It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to drop in here and do some writing. Life has been so hectic recently that all writing, my fiction, email, letters have shrunken considerably. 140 charcters would suit me fine, but the last thing on my mind is tweeting. The only writing that has lengthened of late is grocery lists and to-do lists. I’m back at my day job in public health, maximizing my evening hours with the baby, and then after he goes to bed, steaming and pureeing baby food, laundry, my dinner, occassionally talking to my husband, even more occassionally talking to someone else, and so on. We’ve been a little more crazy lately because of my husband’s writing life, a new freelance script, a film festival, family visiting. But yet, here I am, very much in the mood to write something and connect again to anyone who cares. My second novel hasn’t fallen away from me as badly as this blog has. I’ve been reading it. A very important step that you writers out there will knowingly nod at. Ah, she’s reading it. It’s a sympathetic task, let me assure you. I got to the end of my restructuring. I implemented a lot of people’s notes. I took a step away and went back to the beginning. On the front page, I changed my name. I’m now Rachel Stolzman Gullo, depending on which ID you ask. I added a quote that helps explain the title. I took a step back, and I started reading. I’ve now read the first six chapters. There were two chapters I broke into four from reading it. That’s what reading can do. Reading, by the way, means printing a clean copy and reading it on paper. Hopefully it is pages you haven’t read in six months or more. Hopefully, you don’t recognize the words, and have laser sharp criticism of your own work. What’s wrong leaps out in all its stupidity. What’s particularly weird and unexpected gives you a satisfied sense of pride. You did that weird thing. So, I’m reading. A little too slowly, and getting through another degree of revision with each chapter. It’s inching.
But I’ve spent more time lately in other genres. What are they? One is called Lotus Notes. That’s the New York State’s Department of Health email system. I’m on it from 9am to 5pm, and respond to most emails in real time. I’m instant messaging with the agencies around the city who are conducting HIV prevention and care with women and with my DOH colleagues in Albany and New York City. We received an email recently about appropriate emailing. It reminded us not to be overly casual and familiar in our outgoing emails. That our emails are not from us per se, but represent the state. Wow. But I kind of liked being reminded of that. It made me notice how often I told someone, “This is crazy- how can I ask you to do this- it’s insane- please forgive me! I need a new budget mod.” I’ve known half the people I now manage for ten plus years- why wouldn’t I get casual and familiar. But I’ve been dialing it back. I pretend the new Commissioner of Health is reading all my emails. Which he can, our emails are not in any way private of course. I tell people the simple news. Here’s the situation, what I need, what they can and can’t do, how I can help. And you know something, they like it just fine. And you know something else, my fiction would benefit from this too. And there’s always the phone when you want to say, “What the fuck!”
The other genre I recently wrote was a birth story. I’m a doula and when I support a family with their birth, part of the job is writitng their birth story. Well, I’ve been doula-ing and writing birth stories since 2005. And what do you know, but I’m changing the way I write those too. In 2005, and 6, and 7 and 8….I thought it was only proper to write a clinical, factual, primarily medical account of a birth I attended. It would be wrong to leave out unpleasant memories, low points, hostile providers, negligent husbands, bodily fluids. Was I insane? Please forgive me! How can I ask you to read this! I’ve grown up, I’ve learned. No mother or father needs to know exactly what time their membranes were stripped, the third resident gave a painful vaginal exam, or what words they spoke when they felt most defeated. Or how many hours exactly they kept their doula in the hosptial, how many damned nurses changed shifts. I recently supported a beautiful birth, for a family I worked for four years ago too. I wrote this recent birth story to their newborn daughter directly. I told her how awesome her mother was- which was utterly true. I told her how her personality showed from even before her birth and how her tiny hand shot out like a rebel warrior during her own birth. I told her how her parents loved and supported each other for the whole labor. And you know what?, it was as true and precise as any birth story I ever wrote, and it didn’t mention a single time of day or night.
I’m gonna go work on the song I’m writing now on my ukelele. Because there’s still plenty of time to be new again.
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