Cissell Ink

So, here we are at the beginning of a new year – or nearly so. Which is not to be confused with being at the beginning of an old year.

I”m no a big fan of new years. I don’t stay up until midnight. I figure, what difference is it going to make? I was up when the new year burst in upon Newfoundland. and, as near as I can tell, things are okay with that. I was asleep when the New Year crept across Deadwood and westward. I don’t think it mattered.

At least not to me.

We had a day-afte-New-Year’s day family gathering in Madison, SD with 24 people present – all of them related in one fashion or another. Daughters and nieces read Dr. Suess to one another, adding to a litany of conversation and family tales. It was a fun time together. – And plenty of food, as well.

Madison is almost all the way across the state from the city west of where I used to live. It is a long drive – not so scenic. We cam home Tuesday morning. Marie drove most of the way. She does that a lot better than I do.

My next ENT appt is on the 23. My voice has been behaving itself pretty well. I haven’t had any total “fade-outs” like it would do so often in the past. I am behaving myself pretty well, too. No coffee. Talking only rarely. I did put orange juice on my cereal the other morning. Citrus is a no-no. The acid is hard on the vocal cords.

So, until the 23rd, I won’t know much about how the vocal cords are responding to treatment, except by whether or not I can communicate in more than a whisper.

On Sunday, I have a meeting to go to, halfway across the state. or more like 2/3rds. It is church-related and I will probably count it among my hours.

I don’t know yet about going to Albuquerque – perhaps I’ll hear something tomorrow.  And, I think it unlikely that I’ll be going to Nashville in early March. Too much travel…. The Wesleyan Theological Society meets the first weekend of March every year in a variety of places around the country. We discuss (mostly) John Wesley thought and writings . I presented a couple of times to this group, once – the second I time I went – on Charles’ depression and how that sort of guided him throughout much of his life. It’s a fun group to be with. Last year, the meeting was in Dallas and I didn’t go; the year before, in the L.A area and I did go. The years before – Kansas City, -2008; Bourbounnaise, IL – 2009; and somewhere in Indiana – 2010. I drove to each of those and visited family on the way over and back. They were fun trips – a lot of driving.

In Bourbonnaise, when I was leaving, I ran into someone I didn’t know. Fortunately, no one was injured, and there was very minimal damage. Very minimal.

So much, for travels… See ya later.

I am stuck with my depression. This is a realization only a couple of weeks old. There is no cure. There are a myriad of treatments, of which I am receiving several.

I need to make some decisions as to how I’m going to approach the future and how I’m going to treat the past. I wanted so badly for there to be a cure – a pill that would make everything better. But there is no so such thing. I’m stuck with this.

I have some tools to use in working with this monstrosity that would steal my life. I’m not sure how effective they’ll be – it’ll depend a lot on how effective I am. One of the major ones is positive self-talk instead of all the negative stuff I’ve been saying for years. A second is the assurance that I’m a child of God, loved deeply. I have known this almost forever, but I’ve never really lived it. I’ve sort of camped beside it, admiring it from a distance.

Knowing that you’re loved by God is a powerful resource in daily living, though. It brings a freshness that isn’t found in any other place. There are possibilities here that push back the darkness and let in light. I like this: it’s exciting.

So, we’ll see what happens as I live toward treatment. I have an appointment with the psychiatrist on Monday. We’ll talk about all the medications I’m taking and the possibility of getting rid of one or two.

A problem with the anti-depressants is, they dry out my body – which includes my vocal cords. One way of treating that is drinking a swimming pool’s worth of water every day (maybe not quite), which has me up during the night, which leads to a sleepiness during the day which adds to the depression.

So maybe relaxing the drug treatments will ease up on everything. I think I could deal with that now in not thinking that the greater number of pills will eventually cure me.

Anyway, my discovery of the year. We’ll see where it goes from here.

Well, the news was not surprising. I have another 6 weeks of restricted voice use to look forward to. I am to end coffee consumption entirely within 2 weeks. Increase considerably the intake of fluids. 64 oz a day.

I sent an email to Pastor Doug telling him the news. I am tentatively scheduled to preach on January 1. I’m not sure what we’ll do with that yet. The problem is not so much with speaking but with straining the voice. Preaching is a strain. At least for  me. Generally, it’s not a comfortable, relaxed presentation.

So, another six weeks of waiting, trying to behave myself in following the dr.’s orders. No smoking, no alchol, no spicy foods, no lying down within three hours of a meal – this includes napping. Of course, I can nap sitting up, probably standing.

I continue to re-date my Zacchaeus story. I also am doing some editing. In the original version, poor Phoebe had seven children, or some such. In this latest edition, she has only two. So far…

I am taking a liberty with the dates. I haven’t, thus-far, allowed for the change between the Julian and Gregorian calendars. It doesn’t really matter all that much. It is, after all, fiction. But, in the interest of accuracy, I should make that adjustment.

It’s an easy thing to do, so I likely will go back and make the changes at some point.

What am I going to do with it when I’m done? Send it through Amazon? That, undoubtedly, is the easiest way to go. The big problem with that is, no publicity except what I generate myself.

By next summer – or even spring – I could have six books in print. Isn’t that a thrill?

I wonder sometimes what the point is. Not that it’s been a lot of work. The writing is challenging but fun as well. Once in a while all I do is sit at the computer and wiggle my fingers and the story sort of writes itself. “Once in a while…”

Did I tell you about the note from PublishAmerica informing me that The Journey West had been chosen to be one of the five books presented to the L.A. Times Book Review? That was a week and a half ago. I’m not sure what that means exactly. Perhaps we’ll find out one of these days.

So much for “post-Doctor” day.

One of the cartoons in the paper the week before last: A guy is sitting in a chair at the edge of a cliff. Way down below is a guy on a couch. The guy in the chair yells, “I said it appears that you’re in a deep depression.”

I’m not.

Tomorrow I go back and see the ENT. I don’t have a clue what to expect. That’s a little bit frightening.

I have been using the voice a little bit yesterday and a little bit again today. It sort of comes and goes. Although, the more I use it, the more it goes. Just sort of fades away.

The thing is, I don’t know what the possibilities are. Surgery, for one. But what does it take to get that point? I don’t know. It’s fairly obvious that things are not yet “well.” It’s also fairly obvious that I can’t go back to doing what I was actually hired to do: that being, talk to people.

So, tomorrow at 10:30 or thereabouts I will find out something about the immediate future. Waiting has never been one of my favorite things.

Tom Monihan died Friday. High school classmate. He was a month away from being 63.

This, too, is a bit frightening. He had a heart attack. At age 62. The funeral is Tuesday morning in Sturgis. I believe I’ll go.

We were friends but I knew who he was. Our total class was like 165, so it was kind of hard not to know almost everyone.

His obituary was a lengthy one. He had a lot of achievements – building buildings and taking pictures and different artworks types of things. He livedin Sturgis all his life. He was well established there.

I visited with older older brother William at a craft fair in Rapid City today. William had several of his photographs on display and for sale. He has branched out into totebags and t-shirts with his art work. His photos aren’t just photos. They are expanded pixels to the point that a single point in the photograph becomes a new photograph of color and design. Interesting stuff.

We swapped stories from childhood. Mostly things we never told our parents. Car stories. Horror stories. How my two brothers and I survived teenage years is something of a mystery.

Like the time… No, never mind.

Today was “Dream Sunday” at the church. We were invited to write our dreams for the church and for self on little 2×2 post-it notes and bring them forward and stick them on a styrofoam cloud. My self-dream was for inspiration to continue writing.

So, this afternoon I started re-dating my Zacchaeus story. I will offer it as my next work to the critique group. This won’t happen until after the first of the year. We meet on the 20th and again on January 3. So perhaps in January I will introduce my writer friends to Zacchaeus.

And, now, I shall go back to thinking about tomorrow and the possibilities that lie beyond.

Today is the 9th anniversary of Dad’s death. He was 93. He had a gall-bladder incident and didn’t survive the surgery.

He indicated to us that he was ready to die before the surgery. He didn’t want any special measures taken if he should have difficulty during or following the operation.

So, 9 years already. That doesn’t seem possible.

I was serving a two-point parish just east of here and they pretty much gave me time off from before Thanksgiving to the end of the year. Very generous.

All five of us kids were able to be around for most of that time, even Michael who was in Kentucky at the time. It was good that we could be together.

Dad was a story teller, but you had to prod him a little bit. He didn’t really have any childhood tales, but from the time he left home through his military service in WWII, there were quite a variety. He traveled from coast to coast by rail, worked on farms and ranches and the CCC.

He went back to his parents farm the fall his dad died. Two men from the Roman Catholic Church where his parents attended came out to see him one afternoon – not to see if they could help with the harvest, not to see how his mother was doing. No, they came to see what Mrs Cissell’s intentions were regarding the pledge Mr Cissell had made to the church the previous year.

Dad chased them off the place with the pickfork he was holding. Dad never had much to do with the church after that. Maybe he didn’t beforehand either.

Anyway, that was one of his stories. He enjoyed telling it, too. And I miss him.

So, I think of him often. I like rehearsing his stories in my head.

My critique group dealt with the last of Family Affair this evening. They didn’t have much to say about the last two chapters. I have a continuing problem with point of view changes – I don’t mark them well enough.

What I do is just create a new paragraph and go on with the story. What I should do is double space and go on with the story. Usually, though, when I’m typing, I’m not thinking about such details. I’m just trying to get all the words out of my head and onto the computer screen.

So, anyway, we finished it. They didn’t really comment on the ending. Maybe that’s because it didn’t really end. What it does is, it bridges itself into Book III. Which is begun but sort of just hanging around at the moment. I haven’t looked at it for a while.

And somewhere during the night I started a new book, Social Networking. I got up at 4:45 this morning and wrote 2,000 words. This is not going to be a marathon like NaNoWriMo, though. I have no plans for finishing it before the first of the year – of course, that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen. I’m not aiming in that direction, though.

My appointment with the ENT is about 5 1/2 days away. One of the critique guys asked if I could lose my voice permanently. I suppose that’s a possibility…

Oh… I went to give blood today. They wouldn’t take it because I couldn’t/wouldn’t verbally say who I was. I thought that a bit odd, a bit funny and a bit aggravating. I don’t actually give blood. They take my plasma – so it’s nearly an hour process.

But because I couldn’t say that I was who I am, I couldn’t donate. I had picture i.d., my blood donor card going back five years or so. It’d only been four weeks or so since I’d donated. But, nope.

Oh, well…

Our thermometer said 6 above this morning. I had to scrape a little bit of ice off the windshield before going downtown to the church.

Back to critique for a moment (the blood interrupted my train of thought). I find myself to be a poor critiquer. I hardly ever have comments on the writings of others. Once in a while some punctuation or spelling issues, but that’s about it. I have a considerable admiration for those who read with a wider view.

At the same time, I don’t read anything anymore. I tried a Mary Higgins Clark book the other night and put it down after 8-9 pages. I still re-read my Agatha Christie books. I enjoy her. Some of my theology books, John Wesley, etc, I still read. I read a portion of a John Wesley sermon this morning having to do with discipleship and persecution.

So, that’s the way it is, Tuesday, December 6, 2011.

A brief post. It is nearing 10:00 and I’ve been writing since 4:30 this morning, with some breaks for a little bit of work at a couple of points during the day.

50,151 words. My final posting. That doesn’t mean the story is finished. It needs some polishing, I’d say. And it ends rather abruptly. “Jeremiah was on his feet in an instant.”

The story goes through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus (Yeshua) and a little bit beyond – not quite to the Ascension and Pentecost, but that could be part of the polishing.

So, anyway, there you have it. Night Screams: Jeremiah & the Gadara Road.

Like I said: a brief one tonight.

46024. That my latest posting. Four thousand words to write tomorrow. I can do that.

My main character, Jeremiah, has a serious character flaw. He started out the story with demons – depression, paranoia, self-doubt. I think there were 7 of them. As is true in the Biblical accounts, Jesus has exorcised him, warning him that if he weren’t possessed of a new Spirit within a short time span, the old demons could return and “repossess” him.

So what does he do? He gets possessed by - at least it certainly looks as though he’s headed in this direction…

Now you’d think that because it’s my story I’d have a little more control over the behavior of the characters. Not true!! For instance, I was surprised when one person died during sleep one night. I hadn’t expected that. And, I was surprised when Jeremiah invited a thief (not a good one, by any means, but still a thief) to help him run his jewelry booth.

So why should I be surprised when Jeremiah does… this? A curious thing. I won’t spoil the book by telling you what sort of demon he gets hooked up with. You’ll have to read it for yourself.

I have been talking. Today was a pretty good day. Except for this evening. A little on the hoarse side again. I see the dr in a little less than 2 weeks. He’ll probably scope my throat again and see what the nodules look like. I’m not sure what the alternatives are – continue voiceless or have surgery… I’m not sure.

This has been quite a six weeks. I’ve written many more words than I’ve spoken. Maybe that’s not so unusual, but the forced silence is.

Michael J – if you’re listening, there is an issue. I lose the end of a post on occasion. It sort of disappears in mid-sentence. I think the last one I did, did that. Any thoughts?

We had a good Thanksgiving. I made a chocolate pie for 99-year old Uncle Bob and we were in the far eastern part of the state for a Saturday Thanksgiving gather

I got up at 4:30 this morning and have written 1119 words. It’s now almost 8:00. They are not frivolous either. They develop the story and the characters. So it’s good stuff.

Going on – even when you don’t know for sure what that means – is an important part of writing. I believe the story often takes on a life of its own. Part of what that means is, the story often is just waiting for the writer, the author, to sit down and begin typing. The story already exists. All I – you – have to do is sit down and get it on paper.

This is a hard thing about writing. Part of the discipline is just doing it – sitting down to write whether or not there’s an idea in your head, whether or not you know where you’re going next.

If the story is a story, it’s going to be written. It may take longer than we imagined; it may take directions we didn’t imagine. But it will be written.

One of the neat things about writing are the surprises. For instance, I decided (or so I believe) that one of my characters would be Bar-abbas, the thief and murderer turned loose instead of Jesus just before Jesus is crucified. Well, Bar-abbas is not acting anything like the way I imagined him when he first came into the story. And (I believe) I don’t have much control over that. He’s simply part of the story being developed, revealing itself.

So, I keep at it. It won’t matter in the end whether or not I finish the month with 50,000 words. What will matter is the story – that the story gets

This is not going well. I was off to a funeral Thursday and Friday and didn’t write while gone. I didn’t write yesterday and haven’t written today, although there has been plenty of opportunity. What this means is, instead of being 1100 words behind, I’m more like 6600 words of the mark.

I got stuck when I introduced a woman to the story. There’s a healing Jesus does for a woman who had been bent over for a number of years. I brought her into the story as the women who interrupts the supper given by Simon the Pharisee. The woman in the Bible is not bent over and is known to be quite a “sinner,” whatever that might mean.

So I had Jeremiah hire her to work in the jewelry shop. And now I don’t know what to do with her. The easy thing to do is just let her fade away into the background – and that maybe is what needs to happen for right now – just for the sake of writing more. The more difficult thing right now is to use her as part of the story.

Whatever – I’m 6600 words behind.

I am talking at home today – at least that’s what I was doing this morning. Now, the voice doesn’t seem to be real cooperative. I didn’t talk at all when I was at worship. A lot of people express concern. And I am appreciative.

The 10-12 inches of snow is melting away. It’s a sunshiny day here. There wasn’t any wind with it, so it just lay where it fell. The picnic table on the deck was the huge hexagon of snow. The seat on the bicycle was like an upside down cone. Some very interesting shapes. But nothing blown in anywhere. That’s nice.

So… Back to staring at the computer screen. Perhaps some random thought will wander by and I can capture it.