An incredible portal into a magical space-time
October 26th 2018
And I am back to my book-writing zone as the hangover from
the festival is cleared by the orange sun. Here in Kolkata the color of the sun tells you it is autumn. As it throws its beams
on green foliage and I fling open the windows for a touch of the still furtive north
wind, I try to shift my mind to another
time and place where fall bursts upon
the earth in all its splendid hues. I am moving my thoughts bag and baggage** to
the stage where A Night’s Tale is enacted, and allowing them to play.
That stage straddles many worlds in time and space. I return to the Morning Pages* of yore. I’m searching for something I wrote a couple of years ago on this theme. I need to pick up those tenuous threads and continue weaving. I can’t wait another year for another autumn; time is no longer on my side. And this book insists on being written in the autumn alone.
I find my way to the note I had written and shared within a small circle of fellow writers in 2016. And I read it out to myself and to a bigger audience. I see that it is no longer a mere morning page but part of a continuum, and that is reassuring.
That stage straddles many worlds in time and space. I return to the Morning Pages* of yore. I’m searching for something I wrote a couple of years ago on this theme. I need to pick up those tenuous threads and continue weaving. I can’t wait another year for another autumn; time is no longer on my side. And this book insists on being written in the autumn alone.
I find my way to the note I had written and shared within a small circle of fellow writers in 2016. And I read it out to myself and to a bigger audience. I see that it is no longer a mere morning page but part of a continuum, and that is reassuring.
It’s happening now, the timeless action that repeats on any
ordinary morning. Does it surprise you that the hand is still troubled? It
doesn’t surprise me. It is the writer’s hand that will be restless till it is
fulfilled.
September 29th 2016
Yes it was the milkman indeed that pierced the veil. My hand
was a little troubled last night. I don’t enjoy the continuing sensitivity nor
the patchy alternating zones of too dry/too moist. However, I had gone to bed, safe in the knowledge that I was loved. Safe in the knowledge that I
could get my writing to flow, regardless of grammar or tense or content. To
order! For that’s the first step it takes to earn a living by your pen.
But returning
to the love, a friend approached me asking if she could join me on my Puja
jaunts. I can tell you I was overjoyed because she pierced my veil of
loneliness and frustration and looked in and connected. And I haven’t known her
beyond a few months nor ever set eyes on her in person. But it gave a lift to
my spirits beyond anything I could have imagined. These days I am considered
the person who likes to be alone. I have been labeled, branded and left alone.
To my dismay.
Since yesterday my writing has lacked that “hereness” or
“thereness” if you prefer it that way. I have been drifting between tenses and
floating between flashbacks movie-style, and reporting live TV fashion. I have a
vague misgiving that this is making the reader uncomfortable. Or maybe it is
my editor's vein surging with the urge to change something, anything. I need to
stay in the present when I write that book. I keep telling myself this is a
movie, no this is live coverage. Reflective and meditative but real time. So
write in real time!
The problem with real time is the person who straddles time
both in time and space. Does that make any sense? It doesn’t have to. For this
writing is about me and untangling my ropes and slipping free and easy.
The sky over anywhere
How do
you straddle time in space? A writer does that I believe. A writer deals with
all those blank spaces she must fill or is impelled/compelled to fill, whichever way it might be. My real time is about living in the here and now and
switching to reflecting on what has happened. There are times when real time
crosses into the future and I see myself in California or in Maine. No I don’t
waste time seeing myself. I am busy being, just being in that zone. Likewise
when I slip tenses I am slipping zones, slipping frames of mind.
Maybe I should
not be too conscious. But oh, help me-the-editor! By the time I’ve read back
the manuscript with red pen in hand, I would have written a whole other book.
And then a third person will peruse it and start suggesting I slip between
frames all over again. And they would visualize their own way to do it.
Is it a
good idea to have somebody else edit your book? I sometimes think not. Else
they need to be credited at par, the way the film editor comes up pretty high in
the billing with the cinematographer. Writing is every bit as "technology" driven, even if you consider all that goes on in just the author’s brain. There is the
mind handshaking with the imagination, intellect, beliefs, prejudices,
compulsions and the whole gamut of banal interrupts from across frames. Not to speak
of the mundane devices that operate just to bring a work from the author's inner
being to the outer. And thereafter to the medium of the blank page.
This comes
effortlessly and reflexively to those who practice the art and craft with
devotion. The art and the craft become equal partners in the exercise. And they
oft quarrel between themselves. Morning Pages leads to the resolution of this
ongoing conflict, transforms it into a dance that is spontaneously
choreographed, wherein the discipline of writing and coordinating among ones own
faculties, comes naturally. And pleasurably. Where even the articulation of
pain, struggle, negative emotions and situations in words, becomes a relief if
not a joyful release. There are times when words are empty vessels waiting to
be filled with meaning. At others these words are waiting to spill their
contents and let other words take over.
There are times when making it to 750
words is an empty exercise going nowhere. There is a moment when you take
charge and say this is IT. And no more. I end at 7:34 am, nine words short.
Coffee calls!
October 26th 2018
As I slip back into the present, I understand that some things never change. That others do and that my hands are a lot steadier on the loom. That the turbulence every act of creation emerges from, has taken place for this one, and the nectar is in readiness to rise to the surface. That I can leave some threads behind - some broken, some entirely unused - as I carry on into the future, writing about something that happened in 2015 in Maine but could happen any fall of any year and almost anywhere.
*“Morning Pages are three pages of longhand, stream of consciousness writing, done first thing in the morning. *There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages*– they are not high art. They are not even “writing.” They are about anything and everything that crosses your mind– and they are for your eyes only. Morning Pages provoke, clarify, comfort, cajole, prioritize and synchronize the day at hand. Do not over-think Morning Pages: just put three pages of anything on the page…and then do three more pages tomorrow”
**Take a look at this post for a background(and the bag and baggage) of the book being written.
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