Learning to Write for Me

082519

Learning to Write for Me

Let’s face it.  Publishing sucks.  I can say that without hesitation even with two published novels under my belt.  They’re no longer on the shelf.  I don’t have an agent.  And I can’t sell hot chocolate to Eskimos.

I didn’t always have the ambition to write for a living and to be honest, I don’t any more (that's a lie---think of it as an exorcism). When I was a kid I just naturally told stories.  My philosophy, apparently, was if an adult asked a stupid question it was because what they really wanted was a story. So I gave them one. Of course I remember very few of those but my mom seems to remember many. She says she looks back on those days and shivers at the thought of how easily I could have been removed from our home and my parents fined for neglect at least.  They were not neglectful, but my stories seemed to suggest it.  That was not my intention, my intention was to tell a story of great adventure, mystery, intrigue.  Now I’m proud to think that they were also believable enough that adults in the family, when I was little, would take Mom aside to discuss “that time when ...”!

Stories were just all around me and in me and I had voices in my head that argued or consoled or discussed grave matters—with each other, not with me.  Running dialogues all the time.  I thought, and still do, in hard copy—editing the sentences crawling through my mind when I walked or waited for friends in a restaurant or stood in a grocery store line or drove to work. All the time.

I’m a third generation writer (at least) and that’s not to make you gasp or think “no wonder,” it merely speaks to how natural and expected it seemed to write things down—feelings, images, dialogue, descriptions, stories.  My sister writes also.  At least one of her daughters writes. It was natural, then, to claim English Literature as well as Creative Writing as my two majors, though back when I was in school there didn’t seem to be a lot of help from guidance counselors to build your major and I was actually PREVENTED from taking as many writing courses as I had intended and desired and it made me very angry.  The classes I did take, however, were great fun and I loved every minute.  (Even in high school, it’s easy to believe you’re special when English teachers pretty much tell you your work is brilliant, no matter what you do...and when you fall in love with Beowulf and demand to study a more authentic interpretation of the language and form when they insist on reading horrific narrative versions that skate over two or three “key passages” some idiots think will interest teenagers, you can pretty much design your own courses—but that was another day and time.)

In college, one of the writing classes I took included the requirement to submit so many articles to appropriately fitting publishers.  Fortunately, getting published was not a prerequisite.  What we were learning was how to write and tailor it to publishing.  Turns out everything I wrote for that class was published—like maybe five different articles and stories.  I don’t know how much of that was really me, or the connections my professor had. I didn’t know it till class was nearly over that semester, but he was a great pal of my dad’s and they’d worked together on different assignments in years past.  At the time, I felt like whatever I wrote was pretty good—not easy, not just whatever flowed, I had to work at it, shape it, edit it, but it was always published.  So I believed this is what I would always do and it would always be published.  Complicate that with having a very close friend and literary mentor who was a year ahead of me whose thing was primarily poetry and she won every contest she entered and her great dream was to be an editor and publisher. Not long after we graduated, and I was often sending her short stories just for fun, she sent one back to me and said, “This is a novel.  Here’s what you do to turn it into one.”  So I did and her publishing house published it and I was twenty-seven years old.  Career set, but not lucrative.  I had to work otherwise to pay bills and I worked in advertising as a copywriter and in a small enough house in the south (my high school and college years were in the upper midwest) with people who knew my father but were giving me a chance to prove myself worthy, that I was copy chief managing freelance writers working with me.  Loved the creativity of advertising and marketing (business to business) but hated the business side of it. But it was in this setting that I was able to finish the draft of that first novel and see it published.

I don’t know what happened. It all got away from me. My writing wasn’t good enough or edgy enough to be noticed and propel me into a world of constant demand.  I was lazy I guess, had to make ends meet, needed to do other things, getting older all the time.  Not realizing that I was maybe running a little scared or a little weary of the pace and demands I saw in a publishing world.  That wasn’t who I am.  But somehow I strayed somewhat from the love of writing for the sake of writing.  The love of the story.

What I haven’t said here is that in college, ironically enough and just before the senior class of writing and submitting, I was very heavily attached to a professor who taught sociology and criminology (I know, I can’t explain it) who was a great fan of my writing (or at least always had something positive to say) and she said to me one day, “It’s time to grow up.”  I stood gobsmacked.  She waited but then clarified, “It’s time to grow up and share your writing with the world.”  My entire life I’d shared my writing with my family and close friends and what I shared was connected with those people specifically in some way.  It was time to risk publishing.  Was not interested in the least, had not considered this as a career per se, it was just what I did like brush my teeth, take a shower, write. I had no other agenda.  Until that day.  I don’t blame her but it does speak to the power of a teacher or mentor or whatever you would call her to say the one thing that roots in your head and suddenly becomes a kind of god that grows as a demand, misunderstood or not.

This is the polar opposite of success stories where people are told how worthless they are, or that they’ll never be able to make a living with that thing they love inside them (Bette Middler always comes to mind but there are others), and so they fight against all odds and then...a star is born.  Maybe that’s why it’s not working for me.

Fast forward—because that’s literally what time does—I have been teaching for more than two decades and the last fifteen years it’s been in a highly competitive program for the more brilliant high school students pursuing ivy league acceptance and so many of these kids are literally changing the world to become a better place. I am in love with these teenagers and I love my work, but I hate school—the bureaucracy, the unrealistic demands of politicians and administration who have no idea what it’s like to be in a classroom. I’ll just stop there.  The point is, who has the energy to write?  Well I do, sort of, at times, but not how I thought it would be.  Somewhere back there three decades ish ago I had been working on a novel must have been 10 years and was in a time and place where I was finally able to seriously rewrite it for about the third time.  I moved closer to my folks and will forever be grateful for the “plot whisperer” my dad was who helped me reorganize it (I suck at plot—my thing is dialogue and setting...character-driven stuff but it’s gotta have plot, oi) and was able to publish it.  But publishing it was worse than the first time. See, the biggest problem I have with publishing is that it’s 20% writing and 80% marketing.  Yeah I was in marketing and advertising, but as a creative, not on the business, marketing side.  Promoting and hunting down where when and how to have book signings and soliciting speaking opportunities and all of that shut me down, basically. I thought that’s what the PUBLISHER was supposed to do.  That’s what all the “success stories” seemed to say.  Look at Harper Lee, with ONE NOVEL, and J.K. Rowling. You know all the ones I’m talking about.

Consequently I saw myself more as a failure I guess.  I didn’t write much as time passed.  All the voices in my head, the dialogue, the dreamy stories—these are transgenerational stories, science fiction stories, experiments with narrative forms—began to give up on me.  I have three novels sitting unfinished in their respective drawers.  My focus has shifted to being a failure because I don’t have (or want, really) the ability to market my stuff, spend time in business ventures, dealing with finances.  I am on my own so don’t have the capital to completely devote to making a go of it and quite frankly I don’t approach the writing as a business model and watching myself summer after summer “dabble” in writing (what it looks like from a business end) I would starve to death quite quickly.  All of these financial dangers are real.  But I’ve lost my baby in all that bath water.

Almost.

Definitely I need an audience.  Right now I’m writing with the idea that people will read this and love it like I read and love similarly toned self-revelational writing by some friends of mine.  I know better though.  It’s too long. Too self absorbed. Doesn’t have the “here’s how you can succeed” bent to it.  It’s melancholy and has no plot to speak of....

About a year ago, maybe five—again with that time thing—I decided/realized that the problem was that I had swerved focus to what I cannot control. Beating myself up and shriveling away from what I cannot control.  Not in the way I would want to.  I tell you what though, it is hard work to shift back to the core and basics—for the love of it—especially when it feels a lot like I’ve been abandoned by my Muse...She has taken her gift and wandered off.

I have to go back to writing for the love of writing.  Dwelling in the story for the love of the story.  Getting to know fascinating characters within me for simply loving their company and exchanging life giving ideas and lessons.  I have to truly, authentically, sincerely, focus on the story and the people in them again without even that absurdly annoying hint of –aha! And THEN I can publish it!

I have to come to terms with the commitment to never write to publish again.  This is the single most compelling reason I fail to write well I believe.  I know that I still want to publish.  That publishing, the idea of publishing has succeeded in making me believe therein lies my worth as a writer as well as my reason to write.

Is it too late? Once that innocence is lost can the purity of the well spring water flow ever again?

Recently I read a short story that was so well written I feel like I saw it as a movie actually!  About a woman in the west (like Arizona) who painted all the time. Alone. Loved it. Lived it. A young Hispanic boy shows up one day requesting a job. To work for her as an assistant, cook, whatever she needed. She’s a bit of a recluse, loner, odd and countercultural in that regard. Somehow her paintings were “seen” and had become important or popular and began to have financial returns for her. But she focuses always on the art.  A journalist shows up one day to interview her and in the interview there was a question something like, Now that you are famous, does that have an impact on your work? Has it affected the subjects you choose?  These questions stop her cold. The rest of the story follows her rather dismantling her life, she eventually destroys all of her work because she knows she is dying, or that death is imminent and she can’t stand the thought of her work being pawed over and judged by others, can’t stand the thought of being famous or known for her work.  Apparently this is based on a true story or at least a real character who felt similarly.  This woman was truly called to create and that’s what she did. The notion that her beloved creations would be exploited for monetary profit not only crippled her but enraged her to the point she felt she had to protect her creations (or protect herself, her own identity) by destroying them with her own hand before allowing them to be destroyed by fame (misunderstood by it).

I’m not looking for that extreme.  Story telling is a way of connecting with each other. Vital part of our human existence is to touch and be touched. Story is powerful for that. It can be. I’ve never really considered “what am I trying to say” so much as just following the lives of characters who come to visit my imagination and I simply get to know them. They’ve always been the ones to have something to say.  Until the idea of publishing sorta took over the greater segment of my mind and it is now part of what prevents me from writing.

Every day I’m working at spending some portion of the time writing. Anything. Thoughts like these, memories, characters, dialogue, pieces, descriptions of the surroundings where I am, sometimes I share them with one or two people, sometimes a bit on facebook. But they have to be short so I feel like I’m not fully developing anything and especially not a novel. I suck at plot even to this day and my plot whisperer is gone. The great story of my life that I wanted to write and was met with great joy in this plan by the driving force and we worked together but I didn’t make it the priority I should have and within five to six years she was dead and now gone and I have no source of information because family that is left is against my writing it and one is threateningly against it.  It’s hard to write with that threat over your head especially knowing that you don’t really know the story like you want to to write it. Look at me shifting to the second person.

There is something wrong and unfinished about these three manuscripts but I can’t help but wonder to what degree the reason is this knowledge they won’t be published or I won’t follow through with ensuring they are or facing the failure of soliciting and failing...the energy !!  At my age and stage...  Not old, mind, but just ... not pulled in that motivation.

Like any marriage, any first and profound love, especially with the love of your life, the BEING and DREAM and CONSUMMATION (the success) takes determination, permission, sitting with and listening, listening, continuing to listen, to speak softly and tenderly, to touch, to focus on the needs of the other more than your own, to recommit to time and energy, to be with, to dwell, for better or worse, digging deeply together to what really matters, to then turn and side by side move forward with the common goal and desire, to build together, to encourage each other, to abide, to linger, to chip away at the challenge, to continue, to love and nurture that love with more of the same.  Every day and perpetually.  This is what I want.  To live in this love and relationship with my muse and my stories. This is what I want.

freewriting on the conflict of writing and teaching

Flannery O’Connor warned me today—she grabbed me by the shoulders and with those piercing green eyes she said with fierce passion: do not abandon the story; do not abandon the mystery.

I love story.  I believe with all my heart the story will save you. Will save the world. I believe that the source of power in story is its ability to engender empathy.  It is empathy that connects us, protects us, enables us to love and accept those who are unlike us but with whom we can identify at the most basic level—our need to be loved, fed, protected.  Our desire to love, nurture, protect.  This is also the ultimate mystery—who we are and why we do what we do.  This is character and plot, pure and simple.

I also love kids.  Now THAT is a mystery.  I like the power of discovery, the openness most kids have in exploring the world...  But the harsh irony is that I spend all day banging my head against the walls of formal education where it is my duty to teach the tools of analysis.  “We murder to dissect” has rung in my ears since I was in high school myself and wondered why the teacher was teaching a great poet like Wordsworth who basically undermined everything she was teaching.  Now I do the same.

Because I have to teach the minutia of analysis and how to speak authoritatively of the author’s purpose, the structure of the story, the intent of meaning through an element, the textual properties and means of explication, I feel I have pounded the flavor out of the meat of mystery and pleasure and joy and true power of a novel—to alter and change us, sometimes without our conscious collusion.

Most of the year I languish under the desire and critical need to write, to create story, and summarily fail.  Most summers I dig and dig, struggle against the solid, stony ground of my imagination until once again I strike gold...or oil...or clear flowing waters of story...  But I seem to lose ground every year, find I am farther and farther away from finishing worthy stories, worthy novels, A worthy novel, to hand to a stranger and be read. 

I don’t know why.  It is a puzzling mystery.  But I want to write.  I want to learn how to tell a story.  A story with meaning.  I want to give to “someone” what I have loved in receiving great novels, great film, great short stories, great poetry. 

I tend to blame my job for being stifled and barren.  Oddly, pathetically, I feel I have made a sort of secret deal with my ancestors...I have not borne children, therefore (or because) I will bear stories.  And yet I have not done so.  Not really.  Not right now.  Not for a long time.

Even this...this...emotional dribble...is a violation of all that is story.  I am emoting and telling...not creating a story with pathos or empathy.  I am merely emoting.

I walked very fast today my 40 minute walk around the circle and I took Flannery O’Connor’s collection of essays with me and I read as I walked.  The humidity is so heavy and there were few walkers which I never realized before how much I prefer not having to pass others on the walk.  Sad isn’t it?  Anyway, got back and showered.  As I washed my face I was suddenly overcome with sadness thinking (didn’t even realize it—surprised me) about a particular student who is so very, very intelligent and is in so much trouble.  He has two more weeks of probation...he has four felonies.  He’s 16 years old.  His record will be expunged when he is 24.  Yet he has already established a habit of breaking the law.  It truly blows my mind that he is living that life.  I love this kid—he is bright and deeply insightful.  He picks up on subtleties in literature and poetry that even the majority of my IB students miss.  I know that this kind of sensitivity and high intelligence often gravitates toward the flames of self destruction but I don’t understand exactly why and I certainly don’t know how to stop it—only he can stop it.  But how can I help?

And I cried at all of this thought that didn’t have words until now.  This kid who is the youngest of three boys, three years apart.  His oldest brother is the scholar and the favored one whom his father loves—this boy feels that so keenly, I can see it ooze from every pore as he smiles calmly in the telling of it.  His brother, the one in the middle, 19 years old, he whispers, is transgender, doesn’t feel like he’s in the right body.  This draws a lot of pain and confusion from his father.  He is a great disappointment.  Of himself he says that he is the greatest disappointment of his father.  Whatever crimes he has committed...time he has done in jail...whatever it is, he feels he has deeply hurt and alienated his father.

Whenever I grow despondent about the writer’s block, the energy drain, the distance my stories keep from me, a friend of mine tells me that I am doing far more important work teaching and engaging with these kids.  But...I feel that I have betrayed a gift...a particular trust...I am not living up to my potential, not fulfilling my calling to write.  I am failing at the purpose of my life—this is how I feel, this is a deep and passionate conviction.  No excuses.  I am a story teller.  I must tell the story.  But every day I fail.

I don’t know how to fight this dragon.  I don’t even know which thing is the dragon...  Is the dragon the failure to write, or is the dragon the feeling that I am failing.

Underneath all of this and perpetually is the haunting of my Japanese American friend.  Twenty years ago, this friend who spent his childhood in the Japanese internment camps in California, mentioned his gift and love of writing.  I asked him why he wasn’t writing, except within the context of his ministry.  He said he had to make a choice and because of his experience in the camp he chose to follow the calling of Christ to minister to those who are victims of a system that beats them down and keeps them down.  He felt it was more honorable to give his life to others rather than to his writing talent which he considered to be a selfish indulgence.

I disagreed.  And I told him so.  I’m sure he smiled at my impertinent youth and delusion. 

The reality is I must work, earn a living, where I have a reciprocated feeding of the soul—I find this in teaching. Writing (as a career) is too unpredictable, too precarious, too insecure, too risky....  So I cannot give up a stable income on the way way off chance that my God-given gift and talent, the promise I made to my ancestors, might fail...might become cursed in the face of the more noble and higher calling of teaching.  Ironically it already feels it is cursed, as if in teaching I am squandering my opportunity, desire, need, gift.

It’s not that I want to give up teaching; it’s that I want also to devote my life to the craft of writing.  To find a way to truly inspire the love and joy in the mystery of the story...I want to cultivate that curiosity and I want to nurture my own muse and engender in me that ability to write the story even as I teach others how to find meaning in other people’s stories. 

But deep down I fear it is a serving of two masters...unless I can find a way of recognizing it is simply a single coin with two sides...