On conducting interviews and writing
I've made space to be able to write today. By getting ahead on scheduling content on the GMP, I buy myself the illusion of uninterrupted hours of writing time in which I do not need to fret about work. What I have actually bought myself, it seems, is something like a children's book I read about a man who tried to save time by eating his breakfast the night before. Then he tries to save more time by eating breakfast at lunchtime the day previous, and tomorrow's lunch at dinner. The madness continues until he brings his clock all the way back around and is eating eggs in the morning again. A paean to the routine.
My routine this morning took me and Charlie on our river walk: about an hour without stops taking us over the hill to Smith, along the river, and home again in a big loop. The ground is wet and I suspect, boggy, and I know I have to start thinking of other places to do my morning yoga and floor exercises. Inside my house seems obvious, but the dog bothers me so much more when I get down on the floor in here. Excuses.
I have vague thoughts of a novel I want to write that would somehow capture my amnesia and fantasy lives by including the stories I've tried to write as books of their own in a memoir. I want to write it in such a way that I can make clear how I did not understand their connections to my life. The unreliable, plucky, amnesiac, dissociated narrator.
The work writing I've given myself the past couple weeks has been exercising my writing brain, work I have needed to have. It's why I applied to write for the Boston Local Food Festival again this year, and why I wrote for the Examiner for so long. I need the prompts. I have three blogs that need something new posted to them. One in Six Trans Men is of very high quality, but since I became a vendor to the GMP, I've had even more incentive to write my best for them, and for my blogs to be the ghettos of my trans and food writing. I've gone back and reprinted pieces from my food blogs, particularly Tin Foil Toque. In cases where I've retitled them and/or given them better feature images, they've been much more popular. One that I called Why Americans Are So Fat has gone viral (the old title was a real dud), and one that I streamed to Open Salon both times I published it, made it an Editor's Pick the second time, when I gave it a picture. I pass on what I learn about writing hits and marketing them to my writers.
I've been doing a bunch of interviews. They take it out of me, even the ones that don't involve me psychologically, like talking to a brewmaster and to the author of a book on exercise for new dads. Talking to someone who runs a medical mission in Peru takes a little more out of me. Talking to guys who are looking for my feedback, or I'm interviewing at least in part for an article I want to write on mentorship, takes yet more. The hardest was talking to Thomas Beatie. We have too much in common for it not to resonate with me for days.
Today I want to write about a writing program working with prisoners and ex-prisoners. I know it will take me a while to digest, and I usually overpromise people when it comes to delivering the first draft. I'll tell them "a day or two" when that ultimately turns out to be more like four days or a week. Then I'll whip out a draft in a morning, but not until I'm ready. First there's reading and notetaking, and at least one session of just digesting and thinking. I'm still thinking of Beatie and the next round of questions I want to ask him. I think I come up with pretty good questions now, and usually just the right number, which is smaller than you might think. When I write it up as an interview I will end up inserting questions to reflect the way the conversation went. There's a lot of editing involved. Joanna taught me to just hack away at it until you have something publishable. Like topiary.
My routine this morning took me and Charlie on our river walk: about an hour without stops taking us over the hill to Smith, along the river, and home again in a big loop. The ground is wet and I suspect, boggy, and I know I have to start thinking of other places to do my morning yoga and floor exercises. Inside my house seems obvious, but the dog bothers me so much more when I get down on the floor in here. Excuses.
I have vague thoughts of a novel I want to write that would somehow capture my amnesia and fantasy lives by including the stories I've tried to write as books of their own in a memoir. I want to write it in such a way that I can make clear how I did not understand their connections to my life. The unreliable, plucky, amnesiac, dissociated narrator.
The work writing I've given myself the past couple weeks has been exercising my writing brain, work I have needed to have. It's why I applied to write for the Boston Local Food Festival again this year, and why I wrote for the Examiner for so long. I need the prompts. I have three blogs that need something new posted to them. One in Six Trans Men is of very high quality, but since I became a vendor to the GMP, I've had even more incentive to write my best for them, and for my blogs to be the ghettos of my trans and food writing. I've gone back and reprinted pieces from my food blogs, particularly Tin Foil Toque. In cases where I've retitled them and/or given them better feature images, they've been much more popular. One that I called Why Americans Are So Fat has gone viral (the old title was a real dud), and one that I streamed to Open Salon both times I published it, made it an Editor's Pick the second time, when I gave it a picture. I pass on what I learn about writing hits and marketing them to my writers.
I've been doing a bunch of interviews. They take it out of me, even the ones that don't involve me psychologically, like talking to a brewmaster and to the author of a book on exercise for new dads. Talking to someone who runs a medical mission in Peru takes a little more out of me. Talking to guys who are looking for my feedback, or I'm interviewing at least in part for an article I want to write on mentorship, takes yet more. The hardest was talking to Thomas Beatie. We have too much in common for it not to resonate with me for days.
Today I want to write about a writing program working with prisoners and ex-prisoners. I know it will take me a while to digest, and I usually overpromise people when it comes to delivering the first draft. I'll tell them "a day or two" when that ultimately turns out to be more like four days or a week. Then I'll whip out a draft in a morning, but not until I'm ready. First there's reading and notetaking, and at least one session of just digesting and thinking. I'm still thinking of Beatie and the next round of questions I want to ask him. I think I come up with pretty good questions now, and usually just the right number, which is smaller than you might think. When I write it up as an interview I will end up inserting questions to reflect the way the conversation went. There's a lot of editing involved. Joanna taught me to just hack away at it until you have something publishable. Like topiary.