blank pages

continuation of ...

woke up thinking blank page, bit obvious, maybe I could write something about writing and blank pages ... and then I could scan it ... and put it on the blog ... scan worked ... but I couldn't work out how to put a pdf on here, just kept repeating something about a rejecting server ... so back to the phone ... and half an hour spent forcing the bluetooth thing to work .. next task, write it out so its readable ...

why write

Writing is failing me somehow. Not completely, because part of that energy is inviolate but everytime I sat down to write in the last months  all that resulted was cliched  and self-conscious posturing.

I'm not sure anymore why I want/need to write.

Word and thought slip from my grasp. Or is that they are held too tight? Words and phrases flatten beneath my touch and conscious mind, running along the same old tired lies. There are deep ruts in my mind from repititious thought sliding (slithering) without effort or care toward the same horizons.

First impressions - yes we see what see from deep held ... what? I have nothing to say - or is that I need to say my old things differently - or is it, really, that I have nothing else to say.

Sometimes all I see is the enormity of what I don't know.

So how can I say anything when I know nothing. To write is to say something, and should only ever be that. No wonder I can't.

I am stale and weary.

What is important to me is you kids and getting over this writing thing.

(the image that should be here, but I'm not sure about copyright and google images, is a blank page)
so, from my phone, after half an hour trying to remember how to do it ...

Not writing

I stopped writing in this blog. I stopped writing period. And then one morning before work I sat in my car parked in UC carpark and wrote something about not writing in an old exercise book. Which I then lost. I've found it again, along with the login details for this blog, which I also had lost. I look at the last blog entry and it is, according to my understanding of blog rules, waaaaaay too long. So this is catchup to get back on track. I have the exercise book. It is now winter and I am freezing in this room and my dressing gown in the middle of the day, so I don't want to write anymore here - but I think perhaps just to catchup, keep the login in a more findable place, and edit the exercise book entry is as much a blogging thing to do as just entering it with no comment. That is, after all, what a written journal allows us to do and this is supposed to more or less parallel that.

I'd stopped writing in my journal too. That's what finishing a course does, because when I look at the dates it makes sense. But I am going to my graduation in September because dammit I want the glitz and my children can come too, and because somewhere over the last few months I changed my mind about the usefulness of doing courses. We should do one, if we want to be a writer. I think it's an important part of the journey. How we do it is up to us, not completing it is as much an option, as completing it. Either way we gain. Doing a course puts our writing in current context, with external comment and opportunity to expose. Even if completing it does make it hard to get back on track again.

30/12/2010, TodaysPoem - re-rewrite

OK. This doesn't work:

TodaysPoem - rewrite

Trying again to capture that day.

Found poetry

In the car on the way to work, gliding down Belconnen Way
in the rain and running late but
my old car hums and sways, and I smell the wet and warm and the rain
whistles and snickers beneath my wheels
like a battered metal fish ... and then
a radio ad that shocks me to the here
and now:
unexpected words that sing, and
later, at my desk, an error message in a neat, black square
something about an
unexpected loss of fidelity:
(I was just entering my work hours!) so
I scrabble these found songs down, but forget,
so,
to be finished tomorrow because
the exact words are in my work diary.

except I've searched my work diary of days
MondayTuesdayWednesdayThurdayFriday
appointments, desk shifts, decisions, and a seperate column
for family dentist, school, skimming the surface
of motherhood
like an afterthought
but I can't find what I heard
and what I thought that day,
like my family,
drowned
in the surface of things.

Lost Poetry.

Blogging

Trying to get a balance between life and the requirements of blogging. How do people do it every day?

When I wrote more regularly I noticed I would begin to mentally write a blog when I heard or saw or read something that sparked a thought or idea, poem or story idea

Followed by the thought I have to remember that, but of course didn't.

So the next idea was to write them in my journal, roughly. Which resulted in lots of notes for blogs which then stood between me and the act of blogging because how could I write anything new when all that stuff was there!

So. Next decision. I either write in the blog, or I write a blog in my journal. That way I am keeping with the original reason for all of this anyway which was to Write Daily. If it made the journal, it didn't have to make the blog. Excellent and sort of works so far.

Join this up with the perennial problem. What to write about. Perhaps just catch any idea that leads to something conclusive I can relate back to writing. If we have the basics we can break the rules - so the basic is to write, and to write short - and to link whatever the thought is to writing.

So. Todays thought.

I bought my son a Guitar Hero pack for Christmas. It has a drum component as well as guitar and vocals. This afternoon he hit me full beam with his betrayed son look when I refused for the whatever-th time to play it with him. So I gave in, and I played the drums. Sitting in the darkened room because its hot outside, him playing on the guitar part, me watching shifting colours move on the screen which I have to match and keep time with, failing and then going with the music, even if it is tinny and the sound we both make is just the thud of rubber and wood. But I loved it. And I want to learn how to play drums. Move beyond the steering wheel of my car and this toy thing.

So. Drums. And writing.
I so want to learn how to play drums.
So want to learn?
That's such a bad expression and why do I keep falling into it. I am Too Old for this cheapness of expression!
Is 'so want to learn' a valid way of expressing my hunger?
What constitutes a 'valid' way of expressing something?
It's whatever says what you want to say.
So language will always change, according to what needs to be said.
When the words couldn't say it before.
I'm glad I'm English.
The English language is rich and flexible as well as frustrating and inconsistent. Born of a lots of other languages with a nice solid foundation. So in the end it allows us to say whatever needs to be said, in our own way.

The English language can so do at that.

Ta dah.

TodaysPoem - rewrite

This is a rewrite of:

notes for Found Poem

which was just a sequence of notes for a poem I planned but didn't get back to.
 
Getting back to it now:
 
Found poetry

in the car on the way to work, driving down Belconnen Way in the rain, a radio ad:
later, at my desk, an error message coming up after entering times in my worksheet:
- to be finished tomorrow because I wrote them in my work diary.

except I've searched my work diary of days

lost to busy busy and

I can't find what I saw and heard that day.

Lost Poetry.

Reading about writing

Forgot to add in my previous post - about the things I have disovered along the writing way  to be important - and that is reading about writing.

Read:

• writing journals
• books about writing craft
• biographies and autobiographies about writers, in any format - film, TV, music, books, articles, websites
• listen to and or watch interviews with artists of all types
• then read what they have written/see what they have done
• books about pursuing an art, or any creative activity that doesn't necessarily bring in cash
• journal articles, web sites and books about what it is to be a writer