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?

Yet another schedule

Ok, unless you're really looking for something to read, skip this post. Really. It will be boring. And it will repeat/contradict the schedule I posted earlier. But I need to get this revised schedule out there so I can refer back to it as needed. And I need to get very specific about how I'll be spending my writing time in the next few days. I've been finding that I'm feeling stressed and unproductive/unfocused, so hopefully a schedule will help me both buckle down and pencil in some downtime.

April 1: Thesis to Hester
March 12-April 1: Do line editing of all stories. Spice up verbs, cut extra words/paragraphs/etc.
March 12: DONE with major revisions
March 6-12: TBD (depending on how well I stick to the schedule, and if I have the energy to revise the two short short stories I have been debating about including in the thesis)
Feb. 27-March 6: Revise aneurysm story
Feb. 26: Journal about Aneurysm story, decide where to go with it.
Feb. 25: Day off.
Now-Feb. 25: Revise Bee story
Sunday: Family party, time spent on story TBD
Saturday: TBD (depending on how tonight and Friday writing go)
Friday night: Spend one hour on story, go out with B
Tomorrow: Morning pages about story. Night off! (Writer's group meets/Lost)
Tonight: Read through story, deciding where to insert new information I wrote
yesterday and responding to Hester's comments

A funny quote

This quote made me laugh, as I imagine it will anyone who has simultaneously struggled with writing and enjoyed it immensely:

"Writing a novel is like making love, but it's also like having a tooth pulled. Pleasure and pain. Sometimes it's like making love while having a tooth pulled."
--Dean Koontz

What do you want, character Celia?

I've been distracted by some regular life things, and very busy at work. Not a good combination for making my deadline to send another draft of my story to Advisor by tomorrow. So, now, before I leave work to meet Brian for a Valentine's day dinner, I will journal about what I think is the biggest of the currently known problems in the story.

What exactly does Celia want in this story? She's a soon-to-be-divorced 30-something woman who moves to Boston from New York to escape her ex, who cheated on her. She's lonely and sad and cold. She is also very confused about what happened--her marriage hadn't seemed bad before she found out her husband was dating someone else and had no intention to stop.

One of the main things she wants to figure out is: how could she not have known? How could she be married to someone--smell his morning breath, know everything he's eaten in a given day--and not know that he's someone who could break a vow that she took very seriously, and that he once did too?

And more specifically, how could she not have known that he was cheating? Sure, in retrospect she can see certain behavioural changes that can be linked--he started "going to the gym on Saturday mornings," he worked late a few more times a month than usual.

But more than not questioning those could-be-benign signs, how did she not notice anything change in him? Did he not change how he looked at her, how he had sex with her, how he talked to her? How could someone not change those things while they're falling out of love with you, and decieving you? Did they change and she just didn't notice? Did she chalk up any minute changes to the changes that happen between all couples, day in and day out, the changes that come and go with mood, and external events like a bad day at work?

The answer of course is that people and relationships are complicated. Very good people can do very bad things, and vice versa. Very good relationships can take very bad turns. What might be a sign of a revved up health kick one month may be the sign of someone cheating the next. It wasn't that she didn't know Bobby well enough, or that she misjudged him completely. It's that people are so complicated that even those you think you know well can surprise you. Hell, you can surprise yourself.

It is through her budding friendship with a neighbor, Abby, that she begins to figure these things out. And when it comes out that Abby in fact cheated on her first husband with the man she is now married to, Celia can better understand that people do shitty things and even though they may not be sorry at first (her husband never apologizes, and Abby didn't really feel bad about what she did until much later), they probably have regrets and remourse later on.

So... how to insert this more into the story?
1- Have a scene where Celia is asking Abby about how she couldn't have known he was someone who could cheat, and have Abby say something about how people are a complex mix of good and bad, and how people often do things that they are surprised they can/would do in a given circumstance. She should give a small example, like that she shouted at a scary-looking teenager on the bus once to give up his seat for an old woman who just got on. She never would've said she'd do that, but something about the situation just made her spring into action.

2- When Celia finds out she has to go back to NY for the divorce hearing, have her imagine asking Bobby these questions, and her not even being able to imagine what could be a satisfying answer to them.

3- Have a scene where Celia surprises herself. Maybe after she storms away when she finds out that Abby cheated on her husband. On her walk back to her apartment, something happens and she reacts to it strangely because she's all wound up from their interaction. What could it be??

4- In the denouement, after Abby apologizes to Celia and Celia gets a sense of satisfaction from that, almost as if it was her husband saying all the right words, Celia should make note of some sort of acknowledgment that it wasn't her fault to know any more than she knew, and that people are indeed complex.

OK, I drafted this in a hurry, so I'm sure their are typos. But please ignore them, and offer your thoughts!

More audio, an update

I've been a bad blogger. Mostly because I haven't had much to say. I do have some pictures to share, but that whole plugging-the-camera-into-the-computer thing seems like something I just don't have the time for.

So instead, I bring you a link to Harvard Book Store's Audio page, where you can hear authors like Steven King, Barbara Kingsolver, and Richard Russo read and discuss their work. (I'm going to see Charles Baxter speak there tonight. Hopefully they'll put the audio of that up at some point.) Another good literary thing to listen to while I knit!

And as my blog title promised, I also bring you this update: I'm still plugging away at revising Northern Exile (the second of the five stories I'm revising this semester for my thesis). It's going a little slower than I'd like, but it's moving. I decided I will send it to Advisor on Friday No Matter What, so hopefully a firm deadline will get my little fingers moving.

I've been doing morning pages (journaling) and that has really helped me work through some of the problems in each of my stories. I highly recommend freewriting about the issues you're having in your poems/stories/novel/essays. It seems a little odd that writing about your writing might help, but it really does! Something about writing in a journal (ie not having the problematic work staring you in the face) releases enough pressure for your brain to work out whatever needs to be fixed.

Backwards Schedule

I'm doing pretty well on my revisions, but I'm getting nervous that I'm not working quite fast enough. So, the remedy of course is a backwards schedule:

April 1--Thesis draft due to Advisor
March 17-April 1--Make final revisions on all stories.
March 17--Get third draft of Purpose to Advisor and fifth story (Untitled, second draft) to Advisor
March 8--Get fourth story (Purpose, second draft) and third draft of Queen to Advisor
February 22--Get third story (Queen, second draft) and third draft of Northern Exile to Advisor
February 12--Get two stories to Advisor, one will be the second draft (Northern Exile), the other will be the third draft (Sit, Stay)

This schedule is super tight, so I'm guessing I might need to push the April 1 date a bit. I think (and hope!) Advisor will be OK with that. I'll double check as the need arises...

Need to be read to?

As some of you know, I like to listen to books on tape, NPR, and things of that nature while I knit. I thought I'd share two writing-related audio features I just learned about:

1. The New Yorker has published free audio clips of authors reading their favorite short stories and discussing them with the fiction editor of the magazine. So far, I've listed to Jhumpa Lahiri reading/discussing William Trevor's A Day, and boy was it worth the 45 minutes! I learned a lot about the story, which I had read already. Go to itunes.com and search for New Yorker. The fiction should be easy to find.

2. Salon.com recently featured Billy Collins in its Video Dog feature. Click here to watch him talk about poetry and the writing process in general.

Revision, Story 2

I don't know if I'm procrastinating by blogging, or if I really think this is a good use of time... But in any case, I need some structure regarding revising Northern Exile, the second story I'm working on this semester. So, here's another of my lovely schedules:

Tonight: Write out first scene of Celia spying at her neighbors through her peep hole.
Tomorrow: Write scene where she meets Abby in the laundry room of the building.
Friday: Read through latest draft to see what should stay and what should go.
Weekend: Write through scene where Celia tells Abby about her divorce, flashes back to some info about her marriage.

This plan is a work in progress, subject to change. All I know for sure is the first two steps that need to be taken. I'm guessing about what I'll feel needs to be done by Friday and the weekend...

Look ma, no hands!

This writing process is an emotional roller coaster! Just look at my last two posts: one minute I was thrilled with the progress I made with my story, the next I was in despair about the story and writing in general.

I laid awake in bed last night (probably because I slept so much all damn weekend...) and I spent some of the time thinking about one aspect of my story that needed work. I think I figured out why the character is doing what she's doing, which will help me take a new crack at the story tonight. But I'm far from that elated, aha, top-of-the-roller-coaster feeling. It's more like I'm dreading the work, not quite sure if I'll ever get that good feeling again.

At least I have some place to dig in.

Miscellaneous numbers regarding being sick , and having existential crises

Times I've been very ill this cold/flu season: 3

Days this current cold has lasted: 3

Times I've been outside in the last 48 hours: 0

Hours in the last 24 hour period that I have been asleep: 17

Pints of frozen yogurt I've eaten since getting sick: 2

Days of work missed: 2

Social events cancelled: 2

Moments of existential crises gone through: too many to count

What is it about being sick, when my body's defences are totally down and my cells need all the energy I can give them to fight whatever virus has invaded, that makes my mind swim in circles around questions like: What is my purpose on this earth?

I came down with an awful case of bronchitis my Freshman year in college. It was then I decided I ought to drop out of school since I really had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. This question--of what to major in, of who I was--had bothered me since the day I moved into my cell-like dorm room, but it really started to get to me when I had hours upon miserable hours to lie in bed and think.

I called my parents during this crisis and told them of my plans to drop out of school. Instead of freaking out, my mother, in her infinite wisdom, said, "Why don't you just focus on feeling better and we'll talk about this later." By the time "later" came, I realized that thought I still had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up, dropping out of school wasn't going to help me figure that out.

During this current illness, I happened to get my MFA mentor's comments on the stories I had given her. Even on the best of days, comments on my work are often enough to send me straight to the Land of Crisis. Needless to say, feeling like crap physically didn't make her comments easier to take. So of the 7 hours I've been awake in the past day or so, I would say 5 of them have been spent wondering, WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE? I CAN'T WRITE! WHY AM I EVEN BOTHERING TRYING TO GET A STORY ON THE PAGE AND THEN OUT THERE INTO THE WORLD? WHO AM I KIDDING?????

Her comments weren't harsh or even surprising--I knew the stories I handed in needed a ton of work. And I'm excited to work on them. I guess I was just hoping for some over-arching positive message like, "You've come a long way since we first worked together" or "You're totally going to make it--don't worry!" I guess that's what we're all always hoping for, though, and I should just get used to not always getting it.

For more miscellany, visit Sunday Scribblings.

The Snick

Thanks to Laini (of Sunday Scribblings fame) for naming the feeling I've had while writing recently: Snick. She defines it as the sound of puzzle pieces fitting together, and broadened it to encompass the feeling you get when you finally, finally know that something you've been working really hard on is moving in the right direction.

I finally feel like I've got to the heart of a story I first drafted over a year ago. How do I know? I can finally answer the deepest question a writer can ask of her work with confidence: What is the story about? Well, Sit, Stay is about two lonely women who find friendship with each other for a short period of time before they come to a small conflict that they cannot overcome because they are both hurting from recent losses and can't risk getting hurt again.

Ta dah! Now in my next revision, I can make sure the themes of loneliness and fear are present and clear throughout the story.

Sunday Scribblings: Fellow Travelers

I have so many stories about meeting wonderfully nice and helpful people in my travels.

One of my favorite stories is from a trip I took recently with my mother to Paris. Despite all the jokes about how rude the French are to tourists, we encountered nothing by smiles and helpfulness.

When we first got there, we took the Metro from the airport to our hotel with no problems. So on our way back to the airport at the end of the trip, we decided to take it again, instead of a cab.

But this time, the trip was not so smooth. First of all, the escalator was broken at the metro station near our hotel. My mom is a small woman who travels with a large suitcase, and there was no way she could carry it down the stairs. So I told her to wait up top with her bag, and I would carry mine down and then come back for hers. By the time I got half way back up the stairs, two young men had taken her bag and were carrying down the stairs. (I'm surprised my mother didn't freak out and think they were stealing it, since she doesn't speak much French...)

We switched trains and unfortunately got on the wrong one (the first time this happened, throughout the many times we took the Metro!). Once I realized we were headed the wrong way, we got off, as did a young man who overheard us and realized that he, too, was on the wrong train.

When we got off, I asked this Amazon of a woman where we could go to get the right train. Not only did she tell us where to go, but she hoisted my mom's suitcase, balanced it on her head, and told us to follow her. She carried the bag up one flight of stairs and down another to the correct track--only to turn around and go back up and down the stairs to go back to the track she needed to be on.

By this time, my mom was close to tears. She hated feeling so helpless, and was cursing our decision not to take a damn cab. The man who got off the train with us came to the rescue, chatting with us about how he used to live in Paris, and now lives in Greece with his wife and kids, but returns for business sometimes. When our train got there, he helped me lug our luggage onto it (there's an awfully steep step onto some trains in Paris).

Then, when we got to the airport, he stayed with us until we found our terminal (which sounds easier than it is), using his flawless French to ask questions and get answers in a fraction of the time it would've taken me to struggle through the conversation with my limited French.

When he left us, we all hugged goodbye, and my mom kept calling him an angel.

When we got home, we told this story to my family. My brother asked, "Are you sure you were in Paris? You didn't get lost and go to Ohio or some other super friendly place by mistake?"

I love bashing cultural stereotypes, and only hope we helped bash that of the Ugly American when we were in Paris, trying very hard to speak French and honor their customs.

For more travel tales, click here.

An Aha moment

I had my writer's group last night, and I ended up getting the most out of it on the drive home. I dropped one of the members at her house, and during the ride, I mentioned how I was having a hard time with the story I am revising. I decided it was because many of my stories are about the same thing--loss of a loved one-- and I was finding it hard to really to distinguish this character from my others.

My writing group partner mentioned how in lots of author interviews, writers talk about how they often get obsessed with one topic and write about it from a million different angles to try to get a grasp on it. And she noted that loss of a loved one is a big enough topic that she could see how I could do that.

Something about her saying that made me think about the many people a person grieves
throughout a lifetime. And that made me realize why I was feeling stuck--two of my characters are 30-something women grieving after the unexpected death of a husband. Why do they both need to be grieving husbands? There are so many other types of people whose death would really impact a person. So now I am thinking that the character in Sit, Stay is grieving after the death of her father, to whom she was really close.

I feel unstuck! And excited to get back to my revision this weekend.

The philosophy of the book review

An intersting article in the NY Times book section describes a battle between two philosophers over a book review. You see, one philosopher really flamed the other's book in a journal. And I mean flamed.

According to the article, he called the book, "painful to read, poorly thought out and uninformed.” And he said that the review as printed was actually toned down after his editors asked him to make it less critical. Yikes!

Since philosophers are involved, of course they are thinking deeply about the controversy, wondering, What is the meaning of life? Oops. I mean, What is the meaning of the book review? :) The article only touches briefly on the question of whether such scathing reviews should be published. But I think it's an interesting
one for writers to discuss. What do you think?

I think that of course the reviewer's opinion should be front and center--that's what they're getting paid for. But I also think that reviewers and editors should really think carefully about what kinds of books they are assigned. In this case, the philosophers were from totally different schools of thought. Did that influence the reviewer's opinion of the book? Who knows. But it's something to consider.

I remember a professor of mine at Harvard got a letter to the editor published in the Times responding to a Michiko Kakutani review. In it, she had slammed a book by a friend of my prof's. I forget the specifics, but the book was of a genre that Kakutani always slams, so my prof suggested that maybe someone with a more open mind to that type of book should've reviewed it.

Something to ponder... Let me know your thoughts!

Making time to write

Hopefully if I put my writing (and exercise) schedule in writing, it will make me feel worse if I flake out and don't keep it. Here goes:

Tonight:
Write through the scene where Charlotte drops Snoop off at the shelter
Journal
(Reward for doing all this: vodka cranberry and some knitting/TV time)

Tomorrow:
**Before work:
20 minutes of abs/arm workout
Morning pages
Brief meditation

**After work:
Write through scene where Charlotte goes back to the pound to get Snoop to eat

(Reward: Time to order honeymoon album; yes, I've been married for years and have neither a wedding or honeymoon album put together)

Wednesday
** Before work:
Morning pages
Brief meditation

** Lunch: Elliptical at gym

** After work: Write through the scene where Charlotte brings sandwiches to the pound

(Reward: knitting/photo album time)

Thursday
**Before work:
Morning pages
Brief meditation
Run with Chloe

**Lunch:
Read stories for Writer's Group

**After work:
Writer's group meeting

Friday:
**Before work:
Morning pages
Brief meditation

**Lunch:
Yoga class

**After work:
My friend Gracie is in town from Seattle this weekend, so I will probably be spending Friday night with her.

Saturday:
Morning gentle yoga class
Write through scene where Snoop gets adopted
Redo bedroom--I'll post pics of our new space once it's all set up. We rearranged our furniture, ordered a new bed (which will be delivered this week) and now need to move around pictures and get new curtains.

Sunday:
Take a break from Sit, Stay if I need it. If not, write through vet scene.
Do hot yoga class.

A renewed commitment

I admit it, I fell off the blogging wagon. First I was getting ready to be away from a week from work and home, then I went to the Bahamas for Christmas, then I came home and caught up only to leave again to go to my last (sad!) MFA residency. But now I'm back, my writing batteries super recharged, and I'm ready to post!

I'll start with my ubiquitous list of writerly things to do:

This semester I'm putting together my thesis. Yikes! That means I'll be revising 5 short stories and 2 short short stories, getting them to a finished state (whatever that means!).

The first one I'm working on is called Sit, Stay. It's the first story I wrote for the program, more than 18 months ago. It's about a woman who runs a dog pound who befriends a woman who has come to drop off a puppy that was thrown from a moving van in front of her house. Both of the women are fragile, though, because of recent personal losses, and even forming a friendship is difficult for them, it makes them feel very vulnerable. Some questions I need to answer before I can revise:

Whose story is this?

If it's Tracey's (the woman who works at the pound, and whose point of view the story is now told from), what changes in her? What does this episode mean to her?

Should the story be in first person? Or should it be in third so I can follow both women?

What's at stake for the characters?

I just reread the story, and even though I wrote it so long ago, I'm finding it hard to think about tearing it apart, though I think my first step should be rewriting it from the third person POV and seeing what that does. Wish me luck!

Words and images

I've always loved making collages. It was the kind of visual art I was drawn to most as a kid--something about how difficult it was to make a mistake, how a collage wasn't supposed to look like anything in particular. I felt free and nonjudged in a way I didn't when making other art.

As a high schooler, my best friend and I made collages together often. We would pull out pictures that represented what our lives would be like in some far off imaginary future--we'd always live together, near the beach, and date surfers.

I stopped making collages for a while, I think because the act didn't seem all that purposeful--it wasn't like I was going to sell these things or even show them to anyone else. The other day, on a rare day when I had absolutely nothing definitive that I hadto do, an image in a magazine called to me and I got out my scissors and glue stick. I put this one in my current journal, which I realized was a great idea and one I plan to use again. This way I can page through my collages just like I might my journal writing.


On a similar note, I saw a great presentation recently where Poet Steven Cramer read his poems as a slide show of a photographer's pictures played behind him. The two were randomly paired up and were asked to create a show that featured their works resonating off one another. It was very powerful, and it reminded me of the power of words and images when they're used together. So maybe no one will ever ask me to present my collages to an audience, but the presentation made me realize that media that mix words and images are important, and so is the fact that I'm drawn to this particular one.

If only we could all be so easy on ourselves...

I read this quote today, and wondered why I don't think like this instead of getting frustrated that my writing isn't perfect, whatever that means.

"I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper."

--Steve Martin

Sunday Scribbilings: Walk

God it's been so long since I scribbled! It feels good to be back!

This week's prompt, Walk, made me think of a few different things:

1. When I'm waiting to meet someone, if I'm not reading to pass the time, I watch people as they come towards me. I try to determine, well before the person's face or characteristics come into focus, whether or not it's the person I'm waiting for. I watch the person walk.

I'm most familiar with my husband's walk, and I'm pretty good at spotting him from afar. He sort of slides down the street, no bounce in his step, almost as if he's skateboarding.

When we were first dating, when he'd get to the point where we both could definitely make out each other's faces, he would nod his head a little, like a basketball player might say "hey" to his teammate. Now he usually does something silly. He'll give me the peace sign, or the "rock on" sign.

Being able to spot him from afar, and knowing how he'll first give recognition to the fact that I'm waiting for him is one of the intimacies of marriage that I never thought about or even knew existed before being with someone for so long.


2. One of the things I most enjoy in life is walking my dog. I love watching people smile and coo over her (at least the ones who aren't cowering at the sight of a silly black lab). I love getting to know my neighborhood well by walking down its streets a few times a day. For example, I never would've known that the house across the street from the park has been for sale twice in the last two years, or that it's an 80-something year old woman who puts a garbage can in the street so she can save the spot in front of her house whenever she goes out.

The few times a year when I'm not in the least bit excited to take Chloe out, I know something is wrong. My excitement about this chore is like a barometer for my mood. And as soon as the pressure is so low that I have to drag myself out the door, I know there's a bad mood a 'coming.

Though this knowledge doesn't make getting my butt out the door any easier, it does help me get to the bottom of what's bothering me well before I would otherwise. I guess that's why people say walks are meditative.

For more takes on walks, click here.

Hard work

I forgot what hard work revision is. I realized that the main problem with the story I'm working on is a very basic one: there's way too much telling, not enough scenes. So now revision really means writing the whole thing over again.Oy . Plus, I feel kind of stupid for having made such a basic mistake in the first place, and a tad annoyed at my
mentor, who didn't point out the problem as clearly/forcefully as I would've liked.

So I'm looking forward to another frustrating evening tonight. But at least tonight we're getting our Christmas tree and Chinese food! Those will make me feel a tad better, I hope. :)

Revised revision plan

I did not get to revise anything this weekend, as I had planned. I did finish laying out the alumni newsletter I'm working on for my grad assistantship, and that took all my work time/energy. So... now I need to spend this week revising stuff to submit for my MFA residency. This is how I plan to proceed:

Tonight: Make notes on the main characters of the tougher of the two stories I plan to revise. Identify scenes that need to be added/deleted. Use a chapter of Prep (a book I'm currently reading and loving) as a model for how much showing and telling to do.

Tomorrow: Begin rewriting

Wednesday: Continue rewriting

Thursday: See Steven Cramer read (see previous post for more info)

Saturday: Revise 2nd story (which needs less work, in my opinion)

Sunday: Finish up whatever I haven't gotten to in both stories.

Care to join me?

I'll be hitting these literary events in the next few weeks. If anyone would care to join me, let me know!

The Ghost in the Album: An evening with Photographer: Judith Black and Poet: Steven Cramer

Thursday, November 29, 2007 - 7p.m.

Lesley University, University Hall (formerly Porter Exchange),Room 3-094 1815 Mass Ave, Cambridge.

This collaborative presentation includes material from the intersection of the artists' photographs and poetry and offers their unique interpretations regarding family, memory, and time.

The lecture is FREE & open to the public.

**See Black photograph and Cramer poem at http://exhibitioncatalogs.com/

BOOK REVIEWING: HOW IT WORKS, HOW IT'S CHANGING

WHEN: Thursday, December 6, 7 pm
WHERE: 5th Floor Reading Room, Barnes & Noble Bookstore,
Kenmore Sq, Boston
Free and open to the public
INFO: www.nwuboston.org or 617-868-3143 (Barbara Beckwith)
Presented jointly by the National Writers Union and Barnes & Noble

Book reviewing in newspapers and magazines has faced pressures
that have often undermined good criticism: an overwhelming number
of books, a need for funding, a complex relationship with publishers,
and the inherent difficulty of being accurate and fair. As the field
moves online, cyber-reviewers will face many of these same pressures.
Can we create new and better traditions--or will the new media repeat
the failings of the past?

Gail Pool has been a columnist, reviewer, and review editor for many
newspapers and magazines, including the Christian Science Monitor,
the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and the Women's Review of Books. Her
essays have appeared in such publications as the New York Times,
Columbia Journalism Review, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.
She is the editor of Other People's Mail: An Anthology of Letter Stories,
and she lives in Cambridge, where for many years she taught Writing
for Publication at the Radcliffe Seminars.

What to submit?

I'm taking the train to New York this weekend for some pre-Thanksgiving
friends and family parties. I want to bring printouts of the two
stories I need to revise for my MFA residency so I can read them over
and take notes. This, of course, begs the question: which stories
should I revise??

I wrote three this semester. One that I definitely plan on revising needs a good deal of work--especially in terms of that oldie but goodie
of "show don't tell." One of the other stories I'm pretty happy
with--it needs some revision, but it's definitely on its way to being
done. I haven't received comments from my mentor on the third story
yet, but I am assuming it will need more work.

So what I'm wondering is: do people submit
stuff to workshop that they know needs a lot of work and will therefore
be ripped apart (in a supportive way--one hopes!)? Or do you submit
stuff that you're pretty happy with to see if others feel it's "done"
too (and maybe, just maybe, to get a bit more praise than you would
otherwise)?

Organizing, in pictures

I had piles and piles of paper, mostly to do with my MFA residencies, writing in general, and the adult ed classes I teach. I decided to get them organized before they took over my entire study.

The first step was buying some very cute accordian folders:


Then I chose one to hold my writing papers, and one to hold my teaching papers. I labeled the folders in the writing file with things like: story ideas (which holds articles I rip out of newspapers because they piqued an idea), stories in revision (which holds marked up copies of my stories; I also have a few other folders to hold stories that have been workshopped and therefore there are too many copies to fit in the accordian), and interesting articles on writing.


The teaching folder is broken down into the different classes I teach or plan to teach (freelance writing, memoir, fiction), with handouts and story examples filed in each.



And lastly, I have a basket that holds things like books I plan to read next and papers that I'll be using in the near future and therefore don't need to be filed:


What kind of filing/organizing system works for you?

Structure

I'm enjoying my extra-long weekend and relaxing and getting some organizing done. (I might post pics later of my new system for keeping writing-related papers organized.) But I'm realizing that one thing I'm already really missing is having the structure of the MFA deadlines. This makes me quite frightened at the idea that in 6 months I'll graduate and have no imposed structure. It's also ironic that last month I was dying to be out from under the deadline pressure and now I want it back!

Anyway, here are some ideas for writerly things I want/need to get done in the next month before my next residency.

* Revise two short stories that need to be submitted by early Dec for my residency workshops

* Put in final revisions on Harvard thesis and submit it for final approval(whoo!!)

* Go through stories I've done for MFA program and decide which I will revise for my thesis.

* If Carte Postale is not one of the stories I submit for residency, revise that.

* Send Carte Postale out to Atlantic student writing contest

* Make list of other places I would like to submit fiction. I plan to go about doing this by looking in the Best American series for magazine/journal ideas, and then going to one of my favorite bookstores (the Trident on Newbury St.) to check out the magazines and other literary journals to decide which ones seem appropriate for my work. If anyone has other ideas on how to create such a list, please let me know!

* Revise three essays--one on cleaning, one on friendship, one on Forest Hills Cemetery--and send them out.

* Pitch Globe Magazine idea for relationship essay section (on how B and I are best able to make time for each other when we're insanely busy)

Knit-pics

I finally have the time to get a summer's worth of pictures off my digital camera and onto my computer. As promised, here are some shots of my recent knitting projects, along with one or two pics that will make you pine for the days of BBQs.

A fun shawl with arms I made. (Funny story: I wore this to a bar and someone wanted to buy it from me!)




A very funky star-strewn hat and my favorite of the squares I made for a blankets for the homeless project.







An easy lace-knit shawl for my aunt's 60th birthday present









Sum Sum Summertime

Back to blogging

Well, I really took that bloggin without obligation to heart! I needed the break though. Things have been just a wee bit hectic in this bug's life. But I'm feeling a little bit calmer, having gotten my final submission for the semester off to my MFA advisor, and what I hope to be the penultimate draft of my thesis to my Harvard advisor.

This week has allowed me to get back into a few neglected routines:
* I did morning pages a few times this week
* I've made it to the gym just about every day
* I went to two literary events: one on Monday night at a bar in Cambridge where four readers read, and another last night at the Brookline Booksmith where some of the authors featured in Best American Essays 2008 read, along with the series editor. Both were fun and made me remember how lucky I am to live in such a literary city.

I think I will become more regular with my blogging, and I hope I have a few people left who are still checking in occassionally! Some topics I want to blog about in the near future:

*story ideas (reminder to self: female friendship idea, awkward Thanksgiving idea)
* emotions of going into my thesis semester at Lesley
* general writing progress
*pics of finished knitting projects

Looking forward to rejoining the blogosphere!

Creature of habit?

I'm not someone who loves schedules. Or at least I wasn't. Then this weekend things got very thrown off--I stayed out too late and drank too much on Friday, so I slept late on Saturday. Then I was up again super late on Saturday for a wedding. I slept a little late on Sunday, but managed to get a bunch of work done anyway. Sunday night I stayed up til 11, watching the Red Sox (slightly later than usual for me on a weeknight).

This morning, I felt rested, but super cranky! I was in one of those moods where everything seemed annoying, even my being annoyed. I can think of a few other good reasons why I might've felt this way, but I think my schedule being messed up all weekend had something to do with it.

Back to my normal schedule of writing, knitting (more on the affects of being OCD about anything, even benign things like knitting later), and going to sleep early.

Just say no

I have done a fairly good job of beginning to implement my "policy" of saying no to things I don't have time for/don't want to do. I didn't go meet up with a distant cousin when she unexpectedly came to town, I opted to take a two hour nap instead of shopping with my mom when she was in town (we spent the rest of the weekend together, lest you think I'm an evil daughter), I did not go to my inlaws' for a Wednesday night birthday party, I canceled going to a reading with a friend when I realized my schoolwork was behind, I decided to put off painting the front door/foyer until after my last MFA submission is due.

On the negative side, I did volunteer for a project at work that I'm not sure I really have time for. But it's a writing project, and the type of thing I haven't done in a while, so I don't feel too badly about it.

In general, I feel very good about myself for taking control of my time. I know I have a far way to go--especially in the saying no without guilty area--but I'm getting there. So if I don't blog much or comment on your blog much, note that I'm not ignoring you/being flaking, I'm just "practicing".

Knitting for the homeless

As some of you know, I am a somewhat obsessive knitter. I'm also concerned about what options the homeless have now that it's getting colder. So what better than a knit-a-thon to support Pine Street Inn of Boston, New England's largest resource for homeless men and women!

I am going to knit as many 9x9 squares as I can, and I and other Boston area knitters will assemble them into blankets, which will then be presented to the tenants of the Pine Street Inn residences.

If you'd like to sponsor my knitting, go to http://www.firstgiving.com/CEJ.

Thank you in advance for your help.

Happy Knitting!
Christine

How're things in writer land?

It's a question Poet Mom asked on her blog, and one that I thought I'd answer on mine.

I'm at work on a new story, and for some reason first drafts are so much less painful for me than revising (which is what I did for my last MFA submission). I think it's because I've finally got it in my head that first drafts are shitty, that I'm allowed to make mistakes in them, that a lot of the work is done in just allowing yourself to write poorly.

So now I think that first drafts are fun. Second or third drafts though? That's when my Evil Editor sits on my shoulder second guessing every change I make, reminding me that even at the end of this draft the story will be no where near done, asking me why I'm doing this anyway?

Hopefully with time, that Evil Editor will shush down and allow me to revise in peace, knowing that even second drafts are allowed to be shitty, that I'm allowed to make mistakes in them, that a lot of the work is done in just allowing yourself to write poorly.

So that's how things are going in my Writer Land. How about you??

Another book suggestion?

You all were so helpful last time, I thought I'd ask again for suggestions for a book I want to have my character read in my short story. This one needs to have a theme of people on the outside looking in, or people watching others in a removed way. Any ideas??

This weekend

I've got a ton to do this weekend, so I need my trusty online to-do list. Here goes:

Tonight
Hang flyers for neighborhood watch meeting
Pilates
Cook healthy dinner

Tomorrow
Yoga in morning
Work on revising craft essay/story for MFA submission
Hair cut at 11:30
Spend rest of the day revising and doing house projects (see below)
Saturday night: dinner with friend

Sunday
House projects in the morning
Relax at Harvard Square October fest for a bit
Work on essay/story

Monday
Be thankful that we still celebrate Columbus day, though I question whether the man truly deserves a holiday
House projects and writing
Yoga class in evening if time allows

I would also like to fit in two 30 minute meditation sessions over the weekend.

House projects:
Paint bedroom (only two walls)
Fix hole in bathroom wall and paint over it (requires getting paint matched)
Replace broken doorbell
Hang pictures in the hallway, rearrange those in the kitchen and bathroom
Organize laundry room/back porch
Paint front door and clean foyer
Winterize gardens

Streeeetched...

... too thin. I have finally hit the wall. I have taken on just one too many things, and I'm starting to go a tad crazy. My eye will start twitching any day now... But you know what, starting in the new year, I will just say no! I'll be in my thesis semester, and have a good excuse to cut back. I guess I could just start now, but I need some time to get used to the idea of not taking on so much stuff. Though I know I need to, these habits are hard to break!

Revision: opinions please

I'm revising a story for my next MFA submission. (I am WAAAYY far behind, but that's another story.) In the story, the main character joins a book club. They read two books in the course of the story. Now, here's the question: Should they be real books, or should I make them up? What are your thoughts on either? What are the pros and cons of each? Have you read any books that name drop books well? One of the books they read has to be about an affair for thematic reasons. Thanks for your thoughts!

My latest obsession

I have yet to figure out a good way to keep a list of the books I've read and want to read. I tried the old fashioned way--keeping it in a journal--but I always forget to update it when I'm actually near the thing. Internet to the rescue! http://www.goodreads.com lets you keep a bookshelf of books--and label them as things you're reading, have read, or want to read. And you can rate them and see what your friends have read/rated. If you join, look me up and friend me!

Some links

I am a member of the National Writers' Union (which I highly recommend my fellow writers look into--they have really intelligent members who answer questions on various listserves, they run workshops and events, and they have a contract department that will help you read through a contract to make sure your rights are being looked after). Through the NWU, I learned about some neat web sites that I thought I'd share:

http://www.book-proposal.com/ Has info about writing book proposals

http://www.zokutou.co.uk/forum/profile.php?mode=register An online writing group based in the UK that has some neat exercises on their site

http://writersisland.wordpress.com/ A site similar to Sunday Scribblings

Breaking the silence

Hello! It's been a while! I think this is the longest I've gone without blogging, and I have a few things to thank/blame:

1- The silent retreat is still having its affects. I'm finding the need for more silence, less communication.

2- I've been really busy! I started my graduate assistantship, where I'll be editing the Lesley MFA program's alumni newsletter and sending out announcements about publishing opportunities and events to current students and alumni. And I taught my first class as part of my teachingassistantship! It went well: the kids seemed fairly engaged for 8 a.m., the professor was happy with my performance , and I wasn't even that nervous. And of course there's the regular MFA writing/reading, the revising I'm doing for my other masters, and my job. Phew.

3- I've taken this to heart:


I especially love the line about blogging not being a competition, and how when you're dead, no one will take notice of the number of posts you've done or the number of comments you've received. Amen to that.

Retreat report, backwards schedule

The retreat was wonderful! I was really worried about being silent for a whole weekend (and silence included not reading, writing, knitting or basically anything other than walking, sitting, eating, and doing bathroom stuff).

But it was easy! And pleasant. It's amazing how much I/we talk and think above and beyond what's necessary. I can't tell you how many times I had the same thought, about the same mundane things like, I'd like to find a low-calorie recipe for chocolate chip cookies...

And eating mindfully is wonderful! Food is so much more satisfying when you're actually paying attention to it instead of concentrating on what you're going to say next, etc.

Now it's back to reality, but hopefully a more mindful one. I even got up 10 minutes early for a brief meditation this morning. And that's saying a lot since I had to leave the house at 6:45.

One part of being back to reality is getting back on track with my MFA work. Here's my newest backwards schedule:

October 8: Submission due. Write letter to Tony, mail packet.

Oct 1-7: Add in new sections/revisions to the electronic version of the story.
Write about the new Lorrie Moore stories in essay form.

September 24-30: Journal/free write about the areas I marked up in previous week.
Read second Lorrie Moore story, take detailed notes.

September 17-24: Read over story I'm revising, mark up hard copy as to major things to change/explore/expand. Close read one Lorrie Moore story, take detailed notes.

This month is going to be a little tight timewise... I think I gave myself too much of a break by not working last week or this weekend. Oh well. Pedal to the metal now!

The sound of silence

I am going away on a meditation retreat this weekend in Western Mass. So this blog will be silent for a few days, as will I--there's no talking at the retreat! I hope I don't go crazy from the sound of silence. Something tells me I won't, and that I might just appreciate it a lot more than the sound of talking. Have a good weekend!

Package 2: sent

I sent my second MFA submission yesterday, which means that I'm officially half way through my third semester. Gulp! (The feelings that go along with being close-ish to done with my MFA program deserve another post.) I feel pretty good about what I sent, in as far as I ever feel good about sending someone my SFDs (Shitty First Drafts).

I experimented with the omniscient point of view in both a long short story (20ish pages) and a short short story (3 pages). I'm proud of myself for stepping into this unknown and scary territory. After all, the omniscient POV means you (the author) have to make many more decisions than you would if the story were told from one person's point of view. Which characters' heads do we get into in the story as a whole? What about in each particular scene? What would you gain from hearing the thoughts of each character? What would you lose? Is it OK to be in a character's head in one scene, but then not another? (If anyone would like to comment on this issue/these questions, please do!)

I usually try to take some time off between submissions, but unfortunately this week will be devoted to more work, though not for my MFA. I will:

* Revise The Rest of June, a story I'm submitting for my Harvard MLA thesis.
* Revise the prologue for the medical memoir I worked on for my IS last semester.
* I also want to try to take some photos, especially of my garden and knitting projects and post them.

Back to school

I started my teaching assistantship yesterday, and it did not get off to a very auspicious start... I was so nervous about it on Sunday night that I couldn't sleep. This set me up to sleep right through my alarm and not wake up until 7:30--only half an hour before my class started, the class which takes me about an hour to get to. I got ready in about 5 minutes and quickly got a cab.

The cabbie was very into getting me to Porter Square on time, though he kept saying, "I make no promises!" He zigged and zagged through traffic, driving down back alleys and small side streets. Even with this herculean effort, I arrived 10 minutes late. Sigh... My professor was very nice about it, and the class was very interested. Best of all, the students participated! At 8 am in a freshman comp class!

I forgot how energizing it can be to be in a classroom, watching people learn and learning from others. I need to remember that energy now, when I'm feeling slightly hungover from yesterday's rushing/excitement/working late to make up for the time I was TA'ing/etc.

Fall: how I love and hate thee

Ever since Brian and I started dating (9 years ago tomorrow!), I've loved the fall. The crispness in the air, apples, dusting off my sweaters--all reminded me of that wonderful period when you're going gaga over someone.

But since last year, the first feeling of coolness sends me into a panic. I feel claustrophic with the idea of being stuck inside all winter, dreading getting out of bed to feel the icy air on my toes, wearing layers upon layers everywhere. These thoughts bum me out so much that then I spiral into dwelling on all the things I'm not in love with about my life. Just don't think about them, you say? Yea, try not thinking about food the next time you're starving. Even if you manage to get your thoughts on something else for a moment, you still feel hungry, and that hunger colors your attitude.

I don't think there's any way around this experience, at least not this year. So instead of fighting it I'm just going to try to make the most of the days when I'm feeling awful, and try to shorten their stay by doing more of the things I love: knitting, yoga, walking/running with Chloe. And as little as possible of the "have to's" like freelance projects and even some of my school work. I'll trade a less-than-awesome September submission for some piece of mind. I'm also planning some fun events like a foliage day cruise. Wish me luck!

Tune in!

A friend's radio documentary is airing on a program called Outfront on Canada's Radio One tonight at 8:43 p.m. (EST). You can hear it podcast if you go to http://www.cbc.ca/outfront/ and click on "Listen to CBC Radio" and then make sure you go to Radio One, and chose London as your location.

I couldn't be more proud of this fabulous writer/documentarian! Check it out!

Here's the introduction from the Outfront web site.
According to Form
by Tracy Isaacs
It is a simple form, and not unusual these days. Tracy Isaacs teaches at a university. It sent its employees a survey to find out how diverse its workforce is. The questionnaire asks her to classify herself racially. For Tracy Isaacs, born under the neither white nor black classification of "coloured" in apartheid South Africa, this opens up a flood of questions about how she thinks of herself.

Weekend follow up

Thanks to the so many of you who posted such heartfelt comments to my last post. I come back home with good news: I was able to live up to my intention! Not once did I wish or try to make B act differently than he was. And the result, of course, was that he seemed to feel more comfortable and therefore act less withdrawn. We didn't get into a single argument the whole time, either. (Not that we fight much in general, but stressful situations often lead to fights between most people, I think.)And another result was that I was better able to be myself and relax since I didn't have to worry about "managing" the situation.

But like any change, this one--coupled with a few other unrelated family changes that we evident this weekend-- did left me with a weird feeling a bit strange. I'm going to do some freewriting in my paper journal and hopefully get to the bottom of some of that. Thanks again! I really think it was putting my intention on paper that helped me stay conscious of fulfilling it.

Sunday Scribblings: The End

I'm spending this end-of-the-summer weekend visiting my parents' new house in New Jersey. I'm hoping this weekend will mark the end of some bad dynamics that have arisen in the past few years.

You see, my mom and husband have a bit of a checkered past. It's a long-ish story, but it boils down to a day a few Christmas's ago that I spent hysterically crying after my mom criticized a ton of stuff about my then fiancé—first to me, and then to him. She and my dad left, and we didn’t speak for a few days (which isn’t that long, but felt it. Time slows down when you know you’re ignoring/avoiding someone).

She has since apologized profusely, but once words are out there, you can’t take them back. So when B displays any of the tendencies she attacked him for (being too aloof, not wanting to spend every waking hour chatting with her, etc.), I get uncomfortable. I spend the whole time wondering if she’s judging him. And for some odd psychological (I’m sure!) reason, I tend to take all this discomfort out on B, wishing that he could act however it is she wants him to act.

So this weekend, I am setting an intention to not play into this dynamic any longer. I will just concern myself with my own feelings, and with making sure I am relaxing and doing what I want to do—not worrying about what someone else may or may not be thinking. And I definitely won’t get mad at B, no matter how he decides to act/spend his time.

Here’s to the (hopefully) end of all that! For more endings, click here.

Walking in circles

B told me about a very funny interview he heard on NPR today. It's with writer Merrill Markoe, who has a new book out called Walking in Circles Before Lying Down. As you may have guessed, it's about dogs. If you love animals, or just need a laugh, listen to the author discussing her book with Robin Young on Here and Now.

On a totally unrelated note, I thought I'd announce to the blogosphere my new fitness goal: to run or do yoga every day of the week (with maybe one day off). Try to keep me honest--ask me how it's going in a few weeks!

blogger annoyances

I've been trying to get this picture to be my bio pic for days now. I'm hoping that posting it here will make it easier to get it into my bio...

Grace Paley

"None of it happened, and yet every word of it is true."

Grace Paley said that about her fiction, and I think it just about sums up how I think of my work, and how I hope readers will think about it.

Paley died of cancer yesterday. (Click here for her obit.)

I took a seminar this summer where we did close readings of a few of her stories, and boy am I glad I did. I learned so much from her writing about what makes a short, short story work: how the story can simply express a moment in time, and show the slightest change in the character at the end. In that way, I think that Paley's fiction is the heart of truth--after all, to paraphrase the Eagles, people change so slowly if they ever change at all.

Feedback on feedback

What is it about getting feedback from my mentor that throws me into an emotional tail spin? I got my stories and comments back yesterday, and they were really positive. The most positive I have ever gotten (which I think makes sense because this was definitely the best story I've handed in). But still, I can't stop thinking about the comments and trying to make sense of it all...

I got home at 10 last night and saw the envelope in our mail pile. I ripped it open before even saying hello to Brian. I then sat in the living room reading the responses like a zombie while Brian tried to talk to me. When I came up for a breath and he asked, what is that? I told him my mentor response. After I read all the comments, I answered Brian's other question of, what did he think? He liked it, I said. And that was it. Then I went to sleep and lie there thinking and thinking and thinking about the comments.

And I woke up, thinking about them some more. I'm thinking about how to revise the story, how to respond to some of the questions that were brought up regarding my essay. All while I should be focusing on my next story, which I'm now worried will disappoint by not being as good as the first (it's definitely a harder birthing process for this one...). And I'm wondering if my new mentor isn't pushing me hard enough (way to turn good news into bad, huh?).

Anyway, how do you react when you get feedback from teachers, writing groups, friends, etc.?

Sunday Scribbilings: Dear Diary

I'm using this Sunday Scribblings to help me get into the head of my new character, Celia, a woman who is going through a divorce and moves from NYC to Boston to get away from her husband and his mistress. Here is one of her diary entries:

Dear Diary,
I haven't written those words in years. Maybe since those days of 7th and 8th grade when I was so worried about pimples and boys and fitting in. Just like everybody else, though the worst part of course was how alone in my worries I felt. I realize now that there are probably hundreds of women going through the same thing as me now, and probably thousands before me who have too.

But not really. I'm probably the only who moved to a strange city to make sure I never would drop my hot coffee all over my tighted legs when I saw my husband and his mistress in Starbucks, after he told me he had stopped seeing her. And I'm almost definitely the only one who finds healing in the Boston Aquarium--going each morning as soon as it opens to stare at a new spot in the giant column of water that makes up the middle of the building. It's dark and fairly quiet at that hour, and it's the only place where I lose myself and forget my loneliness and fear and betrayal. The fish swim past--different shapes and sizes and colors--and it's amazing how I can be staring at one fish only to realize that there are three more between me and it, only I couldn't notice them and my current obsession at the same time.

And the fish make me laugh. My face will be right up against the tank and an ugly, ugly blow fish will swim by, centimeters away from my face and I'll startle and laugh at the same time. Those moments are probably the only true laughs I've had in months.

I joined a book club, at the insistence of Jen [narrator's best friend in New York, who introduces her to one of the book club members]. The women are all really nice, and I'm sure I'll like going eventually. But I left my first meeting feeling lonelier than I had when I went in. They all knew each other so well, they'd gone traveling together, watched each other get married and have babies.

I realize now that Bobby's gone, nobody knows me that well. Jen is the closest, but we've definitely grown apart since she had her babies. And plus the last few months it's all I could do not to push her away completely. After all, if your husband can betray you and decide unilaterally that the marriage wasn't worth working on, how can I trust anyone? Jen and I met at the same time I met Bobby, so we don't even have more longevity that I can point to as a reason to trust her.

It's impossible for me not to think and think and think about everything--both was has happened and what will happen. That's why I love the aquarium. When I watch the fish, I just watch the fish. It's like an instant meditation. If only they were open 24 hours a day, I might just move in.

For more diary entries--real and imagined--go to Sunday Scribblings.

Goals for the weekend

Thanks to my fellow bloggers' advice (and some days off from work due to food poisoining--hey, at least I got some down time out of the deal!), I've managed to make some progress on my new story. Continuing that progress plays a major role in this weekend.

Work end:
* Write forward for 2 hours every day on story
* Fill out the last section of my thesis essay
* Finish Nervous Conditions (TI,Repeater did you read this for Tony? I like it.) And start on next book.

Fun end:
* See Paris Je T'aime, which I am shocked that Brian is going for!
* Go to a one year old b-day party and an evening adult party involving lots of alcohol and sitting outside.
* Go see the seals at the aquarium! I gave B a gift certificate for Christmas for a chance to "train" the seals. We're finally going! I'm sure I'll post pics. :)

city living blues

We've had trouble with our upstairs neighbors since they moved in. They're loud, loud people who LOVE to blast gross techno music. We've finally, FINALLY started making headway with them (after getting into a screaming match in the middle of the street this winter).

And then, our neighbors on one side (our houses are separated by like 10 feet of grass) have decided that it'd be a fabulous idea to start hanging out in their parking lot, which is very close to our backyard, porch, and bedroom, playing--you guessed it--gross techno and house music out of the back of their car. Oh, and their teens also just sit in the parking lot at all hours of the day/night and rap/talk really loudly.

I'm trying to figure who to talk to--they're renters and I have no idea who owns the building. I wish I had faith enough to try to talk to their mom or them directly, but dealing with Tweedle Dum and Dummer upstairs has sucked that faith right out of me.

I swear, it's only since we bought a place that we've ever had serious neighbor problems. Why oh why does this have to be the case, when we can't move (easily)???

My annoyance about this (which I swear is about to bring me to tears) is amplified by the fact that thanks to food poisining, I haven't left the house in two days. Only 1.4 years until B finishes school and we can move...
OK, rant over.

No traction

I'm having trouble getting going with my new story, which I don't think is normally my problem. What do others do when they get stuck early on? Advice would be most welcome.

What the world needs now...

I believe this is the second time I've blogged about Cary Tennis' Salon.com advice column. What can I say, he writes about artists a lot in an eloquent way. Today's question is from a visual artist who is finding it hard to deal with rejections. Cary's response is long, but here are some of my favorite parts, with some personal comments.

"I have experienced literature that opened the skies for me, that made the earth tremble, that proved the existence of a world right alongside ours, so far superior to ours..... Every time I write I think I am required to make the skies open. I think I have to make the earth tremble. I think I have to reveal the existence of a dazzling universe quietly superseding our own, right next to us in another dimension.... So naturally I fail every day."

I went to a meditation class last night, and one of the themes, if you will, was forgiving yourself. Every time your mind wandered from your breath, you were supposed to say to yourself, "I forgive you." It was so amazingly nurturing to say that to myself about 100 times. That's what this part of Cary's column reminded me of.

This part about finding a supportive group of fellow writers also hit home. I feel so blessed to have found and continue finding other like-minded writers:

"You need constant encouragement and reinforcement in order to keep going. It's not even about feeling good so much. It's just about keeping going. I began to think about athletes....A batter gets a hit maybe every four or five at bats. So that's pretty tough. How would an athlete deal with all that rejection? In sports there is rejection and pain. But there is also joy and encouragement. There are coaches. There are teammates.

Those of us who work alone trying to make the heavens open up and the earth tremble, we need regular encouragement. We need coaches to say, Hey, good game. We need hand slaps and high-fives. Without support we will stop sending out our work."

And lastly, I will point to the part in his column where he explains just why it is that people need positive reinforcement just as much as constructive critism:

"Others have been hard on me as well, and I have sort of invited that. I have said, That's OK, give it to me straight, I can take it. Actually, I couldn't take it. But I would say I could. I believed in the interest of telling it like it is that everybody had to be hard on everybody else and on themselves. That would ensure that we were all aesthetically honest and pure.

Well, so now I am thinking, what good does that do if we become so embittered and afraid of rejection that we can't continue our work? I think what we need is more acceptance and more love.

Well said, Cary! (Click here to read the whole article.)

My Saturday in pictures

Brian and I took a day off, and a day trip to Portland, where we visited an alpaca farm and drank some of the fine local beer. I also bought lots of yarn and finished a knitting project (which I'll post a pic of after it's been blocked).

(Click on the collage to enlarge the photos)

2 new backwards schedules

I've got a lot to get done this month, for both my MFA and MA programs. Luckily my teaching assistantship/grad assistantship don't start for another month, so I can focus my energies, as following:



Next MFA submission due: Sept. 10 (consists of 1 new story, 7 pages of 15 page essay)
Sept 1-9: Revise both as needed
August 24-31: Spread time equally between essay and new story, getting a draft of each done
August 17-24: Concentrate on expanding essay, continue to write at least 1 hour on most days
August 10-17: Free write on story every day (1-3 hours)


Next MA submission due: Sept. 15 (consists of expanded 25 page essay, 2 revised short stories)
Sept. 7-14: Revise Rest of June
Sept. 1-7: Continue writing essay
August 24-31: Write new parts of essay
August 17-24: Revise Trying
August 10-17: Finish braindumping on new short stories I am adding to essay, and revise/expand other sections of essay

And what's up with no one commenting on my blog this week? Is no one visiting? Am I a pariah???

New story

I sent out my first MFA package on Monday--god, what a good feeling it was to put that in the mail. This is my first mentor who is requiring mailed packets as opposed to emailed, and while it does add another layer to the process (printing and getting to the P.O.), I also got a more tangible sigh of relief when I dropped that sucker in the box, and can imagine it moving across the state.

But, as the saying goes, there's no rest for the weary, so I'm thinking about my next new story already. This one will be about a woman who's at the tail end of a divorce. She moves from Manhattan to Boston to escape memories and the possibility of running into her ex. She's been fairly exiled the first 2 months she's been there--it's cold and she's depressed so she doesn't try to go out and meet people.

The story will start on a spring day when she's finally going to the book club run by a friend of a friend of hers from Manhattan. The friend had been trying to get her to go since she moved--she thought the main character and the book club woman would hit it off. I'm not 100% sure where the story goes from here--I think what will happen is that these two women will become friends, and after the main character reveals a lot about her marriage and the reason for its failure (the main one being that her husband cheated), she then learns that this new friends of her had been "the other woman" in the not so recent past. The main character has to digest this info, and somehow get over the feeling of being betrayed all over again.

Any thoughts, directions, questions are most welcome!

Link

I promised I'd post links to the Boston Globe articles I wrote this week. Unfortunately only one ran as scheduled. I'm assuming the next will run next week, and I'll post it then. But here's a news brief about some possible changes near my house in Jamaica Plain: http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/08/05/one_way_idea_is_circulated_for_getting_round_the_t/

Sunday Scribbilings: Decisions

I think a lot about the topic of decision making. I don't have much trouble making decisions, but I do ponder about their consequences a lot. What if I hadn't gone to BU? What if I didn't take a semester off and got a job interning at the Globe, where I met my husband? (I would like to believe that we would've met anyway, that we were somehow destined to be together, but I don't think I can truly buy the idea of destiny.)

What if I hadn't decided, somewhat on a whim, to apply to Lesley's MFA program? What if I hadn't gone to the Ann Lammott reading on a snowy night in a church downtown, where I met the friend who ended up introducing me to the neighborhood in which I now live? What if...

When I was younger, I used to think that any changes to the major decisions in my life would lead me down a path to becoming a totally different person. Now, I think that despite the fact that every decision impacts the course of one's life, I'd be the same person with similar worries and goals no matter which road I chose.

On a happier note...

In my insane post of yesterday, I forgot to post the good things I'm doing this weekend: Tonight is a BBQ with a friend and her baby while her hubby's out of town, tomorrow is a walk with BostonErin and our doggies, and a movie at night with B. Sunday is another BBQ with friends.

No time!

I've had this song stuck in my head all week because, you guessed it, I have no time! (I love the part late in the song when they keep repeating "No time! No time!" with urgency in their voices.)

The odd thing is that I have much more time than I will in the fall, when I start TAing and my graduate assistantship. But I had meetings regarding both of those things--and my Harvard Extension School thesis--this week, so all sorts of thoughts, ideas, and worries about them are floating around in my head. Thank god for this sleep/meditation CD or I would've spent a third night as an insomniac last night.

So, what do I do when I feel stressed? Make a list, of course! Here goes:

Things not to worry about right now:
1. TAship (expiration date 8/15, when I should email professor some thoughts on which classes I want to lead)
2. Grad assistantship (expiration date 9/1, when I should email supervisors and touch base)

Things to do this weekend
1. Add baking scenes into my main story for my upcoming MFA submission
2. Revise the short short story that I will be submitting too
3. Expand the outline to my MFA essay
4. Brain dump about the stories I am adding to my final MLA thesis essay

Things that will get done sometime, and it's fine that they're not done right now (really, it is):
1. Fix up my garden (front)
2. Add elevated beds for my back veggie garden
3. Paint the floor/ceiling of my back porch
4. Put together a wedding album (yes, I've been married for 3 years and I haven't done this yet...)
5. Get down the many essays that are floating around in my head, especially one on dealing with a loved one's sickness and an essay on covering neighborhood meetings now, in my own neighborhood vs when I was younger and a reporter for a town newspaper in a ritzy area that I could never dream to live in (and with snobby people worried about the stupidest things...)

On that note....
I have two articles that will be in this week's Sunday Globe. I'll post links on Sunday.