The Hungry Artist

Two terrifying thoughts:
That my patches of red will relentlessly and endlessly
Itch
No matter how many times
I scratch
And that if I you take my books from me
I will never ever remember all the profound ideas I’ve
Read

Third terrifying thought:
That without my books I will forever search
For aesthetic relief
As I do for insatiably
Forgetful skin.

No fooling – I’ve ended the 50k-word challenge for the month of March dismally below the targeted goal at: 19,551 words. The intention I suppose of the challenge was to get you to write swiftly and consistently, and overall, that’s what I did. But like a long-distance run (which I’ve never been good at), I started off strong, my pen swift and dizzy and my fingers flying on the keyboard, only to decline, let me see (as I scan my calendar), right around the middle of the month – March 16th. The number of words after that for each day rose and fell, but I never quite reached the peak of 1,646 words on Thursday, March 3rd. There were exactly 8 days I didn’t write any words (though believe me, I thought of them), which made it nearly impossible to ever catch up.

And so, what do I have to say about taking up this challenge and failing? I won’t be cheesy and say that at least the experiment got me writing more (which it did) or that it’s the effort that counts (because it isn’t). You either meet the goal or you don’t. That being said, I may have written even more in a month’s time when I worked on my graduate thesis (and will plenty more if I get in to a Ph.D. program in creative writing). I won’t even argue that old cliche: it’s the quality rather than the quantity (gag), because honestly, after a while, what you write ends up being mostly bull-crap. So what am I personally reminded of from attempting to write what would equal the length of at least a novella? What I already knew – that writing is a fixed part of my life, whether I write every day, every other day, or only on the weekends. So farewell March 50-k Madness. I hope to never see you again.

It turns out I’m falling behind in my daily targeted word count of 1600 words. Today, only 321 words. But I’m not admitting defeat. See, my novella/novelette is at some kind of a standstill and needs shaping, editing and revising. I’m at 56 pages (15,112 words) with this project and I feel it is very much nearing completion. As happens all the time in my writing, I’ll be engaged with my daily reading and something will hit me in connection to my story. For example, in the middle of reading Zizek’s “Violence,” I was struck by his quote of a statement made by Deleuze (whose philosophical work I greatly admire): “If you’re trapped in the dream of the other, you’re fucked!” That quote impacted me instantly. It forced me to reflect upon an aspect of my story that I had inadvertently left dangling, and that I now know needs to be redressed. So that is what I spent the last hour doing – returning to this part, and shaping it. I came up with only 321 new words, but a few hundred words that are clearly necessary as I draw my novelette to a close.

As they swim to shore, the Changer searches for the Not-Here, ahead of them where he ought to be. He is nowhere to be seen. For these few moments, he has forgotten himself. But when they reach land, the Changer will once again be concerned with what he smells like, seeking to return to the smell of his birth. He is not aware that the smell of sweet ginger snaps at birth was the smell projected by his mother and was thus not granted by nature. Nature grants nothing but the playground in which to perceive an array of sights, sounds, tastes and smells. Perhaps ginger snaps were placed on a plate by the hospital bed. Unable to withstand the smell of birth, which for her was the smell of pain, she immediately transferred the pleasant smell of ginger snaps to her newborn son. The more likely story is that he was born smelling like nothing, and his mother simply could not bear this smell of nothing. Therefore, the Changer will always smell like something, even when this something is nothing.
* * *
The Changer is still not certain. Sometimes he picks up a faint scent of his very own, even in the midst of the objects of his world. When he withdrew from this manmade lake, he smelled something like a cross between soggy cookies and a Christmas tree. But the Oral Writer, the Changer, and the Not-Here are not here anymore. Neither are the three geese. They are – each one of them – over there somewhere.

Day 4 = 1,619
Total so far = 6, 478

I’ve added many pages to my novella/novelette in progress, Slumber Citizens. I’ve also written some poetry, handwritten dozens of pages of ideas, etc. This through stacks of papers to grade (still stacked to a degree) therefore grading, teaching, prepping, eating, (among many other essential things), and today feeling miserable as I don’t feel well (but who’s complaining.) No one’s making me do this crazy thing, of writing at least 1600/day. So far, I’ve maintained by goal, although I know it’s only day 4. However, it’s already feeling like routine, and it helped that I already made sure to write something every day, even if 1 line. Writing 5 or more pages a day feels like quite a feat, but I also love hand writing, so that it feels therapeutic. Here is an excerpt from Slumber Citizens that I came up with today:

Slumber Citizen 1 approaches her friend with a locket in her hand. “Take a look at this antique locket – it doesn’t have a chain, and the loop has been broken off, but it’s beautiful, isn’t it?” The locket is golden colored, oval shaped, with an array of vines flowering outward from the center. Behind the vines, a paper background is visible as if something has been placed inside. She clicks the locket open and inlaid on both sides of the locket are two tiny pictures, one of a baby and the other a little girl with crooked pigtails. “I can’t tell if this is the same child, can you?” Citizen 3 peers closely at the two little photos, which have been glued in. As with most babies, you can’t tell whether this is a boy or girl. The baby is neither smiling nor crying, its tongue slightly sticking out. It appears to have rosacea on its cheeks. The little girl on the opposite side doesn’t. Her ivory skin is completely smooth. That doesn’t tell me anything, Citizen 3 thinks to herself, because most babies outgrow these kinds of skin conditions. The little girl’s eyes are wide and she is neither smiling nor laughing, though it looks she’s attempting a grin. “It’s probably the same kid,” she answers, handing the locket back to her friend. Citizen 1 looks again, and it occurs to her that there is no way of telling for sure whether these two people on display in this locket are the same person. Maybe they are related, brother and sister, or sister and sister. She tends toward thinking they are the same person, as most people look completely different than the way they did as a baby. “I was a fat baby,” she says aloud. “You’d never guess looking at me now.” Citizen 3 considers this remark and thinks back to her own baby pictures. “I was just an average baby, like I am now.” They both giggle as Citizen 1 walks back toward the lockets, still holding the locket close to her face and staring at the photos. The tiny heads remind her of Borges’ head. Today she is her core self, even though it’s the weekend. And a shadow of Borges lingers in that inner, ruminative self. The young Borges looked quite different from the old one. For one thing, the young one’s hair was darker and fuller, and the eyes wider and darker. The eyes of the older Borges seem to have shrunk, but with a more steady gaze. Still, the young Borges and the old Borges contained the same core person, and the same body though appearing different at different times. They both carried all in one. Bumpy red cheeks on baby girl, smooth ivory skin on big girl. I was a fat baby. Look at me now. If these two people can be the same person, so can I. Borges knew. He knew. He was a slumber citizen.

Lend me 1 minute, and I can expand it into infinity. How many communing, intersecting thoughts can be laid on the page with any sort of sense or meaning in that 1 passing minute? And then multiply that times 60 to equal an hour of letters, words, symbols = language porn. I don’t want to waste 1 minute. March is the month of obsession with every passing minute, mourning each one I spend in slumber or banal activities – though even in slumber, thoughts don’t sleep…

*Orin and I both work full-time (and then some), though I think he has me beat with obligations (maybe!) Today will be a challenge as I have to teach 2 classes, grade 3 class sections of papers coming in this week, and then watch out for a possible evaluation by one of my deans! Okay, I’ll stop complaining and post how many words we both get written by the end of the day (whenever that is)!

March is novel-writing month. The challenge is to write 50 thousand words in a month. Yes, that’s right – 50k! So far, it’s me and my friend, Orin, who are mentally ill enough to take up the challenge. Calling all MFA’ers and/or writing addicts. Who else is in?

So House of Anansi Press, which published Margaret Atwood among other Canadian writers, has requested to see a 25-page sample of my novel, The Former Things Have Passed Away, based on a query and synopsis I sent 4 months ago. This is the third press that has made such a request based on a synopsis or sample. My novel has been denied by several other publishers to whom I sent either a portion of my novel or the whole manuscript without request. So here I go again because you have to keep going – particularly when something about your work stimulates even a bit of interest. Now to decide which 25 pages to send and lure them in with…

That very night she had this dream:

Her best friend appears to her, only she looks completely different. Something tells her that this indeed is her best friend, despite the fact that this person looks nothing like her best friend. This individual doesn’t even have the same mannerisms. Everyone accepts her as this best friend. Slumber Citizen 1 does too, but when her best friend says she has a boyfriend despite being married, suspicion takes over.

“You have a boyfriend?”

“Well, yes, and my husband has a girlfriend.”

“Wow, that’s strange.” Slumber Citizen 1 thinks of how her best friend would never do such a thing or stoop so low.

“You don’t look like the friend I know.”

“But indeed I am.”

Slumber Citizen 1 is troubled. Something tells her that this indeed is her best friend, but at the same time, something tells her that she is not. She decides to ask her best friend’s sister in order to verify her identity. She looks everywhere but cannot find this sister. She only sees her in her mind’s eye. At last, the real best friend appears, who looks exactly like Slumber Citizen’s best friend and has the same mannerisms.

“She isn’t me.”

“I know.”

“I vow to discover the true identity of this impersonator.”

“Yes I know. I believe you. You are the real thing. And yet, this other one, she seems to be you too. Despite the fact that she looks nothing like you – still, she is somehow you.”
Slumber Citizen 1 woke up the next morning not remembering a trace of this dream.

She felt the overwhelming urge to let down her hair after pinning it in a bun. She paused, reflecting on her self in the mirror. Let down your hair, she told her self. You don’t have to be in school today. Without remorse, she let down her hair and lilted around the bathroom, barefoot and light-footed.

Could it be that all that uncomfortable and unsatisfying sweating and slipping was a result of both our forgotten dreams?

He nearly drives himself mad with this question, and realizes he is starting with the most difficult question of all – do our dreams combine and fornicate? He decides that rather than complicate matters he will not see Slumber Citizen 3 for a while. For now on, he won’t let the dream suppress the best of him. He will do all in his power to remember the dream.