my new fan obsession: blazer radio

Here's Travis Outlaw being all pumped up in last night's clincher against Houston.

Great to see, but even better to hear. We're now in month two of our tv ousting, and really, the playoffs were my only regret. Until I started listening to Brian Wheeler and his trademark alliterative tagging of the opposing coach after significant Trailblazer runs. (E.g. After the Blazers 4th Quarter run, Adelman was characterized as "dejected, deflated and devastated!")

Wheeler's commentary is immediate, grabbing and entertaining. He doesn't miss a beat, and he takes in the whole picture, offering realtime tidbits from the bench, the court, the stands and the scoreboard. It sort of comes down to the power of storytelling, I think. The ability of a narrator to pan the landscape and zoom in on nuance and tension, without the aid of visuals. As Lorrie Moore once said in a lecture I attended, "the reason books are more powerful than tv, is that books cannot proceed without you." As a listener, your imagination, experience, emotional state and attention is called upon differently when you have to supply the picture.

The other thing about listening to a sporting event instead of watching one is that the dynamics of a household change. For instance, while we had both upstairs and downstairs radios tuned to 95.5 fm, we were engaged in several other activities. Me: doing dishes and relaxing on the couch; Kirk and Carson: cleaning and organizing his room in anticipation of his big birthday bash coming up this weekend. It was a sort of social multi-tasking, where we converged every so often to comment on Roy's flu symptoms or Scola's foul, or that steal Fernandez made. We all brought more to our interaction this way, each of us interpreting the game with what we were seeing in our respective heads, rather than what may have been on a collective screen.

good stuff

We interrupt this economic downturn to point out a few exquisite pieces of terrific news:

1. Many of my writing colleagues have just, or are in the midst of, landing terrific book deals
2. My daughter has just been accepted to a master's program she has worked very hard to be in
3. The gallery where I work, after experiencing recent hardship, is facing brighter days
4. So many of my entrepreneurial colleagues and artist friends are venturing forth with exciting work and new business

In short, for folks who continue to work hard and think outside the box, the future is bright.

stepping back from the trees

Last week my very good and smart writer friend Cheryl, offered to examine the first part of my novel. She's seen much of the book in seven page increments (our page limit at workshop is seven, so we can get to everyone), but seeing the novel is a larger chunk gave her a whole other perspective.

We met at a tequila bar during happy hour, and for the next 90 minutes, over margaritas and tortilla chips, Cheryl and I talked about The Secret to Love. It was like meeting your child's teacher for a parent conference, when you know that the teacher loves your child, and that anything other than "Little Johnny is a talented, wonderful angel" was going to be constructive and offered in the spirit of: Now, what can we do to ensure that Little Johnny become president some day?

Seriously, having a trusted, smart colleague pore over your work and then offer a considered critique is far and away the best supplement you can add to your draft. In the case of TSTL, the upshot is, I need to restructure my conceit. When it comes to the "horizontal" of the book, instead of giving equal billing to backstory and ongoing narrative, I need to allow the backstory to inform the emotional drivers of the novel. The reader must become more rooted in Fifi's present world--more compellingly invited to the ongoing party. It all seemed so obvious, after two loaded margaritas!

Back to the drawing board with TSTL. Sort of. The good news is, pretty much everything I've written is keepable, I just need to build slower scenes around it. My opening prologue, a wholesale adjunct, is now a scene with Fifi, her husband and her dog at the Portland airport, as opposed to backstory about characters that are not as crucial to the trajectory of the narrative.

Now, on this sunny Monday morning, I must return to them, my little trio, and gear up the engines for this line of flight.

re-tweet

A few days into my Twitter experiment, I already want to quit. Or take a re-tweet (get it?). The feeling of being behind if I'm not checking my laptop or phone every five minutes is fracturing.

So I did, actually, take a re-tweet. Kirk and I played hooky yesterday afternoon and cruised up to our favorite off-the-grid destination: Mt. Hood Meadows--our skis in tow. On the way up, we both felt sort of out of our bodies: headachy, stomach-achy, general malaise. With his mother currently weighing 82 pounds--and lingering with this grim diagnosis of debility and decline--and my 71-year-old father and his rapid-fire matrimonial hyjinx, my ex-husband's lack of reliability regarding the fiscal and custodial terms of our divorce, the publishing crisis and my dwindling chances of finding an editor interested in my novels, the impending ax in Kirk's school district promising pink slips to 25% of the teachers come next month, the large-scale economic shadow of doom generally--all of this felt packed into our bodies, tamped down with the weight of another damp, gray day in the Pacific Northwest. So, on this IRS red-letter day, we went skiing.

Despite the parting clouds, the fresh snow and the calm winds, Meadows was a ghost town. A skeleton operation with only a handful of lifts operating. I had new equipment I was testing out for possible purchase, and Kirk had waxed his skis, so we went slow, took the easy runs: up and down, up and down.

By the fourth run, I felt terrific. The aches and pains had dissipated with the clouds, the new skis were amazing. Kirk was having a bit more trouble though. The uneven wax on his old skis were sticking in the slushy snow, and he actually fell a few times--a very rare thing for him.

We took a break, went to the lodge, and I ordered something with vodka--something I never do. I'm a sober skier--way too uptight to risk altered reflexes, but yesterday, all of the sudden, I felt in need of a stiff drink. Yes, in need of. (Cue the warning bells.)

So back up the mountain we went. And down. And up. And down. Kirk had a better experience, and my thimble full of vodka had absolutely no effect at all. Until we finished, and were heading back down to the valley, and the impending catch-up with work and Tweets and conference calls and absorbing news, and following up with stuff slammed into me and sent me scrambling for Excedrin.

But, I said I'd give it a month, and that's what I'm doing. Back to the fray. Follow me.

What song is running through your head right now?

All morning Steely Dan's "Kid Charlemagne" has been running through my head! What about you? (Answer is comment below)

twitter, tweater, twiddle, twerp

Okay, I've decided to completely embrace, figure out, dive in and otherwise become obsessed with all manner of online social media. For a month. I'm giving it a month. The back of my head and my neck already aches, and, hey, what about that Internet Sabbath I pledged. A month.

Here's why.

I write for a living. It isn't a hobby, it's not what I do on my time off, it's what I do. Period.

My concerns, projections, trepidations and misgivings are thus:

1. I'm contributing to the trend towards limited attention and shallow engagement
2. I'll have to give something else up, and I'm not sure what that will be
3. I worry that my tendency to feel like everything is only half done and that there's something I've forgotten will increase
4. I worry about being sucked into the land of endless trivia

My hopes, goals and optimisms are:

1. I'll get to know more cool people
2. I'll get to know about more cool things
3. I'll waste less time and improve my powers of concision
4. I'll be able to get more clients, and help more clients
5. I'll deliver my creative messages to more people
6. I'll be able to boil down my messages to their most salient points
7. I'll find more audience

Let the craziness begin!

unpacking Christmas

I find that Christmas works itself into my stories a lot. It's sort of like when I used to go house shopping and envision the placement of a Christmas tree before contemplating things like the price of the house, for instance. Does that make me sentimental, I asked myself the other day?

Why is the chronicling of ritual--the anticipation of gatherings--so important to me? In STL I've spent about 100 pages on various Christmas-time scenes with my little family, Messmeir. It's the distillation of family, I suppose, that I'm after with all this yuletide reportage. The pure drops of love, dysfunction, hierarchy, personality--all things that inform character development.

I read some "Christmas morning" pages at workshop last night. Three characters plus a dog assembled around the fake Costco tree, trying to create new ritual after the death of one of the character's mothers. Because this novel includes current day phenomena, I had Annika with her laptop, trying to evoke her missing father via Skype. A far cry from a traditional Christmas scene, and the culmination of the scenes before, where all ritual had been broken down due to various chaotic fiascoes.

I have to add another layer to the scene; tie it more tightly to the chapters that proceed it. The good news is, that I seem to have accomplished my main objective with this scene--to plant the seeds for a new alliance between Fifi and Annika--the first positive connection between two characters in my book.

scribbling witness

The last few days, giddy with sunshine, I've been steeped in collecting ephemera for use in my work. Eavesdrops, descriptions, scenarios, utterances.

Typically, when I'm gathering like this, I jot things down on scraps of paper: gasoline receipts, deposit slips, napkins. I reached for one of these today, wanting to record a potential exchange between Annika and Frances, a bit of b-and-f that had played out in my head, and, lo and behold, there was a note already scribbled upon the only square inch of blank paper in my purse. It was something my son had mused about months ago when we pulled out of the gas station, after the attendant had issued a receipt.

The note, in scratchy, cryptic handwriting had claimed that my son asked what would happen if I wanted to return the gas (in his world, that's the only reason you have a receipt--in order get your money back). "Would they suck the gas out of your car with a different kind of pump?"

I'm sure I'll use that someday, somewhere...

good news gone south

The other day I accidentally unearthed a file folder full of correspondence. Much of it, rejection letters. The notes in this folder were largely anachronistic. Most publishers, presses and agents say "no" via email these days, thus disallowing the fantasy of papering a bathroom with rejections on letterhead after landing the "bit fat deal."

Once I found this file, paged through it, and dumped it into the rolling recycle bin in my driveway, I realized that somewhere else in the deep, dark recesses of my bungalow, dwells a file with the tabbed notation: Good News. Frantically, I went in search of it, only to get sand-trapped in old manuscripts, tax files and mortgage records of houses I no longer own. Alas, my "Good News" file seems to have vanished. Which really sucks, because in it are some fabulous letters, including the one from C. Michael Curtis telling me I was a prizewinner in the Atlantic Monthly Student Writing Competition, and an agent green-lighting my story collection, with a list of places she planned to send , and a few literary presses responding favorably to my quest for publication, and a couple of REALLY AWESOME letters of recommendation.

After wasting several hours on my hunt, though, I was resigned face the sad truth that Good News is gone. Just like my custom-made watermelon tourmaline earring and my spare set of car keys.

Often, I have this St. Anthony type thing I do when I can't find something. I give the missing thing over to the invisible elves. Usually my missing item only shows up when I'm actively hunting for something else, though, and perhaps this will be the case with Good News.

4G 3G wtf?

If you're a modern-type, and by modern I mean you e-mail more than you fax, you probably have been scratching your head lately about the choices in communicating via phone, Internet, skype and VoIP. And for entertainment, should you continue with cable? Try dish or direct tv? Watch everything via your computer screen? Or should you just Netflix what you want, or download it via youtube or iTunes or whatever else comes out of the digital birth canal?

Ah, the choices. All this G stuff. iphones are 3G, wi-fi is 4G. It's all so confusing, eh? As are the consolidation/bundle/cancel options.

My husband and I are still in the throes of merge, and discussions on what to consolidate, what to keep separate, what to banish entirely fill the allotted pragmatic plate. A few weeks ago we pondered the latest "bundle" offer from Comcast. $114.95 for basic cable, land line and Internet. Since I was currently paying Comcast $120 for just Internet and tv, I thought that by eliminating Qwest and Sprint, we'd be saving $80, so I called for a disconnect and had my brand new husband call for installation under the new service price.

Of course, I knew it wouldn't be that simple.

So the installer shows up on appointed day (after a snafu which included an inadvertent cancellation of my cancellation, thus generating a new invoice, leading me to suspect that I'd be paying double for the next month) and right away, he pronounces amazement and surprise when I query him about the wireless component to the order. "Wireless," says he. "Ain't gat no order for wireless. Don't even have a modem with me in the truck."

"No problem, I have the modem and the router already."

"Oh, well, this here is a differnt type of hook-up. They'd charge you an additional $100 for the wireless hook up."

"What hook up?" I vehemently protested. "It's already hooked up. All you have to do is hook up the phone."

So, with the impatient installer standing in the doorway, I dialed up Comcast on my iphone (dialed isn't right with the iphone, I know. We need to invent some new phone-calling verbs. For now, let's say smeared. I smeared my fingers over the screen), and after the queue of mirrors, was told I was shit out of luck. I'd have to reschedule my hook up, and my installation would be $100 instead of $45, and then there was a sur-charge for this and a tax on that. I hung up the iphone. No, make that tapped END CALL, or whatever it says in that red rectangle.

Long story short, I decided, Who the hell needs a zillion sports channels and a landline that seems to serve only to usher forth phone calls from solicitors? All I really need is Internet. Fast, furious, Internet.

Luckily, Portland is a test market for a great new Wi-Max service (4G) called clear. They have mobile Internet, home Internet and phone services all compartmentalized with gradient pricing. After a little investigation, I found out that I could get exactly what I needed for $35 a month (and five of that is modem rental). The best part was, I simply took the modem out of the box, plugged it in, and voila!

If you live in the Portland area and you're sick of Qwest and/or Comcast and their big box bullshit, call my guy, Simon Benz: (503) 875-4709. Or email him at simonbenz@clear.net . He'll come to your house with the goods and determine whether your location is in the clear zone, and hook you up! Tell him Suzy Soule sent you :)

there is a season

I've reached the point in my novel where I have to very, very quiet in order to hear the heartbeats of my characters. Discern the strength of pulse, of intent, of sorrow and redemption.

Ideally, this is when I'd go hide out in a hole somewhere and banish all manner of monkey mind from my day.

Instead, I'm doing what I typically do on Monday mornings: making a list, attending to the queue of inbox tasks that I envision are starting to grow microscopic flora. Mondays are always "too much with me," and I think it has something to do with locating myself in the world.

This is a particularly onerous Monday because it is the Monday after Spring Holiday. Can you see the circles under my little boy's eyes? He spent the week with his father, sick and in bed. Came home with a rattly cough and diminished energy, but his usual strong will to go to school today (he can't stand the thought of being out of the loop--what a Type A!); and there's his older brother, Sam--my first baby. Spring break for a college boy is all about beer, video games, laundry and, in the case of my son, voicing all the things he's going to do when he wins the lottery.

Yesterday was quite fun though. Sam, Carson and I played miniature golf in one of those blacklight basement venues that are cropping up. Sam, who takes all games seriously, kept the scorecard, announcing at each hole how much over or under par he was. I loved how we matched pace-wise: we're efficient when it comes to putt-putt, taking our turns in the middle of each other's turn, leap-frogging over slower families. None of us cares to dilly-dally.

Next on the list was a trip to Home Depot for a dehumidifier for Sam's soggy basement apartment, and then a stock-up trip to the Japanese market for staples. Sam is an aficionado of Asian cuisine, and he trotted me around to the various shaker spices for sushi rice, a particular type of Nori that he likes, and a quest for fresh uni. We rounded out the chores with the acquisition of more duct tape to hold Sam's headlights in place.

In other news, my mother-in-law continues to fade. All the Soules were up for another good-bye session round the bedside. Dorothy is in her final furlong, offering gaspy witness to a collapsing temporal reality: her parents, her children, her childhood, her wishes for the near future. "I love you," she whispers. Then: "I want to go home."

We're entering the second month of hospice, and Kirk and his sister are taking turns spending the night with her in her assisted living apartment, the oxygen machine as metronome in the background, its bellows like the blow hole of a whale. It's peaceful, scary, large and human: all of those things and many more. Her imminent death greets us every morning, and each of her children must go through the dance of letting go anew. The exhaustion of that is taking its toll on some more than others. As she shrinks from us, both physically and psychically, we are reminded of the miracle of the body: the tenacity of will and spirit. Myself, I think she has another week in her. She'll hold on until the month of her birth, which is fitting.

So, today is Monday. The holiday week is over. The kids are back in school. My checklist is moderate, and my heart and mind are open to the next thing. I'm trying to purge the jangly sounds in order to hear the voices of my other family: the Messmeirs, and for that, I may need to walk in the woods.

self worth: the never-ending pursuit

Last night, after workshop, I came home to my sleeping husband and I was in the mood to share. Workshop had been full of emotion. With ten of us, it happens sometimes that there's a leak in the boat. Someone feels dissed, or insulted or threatened. I wanted to download all of this with Kirk, the way he does with me sometimes after basketball when a fight breaks out on the court amongst his long-time hoopster friends.

I yakked on about how much I love my writer friends, and what had transpired during the evening's session. I offered the anecdote that one member gave as a way to help the other member who felt shut down. I don't think I was very articulate. It was the red wine mush-brain syndrome. The, "I've been up since 5:30 a.m. and now it's 11, and we have to get up at 5:30 again" thing going on there in the bed. I was trying to convey the relationship between language and emotion, and it was late. Too late.

"That's nice, Honey," said my husband, whose sleep I had interrupted.

This morning though, at o'dark-thirty, as he bounded out of bed to grab his basketball knee guards the way you only do when it's the Friday launch pad day of spring break, he'd thought over the broohaha I had assumed he'd not absorbed.

"I guess I just don't understand the creative process," he said. "What writers go through. Seems there's a lot of suffering."

He wasn't being dismissive, he was just stating a fact: artistic angst just isn't in his frame of reference. He views writing as a pragmatic endeavor. "You have an idea, you outline it, you write it, the end," he said.

"Well, yeah, if you're writing for the intellect, I guess," I said. Then, I went into the whole Dangerous Writing paradigm. "When you go for the heart, you actually have to open yours," I told him. "You have to get vulnerable, and sometimes that's messy."

"You know what I think," he said, "I think there may be too many girls in your writers' group." With that, my lover gave me a kiss and then bounded off in his basketball outfit to get in a little chipping, pushing, shoving and dunking in before work.

Power Play

The other day, after spending some time on my pages, the balance of power between my characters loomed large. Starting with the grandmother character, trickling down through my narrator, via her mother, and then onto my narrator’s niece. My novel is a study in matriarchy. The men in my novel are “shadowy extras on the set” which is the actual descriptor early on. This is a family where the men lope behind the women like pets. They are expendable and mostly badly behaved. This is exemplified in the opening scene, in which a male forebear commits a murder/suicide—a definitive statement from which the tale unfurls.

Dizzy with words and characters and plot points, off I went to the gym, headphones in pocket. On the elliptical machine, there in front of me on telly one, was Tony and gang. Commensurate with my state of mind, this was one of the quintessential power-shift episodes, the one where Little Anthony gets in trouble for being drunk in gym class and is consigned to the school counselor to rule out ADD.

The undercurrent is in backstory, where we learn the root of Tony’s ensuing existential crisis: his first awareness of the family “business.” This is juxtaposed with his own decision to reveal or not reveal the nature of his livelihood to his own kids, and the confession of his philandering ways to his shrink.

The one scene in Melfi’s office unveils, in my mind, the core of the success of this show. There is this stunning confrontation between Melfi and Tony, a standoff of psyches, on the heels of a session where Tony revealed his “love” read: transference, for his therapist. Tony’s need to balm his vulnerability with face-saving machismo is so wonderfully, classically, hyperbolically male. Melfi’s retreat into professional stance when she is clearly intrigued by her patient, is played on the edge. The chemistry between these two characters comes up against their sense of control and power and hunger for winning. It’s everything I want to explore in my work, and left me feeling drained and excited all at the same time.

lost in translation

This week, we have a lovely young girl from Toyamaken, Japan visiting our home. She's a 16-yr-old high school student here on an exchange through the high school where my husband works.

She speaks a bit of English. We here at our house speak zero Japanese. Hand gestures abound. I didn't know I could move my eyebrows up and down that energetically!

I haven't been a host to someone from another culture in a very long time, and this exercise is teaching me a lot about communication, presumption, non-verbal cues, etc... It's making me realize that a lot of my day--really, a lot--is about anticipating disaster and managing expectation. Having a non-English speaker in the house has magnified this. It has magnified my ineptitudes as well. For instance. I'm a really shitty folder. Sheets, towels, Origami, you name it, if the goal is to make something look like it just spent a week in the hamper, I'm a pro. Our house guest is an expert folder. She handed me her dirty laundry and it was presented in this beautiful shape, as though it were a bouquet she was offering. I'm going to labor over the folding of this laundry when I hand it back to her. Or maybe I won't actually hand it to her. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to stack it by her bedroom door. Maybe she'll think my nine-year-old did it that way and I can save face.

So, I'm a terrible folder, BUT, I'm good at flinging things. And the hip check? I have that down pat. Plus, I can scramble through a Safeway, get everything on my list and into my car in less time than it takes to, uh, fold a load of towels.

In order to give our guest an adventure, today we took her skiing. The mountain was more blizzardy than I've ever seen it. My ass was literally lifted off of the ski lift during one gust. Our Japanese girl was quite amazed, though certainly polite, as horizontal ice pelted the few exposed areas of her cheeks. She had enough after three runs down the bunny slope. And who could blame her? I tried to joke in that way that you do when you speak a different language than the person you're joking with.

"Bet you wish you were on a nice beach, eh? Well, we're tough here in Oregon. Very tough. This is what we do for fun!" I said, emphasizing the joke words by saying them way too loud, Trying out hyperbole with my cheek muscles, though, my voice was muffled and my jaw was enshrouded by the neck warmer I'd pulled up to my goggles.

She's off to slumber land now, our guest. The trepidation she carried in her body the last two days (she was very nervous about this impending ski trip, I think), has melted, if, indeed, the ice on the mountain has not. She's relieved and looking forward to the next few days, where she'll attend American high school with the other Japanese students, and as far as "home stay" activities--I think we'll take in a movie tomorrow night. I'm thinking Coraline.

David Foster Wallace

Interesting article on David Foster Wallace in this week's New Yorker. The newest issue isn't online yet, or I'd link to it. If you're a fan of Wallace, or even if you're not, it's an important read. Also in the issue is an excerpt of his soon-to-be posthumously published novel, THE PALE KING-- a book which seeks to argue for the transcendence that comes through abject boredom.

I never could sit still long enough to get through Wallace's verbal hyjinks in INFINITE JEST, but I admire the intensity and energy of Wallace's writing--his unapologetic wrestle with language. His ambitious and arrogant approach to the relationship between thought and word, image and concept, idea and paradigm.

And I say "arrogant" partly to stir the bee's nest, and partly to elevate the notion of arrogance, because, let's face it, writers are a study in chutzpah. Who else would deign to invent a human, give him language and hire him to carry out the stray thoughts and conundrums of wholesale invention other than a writer? Well, maybe George Double-ya, but he's old news.

Wallace suffered. Geniuses tend to suffer. Do you know any geniuses who don't suffer? The New Yorker piece digs into the pain of Wallace's inability to accept praise of his various efforts. He always fell short, in his opinion. Writing drove him mad. It was his salvation. And it drove him mad again.

When I was younger, I was afraid I might also be swept into madness exacerbated by creative endeavors. Fortunately, it was only youthful craziness in my case--being blessed by overall favorable bio-chemistry, my pendulum won't let me swing too far one side or the other. Nevertheless, I find the connection between madness and creativity both scary and fascinating. The piece on Wallace was a reminder of the fragility of the psyche. It left me feeling extremely sad. The despair and hopelessness that squeezes in on incredible artists, like Wallace, like Cobain, like Sexton--stemming their gifts to the generations who might have otherwise experienced transcendence from their art.

dining continental

Last night, at workshop, I brought in a piece where my characters were assembled at the grand family dining table, and I offered a tidbit on dining "Continental Style." Here's the passage I had:
Ursula and I drank goblets of Hawaiian Punch, careful to wipe any telltale stain from our top lips. Now, after a few bites of carefully cut, fussily delivered meat—Grandmother eschewed the trend toward American dining, so we had to put down the knife and transfer the fork to the knife hand after every painstaking Continental bite—it was time to begin the ritual Ursula and I longed for—the supper gossip.

Chuck told me that I had it wrong. That "Continental Style" necessitated keeping the fork and knife in hand at all times, and eating with the "tines down."

My information was incorrect? How could that be!? So I checked it out with the "expert," Ms. Brouwer, and found out that, et voila, Chuck's right and I'm wrong.

Check out this "expert" video below (you'll have to sit through a 15 second commercial on Swifter or something equally stimulating--but it's worth it just to watch Brouwer's etiquette lesson).

Proper Etiquette for Using a Knife Continental Style -- powered by ExpertVillage.com

Ms. Brouwer is the expert, I suppose, but I found this "comment" on the "expert village" website even more helpful to my story, as I believe it embodies my matriarch character's feeling on the matter:

The problem is that the Continental style of eating is rather barbaric, so talking about its "etiquette" is silly. The Continental style suggests that you have to gobble your food down so quickly that you cannot take a split-second to change hands. This lack of pause for switching hands also results in the tendency of the diner to bend over more and more until his head is nearly to the plate and he is just shoveling food into his mouth. In the United States, it's also an affectation --in essence announcing, "I've been to Europe." Therefore, although, as Ms. Brouwer says, it "is what you will find all over the world" (I guess like spitting or flatulence), it is generally not appropriate in the United States and it is offensive for her (from her accent, apparently a European ) to come here to advise us that we are eating improperly and that her way is what is done "all over" the world. In addition, it looks silly to hold the fork upside-down, especially when one must mash peas onto the fork to be able to pick them up, looking like a slob and destroying the fun of eating peas, which is to pop them between the teeth.

on becoming a writer

In October, I will be celebrating my 20th Anniversary of moving to Portland--and, my 20th Anniversary of defining myself as a writer.

Even though I've been writing stories since third grade, it's only after moving to a city where I did not know one person that I formalized this reinvention of myself as a writer. Until then I was a mom. A dietitian. A widow. A young lady. All vague designations that had much more to do with my reflection to the world than my self-concept.

The first Monday after I moved into my one-bedroom apt in NW Portland, two babies in tow, I rented an electric typewriter--a cumbersome machine that weighed about the same as the microwave ovens of the era. The Willy Loman-type salesman who delivered it stayed for an hour or two, while I made him tea, and my babies crawled around and climbed all over him like puppies. He asked me why I was renting this state-of-the-art typewriter, and, just like that, it came tumbling out of my mouth: "I'm a writer."

"Oh," he said. "I thought maybe you were a student."

It didn't take longer than a heartbeat in those days for me to question myself. "Well," I said, "I'll probably need to take a writing class..."

"So, are you published?" he said.

There it was--the need for proof that I was, indeed, a writer, and not a wanna be.

"Not yet," I said, peeling my one-year old daughter off of his pant's leg.

"So, what do you write?"

I had notebooks filled with the answer to that question. But all I did was shrug my shoulders.

A couple of days ago, I was reminded of that exchange when I spoke to a creative nonfiction class at PCC, where my friend Rodger Larson teaches. After I gave my spiel--chatting up the local magazines where I've penned several articles, offering publishing advice and plugging the lo-residency school where I got my MFA, it occured to me that maybe these students just wanted to learn how to write. So I asked them: Why this class?

The mostly 20-somethings in the room, it turned out, were not there to find out more about publishing their work--they were there to learn how to write. Or write better. They came alive during a discourse on electronic media and computer vs notebook. These students were a tribute to the anachronistic medium--they pretty much all were appalled at the demise of the "book" as the main conduit to narrative engagement. It was heartening. Young people who don't blog! I, who just invested in an iphone mostly due to peer pressure and the expectation of immediate response--after all I own a communications business--was humbled.

I passed out a sign-up sheet to snag the students' email addresses, and I had two sections: "I'm interested in workshops on the craft of writing," and "I'm interested in workshops on the business of writing." Business got only two interested parties, and both of those had also signed under craft.

That same lust that I had that first Monday after moving to Portland: to write! Was alive in that Community College group. And about what happens after that? Not so much.

Life. And death.

Much of the marketing copy I write these days includes a directive to find unique ways of saying: "In these tough economic times."

With AIG needing yet another bailout, the schools at risk of early closure, record-breaking unemployment, foundations and philanthropic organizations scrambling, "tough times," hardly covers it. I like the word "crisis" better, actually--but, like single-word sentences, "crisis" has also been used to death. To death? Is that what this is all about? Good old fear of mortality rising up around us like the stink off of a stiff?

All around us, tried and true economic fixes are failing. Zapping the economy with low interest, incentives, stimulus, recovery dollars--none of these infusions has positively impacted the stock market--which just today celebrated its lowest opening bell since the 70's. My husband, a schoolteacher with more than 20 years in the public school sector, was asked to fill out a survey over the weekend. The Beaverton school district stoked the survey with disclaimers, and basically, the query had the tenor of: We have no intention of doing this AT THIS TIME, but, would you leap at the chance to put enough dough in your pocket to buy health insurance for five years if we squeezed your ass out the door next year so we could hire newbies at less than half your salary? Oh, and, by the way, would you commit to being on the substitute teacher roll for X years as part of this deal?

Perhaps the district is worried about culling all the fresh-out-of-school teachers from the sub pool, and wants to cover their butts with the veterans. Hard to say. But one thing is certain, the air is full of people scrambling. Holding on. Not wanting to let go. Fear.

So long, Rocky Mountain News. Bye-bye rising GNP. Fresh out of college, needing to pay off staggering student loans? Hope you like yanking espresso machines. No, wait, Starbucks is closing stores! There goes the neighborhood.

I always get a pit in my gut when I pass by a newly shuttered store or restaurant. It hits me like the dissolution of long-time couples I always thought were still madly in love. Failure is so easily internalized. And yet, I can't seem to keep death out of my writing. Pretty much everything I write involves loss. Love and loss: my two great obsessions.

And now, in my real life, I am facing the imminent death of my mother-in-law, who is literally shrinking from our sight. Witnessing this human downsizing over the last three months has been a compressed version of solid companies collapsing and quickly placed "for lease" signs pasted on to merchant windows. It's a one-way ticket. There won't be anyone new occupying Dorothy's body. She's leaving us bit by bit, forever.

And meanwhile, daffodils poke up. All of the perennial hallmarks: greener grass, longer days, the occasional warm burst of air. Dorothy's children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren continue to live and grow and work and play and love.

Our infinite capacity to create and continue is our only salvation with so much death around us. We will find new ways to do business. To read the news. To ensure education for our next generation. To keep the dying safe and comfortable while we say good bye.

reconstructive surgery

A few weeks ago, as prelude to reading the pages I'd ponied up for workshop, I realized that I'd reached that point where the information I now have about my characters needs to be woven into the earlier chapters.

Typically, we wait until completing an entire first draft before attempting this, lest we act out of premature assumption. I get this, truly I do. But for me, it's like reaching a plateau on a climb up a steep mountain. You know all about false summits, but still, you stop and admire the landscape beneath and retool for the rest of the climb. Perspectives shift, periodically, and imho it's never a bad time to align oneself with this dynamic, shifting perspective.

Not everyone can or should honor this process, I understand, but I know enough about the peaks and valleys of my own creative sensibilities to listen to this whisper in my ear. I'm at the print-out and rewrite stage, and so my forward progress will come from the center, rather than the end for this next little while. As for the word count? It may shrink. But then again, maybe not.

leftovers, anyone?

Disgusting, right? Far more easier to tolerate when the noodles you throw at the wall haven't been steeped in sauce.

In the world of selling writing, strategizing a home for your pages, then following that up with cover letters and evidence and sparkling opening paragraphs is a bit more complex than hurling pasta against the wall, but the outcome is the same. If it's done, it sticks; if it's not, it slides to the floor.

But the "doneness," well, the criteria for that involves many more factors than the level of durum saturation. First and foremost is a keen sense of who your audience is...what they're reading, what they can't put down. You have to play to that. If everyone's on the South Beach Diet, your pasta's going to wind up in your basement, under your Rubbermaid tub of teenage diaries and art projects. Hypothetically speaking.

The market is fickle. More fickle than ever. Tastes have changed, but the impulse to get lost in story has not. The same themes that have always tantalize, continue to do so.

I wrote a novel several years ago. The character was wrestling with mortality, and the decision whether or not to bear a child. It was birth:death, death:birth, side-by-each, with other Maslow's hierarchy considerations sprinkled about for good measure.

The novel remains unpublished, but recently, whilst cleaning the funnel webs from my basement, there it was! A dampened, mildew-infested manuscript daring me to open it up and re-engage. Oddly, upon reading, I wasn't disgusted. It was relatively serviceable spaghetti, there on the page. Ingestible, even.

I've decided to throw it against a few more walls before tossing it into the dumpster entirely. As a timeless, nourishing read, it deserves at least that.