The Forest For the Trees
February 15, 2010 by Janice
Ghirardelli Chocolate, Rhodia Pad, The Forest For the Trees (tabbed), Janice Cartier, February 2010
You know what would be sweet? Yes, chocolate for a lifetime, but other than that. An editor’s mind to pop ready made into an empty brain cell or two of mine this week. That’s what.
I have two notebooks stuffed with notes. I have journals, and I have scribbled words in some field books and the few sketchbooks I have on hand.
“Content”.
Lots of content.
And yet,
Getting it into consumable form?
Meh, not so much.
How do curators, and editors do it?
Hand me a brush, a pen, a pencil…
I am good…
Give me a blank page in a journal, I can write until I am spent.
A post?
Driven by what’s going on in the studio, a rhythm that’s part of my practice…
Set these notes and archival material in front of me…
My eyes glaze over, or I get lost , reading it, tagging it, categorizing it…or getting lost in the idea of it…. and seeing ten more paintings I could do.
Ahem.
So what?
I have an extemporaneous style of speaking and writing. Sitting down to possibly outline something, or organize it into …
What? What form?
In the studio the simplest, first step is drawing.
Easy peasy,
Back flips with that all day long.
Is the first and simplest action with long form writing…
A paragraph, a sentence, a topic?
What’s the sorting action?
First page on the stack..this needs a paragraph , a summary, transpose this note, condense?
Choosing forms, to put them in…
I am slightly stuck.
Notes become what first?
How do you best work?
And gee, this feels like going back to school…
Yes, it’s Organizing Monday, and the studio is tempting…teasing me… come here, just grab your brush and ink..
But I promised myself,
I would at least solve this this week..
Help… I cannot see the Forest for the Trees..
And I am trying to get unstuck, keep my tires from spinning round and round in the muck…
So far I am liking paragraphs…or looking for the lead sentence on the first page, then the next and then the next..
The artist smiles…
How do you organize your source material for writing? What “next action” comes up first for you?
Comments
6 Responses to “The Forest For the Trees”
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I suppose what comes to mind is… what is that you are wanting to write? I mean – what is you want to express, to communicate, to share, to convey?
The form will follow from that.
My other suggestion – don’t look at your notes. Or maybe, look at them, then put them away.
Then sit down and let it flow… maybe as mind map or doodles till you see on one page what the shape of the thing might be
Or just one page, the first page, telling us what it is you must tell us…
Tough question here today Janice. Deadlines probably turn my notes into writing better than any other trick, but that’s probably a cheaters answer. I like Joanna’s suggestion of putting away the notes. Sometimes it’s hard to tell when notes should turn into product. My blogging follows that form. Ideas bounce around, notebooked, post-it’ed, 3×5ed or just in my minds eye. At some point it gels. Or forces its way out. It can be unpleasant.
Unfortunately most of my writing is dictated by the forms and functions of plans and proposals. The good side is that structure is well engrained so notes fall into categories which slip slowly into paragraphs.
All well and good. But being honest. In the end the deadlines are what force the structure. Something has to be put on the page. Now the page has to be rewritten. Now the product needs to be shooed out the door. Repeat.
From an article on having the courage to write.
“Tom Wolfe had gone to Los Angeles to report for Esquire on car customizing. He then found himself unable to compose a coherent article from his notes. During an all-night, deadline-driven writing stint Wolfe finally typed up forty-nine pages of those notes as a memo to Esquire’s managing editor. The next day this editor called Wolfe to say that they were going to publish his memo untouched. It ran as “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby.””
http://havecoffeewillwrite.com/?page_id=3244
Joanna,
Hm…this is as much about processing the notes as it is about writing…keep, discard, use for what form…and there is that question, “what is it that I must tell you..” I like that one…perhaps that is the leading question…as if the page might be a conversation point…between friends..
Fred,
I have put deadlines on all of this time and again, I shift the materials around, and find common topics…but then….bog down…no trouble meeting deadlines on posts, proposals, when they are for someone else…:) This is creating something new…
Hm, maybe… if I thought of them as a series of conversations I am going to have , and book a reservation…. to just get that conversation down….
I see a trend here…
LOL
Thanks you two.
L.S.,
A memo…thanks for offering that up…I like it.. a nifty way to think of getting the notes into a flow….This whole thing of form and function in words… there’s a block somewhere, trying to track it down…always ask questions of the wall…LOL… surprising things shake loose…
[...] I have a note to self for this month on several active projects. It reads ” choose form” . It’s a studio thing…until I transferred it over to my desk and the accumulation there. How do I get all those notes and source material for writing processed? What’s the first action, or next action there? So I asked other writers and editors on Monday, you may have read. [...]