Catfternoon

New (to us) kitties, Bennie (top) and Jett. Adopted last Saturday from the Peninsula Humane Society. We went catless for too long...

Writing as meditation

At one time I had something like a real meditation practice. That has not been the case for awhile now, largely because I can't figure out how to meditate with cats either a) climbing on me or b) hurling themselves at the closed door. No, really: this is a good excuse.

At any rate, I am now applying meditation techniques to my writing. For the last several weeks I have just not felt good about anything I've written, which has led me to put whatever creative energy I have into thinking up excuses for why I don't have to write today. The bottom line is, I don't want to write if it's going to suck, and there seems to be a better than even chance these days that it will.

So what I've decided to do is institute my own personal NaNoWriMo, except without, necessarily, the "No(vel)" part. From now till the end of January, I am going to write 1,000 words per day which are nominally related to the story idea I am currently least repelled by. I am not going to craft my sentences or delete sections that seem irrelevant, and above all I am not going to pounce on the thing and strangle the life out of it by declaring: Aha! I know what this is about! This is definitely a novel/novella/short story, from the point of view of the alien baby, and there's a big shoot-em-up at the end! There is to be no, repeat, NO anticipation.

This is related to the technique in Insight Meditation in which you don't try to stop yourself from thinking, but rather notice the fact that you are thinking, without pursuing any particular thought. You notice, and then return to the breath, as they say. So I notice the anticipation (This is a novel! I know it! Ooh, I can really build on that scene!) but make no commitments to it. I just go back to churning out words.The words are the breath.

Like meditation, this process sometimes really feels like crap. But I have become aware of how little tolerance I have both for writing poorly, and for not knowing what I am doing--that is, not being able to anticipate the outcome. In the past, it seems like I have been able to work around this and get stuff done anyway, but now, for whatever reason, this is not so. Therefore I am resorting to the kinds of writing advice one always gets in beginning writing classes, and which I have generally scorned.

I really don't know what will happen, but at least I'm writing.

The early reviews are in

There is now cat vomit on my revision notes for novel #2. I suppose that's better than having it on the completed manuscript. I will tell the archivists it's coffee.

In related news, Zee appears to be on the mend at last. But the process has not been without...hiccups. And four visits to the vet.

Against the Day: Where the hell am I?

So I wanted to write about a brief sentence I read just last night in Pynchon's Against the Day. It was a little thing he did with dialog, which I was going to blow up into a larger thing we could all learn from.

But, leafing through the book, I can't find the line anywhere. It should, shouldn't it, be somewhere just to the left of the bookmark? Apparently, a few nights ago I put the bookmark in the wrong place, and so last night I resumed reading about 100 pages ahead of where I had actually stopped. Here's the thing: I did not notice. I am used, with Pynchon, to not remembering who each character is, and not knowing exactly where I am, setting-wise, in any given section. I had given myself over to the gestalt of the thing, and was reading along quite happily.

This is not so much a criticism of Pynchon (or me) as an aspect of the experience of reading him, which I think is mostly a fine one: sort of riding the whirlwind rather than trying to parse it. Parse away if you want, but I don't think it's strictly necessary to enjoy or even "get" the work.

On the other hand, after visit #2 in three days to Kitty ER, I was not at my sharpest last night. Keep a good thought for Zee. She is tired but feeling better--for much longer, this time, I hope.

Inspirational words about writing to compensate for incipient crazy cat-lady behavior

Our cat Zee spent yesterday in Kitty ER. She is OK now--this was apparently a flare-up of a chronic intestinal condition, if by "flare" you mean...well, you can get the picture. That picture includes, at least for the moment, a special diet, which means I am spending this morning keeping Bella away from Zee's food and Zee away from Bella's (formerly Zee's as well). Obviously the simple solution is to only feed them at certain times and then *put the food away,* but they are so plaintive and manipulative that it seems easier just to get up every 10 minutes and chase somebody into another room. Did I mention that the special diet smells?

So for today's post about writing, I will simply refer you to this nice piece on procrastination by A.L. Kennedy:

I have, in my professional life, met numberless writers who seemed paralysed by their own desire to write, who had intelligent and reasonable excuses for not starting, not committing, not getting on with it, who could trump any arguments or suggestions I might make towards putting anything on paper. It is nice to win arguments, but not if it means you deny yourself the chance to do something beautiful and intensely alive.

Two poems for Thursday

THIS IS JUST TO SAY

I cut in front of you
in the parking garage
and took the spot
you thought would be yours

Forgive me
I am usually not quite such an asshole
but I was hungry and late for my haircut
and your giant black Expedition filled me with self-righteousness

-----

YOWL

I saw the best chairs of my condominium destroyed by cats.

Slack is back

I am practicing being a glass-half-full kind of person. To that end, a Monday litany of good news:

• Barack Obama is still President-Elect. Evidence is mounting that we did not dream it.
• Our cat Bella took her first trip to the vet (that was bad) but she is OK. The vet is two blocks away, which is also good news.
• The Slacktivist has resumed his Left Behind Fridays with his first critique of Left Behind: The Movie. And it includes a pretty fine explanation of why bad books make better movies than good books (even though, in this case, a bad book also seems to have engendered a bad movie, which is good news for Slacktivist fans). (OK, and technically that's Friday good news, not Monday good news, but I found it on a Monday, when I needed it a lot more.) (One thing glass-half-empty people do is nitpick about details and then use them to buffer their announcement of having enjoyed something, even though they did not, because they were nitpicking in preparation for the apology they knew they would have to issue for having pleasure.)(Well, I still enjoy the Slacktivist, and will probably save the LBFs for Mondays in the future.)
  
• (Meanwhile Bella plots her revenge.)
  

On having a reborn robot servant

So last week we thought the Roomba died. We heard it whirring away in the other room, when we heard its musical "help me" beep. Trev went in to find it spinning in a circle. He restarted it, same thing. The female voice, which may or may not be Roomba's own, eventually said "Please inspect and clean Roomba's wheels." One wheel was pretty much stuck, but we couldn't find anything wedged in there or any other reason for the problem. On the third restart, we watched in misery as the thing spun, stopped, tried to shake its wheel loose, and kept spinning. Finally we decided we had to send it back, and Trev filled out an online form for that purpose. As he carried the disabled bot into the other room, both cats gave off a distinct "our work here is done" vibe. Their tails went up and they swanned around the living room. It was hard to tell what, exactly, they had done; but if wishing could make it so, they're responsible.

Anyway, a few days later, Trev got an email advising him to flip the Roomba over and bash the wheel repeatedly with the heel of his hand (I paraphrase). He did, and after a few tries--it worked! The Roomba shot across the carpet and cleaned steadily for longer than it ever had before. It didn't even want its brushes cleaned.

On having a robot servant

Trev and I have always avoided vacuuming because of allergies and because of the noise, which makes any concurrent activity impossible in our small condo. Also it scares the cats; it takes hours for them to recover from the trauma. But of course it's the cats who make the need to vacuum all the more urgent. With two white cats, it takes approximately two days for a clean room to become coated in what looks like an early morning frost. Yet the more hair there is, the less we want to vacuum, and the terrible spiral continues.

So we recently bought a Roomba. I hate buying anything (except Moo Shoes and food), and as I've said, I hate the very idea that a product could "change my life." But with the Roomba, resistance is futile. It really makes a difference. Now we can actually be doing other things while vacuuming--frantically doing dishes and cleaning the bathroom, for instance, in anticipation of company, or simply talking (about the Roomba). Best of all, it does not scare the cats. They watch it warily when it first starts up and back away if it charges at them (which it does once in a while, randomly of course); but then they go about their business. No recovery time necessary.

The troubling thing about [the] Roomba (it refers to itself as "Roomba" with no definite article) is its servant status. When we're done with it we take it to the spare room, put it on its charger, and close the door. It feels very Upstairs Downstairs. Maybe if the Roomba weren't so cheerful, with its blooping noises and pleasant requests for assistance ("Please remove and clean Roomba's brushes!") it would be easier. I could do with a little class resentment, a touch of sullenness. Better yet, I'd like it to speak in the voice of George W. Bush. That way I could make it work all day long and not feel the least bit guilty. As it stands I still feel, after a half hour or so, that it really deserves a break.

Cat, by robot

Here is a picture of Bella, taken by Trev's new SRV-1 Blackfin Robot, the Open Source Wireless Mobile Robot with Video for Telepresence, Autonomous and Swarm Operation.

As you can see, Bella is somewhere in the middle on the "impressed with robot" scale.

That's me in the background, not working on my novel.