Sweeping Up Kitty Litter

Sorry, Stephen. It Can't Be Done

2011-09-23T13:58:00.000-07:00

I was flying down the highway from Waimea toward Kawaihae the other day, a steep grade conducive to loud music and streaming thoughts, when something struck me. It wasn't a truck or a bolt of lightning, more like a mini-epiphany.

It started with the view, the vast indigo ocean calm and wide straight ahead, and the early evening rays of light beaming down, God-like, through the clouds. But where the light met the water, strange circles reflected on the surface as though a spaceship were about to descend from the clouds. I'd been thinking about the last four books I read, and when the overwhelming view came into my consciousness, I had a feeling there was a reason it was there, like it was supposed to be somehow underscoring what I'd been reading and ruminating upon.

Then Suite Judy Blue Eyes came on. I'd been half-listening to the songs that started with "S" on my iPod - I'd skipped a few, like Still Fly - and I wasn't paying much attention to Judy until of course zam, bam, there was the famous line. Don't let the past remind us of what we are not now. The words, when Stephen Stills wrote them, referred to his relationship with Judy Collins. But they have universal relevance and can just as easily relate to such topics as aging and parenting, right?

So back to the books: Beautiful Boy (David Sheff), Imperfect Birds (Anne Lamott), This Beautiful Life (Helen Schulman), The Lost Child (Julie Myerson). Two are fiction, two memoir. All are about families with teen and teen angst and, more importantly from my perspective, parent angst. The dialogue (and interior dialogue) is as raw and real as it gets, especially as the parents look back at the innocent blank slate they'd started with and wonder how they got to where they are today. As a collection, these books have been infiltrating my mind, like worms boring holes, sabotaging my attempt at inner peace. After all, I've got three teens.

As a new parent - nearly twenty years ago - I was like those parents in the books. I knew I'd have the perfect family not only because my kids were tiny little innocents with big smiles and poopy diapers but also because I was going to be the perfect mom. I was smart, had strong values, and was brimming with love. I was analytical but also creative. I was realistic; I knew my kids would get hurt and make mistakes and even rebel now and then. But I also knew that I was going to be brilliant and cool and funny and omniscient, and I'd handle everything swimmingly and all would be fine in the end.

I also believed in Santa Claus back then.

What these last four books confirmed for me, finally, is that smart, value-driven, loving parents can also wind up with lots of challenges. We are not alone. And that's the sign of a good book: characters, and a story, that plague you when you're done, sometimes without even having an obvious reason to do so, often times when you don't even want to keep thinking about them. None of these books will likely wind up on the list of great classics beside Woolf or Hemingway, but to be honest Woolf and Hemingway don't haunt me the same way these authors did. I didn't suffer from Woolf's mental illnesses and I'm not a game hunter the way Hemingway was. But I am - and keep reminding my kids always will be - a parent.

And the lesson I learned from these fictional and real parents is that it's impossible to follow Stephen Stills's advice. Parents do remember the past. They do remember their own exuberant dreams as much as they remember the first baby steps and the first day at kindergarten. No matter how hard we try, the past will remind us of what we are not now.

Writing, Yoga, and Aliens

2011-09-13T10:49:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year. Back to school. Back to blogging. And back to...yoga? That wasn't necessarily in my plan, but there's something in the air.

One of my good writer friends told our writing group about her doga (yoga with dogs) portfolio on Facebook. My sister-in-law wrote about yoga in her recent blog (http://fitnessmashup.wordpress.com/2011/09/11/of-chants-and-sitting-cross-legged). And my husband, who thinks cobras are snakes and eagles are birds, decided he wanted to take up yoga. I got the message the universe was throwing at me. I needed to go back to yoga.

But I dreaded the thought. Why is it that going back to something you like is so hard? Fear of failure? Lack of motivation? I always feel good after yoga, just as I usually feel good after writing. So why did I have a long list of excuses on why I couldn't go? Even yesterday morning, I stood in my closet and tried on all my yoga clothes. Nothing looked good. I absolutely couldn't go to class, I told myself, until I bought new clothes.

And to complicate things further, it had turned out that John wanted to go to the same class I'd been going to, and I said "uh-uh, no way" to that. I'm selfish about my yoga. We live in a major urban area; I figured there had to be another good yoga teacher somewhere. So we explored other options and I gave him my opinion of what he needed and what I look for in a teacher, and the more we thought about it the more I realized that Teresa would be great for him. So we negotiated a solution. He could go to my old class and I'd move up to the next class. I mean, how hard could it be?

Hahahahahahahahahhaowhahahahahahaowowhahahahowowowowowhahaowowowowow. Ow.

Yes, I went despite my pathetic wardrobe, and it wasn't just that I didn't look like a hot little yogini (which I'm not). It wasn't just that I am out of shape (which I am). And it wasn't just that there were a few poses I'd never learned (which there were). The problem with Teresa's 2/3 class is that THERE IS NO WAY HUMAN BEINGS CAN POSSIBLY DO THOSE THINGS. I stood there watching every other student weave her arm around her leg with her elbow bent weirdly, then clasp her hands behind her back, then straighten her legs and lift off the ground balancing on like a thumb or whatever. Sorry, uh-uh. No way. No can do. It was not possible even though I was seeing it with my own eyes, seeing everyone else doing it. Then it dawned on me. I was not just in Yoga 2/3. I was in Yoga 2/3 for Aliens.

Which is sometimes how I feel about writing classes. But more on that another time.

The good news about this class is that, after having to modify most of the poses to fit my human capabilities, I did feel pretty good walking home. No one had laughed at me (at least not out loud) and I'd located a few muscles I'd forgotten I own. In fact, I felt damned good on my way home, which is also kind of like writing, like when you sit down and your fingers are flying across the keyboard and your mind's on a roll and when you finish you know you've written the most brilliant scene+narrative+epiphany ever. Ever.

Until morning comes.

Today, I couldn't move when the alarm went off. Even reaching for the alarm was a major acrobatic feat. The "gee-I'm-so-great-for-having-gone-to-that-class" feeling was gone, replaced by a sense of melancholy for what once was, for the body that used to be able to move. When my dogs eagerly pranced to their leashes for a walk, I felt like saying "yeah, right. Uh-uh, no way." And as any writer knows, that's exactly how you feel the morning after a brilliant round of writing. In fact, some times I sit down and reread what I've written, anxious to be regaled with my own genius, only to wonder who exactly wrote that trash on the page. It certainly couldn't have been me; it must have been an alien. One of those alien yoginis, most likely.

So why do I avoid doing the things I love? Because sometimes those things, like Love itself, are hard work. They're painful. They reveal-no they highlight-my flaws. Sometimes it seems better to live in fat-dumb-happy bliss. But then I'm not really living, at least not the way I want to live.

So I try to convince myself all that good yoga yesterday and all that good writing last evening weren't just a bunch of !@#$%bologna. Which makes me think I need to call my mom, who used to pack me bologna sandwiches a few centuries ago. Which makes me think about how hungry I am, which makes me think about making myself a sandwich (albeit a healthier one) after I call Mom. And then just maybe I'll sit down to write. Or maybe I'll try a little more yoga after all. Surely I can convince myself to do at least one little pose.

At least I can practice my shavasana.

What's In A Name?

2011-07-29T16:43:00.000-07:00

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

Yes, you're right, Juliet. But would you even approach it in the first place if the flower were called vomit or boogers? Unless you lived in Harry Potter's world, I'd venture a guess that you wouldn't.

I do think a name's important. And a title too. I confess, I do judge a book by its cover. The artwork, yes, and the font, too. But most of all I judge by the title. Before I open the book or read the back flap cover, that is.

There are all sorts of titles. There is the character's name (Macbeth, Beloved, Mrs. Dalloway). Or the title/role of a character (The Pilot's Wife, The Lord of the Rings, The Count of Monte Cristo). There is the place (Wuthering Heights) or the period (1984) or the big theme (Atonement). There are plenty of things (The Tell-Tale Heart, The Lovely Bones, The Things They Carried). There are active verbs (Housekeeping, Digging to America). And then of course there are the prepositional and other phrases (To Kill a Mockingbird, Then We Came to the End, Waiting for the Barbarians).

What all of these titles have in common is that they each fronted a story that received high literary acclaim. But frankly I find some of the titles far less intriguing than others. Beloved, for example, sounds like it should belong on a Harlequin rack at Safeway. Atonement sounds awfully preachy and Housekeeping sounds pretty damn boring. And, if I knew nothing of Shakespeare, I wouldn't have a clue who or what or where Macbeth was. Maybe he just didn't know how important the title was. Or maybe he didn't have much competition so it didn't much matter.

I do believe there is a trend these days to come up with something really eye-catching. I mean, would The Bard ever have thought of a title like The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society or The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency? Back in 1948, titles were still pretty straightforward when James Michener won the Pulitzer Prize for Tales of the South Pacific. And later Pulitzer winners seemed to follow most of the same categories I listed above. There were names (Beloved, Toni Morrison, 1988, and Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout, 2009). In 1956 MacKinlay Kantor's prize-winning title was place-based, with Andersonville. In 1973, Eudora Welty went with the character's title for her Pulitzer title: The Optimist's Daughter. There have been thing titles over the years, some of which probably raised a few eyebrows in their day: Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels (1975) and Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song (1980).

But it wasn't until 1990 that the titles started getting longer and a little more peculiar: The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (Oscar Hijuelos, 1990); A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain (Robert Olen Butler, 1993); The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (Michael Chabon, 2001); The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Diaz, 2008); and A Visit From the Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan, 2011).

So what's a contemporary writer to do? The trick of course is to come up with a title that hints at what the book's about (character, theme, etc) while piquing the reader's interest. You can still go basic, at least that's my sense from looking at the current New York Times Best Seller list (The Help, The Confession). You can still go with a name or place (Quinn, Maine). Phrases are still pretty popular (Now You See Her and Then Came You). Or you can go with something totally outlandish, something you know no author has done before, like Steig Larsson's The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest or Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Of course, just because something's on the best seller list doesn't mean it's of high literary value. But it does mean people are reading it, which is really what writers like me want after all.

The novel I'm working on originally started out as Climbing Backwards. I loved that title, still do. But it doesn't make sense anymore now that the novel has morphed into a new creature. So here I am now trying again to find a title.

If you walked into a store and knew nothing of a book but its title, which of these would you be inclined to read?

The High One
High and Mighty
Hell on High
Climbing in Hell
View from Hell's Balcony
The Minister's Wife
A Minister's Wife Goes to Hell

Because I Said So

2011-05-29T15:02:00.000-07:00

I have a confession to make. Sometimes I don't think a writer knows what he/she is talking about. Once, I critiqued a writer and accused her of not understanding Hong Kong geography because of the way she'd written a scene. I'd been to Hong Kong and therefore of course I was an expert. Another time, I accused a writer of not understanding that the French eat lunch later in the day than we Americans. I'd been to Paris. So I knew. And I was recently reading Sandra Tsing Loh's "Mother on Fire" and wondering why on earth she thought readers would want to read her ramblings on preschool worries.

In this way, I remind myself of my teenagers. They of course know everything, and parents know very little.

I have a sneaking suspicion I'm not the only know-it-all-reader. I've had readers question passages in my own writing too. But it's not just questions of fact, like whether or not I really know how tall Denali is, or whether I'm accurate in stating what time the sun rises in Talkeetna in mid-May. It's questions like "Are you sure you chose the right narrator?" or "Shouldn't you have written this in scene?" or "Why didn't the character react in a different, more appropriate way?"

I hate questions like that because they're hard. Sometimes I know exactly why I've made a particular choice in my writing, but sometimes it comes subconsciously or subliminally or whatever. It's just something I've done, and I don't really want to have to answer those questions. It takes the fun out of writing. But then again the hard questions are the ones that push me to become a better writer. Grumpier maybe, but better, the same way the challenges from my teens theoretically make me a grumpier but better parent because they force me to really think through my decisions.

But not always. Sometimes, at the end of the day, I might not have a good answer and I don't want to deal with any more questions. I swore I'd never say "because I said so" to my kids, but in fact I have said that on more than one occasion. And sometimes it's that way with my writing too. "Because I said so. Because I'm the writer. And that makes me the expert. Period." Maybe I should be able to justify my choices better, but I'm tired. Worn down. Just want to move on. So there you have it. My word is final.

Readers, and teens too, usually have the best of intentions when they ask questions. But they don't always know it all. A writer friend of mine reminds me of this over and over. She's got the confidence to take what her readers say, mull it over, and then move on. I wonder if she does this with her kids too, although her kids are just becoming teens. She's got a long way to go.

Now, back to those other writers. While I really didn't think Loh's trials and tribulations of her preschool children were book worthy, somebody obviously did. Her publisher for example. And the NY Times reviewer. And the NPR reviewer, too, to name a few. And yes, I'd been to Hong Kong and Paris for one week each, and had learned a fair bit about their geographies and culinary cultures, but guess what? Those writers I questioned, as it turned out, had actually lived in those places. In the end, I think most of us writers, like parents, know what we're talking about after all. We just don't always know how to show it.

The Beauty of Research

2011-05-10T13:32:00.000-07:00

Molly Gloss once told me she does most of her extensive research before she even starts a novel.

Nelson De Mille said in an interview that he approaches research in three stages: first reading everything he can, then interviewing experts in the field, and then going on location.

A memoirist (I can’t remember for sure who it was, but I think it was Judy Blunt) said she first writes her story and only later does any research to check facts, particularly if she’s writing about family, because she doesn’t want the research to inappropriately influence her writing.

The point is that there are so many ways, and times, to approach research, whether working on fiction or nonfiction, and I’m still trying to figure out what works best for me. With the internet at my fingertips, it’s tempting to do it all in my pj’s with a cup of coffee or glass of wine at my side, and I admit much of my research is done this very way. But the work, both internal and on the page, can be so much richer with broader, deeper investigation and discovery.

My current novel started with an on-location visit before the novel was even conceived. A trip to Alaska and a writer’s class taught by literary agent Donald Maass fertilized an egg of an idea. Over the course of a couple years, the idea began to grow and multiply. Once I decided to put the ideas into words, I began feverishly reading everything I could on mountain climbing, interracial relationships, and at-risk youth, and the story was born. From that point I continued reading, and I supplemented it with internet sites, movies, and television shows on related topics. I studied psychology to try to pinpoint who my characters were, and I wrote short stories about several of them to further flush them out. Of course I also wove my own experiences of aging, adoption, and religion into all of this. The story began to develop the way an infant begins to crawl: clumsy with curiosity, sometimes moving forward and sometimes moving back.

As I worked on the second draft of the manuscript, I kept a running log of research questions that still lurked like shadows in the night. I literally pulled the research log up on my screen next to my novel, the two documents forced to sit side-by-side. When the second draft was completed, I felt like I had a toddler now, lovingly conceived and nurtured thus far, but still having so much more growing to do.

And so the work continues. I joined a writing group to knock down my sand castles, which they do with sincere relish. I reached out to experts, now knowing what questions I should ask them which I wouldn’t have known if I’d contacted them at the outset. And I made a reservation to return to Alaska in early May, during Denali’s climbing season.

I've been in Talkeetna for two days now and have learned things about the townspeople, the mountain's terrain, and the climbing community that I couldn't have learned through other sources. I've seen the little log cabins, smelled the woodstove smoke, and heard the crusty pilot's stories of long ago. I've felt the anxiety in the NPS orientation room and the vibration beneath the co-pilot seat on old Beaver bush plane. I've crunched through the snow at base camp and made friends with a couple of climbers from the UK and munched on caribou chili and reindeer sausage.

I've learned that you have to do on-location visits to really understand your story, and I've also learned just how lucky I am to have accidentally chosen such a beautiful setting for my novel. I had no idea, when I wrote the first draft of the opening line years ago, that I'd decide to return to Alaska for research, but I'm convinced it was an absolute necessity. And the other thing I've learned is this: from now on I've got to choose my setting wisely. I was lucky this time; next time it will be a more intentional choice of a place I really want to explore. Although, to be honest, I can’t imagine any setting more beautiful than Alaska.

So who knows? Maybe my next novel will have to be set here too.

Unpredictable Inevitability

2011-04-23T08:10:00.000-07:00

I had lunch with my 88-year-old Aunt Jo the other day. She's always been a tell-it-like-it-is old gal, as quick to tell you what she thinks of you as to share a dirty joke...if only to get a rise out of others, like my mother. Don't get me wrong. I love the old gray mare. But whenever I go visit her, I always check my suit of armor to be sure it's on just right. And I thought it was, on Wednesday. But even at her advanced age, she's still got the ability to find the weak spot and attack.

This time she started railing on another family member. We'd just ordered our lunch at a nice Italian restaurant that of course didn't serve lasagne even though that was the only thing that sounded good to her. The bread had just arrived, without butter but with extra virgin olive oil, and she regaled us with her disgust for the way her nephew slathers olive oil on fresh bread, how the very sight of it makes her want to vomit. I went with dry bread that day.

But he wasn't the relative in trouble. It was my brother. She ranted about how he hadn't visited her enough over the last few years, and then the last few months, and how if he had visited her he'd remember the painting that she's offered to him for keeps but that he hasn't bothered to retrieve, and now the estate sale is only weeks away and the painting will have to practically be given away. I looked around her new apartment at the assisted living home. She had all sorts of knick knacks and cross stitch wall hangings and photographs here and there. She probably could have made room for the painting herself, but instead she'd chosen to bequeath it to him, and in her eyes he'd committed a mortal sin by not accepting it hungrily.

My mother and I tried to cover for him, how busy he was, he had a job and a family after all. And he'd spent the better part of the last four years taking care of another sick aunt and my mother too. In the eyes of most people I know, he's a kind soul who gives way too much of himself to others. The fact that she'd gone off about someone was completely predictable, but the fact that he was her target was the thing that threw me for a loop. And yet again, if I'd bothered to spend the time looking at her life, piecing together all the puzzle pieces of her loneliness and grief and his proximity to her, and the notion that he was in fact such a giving person to everyone else...I might have seen it coming. And so I guess, in hindsight, it was inevitable too.

One of my MFA instructors, David Long, used to preach on the need for unpredictable inevitability in our writing. But it's a lot easier said than done.

Like my aunt, I'm going to pick on someone. Today I'm going to pick on Jonathan Franzen and his latest big hit, Freedom. The breakdown of the mother-son relationship was both predictable and inevitable, and I know a lot of parents who say their rebel children eventually do turn around and come back home, and they'd say Joey's turnaround was also predictable and inevitable.

But I'm cynical. Maybe my cynicism stems from the fact that I'm still waiting for a certain person in my life to make that about face and come back to me. But I also think Joey's epiphany and search for redemption was premature. Maybe that's what made it unpredictable, but to me it was not credible. It came too fast; he was too young. He'd gotten involved in some pretty high level corruption at an early age (that part was believable) but the self awareness and repentance was much too early for a boy with a history of problems like that. So the unpredictability, if that's what Jonathan was going after, didn't work.

And as for inevitability: I didn't buy it either. It felt to me like someone told the author he had to wrap things up nicely for Joey. He couldn't leave the son out there hanging. He had to reel him back in and clean up the kitty litter mess and make him a good guy before the novel ended, because after all freedom is all about experimentation and then coming back to what's right, right? He'd pursued his life and liberty and happiness and now had to get real and responsible, right?

Sorry, Jonathan. It didn't work for me. Even with hindsight, even after putting together all the pieces of your novel's puzzle. See, the thing is, writing about life is even harder than being right in it sometimes. Even when you write about something that really did happen, it doesn't always come out in a way that satisfies the reader.

But don't get me wrong, Jonathan. It was a great story and well written to boot, as you know by all the acclaim and money in your bank and that nice little writeup about you in the latest Time 100. But it just didn't quite pass the unpredictable yet inevitable test for me, although maybe I'm not your normal reader. After all, I learned from my Aunt Jo.

Writing Nonfiction: Not a Vacation

2011-04-13T16:07:00.000-07:00

My new hairdresser, Jeannie, is an avid skier, but she says there's no such thing as a ski vacation. "Warm weather, palm trees, the tropics...that's a vacation. There's just too much work involved in skiing." I happen to agree with her.

Although the novel, and fiction in general, are still my passion, I've decided to make a commitment to writing nonfiction too. Short stuff, around 5000 words. True stories, you might say. Or maybe you'd call them personal essays. Or personal narratives. Or creative nonfiction. I'm really not sure what I'm writing, come to think of it, except I know the people and settings and situations are true, at least as far as I can remember, and they've had some sort of impact on me, or at least I think they have. And I thought it would be a nice, healthy little break, now and then, to focus on reality instead of my imaginary world. I even foolishly thought it might be easier to write.

But the more I write, the more I wonder what the heck I'm even creating. In cooking, you blend together a variety of ingredients, and you might not be sure what exactly it will taste like, but you have a pretty good idea most of the time where it's heading, and at least you know whether your masterpiece can be classified as an appetizer, or an entree, or dessert. Or whether it's French or Asian cuisine, or even fusion. I would think writing should be the same. But, at least in the nonfiction world, it's not that simple. I can say I'm writing nonfiction, just as I can say I'm cooking food. But because I can't put my finger on what exactly it is that I'm creating, I wonder if anyone would ever want to read it. It's kind of like walking into a restaurant and the menu simply says "food." With that sort of generality, it's not all that enticing.

So I worry, and I analyze, and I research, and I ask my writer friends to help me understand what I'm doing, and it wears me out some days, the same way you can come home from a vacation all worn out thinking you need to go back to work to rest. For me, I guess it's back to fiction. But stay tuned; the nonfiction journey, after all, has only just begun.

Hidden Relevance

2011-03-30T18:49:00.000-07:00

My husband offered to retrieve my passport for me. It was in a cabinet where my cat hangs out, and when he returned he didn't comment on the kitty litter I'd failed to sweep up or the thermostat's temperature. Could it be he didn't notice these things?

I'm getting ready to send out a chapter for critique, and I was thinking about the chapter's inventory. Just for fun, I compiled a few lists of nouns to see what they might reveal about the chapter depending on which ones I chose.

List 1: whore, scissors, funeral, skeleton, blood,
List 2: tunic, chignon, heels, suit, bling
List 3: diary, teen, grandmother, mother, kitchen
List 4: cross, lilies, light, choir, hymn
List 5: nutcase, bra, satin, headboard, elevator

Each list suggests something different about the chapter and I imagine each list would mean different things to different readers. It's kind of like real life. I might notice the Mustang, you might notice the truck. I might taste the garlic, you might taste the ginger. What you get out of one chapter or book might be entirely different from my interpretation. That's what makes the world go 'round, they say. And it's also what makes word choice in writing so important. The words we choose may have more or less relevance than we'd anticipated or even noticed.

When my husband came back with my passport, he also didn't ask whether the dishes in the dishwasher were clean or dirty or when I was planning to assemble the chair in the box in the closet. But he did make one comment; he'd noticed the one thing I'd least expected. He'd noticed my secret stash of wine.

I Wonder If Monks Have Groups, Too

2011-03-27T16:51:00.000-07:00

I should have become a monk.

That's what the results of one of many career planning tests said when I was thirty and going through one of many interim life crises. But I didn't become a monk or do much else with those tests for a while; I spent a few more years in the world of finance and then started devoting more time to writing.

For years I've been reading about, and listening to, debates on the value of a writers group, and the most recent group I was in was exactly what I needed at the time. I miss the old group. We'd meet monthly around the same long dining room table and nibble on our hostess's tasty treats. We'd spend a short while getting caught up on the personal lives of one another, which ranged from financial and divorce woes to the antics of our children to suicidal thoughts and new puppies. And then we'd get to the business at hand of critiquing each other's work.

One of our members had an eye for detailed edits. Another's criticisms were often stinging but true. One was particularly supportive, and another member always seemed so keen and wise. We were represented by degrees in English and journalism, and MFAs and PhDs, and no degree at all. Some of us were married, some divorced. One was an empty nester, one had young children, one had no children at all. We both embraced and rejected religion; we were Republicans and Democrats; we came from Northeastern Canada and the midwest and the Pacific Northwest. We wrote poetry and nonfiction and fiction. We were diverse and yet we were writers, and serious about our work, and we were good for each other. And when the group broke up, I felt like I was getting a divorce.

It's been nearly two years since we last critiqued each other's work, and I decided it was time to join another writers group. But I also realized it's not that simple. I'd need to figure out what kind of group to join. In person or online? Monthly meetings or more or less often? A group that's highly organized and professional or a group where anything goes? Writers with similar experiences as mine? Writers of the same genre?

As it turned out, I was invited to join three writers groups this month. "When it rains, it pours," my mother always said. It was a good feeling, and if there were 48 hours in a day I might have chosen to join all three, for each has its advantages. I decided I could handle two at most, especially if one was an online forum. I would devote my nonfiction to that group.

But I still needed to decide between the remaining two, and it wasn't an easy decision because of my own conflicting priorities. Was it my work, or my ego, or my need for social contact with other writers that would be the defining factor? I can't deny it - my ego likes to be stroked. And the life of a writer, especially when you're in a new city and you can no longer rely on field trips and Cub Scout meetings and water polo matches to make new friends, can be very lonely. But then again, my work needs work. If my characters will ever have the chance to become known to the real world, then I have to do whatever it takes to polish their imaginary worlds for them. I need to find the group that's best for them. Maybe it's the mother in me, putting my characters first as I still do with my children.

I think I know the answer. I think I know which group I'll go with, and now all I need to do is to write those decisive emails.

It would have been so much easier if I'd just decided to become a monk.

Redemption for the Critic

2011-03-23T19:47:00.000-07:00

Today I critiqued three chapters or stories for three different writers. Let me throw the metaphor out there right now. I feel like I scattered kitty litter over their work.

I love to critique works in progress; it's like mentoring a child as he grows. Just as the child needs occasional guidance and correction (okay, some kids need more than occasional help), works of art can benefit from it too.

But being a critic is difficult for me for a couple of reasons.

First, I'm a recovering left-brainer and I'm always questioning myself on how to approach the critique. Start or end with the general comments? Go for the big picture or mark up misplaced commas? Hit on every literary element I can think of from character to dialogue to metaphor to story arc to theme? The problem is, this is a work of art I'm dealing with, and my right brain wants to go with the flow, comment on what strikes me at the moment, forget about any systematic approach nonsense. This isn't an audit, after all.

Also, I don't naturally take criticism well, so it's a little hard to dish it out. I was the child who ran off in tears with the slightest admonition. I was the teen who yelled at my father to let me do it myself (and I'm sorry about that, Dad). I was the young professional who wrote a rebuttal to her personnel evaluation. (Are you reading this, Don?) I was the new MFA student who wanted to give up writing permanently when an early advisor (who shall not be named) said the piece wasn't worth saving. I happen to know that criticism, however well intended, can hurt. And furthermore, as my kids can well attest, I don't know everything and I'm not always right. So the last thing I want to do is hurt someone and be wrong at the same time.

And so I guess I'm looking for a little redemption: past, present, future. I love to read the work; please keep it coming. And please accept my apology if I make a little mess for you to clean up now and then. As John Lennon said, I didn't mean to hurt you (but unlike him, I'm not a jealous guy). And, as long as it's just kitty litter, without the kitty waste, the mess can't really be all that bad. Can it?

Chekhov's Scotch

2011-03-20T16:13:00.000-07:00

"Has she been drinking excessively?" the veterinarian asked.
"You mean binge drinking?"

My cat, thank goodness, had not become a binge drinker. But someone else dear to me apparently has, I've recently learned, and I've been spending a lot of time thinking about that over the last couple of days. Suddenly it occurred to me that this doesn't only happen in the real world; it happens in literature too. Alcohol has been used by Updike, Hemingway, Carver and Cheever, to name a few, and it's there for a reason. What I realized is that one of my more important characters, Ryan, had become a binge drinker, but I've done nothing with this development as the novel progresses.

Anton Chekhov would no doubt criticize me for that. Guns and alcohol have a lot in common, after all; both, in my opinion, are dangerous vices. If you give a character a gun, it must go off. If you give a former tee-totaller a sizeable amount of alcohol, there has to be a reason for it, too. It's part of the character's inventory, as Ron Carlson might say.

Whoever thinks fiction is not truth is wrong. Truth begets fiction, and sometimes fiction begets truth. I need to figure out what will happen with Ryan's new love. I need to figure out what will happen with my loved one's new vice, too.

Releasing Tension

2011-03-16T21:24:00.000-07:00

I woke up the other morning to discover kitty litter everywhere. My first thought, hazy without coffee, was that my cat had had a party to which I wasn't even invited. But since there are no other cats in our home, and I am the gatekeeper of who enters and leaves the abode, I was pretty sure that wasn't the case. My second thought was that she was unhealthy; perhaps she'd had to make a few too many trips into the kitty commode that night. But her appetite was good, her attitude bright, and she'd just passed an exam at the veterinarian. Which left only one other possibility that I could think of: she had to release some tension.

As writers, we are constantly reminded to create tension for our characters. That's fine, but if they are credible characters, they have to be able to release that tension too, just like us real people. Some of us exercise, some of us meditate. Some of us drink (too much) wine. Some of us go shopping, some of us cook; we socialize, we retreat, we might even pray. But sometimes that's still not enough.

The protagonist in my novel-in-progress has decided she's under a lot of pressure. She has set forth goals she is worried she can't achieve, and she has decided her life, and the sacrifices she's made, will have no meaning if she fails. Whether or not other characters believe she's in such dire straits is not important; it is what she believes, it is her truth.

To relieve tension, she runs with books stuffed into her backpack. She writes prolifically in her journal. But sometimes that's still not enough. As with us real people, sometimes she needs to really let go, really let the steam out of the proverbial pot, because if she doesn't then failure is almost guaranteed. Sometimes she needs to go a little crazy and scatter her kitty litter everywhere.

Becoming an Impressionist

2011-03-12T15:28:00.000-08:00

My 14-year-old son is a wizard at impressions. He's a middle class, west coast caucasian, but he can don a British, Indian, and southern accent as easily as he puts on his boxers. He can also perfectly mimic people of various lifestyles that are not ethnically or geographically specific. As for me, I can pick up my old Chicago accent when I go back to the midwest, and a twang might appear when I head down south, and I can meow well enough to alert my pets that a new feline might be prowling about. But I can't just come up with whatever accent I want. Similarly, I have a hard time writing any extensive amount of dialogue in a vernacular different from my own.

I have read that it's best not to try to have too much slang or unusual jargon in a book, as it becomes tedious for the reader and also risks the author's credibility should a mistake be made. An example of this sort of thing can be found in Zora Neale Hurston's novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. It's a simplistic story, in some ways, about an African American woman surviving several marriages and living in various cultural environments. But it takes effort for someone like me to read it.

The dialogue throughout the book reads like this. "You better git dat kivver offa dat youngun and dat quick!" or "But dem last lick burnt me lak fire." or "Ah reckon Ah done over-layed mah leavin' time, but Ah figgured you needed somebody tuh help yuh shut up de place."

I assume Hurston was a wizard at the southern African American vernacular of the 1930's; I have no reason to believe she wasn't, although there were times she would spell out a word like 'them' and times it would be 'dem' and I wondered whether this was character-specific and intentional or a writerly mistake. The fact was, the dialogue was fun to read only if reading aloud, and I was so focused on that that I couldn't really discern among several of the characters through their speech. In that way, the vernacular was a distraction. (On the other hand, she certainly had talent for switching between dialogue like that and narrative that was more generic, such as, "So she sat on the porch and watched the moon rise.")

My novel includes characters of color, an Irish national, a teenager who prefers not to speak much, and a young woman of Athabaskan descent. I am white, middle-aged, and of European descent, and it's been a challenge to demonstrate their individual speech habits accurately without becoming tedious. While eavesdropping, which I discussed in my last blog, is helpful, it seems there is no surefire way you can integrate a multitude of languages and dialects and accents naturally into your own thoughts and words. Unless you're my 14-year-old son.

On Eavesdropping

2011-03-09T17:45:00.000-08:00

So I had the pleasure a couple of years ago to attend a craft talk by Mark Spragg, author of An Unfinished Life among other works, and he described his approach to revision. Once he feels pretty good about a manuscript, he goes back over it several more times, each time focusing specifically on some aspect of writing in particular. One of those aspects is dialogue. His goal, in this procedure, is to make sure that his dialogue is consistent for each character throughout the entire manuscript.

I've been working through that myself. How easy it is to not recognize when you let your character start sounding like yourself rather than like her own person. Or how easy it is to overlook the need to change the character's voice and speech once you really discover who he is. In my novel, my characters are diverse in terms of geography, ethnic or racial heritage, and age, so they certainly should have distinct voices.

If I were to write a conversation between my mother and my son, the characters would obviously speak differently; I know that by listening to them. And the same should be true if I were to document a dialogue between my west coast friends, my southern friends, and my midwestern friends, or between my various friends of different heritages. But in real life we tend to let many of the sounds and colloquialisms blend together. We stop hearing them and we overlook the different ways that people speak to one another just as we might overlook a few pebbles of cat litter that simply become part of the landscape.

Time and again writers are encouraged to pay more attention to people in the store, at the restaurant, or on the bus. To really listen to what they say and how they say it. To eavesdrop. But I would suggest that isn't simply something that writers should do. I think we should all be alert to how those around us are communicating, because those spoken words, and the unique manner in which they are uttered, are gifts from each individual to the world.

Dumping It All Out

2011-03-05T10:01:00.000-08:00

One of the things about having an indoor cat is that you periodically have to completely clean out the litter box. I'm pretty good at taking care of the clumps and poops every day or two, but I confess I procrastinate when it comes to dumping it all out and starting from scratch. Maybe it's my semi-frugal upbringing (it doesn't seem right to dump out what seems to be perfectly good, albeit somewhat smelly, litter) or maybe it's just that I'm not Suzy Homemaker (unlike my dear friend who recently ran away to live on a sailboat and who I'm sure will die of boredom without having a whole house to clean).

A year ago, I dumped my novel out and started from scratch. It was a frightening thing to do, but it had to be done. I started over from page one, and while I retained some of the underlying story elements, several of the main characters, and the primary landscape, I minimized or omitted elements that had previously been louder, and I experimented with new ones, sort of like trying out a new brand of kitty litter. I spent the better part of a year overhauling the novel.

And since then I've spent many months cleaning out clumps and poops and periodically adding fresh litter, oops! I mean fresh literary elements, to the pages. Is it better now? I hope so. But now I'm coming to the stage where I wonder...am I really seeing the finish line out there, or is it simply time to completely clean out the litter box again?

Why Writers Are Great (Cat) Lovers

2011-03-02T17:05:00.001-08:00

If you want to have an indoor kitty, there are certain things you have to do. You have to feed her and love her and play with her, but you also have to brush her and clean up her messes and clean out the litter box. The problem is that kitty litter tracks everywhere, and even when you get rid of the litter, you still have to deal with the dust. You can vacuum or sweep or mop, or all of the above, and then when you think you're done you turn around and there's more on the floor again.

Being a writer is like having an indoor cat. When I first sit down to write, there's the thrill of documenting all those brilliant profundities; it's the same kind of thrill for me as visiting all those poor kittens at the pet store or humane society. There is so much to say, so many creative juices flowing; I can hardly keep up with all those ideas and I know some will have to be left behind, hoping for tomorrow like mewing kittens. But then, when I come to my senses and realize what I've just written, it's like waking up in the morning to find all that litter and dust tracked across the floor, only it's also tracked across the page and desperately needs to be cleaned up. Immediately, or else it gets tracked onto more pages, and more, and so on.

And so here I am stuck in the quagmire of revision for my second novel, slowly and methodically and painfully editing, deleting unnecessary adverbs and adjectives, checking for consistency, watching for misplaced metaphors, doing what I know must be done.