Last year at this time I was on the annual retreat with sketchbooks and pencils in tow. I had a job pending and I was panicking because it wasn’t a simple job–it was one that required “inspiration.” As a working artist, you learn how to channel those artistic demands and force them to your schedule. But I was having problems. Nothing I drew felt especially good. The concept for the over all piece was shaky and ever changing with only a week to pull it together.

I remember the night I finished it, carefully setting the book to dry after printing the pages and casing them in. I got up in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, to look at it again and burst into tears. Torn between the fact that it was beautiful and yet I still felt there had to be someone out there it just didn’t please. A terrible moment. Painful.

So a year later. A book of a wholly different kind. This year it’s notebooks and pens I’m taking, hoping for a bit of inspiration to lead me out of the dark places I seem to wander in. A purposeful wandering, looking for the light–and its not always clear, which way I should go.

**So I’m back now and as always it was good to get away. Did I come back with something tangible? Not really. Just a few ideas of how to say things, a few notes of things I saw or heard or smelled that might someday help to lend a touch of credibility when I need it. Some photos of things I hope to remember, certainly since these are camera phone pics, and not very good.

Best of all though, I feel ready to work. Ready to take a fresh whack at it. Hoping to get some momentum out of this small hiatus and looking forward to another one before the summer is over.

Today at least I don’t mind that I’m not so far into my redraft. It will come along given time and effort and plenty of breaks in between to recharge–really recharge. I’m seeing that just not writing that day is not enough of a break. Needs to be a change of scenery, physical and mental to work it’s soothing magic.

for Irony?

I’ve been hard-core word editing today, and when I do that, especially for poetry, I carry a small notebook to jot down those turns of phrase before I lose them. I grabbed a notebook for a scene addition–an old one and low and behold, the very last page was about the very scene I wanted to make a note on–dated from last year of course. I think it’s ironic. Maybe someone else would say pathetic–but there is it.

So then, where am I today….I’ve set aside my fear that I’ve written crap. But I am doing something that I haven’t allowed myself to do from the very start and that is, fuss with the words. It has been all about just getting them down. Well, after yesterday, I thought maybe if I really dug into the guts of the thing I’d feel better–and I think I’m right.

I am pulling out all the passive verbs and replacing them with action or descriptive verbs. This is just a tiny little piece, mind you just a page and a half or so. The majority of it is actually a several paragraphs long prologue, written in very remote third person, but one in which I’ve tried to take out the passive voice where it makes sense, making sure that the subjects of the sentences are doing the action, not being acted upon.

Then it transitions into a very up close and personal third person view that is meant to be very intense. That’s where I am trying hard to pull out unneeded modifiers and describe precisely using action without static detail.

Well, I don’t know of course, but I think it’s starting to take shape. I think if you were to compare this rewrite of the opening scene to the previous–it would be shockingly different–and not simply because I’ve changed the POV character. I’m hitting it on the micro-detail level. Word choices. At last, a dip into language. Editing that feels more about expression and less about plot construction. Oh, that’s in there too, as well as scene construction and all those other things–but just a change of pace.

Yesterday: The plants were reaching towards him, gorging themselves on his glow, trading their life force with his in kind.

Today: The broad leafed ferns bejeweled with sparkling droplets trembled as they reached out with their delicate laced tendrils to touch him, gorging themselves on his luminous glow, trading their life force with his in kind.

Maybe it’s over written or maybe it’s rich with detail–all I know is that I finally feel like I’m writing something that sounds like ME.

Those index cards, I mean. They really might just work.

If nothing else, they keep me very focused about what needs to be happening. Event X is needed to achieve response Y and reflection Z.

Writing without an outline is great. It’s my true natural way of thinking and creating. It’s how I work as an illustrator too. I just start sketching. Never use that photo reference stuff. Oh, but I should. Look how nice my portrait came out. It’s unnatural for me to work that way, but it produces very nice results, once I get over my resistance to it.

So with writing, here I am with my character, and he’s thinking about event X. Reflection Z is certainly going to be an alphabet soup of concerns because I’m writing it stream of consciousness as I go. Now that’s great, because connections that I didn’t have in mind at the start, begin to appear and it might lead me down a whole other path. But now that I am trying to edit and tighten, I need to pull out which of these I want to emphasize, so that I know with certainty which way I need to go forward. Some concerns might be better served if I wait until a new event arises, that in turn deepens his disquiet. See what I mean? Tighter.

Last night, after looking over my boards and realizing I am shuffling and adding to the plot I decided to start writing one of these additions. Which in this case is a rewrite of a scene description I had made earlier and set aside. Amazing how much more focused the intention is. I know for certain what it is that I need to say. But foolish to write it. Still don’t know yet how things will exactly play out.

I still think that my initial way of working is the best and most natural for me. The stream of consciousness free flow of thought. Just like the unbridled sketch. But it is clear to me, that this under structure, this careful measure, is critical for someone who works as I do. It sucks. It’s hard. It feels confining, constraining, contrived, and painfully boring. But it has to be done. And done in this way.

The struggle to get this project to come into being is at least as strong as the vision behind it. It’s a real battle. I’m tired of fighting it out. It’s moving at  the pace of an ant. Everyday a new card or two goes up. I have seven index cards for multiple versions of one scene–and even then just yesterday, I realized I might not even be asking the right question yet.

But if you saw how many times I had to start over on my painting, or add a new layer, or go back into time to an earlier save….oh, its the very same hell of a process. I told my five year old today when she casually asked me if everyone makes mistakes, that we should make lots of mistakes when we learn new things. If nothing else it teaches us not to be afraid to try. People who are exceptionally gifted often fail on the big jobs because the first time they get something wrong, they give up. It’s not easy to deal with failure when it happens rarely. And that’s what we all strive for isn’t it? To be so good, so much a master, that it’s easy to produce and reproduce our vision. That we don’t risk much in the making. The chance for failure is low because our skill is so high.

Well. So I look at my painting that I love and I think to myself: That was so hard. I want to do another, but it was just so hard. I don’t think I have what it takes to go through that again! I don’t love the struggle part, folks. It’s agonizing for me. But the real honest truth might be, at least for myself–work like this is always going to be hard. There is always going to be a price that has to be paid if I want to achieve a certain level of proficiency. That wish of being so good that it’s not painfully difficult might just be an impossible dream.

And I think it’s good for me to think of it like this. Because fear and despair that it’s going to be difficult to finish, will prevent me from trying. I will begin to think I’m untalented. I will begin to think there is something wrong with my work, that it’s hopelessly off course.

No, better to think that struggle is inherent in any demanding piece of art. The question then becomes, I am passionate enough to persevere? And with a dash of hope that I’ve actually learned some small bit of new skill to make it just a little easier…perhaps I will.

Today, I started feeling the very start of creative burnout. It’s different from just losing focus, or getting stuck like a writer’s block. You can force yourself through that. No, this was that inkling of hopelessness, of fatigue, of I just don’t think I can do this anymore.

Whenever you feel like that, even just that start of it–drop whatever it is you are doing. True creative burnout is difficult to recover from. You might really abandon your project and the thing of it is, you won’t even care.

Now, I know what has caused this in my case. I’ve been ill, I’ve been emotionally upset, and I’ve been agonizing over my project. It’s taking so much out of me, and when I don’t see the finish coming–I feel despondent. So I’m setting it aside in a fashion. I’ve picked up a new project–something to distract myself with. I can pour my anxiety into learning something new. Which is good. I’ve had a lot of anxiety lately and nowhere for it to go. I’ve been feeling like I need a quick payoff–a boost–a dose of encouragement. No way to get that either. I would literally have to email someone, beg them to reply–oh, and be sure to tell me how awesome I am somewhere in the message.

Sometimes its good to ask for what you want. Who knows. I might try it.

Anyway, back to my agonizing and disaster making. I’ve been unhappy that my book rewrite is taking so long. It’s hard to have worked this long on a project and never shared it with anyone. Could you work daily on a project for a year and a half and have said nothing in that time? Never let a word of it slip your grasp? I can’t do it with art. I would quit.

Well, I know what I should be thinking. In a month, I’ll be getting feedback. In a month I’ll be talking about my project in detail with strange people. What is a month more when we’ve been at it fighting it out for 18? Maybe though, 18 months is my breaking point. Everyone has one. Maybe that’s mine. Maybe it will push me into creative burnout and I won’t care anymore.

But I did some calculating. Knowing it takes seven months for me to write a draft from nothing–I will say it will take six to have this rewrite finished. That means done by or before September. It’s been marked on my mental calendar since the day I finished the draft.

Now at that point, using what I have already written as the measure of the whole–I will have a completed book. I can hand that off and it will be essentially complete–except for the third draft–which is where the fine polish comes in. A check of the subtext and the symbolism, allegory, metaphor–re describing things. Pushing the nuance.

But, the emotional tone, the plot line, the characterization–all that will be set in September. Done by the end of the year. A real hard and fast deadline. Not forever. Not never-ending.

That does help me. Tremendously. So, if I can keep that in mind–and keep my anxiety tied up in another project—I should be able to avoid burnout. And if it gets really bad, I might try some advice I read today: a loud primal scream out of the window while driving–a silly word, Papaya.

Yes, Papaya. Guaranteed to work.