Mary Panttaja

Coming down from the hermitage…my first blog post.

I have been working in my little hermitage in the woods in Northern California for a few years now, writing mostly, but also engaged in those day-to-day activities that keep you busy when you live in the country. (It’s a little different from city living.)

I just finished the third draft of the novel I have been writing. It is a great relief to turn it over to my diligent readers for their reactions and suggestions. A bit of a breather on that side of the work load, filled with a few nerves and a lot of hope.

I am also coming into some self-consensus about how to experiment with the rest of my work, moving it and myself back out into the world—talk to people, get some feedback.

I have a odd and complex history of work—first in the theatre, then in technology and business, and now writing fiction and personal/business growth and management theory. It all makes sense organically but it sounds like a strange path to most people. Well, it even sounds like a strange path to me, but it feels normal.

So I am going to be writing a cross-linked set of blog threads—mirroring my evolving fictional structures in complexity and woven meaning.

Blogging is a new and mysterious medium to me, though it is still writing after all. But it’s form is so very different from other forms I’ve done. I keep asking myself, “What is the point?”. What am I trying to accomplish? But as a writer, it seems necessary to explore its timeliness, flexibility, ambiguity, and the weaving nature of narrative cross-linked by theme and time. It will not be easy and I must be ready to shift gears from the single focus of the novel, which, as a large and complex structure, has taken considerable time to build. Without strategic focus, it would never have come to be. But blogging as a format allows many threads of thought to be express simultaneously. The ability to capture the threads in a visible structure as they come to be seems like a very promising development for the practice of keeping the creative pipes primed on all fronts. So my work will not be “written” and complete, but instead evolving in the process of meeting an audience.

So what are my threads, the courses of thought that seem to demand my attention?

The Illumine Story Line

The story continues beyond the current novel format. I envision many ways to explore this material in time-based formats. This follows naturally for George’s journal, but also suggests more ways to imagine creating ambiguity in time and space.

The Travel Journals

I have written these independently but they are often part and parcel of the evolution of the Illumine story. It is wonderful to have a platform to observe and discuss the world and your experience of it.

Creativity: E-4/Catching the Updraft/The Arising World

These are all incarnations of the philosophical work on the process of creativity, innovation, and making things happen in the world. Different voices for different audiences. The key issue here is where to start the conversation. In fact, for a writer that is always an issue—what is the best entrance into the story. And is it always different for different readers? How can you choose/discover/evolve the perfect set of entrances.

Business and Technology

Having been only peripherally involved in the last couple of years, it is interesting to dive back into what’s going on. There are some stark contrasts appearing between “old world” business practices and work styles, and the new world—differences in habit, actions, belief structures, values—it is interesting to see. In addition, technology has shifted, but is also so much more volatile and dynamic—it’s hard to do more than identify a directional current.

How do these relate? Well, I can weave them together left to right, top to bottom; though it’s not clear how the weft moves back around. My travel writing is a major source for the story. The creativity work and the story are tightly woven together as the philosophy is a major current in the story. The creativity work and my approach to business leadership, management, and technology are tightly woven. So the weft is there, though it’s never obvious why a fiction writer also delves into business and technology so deeply. But there you go; that is what I do.

So now, I have begun.