Tag Archives: spring

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Spring achieved, and a ‘writing’ update

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Photo credit: Matt Botsford. Unsplash license.

Before I get to my tale of angst, I feel I ought to note that today was beautiful in terms of weather. Nearly 70 degrees. It was the first day of the year I slid the screens down in a couple windows and opened them for fresh air. I always feel an easing of the soul when this happens. The dark time is ended. We’ve made it through alive.

I have another ‘writing’ update – and the collective holds its collective breath. (No breath for you! Your social credit score has fallen below permissible levels!)

As I’ve told you before, I’ve been plugging along, trying to learn Audacity, the free recording software that most aspiring book narrators seem to start with. Audacity is quite sophisticated, really, which is part of what scares me.

Thinking back to radio school (Brown Institute, Minneapolis, 1980), I enjoyed a peculiar place in my class. Aside from being one of the oldest students, I was generally considered (or so I remember it) the best copy reader and the worst engineer. A popular, oft-repeated story told of how I panicked in the control room one day, reached desperately for some dial or other, and went over backward in my chair (it had casters), so that I presented the spectacle, through the control booth window, of my feet waving in the air.

This story was completely true.

The disconnect I seem to have with my hands – sort of like a seven-second delay – has always prevented me from handling any mechanical device with confidence, from a can opener to an automobile. Also, I seem to lack the common male aptitude for spatial visualization. So I’m clumsy with any kind of equipment. Typing is a repetitive and minimalistic task, so I can handle that. I’m not much good for anything more demanding.

But today, my drilling with Audacity – just recording and playing and editing a little, throwing my work away at the end of each session – seems to have begun to bear fruit. I’m feeling a little more confident with it. Not a master, but not a stranger in town anymore. That’s gratifying.

One of my major regrets in my life comes from those radio school days. One of my instructors, a professional broadcaster who taught as a side gig, offered to help me get into voiceover work. He considered me talented enough to make it in that business. I was flattered, and made a preliminary demo reel, just for his critique.

He critiqued it. Suggested some improvements.

I was embarrassed that it wasn’t perfect, and I gave up.

This was stupid. I had a chance to get into a field where I could have prospered. But that never-silenced Voice In My Head argued me out of trying any more. My whole life could have been different if I’d accepted the criticism, made improvements, and kept at it until I made the thing work.

The Voice In My Head, I realized recently, doesn’t really hate me. It’s just terrified of failure. It’s trying to protect me from getting hurt. It fails proactively, because it’s less painful to just surrender at the start, rather than trying and falling on my face.

This book narration thing, it seems to me, is a second chance. This time I’m going to try. This time I’m going to take the risk.

Honestly, what do I have to lose?

Writing

Writer’s journal: Spring freeze edition

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Crocuses. Photo credit alesmaze. Unsplash license.

It’s a very Minnesota thing, actually. Yesterday was the first day of spring, so the temperature, which had been flirting with a springlike 60 degrees for weeks, plunged promptly to freezing. And that makes sense, in its way. One consistent thing about our winters is that, however mild they may have gotten, a final blast must infallibly come after the spring equinox. One last hard freeze. Maybe one last blizzard. Like a kid being wakened for school, who whines for just a few more minutes in bed.

We might get snow over the weekend. Quite a lot, even. Don’t put that snow blower away yet, neighbors.

You want spring in this state, you gots to pay your dues. Even if it’s been spring most of the winter.

How is the book coming? The Baldur Game is coming together. I finished another revision and sent it off to beta readers. Once they get back to me, pointing out my howling howlers and shrieking sins of omission, I’ll do some more work on it and – I imagine – get it up on Amazon.

I took a peek at the first few paragraphs after I sent it to the readers – which is cheating according to my personal protocols. This is the time to wipe my brain clean, forget everything about it, so I can come back and view the thing with semi-unbiased eyes.

But that peek told me I’ll probably need to polish it a little more. I may have actually sabotaged myself at some points. I have this quirk I employ, especially in the Erling books. I try for an antique effect by altering my verbs. Instead of writing, “I haven’t got any bread,” I’ll write, “I’ve no bread.” Sounds vaguely Irish, which fits Father Ailill. But my peek suggested that maybe I overdid it. Made the prose difficult to read. I’ll have to check for that.

But not now. Don’t think about it now. For the time being, I’m working my way up to my audio book version of The Year of the Warrior. Very preliminary. Learning stages. The technology scares me, but some people helped me out generously with equipment, and I need to master this stuff. Small steps, ascending learning curve, in the Jordan Peterson style.

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Writing Journal: Rainy day

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Today was a rainy day. Not snowy, rainy. This is not unheard-of in March in Minnesota, but it’s far from the norm. My front yard is entirely free of snow – there’s a little left in back, where the stuff gets piled up at the northeast corner of the house, but even that may be gone now. I haven’t looked out there in a few hours.

The rain has been slow, drippy stuff through most of the day, but I’m hearing thunder now.

A wild surmise begins to burgeon in my heart – we may have seen the last of this winter. The forecast doesn’t show any cold weather or snow for a couple weeks. Of course, we can still get snow even in April, and often do. But the sunshine seems to have gained the upper hand at this point. If we get any more snow, it’s unlikely to establish a beachhead.

Work goes slowly on the new Erling book, but it does go. I’m mostly adding stuff at this point. I’ve got the armature of a book, but it needs fleshing out.

Just wrote a scene (meant to be funny) about haggis, because Macbeth is in the story. This sort of thing is a tad self-indulgent, and if I were a purer artist, I’d probably consider it beneath me. But in my experience, very little is beneath me.

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Spring, our false friend

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False spring is what we call it. At least I think so. I’m not actually sure I’ve ever heard anyone say “false spring.” But if that’s not what they call it, they ought to. I’ll take full credit. Registered trademark.

Anyway, the sun shone, and the temperature got into the upper 40s (farenheit, for our European readers). The snow is more than half gone from my neighbors’ lawn to the east. It seems barely diminished on my neighbor’s lawn to the west. And I’m kind of in the middle. I supposed the inequity has to do with the angle of the sun. Or systemic sexism – but in that case, it favors the woman.

Anyway, it was so nice out I decided to go on the back porch this afternoon and work on the new Erling book. I’d been stalled in my revision; a timeline problem that overwhelmed me one evening a month ago. Since then I’ve been spooked about it, sure it was beyond my powers to solve. I decided I was in a rut and needed to change my writing environment, so I sat on the porch, rolled my pants up to get some sunlight, and gave it another look.

I think I solved the problem – which means there’s probably a couple loose threads I’ll still need to fix in a later revision. But anyway, I’m on the job again.

James Lileks complained (sort of) about this warm spell a few days back. He noted that it won’t last, that we’ll get more snow and all this warmth and sunlight will have been but a cruel tease.

I sympathize keenly with that sentiment. If there’s one thing I’m all about, it’s looking at the dark (and cold) side. But you know, the knowledge that more snow is coming doesn’t make today less sweet. The air was no less mild. The photons my legs absorbed were no less Vitamin D-incentive.

It’s not just about false spring, either. You’ve got to think that way every day, when you get to my age.

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Rite of Spring

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Today was one of those deceptive, insidious March days in Minneapolis, when the sun shines bright, the temperature soars into the upper 30s, the snow tries to melt, and all nature smiles. It’s false, that smile, hiding ample devious malignancy for a dozen bad dames in hard-boiled mysteries. She’s a beautiful dame, with classic lines that never go out of style, but she has a gun in her garter, a stiletto up her sleeve, and her ring holds a secret compartment containing a rare Middle Eastern poison, undetectable by modern science.

In other words, it’s March in Minnesota, and we’re gonna have at least one more blizzard. But the dame was lookin’ good today, and you might as well enjoy her beauty before she shivs you in the ribs.

I left the cocoon of Blithering Heights to journey out to the mean streets of Minneapolis. There’s a big church near Franklin Avenue known as Mindekirken (Memorial Church). It’s your one option if you want to attend a Lutheran church service in Norwegian in this city. It also serves as a sort of Norwegian cultural center.

Every Tuesday Mindekirken hosts an open house, with a nice Norwegian-style lunch and an invited speaker. Today that speaker was Your Ob’t. Servant. I spoke about the Icelandic Sagas, and they let me sell books afterwards. (Yes, I know today was Monday, not Tuesday. Just for this week, they had to move the event because of the primary elections tomorrow. The church, I assume, is a polling place.)

It went well. Turnout was good. Some audiences are better than others. This audience, though mostly made up of people (even) older than me, was sharp and appreciative. They laughed loudly at the story of “Thorarin’s Toe” from Heimskringla, which is my gauge of the mental acuity of an audience.

Good (and profitable) days have been rare for me of late. Thanks to the Mindekirken folks for making one possible. I was so buoyed that I actually took myself out for dinner at Perkins tonight, something I don’t do often anymore.

Music

‘Les Bicyclettes de Belsize’

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When spring comes, I generally think of this song. It came out about the time I graduated from high school, and followed me into college, performed by various artists. But this is the original version, from the short film of the same name, “Les Bicyclettes de Belsize.”

The film (which I’ve never actually seen) is about a young man in London who falls in love, in rather improbable fashion, with a fashion model. Why is the title in French? I have no idea.