Fluff and Nonsense

i’ve been trying not to wander into the realm of “you’ve got to be kidding me” with the goals, but finally realized that i have no idea how much time any of the things in my life actually take. someone asked me to keep a time log to see where my time was going and it seems that i spend a lot of time taking care of the elf but not doing anything while i do so. that’s mostly because the elf is just fun to watch, but partly because i haven’t had any energy to be active. so if i’m going to write,  a lot of things in my life have to change.

• take care of my health. if you think this isn’t a writing goal, just try getting any housework done when you’re dragging around with Yet Another Viral Illness because your immune system is shot.
• finish the 1st draft, and reorganize the Nanonovel. until i do i have no idea how to figure out if i have novelist capabilities or if i should just junk this thing
• submit 2 sets of haiku
• submit other poems to four places
• complete 1 article in my academic field
• stop trading off sleep for writing (read: say no to unreasonable demands from others). this might mean getting up early to write (which i don’t like – the minute it’s light out, i work at about 1/2 normal speed – sort of reverse SAD), and, more importantly, getting stuff done and getting my family on board (kicking and screaming if necessary) with doing actual housework.

we’ll see how it goes. i suppose i’ll keep track here; seems to be as good a place as any

incidentally, you’ll notice i’m not including any actual writing goals, but that’s because i have no problems with writing. i write constantly, all the time, on anything. i probably lose more poems just because i put them in random places than most people write a year who are amateur poets. so i’m not worried.

I understand that some people experience a kind post-Nano depression in December. I think I had it for a day or two – sort of like post-partum depression but without the grandparents all standing around worrying about whether the baby is perfect and telling you that it’s all your fault because god knows losing two units of blood and going thru active labor for 25 hours isn’t bad enough. In other words, I’d love to have the time to continue to feel depressed but I have 26 final papers to grade in two days and I’m still running on no sleep so I’m just having to have my depression in my off moments.

Right.

Between papers, I’m trying to edit some of the poems I wrote for the November PAD contest over at Writer’s Digest. The idea is to put some together into a chapbook for consideration in their contest. And I’m having the BIG BLAH over the editing. Partly, the poems feel uneven to me; given the consistently spectacular poets who spend time on the WD site, I’m pretty sure I’m not close to the running.

But…I think part of the reason I’m feeling blah about the chapbook challenge is that there were two poets who posted regularly on the challenge that I got pretty angry with. They both wrote diatribes that were supposed to be poems (ugh), one about religion (bombastic) and one that was supposed to be religious but was really re-hashed Fox news and third hand Biblical stuff (don’t Christians READ the Bible anymore??) I really wanted to lash out. Mr. Faux was ranting about how he misses the good old days when women stayed at home and “sexual perversions” weren’t rampant, and I was having fantasies about writing to his local hospital and tell them that when he comes in to the ER with an ongoing MI, tell them women ER docs to let him lie on the guerney and instead treat the babies that he thinks should be thrown out of the country because their parents came here illegally. If someone shoots him with the gun that he keeps in the house because it’s his Constitutional right, let him bleed out ON THE FLOOR.

Anyone who knows me knows that this is not like me. I get really angry about injustices; I’m not very good at not being kind to people, even really awful people. I think what happened is 1) I was watching other people get really, really hurt (I mean, there are a couple of poets on that list who are gay, there are several who have gay relatives)
2) No one was saying anything and I knew that if I did I’d be nasty in that way only academics can be nasty and it wouldn’t actually solve the problem

and 3) I think they would have been easier to ignore if…
their poems hadn’t been SO BAD.

The thing is, it isn’t that I have problems with the religion. There are other Christian poets on that board. They are kind generous and gentle people and several of them are good poets. If someone wants to write about this experience and way of living that means so much to them, I think that’s what that person should write about. Creative writing at its best is driven by passion. But these two guys – one is driven by ego and the other, at a guess, is driven by fear. Lack of courage – and yeah, you can be a war veteran and still be a coward – drives me bats. Ditto bad writing. Take the two, and …well, you can see why the poetry I wrote during last month gives me a bad feeling every time I look at it. Ugh.

I suppose I’ll turn the chapbook in because I promised myself I would, and I’d feel really (really really) guilty for letting my family’s comforts go to hell in a hand-basket for a month for no reason. In fact, I would post a picture of the mess just to motivate myself, but even using wide angle, I can’t capture the extent of disaster. Good thing I have papers to focus on….

Okay, so with Ye Childe in school between 4 and 6 hours a day, I decided to go for it. I’m doing Nano, I’m doing the Writers Digest Poetry Chapbook Challenge, and I’m still teaching, and still mom-ing/cooking/laundering/etc. You’ll notice that cleaning is NOT on that list – the house looks like the last 7 years of Nebraska tornados all decided to stop by for a quick check in before moving on to bigger and flatter things. And I wouldn’t say that sleep has been a big part of the picture. And this is only – what? day 9 or 10 of the month?

The weird thing is I feel GREAT. I mean, like tired, but phenomenal. The Nano book is complete trash and on top of that, well, it just sucks. I’n not convinced it’s reparable either, though I’m really enjoying just about everyone but the main character (she’s a bit of a pill. sheesh). The poems are better – cleaner, since I’ve been inspired by four and twenty (great magazine) and take advantage of the fact that when I’m not mucking around with Ideas the images can come out. I don’t in fact know why I didn’t do this before – images have always been the striking thing about my writing.

In any case, we’ll see if I get through the physical part of this – emotional goodness aside. I’m ahead on my count with Nano which is good, but I haven’t seen friends in yonks, I’m not talking to my spouse about what I’m doing (he pulled a great piece of sabotage two months ago when I started writing poetry again, and I don’t trust him anymore), and the child is of course the child and needs help and has lots of activities and shouldn’t be neglected.

Crossing fingers.