Post #14: Navigating an Endless Ocean of Words 🚣♀️
Wishing you a Happy Disability Pride Month! And seeking any and all inspiring quotes about writing, to guide those who are stuck in uncharted literary waters (Asking for a friend).
Hello, Friends!
Happy Disability Pride Month / In(ter)dependence Day! I hope this short message finds you well! What are you planning to do for the holiday weekend? Paul and I are going to watch fireworks / light sparklers with my parents on the 4th, and then his folks are coming to town the next day for a weekend to visit us, and the Zenith City of the Unsalted Seas (Duluth). It will be good to have a stay-cation of sorts with them!
UPCOMING VIRTUAL EVENT ON JULY 12TH:
I wanted to share that, to coincide with Disability Pride Month, I will be participating in a virtual launch event for the brand-new San Francisco Disability Cultural Center on Friday, July 12th at 6pm Pacific / 8pm Central. This online celebration is called Disability Culture is Here — it's a genre-bending showcase of performances that celebrates the beauty, creativity, and joy of Disability Culture. The lineup is disabled, mostly BIPOC, artists, musicians, poets, dancers, and writers, who will channel the joy of Disability Culture while challenging perceptions. After the show, the performers will have a conversation about their work and what Disability Culture means to them. I'd love for you to attend! Details can be found here: https://www.disabilityculturalcenter.org/calendar/disability-culture-is-here
P.S. PBS is featuring some great shows about disability this month!
MEMOIR UPDATE:
Other than that, I am just writing, writing, writing!!! I am currently on Chapter 14 (of 21). This means I am about 65% done with the rough draft, though I don't quite see the light at the end of the tunnel yet. I suppose it's there, somewhere around the bend. Truth be told, I rather feel like I am down deep in a mine, chipping away daily at an unyielding, granite wall. But I have to have faith that each line of text is getting me a little bit closer to the end!
I shouldn't complain, of course — I am essentially living the dream, spending my afternoons writing in a studio apartment that is abutted by woods and gorgeous Lake Superior. It's just a big ol' project, and reliving one's past one inch at a time is a bit intense. The fun days (writing about music or dating Paul or teaching fiddle lessons) are extremely enjoyable, but the hard days (writing about medical trauma or job discrimination) are a bit more like a root canal. Oh well, in the end I know I will be glad I did it, and I'll be so happy to finally get to share it with you!
Are any of you writers? What is the mantra, quote, book, or idea you turn to when you're in the middle of Word Ocean with no sight of the shoreline? Feel free to hit reply and let me know... And enjoy the holiday weekend!!
With Love,
Gaelynn Lea
Hello and how you look so pretty like a happy flower.
I’ve been meaning to write to you. However sometimes words to arrive in order. They sort of orbit around. Sometimes I go out of orbit when I get overwhelmed. My son calls it housecatting when he needs to escape the noise.
I most enjoyed my staycations. The fam and fireworks and the comforts of home sounds sweet. And the full fabulous trees so green so alive. Looks like a wonderful place to write.
Belief and Technique for Modern Prose by Jack Kerouac
~•~
Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
Submissive to everything, open, listening
Try never get drunk outside yr own house
Be in love with yr life
Something that you feel will find its own form
Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
Blow as deep as you want to blow
Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
The unspeakable visions of the individual
No time for poetry but exactly what is
Visionary tics shivering in the chest
In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
Like Proust be an old teahead of time
Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
Accept loss forever
Believe in the holy contour of life
Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
You're a Genius all the time
Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven
~•~
Happy Summer, Gaelynn Lea 🐚
I definitely identify with this experience of reliving the past through a creative project. In the past two years that I've been working on my art exhibit, "The Extraordinary, Ordinary Nature of Interabled Love", I've spent hours and hours pouring over old photos to be used as reference images for paintings in the exhibit. Sometimes the memories were pleasant and sometimes not.
When I'm painting, I find myself deeply reliving that moment in time. In most of my work, I focus on the pleasure of simple moments, but for some pieces, it did involve delving into painful and traumatic times. One piece I left right to the end was a representation of when the paramedics were called to our apartment after what we think was a seizure I had back in 2021. That one hit way too close to home given my recent fracture and another very traumatic paramedic call. I knowingly didn't linger on that piece of artwork to ensure I didn't get bogged down in its trauma.
As you were asking about resources, one book that I often recommend to writers in my work as a Creativity Coach is Elizabeth Gilbert's "Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear". I've always liked the tone she sets around her writing and the way she holds her creativity very lightly. She did a great TEDtalk many years ago that I highly recommend if you haven't seen it already -- https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_your_elusive_creative_genius
Best of luck in your writing!