Bloody But Unbowed

It seems like longer than a week since I last posted. You work yourself to a nub, time does funny things. I guess that's the deal.

Anyway, it's Wednesday, and the workshop is almost entirely done, done, done. I've outlined it and I've written a narrative that I can read half a dozen times between now and showtime. My only concern is that it's too short, that I'll talk for 10 minutes and then it'll be over, and question time.

Mind you, if it does take 10 minutes, I'm thinking it's going to be an intense 10 minutes. There's a lot of information in what I have, probably more information than I've ever offered. Maybe I ought to put rest breaks in between concepts.

I could also read the narrative out loud--I won't follow it exactly when it comes time to present, I'll use the outline instead--but that should give me some sense of how long I'll be talking.

(I do best when I have to think and remember what I want to say, rather than having a firm script. The outline just keeps me somewhat on track. Because I can wander and get seriously lost.)

Anyway, I'll do my best, given what I know about what seems to work, and by 3:00 PM Saturday (at the latest), it'll be behind me...

Arga barga

"Arga barga" is about all I feel truly competent to say. The brain is scrambled. Scrambled, I tell you. And out of the info-overloaded mess between my ears, I must somehow extract a coherent, informative and entertaining workshop by next Thursday. (Okay, I don't have to give the workshop until Saturday, but I like to leave myself some wiggle room for the inevitable disaster.)

Under normal circumstances I wouldn't be at this particular level of arga-barga at this point in time (relative to my performance). I'd be hip-deep in writing the workshop. The thing is, I got in just a little bit over my head.

I thought I understood emotion--which is half the heart of the workshop. It turns out I didn't understand it at all. It's all tied up with consciousness, which is just as weird as it seemed in the fall, when I began this research. Consciousness is huge, it's taking me in all kinds of interesting directions that I think will radically impact the way I develop characters (the other half of the heart of the workshop), and I think that will make for an even cooler workshop than I'd hoped for.

So why am I struggling with this now?

For once in my life, it isn't procrastination. It's partly that I had other things that were just as important, but were slightly more urgent because they had earlier deadlines. It's partly that it took me a while to digest some of the things I read in the fall, and it's partly that it's taken me this long to find the books I needed all along. Great books, that I might not have been able to absorb in November, but still...

I think part of what's making me so dead, mentally, is that I'm writing the workshop with half my brain while I'm absorbing new information with the other. And I'm trying to grasp what I'm learning so I can use it as a writer, and that's a huge mental-energy suck. Still, I really do think this is going to turn characterization inside out for me, and I suspect that will add nuance and grit to the people living in my stories. And if I can see how by next Thursday, I'll be able to tell other people about it, and they'll get something out of this. (And I'll be very excited by this, and an excited speaker generally makes for an interesting speaker. So this is all good. Really.)

I can't say more, but I can give you a partial list of the books I've read that have led me to this point. In no particular order:

• The Emotional Brain by Joseph LeDoux
• The Feeling of What Happens by Antonio Damasio
• The Man Who Tasted Shapes by Richard Cytowic
• The Three-Pound Enigma by Shannon Moffett
• An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain by Diane Ackerman

What I've Been Doing

Okay, I do know one thing I've been doing: playing with Microsoft OneNote 2007. I'm using it to manage the buckets of information writing a novel generates and I'm loving it because it allows me to do soooo much, including create character collages, which is something I've never been able to do.

Below is a collage of the collages I made. I'm crazymad proud of myself, because I like looking at all three.

So that's what I've been doing. Creating.

Katy Who?

I'm sorry I've been AWOL--I'm not even 100% sure where I've been. Which seems to be the case every time I go missing. I haven't had much to say, and the little I've had has been concerned with my story. Winter's getting me down, too--day after day of cold, bitter cold. What's made it tougher is that Saturday I was out in a denim jacket. Comfortably. And next week the highs are going to be in the mid- to upper 40s. So this sub-zero wind chill stuff is just maddening.

I want it to be spring. I want it to be light before 6:00 AM. I want to go out in sleeveless tops.

Instead, I'm bundling myself into everything I own and waddling to the car like an olive green penguin.

Sigh.

I'm probably going to be missing again for a bit. I'm working on a workshop for the New England Chapter's Let Your Imagination Take Flight conference, held March 30-31 at the Crowne Plaza in Natick, MA. (Anne Stuart's speaking! So is Barbara Samuel! How cool is that? If you want to join us, there's still room--just go to the New England Chapter conference webpage for details.

Anyway, my best workshop MO is to mull over ideas until shortly before the day I'm giving it, and then scribble like crazy leading up to it. I'm actually out of mulling-it-over time and starting on the scribble madly portion of the program. And that's going to eat into a lot of my everything else time.

But I'll be back...