Beatrix Potter: Mice with Candles (1903)

The New Finished
After only five and a half years of intermittent effort, I finally submitted one of my series for publication this week. The finish mirrored the process. I noticed as I skimmed through a compilation of the manuscript that I had not adequately indexed the text, so I went back through one final time to assign styles to everything: Body, Buried Lede, Caption, Verse, and Heading; this to ensure a consistent finished product and to ease making later changes. Just that morning, I discovered I’d inadvertently mislabeled my current series iOlogue instead of iAlogue. I’d felt stupid for making the mistake. Still, I felt redeemed when I immediately disciplined myself to go back and correct every instance of the error, which had proliferated in the over thirty days since I’d innocently committed it. I had to change records in my Blog master, manuscript master, Facebook intros, SubStack copies, and LinkedIn posts. This effort consumed more than two hours. With this experience fresh in my mind, I warily submitted that manuscript, aware that maintaining it would get even more complicated before publishing was finished. That manuscript’s final compilation revealed some inconsistencies in the compiling process. I submitted the damned thing anyway, noting to the editor that paragraph breaks seemed inconsistent from the source document. I figured that complication might be resolvable later. Not even that finished product was truly finished.

We labor in the misguided conviction that we might one day finish something when getting something started might be the very best we can ever hope to accomplish. Our work remains a work in process even long after we hoped it might be finished. Can’t Be Undone might be the new done.

Weekly Writing Summary

I began my writing week by stumbling upon a better way to produce my Weekly Writing Summary as I described in Discerning “I can usually see better when better arrays itself before me. Until then, my imagination often proves wanting.”

Henriëtte Ronner: The Musicians (c. 1876 - 77)
" … betters tend to sum to worses …"
—
I described how I cope with The Muse using her new profession’s unique terms in ShopTalking “I simply switch off my need to understand the content. I can almost always discern the parts of speech and thereby manage a grammatical understanding of any … material.”

Adriaen van Ostade: Man and Woman Talking (17th century)
"It's a sincere form of caring to keep nodding rather than merely nodding off."
—
I explained how nearing publication of one of my series, I felt unable to accept completion as a possibility in ApoplecticAngels, the most popular posting this period. "I feel like the man who crossed a continent on foot only to discover disappointment at the end of his effort. He arrived to wish he could just be home again.”

Odilon Redon: The Lost Angel Then Opened Black Wings, from Night (1886)
" … he noticed a shadow falling over his finished product …"
—
I told the story of telling stories that didn’t necessarily want to be told in Belligerence. “ … the opponent is probably always just me in a different guise, but I'm not above losing even a fair fight with myself.”

Jack Gould: Untitled [tug-of-war] (1955)
"Bruising sometimes occurs …"
—
I explained how Matter seems to exist in only two states in Late January: Sleeping and Not Sleeping. “He feels enough of a failure without rehashing his prior successes and failures and draws. He acknowledges that he might not have even been there then, when the memories were laid in for future reference.”

Stuart Davis, After Mark Rothko, After William Baziotes:
Sketches of “Max,” Mark Rothko’s “No. 19,” and William Baziotes’ “Moonstruck” (1950)

"The fuzzy distinction between … won't become interesting until much later."
—
I ended my writing week reporting on how I hear a cacophony of voices directing my actions in CrowdControl “The richness of incoherent stories somehow seems superior to those carrying single messages, impressionism, and abstraction rather than photographic focus.”

Arthur Rothstein: Crowds at races, Indianapolis, Indiana (1938)
" … messier but more fully human …"
—
A deep freeze broke this week bringing comparatively Spring-like weather: rain, fog, and the promise of difference. I experienced genuine innovation when discovering a Discerning way to skin a once-weary cat. I received a visit from the familiar ApoplecticAngels who always oversee my production and publication. I took their presence as a good omen. I disclosed how I cope with stuff I’ll never truly understand like ShopTalking. I described how I manage to tell stories that do not want to be told in Belligerence. I managed to stay awake long enough to explain how Matter exists in only one of two states in Late January and I ended my writing week trying to manage a cacophony between my ears. So many voices mumbling I struggle sometimes to hear anything. Thank you for following along. After this week, I feel confident we’ll make it to Spring after all.
©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #iAlogue , #PureSchmaltz