Moving

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Marketing

After all, in this society, if something isn't for sale, it might as well not exist -- and it's almost impossible to think of anything to do with something of value besides market it.

-Days of War, Nights of Love-

I spent the better part of a week in meetings. Meetings to discuss marketing of a book that I haven't finished yet. Meetings to discuss the possible business options that could be launched from the sucessfull marketing of said unfinished book.

I spoke with some brilliant up-and-coming businesspeople and with some brilliant established businesspeople. All were very excited about what could be if we marketed correctly. All had great advice how to make some serious money off of my ideas.

The problem is that I don't want to write a book that makes serious money (I mean, I'm not opposed to writing a commercially successful book, but that is not the main reason I write). I want to write a book that makes me a serious writer. I want respect from my writing peers. I want my readers to change how they see the world because my writing is that strong. 

Not because I sold a bazillion copies.

I want my name mentioned alongside other great and successful writers because I made something of quality that stands up against other authors of equal quality: "Oh her? She and Neil Gaiman are my favorite authors" or "Did you read that article in the New Yorker about her and Rebeccah Solnit? Aren't they just amazing with how they express sense of place?"

The thing is, just like one businessguy said, I could (with help) manipulate the system and write something that catches attention for a second before quickly falling into the deep well of conscious oblivion.

I could. I know the formula. I now know the people who could push it through.

I just wouldn't be happy. I wouldn't be able to stand behind what I wrote. I would hate my writing because it represented a part of me that I never want to give primacy. That part which is greedy. That part that equates success with money and popularity. That part which thinks fulfillment, joy, and peace can be bought and sold. That part which isn't creative; it is mechanical, rote.

I hate that that part of me even exists. I hate that, no matter how much I protest, the quote I put at the beginning of this post is true for me. I hate that often when I write, I can't think of it as anything but something that is publishable. As if getting published will actually validate anything I do.

I want to re-vision my work. I want a paradigm shift in how I value what I create.

I know from my week of meetings, that society is not about to support such a change in vision.  If I am to see my work differently, I need to see the world differently.

Such a change in perception does not come easily. Nor is it a light matter to value things that the rest of society does not. But if I am to have integrity and peace in my life - if I am to do true good and write truly - I must not falter because others so easily see a way to sell that ultimately twists my work into a deformed - yet commercially viable - monster.

Naïve as it is, I must create true things. Regardless if they are considered valuable by others.



Perception/Participation

I've been thinking a lot about my newly-acquired and appalling resistance to writing. It has something to do with the state of being I have to achieve before I can write. And no, this is not some ephemeral flash of creativity; it is something that happens with daily discipline and training.  It happens with work. I used to enjoy the work--even when it wasn't productive and was often frustrating. I still think about how I would like to write. I make plans to be disciplined. I make lists, long-term and short-term goals; I sign up for programs that will encourage me to write a certain number of words a day.

And then.

Nothing.

Nada.

Zilch.

I don't write. I doodle. I run errands. I clean. I cook. I call up a friend I haven't spoken to in a while. I read. I find a million other legitimate reasons to ignore that what I really need to do is set pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and just. freaking. write.

And then a day goes by. And then another. And a week. And then a month. And now it is almost the end of this year and I haven't written in weeks both for my book and for my own personal sanity. 

I initially told myself that this drought of words was sign of my depression. And there was nothing I could do about it. I spun a narrative that kept me trapped in a desert devoid of joy and creativity. I indulged in my acedia. I mentally hunkered down to just move through my life until I reached a better time for writing--until my life was worth experiencing again.

But what does that mean really?  Life is worth experiencing when we decide to actually participate in it.  I just didn't want to participate. I didn't want to expend the effort to really see my world around me. It is easier to put my head down and just let the days flow over rather than raising my face, opening my mouth, and drinking in all that my life is: the bitter, the sweet, the sorrow, the joy, the mundane, the heart-racing, the difficult, the peaceful, the wretched, the beautiful. It's easier to keep my head down and let the hours pass. And pass they do. That is one thing. Time continues. Life continues whether you are there or not. So then you have choice: to participate or to live without perception. If I choose the latter, I know for a fact that I will look back at my life with all of its amazing wonders with deep regret.

I don't know exactly what I am going to do with this new awareness. I know what I should do (and I am making plans to do it), but then I have days like yesterday where I consciously refused to actually experience the moment when the silvered air moved across a cobalt bay because I would have opened a door to experiencing other things too.  It was easier to keep my head down and let the hours pass. This attitude both disgusts and scares me.  Yet I don't stop. I can't stop. I am frozen.

I started reading Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird again. In the introduction, she talks about hope:

Hope is a revolutionary patience; let me add that so is being a writer. Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.

Trust.

Hope.

Wait.

Do good.

I think I can do that. At least, it's a start.

Sex in the City Syndrome

I've just realized something . . . that no matter how inane your blog might be, if you end it with a series of questions, you sound smart and introspective. I think of this as the Sex in the City syndrome: Carrie Bradshaw pecks away at her computer after some life crisis, and what does she come up with? A series of rhetorical questions for her audience. She never actually asserts anything. Yet we are all stuck with our hands on our chins going "Hmmmm, this show is amazing. It is funny, sexy, and wise. I must watch more of it."

Boy have I been fucking this up.

My inane blog could be so much cooler. With a few well-place rhetorical questions, I could even rate a bucket list or at least some readers.

I've decided to battle everything that was taught to me (and that I taught for four years) in rhetoric and composition: namely, don't EVER use a question. Express yourself ONLY in statements because questions allow the reader to intrude into YOUR argument.

But now I ask myself, why fear the reader intrusion? (see look at me go--a question already--sort of) If my reader is hella smart, then he or she is going to project his or her hella smartness on my writing as long as I don't ever state an actual opinion.

However, something in me wants to rebel against this trend (more in another post on how if you disagree with everything that is mainstreaming, you will seem that much cooler . . . and then another post on how if you are disagreeing ironically with all that is mainstream then you are so cool that you kick way ass). Relegating my writing and opinions to a series of questions is like only following the prefabricated, safe PS book club guide at the end of a trade paperback without adding any analysis and synthesis and relevance to your life. You won't own anything you read unless you mentally do the work to engage with it. Prefab questions are a cop-out, used to assuage the latent sense of intellectual inferiority that runs through our culture.

Should I have phrased that last bit in the form of a question?

I don't want to be too perverse. Deep breath. I am going to do it. Or am I going to it? Lots of questions. Lots of questions?

Why is it that we engage more readily if invited to intrude into a conversation via a series of questions (no matter how scripted and shallow they may be)?

Why don't we recognize that all writing is predicated on dialogue and needs it to thrive?

Why can't we see that we are fools to forget the above and allow an author free reign in influencing our thoughts?

Why don't we work anymore as readers to claim the text as ours?

Are we too fearful of asserting our own opinion when another is speaking with confidence?

Or is it like Taylor Mali says, it is now just uncool to actually have a real opinion?

Why did the convenience store fail to stock Cheez-Its today?

Why do I always buy the bad coffee there?

Will I ever finish The Interrogative Mood?

Why didn't Padgett Powell at least incorporate some sort of narrative into the question(able) story?

Why don't we think back at authors? Why do we need a question to make us understand that we already contain the answer?

Wait.
Let me rephrase.

We do not need prefabricated PS questions. We can think on our own.

Any questions?

Bucket List-less

I learned a new term today: bucket list.

Okay, so it's not all that new. I've heard/read it many times on people's blogs, and I've inferred that it has something to do with things you want to do in your life. But I never actually looked up the term to see why these (hella long) lists were called bucket lists.

So, once I figured out all the meaning and etymology behind bucket list, I began mentally compiling mine. But then I stopped for a few reasons (and not very good ones at that):

1. I don't know how to put a bucket list tab on my blog page (other people are doing it on Blogger, so it must be possible). I am embarrassingly computer-stupid.

2. But even if I did know how to put a bucket list tab on my blog, what if my bucket list isn't cool enough to hang out with all the other bucket lists? What if instead of being a clever shortening of the term, my bucket list is indeed a b-list?

I have a fear of being a b-list person. It's my own private (or not so much now) personal insecurity: people find me a b-list person. I fear mediocrity and b-list smacks of it. This fear is grounded in some experience.

a) I was home-schooled and didn't have any friends besides books (and goats and rocks and trees--sort of like a Disney heroine except I have bad hair and a shitty singing voice and no fairy godmothers (that I know of)) for many years of my life, so this whole being in the company of peers thing is still relatively new (say about 1/3 of my life). I lack the social graces that apparently you pick up when you are being tormented in junior high. I'm often awkward.

b) I have had some friends(?) close acquaintances(?) who very obviously considered me their b-list friend: if something better came up (and it often did), they had no problem with abandoning me to my own devices (luckily I had all that practice reading books and not having friends as a child, so my devices are quite competent). This behavior wasn't some soul scaring thing for me. It was a bit sad, but I recognized the situation and didn't spend (too) much time wondering why these people didn't want me a an a-list friend. But the psychological damage has been done. [Of note, three people, who don't know each other at all, have randomly apologized for making me a b-list friend . . . while that apology (which confirmed everything) is nice, it didn't do much to assuage my fears that I am indeed a b-list person.]

c) My name starts with a "b," so I am perpetually on a b-list somewhere by virtue of that (though I do love the letter b. It makes me think of that Sesame Street song, "Letter B").

And further, what if my b-list is not only completely uncool, but it is also shorter than 100 (or 101 for some blogs) things. WHAT IF I AM SO BORING I CAN'T COME UP WITH 100 COOL THINGS TO DO BEFORE I DIE?

Seriously, people the Internet over are judging each other by the items on their b-list.

"Oooh, she wants to catch fireflies in a jar" (read: quirky, appreciates aesthetics, yet enjoys the simple things in life)

"and he wants to run an ultramarathon barefoot in Mexico with the Tarahumara tribe" (read: super in shape yet knows how to party, impenetrable feet, loves nature and being in solitude for a long time, reads books on running)

You get my point. How do you even think of stuff like this? I can't. My b-list would contain: drink wine and read books. Then I would cross those off over and over and over and over again because I do them everyday. But they aren't things I want to stop. They aren't things that you can do just once and say "whew, that reading thing, glad I got that one over with, now I'll never read again." I like drinking wine. I love reading books. I want to do so much more of both of those before I die ("have sex" is something else that has happened before and I would like to have happen again, so it would probably be on my list too--I guess I could cool that one up with a location or type of sex act, but honestly, how do you know when you've crossed the creepy line? The goats (happily) never taught me those kind of social skills . . . did I just cross the line there?)

3) And speaking of thinking of my b-list contents, how do you organize your head enough to even make a list of things you want to do before you die? Nothing I want to do stays static. I tend to get passionate about something for a period of time and then I just abandon it along my road of life without a second glance. I would have to update my list every week or so to accommodate the new things I want to do and get rid of all the stuff I no longer am interested in. And we all know I wouldn't actually update it, so then I will go back to it in like 13 years and have a panic attack because I never made my son homemade blueberry pancakes. Or, worse, I'll feel so committed and locked into doing the things on my list that I'll sneak into my son's college apartment on a Saturday morning as he's sleeping off his hangover from the night before and make said pancakes only to be surprised by his naked roommate coming out of the bathroom. Then the roommate and I will have to sit down and eat the pancakes because my son won't be awake yet, and I'll have to pretend that the roommate isn't naked and all shaved and pierced (was that crossing the line? Damn those goats). It will be awkward for all of us.

4) Maybe I'm ascribing too much weight to this b-list thing, but if I am going to put down life goals in writing, I really want to make sure that they are things that I really want to do and not just filler. However, sometimes I won't know whether or not something should be on my b-list until after I do it (and we all know how dissatisfying it is to add something you've already done to a list just to cross it off). For example, "jumping in puddles and rescuing worms with my son during a rainstorm followed by "hot-tubbing" it in our giant bathtub with (kinder)beers" wasn't something that I wouldn't have included on my list de novo, but now that I've done it, I know my life needed that moment to be complete. Our lives need hundreds and thousands of these little moments to be complete, and we often don't know it until they've happened. They are moments that can't be anticipated and that is why they are so precious. How do I take those moments and condense them into a pithy little line and then cross them off? I think something is lost. I want to live my life, not necessarily make it a to do list.

I love lists. I love having goals and desires (in fact, I have so many of both that I have been referred to as a cavern of want). Yet I am reluctant to merge the two. Maybe because I can't solidify what I actually want to do with my life. Maybe because I am afraid of the reckoning that articulating something brings. Maybe because I just don't really want to examine all that I want to do before I die. Maybe because I'm afraid of what would happen to my heart if I actually put something like "write a book that gets published" into print and then I am 95 years old, dying, and it didn't happen.

Maybe I am making this whole bucket list thing into a way bigger deal than it really is.

That's likely.

In any case, I am now going to drink wine and read. So I can cross those off my list

again.

Feeling Angsty

So, I just got back from a long weekend that filled me so full of creative spark and excitement, I thought I was going to burst when I got back to Monterey. I was so full of all the creative ideas and projects I wanted to finishing/revisit/start. I felt I would set the world ablaze (oh yes, I am a firestarter) with the sheer magnitude and volume of what I have to express.

Then I got back.

And now I have just undirected angst and the itch to do something but what? What? WHAT?

Part of it is that I am trying my hardest to back out of a commitment I made, and I can't seem to do it. At the weekly meeting I have with those involved with the project, I quietly mumbled things like "I don't think this is right for me" or "I may not be the kind of writer you are looking for" or "We need to have better focus before I continue." And no one heard me.

It may be that I am so awesome and valuable to their project that they just don't want to acknowledge that I want to leave and so hope that by ignoring it, I'll stop talking and just stay.

But more likely it is that I am an inveterate conflict avoider, so my quiet mumbles are probably more like inaudible whines.

Seriously, this is a huge character flaw I have. I either lay down and let everyone move me around however they see fit or I get blindingly full of rage and then destroy everything that is dear to me in my attempt to be heard. There has to be a happy medium where I am heard yet I don't hurt (myself and others).

Still looking for it. And so in the meantime, I'm left with angsty rainy Wednesdays and have no one to blame but myself.

[And to top it all off: I can't speak French!]

Henry Miller (who could speak French) gets the last word:

What I secretly longed for was to disentangle myself of all those lives which had woven themselves into the pattern of my own life and were making my destiny a part of theirs. To shake myself free of these accumulating experiences which were mine only by foce of inertia required a violent effort. Now and then I lunged and tore at the net, but only to become more enmeshed. My liberation seemed to involve pain and suffering to those near and dear to me. Every move I made for my own private good brought about reproach and condemnation. I was a traitor a thousand times over. [...] because "they" needed me, I wasn't allowed to remain inactive. Had I died I think they would have galvanized my corpse into a semblance of life.

(Actually, he doesn't) How do you say no to good things when all you have to go on is that there is a slight possibility of a better thing in the future if you are available and ready?

Bird by Bird

I have entered a very painful time in my relationship with my son. I knew it would happen someday, but I thought I had until he was at least 13 before I was totally annoyed with him and he hated me. Apparently, with the right impetus, the schism can happen when your child is as young as six. And that impetus for us is writing stories together.

It's not like we are sitting down and engaging in fun and free writing where anything is possible and the entire English language is at our service (or not if we don't want it). Rather, every week, he has ten disparate spelling words that he must weave into a coherent narrative. Couple that task with shaky handwriting skills at best and a patchy knowledge of English conventions and you have a definite challenge for any six-year-old.

The challenge for me is not letting him know just how thin my patience gets when we are doing this part of his homework. That's not easy: he's freaking annoying as hell.

Composing a narrative should be easy for him. He can tell stories like no one's business--most beginning with "When I was three"--yet when it comes to actually writing these stories down, he's suddenly pen-tied (oh no, not tongue-tied because even as he whines that he has nothing to say, he manages to keep up a nearly constant patter of talk that in no way uses a single spelling word) and completely unable to just. sit. still.

(Like Moby) I try. I bribe. I yell. I threaten. I look at each spelling word and find connections to our life ("Look honey, 'whale' is one of your words. We live on a bay that is full of whales. Would you like to write about that?" "Nah." "Okay. Here are some pictures of whales on the Internet. Oh look, the blue whale is the biggest animal ever. Even bigger than dinosaurs. Would you like to write about that?" "Nah."). I even (gulp) make connections to his video games ("We can write a story about Sonic and a whale." "Nah, I want to write about Mario and a whale" "[Ecstatic that we are getting somewhere] Okay, let's do that!" "Nah.").

Nothing works. In fact, the more I try to engage his writerly self, the more active his body becomes in a Tourette's-like litany of wiggles and twitches and rolling and pencil tossing and exorcist-like head rotations, searching for any distraction at all ("Mom, why is there a turtle in that picture? Mom, look at that bird out there on the house. Mom, check out how my pencil rolls farther than this cookie."). One second he writes a single letter (poorly) and the next he is doing a three-legged down dog.

Nothing. Works. And then I lose it. I leave the room (instantly he drops to the floor and starts playing with the cat, singing his spelling words instead of writing them down), and I start screaming in my head:
Why doesn't he love writing like I do?
Is he even my son?
He hates salsa too, maybe there was a switch at the hospital.
Why won't he stop moving?
Is he going to be a dumb jock?
I am so just going to give up.
It's not worth it.
Let him be a math nerd.
I don't care.
I won't share my books anymore with him, see how he feels then.
How is his writing process different from mine?

I stop there.

How is his writing process different from mine?

I get ready to write every morning. Then I wander the house, call a friend, write a sentence or two, fold laundry, do dishes, make tea, put on some music, check to see if the chickens have laid any eggs, write another sentence or so, delete it all, dance a little to a really good song, check Twitter, etc . . . I may fake a bit more purpose than holding a pencil in my mouth and barking like a dog, but my writing process isn't really all that different from my son's six-year-old version.

Ultimately, we are both trying to accomplish the same thing: we are seeking order in the colorful, butterfly-winged words that skitter and flit and zoom and swoop constantly in our heads. All our movement and procrastination is an attempt to shake these words into a semblance of form without being overwhelmed by their sheer power--to pin them down in a way that makes sense on the confines of 70% recycled, brown, lined paper.

I loosened up. The story about Mario feeding a singing whale a cube of chopped old and new fish got written. Peace reigned again in our house.

Until next week at least.

I Make Them Write Write Write

And then I make them read.--Taylor Mali



Which may be the problem with most of today's writers: they are disproportionately write, write, writing to their reading. Possibly this is why Poets and Writers laments that while the number of those who want to write is increasing, the number of those who actually read is going down (for further articles of this ilk go here and here).



I wouldn't think that reading would be something writers wouldn't have time to do. It seems like a no brainer: you want to write so you must love words, you must be engaged in the textual conversations that are ever-present in this (semi)literate society, you must read all the time. Come on, it's like two sides to a coin. You can't write well if you don't read, and read broadly. But apparently, we have a generation(s?) of writers in MFA programs or whatnot whose mantra is "I'll read in the summer when I have time." Hmmmm, three whole months? Wow. And who's to say you'll have time in the summer for reading? Life happens. Further, what are you doing in the off-reading months? Writing? Writing in a vacuum does not produce great works as I can attest from many of the pieces submitted in the fiction writing MFA class I am crashing.



Yet these writers?/kids?/whattheheckdoIcallthem? have no idea. They spend so much time reading each others' shoddy solipsistic works that they have no concept of what real (and good) writing looks like.