Andrew's View of the Week

A 9-17-9 Challenge

Posted on 09/06/2015 by Andrew Reynolds

Annika of Annika Perry’s Writing Blog nominated my for the 777 Challenge. The idea is to go to page 7 of your work in progress, the scroll to line 7 and share the next 7 lines on your blog.

Interesting. I’d be happy to share some my work in progress, but there is a problem. Well, more than one problem. Most of what I’ve been writing lately is about two pages long so no page 7s. My poetry book has 74 pages, but page 7 only has three lines, no line 7 to share. My novel is a mess and it’s difficult to find anything in that folder of notes that would even pass for work in progress writing. Seriously, most of it is research, random notes and a few pages of things I have no idea what I was thinking when I wrote them. There is a written set of notes, but page 7 of that is just a list of character names. I do have a first chapter and a prolog going that I wrote maybe ten years ago and since I had to read through myself to remember what they said, I don’t consider that work in progress.

So what to do? First, I’d like to thank Annika for recognizing me with this challenge. I am honored that my blog writing made her think that I had some secret stash of interesting, yet undiscovered longer work somewhere on my computer. I’ve been checking and for reasons I can’t explain, I seem to avoid writing a page 7. I am sure that there is some numerological significance, but what it might be, escapes me at the moment.

Since 777 isn’t working for me, I’ve decided to go with a different challenge. I do want to share some fragment of a poem so I started checking other page combinations.

I rejected the idea of a 666 challenge as being too symbolically weird, and 222, 333, 444 and 555 of my poetry book were so short that they didn’t make sense, so I’ll skip those. Page 8 didn’t have any poetry, but page 9 did. Unfortunately, the poem doesn’t start until line 18 as I mix prose and poetry in the early section of the book.

Well, all is not lost. 18 is a multiple of 9, so that’s kind of okay, but poem is only 8 lines. Not okay. Turns out that line 17 kind of introduces the poem so that brings the line count back to 9. That makes the challenge a page 9, line 17 (9 x 2 -1), length of 9 or a 9-17-9 challenge. Are you ready for this? Here are 9 lines starting at page 9, line 17 of my yet to be named book of poetry about cancer:

My world started spinning differently that day; and now three years from that month:

I sing new songs.
I tell stories differently.
I cry for the loss.
I embrace the poetic.

As none but verse lets me tell either my or mother’s tale without
tears for the dead,
tears for the loss,
fear for the unknowable future.

The last part of the challenge is to nominate seven other bloggers for this challenge. We’d be here until November if I tried to do that. Who knows what kind of rules my mind would come up with for that selection. Instead, if you are intrigued by the idea of sharing some lines of your work in progress, please nominate yourself and post your challenge. Please leave a link in the comments to your work and I’ll ‘officially’ nominate you. I’ll mention the first 7 or 14 in a future blog post.

I’ve had a few folks asking about the progress of my poetry book project. For those who don’t know, the poetry collection I’ve written is in response to my prostate cancer and to my mother’s death due to pancreatic cancer in 2007. Currently I am in the editing phase. This is likely the most difficult part of the project. It’s where we writers get hit full force with self-doubt and lack of self-worth. This is the phase where many manuscripts get burnt, shredded, deleted or otherwise obliterated from the planet. To date, I’ve managed to avoid that and have been pressing on with the hope that one person might find it enlightening.

I’ve had three people read and edit the book. Heather has been through it twice for me, along with two trusted friends. I am thankful to have received detail edits, corrections and comments on the work. After incorporating much of this feedback into the manuscript, I’ve come to the place in my mind where the book is done.

It’s lost it’s energy for creation and now is telling me that it needs to leave my desk for the bigger world. Yes, my books talk to me.

Looking at my options for publishing this work, I’ve decided on self-publishing it through Amazon’s Create Space for a physical book and electronically on Kindle. Since I believe that poetry is often at its best when spoken, I’ve been looking into creating an audio book through Audible. Turns out there is a way for me to record myself reading the book and self-publishing it. I find the possibility of all three formats interesting.

I am under no delusions about sales. Poetry doesn’t sell, but this is a work I feel I need to have out there. The purpose of this work has never been sales, but rather it’s one way I can tell a story that is important to me.

I have no real idea how long all that is going to take. Likely, longer than I want.

Till next week,
Andrew

Posted in General, Poems, Writing | Tagged 777 challenge, cancer poem, cancer poetry, poem, Poetry, poetry book, self-publishing, work in progress, writing | 28 Comments

Wednesday Woodworking – the Cart and Pick Axe

Posted on 09/02/2015 by Andrew Reynolds

I wasn’t in the shop much in August so it’s been awhile since I done one of these posts. Mostly it’s been too hot or too busy to get much shop time. I did make progress on my new shop cart built from recycled wood. As of today it has wheels, sides and a frame to hold it all together. Next step is putting the top on, some drawers and doors. At the rate I am progressing I figure to have it ready by November. November 2016.

cart from the side. Ignore the axe, it’s just there for fine adjustments.

My shop isn’t very big so taking pictures can be a challenge at times. If I was planning ahead, I would have taken a picture of this during the day out on the driveway.

Here’s a picture from the other side. This cart has a number of functions: house my air compressor, nailers, supplies and the top is the same height as my table saw so it can double as an out feed table or assembly table. Most likely though it will end up holding a lot of junk.

Here’s where the air compressor goes. Hopefully being inside the cart will reduce the noise when it turns on.

Another thing that’s kept me busy is the garden. It’s needed a lot of work. We had one of our shrubs out front die and I got tasked with cutting it down and digging out the root. Easy. I’ve done that a million times with my trusty pick axe. I love being able to grab the pick axe, head out into the garden and take manly swings at dead plants.

However, I had a problem this weekend. Here’s a picture of my old, soon to be disposed of pick axe, next to its replacement:

New one on the left. Old one on the right.

Yes friends, during one of my manly swings at the roots of the shrub, I bent the blade of my pick axe. I didn’t think that was possible. In a way it’s a bit sad as I’ve had that pick axe for about 20 years and it’s cut through countless root systems.

I’ve come up with three possible reasons why the blade bent:

I am stronger that I realize
The axe was defective
The shrub is actually composed of some kind of living concrete that is strong than iron.

And for the record, the stump is still in the ground and I am afraid to hit it with my shiny new pick axe.

If you need me – I’ll be out front with the shrubbery,

Andrew

Posted in woodworking | Tagged recycled wood project, shop cart, woodworking | 15 Comments

Creative Struggling

Posted on 08/30/2015 by Andrew Reynolds

Oh my, I can’t believe I did that last week. Seriously, I made a huge mistake in last week’s post, Disturbed. I’ve edited the post to correct the error and would like to ask for your understanding in this matter. Really, it’s been bugging me for days and I’d like to offer my apologies and hope you’ll forgive my thoughtlessness.

Let me explain. Near the beginning of the post, Disturbed, I made this statement:

“But always the man goes south. Never east where the woman the goes.”

What was I thinking? That is just so wrong. Consuela would never go east at this point in the story. The line should have read:

“But always the man goes south. Never west where the woman goes.”

Thanks for understanding and I hope that this correction will end the matter. I am sure that you understand the importance of the character’s parting and the significance of the cardinal directions they go.

Of course the fact that Colin had traveled north and Consuela had traveled east to this faithful meeting was also significant. Well, not to Colin and Consuela. They were ignorant in that regard, but rather the direction of travel informs and defines the mythology and religious practices of the people who eventually settled in and around the meeting area who called themselves, “the valley people.”

At this juncture you have either moved onto a different blog or would like to know where did that information come from. There maybe some of you are concerned about my mental health.

I’ve been thinking about what I wrote last week. I was even moved to dig out my old file and read through the notes and text I’ve written. It’s an incomplete narrative with just a seed of an idea. The idea for the story was born out of a conversation with Heather while we were hiking through the hills. We were discussing the nature of creativity and brain storming about projects we might do. Over the miles of walking we meandered onto the topic of me writing a novel.

I’ve always thought the best way to begin a project is to start where you are. I was hiking that day so the story would be about a hiker. I wanted an adventure so the hiker would be escaping something. I’ve always wanted to write about a future society, so why not have my hiker escaping an oppressive future society. Since I also wanted to write about what I know, I decided to set my world in a future California.

From there ideas flowed and I wrote some 30 pages of notes along with part of the first chapter. That’s when the problems started. My character was stiff. Dialog was forced. The action with little dramatic interplay. It felt wrong and I put it aside.

After I had completed my BA I decided to revisit the work. Using what I had learned about story telling, I approached it differently and one afternoon after watching the movie, The Dark Crystal, the thought, “fracture the crystal,” came into my head. Also there were some questions that started to pop up in my mind. First was, how did world get from the early 21st century to Colin’s world centuries later? I wrote timelines, notes and part of a diary entry of a person directly involved in the events of the collapse of the United States and existing world order. It’s a problem to kill nearly seven billion people and not doom the planet to centuries of nuclear winter.

Since I was exploring the past of my world, I thought about the future. What if Colin’s escape not only worked but also became one of those pivotal points in history where the world changed? What would the world look like two or three hundred years later? What if Colin’s descendants started to tell the escape story again and again? What if they turned it into myth? What if it turned from myth to religion?

Then I wrote another story about that time after Colin. I even partly wrote a book of worship for the valley people. I let the story, characters and intuition inform my writing. I discovered my valley people had important symbolism and metaphors for life – the compass points.

They are people of the land and knowing which way to go is important. They also knew the parts of the story and broke it down based on what direction Colin traveled. The city he escaped was on the west coast so he went inland to the east. The valley people now take that direction to mean the beginning of a journey or a difficult road to take. In this world young people go east to find themselves. At a critical juncture in the story, Colin turns north in the hope of finding something wonderful. The valley people hold north as the direction of the future, of the promise of new things.

It takes more than I can explain here, but each step into the story both clarifies a point and asks a new question.

So getting back to the problem I have with that scene on the dam. I now realize it’s not about the dialog. It’s not about the actions Colin or Consuela take, but rather it’s about the symbol that it builds for the next part of the story. The last scene should never be told exactly how it happened, but rather it should be told from a distance, from many points of view and likely should be a poem recited to a young child.

The answer to my other question is, yes I continue and I tell the story the way all great stories are told: in fragments, incompleteness, and contradiction. It will be a messy story that will not clearly resolve into good and bad or even make you feel good.

All I ask of my story is to make you think, see a different world, consider your future and cause you to rethink your current steps in the world.

Till next week,
Andrew

Posted in Writing | Tagged creative writing, novel writing, writing, writing process | 14 Comments

Disturbed

Posted on 08/23/2015 by Andrew Reynolds

My creative self is a bit disturbed this week. An old abandoned project haunts my thoughts. The old story comes unbidden to my mind. My mind’s eye sees two of my protagonists in the sun atop the tall dam, holding back the waters of Hetch Hetchy. A young man sits on a horse considering the middle-aged woman standing on the decaying roadway. They face each other, with hope, with fear, with concern, with hate, with love.

Unbidden, the scene replays in my mind. Dialogue plays out: Then shifts and the characters move. In one scene the young man arrives with his rifle across his lap. In another, the woman gives the young man the rifle and a string of mules. In another he says nothing. Sometimes the woman explains the why. Sometimes they don’t speak at all. Sometimes he takes the mules while she flies away down the canyon in a helicopter.

But always the man goes south. Never west where the woman the goes.

It’s a story that I tried to write years ago about a young man in the near future escaping a repressive society. I went to some lengths to make it work as a novel. I did research, wrote notes, character studies, chapter outlines, and have even been to some of the real places where my story would take place.

It never worked. The writing never flowed as I realized the problems both with the narrative and the story I was trying to tell. My mind worked on it many times and always got stuck on top of that dam. The scene never resolved. I decided to abandon the project, put my notes away and then started writing this blog. The novel became apart of the past.

But today, there is an energy in the tale that won’t let my mind go. Perhaps it is the most frustrating part of being a writer or an artist – having a vision, but not being able to complete it.

As a writer I firmly believe in the concept of following the creative energy as it presents itself. Following that notion I was able to write my cancer poetry book in just a few months. However as I write tonight I find my energy for the poetry book fading. It’s time it was done and sent to an audience.

I am working on that, but the poetry book has now moved from creative to just the work of editing, marketing, business, and the whims of a publishing world I barely understand. I’ll figure it out, the poetry book needs to leave home.

But while I work on that task, the sun’s afternoon light and heat falls on Colin and Consuela as they dance around the conclusion of one story and the start of another.

I wonder why? What is it in that this fabrication of my mind is so compelling that I keep coming back to it? So many whys and so few answers.

While these two people do their slow circle in my vision, one old thought finds it’s way back to the surface of my brain – fracture the crystal. I keep trying to see the story as a complete whole and that vision won’t come. Perhaps it’s time to accept that the arch of this narrative isn’t a smooth curve from A to B, but rather a series of glimpses of fragments of a life that keep rearranging themselves and refuse to be static.

Perhaps, I am not making sense here and should just go start the pizza.

The creative process is a strange thing and most times I don’t understand it. I know it has an energy. I know I can feed the creative energy by doing things like hiking, reading, working in my shop and playing. What is harder to do is to control what creative energy comes out and where it calls us to go.

That’s where I am this week. One writing project moving from me to my audience and one project disturbing my mind. Just one question on my mind tonight: Do I follow that energy and pull out those old notes?

Or do I let my intellect, my inner critic, step on that thought and refuse to revisit the past?

Shall I fracture a story line and tell it as it comes to me: A series of short scenes, poems and notes? Or should I struggle for completeness in the vision?

Till next week,
Andrew