Russell Carisse : My (small press) Writing Day

     I live where time holds little value beyond night and day, the seasons, or the ebb and flow of the wilderness surrounding me. It has been here that has allowed me to freely write more than anything else. It is place that has facilitated a schedule full of leisure, where writing is a pursuit among many. So rather than a break down of a “typical” day, I will colour in where and how I am able to write daily, followed by a shade of my writing methods.

     It is the fourth year of living in the woods with my partner and two teenaged kids. The closest village is seventeen kilometres away, the closest neighbour one. We live in a 1960ish, 10×24 foot mobile home. There is no running water, unless one counts the natural spring a couple of hundred feet away. We are off-grid; in the winter there is hardly electricity to charge phones, in the summer no one is inside to use electricity. The cell service is which ever way the wind blows and no highspeed internet is available. We heat with wood, and we grow/forage the majority of our food, plant and animal. We are also constructing a stone home using older building methods with local and found rock. Everything is either second-hand, homemade, or jimmy-rigged.

    One would think that the lack of space and time would be prohibitive to writing, but honestly there is both in plenitude. As long as a small portion of everyday is given to essentials (ie. firewood, weeding, getting water, etc.), one has more leisure compared to typical employment and the outdoors is hardly claustrophobic. We are thriving on 90% less, than we did 4 years ago living in Toronto treading financial water with rent. We have no bills now, except for the phone, this was begrudgingly taken on, and a $60/year property tax. There is very little to compel one to reenter the economy once freedom has been tasted.

     I use to work 50 hours a week, six days a week as a mason specialising in heritage restoration and stone carving. It was extremely physical work, and I would come home and pass out. I wrote nothing but a few scribbles here or there, maybe some marginalia in the single book I could finish each year. We were urban normal, eating out, going to sporting events or shows, this was how time was spent, further accruing red ink and dissatisfaction. At the time a semblance of self, social and environmental awareness would present in things like urban harvesting, guerrilla gardening, and owning contraband chickens. Chickens that became the catalyst for the extreme lifestyle change. Chickens and a fear (read lazy) of doing taxes. Now being that I live in Canada, when we filed our taxes after five years of evasion and all was settled, there were benifits that were unclaimed over those years. At the same time the city of Toronto had come and demanded we get rid of the chickens (ironically that neighbourhood is now allowed to own chickens). Our tax return was enough to buy literally  the cheapest 100 acres in the country, which is the Chipman area of New Brunswick, and a one way ticket to get there with only camping gear, family keepsakes, and books. There was nothing here but nature. We lived in a tent for over three months. Over the few years we've managed to scar around an acre for ourselves, the rest being left woods, ponds and bog. This is where I plan to live, a permanent outsider, until I die.

     Of writing method then. My space is multipurpose, I write with a 2mm mechanical pencil and type/submit with my phone in a room that is bed/living/dining/kitchen. There is only one rule that I use, and that is that there must always be a rule to exaggerate, deflect, obscure, and/or defer the meaning. I am under the belief that if one is trying to describe the indescribable, then being unable to do so may infact achieve a better resemblance of this indescribable, or at least leave the text open enough for different readings. The rules are centered around metre, form, etc. and I keep on using a set of rules until points of resolution and dissolution are found, changing the rules as they begin to resonate or not. Reading is the backbone and often provides the moment of entry into a particular constellation of thoughts. I read more than I write, and writing is almost solely in response to what I am reading, positive or negative - I read almost as much of what I don’t agree with, as what I do and read books repetitively. Generally, I concern myself with philosophy, poetry, theatre, and history. I am always working on more then one project and reading multiple books, if I am not distracting myself with my other amature persuits like, painting, astronomy, collecting specimens to study or eat, or just staring at the sky or ceiling (weather permitting). My writing has affected my house building though. So currently I am attempting to merge intellectual activities with physical activities over the next building season in efforts to finish the one thing that is guarantied to out live me by generations - a stone house.

Russell Carisse (anarchist/poet/mason/pretender) lives with their family of people and animals in New Brunswick, Canada. They are preserving 100 acres of wood and wetlands, where they are building a handmade stone house, growing food, and scribbling. Russell’s debut collection of poetry, Nomography, is forthcoming Feb 2020. Freedom is a priori and Art need always be free.

  

My Writer’s Day – Kenneth M Cale

When I think of the phrase, writer’s day, I think of songwriter, novelist, and performer, Nick Cave, whose routine involves commuting across town to an office and then writing from 9 am until 5pm. To me, his writer’s day sounds fantastic, not only in the wonderful sense of the word, but more so in the fanciful sense: as much as I would like it to be otherwise, writing has never been (and probably won’t ever be) central in my life. Around the concurrent narratives of me as a father, partner, and teacher, writing exists like an annotation in the margin of my day.

Appropriately enough, my work itself is also away from the center of things. Sometimes it’s categorized as visual poetry or hybrid, poem brut or other. My works are (usually) combinations of hand-written poetry, collage, and abstract art, with the presence of each element varying from piece to piece.  It’s possible for me to complete a work, or a component of one, in a relatively short space of time. This is advantageous: ever since the birth of my daughter, I’ve been conscious of the limited time available for writing-related stuff and increasingly anxious to make the most of it. 

Currently, I have a few recurring windows of time to work in: Tuesday and Thursday mornings from 8 until 10; Saturday and Sunday afternoons from 2pm-4pm. On weeknights, I’m able to find 20-30-minute ad hoc blocks too. I keep my daily goals small and try to accomplish something each time, whether it’s scanning collages or sending out submissions, digitally manipulating images or editing a few lines I want to use from an old notebook.

So, given that my process is as much of a collage as the pieces I create, it’s hard for me to talk about a writer’s day in the conventional sense. Instead, I offer some writing diary entries covering a two-week period, about four hours of work total.  

Sunday afternoon: Recently it occurred to me I haven’t compiled any recent work, so I copy all my published and unpublished pieces into a word doc. Soon it’s a 71-page word doc. My initial reluctance to cut abates, and, subject to my own undefined, internal criteria, I get the document down to 53 pages. Three separate chapbooks? I also hit upon the idea of combining two previously published pieces, Injustice and Intrazonal notes, and the resultant hybrid looks both striking and strong (to me, at least). 

Tuesday evening: One of my favorite recent pieces has been rejected. The editor says they loved the piece, but as the collages constituted art, and the publisher handles all art for the anthology, they had to say no to it. The editor’s email is sweet and supportive, but, ultimately, it’s a rejection. Disappointed and discouraged, I spend the rest of the evening reading Mary Gabriel’s awesome Ninth Street Women.

Thursday morning: An old poem pops into my head: a pastiche of Gertrude Stein’s If I told him. On finding it, I notice it has the least poetic working title in the history of literature: The Banker Arthur (TBA). Not completely put off, I read it over. With a few edits and the right visuals, it might work. I whittle its ragged threepagedness down to a semi-ragged one.

Saturday afternoon:  NSW mentions how most of Joan Mitchell’s time in the studio was spent looking at her paintings. It got me thinking: How much of my writing is actually just looking? A lot, it turns out. As well as glancing over the chapbook(s), today I pull out a work which always seems to resist being finished, the appropriately titled, What Remains. Unlike others from the same period - finished, since published - WR has never been right. The text itself is fine, but not the visual component. I identify what’s wrong with the current version: instead of creating a harmony or dissonance, the background’s black abstract lines blur together with the handwritten index cards. The more I look at WR, the more it seems stringy, indistinct. 17^th totally new approach needed.

Tuesday morning: TBA needs more work than I first thought. Also, the last line will not come. It hangs at the periphery of my mind. The phrasing latent but unwilling to surface. Chapbooks:  I have three variations on a 15-page chapbook now. The longer collection sits at 36 pages.

Thursday evening: Abandoning WR (again), my thoughts turn to another unfinished piece, LotusFlowers. This started as a poem, but feels more short story-ish. In my journal I note: what I’ve written so far feels like prologue. As I make veggie Bolognese and list plot ideas for it, I look again at that note and laugh: this is pretty much how I feel about all of my writing so far.

Kenneth M Cale is visual poet and collagist currently living in Oregon. Recent work can be found in Always Crashing Online+, Talking About Strawberries All the Time, and Word For/Word. twitter: @kmcale81

Martha Warren: My Writing Day, Saturday, December 14, 2019

I’m an early riser. Which makes me productive and smug, until about 6 pm, when I start to get sleepy, and the rest of the world catches up with and surpasses me. I start my day with coffee, newspapers, and a dog hike. Living in the suburbs of Vancouver on the edge of rainforest, there are lots of trails, and Charlotte (Bronte,) the dog, loves a good hike.

For me, the key to writing is discipline. It need to start at my desk every morning, in my little home office, and not succumb to distraction. Not succumb to the call of the garden, which needs raking, or the cleaning and laundry, which are unending. Or guilt-ridden self-talk such as, A Good Mother would be baking muffins for her children right now: Why can’t you multi-task by writing to the warm smell of muffins rising in the oven?

I break my writing into short assignments to make the project I’m working on less overwhelming. I’ve been a student of The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University this year under Joanne Arnott, and she and my classmates have broken me of my old safe ways, pushing me to be more experimental. My poetry is now quite often devoid of punctuation, written entirely in lower case, in free verse, and even, to my horror, includes some memoir.

Today, however, I am working on my first novel, which requires an entirely different methodology. I’ve always been very linear in my writing, relying on detailed outlines. Now I find I’m layering, for want of a better word. I go back over sections and add more plot and metaphors, and clues, and bits and pieces, until my brilliant magnum opus risks becoming a hash of confusion.

I have always found writing lonely, but now I am part of several writing groups that meet regularly, and I enjoy the kinship and sense of belonging. I attend TWS readings and student-led workshops. Through TWS and also NaNoWriMo, I have also discovered a twitterverse of fellow writers for support, and I cherish this community. One writer following me on Instagram is a physicist at Los Alamos, and likes the working title of my novel, Proton. I fear he will be disappointed when he finds out it’s mostly about money laundering.

After two or three hours of writing, I find the distractions harder to ignore. No, I tell myself, you’ve already tweeted something today; no, you don’t need to check to see if anyone has appreciated your breathtaking Instagram brilliance; omg I should never post photos of myself. The lure of social media is best resisted by leaving the phone in the car in the garage.

I try not to check email while I write. Like this Food & Wine email just in that lists the Coziest New York Hotels to Visit in the Winter. I have no plans to visit New York any time soon. Huh. It seems the NoMad Hotel has a lounge known as The Library. Now that’s something every writer should probably know.

Of course, there are some distractions that really can’t be avoided. Like attending to my oppositional defiant printer. Or breaking up the warring factions of cat and dog, (Leonidas-King-of-Sparta, and Charlotte Bronte do not always see eye-to-eye, with the result that after three warnings, one is banished to the deck; the other, to the kitchen.)

Or my father with whom, in his late stages of dementia, I like to sit at his care facility, even just for thirty minutes at a time. Once I have seen him, I worry about him less, and I am re-centred and focused, and return home to write some more.

I sometimes write at my local library or a café using my son’s old laptop. I will often curl up on the sofa and write with notepad and pen. I have made writing notes on my phone standing on a sidewalk or in an art gallery, and scribbled on the back of grocery lists in the car. Mostly, I sit on a balance ball at my desk and type onto my desktop. But after waiting so many years to devote some serious time to writing, where I see myself is standing on the edge of a precipice, so ready to let myself fall into this new world.

Martha Warren is a writer and poet. Her subjects have ranged from fairy stories, to cooking, to aspects of law. She was shortlisted for the Federation of BC Writers Flash Prose Contest in 2018, and awarded Second Place Prize for Poetry by the North Shore Writers’ Association in 2018. A graduate of SFU’s Writer’s Studio, Martha was one of the featured poets in the recent photopoetry exhibition, Line & Lens. @m_warren_writer

Mitchell Toews : My Writing Day and the offer to participate, therein.

Dear rob,

If I was (Were I?) Emma Thompson, actress, I would shout, "What fun!" and you would know with no chance of error precisely what fun I genuinely believe this to be. 

        Then I read some of the comments to some of the Guardian author's posts.

        [...] "Utter cockwash" [...] is now in my head, probably for about two-or-three days. I have a brainplace that is Velcro—military-grade Velcro—for words and phrases that appeal to my lesser angels, angels with mustard-stained frocks. An exemplary past Velcroism: “Power Clip”—a design feature on a used pair of CCM Tacks I bought to coach ringette years ago. It was such a gimmicky, marketing pitch thing that it stuck in my head for some unlikely reason. My daughter would ask a question and just to annoy her I would shout "Power Clip!" for an answer as we got ready to go to the rink Saturday at 6 A.M. (Me being a bit groggy.)

        And then, just as I’m concentrating on “Power Clip” and my daughters and how fun it was to have them around all the time, and all of us yelling “Power Clip” on our way to figure skating and ringette and what not, this nettlesome thing happens: "YOU'RE MISSING OUT ON KEY GRAMMARLY FEATURES!" a pop-up screams at me, giving me temporary mental relief from "cockwash", at least.

        Nonetheless stalwart, I try to enter "cockwash" into My Personal Dictionary (a key Grammarly feature) but every time I do, the KEY FEATURE admonition pops-up, like a virtual Nanny McPhee. I am in an unexitable cockwash loop. The sound of ripping Velcro fills my writing room, as I stand at my desk looking out at the lake, chickadees—black-capped—looking in.

        I consider taking a bathroom break. "Ablutions", as you less-alliteratively put it in your “My Writing Day” piece. "Ablautions" ol' velcrobrain thinks, toying with the word ablaut—as in ablaut reduplications—the way English speakers like to arrange vowel gradation. Seea interessaunt, I think, in Plautdietsch. 

        I decide against the bathroom and opt to accept your offer. A kind offer. A fine offer.

On the way to the bathroom (a sudden reversal: "Gangway! Gung-Ho! Gong Show!" I ablaut aloud alliteratively on my way...) I consider possible titles for the piece.

        "Why Do You Hate Ants So Much?" is one example of my typical writing day, jump-started at 2:17 A.M when I listen to a YouTube think tank about Artificial Intelligence. I chose that video because I have a short story in the works about a sweet Jetsonesque household maid... an AI robot with Alzheimer's—or the AI equivalent—and I want to research AI some more. Both my mom and my mother-in-law were fit, bright charming older women who succumbed to Alzheimer's or dementia or both. Maybe if I make my story a bit whimsical, but not quite, I can make sense of the whole shiteroo. Maybe if Rosie the Robot can be cured, I won't get it and my wife won't get it? Our girls? Oh, boy.

        Anyway. A title...

        "My Life is an EM Dash." Kinda nice. Writerly.

        "Distractions are Your Friends"..."Velcrobrain and Me"... Wait, I've got it. "POWER CLIP!"

        End

Mitchell Toews lives and writes lakeside in Manitoba. His work appears in print and online, in places near and far. He is working on a novel. You may follow him on the trails or out on the water or ice, or more conveniently at Mitchellaneous.com, Twitter or Facebook.