News

The packet came back on Friday. It was pretty good. I can't complain.

The weekend has been like a horrible nightmare, but finally I woke up from it and everything is ok. One of our cats had surgery on Friday for a problem with his ear that's been going on for more than a year. He had already had a procedure on it in February which didn't work , so we took him to the teaching hospital at Michigan State University. They went in through his throat and cleared out a mass that they think was a polyp. He seemed to be recovering fine, but then on Friday evening, he went into cardiac arrest. Thank goodness, Erica, the veterinary student who was assigned to him, was there watching over him. She saw that he had stopped breathing and got one of the emergency room doctors and they resuscitated him. He wasn't doing very well on Friday night. It might sound odd, but it's one of the hardest things I've ever been through. Some people would say, "It's just a cat," but really, they are so much like people, except that they don't hold on to grudges or bad feelings. They just love us and want us to love them. And this cat in particular is so sweet and even tempered. And he's a hugger.

I don't have kids, so I don't know this, but I think it must be what parents feel. When you are responsible for the welfare of a living being and that being is with you for years and you have a bond with them, it is terribly stressful when their welfare is suddenly out of your control.

So Friday night I kept waking up. I had a headache because I had been sobbing for a long time after we got the first call saying that he had gone into cardiac arrest and they were trying to revive him. He was breathing again by the time I went to bed, but not as well as they would have liked. On Saturdaymorning, the doctor called again to say that he had gotten better over night. We were scheduled to visit him, and the doctor said we still could. He warned me that "he is not the Anubis you know." I wasn't sure what this meant, except that he had a lot of tubes running into and out of him.

He was in intensive care when Marc and I got there. Erica took us in to see him in his little container. He was on an IV, had oxygen and a heart monitor. His neck was shaved for the surgery, which looked weird, but then Erica said, "He's showing signs of blindness right now. Dr. Haupman says sometimes cats recover from that and sometimes they don't." That was a terrible shock. I'd been so concerned about him losing his hearing, yet a vision loss would be much worse for him than deafness. We stayed with him for about ten minutes and then we came home.

I thought about him all night, reading about blindness associated with cardiac arrest, wanting to know if there was anything I could do. Of course, there wasn't. But what I read made me more scared.

This morning Erica called to say that he had gotten better during the night, that he was moving around and acting like his old self. "And," she said, "he's visual." We're hoping to take him home tomorrow night.

No packet yet

So I haven't gotten my packet back yet.

There is a lot of stress in my life right now. One of our cats is in the hospital having this scary surgery. He's been there since Wednesday and the surgery is today. They haven't called yet. I woke up in the night and couldn't sleep because I was thinking about him, all by himself, not knowing where we are. I know he always misses Marc, even when he, the cat, is home and Marc is gone for a few days, so I can't imagine what he's going through now. He's never been away from home this long before.

Anyway, because of this, I haven't been obsessing like I usually do about when my packet will arrive. Every other time, it's gotten here either Wedsday, Thursday or Friday, so I really do expect it to come today. I didn't feel that great about it when I sent it, but I took some of the writing to my writers' group and everyone really liked it. So maybe Pete will also like it. Bwahahahahahahahahaha! Unlikely.

I'll keep you posted.

Chill

It's autumn now. Leaves are turning red and orange and yellow, and alas, even brown. The maple trees are the most beautiful, with their star shaped leaves, when the trees are only half-committed to fall, the top half gold and the bottom half still green. Fall comes over them like a blush.

It's a little colder now than last month, but when I called this post "Chill" I meant laid back, mellow, relaxed. The calm after the packet. And you know what that means, don't you? Writing just pours out.

So I wrote a bunch more of my current chapter and I wrote that article, submitted it, got a request for revisions, did the revisions and sent them off. Tonight is writers' group, but tomorrow, I may finish the chapter and start on the next one.

Also, books. I started 1984. I actually expected to dislike it, but I really like it. The writing is nice, clean, interesting. And Orwell thinks like a writer. I don't know why, but I didn't expect that either.

The only thing I am missing is having more contact with other MFAers. There is some contact, but not nearly as much as I wish for. Have to work on people during the residency, to try to get them to participate in more of the electronica that various people have set up.

Wish I could go home right now and do some writing.

A little non-fiction

Well, night before last, I was inspired to write a short essay on the topic of reading. Reading, for me, is kind of a big deal. I h ave struggled with it for the past ten years as I've had a series of problems with my eyes. So I wrote the essay and I sent it off to a few people for feedback. I edited it and today I sent out a query to a magazine that might be willing to publish it. Of course, it won't really count, even if they do publish it, because it's not fiction. But at least I'm trying to publish something. Novelists can't just whip off a few pages and get them published. (Harlan Ellison, I'm not.)

The packet is in the mail

Well, I finally sent my packet off. This has been the hardest packet ever, but not the best. I don't even know what my commentaries say. I hope it's not a disaster. I'm just relieved to have sent them off.

I'm going to read shorter books this time. That is my solution. Short books, short stories, short short short.

Finally I am paying enough attention to the other parts of my life. And I can get some sleep. As if by magic, after finishing my packet last night, I lost four pounds. Really. Go figure.

Oh, the pain, the pain

Never have reading commentaries been so difficult for me to write as they are this time. I just finished the commentary for American Gods. I finished the book yesterday. FINALLY! That book is long. But after really struggling to keep reading it, I really started to like it right around page 300. In fact, I liked the last half of the book so much, I almost forgot how much I wanted to jump in front of moving vehicles while reading the first half.

My plan was to write three commentaries this time, and then next time to have a choice between writing two and writing three. But I'm almost ready to cave and just do two this time. It's just so stressful trying to write a commentary in a few hours with no time to look back over it. And it absolutely has to go out tomorrow. The one for Howl's Moving Castle is more than half done, but I want to watch the film again and get some exact dialogue to put into it. The one for Till We Have Faces is not remotely done. I think I wrote the first sentence of it yesterday. I'm struggling to make it not sound like a book report. I guess I'll try it anyway. Now that the A.G. one is finished, it would be great if I only had to do two next time.

'm such a whiner. It will all be fine. :)

Stress Writing

Whoa. The stress is crashing down on me. How's a person supposed to get all this stuff done? And plan a trip and take care of other life responsibilities. See, it's the stress that is stopping me from writing. I just can't relax into it. You know: the state of mind required to write about magic. I need to close myself up somewhere, alone, without cats, without students, without husbands, without friendly office mates, and without email for godsakes! and chill into that place in my head where everything just works. However, that is not happening. Because I have to finish reading two hundred more pages of this stupid book. I don't even like this book. And then I have to write three commentaries. And by the time I'm done with that, time will be short and I'll be stressed because time is short.

So there you have it. The state of my brain. We'll see if I can pull something out of a hat.

Postscript: You might think by reading this that I haven't really been working on my stuff. But I have. It's just not going so well. It took forever to read the C.S. Lewis book and now it's taking forever to read American Gods. And the fiction, I've been working on it every day. But it's just not there yet. Not quite there.

Message Board

So, I started a message board hoping that I could get other MFAers to post on it. Since we don't have the traditional program where we can all go across the street to the student center or to Maggie's Buns and sit around and drink coffee and chat and study together , I miss being able to hang out with everyone. And residencies are so busy and I am so scattered that I don't get to meet everyone. So why not hang out here with people?

Well, I know everyone is busy, but I still hope people will post. It would help if we could all get to know each other during the semester so when we go to the Winter residency, we have a head start.

I put the board in the links.

Writing, writer, write, writes, written, wrote, writ, wrath, wroth aka The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

To Writing:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee when I wake up in the morning and
haven't had coffee yet, and I sit down at my computer
with a head full of ideas and
not one of them will come out through my typing fingers.

I love thee when I am at work
And I have three calls on hold
And my boss is waiting in the hallway for me
to get off the phone, and then a student
sends me an email asking me to look
at something that she needs back by four pm
if I don't mind and I look at the clock and it's three forty nine
And the only thing in my head is
"How am I going to get my character out of there?
Why doesn't anyone help her? Why did I let her
get into that situation in the first place?"

I love thee when I am in the throes of a great idea
and my characters are talking to each other
and they are actually funny
and then Ariel, my cat, comes in and sees that
I am really working.
And she climbs up on my desk and sits on my hands and I put her down on the floor
after kissing her on the head and she rebounds like a rubber band. Down, up, down, up
until finally my characters get frustrated and go to get a drink in a bar somewhere
without me.

I love thee when I am sitting in the living room staring into space
and I can see and hear in my head the action that I have been pondering for the past
three weeks. And then Marc walks in and sees me and says, "What are you doing?"
and I say, "Thinking," and just keep on doing it. And then in two minutes he comes
back and says, "When is your next packet due?" and my stomach clenches and my mind
goes blank.

I love thee best, I admit, when a little epiphany taps me on the shoulder
and I turn around, and it says, "Hello, my lovely" and shoots me
with a gun made of its pointed index finger and thumb
right in the center of the forehead. And
I know immediately what happens next
and the writing on the page transforms somehow
and when I read back over it I am truly, deeply happy.

Except for that one word on the second page that just never seems right.