Some random writerly bits

1. I recently finished Jhumpa Lahiri's newest book, Unaccustomed Earth. It is half short stories, and half linked short stories, and IT. IS. AMAZING. Read it. There's really not much more to say. She's a marvel.

2. I forgot how emotional writing is. I started a new story, and man, monitoring my thoughts as I got back in front of the computer was crazy. I felt:

• impatient--I wanted to know what was going to happen already!
• scared--where was this story going? Was I wasting my time?
• annoyed--why was this taking so long to figure out?

All of this in about 30 minutes of writing.

3. OK, not a writerly update, but I thought I'd announce that we moved! We're just getting settled into our new "country estate" (sounds much better than suburban colonial, right?). It's so nice and relaxing. I am really happy with our decision.

Must. Start. Writing. Again!!

I haven't written a word in weeks. Nothing in my journal. Nothing on my blog. Nothing in a Word doc. I blame it on moving and simultaneously tying up the loose ends of my thesis.

I'm still living out of boxes, and still feeling out of sorts as I adjust to a new house, commute, life. But the only I'm going to feel better is if I get myself back into some sort of routine regarding exercise, eating, and writing. Yes, writing is as important to my well being as healthy food.

I've taken the first steps. I wrote this post. I bought a new journal yesterday (my old one is packed in one of many boxes). Tomorrow, I'll take the next step and actually write in it. I'm imagining spewing forth on my feelings and thoughts about our move, and some ideas for new stories.

Happy publishing news

Not about me, unfortunately! But I do like to share good news even when it happens to strangers, in this case a Canadian writer who self-published his novel after not being able to land an agent or publisher. He recently won Canada's most prestigious award--and $10,000!

Check out the details here.

Some interesting tidbits

I don't have much to report from my own world of writing--just finishing up my final revisions on my thesis (whoo hoo!). But I do have some links I'd like to share:

• This NY Times article announces the fact that Nabokov's son is going to publish his father's last, unfinished work--against his father's wishes. It made me wonder--what would I do and what would I want done?

I think I would publish the work if I were the son. It just seems a crime to not let anyone see it, as long as people know not to judge it as if it were a finished work. If it were me, I would probably be OK with something unfinished being published under those
circumstances. But if someone were to publish diaries or something of mine that I told them not to because of their private nature, I would come back from the grave and haunt
whoever made them public. Which reminds me to burn all diaries myself before I die.

• Another interesting NY Times article, this one discussing the state of the literature and books, and the impact of MFA programs and self publishing on them.Two quotes I found most interesting from the article:

Mark McGurl, an associate professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of a forthcoming book on the impact of creative writing programs on
postwar American literature, [says] that writing programs have helped expand the literary universe, “American literature has never been deeper and stronger and more various than it is now,” McGurl said in an e-mail message. Still, he added, “one could put that more pessimistically: given the manifold distractions of modern life, we now have more great writers working in the United States than anyone has the time or inclination to read.”

I feel like McGurl's take on the state of books in America is realistic. Another quote-- this one I do not agree with:

In “So Many Books,” [Gabriel] Zaid playfully writes that “if a mass-market paperback costs $10 and takes two hours to read, for a minimum-wage earner the time spent is worth as much as the book.” But for someone earning around $50 to $500 an hour, “the cost of buying and reading the book is $100 to $1,000” — not including the time it takes to find out about the book and track it down.

If you measure your reading time in terms of how much money/time it "costs" to get through a book, I feel sorry for you. Reading is about personal fulfilment and enjoyment, and cannot be measured that way.

• And finally, a link to the ever inspiring Poet Mom, who posted a great video of a roundtable discussion with three writers about characterization in their work.
  

Competence

I haven't blogged in a while, mostly because the insanity that comes with buying and selling real estate has taken up most of my energy. But I've also been mulling a topic over in my head for a while. I'm wondering if any writer ever feels competent.

As a journalistic writer (my day job), I feel competent. I know what elements of a story need to be included for a reader to be satisfied at the end and to learn something. And as a creative writer, I have the basic knowledge about those things, too.

One of the main differences, I think, is that I am not worried about perfecting a journalistic piece. Don't get me wrong, I want it to be good. But I know that a large part of the process is the editing that my editor will do to ask questions I didn't think to, and maybe to help me focus the piece.

The second big difference is that at some very definitive point, I have to let go of my journalistic piece. It's called a deadline, after which, my words will be printed somewhere and I can never, ever edit them again. The process for getting creative writing published seems to encourage a feeling of incompetence--you finish your story/book and think it's done. You send it out to a few magazines/agents/editors, and let's say they all reject it. So now not only is your writing incompetent, but so is your judgment about knowing when something is done. So you go back, and rework, and send it out again in the hopes that this new person won't give you another reason to think you're incompetent.

So what's the moral of this post? How does a writer begin to feel competent about her writing, her story telling, and her ability to decide when something is done? I don't know! You tell me. Please.

My Beef with Jhumpa

I went to see Jhumpa Lahiri read last night at the Coolidge Corner moving theater. She read from her new collection of stories, and then took questions. She seemed very reserved and nervous--clearly being in the spotlight isn't something she enjoys. But she answered the questions honestly and sincerely, and was even occassionally funny.

So what's my beef? I asked a question about what drew her back to short stories (her first book was stories, then she wrote a novel, and her new book is stories). She said a lot that I agreed with: that she hates how the literary world and readers look down upon stories as something less than novels, and how wonderful short stories can be both to write and to read.

But then she went on to say that she didn't think that reading or writing a short story was very different from reading or writing a novel. Huh? I would argue that they are totally different genres. Yes, you need many of the same elements in both, but there's only so much you can fit in a story. That's part of what I love about the best of them--they are jam packed just to the limits of how much emotion and change a reader can absorb a character going through in the space of 20 pages.

A novel, on the other hand, has layers and layers of things going on, and usually more characters jumping in and out of the spotlight. As a writer, I think the challenge of working on a novel would be to keep all those balls in the air and, when you set some down, to remember where you put them so you can go back to them when needed. And the challenge of writing a story is getting across, in a short amount of space, a change in your character that is both meaningful and realistic. That challenge exists for the novel writing, too, but she has much more room to move in and breath in.

As a reader, I find reading a short story to be a more powerful experience. I usually get a whole story in one sitting, and then have to absorb the entirety of it. Novel reading is more leisurely in that the whole emotional punch of the story is unwound throughout hundreds of pages (and tens of reading sessions). I love both experiences--the intensity of the short story and being mid-novel and being compelled to get back to the book so I can see what happens.

This is coming from someone who has only written stories. So what do I know? If you've written in both genres, let me know your thoughts! And if you read both genres, please comment to.

Movie Rec

I saw the best movie last night. Seriously, one of my new favorites. I had never heard of it, so I'm guessing others might not have either. It's called Last Kiss, with the guy from Scrubs and Gwenyth Paltrow's mom. It's basically about relationships in different kinds/levels of crises among a group of friends and family. It's really thoughtful and very well done. Let me know if you see it--I'd love to discuss. (The soundtrack is pretty awesome, too.)

Breaking up over books

This essay from the NY Times will make book lovers smile. It's about how we judge potential loves by their book knowledge/choices. Though the idea that people would only read/admit to reading books that might make them look good to suitors strikes me as very sad, and makes me glad that A) I'm not single and B) I don't live in New York. The second assertion may not be fair--since the article focuses on New York it's only natural that the people admitting to altering their tastes would also be from New York. But having grown up on Long Island and having friends in the city, I feel qualified to say that Manhattan is a much more judgmental place than the rest of the world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/books/review/Donadio-t.html?em&ex=1207022400&en=be66964abe7c5f54&ei=5087%0A

Calling yourself a feminist is an act of gratitude

I try to keep this blog about writing and other crafts, but occassionally something outside of this realm is so damn appealing that I need to post it and spread the word. If you don't call yourself a feminist, check out this video and hopefully be enlightened. If you do, watch it and be inspired.

Knit pics

I'm very bad about posting pics on the blog. For some reason, it seems like a big pain in the tush. But since I am doing too much thesis work to write anything much on the blog, here are some pics of baby gifts I knit earlier this year.

Can intense people/overachievers be OK with calm?

I recently got introduced to some wonderful craft blogs (links on the side of my blog). These bloggers' lives are what I've always dreamed of. They write, they craft, they hang out with their children, who do their own crafts with their sweet little fingers. They are just like the person who, as a kid, I assumed I'd be when I grew up.

My husband and I are in the process of buying a house--our dream house--the kind of house where I imagined myself doing all that crafting and writing. It's on an acre of land, so we'll have plenty of room for gardens and hanging out (and animals--lots of dogs, rabbits, etc!). It's big enough that I'll get a craft/writing room, where I can decorate as I please and leave yarn all over if I want to. (Of course I'll have to work to help pay for the house, but that's just a pesky detail.)

So now that I'm getting to a place in my life where I can really envision myself living the life I've dreamed of for so long, I find myself asking, Will I really be able to? Will I be able to devote so much time to things that give me pleasure? Will I be able to not feel incredibly guilty doing so? Will I be able to enjoy it without feeling like there are better things I ought to be doing with my time? (Like, say, saving the world.) Is it OK to relax and enjoy life? Will I just find something new to worry about?

I guess I'll find out in the months and years ahead. (I assume that finalizing the buying of this place, selling our condo, and moving will give me enough to stress about in the near future.) But in the mean time, the idea that I could be worried about not worrying is something I Just Don't Get.

For more writing on things that baffle us, check out this week's Sunday Scribblings.

Me and my laptop take a trip

With a condo on the market and a house that's about to be ours, I'm finding it a wee hard to concentrate on my writing. So I'm going away, just me and my laptop. We're taking a bus to Western Mass tomorrow, checking into a B&B and holing up there. When we emerge, I'll have finished drafts of all my thesis stories. Here's my plan:

Tomorrow I'll finish a draft of Cartes Postale, Aneurysm and Sit, Stay (Sit and Aneurysm need just minor work, and I have a detailed plan for Purpose.)

Friday I'll revise Northern Exposure and Bee Keeping (both of which are in their third draft, but need some serious revision still).

Friday night my friend Kathy comes to join me, and Saturday we'll spend the day at a yoga center.

I'm confident I can get the work done once I'm away from the mortgage brokers, realtors, and boxes of my real life. I am so looking forward to only having one thing--my writing--to focus on.

I don't know if I'll have internet connection, but if I do, I'll try to spend some of my down time catching up on the blogs that I haven't had a chance to visit in a million years...

Every MFA students' fear

If you're worried that, post-graduation, without the structure of an MFA program, your writing will falter, check out this thoughtful advice:

http://www.salon.com/mwt/col/tenn/2008/03/12/writing_and_fitness/

Last thesis story

I am finally, finally beginning the last major revision for my thesis. There's a ton of minor things to do once I'm through with this, but it will feel good to at least have an idea of the structure and meaning of each story. So now's the time for me to start brainstorming about this story.

Title: Carte Postale

What is it about? A young woman, Chloe, who goes to France a year after her husband unexpectedly dies. She is taking cooking classes there--something she learned about while researching culinary vacations for the magazine she writes for, but her main reason for going is because vacationing alone seems like a hurdle a newly single woman should jump.

Who is Chloe? Chloe is all about jumping hurdles. She's very successful in her life as a magazine writer, and she wants to feel competent about grieving, too. She has tried very hard to keep it together, especially in relation to her mother-in-law, who was obviously grieving herself. Her mother in law is a bit self-centered, and she gave Chloe something to focus on while repressing her own grief.

What happens? She writes postcards to her dead husband, the first kind of journaling she's ever done, even though the grief course she took with her mother-in-law said journaling was a good way to get in touch with the pain.
The writing, being in such a romantic spot, and being away from anyone who needs to be taken care of leads her into real grief for the first time. The grief starts when she pretends to her fellow cooks that her husband is at the Louvre. At first, the denial is only when she's in class. When she gets out, she cries and cries that Ethan won't be meeting her, like she told everyone. At the end of the week, though, she has a mini-breakdown where she allows herself to believe he's alive even after class ends, and when she finally comes out of her imaginary world, she is devastated. But she is also ready to move on.

Some challenges:
*How to present the denial/imaginary world without making it seem like she is crazy?
*How to make the city of Paris come alive in the story

Revision plan:
Reread draft tomorrow during the day
At night, rewrite the cooking class scenes. Make the class span a few days.
Thursday night: Writing group; probably won't work on story
Friday night: Getting a much-needed massage; probably won't work on story
Weekend: Finish revising by thinking about postcard structure, determining what info should be presented to Ethan on each, and in what order. Decide if she needs to sleep with the man she meets (probably yes). Make sure it's clear that Chloe is not crazy, just really wants to believe that her husband isn't dead.

The benefits of watching TV for a writer

In general, I'm not a big fan of television. We don't have cable. I probably watch only an hour or two a week. But, because of some things going on in my life that I hope to be able to blog about soon, I've been a wee bit more stressed than usual. The up side is that has caused me to work out more--I swear, the best way to combat that racing-heart feeling is to make your heart actually need to race. What I had considered the downside was that I've been watching more TV because it's easier to get absorbed in a TV show than it is in a book, when I'm stressed at least.

But I've realized that, while too much TV can certainly be a big time suck and a distraction from writing, it also has its benefits. Currently, I'm hooked on two shows: Grey's Anatomy and Men in Trees. (Lost lost me last week, with all those time travel shenanigans.)

Both shows (and I'm sure others) do something that I've been struggling to do in my writing: they stick to a theme and explore that theme through the episode. For example, in the Men in Trees I just watched, it was thought that one of the characters drowned in a boat accident. His girlfriend is thinking about all she regrets about their relationship--namely that they took too long to get it started. Then, using good transitions, the theme of regret was explored throughout a few of the characters lives, and you saw how regret can mean different things to different people and affect different people differently. Even the minorest of characters--a guy who showed up at a priest's door after a fight with his wife--showed regret.

In thinking about how the television writers brought out the theme, I'm realizing once again how every piece of information that is conveyed in a story really needs to focus on the theme. But my main lesson is that stress relieving TV can be good for the writer--and that if we look hard enough, we'll find teachers and lessons just about everywhere.

One reason I love the Boston Public Library

I am a huge fan of libraries. (Nerd alert!)

We went to my town public library a ton when I was a kid. My mom is a big reader and we would go together to get books for the both of us. (She later ended up working there.) Now, I'm a "friend" of the Jamaica Plain public library, meaning I donate to them so they can buy new books and maintain their falling apart building as best they can.

My absolute favorite thing about the library is that you can search their web site for the book you're looking for, and if any branch of the library (including some public school libraries) has it, you can order it and they'll deliver it to your local branch! How cool is that?

that I have three books waiting for me. What a treat I'll get this evening!! (FYI, I'll be reading: The Annie I just went online to seeDilliard Reader, Away by Amy Bloom, and A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham.)

Calm, finally

I'm feeling calm for what feels like the first time in years. I think I had to get to the opposite of calm, as I did last night, to be able to come back to calm. I've learned some lessons through this, though:

1- It does everyone involved good if you say no if you don't think you can make it somewhere. On Friday, I really wanted to go support Poetmom at her reading. But it was an hour away from me, and I had a few things I needed to do after work before I could get there. A last minute flag-on-the-play meant I just couldn't make it in time. I knew I was going to be harried getting there, and I should've just expressed my regrets from the get go instead of cancelling at the last minute.

2- I ended up at a yoga class after doing the stuff I needed to do. It was the perfect anecdote to the anxiety surrounding rushing and canceling plans.

3- Sometimes it feels really good to organize. I spent hours and hours today organizing our condo and our tax documents. Brian went out to do homework at his school. The only time I can happily do housework is if I'm alone. Something about doing it while someone else does anything else (even if it's homework) makes me feel like a martyr. But organizing alone is a fantastic feeling.

4- Bouncing off my wonderful yoga experience, I meditated today, and I'm going to take a yoga class tomorrow morning. I think today's meditation is keeping me relatively calm as I react to:

5- I'm behind on my writing. Again. It's so strange how I really, really, really want the stories in my thesis to be great, but I'm often finding myself resisting working on them. Maybe my next post will be a Letter to my Thesis, ala RB.

My memoir, in 6 words

Tori and I must've been listening to NPR at the same time, because we both heard the story about a neat book of people's 6-word memoirs.

Here are mine. (They're three seperate 6-word "memoirs," not one 18-word one. So don't think of me as a cheater.) If you decide to post one, let me know so I can be sure to take a look!

Tackles too much, gets much done

Sleep, animals, writing, reading, snuggling, yoga

Worries much about own, others' feelings

Hubris

I was clearly kidding myself in that last post. I sit here, a day behind on my writing schedule (see post from a few days ago), completely stuck with Bee Keeping. Ugh. What was I thinking, giving tips? What do I know? Double Ugh.

The one thing I do know is that I've got to get back to it.

Finally!

I'm finally making headway on my Bees story (renamed from Queen to Beekeeping). This one has been a toughie for me. I don't know if it's because I'm juggling a bunch of fairly emotional stuff in my regular (ie, not fictional) life or if I'm getting a little burnt out, or if it was just a tough nut to crack.

B asked me how one goes about revising, saying something along the lines of, "Everyone says you have to allow yourself to write a shitty first draft. But then what? Anyone can write crap." It made me realize that first of all I hadn't given revising it's due before this semester--both in terms of how hard it is and in terms of how important it is. And second of all, I hadn't given much thought to the steps I'm going through in revision. Here's some of what I have learned about revision. Please add your own thoughts in comments--I'd love to learn more from you!

1. The work must sit for weeks or months between first draft and second. Before each residency, I tried to revise stories that I worked on in the previous semester. But I didn't really revise them. I tweaked them, making scenes more visual, characters clearer, dialogue better. But I didn't re-envision them. For me at least, I need a few weeks or months to be removed enough from the story to see what needs to be re-envisioned.

2. I need to freewrite about some questions around the story:

"What does the character learn in the story?"

"What are the main themes of the story?"

"What is the narrative drive of the story?"

(ie, What makes the reader be compelled to read on?)

I think freewriting is important here--not just thinking about these questions or trying to answer them as you type in the story file. I need to use a journal for this step because getting away from the story file allows me a freedom I don't feel when the story is in front of. On the pages of my journal, I feel freeer to try theories out, to test things, than I do in the Word document of the story. (I use a paper and pen journal for this step, but I imagine blogging or even typing in a clean Word doc would work.)

3. I need to open a fresh Word doc and begin revising by cutting and pasting a paragraph or two from the original draft into that fresh document. Something about this step allows me to feel freer to move things around, delete things (by not copying them into the new doc), and write completely new material. This is clearly all psychological, but it works for me.

After all of this, I have a story that barely resembles my first, shitty draft. It generally starts and end in a completely different place, the focus of the story has shifted, some of the characters didn't make the cut, and some others have been added in. My next step will be revising at the sentence/word level--reading the piece aloud to make changes concerning rhythm and word choice. (I haven't gotten to that point on any of my stories yet. Yikes!)

Now, tell me about your revision process! Do you do anything similar to this? What isn't on my list that would have to be on yours?