Averil Dean's Blog, page 25

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...

Give Me Love

Happy Valentine’s Day, beloveds.

XOXO

Mayo

I’m on the pony, on the pony, on the fucking pony. In other words, writing. Words all strung out and dopey, gnawing sleepiness, circular walks over familiar territory, chanting open sesame from the inside of a locked room. Someone recently called me weird—and not even my writing, which is par for the course, but me personally, with an implication of otherness: We are here being normal, you are over there being weird. Just stand where you are while we get the name tag printed up. And I thought...

The Locked Room

Blackbird 2.0. I spent the weekend mapping out a new outline and got a start on the writing, beat down yesterday morning’s panic attack over the looming deadline, and woke this morning with an unambiguous directive in my head: simplify. The structure of this work is becoming increasingly complex, with a third-person, backward-moving timeline spanning several years, and a new first-person narrative detailing the events of a single hour, weaving through the middle of it. (Yeah, I know what you’...

Smooches

Ahh. I just got off the phone with my editor at MIRA. She’s read the new draft and has walked me through her ideas for revision. The chick is brilliant. She managed to give me a shitload of homework that I can’t wait to do.

Who’s the best source of feedback for your work?

Photo by Ellen Von Unwerth

Doldrums

I haven’t been writing lately. I’ve been depressed, I suppose, though it’s hard to tell. I recognize the bigger fiery emotions, but this slow coldness is harder to name. Could be the winter doldrums, or low-level angst about my job, or diminished expectations, or grief. It doesn’t matter really. We feel what we feel until it passes.

It should be something to write my way through, but I’ve been obliterating the words on impact. It’s a side effect of publication, this apologetic feeling for havi...