My therapist has given me certain tasks before our next meeting, one of which is to explore my family's particular "legacy burden" and how this affects me as a writer. I think this is significant because I come from a family of perfectionists and perfectionism, I'm convinced, is the diametrical opposite of creativity. Not to mention that it can cripple someone who is getting ready to bring out a book and thus subject themselves to public analysis. So I need to think about this, break it down....and get over it. It sounds stupid when you write it down but here goes - my attempt to analyze my family's philosophy.
There is shame in the act of wanting something. I remember an aunt telling me, following the bruising of my first romantic breakup, “Act like you don’t care.” I believe that line is on my family crest.
Act like you don’t care.
I have a cousin who went to college to study French, aced her placement exams and wound up in a hard class, and immediately switched her major rather than to admit she didn’t understand what the other students were saying. I understand that sort of decision, that sort of flight, because another family motto is “If you can’t do it well, don’t bother doing it at all.”
If you can’t do it well….don’t bother doing it at all.
Ergo a family that rarely ends up taking risks or doing anything new. Ergo a family of teachers, people who feel comfortable explaining things to the peons but who would rather die than be caught in the act of learning something themselves. Learning something is shameful, because if you were really smart and capable, you would have been born knowing how to do it. Line three of the family crest would be
You should be naturally good at things.
At the roots of all this is not just fear, but a deep and crippling perfectionism. Hard on anyone, but perfectionism can absolutely cripple a writer. I think this is the legacy burden I need to drop in the upcoming months as I prepare for the publication of my book. I have to overcome the shame of publicly wanting something…deliberately going after something….making mistakes along the way and …having to learn as I go. These don’t sound like appalling crimes when you list them. But in my family they’re the ultimate no-nos
Friday, March 27, 2009
Friday, March 20, 2009
Why I want to wear the turquoise dress
Went to see my therapist this morning and spent the session talking about what I'll need to do to get emotionally ready for when the book comes out in January. She sent me away with two tasks - one, to describe why I want to be an author and two, to list the things that are going well about the process. My struggles to accentuate the positive are well-documented in this blog so I've decided in this entry to discuss the first task.
So why do I want to be an author? The thing is, being an author is very different that being a writer. I always think of writer as being present tense verb-driven, i.e., someone is a writer because they write. You are an author because you have written. The word implies a finished product, probably in the form of a published book. It's more about the role you play in the world after the book is written. It's about being seen, reviewed, critiqued, idolized or rejected. It's struck me lately that the world "publication" means just what it sounds like it means - you're moving a book (and its author) from the private realm to the public realm.
And that's what I'm struggling with, this upcoming move from the world of the writer, which is private, to the world of the author, which is public. As I've said before I see my experience as a dancer as a chance to practice being more public. You can certainly dance just for the fun of dancing, with your friends or in a studio with an instructor and many good dancers never take it further. They opt not to compete - just as many good writers never seek publication. It's not like it's absolutely mandatory for any creative person to ever go public with their art. In fact, you could argue that there's a deeper beauty in not going public because you're left with the sheer joy of the activity. I know the joy of writing. I know all about that faint tingling feeling you get across the top of the skull when the work in possessing you - when it feels like you're falling. You don't have to publish to you get that feeling. In fact, publishing carries you farther away from that feeling.
So.....why be an author?
When I was getting ready to take the stage in the dance competition last weekend I saw a woman I sort-of know waiting to take her own turn on the stage and she looked terrified. She glanced at me and muttered "I don't know why I do this to myself" and indeed you can make a good argument never to do this sort of thing to yourself. Why expose yourself to the pain of being ridiculed or judged? The performance aspect of my work, whether it's dancing or writing, is never going to be as emotionally rewarding as the creative aspect...it's probably going to be a best a mixed experience and possibly a downright humiliating one.
So....why I doI want to be an author?
Here are some of my reasons:
Money ( a puny reason)
Fame (ditto - not because money or fame are puny, but because novel writing is an unlikely path to either)
I'll feel important
People will listen to me
At long last I'll be sitting at the cool kids table
I will be participating in the global exchange of ideas.
Because it's the only item on the list that doesn't make me sound like a total fool, let's ponder the last point. I was envious when I saw my friend Alison's bookshelf with the foreign editions of her novel and each time I to into a bookstore in Europe I am struck with a similar envy for the American authors whose books are on sale there. I've always wanted to be able to call myself a citizen of the world and what better way to earn that title than with international publication, the dizzying idea that someone will be sitting in a coffeeshop in Siena or Munich or Rotterdam reading my book? It's my small chance to participate in the global exchange of ideas. Just thinking of it makes me so happy I want to weep.
And then there's another point, also a little grandiose, but here goes. Once I was sitting at a sushi restaurant working on a manuscript and the waitress asked me if I was a writer, as waitresses often do. I said yes and she said "I love to read" and for a moment her face was flooded with happiness and hope. She was a dark, nearly goth looking little girl, with bitten down fingernails with green polish, someone who was trying really hard to be tough and cool but when she said "I love to read" everything in her turned porous and I could see the real person inside and she looked me right in the face, in the way few people look at each other, and she whispered "Reading sustains me."
That's it. That was all. She turned away, shut back down. But I've never forgotten her. She was right. Reading sustains people and thus writing sustains people. It's important work.
And this would be a nice way to end my list of "reasons I want to be an author," with the ideas of sustaining young gothic waitresses and participating in the international commerce of thought. A smart person would stop typing right here. But I think I'm doing an injustice to myself if I don't consider the reasons at the top of the list equally valid. The ones that sound shallow like fame and money and being important and having people listen to me. Because I want those things too. Of course, of course....I write because I love to write just like I dance because I love to dance. But there is also a time when you step forward onto the lighted stage and show yourself. When you admit how much you want it and you risk being judged. Not everyone has to go public, but I have to do it because if I'm drop-dead honest with myself it's part of the reason that I write. It's time for me to put on the turquoise dress and get comfortable with the fact that people are going to see me. I think I can get used to it. I don't think I have any choice.
So why do I want to be an author? The thing is, being an author is very different that being a writer. I always think of writer as being present tense verb-driven, i.e., someone is a writer because they write. You are an author because you have written. The word implies a finished product, probably in the form of a published book. It's more about the role you play in the world after the book is written. It's about being seen, reviewed, critiqued, idolized or rejected. It's struck me lately that the world "publication" means just what it sounds like it means - you're moving a book (and its author) from the private realm to the public realm.
And that's what I'm struggling with, this upcoming move from the world of the writer, which is private, to the world of the author, which is public. As I've said before I see my experience as a dancer as a chance to practice being more public. You can certainly dance just for the fun of dancing, with your friends or in a studio with an instructor and many good dancers never take it further. They opt not to compete - just as many good writers never seek publication. It's not like it's absolutely mandatory for any creative person to ever go public with their art. In fact, you could argue that there's a deeper beauty in not going public because you're left with the sheer joy of the activity. I know the joy of writing. I know all about that faint tingling feeling you get across the top of the skull when the work in possessing you - when it feels like you're falling. You don't have to publish to you get that feeling. In fact, publishing carries you farther away from that feeling.
So.....why be an author?
When I was getting ready to take the stage in the dance competition last weekend I saw a woman I sort-of know waiting to take her own turn on the stage and she looked terrified. She glanced at me and muttered "I don't know why I do this to myself" and indeed you can make a good argument never to do this sort of thing to yourself. Why expose yourself to the pain of being ridiculed or judged? The performance aspect of my work, whether it's dancing or writing, is never going to be as emotionally rewarding as the creative aspect...it's probably going to be a best a mixed experience and possibly a downright humiliating one.
So....why I doI want to be an author?
Here are some of my reasons:
Money ( a puny reason)
Fame (ditto - not because money or fame are puny, but because novel writing is an unlikely path to either)
I'll feel important
People will listen to me
At long last I'll be sitting at the cool kids table
I will be participating in the global exchange of ideas.
Because it's the only item on the list that doesn't make me sound like a total fool, let's ponder the last point. I was envious when I saw my friend Alison's bookshelf with the foreign editions of her novel and each time I to into a bookstore in Europe I am struck with a similar envy for the American authors whose books are on sale there. I've always wanted to be able to call myself a citizen of the world and what better way to earn that title than with international publication, the dizzying idea that someone will be sitting in a coffeeshop in Siena or Munich or Rotterdam reading my book? It's my small chance to participate in the global exchange of ideas. Just thinking of it makes me so happy I want to weep.
And then there's another point, also a little grandiose, but here goes. Once I was sitting at a sushi restaurant working on a manuscript and the waitress asked me if I was a writer, as waitresses often do. I said yes and she said "I love to read" and for a moment her face was flooded with happiness and hope. She was a dark, nearly goth looking little girl, with bitten down fingernails with green polish, someone who was trying really hard to be tough and cool but when she said "I love to read" everything in her turned porous and I could see the real person inside and she looked me right in the face, in the way few people look at each other, and she whispered "Reading sustains me."
That's it. That was all. She turned away, shut back down. But I've never forgotten her. She was right. Reading sustains people and thus writing sustains people. It's important work.
And this would be a nice way to end my list of "reasons I want to be an author," with the ideas of sustaining young gothic waitresses and participating in the international commerce of thought. A smart person would stop typing right here. But I think I'm doing an injustice to myself if I don't consider the reasons at the top of the list equally valid. The ones that sound shallow like fame and money and being important and having people listen to me. Because I want those things too. Of course, of course....I write because I love to write just like I dance because I love to dance. But there is also a time when you step forward onto the lighted stage and show yourself. When you admit how much you want it and you risk being judged. Not everyone has to go public, but I have to do it because if I'm drop-dead honest with myself it's part of the reason that I write. It's time for me to put on the turquoise dress and get comfortable with the fact that people are going to see me. I think I can get used to it. I don't think I have any choice.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Revision and other endless pursuits
Over the course of the last week I've run a copy of the manuscript, and carried it in pieces each morning to the Starbucks. Sat and tried to read it fresh, as if it had been written by someone else. And the funny thing is, at times if felt like that. Late November was the last time I really read the novel from start to finish and in that short time I've already forgotten stuff. I kept coming across sentences and paragraphs I couldn't remember writing. It's a funny phenom, when you don't recognize your own work, even work from just a few months back.
I made notes all over the pages and now I am in the process of revising. Dawn called me at one point and said she had a feeling the first book was going to do well, that it was going to be one of those little underdog books that does better than people anticipate. I hope she's right and - not to kill the karma - I've had the same sense about it. There are advantages to bringing out a book with low expectations. I've cleared my calendar for the first four months of next year because that's all a book has, really, a narrow window of opportunity to find its market before it's remaindered and the next season's wave of books begins. So I know I'll be doing my publicity myself - creating mini-book tours in cities where I have friends willing to help me. Like my friend Kathy, for example, who lives in Seattle who offered to line up a few independent bookstores, bookclubs, groups to speak to, etc. before I come out to visit her. I can stay with her - which will be both cheap and fun and will ensure I have a built-in means of emotional support - and use her house as home base to pivot in different directions trying to work the Seattle market. And I plan to do this in several cities. I know it's up to me. I'm small potatoes at my press and nobody's spending any money on publicity in this horrible market anyway and besides...Here's the bottom line. There is a certain dignity and calmness in accepting that it is up to me, that the fate of my little book is in my own hands and those of my friends.
Otherwise, I bump up and down. The revision will take a couple of weeks and then I will step back again, look again at the holes that need to be filled, the plot lines that are petering out to nothing, the scenes that don't pay off. Yesterday I learned I didn't get into Jentel, one of the colonies in Wyoming. That sucks. It's a small colony and I thought I had a pretty good shot. Three still out there for summer and I also just re-applied to MacDowell for fall. Something will come through.
I made notes all over the pages and now I am in the process of revising. Dawn called me at one point and said she had a feeling the first book was going to do well, that it was going to be one of those little underdog books that does better than people anticipate. I hope she's right and - not to kill the karma - I've had the same sense about it. There are advantages to bringing out a book with low expectations. I've cleared my calendar for the first four months of next year because that's all a book has, really, a narrow window of opportunity to find its market before it's remaindered and the next season's wave of books begins. So I know I'll be doing my publicity myself - creating mini-book tours in cities where I have friends willing to help me. Like my friend Kathy, for example, who lives in Seattle who offered to line up a few independent bookstores, bookclubs, groups to speak to, etc. before I come out to visit her. I can stay with her - which will be both cheap and fun and will ensure I have a built-in means of emotional support - and use her house as home base to pivot in different directions trying to work the Seattle market. And I plan to do this in several cities. I know it's up to me. I'm small potatoes at my press and nobody's spending any money on publicity in this horrible market anyway and besides...Here's the bottom line. There is a certain dignity and calmness in accepting that it is up to me, that the fate of my little book is in my own hands and those of my friends.
Otherwise, I bump up and down. The revision will take a couple of weeks and then I will step back again, look again at the holes that need to be filled, the plot lines that are petering out to nothing, the scenes that don't pay off. Yesterday I learned I didn't get into Jentel, one of the colonies in Wyoming. That sucks. It's a small colony and I thought I had a pretty good shot. Three still out there for summer and I also just re-applied to MacDowell for fall. Something will come through.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Dancing With the Scars
I just got back from a dancing competition - my first. Waltz, tango, and foxtrot at the Grove Park Inn, this cool old hotel in the mountains that still has a ballroom and a stage and the sense that you're on the set of a old MGM musical. The experience was pretty brutal - I danced in a hard heat and didn't advance, which is the sort of thing that kicks me in the ego. But as I was hanging around the spa after the competition, feeling sorry for myself, I remembered this vision-like thought that came to me last summer, when I first started taking dance lessons.
First of all, I love dancing. When I dance I feel pure joy. Remembering this helps me to know that despite little setbacks along the trail that it would be tragic if I allowed anything to make me stop dancing. So that even though I felt like pulling a major pout, hopping in my car, and heading back to Charlotte I knew that would be self-sabotage of the highest level.
Secondly, I dance because there are body issues, gender issues, issues with simply releasing control and learning to follow that dancing helps me deal with. Releasing control is not easy for me or, I dare say, very many women of my generation. Maybe it's hard for all humans on the planet Earth, I don't know. But once again, to have turned tail and run would have been to deny myself the chance to learn a major lesson in letting go.
But there's a third point. Ever since I started, I have had this persistent sense that dancing would help me learn how to deal with the publication of my novel. I realize that doesn't sound logical but here's how it seems to work. Writing a novel is a private and largely solitary occupation. Publishing a novel is excruciatingly public. All of a sudden you're expected to brand yourself, market yourself, answer interview questions, read reviews, expose your thoughts to strangers and family/friends alike (the latter is the harder of the two) and just generally go naked on the page. Writing taught me how to hide. Dancing, which is a performance based and public art form, is helping me become more comfortable with being seen. Maintaining dignity and pride under trying circumstances. My instructor keeps hissing at me "Keep your chin up" which I think is generally good advice for all situations.
Friday morning when I went on the dance floor I was aware I was competing against better and more experienced dancers on a crowded, brightly lit stage. Terrifying. But the most terrifying thing about it - or at least the most foreign - was that I knew I wasn't supposed to let my emotions show on my face. No matter what, you keep smiling. You stay serene. You act like you meant to smack right into that other dancer. It's good practice for someone from the oh-so-private world of writing. When I get a writing-related blow, like last week when I saw the cover of my novel for the first time, I can at least lick my wounds in private. I can pace and curse my fate and bitch and moan to my friends and gradually compose myself. But with a dancing-related blow you have to compose yourself immediately. Keep moving. Take the next step. And then the next. Literally move past it. Keep your chin up. Somehow I suspect publication requires a very similar emotional process.
First of all, I love dancing. When I dance I feel pure joy. Remembering this helps me to know that despite little setbacks along the trail that it would be tragic if I allowed anything to make me stop dancing. So that even though I felt like pulling a major pout, hopping in my car, and heading back to Charlotte I knew that would be self-sabotage of the highest level.
Secondly, I dance because there are body issues, gender issues, issues with simply releasing control and learning to follow that dancing helps me deal with. Releasing control is not easy for me or, I dare say, very many women of my generation. Maybe it's hard for all humans on the planet Earth, I don't know. But once again, to have turned tail and run would have been to deny myself the chance to learn a major lesson in letting go.
But there's a third point. Ever since I started, I have had this persistent sense that dancing would help me learn how to deal with the publication of my novel. I realize that doesn't sound logical but here's how it seems to work. Writing a novel is a private and largely solitary occupation. Publishing a novel is excruciatingly public. All of a sudden you're expected to brand yourself, market yourself, answer interview questions, read reviews, expose your thoughts to strangers and family/friends alike (the latter is the harder of the two) and just generally go naked on the page. Writing taught me how to hide. Dancing, which is a performance based and public art form, is helping me become more comfortable with being seen. Maintaining dignity and pride under trying circumstances. My instructor keeps hissing at me "Keep your chin up" which I think is generally good advice for all situations.
Friday morning when I went on the dance floor I was aware I was competing against better and more experienced dancers on a crowded, brightly lit stage. Terrifying. But the most terrifying thing about it - or at least the most foreign - was that I knew I wasn't supposed to let my emotions show on my face. No matter what, you keep smiling. You stay serene. You act like you meant to smack right into that other dancer. It's good practice for someone from the oh-so-private world of writing. When I get a writing-related blow, like last week when I saw the cover of my novel for the first time, I can at least lick my wounds in private. I can pace and curse my fate and bitch and moan to my friends and gradually compose myself. But with a dancing-related blow you have to compose yourself immediately. Keep moving. Take the next step. And then the next. Literally move past it. Keep your chin up. Somehow I suspect publication requires a very similar emotional process.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Colony Westward Ho
I keep telling my friends how great my experience at MacDowell was and how I wish I'd known about colonies years ago. And I've presently applied to four - Jentel, Ucross, Yaddo and VCCA. Two of them are in Wyoming, hence the title of this post, and I have high hopes since I would dearly love to spend a month this summer out west.
But the point of this blog is something that hit me when I was encouraging my friend Jennifer to apply to a colony. I was giving her the obvious reasons - uninterrupted time to work, the chance to meet other artists, a sort of geographically-induced focus - when it hit me that I am always slow to confess the thing about colonies that mattered the most to me. I was respected there. The colony formed a boundary around me and the real world and the tenacity with which they held that boundary showed me that I should do this for myself, that I should value my time as much as MacDowell does, that should take my work (even my unformed work) as seriously as they did.
Bottom line is that being in a colony made me feel the way I thought being published would make me feel. It sounds ridiculous but on some very sub-sub-subconscious level I think I thought getting an agent and selling the book would be more like crossing a personal Rubicon. I assumed it would make a bigger impact on my life, maybe even be a life-changing event, and that even if publication didn't leave me richer or more famous or much successful in some societially-recognized way that I would feel different inside. That didn't happen and I pushed the disappointment down. (Not too far down, as my friends would attest - it kept popping up like a beach ball in a pool.) But I did try to push it down.
Ten months later I went to MacDowell. I wasn't expecting much beyond time and I was grateful for that. But when I got not just the time but the sort of emotional boost I hadn't gotten the winter before it took me a couple of weeks to even realize what was happening. I'll say it again - being in a colony made me feel like I thought getting published would feel. It made me feel like a real writer.
I'm sure a more dedicated artist and a better person wouldn't need any outside support at all. Yeah, right. We all need support and that might be the single greatest thing a colony gives us. Right now I am waiting to see if any of the four come through for summer. I have a book that needs focus. And I have emotional well which, while not bottomless, does need to be replenished periodically. So wish me luck. And if you're reading this, apply somewhere. It's one of the few things you can do to take your creative fate into your own hands.
But the point of this blog is something that hit me when I was encouraging my friend Jennifer to apply to a colony. I was giving her the obvious reasons - uninterrupted time to work, the chance to meet other artists, a sort of geographically-induced focus - when it hit me that I am always slow to confess the thing about colonies that mattered the most to me. I was respected there. The colony formed a boundary around me and the real world and the tenacity with which they held that boundary showed me that I should do this for myself, that I should value my time as much as MacDowell does, that should take my work (even my unformed work) as seriously as they did.
Bottom line is that being in a colony made me feel the way I thought being published would make me feel. It sounds ridiculous but on some very sub-sub-subconscious level I think I thought getting an agent and selling the book would be more like crossing a personal Rubicon. I assumed it would make a bigger impact on my life, maybe even be a life-changing event, and that even if publication didn't leave me richer or more famous or much successful in some societially-recognized way that I would feel different inside. That didn't happen and I pushed the disappointment down. (Not too far down, as my friends would attest - it kept popping up like a beach ball in a pool.) But I did try to push it down.
Ten months later I went to MacDowell. I wasn't expecting much beyond time and I was grateful for that. But when I got not just the time but the sort of emotional boost I hadn't gotten the winter before it took me a couple of weeks to even realize what was happening. I'll say it again - being in a colony made me feel like I thought getting published would feel. It made me feel like a real writer.
I'm sure a more dedicated artist and a better person wouldn't need any outside support at all. Yeah, right. We all need support and that might be the single greatest thing a colony gives us. Right now I am waiting to see if any of the four come through for summer. I have a book that needs focus. And I have emotional well which, while not bottomless, does need to be replenished periodically. So wish me luck. And if you're reading this, apply somewhere. It's one of the few things you can do to take your creative fate into your own hands.
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