Learning to Skate

I got my first pair of skates the Christmas I was seven. It was exactly two weeks to the day I got my very first two wheeler, a Schwinn Stingray - green with a banana seat. When I think about it now, I was hitting developmental milestones right and left as this was shortly after I had started reading on my own and beginning to tell time with a fair amount of accuracy.

Christmas night my dad took me over to the public rink at Flora Park. Just water frozen hard over the parking lot for the swimming pool, but when I was a child it was always packed with skaters of all ages and abilities. There was an old barn that somehow managed to survive the residential explosion and became a quasi community center that doubled as a warming house during the winter as the park was also a favorite for sleigh-riding on the hills near-by. My dad’s skates were those ancient leathery looking things devoid of any ankle support with strings so old they were double-knotted in places where they’d broken but he hadn’t replaced them. The rink was crowded, despite it being Christmas and the parking lot lights illuminated the entire skating area. Rock music blared from speakers up on the warming house. Dad laced up my skates as I seat on the passenger side of the front seat with my long for a first graders’ legs hanging out and then leaned against the hood of the car to put on his own while I wobbled and watched. It was always fascinating to watch my father perform some new skill that still seemed exotically grown-up to me. Though I could tie my own shoes at seven, the thought of lacing up my own skates with the same speed and precision as my dad made the two tasks feel completely unrelated.

My father taught me to catch a baseball by tossing them at me until my glove and the ball accidently found each other. This meant that often the ball hit me. Hard. And even more often it sailed by me and I would have to chase it down and run back to my abandoned post in order to be close enough to throw it back to him. He taught my brother and sisters and I the rosary by death marching the entire family through it every night for the vast majority of our collective childhoods even before my youngest sibling was capable of recitation on the smaller scale of singing her ABC’s. My first and only bike riding lesson in the basement two weeks earlier and consisted of him standing by the stairs in our basement with me on the other end of the room and telling me what I should do before turning and walking back upstairs for a smoke, coffee and to finish the evening newspaper. It shouldn’t surprise anyone then, that when we got to the ice he gave me short verbal instructions and then took off into the crowds, circling around periodically to make sure I hadn’t broken anything. And I hadn’t. I didn’t. By the time we left that evening, I could skate. Badly. But I could do it.

We got Katy her first pair of skates well over a month ago, but today was the first Sunday we actually had time to get over to the free public skate at the ice arena near our home. She seems to have inherited my natural athletic ability and by the end of the hour was pushing herself along with what appeared to be a start of a decent form. Also like me, she is a bit impatient and as we neared the end of public skate she made a few attempts to go it alone. No stand and no hanging on to anyone’s hands.

My horoscope for today told me I need to learn to be more self-sufficient. When I was a little girl, I was out of necessity because that was the way my father, and my mother to a lessen extent, parented. I learned not to ask for or expect help and I carried that lesson with me for better, and sometimes not, until I met my first husband, Will. He was probably the first person I ever leaned on and that time didn’t last long. So, I was not really sure what my stars are trying to tell me until I read the last bit of Stephen King’s advice on writing the evening while Katy was taking her bath. King was expounding on writing groups and classes and work-shopping in general and he basically said that a writer has to write a piece, a novel or short story or whatever, alone. That too much input during the creative stages is a hinderance. And now I get what the universe wanted for me to learn today. I learned it long ago actually from my dad that Christmas night at the skating rink. I saw it in my daughter today.

I really enjoy the time I spend at writing groups. It’s energizing and fun, but I cannot share works in progress or even first drafts that haven’t been read by my IR (ideal reader aka my husband). A story isn’t about the “atta girl’s” or the neat feeling that comes with people telling you that you are a good writer. It’s about telling the story. Just like skating is about getting on the ice and falling down until you don’t anymore.

Start Here

“It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support-system for art. It’s the other way around.”
Stephen King from On Writing p.101

Something I needed to hear. Funny how that works.

A Work in Progress

I began reading my novel today. I only tackled a few chapters before I had to put it down and I came to the decision that I need to wait until after the holidays before I continue. There are a few things I can work on between now and then including a continuity chart for this piece of work and the series of short sci-fi pieces that I began in October that will be inter-locking works in much the same way I, Robot is. I always have plans to start submitting at least one off those stories as a stand alone piece. I really need to start building a publishing resume. But the big novel lives too close to my soul to tackle right now with the holidays coming up and work to be done to make our anticipated relocation back to the States this spring a smoother move than it would be without some pre-planning and a bit of elbow grease.

Today I read Stephen King's chaptering on editing in On Writing. He provides a first draft of the story 1408 and the edited version. It follows the Strunk rule of "omit needless words" quite well. I am a needless word person myself but I can be just as ruthless an omitter. I am certain that I can edit my novel but I am equally certain I am not quite up to the task emotionally. It would be a bit like cutting myself literally. That can wait. For a while anyway. But, some stories need to be told and mine has waited, not always patiently, and will only wait a while longer.

On Writing a Novel

I am currently zipping through Stephen King’s book about writing called On Writing. There are two things that make this unusual. The first being that I am zipping through it. Reading anything longer than a news paper article is rare for me these days. If a story runs more than two pages in Oprah:The Magazine, I shudder and steel myself for mental exertion. The second reason my reading of King’s book is unusual is that I generally speaking don’t care how other writers go about the business of writing. Perhaps I should, but I don’t. I write. Sometimes I share it. I like positive feedback. I am annoyed by constructive criticism but once I get past the annoyed part I do take it to heart and use the constructive parts. The reason it annoys me though is because it is rarely information I didn’t already know. I know when my writing isn’t working and having it pointed out to me just makes me crankier than I probably already was. But, I am enjoying the King book. It isn’t really about the process as much as it is about his journey and we all have our own journeys to make as writers. I found what he had to say about the writing of Carrie to be particularly interesting. He said it wasn’t a story that he connected with and that it was hard to write, but he thought it taught him a lot. Among other things it taught him that a writer should quit just because a piece was difficult emotionally or imaginatively. “Sometimes you have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you’re doing good work when all it feels like is that you’re managing to shovel shit from a sitting position.” - (p.78 of On Writing by Stephen King).

I kinda feel like that right now with my novel. It has changed direction and style and format to the point where I think I will need to start again. Not toss what I have, but start at the beginning and work my way through to what is passing as the end right now. That is 223 pages worth of reading and revising and thinking and being frustrated. Because I am.

Rob printed off a copy of it for me at his office at work because we don’t have the printer set up in our home office yet. I have been pestering him for a printer since September because I really don’t like having him print things for me at work. Not because I am one of those people who worries overly about things like using the employer’s office supplies for personal business, and I know this makes me a terrible person in some circles, The reason I don’t want Rob printing things is because he will read them, and they are not ready to be read until I say they are ready and even then they might need more work in my opinion. So Rob printed my mess of a novel and asked me where the story was going. Did I know what I wanted to say? Well no actually, thanks for asking. The thing is that I am coming around slowly to the idea that my story is not about Julie the widow but about Julie the woman who watched her husband die. It’s about me in more ways than I am comfortable with and about people I know like family, friends, the men I met online last year in my quest to date again. It’s about chaos. It’s about loneliness. It’s about pain. And it’s about how all these things go on out of sight while people appear to be managing and surviving.

Stephen King is got it about right.