The Real Writer

To Write or Not to Write...

“What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that may cost and wherever it may lead.”

-- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I'm going to use this quote to suit my purposes today. It can cover alot of life's facets. How about how it applies to writing?

It's your choice, of course. Lie around watching television, do laundry or dishes, call friends and gab on the phone all afternoon, go shopping for yet another pair of black shoes, all the while feeling that nagging poking in the back of your head and that disappointed voice saying sadly, you should be writing, you should be writing.... Don't you just HATE that know-it-all voice?!?!

OR, you can go over to the computer, or grab a piece of paper and a pen and just write. If you have to say to yourself, "Okay, let's get this over with," then say it and get it over with! If it makes you mad, be mad, if you're frustrated because you have nothing to say, be frustrated. Sit down and write about how you feel and why you shouldn't have to write if you don't want to. But also breathe and allow yourself to be open to the good parts of writing that you love, too. For example, here's what I wrote recently along those lines:

I don't want to write anything! It's summer. I want to lie in the park under a tree reading. I want to go to the movies. I want to sleep. Yes, writing can be thrilling and mysterious, and when it's going well I could do it for hours, but how often does that happen? About twice a year. Usually it's a parasite, constantly sucking at my energy, and then when I finally do go to the computer, nothing comes out the way I had it written in my head. It was perfect there; it was musical, intense, visual, powerful, and original. Once it's out it's flat, and boring, and contrived. I don't know why I do it. I don't know why I bother. I wish I could let it go and never write again. But then I would feel even worse, I know. I wouldn't be myself. Here's where I admit for the 600th time that it's just who I am - a writer - and there's no getting around it. I can accept it and honor it, or I can make it extra hard and never get out any of the things I want to say. Guess I better write!!

And then I wrote 7 pages of the memoir I'm working on. Sometimes you just have to complain first. Try it. It helps. Yes, writing takes time and effort. Yes, it's a sacrifice, but like the quote above says, no one is forcing you, and you never know where it may lead - good or bad, it's somewhere other than where you were, which is always progress. New direction, new perspective, new ideas, new images, new information - all these come when you move forward. It's worth it.

If you need an extra kick in the butt here it is (and I read this after I wrote the above about how I get irritated because what's in my head seems better than what ends up on the page; guess I better rethink that...):

From the inspirational calendar on my desk:

THE THINGS I CREATE ARE EVEN BETTER THAN I IMAGINE.

Say it with me...

On Walden Pond

"We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when
we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him
be where he will." -Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)

I'm a little ahead of myself on this post, because I haven't actually been to Walden Pond (yet). But I was very close this weekend, as I was up in Wayland, MA (near Boston), which is about 15 mins from Walden Pond, visiting one of my very dearest friends, another writer, who moved there in April. We planned to go, but a trip to Paper Source (www.paper-source.com, if your heart doesn't beat faster when you see this website, then you're not a Real Writer) effectively put an end to that. We spent about 2 hours there, and then I had to leave. But, oh, it was 2 hours so very well spent!

Back to my point, which is to share a bit of trivia that gets me a little steamed. I was/am excited by the prospect of going to WP and standing in the house where Thoreau lived and wrote, however, in researching WP, we found out that Thoreau gave the original house to Emerson, who then sold it to his GARDENER. Two years later two farmers bought it and MOVED IT to the other side of Concord WHERE THEY USED IT TO STORE GRAIN. In 1868, they DISMANTLED IT FOR SCRAP LUMBER and put the roof on an outbuilding.

Fucking Emerson.

He certainly knew that Thoreau was a great mind. I'm sure he wasn't planning ahead, thinking of selling tickets to visitors for a tour of the house along with a reservation for a campsite with a canoe to boot, but he wasn't stupid. Couldn't he see how such a structure could be a symbol of an important time in the history of literature and have a little respect? So now, when I go, or you go, there's a replica, and you know how magical it feels to visit a replica of anything.

Hey, fucking Thoreau too! It couldn't have meant all that much to him if he just passed off the house. Yes, perhaps he trusted Emerson would know its value but, clearly E didn't and T should have been a little more careful. Honestly. If I had a lucky pair of underwear, the wearing of which prompted me to write fabulous poems, you can bet your Victoria's Secret I'd save them til the day I kicked.

So stay tuned. Next time I go up there I'll go to WP and we'll just see how it is.

I wonder if I could track down the sale of the wood to those farmers and see where that building is.

Fucking gardener.

Come to the Dark Side...

Saw a great bumper sticker this morning:

COME TO THE DARK SIDE. WE HAVE COOKIES.

While you're there, tune into the parts of you that you usually avoid: the ugly, scary, angry, lonely, greedy, selfish, crazy parts. Write something from each of their voices. It can be about what they want to tell you about you, themselves, or the world.

These voices are just as important for you to listen to for yourself, as well as when you are creating a character. Let your characters be all of the above when called for. Let them be human.

ADDENDUM: per the comment, note that I made a distinction between listening for yourself (as a journaling exercise, for example), and listening on behalf of your characters when you're in the process of getting to know and understand them. If you'd like to base a character on yourself and what you hear from these parts of you, great. If not, visualize your character and let those parts of him/her speak to you. A character's fears, phobias, and flaws are just as important as his/her talents and gifts. Making sure to represent both sides creates a well-rounded character. They, like us, though, will always have one aspect of their personality that stands out - positive or negative - and dictates how they will behave. Keep that in mind!

Making Meaning

This is from the weekly newsletter sent by Eric Maisel (www.ericmaisel.com), a coach for writers with wonderful books like "Deep Writing," that have helped me get out of my own way in my work. Read this:

"If I am a member of a species created for no particular high-minded purpose and if, for some bizarre reason, I am also permitted to know this, it must finally strike me one day that there is no meaning available like the meaning I have been built to want. My need for meaning, at best an adaptive trait, at worst a spandrel (an evolutionary artifact produced accidentally in the course of nature producing something else), causes me to hunger for something that doesn’t exist and can’t exist. I am built to want my actions to make sense in a universe that doesn’t make that sort of sense.

This is where we have arrived, simultaneously believing in and denying the indifference of the universe."

This is a powerful thought - that we each individually make our own meaning. It's also overwhelming, frightening, and a huge responsibility. Difficult as well, in a world where so many of us (some more than others) care a great deal about what others think of us and our work. We all have a strong need for approval. But approval should come, first and foremost, from ourselves for ourselves. The best art, music, dance, writing, the best anything, is original, and is the truest expression of the questions, thoughts, and ideas in the heart and mind of the artist. The most exciting experience is watching a play, or looking at a painting, or reading a book, or hearing a piece of music that is not like anything else, that you can feel the writer, painter, or composer brought forth from the deepest part of themselves, using their own private language. It's intoxicating. It makes you want to run home and try harder to do the same! It reminds me to write for myself, to focus on my way of expressing myself, not what I think someone else would want. If you're writing/painting/composing/whatever for the sole purpose of fitting into a certain market and making money, that's different. If you're doing it for the sake of the power of pure creation, go deep, be true.

This weekend I worked on my own meaning-making, and that was to start the residency memoir (In Residence). I wrote 11 pages on Sunday, in between necessary meetings and errands and cleaning, and it flowed so easily that I had a great time. Whatever becomes of this book, I need to do it for myself, in order to have some perspective on what I'm doing with my residency. It's a good way to hold myself accountable, to remind myself that it's a finite period of time I have for my projects at CA, and I can't 'drift' too much. Some drifing is necessary, but there's a moment when it becomes inertia due to fear and laziness, and we all really do know when that line has been crossed. We don't want to admit it, but we know! I should have it finished by October and my agent is eager to see it.

And Killing the Good Girl is ready to go to the contest, today. The book is eight years old and I can finally say that these latest edits are the last. So next time you think a piece of yours is really finished, take that with a grain of salt. It often takes many versions and many years before it finally comes to a 'rest!'

Take a few minutes to think about making meaning. Is that what you're doing? Do you want to? What's getting in your way? Can you let obstacles go? What are your 'meanings?' How do you order/process the world? How do you ask and answer your questions? Do they ever get answered? Maybe free associate your answers to these questions on a piece of paper. If you have trouble focusing on them, or they make you nervous, pretend you're interviewing yourself (you act as the interviewer while 'you' the interviewee is a separate person you don't know and who is free to say anything).

Go back over poems, stories, and journals, what themes keep appearing? What questions? Look at the conclusions you've drawn in the past. You don't have to find the meaning of life, here, just begin to explore your meanings.