Attributed to Elisabetta Sirani:
Young Woman Writing or Drawing
(n.d. - mid-17th Century)

Now Is The Time
There's nothing else like the enthusiasm accompanying a New Beginning. Old beginnings seem materially different because we've already traveled those routes before. The New Beginnings involve different paths and destinations, so not even our best imaginations can properly set expectations. I dream big then as if precedent were meaningless and everything might be different this time. There will be space to relearn that space and time remain relatively unchanged regardless of the charted path. We remain denizens of the same neighborhood regardless of where we travel. A new series, though, opens many doors. I already perceive my usual routine as different. I'm focusing on other things than I attended to when writing my Publishing Series. Honing might allow me to implement lasting improvements, which might even make my life a little easier. I've already created a little template that might allow me to avoid ten minutes of typing each morning. This after doing the alternative only about twenty-one hundred times. New Beginnings insist that now is the time, and so it is.

Weekly Writing Summary

I began my writing week with a complaint in Vengeful. "Any God capable of holding a grudge seems like he was made in man's image rather than the other way around. I'd expect—and forgive me if I seem disrespectful—infinite forgiveness."

Tobias Stimmer:
Allegorical Figure of the Old Testament
(16th century)

" … one uninterested in unrequested eye removal …"
—
I noticed how very likely miscommunication seems to be, even or perhaps especially when Publishing in TheIllusion. "Apparently, the better the connection, the more likely the resulting disconnection. It's a universal law or something."

Strobridge & Co. Lith.:
Kellar and his perplexing cabinet mysteries (1894)

"The problem with communication is the illusion that it's occurred."
—
I confessed to a distraction, a part of my backstory that was exerting front story influence in *AngryArm. This story proved the most popular this period. "Everyone maintains a backstory that profoundly influences the front story portion of their lives. Backstories mostly remain tacit, publicly unacknowledged, and it seems easy—too easy—to assume away its influence."

Paul Giambarba: The Withered Arm (c. 1960)

" … no fixing in the immediate offing."
—
I stumbled upon an insight that I might consider my writing and Publishing as a secondary purpose and that I have always been MakingMantras. "This writing and Publishing work takes on a different meaning if I embrace the notion that I might be MakingMantras. …Well crafted, a story won't necessarily get in the way of a reader's wandering mind. It won't constrict the reader's ability to transcend it, experience its subtler transformative features, repeatedly losing the thread and rediscovering it, engaging in the meditation that reading always entails. It might be that I was never really writing books but studiously unaware to the point of distraction that I was merely MakingMantras all along."

Rockwell Kent: Meditation (1929)

" … merely MakingMantras all along."
—
I anticipated the ending of my Publishing Series by reflecting on the essential tasks involved in TidyingUp. "The ultimate TidyingUp proposes an explanatory story to make sense of the mess left behind. The better the story, the better the experience. "

Russell Lee: Cleaning up manure in milking shed. Large dairy, Tom Green County, Texas (1939)

"It's up to the protagonist to decide what …"
—
I finished my Publishing Series with another Begending in MoreBegendings. "Writing seems like dreaming. Publishing's the serious side of the practice."

Winslow Homer:
The End of the Day, Adirondacks (1890)

" … the serious side of the practice."
—
I began my twenty-fifth series and named it Honing, believing that I and my writing might benefit from some FineTuning. "Honing seems to be the next adventure, and while it might seem altogether too pedestrian to qualify as an adventure, it seems to represent the next pieces to the grand puzzle I'm working."

Jules Bastien-Lepage:
Mower Honing a Scythe (1878)
—

I had not noticed before this week just how much milling around an ending typically carries. It's regular and easily anticipated that the first few pieces of any new engagement amount to so much milling around, for that’s how people get themselves oriented. We seem to do something similar when preparing to exit, or at least, that's what I caught myself doing this writing week. During any decent milling around period, one should properly experience a fair amount of disorientation and distraction, and this writing week provided no exception. I wrote two pieces on my aching arm: Vengeful and AngryArm; neither mentioned that I felt too close to an ending to feel very comfortable about it. I acknowledged the essential Illusion that all forms of communication engage in and reframed my work from writing to Mantra Making. I didn't actually end the Publishing Series. I copped out on another Begending instead before beginning my next adventure in FineTuning, what I've been doing for twenty-four whole series. Thank you for following along, even when I skirt relevance sometimes.

©2023 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Honing, #PureSchmaltz