First Cup of Coffee - October 11, 2019

Recognizing the difference between finished work and early drafts, perceived time while writing vs reading time and how that affects pace, and being in the world but not of the world. That is: what to do when you get knocked off your pillow.

The blog post I reference is here. https://blog.jeffekennedy.com/2019/10/09/writing-beginnings-again-and-again/

Transcript

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Good morning everyone. This is Jeffy Kennedy and I'm here with my first cup of coffee. Today is Friday, October 11th. And October's just rolling right along. Today I'm actually having a cup of green tea. Most days I switch from I have a couple of lattes and then I brew a pot of green tea and I keep it on my tea warmer next to the desk. In the winter. I usually don't want it for the hottest summer months, but now it's starting to cool down again. I've uh have gone back to that, and it tastes lovely and it's good for me. So when all around Jackson keeps wanting to set up this ambush by the bird fountain, Jackson, come away. Thank you. So yeah, now all I have to do is come out and say, Jackson, come away, and he immediately jumps up like a guilty kid and ambles away from the fountain like he wasn't trying to set up an ambush. No, not him. I just feel really bad about like luring the birds in for his ambush. I I don't I won't be party to it. So let's see. I'm I posted this um blog post on Wednesday about beginnings and writing beginnings, and I was summarizing some of what I've talked about here on the podcast about going back over the beginning of this book. And I don't know if it even counts as the beginning anymore because you know I'm at what now I'm at 28,000 words. Um, but it's it just feels so slow because I wanted to be much farther than this by now. Um but I just went back over the last bits I'd written, including all of the talking heads bits, and I think it's fine. You know, the thing is, and I've talked about this often, but you know, hey, this is maybe a good insight into the life of the writer, because you just end up coming back to the same challenges and questions over and over. Oops, sorry, put my arm over the microphone there. I'm staying in this morning because it's still only 35 degrees out. We did get our hard freeze last night. It was 22 when I woke up. So that's part of why I'm concerned about the birds having their water. I think that was a pretty sudden freeze for them. Even the hummingbird feeders froze up solid. I brought them in to thaw them out for a little while. Hummingbirds will be taking off now, but they were still around yesterday, at least a couple. So, anyway, you know, coming back to those same challenges over and over again. Um I've lost my train. What was I saying? I know I was going to make a specific point there. Anyway, um I did this blog post talking about it. And Grace Straven, my lovely friend, uh reposted it and added some of her own comments to it, too. And I think it's really important to remember because she and I had been helping another author friend who is uh still to be published, working on getting her first published book, and she and I were helping her with the beginning of her book. And Grace and I had each used, it's kind of amusing, examples from the others' books to try to demonstrate a point to this gal, which I think is funny. I was like, look at how Grace began this book, and she at the same time uh said, look at what Jeffy did at the beginning of Orchid Throne. Um I guess it's good that we have the Mutual Admiration Society, and we learn from each other. I mean, I think that's really interesting because Grace and I were then got into an interesting conversation about how we each began these books and choices that we made. And one of the things that we were talking about as we uh went, he's right back in that English spot, you guys. Okay, hang on. Jackson, come away from there. Come on. Oh, no, he's not being guilty, kid. Come on, I told you. Yeah, thank you. He's like, damn, I almost had them. But Grace and I were talking about, you know, like the things, the choices that we each made in those beginnings, and we got in this conversation about like how many times we had changed them. And Grace said, Oh, you know, that she had ripped hers apart countless times and ended up starting with an entirely different POV character before it finally gelled. And the thing that she liked, he's heading back to the ambush. I'm trying to stop him. And the thing that she really liked about Orchid's Rome was the way I started with that prologue. You know, and I don't really like prologues. And she's like, oh, that was so smart. It was like, you know, having a little tour of the recent history, and she said it was like getting I loved her analogy, like getting on a tour bus and getting a quick overview of the landscape and politics. And then in chapter one, your characters could hit the ground running. I'm just going to tug at him and not call him. Come on, go down to your weak spot. Go on. I guess I can't help talking to him. And I said, you know, I only did that because my editor wanted me to. That was something I added much later. And she said, Oh, well, it was so smart. And so the upshot is that in some ways it's a little unfair to show the author who is struggling to write her book and revise her book the polished versions of our final books and say, here, look at this technique for an example. Because it is polished. And, you know, and it's not like we pulled that out the first time, or even the second, or the third, or I don't know, you know, like even the tenth. It's like what you see in the published book is so has been gone through by so many people and adjusted so many times, because that's that's what it takes. You know, and so it's difficult when an aspiring author looks at something and says, you know, it tries to imitate that opening or tries to imitate a technique and looks at it and says, Oh, but mine falls so far short of this. It's like, well, yeah, because you haven't revised it a million times yet. Give it a little time. So I think that that's uh, yeah, I I can't remember what I was going to say about facing the same facing the challenge same challenges over and over again, but um oh, I know what I was gonna say. Yay! Well, uh because I was talking about the talking heads thing, because one of the things that really interferes with a writer's perception of their own work is relative time on the page, that what to me feels like an excruciatingly long conversation is not to the reader. And I know I've mentioned this a number of times, but I'm always having to remind myself of this truth. That you know, I've been spending several weeks on this set of conversations, and so of course they feel really long to me. It feels like these people have been talking to each other for weeks, right? And in my mind on the page, they have. So, so you know, that's just the thing, and I think that it's one of the more difficult aspects of being a novelist because we are constantly being reminded of pace. Our editors ask us about pace, the readers mention pace, reviewers mention pace, and the pace of writing is so incredibly different than the pace of reading that you know it's nearly impossible to make them, you know, to compare. You know, so the the pace is really something that you have to look at when you revisit. And hopefully somebody with uh fresh eyes can can help with that also. So let's see, what else? I'm happy not to be going to Phoenix today. Um that timing just wasn't great for me. What was going to Mile High Con next weekend? And I'm happy to have some time to work on this book. I think I'm going to uh spend some time over the weekend. I'm just gonna maybe try to work on it some every day. Oh, there he goes creeping back up on the on the fountain. I need to um like put a little kitty fence around it. I see you! Let's see if we can get him. Isabel's down in the lower what we call the weed patch, weed spot. He's down there. Are you gonna go that way? I think that's a really good idea. What a great idea. Go do that. Yeah. She's sitting down on the septic tank lid, which is one of her favorite spots. But yeah, I'm reading um Grace's book now. I've finally gotten some other things out of the way, and I'm reading um Dragon Unleashed. And it's um, oh, it's so good, you guys. It's really good. It's uh well, you know, I liked Grace's books before I was even her friend, so it's that's always a wonderful thing is to sink into her books. But I like this one better than Phoenix Unbound. There's a um a dragon shifter in it, which I believe is not a spoiler because you find that out very early in the first few pages, and it's um kind of a shifter, kind of a dragon shifter, a different take on dragon shifting, and it is um it is awesome, guys. So I expect to have a fairly quiet weekend um getting into this book. I know that I sounded um emotional yesterday. That was kind of like a bit of dust up and drama that you know I I don't get derailed very often, but when I do, boy, do I get derailed. And it's one of those things that you have to figure out sort of um, you know, it's life. If you're going to be connected with people, then occasionally people's emotions are going to affect yours. And I had things going on on several fronts. You know, it's always seems like a number of these things come in together. Like the universe is testing you. Now that Jackson's gone, the birdies have all come into the fountain. See if I can get a picture. Now people flew away. Oh, there's a couple on there. No, they all flew away. We'll get one later. Sorry for the discombobulation on today's podcast. Got all the tax stuff done. That was good. But yeah, it seemed like, you know, as as it always seems to happen, several things happen at once, and I always wonder, you know, like, what is it about my karma? Why is everybody bothering me right now? Why can't I just be left alone to write? You know, and it always sounds so tempting to go, you know, to be the hermit, to go live in the cabin and to be, I don't know, you know, just immerse yourself in the writing or the art and not have to deal with other people. But, you know, that's kind of not why we're in this world, right? You know, we we live on this planet in order to to deal with other people and and to be challenged by life. That's something I always have to remember that uh there's a a number of sayings like that from the the yogis and the Taoists that it's fairly easy to maintain internal peace if you're all alone, if if nothing's bothering you. And the trick is to learn to maintain internal peace when you're being buffeted by the storm. And I think that's the thing that we all, you know, when we do get knocked off our pillows. I always love that image. When you do get knocked off your meditation pillow, the the tempting thing to ask is, why am I why did I allow myself to get knocked off my meditation pillow? What did I do wrong that I fell off the pillow? And really, that's not the right question to ask. Because sometimes, you know, you're gonna get knocked off the pillow. That's just part of being alive. But the qu what the question is, is how do I get back on the pillow? How do I regain this place? How can I um go with the world, be part of the world, and what is it um from the Dao Tijing? It's um to be in the world but not of it. So I think that's a a good place to leave it, a good mantra. And look at this, I'm going to end the month with like five extra minutes left on Buzzsprout. But I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. I hope that you find good ways to be in the world, but not of it. And of course, finding ways to do that with delight and gladness. I know that um the delight and gladness is what gets me through. So I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, and I will talk to you all on Monday. Take care. Bye bye.