RIP

“That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write ‘Fuck you’ right under your nose.” J.D. Salinger, 1919-2010.

“In the United States today, the Declaration of Independence hangs on schoolroom walls, but foreign policy follows Machiavelli.” Howard Zinn, 1922-2010.

Stage Fright

I love reading other people’s work. I’m one of those people who tend to give lots of comments, to the extent that I’m always afraid I will offend someone, that they’ll look at the blue-spattered page and say, “Are you kidding?” I think I’ve only read one short story where I commented, “This is so unified and coherent, I really have nothing to say other than great job!”

But my friends also know I’m unreliable. I’ll say I’ll read something of theirs, and then I won’t. Or it’ll take months. I really do best if given a deadline, something like “I’m sending this to a contest, which has the deadline next Friday. Could you possibly get it read by then.” This allows me to jump right in without thinking about it.

Because thinking about it, anticipating it, is deadly. I get it via email, and I’m excited. My friend so-and-so sent this, and I’ve read their stuff before. It’s really really kick-ass. I so much admire their work. I see the title. That’s a good title. Sounds interesting. Then I glance at it one more time before returning to work or taking care of the twins or whatever. A day goes by. I think, I’ve got to get to that. Two more days go by, and I start to feel guilty. I’ve got to get to that. This weekend I’ll do it, I swear. Then we’ll have visitors or I’ll have a deadline or one of the twins will be sick. Monday, I’ll glance at my email and think, shit, I didn’t get that done.

Then, it’ll build and rise in my mind like a genie out of a bottle. It’ll loom large, and every time I think about it, I’ll feel guilty. Very guilty. So I won’t think about it. I’ll do other things. Every once in a while I’ll see it there at the bottom of my inbox, and I’ll twinge. You are a pile of shit, I’ll say to myself. But, if the friend comes back and nudges me: “Say, you know that thing I sent you? Did you get to it? I’d like to send it out with an application to Bread Loaf.” I’ll jump right on it.

This tendency of mine makes anticipating conferences horrible. I know I’ve got to comment on 11 other people’s work, and boy do I dread it. Usually what happens is I read and comment on as many as possible on the plane ride there, but then I have to type them up, and inevitably I spend at least part of the conference feeling awful that I haven’t gotten it done yet. But I do get them done by the end of the conference. But, the thing is, I love reading the work.

It’s similar to writer’s block. I used to get writer’s block a lot, just the same way. The emotion was too much. The dread. The guilt. I’ve largely overcome that. I used to be the same way about answering emails. It was so emotional, so fraught ~ I’d have an inbox full of very nice, very friendly emails that drove me crazy. After a month or two, I’d force myself to do it.

So, this is the one huge remaining creative anxiety I continue to work on. I will master it!

What I’m Reading Today: Not much. I had book club last night, which was fabulous as always. Hey, Vixens!

PS My friend Kim Shannon, who’s an amazing artist, has had her oil painting Out of Context Series selected for the 35th Annual Juried University of Wyoming Student Exhibition. The open house and reception is tomorrow, January 29, at 6 p.m. at the UW Art Museum. Those in Laramie, check it out!

He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother

My first creative writing workshop taught by the wonderful Alyson Hagy. Oh, I was shaking in my sneakers that first day. Alyson takes everyone seriously, even those of us who just fell off a sugar beet truck. To get us started on that first day, during class Alyson had us write a short short consisting of only one-syllable words. The poet C. C. Russell wrote a piece about a woman waiting in the dark for her rapist to return. Oh my gosh! Such an amazing and powerful piece. I thought, oh shit, am I in deep over my head. I fumbled around and created something like Dick and Jane, only a lot less elegant. Then, as the semester progressed, we read great writers (Faulkner, Jean Toomer, Hemingway) and tried to mimic their style with our own work. I blush to think of the earnest but inchoate things I produced. But we all have to start somewhere.

The greatest gift of the many gifts Alyson has given me is taking me seriously, especially at a time when I was unable to imagine calling myself a writer. I wrote, but I wasn’t a Writer, if you know what I mean.

This is a gift that I try to pass on to other people. I am passionate about the creative process, and when I find out someone else is creative, I try to encourage them in their gifts no matter what stage they are at or whether they dare to believe in themselves. I don’t say this to make myself sound noble or anything. I get a lot out of the relationship too, things like friendship, mutual encouragement, and so on. I really mean it when I say I believe in you ~ because people have an infinite capacity for creativity and goodness and sheer determination counts for a lot.

The same goes for people who’ve been at it awhile. I think it’s so important to have a support system, other creative people who understand you and to whom you can talk. I know for myself when I’m down, all it takes is a word from one of my creative friends, a little encouragement or commiseration, and I’m back on that horse.

That’s why Facebook and this website and the internet has been so life-changing for me. I’ve made so many friends I never would’ve made, and they’re so fabulous to me. I find that taking myself seriously as an artist is not just a momentous one-day decision but a series of very small everyday decisions. It helps to know there are other people out there struggling too.

What I’m Reading Today: My friend Len Joy’s short story “Dalton's Good Fortune," which is up at Bartleby Snopes. I have long been a fan of Len’s understated style and the way he’s able to deliver humor or gut-wrenching sorrow so economically. Way to go, Len!

PS Received a form rejection today.

Whatever You Say, Professor

I need to watch my tone in these posts, I think. Rather than trying to be an amusing dinner guest ~ telling entertaining stories, possibly with deeper meanings ~ I find that I fall into the didactic, the imperative mode. You do this and you do that. I’ve got to remember I’m speaking to real live people who don’t like to be told what to do. I sometimes soften it by saying I’m speaking to myself, which is absolutely true, but if I’m posting it here, it’s not just inside my head. I’ve got to be gentler with other people.

Please read with a forgiving heart, and feel free to stick your tongue out if ever I come on too strongly.

What I’m Reading Today: “Read” ~ i.e., listened to ~ the New Yorker podcast of Carson McCullers “The Jockey,” read and discussed by Karen Russell. A story I could read and reread for all the little effects and how it all works together. It’s all of a piece, everything working together so well. The telling details are, at the same time, in your face yet subtle and multifaceted.

PS My friend Lynne Barrett has a story "When, He Wondered" in March/April's Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. I can’t wait to read it!

The Problem with Nonfiction

I wrote today.

Which isn’t to say I wasn’t writing other days, but today I moved forward on what I’m supposed to be working on ~ a personal essay that I’m writing for some contests and to be critiqued by some good friends when we get together in April. Partly, today’s focus was inspired by my friends on Facebook who reported their extraordinary progress on their projects this past weekend. Way to go, guys!

I don’t mean to be down on nonfiction ~ as it probably seems on this blog. I’ve written a lot of nonfiction in my capacity as editor, freelancer, and friend (you know, people find out you do resumes …). It’s an art in and of itself. Because it’s so often short form, the art of nonfiction is unifying, making an argument, presenting a side. Whether it’s a resume, a newspaper or magazine article, or a technical report, you’re necessarily making a case for something because you exclude so much. You must select your points of view and your truths.

Short stories are short form as well, but within those parameters the writer is allowed to present more than one side, to view something from all angles, to slow way down. He or she is allowed interiority. Plot and fact are not necessarily the driving principles; for me, it’s nuance and emotional truth.

One thing I cannot abide in nonfiction, which sometimes happens in novel-length works, is the writer going inside someone’s head (other than him- or herself, of course). It’ll make me throw the book across the room. “As he stood on the porch, he thought of his dear mother.” This is NONFICTION, and as such, you cannot know what goes on in a person’s head at a particular time. Big no-no in my book. If you want to write that, call it fiction. I’m much more forgiving about creating dialog. There is external evidence on which to base speech patterns and manners of speaking.

What I feel when I’m writing nonfiction is constriction. I always want to add more. What about this? This part is interesting too. For example, right now I’m writing a personal essay about my high school sweetheart. I have a hard time moving forward because I don’t necessarily know where forward is. I know the timeframe I want to cover ~ so the basic plot ~ but it’s so complex, and for some reason, if I were writing fiction about it I’d be able to distance myself in a way I can’t in personal nonfiction.

There ARE lots of people out there doing nonfiction superbly.

I feel like I’m stumbling around here trying to explicate this in my own mind.

Maybe it all boils down to my life experience, the ways in which I’ve felt bundled in with someone else’s “factual” subjectivity, how I’ve felt my experiences are nullified by whomever is representing me. “The West is about cowboys.” “Women are angels” or “Women are whores.” Plus, being involved with a long-term Hatfields and McCoys lawsuit, I’ve seen how the facts have been misrepresented and how emotional appeal can carry the day.

There are few facts; there are lots of points of view.

What I’m Reading Today: Julian Rubinstein’s Ballad of a Whiskey Robber for book club. I can’t decide whether I like it or not. A great story ~ obviously, lots of research went into it ~ with great history and compelling characters. I’m learning so much about Hungary, which I (shamefully) don’t know. Rubenstein’s language has great vitality, which on one hand I love but, on the other, it has lots of similes that get between the reader and the text, and half the time those creative energetic verbs don’t seem quite to work. Trying too hard. Plus, the book has that cardinal sin (for me) of nonfiction, “he thought as he sat there.” I’ll withhold judgment until I’m done.

Lethargy, Languor, Lassitude, Listlessness

I don’t know what to write about today. I have plenty of subjects lined up, but something about it being the Friday of a long week of up-ups and low-downs makes my mind wander. So maybe just a shout out to everyone pressing in their traces, creative or otherwise. You can do it! I believe in you. If not today, a good night’s sleep and we’ll get it done tomorrow.

What I’m Reading Today: I read James Joyce’s short story ~ novella really ~ “The Dead” for the first time. It’s one of those things I’ve been meaning to read for a long time. What a lovely story. The contrast between the liveliness of the party, with its good humor and little frictions, and the image at the end of “the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.” Hear, hear, for the epiphanic ending, even though many people say its time has passed.

PS My friend Jenny Shank’s first novel is being published! The Ringer is about an accidental police shooting and the way it affects the families of both the shooter and the victim, who confront each other when their sons unknowingly find themselves first as rivals, then as teammates in a Denver youth baseball league. When it comes out in May 2011, I’ll be the first one in line!

PPS Got a very nice rejection from a very important literary magazine today, and it made me feel so good. Writers, you know what I’m talking about.

Philip Gourevitch, You Are Definitely a Cool Person

Oh, my. Philip Gourevitch. What a fabulous reading. His eyes are intense ~ you can tell his mind has leapt out far ahead of what he’s saying ~ yet here and there his face relaxes with humor at a question or as he mimics the old-school NYC accent, with its “oi” for “r” and “oh” for “ah.” When asked a question, he gives a full answer, teasing it round and round to present it from all sides.

I’ve done a little freelance journalism ~ a few profiles and historical pieces ~ and what bothered me about writing them is that you have to tell coherent unified story. You have only maybe 800 words, if you’re lucky, to tell what happened. You have to tell the truth, of course, but not the whole truth, and that’s why I am drawn to literary fiction. One of the aims of literary fiction, in my mind, is to get at the nuances and complexities of life, not to simplify it.

And that’s what I love about Philip Gourevitch’s work. He’s writing nonfiction, yet he’s trying to understand what happened from the ground up, in the hearts and minds of the people who were there and how they view it after it happened. He doesn’t simplify it; he complexifies it.

He read from his book We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, which explores the 1994 Rwandan genocide. He talked about how reporters called the genocide “unseeable, unimaginable, and unspeakable.” The person who was supposed to be the European expert on Rwanda said, instead of there being good guys and bad guys, “they’re all bad guys.” How dismissive, Gourevitch said. Isn’t that the job of journalists to see, imagine, and speak?

That’s exactly what I’m trying to do in fiction. Everyone has a reason why they do something, emotional or otherwise, and to call them crazy is to dismiss them and their realities. It’s laziness or timidity and lack of imagination on your part. It’s the Why that always fascinates me. People fascinate me.

And that’s what Gourevitch said he’s trying to do too. He’s interested in the criminal mind and in aftermaths. He’s fascinated that a murderer would justify his actions by talking about all the people he could have killed but didn’t. He talked about Rwandans and how they make gallows-humor jokes about the killers and the trials. He’s interested in our common humanity and how ~ in theory, around the dinner table ~ we believe that everyone on the planet has a common humanity. Yet, in practice, we act locally, and that becomes a problem when we set policy in theory yet act locally once we get there.

Gourevitch wrote about the Rwandan genocide (We Wish to Inform You …), about an unsolved (until recently) NYC murder case (A Cold Case), and about Abu Ghraib (Standard Operating Procedure, or The Ballad of Abu Ghraib). What I’m left wondering is: What does that do to your beliefs about human nature? Are we base creatures or essentially good or somewhere in between? How can you witness all that, imagine and cogitate for months about all the horrible and wonderful human acts in order to write about them, and not be affected?

What I’m Reading Today: Still reading Best European Fiction 2010. Each story is just a gem.