Coming Home

The shutters are all closed

Floors dusty

No, dirty

Only the cat has tended to home

All this time

(And he doesn't sweep)

But the smell

Fills me

With memory

The trip was long

And I am sore

Yet my feet

Find a spot on the rug

To stand

Where I always have

In my mind

The windows greet me

Smiling with sunlight

The walls

I painted by hand

Are smooth under my fingertips

Vacations are bliss

And I know of those I have left

That I already miss

Terribly

But nothing compares

To the serenity

Of sitting in

Wallowing in

My own space

My own walls

My own work

At long last

I am home.

Writing Soul

Tell me it's all in the rules

That my characters lack

Fine detail

Bodies to drool over

Gripping dialogue

Humor

Class

Style

That the climax

Doesn't have the violence needed

To reach

A modern world

To resonate with

The avid reader

Devourer of books

Ask me why

When all the world's genres lay before me

I choose one that holds

So little promise

With hard walls around it

Hard rules

Or why I break the rules

Or turn them on their heads

Tell me the rule breaking

Pisses you off

Tell me I bore you

Tell me nothing works

I'll agree

But I didn't write it for you

I wrote it for the single set of eyes

Who needs the book

Who'll see my soul inside it

And know me better

And know themselves better

The way that I know my own soul

Within it

Better

Because I have it written.

Flowing

The wind is pulling at me

When I listen

When I stop to feel

But I spend most moments

Striving against it

Leaning in to it

Stubborn to push my will

Against its

Implacable

Force

The headaches come

A mace to my brain

But I ignore them and

Push on

The tension

Hardens my shoulders

And pinches at my back

But I set my chin

And push until I cannot push more

Only then

When I am out of my own steam

When I have been overcome

And think it is all over

Do I lie in the sand

Defeated

Quiet enough to listen

To the tiniest of voices

Still enough to feel

The softest of breezes

Only then do I realize

I was resisting the flow

Of the world

Of my life

Of the divine

And missing the path

Of my own destiny.

Pulling at the Mattress

As I sleep

Unaware

The dreams turn

To worries

Frets

Stresses

Close to home

And far away

They slip into my brain

Pulling sleep away

As if tugging my mattress out on the front lawn

To await the trash man

No use going after it

I won't get back to sleep.

The Trials of Waiting

The pictures of the backsplash have been taken, but I am now across the country, with two kids in tow, and without the USB attachment I need to download the pics onto my laptop.

So you'll have to wait. Get used to it. Some things take time.

My novels have taken time, and they are still not finished. Not one of them. I have my Ark novel up on my desktop, and my fingers are itching to get at it, especially after reading a book on making my novel work better. But they'll just have to itch a little longer. I have some characters to develop a whole lot more first, and I'm doing so methodically, by writing all sorts of details about each one--choices, ethics, changes--in a notebook.

I'm not allowing myself to write yet, not until the characters are all fleshed out and I've added extensively to the second half of my novel's outline. You see, the first draft of this book was written without a plan, and now that I'm pretty much abandoning the latter 2/3 of the novel, I want a better idea of where I'm going before I get there. So I'm shaping, and characterizing, and plotting the boat's journey on a map. I'm prepping.

By the time I'm finished prepping, my little child of a writer's psyche is going to be throwing a tantrum to be allowed to write. It's already starting to snivel a bit, whine, and pull at my pajama pants.

But it doesn't get what it wants. Not right now. It'll have to be patient, even if waiting is a trial. Since I'm on vacation, finding the time to work on all of this is harder, but I'm making slow progress. And before long, my happy little writer's psyche will be allowed out of its cage.

I'm looking forward to that.

I'm Not Writing Anything Anymore, Dammit!

I had intended to post photos of my backsplash work last Sunday, and if you scroll down through this message, you'll see that I am still not posting them today. I haven't even taken pictures of the stupid things yet (stupid, yet beautiful), mainly because I keep forgetting until it's too dark outside, but I have to get my pics in this morning, before I hop on a plane bound for Seattle with my two kids.

I could have posted about something else, but the nasty voices in my head--you know, the ones that tell me to stop writing, tell me all my stuff sucks, remind me how much time I've already wasted on all these novels and poems and blog postings and plays--have been shoving their fists into my brain this week, punching the tissues pretty hard.

Thursday, though, I had an epiphany. Writing is therapy, right? (It is for me. If it isn't for you, I'm sorry, since it's SOOOO much cheaper than a therapist.) Thus, if I write to get through issues, to analyze past situations that still bug me, to figure meaningless things out in some meaningful way, why not do it with these stupid voices?

As a result, I have created the I'm Not Writing Anything Anymore, Dammit! blog. It's the antithesis of the encouragement blog for the would-be writer. Call it the discouragement blog, if you will, but my intent is to get all the self-doubt (which I know at least a few of you have, given some recent e-mail exchanges with several of you) out in the open, then shred it, show it for what it is, and laugh at it (whenever possible).

I'm still working out my weekly schedule for the new blog, and I'm probably going to work hard on creating more structure for this blog while formatting that one. If you like the feel good gentleness characteristic on Creative Arts, you won't like this new one. If you've wondered all these years why I've been so nice and found my sweetness sickening, the other blog just might be for you. I'll be placing a lot of your blogs on my blogroll there, once I get the site going. Today, though, I have to finish packing, take some long-awaited pictures, and fly a very long way with two kids. We will all be exhausted when we get there, but there will be time to relax--and to work hard on my writing (I hope).

I will post again as soon as I can. Promise. Until then, don't let those nasty voices take advantage of you. And if they slap you across the face, slap them back. I'll do the same.