Guess not if you are a hibernating bear! And I’m not so sure I am not.
So… where have I been? Writing actually. And making my mind up that I am a writer and not a knitter. All that means is that the needles get dropped and left behind for the pen more than the other way around. It also means that the pen gets picked up for other things that the needles don’t. Like drawing. I think.
At the moment, I am co-authoring a blog about learning to make comic books called
Comic Kazes. I’m making it with my friend Gretchen, who is the other reason I haven’t been keeping up with the blog. You know how it goes with a new relationship, right? Lots of online words between us both in emails and, most often, in the time-guzzling virtual world of Second Life.
I had high hopes of making a writerly space there, but something else got in the way. Yet another writing pursuit in the form of an online technical writing class. That has been more troublesome than I thought it would be. I think it’s because the universe of technical writing has nothing to do with what I actually might right about. OK, so that’s a bit of exaggeration, but still. I don’t work in a field where office memos are part of my everyday speech pattern. As it is I had to create a Second Life project for one assignment. I also ended up using the Comic Kazes blog for another. And somewhere along the line I discovered that it might do me well to learn Adobe Acrobat for real. Something about on-demand publishing.
Which of course sent me running back to my NaNo-novels to see how ready they might be for publishing.
Only if by publishing you mean getting someone to put them into print for me so that I can use them like I would any novel I would want to analyse. Only this time I would be quite critical and tell the author how she might improve the story and the obvious typos. I think that would be quite satisfying since I know the author would listen to me. Nothing like talking back to an author knowing you will be heard! Gives reading with a pencil much more impact. More power.
Now, I want to shift the blog to where it was heading anyway. Shift it visually away from knitting. And I just got something.
I wrote a couple of comments in response to a couple of my grandmother’s fans. In one of them I was remembering reading Mae’s book of poetry and I wrote that I was sitting in her mother’s chair and my mother was sitting nearby knitting. That’s the connection and I never saw it till now. My mother didn’t write. Neither did my great-grandmother. Granny crocheted and Mommy knitted. I suspect, though, that Mommy knitted instead of writing. I suspect a lot of women did needle work instead of something else they wanted to do more. Which makes Mae’s book even more remarkable. I know that my mother had the desire to write and to make other kinds of art. For one reason or another, she didn’t.
I do. I keep trying not to, though. I let myself feel ashamed that I am more exuberant in my marks on paper than others are. I still can’t shake the feeling that I am betraying someone in my delight at the dance of my hand over the blank surface of something and the record it leaves behind. Writing the Comic Kazes blog was intended to be my way of drawing visual stories out of others without the weight of having to draw. I see now that I need to let that go since all I am doing is still feeling ashamed of what I do and how I do it.
So much for returns and revelations.
Why do we keep turning away from home to feed our desires? Perhaps because they get buried at home. More revelation. I am looking outside myself for source and sustenance. At the moment, I am also looking at what appears to be some Granny wrapped in a lace shawl. It’s just photos of my first lace piece draped over a chair.
Proof that I can follow directions as well as finish a complex task.
I think I’m doing battle with ghosts here. Letting them out so they can go home and leave me to play. I know this lace thing is good. I also like the practical stuff, like sweaters and socks. I just don’t know how to put it all together with the writing and drawing and the rest of my life’s tasks.
Oh well. That’s what Second Life is for! Taking me away from all this. You can’t really knit in SL. And besides, I get to be a Shaman Bunny. Can’t do that in Real Life, and while a bunny
can write in Second Life, it can’t in Real Life….
So there!
OK… done venting. Will be back with more about the Shaman Bunny or another story. Meanwhile, I’ll be changing things around a bit.
Nanowrimo 2008
100Words
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