mimsy and outgrabe

The following is a day-by-day log of my progress and thoughts throughout last week, as I completed an "Artist Residency in Motherhood" with my colleague at Stuffolk, and frequent collaborator (in teaching and in art), visual artist Meredith Starr . During the week I worked on revising a poetry manuscript and finishing one of my plays. M.S. has a year-long painting project she's been working on, and she spent the week catching up/getting back on track with that series.  This log makes for a long blog post, which may not be everyone's jam, but since I keep this blog more or less for my own edification, I thought I'd include this disclaimer at the top. If you like to read about other artists' processes, read on. (And, I highly recommend Daily Rituals: How Artists Work and Daily Rituals: Women at Work , both by Mason Currey both of which I read in the first weeks of this summer.)  Playwriting photos are not very exciting, admittedly. If ...

Spent three and a half hours writing just over 1500 words of Accountability Partners today (my non-verse play). And in the morning, before the kids woke up, I wrote another poem for the new manuscript. That makes over 60 poems written since the end of June!  Sorry for the blog brag, but I had to share my good news with the universe. I'm on some kind of unprecedented tear here, and thoroughly enjoying it. I mean, not all of those 1500 words are golden, and I sincerely doubt all of the poems are publishable (certainly not right now -- most need the benefit of time and careful revision) . . . but I'm so, so happy and grateful for the generation. And, yes, relieved. Because at this time last year, I was already having serious doubts about my abilities and future as a writer (even before the bad news/sabbatical debacle). After all -- while it goes a long way toward helping with validation, publication is not necessarily the thing that makes one feel like the genuine article. ...

This is the last weekend of freedom before the new school year begins. I went into the office yesterday to clean it out -- there was so much junk stashed everywhere from last year's drop-and-run. I would come into the office with one pile of folders and books, place them on a desk or a table, and then pick up another pile of folders and books, and run off again. When I did work in the office it was often between columns of stacked files and assignments and general clutter.  I don't really want to do that again, if I can avoid it -- so I had a "purge day" wherein I went through all of the stacks and sorted through what needed to be filed and what needed to be recycled. When I left yesterday I had three or four boxes/bags of material to be recycled (which I'm doing at home because I don't trust that the school genuinely recycles -- I've watched our janitorial staff combine trash and recycling in the same cart and that's just suspicious  . . . I mea...

Grainy shot of my neighbor's zinnia. And butterfly. In the wake of Micro-Sabbatical Summer 2018, I've kept writing and done some small fine-tooth-comb type edits to poems that I've written this summer -- which happen to number FOURTEEN, if you're curious.  I know, I know, I'm just as shocked as you are.  My workspace in August, feat. coffee, sprinklers, bug spray, knee. I know that for other writers this isn't really a big deal, but I know also that there are some of you who understand this feeling -- this feeling of having been treading water for a really, really, really long time and then finally venturing toward some distant shore. The shore may be really far off in the fucking distance, but you're finally able to swim toward it. Maybe that's a lame and expected metaphor.  But I warned you -- I'm still rusty. Yesterday I met with M.S. and we shared with each other the work we've been attempting to eke out this summer, som...

Monday: Wrote just over 1400 words of "Accountability Partners," a play I began writing in the summer of 2016 as part of the Stony Brook Southampton Script Development lab. BOOM! I now have three complete scenes. If I accomplish nothing else this week, I will have had these three hours in the Starbucks off the service road of the Sunrise Highway. Living the dream, people. Tuesday: Ermagherd, peeps. Just over 1000 words today. Not that 1000 words really means anything significant. I'm not exactly aiming for word length with this play. But I'm thinking of word length in terms of commitment. Another three hours of concentrated work on the play today. And another three hours of sitting in a Starbucks. I'm cold and full of coffee and my teeth are on edge between the air-conditioning and the caffeine in my system. But I wrote! And I have another scene! Maybe I'll actually keep it! Who knows! So many exclamation points!! A noisy-ass coffee shop is the mos...

This week was a strange one, where I've vacillated between periods of extreme productivity and good humor and lower moments of stasis and frustration. To be honest, it feels a little like mania and depression, which is startling, but I'm going to stop just before the point of self-diagnosis and chalk it up instead to a weird mood swing, or bullshit like the full moon and maybe something fun and ridiculous like Mercury in retrograde. ( Is Mercury in retrograde? What does that even mean?) I have been in hiding from so many of my favorite people for weeks, mostly because I'm afraid of spreading my weird bad mood, which honestly has persisted since this spring and seems to be dissipating but then rears its ugly head again. If you're one of those favorite people, please be patient with me.  Anyway, let's focus on the positive, shall we? Some of my little wins this week have been poem-related. Something happened Monday morning and I woke up with ideas for po...

Today I'm coming off that glow that arrives during, and just after, working on something you're obsessing over for about 24 hours straight. It's amazing how empty I can feel of ideas and music and language for so long and then, thankfully, they all come back in a flood and I create something that makes me excited, happy, and that I read and feel like, "yeah, that's a poem ."  In one of my graduate classes, back when I was a fucking baby with stars in my eyes, Derek Walcott said that most of what we write, if we're lucky, is just good verse. Every once in a while (for him), or once in a lifetime (me), we write a poem. So currently I feel like I wrote a poem, but knowing myself fairly well at this point, I'm conscious of the fact that a few months from now I'll probably look back at the piece and regard it as merely good verse. And that's okay. Because there are fewer stars in my eyes and I'm not quite so young (although maybe I act...

This week has been a busy one.  First, I've been traveling with the kiddies, and we discovered that the newbie gets car sick. (Yay!)  Second, I had two different writing deadlines. The first was for a guest blog post over at Carly Pizzani's Fine Fit Day , which went live today. I haven't done this kind of expository writing in a long time, and it was fun to flex those muscles again. Of course, I had to rely on a ton of help from my mom, who walked the baby and distracted the older kiddies while I typed away to meet the Wednesday deadline. Third, I had to write a final, last report for that Leadership Academy I participated in last August. The rules were: write a final report, earn a Certificate of Completion. Miss the deadline for the final report, earn a Certificate of Participation. I decided I'd be damned if I was going to earn some lame Certificate of Participation after sacrificing two weeks (one last August, and one this upcoming August) to the Lea...

I persist in thinking that I'm going to accomplish a lot every morning when I wake up, even though my body persists in thwarting my endeavors each day. For instance, yesterday I assumed that I was going to tackle the bags and bags of "give away" clothes that are piled in our basement, and finally separate the girls clothes and put them away for future use (because we found out on Tuesday that we're having a little girl in March -- much to The Boy's chagrin and Little Miss Talkalot's ecstatic, shrieking joy). However, after spending the morning vacuuming up about four lbs of dog hair from the first floor alone, and then attending Little Miss Talkalot's last soccer game of the season, followed by a victory lunch at McDonald's (a rare treat from Mommy) and a quick trip to the grocery store, I was completely, utterly wrecked. Done. I had not one ounce of energy left in me. So when The Boy went for his nap, so did I -- and The Girl quietly and happily veg...

RE: Fairy Tale Poem Revision Stanzas revised this morning:  3 Stanzas revised (total): 9 Stanzas that need revision: 80 That's not daunting, is it?

Woohoo! Today marks Day Three of actually raising my butt up outta bed when A. leaves for work! He's leaving close to 5:40 a.m. these days, which is later than my starting time this past spring, but who cares! The fact that I'm conscious and don't feel totally hungover when I wake up AND that I want to write -- I wrote both yesterday and the day before, people -- speaks volumes. Take THAT, hormones! I guess my body is finally beginning to adjust to this pregnancy thing, which is sooooo cool. I'm not one of those women who loves being pregnant. I like the squishy adorable baby part at the end, but I cannot stand being ruled by hormones. It totally sucks that you can be conscious of being a raving lunatic and yet somehow unable to cease being that raving lunatic when you're riding a hormone surge. Or to be aware that, in some parallel universe, you'd stop the words coming out of your mouth, but that you're stuck in this universe and in this universe y...

June is a slow month for blogging, I guess. Actually, it's a slow month for everything. My house is still disaster-ish. My article research is underway, as is the revision of the fairy tale poem, but I'm making progress very slowly. And this week has featured a special hiccup in the form of pink eye (both the boy and I contracted it). It's kind of amazing when and where inspiration hits and a poem demands to be written. Take, for instance, yesterday. The boy was supposed to go to daycare -- his last full week -- and I was going to go into the office for a meeting and to take care of a slew of little tasks that need attention before the end of the month. But then the boy woke up with goopy-eye, which prevents him from going to school, and I woke up with . . . a poem forming.  I began the poem after my husband left for work and while I still had a silent house to myself. I finished drafting about 12 lines, the first strophe of the poem, when the house awoke -- girl,...

I began revision of the fairy tale this morning. Slow going, but it feels good (and right) to be working on it again. Yesterday, this arrived in the mail: These two things make for a nice beginning to the week.

Well, I've officially begun work on the verse drama. (Two weeks before the sabbatical report deadline! I am GOOD!)) This past week I finished revising three scenes and putting the language right, to some extent. All in the all, the experience was rather like rearranging furniture in a room, and it made me realize -- or re realize (sure, let's pretend that's a word!) -- that something written in meter does not a poem make. Or something like that. Anyway, writing a play with poetry is difficult (to which statement, my eloquent-as-ever-inner-critic says duh! ) and will take me much longer than I anticipated. I don't see it as an insurmountable task, but I do see several drafts in my future. Right now, each scene is very brief, very sparse. I don't have that many extended speeches or monologues, and that's something that needs to change -- not simply because they'll help each scene last longer than a blink of the eyelids, but because there are moments that n...

The surest way to keep a project going is to make up your mind that the project is finished. At least, this is the way of things in MY world, which is a contrary world and a confusing one at that. Yesterday I resigned myself to certain facts: one, that poems for the fairy tale (those "interruptions") and the myth section of the manuscript were not coming as easily as they did a few weeks ago, and two, that the deadline for my sabbatical report was fast approaching and I needed to print out whatever I had so far and begin writing the report. These were fictions more than they were facts. Actually, "fact" number two is still pretty much true -- I DO need to start writing that report -- but I woke this morning thinking about beginning my revision of the first two scenes of the verse play, and ended up writing another interruption poem. I'm happy with the result, but I find the situation laughable. The verse play is never going to be written, at this rate. So...

Little Miss Talkalot is Little Miss Very Sad. Because she's caught some kind of virus replete with fever, she missed the Valentine's Day celebrations at school yesterday and she's missing today's 100th day of school celebrations. (Apparently, there's always something to celebrate in our elementary school, which really isn't a bad way to live life, is it?) A. stayed home with the girl yesterday, and today it's my turn. I'm missing two meetings and cancelling the same class I had to cancel on Friday when the boy was diagnosed with strep throat. This season of illness is kicking my butt. It's been a week since I assumed the new administrative role and yet I haven't really had a chance to fulfill its duties. But at the very least, I can say that I'm not falling behind in four classes, just one. Also, it's just really weird to see my daughter so sick. And it's not that she's near-death, but that we're just not used to seeing ...

I'm super-tired at the moment, but fairly content. This has been a rough week, with a lot of changes occurring during a very small time frame at work. I wasn't really expecting this to happen -- in fact, I was striving to have a calm, non-interesting semester in terms of teaching and commitments at the college, but once again I've completely abandoned my previous notions and expectations in order to thoroughly embrace something new and exciting but also potentially disastrous! 'Cause, apparently, that's how I roll. I took on a temporary administrative position at the college that will, hopefully, help out my department and also be a good fit for me in terms of easing back into teaching and working full-time. The colleagues I've asked for advice are evenly divided as to whether this will actually happen. Some think that the job will allow me to accomplish more when I'm physically at work, so that when I return home I can emotionally/mentally "be...

I've been quiet for the past few days. (On here, that is. It's almost impossible for me to be quiet in real life.) (Shut up, A.P.) A.P. and I postponed Poetry Friday until Monday because I was having a little Pre-Semester Freakout, and then we moved our meeting until next week because we realized how futile it would be to speak about poetry when the large, ugly shadow of course outlines and class prep loomed over our heads. And thus, once again, writing took a back seat to teaching responsibilities. But, as Vonnegut would say, so it goes . . . some times you just have to put away the poems and focus instead on the paragraph about not texting or surfing the web in class, because that paragraph is what pays the bills. (Sort of. Not just that paragraph, but you get my drift, right?) My problem this week ended up being that I didn't put away the poem. For me, this is a good problem to have -- I'm truly not going to beat myself up too much for writing. But it made the ...

Yesterday I managed some serious work. I finished Chapter VIII of the fairy tale, which means that I'm starting Chapter IX today, and that I'm two chapters away from finishing the entire poem. I'd shout "woohoo!" except that I'm already, slightly, mourning the end of this insane project. I've pulled my hair out for months over this poem, and now that I'm faced with the prospect of not having to write the poem . . . I feel a little lonely. Does that make sense? I'm not gonna go all Tori Amos on you and start talking about my poems like they were people, but lonely is the word I want to use. Of course, this is typical of me: thinking so far in advance about something that I'm saddened by the prospect of it ending WHILE I'M STILL IN THE PROCESS OF EFFING WRITING IT. And I have two more chapters to go, which will be no small amount of work, particularly since the last chapter is a definite three-part-er. Also, yesterday, I managed to pick...

After several years of writing, it's comforting to know that you can change and be changed by your writing processes. It's affirmation, I guess, that some parts of you are still growing, and changing without shutting down -- unlike other parts of your being, like your skin and your hair. (Hi sunspots! Hey grey hairs! I'm old!) Yesterday, after having a fairly successful day of writing, I was thinking about how very different my habits have become since I was given this time to write. For years -- years -- I felt an impediment that I called "writer's block" but was probably just good ol' fashioned mania. I never really slowed down long enough -- or separated myself from work, family, and outside noise for long enough -- to focus earnestly on my writing. To be honest, I'm not even sure I did that during grad school -- the one (or most likely) time in your life you're given explicit permission by family, society, and your checkbook to focus entir...