near wild heaven

This is now, this is here, this is me, this is what I wanted you to see.

I Thought I'd Move to Another Place Where It Never Rains

I reached page 100 in my draft of this novel about a month ago, and though I had designs on pushing through and cmpleting the chapter I was writing, I found that I could not sustain the energy it would take to write another 10 pages. Not a bad run--sixty pages since mid-January, and this again while temping. I had reached this curious point where my ideas  had been evolving and growing at a faster rate than I could process and integrate them ito the book...I was looking beyond the present chapter more and more, to the one that came after, and what might happen in the last fifty pages. Any substantive idea is a good thing, and shouldn't be turned away, but I became so increasingly preoccupied that my interest in the current chapter was waning. I think I was having a grass-is-greener moment. Why deal wioth the present muck of actually writing, when I could think about how good things will be in another 75 pages!

But, also, was having crisis in other areas. For me, temping and writing (and trying to make modest gains in my reading) was like a game of Jenga. Really. My energy and focus was like the game pieces, and gradually, as another piece was removed, I found it more difficult to focus on reading. It's a labor, this kind of reading I strive to do. It's hard to do it on the side, hard to maintain the proper energy level. This frustrates me since there are still so many holes in my reading. So, to complete the metaphor, the life of temping were the fingers, ever so carefully removing the game pieces of my time and space and energy. I started and abandoned at least a half-dozen books, could not focus on my own work. I wanted the TV--24, Sopranos, even the funniest show on television, American Idol. It's all good entertainment.

The Egypt decision, thogh terribly stressful, came at a good time. I couldn't focus on my writing with this decisionlooming, so I was free not to feel guilt about not writing.  I was mulling this decision, being pulled  from one side to another. I found solace in a collection of essays on fiction, not on fiction itself, and there was something of the compost heap to this reading, constantly turning over in my head what Charles Baxter was identifying, naming and describing, all of which had occurred to me, in less well-developed ways. He filled in what I had only started to voice; I was like a babe in his writerly arms.

And now I have returned to the chapter. It was tough going at first, always is after a delay, but it held up well enough to my deferred scrutiny. I printed up the pages and found myself rewriting phrases, adding to sentences, sharpening what was on the page. This is, in many ways, my favorite time as a writer. It's like peeling away the rough layers to find what's really there underneath, what's better, more precise, more fully realized. It's exciting to know I'll reach a point when this entire project will undergo such transformation. And it will happen in Cairo. A few more weeks, and temping is done, and that lifestyle is overwith, and I'll be teaching again, at perhaps the best university I've yet taught at. Class sizes will be downright reasnable. And, in the 21+ months I'll be in Cairo, I will actually be teaching for about 12 of those months. Time, space, energy...and a keen challenge in Cairo. I wonder what awaits me there?

posted by: zithereen at May 16, 2006 21:09 | link | comments (2) |

You Really Can Live On a River Called the Nile

It's been, rather suddenly, almost a month since posting, and my public has been clamoring for more words, worrying over me. Am I, they wonder, with child (again)? Living the life of a secluded, acquitted pedofile in Bahrain? Perhaps biding away the time in central Africa?

Actually, no. Do not worry. But I had been mulling an enticing and interesting offer to teach for two years at the American University in Cairo. That's Cairo, Egypt, not Cairo, Ohio, Cairo, Georgia, or even the Golf Club at Mirage City, aka Cairo Egypt/Orlando Florida. It was a fsacinating offer but one I considered with some trepidation, for all the same reasons that I found it exciting. It's a foreign country, a much different culture, a foray again into teaching, the opportunity to travel widely throughout Europe and Africa, and even Asia, which isn't very far away. All this sounds good, and it is. There's more. No taxes! Free apartment with utilities--apparently the apartments are very nice, too. And, get this: one of the neighborhood where I could live is Zamalek, which is an island in the Nile River.

As it turns out, Near Wild Heaven could be coming at you from a much different place. I took the offer.

posted by: zithereen at May 10, 2006 18:51 | link | comments (2) |