Forbes Mac Bean: Public Writer (1854)

Whatever Change Was Supposed To Promise
I believe we're all here to spot curious convergences. We might try to establish routines to make our lives more efficient, but something, thank Heaven, always seems to manage somehow to disrupt them. While we struggle to reestablish what was probably never destined to be sustained, we tend to stumble upon change. We speak of change as if we might one day master it, but I believe we're destined to remain its humble or humbled servant. Our clever strategies for creating it often leave us feeling like fools while its designs for insinuating itself into our lives properly leave us gasping. We were never intended to master change but to be shifted by it. We should lose our mooring. We should lose our heading. When we can keep our wits about us, we often spot something interesting. When we lose our wits, the experience can become even more interesting. Reasoning’s definitely not required. Of course we cannot yet understand its eventual significance. It travels in relative obscurity, seemingly fueled by synchronicity, accidentlies on purpose, accidentlies bringing renewed purpose in clever disguise. This final week of GoodNuff stuff brought all of whatever change was always supposed to promise. I feel changed for the good as a result.

Weekly Writing Summary

I began my writing week attempting to answer a very slippery question, puzzling over how to describe my manner of living by simply describing WhatIDo. "Almost everything I've found describing how to write ignores my central question: How might I chronicle my manner of living? "

Jean François Millet: Peasants Going to Work (1863)

"If you glimpse yourself in there, you're finally seeing the other."
—
My enquiry continued to the end of this writing week, next passing through an attempt to explain
WhatIWillNot do and why. "I never intended to produce photographic-quality portraits but senses instead. I hoped my stories might prove more inductive than instructive, more nuanced than explicit. I structure my stories employing other means."

Leonard Leslie Brooke:
The eldest son refuses the old grey man
[from The Golden Goose Book] 1905

"I am my own audience."
—
I next attempted to describe *HowIDo whatever I do when I write. This story proved the most popular this period. "The writing will occur outside of any conscious observer. Once I start writing, time stops. I am no longer fully aware of whatever I'm doing then. I feel suspended slightly outside of space and time. My two-and-a-half typing fingers seem to know the routine, they know the way. I follow."

Honoré-Victorin Daumier:
"Let's go..., my friend, I do not find this painting pretty..."
From the book:
L' Exposition de 1859, 11 (Le Charivari, 21 June 1859)
Original Language Title:
"Viens donc..., mon ami, je ne trouve pas..." (1859)
—
I completed my description of how I do my writing, most of which should rightly be called editing, in HowIDo2. "I must not think too much while writing lest I disrupt what might pass for flow. I learned long ago to separate editing from writing, for instance, because the two activities remain antagonistic and seem better left sequential. Once I've "finished" writing, I begin editing."

Jack Gould:
Untitled [workmen constructing new house] (1950)

“Another GoodNuff Story's published!”
—
I finished my GoodNuff Series with a bit of a flourish, reclassifying what I had been creating as a solo Dialogue in iAlogue. "As I've been creating this GoodNuff Series, I have been slowly realizing that I have been engaged in a kind of dialogue here, a special purpose conversation focused upon and explicitly including only one. I have not been writing my GoodNuff Stories to instruct anyone except, perhaps, sometimes myself."

Quiringh Gerritsz. van Brekelenkam:
A Confidential Chat (1661)

" … engaging in solo dialogue …"
—
I finished my writing week while smearing my categories, including some almost final GoodNuff material into starting my replacement iAlogue series in FinishingIn. "I'm no paragon of anything other than ragged endings and equally ragged beginnings."

Charles Folkard:
She found...ripe strawberries, poking up dark red out of the snow. (1911)

"… an appropriate backdrop for such a ragged undertaking."
—
This writing week seemed the most focused of the entire GoodNuff Series. I felt the impending ending and an urgent sense that I needed to finally figure out something important, an issue I've wrestled with since I began writing. I feel I succeeded, though I might not have conceded the answer I discovered had I not sweated through the details. There must have been some magic lurking in those old explanations I found, for when I laid them out on a page, they began to sound authentic. Magic emerged when trying to explain WhatIDo with more hiding behind my values as exhibited in the negative space of WhatIWillNot do. My lengthy descriptions of HowIDo and HowIDo2 also rang true and slowed me down, copying and pasting visual examples so that I might have almost caught up with myself. I caught myself talking with myself again but found a fresh appreciation for what I had probably always been doing. I now warmly anticipate the upcoming season where I will surely come to better understand the properties inherent in giving myself better talking to-s. Thank you for your interest and for following along, and I wish you a very satisfying holiday season!

©2023 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #iAlogue , #PureSchmaltz