An Old Post, Never Before Published

The reason why I haven't been blogging recently (This is how it goes):

I'm pregnant, and when I am pregnant I have trouble stringing words together. Maybe I'll get together a paragraph in my head while I'm supposed to be working on something else, but then I'll start to write it, and... There's an interruption of some sort, or I can't get it to work the way I want it to. It happens over and over again until I finally decide that I'm not going to do this for a while.

In graduate school just before Parker was born my inability to write proved disastrous. Three papers due at the end of the semester--the one I turned in to my Black Women's Metaphysical Fiction professor was total crap. I couldn't come up with anything interesting to write about, and what I finally did write about was incoherent and possibly offensive without any sort of redeeming usefulness. Seriously. I've tended to feel like an outsider a lot of times in the past and tried to write about being disappointingly marginalized by Ntozake Shange's expressed intent concerning the play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf.

The paper I turned in for my Shakespeare class that semester, I don't even want to think about, and to this day I turn over and over in my mind possibilities for completing that incomplete earned in Theory of the Novel because I simply couldn't do anything with it. The incomplete haunts me because as long as it exists I damage my chances of ever being able to go back to Graduate School, even though by now I don't know whether or not I really want to go.

At this point I've said way more than I meant to say when I'm supposed to be posting pictures. Anyway here's a post I started at the beginning of May, and so instead of throwing it away, I'm posting it here, almost eight months late:

Parker slept late this morning, which turned out to be a good way to start the day. Especially since I wasn't in the mood to put anything away last night; so there were toys to redistribute, dishes to add to the dishwasher, and others needing personal attention. He atypically slept through one and a half showers, giving me the opportunity to do some devotional reading. I'm slowly and inconsistently working my way through Devotional Classics edited by Richard Foster and James Bryan Smith. Today's selection was from Jonathan Edwards, and I confess that it did not get the attention it deserved. Maybe I'll have better success with comprehension tomorrow.

Parker has lately become a hugger and a cuddler and a climber and a talker. He doesn't blab, blab, blab away all day, but he is saying more and more words.

I've emailed two different people blog worthy material this morning, so I'll lay aside the guilt I feel at not revisiting those subjects afresh, and reproduce what I have already written here.

The first item I considered blog-worthy on May 2, 2008 was a story about how pregnancy hormones affect the mental faculty:

Two coffee cups. One has residue from yesterday's coffee because I found it this morning under my bed. The other has been freshly used then rinsed because I've decided to make a cup of tea. Which cup do you think I chose to put the tea bag and hot water in?

My used-to-be perfectly-good brain says, make sure you use the right cup. My perfectly-good brain does not say, put the old cup in the dishwasher before you do this. Thankfully the tea tastes okay anyway, and Parker is temporarily placated. Unfortunately I just realized that I forgot to put a bib on him, so he has oatmeal down his shirt.

Honestly, I no longer remember what the other blog-worthy post was meant to be.

Pleas

How many times recently have I started to post something and then been held up? I couldn't say. I try to write a review and the words won't come, or at least I am unable to structure the ones that do. I start to put something in my journal, and I am interrupted four words in. I have anecdotes to relate, I have ideas in need of development, I have to be thinking of something all day and every day.

When I think about it I realize that the people who read this blog mostly care about what I have to say. They like seeing pictures of the baby. They are at least mildly curious about how my mind works, if only as a psychological study.

It is fearful, in a way, to think that sometimes I have nothing to say, if only because I am the sort of person who needs to have things to say. If I cannot let myself think for several minutes every day, then who the hell am I?--though I don't consider that the appropriate use of a curse, it is there because so much of my identity is tied up in what I can be persuaded about the quality of my intellect. And if I cannot write, how can I continue to believe that I can think.

The books that I read wash over me--some of the ideas in them absorb, but if I cannot put them into words or practice, what good are they? Sometimes I read only because I have to in order to live. That is why reading becomes more important than mopping the kitchen floor. That is why writing becomes water--bringer of life.

Parker Plays on the Quad

I simply haven't been in the mood to write lately, which is probably why I am reading a book right now on the value of non-reading. For some reason that seems ironic to me.

Comment

Now that I'm feeling better (see previous post threatening bodily harm), please note that I've posted something new below the photos of Parker, a post I started earlier, but posted late, which is also the post that dispelled my momentary frustration of twenty moments ago.

Even More Pictures of Parker

There were other pictures of Parker that I wanted to post, but I'm having a computer function melt-down. One of those things where you just want to throw the whole thing through the window, breaking window and machine at the same time. I'd really like to see it crash heavily into concrete right now. Only problem is, no problem would be solved by thereby doing.

Seriously, I'm about to gnaw my own thumb right off.

Stepping Back Again

I haven't run out of things to say. It's just that the things I want to say are too involved, there are too many stories, too many details to sort out, too many interconnections, in some ways too much guilt as I realized how self-centered is my intellectual work right now. It's hard for me to write right now because I cannot begin and end in one sitting, therefore I cannot find my way to begin.

There's a story about why I hate chocolate covered cherries, though I do not hate them any more. There is a story about growing and becoming, and how do you find your way into that one? There's a story about being saved that does not follow any tradition. There is anxiety about being different from my peers for so much of my life, though that percentage reduces itself as I age. Some of this stuff is personal, although I do not fear embarrassment. I have always accepted myself, though I haven't always expected anyone else to.

This post is a glimpse of things going on inside.

Metanarrative/Metablogging

Remember how I've complained about the formatting capabilities of blogger in the past? This morning I accidentally moused over a symbol in the right side of my toolbar and discovered that it's function is to remove formatting!

Re-orientation

I have so much to say, I don't know where to start, nor how to make a cohesive narrative out of my musings. For the last several days I have had no desire to write anything, not even in my calendar. As we realized this morning, Michael has been writing voluminous responses in the evolution debate on http://www.oneambition.com/, if only to keep the authorial equilibrium within the Fox household. (In point of fact, his writing has little to do with my own. At this point I think that he should author a book, although the efforts of his editor (myself) would avail him little. I can't even read the stuff.)

Coming Soon:...

...an excerpt from a Robertson Davies short story that is an updated version of A Christmas Carol; remembrances from when my brother and I appeared in A Christmas Carol fifteen years ago; notes on how my Dad and Parker made me laugh and laugh this evening; observations on trusting God with certain needs that are in my life right now; and why I have a serious problem with an essay I read by Tim Stafford this past week.

Do any of you know who Tim Stafford is (besides a senior writer at Christianity Today) and if so, can you tell me anything about him that will make me like him better than I do right now? Right now I only have one essay by which to judge the man and it may not be entirely his fault that this particular essay said exactly the wrong things to favorably impress me.

More Thoughts on Process Writing

I'm struggling with Parker and every electronic device in my life today, so even though I've been thinking A LOT this morning, I'm not going to even try to get any of it down here today.

I will say this: When I called my post on the uses of wealth and vocation "An Undisciplined Question" a couple of weeks ago, I was referring to the fact that I hadn't given the matter much forethought before putting it down on the page. I wasn't prepared to write an essay, only to note what I had been thinking that morning. You'll notice that I do that a lot, and the only reason this bothers me is because I am very serious about writing. I want to do it properly. I want to write things that are organized, properly annotated, and researched. At the same time, a professor of mine from graduate school told me that in order to become a good writer I had to do it everyday, for at least a small, set amount of time just to get my ideas out there and to develop the habit of writing. In real writing you go back and fix things, making them more accurate and detailed, later, at least that is how it works the way that I do it. This may be comensurate with the Peter Elbow pedagogy of writing. Elizabeth could probably tell me that for certain.

Let's just say that I am not in that frame of mind that will allow me to express in writing what I want to express in writing. There is too much going on.

It's funny how sometimes you can try so hard at something without effect, and other times you can barely try and success will come. This is a pattern, and it is an interesting one, but it certainly no guarantee--that's sort of what I've been reading about in Chesterton tonight. Chapter 4: The Ethics of Elfland. David F. told me yesterday that this is his favorite chapter.

The something I refer to above is my personal review of Orthodoxy. I picked up my book journal this morning intending to make notes on "What I am Reading Now" and all of the books I want to be reading as well. Inspired by the movie Luther, which Michael and I saw with my sister over the weekend, I picked up The Cost of Descipleship by Deitreich Bonhoffer to review what he says about the activities of Luther's followers after his death. The first chapter is probably the only part the book I have ever read, and I got no further than the index this time before being called away to something else. What I wound up writing in my journal was all Chesterton, my history with the book, why I decided to finally read the book now at this specific time, and what I understood from Chapter 3: The Suicide of Thought.

If I approach the George MacDonald text, The Truth in Jesus, in such a less intentional way as I approached my book journal this morning would I get so satisfactory a result? Probably not. Reading that particular text aloud may be more helpful, but it contains an aweful lot of language to be read out loud to a baby. And no pictures. At 14 mos., I don't think Parker would tolerate it.

FRUSTRATION

Let it hereafter be known that I am permenantly frustrated with the formatting on this thing.

The Difficulties of Writing

One of the things I have been taught about writing is that it is necessary to orient your readers to the meaning of any quotations you may choose to include in your text. The meaning of and the reason for the quotation may seem obvious to you, but is not necessarily as obvious to your reader.

Okay, I accept that. But I am not very good at doing it.

Just now, I spent a good bit of time attempting to explain what Chesterton says about "the balance of apparent contradictions." I would type a fragment of a sentence, contemplate it's meaning, and then erase it because it is difficult to speak for someone like Chesterton.

My Dad has occasionally said that when it comes to quotations, most statments are not so well made that they cannot be stated in another way, so quotations should be chosen wisely. I keep that in mind as I write, but too often in the sort of work I prefer, it is the cadence and the rhythym of the sentence I am trying to convey, not just the meaning, because the cadence and the rhythym inform the meaning in some way. In those cases paraphrase or explanation is inadequate, yet my understanding of the meaning is probably unclear.

This is just another one of the problems of writing I am not sure how to solve.

By the way, I just about give up on formatting anything properly in blogger (see below).

Note to Self

You shall see below that I am full of questions this morning. This post is more in the way of a note of intention to myself.

The other night as I was cleaning up my kitchen I listened to the second volume in the Songs from the Voice collection called, Son of the Most High. It occured to me as I listened that this CD actually qualifies as Christmas Music as it contains songs that are a fitting way to be reminded of and inticipate the celebration of Christ's birth.

Several months ago I ordered one of the books that is part of the voice project. It is titled the last eyewitnesses: the final week with the following explanation on the cover that John relives Christ's last week before the crucifixion. This book was written in collaboration, and at the time I considered reading it and then writing a review for our church newsletter. The long and short of it is that I haven't read the book, but it recurrs to my attention now because of the Son CD. This is all very interesting too because Michael recently stated that he thinks we skip too quickly over the crucifixion to get to the ressurection, which we consider the good part of the story. Michael says that Christ probably spent a great deal of time preparing himself for and anticipating the sacrifice, and that we should do so as well. The reason why he links this to advent approaching Christmas I do not entirely understand, but remembering this book brings it back into my mind. Perhaps reading it, or reading in it, could be a beginning to materializing what my husband suggests. It's definitely worth an investigation.

If only I could organize my reading a little better. How many books can one person start in a week and really understand what is communicated by any of them?

Reading my Own Writing

If you've written much yourself, you realize that at times reading your own writing is almost unbearable to contemplate. It's the same way I used to feel back in my law office days. By the time I had finished preparing and copying and witnessing a closing, I had spent so much time handling the file that I could hardly stand to touch it again, much less put the file in an easily referenceable order.

Today I do not feel like reading my own writing. So if there are mistakes in what is posted below they'll simply have to wait until tomorrow. Or never. However, since I am uninterested in my own writing this morning I'll leave you with the following quote from one who, according to Philip Yancy, may have rarely read his own writing.

[That I explain myself further] was perhaps an incautious suggestion to make to a person only too ready to write books upon the feeblest provocation (2).

and

I have written the book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it
(5).

from Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton

Formatting Issues

I seem to be having problems with my formatting this morning. so I've inserted stars between paragraphs in my recent post. I hope it isn't confusing; it would probably be more confusing if I left my paragraphs to run together.

Please note also that my posts are appearing out of the order in which I've authored them today. There's a lengthy post I began days ago on postmodernism that has shown up on the blog under an old posting date, the day I began thinking about doing the post, as a matter of fact. I most certainly did not write the possum post at 3:00 in the wee hours this morning, but I did make a note of it at that time since Michael was under the house looking for signs of animal life as described therein.

Update:

Problem has been solved, at least partially, I guess. The postmodernism post still appears much lower on the page, when I actually did the bulk of the work on it this afternoon.

What's your process?

Those of you who have a blog, or write anything on a regular basis...what is your writing process? How do you decide what you want to write about, and once you've figured that out, how do you begin? If you come up with ideas that require internet research, how do you tackle that?

Anxiety of Influence

It's difficult not to take all this way too seriously. There are so many choices to be made just in getting started: templates, names, titles, locations; these are all things I expect to be stuck with for the forseeable future. This makes choosing all the more difficult because, while I am unlikely to make an actual mistake in this context, I am labeling myself in some particular way from the very beginning.

This, my friends, is exactly how I begin any project, with a stream of metanarrative that may (or may not) provide a gateway to something excellent. Maybe this is just practice, or maybe it's for real, after all, the intent of this project is simply to get me writing, and writing requires the false start now and again. Like I said, it's difficult not to take this all way too seriously.

So I'll begin again.