Writing Exercises the Whole Life

I'm supposed to be working. I take minutes and transcribe them as one of my jobs, which translates to a lot of sitting and I only get paid for two out of the five groups I do this for. Six if you count the Jell-O artists, for whom I track script changes and write things for possible use in the performance. Still, I generally like to do it. It feeds my need to articulate carefully, use my vocabulary, practice typing (still don't use those little fingers) and put things into words when they are sometimes said in less-than-elegant or diplomatic ways.

The task uses a certain kind of careful language that requires impeccable spelling and a solid understanding of intent, lots of editing skills, and the ability to construct simple sentences. I like long run-on sentences packed with lots of dependent clauses and uncommon words, which I should be using in fiction or even in blogging. I can't often use them in the minutes or reports I type. I can say anything I want in the Jell-O scripts, which is my joy in that job, but filling up the script with language usually involves taking it out in the next draft. We only have about a twenty-minute show.

Meetings are often two hours or more, so that is four or five for me. I have to move around on my seat cushion a lot and refocus my brain afterward. Super-tight attention is required to avoid interpretation in minutes: there really shouldn't be much of me in there. Of course there is a certain personality and style that comes through. I don't want to get lazy about it, and actually welcome the times that someone takes issue with words or phrases and challenges me to think again. Without that I would be throwing hours of focus out there to not even be noticed. Not many people read minutes at all, or at all carefully. You have to be a certain kind of detail person to even bother doing more than a quick skim.

Yet keeping the public record is not only a legal requirement of most organizations, it's a facilitative skill. Anyone can check back on a detail, and I frequently do, and assume others do too. I tend to leave things out that might make someone look bad, in the interest of moving forward through awkward times. Volunteers have a hard enough job speaking in groups without having to be super careful about how they might be misrepresented. I try to keep to the salient facts, including the discussion points, but I don't generally put names to opinions. You have to be there to really get the sense of the personalities of the meetings I transcribe. It's a little less transparent, but a little more efficient and protected from people who like to target other people with their complaints. While I simply love reading the OCF Board minutes, with all the names and attributions, I don't do that type of attribution unless someone asks me to. There have been times I have quoted people against my better judgement, because when getting paid, I do have to remember that I am working for the people who hired me, not myself. But the truth comes out. If someone acts like a jerk, they don't stay hidden for long, even if I extend them some courtesy. There are always stories between the lines, whether or not I am aware I am alluding to them.

I'm blogging today instead of transcribing just because I want the pleasure of writing without concern. I barely edit these blogs, though I like to think I write in an organized way. I read them over a time or two, but mostly they just flow out and that feels good. It's how it used to feel when I would spend three or four hours writing fiction, somewhat effortless and in the zone, really a pleasant place to dwell. I wish I wrote more fiction.

I'm still using the skills I learned over the last couple of decades, and my writing group still meets weekly to talk about writerly subjects. Pitching my script idea to the Radar Angels was a lot of fun for me, and deepening it as I incorporate the characters people want to play and the style they want to play them, as well as their lines that they write, is a great exercise in collaboration, which balances my need for control. One member carefully led me into a discussion of "holding space" as a facilitator, rather than moving the group in a particular direction. That felt useful and I try to do that. I'm not in charge of anything (setting aside my role as the Queen of Jell-O Art) except for helping all of us to hold space for each other, so that we all can thrive and create in the ways we want to. It's a gorgeous process to witness.

It has been working pretty well, the script, the minutes, and my writing life. I'm still working on a book, about my house and property and the historical background I've been so thoroughly researching. The research is a lot of fun, and I will hope to write some articles about it and some sections of the book in the next year. Unfortunately that work generally gets shelved in May and not addressed again until fall or even winter, as the business of making a living intrudes. I might get a couple of things in before April, but that is looking less likely as the meeting frequency increases and the workload does too. The board I found in the house is turning 100 years old next month. The first date on it, April 23, 1915, is one century before my brother's wedding will be, in Australia. I'll be there and not thinking about my board. The photo shows the board, which has three signatures and two dates, and this is another one, with the date of January 10, 1916. I assume that was the completion date, and the other, signed by Elmer Irwin Van Orden, the completion of some earlier phase of the work. Trying to answer the question of what Van Orden did has been a great puzzle. My current theory is that he did the basic framing to convert the two-room old building to one with a shed-like addition for the kitchen and bathroom, or maybe he built the foundation and chimney, or maybe he moved the building there and did those things. I don't know why the wood would have been on site to sign unless he had done a significant phase leading to the finishing done by this guy, Howard Frank Bowers, and Bilyeu Vaughn, who both signed almost nine months later. The fiction writer will have lots to do to fill in the gaps for the nonfiction writer.

This is the board, but not the right signature.

Back to the present year: John wants me to speak at his wedding, and I am tempted to use that tidbit in my speech, but I know that my house is about my life and the task is to speak to his life. I'll have to scratch that itch in another piece of writing. I'm not planning to take my laptop with me but rather paper journals, so I might take the one I write house pieces in. Experience tells me to just take a blank journal and write all about traveling to strange lands with my Mom, and I have learned to listen to experience, that's for sure. Maybe you'll see something here before I go, but March will be a very busy month.

In the meantime, I'll include a youtube of a Radar Angels performance song that I had absolutely nothing to do with. The skit was about a lot of things at once, as usual, as you can see by the diversity of costumes. It's a great piece of parody and staging, and if I knew who to credit for filling that space with that level of creativity, I would credit them. I have a feeling it was all of them, because that is how it works in collaboration. There, I have a lot to learn, and a lot of it is not at all about me. Good exercise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vuu3ofp92Uc     
The song came near or at the end of the 2009 show Jell-O-Zone. Since the year was the sesquicentennial of Oregon's founding, the pioneers were included. Wish I could read the script.