lunch break

Lunch break -- less time than ever to update the blog.

For readers of art reviews, I will stop writing reviews this summer in order to devote all my time to the new novel. I am working under the aegis of an Alberta Foundation Grant for Literary Arts and so want to make the absolute most of this opportunity. I know how important this is and how lucky I am to have received it.

My schedule since May 1 on the dot is basically to get an early start, either at the computer or to my secret lair located in the library tower of the U of C and write straight through until roughly 1:00. I then take a brief lunch (meaning coffee) pause and begin again, stopping only at 5:00 or so. How can creativity be so regimented you say -- I answer with read Twyla Tharp's book on creativity. Invested time is critical to creating. Routine creates productivity. (I'm not denying the creative frenzies that we often follow). In the evenings I sometimes write a bit more, if the eyes are not too worn out, but I see maintaining energy as in a marathon as critical to not burning out. Otherwise I read. The new books will be the subject of a future posting.

I recently came across an interview with Elizabeth McCracken (The Giant's House) who I first read in the Granta Best of Young American Novelists. In it she talks of her lazy writing habits, and her Providence boosted writing attacks. She says she's done a book when she hates it. This is the sort of line that I mull over for a long time. I think, for me, it's less that I hate a work, and more that the work eventually loses its thrill. I have revised it to the point where I know if I revise it more, I'll either be diminishing it, repeating myself, or just be writing another book. Sometimes ew ideas become so enveloping that I must move on. But hate it? I can't say I ever really hated a work I created. Even those I've destroyed (and those could fill a dumptruck) were not works I hated. Strong word that I reserve for works of others.

(laugh track inserted here)

Now for a bit of news regarding the new novel.
On Saturday I printed out a new draft (no longer in this age of word processing can we attribute a number to each draft). Currently kicking in over 126,000 words. The hard copy was so overwhelmed with written notes that I had to get a clean copy in order to continue.

And so it begins again. The rewriting is a daily given. I also undertook some significant structural changes that have been haunting me for quite a long time, and I deleted a good deal of material that never sat quite right. Ah, basing the future of the world on a gut feeling. But what a rejuvenation to have the hard copy to see the index cards with notes and colors (I use colored pencils to indicate different routes and connections).

So here's one to put in your pipe and smoke, how is it that writing can at once be simultaneously so mundane and so thrilling?

Reading News

Last night was the reading at the Calgary Public Library, fun event and THANKS to everyone who turned out. Great to see so many faces and special Kudos are awarded to the Library staff (Donna Bagley and Ann Austin) who made my visit so pleasurable. Michael Boyce turned out too, he's the author of Monkey which I'll now have to add to my stack of reading. The reading was lively with great questions, lots of laughing. And just who was the mysterious woman who apparently collects books signed by authors?

I should mention, while on here, the writing is going well -- hard as hell, horrifically difficult, but I know that is what to expect. It's the balance of macro and micro simultaneously. The thrill combined with the trance.

I just finished Whitman's Leaves of Grass and have moved on to Jeanette Winterson's The Passion -- nice magic realist style combined with risk-taking and stream of consciousness. There are some interesting reviews on the net -- and I tend to agree, deft, virtuoso sentences quite frequently -- boy don't I love that stuff. Some critics say the characters are undeveloped. Maybe so. On the other hand, it's a fascinating post-modern work, dense, white lit Venice and the darkness that lies within hearts. I stumbled across a beating heart that lay within a little jar inside my own closet. You might too, and when the dream works, it is 100% REM. Quick read and one worth picking up for that beach chair. I've moved on to essays about Winterson's works, here we go, into the post-structuralism.

Were I to say "woo hoo" I might be proclaiming my own male identity as a position of power in a polysemous, plural, genderless society. Hey but I'm in Canada, this 1990's identity politic is all the rage! I'm going moose hunting now.

Digging a hole to the other side of the earth

Now is the summer of our contentment
made glorious by the ability to write as
much as my eyes hold out.

Thus comes the hard work on the next
novel, which I expect to have in decent form
by the end of August.

Thus these posts will dwindle a bit for a while.