Choose, Madeleine, Choose!

I have my quick, loose draft of Story #2, but I really want to write Story #3. I can't face going through the quick, loose draft of Story #2 right now! I know both the beginning and ending of Story #3, and it will be a much shorter story than Story #2, and I feel like writing something quick and short right now.

But if I give up on Story #2 now--not give up, but put off writing draft 2--then I might not have a completed story by mid-August, and the most important thing right now for me is to complete a story by this deadline. I must meet my deadlines, plus I have promised to give a new story to someone in mid-August. Will I be able to write Story #3 by mid-August? I don't think so. I know the beginning and the ending of Story #3, but I don't know what comes in between.

But Story #3 is going to be SO good. I love Story #3. Not that I don't love Story #2, I do love it, but it's so complicated. It's so long and winding , which is exactly what I love about it, but also I love the idea of writing a straightforward, shorter story like Story #3. I have had the title of Story #3 in my head and in my notebooks for a long time. It is a great title.

Plus, if I am inspired to write Story #3, then that's what I should write. But when will I get inspired to go back to Story #2? And writing isn't about inspiration; it's about hard work and plugging at it and sticking to it every day.

This is what I'm thinking when I go to my studio. It leads to paralysis. I must choose!

Or, Readers, choose for me: Story #2 or Story #3?

What happened to Agnes?

Agnes: Not a Homecoming

I am on the train to New Haven right now thinking about that place and about my awful graduation and how I haven't finished writing the speech that I intended to write as a riposte. I have been thinking quite a bit about how writing fits into my practice and into my life, and I haven't come up with any easy answers except, I suppose, that it is a part of both. A rather jagged part. The function of this writing continues to elude me, however. Maybe because I haven't smoked now for almost two months. It does get easier as time goes on until eventually it seems like it isn't an issue at all. That I am a non-smoker. And I'm not until I am again.

Madeleine and I both just read A Portrait of the Addict as a Young Man. It does seem a little hubristic for a literary agent to name his drug memoir after the classic James Joyce novel. Maybe it's a joke? I'm not sure as (to Madeleine's abject jar on the floor horror I have not read the latter.) I think she liked it rather more than I did, though I did read almost the entire book (the last chapter had to be skipped by me, unfortunately, as it was experimental or something with irritating babies imagery out of Anne Geddis photographs. I think. It wasn't that bad and I bring it up only because it's an addiction memoir. It's not like you don't know what's going to happen. And I feel a little like that about this blog. At least my part about it (NOT that I'm saying it's not inevitable that M will finish her stories which it IS.) There are some things to which the narrative arc is irrelevant: eating, sex, having babies (or so I'm told), these are things that we do regardless of their banality. This is really a first-world problem, isn't it? At least I can be safe in the knowledge that although there have been times when I have smoked and drunk quite heavily, I have never gone through $70,000 over the course of two months to feed my habit. Huzzah. Is this kind of navel-gazing really that productive? As skeptical of the talking cure as I am, I have gotten something from it once or twice in the past. If this could actually be like that it might help, though the point of therapy/analysis is the neo-parental relationship one develops with one's therapist. Even if I could be totally honest here the idea of a “public”, however small, playing the parental role seems really problematic (which is why I am not the kind of girl who aspires to Lindsey Lohan/Jennifer Aniston -type famousness). Then there's the fact that one pays one's therapist and that they are, after all, one's employee.

I have done away with the data collection projects. It was too much bloody work. Also, it brought out the worst in me. I have a tendency to be a bit extreme. And obsessive. So I think the secret is to do whatever it is that I can to ensure that the changes I need to make (not smoking, eating better, exercising, the usual) are something that I can sustain rather than being very, very good and then horrid.

I will tell you all how New Haven went.

Madeleine in Studio and Writing Is Still Hard

I am in my studio right now, readers!

You know how you always think, well, if I just do this one thing, then X will be so easy?

As in, if I just had a place to go and write, a place separate from my home, a room of my own in a building near my apartment, then I would go there and write and do nothing else and I would get so much done!

Well it doesn't always work that way--at least at first.

Today, my fourth day here, I finally refocussed on Story #2 and wrote. (I am spelling "refocused" wrong. Both ways, one or two esses, are wrong, according to my computer. Esses is also wrong.) But it is daunting! Even with my quick, loose draft in hand, I feel like I am starting all over again. So I stopped writing it to write this post to keep my fears, my anxieties, my self-criticalities (Sarah Palin says that's a word) from getting out of control.

I will let you know next post, readers, if this worked.

Madeleine Gets a Studio

Yes, I got a studio! It all happened out of the blue. I had not been thinking about it recently, but I had thought in the past about how nice it would be to have a place to go to write--not a cafe--and I wondered if I would get more done that way. Of course, I assumed that I would--and now we'll find out...

What happened was this: a friend (let's call her Cindy) was leaving town for two months and needed to sublet half of her studio. She mentioned this to Agnes, thinking that Agnes might want a studio, but the space has some restrictions, i.e., no oil paints, no plaster, basically no working with any material that Agnes might want to work with. Also, Agnes is not employed at the moment, so paying for a studio right now is sort of a stretch. So Agnes mentioned to me that she had heard from Cindy, that she was back in town (after months away) only to be leaving again this week, and that she was trying to sublet her studio, which is two blocks from our apartment, but that Agnes couldn't take it for the reasons listed above. I said, "I should take it." The phrase slipped out of my mouth; again, it was not something I had been considering, and then Agnes said, "That's a great idea." And then I started to think that it was a great idea, so we emailed Cindy, and I walked over that night to see it, and here I am in the studio right now writing this blog post.

So now in addition to the blog, which was set up as a way to compel or force or shame or (you choose the verb) me into writing/completing my stories, I also have a studio space for two months (or longer, if I like it) which I am paying for, which is to say that if I don't get a lot of writing done in these two months I will feel rerally bad. This is good for me! Shame usually works, or guilt. The same reasoning/method applies to joining a gym; I am going to join a gym soon (I have been talking about this since January). I hate going to the gym, but then once I pay for it I will go to the gym, because I paid for it. I am writing in circles, it seems.

I must say, though, I enjoyed packing up some of my writing things and walking around the corner this morning (afternoon, actually) to go to my studio to write. Agnes, too, is happy to have me out of the house. But some pitfalls: 1) the studio has Internet. I have been on the Internet since I got here, taking care of business, but that must be limited if I am to get anything done; 2) I share this studio with someone else whom I don't know--we each have our own spaces, though, and there is a wall between us, and he is not coming here until August, and he is supposed to be nice and quiet and we will probably be here at different times, but...

I am excited and inspired.

Agnes' latest episode of self-improvement begins murkily

I will note, about the vacation that Madeleine mentioned, that although she did not write anything, I did not smoke. Naturally I won't put a value judgement on either of those things; that's for you to do.

Since our return I have been self-improving with renewed zeal because, among other things, my head is far too small for what seems to have happened to my tshirts in vacation photographs. The good news is that it has been effective, and I have now lost a total of 6 real pounds since I began this whole ordeal almost a month and a half ago. The bad news is that while this change is visible, I'm afraid I am going to have to revise my weight loss goal to an additional 15 pounds as this first 6 is definitely not having the desired effect. The truth is that what they say about quitting smoking has in general been true for me: every time you quit you gain 5 pounds. And those 5 pounds seem to be very “sticky” and they also don't go away when you start smoking again. I am also beginning to feel like I am on the wrong side of the age line to be messing around with my no-longer girlish figure. I remember looking at my mother and thinking to myself “she used to be so athletic—how could she let herself go like that?” For me, evidently, the answer was graduate school. The point being that I know now that I am really too old for a “diet” to work for me. If I don't want to continue to look like a marshmallow with toothpicks stuck in I am going to have to make significant, consistent, long-term changes to my diet and to the amount of exercise that I get. Unfortunately for me, I have never been very good at long-term projects. I am more of an “intense focus” kind of person rather than a “slow and steady” kind of person, and I would take this opportunity to request that the race be made shorter, only I know that it won't do any good.

This week I have started a new tactic of self-tracking everything that I eat. There is a website called Sparkpeople that has an iphone app with which you can input all of your consumption. I think this might be a bit more practical to do if I had internet access at home, which I do not. Trying to do this on the iphone every time one has a handful of peanuts is bad enough, but trying to figure out exactly how much rice/chicken/onion/zucchini/egg/oil/soy sauce one has eaten in a plateful of homemade fried rice is a fucking nightmare. Self-tracking is fucking tedious, and added to its innate bloody fucking tediousness is the impossibly annoying slow fucking NYC iphone 3G connection. In the end it's no wonder that the people who do this (according to the “user-entered” items that pop up everytime I do a food search) end up eating all sorts of unsavory Heathy Choice meals and individual fat-free yogurts, and endless amounts of “baby carrots.” It is time-consuming enough to make a tasty, healthy meal with fresh ingredients; to then have to try and figure out exactly how much of whatever it is ended up on your plate and to try and guess how much by volume was, for example, that extra scoop of salad greens is simply too much. Cooler heads might argue that since salad has only somewhere in the neighborhood of 22 calories per cup that an extra scoop here or there is mathematically negligible—and I'll agree that is true. But it is so fucking TEDIOUS! I will admit that it is satisfying at the end of the day to be able to tot up all the calories/carbs/proteins/fats one has eating and then to counterbalance that with the amount of exercise one has gotten. It's great, and I have decided that if a team of nutritionists and a home chef want to move in and cooperatively strategize with my personal trainer, massuese and teeth-whitening consultant I would totally be down for that. But it is really a very had thing to be able to do on your own if you don't have lots of (or any) money. And this is from someone who a) has a gym membership and b) IS NOT CURRENTLY WORKING. And if it makes Our Dear Reader feel any better: Agnes has not been getting any work done lately. Though her studio is kind of set up and she has started working a bit today and will be full steam ahead tomorrow.

Agnes is toying with the idea of fixing up a “routine” for herself. She has never before had a routine that was not imposed upon her. For next entry, I will write about the one time I had a healthy routine: this was the time that immediately proceeded my matriculation.

Madeleine's Worst Post Ever

That was my worst post ever. I am confident of that.

Madeleine Is Confident, in Third Person

Madeleine is confident that she will finish Story #2 by mid-August--even though today is her day off (i.e., no office) and she has not worked on Story #2. She has been thinking about it, though, and she did finish her first, quick draft yesterday, and she has been working on some other things.

Why is she confident? Just a feeling; something has changed in Madeleine. Or she believes that something has changed. Why is she working on "other things?" Because Madeleine wants to get things done. Other people get things done, so why shouldn't she?

Madeleine remembers writing posts in the third person in the early days of the Mildred. At some point she switched to first person. Today, making one of the sweeping generalizations that she often makes (and that drive Our Dear Reader crazy), she decides that most great works are written in the third person, so, confidence swelling, she decides to write this entry in the third person.

She is not so confident in this entry, though, so tomorrow and thereafter she will return to first person. (Confidence wanes as she reads over this entry....)

Agnes: Hungry = Brittle

Have to post now that Mad has. Will only post until all of my stuff has finished updating though--must get home for lunch. Have not smoked since June 1. That makes it officially more than 5 weeks of not smoking for me. Also have a net weight loss since I quit, which is no small feat.

Hooray. Now it looks like the updating is finished (this computer hasn't been streamlined in a while and I haven't been online in weeks) home for eating.

IT IS SO HOT HERE. THIS ALSO PUTS AGNES ON EDGE.

Madeleine Figures It Out

We were away. That's why I have not posted on the Mildred in such a long time. It was something I meant to do before going on vacation, but I kept putting it off and then I was gone and without my computer and in a remote place where Internet access was spotty at best. So, yes, I delayed and delayed and didn't do it and then felt guilty about it.

"Just like your writing process, Madeleine!" Right, readers? See, I always know what you are thinking...

Anyway, the vacation was great and I feel reinvigorated. We drove far and hiked a lot. I read an interview recently with some writer, a Brit, who said that whenever she gets stuck/blocked/foggy-headed she goes for a long walk, and usually, by the end of her walk (it was definitely a lady writer, and definitely not a poet) she has worked through the block, figured out where the story/play/novel needs to go next. That's what happened to me on this trip. Before I left, I was frustrated with Story #2, lost in it, lost in my process, and beginning to think that Story #2, the hardest story I have ever had to write ever, was actually two stories. (A psychic once told me that the voices were telling her that some story I was writing at the time was really supposed to be two separate stories; I thought Story #2 was that story.)

While I didn't write on my trip (though, of course, I did bring all my notebooks and notes and guilt), I thought a lot about Story #2 and the other stories and hiking around the shores of Lake Superior and driving on the country roads up there and no Internet access and little news and no political blogs (that, I think, is key) cleared my head and helped me work out some of the problems of Story #2. And now I am ready to go on.

I would like to finish Story #2 in mid-August, before Mercury goes into retrograde (is that how you say it?). I can do it; readers, hold me to it.

Also, it's NOT true that Story #2 is the hardest story I have ever written ever--Story #1 and another story I wrote two years ago were much harder to write--so why do I want to insist that Story #2 is the hardest ever?