69th ROW80 Check-In
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| A Round of Words in 80 Days Round 4 2012 The writing challenge that knows you have a life |
These check-in posts will contain any commentary I have about encounters with the goals since the previous check-in and any relevant links.
Below the commentary is my current reading list for the READ CRAFT goal.
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Still holding steady on all fronts and still at the bare minimum except for READ CRAFT and DAYDREAM STORY. Still making more room for fiction reading by keeping post prep down to an average of an hour. Most days still under an hour. But still no new fiction scenes.
I won't be limiting myself to an hour for this post.
I discussed in Sunday's check-in how I'd gained insight into the roll of mining the depths of ones own emotions, especially those rooted in one's personal life, can lend power to the fiction. I confessed that I tended to keep my stories narrative and dialog on the surface and that I'd written some that did not last week but they weren't fiction tho they could have been mistaken for it by anyone not aware of my current crisis. Those 'scenes' showed up in my freewrite aka morning pages aka journaling. There was also some lines that could belong in a poem and it was these that I worked up into a poem/story for last night's post dropping the first hint of the earthquake that just hit my life. Here are a few more:
Today was supposed to be my travel day for returning home. Instead it became my intake visit with a new counselor at the family clinic my sister took me to yesterday to get my blood pressure, anxiety and depression meds renewed. This became necessary when I discovered two weeks ago that I was no longer covered by my husband's insurance.
An email exchange between my husband and I got very intense and for over a week it looked very likely we would be ending our 34 year marriage. He thot that was what I wanted and I thot that was what he wanted based on misreadings of each other's pixelpated words.
Yeah I know. That's a made up word.
But as of last night we have each agreed that an indefinite separation in which we each are working on personal goals to bring back to the marriage is the best thing for both of us.
It would be life-threatening for me to be without medical care so I'm staying here in Longview WA where the assistance is available and I have my sister who is already an expert in advocating in the system. He will stay down there and get us on the nine month waiting list for the Oregon Health Plan.
I debated the propriety of sharing at all and if so what to share but if I'm to continue blogging I can't keep all of this locked in a separate brain space. If I'm to continue writing at all I can't keep all of this blocked off in an off-limit place in my head. And if I'm to continue writing stories worth reading I have to allow the parts of my heart most affected by this experience the freedom to voice their pain and joy.
Pun intended.
I don't plan to make this topic a regular feature of these check-ins but if something I refer to in a future check-in would make sense only in this context I will link back to this post.
READ CRAFT:
Currently Reading
Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Go by Les Edgerton
Write Good or Die! edited by Scott Nicholson (a collection of essays by inde authors. many of them self-published)
The Act of Creation by Arthur Koestler
What Matters in Jane Austen? by John Muller Net Galley a NF that purports to answer many puzzles in the Austen novels. Since this discusses writing and techniques of fiction
Jung and the Tarot: An Archetypal Journey by Sallie Nichols Since I'm reading this for an understanding of character type and the language of symbol understood by our unconscious as well as research for a character who is a Tarot reader
13 Ways of Looking at a Novel by Jane Smiley This was one of the 24 items I checked out of the Longview library on my sister's card last Thursday.
The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick. Found this while spelunking the stacks looking for the Smiley book. Who knew. Dick was a mystic. I've only read one of his novels and a few short stories but now I've got to try to find and read everything!
Mystery and Manners by Flannery O'Connor This is a reread for me and has had significant impact on the development of my storyworld in the early months of its inception. My Friday post was about my current encounter with it after checking it out of the Longview library again for the first time in over a decade.
Recently Read:
A Cheap and Easy Guide to Self-publishing eBooks by Tom Hua read this online
Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Leher
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg Just finished this last fall and wrote an overview of it for that check-in along with my musings on how to apply what I learned.. This is where I've been getting the most help with learning how to recognize a habit, determine if it is desirable and if so maximize it but if not change it.
2 tell me a story:
Thanks so much for sharing your life with us. I have suffered from depression a lot throughout my life but have pretty good now for 12 years, so it can get better.
I hope you can work everything out with your husband, when your depressed, it's not really the time though. My thoughts are with you!
Sometimes life and writing are deeply intertwined. Thanks for sharing your raw poetry too. (IMHO, poetry can be a great form of pure expression.)
Good luck on all the issues in your life.
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