Good-Bye, First Novel

The beginning and ends of my nights are spent in a semi-conscious dream state where I solve major issues like where my daughter’s spring jacket is and what I’m going to plant in the garden. I have to admit to being slightly bitter about the domestic nature of my mental wanderings. Sometimes, though, I solve a major problem – the kind of problem that had me on the fence for five plus years and had kept me awake for many nights.

It started quite ignominiously right here on this blog, during my first year of blogging. In October 2012, I started to hear murmurings about NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month in November of each year. Writer friends kept asking if I were going to do it.

canstockphoto19927024I was 45 years old. My daughter was 8 and my mother-in-law was needing more help as her Alzheimer’s progressed. I was working from home part-time doing bookkeeping. That was the year I went out of character and got a tattoo. I’d been training in Taekwondo the last year and tried to learn Japanese ink painting. It was easy enough to see I was in the grip of middle-aged curiosity, trying to define myself beyond employee and parent and wife. And I was definitely game to write a novel in a month.

The funny thing is, while I always wanted to be a writer, I hadn’t really thought of myself as being a writer. When I was in 5th grade, horribly shy and out of step, I had a kind teacher named Mr. Dunn. He encouraged me to write and helped me to publish bad poetry in the local paper. I was thrilled when he had my classmates debut my epic play Snow White and the Five Dorks. Spoiler alert: the wicked stepmother gets eaten by toxic Odor Eaters. I had an undeveloped sense of humor at 10. That really hasn’t changed.

I did not take my creative endeavors seriously, always feeling like a jack of many trades, master of none. The dilettante. The hobbyist.

canstockphoto16261737November 2012 would change that. Despite being toasted on Nyquil most of the month as my family enjoyed a round robin flu season, I managed to write a skeletal novel of 50,000 words. It had all the earmarks of a first-time novelist – sketchily autobiographical, great gaping chasms in the plot, characters who had all the charisma of cardboard cutouts. But I had done it and I began to see myself as a writer.

As I struggled through the second and third and fourth revisions, I hemmed and hawed, putting the novel aside for weeks at a time in the hopes I could come at the thing with a new perspective. I finish things, dammit. I don’t give up. I persist. This has been something I’ve prided myself on, something I saw as the only alternative to failure. I am now entering year six. My characters are fully developed, I know every intricacy of the plot by heart, every theme and idea has been unwound and rewoven into the fabric of my story.

And now I’m saying good-bye.

It happened at 3am on Monday morning. The tightness in my chest turned out to be a very fat cat staring me down for breakfast. With a rude shove, I rolled over intending to go back to sleep. My mind drifted. I’d put together my work plan for the week, just as I’ve done every Sunday for months now. Work plans that never quite came to fruition, although I’d made incremental progress. I’d been working on issues of procrastination and perfectionism that I thought were the hurdles. And then it came to me, floating in and settling on my brain. I am done. It’s time to move on.

canstockphoto2884614I spent Monday backing up files and looking at all the versions I’d saved. All that work. All that time. But I’d spent more energy and time avoiding it than writing it. I hadn’t really enjoyed it after that initial buzz of completion. I wasn’t passionate about it and it no longer interested me. Would I truly mourn the fact that it would never be published?

This was a novel I’d pitched to agents and gotten positive responses, so I had learned to talk about my work. I’d learned four or five different ways to come at a novel, from mind mapping to index cards to plotting or letting the story go where it wanted to go. I’d become better at dialogue and characterization. I learned that plot cannot be everything.

I became adept at using Scrivener, which was not intuitive for me, but has become profoundly useful in reorganizing scenes. Because of my hunger to get better at writing, to fix the damned albatross of a novel that I’d been lugging about, I began to read with intent. My writing has improved exponentially because I now read more challenging work.

One of the biggest lessons I learned, in the words of Lorrie Moore, is that writing is more important for me than being a writer; it is very easy to conflate social media platforms and blogging and getting a business card and going to conferences with being productive, when productivity lies in the doing, not the being. Everything else can happen after the doing and it won’t feel like playing dress-up.

The struggle made me look for ways over and around my personal obstacles and bad canstockphoto29382733work habits and distractions. I am learning to write without judging or editing, which has made me more productive many times over. My to-do lists these days no longer start with dishes or laundry. I write before I do anything else. So instead of feeling shame at the failure, I feel gratitude for all the lessons that will eventually get me where I’m going.

I drifted back to sleep on Monday, feeling happier than I have in a long time. I get to write a new story.

The Loci of Writing: Plantsing and Politics

It’s a year where satire and parody seem unnecessary – this political season has been aggravating and exhausting. I believe there are personal lessons to be learned and am mercenary about the sources. This last month, I’ve been thinking a lot about the people with whom I disagree. It would be a stretch to say I feel compassion or kinship or empathy, but challenging my thinking – a bouillabaisse of stereotypes, personal prejudice and simple loathing, is important to me.

canstockphoto3646334It’s about the locus of control. I’ve been a bit baffled by the people who are intensely invested in Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders or really, any political figure. It seems like they think one of these people would personally remove their credit card debt, mend their marriage, bring back their dead pets, educate them, make their children attractive, feed them well, make their everyday lives a bed of roses (but only after removing all the thorns, treating them with a non-toxic pesticide and laying them perfectly parallel). This is to say, they were relying on outside forces to make their lives better, provided they hand over their glass slipper of critical thinking skills and a vote.

This is where I can get into hostile and loud arguments with anyone, including friends. I am a cynic, but more than that, I cling intensely to an internal locus of control. Everything that happens to me that is bad is my fault. And most of the good things are luck meeting preparation. I just don’t speak the same language and when I hear a candidate’s supporters talk, it doesn’t make sense to me.

canstockphoto11597947To hear grown humans blaming the shittiness of their existence on immigrants or a global economy or god forbid, the civil expectation that you be polite to other humans (all that political correctness, doncha know), is mind-boggling. To hear some men, especially those in positions of power and influence, referring to women by body parts, pejorative gendered terms and bizarre biological theories is like stepping into a world where logic is suspended and civility is maligned. It’s on this same planet where compromise and working together suddenly seems like an 8th deadly sin. It’s a planet where the locus of control in their lives is completely external and they have no personal responsibility.

I grew up with a lot of people who couldn’t see their way clear of their own shitstorm. All that fear and insecurity and lack of knowledge was externalized and laid to rest on the shoulders of everyone and everything else around them. The problem with living this way, is that it means nothing will ever change. If you practice blaming everyone and everything else for your problems, this is what you will be good at, no matter how the external circumstances change.

canstockphoto15646582For whatever reason, I was one of those people who knew the only way out was to do. I joined the Army, went to college, slowly worked my way from a hotel toilet bowl cleaner to managerial roles. Every fuck-up of mine, I owned. It makes me less tolerant of blamers,  less compassionate towards handwringers and less patient with sky-is-falling humans and that’s not the only downside to the internal locus of control.

For me, it’s always been that no matter what happens to me, it’s on me to fix it, to bounce back, to learn from it, to change it. That’s a big responsibility in a world where there are many factors we have no control over. My practice habits now involve trying to recognize what is truly in my locus of control and what is not.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been preparing for November and December. It is my time to finish a good enough draft of my novel to send out to beta-readers. I’ve cleared the decks of old projects and I began meditating a few minutes every morning to prepare myself for the day. I’m not very good at it, but that’s why they call it a practice.

It’s taken me years to get to this point. Three steps forward, two-and-a-half steps back. It has felt like a nonstop struggle to get myself to sit down and write and to practice shutting out all the shoulds so that I could focus. My responsibility. If I look to external reasons for why I don’t write on some days, I’ll find them. It’s easy. But there are two things that I have picked up over the years.

  • If something is truly important to you, you’ll make time for it.
  • If you’re going to use an excuse, add it to a list – you only get to use it once (thanks AB, for that sage bit of advice!).

Now that it’s National Novel Writing Month, up crops the old discussion about whether or not someone is a pantser (flying by the seat of their pants) or a planner (color-coded outlines ahoy). I am a fantastic planner. I have character cards typed up, timelines tacked to boards, a small town drawn out, chapter outlines (at least 3 of them) and all the mailing supplies for my beta-readers lined up.

canstockphoto37898886It makes not one whit of difference to the writing, but I’ve accepted that it’s part of my process. When I write, I go where the story takes me and no amount of neatly typed notecards is going to change that. I’m a plantser. The planning pays homage to my internal locus of control – mirage or otherwise. The pantsing pays tribute to a creative spirit, which seems like something out of my control. And I honor it. I wouldn’t trust it to run the country, but I like to watch it race across the page.

Getting Lost on Purpose

Yesterday I got lost driving in St. Paul. My husband swears we should never cross the river that divides the Twin Cities. He’s gotten lost as well. Jesse Ventura, the former infamous governor of Minnesota, once insulted the city on national television by suggesting it was designed by Irish drunks (I imagine the Irish were insulted as well!).

canstockphoto9422901Getting lost has never caused me undue anxiety, especially since we bought a car with navigation – except it will fritz out at critical junctures in the journey. I have learned to just work on getting back to where I came from, doing u-turns in cul-de-sacs and slowing down to squint at street signs. It’s how I learn to find my way around.

When we traveled the west coast this year, I realized that having access to internet reviews, maps, pictures, and descriptions of every locale and hotel changed the nature of travel. I was rarely lost, surprised or delighted by the planned stops. I had to look for those moments.

In everyday life, the thrum-thrum of routine and picayune worries means that I have to look for those moments daily. Sometimes I think it will be this way until I’m found lifeless, slumped in my wheelchair at a nursing home. Sometimes I think any tragedy and ten years down the road, I’d be living a completely different life – that thinking awful thoughts will prick my appreciation for the sameness of this moment.

Moments are found in the knocking of a woodpecker, who is grocery shopping in the wood of our grayed deck railing. Or in an autumn memory flash of crunching through the leaves, while walking my chatty, happy 4-year-old to preschool years ago. Or hearing a piece of music that reminds me of new love and mix tapes.

canstockphoto4603487Sometimes though, we have to deliberately create those moments. We have to snatch up the defribrillator paddles and apply them in earnest. Wake up. Do something. Bring on the discomfort. I’ve done this over the years – trying improv comedy in my 30s, taking up martial arts in my 40s, public speaking, swimsuits and often saying no. I’ve been getting lost, been foolish, tried things not recommended at home, gone without a net, safety glasses, an umbrella or warm socks.

There is something I have not done. I have not dared to do anything beyond blogging with my writing.  I have a novel that I wrote the first draft of 4 years ago, that I’ve rewritten twice, renamed thrice and shredded in fits of pique. Then I decided to sign up canstockphoto14879538for a writers’ pitch conference taking place next spring. At this conference, I am supposed to pitch a polished novel manuscript to agents from three literary agencies.

Five months. I have five months to finish the cursed manuscript, fly it past beta-readers, get it to an editor and then hand over what remains to complete strangers. I want to throw up just a bit. But there it is – I’m awake and can no longer hit the snooze button.

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It hung precariously to the tile. Only I didn’t see it until I was washing my hair. With no glasses on, it was something that didn’t match the pattern on the wall. And it moved. I shifted the shower head so I could stand facing the spider, further away. We eyed each other with dismay.

canstockphoto6967523There is always a moment, facing the creepy crawlies that invade our house, of decision. Their benign attempts to coexist are met with shrieks by the large, destructive predatory inhabitants. We are the elephants and they are the mice, and we shrink away.

I remembered many years ago, reading about Buddhist monks who tread paths carefully, lest they step on an ant. I began to walk more carefully.

When my daughter was younger, we’d pantomime saving the spider. We’d use an index card and a cup, removing the arachnid from its ancestral home, depositing it gently outside to roam free. The reality is that most house spiders die shortly after being deposited into the elements.

Then came the shrieking phase and all she wanted was the monster dead, which had always been my gut instinct anyway. It seemed more humane, casting a dark human shadow, a quick crushing end to its life. I am the monster.

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I went to a poetry reading by Billy Collins a week ago and left feeling that I could write poetry. Until I tried to and was reminded that I was wrong. Over the years, I’ve read more poetry. I keep imagining that my ever-shrinking attention span would be a benefit, but it’s not. Poetry is an economy of language and done well, requires one’s full attention.

canstockphoto15817518Serving as US Poet Laureate for several years, Billy Collins writes what is often called “accessible poetry”. He describes it as unashamedly suburban, middle class,  and domestic. One of my fears is that I, and by extension my writing, am suburban, middle class and domestic. My childhood working class prejudices make me shrink from that description. Who we are now, though, informs our writing as much as who we were. It’s a good lesson to remember – creativity on a continuum.

One of the things I love most about living in a metropolitan area is the ability to attend a wide range of authors’ lectures. I enjoy hearing about their writing processes and experiences. Sometimes, though, they mostly let their work stand on its own. Mr. Collins read his poetry with only slight interjections in between each work. This seems novel in an age where self profession has become a genre all its own.

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canstockphoto14284461Thank you to Kiri, Ross, and Cezanne for your winning entries in The Green Study’s “Positively Happy Nice Story” Contest. Nothing like some positive vibes to stave off this depressing political season! Stay tuned next week for the Honorable Mention entries from Catherine, Bill, and Alison.

Marlon James and Notes in the Dark

canstockphoto15617395A good story makes you ask better questions. It’s scrawled twice in the margins of my notebook. I took notes last week in a darkened audience, attending a lecture by the 2015 Man Booker Prize winner, Marlon James. He received the award in October for his sprawling, intense novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings.

One of things on my writing hit list this year was to seek out better writers and better writing. I am fortunate to live in a metro area for some of the big name writers who give lectures, but I’ve also watched a lot of videos, listened to audio books and stepped up my reading habits. It isn’t that I’m seeking some sort of osmotic reaction. It’s that I want to live in that world where writing matters, where people value telling really good stories.

While whinging on about this novel I’ve been treading in for the last three years, a writer friend responded with silence. What? She hesitated. “Maybe you should write something else.” As I have done with numerous people, I adamantly held on to the premise that this must be done. This was the novel that was going to teach me how to be a proper novelist. I needed to just work through it. My argument has come to sound hollow and unenthusiastic.

After another mucky, miserable writing session yesterday, I flopped down on the couch. It was time to quit trying to ram through the novel – this door that would magically unlock the novelist within. I’m on a third rewrite and feel like my compulsion to finish and do it right will eventually stop me from writing it at all.

Marlon James shared advice he’d gotten early on: “Write about only three things: what you love, what you hate, and what you’re deeply conflicted about.” 

canstockphoto7418437That quote has been playing in my head repeatedly. The novel I’ve been working on is rooted in the past, in things I once hated and loved and things I’m no longer conflicted about. I wasn’t asking better questions. I was asking questions for which I’d already found answers. It makes sense that I’d be sick of the whole damned thing and unless I could bring something new to the story, it wasn’t worth writing.

Today I pulled down the story board cards, packed up the notepads, filed the drafts in a binder and backed up all my digital records. I’m taking the month off from working on it and diving into another story. Since it’s November and I have some writer friends who have been hemming and hawing about participating in National Novel Writing Month, I’ve had a change of heart and will give in to this particular, peculiar compulsion. A little free range writing might be fun. Or not.

RANDOM NOTES

This post by The Bloggess made me laugh so loudly this morning that I woke up my family.

And then that one time on twitter we all just became human and I laughed until I gave myself a headache.

It reminded me of volunteering on kindergarten registration night, when I had to request documentation for enrollment, to include birth certificates. An acquaintance arrived with her kindergartner, older son and a newborn. I smiled and proceeded to ask her for a copy of her birth control. I morphed into the worst volunteer ever, as I had to keep leaving the table to stop laughing and/or dying from embarrassment.

If you wonder how artists spent their days, I just finished a fun read in which I learned that having a wife, servants, a drinking problem and Benzedrine are really the tricks of the creative trade. Having none of those, I did also find that on average, many creative talents worked a solid 3-4 hours a day and spent a lot of time going on walks. I can do that.

Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey, Editor

For those of you participating in NaNoWriMo, best wishes!

For those of you not participating, keep your eye roll at the ready, as writers lose their minds but always, always know their word count!

Being Fiction, Instead of Writing It

canstockphoto1323495Over the last few years, I’ve written blog post after blog post about making changes with a mind towards writing. I quit paid work. I quit volunteering. I set up my study, surrounded by books, many of them about writing. I am supported by the people in my life. I talk about writing. I read about writing. I write about writing. On occasion, I even write things that aren’t about writing.

The only person in my life who doesn’t take me seriously as a writer is me.

The door is open wide and I look desperately out of windows, jumping at anything that is not writing. It’s an odd compulsion that I’m at a loss to explain. I read somewhere that writing is hardest for writers. This makes no sense to me. When I’m in my writing groove, I’m so damned happy. But I’m a dilettante, without rigor or discipline. And the time for lying to myself is over.

I’ve been a consummate caregiver. But my child needs less from me. My mother-in-law is moving into a nursing home. I’m becoming increasingly less employable and less relevant to others as each moment passes. The closer I get to unfettered time, the more conflicted and lost I feel. But the cost to my psyche of not writing is starting to outweigh everything else.

If you daydream about a day when you didn’t have to work and could devote yourself full-time to writing…if you wished that those around you supported and encouraged you…if you wished that you had the perfect writing space…if – if – if.

canstockphoto10947379Real writers know this is a shell game. I have met all my “if” conditions and I am no more a writer than I was at the height of activity – working, volunteering, caregiving. For me, calling myself a writer was just a lie to make all that other shit worth it. I could feel that I had a higher purpose, even when kissing someone’s ass in an office or getting barfed on by my child. I could always tell myself that when I had more time, I’d be awesome.

Well, it turns out I’m not awesome. I’m a procrastinator, a hustler trying to put up a good front. I remember watching a commencement speech by Neil Gaiman. He talked about how he got jobs by lying about where he’d been published and then made it a point of honor to get published later at the places about which he lied. Like him, I’m going to call myself  “chronologically challenged”. My talk has preceded my walk.

There are many people who write/blog/create memes about writing. I know – I’ve read or seen many of them, because it was something that I could do instead of write. I don’t experience muses or inspiration or manic writing. I lost the poetry of my adolescent years and the sentimentality of my twenties. My thirties were dominated by marriage and child-rearing. And here I am, wrapping up my forties in a clusterfuck of unresolved personal issues and middle-aged angst.

canstockphoto12404837Here’s the thing about inner conflict: it’s the heart of everything. It’s the recognition that you are your best friend and your worst enemy. It’s the battle between what was, what is and what will be. It’s the ultimate choosing of right and wrong, of what feeds you or what sucks your soul dry. It’s grabbing your childhood by the throat and saying “enough already!” It’s learning how to take all those chronic character flaws and turn them in your favor. It’s recognizing that there are certain things that you will never change about yourself.

I’ve been struggling the last couple of years, swinging wildly between determination and defeat. These last four months were a long finishing punch. It turns out that I do have a muse. An insistent, rather violent one who favors tankards of coffee, swear words and surprise hook punches. Okay, okay, I get it. I’m tapping out. You can stop now.

I’m putting a spin on my forties, when I decided I’d become a martial artist, super mom, Japanese ink painter, personal trainer, officer of the law, marathoner, web genius, everywhere volunteer and organic vegan superfreak. It was all research for writing. It sounds so much better than a midlife panic.

canstockphoto16261737It’s time to ante up or fold. I’ve run off in a thousand different directions and always, always, I come back to writing. And the only opposition to me seriously pursuing it, is me.

That’s a little embarrassing, considering the very real obstacles a lot of artists encounter. But so is getting kicked in the face by a 12 year old in taekwondo, painting bamboo 5,000 times and having it still look like a tulip, running so slow that I get lapped by the senior walkers, farting while bench pressing, nearly passing out during public speaking and offending people in the regular course of my life just by being me. What’s being a failed writer going to do? Humiliate me? Hell, I got this.

So I’m taking the best writing advice I’ve ever read and running with it: write. Set hours, set commitment, failure possibly imminent. I can always become an origami instructor if it doesn’t work out. canstockphoto8251234

Walking through Storyland

canstockphoto15817518The most irritating writing advice for me is write what you know. Once I’ve written that paragraph, I sink into a morass of self-pity and caffeine. I wrote about finding narrative on vacation. Sometimes a change of scenery is the jolt needed to wake a person up from the glazed coma of being in one place for too long. Upon return, things look a little different.

Last night, I took a stroll around my neighborhood. With the latest addition of a grocery store, my neighborhood is like one of those preformed children’s city sets. I had a moment when I realized how lucky I was to live here, about two seconds before writer’s angst kicked in – could I create from such a comfortable and comforting kind of life? But wait! There’s more.

Welcome to the calm seas of a suburban life rendered into the turgid waters of human existence. Let’s take a walk.

I live in a neighborhood built in the 1950s, each little ranch home a duplicate of the one next door. Except that these houses have stories. Our neighbors on one side have home schooled their six children and the driveway is chock full of cars, as each child gains a driver’s license. Years ago, the husband got booted for smacking his wife. He’s back, contrite and polite. I watch for signs that he’s actually learned his lesson.

canstockphoto15722695The children all turned out a bit weird. One walks the dog sullenly, barely making eye contact when I say hello. The youngest has grown his hair as long as my daughter has had hers cut short. The next youngest used to follow me about the yard asking me if I was a Christian and telling me that the raspberries I picked were “God’s juice boxes”. I’m hoping the kid that keeps showing up on the weekend in camouflage is part of a well-regulated militia. And while they sound like a version of creepy Quiverfulls, they’re pretty good neighbors who don’t spray their lawn with chemicals. We share weeds.

The house that sits on the curve was thankfully bought after a brief time as a rental property. It worried us. They had pit bulls that occasionally got loose and the Sheriff showed up once a week to follow up on warrants for the son, an ex-con who was still dealing drugs. Cars would pull up at all hours of the night.

canstockphoto28260950I walk around the high school near us and pass a house where a couple of years ago, a man holed himself up with his shotgun and girlfriend. Eventually he surrendered, but we listened to the choppers all day.

John’s house is on the right. He is a veteran of the Korean war and following a valve replacement, would walk every night down our street. When I saw him coming, I put down my gardening tools and met him halfway. He’d lived here since the beginning and always had a new story. He has Parkinson’s now and I sometimes catch glimpses of him in the evening, slowly walking to his mailbox.

As I walk a few blocks away to the city park, I feel a moment of silliness. I’m in Lego Land. There’s city hall, the police station, the firehouse, the public pool. I think whimsical thoughts about how, if like Lego people, we could all turn our plastic hair backwards, everyone would look like Donald Trump.

There’s a gangly boy using the skateboard park. I always fear that I’ll be witness to a noggin being cracked open every time I pass the park. This kid’s not wearing a helmet and seems light on skills. My pace quickens.

At the outdoor amphitheater, they’re in rehearsal for “Oliver”.  A woman is warning them that four days is a long time without practice and that they need to keep at it. My daughter, years ago, took a summer acting class at this theater. They made the kids wear stage-worthy makeup which smeared in the August heat. She was morphed into a melty butterfly whose lack of interest in stage direction was only eclipsed by this summer’s soccer apathy.

Behind the firehouse, the police and firefighters are having a family picnic. The officer I talked to that morning is there. Two police cars and a fire engine had pulled up in front of our house before 7 a.m. I could see up and down the street, people looking out windows, strolling to the end of their driveways. Hovering at the edges with the odd, wary politeness of midwesterners. I watched officers break into the home across the street.

I used to joke that the guy was either a unabomber or that bodies would be found stacked like Jenga blocks in his basement. It seemed like he waited until no one was outside before getting his mail and his windows were always covered. After having a child, I decided that this was too weird. I started waiting for him to get his mail. And then I’d go out to check mine and greet him with a loud “hello” and big, fake smile. Who’s scary now?

It turned out to be a natural gas leak and he’d moved out a while ago and was just renovating his elderly father’s place, in order to put it on the market. Nothing exploded and no bodies were discovered.

canstockphoto2595648I was glad to see the officers and firefighters at a happy event. They deserve it. Earlier this year, after two new officers were sworn in at city hall, a man entered the building and fired on them, hitting the new hires. They survived. The shooter did not. One of the worst first days on the job ever.

Behind the pool there are tennis courts. A young woman is teaching tennis to a group of elementary kids. Only one parent stays. He watches as her tennis skirt sways and flutters upward during a demonstration for the kids. I slow down as I walk past him, making him unconsciously lean left and right to keep his view. Sometimes I can be a jerk.

One and a half miles of the human experience. Subject to a thousand interpretations, waiting for a writer to take hold and grapple with the stories on paper. To say we don’t know what to write has as much veracity in my ears as my kid saying I’m bored during the summer. My response is the same: Go for a walk.canstockphoto7444328