Writing Salon Mistress Muses

The Writer's Learning Curve

Before plunging into a sunny Sunday comprised mainly of trying to catch up on Writing Salon tax bookkeeping/itemized deduction duties (given that I'm three months behind) I decided to preface this daunting task (daunting for ME, the poet/photographer type, not the accountant/math type) by taking 30 minutes to read an essay by a surgeon named Atul Gawande, which was published in the New Yorker a few years ago.

At the top of the essay is this editor's intro:

"Practice, practice, practice" . . . is as true for surgeons as it is for musicians. Atul Gawande, who has chronicled his own surgical training with honesty and humor, shares his experience—and anxieties—about the way doctors learn their skills: performing supposedly routine procedures on unsuspecting patients.

Gawande describes in harrowing detail how these procedures are not necessarily "routine" at all—not when the person performing them is an intern or a resident. You see, the thing is, surgeons have to begin at the beginning, just like anyone else learning a new skill. There has to be a first time, and a second and a third...before the student surgeon gets to the hundredth or thousandth time. There has to be PRACTICE, and the practice has to be done on real live humans. Not animals. Not cadavers. Real live people.

Anyway, Gawande talks about the training that surgeons go through, and I found this paragraph to be a good validation of what I already know to be true (not because of studies but from years of experience):

"There have now been many studies of elite performers—concert violinists, chess grand masters, professional ice-skaters, mathematicians, and so forth (ME: you can add "famous writers" to this list)—and the biggest difference researchers find between them and lesser performers is the amount of deliberate practice they've accummulated. Indeed, the most important talent may be the talent for practice itself. K. Anders Ericsson, a cognitive psychologist and an expert on performance, notes that the most important role that innate factors play may be in a person's  willingness to engage in sustained training. He has found, for example, that top performers dislike practicing just as much as others do. (That's why, for example, athletes and musicians usually quit practicing when they retire.) But, more than others, they have the will to keep at it anyway.

Gawande devotes a large part of his essay to describing what his learning curve was like for the difficult and scary procedure of inserting a "central line" into a patient's chest. Oh my god. What an eye-opener this was for me. Learning this procedure did not come easy for Gawande; time and time again he made all KINDS of mistakes with this procedure, ranging from minor to major. No, he didn't kill anyone, but he came darn close, and he knew of other interns/residents who HAD killed patients simply because they hadn't had enough practice and basically just blew it!

Toward the end of the essay he describes the day when he finally, finally GOT it:

"S., the chief resident, was watching me this time, and when everything was ready I had her tip him back, an oxygen mask on his face. His flesh rolled up his chest like a wave. I couldn't feel his clavicle with my fingertips to line up the right point of entry. And already he was looking short of breath, his face red. I gave S. a "Do you want to take over?" look. Keep going, she signaled. I made a rough guess about where the right spot was, thought it wouldn't be long enough to reach through, but then I felt the tip slip underneath his clavicle. I pushed a little deeper and drew back on the syringe. Unbelievably, it filled with blood. I was in. I concentrated on anchoring the needle firmly in place, not moving it a millimeter as I pulled the syringe off and threaded the guide wire in. The wire fed smoothly. The patient struggling hard for air now. We sat him up and let him catch his breath. And then, laying him down one more time, I got the entry dilated and slid the central line in. "Nice job" was all S. said, and then she left.

"I still have no idea what I did differently that day. But from then on my lines went in. That's the funny thing about practice. For days and days, you make out only the fragments of what to do. And then one day you've got the thing whole. Conscious learning becomes unconscious knowledge, and you cannot say precisely how."

This is something I try to get across to students in my classes, especially those who take the Daily Write Round Robin class. There are impatient students who want you tell them the shortcuts to success. Isn't that your job as a teacher? To deconstruct the process of writing? To spell out the elements of craft? Well, my answer is: yes and no.

We can show you examples. We can give you models to emulate. We can break it (the craft) down into many manageable fragments (plot, character, description, setting, point of view, concrete versus abstract, dialogue, etc.) that can be discussed one by one.

But that alone is not enough. Like it or not, you still have to practice. Over and over and over and over. . . until conscious learning becomes unconscious knowledge.

The Truth Brings Home Memories...

Here's an excerpt from an essay by one of my favorite writers. I chose to post it today because I thought I had lost the book but then found it in a box in the garage, recently. I opened it up today and turned to one of the pages I earmarked a few years ago. I liked it then and I still like it now:

"The truth brings home memories that make her suffer. Yes, she's used to writing while weighed down by a heap of rubble, but she is afraid that touching so many memories may scorch her hands and eyes. She's also afraid her memories may hurt others in her life, whom she loves. Compared to telling the truth, inventing was like playing with a litter of kittens. Telling the truth is like moving through a pack of tigers. She reminds herself that to a writer everything is permitted so long as she writes—even freeing tigers and taking them out for a stroll. But in fact she doesn't believe writers have any special rights, any more than others do. So she faces a problem she cannot resolve. She doesn't want to be a shepherd of tigers.

Teaching Writing

Today I stumbled upon and enjoyed this essay by writer Anne Bernays, in the New York Times archive of their "Writers on Writing" column. It's about how she became a writing teacher — a profession, she quickly discovered, that was entirely different from that of being a writer.

I hope a few students will read it and gain a deeper appreciation of (or at least think twice about) the fact that teaching is an art form, too. But I guess no one can fully understand this unless they've been a teacher. It's like trying to tell someone how hard (or rewarding) parenting can be. You have no idea until you become a parent yourself, and then WHAM! You get it.

What's a Book Proposal and Why Write One?

It's never easy for us to fill the Book Proposal writing class taught by Dianne Jacob, even though learning how to write a book proposal is of the utmost importance if you ever want to get a nonfiction book (or a memoir) published. I wonder why this is. Are we too honest in our course description, in that we don't try to hide the fact that writing a book proposal is hard work? We say upfront that a book proposal can be 60 pages long. Maybe that scares people off?

Well, if you have an idea for a nonfiction book or a memoir, I strongly urge you to consider reconsidering your reluctance to take this class! If you want more explanation (beyond our course description) about why writing a really really good book proposal is essential, you can find it here on Dianne's website.

Be brave, be bold, be practical, be smart, be determined.  Dianne will help you break down the process into manageable chunks. Step by step. Otherwise, you can dilly dally around forever, talking about your book idea but never making it REAL.

A Good Example of Short Personal Essay/Memoir

At our "Meet the Teachers" soiree in Berkeley this past Saturday night, our personal essay class teacher, Alison Luterman, brought me a copy of More magazine from October 2008; it's the one with Michelle Obama on the cover.

More published a piece of Alison's in their Memoir section. It's called "The Widows' Summit" and is about her recollections of her marriage to her ex-husband, George — memories intertwined with musings about her interactions with his other two ex-wives (Alison having been #2), after his death.

It's a wonderful piece. I am in awe of Alison. I usually am after reading anything she has written.

I went on Google to see if I could find the article somewhere online, to point you toward it. I typed in: Alison Luterman Widows Summit. This led me to the More magazine site, where I discovered you can order digital back issues of the magazine for only 99 cents. Just click on "Purchase Options" when you get to the site. A quick and easy way for you to read this lovely piece (and very probably be inspired to try harder to write your own pieces).

Analogies and Metaphors

I received this email from Writing Salon teacher Alison Luterman today. It came in just at the moment when I was wondering what to post on this blog. I thought, Easy way out!  and took it.


Every year, English teachers from across the country submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high  school essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country.

Here are last year's winners.....

1.  Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making  and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3.  He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went  blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a  pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the  dangers of looking at a solar eclipse, without one of those boxes with a pinhole  in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine  laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it    throws up.

6. Her  vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a  six-foot, three-inch tree.

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30  years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock,  like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.

9. The little  boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball  wouldn't.

10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty  bag filled with vegetable soup.

11. From the attic came an unearthly  howl. The whole scene had an eerie,surreal quality, like when you're on  vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of  7:30.

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a  sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots  when you fry them in hot grease.

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the  star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two  freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36  p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35  mph.

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences  that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

16. John and Mary had never met.  They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

17. He fell for  her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.

18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a  steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted  shut.

19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

20. The plan  was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might  work.

21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not  eating for a while.

22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping  on a land mine or something.

23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe  and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire  hydrant.

24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids  around with power tools.

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing  up

More Dear Natalie

"You have to earn the right to make an abstract statement. You earn this right by using the concrete bricks of detail. After much original detail, you can take a little leap, step away, and make a statement: "Ah, yes, life is good," or "Life sucks." But you can't say "Life sucks" until you have given us a picture of it: a man lying in a gutter, mosquitoes feeding at this open sores, the tongue of his right shoe hanging out, his pockets turned inside out, his eyes stunned closes, and his skin a pale yellow." — Natalie Goldberg

Push Yourself

"Push yourself beyond when you think you are done with what you have to say. Go a little further. Sometimes when you think you are done, it is just the edge of beginning. Probably that's why we decide we're done. It's getting too scary. We are touching down onto something real. It is beyond the point when you think you are done that often something strong comes out." — Natalie Goldberg

Dear Alice Munro

Last night after midnight, I finally managed to stay awake long enough to finish reading one short story by Alice Munro. The story was called Chance, and it was in her book of short stories called Runaway. Her story, which was character driven, pulled me along as deftly as a magnet pulls a metal filing.

What was going to happen to shy and romantically inexperienced Juliet when she went to visit the man she'd met on the train? They had spent only a few hours on the train together. He was, essentially, a stranger. It had been six months since the train encounter when she received a short letter from him, a letter that said little more than "I've thought of you often." He had sent it to the school where she taught, because he hadn't known her address and, in fact, could not even remember her last name.

Nothing boded well for Juliet. The trip seemed destined to end badly, somehow. But how? I was reminded of myself at age 21, the same as as Juliet. I had all but forgotten how it feels to be 21, to be so on the verge of. . . almost everything!

Where was Alice Munro taking Juliet? Where was she taking ME? And why?

Reading that story made me want to write again. I'd also forgotten how reading can inspire me as a writer. It doesn't even have to be a whole book. My time for reading is limited, and squeezing in a short story is about the best I can do right now. But oh, what a relief from the torture of TV. A torture I impose on myself far too often. What an idiot I am! Television has gotten so BAD. The reality shows are hideous. Moronic. They certainly don't inspire me to write.

Dear dear Alice Munro. Thank you.

My tip for today (obvious but can never be said enough to an American): Read more good literature. It will inspire you and perhaps even teach you a thing or two about how to improve your own work. Turn off the TV. Turn off the iPod. Turn off the cell phone. Turn off the radio. Turn off the computer. Pick up the book. Open the book. Read.

Walking & Writing

I have more to say (surprise!) about my last post. Much more. However, I feel like a change of pace, so..... just so you don't think I've become nothing but a boring BCO Blogger (Breast Cancer Obsessed Blogger), I'd like to add that I've been working away on the new spring session schedule of Writing Salon classes, and am rather excited about a new class we'll be offering called Walking & Writing, taught by Stephen Vincent.

Stephen just sent me a short series of some of his own writings that he did (or started) while out walking around San Francisco. The writings are coupled with photos that he also took while out walking, and the series is titled Ghost Walks. Here's a small, lovely excerpt from Ghost Walks.

More about Walking & Writing later, but right now I am inspired, partly by Stephen, to go out for my three-mile walk before the next downpour arrives. This time I'm taking my new Nanopod because, as much as I enjoy the peacefulness of walking in silence, I also sometimes get bored with that. I want to whisk myself around Bernal Hill to the sounds of music today. Maybe a little Zydeco and World Beat.

The Truth Is. . .

I'm going to take the easy way out this morning, and do a cut and paste blog entry. Below is an excerpt from a book about writing, which I typed out last night to send to my Round Robin class members. Since the Round Robin is a class that requires students to write from prompts for 10 to 12 minutes a day, every day (without planning ahead of time what they want to write), I especially wanted them to note the graph that I've put in bold.


"All of my friends, and most of my acquaintances, are writers of one sort or another, or editors or agents who deal with writers constantly. But it's remarkable how little I know of what happens to writers when they're actually alone writing.

If the way my mind works when I'm trying to write has any resemblance to the way real writers' minds work, then I pity them all. When I have time to write, the ideas aren't there — or if the ideas, then not the words. Forcing myself to put the words on paper helps not at all: insights become platitudes as phrased when writing under self-imposed duress. You see?!

If I determine once and for all to finish up a section which has been "nearly finished" for months, then the simplest transitional paragraph evokes related but irrelevant speculations and I find myself furiously scribbling thoughts that get further and further from what I was intending to do, that cover material I know I must some time write, but it's material that I'll want to have make a different point from the point I'm making with it now.

Still, one often stares so blankly for so long at the paper to no avail that to be writing anything -- and this fast! -- is to be exploited while it lasts. And perhaps there are some sentences in it that when later combined with the laborious, correctly directed writing-under-duress can be organized to say what it is that's needed.

Combining them, then, later -- determined this time to make a coherent sequence out of all these scraps and all these sets of three or four pages of hasty handwriting, some retyped some not -- I try to construct some sort of bridge between two of these passages, some transitional passage, which somehow gets me started on a related train of thought, but certainly not the one that's needed here, and off I go again, wildly and enthusiastically (but despairingly) scribbling something I hope is good and may have some use later: another disjointed passage to puzzle over.

This is a sample of that.

Can I use it to say that the necessary, planned writing is often the most pedestrian, if not actually awkward, and that what seems most useless when it is being written will often prove not only best but eventually central, because it flows as it comes -- which it wouldn't do if it were wrong with the mind, with your own real thoughts on the matter?

But that's not it, not really. Sometimes I can see not only exactly what it was I meant in such-and-such a passage, but also a use for it with a whole new slant. I can comprehend the whole. I can see beyond a few pages to where so-and-so might lead. Befuddlement passes. Super ego sneaks away in shame. Energy releases clarity. Clarity releases energy. What paralyzes a writer is the inability to see where what he is writing is going -- to see the connections between the aspects of his work. Concentration is all that's needed, really. A deadline releases nervous energy. Adrenalin flows. There's someone who wants the work, is waiting for it. Encouragement's coming, is on the way. No, again that's not it, really. It's more than that. The truth is that the only way not to feel really terrible is to work."

    from Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular, by L. Rust Hills

The End

"I wanted a perfect ending. . . . Now I've learned, the hard way,
that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear
beginning, middle, and end. . . . Delicious ambiguity." — Gilda Radner

My students will be arriving in an hour. Since I still have things to do to get ready for this Round Robin class that I teach every session, I can allow myself only ten minutes for a blog post. Guess I'll have to cut to the chase and get right to the ending.

I love good endings. Every time my writing group meets, we all pretty much know what each one of us is going to say by way of critique. I don't mean that we know exactly what will be said, but we know what each person will zero in on. Martha, for example, always always always focuses on looking for the first signs of conflict, and she always always always wants the first signs to be moved up closer to the beginning of the piece. Doug always always always thinks that the original version was better than the revision. Eric always especially appreciates the poetic aspects of any piece. Mary Ann always either cries or says it's beautiful, or both. Will always fixes small punctuation errors on the hard copy, and pays a lot of attention to what you seem to be trying to SAY, so much so that he usually "gets" it better than anyone else does. Karen always (okay, not always but often) says she thinks it's brilliant. And I always say that I think it should end sooner. "Just lop off that last line," I say. Or "What if you ended it with the second-to-last paragraph?"

This is because I prefer endings that don't try to wrap everything up all nice and neat. I'd rather my endings end with a question than an answer.

Today while sitting in the dentist's chair waiting to have my teeth cleaned, I read a 3,000 word short story, "A Taste of Dust," by one of my favorite writers, Lynn Sharon Schwartz. I particularly loved her ending:

"She tried to telegraph back the kindly message he wanted: I'm sorry it turned out this way. I would help you if I could. But as the door shut behind her, her face showed envy, not sorrow. He owned all the misery his risks had earned; he was in the thicket of his mistakes, impaled, fending off an excess of feeling, even if it was remorse. His life was dense and palpitating. She was clean and dry as old bones."

It satisfied me in the way that only a story that refuses to depend upon a tidy ending can. Needless to say, such a story will almost certainly be character driven.

Doing the Work

One of the Writing Salon teachers who has been teaching a longer class told me that he wants to change the class to a one-day workshop. Why? Because, he says, "not enough people want to do the work." They come to the class all fired up because they have an idea for a book,  but many drop out of the class as soon as they begin to realize that there's a whole lot more involved in writing a book than just having an idea, even a good idea.

Sometimes when people drop out of classes it's because the teacher isn't very good. But in this case, I know the teacher is good. Very good. I've taken his class myself, so I know only too well that you get out of it exactly what you put into it.

Many students haven't yet figured out that  writing really IS a craft and, some of the time, an art. They think they know this, of course. But they don't REALLY know it. They don't REALLY understand how much time and effort it takes to learn a craft.

If you attend a class 2.5 hours a week, that's great. You'll almost certainly learn a few things during that time. But to get the full value of the class, there's more to be done on your own. You do your homework. If you don't have a homework assignment, then you set aside time to practice. Or you read other writers. Or you think about writing, you train yourself to look at the world with the eyes of a writer. You ponder your ideas. You percolate.

Taking a class is a step in the right direction. But it's just one step. The teacher can give you valuable information and tools, but you still have to buckle down and do the work yourself. No magic trick, no formula, no book, no class, no teacher is going to do the work FOR you.

After your class has ended, maybe you'll opt to take more classes, or join a writing group, or work privately with the teacher, or plug away on your own. Or some combination of the above. Whatever you choose to do in order to progress, you aren't going to be able to escape the fact that writing is work, just like any other work.

For me, the work of writing sometimes feels like play. It's great when that happens, but it doesn't always happen. Often it feels daunting, boring, difficult, downright impossible. Often I don't have time for it. Or I do have time but I don't use the time well because I'm too afraid, confused or lazy to grapple with the hard stuff, the messy stuff.

Yeah, writing can get pretty messy. Just like life. And you muddle along as best you can.

Uh-Oh

I last posted on August 1st, I see. Five days ago. Rather a long time. Uh-oh. Apparently I just lived through five days while in the process of blinking my eyes ONCE. A split second ago it was last Sunday, July 31st, and I was two miles south of Occidental on the Bohemian Highway, where I turned onto a tiny, windy dirt road and curved around and about through dirt and woods until I found the tiny house guy (see my Tiny House blog for more information, which will be there someday I hope). That was nice, meeting the tiny house guy. A nanosecond past a split second ago, it was last Monday and I was posting  a poem written by Marie Howe. After that, I did a couple loads of laundry, got the car air conditioning fixed, vacuumed the floor of the Writing Salon's Berkeley classroom and then spot- cleaned the carpets with Resolve (straight from a spray can). And I taught a writing class. And I wrote about my softy-earred cat and about the multi levels of sex and about my new neighbor who is a chicken.

Getting to know Ms. Bak Bak Baaaaaaaaaak was the peak experience of my rapido week, I suppose. She's a clucker alright. I asked my writing class students if anyone knew whether it was legal to raise a chicken in the city. A couple of students said no, and a couple said yes. Then we moved on to doing an active verb exercise that I took from a book by Natalie Goldberg. Put ten concrete nouns in one column. Example:

shoe
table
car
ice cream
computer
bra
dog
clock
nose
feather boa

Now think of an occupation. Example: chef. Now make a column listing fifteen verbs that go along with the actions of a chef. Example:

saute
chop
dice
slice
stir
whip
mix
steam
braise
bake,
broil
flambe
boil
poach,
spice

Now combine your nouns with your verbs, as in: subject/predicate. As in: The feather boa spiced up her neck. Her Miracle bra poached her nipples. Clocks broiled my dreams. Computers flambed my brains. His ice cream whipped her into a frenzy of hot fudged desire.

We had fun. Our words stirred the thick August air. Karen's glove knelt (kneeled?) down beside the table leg.

Get to Work!

"A man named Buzz Green worked with me years ago at the Boeing Company. He had once been a jazz musician and along with a man named Lu Waters had founded a jazz band well known in its day. Buzz once said of Lou McGarrity, a trombone player we both admired, 'He can play trombone with any symphony orchestra in the country but when he stands up to take a jazz solo he forgets everything he knows.' So if I seem to talk technique now and then and urge you to learn more, it is not so you will remember it when you write but so you can forget it. Once you have a certain amount of accumulated technique, you can forget it in the act of writing. Those moves that are naturally yours will stay with you and will come forth mysteriously when needed.

"Once a spectator said, after Jack Nicklaus had chipped a shot in from a sand trap, 'That's pretty lucky.' Nicklaus is supposed to have replied, 'Right. But I notice the more I practice, the luckier I get.' If you write often, perhaps every day, you will stay in shape and will be better able to receive those good poems, which are finally a matter of luck, and get them down. Lucky accidents seldom happen to writers who don't work. You will find that you may rewrite and rewrite a poem and it never seems quite right. Then a much better poem may come rather fast and you wonder why you bothered with all that work on the earlier poem. Actually, the hard work you do on one poem is put in on all poems. The hard work on the first poem is responsible for the sudden ease of the second. If you just sit around waiting for the easy ones, nothing will come. Get to work."
                — Richard Hugo, The Triggering Town

Junction

Ranunculus told her that sleep would not matter where they were going. Where they were going, sleep lived everywhere — in the pilings, under the graves, between the sorrow bubbles.

They were climbing the memory steps, and Jurh could feel the truth in his words. San Francisco pricked at her visual horde, but Junction would be her home for the foreseeable future.

She thought of John asleep in their bed, his paperback rising and falling with his breathing. But John would not be able to accompany her on this chase. That was out of the question, so she had slipped out at two a.m. and caught the only bus to the dream station.

An unpredictable place, the Junction. Every corner eatery had been selling nothing but pot roast the last time she had visited. But the Passionada was everchanging, and Jurh now smelled nothing in the raw dawn air but paella — paella and memories. Guitar ballads rose from the cracks between the cobblestones under her feet, sending their sexual vibration swimming through her skin cover.

"Ranunculus," she said, "How long do you think this resolution will take?"

"That depends," he replied as they entered the first cloud story. "What is the nature of your narrative arc?"

She smiled, shrugged, and felt the tension cry out from her neck and shoulder muscles. "I'm not certain. I long for brevity, but then I question that longing. Must I see poetry in every moment? The lyrical has its rightful place, yes, but must it always predominate? This is my first question."

They were approaching the Wind Region. Rununculus moved his pre-paid hand over the invisible turnstile and motioned to her to enter. "Examine your first question carefully," he said. "Look at the shape of it, the direction, the speed. Is it becoming smaller or larger, lighter or darker, higher or lower? What is the background color?"

Ah, he was asking her about setting. Relief blew in through her pores. Setting she could handle; it was the search for a plot that she feared. Within what container would she place the kiss that had redefined the meaning and worth of all future kisses?

That Kiss loomed monolithic.   

Noodling Around with Suspense

The wing of the plane skimmed snowy peak after snowy peak. Lenore stared out over Nevada's plain brown monotony, wishing for another sesame snack and more Coca Cola. Five hours in the sky, at 469 miles per hour, that's how far she now was from Montreal.

San Francisco beckoned. Clouds hinted of fog to come, a return to the city of no summers. Everyone pretended that summer had come when June hit, but Lenore knew better.

Flying over Yosemite, she was't looking forward to working again. A yellow notepad lay flat before her, feigning order, a tidy week lying neatly on the horizon. Yes, she would attend meetings and show up at appointments, including the one with her doctor, where she would mention the darts of pain that had been visiting her left breast off and on for two days running. Below her, the depths had heaved up an ocean.

She thought about how she would attempt to describe the size, shape, and nature of these points of pain. They felt bigger and duller than the imagined sharpness of, say, sewing needles. More like knitting needles, she supposed. Quick flashes or, no, more like pokes than flashes — knitting needle pokes of pain, darts of pain but not as sharp as real darts. Then again, not as dull as. . . what? A pencil? A fork prong? A pair of tweezers? How did one describe "sharp?" What constituted "intense" as opposed to merely "strong" or "more than mild but less than medium?" How did one determine where to draw the line between "annoying" and "worthy of fear?" Each pointed flash was bigger than an itch or a twinge, but smaller than a migraine or a breadbox.

She had also pinpointed the area: inner lower quadrant, closer to the nipple than not. At 21,500 feet and descending, Lenore took solace in the still fresh memory of her son dancing on the round stage, his strong acrobat's arms akimbo above his head. Tears had gathered in hers eyes during the show, and again as the performance came to the end that signaled yet another beginning.

The snow below melted to pine green, the stewardess shifted from  French to English, and the Bay Area grid came into view as the edge of the plane's wing slit the sky. Fog took over, giving the air that familiar, annoyingly abstract blur, nothing at all like the specifically summer sky of Montreal. Lenore's ears popped, the engines hummed harder, and Hank pointed out the salt ponds that would take, he noted, five years to dry out. The knitting needle flashed again, then again, then again, like a lighthouse light.

Suspense

My friend Mary Ann of no more commas period recently sent me this post by her friend Mr. Black at bla bla bla, in which he muses on the nature of suspense - not suspense as a genre. but suspense as the artfully constructed set up that makes one's readers curious to know what's going to happen next - curious enough to keep reading. I don't know Mr. Black, myself, but I am relieved to let him do the "talking about writing" for me today, as I am embroiled in my own real life suspense story in which a woman must figure out a way to use steel wool pads in order to invest in a condominium AND save her love life.

Blogland, Kim Addonizio, plot, etc.

Novice blogger that I am, I only just learned that I can easily and quickly "subscribe" to my favorite blogs simply by clicking on a little orange icon in the lower righthand corner of my screen (when I am AT the blog I like), and a box pops up asking me if I'd like to Bookmark this site. I had to do some minor setting up, after reading the instructions on Firefox (my browser), in order to be able to do this, but it was worth it. (I don't know how other browsers work in this regard.) The "minor setting up" allowed me to create a special tab at the top of my browser page that I have labeled "Blogland." Now all I have to do is click on Blogland, and a drop-down menu appears that shows all my favorite blogs. If I click on one, I can see a list of all the most recent posts for that blog. Very handy for quickly finding out if someone has posted something new, recently.

This morning I revisited Too Beautiful, where Kim Addonizio's new book - a novel - got a mention. Kim's a poet, as most of you probably already know, so I was intrigued and impressed that she has now written a novel as well. (Kim and I were roommates for a while, back in the early '80s when we were both single moms. Her daughter was a toddler, my son was a baby. So long ago. . . so sleep-deprived, so NOT in my fifties!).

I  went to Kim's website to read more about the novel, not only because I was intrigued and impressed but because I've been toying with the idea of trying to write fiction, myself. This would be a HUGE leap for me, as I am mystified by the idea of writing fiction as opposed to what I've always written: poetry, personal essays, erotica, and "lyrical prose" that I'm not sure how to classify, genre-wise. I suppose the prose comes closest to resembling fiction, and now I'm trying to figure out if I want to attempt to turn it into bonified STORIES (thus my periodic references, as of late, to PLOT, a word that scares me mightily.)

I could ramble on about Kim, novels, fiction, my fear of plot, etc. but it'll have to wait. It's 8:15 a.m., and I've got an appointment in San Anselmo at 10 a.m. Haven't even gotten dressed yet. Oy.

Anyway, Kim's website led me to this interview with her in  the online journal, Slow Trains. Have a good Monday, all (whoever you may be). :-)

Today's WOW: It's a Good Thing to Read a Book Every Now and Then (Duh)

I actually read a book while I was in Montreal!  That's what it took (a trip to a city in another country) for me to finally find (make) the time to stop working long enough to read ONE novel. What a blessed relief - and pleasure.  Also a good reminder of why we aspire to write. If you start wondering, Why am I trying to do this writing thing? What's the point?  try reading a good book.  It will re-inspire you to keep at it. You'll also be continuing to learn about the craft of writing, even if you don't feel like you are. It's penetrating your skull via the mode of delight. What better way to learn something?

I read The Time Traveler's Wife by Audry Niffenegger - grabbed it at the airport magazine shop. It was a NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post and Publisher's Weekly bestseller, but I decided not to hold this fact against it. Later I noticed that it was first published by our own local publishing house, MacAdam/Cage, which, incidentally, has also published books by three Writing Salon teachers - Michelle Richmond, Pamela Holm, and Janis Cooke Newman. You can read more about MacAdam/Cage and the good work they are doing in this Poets & Writers article.

I was hooked by the time I reached the bottom of the first page of the prologue:

"Sometimes it feels as though your attention has wandered for just an instant. Then, with a start, you realize that the book you were holding, the red plaid shirt with white buttons, the favorite black jeans and the maroon socks with an almost-hole in one heel, the living room, the about-to-whistle tea kettle in the kitchen: all of these have vanished. You are standing, naked as a jaybird, up to your ankles in ice water in a ditch along an unidentified rural route. . ."

Montreal Here I Come!

May 25, 2005

Next Wednesday I'm getting on a plane to Montreal, going to my son's graduation from circus school. That's right, circus school. He's an acrobat. He found his right livelihood early on in life (at the age of five). What a gift. His major is "hand to hand." Graduation, for him, means being in a big performance for ten days running. I'm excited, I haven't seen him since December. He didn't come home for summer vacation last year because he went to Europe instead. He paid for his trip and expenses, as he traveled from country to country - England, France, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Spain, I forget where else - by doing street performances and gigs at festivals. In London, he and the other four members of his "troupe" looked for a traffic intersection with a long stop light. When they found one that lasted two minutes, that's where they performed. They'd do their tricks for a minute, then run around to car windows collecting donations. They made $300 in an hour. That got divided by five, but still! When I was his age, I was working for $2 an hour as a chicken girl at Woolworth's.

What does this have to do with writing? I don't know. Nothing and everything. It has to do with writing because in order to write you have to figure out how to create the space in your life to practice writing. That's a challenge, because you have to do other things at the same time, like raise families and make a living. Only a small portion of writers make a living from writing. I have the statistics on that somewhere. Maybe I'll find them and post them someday. Even FAMOUS writers resort to teaching, consulting, etc. Then of course there are the ones who have entire other careers in addition to their writing. William Carlos Williams was a doctor. Wallace Stevens was a businessman. Bill Clinton had to do a stint as president of the United States, for heaven's sake, in order to come up with the fodder for HIS memoir. Jane Fonda had to prance around as Barbarella before she was able to write HER memoir. (Plus she had to marry Tom Hayden, Ted Turner, and I forget the first hubbie's name — some lady's man director who wanted Jane to do threesomes. Plus, after all that, she had to go and become a born again Christian.)

One of "Those" Writers

I have a close friend, Diane, whose boyfriend died two weeks ago, suddenly, unexpectedly, and tragically. I say tragically, because — in addition to the fact that he was only 53 and on the verge of making it big as an artist  (or at least on the verge of turning a big corner) after many years of hard work — his death probably could have been prevented if he’d seen a doctor even one day earlier.

Diane is now beginning to write about this experience, and I have been transfixed by the last three or four writes that she has sent me. When she prefaced her last write with an apology for obsessing on the topic of her lover’s death, I wrote back and told her that she needn’t apologize, I was a hundred percent into reading what she was sending. The writes were painful to read, of course, but painful in a mesmerizing way.

I also told her that she had now become one of “those” writers who she and I used to jokingly talk about with an envy that we both knew was ludicrous: these were the writers who didn’t have to make up any compellingly dramatic fictional stories because their real life stories were dramatic enough. Life had handed them conflict and tragedy on a silver platter. All they had to do was write about it. Sure, they had to write about it skillfully, but even so, half the work had already been done for them. Our friend Fran, for example, didn’t have to strain her brain imagining a story about a woman whose husband became a quadraplegic after a bicyling accident. She didn’t have to come up with the idea, or even with the ensuing, agonizing details, because she had to live out every single one of those details, minute by minute, day by day, year by year.

“So much of what you have been writing about up until now,” I said to Diane, “— the trials and tribulations of your love life and how they were interwoven with your longstanding confusion over your own creative endeavors and independence — can now be made to move TOWARD this awful climax, a climax that is, in a paradoxial way, your means of resolving many issues in your life. In fact, on a certain ironic and poignant level, it’s your salvation.”

Diane can "hang" her story on the “event” of her lover’s death. She now has the narrative arc and the structure to do that.” Does this “objective analysis” sound cold?  Of course. Brutally cold. Fiction would be highly preferable.

Technorati Tags: writers, writing, fiction

Blogging Epiphany

Prompt for Today (stolen from my Round Robin class prompts):  Write about something you are tiptoeing through

I started out tiptoeing through my blog, but now I’m clomping around in it with boots on, venturing here and there, feeling wilder and bolder, and thinking, in my Johnny Depp’ish moments, “I can be or do anything I want to be or do! There are NO RULES when it comes to my blogsite. And if someone tries to tell me there are, hell, I don’t have to listen to them. (I can even say HELL if I want to.)

I don’t have to copy the way other people do their blogs. I can make my own rules. And I can break them three seconds after I make them, if I want to. Whew. What a relief. My epiphany. My revelation. My jubilation. (I’m basically such a goodie two shoes, it takes me a while to come to these obvious conclusions, but when I do, I feel as if I’ve just invented the wheel, discovered fire, and figured out that the earth isn’t flat.)

I suspect that the best approach to blogging is a combo of tiptoeing and clomping. I’ll tiptoe when it’s time to avoid writing too much self-indulgent crap. I’ll clomp when it’s time to be brave and let my voice ring out. This is really no different, of course, than what any writer, in any genre, attempts to do. You try to achieve a balance between self-indulgent drivel and self-confident skill mixed in with occasional strokes of brilliance.

This morning I did some more blog investigating, trying to understand how to use RSS feeds. I’m getting the hang of all this stuff, URL by URL, link by link. I’ve torn out quite a bit of my hair in the process, but each time I figure something out, I am born again.

Yesterday Eau De Mike actually sent me an email cry-for-help. He wanted to know how I got that little SUBSCRIBE thingie onto this blogsite. I felt cool. Wow, somebody was actually asking ME how to do something computer-related, as if I were a techie. I told him about Bloglet, and also about how to do "special" things with TypePad Lists.

And while I'm thinking about this stuff, here's a hint for anyone having browser problems, and especially anyone still using AOL: Consider switching your browser to Firefox, and check out Thunderbird as an email program. Both of them are very good, and both will help you get a better grasp of stuff like RSS feeds (a fancy but relatively easy way to subscribe to several blogs, once you negotiate the LLC (Layman’s Learning Curve). Firefox also has this great function that allows you to have as many “tabs” going, all at once, as you want. I do NOT miss Netscape, let me tell you. Or Internet Explorer. Firefox is where it’s at.

34 B or 32 C?

I watched Oprah today and learned that I could very possibly be wearing the wrong size bra. It may in fact be that I have NEVER worn the right size bra. During the “bra interventions” on today’s show, one woman who had been wearing a 34 C for years was told that her true size was a 32 G, as in Good God Almighty.

But enough about Oprah. Lenore is calling to me. I’m not sure what she wants today. Poetry topped off with another Lean Cuisine? 280 calories of macaroni and cheese? Or perhaps a tall dark handsome stranger with whom to dance the bolero?

Lenore, Lenore. What’s your story? You need a narrative arc.  This isn’t Waiting for Godot, this is my desire for you to embed yourself in a plot. I want more than my usual metaphorical riffs. I want more than your repetitive yearnings. Everything doesn’t have to be about longing, Lenore. 

But it’s 5:45 p.m. on Friday, and only the keys are looming on the horizon, the keys I need to have made for the magazine writing class teacher. Otherwise he will not be able to get into the classroom on Sunday. Is Cole Hardware still open? And what about the garbage I forgot to take out last night? It stinks. And what about that lump I noticed in my armpit ? And what about Tom’s horribly unexpected death thirteen days ago? And what about my most recent set of doubts? I can’t see the plot for the doubts.

Lenore, I need the wacky plaid warmth of your flannel shenanignans in order to alleviate the stultifying metal of my machinery. Yes, I must investigate the ins and outs of small business liability insurance, but surely I must also find a way to embrace the ranunculas as they sculpt the air around their sexy stems. Yes, I must remember to set the table, brush my teeth, floss my way to calm, memorize the Desiderata. But it would be unthinkable for me to stop thinking the unthinkables. You know that, Lenore. You know it, you respect it, and I love you for it. 

I heard you earlier this afternoon, whispering to one of the dining room chairs when you thought I wasn’t listening. You asked the orange one if it was attempting to send you a telepathic message. You stared at its rigid back, its chipping paint, its curly-cued designs tinged with years of dirt, and you encouraged it to say something wise.

I admire the cheerful way you allow the chaos of the world to ravish your mind, Lenore. Because of you, I want to race out into the night in search of the right plot. I want more structure. I want an arc that will properly distribute and support the weight. I want the right bra for my story, Lenore, and I am counting on you to help me find it.

Writer's Block

Seth, one of my Round Robin students who is a deputy public defender by day and a writer by night (or whenever he can steal the extra time to squeeze out a few paragraphs) recently turned me on to a gimmicky book for writers: The Writer’s Block: 786 Ideas to Jumpstart Your Imagination, written by Jason Rekulak and published by Running Press.

It’s a mini book in the shape of a big fat block, of course. Since I have nothing against gimmicks, if they’re good, and have always been a fan of mini books, I bought it and took it with me to my last eye doctor appointment, where I found it to be perfectly acceptable waiting room reading. At home, it fits onto my bedside table without forcing me to move anything crucial like my box of cookies. Also, I could see carrying it around in a purse if you’re a person who likes to write on the fly and wants something handy for quick hits of inspiration.

It’s filled with writing prompts, and I can see why Seth, who has it in him to write a detective thriller one of these days, would have liked them:

"Write a story about a con artist. How does he choose his victims? Has he ever suffered a crisis of conscience? Do your answers change if he is a she?"

"Create a character who is falsely accused of a crime."

It also has photos, plus words of advice and inspiration. And the bibliography refers you to miscellaneous writerly resources, for example, the link to the New York Times books section,  which I already knew about BUT had forgotten. (FYI: Anything the NYT has published in the last 30 days is free. Everything else you have to pay for, but you can pick and choose. For example, you may want to look up different essays from their “Writers on Writing” column. I don’t know if it’s still going. . . let me know if you find out.)

Finding Your Writer's Voice

We arrive at the Abiquiu Inn. Shadows from the weeping willow leaves outside our window flicker on the aqua, lavender and magenta bedspread's Southwestern design. I sit on the bed in Room 19. Jack's reading a Sue Grafton mystery novel and drinking a Beck's beer. I'm sipping wine from a paper cup and perusing my two little postcard books of paintings by Georgia O'Keefe:

The Grey Hills.

Blue and Green Music.

Red Cannas.

You can hear occasional freeway traffic outside our room, but in the desert where cars are small and scarce, it’s the sound of wind blowing through trees that permeates consciousness.

No radio or CD player. No coffee pot or wine glasses. One bedside table, one lamp.

We have arrived at a place where less is more. I stare at a photo of Georgia O’Keefe in her eighties. Her wrinkled arroyo face fits perfectly into the New Mexico landscape.

Yellow Cactus.

Black Cross.

Red Amaryllis.

Pelvis with the Distance.

O'Keefe wrote in her journal:

"I was the sort of child that ate around the raisin on the cookie and ate around the hole in the doughnut, saving either the raisin or the hole for the last and best . . . So probably — not having changed much -- when I started painting the pelvis bones I was most interested in the holes in the bones."

You'd think it would be easy to be yourself but it's not. It's not easy to find your own voice when you are inundated by the voices of others. Maybe that's why Georgia O’Keefe gravitated to the desert, to a place where she could be alone with the sound, the texture, the color of her own voice.

Poetry or Plot

Question to Myself: After the sentence has been beautifully completed, after the scene has been done to perfection, then what? I'm supposed to come up with a PLOT?

Horrified Answer from Myself: I think NOT!

Question to Myself: Does this mean poetry is my only resort? I have nothing against poetry, of course. Well, that’s a lie. I do. Pure poetry no longer suits my needs. Stories do a better job of that — stories that contain plenty of poetic language. But PLOT?

Voice from On High: Sounds like you're in a bit of a muddle, dearie. Good luck to you sorting it all out.

I Can't Write

I can’t write.

The keys are too black, the letters too white.

I am succumbing to passive verb constructions.

Hot coffee doesn’t help.

Lukewarm coffee doesn’t help.

Cold coffee doesn’t help.

I can’t write.

My toes are cold.

Passive verbs are everywhere, lots of little Clark Kents wanting to become Supermen but unable to make the leap.

I can't write but I must, so I do.

"The art of writing consists of placing the seat of one's pants to the seat of one's chair."— Sinclair Lewis

To Play Like Yourself

Words of wisdom meant for musicians but applicable to writers:

“I’ll play it first and tell you what it is later.”

“Do not fear mistakes. There are none.”

"Don't play what's there. Play what's not there."

"Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself."

Who said them? Miles Davis.

My favorite? The last one.

Back in the days before the Writing Salon graduated from a blackboard to a whiteboard, that quote was scribbled at the top of the board and no one ever erased it.

The Adverb

"The adverb is not your friend." — Stephen King