The mattress guy told me, You need to get your process straight. And who doesn’t love shopping for a mattress and simultaneously being criticized? At least when bathing-suit shopping (an equally onerous task), the customer isn’t usually judged while considering the options. I’ve never been in sales (unless you count two months working at Wilsons Leather in the 90s), but I’m pretty sure insulting the potential buyer’s thought process is not the move. For the record, I had a pretty well-defined process going in, as this was my second visit to the mattress store, sorting between categories (traditional, hybrid, or foam mattress) and qualities; firmness, motion transfer, cooling, and durability.
Fortuitously, I had been planning to write a post about process, albeit creative process. So thanks for the nudge, mattress guy. Because (I like to think) logical process is generally not my weakness but creative process might be, I’ve been experimenting with my creative process and begun a creative notebook modeled on an online class taught by Karishma Chugani with all these writers and more in mind.
What happens if I work more with mixed media while finishing the first draft of my novel? Will this bring witches and an alternate 19th century Pittsburgh together as I sew up the spine of the draft? My character is embarking on a journey, just as Hermann Hesse’s narrator in Wanderung (Wandering) documents his leave-taking from Germany to Italy/Switzerland. Each chapter is accompanied by Hesse’s own watercolors.
It is impossible in this moment to read this first page, as the wanderer considers the arbitrary and senseless nature of borders, and not think of Ukraine, Gaza, and Israel.
As Hesse’s narrator leaves German landscape and language behind, the text in picture and word becomes a questioning of what it is to be home (zu Hause), versus to have a homeland (Heimat). I am also reminded of recent interviews with Jhumpa Lahiri, who now writes in Italian and says she feels at home in Italian. Isn’t that partly why we create, to feel ourselves at home in a language?
A creative notebook is permission to play with mixed media in service of drafting a novel. Let’s see which problems might be overcome, which new directions might arise, new ways of being in picture and word. (These have started popping up already!) Hesse is a kind of homecoming for me, a reminder of why (an affinity for yearning) I fled to literature when I left the science-lab amoeba behind and defected permanently to the humanities in college. Thanks to Sebastian Matthews in Asheville for an inspiring class on visual art and text, as I try to get my process straight. Mattress decision to be continued. . .
*Es gibt nichts Gehässigeres als Grenzen, nichts Stupideres als Grenzen. Sie sind wie Kanonen, wie Generäle: so lange Vernunft, Menschlichkeit und Friede herrscht, spürt man nichts von ihnen and lächelt über sie,–sobald aber Krieg und Wahnsinn ausbricht, werden sie wichtig und heilig. –Hermann Hesse, Wanderung