Breathing while you're up

I've been in a few musicals, and from them I've learned one or two things about singing. One thing I remember is that you are supposed to time your breathing, so that you know where you are planning on stealing a gulp of air. I was never very good at that. I would see the long note coming, panic, and end up breathing early. Then, when the long note arrived, it showed up just as I was about half-way through my lungful, and I would wimp out about half way through.

Writing can be like that sometimes. It's important in a busy, busy schedule, to plan when you come up for air. If you breath too early, you might not have enough time to do what you need to get done.

The 29th of March is my twenty second birthday, and this week was all about holding my note. Staying on task, keeping my eyes on the prize so that I can go home over Easter. And it wasn't easy.

When we work on our capstone projects, sometimes we have to push. To force our minds to wax creative at the absolute worst and hardest possible times. To meet deadlines and expectations, we just keep squeezing, hoping to find the proverbial golden egg amongst our many thoughts. This week was like that for me.

But! It gets better. Pushing has it's rewards. First and foremost, when you finish pushing... you have something. It might not be good, (or have a beginning, middle, and end), but it is edittable. Some of my best work has come out of edits. I read what I wrote, sometimes weeks ago, and I just know what I wanted to say. Editing prose is hard, but the trick is remembering the goal. Visualize what the finished product will look like, try to keep the emotional journey in you mind, and just push.

Does anyone have any other tips for editing prose? Editing poems is great because I can see everything I want to do, and work with; but prose is too big for that. It's easy to get discoraged as I try to write within the box I've created for my self. Any ideas?

the thread of your life

It's interesting how in life we have all these expectations for ourselves when we start something new. I realize this is a general statement, but at the moment it applies to my spring break. I went in expecting to spent a ton of time reading and re-writing old drafts and, of course, writing new ones.

But then I worked two jobs, did homework for other classes, and went out of town for half of the week. And in the midst of all of that going on, every time I sat down to write or edit, I got angry at the document.

I got angry because my expectations were holding me back. I expected spring break to be freeing, to inspire me, and to validate me as a writer. I thought I would be finally good at this since I made it halfway through. It took me a few moments to see that perhaps I had set my goals too high. Perhaps I had elevated Capstone into such a "grown-up" thing that it was hard for me to see it as something that I could use for my journey instead of an unrealistic goal that I realized I could never achieve.

Last night I gave up on Capstone reading and went to Barnes & Noble to look at magazines for my new class. I was distracted by Writer's Digest, which contained an article about writing memoir. Thinking this applied for my life much more desperately than finding a magazine to write for, I delved in to the main things in memoirs and how to write one in the best way. These included plot, theme, character, setting, and dialogue. It was theme that stuck out to me, since this is what I've been striving for in my writing (especially my personal essays/memoirs about Italy).

"We are shaped by what we decide to do with the circumstances of our lives," rather than the circumstances themselves. It hit my like a slap of that winter-wind out there right now. The article went on: find out how you've grown, changed, acted and reacted to what you've been through, figure out what it looks like in hindsight from your perspective now, and how will you continue to change because of this? What is the thread of your life?

It occurred to me that I've been trying too hard. I've been trying to be something I'm not, write about something I'm not, and go about it in a something-I'm-not way. I need to think more about how it fits into my life now, and maybe how even Capstone will fit into my life as an experience I will never forget.

Are any of you feeling this way? That perhaps there is more to these Capstone pieces than golden words on silver platters? That maybe our pieces will be dirty and messy just like our lives, but that's okay?

Finding My Sea Feet

Recently, Ms. Hougen asked me how Capstone was going. "It's pretty good," I said, nodding as if to assure myself of that fact. "It took a while to get into it, but I feel like I'm finally finding my...sea feet." She looked at me dubiously. "Do you mean sea legs?" I hung my head in shame.

I think that's a pretty good illustration of my Capstone experience so far. I'm starting to get used to the process, and I'm slowly figuring out what I want to say in my pieces. But I'm still struggling to put it all into words. Sitting in a coffee shop in South Dakota with all my tests and papers behind me, I am so grateful for this break. I'm hoping it will recharge me, give me the energy and inspiration to really dive into my Capstone projects. I hate that I haven't been able to completely immerse myself in them just yet.

I'm also looking forward to doing some more reading. I've still been going through Patricia Hampl's I Could Tell You Stories, but I've been feeling as though I want to diversify my reading material a little, so I've also dipped into Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem and Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Both are really, really good (at least, the small bits I've read so far) - but they're also pretty different from my own style and subject matter. (Didion's is rather journalistic, while Dillard's reads somewhat like a nature diary.)

Part of me really likes that disparity - I think it's good to take in different perspectives so your own writing can reflect some of that well-roundedness. But I wonder if it can also be a little destructive to your own work. (What if my writing comes out sounding nothing like me, or if I start including really unrelated topics, just because I'm subconsciously emulating others' work?)

This sort of goes along with Julie's struggle to reconcile contemporary poetry with her preferred style of more old-fashioned poetry - except I'm wondering about the significance of different styles within the same genre and time period (namely, contemporary personal essay). Do you guys think it's helpful or detrimental to read drastically different styles and subject matters from your own? If you're doing personal essay for Capstone (which I think we all are), what are you reading for inspiration, and why?