Reaching a Balance

As writers, our work can go on all day, all night. Always something to revise, send out, work on, create, prepare, organize. Always the research, meetings, workshops, deadlines. I have a great work ethic. And this is work I like to do.

This summer my mind rebelled. It wanted to see friends, have a glass of wine, go fishing, cook an elaborate recipe, watch stupid TV, shop, go on a date.

I said to it, Oh, no -- YOU are supposed to be working! Every minute counts! No glass of wine for you! No time off for you!

That was a good way to get my whole being to go on strike and acquire a cough, an infection, an injury, hayfever, depression. No appetite, no energy. Too much trouble even to read a novel. (I felt obliged to read this novel.) Energy only to play the video game "Jewels" on my droid.

Last week I was out doing errands and had no choice but to take myself to lunch; either that or I wouldn't get any food until after 10 p.m. Wow, I had a sandwich and coffee, wasting my time and money (I should have brought a bag lunch to eat in a park!!) -- and how great that felt! This week I took 24 hours to drive downstate seeking beauty (even though I actually brought work along!). Felt much better.

Take Me Serious

Sunk in the bottom of an ocean of books at a big-box bookstore, I realized how insane it is to hope to make a mark, much less a splash, writing books in this world. But the would-be authors I saw there contrasted so sharply with the crisp and handsome new books that I got keenly critical, and as the former Miss Mousy USA I know it helps, if and when one wants to be taken seriously as a bright and disciplined person with a future, to show your material self some dignity:

• Get a haircut.
  
• Don't wear dirty green T-shirts.
• Clean your shoes.
• Conceal your bra straps and g-strings.
• Crocs are for home wear only.
  
• Don't carry big, lumpy bags.
  
• Women: Wear a bra that holds 'em.
• Don't gnaw at, or carry around, plastic or foam containers of food and drink.
• Don't flap your hands. Don't gnaw at those, either.
  
• Pick one of your good features -- nice hair, nice butt, expressive eyes, strong chin, pretty ears -- and deliberately enhance it.
  
• Sit straight.
  
• Over 40? Ditch the baseball cap.
  
• Harmonize your socks and shoes.
  
• Save your all-in-black look for funerals.
  
• Don't let everyone see you surfing Asian-bride sites.
  

None of the above are prohibitively difficult or expensive. Look as much as possible like a brand-new book!

(More on my life as Miss Mousy in the next post.)

So Much Good Writing

Why are there so many good creative writers these days? Having recently read some litmags -- the Spoon River Poetry Review, Rattle, the new issue of Natural Bridge -- and some collections of poetry and nonfiction, I'm awed. Today in the U.S. there is more good writing by more good writers than ever.

One can reply "Leisure," pointing out that a great many people (but not all who want to, not by a long shot) may now pursue what was formerly an elite activity. Along those lines of practical reasons you'd have to include "literacy" and "education" and "freedom of speech."

But, from a spiritual angle, the swell of creative writing is perfectly parallel to the swell of lies and con games invented by those who use life and language and imagination not to enlighten us but to make us smaller, needier, more complacent, and more anxious. Creative writing is a form of resistance. The more lies we are told, the more we are urged to be ignorant -- and that's not natural -- the more we resist. Simple. And, writers: GOOD JOB!!!

On "Alone Time"

Some people have been miffed when I shut my door to write. Mom stood at the closed bedroom door, pointedly saying, "She's being anti-social," or "She thinks she's better than her own family." In the college dorm, floormates did much the same: "I bet she's in there writing." Bored with my non-response, they soon cut it out. Later roommates interrupted innocently ("Whatcha doin'?") or not (kick open the door and yell, "You're shutting me out of your life!"). This latter person -- a blocked artist -- was hard to dismiss, because what he imagined was true eventually became so. I got intimidated. I shied. Dragged down to his level I replied just as furiously. I used other people's homes to write in. I applied to writers' retreats where I cried from sheer relief and cried when I had to go home. This escalated to his coup de grace: "You don't love me!" One day, hearing "You don't love me!" I said, "You're right. I don't."

Adults should grant other adults periods of peace and quiet. But it seems that only some are glad to make that kind of deal. Others are rendered terrifically insecure by periods of unavailability. Hey, it doesn't mean we don't love you! We are only doing the work we were meant to do.

Good Quotation: "Individual Power"

"Control of attention is the ultimate individual power. People who can do that are not prisoners of the stimuli around them. They can choose from the patterns in the world and lengthen their time horizons. This individual power leads to others. It leads to self-control, the ability to formulate strategies in order to resist impulses. If forced to choose, we would all rather our children be poor with self-control than rich without it.

"It leads to resilience, the ability to persevere with an idea even when all the influences in the world say it can’t be done. A common story among entrepreneurs is that people told them they were too stupid to do something, and they set out to prove the jerks wrong.

"It leads to creativity. Individuals who can focus attention have the ability to hold a subject or problem in their mind long enough to see it anew."- David Brooks, The New York Times

Be Kind to Your Mind

Last night I told myself the thing I'd drafted wasn't a poem: Real poems take long stressful craft sessions, and are serious, and this one entertained me so vastly I read it aloud several times laughing. Then I invented excuses for it: "It's kind of a theater piece," or "You could work on this so it'd be in couplets and then it'd be good," & c. Told myself everything in the world except, "Hey, you just drafted a 60-line poem -- that alone is pretty great; congratulations."

Making some kind of trivial mistake ("What'd I come in here to get? Can't remember") I have been catching myself calling myself "Stupid!" "What a dodo-brain," "Nobody else would be so incompetent," etc.

Have I sat myself down today and said, "You rock! You're doing a pretty good job with your life. You are so well-read, so together, and a creative artist! What discipline, what fire," and so on? I've got a good mind. Why am I not kind to it -- as kind and generous as it has been to me?

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[What's this about? See below.]

Please, Query Letter, Write and Send Yourself!

Realized I'm avoiding querying the last of 4 publishers who might consider my interview book. I have "outed" my reasons for stalling, and here they are in all their glory:

1. Mercury is retrograde; I'll write the query after Feb. 19 when Mercury goes direct.
2. That's the last press on my list. I'm afraid I'll get torpedoed and won't recover.
3. Their manuscript review process can take up to a year -- they said so. Who wants to wait for a year to hear yes or no? Better to have the manuscript sit for a year in a file drawer.
4. They might say no to the query, as the last 3 publishers did, and I am not in the mood (in mid-winter) to hear "no" right now.
5. I'll have to research and find more publishers and that is dull, hard work that no one appreciates.
6. If it's accepted, I don't have another book manuscript ready and will have to work on one.
7. I'm having to face facts and I just hate that.
8. Why risk failure by trying?

This query is haunting me. Seems my creativity is going into making up excuses, so I'd better just write it and get it over with.

Showered with Jewels

Proof that great ideas DO often strike in the shower! A news brief in the June 2007 Ladies Home Journal quotes recent research: "'Our skin is designed to naturally administer the right proportions of molecules to have a beneficial, stimulating effect on our thinking,' explains Frank Rice, Ph.D., a professor of neuroscience. . ." Credit your endorphins -- the stuff that gives you your natural highs, like those you get from exercising or massage. Or maybe from hugs. I read somewhere that for maximum creativity, you need 12 hugs a day.

What's a few wet footprints on the carpet compared to inspiration? Each gift of sudden inspiration comes only once, to only one person. You don't want to lose it. Even Emily Dickinson thought, " 'Twill keep," but it won't -- and you don't want to have to say along with her, ruefully, "The Gem was gone -- /And now, an Amethyst remembrance/ Is all I own."* Get out of the shower, out of bed, or pull over the car, and write down that idea or first line. I do, even if it's a bother. My personal research says that you have two or three minutes before the gift turns to vapor. (Writers do receive other gifts -- such as book ideas -- that are less perishable.)

To be an artist is to be a channel or gateway for creative power. Enjoy your appointment to the welcoming committee!

*"I held a Jewel in my fingers--" (#245)

A Nation of Artists

I think the creativity I see all around me is getting to critical mass and we are about to become a nation of artists.

The Internet has its users making their own films, posting their own writings and music and art, organizing and collaborating, and sharing ideas, opinions, and new software. But the Internet is only part of the arts revolution. The postal carrier does crafts; the doctor paints; the street kid makes up poems; the stay-at-home mom does Japanese-style gardening; the teenager designs and sews her own clothes; Grandma writes and publishes her own cookbook.

Somewhere I read that "The M.F.A. is the new M.B.A." and I believe it. Employers used to shun "creative types," thinking them too dreamy or weird to become compliant worker bees. Now these companies are clawing the walls to get creativity.

During the T'ang Dynasty, if a man wanted a high-level job he had to go to the regional capital and take exams. One of the tests was whether he could write a good poem.

Go Easy On Yourself

I've been fiercely disciplined lately. I'd love to go easy on myself today. So:

I will think highly of myself and my accomplishments. In fact I will list them.

I will finish a piece or leave it unfinished, as I please.

I won't wish I were another writer. I'm who I am, and I'm where I'm at. World, you can just deal with it.

I won't wish I had been born with an Anglo surname. I won't notice that the new issue of Natural Bridge, #17, features six "emerging writers" from around the U.S. Their surnames are: Boyle, Garrett, Fenton, Williams, Kohler, and Merrifield. (This issue was edited by John Dalton, who is a nice guy.)

Just for today, I'll puke up a draft of something new, maybe even something totally "out there," without caring how good it is and where I will publish it and how people may shun me when it's published. I may write as badly as I want, or as badly as I can. (Fun.) How about a poem about a dragon and a princess...