NotWriting, the blog

Hello, and welcome to the thirty-eighth installment of NotWriting.com, an open journal on how one writer spends his time when he really should be writing.

We all have seen films that speak to us, and if we're lucky, in our lifetimes we might even see one or two that change the way we view the world. Two weeks ago, I saw just such a film.

MARCH OF THE PENGUINS is one of the most sensitive, profound, well-acted (no actors, just penguins) and informative films I have ever seen.

To give you an idea of how much those penguins haunted me, again, I saw the film two weeks ago and haven't been able to stop thinking about it.

For the first three days after seeing this film, the penguins' spell on me was potent indeed. Every couple of hours, images of those poor penguins would pop into my head: their shambling 70 MILES——multiple times——to and from their mating grounds, huddling together against the horrible icy wind, struggling to keep their single eggs warm.

Luckily I always seemed to be doing something low-impact at the moment these images hijacked me, like showering, riding the subway, or putting on socks. I fear that if I'd been driving a car, or worse, operating a jackhammer, folks would've gotten hurt.

These visions were so all-consuming that two nights in a row I literally sprang awake and said to my wife, "They're down there, right now, huddling together in the dark!"

"Yes, dear," Alexas said. "Go to sleep."

"Are they going to be okay?"

"They'll be fine, Chrissy. They're built for it."

This film, on a topic that almost none of us knew anything about previously, will haunt you, if for no other reason than how self-sacrificing the penguin parents are in their struggle to bring their young into the world. I think all people considering having children should be required to see this film so they can witness what real parenting is like and ask themselves if they would be willing to approach bringing offspring into the world with the same sense of total commitment that the Emperor Penguins display in their parenting endeavor.

Perhaps after seeing Mama and Papa Penguin march 70 MILES (multiple times) to get food for the chick, and seeing Papa Penguin balance the unhatched egg on his feet for MONTHS, prospective human moms and dads might take the job a little more seriously.

I have always been fascinated with Antarctica, with its completely inhospitable environment, with the idea that it is the absolute end of the Earth. One day I hope to go there, to walk where Amundsen and Shackleton walked. In the meantime, MARCH OF THE PENGUINS has given life to this most desolate of places, and until I get down there, I will be haunted by those indomitable penguins.

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 02:27 AM | Permalink

Hello, and welcome to the thirty-seventh installment of NotWriting.com, an open journal on how one writer spends his time when he really should be writing.

I've been doing a lot of writing lately——I finished the first draft of one novel in 87 days and am now 150 pages into a second one——which is why I haven't logged onto Notblogging and put up new entries. So much for my adding new material just because it's easy. Hey, vacuuming is easy, but you don't see me doing it every day.

I like to think that I don't write as often as most other bloggers because I wait until I have a fully-formed idea, something I truly want to say. A lot of bloggers seem to ramble on the screen until they find the idea they want to talk about, but then they neglect to do the thing one is required to do for any serious, paid writing, which is to go back and cut their maundering. Even though I am fairly tech-savvy, a part of me——the former newspaper reporter in me, I guess——simply cannot "slap up" entries. My mind is geared to work in drafts, a dirty word in this age of instant publishing.

To this end, I still use a technique my philosophy professor taught me: The Drawer Method. As an adjunct professor myself now, I am passing on this writing tip, elegant in its simplicity, to my students. The idea is this: when you finish a draft of a piece of writing, particularly the first draft, you should put it in a drawer for a while and forget it. (And when I say "drawer," I mean drawer——not a folder on your computer, not a flash drive, not your iPod.) Maybe it's the darkness inside, maybe it's the fact that you can't see your work for a while; whatever it is, the act of putting writing in drawers, even if only for a few hours while you go to a movie, gives you the writer the critical distance you need to read your work fresh, like an ordinary reader will have to.

At the moment, like a winery that stores vintages from many different years and grapes, I have at least a dozen writing projects fermenting, aging if you will, in my filing cabinet drawers. Some of these works I have high hopes for, but a few will turn out to be vinegar. There's a screenplay based on my first novel. I wrote it more as an experiment than anything. There's the first draft of that new novel I mentioned earlier. That one, I think, has potential; but only time in the drawer will tell. There are six or seven "finished" short stories that are out making the rounds of the literary journals now. If they all come back as rejections, I'll pull them out of the drawer and give them another look. Then there are the ten or so stillborn pieces of work, stories and sketches that, as much as I try to convince myself I'll one day go back and fix them, will never know an existence beyond the drawer. And finally there are the dozens of notebooks, pocket-sized and full-sized, that lay heaped in one of the bottom drawers and which, in the depths of winter depression, I will turn to for inspiration.

So, bloggers of the world, unite! Join me in taking a step that will elevate the quality of all writing on the web. By printing out your entries and putting them in a drawer for a while before posting them, I promise you will become better bloggers. You will see mistakes you didn't notice the first time. You will think of fresher, more vivid, images. And, most importantly, you will give your subconscious a chance to decide what it truly wants to say.

(Note: This entry lay in a drawer for a week. Maybe it should have stayed there. The thing is, the only way you'll know if your chicks can fly is to push them out of the nest, and ultimately writing is about communication. If the stuff ain't out there and peoples ain't readin' it, it don't exist.)

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 02:24 AM | Permalink