Steinbeck Warmup

Lol good luck. I've had a day of someone asking me persistently where I park my car, when they know full well that I don't have a car. I'm not sure if it's a trick question, or if this person is so shut in her own world that she doesn't hear that I don't have a car because she has a car...

Yeah, some trap door in your brain will know how to do this better each time it hits you!

Ah, thanks Saidso. My I Ching Sage Coach said: stagnant (hex. 12), stay compact and ride it out.

I'm scraping the lowest levels of energy. Keeping myself out of too much, and even then I don't have it all together. Furinstance, took the batteries out of a giveaway flashlight so I could buy the replacement. Not only did three stores I visited not have that size, I can't for the life of me remember where I put the husk of the light!?

Now, normally, part of me that my dad's introject would take this mere loss as symbolic of much more ineptitude around me, or to come. I'm pushing back tonight, no dad, just stop it. It's a freebie, I have another just like it that's doing fine. As a mild punishment to fit the temporary loss, I won't shop for or buy the batteries until it turns up again.

And for the rest ... I'll rest and do even less that I'm doing now, and double check my steps.

So there! Dad, now step back so I can sleep.
Revu2

My partner offered that I should go to sleep and in the morning I'd go right to it. Sure, yeah.

Woke up, and walked straight to it! Eptitude regained.

Revu2

Hi Warmup,

The problem: I took a few days off from dealing with assembling my tax #s to focus on paid work. When I came back I could barely recall what'd I had done, where my best spreadsheet was, which other expenses I needed and which ones were on "record" already. Huh. My memory had "faded" over the course of five days. John Steinbeck suffered something like this when he took breaks from writing his epic novels, to rest, visit with friends, move his household, or have a bit of fun. When he came back to work on Monday he often complained how difficult it was to find the thread of where he'd left off.

So, tonite I called Jerry Seinfeld, E L Doctorow, Anne Lamott, Irene Maria Fornes, and Hermann Ebbinghaus to a meeting to help me understand.

From H. Ebbinghaus: Yes, you see, you and Herr Steinbeck are experience the forgetting curve. In just 24 hours we forget maybe 35% of what you were working on. In two days, it's close to 60%. Yes, it's s burden to get to your work everyday. But remember, Herr Lynx, its a burden to remember after the gap. One must choose.

From Seinfeld & Lamott: everyday do a minimum bit of work that moves things forward.

From E L Doctorow: “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” This means to me I only need to "see" out a couple of days, just keep it rolling so I can plan when I'll get to my forward moving bits of work.

From Fornes: There's a part of you that wants to do this daily thing because it's smart and will save time and effort, in theory, and a side of you that gets tired, busy, committed, needs a break, rebels, and makes excuses — that at heart doesn't want to do it. The worker must keep tricking the other one.

The test. This leaves me with: a new spreadsheet with the days of the month in the first column, and my best guess at what my minimum might be for the next two or three days (limits of my sight in the fog).

Some days that just noticeable advance may be indeed just noticeable.

So be it, and so it is.

Revu2

Hello Warmup,

Attended a Global Gathering of Liberating Structures players and learners woven with attending to some work meetings at the end of last week. Very tired by the end. Had my sense before registering that working commitments would clash, & yup, got that right.

Went an hour early every day to allow time to connect before I had to slip away. Strategy worked well.

One idea for myself suggested during an exercise—exchange all my time and energy fretting and dreading into something that I move forward.

Another was the David Rock SCARF model~

S tatus
C ertainty
A utonomy
R elatedness
F airness

Shared it with my life partner for 36 years and it helped us have a break through, at least for a morning, in a bug in our communication that's bedeviled us since the beginning. It had to with autonomy, my space to use it and hers to adjust.

There are few other ideas, too, too tender to tell.

Revu2

Sounds very positive, especially that you used it already and it worked for you!!! Wondered where you had got to - I'm off again. I realised that I hadn't understood the communication quest that you were on - I'm still at communication base-camp.

Nice to see you back again.

Saidso

Hi Warmup & Saidso,

Saidso, what's up with you of late?

Everything has sprints and seasons in my life. Yup, that framework started helping right away. I'm interested in getting his book because SCARF just deals with our capacity to monitor threat.

The other energy is our capacity to offer reward. Let's play:

For Status the offer might be Honor.
For Certainty offer Clarity.
For Autonomy offer Permission.
For Relatedness offer Welcome.
For Fairness offer Sharing.

HCPWS, this will take some time to work out as an acronym.

Today is mostly doing and outward focused. Paperwork and something to draft, something else to schedule, a board meeting, cleaning. Later, sitting with a panel tonight to talk about how art creates social change. Just remembered Uncle Tom's Cabin (which I tried to read and just couldn't do it) and the disturbingly influential Death of a Nation.

Revu2

Ah, warmup, living as a series of questions and answers. First upon awakening: what's urgent to do today? When will I get to it?

I get up... do I dress now or later? Etc. Poke about a little, look into the morning light at the view.

And so on. One key Q: when does this workday start? Today I set it for 9, some days it's way earlier, others later or not at all. Starting the workday means my personal meanderings stop and I attend to stuff involving clients or other people. I won't response or even read too deeply into email until after I've begun something meaningful for the workday stuff.

When working for clients I need to keep track of my time. The lawyer/novelist Scott Turow has an interesting piece on billable hours. He doesn't like them but also doesn't suggest what might replace them.

I got interested myself when considering the ethics of how much, or whether at all, to bill any of the hours a project haunts my life. A quarter hour of a walk mulling issues and possible next moves. Ten minutes sprinkled throughout a day as I do other stuff reflecting on the best way to make slides about the status and next steps in the work.

I'd used Clockify, a freemium time tracker until yesterday. To actually send an invoice on stationary required downloading its data in a spreadsheet and about 10 minutes of shifting columns, resorting the dates, and patching the result into my word doc as a table & changing date formats. I'm returning to directly putting my daily time totals in an open invoice. With two clients, 10 minutes a month each, I'm reclaiming 2 hours a year. Two days a month I can linger till 9:10 before ...

getting to work,
Revu2

Oh, I am house-hunting...
And while house-hunting, I went into a lefty bookshop, and read half of "No Logo" by Naomi Klein. She makes some interesting points about reduced contributions of corporation tax to national budgets and also about developments in marketing identity politics and marketing politicians - which can seem positive on the surface but sinister in the bigger context. Joined up thinking - stuff that itches but you can't scratch it.

What's with the capacity to monitor threat thing? Uh, ok, I you-tubed it.
Honor, Clarity, Permission, Welcome, Sharing.

Hum, I'm not sure about all this. Most people who I met on my travels during the past week seem to work off scripts - apart from groups of older women who work off nudges (smile). There was a large social group of older women in and out of the café that I used as a base who were fascinatingly responsive to each other's body language codes. But the rest was blah!

I sometimes wonder whether politicians deliberately create states of social alienation, so that people shut down into whatever individual script makes them feel better about themselves?

Howdy warmup & Saidso,
As with anything I play with, I gain if anything in it turns out useful to me. The SCARF piece are domains intuitively used to scope out safety and/or threat.

Once this idea moves to more distant people than oneself and their less nudge-able behavior, it's likely it still works but I sense the strength weakens. There are also other schema like Maslov's hierarchy of needs that can be mapped onto experience. Like all maps, they burnish part of the full context and hide or ignore others.

As the developer of SCARF is a neuro-scientist, the 'data' is constrained to one person. Being trained as a scientist he doubtless applied or 'discovered' these patterns from outside himself. I'm taking them up and applying/playing with them inside-out.

Speaking of inside out, I awoke reminded of Robin Norwood's book, Women who loved too much, when you keep wishing and hope he'll change. Disclosure: I'm a male/man. But I have license to read anything, so I read it in my 20s and it led to me changing me! The publication year was 1985, and I read it maybe in 86 or 87, so I was 23/24.

The last remaining takeaway in my mind: stop letting the feeling of "longing" define what "living" or "life" means! Living is not longing, however strong that longing feels. My shorthand is change longing to having (also from the book).

Now, with my ramped up work schedule, I let longing sneak back in. Wouldn't it be nice if they changed. Or I escaped. Or I didn't have to skip some cool art event. etc. etc.

So, this morning, Longing, you can't fool me, hiding behind that tree!

[This is a song covered by Ry Cooder but I can't seem to catch in on youtube.] No more time for longing,

To the day,
Revu2

Hi warmup & Saidso,

You're house hunting during the current stir around brexit. Oh boy, might be a buyer's market, my guess, as non-Brits seek exit in the winds of this ongoing confusions. Not going to be near a computer in 5 hours when the next rounds of votes begin which likely will ramp up the confusion factor.

Houses are weird things to buy. Location matters, spaciousness, layout, work needed, taxes, color, etc. so many, many factors, some quite tiny. Do you have a list of features/qualities you're seeking?

I'm away from daily writing, perhaps, because I'm off to a writing conference! Its the ever-jammed-packed Association for Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) in Portland, OR. There are endless panels (snore) and publisher booths with giveaway stuff, outsider readings, random connections, and general massive confusion. Great fun, but tiring and a time sucker. I'm going to practice sitting in the back when I can get a seat and closing my eyes to steal a little rests.

Revu2

Seems I'm a proposal delivery/acceptance away from adding another complicated client. That's does it—I'm fully booked. What this means in daily time is that somethings are dialed down to make time:

• reading for pleasure. This has already trailed off. I have five books on CD borrowed for a road trip and three books to return. Interestingly enough, my access to my main library ends at the end of April. I'll pay to renew ... at some point.
• casual entertainment time. I'll miss readings, openings, plays, music, etc. and simply have to look the other way when the announcements drop.
• walking/talking with friends.
• time idly watching videos/surfing the net.
• pampering myself. I'll still need to do this to stay sane, just not in as big a chunk of time each time.
• Dining out.

On the other hand, this is really going to be an interesting run for sure as I discover even more ways to streamline my work and drop into clear focused attention more or less at will. I'll also have to find ways to get myself more sleep, not less. This is counter-intuitive.
Say, last night, I intended to be asleep by 10:30. Reality: 11:30. That last hour really didn't add anything.
There's another scrubby part: I get very cranky under this much work pressure. I'll have to watch myself when interacting with anyone and pretend to have more patience that I'm likely to feel.
Oh, these warmup are likely to get shorter, too.
Revu2
PS—still learning this new look for PC. Can't seem to get my fonts tags to work right. Correction—found the list under the screen.

Hi Warmup,

Heard an interview with a prolific writer and one of the points he made—which paradoxically makes full sense—book in or plan for your distractions/procrastination, etc. A local playwright, given an overnight playwriting assignment, said she had to cram 4 weeks of procrastination into a few hours.

It's that back of the mind sorting out time. I'm using this post to distract myself from writing a contract/scope of work for my latest client. Yay! I think. I'll know after he sees my fees and if we can find a comfortable agreement.

I've gotten to thinking about billable hours again. I awoke knowing I needed to see the next 9 or 10 weeks at a continuous ribbon. This way I can protect critical days for other clients and count off days needed to process each step, etc. I began imagining the easiest way that could be done, while still barely awake.

I got up, stretched, thought about it some more. Still, nothing written or on any computer. Then I remembered I have set up an excel sheet that lists calendar dates in rows. This was the breakthrough. Took maybe 30 minutes to get it configured right with dates as column headers & another 10 or so to print out. So, if I were billing for this, would it be for 40 minutes or for 1 hr 40 min to account for the mental processing time? I barely thought of little else while mentally working out what to do.

Anyway, I'm pitching this project on a package-fee basis.

To the contract draft,
Revu2

Hi Warmup,
Today I'm dealing with my own crankiness when I'm super pressured. The pressure is the good kind, I guess. Many things are pinching in on me: onboarding a new client, daily steps drafting a report, politicking nuances to get my local Dear City government to act right by one of my clients, & keeping it together enough that I deceive my partner that I'm calmly handling all of this.

Truth is: I get cranky under mid-grade steady daily stress. Like now. The range of variance of anything that I expect to not pose a problem narrows a lot. Fur 'nstance — helping Sign. Other with her turbotax last night. It's late (twice she's asked for my help near one of my known time edges—the first time within a quarter hour of me needing to leave to go to a workshop, and last night right before I went to bed).

Alright, I put on a smile and we look at her questions. In the process she had papers scattered all over the place. One form she'd already entered, but on the paper 1099 she didn't make a note she had.

I said: take a pencil and make a note.
She: I'll do it later.
I: Please do it now, so you can know it's in & not have to remind yourself.
She: I'll do it later because you have only 15 minutes (a-hum ... & and why didn't you ask for help at 6:30, I thought).
I: Ten seconds to find a pencil & make a mark — ten … nine …
She: [looking about her desk] I can't find a pencil. And you only have 15 minutes.
I: Eight ... seven ... six ...
I: I'll extend it two minutes. Now you get 17 minutes. Five ...
She: [found a pencil] Found one. [marks the forms]
~
WTF? She asks for my help and then makes it hard on herself to accept it. It's get harder for me to keep offering it, now, and in the future. Notice she said "I had only 15 minutes" and didn't own up to at all to waiting to the boundary of my time. Geez!

I'm not 'doing' anything about this externally as in raising it with her. I did raise it the first time when she was asking for help and I'm on my way out the door. Never goes well as she has zero Mea Culpa genes. So now I wallow in my crankiness and wonder how to keep myself away from her on/off ask for help/refuse it pattern for the next 6 weeks.

Thanks for letting me rant. Feel refreshed.
Revu2

Hi Warmup—
Still holding to Seinfeld's method of never-miss-a-day. I call it now "Red-X, everyday." The start was fun. Now in the not nearly finished Middle.

My most dreaded part of the work. This is where Mz Miss gathers her strength and urges, cajoles, coos, etc. to get me to miss a day.

I'm tempted cuz I'm tired. It's been a good run. I can always pick it up tomorrow. Or even, take two days, who's watching? Not like this is an external deadline.

Now the inward summoning. The eyes on Mz Miss. Who are you? Leave me be. I have work to do. Daily. If you can't be disMissed, Well, step out of my studio.

Devil you cant fool me,
hiding behind that tree.
Devil you cant fool me,
trying to get the jump on me.

So, I remain, pressed to the chair, tired, yet working yet,

To the page,
Revu2

Hi warmup,

A friend sent an email that shared this thought from a chat she had with her friends:

Her friend remarked "men in a group are still always on an unconscious level pissing to mark their territory." She added: "And of course women are still often unconsciously at the level of attracting a mate and gathering fruits and seeds."

Not just territory, but also status/rank hierarchy.

Yet, & also to consider, what's going on when none of the males or females "mark a territory" as when no one steps forward to volunteer to do work or lead an effort?

And what's happening out of consciousness when folks take turns, defer to another, cooperate, share anything, offer help, or listen?

Revu2

Hi warmup,
Just landed another client. This makes 3 intense clients and I’m fully maXXed out! What this means is that I’m going to be crankier than my typical cranky self. Part of the cranky is not being able to project when I’ll have the time and energy to do the distracting fun things which paradoxically are part of the success of the work.

For the past several days I’ve tried to sleep at least 9 hours. More or less did it, but this morning I’m up at 4:30 after 4.5 hrs of sleep. Going to require a nap later.

There are a bunch more things I don’t like about being this jammed with work. Funny, as an independent I like the flexibility, but there’s no extra peers to shift new work on.

I do have an assistant. Talked with her in person yesterday and she’s onboard. Not sure just where she’s going to fit with this one client she will be helping with. Confident it will emerge as we get into things.

Keeping attention now on getting to all projects on a daily basis at some minimum level. Keeping my attention on the next critical step one each. Dropping out from fresh social commitments but honoring those already in play.

Sleeping, reading short essays & poems. And a surprise I thought up this morning: use tidying up as meditation. A dual gain!

Revu2

30 minutes gentle exercise every night before sleep. EVERY NIGHT, no excuses. Only 30 minutes if repeated often enough will get your body into the habit of slowing down your nervous system and your mind. Chinese friend also always washes her feet before going to bed - gets some of the energy down from the mind. We both worked in 10 hour a day 5 days a week work.

70% rule when overwhelmed with work: if everything is 70% ready it doesn't take much energy to deal with sudden changes of plan or emergencies.

Note to own self: stop panicking (biscuits, coffee and computer games are not a helpful habitual reaction to stress!)

Dance - oh yes, I remember you posting about dancing. DANCE!

You love this, I can read between the lines that it's exciting to have several different clients rather than just one set of stuck problems .

My worst attribute when busy is keeping on top of the paperwork. Deserves another urgent note to self this afternoon: do the freaking paperwork! Paperwork is so easy when I've worked in offices that had well-structured filing systems. I know this, but I detest everything about paper records. What I really hyper-detest is the new young professional who sends stuff to me electronically "so as to save paper" then asks me to print out and sign it!!!! Rant and procrastination trigger!

Sending you some tasty fresh tangerines for snacking, and a garden to sit and breathe in!

Hi Saidso,

Wonderful suggestions. I wind down with either reading, a couple of music videos, a podcast, or staring into space.

Rant on! There's sometimes a digital signature trick, but I don't know it.

Yes, I like that I'm loved. Were it entirely up to me I'd have more certainty, smaller scopes, more helpers, and stretched out time.

Today, awoke tired, ate, worked a bit, ate again, napped, awoke a second time with more pep so got to my next chapter to edit. Worked on it 2 hours so far. This doesn't include maybe half a hour off the clock as I read around a bit for research and to feel the mood for this section.

Taking a break. Letting eggs get to room temperature (how long is that?) before making cornbread muffins for a morning meeting.

Still working with Red x, everyday. Or is it Red X is working me?

Revu2

There are day-planners folks who go all in: they have fancy custom printed spiral bound planners, they buy the multi-color pen sets and describe what each color means and how they use them on lengthy youtube videos.

I find it amusing. Me? I keep my schedule in gray - pencil - and have an eraser handy. Just this morning I checked my energy level (still sniffles, so not the highest) and decided to not do something tonight. Grab eraser, find calendar, rub-rub-rub, and gone! Ain't happening. Nothing doing, literally.

What a relief. I can now plan to come back from a single meeting and take a nap! More sleep!

So, when does subtraction serve us?
Revu2

Hi Warmup,

Still in Peak Timer Period till June 14. This means all my work projects are not just ON, they're getting more complex by the day. Requiring more of my energy expressed through my creativity, attention to details, and time.

My nose is my main monitor for this: stuffy, runny means getting too close to exhausted. More stable is I'm handling matters well enough.

Keep making promises for breaks and rest to myself. Peak days ahead are Monday 5/6 with 3 meetings, Thur 5/16 with a report meeting with my biggest client, May 24, Fri, a grant is due for a client but I've no prior experience writing their grants; Monday June 10 I facilitate a board retreat.

Plus, the weather got involved: workshop canceled on the first snowy day in Feb is now booked not once, but twice (due to overflow interest) on May 7 and May 14, both Tuesdays. Though I know the material, these are my first workshops for others.

Ah, let's see. I have medical appointments. And of course, eating, sleeping, and doing the laundry.

So at times I want to sleep long, and pop awake after just 4.5 hours. Can't get back, so I get active. Today like that. This means a nap later: long or short? I'm finding I can't guess well about this.

I did work in extra naps and sleep last week. The goal was over 72 hours to get about 27 hours of sleep. Some article claimed this resets the body's "feel rested" gauge. I got about 18 over 48 hours. A start.

To the glorious day. I'm glad to be alive.
Revu2

Hi warmup,

Today feels transitional. About 8 months ago I opened an I Ching journal when I bemoaned all the stuck places in my life, condo project mired in broken communications and zero mutual deference, client project 1 skitting out of anyone's control, client project 2 seemingly impossible goal of wresting a deed from the cold grip of indifferent city politicians.

As of recently, within the past six weeks and picking up pace in the last two—new condo board with refreshed energy to move project through, client 1 convening a meeting with backers and this is gelling the group a bit;; client 2 is getting political "feelers" & comments that the city is closer to supporting us than we let on in the press (or that our supports express in their letters).

Now I have a grant to finish for client 2. Ay yi yi. But wait, technology might rescue me. (1) record client directly answering the grant questions. (2) transcribe file (3) continue to edit per usual.

Getting the raw text material is the bulkiest step of drafting formal writing like a grant. And moving from recording to text via transcription takes from 4 to 11 times the length of the recording. Thus 1 recorded hour may take 4 to 11 hours! I have an assistant and I have my own billing rates, and we're expensive.

Turns out that automatic transcription services have turned a corner on their accuracy. Several have free use for the first 1 or 2 hours of work. Others use humans, cost more, higher accuracy, and still can turn back work in less than a full day.

About 15% error rate is the industry average. One project worked with Mechanical Turk (Amazon gig marketplace) offering different rates to human transcribers, and no matter their offer the work averaged ± 15%.

So I'm going to do it. Pick two with free intro offers and compare! My own A/B testing.

Warmly,
Revu2

hi warmup,

Got past the intensive 100 days of steady effort and high-stakes (high-steady) work. Idea of symmetry crept in: will those 100 days be joined with 100 days of recovery?

New grant award getting started with a 2-day launch in late June. Intuition is this won't be that much work. So, open to new work not quite recovered enough to actively find it.

June was my highest income month from consulting, ever!? I need to test raising my rates so I earn the same with less drivenness. Lots of joy and pleasure at the successes, but also needed to complain every so often to my support peeps to keep going.

This got me thinking about the whispered comeback of "you chose it, so stop your complaining" That off on 3 levels. 1. when we chose it and when we complain are to distinct times. One is before, and the other is during or after. 2. We chose it for the romance of the joy, status, money, or freedom we imagined. Except for martyrs and masochists, we no choose for no pain. 3. Allow people their complaining, it helps them endure and carry on.

Yet, when I read about parents and their years of low & non-sleep due to the rigors of babychild care, I fall silent. I see from their view they ask, "What are you complaining about, exactly?" In this complaining tournament I cede and they move to the next round.

Yet, method matters. Reading Rachel Cusk's book on her pregnancy and child raising, I cringe when she gets to the chapter on nonsleep. Several times she calls in the word cruel when she hears her daughter crying and because of the culture or medical advice from a person or book, leaves her crying.

Think of it from the baby's point of view: it's dark, I'm left alone with no human warmth or even the voice of my mother to comfort me. I miss that, I need that, I cry out. And nothing happens. Nothing? Am I forgotten? is the family/tribe/village forever gone away? I cry more, they need to hear me!

And in the other room, through doors and walls, Rachel counts down minutes as per the advice in the book. Once after three hours of enduring this the baby is at last silent. Is she asleep and "self-soothed" in the euphemism of some texts? No, she's fallen asleep, standing in her crib with her face on the rail looking at the door. Where in heck is that woman I call mom?

Cusk even cites the practices of less 'advanced' (how anyone can dare to use that term for cultures with practices like this is beyond me) cultures where the children are much closer at night to the parents in a variety of ways. So she knows, and yet ...

In this pattern we are forced to "get" as babies that we're alone and must somehow from this small and vulnerable place learn to:

fend for ourselves &
vend for ourselves

Cusk lives in England, which right at this moment has a national campaign by The Coop with the Red Cross to address isolation and loneliness.

No kidding, Sherlock!?

Revu2

Hi Warmup: Absent a while with my nose to the page and candles burning late into the night.
Moving one client onto the incomplete stack of my life. Regrettably and reluctantly.

Just that since September I've requested, pleaded for, hinted at, and did the work to finish our project. Or at the least the portion I was working on.
All's that required now are agreements to 'release' our report to sturdy participants. Put a "please do not distribute" or something similar on the cover page and in the running footing.

First he asked I stretch our due date for comments a couple of times. OK.

Then his project directors needed to review it (which I totally agree was necessary). OK

Nothing right after their meeting. Waited two weeks, sent another request for a decision. Waited again.

Silence.

When do I call off the wheedling? How do doctors sense when to stop life support? Or sheriffs to call off searches?

Well, I'm calling it. For a ritual end, I'm culling my accumulated papers for this work and boxing them and putting in my storage closet.
Revu2

I'm a fan of the free libraries that pop up all over town. As I'm often busy with my own thinking and imagining to bring project in on time, a novel I can manage but it's more a chore than a pleasure sometimes.

Therefore I delight when i find a story anthology. One such find was the Story Prize anthology of the winning authors for its first 15 years.

Larry Dark from the prize team introduced the collection and made a passing mention that for about the past dozen years the project has recorded the award event of readings and interviews with the 3 finalists. I was about to put the book back into a free library when I remember that comment and kept it. Happy I did. Dark asked Ottessa Moshfegh how she thought through her stories and her answer got me thinking in a new way myself.

Found this at 35:30 on the video:
LD: So where does the story begin for you with that kind of idea?
OM: I'm not really an idea person. I'm more of a musical person. And I, when I start stories I have, I maybe know what the first sentence sounds like or the end of the first paragraph or, or the or the last sentence before the first break. Something like, okay, the cadence is like dah dah dah, dah, dah, or whatever. And it might be the sound of the sentence or the after effect of the sentence.

I'm not sure what it is but when I have that sound in my head, I can attempt to write it in sort of in the way you compose music trying to be detached from the meaning, because I don't know the meaning yet, I haven't discovered the story so I'm just listening.

Once I have that phrase or even just a couple of words that becomes the DNA for the story. The way that like I could take like, you know, a hair out of my head. Is this true? like, like DNA from anywhere it will tell you, like all the instructions for creating the organism is exactly the way that I feel when I'm writing. If I have a sentence all I have to do is go back to that sentence over and over again and it will tell me what to do for the rest of the story.
LD: So, does that sometimes not work out?
OM: It's a 100% success rate strategy.
LD: That sounds like you really have to really immerse yourself and then to really hear.
OM: Oh yeah I mean it's it's nerve wracking but once you get it—it's ecstatic. You know, I mean it's like surfing, like when you catch the right wave. I mean anyone who's felt ecstasy. I mean that that's what it feels like. That's why I love writing so much, … I love writing because of that experience.
LD: So each story in the book to you as like a different music, a different feel.
OM: Yeah
LD: I noticed that the beginning of the second story Mr. Wu has a really long sentence. I think I counted 132 words in that sentence so, is that something that sets the tone for the whole story?
OM: I think it might be the only story in the collection written in third person. I think in effect of what it did was establish the narrator thing—are you're coming with me? It's very storybook. It differs from the other stories because it's not someone speaking to you. It's someone storytelling to you. And that really long sentence somehow cast the line for how the movement of that narrative was going to go.

This will be quite fun to experiment with for my various goals and projects. Crafting that Home Sentence or description that's musical. This suggests a theme song to find for it. That's the whole DNA of the effort. And go back to it, immerse with it, wrack nerves, work without meaning, allow the alignment, step away from cliffs and enjoy the ecstasy. ####