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susanstinsonFor ten years, I've kept a file that I call the morning file. It's writing without the pressure of shape or the expectation of another reader. It includes responses to things I've been reading, fragments, description, angles on whatever problems I'm worrying in my current novel, poems. I've slowed down in using it lately, both because I've been having trouble with carpal tunnel and have been writing more with a pen and a pad of paper to vary the ways I use my hands, and also because having a livejournal account confuses me a little, as I consider bringing some of those impulses here, to this much more public place.
I've been thinking about the forthcoming novel -- the typesetting, the road signs they're using for chapter headings, all of the things I need to do next, but just looked in my morning file from exactly five years ago and saw something from a time when the writing of the book was in full swing, so to speak. (The library guild referred to is a group of women in the novel. Carline is the narrator.):
1/16/99
breathe flying in winter very cold feet dreams of nothing morning faint smells on my hands, lavender soap. sweet surfaces, tenderness, fear, joy, the women of the library guild and their curled world so much to do and the need to plan and the need to dream. Dream. Focus. timeline. Dream. It swells. It swells. It is the shifts in tasks, shifting tasks, several dreams. My heart in the sharp lines of light. My heart in the crackling dark. What is naive, what is possible, what is brilliantly sharp.
swing it, swing it with pleasure, with awareness, with joy, swing it open, swing it out swing it now
mind swinging around even when we’re in free fall the women of the library guild departed with their empty dishes
and also, this from a few days later:
1/24/99
It’s the frets and the memories the dreams and the possible true stories that interfere with the dreams. Actual annoyance. Actual self. World. Whirl. Here. If there is water, if there is cold air, apply. Apply if there are sweet worlds, sweet words. Apply. Your own turn of heart, restoration. Carline is going to get there in a fast heartbeat in a beat in a heart beat in a tremulous beat
God, there is just such a sustained feeling of love for the characters when I'm in the middle of writing a book, and forever after, really. Even as so many other things shift, that doesn't.
I've been thinking about the forthcoming novel -- the typesetting, the road signs they're using for chapter headings, all of the things I need to do next, but just looked in my morning file from exactly five years ago and saw something from a time when the writing of the book was in full swing, so to speak. (The library guild referred to is a group of women in the novel. Carline is the narrator.):
1/16/99
breathe flying in winter very cold feet dreams of nothing morning faint smells on my hands, lavender soap. sweet surfaces, tenderness, fear, joy, the women of the library guild and their curled world so much to do and the need to plan and the need to dream. Dream. Focus. timeline. Dream. It swells. It swells. It is the shifts in tasks, shifting tasks, several dreams. My heart in the sharp lines of light. My heart in the crackling dark. What is naive, what is possible, what is brilliantly sharp.
swing it, swing it with pleasure, with awareness, with joy, swing it open, swing it out swing it now
mind swinging around even when we’re in free fall the women of the library guild departed with their empty dishes
and also, this from a few days later:
1/24/99
It’s the frets and the memories the dreams and the possible true stories that interfere with the dreams. Actual annoyance. Actual self. World. Whirl. Here. If there is water, if there is cold air, apply. Apply if there are sweet worlds, sweet words. Apply. Your own turn of heart, restoration. Carline is going to get there in a fast heartbeat in a beat in a heart beat in a tremulous beat
God, there is just such a sustained feeling of love for the characters when I'm in the middle of writing a book, and forever after, really. Even as so many other things shift, that doesn't.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-16 10:10 am (UTC)thanks *so* much.
that's really beautiful.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-16 01:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-16 01:25 pm (UTC)yes, i'm all about the kernel.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-16 01:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-16 01:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-16 02:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-16 10:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-16 01:27 pm (UTC)