DESIRE- TO-DO-ABILITY - Monday Apr. 11, 2011
today’s Musing written and published from Cranston in south- east Calgary, near the Bow River valley
Morning walk: 2C/36F, a few clouds, steady SW breeze, tricky footing down by the lagoon where a Magpie decided it was fun to bate Gusta – she gave chase. I struggled to restrain 90 pounds of bird dog in hot pursuit of a that annoying bird. It seems my morning workout complete.
Early morning. Early days, at anything - getting started can be scary business.
Battles, or just skirmishes - most often not adventures we deliberately pick though I believe we often sew seeds of our own challenges and misadventures; not sure if they seem to pick us, or pick on us – but we must fight them, struggle with demons just the same, regardless their causation.
Case in point, yesterday’s final round, the Masters Tournament: some of the best couch entertainment in a long time. Phenomenally tight competition, golf drama, character failures, redemption and triumph – Tiger surged, prodigy Rory flopped, Aussies Jason and Adam went down to the wire tied at second in effort to take a green jacket to their country for the first time, ever, but it was a chicken farmer’s son named Charl, from South Africa, who took home golf’s most hallowed prize. Nobody knew for sure how it would all end until the 2nd last pairing had holed out on the 72nd hole, as always – the back nine at Augusta on Sunday afternoon is where the best drama plays out. You could write that finish in fiction, because fiction is supposed to make sense.
Another battlefront . . .
A little over eight years ago, I first wrote this Musing column; today is day 2,844. Like anything we do repetitively, some are good, some are very good, and some, not so much.
This year’s challenge - to write a short story each week, wasn’t my original idea. Like many writers, I believe I have a novel or two inside me somewhere, though nothings show up on x-rays, but seriously, the desire- to-do-ability gap felt huge, though much less so lately.
I remembered watching a Ray Bradbury talk on this issue. He suggested writing a short story a week; his thesis that - at the end of a year, the writer would have something to show for his/her efforts. Of those 52 short stories, he suggested, some would be good. Some might be very good. Others, perhaps not so much. And, without stating the obvious, some might be the basis of story-line and characters for a novel.
A year ago, stabbing as I was at poetry writing, I tried a Bradbury-ish goal, setting out to write a poem a day for a year. Despite early falters, I found my stride, wrote 365 poems. Some good. Some very good. Others, perhaps not so much.
This year, emboldened by poetry efforts coming easier through practice and development of some technique that worked for me, I embarked on Ray Bradbury’s challenge. So far, four stories written, four weeks gone, four weeks experience with a different brand of challenge monkey on my back., four installments toward a collection. My first three efforts are in process – some significant re-writing (thanks so much to feedback from readers to help me make those better) and, today, I’ve launched my fourth effort – LOVE WOVEN COTTON.
Like kid in candy store moments, interspersed with the sense of a slave being worked to the bones - some of the most exciting time I’ve spent at the keyboard, ever. I’ve resolved to start early in the week, make notes, write sentences – perhaps whole paragraphs, to outline my story. So far, each week, Sunday evening arrives, time-limit task master, imposition of deadline. Last night, again, I scrapped most of what I’d written during the week, started fresh, writing the piece in a single six hour stretch, then spent a hour or two polishing and re-ordering some bits before I published it to my website.
In short story parlance, I’ve found a combo of setting, an incident, a plot line, some characters . . . to create mood, feeling, and characterization.
I love inventing, re-inventing and re-directing what my characters can do; I can insert flaws, obstacles and complications with the click of a few keys, change direction on a whim and turn light to dark without accountability to anyone except the flow and continuity of the story.
So far, this adventure is keeping me up very late Sundays; it deposits me, wired, unable to sleep at 3AM, cursing the clock – yet loving the feeling.
Gusta likes it too.
She gets an extra walk in the middle of the night, right after we’ve heard whump at the front door indicating the Globe and Mail just arrived.
Getting started is scary business.
It is early days.
~~~
This Musing year (my 9th), a new goal - write a short story a week, post a new one each Monday morning for 52 weeks. Tthis week’s story: LOVE WOVEN COTTON link to: SHORT STORY PROJECT . Link to last year’s THE POETRY PROJECT archive.
~~~
Mark Kolke
313,408M~~~
April 9 - STEEPED IN SUNSHINE - Comments Received
Hi Mark, Your friend with the good memory is saying the same thing that your responder said two weeks back about "looping back" with behaviors. The repetition of patterns in our personal behavior make us all uncomfortable. Surely, we think, I am making progress, learning, improving, setting and reaching goals... From the outside, listening in, I observe that you are a "catch and release" kind of guy. Not a bad thing to be sure but something one ought to look at carefully prior to the next romantic episode. I find your commitment to your work ethic admirable and I do believe you are truly talented individual, and flawed. Me too, still working on the blind spots. Trouble with blind spots is that you have to depend on others' perceptions because we can't see them, CH, Chimacum, WA
Hi Mark, I haven't received any musings from you in weeks, so am wondering what's going on....if you stopped writing, or I've been 'unsubscribed' accidentally. Thanks, SW from Idaho
