Incompleat Iconoclast » Writing

Wondering why my posts are showing up here out of order?

Edward F. Gumnick — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 14:48:59 +0000

I’m glad you asked.

I was 10 days into a 50-day writing workshop called “50/50 Fall 2008” when Hurricane Ike arrived last September. Several days of pandemonium and 11 days without power pushed the workshop to the back burner, where it remained until recently. Except for one anomalous book review, I didn’t make time to put anything else on the blog for most of a year.

A couple of weeks ago, I revived the 50/50 workshop as part of the process of coaching a friend through an exploration of her own writing. I’d been working the exercises for 10 days or so before it occurred to me that I should post them at Incompleat Iconoclast. I’m putting up the newer pieces as I write them, but in the interest of not burying my few subscribers in a whole bunch of messages at once, I’m spreading out posting the older ones until I get caught up. (But I’m dating them at the time I wrote them so that they’ll appear in chronological order on the blog.)

Write to me if you want to know more!

Exercise #19: Lead line: “Every morning I sit across from you…”

Edward F. Gumnick — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 00:29:28 +0000

Every morning I sit across from you, and you stare back at me with a blank screen. I’ve configured you so that the WriteRoom word processor’s solid-black window hides everything else on the screen—the other applications, the desktop, the menus, the dock. I chose these settings so it would be just you and me when I sit down to write every day for the first of two 25-minute periods. The top line of the blank page is dark gray, and an insertion point in antique white blinks impatiently at me.

Some days, I feel as if you’re taunting me. “So you think you’re a writer, do you?” On better days, you are more encouraging: “I am here for you, empty, but full of possibilities. I know you can do this.” I click command-S and give a bland name to the blank document—090724 Free writing.rtf. I don’t want to take the chance of losing what I’ve written, and I don’t want to have to stop mid-way through the 25 minutes to navigate to the proper folder and save the file. I’m ready to begin.

I click the F12 button to make my widgets appear for a moment. The meditation timer is still set for 25 minutes from last night’s second writing episode, so all I have to do is click begin session. I hit F12 again, and the widgets disappear as the chime sounds with a reverberating boing! The screen is black again.

Without fail, I type the words “Begin again.” This is a two-word shorthand for a lot of knowledge and experience and ideas I’ve collected over the last several years of trying to become a serious writer. “Begin again” invokes Anne Lamott, who observed that every time you sit down to write, there’s a sense in which you must start anew. It also reminds me of the Zen exercises of Gail Sher’s One Continuous Mistake. It signals commitment in the face of the impossible odds that grow out of the unpredictable and arbitrary nature of life. It’s my way of saying, “I have as much reason to write as anyone else does, so here I go.”

Note: The prompt was to begin a piece with the assigned phrase.

Exercise #14: Lead Line: “I cannot help noticing all the things that…”

Edward F. Gumnick — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 05:58:54 +0000

I cannot help noticing all the things that I let get in the way of writing. I came in here more than an hour ago, and my agenda was clear: to write for another half hour, including coming up with something in response to this prompt, and then to get my ass to bed at a reasonable hour. But no. I had to have a quick look at Facebook. And then I had to see what was going on over at two or three other “social networking” sites (read: places to meet guys). Nothing was going on, but I didn’t let that stop me from distracting myself there for a while. Then back to Facebook, because I was thinking about what I’d said to my young cousin, Michelle, about maybe setting up a fan page for the Gumnick family. But then I determined that they don’t really accommodate family sites in the “fan page” model, so I had to figure out where to go to set up a group, and then I had to nose around to figure out which category a family group gets filed into. And then I had to figure out a name and description for the group. And then I had to find jussssst the right photo for the group page. And then I had to tweak some of the wording a little. And send an invitation to all of the family members who are on Facebook. And then remember a few in-laws I’d forgotten. Then I had to go back to one of those other sites to reply to a couple of messages that had come in while I was tinkering on Facebook.

And mixed in with all of that, there was a fair amount of staring blankly at the screen and thinking, “I should stop messing around and get to writing, or I’m going to be up half the night. But first, let me see what this thing over here is.” [Sound of mouse click.]

But now I’m here, and I’m writing. So get off my back already.

Note: The title of this assignment is self-explanatory, I think. It didn’t inspire any flashes of creative brilliance (or even dull glows thereof), but I’m sticking to a “warts and all” policy of posting everything I write in this workshop.

Hey Kids! It’s Time for Another 50/50!

Edward F. Gumnick — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 22:05:14 +0000

I’ve signed up again for “50/50,” Max Regan’s 50-day online workshop. “Students will receive a writing exercise via e-mail each day and will write at least one page of text a day,” says Max’s introduction to the course. Fifty days, fifty pages—hence the title. For more information about the course, visit Max’s 50/50 blog.

The class provides no mechanism for feedback; its purpose is merely to inspire and stimulate participants to cultivate or expand their every-day writing habit. I’m planning to post my 50/50 output here again, however, so that friends and fellow writers who’ve expressed interest or curiosity about my writing can take a look and give me some comments. [View the archive of my 50/50 pieces from the spring 2008 course.]

If you’ve found your way here, either because I invited you or just by accident, I’d love to know what you think. Please post your feedback as a comment on the posting to which it applies, or if you’d prefer not to make them public, send me e-mail. (Or call me on the phone if your critique is likely to make me cry.)

Boot Camp Day 9: An Apology and a Plea for Patience

Edward F. Gumnick — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 05:14:35 +0000

I embarked on a new initiative today. Inspired by what I’ve accomplished in the Boot Camp, I’ve set an ambitious new goal: to write 3,000 words of first-draft text every day. It’s my hope that with this commitment, I’ll push my daily writing routine to a new level and generate some material I can get published.

Today’s 3,000+ words took the form of several fragments—the very raw beginnings of a few stories and essays mixed together with assorted rants and ramblings. I’m going to select a chunk of 1,000 of those words to send to Max as today’s submission for the Boot Camp class, but I’m not ready to post anything (else) new to the blog today.

But don’t worry! I’ll be posting more here soon.

Boot Camp Day 6: Things That Stood in the Way of My Writing 1,000 Words Today

Edward F. Gumnick — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 05:30:21 +0000

The first thing I had to do this morning—after brewing a pot of coffee, of course—was to soak in the bathtub for a while. See, I overdid it yesterday in a couple of different departments. I walked 6-1/2 miles in the stifling heat and humidity of mid-day because I had received an invitation to a party that would conflict with the usual timing of my walk. Then I went to the party in question and drank four beers, which is about four more beers than my normal daily consumption of late. So when I rolled out of bed at the crack of 10:15 this morning, my first rudimentary (dehydrated, hungover) thought after “must have coffee” was “must soak in tub long time.”

Coffee mug in hand, I crawled into the tub with the latest issue of Granta, my favorite “literary magazine.” I had read most of the issue, so this morning’s soak was focused on finding every scrap of text that I hadn’t already read.

When I finally got out of the tub, I had to make my bed, which didn’t really contribute much to keeping me from writing 1,000 words. But then I rewarded myself with another hot, steaming cup of java and took a look at my e-mail inbox. There wasn’t much there that needed my attention, but I was ambushed by an e-mail update from Pharyngula, the blog of biologist and atheist agitator PZ Myers. PZ posts items of interest to evolutionists and all manner of freethinkers on his blog several times a day, and I get a daily e-mail with the most recent updates. He’s an enjoyable writer with a razor-sharp mind. His posts draw attention to stories he’s found in the news or on the blogosphere. Which of the new items that I found there sucked up the rest of my morning? There was an interesting piece about Jefferson’s version of the bible, which he compiled by “chopping out all the miracles and unbelievable stuff.”

I also got sidetracked for quite a while by a scathing critique of Barack Obama’s recent speech about keeping alive—even expanding, God help us!—President Bush’s ill-conceived and relentlessly partisan Office of Faith-Based Initiatives. I’m very disappointed in Obama’s blatant pandering to religious fundamentalists. Does he really think that he’s going to get their votes, and doesn’t he care that if he moves much farther to the center, he’s going to be losing mine? The most disappointing thing about him is that he doesn’t seem to see that progressives have been a big part of getting him where he is today. [Sigh.]

Next thing I knew, Jorge was calling to ask if I wanted to take a quick road trip with him to check out the logistics on the new job he’s starting tomorrow in Texas City, an industrial town about 40 miles south of Houston. He said he’d be over in about an hour to pick me up. I hadn’t eaten anything substantial yet, so I went to the freezer and dug out some pasta putanesca that we made a few weeks ago. Tossed it in the microwave and came back to Pharyngula for a while longer.

I can’t honestly say that spilling pasta sauce on my laptop for the second time in a week was a major factor in my not writing 1,000 words today, but I thought I ought to mention it in passing.

It was easy to see by 2:00 p.m. that the day was racing by, so I took my laptop with me on our journey. As we headed into downtown, I started a free-writing exercise. I wrote 349 words on the topic of trying to write in a moving pickup truck on a dazzlingly sunny day on a laptop with a dusty screen. Truly inspired stuff. Even though I was immersed in my topic, I couldn’t help but notice that Jorge had passed the exit to head south on I-45. It turned out that he wanted to stop at a refresqueria (a purveyor of cold drinks) on our way. And it had to be a particular refresqueria in the middle of a Hispanic neighborhood that was not even slightly on the way to Texas City.

About an hour later, we were headed in the right direction, aguas frescas in hand. An agua fresca is more or less a fruit smoothie. Mine was mango; Jorge’s was papaya. He also didn’t have to work too hard to talk me into a serving of elote, a snack of boiled sweet corn, a touch of mayonnaise, crumbled white Mexican cheese, and a splash of hot salsa. He assures me that after eating this snack, I am now at least as Mexican as he is.

There was nothing remarkable about the rest of the drive to Texas City, but somehow it still kept me distracted from doing any more writing. But I had a phone conversation with Gayle (The Cheerleader) on the topic of why it’s not always easy to write, no matter how much one might want to do so.

Once we arrived in Texas City, we spent about half an hour looking for the contractor parking lot where he’ll have to leave his truck at 6:00 tomorrow morning. It turned out that he’d been given a very poorly drawn map, and we were driving up and down the wrong road for most of that half hour.

Then we took the long way home, via Kemah, Seabrook, and Pasadena. I wrote 343 words about Gayle’s suggestion that I need to work on finding ways to turn writing into a game I can win. This idea needs further exploration.

On the way home, we stopped at Kim Son for an early dinner. Since tomorrow is the first day that Jorge has to be up early after a few months out of work, he’s planning to go to bed very early tonight.

Oh look! I’ve written 1,000 words after all—without even counting the earlier efforts I mentioned. It turns out that for today at least, life wasn’t as much of an obstacle to writing as I thought it was.

Note: When my siblings and I were kids, my father used to tell us “Don’t make noise just to make noise.” I fear that today’s post is making noise just to make noise—pure writing-workshop-word-count-quota babbling. Sorry!

Boot Camp Day 1(b): Writers Write, Right?

Edward F. Gumnick — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 05:44:10 +0000

I wrote 1,211 words earlier today in the form of my typical daily free-writing exercise. I write stream of consciousness for a period of five minutes, timed by a “Meditation Timer” widget I downloaded from the somewhere in a Macintosh corner of the Internet. Then I stop and read what I’ve written, look for a “center of gravity,” and write for another five minutes. Then I read again and write again. At the end, I categorize the piece by date, form, and subject matter. Today’s free-writing exercise included text on the topics of irritability, frustration, money, noise, distractions, Baby Boomers, and “running around the world and playing” (among others).

After I categorize the exercise, I copy it into my writing Wiki, where I’ve collected and categorized 356 articles of one sort or another. Some day I will figure out what to do with all those words. Or not.

The free-writing exercises don’t produce material that I’m likely to mine for content to use anywhere else. For the most part, they’re rants, whines, whimpers, or bits of self-pitying or self-aggrandizing nonsense. But they serve the purpose of draining some of the crazy out of my system before I try to write anything more purposeful. Maybe they serve some other function as well. I’m not sure.

During the 50/50 class, I often used this structured free-writing practice as a way to warm up and to start playing with ideas for the class assignments. That didn’t seem to work today, for some reason. I received the assignment around 2:00 in the afternoon, but it took me a couple of hours to get myself situated in front of the laptop and ready to write, and then the stream of my consciousness wanted to go in several directions completely unrelated to the class prompts. After I’d finished the warm-up, I took a stab at the “canoe” prompt. It’s a shadow of a story idea that’s been lurking in the back of my imagination for years and years. I don’t know what’s going to happen yet. There are two young men who seem too good to be true, and the narrator is profoundly jealous of them (and intensely attracted to one), and then something terrible happens.

But after banging out a few paragraphs of that story, I was stuck. I played around for a while with several false starts on the other two suggestions, but was getting nowhere, so I took off for a walk at the park.

Walked 6-1/2 miles, and as I was finishing the last stretch, my boyfriend drove by in his truck and gave a honk. He found a parking space and met me near the end of my route to see if I wanted to go for some dinner. I was famished and welcomed the excuse to put off the rest of my 1,000 words just a little longer.

After dinner, I came home and got back to work. I kept running into more false starts, so finally I decided to take this approach: just write something. Write about what worked today and what didn’t. Write about my writing practice. Write about how eager I am to make something good happen with this Boot Camp. So there you have it.

Special Event

Edward F. Gumnick — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 16:26:52 +0000

Community Reading

Sunday, April 13
Doors open at 3:00 p.m.
Reading: 4:00–6:30 p.m.

Spectrum Center
Houston, Texas

MAP

The Spectrum Center Writers Guild has completed another year of exploring expression through writing poetry, prose, memoir, fiction, essays, and rants. On this afternoon, members of the guild will read pieces of their works-in-progress.

We gather in celebration of the discovery and surprise we’ve enjoyed by allowing our writers’ voices to come forth.

We would be honored to read for you.

Arrive early, meet some of the center’s practitioners, and tour the new Spectrum Center home. We will offer refreshments and delicious tea from The Path of Tea.

RSVP to reserve your seat: 713.840.8957, ext. 1, or rosa235@earthlink.net.

50/50 Exercise #50: Fifty Things That Come Next

Edward F. Gumnick — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 03:49:40 +0000

I will experiment with writing at several different times of day (in the same day), for several days in a row, mixing it up with an occasional day off, etc., to see whether there are some patterns and habits that work better than others.
I will look for magazines and journals that publish the kind of things I like to write.
I will develop a habit for working in several different forms and stages of creative production in parallel, keeping lots of balls in the air—stream-of-consciousness exercises, first drafts, editing and polishing, final drafts, brainstorming exercises, idea-mapping, creative play, etc., in short fiction, personal essay, memoir, flash fiction, a book-length project or two, etc.
Topic: My writing day
I will learn to work in noisy, public places (as a change of pace, not for the bulk of my work).
Topic: My ideal place to write
I will develop more one-on-one social contact with other writers.
I will experiment in combining my everyday writing routine with travel.
I will read with greater intentionality and more careful attention.
I will also read for the joy of reading.
I will make some income writing.
I will win a writing contest.
I will attend more readings by writers whose work I enjoy.
I will subscribe to more periodicals that publish fiction.
I will write on nights when I’m sure that I’m much too tired to write.
Topic: Life in the suburbs
When someone makes a suggestion about a text I’ve written, I will pay careful attention.
I will go on a retreat to a beautiful place when I can write in a peaceful setting.
I will write second (and third) drafts of some of the many first-draft pieces in my possession.
I will open a separate checking account for my writing work.
I will start a QuickBooks file to track the finances of my writing career.
Topic: Imagination as the root of “intuition”
I will return to the practice of keeping a reading list.
Topic: The waterfall at Cade’s Cove, Tennessee
I will schedule writing times and then honor them, even when presented with the tempting offer of a social outing. (But not every time.)
I will explore more deeply the development of characters.
I will experiment with unusual forms.
I will write a six-word bio. (Or many of them.)
I will idea-map on a more regular basis.
I will seek out workshops on some specific areas of writing craft: characterization, writing dialog, etc.
When I travel, I will keep travelogues. But I will try to tell a few interesting stories or observations instead of an exhaustive journal of the trip.
I will figure out how to enable Gallery 2 software to make it easier to incorporate images into my blog.
I will pursue the idea of using my blog as a form of postcard for my next big trip.
Topic: Deception
~~I will refine a couple of pieces to read at the Spectrum Center Community Reading on April 13.~~
I will write a book to dedicate to Gika. (Guess who suggested this one.)
Topic: The smell of the bathroom at Latina Café.
~~I will fire an irritating graphic-design client~~ (or all of them).
Topic: Pasteleria
~~I will go to the beach.~~
Topic: The new cathedral in Houston
~~I will take a few days off from writing to reflect on having completed the 50/50 class.~~
~~I will beat myself up about letting my writing habit lapse for a couple of weeks when I had been doing so well.~~
I will stop reading books about creativity.
Topic: College roommates
I will still think of myself as a creative person even if I’m not having a creative day.
I will feel free to disregard writing advice that doesn’t make sense for my style and voice.
~~I will agonize over the last exercise, dragging it out for days and days and days.~~
~~I will leave this exercise unfinished in the interest of getting on with writing.~~

And then I thought of a few more things that ought to be on the list.

I will put together the curriculum for a workshop on new technologies for writers.
I will reinstitute the good filing habits that fell by the wayside when I started the 50/50 class.
I will remain curious about ways to improve my writing practice.
I will try to have lots of fun.
I will get better at it.

Note: The assignment was to “make a list of fifty things that might come next for you as a writer.” I’ve been working on it on and off for the last 19 days. Enough!

The items marked with a “strikethrough” line have already been completed.

50/50 Exercise #15: Book That Changed Your Life

Edward F. Gumnick — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 23:09:28 +0000

Author’s note

This piece is so far from being complete that I thought it might clarify matters for my readers if I put my note at the start instead of at the end, which is where I usually have been placing notes about the texts.

The assignment was to write about a book that’s had a big influence on me. I’m having a hard time figuring out exactly why this has been the hardest exercise for me since the 50/50 class started. I love books—lots of them! I could name many books that have had a profound impact: The Chronicles of Narnia, any Ray Bradbury short-story collection, The House of the Spirits, Illusions, Walden, A Christmas Carol, Welcome to the Monkey House…the list goes on and on and on. But I settled on One Continuous Mistake a few moments after receiving the assignment, and I’ve been chipping away for days at trying to put into words why it’s had such a significant effect. Part of the problem, I suppose, is that I’m still trying to digest its lessons.

In the interest of getting back on pace with the class assignments, I’m going to call it quits, set this exercise aside for now, and return to it later. The following bits and piece are what I’ve assembled so far for a consideration of the book’s influence on me.

Writers write.
Writing is a process.
You don’t know what your writing will be until the end of the process.
If writing is your practice, the only way to fail is not to write.

—Gail Sher, One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers

When my friend, coach, and mentor Chris Welsh mentioned the subtitle of One Continuous Mistake to me on the phone one day last spring, my flippant remark was, “Tell me the four noble truths, and maybe I don’t need to read the book.” He read the four truths to me from the book jacket, and the minute I hung up the phone, I tracked down the book in the Houston Public Library catalog and requested that one of their three copies be shipped to the Heights branch.

I have to back up.

Long before I read this book, I spent a lot of years calling myself an “aspiring writer.” I used to visit a psychotherapist who spent years asking me how my writing was going, and my answer was usually a shrug and a change of subject. Even with his very capable counseling, I couldn’t reconcile the feeling that I ought to be a writer with the fact that I wasn’t doing much writing. For a while, I resisted his efforts to talk about the topic at all.

Here is where I need to talk at length about developing an every-day exercise routine, how my walking regimen started producing results and became an irresistible habit/obsession/compulsion, taking the first steps toward writing on a regular basis, the advances I made when I took Chris Welsh’s Mastery of Learning program, and where I found myself in life at the moment I encountered this book.

One Continuous Mistake helped me make sense of some things that I was trying to work out on my own. It offered a plausible explanation of the connection I kept making in my mind between walking and writing. It helped me recognize that my walking routine was a Zen practice—an exercise in which “success” is manifested in merely showing up—and it helped me get comfortable thinking of my daily writing habit as a Zen practice as well.

It made a huge difference for me to realize that if I just sit down and write for a half hour or so every day without regard for quality, with no objective, no focus on results, no attention even to coherence, I have still accomplished something. And after I’d gotten myself to that point, something started to thaw in my resistance to thinking of myself as a writer.

One day I was at a workshop, and we were going around the room taking turns talking about what we’d been reading and writing. I said (among other things), “I write just about every day,” and I saw a look of admiration in a few of my fellow writers’ eyes. Later that day, after one of the rounds of reading our class work aloud, I realized that somewhere in the previous year or two of Zen-practice daily writing exercises, something had changed for the better in my writing. In all that stream-of-consciousness scribbling, I had drained off a lot of my pretensions, left behind some of my attitudes about what a writer’s voice should sound like, and reach something simpler and more genuinely my voice.