Allison Armstrong : My Writing Day

My writing day isn’t a day. It’s a decision.

Right now, I’m entirely self-employed. I do as much art modeling work as I can get, take on one-day and one-week temporary office contracts, work as a virtual assistant, sew “dog accessories”, and pick up occasional other work as and when I can get it.  Sometimes I manage to get a piece published by a paid market, or sell a self-published chapbook or two, but those are still pretty rare.

Because writing isn’t my “job” in the sense of “something I am definitely and reliably financially compensated for doing”, and because my weird little income quilt involves a lot of half-days, or half-weeks, or flexible work-from-home hours… I have a lot of free time.

“Free” in the sense of “scheduled at my discretion”, but also “free” in the sense of “unpaid” or, more to the point, “Shouldn’t I be hustling right now”.

This is time for me to write, sure. It’s also time for me to grow food, cook from scratch, and take... honestly, pretty mediocre… care of the house I share with my wife and four talkative little birds.  As such, it’s also time in which to spin, feel guilty, and tell myself I should be washing dishes or vacuuming or looking for jobs on craigslist, rather than “wasting” time on writing.

Which we all know is a sure-fire way to not get any writing done either.

Thence my writing day being less a full-time (or even part-time) “day” and more being a decision that I make over and over.

My writing day happens at my computer (surrounded by clutter, accompanied by the chatter of indoor birds), after doing my virtual assistant tasks and checking my own email for modeling or temp gig offers, and while steadfastly NOT checking twitter (again) (yet).

My writing day happens in the twenty minutes between walking to my modeling gig and the art class actually starting, scribbling in a slightly floppy, spiral-bound notebook, using turquoise, purple, fuchsia ink and relying on the different colours to show me where one poem finishes and another begins.

My writing day happens between starting the bread dough and kneading it after its first rise, or between prepping the ingredients – onions, chick peas, barley, carrots, dandelions, sunchokes, tomatoes, chives, sage – and taking the slow-braised dinner out of the oven.

My writing day happens in between phone calls when I’m working a reception job (or when I need to stop staring at the spreadsheet I’m filling in, if I’m doing data entry), sending emails to myself through MS outlook, and then deleting them from the Sent file.

My writing day happens after I’ve spent an hour weeding and watering the vegetable garden or foraging for service berries or wild greens (perhaps unsurprisingly, food and gardens are as much a reoccurring theme for me as tarot cards or lunar cycles or feelings or relationships), or while waiting for the previous rack of just-washed dishes to dry.

My writing day happens, pretty frequently, during mid-afternoon visits to a hopefully-deserted laundromat, while waiting for the spin cycle to finish, and between flipping the wet clothes into the industrial dryer and folding them (warm and mostly dry) into the backpack for the walk home.

Sometimes, if I’ve had a particularly paid-work-heavy week, my writing day happens for two or three glorious hours in the afternoon (specifically between Lunch Rush finishing and Happy Hour Rush starting up), sitting in a favourite café, nursing a cup of coffee, and telling myself I can buy myself a cookie once, and only once, I’ve drafted at least two decent poems.

But that isn’t the norm.

My writing day happens in free moments, and fits and starts. It happens because I decide to make it happen.

Allison Armstrong is a queer Scorpio leather femme, a Cancer moon kitchen witch, and a Professional Naked Girl with Gemini rising.  She lives on an ancient seabed, and unceded Algonquin territory, in Ottawa where she writes poetry, reads tarot, and makes things with her hands. She has been published by Hyacinth Noir, Cuir & Queer press, Bywords.ca, and Venus in Scorpio. Follow her adventures on twitter @amazon_syren and at https://queeroticpoetry.wordpress.com/.

Thomas L. Winters : writing, the day dissolves

            Lately the chirping has been louder, premature almost. I oversleep and get a dreadful sense that I need to “catch up” for the time I’ve lost. The chirping outside urges me on, I talk to myself, the script has started. I open the living room blinds and allow the burning rays of light to set the mood. Counter-intuitively I set my laptop on the dinner table, which has for the past couple months become my go-to work station. Maybe writing in the place of digestion will make the written word feel more like an act of necessity than of volition.

            There’s nothing about my writing day that is set in stone, save for the tricky art of patience. Unlike the job I recently acquired and my daily coffee (and other various obligations) it’s not always clear with writing what the next move will be. But I revel in this; I find that to let come what may is the method (or non-method) which yields the most candid results. Typically I’ll gather energy from the absence of idea, from the uncertain sphere I live in. A lot of my poetry originates from the simplest activities: tilting my head back and staring at the ridges of paint on the ceiling; digging into some meaty why’s; fixating on a window in my house and realizing it creates a certain divide between realities. In choosing to see the beauty in the most mundane of constructs I prevent myself from becoming another Jack Torrance. To write I need to unburden myself from all egoistic concerns and perform a thorough examination of possibility. What I mean to say is that closed-mindedness remains for me one of the true offenders in the realm of creative potential; being dismissive or wilfully ignorant is the last thing I want to be when looking outward into the streets of the world. The poetic is a form of personal extraction from the mind to the physical space, the perfect rebuttal to manipulative forces.

            Today is the first warm day of the year and I’m feeling outside of myself. I travel mentally: I envision birds not chirping but picking bread crumbs off a damp sidewalk next to a Brooklyn apartment building where a pair of Italian boxers play rummy in the shade of a four-level fire escape. I try to be innovative: discovering one of those old bedtime scary story anthologies I make an erasure out of one of the pages; I grab a back issue of The Source and scissor out words; I invent my own form of short poetry which I dub flamengu since the syllabic structure grotesquely resembles a flamingo’s neck. Thinking outside the box is the best way to challenge myself, especially if I’ve been drawing blanks for hours.I get up, stretch, go on a quick run. I read and then read some more. I read through submissions for my online arts magazine, a venture currently stirring in incipience. I pour a second cup of coffee and listen to Wanda Jackson. Later I’ll be catching a film. Sometimes the drive to the movie with all the sights you get to see from the car seat vantage inspires me more than the movie itself. It’s small surprise to me that life is often the most fascinating movie of all. I like to pretend I’m a shard of glass, absorbing the projector’s glow on one side and filtering out through the other a pool-like shimmer of distorted impressions. Everything is a little strange when keenly surveyed, and positively absurd when placed under a magnifying glass. I think of writing as a way to magnify further.

            Emulsion, much like the magnification of space over the naked eye, is when one liquid disperses into another in which it is not soluble. Most of my work is accomplished inside the self, even as I decamp for other islands and gather scraps; the art of the word is an endless round-trip, a cavalcade-dance on the brinks, where the external and internal combine but retain their discrete forms.

            So it is with ease that I submit again to reflection, that quiet linking of the unlike. Someone buzzing somewhere in the kitchen accuses me of wastefulness. Unperturbed, I think. I think about tomorrow, about paradoxes, about patterns of worship. I think about the shadow and the shell and the spectator at the bottom setting the controls. I think about moss-covered machinery in the old heart of Michigan. I think about aplomb, shame, the forest fires; the fires of my past and what stamina they still possess. I think about re-interpreting Ganymede with a mangled brush.

            The clouds have begun to conspire against the dry land. It’s exceptionally late and I haven’t written much down today, and yet it’s all a matter of perception—you could say I’ve written a wealth of content, the seed for a future novel lurking there somewhere like a pipefish roving the Adriatic.

Thomas L. Winters (twitter handle @tomxwinters) is a writer and artist who enjoys obsessing over revolving doors and the mysteries of dream clay. He is the founding editor of Bye Bye Nite Magazine and has a forthcoming chapbook of poetry called Sleeping Through The Machine. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in OCCULUM, Riggwelter Press, formercactus, and Corvus Review, among others.

Eva Gonzalez : my (small press) writing day

7:23 PM

The child screams through the monitor and we are all awoken. She likes to wake up with flare.  Every.  Single. Morning. I wouldn’t change a thing. She’s like her mama. We wear our emotions on our sleeves. She’ll probably suck at poker for the reasons I do. That isn’t to say I haven’t taken money from seasoned players now and then.  I let my daughter see that I’m holding aces. She needs to understand what will win the pot. 

Poker stains the walls like cigar smoke

The stench of old jokes and mind games

 Counted cards and folded friends

10:40 AM

Between cleaning and figuring out lunch, I think about the prolific Isabel Allende.  If only I had ten hours a day to write, rather than two. It’s too bad for my book I like to keep a tidy house. Someday. And someday I won’t have a cute toddler to spend my day with.  Such is life. 

            Time is the sky wearing a purple dress

Calling the moon her lover

Noon

I am reminded of how eating with my father was often difficult. At times even the best of meals turned bitter in my mouth having to see him sitting at the head of the table. Only my brother was allowed to sit to his right. 

                        My father was a rock.

                        At times I stood behind him,

                        Hidden from the beating of the waves.

                        But often,

                        When salt stung my eyes, and the current shoved me into him until I bruised,

I wondered why

We didn’t just go on land.

2:15 PM

The brain fog hits. I’ve never been punched in the head but I think that this is what it must feel like. I brace myself for the storm that arrives on schedule and am comforted by the fact that it will coma as surely as it will go.  It only lasts for a couple of hours, but during that time it’s like I’m floundering in gloom. God… will my brain ever heal from those awful pills I reacted to? Doctors are the new drug dealer, getting paid on the side to pedal goods they barely understand. 

It’s not on his Wikipedia page but it was all over the news when he died. Chris Cornell had a similar reaction and he didn’t make it, so I feel like one of the lucky ones.  And whether or not this gets better, I’ve decided to live my life full of gratitude. Writing my novel has been a huge help for my psyche, somewhere to go when I need to get away. 

I also remind myself that I have gleaned so much wisdom and understanding regarding human suffering and what it means to overcome withdrawl, (albeit without the pleasure of doing the hard drugs), which may become a priceless resource for my writing.  Haikus often reflect on Buddist zen. Sometimes I write one to remind myself to relax. 

The dog sniffs his bone

Starlings swarm in a pink breeze

There is only now

2:15-3:45 PM

I am engulfed in a merciless, mental murk. I tell myself that it’s much better than it used to be, and it will only improve. I focus on the first time that I felt sunlight on my face and it didn’t hurt my brain. It was one of the happiest moments of my life.

                        Darkness is

Understanding light.

3:45 PM

I don’t notice that the fog is lifting but suddenly my mind starts wandering and I come up with what one of the characters in my Harlem story will say to the other. I’ve been struggling to put the right words in his mouth and I think I’ve finally got it. First draft got it, not final draft got it, but it’s still exciting to have figured out the gist of it. Writing is like putting together a puzzle, fitting the right pieces into the right slots, all while riding a rollercoaster.  I grab for a pen and paper, maybe the kid will let me do a bit of writing before demanding I pull out the playdough.  I am reminded of some Yakuza poetry I read a long while ago.

                        Crisp autumn Tuesday

He fits neatly in the trunk

                        Bright red Camaro

3:45 – 5:15 PM

Blue seals barking and pink hydras dancing. I love my kid. And surprisingly, playdough. 

In fifty years

                        You won’t remember  

                        That we sat and played

                        But your heart

Will not have forgotten

5:30 PM

I steal a minute or two before Joe comes home and do a bit of automatic writing. This is what came out of my mind today. I ruminate on the idea that our several “minds” fight with each other and the outcome is what we call consciousness. I think I’ve got characters in there.   Yellow fog and yellow smoke and window panes seem to make their way into my automatic poems a lot.  The women come and go, and there’s the pot, boiling over. My best line from today’s automatic experiment: 

My mind is the landscape where every horse I’ve ever seen lives

6:30 PM

Dinner. I have a husband who thankfully doesn’t mind hearing about the intricacies of writing a sex scene, and how sex in literature is political. The actions you describe serve to inform the relationship, there are matters of consent, there are issues of keeping it tasteful but interesting, and it goes without saying that the female must have a voice in it all. In my book there is an interracial/intersexual sex scene so there’s that too. Tone became supreme in that case.   

The writing can’t be mechanical but you have to give the reader something to go off of. Writing sex scenes is almost exactly like writing battle scenes, you give the reader enough information to know what is going on in general but leave the details to their imaginations, for the most part. It is more important to focus on what the characters are feeling, and how the action impacts the plot and character development.  I love writing battle scenes. They can be sexy too.         

7:45 PM

My friend had her baby! All I could tell her before she went into labor was that parenthood is the brightest heights of joy mixed with the darkest depths of fear. Joy for seeing the face of generations in front of you, joy for the look in their eyes the first time they appreciate a sunset or the moon rising, fear for the challenges that the little being you just brought into life will inevitably go through. 

I almost send her a text talking about my character Isa and how she was part of a difficult birth as well, but now is not the time.

9:03 pm

The first thing I do once my daughter is down and my husband is watching his sports is open up YouTube and look for either Lazaretto by Jack White, Do I Wanna Know by Arctic Monkeys or anything by Interpol. Tonight I’ve decided to listen to a playlist starting with Evil by Interpol. Being pleasantly unsettled by dark guitar riffs is imperative to my writing process, it’s like sinking in to the embrace of an old friend. It keeps everything in me awake.  Maybe this is why my writing gets really dark sometimes. 

The second thing I do is crack open the Saskatoon Berry ice cream of glory. We got it on the weekend on our visit to the Saskatoon Farm. If you have small kids and you haven’t been there, you’d probably like it. They have a chef in their Mexican restaurant named Chino. That’s how I knew the place was legit.  It’s a nickname that gets used all the time in Latin America.

10:45 pm

I crack open “Midnight’s Children”, one of the books I’m currently reading. I get through as much of it as I can given how tired I am, because as anyone who has read Rushdie knows, reading his work is like watching a dramatic fireworks display unfold on every page.  His work is gorgeous, but I find reading it on the demanding side. I’ve got a chronological glossary of obscure or foreign words he uses in the book open on my computer which I refer to at least once every page or two. His brilliance is dazzling.   

11:30 pm

I stayed up way too late again. I’m going to regret this in the morning, like I always do, and then do it again tomorrow night, because until this book is done I really have no options and refuse to rest like normal people do. 

11:35 pm

Lights off.

11:45 pm

Goddamm it, that’s what exactly what needs to happen with Udal and Saumya! I fumble around in the dark for my phone and type notes. Fuck, now I’m awake again. Ah well. It was worth it.

11:55 pm

Lights off. This time for good.

Eva Gonzalez calls Calgary, Alberta home. She has had poetry published in Filling Station Magazine and NoD Magazine. After receiving an English BA from the University of Calgary she started working on her debut novel, due out sometime in 2019.  Also, she once defended experimental poetry as being poetry at a public trial once in downtown Calgary.