pain for a few hours or a few days, and it took as long, if not longer, to finally reach a plateau where that was no longer so immediate, and I found that I could get through a day without needing so much solace or comfort.
Which takes me to where I am now, once again grasping at those things that feel good, and that make ME feel good, though they now represent choices that are vastly different from those I made back then. Now they involve walking in the woods, taking photos of the things I see and love, watching old movies, losing myself in a good book or some good music, and, of course, writing.
Always always...writing!
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS
Oh sure, I could make it like the day. I could sit here trying to convince myself that all of my many problems and issues have no power over this day, that no matter how much I rant and rave (inwardly), the sun will continue to shine, the clouds will stay away, and the day will glow. For nature, as has been said, really doesn't care much about me or my issues, and everything around me existed long before I got here, so I am but a blip on its radar screen. It will persevere with or without me.
But once again, that would take yet one more enormous effort of the will on my part to achieve, to pretend, for the remaining hours of this day, that all is as well within as it is without. So is that really what it's about, getting up each morning and facing each day with a renewed resolve not to allow reality to spoil the view? If nature, and all this beauty around me is indeed a balm to the soul, then all that means is that my soul needs a lot of balm, and that the underlying issues will never go away and will need perpetual tending.
I've come to the conclusion that everything I do is but a way to offset the inevitable, which is that someday, all this will end. When my mother died 12 years ago, I spent the next several years grasping at whatever I could that simply FELT good, or at least that felt better than facing the truth that she was gone. I bumbled about for a long long time dabbling in whatever eased the pain for a few hours or a few days, and it took as long, if not longer, to finally reach a plateau where that was no longer so immediate, and I found that I could get through a day without needing so much solace or comfort.
Which takes me to where I am now, once again grasping at those things that feel good, and that make ME feel good, though they now represent choices that are vastly different from those I made back then. Now they involve walking in the woods, taking photos of the things I see and love, watching old movies, losing myself in a good book or some good music, and, of course, writing.
Always always...writing!
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS
Saturday, May 31, 2014
Interim
...and so I find myself for the moment at least slowed
brought to a temporary stop between ideas possibilities thoughts and
I take this time to look out at the light golden on some leaves
emerald on others and I imagine each has it own story of how
it moves the water and minerals through vein and petiole
lures them up from the roots with promises of immortality or at least
a momentary glory at summer's height.
And there, I look for inspiration a renewed sense of purpose
where I delve and dig in the humus of my mind
readying it for the next seed or sprout
wondering what it will be what genus what shape it will take
where it will lead me through the maze of roots and tunnels dug by
other smaller things that ask no questions assume little but give much.
Then hands trembling I approach the task heft the spade and dig deep
the soil resisting at first then parting willingly sensing my love.
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS
brought to a temporary stop between ideas possibilities thoughts and
I take this time to look out at the light golden on some leaves
emerald on others and I imagine each has it own story of how
it moves the water and minerals through vein and petiole
lures them up from the roots with promises of immortality or at least
a momentary glory at summer's height.
And there, I look for inspiration a renewed sense of purpose
where I delve and dig in the humus of my mind
readying it for the next seed or sprout
wondering what it will be what genus what shape it will take
where it will lead me through the maze of roots and tunnels dug by
other smaller things that ask no questions assume little but give much.
Then hands trembling I approach the task heft the spade and dig deep
the soil resisting at first then parting willingly sensing my love.
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS
Friday, May 30, 2014
On the Inside Looking Out
You'll have to forgive me if I seemed to be nonexistent these last few days. I was, you see, living inside a story that I'd written, and I couldn't move out until it was finished. Based on childhood impressions that I've kept with me all these years, it was necessary to travel back to that time and take up residence once again in the world I occupied at the time, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. So this meant that I had to pack all my emotional bags and bring them with me for the duration, as I am never sure just when I'll emerge completely from inside a story.
This time around, I went back to the 1960's and to a house I'd known as a child. I didn't live in the house, at least not in a real sense. But it appropriated enough of my imagination that I was fully able to enter it and spend a considerable amount of time there absorbing its energy and storing lots of impressions away as well.
Many writers will tell you that they are introverts, as I am; and as such, that means that we spend, or have spent in our lives, a great deal of time living inside our heads where all that we've seen, done, and felt is stored away and keeps us company. It's a lot like a box of mementos, only we writers go through ours a lot more often than other people do, because, well, we don't have a choice really.
Those impressions and memories never give us a moment's peace, so that it sometimes appears to other people as if we are living in the past, when nothing could be further from the truth. We're not living IN the past, but WITH the past ever at our beck and call; and sometimes, if we're lucky, all those impressions, all that sensory information, comes together into what we like to call stories, because there really is no other word that adequately sums up what they are.
And so the last few days, that's where I've been...in that little house in Biddeford, Maine, or on the path leading to it as well as on the corner of the street I grew up on...reliving some of the experiences I had almost 50 years ago, and watching them all come together, almost like a small cyclone picking up everything in its path, and then redepositing it something that is only a shadow of what that time was like and how it affected me.
But I'm back now, for the time being anyway, until I am once again whisked off to some other initially undisclosed place that may as well be a million miles, and as many light years away, but that has been right here with me all along.
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS
This time around, I went back to the 1960's and to a house I'd known as a child. I didn't live in the house, at least not in a real sense. But it appropriated enough of my imagination that I was fully able to enter it and spend a considerable amount of time there absorbing its energy and storing lots of impressions away as well.
Many writers will tell you that they are introverts, as I am; and as such, that means that we spend, or have spent in our lives, a great deal of time living inside our heads where all that we've seen, done, and felt is stored away and keeps us company. It's a lot like a box of mementos, only we writers go through ours a lot more often than other people do, because, well, we don't have a choice really.
Those impressions and memories never give us a moment's peace, so that it sometimes appears to other people as if we are living in the past, when nothing could be further from the truth. We're not living IN the past, but WITH the past ever at our beck and call; and sometimes, if we're lucky, all those impressions, all that sensory information, comes together into what we like to call stories, because there really is no other word that adequately sums up what they are.
And so the last few days, that's where I've been...in that little house in Biddeford, Maine, or on the path leading to it as well as on the corner of the street I grew up on...reliving some of the experiences I had almost 50 years ago, and watching them all come together, almost like a small cyclone picking up everything in its path, and then redepositing it something that is only a shadow of what that time was like and how it affected me.
But I'm back now, for the time being anyway, until I am once again whisked off to some other initially undisclosed place that may as well be a million miles, and as many light years away, but that has been right here with me all along.
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
The Birth of a Story
After having spent a long and very productive day staring at a screen and at the same collection of words, I realized that the writing process is, metaphorically speaking, very similar to giving birth. First comes the planting of the seed, which is the idea. Then, like cells, that idea starts to grow as more words are added to it, thus increasing its bulk and its viability as a living breathing thing. (OK, maybe not breathing, but you writers know what I mean.)
The idea evolves, slowly or quickly, as the case may be, and takes on a life of its own while still dependent upon you for its sustenance. At last, after weeks and months of carrying it around close to your heart as it gets heavier and heavier, it's time to give birth. Thence comes the labor, the final push out into broad daylight where it assumes its own identity. At that point, just as life steps in to edit the human being, add meaningful content or cut away superfluous baggage, mold and shape it into the gem that it is destined to be, you polish the piece of writing until it becomes The Finished Story.
It's late at night, and it's done. Your eyes burn and your whole body aches from the strain, and after what seemed to go on forever, there it is, this beautiful creation that is yours and yours alone. You spend the last few moments alone with it before announcing its birth and sharing it with the world.
And it won't matter if everyone looks at it and says, "That is the ugliest story I've ever seen." To you, it will always be beautiful, because you love it.
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Getting Into Gear
Some days, there seems to be no going forward at all. There is, in fact, no movement at all...not going forward, no going back, nothing. Just a standing still, an infuriating incapacitating lack of movement that could easily set the stage for stagnation, and then the ultimate--death. Not in a physical or biological sense, but death nonetheless, of an idea, a possibility, the permanent blocking of a path that had not that long ago seemed to open and unobstructed.
Yet here I am, stopped dead my tracks, unable to take another step forward. And I call to mind the words a math professor once used to describe the peculiar habit I had back then of coming to a screeching halt when a problem presented itself that I could not solve.
"It's like you come to a tree," he said, "and you stop. Instead of moving around it and continuing, you stay behind the tree, looking around it, but afraid to go on."
Well, in terms of math, that fear was very real. It was an algebra class, and I'd never even got the gist of fractions and decimals in grade school, so I had no business even dabbling in anything beyond basic math. And that fear? Well, it was of failing, of course, because if I wasn't certain of anything else, I was positive that only failure lay at the end of any mathematical journey I might undertake. And I haven't been proven wrong in that theory yet.
But words? What do I have to fear from words? Plenty. That they won't come out sounding right, that I'll have to rearrange them until they do, and then, when will I know I've succeeded? Or maybe I'll think they flow well and adequately convey my meaning, but how can I be sure?
The truth? I can't. I can only trust that my years of crafting sentences and building them into paragraphs will work, and that others will want to read them. Because at its most fundamental level, writing isn't about hoping people will read my stories and like them. It's about reading my life and seeing me at my most exposed and hoping they'll understand and not think me too ridiculous.
As most serious writers know, writing isn't simply the act of stringing words together into pretty necklaces that we hope will sell. It's about stepping out into broad daylight wearing all our faults and our foibles imprinted on a sandwich board for all the world to see. And for many of us, those boards are large and very heavy and sometimes hard to carry all day, every day. But we do.
Because we must.
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS
Yet here I am, stopped dead my tracks, unable to take another step forward. And I call to mind the words a math professor once used to describe the peculiar habit I had back then of coming to a screeching halt when a problem presented itself that I could not solve.
"It's like you come to a tree," he said, "and you stop. Instead of moving around it and continuing, you stay behind the tree, looking around it, but afraid to go on."
Well, in terms of math, that fear was very real. It was an algebra class, and I'd never even got the gist of fractions and decimals in grade school, so I had no business even dabbling in anything beyond basic math. And that fear? Well, it was of failing, of course, because if I wasn't certain of anything else, I was positive that only failure lay at the end of any mathematical journey I might undertake. And I haven't been proven wrong in that theory yet.
But words? What do I have to fear from words? Plenty. That they won't come out sounding right, that I'll have to rearrange them until they do, and then, when will I know I've succeeded? Or maybe I'll think they flow well and adequately convey my meaning, but how can I be sure?
The truth? I can't. I can only trust that my years of crafting sentences and building them into paragraphs will work, and that others will want to read them. Because at its most fundamental level, writing isn't about hoping people will read my stories and like them. It's about reading my life and seeing me at my most exposed and hoping they'll understand and not think me too ridiculous.
As most serious writers know, writing isn't simply the act of stringing words together into pretty necklaces that we hope will sell. It's about stepping out into broad daylight wearing all our faults and our foibles imprinted on a sandwich board for all the world to see. And for many of us, those boards are large and very heavy and sometimes hard to carry all day, every day. But we do.
Because we must.
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS
Monday, May 26, 2014
What Stories Are Made Of
Words are magical things. In them reside all our experiences, our thoughts, ideas, hopes, dreams, fears, and joys. In other words (pun intended), "words" sum up who we are. And there isn't a single word in any language that cannot stand on its own without needing to be embellished by others. All words began as sounds, and a sound can convey a great deal of meaning and emotion without any explanation at all.
We take words so much for granted. For in the course of a single day, we read, shape our thoughts, hear, or speak millions of them without giving a single thought to the role that each one of them plays in that process. And any writer knows that any piece of writing begins with a single idea, and that idea can be reduced to a single word. For even the most seemingly inconsequential word has meaning and purpose, on its own and when used with others, and not just nouns, verbs and adjectives. Articles, conjunctions, and prepositions all imply something by their very nature and how they are used in sentences. And even when stated alone, a single article--the, for example--has more to say than is intially apparent.
At its most fundamental, we know that "the" is an article. By itself, it means nothing, or does it? For the moment we say it, once, twice, three times, we realize that it DOES say something by implication. "The" immediately implies the need for another word, but what is that word? For starters, the choice of whatever word it implies is left entirely to the speaker or the writer. Thus, the word "the" opens up a possibility, an outcome, the existence of an object that the writer or speaker will eventually elaborate upon. From that point on, whatever new word that is associated with "the" will assign it a whole new meaning and purpose.
Now let's take a very familiar noun: cat. As soon as we hear, say, or write the word, we know instantly what we're referring to, for the word's basic meaning unstructs as to its attributes. So right away, we know we're not dealing with a dog, an elephant, or a snake. So that shifts our focus from all other creatures and onto a cat. Then, our minds take over, and we start remembering what we know about cats, which in some cases is more or less than others do. But we all know something, and that is what we bring to our understanding of the word "cat."
The natural question that follows is thus, "What about the cat?" This is where the author's or speaker's mind kicks in and starts attributing characteristics to the cat, and that is how ideas come together, through an immutable law of attraction. In order to grow in meaning, a single word must attract others or die. But it's not like a tree absorbing nutrients from the soil. It's more like one snowflake attracting others until it is no longer a single flake but an entire snow bank that has to be shovelled. Or to use a more fitting analogy--one building block is relatively useless unless others are added to it, which ultimately results in some sort of structure.
That is what writing is--starting with one word, one idea, and then adding others to it until it eventually takes on a life of its own as an entirely different entity from the one that gave it life. And in that way, writing is also a metaphor for everything that exists in this world that got its start in the very same way.
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS
We take words so much for granted. For in the course of a single day, we read, shape our thoughts, hear, or speak millions of them without giving a single thought to the role that each one of them plays in that process. And any writer knows that any piece of writing begins with a single idea, and that idea can be reduced to a single word. For even the most seemingly inconsequential word has meaning and purpose, on its own and when used with others, and not just nouns, verbs and adjectives. Articles, conjunctions, and prepositions all imply something by their very nature and how they are used in sentences. And even when stated alone, a single article--the, for example--has more to say than is intially apparent.
At its most fundamental, we know that "the" is an article. By itself, it means nothing, or does it? For the moment we say it, once, twice, three times, we realize that it DOES say something by implication. "The" immediately implies the need for another word, but what is that word? For starters, the choice of whatever word it implies is left entirely to the speaker or the writer. Thus, the word "the" opens up a possibility, an outcome, the existence of an object that the writer or speaker will eventually elaborate upon. From that point on, whatever new word that is associated with "the" will assign it a whole new meaning and purpose.
Now let's take a very familiar noun: cat. As soon as we hear, say, or write the word, we know instantly what we're referring to, for the word's basic meaning unstructs as to its attributes. So right away, we know we're not dealing with a dog, an elephant, or a snake. So that shifts our focus from all other creatures and onto a cat. Then, our minds take over, and we start remembering what we know about cats, which in some cases is more or less than others do. But we all know something, and that is what we bring to our understanding of the word "cat."
The natural question that follows is thus, "What about the cat?" This is where the author's or speaker's mind kicks in and starts attributing characteristics to the cat, and that is how ideas come together, through an immutable law of attraction. In order to grow in meaning, a single word must attract others or die. But it's not like a tree absorbing nutrients from the soil. It's more like one snowflake attracting others until it is no longer a single flake but an entire snow bank that has to be shovelled. Or to use a more fitting analogy--one building block is relatively useless unless others are added to it, which ultimately results in some sort of structure.
That is what writing is--starting with one word, one idea, and then adding others to it until it eventually takes on a life of its own as an entirely different entity from the one that gave it life. And in that way, writing is also a metaphor for everything that exists in this world that got its start in the very same way.
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS
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