Gretchen Hummel

I titled this entry in this way because it’s how I think new writing and editing are related.  Analagous, if you will.  I have been editing away on this book I’m writing for months and months now and honestly not getting much gratification out of it, even to the point of wondering if this is what I want to do at all.  Granted it doesn’t take too much to question myself to this extent where writing is concerened.

Still, the point I’m trying to make is I’ve learned the new writing is what’s fun for me, that’s the part of writing that gives me that zing of energy, that sort of frisson of creative anxiety that starts all kinds of things percolating away in me.  It’s what makes this all worthwhile for me, the joy of the enterprise you could say.  What brought this all to a head recently was finding I needed to add a new half-chapter to increase and remind the reader of my main character’s motivational state of mind–in short I had to write some new stuff.  And I had so much fun with it!

All of which goes to say, I believe I have to find a new way of writing a novel, so that I can enjoy some of the new writing alongside the grueling hours and hours of editing.  Not sure how to put this into practice exactly except by perhaps starting to write a new one while editing the old one?? 

I was invited to a new writing group that I went to last Friday night, here in Charlotte, Concord rather, but it’s much closer than the one I’ve been attending in Augusta.  Nice group–I experienced some warm enveloping vibes from them that I was feeling pretty good about by the time I got home.  And there are some good writers among them.  But they meet every Friday night.  I’m thinking since I’ve already gotten through most of my novel with my writing group in Augusta I’ll stay with them until it’s concluded which I’m thinking will be in October.  And then perhaps I’ll take up full-time residence with the new group.  Until then it will probably be hit and miss, but they were very open to my just showing up when I could and not even bringing material, but just being there to offer comments.  So, I’ll probably do that.  Writing groups are so good for writers.

I read a great book recently I’d recommend–The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Grubar.  Very entertaining, funny, erudite and wonderful character development.  

I’m back from a couple of summer vacations, one to Maine, the other to the mountains of Colorado and it’s time to get back to work on the novel.  We saw some of the most spectacular scenery I’ve ever seen in my life, bar none while in the San Juan Mountains, going over Cinnamon and Engineer’s Passes.  The tetons may rival it–may.

Sometimes it seems I’m so close to being finished with this book I can taste it, others that the editing just goes on and on and on.   It’s going to be a big book, in the 90-100,000 word range, speculative genre.   The first draft is finished and my writing group has seen three-quarters of it at this point.  It is not an easy task, slogging through this editing, and I wish the writing would go a little faster, a little smoother, but all I can do is apply seat of pants to chair as they say and whittle away at it.  Setting weekly goals has helped.  Editing is one of those passtimes that can go on and on–I’ve heard it said that you know you’re done editing when you start changing things back to the way you had them before.  I try to get to that point with each chapter.  I’m having a self-doubt attack this past week, worried about certain parts of the book, which only serves to make the daily work that much more trying.  And why am I doing this again?

I had to include this summer poem below, it’s so beautiful.  The poem was featured in today’s poetnews@poets.org  Our summer nights here in the South resonate with the sentiments expressed–the heartbeat of the cicadas. 

In those days I thought their endless thrum
   was the great wheel that turned the days, the nights.
      In the throats of hibiscus and oleander

I'd see them clustered yellow, blue, their shells
   enamelled hard as the sky before rain.
      All that summer, my second, from city

to city my young father drove the black coupe
   through humid mornings I'd wake to like fever
      parcelled between luggage and sample goods.

Afternoons, showers drummed the roof,
   my parents silent for hours. Even then I knew
      something of love was cruel, was distant.

Mother leaned over the seat to me, the orchid
   Father'd pinned in her hair shrivelled
      to a purple fist. A necklace of shells

coiled her throat, moving a little as she
   murmured of alligators that float the rivers
      able to swallow a child whole, of mosquitoes

whose bite would make you sleep a thousand years.
   And always the trance of blacktop shimmering
      through swamps with names like incantations—

Okeefenokee, where Father held my hand
   and pointed to an egret's flight unfolding
      white above swamp reeds that sang with insects

net over the sea, its lesson
   of desire and repetition. Lizards flashed
      over his shoes, over the rail

until I was lost, until I was part
   of the singing, their thousand wings gauze
      on my body, tattooing my skin.

father rocked me later by the water,
   on the motel balcony, singing calypso
      above the Jamaican radio. The lyrics

here the citronella burned, merging our
   shadows—Father's face floating over mine
      in the black changing sound

night, the enormous Florida night,
   metallic with cicadas, musical
      and dangerous as the human heart.

“Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”–Somerset Maugham

I’m almost finished with a rewrite of my current novel.  The work is going well at the moment.  I’ve been setting weekly goals and finding that working quite well–that is if I break down the weekly goals into doable daily bits.  In other words, I’m so much better off if my to-do list for the day has only two or three items listed, rather than staring down a writing to-do list as long as my arm.  I don’t do well with overwhelm, no question about it.

I’ve also recently recruited a goal’s partner, a writing goal’s partner.  We exchange weekly goals and are then accountable to one another for our success or lack of it in accomplishing them.  This was a suggestion from a course given by Margie Lawson on-line.  MargieLawson.com.  I highly recommend her.

I’m also a member of a writing group, another must, at least for me as a writer.  Writing can be such a lonely pursuit.  It always gives me a lift to see that there actually are other people on this planet that are blessed with/suffer from this writing compulsion.  Enough for tonight.

Read more »