The full moon (or something
close to it) was hanging fat and round directly across the way from me
this morning and I seemed to be walking into its cold embrace as I went
down the driveway for the paper. I often sleep fitfully on the nights
leading up to the full moon and for a little while after. Add to that
the dislocations of the holidays, the difficulty of keeping to a
schedule, the constant opportunities for haphazard eating, and I wind
up feeling like all I'm doing is spinning my wheels. Even the
Holidailies logo hanging at the top of my page makes me feel compelled
to write only about Christmas.
I tried to get back to fiction work today. Yesterday I gathered all my
fiction materials and took inventory. I have a plastic crate full of
hanging files loaded with folders containing notes, random ideas,
copies of other people's published stories that I've outlined,
underlined, and annotated to study structure, to answer the questions,
How did she do that? How can I do that? I have a separate
three-ring binder containing all the work I've done on my 19th-century
novel (the research for it has its own crate), and one for the
contemporary novel I've been coming back to off and on for three years.
Part of my problem is the difficulty I have in picking one project and
focusing on it.
So today I made something of a schedule. I fell back on the language of
the school year that was my working lexicon for three decades. My
Winter Term will have two parts, the Feast of Stephen to Ash Wednesday
(February 9), and then the seven weeks of Lent (February 9 to March
27). Then I'm taking a break before going into the eight weeks of my
Spring Term.
The Winter Term divides nicely because on February 7 I'm joining a
six-week workshop for experienced writers that will focus exclusively
on revision. (Most workshops around here are geared to beginners, to
people who aren't quite sure yet what writing fiction is all about.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. I'm just not
in that place.) So I need to have a complete first draft in place for
the first meeting.
I've chosen another project that's been languishing for almost three
years, a short story about a woman who has a compulsion to attend the
funerals of strangers. I haven't done much with
Selena since
that first burst of about 1500 words, but she keeps hanging around.
I did all this reviewing and planning at a public library just across
the river in Camp Hill. I sometimes find that I can be more productive
if I take the materials I want to focus on and go to a place where I
won't have the distractions of home, where surfing the net is harder
(because you have to sign on to a public computer for only fifteen
minutes at a time) and napping is impossible. I chose a carrel that was
in a sunny alcove with a comfortable chair beside it.
I was there for three hours, during which time I worked on my
materials, browsed the fiction shelves, browsed the travel shelves,
looked at the Russian nesting dolls display in the lobby, read the
cartoons in the latest issue
The New
Yorker, and like Goldilocks, tried out all the other available
work tables and alcoves to make sure I had the one that was just right.
The whole time I was there a woman sitting in the carrel attached to
mine worked at a laptop. She had a notebook and a printed book spread
out in her space. About five minutes before I left she got up to use
the bathroom, the only time I saw her stop working. I gathered up my
things and put on my coat, and by the time I was finished she was back
at her place, typing away again.
I hope I can develop that kind of focus.
