Midnights, March: 31

I have realized that if I stand a chance at happiness in this season, I need to get more sleep. That means cutting out this night feed as much as Albie will let me. Yes, I wanted to bulk him up a bit with extra Night Calories—Nutrition After Dark—but I will just have to do my best to convince Ol’ Wiggly-Pants McGee to buckle down and concentrate on eating more during the day. Sun’s out…tongue’s out? No. Oh, yikes. Forget I said that. 

Does this mean you won't continue Midnights, March into April? I hear you ask. Good question, you! To which I say, Not if I can help it. Though I’m not sure much has changed in terms of skill or motivation over the past month, this nightly discipline has still been a valuable exercise as I ease back into writing. At the very least it's reminded me how much I really do enjoy blogging. But I probably won't do it every night. It’s time to get back to fiction. 

But anyway. Thank you, as always, for reading. 

I love you. 

Be well. 

(That is a threat.)

Midnights, March: 30

A HISTORY:

The first story I ever wrote was composed (and illustrated!) in heavy-handed pencil on red construction paper stapled together. Titled When I Was Small, it chronicled the misadventures of a girl who woke up one morning, Kafkaesque, to find herself shrunk down to roughly the size of a ripe strawberry. Much of the plot was devoted to the tiny character’s struggle to get down the stairs. I was six.

The second story I remember writing came about a few years later: a Christmas story about a funny pair of elves who appeared in a girl’s bedroom one night (I wonder who the girl was based on?). It was meant as a gift for my writer-professor grandfather, but it quickly ballooned into a whole adventure story—Santa was missing, and also there was some sort of White Winter Queen? The worldbuilding was admittedly…muddled.

Anyway. In typical Carrie fashion, I was still finishing the story in the car on the way to my grandparents’ house, stuffed in the middle seat between two of my sisters, typing ponderously on my dad's brick of a laptop with a rising sense of panic. “We can print it there,” my dad assured me, but no one expected just how many tractor-feed pages the ancient dot matrix printer would spit out. A few weeks later, during my birthday celebration, my grandfather pulled out a marked-up copy of my story, handed me a book about writing short science fiction, and taught me about chapter breaks. It was the first time anyone had treated what I was doing like work that deserved critique to make it better. I dedicated my first novel to him.

After that I was always scribbling something but rarely finished anything. I wrote a musical about a cannibal restaurant…scrawled a series of Mary-Sues in endless spiral-bound notebooks…won a handful of awards and contests for essays in junior high and high school. I took a stab at songwriting, and I found out that poetry was not where my talents lie (though LORD KNOWS I TRIED).

When it came time to apply to colleges, my only career plan was to transition directly from undergrad to forest hag, scribbling in messy seclusion until I suffocated beneath the weight of so many notebooks. Maybe someone would unearth something amid the stacks of loose papers worth posthumous publication. To this end, I secreted myself away in a little school in Ohio and emerged three years later with a B.A. in English and a folk-fantasy novella that never got a second draft (reading it aloud put my boyfriend to sleep, which might explain that). Forest haggery proved a more difficult path than anticipated, however, especially because I had become accustomed to enjoying various fancy cheeses from time to time, and such habits require CASH. I tried Any Other Career in pursuit of that filthy lucre: teacher, bookbinder, temp, transcriptionist, receptionist, paralegal. I was fired from a telemarketing position at a nonprofit. I didn’t know charities were allowed to fire people. Writing was the only thing I could do halfway decently, though it was also the least likely to keep me in the aforementioned fancy cheeses.

So I did what any modern, independent woman would do: I got married. Not only did this guarantee me health insurance, but for some reason he happily supported my writing habits (which overlapped suspiciously with the habits of a feral raccoon). Eventually I did self-publish a young adult novel to little acclaim and, in theory, am about halfway through a second draft of the next book in the series. I expect even less success this time around, if it ever gets finished.

You see, when it comes down to it, I’m one of those writers who Doesn’t Actually Write. I’m in it for the lifestyle. The late nights and under-eye circles, the unkempt hair and threadbare robe…the muttering. What else is all this self-loathing good for?

Now that the Tiny Wee’un has come along—the Miniature Knucklehead—DJ Li’l Pipqueak—I’m cursing myself for my lackadaisical habits of yore. I used to have so much tiiime! An embarrassment of it! Enough to utterly SQUANDER!

But this forces me to make a choice. Narrowing a path really clarifies which direction the path is taking. Could these be the circumstances under which forest haggery is finally achieved? With a sweet little goblin playing at my feet?

I guess we’ll find out. In—

A History: The Sequel
or, The Future!

---

Oh my word, I just remembered—that second story was called A NORTHERN QUEST. So ambitious!

Midnights, March: 29

I went back and reread the beginning of the book I wrote.

Why didn't anyone warn me? Why didn't I set up an elaborate security alarm that stopped me from opening that cover? 

It's not that it is, strictly speaking, Bad. It's that it's Final. There were things in the first chapter which, upon this reading, struck me as flowing inelegantly. But I can't go back and change it. Can I give myself grace about it? 

This question feels more urgent, less rhetorical, than it would have a year ago, because I don't think I have it in me to both 1) keep writing, and 2) berate myself over past efforts while marinating in shame. I am not getting nearly enough sleep for all that.

It'd be so easy to use this read-through as an excuse to say, “See? I'm no good at this, either. I'm no good at anything, so I shouldn't even try.”

Or I could just let it go. This sweet little book exists, imperfect and earnest (like me!). I can't change it now; all I can do is make the next one is better—and the one after that, and the one after that—until I have a whole line of Past Carries whose writing deserves grace simply because they didn't know what I know now. Or…will know by then. Or would…will have known…when I…well, anyway.

The work goes on, I s’pose.

Midnights, March: 26

In the sitcom The Good Place, moral philosophy professor Chidi Anagonye compares his indecisive mental process to a fork caught in a garbage disposal.

Oooh, I felt that so much. But for me, I realized today, it's more like a rock tumbler. I never had one (because I wasn't a NERD), but it was familiar enough: place a rock in between two tumblers and set it a-bouncin’ so the friction wears down the rough surfaces until the rock gleams, smooth and unblemished.

Most of the time, my brain puts too many rocks in the tumbler at once and the machine gets overloaded and jams. Too much sensory input, too many thoughts piling up on top of one another. But when I can close my eyes and lie down, it takes away those extra rocks. I count breaths: one, two, inhale, exhale….three, four, out, in. I count to a hundred, and the machine is clear (usually). Then I can drop one rock in, a single question or concept or sentence, and let it tumble about refining itself until it's ready to write down.

Is this an efficient process? Hell no! Do I repeatedly tell myself, “I don't need to write this down; surely I'll remember it”? All the time! Do I ever remember it? Of course not! That's why I wake up so many mornings with smudgy sentences scrawled on my arm in the dark.

Oh. I just looked it up and that's not how a rock tumbler works at all. A bunch of rocks go inside a tumbler together like In a cement truck, and they're turned and tossed with grit and water and that's what does the work. What was I thinking of? A garbage disposal? No. I don't know. But I wrote this short sketch before I knew all that, so just PRETEND that what I'm picturing exists and that a feral little girl has received one for her birthday.

Filed under “What'm I Ever Gonna Use This For?”:

The gift had worked up such a raging lather for clatter and clamor in her that she panted as she poured in a bucket of rocks from the garden, dust flying up in their wake.

She turned on the machine.

Crunch! Scrunch! Kaplink! Scrrrattle!

She laughed in sheer delight at the destructive cacophony. The grinding din reverberated through her body like an electrical current; she stopped just short of running her fingers through the mechanism just to hear the jolly crackle of bones being crushed.

Midnights, March: 27

Coupla tired eyes here, reporting for duty. 

I've been thinking, what if I took the advice of so many of our best writers and knocked out all adjectives in my prose (to say nothing of the adverbs!)?

How grim that sounds. How dreadful and stifling. For I dearly love an adverb, and the adjective is my delight. 

Granted, this guidance is often directed toward novice writers, one of those Rules of Writing meant to solidify a strong foundation before a writer begins to break the rules to achieve specific effects. Instead of she said pleadingly, The Rules suggest, try she pleaded. Don’t depend on modifiers, The Rules advise, when a good, strong, toothsome verb will do the trick (see what I did there?).

[I get it. Rules are important. But they’re not infallible. For instance, ‘Ha, ha, ha,’ he chuckled contains no descriptors. And yet.]

Even without descriptors, however, we still need to set a scene and communicate the manner of action. A writer may use vivid verbs, but if she wants to do more than that, she must fall back on metaphor. This can be wonderfully resonant and artful. But you can’t stack them endlessly, lest they bog down the narrative. Are metaphors always better? More efficient? More elegant?

Sometimes, yes. My thesis advisor in college had to straight-up tell me to add more metaphors to my writing, so maybe there’s something to it. They can be puh-retty effective.

Still, I like adjectives. Maybe my writing can veer into the florid because of it; maybe it verges on purple at times. I just want a little more room to play with sounds sometimes, or I want what I communicate to be precise. All art is limited to begin with; why eliminate one set of tools out of mere prejudice? 

Likely it is better writing to thin out the crowd of adjectives and adverbs. But it is not my style. And that matters, too.

Midnights, March: 25

This afternoon, the type of warm early-spring afternoon where the new shoots are so hearty-green they're almost blue, the baby fell asleep on our walk. I parked his stroller next to a bench. I pulled out my notebook. I pulled out a pen. And then I sat, watching the river, and scribbled in said notebook with said pen for ten glorious minutes. 

At which point an elderly couple approached along the trail, their smiles hungry, their gait surprisingly quick.

“What do you have in there?” they called out coyly. 

“Eighteen pounds of pure black tar heroin,” I thought but did not say. 

Nor did I say, “What do you think, old woman? This is the weight of my own mortality. Careful! It bites!”

What I most wish I’d said was, “Biggest damn pigeon you've ever seen.”

They came right up to us as if they owned the place and cooed loudly enough that the baby's eyes fluttered open in surprise. 

“What's all this?” he asked me with a look. “More grandparents?”

The woman bent close to my face. “I haven't had one of them in sixty-seven years.”

Sixty-seven years! Then she must be at least in her late eighties. And still her lipstick shade was so fresh. 

And yet, they had woken my sleeping baby and must therefore be my enemies for all time. 

Midnights, March: 22

First day of spring, and boy did she let us know it. To celebrate, watch me sketch a little something in real time: 

Draft 1:

I had a best friend in first grade who still sucked her thumb. Not all the time, but if we were watching a movie, she’d pop it in there. [Also her house was always FULL of candy but she never suggested we sneak any during sleepovers, which was disappointing to say the LEAST. Like if Willy Wonka never sampled his own creations. Wait—do you think he ever snacked? Did the Oompa Loompas? Does Oompa-Loompa have a hyphen? No it does not. Probably Willy never got too high off his own supply, otherwise the whole Augustus Gloop song wouldn’t go so hard on the virtue of moderation. Unless—!] Consequently, her fingers were always a little bit red and a little bit damp. They were small, too, like […like what? Like soggy matchsticks. Maybe. Her dad used to eat birthday candles as a party trick—is there anything there?] soggy matchsticks. [Her mother was always listening to Shania Twain and had the obligatory ‘90s themed kitchen, though I didn't recall what the theme was.] This friend was an only child, and I guess that's what I thought only children were like: [Oh, her mom also made QUILTS. The process seemed needlessly complicated and joyless to me. Insert earlier:] We used to play Mario Kart, and her tiny hands on the controller were so much better than mine. I didn't have any sort of console at home, but I thought maybe it was the slight tackiness of her fingers that kept her from spinning out on the beach track. [What was it called? KOOPA TROOPA BEACH! I found a video of it and saw the exact spot where I would always overcorrect and spin into the water. Maddening.]

[Okay, now to give a messy draft some meaning. Take out all the Willy Wonka stuff and other unimportant asides. I actually think the candy part is important, but phrase it differently. I want to express a difference between her and me but without getting into the weeds. She had her own room! I shared with my sister! She had jars filled with sour belts! I had a dozen chocolate chips for dessert that I would stage weddings for, with a honeymoon in my belly! Who cares? I'm most interested in the candy, actually, because I think it shows the contrast best. But I don't want to dive into narrative; I want to keep it light and observational with humor and distance. And I'm still interested in the small hands that made her seem like a baby even though…what? Even though she had all this stuff. Everything she could want. Why did she still need to suck her thumb? And what does it say about me that I just wanted to eat all her candy she didn't care about?] 

Her head would drift onto my shoulder, her mouth would fall open to reveal a tiny thumb damp with [desire? Ew, no. Greed? Discontentment? There is a word for this, I know it. Damp with…maybe “damp” is the problem. Clammy? Is that better?] to reveal a tiny thumb, red and worried.

Draft 2:

I had a best friend in first grade who still sucked her thumb. Not all the time, but if we were watching a movie, she’d pop it in there. As a result, her fingers were always a little bit red and a little bit damp, small and brittle like soggy matchsticks. Her house was so different from the bustle and noise and crowd of mine: Her mom always had a quilt in progress, spread over the dining table that was never used for dining. The process seemed needlessly complicated and joyless to me, but she put on a Shania Twain CD and resumed her meticulous work, leaving us to play endless games of Mario Kart. My hands were clumsy on the controller. I didn't have any sort of console at home. Secretly I wondered if maybe it was the slight tackiness of her fingers that kept her from spinning out on Koopa Troopa Beach. The greatest wonder of her house was the pantry. My memory of it overflows with candy—candy that would be a cinch to reach if we climbed up the shelves, but I understood that it’s bad manners to suggest climbing the cabinets in other people’s houses. Despite my restraint, my friend never suggested we sneak any during sleepovers, which was disappointing to say the LEAST. This friend was an only child, and I guess that's what I thought only children were like: a pool in the backyard, a Nintendo 64 with two controllers, and a pantry full of candy you never needed to eat because it was always there. Before wiggling into sleeping bags we’d curl up on the couch with a movie and before the end her head would drift onto my shoulder, her mouth falling open to reveal a tiny thumb, red and worried.

[Hokay. It’s a little stilted still, needs a little pruning, more flow and resonance, but it’s getting there. Maybe less about the mom. I dunno.]

Draft 3:

I had a best friend in first grade who still sucked her thumb. Not all the time, but if we were watching a movie, or after snuggling down into our sleeping bags at night, she’d pop it in there. For comfort, I suppose. Or out of habit. Either way, her fingers were always a little bit red and a little bit damp, small and brittle like soggy matchsticks.

Most of our sleepovers took place at her house, so different from the noise and bustle of sisters and pets at mine. Her mom always had a quilt in progress, spread over the dining table that was never used for dining. The process seemed needlessly complicated and joyless to me, but she’d put on a Shania Twain CD and resume her meticulous work, leaving us to play endless games of Mario Kart side by side on the living room rug. My hands were clumsy on the controller since I didn't have any sort of console at home, but secretly I wondered if maybe it was the slight tackiness of her fingers that kept her from spinning out on Koopa Troopa Beach.

The greatest wonder of her house, though, was the pantry. My memory of it overflows with candy—candy that would be a cinch to reach if we climbed up the shelves, but I understood that it’s bad manners to suggest climbing the cabinets in other people’s houses. Despite my restraint, she never suggested we sneak any during sleepovers, which was disappointing to say the least. This friend was an only child, and I guess that's what I thought only children’s lives were like: a pool in the backyard, a Nintendo 64 with two controllers, a bedroom to yourself, and a pantry full of candy you never needed to eat because it was always there. Her life held endless riches, wonderful variety—why did she only want to drop banana peels on Rainbow Road and watch my Yoshi plummet to his doom?

After dinner we’d curl up on the couch in front of a movie, and before the end her head would invariably drift onto my shoulder, her mouth falling open to reveal fingers curled beneath a tiny wet thumb, red and worried.

[There we go. Not perfect, but Good Enough. Now. What are your thoughts on the process? Did it come together in a satisfying way, or does it still feel lacking? Leave me a critique! But do be gentle, please. I am FRAGILE.]

Midnights, March: 20

Oh, my head was very stupid today and I could hardly write even the most perfunctory sentence. 

Midnights, March: 19

I feel so much better tonight. Whoever invented naps was a genius. A small sleep outside of your regular big sleep? A demi-sleep? A li’l nappetizer? The a-snooze-bouche course? Snore d’oeuvres? That’s just some reeeal smart-brain stuff. Don't get me wrong; I'm still tired with a tiredness that fills my head like bees, but at least the bees are a bit subdued.

Albie stood today. He was holding onto his little Fisher Price push-toy, and I let go, and he stayed up, his plump legs set in a wide stance and his feet planted surely beneath him. I just laughed and laughed in half-disbelieving delight, feeling like Sarah in the Hebrew Bible.

Midnights, March: 16

I’d forgotten how good it feels to really work. To dig into all the little pockets of time I can rustle up, and steal time from other pockets that aren’t mine to use. What I mean is, poking a hand out of the shower to jot down a few lines is finding a little of my own time to devote to writing. In fact, I used to hang a waterproof notebook on the shower wall for just that purpose. But stopping to write a paragraph or two during a board meeting? That's thievery. That time doesn't belong to writing. Which makes me, at times, a li’l bandit. A Time Bandit.

Am I above, say, fumbling for a pen at a red light and scrawling something down on my arm? Of course not. You know me better than that by now. But I will feel slightly conflicted about it. So perhaps I’m not the most fearsome Time Bandit, but I think that makes me approachable. People like a little humanity in a thief. A bit of moral compunction to muddy the waters.

Anyway.

I've even missed the frustration when other responsibilities interrupt, and the satisfaction that there are enough words in me today to warrant interruption.