A Little Press

Today Webtrends, the corporation that has graciously hosted Switchyard Creative since April, officially announced the incubator program that we were fortunate to join in its infancy. It’s funny. I haven’t published many words about that side of my life on these pages because I try to keep the two separate, but of course, with all the time and energy I spend growing that company and making sure it’s a business that can remain my sole professional outlet for as long as possible, there’s no pretending that work and writing can remain independent of each other. I keep my office downstairs sacred, but of course my day job keeps me from getting down there nearly as much as I would like.

But I don’t mean to go off course. The fact is, today’s positive press from numerous local publications makes me feel pretty good, and at first I was a little embarrassed about that, as if the only news that should really turn me on has to deal with the novel or publishing a story. But fuck it. I’m happy for the positive feedback no matter its form.

Bullheaded

So I’ve been working on this book for a while, see? I keep saying three years, but I’ve been saying that for about a year, so somewhere along the way my disappointing admission has become something worse: a lie.

And yet I still can’t bring myself to take a break and do something else for a while, like write a new short story or edit some old work or write something for a performance (reading, monologue, etc.). I know it’d be good practice, plus the writers I most admire seem to work on several projects simultaneously. So what’s keeping me back?

My first answer: a misconception that for every minute I spend on a writing-but-not-novel-writing project, I would otherwise be working on the novel itself. There’s something sacred about the hours I get to spend writing or thinking about or drafting or erasing large chunks of the book, so the idea of somehow stealing from those hours for a project I’m less enamored of seems wasted, or rather like stealing from myself.

But I know that’s not entirely true. The whole reason to break out is because I often spend those available hours staring into space or cleaning something or reading someone else’s book or wasting time on the internet (putting the internet at the end there is misleading, because, honestly, that’s the most likely time sink of the bunch).

Sage just asked me whether I’d like to collaborate with her on a project, and immediately I had that knee-jerk reaction: NO! I cannot pull myself away from the book, which, no lie, I still firmly believe in and think will be worth all of the effort. But then she broke up my thinking by suggesting I do something other than write, like sketch. I love to sketch, pen drawings. I’ve always loved drawing. Look at my journals from way back. They’re chock full of figurines, psychedelic dreamscapes, naked women, signatures, still lifes, monsters, eyeballs, faces, haircuts, lists, lizards.

I’ve stopped making promises on these pages, but I will say Sage is onto something. Forget this lie of a limited creative balance. As with the proverbial distance that a stronger fondness makes, I’ll find myself yearning to get back to the novel when I’m doing my best sketching, and in the process jump straight into something good. Real good.

Sportsman

Didn’t think that my best, or at least most frequent, public writing output would be tied to minor league sports writing (that is, writing about minor league sports, not minor-league writing about sports, if you catch my drift). But so far in 2010, that is the case.

I’m part of a loose affiliation of sports fans and technology geeks and writers of various daytime occupations who contribute to the Portland Sportsman, a local online concern. The purpose of the Sportsman, insofar as I like to view my participation, is to observe sports not for their outcomes but for the interesting stories that grow up around and within those sports themselves, and for that purpose minor league sports have turned out to be more interesting than their major league counterparts. For example, we write about what in the world could possess a Triple-A baseball player to continue the fight into his late twenties/early thirties, especially when it’s a prospect’s game down there. These guys (amazing athletes though they may be) pull town a measly wage, travel by bus, share rooms, and play in front of depressingly sparse crowds. But I digress; you can read about that in a few articles over there.

Anyhow, it’s writing with deadlines, which I love; it’s writing for something I care about; and it means more words on the (digital) page, which helps no matter what the subject. Go ahead and check out some of the writers over there if you’re interested in minor league soccer, baseball, rollerderby, pinball, and so on.

A Quick Note on the Shaver Project

Don’t expect these tiny stories to be any good, not for a while. Instead of writing a collection and editing out the weeds, I’m interested in linear publication of a thought connected to someone else’s (Sage’s) image.

And re. that. Sage isn’t sold on the idea. It seemed interesting at first, but essentially this project asks her to take the same photograph at the same time every day, with the idea that some small and potentially revealing details will change both in the short- and long-terms. I’m looking for those tiny changes and trying to build a personality around the act of noticing. For Sage, though, one wonders where the relevance lies. Perhaps nowhere. Perhaps this project will die very soon. Who knows.

Shaver #2

I watched you drive away, both of you. The evidence is overwhelming. I do not care where you are headed, no. There is only one question: Why here? Nobody lives in the building where you were parked all night. I see those windows, too. Dark for months. Don’t answer. This is a rainy town.

Shaver #1

Truthfully, you are too clean. This is no compliment. Look at your two sentries, your wooden corner posts that reach up and up. They should drop garbage like leaves, but those bills clutch on, no scraps in sight. And this is the morning we’re talking about, the first scene after drunks pull paper down around them and toss flyers into puddles to become pulp. Your upright newspaper carts! Your volvo! Who does your sweeping?

Letters to Shaver

The other day Sage asked whether I’d like to join her in some sort of rapid-fire daily project. Like those people who write a poem a day or make a craft project per day, something in that line.

We decided to try something collaborative, and I’m hoping it turns out like this: Sage takes a photograph of the Mississippi and Shaver Avenues intersection, same time of day, same general area. She sends the photograph to me and I write a very short story about one subject I find in the image. Perhaps it’s a piece of litter, or a dog wandering by himself, or a woman with a coffee. It’s half a rip-off of Joe Wendroth’s excellent “Letters to Wendy’s,” excerpts of which you can read here. The conceit is this: Wendroth has created a persona that writes some profound or disturbing or plainly bizarre piece of wizdom on the little comment cards you find at Wendy’s restaurants. A real picture begins to emergy, within just a few comments, of what a fringe person is behind the writings.

It’s worth picking up, and might be one of my favorite bathroom books of all time. You can simply flip to any page and, even if you’ve read it before, find something interesting to read. About food and sex and violence and just about everything you could want in an American book.

On Divisions

Yesterday I had lunch with my friend Jewel Mlnarik at Fu Jin (where you’ll find not only a stellar hot and sour soup but also the most formal server this side of white linens), and among other things we talked about how to successfully separate the interests that conflict during the course of a day. Since starting my own company last summer, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about how work wants to bleed into personal time into writing time into everything, until finally you have some aspect of work on the mind at all times. There’s nothing about it conducive to good writing.

So you silo your work and you protect your spaces (physical and mental) carefully.

For me it’s fairly straightforward: when I’m writing a story or part of a chapter in the novel, I need to push out any lingering distractions. That’s why establishing the writing dungeon was such a high priority, and also why my best writing happens in the morning when I wake up, keep work thoughts at bay, stand over my stove until the hot water is ready to make coffee, and slink downstairs to write for a couple of hours. It’s also why my work computer has and will never cross the threshold of that room. It’s a little silly how vehement I am about that rule, but it’s served me well so far.

Of course, the fact that so many excellent writers never had the desire or the opportunity to protect a physical space for writing makes me wary of my own need, and, to be honest, makes me wonder why exactly I have that need in the first place, but whatever the case my current situation is working out and I’m not rushing to change a functioning setup.

As for Jewel, sounds like she’s looking for a way to have similar divisions online: a space for her personal writing and photography, a place for her professional consulting portfolio, and a place for her professional photography. Sounds like the same practice of division will work well for her, instead of trying to clump all of her public-facing work into a single presence (I predicted yesterday that such a clumped arrangement would lead to a persistent confusion about what projects she was focusing on when).

Anything that improves productivity, right?

New Space

So Sage and I have moved into our new apartment in the Rexall Drugs building at the corner of Shaver and Mississippi. The real story, though, is what lies in the building’s bowels, including a kiln, a man who restores busted hi-fi equipment, records upon records, bikes, invasive vines, and my own dingy office, which is perfect. I like to think of it as an elective sensory deprivation center, where I can lock the door, scrawl on the chalkboards all around me, tack paper to the walls, and disappear for hours to write.

Over the next few months I’ll be training down there, sort of like a runner, with longer and longer periods of writing-exclusive time. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, in the vein of “A Cave of One’s Own.”

Obligatory "It's Been a While" Post

So that’s done with. On to the next one.