ieva melgalve

Last Saturday, I spent a beautiful day with Emma Jones, and am still digesting her book, slowly, a poem-on-poem basis. Emma is one of those people with whom I reach immediate contact—and have no way of adequately expressing it afterwards; or maybe I’m afraid to talk about it too much lest I shatter that gentle feeling of connection. It is a fleeting thing anyway since I very likely won’t meet her again, at least not in a foreseeable future.
My Trusted Reader (and a trusted friend), Russell, is coming to visit Riga on October. I have been reluctant to write about this, since it all feels very unreal to me. This is the backslash of modern relationships, I guess—the virtual connection is very different from the real one, and the mind just cannot translate it properly. So it’s waiting, stalled, like a rabbit preparing to jump just as soon as the passer-by gets close enough.
Up until now, I could have shuffled this to the background, but October is right around the conrner so I can’t do that any more. And now there’s almost zero chance something could go wrong with his journey. So yeah, I will see Russell in real life very soon, and it’s so exciting and confusing, and, above all, amazing.

I actually like the ending I’m about to have. Unexpectedly, I used one of less explored side-effects of the “magic” to bring it around satisfactory (instead of just using powerplay and relying on my villain’s good behavior). I expect it to be done next week, or maybe even this week if I really set my mind to it.

I just had a perfect afternoon (even if slightly un-scheduled) with an Australian poet Emma Jones. Nothing beats meeting somebody and hitting it off right away. I think if I’d read any of her poems beforehand, I would have been so shy (I gather she’s a really, really good poet), so, in a way, it’s good that I haven’t. I’m glad that I met her on an even ground—her, a poet in a foreign land, me, a Latvian on a foreign land of her mind. I will have her over on Saturday, to show her the suburbs of Riga (and I really hope this will work!).
It’s amazing how the writers have this common ground. Just like, I think, mothers do. It isn’t about the personality as such, or about the way of talking, or even thinking. It’s more about having stepped on the land of creativity, and having maps to share, vague as they are.
Wouldn’t it be weird, and wonderful, having the maps of creativity superimposed on our everyday geographical maps? Would it be beautiful (I’ll just take you to this place, and know you will love it) or scary (isn’t there any blank space left?)?
Would or wouldn’t it be scary, to have a world just for ourselves?

There is this point in planning, and writing, when your perception shifts, picking up more and more clues for the book you are writing. I sit in my kitchen, reading Oliver Sacks (who seems to be giving me really good pointers about the mystical part of Newil), and somebody out there, in the darkness, listens to R.E.M. “Losing my religion” loud enough for me to hear, quietly enough for me to wonder whether I really hear or just imagine it, and I think, yes, this is the song.
The hardest part is to remember to write these impulses down, and figure out a way how to do it without ruining the magic and still keeping the idea, without restricting it and still being concrete enough to work with those scribbles later.

But it’s necessary, because these vague things very rarely make it to paper while you’re writing–the “real”, planned stuff takes precedence. Also, their vagueness isn’t a feature (even though it’s what makes those ideas interesting); the vagueness is a sign that this should be explored, broadened, understood.
It’s like standing on the edge of the forest and thinking “it will lose it’s magic if I go in”. Sure, your eyes will adapt to the darkness, and you will find out that the mysterious shadow was really a tree stump, but for every mystery revealed there will be five more waiting for you in the answer you find.

All this weekend I have been planning extensively, and right now I am feeling pretty good about all this NaNoWriMo thing. A fun, self-paced, moderately relaxed worldbuilding is much like what I guess fitness should be like: adding to places which felt too thin, getting the tangles out and reshaping plot lumps to more manageable, even graceful shapes.
I restarted working on Flowers as well. There’s no use rushing to finish the thing (it will be done by middle of October, which is just fine for my purposes). And I like mixing my assignments.

Also, going inactive in critters group (instead of just lazying off as I usually do) since I will have to do a lot of crits for my local writers’ group. Besides, I still have a zillion (well, approximately ten) stories to edit, hoarded from last year. After a week of productive work, if I still can’t see how can I fit in a quality critique in, then obviously it isn’t going to happen.

In other news, I’m going down with cold and curing myself with a tea that better be healthy for all the foul taste it has.

After returning from Tricon I spent a horrible amount of time recovering. Tricon was great, and the experience I got there was worth it, but still I have to find a way to work consistently even after receiving a large amount of information and emotions. (That is sort of funny, come to think of it–that it seems I need some amount of emotional silence to write. Very different from my teenager years, when I was writing mostly when thoroughly distressed. I’ll have to figure it out at some point, to make a reasonable plan for the future.)
So, what I’ve done:
- Finished chapter 5 in Flowers.
- Started character planning for Newil. I seem to know about Newil quite a lot now, and most of what I know I don’t really like. I can understand and empathize, and, after all, he’s not that different from me when I was a teenager… but still (or because of it) I don’t like him too much. Just enough to drag him through unpleasant experiences and force him to change.
- Got through the first lesson with my aspiring writers’ group. It wasn’t half as bad as I thought it would be, and it seems there really are some tips-and-tricks I can offer them even if their theoretical background (thanks to the extensive course during first half of the year) could be more solid than mine. They were polite though and didn’t show off their knowledge.

So, Newil planning today, and re-start on Flowers next week.

Things I’ve done:
- worked quite a bit on Vega revision (although the real value of this is still unknown; ie I have very little idea whether I will be able to put that thing in shape and how long it will take),
- worked a bit on Newil planning,
- worked a bit on Flowers.

Tomorrow afternoon, I’m going away to Tricon 2010, and I have very little idea whether I’ll have Internet access there, so posts may be scarce. I have very little idea on when I’ll be able to pack and where I’ll sleep and I have a zillion other concerns and uncertainties, but I’m trying to see it as an Adventure.

Today, I started planning NaNoWriMo. It seems that I’m going with Newil after all–a decision that surprised me both because it came so easily and because it seems WAY too hard to pull off. I started with a sentence for the plot, and three sentences for the three sons of God. (Yes, capital G, since he’s the only god in the Galaxy. And he dies in the first scene or so.) I have very little about what will actually happen–I think that I can envision three of four important meetings between people, but that’s about it.
I think that I’ll start plotting this thing from what I surely know what will happen–what must happen–and work my way back and forth, fitting the pieces in. From that, the characters and the worldbuilding would arise. I know it’s a haphazard way to go about it, but the actual plot has always been the weakest link, so I guess it makes sense to start with it and support it with the stronger parts of my writing.
Anyhow, this feels like something breathtakingly cool, and I’m very glad I chose it for Nano… because I surely wouldn’t have the guts to do this on any other occasion.

So I’ve done 130 pages right now and it’s clear that instead of 5 chapters (150 pages) as I planned, this will take 6 chapters (180 pages).
And yes, I’m back in my productive mood, sort of. I am, as always, dissatisfied with how little I actually do, and I’m quite sure I could be doing more, managing my time more efficiently etc. etc.. I’m tossing various ideas around, so my brain is constantly buzzing–and I have little idea how much of this buzz is useful. This is fun, of course, way more fun than doing nothing. Actually, even “doing nothing” and killing my time with computer games has become better, because now I don’t play them just to avoid thinking about other things. I’m playing to enjoy the game, because I have awarded myself with the gift of “game time”. (This is actually a good idea: to treat my normal do-nothing pastimes as gifts to myself, not self-sabotage.)

Oh, and on September, I’m helping out a friend to tutor a class of Latvian (wannabe) writers. This is going to be harsh, on all of us, but I hope I will learn something, if only not to volunteer for such things Ever Again. (OK, I actually hope that what I’m going to say will be useful to those people as well… But that remains to be seen.)

Yesterday, I realized that constant, successful writing takes two things: freedom and discipline.
Discipline, not “forcing yourself to write and punishing yourself for not doing so”, but “allotting time to write and sticking to it, sitting down, writing and enjoying the thing, too”. It’s possible. Just yesterday, I re-read the beginning of Flowers, and I found out where are the parts when I really, really enjoyed my writing. Funnily, these are not the parts that I’d expected to enjoy, and some of them were written while stressed-out and hurt. I guess it’s really impossible to tell beforehand, whether you’ll enjoy writing or not.
About the second part. Freedom. This realization came after reading “168 Hours” manifesto: there are many hours every day, every week that I reserve for tasks and people who never really take that time. For example, family wants me to be home and available even when they don’t really need me, “just in case”, but they never say “hey, don’t you want to have an hour by yourself, so you can write or do whatever you wish?”
That’s understandable. That’s how the world works, from tiny things (like five minutes of my time) to world wars: freedom is something you have to fight for. It’s not given to you for being nice and docile, it’s not a thank-you gift for giving yourself away. It’s nobody else’s responsibility that you have your freedom; it’s yours to fight for and yours to take.

The funny thing is that I used to do this for a while, and it worked fine. It worked fine for so long that I got used to it and thought that I don’t have to fight any more. That was when I lost my freedom, and with it, my discipline, and with it, my will to do anything.
Now, I can take it back. Because that’s the other funny thing about time: while people can claim it, nobody can take it away. I still have my 168 hours a week, and, no matter how I’ve wasted my time in the past, nobody is taking away my future.

Today, I finally put the end to the chapter 4 of Flowers. All the main players are in the key location (except for the dark horse, Daniel, who’s about to make his move very, very soon). And it’s fun. I don’t know at what point had I decided that everything I write has to be profound and deeply connected with myself, but that was surely around the time of my last writer’s block. I mean depth and stuff is nice if you can get it but if you can’t, just doing a decent job is good. And if you can’t do a decent job, fooling around and having fun is good as well. After all, the best thing about a good book is that it feels effortless–as if it wasn’t hard to write at all–and the easiest way to get that feeling of effortlessness is to approach the material lightly as a feather, not dumping all the heavy stuff in it.

The depths of your experience isn’t something that you have to express. If you can throw it out, throw it out. If you cannot, carry it with you. That’s it.