I’m listening to Scott Medina’s CD of kirtan chants.
“Sita Ram Jai Jai Sita Ram Jai Jai Sita Ram Namoh”
I’m looking at this page. My fingers move. If I think about them, I see them in my lower peripheral vision. I can see my green shirt that way, too. There is a tiny pine table under the laptop. The laptop is a charcoal black Sony VAIO, whatever that is. The battery doesn’t work. (I laugh. A guy I know says he had the same one and the first thing he said was, “Does your battery work?” His didn’t, either. I’d accept donations of a newer laptop if you want to support my work to write this blog and this book.)
There I am, right out of my business in a couple of sentences.
Okay, back at it.
Being with myself. I actually typed “Beign” first and backspaced to correct it. Why? Because I was out of my business. I was thinking of you, my imaginary reader, who would wonder what I meant, and maybe of my English and Spelling teachers who live in my head . . . and make me a pretty good writer. . . or do they? Read e e cummings sometime or Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll and then tell me about my English-teacher-in-my head.)
See? Can’t even manage it for two sentences. Heck, I can’t even manage it for one misspelled word!
Okay, so I am communicating… “co” means “with.” So, I’m inherently split into at least two to just write, but I’ve heard of authors being in a zone where that is not the case. Eckhart Tolle is said to have only been able to write his book while visiting California. When he was elsewhere he couldn’t do it. I should look that up. It’s interesting.
Natalie Goldberg, writing teacher extraordinaire, although I couldn’t even finish her novel, Banana Rose, talks about being in this moment. She also studies Zen meditation. She brings that awareness to her writing. There is a very present-moment-ness to her writing even when she talks about the distant past.
I want to do that.
I want to be in this moment writing and letting the words flow from my fingers like I am
*sigh*
I nearly had it there for a minute.
*pause*
Practice. That’s why I practice.
That’s why the 50,000 words I’m attempting to write for NaNoWriMo.org (please make a contribution. At least half of it goes to support children’s libraries in Viet Nam) . . . anyway, that’s why so many of these 50,000 words are drek. Yes, drek. Garbage, incineratable, even.
I can write a paper for school, you know, 15 to 20 pages, on just about anything and figure it’s good enough.
I have been paid for writing 300 to 700 word articles that I ripped off in 15 to 30 minutes each. And they weren’t half bad.
But we’re talking BOOK length here. OMG
This 50,000 words will amount to a mere 175 pages approximately.
How many words does it take to make a book?
Well, taking a few off the shelf here, let me see:
Kabbalistic Healing by Jason Shulman, 184 pages… trade paperback
Move Your Stuff Change Your Life Karen Rauch Carter, 232 pages… trade paperback
Macroscope by Piers Anthony . . . 480 pages, mass market paperback
(Note Anthony is the only fiction at my bedside at the moment.
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott . . . 237 pages trade
Okay, let me go to the bookshelf for more fiction.
Star Dance by Spider & Jeanne Robinson . . . 288 pages, mass market
Grumbles from the Grave
… and at this point, my laptop decides to save this post. Or, really, I hit a key somewhere and landed myself in Save mode. Reminds me of a cartoon I kept for years and years when I was teaching software and working at help desks. The picture shows a business man, in a suit, with a briefcase, standing on the Moon with the Earth in the background, looking down at a little alien guy who is saying to him, “Think back. Which key did you press?”
See? See?
And I had just typed in the page count for 2 more books! Which I lost.
What does it take just to be with myself, my feelings, in this present moment?
I don’t know. Sometimes I do it. I’m just walking along and I’m suddenly in some altered consciousness and there I am.
Right now, I think I’ll practice in a hot bath.
Love, Ann
