Crone willing and if the Creek don't rise

[pjthompson]

I've been slowly going through old paper journals to purge the more embarrassing entries. This is quite a masochistic practice so I can only do it a little bit at a time. Although I don't want to completely throw these journals—they are a record of my life—I don't want some of that crap to live on. The whiny bits. The rune/Tarot readings with whiny questions. The really, really bad poetry.

So I came across an idea and outlines from a 1991 journal re: a novel I had wanted to write about The Crone and had myself a good laugh. As if I had a clue. I still don't have a clue but because I realize I don't have a clue I may be further along on making something of that idea. The requisite clue isn't about wisdom, it's about knowing that you don't have wisdom, just the accumulation of experience, and that anyone who claims to be wise probably isn't.

But this was also an illustration of how some ideas can be worked with almost immediately but others have very long gestations. I once heard Louise Erdrich talking about this in an interview, how sometimes she won’t be able to work on an idea until twenty years down the line because when she got the original idea she wasn’t yet ready for it. I thought I understood at the time, but I really understand it now. (Or, maybe, I just have the illusion of understanding.)

I may be able to write this idea now. I've been poking at a new form of it recently and it actually seems to be moving. We'll see. It's nice to be writing but I do wish one of these competing ideas would gel so that I’m not constantly circling and not making real progress. Survival of the fittest when it comes to competing ideas. Being ready to write them. This crone seems to be the one with the most juice. Crone willing, she’ll win the race.

Like I said, we'll see.

Comments

[sartorias]

Yay!

[pjthompson]

😁

[whythehellnot]

I have often purged diaries and journals - both paper and digital. I kept bearable poetry - condensing it into one book.

I finally recognized that there was a peculiar therapeutic effect sometimes. Standing in front of a pile of burning hand-written books, or deleting a blog or online journal was a sort of proxy suicide at times of extreme misery and desolation! I literally consigned history of my life at its worst to destruction and death to ESCAPE it.

[pjthompson]

Yes, that's what I meant about the whiny bits--all the therapeutic pages have been consigned to the dustbin of history, as well as most of the oracles stuff. And yes, it felt good to be clear of all that.

But I often used these notebooks more like commonplace books, pasting in scraps of history, and for workbooks for my writing, so I've kept that stuff.

I rarely used my blog to vent, so I've gotten rid of some of it but letting the rest ride. It's sometimes embarrassing to see how my has changed on some things, or how damnably twerpy I was sometimes, but again, I'm letting it ride.

[whythehellnot]

I've decided the whiny bits are necessary at times. Sometimes wallowing in the feeling is the only chance we get for internal elucidation of what has happened to us and what we need to do about it. But you are absolutely right, later you look back and go "Oh my gawwwwwds!"

But hey, who doesn't love a small bonfire of personal vanities and worries from time to time?

[pjthompson]

Oh, don't get me wrong. I still do the whiny bits, and agree they help you work through things. But I don't keep permanent journals anymore. I do the whiny bits in spiral notebooks along with notes for other things. When I fill one up, I digitize what I need to keep and throw the whiny bits out with the notebook.

[rimturse]

Heh... my mother recently gave me back my old diary from when I was 15-17, and I'll be throwing it out without reading it. I have no desire to revisit that time in my life. My last entry was me lying about a pregnancy scare, just to confirm that my mother was indeed reading my diary as I suspected. And oh boy, was she. That led to me moving out at 17. I must have forgotten to bring the diary. Not that it mattered since she'd already read it.

I hope your idea is ready to hatch. I, for one, would love to read it.

[pjthompson]

I do have some of those teenaged diaries around here somewhere and I'm not sure I want to read/keep them. The ones I'm going through are journals/workbooks/commonplace books from my late twenties onward. The ones from my late twenties are painful enough to read. I don't think I'm brave enough to go back to the teen years!

And thanks for your interest in my idea. Last week I managed about 2000 words on it, but this weekend another one came on strong, even waking me up in the middle of the night to write stuff down. So...I guess I'm working on that one now. It's more advanced than most of the other things so I sincerely hope things settle down so I can finish something.

[rimturse]

Sounds like the story is speaking to you! :)