The Confabulator Cafe

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  • Ephemera – How much have you written this week?

    This week we discussed how we as writers make time to write, since most of us aren’t full-time writers. Having talked about that, it seemed only natural to ask how much the Confabulators wrote this week. Were we true to our claims as far as making time to write?

    Sara Lundberg

    I think I had too much free time this week, so I didn’t write much. I also tend to go into writing hibernation for a few months after Nanowrimo in November. I’m still recovering from that. But this week I wrote the flash fiction for the Cafe, a couple of discussion assignments for my class, and, my crowning glory, a cheesy simile for a Valentine’s Day card for the significant other, Jack Campbell, Jr.

    Jack Campbell, Jr.

    I wrote a lot this week, but the only fiction I wrote was for the upcoming flash fiction here at The Confabulator Cafe. I wrote a lot about Jacques Derrida’s concept of Deconstuction as it relates to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown and various theoretical analyses of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The most important thing I wrote this week, however, was a Valentine’s Day letter to Sara Lundberg. While her card was a simile comparing me to coffee, my letter was written in the form of a long metaphor. In her words, “We really are literary geeks.”

  • The Art of Never Making Time: A Cautionary Excuse

    Most days, I don’t make time for writing.

    I can’t write fiction during the day. I mean, I can. Under the right circumstances, if its calm and I have a chunk of time to myself. I know, I know — write even if you only have five minutes, but its just not me, especially when I’m rewriting and I have to both read and write. So, most often, I write at night, after Miles has gone to bed.

    I have all these fantasies of kicking the nocturnal habit and being productive when Miles goes off to school. I could get my work done in half the time it takes now. I could spend the rest of the day being social and active and writing fiction. Maybe I’ll also bake all day and my house will be clean and I will be effortlessly gorgeous. You know what, its my fantasy, let me have it.

    Ashley & Miles
    I’ve lost feeling in my left side.

    I’ve now been writing this post for over an hour. 250 words, because I had to help Miles unlock the bathroom door, get his breakfast together, help him make some toast, make myself some coffee — and then there was a tantrum, which has lead to him clinging to my entire left side crying, “Mommy, I’m scared of the ghosts, I’m scared of the owls, I’m scared of the scary trees, I’m scared of the spooky animals outside!”

    Now he’s decided that we’re not friends and I need to go to my room because I won’t let him play with my coffee. When I’ve ignored that long enough — yup. Imaginary injury, right on schedule. Apparently a Backyardigan hurt his foot.

    (more…)

  • Hitting the Reset Button

    I liked that this was a switch more than a button. I spent way too many hours playing games on this old console.
    I liked that this was a switch more than a button. I spent way too many hours playing games on this old console.

    “Butt in chair, fingers on keys.”

    I don’t know who said that first and I guess it doesn’t really matter. It’s true. It’s how I have motivated myself to spend the time I need to writing. My Twitter feed tends to be filled with people who are also writing stories and when I’m distracted from actually making words into stories, I can usually find some motivation in there. The You Should Be Writing meme is helpful, sometimes, too. Especially when it’s Neil Gaiman glowering at me. I don’t want to give you the impression that I make time to write exclusively out of guilt because that’s not the case but sometimes it’s true. Like most of us, I’m easily distracted.

    You played what in Words With Friends? Who beat my high score in Solitaire Blitz? (more…)

  • Time, and a Total Digression

    They say if you want to get something done, give it to a busy person. They have the rad time management skills to make it happen.

    I live alone. I have complete control of my time and attention. There is nobody shouting, “Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom!Mom!Momomomomomom!!!” in my ears. [0] I haven’t had cable TV for more than a year, so I should be writing all the time, right?

    Right…..

    My secret to getting anything done, in fact, relies on three tools. A well-crafted ToDo list, a deadline, and a kitchen timer. If I get all the errands on my ToDo list done by 1:00, I’ll have the afternoon to be lazy. Writing gets put on the ToDo list, just like laundry, dishes, taking out the recycling, returning books to the library, and so forth.

    (more…)

  • Time and Teaching

    Once, when I was in teacher-training school, my class had to read an article about English teachers and writing. This article expressed the belief that such teachers should not pursue their own writing projects, because any time spent on self-centered expression was time taken away from lesson planning and grading, the true purposes of life for any educator. My classmates and I condemned this concept vociferously, both from a personal sanity perspective and from an educational perspective. For how does one teach a process that s/he does not experience? How can adults model a literary life they do not have?

    Alas, now that I am a teacher, I understand the article’s perspective, even as I disagree with it. Teaching is a time-consuming job. In the current environment we are asked to do more work with less funding and less time, and the powers that be would rather we think of every moment we are not teaching or preparing to teach as a moment stolen from the kids. Several educational consultants have even suggested that if we do ever go on vacation, we must record the vacation and turn it into a lesson for the kids. Of course the kids deserve the best education I can possibly offer them. But it’s easy to start thinking of myself purely as a work machine, here to revise lessons endlessly and integrate new technologies seamlessly and innovate constantly to improve. The constant admonishments from the media and neoliberal organizations about the dangers of bad teachers ring in my ears every time I sit down with a book, every time I pull out my keyboard, every time I journal rather than grade. (more…)

  • Making Time

    Have you ever had an overpowering urge to do something at the expense of everything else in your life? If you have, then you’ll know how I feel about writing… well, at least about two percent of the time. The rest of the time writing almost seems like it comes in last place of my priorities. That’s why I frequently feel like I have to make the time to write.

    Shhh, don’t tell Belgarath the Sorcerer that I’m making time! He’d start lecturing me on the dangers of messing with magic that is way over my head! It’ll be our little secret. Seriously though, if I could fit extra hours into the day, I would, consequences be damned. There simply isn’t enough time to do everything that I need, or want, to do.

    It’s not that I don’t want to write, it’s just that there are so many other things I could be doing. I have friends that want to spend time with me. I have to go to work. There are TV shows I have to watch so that I can fangirl over them with my friends when I spend time with them. There are books to read. There are rooms to be cleaned and dinners to be made. And by the time I’m done with all of that, all I want to do is curl up with a glass of wine before going to bed. (more…)

  • Time Theft

    I steal time. I never use it when I have it. Somehow, I write better when I’m working with borrowed time, when I’m up against a deadline, or I’m behind. I stay up way too late. I sneak time at work. I put off chores, show up late to gatherings, I ignore loved ones.

    If I have a whole day set aside to write, you bet your ass I will find a million other things to fill it with. However, if I have a million things to do and the itchings of an idea, I will put off the world to write it.

    (more…)

  • The Desire to Write

    Judging by the lateness of this submission, I could simply answer, “Not very well,” and leave it at that. However, a one sentence response probably won’t fly, so here goes an attempt to elaborate.

    While in college, I found the best time to write was during class. Not every class, but the long boring lecture halls were a creative gold mine while pretending to take notes. Instead of being bored, I filled a lot of notebook pages with outlines and the beginnings of stories that would never get finished.

    (more…)

  • Escaping to Write

    I don’t make time to write. I make time to run . . . away.

    Lately that’s the only way I can get anything done.

    Like most of my still-waiting-to-become-career-novelist friends, every day is a balancing act between competing responsibilities. I work from home, I’m the primary care giver for my two children, and I really want to make this literary thing happen. Each of these areas has its own agenda, and rarely do they work in concert.

    In the past, I’ve done a decent job of compartmentalizing things. When the kids were home, I’d focus on their needs. But when the munchkins were at school, I’d divide my time between writing fiction, writing for work, and chores around the house. Lately, though, things have kind of fallen apart.

    (more…)

  • There is always time to write, right?

    I am ashamed. I sit typing this blog two days before it will post. Less than two days, in fact. Forty-seven and a half hours. Normally, we try to have posts completed for editing two weeks before they go live. This is the first time I have failed.

    I’ve always been a proponent of a blue-collar writing mindset. R.L. Naquin calls me the terminator, because I write at a consistent pace without stopping, without giving in to distraction. So, why is it that I have broken my cardinal rule of always meet your deadline? I didn’t have time.

    But there is always time for writing. I say it. Everyone here will say it this week. Every author you ever meet will say you have to make the time. I still stand by it, and even if it is stretching a bit, I will argue that my time has been spent writing, just not the actual typing part of it.

    I began a Master’s program studying literary theory and criticism last summer. I knew I would be sacrificing a lot of writing time, but I had hopes that in the end, it would be worth it. Some of the greatest writers have also been literary critics. This includes Henry James, Oscar Wilde, John Gardner, Leo Tolstoy, Margaret Atwood, Ralph Ellison and Anthony Burgess. Edgar Allen Poe was more successful as a critic during his life than he was with his creative writing.

    It seems less common in recent times, as graduate-level English academia has largely split into MFA students, who study writing, and MA students, who study literature.

    That being said, I’ve always been a bit old school. John Gardner has always been an influence for me, and his feelings were that writers should study literature, rather than just writing. As such, I am giving it a shot.

    In the past two weeks, when I should have written this, I’ve read three books, a couple dozen articles on criticism, written about Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown from both Russian Formalism and Structuralism perspectives, and have discussed The String of Pearls (the original Sweeney Todd story) as it relates to Sweeney Todd as a metaphor for social fears, the rise of the middle-class in 19th century London, and the dangers of capitalism without ethics.

    Add in my responsibilities at my day job, which is fifty hours a week, and being a father and boyfriend, and there hasn’t been time for much else. I should be done with my Master’s degree after the Summer of 2014, but until then, time is always going to be tight.

    Still, I hope that in the end it will be worth it, and I will come out of the two years as a better writer, and perhaps contribute my own criticism. Until then, I take the same approach to literature that I take to writing. Get the work done, do it well, and hope for the best. In the meantime, you can always fine me here.