Averil Dean's Blog, page 24

The Ladder

How do you feel about your job? Do you spring out of bed, looking forward to work? Or, is your job a soul-destroying monotony of pure drudgery, or somewhere in between?

First of all, I think we need to give the Daily Prompt a proper name, so that at times like these I can say, Oh, [insert name], how well you know me this fine Monday morning. Are you looking into my soul, [insert name]? Do you feel my pain?

I’m sure something will come to us. Back to the question.

Photo by Ellen Von Unwerth

I don...

Nightbird

What kind of sleeper are you? Do you drop off like a stone and awaken refreshed, or do you need pitch black and silence to drift off to dream?

I drop off just fine. It’s staying asleep that’s the problem. Last night I woke at 3am after a dream in which I had an incurable cancer and was trying to round up a back-up writer to finish my book in case I couldn’t get it done in time. (All of you were like, Forget it, Averil, you’ll just have to write faster.) It was a sweet dream, in a way. I was b...

Birds

Today is the first day of the rest of my…year. I put my hand in the grab bag, and came up with this:

What are your thoughts on aging? How will you stay young at heart as you get older?

Physically, of course, it’s a bitch. Decades of gradual bloating followed by a slow-motion collapse, until all that’s left is a slip-slidey fabric of skin over swollen bones, white wisps of hair, a querulous voice and a myriad of maladies. It’s what’s in store for all of us if we’re lucky enough to survive to tru...

New Curtains

Time for a new format around here. A new project. Starting tomorrow and for the next 365 days, I’m going to let go of control, embrace creativity, and hold my own feet to the fire.

Which is a grand and self-important way of saying that I’m going to do a year’s worth of daily blog prompts, because I’m fresh out of things to write about, because I need a big fucking spur to the ribs, and also because I think it will be fun—until about day 38, at which time I will be ready to gnaw off a limb to...

Empty Boats

Writing, writing, sitting in the bed (deck chair on the Titanic?), writing. Our mattress is concave, two shallow graves side by side, a small hump in the middle. Drew’s side is empty now, as it often is. I think he’s in Montana. Billings, or Butte. Someplace cold. Someplace not-here. To compensate I’ve covered his half of the bed with books and the cast-off clothes I wore today, my bra doing that weird empty thing with the cups all crumpled and sad. My headphones are over there. My e-reader....

Reel to Real

This morning I outlined three new scenes, with notes on setting, stage direction, scraps of dialogue that I know I want to incorporate. This is how I get my pages near the end of a project, when I’ve gotten past the what and have moved on to how. I plan the final scenes beforehand and don’t start the real writing until I can see the action in my head, until I can feel the body I’m writing from as if it were my own. This, then this, then this, no this. The reel goes forward and back, changing...

Broads on Broadway

For anyone in Portland tomorrow night, please come see Suzy Vitello and me at Broadway Books. It won’t be all smut-talk, I promise. Suzy’s book, The Moment Before, is a Junior Library Guild Selection and it’s wonderful.

7pm, March 11. Be there or be square.

(I know. I can’t believe I said that, either.)

Photo by Ellen Von Unwerth. And no, that’s not what we’re wearing to the gig.

Misfire

I’m in a state. Thrilled with myself one moment, ready to stick a pen in my eye the next. I have finally tackled the structure problems with Blackbird but am now confronted by everything else that’s wrong with the fucker, along with my complete inability to rise to the occasion. I can’t sleep, except when I’m supposed to be writing. Can’t eat, except by shoving salty things in my face while hypnotized by my pages. Ninety-two came out so pretty I want to frame it; ninety-four makes me want to...

The Well

Weird the way we shut down sometimes, isn’t it? I wish I had something to tell you—there’s plenty going on in the world and in my life, but I have become so mired in self-loathing that I can’t seem to pull myself together long enough to let the words peep out. This is depression, deep dark well of it, and I’ve just got to be quiet for a while until I can locate some handholds and pull myself out.

Photo by Gregory Crewdson

So I will tell you again about some things I noticed, because words are s...

Slow Dance

Some things I saw yesterday:

A form we give our patients, returned with all the appropriate numbers circled for rating the function of the afflicted hand, but with the circles jagged and tenuous as kindergarten stars.
Two holes in the knees of a pair of black leggings.
Miso soup, separating, then stirred to reveal cubes of tofu and concentric circles of bright green onion.
Small hand pressed to a glass door, leaving a perfect, sticky starfish-mark at knee height.
A man who talked and talked and sl...