Writing Is My Soul

My throat is tight, my vision is blurry, and I suddenly forget how to speak English. Well, it is my second language after all.  I am about to read my piece to a group of writers for a critique.  My opinion wavers between it being courageously brilliant and the worst kind of amateurish junk.  The piece is too exposed, sentimental and may be perceived as whiny.  The title alone warns the reader to stay away or armor themselves with the box of tissues: A Hole In My Heart.

As I start reading, gripping the paper in my clammy hands, I can hardly let the words past my lips, but the further I get, the louder my voice becomes.  I become acutely aware of my accented pronunciation, checking off wrong vowels in my mind.  By the end of the reading, it becomes a total out-of -body experience, like the one I had when I uttered the words "I do" in front of the judge, frozen still, but yearning to run away screaming.  All that time I kept thinking what I have gotten myself into, but kept on with the wedding.  So it is here now.  What HAVE I gotten myself into?  But I can't turn back.

I finish the piece strong, but relieved to get it over with.  There is silence.  A kind looking lady becomes teary-eyed at my courage to touch upon such raw emotion.  Another lady, the Christian mystery writer, suggests to add more imagery.  A man, struggling with a chapter in his novel since last year, warns against using too many adjectives.  I gratefully accept all their feedback.  But then things get out of control.

A polished, conceited journalist of Indian descent, in his immaculate pompous Queen's English, armed with a pen and glasses on the tip of his nose, starts meticulously dissecting all my errors, stylistic and grammatical, one by one. He is a newcomer like me, having just joined the writer's group with his beautiful wife, who quietly sits  looking regal and embarrassed at the same time.  The Indian journalist's demeanor is not unlike a strict spinster grammar Nazi, your worst nightmare of a teacher, who gleefully punishes students with the red-penned fat "F"s.  He sees it as his highest mission to reduce me to dust.  I try to defend my choice of grammar; being an English teacher after all, I would presume I know what I'm talking about.

The discussion gets more heated  when he gets to the phrase "paranoid thoughts".  The opinions fly across the table.  Some love this phrase, while others just don't get why I used it.  Perhaps they never have experienced those thoughts, lying awake at three in the morning, lucky chaps.  The meeting starts resembling a fencing duel, with the journalist trying to stab me with his corrections, me parrying with my arguments, and his retreating before attempting the next attack. The duel is gracefully stopped by the referee, the writer's group leader.

In the end, no one is left indifferent about my writing, but I am left confused.  I feel like I've become a sacrificial lamb on the altar of literary critique, or should I say criticism, as the journalist would correct me.

As soon as the meeting is over, I stumble past the colorful shiny book covers, beckoning me to leaf through their crisp pages and better yet purchase them.  I don't know what to do.  Should I follow their temptations, like a kid in a candy store?  Should I go straight home?  Where is my car?  What time is it?  Who am I?  Outside I smoke a cigarette in the hazy humid night.  I should have listened to my mother.  I should have never written anything so personal, let alone shown it to a group of strangers.  I should have stayed home and never ventured out into this dangerous cruel world.

I mull over the situation, unsure whether to laugh or cry.  It undoubtedly looked comical, which I will probably realize later, when my ego is feeling less wounded and stripped.  And crying comes much more naturally to me.  So I do what I do best -- I cry and vow to quit writing forever.

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In the middle of the night, I am consumed by nightmares where writers take votes for every single word I wrote, with the journalist being against me, and the kind ladies cheering me on.  From deep inside me comes a message sharp and clear, like the voice of God calling upon Moses from the Burning Bush.  Writing is not just a hobby for my soul.  Writing IS my soul.  And no one can take that away from me.

A Novel in a MONTH??!!

What have I gotten myself into?!

So I have been on a self-flagellating roll lately and really under the weather about the whole me-as-a-writer thing.  I mean, I submitted an essay and a poem to Christian Science Monitor, and no reply, which means that they are not planning to publish me.  And if I were a Pollyanna, I would just brush it off, and submit something else somewhere else, but I am not. What I am is an Eeyore. And a very pessimistic one too.

Then somewhere I don't even remember where, I saw some information about the site NaNoWriMo http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/ , and I decided to check it out.  This is an organization that encourages their users, who are struggling like me and not-so-struggling writers, to write a novel IN ONE MONTH! They've declared November as a National Novel Writing Month, and in their own words,
 "National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30."

So I decided to register with them and take on the challenge.  I made my profile and novel description: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/641593 . And that's regardless of the fact that I will be working in November, probably teaching Advanced Grammar and Writing class and being buried under the piles of students' essays, housework, and wifely duties.  Hey, what doesn't kill me - makes me stronger, right?

What's the most fascinating is that people actually DO finish their novels in 30 days, and they DO publish them (albeit after numerous editing). With the REAL publishers like RANDOM HOUSE and HARPER COLLINS!  And even though my novel is not a romance, but bravely self-appointed into the genre of literary fiction, I hope it will find its publisher too.

What I need now is a writer's prayer.  And Holy %^&*, I just found one online:
http://www.inspirationforwriters.com/writinglife/prayer.html

AMEN

If My Novel Was A Manga!

I've had a twisted novel plot haunting me for years, and at times I revisit its dark and perverted world.  The plot is pretty simple:

In a totalitarian society controlled by government, where a person's life is worth nothing and basic human rights are nonexistent, an unremarkable government worker gets arrested on false charges of political crime.  His wife is summoned to the secret police service and is given a choice - if she performs "certain duties" willingly with the commandant, who is secretly obsessed with her, he will let her husband go.  She keeps refusing, her husband's interrogation and torture escalates in monstrosity and  cruelty in order to break her spirit and force her into the arms of the devilishly handsome but corrupted and twisted commandant.   In this sick and perverted story, the rules of right and wrong are challenged and discarded with each passing page, leaving the reader increasingly aghast and disgusted, but unable to turn away.

And then, I started reading a shojo manga called "Black Bird", which is as twisted, sick, and sexually perverted as shojo manga can be.  Anything goes - handsome villains, sexually insatiable vampires, killer demons, as long as a teenage girl is involved in the middle of all the blood and gore and sexual tension.  


So I thought, "What if my novel were a shojo manga?"  How free would that be!  Here I am, trying to rationalize the setting, the politics, the characters' reasoning, mentally fighting with the future critics who will try to find fault with any weakness in the plot.  Now, if my novel were a manga, everything would magically fall into place! 


 Wife - a damsel in distress.
Commandant - a handsome, cruel villain.
Husband - a useless, but cute and pitiful good guy.
Setting - a fantasy totalitarian world in an undetermined country and future.
Sexual tension - escalating exponentially.
Blood/torture - elaborate and lurid.

If only I could draw! >_<

The Trick Is To Keep Breathing

Am I a true writer?  Laypeople think that only if you are published, you can be considered a REAL writer.  Others, the more knowledgeable about the agonizing process of writing, say that you MUST WRITE to be a writer.  And still others, the envious and vicious type, a.k.a. my ex-boyfriend, think that you are ONLY a writer if you GET PAID for what you write.

These days, I am doing neither, struggling with trying to find motivation to write every day, and being completely overwhelmed and disgusted by even starting to think about the whole tedious writing process.

Having finished two online writing courses, that something possessed me to take at the same time, I feel wrung out.  All my words have been washed out of me, strung out to flap in the wind on the clothesline, like forgotten laundry.  All my motivation for writing, cleaning, having fun, and simply living is gone with the trickle of sand in an hourglass.  All that is left is silence and the residue of self-criticism.  Empty time, filled with incessant useless ruminations about my own futility.

Am I a writer?

Instead of writing, I read about writing, I subscribed to the Writer magazine, I have found a living, breathing writer's group in Buffalo, I started taking notes on a novel that has been haunting me for years, I have jotted down a few passing thoughts in poetic form, I even squeezed out a few freewriting pages out of my tired and stressed out brain, but I still do not feel like I am WRITING, or that I am a WRITER.

What would it take for me to acknowledge, to truly believe that I AM?

Natalie Goldberg, the guru of creative writing, says that we have to be prepared for some of the worst writing to come out of ourselves in our writing lives.  I think that's what I am producing right now.  And I hope that this drought will pass, and there will be the Great Flood of Inspiration in future.  I will keep criticizing myself and overcoming my self-flagellation every single day, just trudging on, and producing some of the worst writing in the history of the Universe, and then, I may have a single gem of brilliance under all this pile of rubbish and rumble.

"The trick is to keep breathing...."


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When are you going to rise to the challenge?
Always looking at others' success 


So you think you can?


From the grime of the soul's sorrow
A poem blooms

Ramblings and Complaints

Ok, I never took upon me to use this blog to freewrite from my stream of consciousness, and complain bitterly.  But there's a new beginning for everything.  Here it goes:

Why on Earth did I think that I could handle TWO Creative Writing courses in addition to my job, and why on Earth did I think that writing poetry in English would be a breeze?!!!  This is the hardest thing I had to do in my life, except taking a Statistics course and struggling with the concept of Probability.  Even Quantum Mechanics that I read about FOR PLEASURE in my own free time did not seem as hard as Probability.  Now Poetry?

Who in their right mind calls Free Verse FREE?  It has more restrictions than the rhyme and rhythm poetry.  At least keeping the rhythm is completely natural to me, rhyming is much harder, for I have a hard time finding words to rhyme in the language that is not my own.  But in Russian I produced the gems of poetry! When I was 18! What happened since then?  Why now am I struggling so much?  My brain is literally splitting up, and some new areas are at work that have never been used.  I feel the connections between the neurons forming painfully with each new poetic exercise that the instructor throws at us. 

One of the assignments is to write a SONNET!  I am not Shakespeare, I'm just a beginner, as well as some other students taking that class.  As far as I remember from the good old Russian school days, the sonnet form was considered hard even for experienced poets.  So far I have gotten first four lines. With the PERFECT rhyme and rhythm and even making sense,  but continuing with more seems impossible.

On top of that, I have to come up with a prose poem, a poem about an event I heard on the news about and assignments from a new lesson that I haven't even read yet for the fear of stressing myself out.  In addition to that, I am extremely behind my creativity training prose class, where assignments are much more comfortable and easy for me, but no less time consuming.  I have to write about a word of choice and about a writing day in a perfect world, and conduct Internet research on a subject I am not familiar with.  The last one I feel the most comfortable with, because my profession as an ESL teacher have made me an expert in Internet research on almost any subject, including an academic one. Oh Lord, please don't remind me about doing research in grad school in the Cybrary into the wee hours.

As though all these responsibilities I put on myself are not enough, I also set my mind on finishing or restarting for the millionth time the story about Shibshib getting lost for the publication in Chicken Soup for the Soul, which is due MAY 31, which is like in TWO days!  Oh, yeah, look at me, I'm a Superman, I can do it all AND successfully plan lessons. 

And to top all this off, my writing and communicative ability, as well as cognitive skills are almost non-existent now.  It is Friday, I've been struggling with the cold, lack of sleep and adjusting to the work schedule the whole week, and my brain is on strike, or vacation.  So, I declare today a NOWRITE DAY, and I am NOT writing.  As in not writing anything that needs to be written.  I can't deal with requirements and expectations of being judged right now, so I am just rambling on aimlessly in my blog that no one will read anyway.

So, tomorrow, I will go on another Wine Tasting class, and then on a mindless shopping trip at the mall with a friend.  Sunday, I will buy materials for our patio project with my husband, and have a  barbecue dinner at another friend's house.  To Hell with the writing which seems like a nightmare now.  After recharging my brain cells, I will produce yet another masterpiece, as I have always done in the past.

Just have faith and let go.

Discovery: False Starts

I have not realized how many times I tried to write and how many times I gave up.  The following was found in the old journal of sporadic entries from 1999 to 2002, which wasn't the only one started and then abandoned.  I was blown away by the quality of my writing.   I am glad I found courage not to give up anymore.

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It's the first to greet me in the morning.  It's the last to wish me good night's sleep.  It's in a sickly pale face of the moon; it's in the threatening frown of the clouds enclosing the sun.

It's so familiar, it's become a part of my identity, ME.  It's been with me so long, I can hardly remember when I was free of its company.  Maybe that's why I befriended it, because I never had anyone to take it's place.  The imaginary friend of adulthood.

It hits unexpectedly, or should I say expectedly, since it's always there feasting on my self-confidence, preying on my consciousness.

When I used to write poetry, I would call it "My Pain".  When it fits the schedule, I call it "PMS".  Other poeple call it "Being moody".  If I had a shrink, he would call it "Depression".

From the moment I open my eyes to the moment I sink into the bed -- it is always my companion.

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Looking for a job is like looking for a mate:  full of bitter rejections, unfulfilled dreams, and missed opportunities.

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Why does every man, when he is with his male friends, turn into a belching monster, too eagerly laughing at their jokes about his own impotence?

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Cooker's Block

Note: "cooker" is an incorrect but endearing term used by ESL learners that means "cook" or "chef".

So here I am at my Physical Therapy, doing the treadmill.  I love the treadmill, for it lets me concentrate on some creative writing book full of inspiring ideas, and at the same time do some deep torturous self-examination.  As Socrates proclaimed at his trial, which would eventually sentence him to death, "The unexamined life is not worth living", so I am the Great Master of this sport, setting my own trial and being my own plaintiff, defendant, advocate, prosecutor and judge, .

As I try to concentrate on the "Writing as a Sacred Path:" by Jill Jepson, who traveled the world analyzing the spiritual practices of all religions and marrying it with the writing practices, and as I am being enlightened by another pearl of wisdom about nurturing the stories like you would plant a seed, the self-deprecating plaintiff kicks in.  "You are no good.  You ain't no writer.  You can't create nothing.  You are a boring person, a whiner, and a bad wife.  You always make problems for yourself.  Why you can't just let it go and be happy for once!  What was the last time you cooked dinner?  No wonder your husband don't like you."

Who can fight with that?  I, the defendant, just let it go on, ramble itself out, trying to focus on another pearl of wisdom from this wonderful book.  A thought pops into my mind, that time from a wise mature compassionate advocate, the one that keeps observing all from the back of my consciousness.  "You don't just have a writer's block, you have a cooking block.  That's why you can't cook and come up with any idea of what to cook.  You are too tired and winded to create anything."  Yes, thank you for your understanding.  Finally someone not trying to judge me.

As I keep walking on the treadmill and thinking what would I like to do for myself today, what would my heart desire, I see an image of a dusty honorable bottle of shiraz, so dark that it's concealing the treasure inside it.  Yeah, shiraz sounds good.  I tried it for the first time in Tandoori's, Indian restaurant, and it was sublime like a vampire's feast: spicy, deep, earthy, black currant, thick, violet blood.  Since then I've wanted to buy a bottle at Premiere but never found time.  Now is the time. 


Reliving the tangy aroma of the wine, my mind comes up with the perfectly paired dish to accompany it: medium done, with a pink kissable softness inside and smoky seared crust on the outside, grilled sirloin steak, light on the spices to enhance the real taste of meat;  woodsy crimini mushrooms and caramelized onions sauteed in olive oil with savory and caraway seeds; plain salad with iceberg lettuce, slices of radish and cucumber, garnished with parsley, drizzled with lime juice and olive oil, seasoned with a dash of freshly ground black pepper and salt.  Simplicity and sincerity, without embellishments.


So, my plan for the night was determined.  The sage old bearded  judge has spoken.  With the new-found goal and creativity, I create a meal that is perfection in itself, like a brilliantly written poem. Writing and cooking are intermingled, both being the capricious children of inspiration.  You have to dig deep inside the well of yourself to find the perfect recipe from your soul. 

 Needless to say, my husband was pleased. ;)
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And for the true wine connoisseur,

here's the wine I drank with that unforgettable meal: