Most every writer I know tries to leverage weird occurrences into prose. You know, “What doesn’t kill you makes a great story….”
This drama-trauma connection is a chicken-or-the-egg thing: does a person write because he’s practicing a well-worn coping mechanism, or, do we create trauma so we have something to write about?
In grad school I remember a lecture by Tara Ison on the dangers of “mining one’s life for material.” Creating a zeitgeist of drama that takes off like a snowball down a hill. I saw examples of this in my classmates—and, I have to admit, myself. Since my final manuscript was in creative nonfiction, and since my subject was, mainly, a marriage I was trying to make sense of, sometimes I’d push the envelope off the page just to throw a little arc into the narrative.
For instance, the landscape of my marriage was festooned with piles of crap: water heaters, the entrails of a forty-year-old car, fiberglass pillars. When my “character” needed to confront her husband about the piles—when I needed some good, cadenced dialogue—I’d think about how to confront my own husband. But first, I’d go wandering amongst the detritus and move things around a little, so I could describe them with maximum impact. A piece of pvc pipe would make a much more active foil in the hands of my three-year-old, so there I would place it. Not proud of it, but I did it. And then I described it as if it had happened organically. (Though my impulse was to be self referential and cotton to the transgression.)
It’s back to that difference between the “What about?” of fiction, and the “What if?” of creative nonfiction. Creative nonfiction invites edge-blurring. Any shitty interaction you have with another person, say a road rage on the Interstate, or an altercation with a landlord, can be objectified and shaped into story. The consequence of this, at least in my experience, is that the experience becomes depersonalized, the emotion divested. I stayed in my marriage way too long because I wrote about it like an anthropologist on field assignment.
It’s interesting going back to fiction—mining someone else’s life for drama, or inventing drama altogether. Not as easy, this template-less design. That’s why I’m buying a pack of 3-by-5s today and framing up my outline with them. I’m a tactile writer, after all, I need to touch drama—even if I’m not living it.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Monday, September 24, 2007
on living graciously
Doing a little warm up in preparation for appropriating the voice of someone who went to charm school. I had to borrow a book on etiquette. Went right for the top: Amy Vanderbilt. Her 1952 Guide to Gracious Living.
Here’s a few things I never learned about appropriate dress for active sports:
1. Tennis: Unless she’s playing on her own court at home, a woman wears white for tennis or badminton to keep from distracting other players on adjoining courts with bright colors.
2. Duckshooting: This is no time for glamour, and warm underpinnings are most important.
3. Swimming: Any woman less bony than a shad looks ridiculous in a bra-top bathing suit and one that doesn’t at least partly cover her thighs.
And here are some tips for the fastidious and well-mannered woman:
1. Dressing for Dinner: Every woman should change for dinner, if only into a clean house dress. Dinner is the high point of the day, the forerunner—it is to be hoped—of a free evening. Fresh grooming for evening is one of the criteria of gentility.
2. Sitting in a chair: Be sure to look at the chair before bending your knees. The back of your leg should actually come in contact with the chair. When you have received this indication of the chair’s position, you should bend your knees, lean forward slightly and go gently into the chair, maintaining careful contact with the floor. Beware of crossing your legs if they are not slender, as it creates unattractive bulges on the leg and thigh crossed over.
3. Women in business: The brusque, unwomanly woman is anything but attractive in or out of business. Women have their place, and men have theirs. However competent she may be in business, no woman should conduct herself in any but a dignified feminine manner.
The domestic affairs section of the etiquette book is especially fascinating:
1. Greeting servants: If you are a familiar of the house you are visiting you may say, “Good afternoon, Perkins,” to the butler or houseman who opens the door. Butlers are addressed by surnames, but maids and cooks are typically called by their given names, such as “Ella,” or “Kate.” Keep in mind that Chinese houseservants switch the order of sur and given name. A man who tells you his name is Fu Wang expects to be called Fu, his last name.
2. Maidless entertaining: Avoid the tension and trouble of extra preparations for company entertaining by living, daily, approximately the way you do when guests are present. However, there is absolutely no use, in a servantless household, in trying to duplicate at the table the kind of service one would have with a trained staff. Instead, serve meals English-style, with all the food for the course on the table or on adjacent serving tables within reach of host and hostess.
3. Cleaning routines: At minimum, daily housework should consist of meal-getting, dishwashing, bedmaking, bathroom cleaning and room-tidying, with at least one room chosen for complete overhaul. The room chosen for thorough cleaning, whether by a day-worker or the mistress, is first diassembled as much as is practicable. Furniture is pulled away from the walls, scatter rugs or carpets rolled up, ornaments removed from shelves, pictures taken down, draperies folded back or removed. Dust, vacuum, scrub and polish, in that order. In corners and inaccessible spots the floor should be lightly scraped with a paint scraper, steel wool, or a dull knife.
The very idea of presiding over one’s life like Vanderbilt instructs sets goosebumps into my skin. No wonder those gals all developed alcoholism, vapors and the need for perpetual rest cures!
Here’s a few things I never learned about appropriate dress for active sports:
1. Tennis: Unless she’s playing on her own court at home, a woman wears white for tennis or badminton to keep from distracting other players on adjoining courts with bright colors.
2. Duckshooting: This is no time for glamour, and warm underpinnings are most important.
3. Swimming: Any woman less bony than a shad looks ridiculous in a bra-top bathing suit and one that doesn’t at least partly cover her thighs.
And here are some tips for the fastidious and well-mannered woman:
1. Dressing for Dinner: Every woman should change for dinner, if only into a clean house dress. Dinner is the high point of the day, the forerunner—it is to be hoped—of a free evening. Fresh grooming for evening is one of the criteria of gentility.
2. Sitting in a chair: Be sure to look at the chair before bending your knees. The back of your leg should actually come in contact with the chair. When you have received this indication of the chair’s position, you should bend your knees, lean forward slightly and go gently into the chair, maintaining careful contact with the floor. Beware of crossing your legs if they are not slender, as it creates unattractive bulges on the leg and thigh crossed over.
3. Women in business: The brusque, unwomanly woman is anything but attractive in or out of business. Women have their place, and men have theirs. However competent she may be in business, no woman should conduct herself in any but a dignified feminine manner.
The domestic affairs section of the etiquette book is especially fascinating:
1. Greeting servants: If you are a familiar of the house you are visiting you may say, “Good afternoon, Perkins,” to the butler or houseman who opens the door. Butlers are addressed by surnames, but maids and cooks are typically called by their given names, such as “Ella,” or “Kate.” Keep in mind that Chinese houseservants switch the order of sur and given name. A man who tells you his name is Fu Wang expects to be called Fu, his last name.
2. Maidless entertaining: Avoid the tension and trouble of extra preparations for company entertaining by living, daily, approximately the way you do when guests are present. However, there is absolutely no use, in a servantless household, in trying to duplicate at the table the kind of service one would have with a trained staff. Instead, serve meals English-style, with all the food for the course on the table or on adjacent serving tables within reach of host and hostess.
3. Cleaning routines: At minimum, daily housework should consist of meal-getting, dishwashing, bedmaking, bathroom cleaning and room-tidying, with at least one room chosen for complete overhaul. The room chosen for thorough cleaning, whether by a day-worker or the mistress, is first diassembled as much as is practicable. Furniture is pulled away from the walls, scatter rugs or carpets rolled up, ornaments removed from shelves, pictures taken down, draperies folded back or removed. Dust, vacuum, scrub and polish, in that order. In corners and inaccessible spots the floor should be lightly scraped with a paint scraper, steel wool, or a dull knife.
The very idea of presiding over one’s life like Vanderbilt instructs sets goosebumps into my skin. No wonder those gals all developed alcoholism, vapors and the need for perpetual rest cures!
Monday, September 17, 2007
the view
It’s looking like I should rename this blog: Let’s talk about why I’m not writing.
But seriously folks, I’m working on it. I am. Really.
As my workshop mates continue to amass their fortunes (Chuck Palahniuk has landed another 3-book contract and entertains movie deal offers every week; Chelsea Cain’s book, Heartsick, is # 8 on the NYT list after less than two weeks on the shelf), I’m off climbing mountains and having lots of sex.
Okay, I’m not implying that my successful writing friends aren’t getting any, I’m just saying...
Rachel brought up an interesting question in her comment (the tomato picture post). Do we have to be manic, miserable or morbid in order to get 'er done? I was talking to my boyfriend’s brother yesterday about how hard it is for me to weave cloth from air. To gather the delicate details that create a completely original world of invent and make it compelling enough to go the distance. I’m not an outliner by nature because I worry about my tendency to be a faithful administrator of preconceived versions of things—not wanting to betray the original inclination by dumping it for a new sexy direction that bubbles up during process. It’s the same stupidity that causes me to have sentimental backthoughts of the minivan I kicked off the island in favor of my sporty Element.
One thing about climbing up above the clouds is that the petty thoughts that normally clog the pipes don’t claim a person quite as fiercely. You get up to 10,000 feet and the air is thin and you realize that all you have is your lungs, heart, and brain. Oh yeah, and your legs. Especially your legs: knees, ankles, toes. I’ve had moments immersed in writing that are similar. When things are distilled to their basic and necessary elements: the word. The sentence. The white space.
It’s a gift when the world falls away and you find yourself filled with the moment. Most weeks I get there, maybe for only five minutes, maybe, if I’m lucky, for a half hour. Artists and mountain climbers. Writers, musicians, lovers. I guess that’s the thing, right? What we strive for? Not a flush bank account?
Ah well. I need to leave this planet now and find a new way to talk about breadcrumbs.
Monday, September 10, 2007
stranger than fiction
I have a teepee in my front yard. The teepee belongs to my boyfriend and I really like it there, just behind the arborvitae in plain sight of the main road, because it adds that little something to the aesthetic, and IMHO, it deters criminal activity. Who would rob a house with another little house benext to it? Plus, the teepee confirms what many of our neighbors suspected, that we’re slightly odd on the corner of 30th and Carson.
Odd, ha-ha, or odd scary? Well, ask my neighbors. At the very least, the teepee keeps them guessing. And I like that.
My son started his third year of piano lessons this afternoon. Hasn’t touched the keyboard in three months, so it’s back to “Can you find middle C for me?” Piano tuition has jumped twenty bucks a month, too. Damn it.
The piano teacher doesn’t hear well, and she’s under the impression that my name is Sally. It’s gone on too long for me to correct. My checks clearly indicate that my name is, indeed, not Sally, so I figure she’ll catch on one of these days. She also thinks that my ex-husband and I are still married. It’s one of those things that’s hard to set straight in front of my son, because you never know what a piano teacher might say: “Oh, I’m sorry!” In which case I’d have to say, “I’ve been divorced for over a year and I’m certainly NOT sorry.” Which, of course, would be inappropriate.
My son has begun primping in the mirror. To work on his “look.” Bangs flat, pulled back in a wave, slicked to his scalp like Eddie Munster. Sculpted to his forehead like Gomez Adams. He washes and powders his feet. He gave me his last Skittle because he was “feeling fat.” He’s eight.
Fiction abounds. From childhood forth we invent ourselves, reinvent ourselves, leap into misperception and turn it into truth, and ride the edge as though grinding a railing with our skateboard psyches. How hard can it be, then, to take this tendency and jump off the bridge with it? Keep the ink flowing down the page of invent? Why, it should be the easiest thing in the world!
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
the competition
This is a sample of what came out of my garden this summer. Yesterday’s harvest.
Since this is a writing blog, as opposed to a food or gardening blog, here’s where I make the metaphoric leap to creative bounty. Lush, ripe, overflowing muse. I look at that bowl of tomatoes, peppers and crookneck squash and should think: the fertility of imagination. The infinite possibilities of translating abundance to the page.
You know where I’m going, right?
Some of my writer friends (Chuck Palahniuk, for instance), channel inspiration through physical activity. These writers have an idea, then go outside and build a patio in order to flow the idea through their bodies. To concretize it, crystallize it, imbue it with authority.
Me, not so much.
When I go outside to weed the garden, let’s say, or paint the side of the garage, any fragments of inspiration poof into the ether as monkey-mind settles in like an unshakable fog. Quotidian tasks queue up, and before I know it, I’m in line at Home Depot buying two-stroke gas for my weed whacker, my characters all on holiday somewhere beyond the ozone and out of reach.
The problem with me, I’ve decided, is that I haven’t figured out how to integrate the pragmatic, quotidian aspects of living with my life as an artist. Those perfect tomatoes and everything it took to grow them compete with writing rather than help to generate more of it.
Usually what happens to writers like me is they end up turning their conflict into prose. Like I’m doing now. Erma Bombeck type stuff. Essays on domesticity and the trials and tribulations of parenting. And I’ve done that, of course. And it’s mildly satisfying. My Sweat in the City column was full of that stuff.
But I want to crack the code on FICTION. I want to write a novel that I don’t hate. I want to write a novel that I can’t stop reading. Is that so out of line?
I have this great supportive boyfriend who, truth be told, is responsible for the tomatoes in that bowl. He’d be thrilled if I’d just turn over the garden and the garage painting and all of it to him, and tip-toe up to my ivory tower and write.
So I have no excuse, really. Other than those seductive tomatoes. And the cookies I want to make for Carson right now because it’s his last day of summer vacation. And thinking about kissing my boyfriend. And the bike ride I want to take. And the blind pug who needs to be guided down the porch steps in order to take his morning crap. Oh yeah, and don’t forget the hangover I’m battling due to the bottle of wine I drank last night with my friend Rachel in her backyard as we burned the discarded lathe and plaster of her remodel-in-progress. I don’t want to give any of it up. Except maybe the day job that I should be engaging in right now.
So I’m not engaging in pragmatic discourse here. It’s more of an existential dilemma I find myself in. The psyche wants what it wants. Today, it wants a tomato sandwich.
Sunday, September 02, 2007
will write for water
Monica and I have returned, safe and sound, from our over-the-Cascades turn-around. In a weird timewarpish valderi valdera, we got to the bookstore just in the nick of time for our 6:30 reading. 6:30? Hm.
We barely got the kids fed with morsels from the cheese/cracker/wine goody table and discussed reading order/logistics with the manager before the onslaught. And by onslaught I mean three eager book enthusiasts.
A holiday weekend in a resort community should have garnered more interest, particularly since there was a lovely write-up on Clown Girl in an area newspaper. Alas, Paulina Springs Bookstore was not on the list of end-point destinations for the Sisters/Black Butte set. Nor did literature fans venture the 20 miles from culturally growing Bend.
The three (four, counting the bookstore manager) polite listeners were terrific, however. I "opened" for Monica with a story that only has one risky part and no f-bombs. In a wonderful twist of coincidence, one of the audience members was a plumber, as was the hero of my story! I was so glad I hadn't named my story The Disgraceful Plumber or something. Whew.
Before the reading, Monica had convinced me to scribble prices on the back of my books. "People respect you more when you charge for your work," she said. So, while Monica, Mavis and Carson were engaging in the 10-minute swim at the hotel (we had thought the reading was at 7:30, and as everyone was suiting up I phoned the bookstore to confirm the time. Oops.) I scribbled $3.50 on the backs of my books.
At the bookstore, in an act of pure brazenness I passed out my books like hymnals before advancing toward the podium, and I suppose I shamed two of the patrons into buying them!
I have a bit of a binge problem at indie bookstores, I must admit. I've never been able to browse without whipping out the credit card for a stack of product I buy often for the cover alone. But this time, with $7 dollars in my hand, I resisted. It was sort of like getting a chit from AA I guess--you know, a little reward for staving off addictive impulse. I left the store richer than when I came in. But, as Monica pointed out on the way back to Bend, I left without getting paid.
"Did you get your bottle of water?"
"Um, no."
"That's your pay," she said, hoisting up her own Kirkland Springwater, which was half gone at this point, having been used to soothe her throat which had begun to act up the minute we crossed the pass into the forest fires of Central Oregon.
The lack of irony in that comment made us both crack up. Starving writers on the road--at least we'll never be thirsty.
We barely got the kids fed with morsels from the cheese/cracker/wine goody table and discussed reading order/logistics with the manager before the onslaught. And by onslaught I mean three eager book enthusiasts.
A holiday weekend in a resort community should have garnered more interest, particularly since there was a lovely write-up on Clown Girl in an area newspaper. Alas, Paulina Springs Bookstore was not on the list of end-point destinations for the Sisters/Black Butte set. Nor did literature fans venture the 20 miles from culturally growing Bend.
The three (four, counting the bookstore manager) polite listeners were terrific, however. I "opened" for Monica with a story that only has one risky part and no f-bombs. In a wonderful twist of coincidence, one of the audience members was a plumber, as was the hero of my story! I was so glad I hadn't named my story The Disgraceful Plumber or something. Whew.
Before the reading, Monica had convinced me to scribble prices on the back of my books. "People respect you more when you charge for your work," she said. So, while Monica, Mavis and Carson were engaging in the 10-minute swim at the hotel (we had thought the reading was at 7:30, and as everyone was suiting up I phoned the bookstore to confirm the time. Oops.) I scribbled $3.50 on the backs of my books.
At the bookstore, in an act of pure brazenness I passed out my books like hymnals before advancing toward the podium, and I suppose I shamed two of the patrons into buying them!
I have a bit of a binge problem at indie bookstores, I must admit. I've never been able to browse without whipping out the credit card for a stack of product I buy often for the cover alone. But this time, with $7 dollars in my hand, I resisted. It was sort of like getting a chit from AA I guess--you know, a little reward for staving off addictive impulse. I left the store richer than when I came in. But, as Monica pointed out on the way back to Bend, I left without getting paid.
"Did you get your bottle of water?"
"Um, no."
"That's your pay," she said, hoisting up her own Kirkland Springwater, which was half gone at this point, having been used to soothe her throat which had begun to act up the minute we crossed the pass into the forest fires of Central Oregon.
The lack of irony in that comment made us both crack up. Starving writers on the road--at least we'll never be thirsty.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
the graceful plumber
Following Monica's advice, I've crafted up a couple of chapbooks. Two-and-a-half hours at Kinko's trying to format my Microsoft Office Publisher document in such a way as to be able to mass-produce it in booklet form, front-and-back.
Sort of a fun, self-promotional adventure, but for the fact that my 8-yr old was in tow and flinging himself on the ground every five minutes in a cry of abject boredom. It got really fun when he got somewhat tangled in the myriad hose-sized cords webbing printers to power junctions.
Carson has better fine motor skills than his mother, so when it came time to glue the back of page 7 to page 8, I handed him the stick.
Road trip to Sisters tomorrow!
Friday, August 24, 2007
reading in sisters
My friend Monica Drake has invited me to “open” for her when she reads next Friday at Paulina Springs Books in Sisters, Oregon. At Monica’s suggestion, I’m going to put together a little chapbook for distribution at the bookstore. What the hell, right? Shameless self-promotion?
The perfect little arts n crafts project for the last week of summer!
The perfect little arts n crafts project for the last week of summer!
Monday, August 13, 2007
voice
I’m working up a voice for my Watch Hill narrator. Sort of disaffected Fran Lebowitzish with Edie Sedgwick undertones… But with a heart. I hope.
The conceit is that the mansion must be sold. Time ticks by before the chopping block hour, and the narrator, Frances, along with Cousin Caroline, are charged with collecting, distributing and/or throwing out all the contents of the house before it is sold for “pennies on the dollar.”
So the overlay story has a bunch of squabbling, relationships going awry, and secrets revealed, while the backstory describes the sordid lives of the previous generations who inhabited the house. There’s a murder-suicide, myriad affairs, groundbreaking science and lots of booze. O, to live in New England with the filthy rich back in the era!
Off to the Wallowas for a few days, and plan to bring my notebooks!
The conceit is that the mansion must be sold. Time ticks by before the chopping block hour, and the narrator, Frances, along with Cousin Caroline, are charged with collecting, distributing and/or throwing out all the contents of the house before it is sold for “pennies on the dollar.”
So the overlay story has a bunch of squabbling, relationships going awry, and secrets revealed, while the backstory describes the sordid lives of the previous generations who inhabited the house. There’s a murder-suicide, myriad affairs, groundbreaking science and lots of booze. O, to live in New England with the filthy rich back in the era!
Off to the Wallowas for a few days, and plan to bring my notebooks!
Thursday, August 09, 2007
torch
I’m tired and satisfied after a week of literary interlude. I’ve been seeking out writers lately. I miss the ol’ shop talk. You know, the pros and cons of first/third POV; alignment with memory in of itself vs the thing remembered. A robust tug-of-war focused on sentimentality in literary fiction (and you thought that was an oxymoron).
Cheryl Strayed came over tonight. She was our “visiting author” at bookgroup. She had all the gals in the palm of her hand just by being genuine, unapologetic and smart in discussing the background and circumstances of her book,Torch .
The book deals with the hardest of subjects, death and grief, and was fueled by Cheryl’s real life sudden loss of her mother at a crucial time in her life.
Torch, despite the somewhat schmaltzy chicklit book cover, is unflinching and sometimes painful to read. The myriad forms grief takes—the way sadness, rage, numbness and dissociative strategies can blossom into implosion—finds purchase as Strayed rolls along the year following her protagonist’s death from cancer.
The heart of the book is that it’s so personal. So particular. There is not one cliché, not one grab-and-go metaphor—but the universal broken heart threads throughout the story. You must read it.
Cheryl Strayed came over tonight. She was our “visiting author” at bookgroup. She had all the gals in the palm of her hand just by being genuine, unapologetic and smart in discussing the background and circumstances of her book,Torch .
The book deals with the hardest of subjects, death and grief, and was fueled by Cheryl’s real life sudden loss of her mother at a crucial time in her life.
Torch, despite the somewhat schmaltzy chicklit book cover, is unflinching and sometimes painful to read. The myriad forms grief takes—the way sadness, rage, numbness and dissociative strategies can blossom into implosion—finds purchase as Strayed rolls along the year following her protagonist’s death from cancer.
The heart of the book is that it’s so personal. So particular. There is not one cliché, not one grab-and-go metaphor—but the universal broken heart threads throughout the story. You must read it.
Monday, August 06, 2007
what if...
My latest project is taking shape around a pit of truth. The flesh around it isn't true though. I'm wholesale inventing two characters (at the very least) upon whom plot and arc will hang, so it kinda feels like I'm putting some sort of fertilizer in the mix here. The vivid neon of Miracle Grow in an otherwise organic scaffolding.
Occasionally a situation will occur to me and I'll want to build character to accommodate the scene playing in my head. For instance, last night my 8-yr old (who I hadn't seen in over a week) wanted to play "spa" with me. He got out lotion and a comb and hair spray and wanted to "fix me up." It was one of those situations where you wonder if this will be replayed on a therapist's couch down the road.
After a few minutes of him trying to yank a comb through my rat's nest hair, I suggested he put the beauty products away and go to bed. "But I want to sleep here, with you!" he said.
"Nope."
Soon as he was in bed I thought about how this scene could play out with the not-yet-fleshed-out characters in my work. Suppose the mom really got into her little boy playing with her hair and giving her a facial, etc...? Then let's say the little boy grows up to commit infractions of a boundary-issue nature?
It's back to that old process question one hears from time to time. The difference between fiction and non-fiction? Non-fiction seeks to explore the question: "What about..." whereas fiction meanders into the territory, "What if..."
Occasionally a situation will occur to me and I'll want to build character to accommodate the scene playing in my head. For instance, last night my 8-yr old (who I hadn't seen in over a week) wanted to play "spa" with me. He got out lotion and a comb and hair spray and wanted to "fix me up." It was one of those situations where you wonder if this will be replayed on a therapist's couch down the road.
After a few minutes of him trying to yank a comb through my rat's nest hair, I suggested he put the beauty products away and go to bed. "But I want to sleep here, with you!" he said.
"Nope."
Soon as he was in bed I thought about how this scene could play out with the not-yet-fleshed-out characters in my work. Suppose the mom really got into her little boy playing with her hair and giving her a facial, etc...? Then let's say the little boy grows up to commit infractions of a boundary-issue nature?
It's back to that old process question one hears from time to time. The difference between fiction and non-fiction? Non-fiction seeks to explore the question: "What about..." whereas fiction meanders into the territory, "What if..."
Friday, August 03, 2007
show me the invoice
The days of August. They are the dog days, are they not? Feet up naps and circuitous strolls through shady parks. Bike rides are a good idea in August. So are matinees and mimosas and myriad delay tactics at work.
Problem is, September is an expensive month. What with back-to-school, soccer equipment and fall maintenance checklists… The disconnect between billable hours and bank deposits is sobering. So, alas, here I am in my faux Aeron chair in between conference calls and data entry, thinking that it sure would be nice to get paid (well) for the sort of writing I most like to do.
Yesterday I read a piece by Steve Almond in the July/August Poets & Writers. (I’m a little behind—you should SEE the towering stack of NewYorkers by my bed). The article (which he probably got $300 or so to write...) is called “Will Write for Free.” Almond laments the lack of pay for creative work, time spent promoting creative work, and the attitude of small press publishers and anthology editors when a writer deigns to broach the subject of fee-for-service.
Almond left journalism to become an “artiste” and pledged to turn his back “on the commercial world.” After writing, publishing and hawking several critically-acclaimed books, the guy is living hand-to-mouth and now has a wife and kid to support.
He wraps the piece by relating some tough-speak he had to employ to get a kill fee from a food glossy when they tanked an article. Evoking the litigious possibilities when you get stiffed, he claims, is sometimes a necessary evil when you’re trying to make your nut with words.
When I finished my MFA program I was all set to do the adjunct crawl. Write, teach, and patch together a literary life. Only problem was, even to get an interview at a community college for a part time slot I needed two years teaching experience, a published book and connections I really didn’t have in place. I began the process of prerequing myself for the crumbs of academe when an opportunity to write for a marketing company bubbled out of the ground.
Through this opportunity, I wrote copy for various financial services companies (think Wall Street…think Hedge Funds…think Bullshit) and made some pretty hefty bank. Talk about selling out. I think it was over the Thanksgiving holiday a few years back when the principal of a Hedge Fund IT company called with a request that I immediately fix a minute glitch on a banner ad for a disaster recovery product that caused me my existential crisis. Not only was I abstracting myself from my family during THE secular fest of the year, I was sweating over the font size of a phrase I’d invented likening a life preserver to ensuring the uninterrupted flow of more money than could choke a major metropolitan sewage system.
Oy fucking vey.
So I declined continued work from said company and similar verticals, and cozied up instead to food companies, yoga studios and other lifestyle businesses that sold actual services and products. My particular pact with Satan was mitigated by contingencies that reduced my culpability as a marketing slut. For instance, I won’t write copy for big, scary corporate banks. Or private financial services smoke-and-mirror organizations . Or individuals who want their web sites to have lots of red and “but wait, there’s more” messaging. But I do have to continue to write marketing copy for a living, and I am putting the kybosh on little journal pieces that pay less than seventy-five cents a word. Time may not be money, but it is time, and I have a Happy Hour to get to…it’s August!
Problem is, September is an expensive month. What with back-to-school, soccer equipment and fall maintenance checklists… The disconnect between billable hours and bank deposits is sobering. So, alas, here I am in my faux Aeron chair in between conference calls and data entry, thinking that it sure would be nice to get paid (well) for the sort of writing I most like to do.
Yesterday I read a piece by Steve Almond in the July/August Poets & Writers. (I’m a little behind—you should SEE the towering stack of NewYorkers by my bed). The article (which he probably got $300 or so to write...) is called “Will Write for Free.” Almond laments the lack of pay for creative work, time spent promoting creative work, and the attitude of small press publishers and anthology editors when a writer deigns to broach the subject of fee-for-service.
Almond left journalism to become an “artiste” and pledged to turn his back “on the commercial world.” After writing, publishing and hawking several critically-acclaimed books, the guy is living hand-to-mouth and now has a wife and kid to support.
He wraps the piece by relating some tough-speak he had to employ to get a kill fee from a food glossy when they tanked an article. Evoking the litigious possibilities when you get stiffed, he claims, is sometimes a necessary evil when you’re trying to make your nut with words.
When I finished my MFA program I was all set to do the adjunct crawl. Write, teach, and patch together a literary life. Only problem was, even to get an interview at a community college for a part time slot I needed two years teaching experience, a published book and connections I really didn’t have in place. I began the process of prerequing myself for the crumbs of academe when an opportunity to write for a marketing company bubbled out of the ground.
Through this opportunity, I wrote copy for various financial services companies (think Wall Street…think Hedge Funds…think Bullshit) and made some pretty hefty bank. Talk about selling out. I think it was over the Thanksgiving holiday a few years back when the principal of a Hedge Fund IT company called with a request that I immediately fix a minute glitch on a banner ad for a disaster recovery product that caused me my existential crisis. Not only was I abstracting myself from my family during THE secular fest of the year, I was sweating over the font size of a phrase I’d invented likening a life preserver to ensuring the uninterrupted flow of more money than could choke a major metropolitan sewage system.
Oy fucking vey.
So I declined continued work from said company and similar verticals, and cozied up instead to food companies, yoga studios and other lifestyle businesses that sold actual services and products. My particular pact with Satan was mitigated by contingencies that reduced my culpability as a marketing slut. For instance, I won’t write copy for big, scary corporate banks. Or private financial services smoke-and-mirror organizations . Or individuals who want their web sites to have lots of red and “but wait, there’s more” messaging. But I do have to continue to write marketing copy for a living, and I am putting the kybosh on little journal pieces that pay less than seventy-five cents a word. Time may not be money, but it is time, and I have a Happy Hour to get to…it’s August!
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
mt st helens
If summer is the canvas upon which subverted paradigms are splashed, then a trek above the timberline is exactly the medium to do the splashing.
Kirk and I (along with Kirk's fleet-footed son, Brendan) climbed up to the summit of Mt. Saint Helens on Sunday, to see what we could see. The air is pretty damn fresh up there at 8,365 feet, and so is the perspective. So with cleaned out lungs, a cleared up head, and slightly sore calf and quads, I feel ready to tackle the next big thing. (Or continue with the big thing I've already begun...)
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
covering the past
For the past few months I’ve been increasingly aware of the ipod in my brain. At any given time an obscure song from the past whispers, clangs or rocks the sidewalls of my skull. For years, whenever I was anxious I found myself humming Christmas tunes. A sort of audio version of grinding my teeth. Instead of being self-soothing, the audible “Silent Night” or “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” was prelude to catapulting into a state of ill temper.
Not so when my playlist includes some obscure ballad from days of yore, such as “Billy, Don’t be a Hero,” or “The Night they Drove Old Dixie Down.” I find myself eager to whistle along or worse, belt out the occasional refrain with abandon. Maybe it’s the secularity of the tunes that eases me into this fuzzy state of goofiness. Maybe it’s a sort of memory lane wonderland divorced from the actual hell I must have been experiencing (given that the target date of most of these bubble-ups is smack in the middle of adolescence) at the time.
I like the notion that this braintrust exists, whatever the source. It gives me hope that somewhere in the archives I can pull up the German I knew fluently at age five, or maybe I can retrain myself to skateboard with proficiency once again. Right now? My storage system is serenading me with “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”
Not so when my playlist includes some obscure ballad from days of yore, such as “Billy, Don’t be a Hero,” or “The Night they Drove Old Dixie Down.” I find myself eager to whistle along or worse, belt out the occasional refrain with abandon. Maybe it’s the secularity of the tunes that eases me into this fuzzy state of goofiness. Maybe it’s a sort of memory lane wonderland divorced from the actual hell I must have been experiencing (given that the target date of most of these bubble-ups is smack in the middle of adolescence) at the time.
I like the notion that this braintrust exists, whatever the source. It gives me hope that somewhere in the archives I can pull up the German I knew fluently at age five, or maybe I can retrain myself to skateboard with proficiency once again. Right now? My storage system is serenading me with “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”
Monday, July 16, 2007
zeitgeist
Still in NY, just back from East 64th, where Kirk, Maggie, Carson and I did a short and dirty 20 hours in Gotham.
I brought along the beginning of my friend Tom Spanbauer’s latest work-in-progress, which is a craft book on Dangerous Writing. I’ve had the pages in my e-mail file for over two weeks. I had been saving the read for my NYC dip on purpose. To know why, you’d have to know Tom, and my history with Tom.
Like many of his students, I became utterly smitten with Tom within minutes of meeting him. His heart is that enormous. He wasn’t my first, nor my last writing mentor, but the profundity of his effect lingers like a scent from childhood: Ditto ink, say, or a beloved relative's kitchen. Tom’s epiphany about writing came to him while he lived in NY in the 80’s, and I knew that’s where he’d be going in his intro, so I waited until I was on sacred ground before losing myself in his philosophical scaffolding on what it is to write dangerously.
A few months ago I was invited to opine on a movie being made by Portland filmmaker Neal Corl. The movie is called Dangerous Writing. My initial thought was: Fuck, I have to stay away from this. Far, far away. I fancied myself some sort of Mata Hari, envisioned Tom getting wind of this, thinking that I might be appropriating his gig for some sort of narcissistic gain. Neal reassured me that the screenplay he’d written and the movie he was about to film were more about exploring his own teacher shadow-figure than deconstructing a popular writing teacher’s methods. What he wanted from me was reality check. A bit of advice from someone who’d studied minimalism and other writing workshop paradigms.
With quite a bit of trepidation I agreed to attend the initial on-set meeting. Amid the group of actors and crew he’d assembled on the set, Neal offered his interpretation of what it is to write dangerously. And he got it completely. The story he coughed up as example courted shame, remorse, sexuality and bad behavior. It did not apologize, was not sentimental and had that quality of spotlighting the place where you’d rather be anywhere else. I thought, Well, okay.
The spirit, the energy and intent of Neal’s approach was honest, and aligned with my experience of why artists , real artists, are compelled to look at the underbelly of humanity, starting with their own failures. The storyline of Neal Corl’s Dangerous Writing had nothing to do with Tom Spanbauer’s story. In fact, the main character, Ezra Rosen, is profoundly different in personality from Tom. But the intersection of humanity is glaring. The broken heart. The wounded grace.
What I came to during my limited involvement in Neal’s movie (I was on set twice, and offered only what I could rightfully claim as my own writing philosophies, leaving any of Tom’s lexicon out of the mix) was similar to the hit I just got reading Tom’s writing book draft, and that is this: storytellers are heroic. It is only through recognizing the heroism in telling an honest, dangerous and self-reflective story that we can assemble the context for purpose.
Go forth fellow storytellers, whatever your medium. We’re waiting.
I brought along the beginning of my friend Tom Spanbauer’s latest work-in-progress, which is a craft book on Dangerous Writing. I’ve had the pages in my e-mail file for over two weeks. I had been saving the read for my NYC dip on purpose. To know why, you’d have to know Tom, and my history with Tom.
Like many of his students, I became utterly smitten with Tom within minutes of meeting him. His heart is that enormous. He wasn’t my first, nor my last writing mentor, but the profundity of his effect lingers like a scent from childhood: Ditto ink, say, or a beloved relative's kitchen. Tom’s epiphany about writing came to him while he lived in NY in the 80’s, and I knew that’s where he’d be going in his intro, so I waited until I was on sacred ground before losing myself in his philosophical scaffolding on what it is to write dangerously.
A few months ago I was invited to opine on a movie being made by Portland filmmaker Neal Corl. The movie is called Dangerous Writing. My initial thought was: Fuck, I have to stay away from this. Far, far away. I fancied myself some sort of Mata Hari, envisioned Tom getting wind of this, thinking that I might be appropriating his gig for some sort of narcissistic gain. Neal reassured me that the screenplay he’d written and the movie he was about to film were more about exploring his own teacher shadow-figure than deconstructing a popular writing teacher’s methods. What he wanted from me was reality check. A bit of advice from someone who’d studied minimalism and other writing workshop paradigms.
With quite a bit of trepidation I agreed to attend the initial on-set meeting. Amid the group of actors and crew he’d assembled on the set, Neal offered his interpretation of what it is to write dangerously. And he got it completely. The story he coughed up as example courted shame, remorse, sexuality and bad behavior. It did not apologize, was not sentimental and had that quality of spotlighting the place where you’d rather be anywhere else. I thought, Well, okay.
The spirit, the energy and intent of Neal’s approach was honest, and aligned with my experience of why artists , real artists, are compelled to look at the underbelly of humanity, starting with their own failures. The storyline of Neal Corl’s Dangerous Writing had nothing to do with Tom Spanbauer’s story. In fact, the main character, Ezra Rosen, is profoundly different in personality from Tom. But the intersection of humanity is glaring. The broken heart. The wounded grace.
What I came to during my limited involvement in Neal’s movie (I was on set twice, and offered only what I could rightfully claim as my own writing philosophies, leaving any of Tom’s lexicon out of the mix) was similar to the hit I just got reading Tom’s writing book draft, and that is this: storytellers are heroic. It is only through recognizing the heroism in telling an honest, dangerous and self-reflective story that we can assemble the context for purpose.
Go forth fellow storytellers, whatever your medium. We’re waiting.
Friday, July 13, 2007
watch hill
Just returned from the most vigorously inspiring journey! My friend Rachel is part owner of a mansion on the coast of RI. Kirk, Carson, Maggie and I were invited to partake in a Gatsby-esque summer home experience complete with salt sea air, the essence of unmitigated wealth and the company of charming heirs. Verklempt doesn't even touch it.
My new project is a fictionalized account of the family who has owned this place for more than half its life. Here's a tiny snippet:
Mr. and Mrs. Dick are dead. Your old-fashioned murder-suicide: bullet to the brain, bullet to the chest. The children were about, but the carnage was timed, as is often the case with well-thought-out homicides, to coincide with the imminent arrival of the housekeeper. The police followed shortly thereafter, having been tipped off by Mr. Sheldon Dick himself, who’d placed the call, speaking in the present tense of an act that had yet to occur.
I'm bombing along with a zeal I haven't had in months. I'm going to write this novel. It's too good, this backstory, to pass up!
Thursday, June 07, 2007
time management woes
One of the biggest hurdles for me is where to draw the line on unpaid efforts. I’m a pleaser, and as such, my tendency is to fulfill. That’s how I’m wired. The challenge comes in when I have to prioritize fulfillment, especially now, when most of my opportunities are writing/editing related.
My boyfriend Kirk suggested that I look at what I’m giving away. How do I value that, if I were to apply something as gauche as money to it? What’s my intellectual property worth, in other words? Kirk says, “Well, if you were punching a time clock, you wouldn’t be able to do what you do.”
My time clock is virtual. And therein lies the rub.
I was born to be a support girl. A Gal Friday who shows up with half-combed hair and a soft pencil. Preparation has never been a strong suit. For me, the excitement is in the unexpected, so my preparation is more about deciding which of my senses I’m going to foreground for maximum capture. My strategy is that I have no strategy. Ergo, I go into overdraft every damn month.
I have the feeling that if I really convinced myself that making money was important, I’d have more. Only problem is, money only figures in when I’m completely out. How passive is that?
I’ve decided to stop writing community news. To stop doing any journalism that doesn’t translate to $25 or more an hour. Better to spend that time on business development for BridgePointNW (which, if you’ve linked on, you realize is the web equivalent of the shoemaker’s child ). So, those 20 or so hours a month I was basically giving away for the byline are going to be rerouted to show-me-the-$ land.
For now, I feel I need to continue to say yes to requests for brain-storming and helping various friends with writing/editing needs. These tend to pay off quite well, in the long run, as everyone I’m helping is part of a network of writers who now and again throw bones my way, and as an Independent Contractor, nearly all of my income-producing opportunities have been word-of-mouth type serendipities.
Okay, so when do I work on my creative stuff? Where’s that 20 hours a week going to come from? Stay tuned for phase two of my Time Management journey…
My boyfriend Kirk suggested that I look at what I’m giving away. How do I value that, if I were to apply something as gauche as money to it? What’s my intellectual property worth, in other words? Kirk says, “Well, if you were punching a time clock, you wouldn’t be able to do what you do.”
My time clock is virtual. And therein lies the rub.
I was born to be a support girl. A Gal Friday who shows up with half-combed hair and a soft pencil. Preparation has never been a strong suit. For me, the excitement is in the unexpected, so my preparation is more about deciding which of my senses I’m going to foreground for maximum capture. My strategy is that I have no strategy. Ergo, I go into overdraft every damn month.
I have the feeling that if I really convinced myself that making money was important, I’d have more. Only problem is, money only figures in when I’m completely out. How passive is that?
I’ve decided to stop writing community news. To stop doing any journalism that doesn’t translate to $25 or more an hour. Better to spend that time on business development for BridgePointNW (which, if you’ve linked on, you realize is the web equivalent of the shoemaker’s child ). So, those 20 or so hours a month I was basically giving away for the byline are going to be rerouted to show-me-the-$ land.
For now, I feel I need to continue to say yes to requests for brain-storming and helping various friends with writing/editing needs. These tend to pay off quite well, in the long run, as everyone I’m helping is part of a network of writers who now and again throw bones my way, and as an Independent Contractor, nearly all of my income-producing opportunities have been word-of-mouth type serendipities.
Okay, so when do I work on my creative stuff? Where’s that 20 hours a week going to come from? Stay tuned for phase two of my Time Management journey…
Monday, June 04, 2007
husbands: a correlative
I just read my friend, David Millstone's blog entry where he aligned his allegiance to two personally significant mediums of expression (writing and acting) with his two marriages. Because David was my first writing mentor, I’ll always side with his metaphoric first wife (though I never met his real first wife).
David will always be a writer in my mind. This designation bears out in that in his blog entry he started with his second love and wife, as opposed to his first. Emotional chronology does not necessarily correspond to its temporal equivalent—and because David has an ear for emotional composition that I find mind-blowing.
Funnily enough, David’s current acting role is that of a writer/writing teacher. His two loves fused into what must be, for him, the sort of challenge that leaves you edge-walking a precipice filled with glorious doom. God, I envy that!
Not to be outdone by my mentor and friend, I’m going to slap up a short marital correlative of my own.
My first husband was barely a grown up when we met, but at the time, my sense of who we were together was a couple who’d been married for 25 years. The portent with which I entered that union, the big Catholic bolus of righteousness, was similar to my first swipes at fiction. Too many words, fueled by concept and wholesale epiphany. Something I picked off of a nose-high shelf, wrapped in shiny paper and called my own. Oh, to feel normal, for once. My stories were chock full of sophomoric, ironic jabs. My marriage had jerky transitions I tried to sand over with compulsive attention to minutiae. I pursued a false God who lingered in the obvious details. Fear. Fear. Control. Fear. That husband died, all of the sudden. My early stories are yellowed dot-matrix testament to that unripeness.
Enter husband two: a volatile boy-child who I followed down a dark gravel rut.
Fourteen years of stream of consciousness vomit punctuated here and there with clarity. The muse of instability yanking me around: happy hour followed by hangover followed by hell. I loved this second husband who gave me an electron microscope with which to examine the cells of my navel. I courted intimacy in my writing, though avoided it in my marriage to this stunted man. The dark side can keep you from that just as effectively as the myth of wedded bliss. A little danger. Less control. My writing matured, deepened. Still, I couldn’t quite commit. Didn’t commit. To either the marriage or the writing projects—which lie in various hard drives and between the plastic covers of chunky binders. I emerged from that work-in-progress battered and jaded, ripe with failure of spirit, and tentative about whatever comes next.
And what of that, the next big thing? I feel the need for interface. A sage-sticking, perhaps? My current love has suggested a fire. Burn the evidence. Concretize the psychic space for tabula rasa. My intuition tells me that he’s correct. I need some sort of bold leap. Enjambment to the unexpectedly next right thing.
David will always be a writer in my mind. This designation bears out in that in his blog entry he started with his second love and wife, as opposed to his first. Emotional chronology does not necessarily correspond to its temporal equivalent—and because David has an ear for emotional composition that I find mind-blowing.
Funnily enough, David’s current acting role is that of a writer/writing teacher. His two loves fused into what must be, for him, the sort of challenge that leaves you edge-walking a precipice filled with glorious doom. God, I envy that!
Not to be outdone by my mentor and friend, I’m going to slap up a short marital correlative of my own.
My first husband was barely a grown up when we met, but at the time, my sense of who we were together was a couple who’d been married for 25 years. The portent with which I entered that union, the big Catholic bolus of righteousness, was similar to my first swipes at fiction. Too many words, fueled by concept and wholesale epiphany. Something I picked off of a nose-high shelf, wrapped in shiny paper and called my own. Oh, to feel normal, for once. My stories were chock full of sophomoric, ironic jabs. My marriage had jerky transitions I tried to sand over with compulsive attention to minutiae. I pursued a false God who lingered in the obvious details. Fear. Fear. Control. Fear. That husband died, all of the sudden. My early stories are yellowed dot-matrix testament to that unripeness.
Enter husband two: a volatile boy-child who I followed down a dark gravel rut.
Fourteen years of stream of consciousness vomit punctuated here and there with clarity. The muse of instability yanking me around: happy hour followed by hangover followed by hell. I loved this second husband who gave me an electron microscope with which to examine the cells of my navel. I courted intimacy in my writing, though avoided it in my marriage to this stunted man. The dark side can keep you from that just as effectively as the myth of wedded bliss. A little danger. Less control. My writing matured, deepened. Still, I couldn’t quite commit. Didn’t commit. To either the marriage or the writing projects—which lie in various hard drives and between the plastic covers of chunky binders. I emerged from that work-in-progress battered and jaded, ripe with failure of spirit, and tentative about whatever comes next.
And what of that, the next big thing? I feel the need for interface. A sage-sticking, perhaps? My current love has suggested a fire. Burn the evidence. Concretize the psychic space for tabula rasa. My intuition tells me that he’s correct. I need some sort of bold leap. Enjambment to the unexpectedly next right thing.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
it's been too long since...
I wrote a story.
I read a novel.
I spent uninterrupted time suspending disbelief.
I wandered alone in the woods in a daydream.
I sat in a room filled with writers.
a sentence I heard gave me a chill.
characters from my pages have invaded my dreams.
I drove around with a notebook beside me, writing ideas down and missing my exit.
my rhythms of speech affected those of made up people.
I last languished in an entire day of reading, writing and pondering.
I read a novel.
I spent uninterrupted time suspending disbelief.
I wandered alone in the woods in a daydream.
I sat in a room filled with writers.
a sentence I heard gave me a chill.
characters from my pages have invaded my dreams.
I drove around with a notebook beside me, writing ideas down and missing my exit.
my rhythms of speech affected those of made up people.
I last languished in an entire day of reading, writing and pondering.
Saturday, May 05, 2007
girls weekend
I’m at the coast this weekend with a gaggle of chicks I don’t know real well and one gal who’s a best friend type of gal, and it’s her 40th birthday we’re celebrating. We’re drinking a lot. We’re dancing and saying things like: “My husband wouldn’t mind it if I fucked Beck.”
Okay, I’m not saying that. One, because I don’t have a husband, and Two, because I’ve gotten over my star-fucking era. Really, I have.
So, as usual, I’m holed up in the space under the staircase working and reading, and only occasionally partaking in the rollicking discussions of our periods and what crap we use to keep pubic hair from spreading out of control.
Okay, it’s not that bad. But it almost is.
No, really, repeat after me: I can be normal. I can be normal.
I can dance to Beck and Madonna and whoever else is spilling out the ipod. But, man, I hate champagne. I’m not much of a crab dip girl, either. But I love this friend of mine who is about to join me in this exciting and rewarding decade. She’s one of those gals who reinvents her enthusiasm daily. She doesn’t spend five minutes enduring crap or people or situations she abhors. I cut the cord of her youngest child. We’re tight. But we’re different.
I’ve had plenty of friends who live in the land of normal. They seize pop culture and absorb it and swerve it with their own brand of my-husband-wouldn’t-mind-if-I-fucked-Beck. I never quite know how to be around it all. One gal talked about a spray-tanning place where a person sprays the tan on you as opposed to a machine spaying a tan on you. It’s sad to be so out of touch. There are places that spray tans on you?
I need to finish my pr piece on creative use of crunchy toppings. I’m developing a must-have pantry list. I wrote the word “craisins” in my list. I’m dragging myself into the 21st century. Reluctantly.
Okay, I’m not saying that. One, because I don’t have a husband, and Two, because I’ve gotten over my star-fucking era. Really, I have.
So, as usual, I’m holed up in the space under the staircase working and reading, and only occasionally partaking in the rollicking discussions of our periods and what crap we use to keep pubic hair from spreading out of control.
Okay, it’s not that bad. But it almost is.
No, really, repeat after me: I can be normal. I can be normal.
I can dance to Beck and Madonna and whoever else is spilling out the ipod. But, man, I hate champagne. I’m not much of a crab dip girl, either. But I love this friend of mine who is about to join me in this exciting and rewarding decade. She’s one of those gals who reinvents her enthusiasm daily. She doesn’t spend five minutes enduring crap or people or situations she abhors. I cut the cord of her youngest child. We’re tight. But we’re different.
I’ve had plenty of friends who live in the land of normal. They seize pop culture and absorb it and swerve it with their own brand of my-husband-wouldn’t-mind-if-I-fucked-Beck. I never quite know how to be around it all. One gal talked about a spray-tanning place where a person sprays the tan on you as opposed to a machine spaying a tan on you. It’s sad to be so out of touch. There are places that spray tans on you?
I need to finish my pr piece on creative use of crunchy toppings. I’m developing a must-have pantry list. I wrote the word “craisins” in my list. I’m dragging myself into the 21st century. Reluctantly.
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