The right words

Last night, I went to a reading over in Jamaica Plain where Dawn Dorland Perry read an amazing essay called Why I Write. There is a section where she talks about why writers labor over words, the right words.

She says "As writers we may find ourselves always looking for a new way to communicate it, share it, and connect–always looking for a better way to tell the story, some new combination of words that guarantees we’ll be more closely, more surely this time, understood. "

The whole essay is beautiful, but this particular bit knocked me in the gut.

Check out the whole thing over here.

Peeling Wallpaper

There is a house for sale behind us, but I won't even look at it because there is wallpaper in every room.

Just before Girlie was born, we had a kitchen full of fruity flowery 80's paper and in some insane hormone driven spurt of nesting I decided to remove it. I spent endless hours using every known method - renting a steamer, applying some questionable chemicals, finally ending up with a small squirt bottle of warm water, peeling it inch by inch.

The trick is to remain in a calm, zen-like state. Once you get a piece started, you have to slowly slowly peel down the paper. Peel. Spray. Peel. Spray.

Of course, I would begin this way only to end up impatiently going at it until I ripped only the top layer, leaving the papery underside still stuck on. Once you reach the papery underside, you're in for a tough peel. Once you reach the papery underside, you're screwed.

Some days the writing feels just like that kitchen. If I could just peel it inch by inch. Slowly. Patiently.

But no.

Papery underside.

Stuck hard.

What am I trying to say?

One of my instructors from Grub offered to meet with each student individually after the last class to talk about our writing. He did it on his own time - which was amazingly generous. Most of the instructors teach multiple classes and juggle freelance work, barely piecing together time to get their own projects in and this was such a nice extra.

During our chat, he asked if I write without knowing what is happening in the story. The answer is yes and no. Usually, the basic concept comes to me before I write it, but I never know any of the details until I get to them. I like the surprise.

In every other part of my life, I tend to be a very linear thinker, so I am always hesitant to put too much of a plan together because it rubs against my creative mind. He said that he'd thought that to be the case, and that my work had a certain natural energy (!) which carried the reader along. He called one of my stories tight. Nice.

That said, at the end of the first or second draft he thought I might need to spend some time thinking more about what I want the reader to leave with. In other words, what am I trying to say?

Right.

Good question.

The purple couch situation

One of the craziest things about writing, and life in general, is what I call the purple couch situation.

You've got this couch, dark velvety purple. Maybe it's tufted or just a big oversized purple couch, but you love it. It's not easy to work with a purple couch, but you congratulate yourself on being willing to take a risk. You buy orange pillows to go with it.

Then one day, something shifts. You turn on a light or your flip the blinds a certain way and it hits you -the couch is actually brown.

You are not a purple couch person. You are a brown couch person. The orange pillows are fine, but still, now everything is different. Had you known you had a brown couch, you might have taken other risks. You might have, for example, picked up some hot pink pillows to go with it.

With the writing, it happens when I look back on a completed draft. For a little while, purple, but then later brown. Brown-brown. And then butt ugly brown. This has been really freaking me out.

But I wonder if the trick in a revision is to keep trying to write the purple back in? To try to get back to the delusional state, but in a new way, until the couch stays purple or the draft feels complete.

I have this thing about honesty, yet with writing a certain level of self-deception must be cultivated. If this were just about life, I'd say face the brown! Embrace it!

But this isn't about life. This is about fiction.

Knowing what you already know

Little Guy is on a terrible jag of waking up before 6 AM. Today it was 5:26. Of course, this shreds into either my writing time or my sleeping time.

Either way, it sucks.

So what I know is that he should probably drop the nap. But getting through the entire day with him and no break? Good lord, I'm not ready. So I am hanging on to the daytime sleep, only to get bitch-slapped by a 5 something wake up call.

It is the same with a revision I am working on. The story is at the point where I should just rewrite the whole thing clean. I know there is something I am not getting to. I keep trying to squeeze in a line, a scene, rearrange paragraphs, but it isn't happening.

What I know is that I need to start over. But again. Not ready.

Third and final musing on The Muse: Yes, at one point , I cried.

First writing conference, not even an overnighter away from home and I shed some tears.

I won't go into the details but something amazing happened that gave me an incredible burst of confidence in my ability to continue. Something with an authority of sorts who read and approved of something I wrote.

I'm not telling the full story, publicly anyway, because I made a promise to myself a while back that I would go forward at this point with no need for external validation. In the past I've been a bit of an attention getter. Recognition has been a large part of my motivation. So often, if I was not the best at something, I would not continue. And even if I was, but no one else would see it, forget it.

You see how this could pose a problem with the writing. So, I've been working on it.

I've told the story about my first college english essay where the instructor put my paper on the overhead as an example of how to write. I used to need things like that.

In one of my current workshops the instructor regularly attributes my insights to the other participants. It isn't intentional, but in the past, this would have made me crazy. I would have felt like I had to make sure he knew it was me, my idea. Because of all of this internal work, I can let go of that. It doesn't really matter how everyone else in the workshop sees me. Ultimately, I am really the only one who has to know.

So when this thing at the conference happened, I wasn't expecting it. I wasn't looking for it at all.

And yes, I cried.

Insights from Muse & the Marketplace: Part 1 of 9

Ha! Had you going there.

No, this isn't the first installment in a nine part series on my escapades at the writing conference, though lord knows it could be (and I might at least get to Part 2 where I stalk a few local writers). However, I will give you this little nibble from the keynote on Sunday.

The speaker was Ron Carlson. He has been writing and teaching for ages and stated fairly early in the address that he feels entitled to be a bit cranky about it. To his new students he says (while knocking his hand on a whiteboard) "Put something in your stories." He went on a ten minute riff about all the things he begged his student not to write about, including death. "The body count is high," he said. "And unnecessary."

He was funny. Really funny.

The best part, though, was that I understood what he was getting to. What joy to figure out that I've been writing enough to see what the novice pitfalls are, when drama and tension become confused with explosions and suicides. Not saying I can write past those black holes yet, but I see as soon as they pop up in my writing and certainly in the works of others during my classes.

In other words, knowing when you start to suck is really big progress. Huge.

Most of the conference felt that way, like I was really ready to take in the wisdom that the instructor-writers were doling out. And here's the other thing. I felt proud of myself for working so hard to get there, and "getting there" was only about being practiced enough to learn. Getting there is getting nowhere at this point, and still, I felt damn proud.

Remembering The Town

Tonight I had drinks with a dear friend who is going through some tough times. We dug into some celebrity gossip, the Royal wedding, movies, light stuff to keep her mind off things.

I was trying to tell her about a movie - The Town - and how it somewhat hung in there despite some very wooden acting by Ben Affleck. Thing is, I couldn't remember the damn name of the movie - The Town - even though I could tell her everything else about it, including the fact that it was set in Charlestown. Oy.

I'll chalk it up to the fact that I am deep in revision on a story that is very important to me and that whilst engaged in this very stimulating barside conversation, my subconscious was also pondering exactly how someone might go about stealing copper pipes from beneath a Baltimore rowhouse.

The Town. The Town. The Towwwwn.

Pop

This weekend I attended a two-day writing conference hosted by my beloved Grubstreet and now, even at day two, I am still coming down from it.

In my writing group a few months back, a friend brought in this beautiful bit about a girl trying to step onto a subway car with a bouquet of balloons. She struggles to pull all of the balloons in as the doors are closing and one balloon becomes stranded outside the train.

I've been feeling like that girl. I am holding something bright and precious, but I can't quite subdue it enough to take it along with me.

What do you DO?

What do you do?

It's such a loaded question. Usually, the asker wants to know your occupation, your job? Sometimes I get this from adults. Cocktail conversation at the neighborhood party or someone in a writing class.

What do you do?

Ahem, well.

I'm in between, I say. Used to own a store, now home with the kids. You know, until Little Guy is in kindergarten or some such.

Yesterday, however, I got the what do you do from a nine year old girl. Her Momma is a big wig at Gillette.

Well, I said, I'm a writer. Little girl's eyes big as saucers. Wow.

Just trying it out for size.

Right now

It turns out that a large majority of the people in my writing classes either don't have children or have much older children than mine. Out of fifteen people in a class, there might be one other person with young kids.

Once, a younger woman without children commented about how lucky I was to have all of the time that I have to write. You know, because I'm not working. I can't blame her really, she couldn't possibly understand what it is like to be at home with a three year old. And the writers without kids have jobs, spouses, responsibilities. We all have things that get in the way. But the fact that so few of the others have small children always leaves me wondering if I am supposed to be doing this. Or better yet, if I am supposed to be doing this right now.

Every time I come home late from class or a meeting, I make a point to peek in on my sleeping children. I do it on purpose. It's a little trick, like putting on music that you know will make you feel a certain way. The Cure for feeling young again. A certain U2 song for being newly married and on that trip to Italy. Sleeping children for making you feel the magic of motherhood.

Stretched out in their single beds, my kids take up so much less space than I expect them to. So much less space than they take up in my life. They complicate everything and yet I love them desperately. Fiercely.

So do I have bad timing? Maybe, but I can't go back, and I can't imagine waiting ten more years. So this is where we are. Right now.

Stupid silly snake

Today I am staring at a really rough draft of my snake story and I'm feeling very silly.

Silly to think I can pull this off. Silly to even pursue it. Silly to focus on something so intently, and to what end?

Silly stupid snake story.

There are a million other things I could do with my limited spare time.

I could exercise.

I could meditate.

I could update my resume.

I could fold a bajillion loads of laundry.

I could even take a nap.

But what I am a doing instead? I am trying to plug the holes in a short story about a woman and a snake. Who else in the world cares about this?

I might be heading for some sort of crack up. I'm going to go eat a cookie now.

Stupid snake.

Workshopped

Had a piece workshopped last night in my fiction class which means that, on top of working on a new story for the next round, I have some revising that needs to be tackled while the feedback is fresh.

This week's to-do list looks like this:

1. Finish first draft of the one about the lost snake.

2. Begin revising the workshopped story with pacing and backstory on the hooker wife as top priorities.

3. Try not to ruin the workshopped story while rewriting it.

4. Spend any spare time googling the literary references from the workshop, with special attention to the ones I nodded agreement with.

5. Try not to ruin the workshopped story while rewriting it.

Stage Mother

So not to be a stage Mother or anything, but my daughter is writing a book.

For the last few weeks I've been giving myself permission to be really serious about writing without feeling silly about it. I have rearranged my schedule and my thinking to really give the work a priority space in my life.

A huge step in this is how I handle the family priorities. I no longer run errands while Little Guy is in preschool, those are my work days. I make the kids wait until 7 AM for breakfast instead of abandoning my laptop as soon as they're up (I know, flagrant neglect, please don't report me). If I am working on something during the day, I tell them they'll have to wait a few minutes to have my attention because I need to finish my writing. I actively ignore the laundry (okay, maybe I did that before, but now I do it with purpose).

And though it will take some time to really kick this thing to the next level, I feel like I am on the right track. Writing is no longer, in my mind at least, a hobby.

So the kids are soaking it in, maybe more than I realized. A few days ago, Girlie spent her entire computer screen time writing a story. She says wants to be a writer. She even wrote an essay about it at school. She wrote, get this, that I am her inspiration.

I was thinking that over the weekend, I'd take her to a coffee shop where we could hang out and be writers together. I already gave her some feedback on the her story - focus on the conflict, get to it sooner, the story behind the story, etc. Chances are that she'll want to be a million other things before she lands on it, but right now I am going to enjoy this thing, hers and mine. She's nine, so next week she could want to be a chef or a lawyer or one of Katy Perry's backup singers.

But as for the writing thing, maybe she's got a shot at it. Her book seems to be coming along much faster than mine.

Here we go...

In one week I will be taking a big step in my fiction journey. I am getting together with a writer pal with the goal of submitting a few flash fiction pieces.

Flash is 1000 words or less, punchy, fun to write, and somewhat manageable for a newish writer. According to some, flash as a category will continue to rise as it fits the whole 140 character way we seem to be consuming information. Flash is sort of a literature lite, non-fat, but with flax. Or an amuse bouche, if you watch Top Chef, a tasty bite. Anyway, among writers, flash is getting some notice. I think I've heard at least one person say this or maybe I said it.

I am nervous about getting started, but like every other first time, I realize that it isn't going to be a big deal once we've done it. My friend and I are doing it together because we plan to keep each other accountable for continuing and because it might be helpful at this stage to have a second pair of eyes when matching the work with the potential journal. And let's face it, who really wants to do it alone?

I've got three decent candidates - a shape shifter called Desert,and two darkish pieces called Six Black Hens, and Fire, Man. I have stumbled into a bit of a fire and chicken theme (sometimes together, sometimes not) and I don't think I am done with it yet.

To get myself warmed up, I submitted a non-fiction story a few weeks back. I've pitched non-fiction before and been published, so I thought it might help to get back in the rhythm. I sent an essay to Literary Mama. It was something I'd written ages about about my mother's secretarial career and I've never found a home for it. Several days ago, I got the rejection. The message started with the phrase "We found much to enjoy in your writing..."

A good rejection.

So my goal with this isn't necessarily to just get published, but to at least be thoughtfully rejected, the kind of rejection where the work was close enough to get beyond a form letter response.

Of course, getting published would be fine too.

Ugly

For the last week, I've been reading Steve Almond's Not That You Asked, a collection of his personal stories some written about writing, some not. Steve is an instructor at Grub and I might be a bit of a groupie.

So, the other night I was tucked in, comfy, wearing my PJ's - the ones with the elephants playing golf while drinking martinis (The elephants were drinking, not me. They make me smile, though I also suspect they might be Republicans, so maybe the joke is on me.) - cruising through Steve's book when something I read almost knocked me off the bed.

It was a chapter about how all great writers are ugly. Not just ugly in the physical sense, though he meant that too, but ugly emotionally. Freaks.

When I was in the fifth grade, my lunch table was in close proximity to a group of girls called the barrettes. They didn't call themselves that of course, but they all wore barrettes with ribbon woven in alternating colors, a different color pairing for each outfit. My barrettes were the metal undersides of theirs, unadorned. The "before" version of the ones they wore.

One day one of the barrettes called out to me. I stood up, surprised that she was talking to me, and approached the table. She handed me something in a small packet. My heart raced.

"Beauty cream," she said, "you need it." The girls all laughed. I walked back to my table and slipped the packet into my pocket.

So there it was. Not pretty. Ugly.In many ways, I have always been that girl.

So what struck me about Steve's story was that this part of me - the tendency to over emotionalize, over internalize, over analyze everything - in other words, the ugly freak thing, is actually okay. It is, as far as writing goes, an asset. Something to be cultivated.

Finally, the fact that I look at myself in the mirror and always see the "before", the me without the ribbons, is a good thing, and also not something I have to worry about growing out of. Which is such a relief, because I am almost forty and starting to feel pretty sure it isn't going to happen.

About last night

Last night was bizarre. I met a small group downtown to review a few pieces of writing. A couple of us planned to attend the spring workshop reading at Grubstreet afterward. A friend of mine dared me to read a flash fiction piece and after a few beers, both of us decided to go for it.

The reading went really well. It was amazing actually. Afterwards our instructor lavished us with praise and I experienced some sort of literary euphoria. Smiling, tingly, and a little sweaty. Like a first kiss. But before I could really soak that in, a man approached me.

I didn't quite put it together at first, but he was someone I'd met awhile back. He was trying to start a writing group near my house. He turned out to be a little aggressive, alienated the entire group (12 or so people dropped out, more than half before our first meeting), and had his meetup group officially removed, twice. Red flags all around. I was starting a new class at Grub, so I politely told him that I couldn't work it out.

Except he showed up at the reading. It felt like he hung out a while near the elevators, so I'd have to talk to him. It was weird because while the thing is technically open to the public, usually the event is just for people who've taken a class that session. He followed us outside and then proceeded to chat us up on the sidewalk for awhile. Puffing away, asking about the classes, commenting on the readings, etc. I urged him to take the novel class and extracted myself. He'd likely take the same train as me, so I left with a friend and waited it out at a nearby bar, we needed to go over some things anyway. He's probably a harmless enough guy, he owns a business near my house and has for many years. Still. Not sure if that will be the end of the story.

So finally I head for the trains and they are all late. I am waiting and waiting, texting the sitter. I get on a train and it stops twice. Lights out, no explanation. At one point the train expresses to the final stop and I have to get off and catch another train. By this time, my sitter is not going to make her train home, so I call her a cab before I even get there. Cab, sitter, killing time at the bar, I've spent a small fortune on this evening.

She leaves and texts me to say that the cab got pulled over. I stay up to wait for her and Little Guy wakes up with a nightmare. It is now past 1 AM and I am downstairs when I hear his feet hit the floor. He runs to my bedroom looking for me, but of course, I am still awake and in the kitchen. I head up there, walk him back to his bed and he says, "Mommy can you just be in your bed now?"

So it was one hell of a night, both awesome and weird, but he was right, at that point I really just needed to be in my bed.

Reduce Reuse Revise

I am getting to the point where I have a stack of writing in progress, various short stories and a few longer things that need to be sorted out for either the trash or the recycle bin. Within the recycle pile I've got writing, both glass and plastic, and I need to weed through and divide those too.

At a reading this week, one of the writers said that revision was his favorite part, that he loved taking something he'd done and tweaking it over and over, until someone (or something, usually a deadline) made him stop. I think this could be the case for me too, except I have to admit that I am a little afraid of it. What if I actually make the writing worse? Or what if the first stab is as good as it gets?

Either way, it doesn't matter I suppose because what I absolutely cannot do is let this stuff pile up and do nothing about it.

Because then I would be a hoarder. And crazy.

A crazy hoarder.

On being brave

One of the hardest things about writing for me has been the lack of something concrete to show for it. I don't mean that I am not producing anything, just that you can't exactly sit it on the coffee table and admire it. The biggest example of this is from my experience with NaNoWriMo. 50,000 words of mostly crap, taking space on my hard drive, never to be seen again.

But maybe not.

The other day I had dinner with a writer friend and she wondered aloud if there might be something to mine from that material. So I sent it to her.

Yes, I sent her my really awful writing, most of which will be more painful to read than my eighth grade diary. I sent it because she knows my other writing. I also sent it because I want to be brave.

Which brings me around to the knick knacks. What I have to show for my work in this case is a smidge of personal development, which I think probably comes, for me at least, in turquoise and red.

And looks perfect on my coffee table (if you just imagine it).

Prompt and also Right on Time

The class that I am currently taking focuses on flash fiction, usually 1000 words or less. We get a prompt or two to choose from each week, usually a particular writing technique to follow, like writing the story backwards or focusing on color, etc. along with an example of that style. I have written some pretty amazing things from a few of these prompts, things I would never have dreamt of writing without them.

As a newish writer I was previously under the impression that it was up to me to summon the magic completely from thin air. This is fine and dandy when you have a story idea in mind, but insurmountably depressing when you do not. So back then, I would sit at the keyboard and hope. Hope does not float. Hope sinks.

It turns out that writing prompts are commonly used within story writing circles, and having a place to start has been, for me, transformative. I've written shape shifters, stories that begin at the end, and the color red. I've written an old tale in a new way and even a love story. Best of all, the prompts have really helped me to be able to sit down and write, which is way more fun than sitting down and not writing.