LISTEN TO YOUR BROCCOLI

Happy New Year -- and more Woe Is Me Juggling and Complaining

2010-12-31T11:28:00.000-08:00

Years ago, in a very fem-friendly high school English class, I read (and then re-read on my own about a zillion times) Charlotte Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper." From what I remember -- and I remember it pretty clearly, I think -- it's a story about a woman who has been sent to bed for your garden variety turn of the century (1892) female hysteria. She sits up in her room, completely divorced from the goings on of her own life, denied all entertainment / distraction, including even a pen and paper, and becomes obsessed with the patterns she sees in the yellow wallpaper on her walls, because what else is there? Eventually she sees people in the patterns, and as she grows quietly more and more and more insane, she believes she is one of them and climbs on in.

That story is the scariest story I have ever read -- and in context, I probably read this around the same time as Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," and I still vote "The Yellow Wallpaper" a million times scarier -- basically because I relate to it so strongly. I mean, she wasn't even allowed a pen and paper ... I, too, would go incredibly and irredeemably nuts.

Here's how I know:

I take one week off writing-writing -- the real writing, the work -- and I become a total bitch. Even if it was my choice to stop writing -- even if I decided to pack, or clean, or be Volunteer of the Year at my kids' school.

I take two weeks off writing-writing -- and I descend into a self-worth-questioning morass of chocolate-consuming, late-night weepies.

I take three weeks off ... the shit hits the fan. That's basically where I am now. Consider this:

6 weeks ago I finished the first draft of the screenplay for / with Mr. Lovely and Hilarious. I also started packing up the house for our move into the Dream House.

A week later, I started the second draft. And I ramped up the packing. Mr. Lovely and Hilarious and I started sending pages back and forth, which was a pretty decent system, until The Move began to consume me ... at which point my writing slowed, his sped up, and he decided he might as well write Draft 2 "on his lonely," as we say around here.

That sounded good at the time. I had to pack. I had to move. I had to incubate twin boys and care for toddler girls and hold it together somehow. And I had a lot of apartmenttherapy.com to catch up on.

But here's the rub:

We moved into the Dream House three weeks ago -- and I promptly went on bedrest. It's hard to really complain about bedrest when you have a nanny and husband who works at home and can basically sit on your ass and make them do all the diaper changing and grocery shopping and errand running and meal providing while you, well, sit on your ass.

HOWEVER -- sitting on your ass in the middle of your household is no way to get any writing-writing done, especially when your actual active PROJECT is being done by Mr. Lovely and Hilarious and you're just waiting around on it (not that I could concentrate on it if the situation were reversed, I mean, I'm sitting here in the middle of my loud friggin' household where there is no way I could get anything done ... especially as I stew over the fact that no one is doing anything the way I would do it myself if I weren't on fucking bedrest, but that's a subject for another day). Regardless ... I am not writing-writing. And I am going a little insane.

I was doing okay, really I was, until my husband walked in last night and said he'd finished unpacking his office. That was sort of the last straw. See, the whole point of the Dream House, for me, was a pantry, a laundry room, a guest room, and my own "DO NOT DISTURB" office space. I have spent the last six years thinking about that office space. I have designed every spare inch of my smaller-than-9x9 refuge -- I have done drawing after drawing of the furniture plans, I have gone over and over the cabinetry, I have surfed the internet for file cabinets for hours at a time, I have sat on dozens of sofas smaller than 51 inches long. But my office remains a mess of boxes because I am on fucking bedrest. My files are not in those file cabinets, because I have to depend on the kindness and priorities of other people to take my file cabinets to the body shop to be painted before I can file my papers. I still don't have a desk. I still don't have the couch. I still don't have my fucking OFFICE.

This is a dumb thing to complain about, it really is. I mean, even if I had my office, I couldn't hang out in it, I'm on bedrest, cooking the twins, and that is literally the most important thing I need to be doing right now. But the problem with bedrest is that I am never alone. It doesn't matter if the door is closed, people are in and out all day. My kids are the loudest tiny people on earth, apparently, and my husband likes to sing to himself. All. Day. Long. And make calls on speaker. Which apparently he believes doesn't work unless you are SHOUTING into the phone. And I am stuck here, in the middle of it, with nowhere to be alone.

Which is not, it turns out, really just a "Yellow Wallpaper" problem. I mean, I have TV, I have internet, I have the Huffington Post and the pre-eclampsia boards, where I am killing ridiculous amounts of time. And I have the constant, whether-I-want-it-or-not, human-interaction.

And THAT'S the problem -- I'm really climbing the walls because I have a "Room of One's Own" problem. I am never alone. Pre-Dream House, I had no private space either, but I could escape a few hours a day and go write in a coffee shop. And that was fine. But that's all gone now, and I am losing it.

I am fairly certain that the number one reason I am a writer is that I am, by temperament, someone who craves being alone. I don't get lonely when I spend a few hours writing-writing -- I get jazzed. I get re-charged. I don't feel cut off from other people, I feel more connected to them, when I spend a few hours alone. I like to eat alone. I love to go to movies alone. I just like to be alone.

And I am getting desperate. I literally broke down CRYING when my husband walked in here a minute ago to ask me what I want for lunch. I almost killed the nanny for coming in to get the laundry this morning. If I don't get some space soon, I don't know what I'm gonna do.

Which is fucking hilarious, considering as of a few weeks from now I am going to have FOUR KIDS. FOUR KIDS. Which makes it incredibly unlikely I will ever be alone again.

Not until they're all in school, at least -- which, and yes, I've done the math, is the fall of 2013.

Here's hoping I get my office unpacked before then.

Inspiration

2010-10-12T11:09:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I posted here, but to be fair -- and I am trying, more and more, to be fair -- I've been busy.

Way back in March, Big Shot Manager introduced me to Lovely and Hilarous Actor, and since then Mr. Lovely and Hilarious and I have been working on a screenplay that I am literally two hours of work away from completing the first draft of ... which explains what I'm doing suddenly blogging after all this time. Yes, I am my own worst enemy.

Anyway, more about the screenplay and Mr. Lovely and Hilarious if / when it becomes a movie. On to the other stuff I can dump here for now as a record that I really was, um, working, since last I posted here, and not just gallivanting about.

Around the same time as I was meeting Mr. Lovely and Hilarious, I was trying to figure out if the magazine that had bought a short story of mine, "Dirty Darlene," was, in fact, ever intending to publish it, or had just closed up shop for good. Eventually, I decided it had closed up shop for good, but then a couple of weeks ago the editor re-appeared and apparently "Dirty Darlene" will be up on the mag's site Oct 16. I will believe that when I see it.

Then I placed another story, "James Dean, My Love, My Copyboy," with a new mag called Armchair / Shotgun, out of Brooklyn, which believe it or not, is actually printed on PAPER. And BOUND. Like a real, live LIT MAG. That should be out later this fall.

And I got a little more serious about sending out "Nothing Will Prepare You," which involved, for about two weeks, employing a Virtual Assistant in India. This was not a great experiment -- apparently fiction loses a LOT in translation, and my goal of off-loading the soul-killing work of FINDING VENUES was never met. Instead, I spent twice the time trying to explain to the VA that I was not writing sci fi, or porn, or horror, that I would have spent generating my own venues lists. So that killed a bunch of time ;)

Oh, and I eventually got a truly wonderful rejection letter for "Nothing ..." from The New England Review, which was actually pretty thrilling because it was so personal and encouraging and made me think I might not be the hack I was beginning to think I was. (See "sudden interest in writing screenplays.")

Oh, and I got knocked up while all this was going on, too. Twins. Boys. Like I wasn't already intent enough on tanking my own career.

Anyway, because I at least KNOW that about myself, I am going to go try to finish the first draft of the screenplay now. But first, the reason I started writing this post in the FIRST PLACE ... (aside from the obvious attempt at procrastinating):

Today I was reading the Oct 11 issue of The New Yorker, and I came across Nora Ephron's piece "My Life as An Heiress," which is about the weeks she thought she might be coming into money, and would be able to abandon the screenplay she was struggling with, and that she was just writing because it was a job. I would just reprint it here, but I can't now, because The New Yorker has a new digital edition that makes that too difficult, so I'll spoil the ending for you. Basically, she doesn't come into much money. Which turns out to be a good thing, because it forces her to finish writing "When Harry Met Sally."

Go figure. And with that, and the obligatory, "Because of GOD," or even, "It was this cold, Spanish tile," I head back to work.

** UPDATE! Two hours later: first draft screenplay complete! Woo-hoo! **

On Rejection

2010-02-10T14:52:00.000-08:00

I am pretty good at rejection. That's the take-away from my romantic life at least: if at first you waste most of your life in love with the wrong men, keep looking for the right one -- he may be out there after all. In my case, he was (hallelujah, and against all odds).

So, too, I hope, for the writing. I keep writing it, and slowly slowly slowly it finds homes.

Or nearly does.

By last count:

One Master's degree eventually completed, with professorial mentoring raised to the "meet my agent" level -- which was exciting at the time. One story published, and honored with a prize. One essay published, and honored by a call-out in a magazine review. Another story bought by an actual paying magazine ... (let's ignore the fact that this mag seems to have ceased operation in the time between purchase and payment). One TV spec co-written, and championed by professionals in the biz, some of whom are complete strangers ... woo-hoo!

But getting there is mostly a story of learning to open the SASEs without the trepidation of a high school senior ("Is it thin or thick? Thin or thick?") Generally, I can read the form letter rejection and forget it rather quickly. Every once in awhile, though, I get one that's just plain rude.

Today, for instance, I received a rejection from a magazine that I had submitted a story to ONLY BECAUSE, when they LAST rejected me, they encouraged me to try again! Literally wrote, "please try us again" at the bottom of the form letter. So I tried them again, and got a rejection today at the bottom of which some jerk had added "I don't know who encouraged you to try us again, we never publish work like yours." Which is funny, because that was exactly the OPPOSITE of what their last note had said, and it's not like my writing changes so dramatically from story to story ... whatever. Suffice it to say, I was a little peeved.

(Almost as peeved as, when working as a lit scout, I brought a manuscript to the agent I was working for which she described as typifying "lazy writing" -- a phrase she actually then INSISTED I relay back to the writer. Who, by the way, had written A NOVEL. Which, no matter how bad, is not LAZY. I know. I write not particularly special novels myself, and it's still fucking hard work.)

But back to my own rejections:

Maybe an hour after I got that rude "no" this afternoon, I got an email from another magazine. A better magazine. A magazine I have actually read and rooted for since it started publishing. A magazine you can actually buy in bookstores. This magazine didn't want the story I'd sent, either. But the editor wrote this:

Dear Sarah,

My apologies. Your submission was misplaced in our system--the second time this story went astray on our end. As with your last story, I admired the quality of the writing, and though I don't think A Public Space is the right magazine for this story, I'd be interested in reading more of your work. You mentioned a new story on your blog that was the best thing you'd ever written--“Nothing Will Prepare You." If it's still available, perhaps you'd consider sending it here?

Umm, what? She read my blog? She did? Really? Cool. Wow. Talk about the best rejection ever (yes, it actually rivals the "no" I got from The New Yorker a thousand years ago, across which some intern had written "I really liked this -- sorry to say no").

All this to say, not all rejections make you want to jump off the Hollywood Sign.

RIP JD Salinger

2010-01-28T16:25:00.000-08:00

I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in a big field of rye and all. ... Thousands of kids, and nobody big at all, nobody big but me. And I'm standing on the edge of this crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to come and catch them. If they start to fall ... and don't look where they're going. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all.

Sobbed my eyes out in the car listening to a prep school kid read these lines on NPR this afternoon.

I used to relate to JD Salinger because Holden Caulfield was a dissafected prep schooler, just like me. Then I related to JD Salinger (through the Joyce Maynard lens) because I was the sort of 18-year old Yalie who just might, under the right circumstances, have moved in with a 50+ man ...

Now I'm the sort of Mom who can't read or hear or watch anything about kids in harm's way. (Seriously -- NOTHING.) So those lines about Holden catching kids on the edge of a crazy cliff ... I literally wept, cried and cried so hard I nearly ran off the road.

And the little girl in the ocean before Seymour blows his brains out ... oh, that little girl! (See what I'm saying? It's not like she's the one who's about to go upstairs and pick up a gun ...) And Esme ... more love, less squalor, kid. You're the one I'm worried about, making it through with your faculties more or less intact.

2009: AULD LAND SYNE

2010-01-08T12:35:00.000-08:00

Every year, I have really high hopes for my work. Not necessarily that I’ll sell any of it – I am a realist, a pragmatist, first and foremost – but that I’ll write it. That I’ll get my butt in the chair, and the words on the page. And I try to be specific about my goals – which projects I’ll focus on, and what the true, achievable goal for each project really is. And I write all these goals down, too (a practice that isn’t just a work thing, for me, but a family thing—Husband and I make a one-page goals list for our work, our health, our family, our finances, and post it on the mirror in our bathroom).

Anyway, sitting down to make a NEW goal’s list requires reviewing the old one. Here’s the play-by-play of WHAT I WAS SUPPOSED TO DO IN 2009:

* Complete 2^nd draft of the novel by TAX DAY

Status: Absolute failure. Didn’t even LOOK at it in 2009. In the wake of Baby Gaga’s birth, the plot just started to seem totally empty and dumb. I did spend a little time completely re-imagining the entire structure, and considered turning it into 3 linked novellas … does that count as progress or procrastination?

*Complete 3^rd draft of the novel by LABOR DAY and send to friends.

Status: See above.

*Write one more script with Co-Writer / advance partnership another level.

Status: Sort-of / Yes! We didn’t write one more script. But we came up with two concepts, for two new scripts. And we got our Big Shot Manager. And we took some Big Shot Meetings—one in studio bungalow! So that was fun.

*Complete Client’s sample chapter.

Status: Done!

*Write Client’s book if offered contract.

Status: Client didn’t pursue contract, so this stalled out totally NOT on my watch ;)

*Submit “DIRTY DARLENE” to 60 venues.

Status: Sold (sort of). Went out to 57 venues. Finally bought by Carve Magazine, for the Fall 2009 issue. That said, there seems to have been no Fall 2009 issue … hmm.

*Submit “JAMES DEAN, MY LOVE, MY COPY BOY” to 60 venues.

Status: In Progress. I’ve sent it out to 23 magazines, and in December I employed a Virtual Assistant in India to come up with 40 more. So we’ll see about that …

*Re-write “ALBERT & NANCY” to completion.

Status: Abandoned. I tried, I really did. But nothing I did fixed it. And then I started to lose hope. So at the moment, this story has been abandoned, despite my sister’s liking it. Sorry, sis.

*Re-write “MAYFLOWER IS A TRUCKSTOP” to completion.

Status: Complete! It’s now called “Nothing Will Prepare You,” it’s in submission, and it’s the best thing I have ever written. Ever.

*Re-write “SEVEN” to completion.

Status: Abandoned. I tried. But there was no “there” there. There just wasn’t.

* Re-write “HONEYMOON WHERE THE SUN NEVER SETS” to completion.

Status: Back in play! Ok, so I didn’t work on this last year … but I’m already nearly done with a new draft of this story, 8 days into the new years … so that’s something …

... and it’s not a bad segue into next week’s post …

Kids Ain't All Bad (No, Really!)

2009-12-15T13:06:00.000-08:00

Ian Frazier is hilarious – way back in September he wrote a piece for The New Yorker called “Easy Cocktails from the Cursing Mommy,” which is one of the absolute funniest things I have ever read.

I can relate – when Baby Gaga was born, Husband and I started a regular cocktail hour in our home that has led to Husband’s buying our booze at Costco. In bulk.

Husband (returning from Costco): You know you have a problem when you’re standing in Costco wondering why the gin doesn’t come in something bigger than a 750 ml.”

This is all a back-assed way of saying that I love to read and talk about mothering – and not good-mothering so much as low-bar, try-not-to-kill-the-baby-mothering, and really not that so much as what mothering does to working / career / ambition / dreams / every wasted cent of that over-priced degree (or series of degrees) that we mother-types once thought would make some sort of difference in our lives.

This obsession of mine led me to obsessively read Helen Simpson stories (a collection of hers that was published around then was called "I Don't Know How She Does It") after the birth of Small Child. It led me to rail endlessly at a Writer Friend who, in the wake of his first daughter’s birth, was still somehow managing to FINISH A NOVEL. (Men. Enough said.) It led to me to killing a wonderful sixty minutes at the Farmer’s Market a few months ago, talking to a Writer Friend-of-a-Friend who is bemoaning her own wasted dreams, which have been interrupted by her own kids. It led me to give up on one novel and axe a bunch of short stories, too.

Someone has to change the diapers / buy the diapers / schedule the doctor’s appts / drive to the doctor’s appts / set the bedtime routines / make the meals / buy the groceries / organize the birthday parties / drive the children everywhere / install the carseats over and over again / join the fucking PTA … etc.

And that someone always ends up being Mom. Mom is not allowed to go lock herself away from the kids for weeks at a time, or insist on complete quiet all day, or skip dinner-time to work or drink herself slowly to death (especially if she’s nursing – that’s a crime in some states). Mom can’t be the artist-at-the-expense-of-the-children. That just makes Mom a bitch.

Some women cope by putting the work on hold until the kids are old enough to go to school all day, freeing up hours for writing. (Mine are WAY too young for me to even imagine that real possibility.) Some cope by putting the work on hold forever, and trying not to think too much about it by burying themselves in other people’s art and movies and music.

Some kill themselves.

Me, I thought about just giving up a few times this year. I sold a story, but that magazine appears to be going defunct. I finished what I consider the absolute best story I have ever written, but no one wants it. So I thought about starting over on the career track. Maybe get a PhD, or do some interior design. Ten years ago, my grandmother told me to stop writing and go do something "you'd be good at." Maybe my grandmother had been right all along ...

Grandmother (78): Why not get into real estate? Or be a psychologist? You’d be good at that.

Me (24): Psychology? They’re not even real doctors! At least suggest I be a shrink!

And this exchange was years and years before the Small Child and Baby Gaga came along and tossed their toys and dirty laundry all over my dreams.

Well, a funny thing happened on the way to consuming myself in the care of my 2-under-3.

Last year, in a last-ditch effort to cling to my Writerly Identity, I co-wrote a TV pilot while pregnant with Baby Gaga.

Meanwhile, in the run-up to Small Child’s pre-school enrollment, I made a Dear Mom Friend at the school.

Dear Mom Friend is married to Big Shot Manager.

Husband strong-armed Big Shot Manager into reading my pilot, while they were both standing in a ball-pit at Small Child’s birthday party. (I would NEVER have asked Big Shot Manager to read my script – I like Dear Mom Friend too much.)

Big Shot Manager liked it! He got us meetings! Co-writer and I went to production companies and studio lots and had strangers tell us we were smart and talented! (Woo-hoo!) I stopped thinking about stopping writing!

So, score one for Children, Husband, and Family. Who knew all the cleaning and washing and feeding would get me, somehow, a few steps closer to a career?

Things I Have Done This Week Instead of Writing (In No Particular Order)

2009-10-28T19:54:00.001-07:00

1. Turned pre-school drop-off into an hour-long gossip-fest, instead of the 10-minute errand en route to work that it's supposed to be.

2. Gotten a manicure.

3. Taken Smaller Child to Music Class TWICE.

4. Attended a PTA meeting.

5. Taken my Mac to the Mac store to have things fixed and replaced, thus ensuring I will not be tempted to work for at least 3 and maybe 5 whole business days.

6. Sewn 2 Halloween costumes -- which counts as 3, since I'm re-doing the 1st one. And there's 2 more to go.

7. Celebrated Smaller Child's 1st birthday by actually BAKING cupcakes and hosting a brunch.

Still have, coming up:

8. Hair coloring -- and straightening!

9. Smaller Child's pediatrician visit

Ah. I may never work again. This all on the heels of me scrapping 2 stories I thought were close to fixable and just turned out to be truly and utterly fucked. So you can see why domestic goddess is a little preferable to writer girl right now ...

The Ups, The Downs

2009-10-06T13:45:00.000-07:00

It’s been an interesting month, work-wise.

I sold a story called “Dirty Darlene” to Carve Magazine. That was a good thing – and totally unexpected. I wrote “Darlene” four or five years ago, and have been sending it out ever since. Sixty-seven magazines saw it – ten or twelve wrote kind, personal, rejection notes, and I had come to think that that was the best response “Darlene” was going to elicit (though Husband kept telling me it was the cover story at his imaginary, eponymous magazine).

So selling it was good.

Also good: The TV pilot I co-wrote is now represented by a dear friend and very connected manager in town, so it’s making the rounds to agents and production companies now.

Co-Writer Friend and I are getting ready to begin another project, too.

And, I’ve got two other short stories in submission, one called “James Dean, My Love, My Copyboy,” that I like a lot, and another, “Nothing Will Prepare You,” that I think may be the absolute best thing I’ve ever written. I am hoping some editor out there agrees.

All these successes are progress towards my big list of goals for the year – one of the biggest goals of which was, “Finish all the stories that are mid-third-and-fourth-draft that are sitting around the hard-drive.” “Nothing Will Prepare You” was one of those – it began life in 2002 as my thesis novel, coming in around 60,000 words. I winnowed that down to 17,000 words in 2006, then picked it up again this summer, and cut it to 12,000 words, then 8,000 … and now it comes in around 5270. And like I said, I love love love it. I am thrilled with how I worked through it, and how it turned out.

Anyway, I thought that somewhere in the process of fixing “Nothing Will Prepare You,” – I swear, even the TITLE makes me happy -- I had somehow drummed up the mojo to fix all the rest of the flawed work that’s been hanging around … so I turned to another story that has stuff I love in it, but is somehow lacking … and I wrote and wrote on it. Then I cut and cut. I wrote some more. I moved some crap around.

And it still sucks.

Which kills me. It’s got great characters, great relationships, some really lovely prose, if I do say so myself, and a killer last paragraph. But somewhere around the last third of the story, something goes wonky, and I don’t know how to fix it, and it’s driving me mad. Still, I don’t want to walk away from it … which is maybe the problem? Because strangely enough, that’s this story’s central theme …

Hmm.

David Foster Wallace, RIP

2009-03-28T14:30:00.000-07:00

I was not a fan of David Foster Wallace's work while he was living, and attempting to read an exerpt from the unfinished manuscript he left behind proves that I'm still not a fan now that he's gone. (Cue Husband screaming "That John McCain piece is amazing! You have no idea what you're talking about! David Foster Wallace was a genius!")

That said, I found the profile of DFW by D.T. Max in the March 9 issue of The New Yorker fascinating. Max did a fine job showing how DFW's process was affected by his lifelong depression, and DFW's own awareness of both. DFW used to write his friends about these things -- friends like Jonathan Franzen and Don Delillo. I quote:

In the wake of "Infinite Jest," he felt anxiety about his writing. Earlier, Wallace had asked DeLillo whether it was normal. DeLillo reassured him, invoking Henry James' words: "Doubt is our passion." He added, "Some writers may have to do 2, 3 books, say in midcareer, before they remember that writing can be fun."

I love that. I totally believe it, too. Writing is a dayjob that often sucks. But sometimes, if you push through it (like, for instance, struggling through draft 2 of a novel that you are passionately doubtful about) you get a chance to go back to a short story, which you realize, as you're reworking it, you love love love. (More on that story, soon ... I think it may be the best thing I have ever written.)

DFW was not my cup of tea, but I do have a soft spot for DeLillo ...

New site!

2009-02-15T13:47:00.000-08:00

And I built it all by my lonesome! It only took one day to build, another to break, and another to rebuild. I am very proud of myself, and while I have already noticed a few items I need to clean up, I am not going to, because that's how I broke the original site in the first place ...

ANYWAY, now I have a new site.

I also have:

1) 1 pilot that is being re-developed with the help of a very smart director who has taken an interest.
2) 1 novel that is 3.5 chapters short of a complete second draft.
3) 1 sample chapter for client that is, I hope, just one more draft short of finished.

This is all none-too-shabby considering I am now the mother of 2, one of whom still eats ALL NIGHT LONG.

PHENOMENAL ARTICLE About Late-Blooming Artistic Talent

2008-12-05T18:18:00.000-08:00

I reprint this article from the 20 October 2008 NEW YORKER MAGAZINE, in it's ENTIRETY, because of a) the incredible HOPE it gives me, and also because b) I recognize myself in this portrait of Late Bloomers more so than in, perhaps, any other essay about artistic talent EVER.

Enjoy.

Annals of Culture

Late Bloomers

Why do we equate genius with precocity?

by Malcolm Gladwell October 20, 2008

Ben Fountain was an associate in the real-estate practice at the Dallas offices of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, just a few years out of law school, when he decided he wanted to write fiction. The only thing Fountain had ever published was a law-review article. His literary training consisted of a handful of creative-writing classes in college. He had tried to write when he came home at night from work, but usually he was too tired to do much. He decided to quit his job.

“I was tremendously apprehensive,” Fountain recalls. “I felt like I’d stepped off a cliff and I didn’t know if the parachute was going to open. Nobody wants to waste their life, and I was doing well at the practice of law. I could have had a good career. And my parents were very proud of me—my dad was so proud of me. . . . It was crazy.”

He began his new life on a February morning—a Monday. He sat down at his kitchen table at 7:30 A.M. He made a plan. Every day, he would write until lunchtime. Then he would lie down on the floor for twenty minutes to rest his mind. Then he would return to work for a few more hours. He was a lawyer. He had discipline. “I figured out very early on that if I didn’t get my writing done I felt terrible. So I always got my writing done. I treated it like a job. I did not procrastinate.” His first story was about a stockbroker who uses inside information and crosses a moral line. It was sixty pages long and took him three months to write. When he finished that story, he went back to work and wrote another—and then another.

In his first year, Fountain sold two stories. He gained confidence. He wrote a novel. He decided it wasn’t very good, and he ended up putting it in a drawer. Then came what he describes as his dark period, when he adjusted his expectations and started again. He got a short story published in Harper’s. A New York literary agent saw it and signed him up. He put together a collection of short stories titled “Brief Encounters with Che Guevara,” and Ecco, a HarperCollins imprint, published it. The reviews were sensational. The Times Book Review called it “heartbreaking.” It won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN award. It was named a No. 1 Book Sense Pick. It made major regional best-seller lists, was named one of the best books of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, and Kirkus Reviews, and drew comparisons to Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Robert Stone, and John le Carré.

Ben Fountain’s rise sounds like a familiar story: the young man from the provinces suddenly takes the literary world by storm. But Ben Fountain’s success was far from sudden. He quit his job at Akin, Gump in 1988. For every story he published in those early years, he had at least thirty rejections. The novel that he put away in a drawer took him four years. The dark period lasted for the entire second half of the nineteen-nineties. His breakthrough with “Brief Encounters” came in 2006, eighteen years after he first sat down to write at his kitchen table. The “young” writer from the provinces took the literary world by storm at the age of forty-eight.

Genius, in the popular conception, is inextricably tied up with precocity—doing something truly creative, we’re inclined to think, requires the freshness and exuberance and energy of youth. Orson Welles made his masterpiece, “Citizen Kane,” at twenty-five. Herman Melville wrote a book a year through his late twenties, culminating, at age thirty-two, with “Moby-Dick.” Mozart wrote his breakthrough Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-Flat-Major at the age of twenty-one. In some creative forms, like lyric poetry, the importance of precocity has hardened into an iron law. How old was T. S. Eliot when he wrote “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (“I grow old . . . I grow old”)? Twenty-three. “Poets peak young,” the creativity researcher James Kaufman maintains. Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the author of “Flow,” agrees: “The most creative lyric verse is believed to be that written by the young.” According to the Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner, a leading authority on creativity, “Lyric poetry is a domain where talent is discovered early, burns brightly, and then peters out at an early age.”

A few years ago, an economist at the University of Chicago named David Galenson decided to find out whether this assumption about creativity was true. He looked through forty-seven major poetry anthologies published since 1980 and counted the poems that appear most frequently. Some people, of course, would quarrel with the notion that literary merit can be quantified. But Galenson simply wanted to poll a broad cross-section of literary scholars about which poems they felt were the most important in the American canon. The top eleven are, in order, T. S. Eliot’s “Prufrock,” Robert Lowell’s “Skunk Hour,” Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” William Carlos Williams’s “Red Wheelbarrow,” Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish,” Ezra Pound’s “The River Merchant’s Wife,” Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy,” Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro,” Frost’s “Mending Wall,” Wallace Stevens’s “The Snow Man,” and Williams’s “The Dance.” Those eleven were composed at the ages of twenty-three, forty-one, forty-eight, forty, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty, twenty-eight, thirty-eight, forty-two, and fifty-nine, respectively. There is no evidence, Galenson concluded, for the notion that lyric poetry is a young person’s game. Some poets do their best work at the beginning of their careers. Others do their best work decades later. Forty-two per cent of Frost’s anthologized poems were written after the age of fifty. For Williams, it’s forty-four per cent. For Stevens, it’s forty-nine per cent.

The same was true of film, Galenson points out in his study “Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity.” Yes, there was Orson Welles, peaking as a director at twenty-five. But then there was Alfred Hitchcock, who made “Dial M for Murder,” “Rear Window,” “To Catch a Thief,” “The Trouble with Harry,” “Vertigo,” “North by Northwest,” and “Psycho”—one of the greatest runs by a director in history—between his fifty-fourth and sixty-first birthdays. Mark Twain published “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” at forty-nine. Daniel Defoe wrote “Robinson Crusoe” at fifty-eight.

The examples that Galenson could not get out of his head, however, were Picasso and Cézanne. He was an art lover, and he knew their stories well. Picasso was the incandescent prodigy. His career as a serious artist began with a masterpiece, “Evocation: The Burial of Casagemas,” produced at age twenty. In short order, he painted many of the greatest works of his career—including “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” at the age of twenty-six. Picasso fit our usual ideas about genius perfectly.

Cézanne didn’t. If you go to the Cézanne room at the Musée d’Orsay, in Paris—the finest collection of Cézannes in the world—the array of masterpieces you’ll find along the back wall were all painted at the end of his career. Galenson did a simple economic analysis, tabulating the prices paid at auction for paintings by Picasso and Cézanne with the ages at which they created those works. A painting done by Picasso in his mid-twenties was worth, he found, an average of four times as much as a painting done in his sixties. For Cézanne, the opposite was true. The paintings he created in his mid-sixties were valued fifteen times as highly as the paintings he created as a young man. The freshness, exuberance, and energy of youth did little for Cézanne. He was a late bloomer—and for some reason in our accounting of genius and creativity we have forgotten to make sense of the Cézannes of the world.

The first day that Ben Fountain sat down to write at his kitchen table went well. He knew how the story about the stockbroker was supposed to start. But the second day, he says, he “completely freaked out.” He didn’t know how to describe things. He felt as if he were back in first grade. He didn’t have a fully formed vision, waiting to be emptied onto the page. “I had to create a mental image of a building, a room, a façade, haircut, clothes—just really basic things,” he says. “I realized I didn’t have the facility to put those into words. I started going out and buying visual dictionaries, architectural dictionaries, and going to school on those.”

He began to collect articles about things he was interested in, and before long he realized that he had developed a fascination with Haiti. “The Haiti file just kept getting bigger and bigger,” Fountain says. “And I thought, O.K., here’s my novel. For a month or two I said I really don’t need to go there, I can imagine everything. But after a couple of months I thought, Yeah, you’ve got to go there, and so I went, in April or May of ’91.”

He spoke little French, let alone Haitian Creole. He had never been abroad. Nor did he know anyone in Haiti. “I got to the hotel, walked up the stairs, and there was this guy standing at the top of the stairs,” Fountain recalls. “He said, ‘My name is Pierre. You need a guide.’ I said, ‘You’re sure as hell right, I do.’ He was a very genuine person, and he realized pretty quickly I didn’t want to go see the girls, I didn’t want drugs, I didn’t want any of that other stuff,” Fountain went on. “And then it was, boom, ‘I can take you there. I can take you to this person.’ ”

Fountain was riveted by Haiti. “It’s like a laboratory, almost,” he says. “Everything that’s gone on in the last five hundred years—colonialism, race, power, politics, ecological disasters—it’s all there in very concentrated form. And also I just felt, viscerally, pretty comfortable there.” He made more trips to Haiti, sometimes for a week, sometimes for two weeks. He made friends. He invited them to visit him in Dallas. (“You haven’t lived until you’ve had Haitians stay in your house,” Fountain says.) “I mean, I was involved. I couldn’t just walk away. There’s this very nonrational, nonlinear part of the whole process. I had a pretty specific time era that I was writing about, and certain things that I needed to know. But there were other things I didn’t really need to know. I met a fellow who was with Save the Children, and he was on the Central Plateau, which takes about twelve hours to get to on a bus, and I had no reason to go there. But I went up there. Suffered on that bus, and ate dust. It was a hard trip, but it was a glorious trip. It had nothing to do with the book, but it wasn’t wasted knowledge.”

In “Brief Encounters with Che Guevara,” four of the stories are about Haiti, and they are the strongest in the collection. They feel like Haiti; they feel as if they’ve been written from the inside looking out, not the outside looking in. “After the novel was done, I don’t know, I just felt like there was more for me, and I could keep going, keep going deeper there,” Fountain recalls. “Always there’s something—always something—here for me. How many times have I been? At least thirty times.”

Prodigies like Picasso, Galenson argues, rarely engage in that kind of open-ended exploration. They tend to be “conceptual,” Galenson says, in the sense that they start with a clear idea of where they want to go, and then they execute it. “I can hardly understand the importance given to the word ‘research,’ ” Picasso once said in an interview with the artist Marius de Zayas. “In my opinion, to search means nothing in painting. To find is the thing.” He continued, “The several manners I have used in my art must not be considered as an evolution or as steps toward an unknown ideal of painting. . . . I have never made trials or experiments.”

But late bloomers, Galenson says, tend to work the other way around. Their approach is experimental. “Their goals are imprecise, so their procedure is tentative and incremental,” Galenson writes in “Old Masters and Young Geniuses,” and he goes on:

The imprecision of their goals means that these artists rarely feel they have succeeded, and their careers are consequently often dominated by the pursuit of a single objective. These artists repeat themselves, painting the same subject many times, and gradually changing its treatment in an experimental process of trial and error. Each work leads to the next, and none is generally privileged over others, so experimental painters rarely make specific preparatory sketches or plans for a painting. They consider the production of a painting as a process of searching, in which they aim to discover the image in the course of making it; they typically believe that learning is a more important goal than making finished paintings. Experimental artists build their skills gradually over the course of their careers, improving their work slowly over long periods. These artists are perfectionists and are typically plagued by frustration at their inability to achieve their goal.

Where Picasso wanted to find, not search, Cézanne said the opposite: “I seek in painting.”

An experimental innovator would go back to Haiti thirty times. That’s how that kind of mind figures out what it wants to do. When Cézanne was painting a portrait of the critic Gustave Geffroy, he made him endure eighty sittings, over three months, before announcing the project a failure. (The result is one of that string of masterpieces in the Musée d’Orsay.) When Cézanne painted his dealer, Ambrose Vollard, he made Vollard arrive at eight in the morning and sit on a rickety platform until eleven-thirty, without a break, on a hundred and fifty occasions—before abandoning the portrait. He would paint a scene, then repaint it, then paint it again. He was notorious for slashing his canvases to pieces in fits of frustration.

Mark Twain was the same way. Galenson quotes the literary critic Franklin Rogers on Twain’s trial-and-error method: “His routine procedure seems to have been to start a novel with some structural plan which ordinarily soon proved defective, whereupon he would cast about for a new plot which would overcome the difficulty, rewrite what he had already written, and then push on until some new defect forced him to repeat the process once again.” Twain fiddled and despaired and revised and gave up on “Huckleberry Finn” so many times that the book took him nearly a decade to complete. The Cézannes of the world bloom late not as a result of some defect in character, or distraction, or lack of ambition, but because the kind of creativity that proceeds through trial and error necessarily takes a long time to come to fruition.

One of the best stories in “Brief Encounters” is called “Near-Extinct Birds of the Central Cordillera.” It’s about an ornithologist taken hostage by the FARC guerrillas of Colombia. Like so much of Fountain’s work, it reads with an easy grace. But there was nothing easy or graceful about its creation. “I struggled with that story,” Fountain says. “I always try to do too much. I mean, I probably wrote five hundred pages of it in various incarnations.” Fountain is at work right now on a novel. It was supposed to come out this year. It’s late.

Galenson’s idea that creativity can be divided into these types—conceptual and experimental—has a number of important implications. For example, we sometimes think of late bloomers as late starters. They don’t realize they’re good at something until they’re fifty, so of course they achieve late in life. But that’s not quite right. Cézanne was painting almost as early as Picasso was. We also sometimes think of them as artists who are discovered late; the world is just slow to appreciate their gifts. In both cases, the assumption is that the prodigy and the late bloomer are fundamentally the same, and that late blooming is simply genius under conditions of market failure. What Galenson’s argument suggests is something else—that late bloomers bloom late because they simply aren’t much good until late in their careers.

“All these qualities of his inner vision were continually hampered and obstructed by Cézanne’s incapacity to give sufficient verisimilitude to the personae of his drama,” the great English art critic Roger Fry wrote of the early Cézanne. “With all his rare endowments, he happened to lack the comparatively common gift of illustration, the gift that any draughtsman for the illustrated papers learns in a school of commercial art; whereas, to realize such visions as Cézanne’s required this gift in high degree.” In other words, the young Cézanne couldn’t draw. Of “The Banquet,” which Cézanne painted at thirty-one, Fry writes, “It is no use to deny that Cézanne has made a very poor job of it.” Fry goes on, “More happily endowed and more integral personalities have been able to express themselves harmoniously from the very first. But such rich, complex, and conflicting natures as Cézanne’s require a long period of fermentation.” Cézanne was trying something so elusive that he couldn’t master it until he’d spent decades practicing.

This is the vexing lesson of Fountain’s long attempt to get noticed by the literary world. On the road to great achievement, the late bloomer will resemble a failure: while the late bloomer is revising and despairing and changing course and slashing canvases to ribbons after months or years, what he or she produces will look like the kind of thing produced by the artist who will never bloom at all. Prodigies are easy. They advertise their genius from the get-go. Late bloomers are hard. They require forbearance and blind faith. (Let’s just be thankful that Cézanne didn’t have a guidance counsellor in high school who looked at his primitive sketches and told him to try accounting.) Whenever we find a late bloomer, we can’t but wonder how many others like him or her we have thwarted because we prematurely judged their talents. But we also have to acccept that there’s nothing we can do about it. How can we ever know which of the failures will end up blooming?

Not long after meeting Ben Fountain, I went to see the novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, the author of the 2002 best-seller “Everything Is Illuminated.” Fountain is a graying man, slight and modest, who looks, in the words of a friend of his, like a “golf pro from Augusta, Georgia.” Foer is in his early thirties and looks barely old enough to drink. Fountain has a softness to him, as if years of struggle have worn away whatever sharp edges he once had. Foer gives the impression that if you touched him while he was in full conversational flight you would get an electric shock.

“I came to writing really by the back door,” Foer said. “My wife is a writer, and she grew up keeping journals—you know, parents said, ‘Lights out, time for bed,’ and she had a little flashlight under the covers, reading books. I don’t think I read a book until much later than other people. I just wasn’t interested in it.”

Foer went to Princeton and took a creative-writing class in his freshman year with Joyce Carol Oates. It was, he explains, “sort of on a whim, maybe out of a sense that I should have a diverse course load.” He’d never written a story before. “I didn’t really think anything of it, to be honest, but halfway through the semester I arrived to class early one day, and she said, ‘Oh, I’m glad I have this chance to talk to you. I’m a fan of your writing.’ And it was a real revelation for me.”

Oates told him that he had the most important of writerly qualities, which was energy. He had been writing fifteen pages a week for that class, an entire story for each seminar. “Why does a dam with a crack in it leak so much?” he said, with a laugh. “There was just something in me, there was like a pressure.”

As a sophomore, he took another creative-writing class. During the following summer, he went to Europe. He wanted to find the village in Ukraine where his grandfather had come from. After the trip, he went to Prague. There he read Kafka, as any literary undergraduate would, and sat down at his computer.

“I was just writing,” he said. “I didn’t know that I was writing until it was happening. I didn’t go with the intention of writing a book. I wrote three hundred pages in ten weeks. I really wrote. I’d never done it like that.”

It was a novel about a boy named Jonathan Safran Foer who visits the village in Ukraine where his grandfather had come from. Those three hundred pages were the first draft of “Everything Is Illuminated”—the exquisite and extraordinary novel that established Foer as one of the most distinctive literary voices of his generation. He was nineteen years old.

Foer began to talk about the other way of writing books, where you painstakingly honed your craft, over years and years. “I couldn’t do that,” he said. He seemed puzzled by it. It was clear that he had no understanding of how being an experimental innovator would work. “I mean, imagine if the craft you’re trying to learn is to be an original. How could you learn the craft of being an original?”

He began to describe his visit to Ukraine. “I went to the shtetl where my family came from. It’s called Trachimbrod, the name I use in the book. It’s a real place. But you know what’s funny? It’s the single piece of research that made its way into the book.” He wrote the first sentence, and he was proud of it, and then he went back and forth in his mind about where to go next. “I spent the first week just having this debate with myself about what to do with this first sentence. And once I made the decision, I felt liberated to just create—and it was very explosive after that.”

If you read “Everything Is Illuminated,” you end up with the same feeling you get when you read “Brief Encounters with Che Guevara”—the sense of transport you experience when a work of literature draws you into its own world. Both are works of art. It’s just that, as artists, Fountain and Foer could not be less alike. Fountain went to Haiti thirty times. Foer went to Trachimbrod just once. “I mean, it was nothing,” Foer said. “I had absolutely no experience there at all. It was just a springboard for my book. It was like an empty swimming pool that had to be filled up.” Total time spent getting inspiration for his novel: three days.

Ben Fountain did not make the decision to quit the law and become a writer all by himself. He is married and has a family. He met his wife, Sharon, when they were both in law school at Duke. When he was doing real-estate work at Akin, Gump, she was on the partner track in the tax practice at Thompson & Knight. The two actually worked in the same building in downtown Dallas. They got married in 1985, and had a son in April of 1987. Sharie, as Fountain calls her, took four months of maternity leave before returning to work. She made partner by the end of that year.

“We had our son in a day care downtown,” she recalls. “We would drive in together, one of us would take him to day care, the other one would go to work. One of us would pick him up, and then, somewhere around eight o’clock at night, we would have him bathed, in bed, and then we hadn’t even eaten yet, and we’d be looking at each other, going, ‘This is just the beginning.’ ” She made a face. “That went on for maybe a month or two, and Ben’s like, ‘I don’t know how people do this.’ We both agreed that continuing at that pace was probably going to make us all miserable. Ben said to me, ‘Do you want to stay home?’ Well, I was pretty happy in my job, and he wasn’t, so as far as I was concerned it didn’t make any sense for me to stay home. And I didn’t have anything besides practicing law that I really wanted to do, and he did. So I said, ‘Look, can we do this in a way that we can still have some day care and so you can write?’ And so we did that.”

Ben could start writing at seven-thirty in the morning because Sharie took their son to day care. He stopped working in the afternoon because that was when he had to pick him up, and then he did the shopping and the household chores. In 1989, they had a second child, a daughter. Fountain was a full-fledged North Dallas stay-at-home dad.

“When Ben first did this, we talked about the fact that it might not work, and we talked about, generally, ‘When will we know that it really isn’t working?’ and I’d say, ‘Well, give it ten years,’ ” Sharie recalled. To her, ten years didn’t seem unreasonable. “It takes a while to decide whether you like something or not,” she says. And when ten years became twelve and then fourteen and then sixteen, and the kids were off in high school, she stood by him, because, even during that long stretch when Ben had nothing published at all, she was confident that he was getting better. She was fine with the trips to Haiti, too. “I can’t imagine writing a novel about a place you haven’t at least tried to visit,” she says. She even went with him once, and on the way into town from the airport there were people burning tires in the middle of the road.

“I was making pretty decent money, and we didn’t need two incomes,” Sharie went on. She has a calm, unflappable quality about her. “I mean, it would have been nice, but we could live on one.”

Sharie was Ben’s wife. But she was also—to borrow a term from long ago—his patron. That word has a condescending edge to it today, because we think it far more appropriate for artists (and everyone else for that matter) to be supported by the marketplace. But the marketplace works only for people like Jonathan Safran Foer, whose art emerges, fully realized, at the beginning of their career, or Picasso, whose talent was so blindingly obvious that an art dealer offered him a hundred-and-fifty-franc-a-month stipend the minute he got to Paris, at age twenty. If you are the type of creative mind that starts without a plan, and has to experiment and learn by doing, you need someone to see you through the long and difficult time it takes for your art to reach its true level.

This is what is so instructive about any biography of Cézanne. Accounts of his life start out being about Cézanne, and then quickly turn into the story of Cézanne’s circle. First and foremost is always his best friend from childhood, the writer Émile Zola, who convinces the awkward misfit from the provinces to come to Paris, and who serves as his guardian and protector and coach through the long, lean years.

Here is Zola, already in Paris, in a letter to the young Cézanne back in Provence. Note the tone, more paternal than fraternal:

You ask me an odd question. Of course one can work here, as anywhere else, if one has the will. Paris offers, further, an advantage you can’t find elsewhere: the museums in which you can study the old masters from 11 to 4. This is how you must divide your time. From 6 to 11 you go to a studio to paint from a live model; you have lunch, then from 12 to 4 you copy, in the Louvre or the Luxembourg, whatever masterpiece you like. That will make up nine hours of work. I think that ought to be enough.

Zola goes on, detailing exactly how Cézanne could manage financially on a monthly stipend of a hundred and twenty-five francs:

I’ll reckon out for you what you should spend. A room at 20 francs a month; lunch at 18 sous and dinner at 22, which makes two francs a day, or 60 francs a month. . . . Then you have the studio to pay for: the Atelier Suisse, one of the least expensive, charges, I think, 10 francs. Add 10 francs for canvas, brushes, colors; that makes 100. So you’ll have 25 francs left for laundry, light, the thousand little needs that turn up.

Camille Pissarro was the next critical figure in Cézanne’s life. It was Pissarro who took Cézanne under his wing and taught him how to be a painter. For years, there would be periods in which they went off into the country and worked side by side.

Then there was Ambrose Vollard, the sponsor of Cézanne’s first one-man show, at the age of fifty-six. At the urging of Pissarro, Renoir, Degas, and Monet, Vollard hunted down Cézanne in Aix. He spotted a still-life in a tree, where it had been flung by Cézanne in disgust. He poked around the town, putting the word out that he was in the market for Cézanne’s canvases. In “Lost Earth: A Life of Cézanne,” the biographer Philip Callow writes about what happened next:

Before long someone appeared at his hotel with an object wrapped in a cloth. He sold the picture for 150 francs, which inspired him to trot back to his house with the dealer to inspect several more magnificent Cézannes. Vollard paid a thousand francs for the job lot, then on the way out was nearly hit on the head by a canvas that had been overlooked, dropped out the window by the man’s wife. All the pictures had been gathering dust, half buried in a pile of junk in the attic.

All this came before Vollard agreed to sit a hundred and fifty times, from eight in the morning to eleven-thirty, without a break, for a picture that Cézanne disgustedly abandoned. Once, Vollard recounted in his memoir, he fell asleep, and toppled off the makeshift platform. Cézanne berated him, incensed: “Does an apple move?” This is called friendship.

Finally, there was Cézanne’s father, the banker Louis-Auguste. From the time Cézanne first left Aix, at the age of twenty-two, Louis-Auguste paid his bills, even when Cézanne gave every indication of being nothing more than a failed dilettante. But for Zola, Cézanne would have remained an unhappy banker’s son in Provence; but for Pissarro, he would never have learned how to paint; but for Vollard (at the urging of Pissarro, Renoir, Degas, and Monet), his canvases would have rotted away in some attic; and, but for his father, Cézanne’s long apprenticeship would have been a financial impossibility. That is an extraordinary list of patrons. The first three—Zola, Pissarro, and Vollard—would have been famous even if Cézanne never existed, and the fourth was an unusually gifted entrepreneur who left Cézanne four hundred thousand francs when he died. Cézanne didn’t just have help. He had a dream team in his corner.

This is the final lesson of the late bloomer: his or her success is highly contingent on the efforts of others. In biographies of Cézanne, Louis-Auguste invariably comes across as a kind of grumpy philistine, who didn’t appreciate his son’s genius. But Louis-Auguste didn’t have to support Cézanne all those years. He would have been within his rights to make his son get a real job, just as Sharie might well have said no to her husband’s repeated trips to the chaos of Haiti. She could have argued that she had some right to the life style of her profession and status—that she deserved to drive a BMW, which is what power couples in North Dallas drive, instead of a Honda Accord, which is what she settled for.

But she believed in her husband’s art, or perhaps, more simply, she believed in her husband, the same way Zola and Pissarro and Vollard and—in his own, querulous way—Louis-Auguste must have believed in Cézanne. Late bloomers’ stories are invariably love stories, and this may be why we have such difficulty with them. We’d like to think that mundane matters like loyalty, steadfastness, and the willingness to keep writing checks to support what looks like failure have nothing to do with something as rarefied as genius. But sometimes genius is anything but rarefied; sometimes it’s just the thing that emerges after twenty years of working at your kitchen table.

“Sharie never once brought up money, not once—never,” Fountain said. She was sitting next to him, and he looked at her in a way that made it plain that he understood how much of the credit for “Brief Encounters” belonged to his wife. His eyes welled up with tears. “I never felt any pressure from her,” he said. “Not even covert, not even implied.” ♦

Five Weeks Post-Partum and Back to Work!

2008-12-05T18:13:00.000-08:00

I seem to have figured out a new working system, even with 2 kids under 2 underfoot ... woo-hoo!

Mornings I take one child into the world, and leave one at home with our housekeeper.
Afternoons I leave them both home with our housekeeper, and go write for 2-3 hours.

It seems to be working. So far, I have FINISHED FINISHED the pilot I wrote with a friend on this schedule, and started sending it out. I have returned to the novel, AND set up a meeting to return to the book proposal.

Granted, I have to do everything in teeny, tiny increments -- baby steps, as it were. But even baby steps move things forward, and I'm pretty damn impressed with myself for having gotten it together this well despite a 5 week old new baby who eats EVERY SINGLE MOMENT of every night.

Progress report

2008-10-06T15:53:00.000-07:00

Entering Chapter 13! Five weeks or less till Baby #2. Dream of completion of draft by then growing ever dimmer with news that baby may be coming earlier than expected ... hmm. Still, since June I've cranked through Chapters 5-12, and am hoping to finish 13 in the next two weeks, so that's not bad for a few months work.

Book proposal for client nearly complete. Still have to write the sample chapter, though, and need to really crank through it considering the "life deadline" approaching.

Spec pilot pretty much done -- have one last scene to tweak and then it's time to get some outside eyes on it.

All in all, not a bad couple of months in writer-land.

Writers as Over-Caffeinated Termites

2008-09-05T20:25:00.000-07:00

According to Walter Kirn:

At the beginning of a novel, a writer needs confidence, but after that, what's required is persistence. The traits sound similar. They aren't. Confidence is what politicians, seducers, and currency speculators have, but persistence is a quality found in termites. it's the blind drive to keep on working that persists after confidence breaks down.

This breakdown usually happens in chapter five or so, but sometimes it comes as early as chapter two. The book's characters have been introduced by then and given a world to live in, creating atmosphere. The challenges they face have been described and made to seem monumental, creating tension. Finaly, the novelist's friends and family have been pushed away, creating loneliness. Now what? The mind is powerless to answer, leaving the nerves and glands to do the job, assisted at times by caffeine and other substances.

But such chemical helpers only help so much. The mysterious energy required to turn silence into words perpetually uphill originates deep within the soul--so deep that its sources resist analysis. Novelists who pretend to understand what keeps them scribbling are really just guessing. A profound, unmet childish need to be acknowledged? Maybe. It hardly matters, though. The termite that asks itself why it keeps chewing risks becoming sluggish and inefficient, as does the writer who grows self-conscious in the middle of chapter five. Stopping to think is fine for characters, but not for their creators.

They have to work.

Yeah. Word. Finished Chapter Nine today, just by pushing on, 500 words a day, no matter what, 5 days a week and three nights ... (Husband rocks on, btw, by giving me that third night ... slightly increasing the very long odds that I can write eight more chapters in the 9 or so weeks before Two-ie arrives.)

I couldn't agree more ...

2008-08-29T12:02:00.000-07:00

"In his 1908 essay 'Mathematical Creation,' Poincare insisted that the best way to think about complex problems is to immerse yourself in the problem until you have hit an impasse. Then, when it seems that 'nothing good is accomplished,' you should find a way to distract yourself, 'preferably by going on a walk or a journey'."

-- The New Yorker Magazine, 7.28.08

I tend to go to lunch, a movie, or a pedicure when I need "distractions," though a walk tends to work pretty well, too, and those moments when you're gassing the car and have an aha! moment are pretty common, I find.

Nesting again ...

2008-08-22T14:23:00.000-07:00

The biological urge to nest is um ... well. Of all distractions a writing mother could face, the last months before arrival of a new baby are the worst. All I can / want to think about are:

-- new blinds for the room First Child will be sharing with Two-ie
-- slipcover for the upholstered glider
-- building Two-ie's crib
-- hanging art to reflect the new addition, including getting mats cut to match the existing art that will then be set into photo frames where I want pictures of First and Two-ie to go
-- hanging First Child and Two-ie fabric letters to spell their names across the window
-- going through First's clothes to get things ready for Two-ie, clearing space in the the closet, and the changer
-- getting a new, double unit expandable monitor
-- a toddler table for First Child, and getting her art supplies
-- a new rug for the play room / my office
-- a new, fancy schmancy diaper bag for me ;)

Yeah, I'm obsessed. Getting myself to actually WORK is getting pretty tough around here -- especially since the nesting isn't just in my head, but about to actualize itself in an 18 month reno of our house, and a new deck for the house we own (and are living in) next door to our house ...

That said, I am still managing to get things done, just more slowly.

For instance:

-- NOVEL -- I am halfway through Ch 9. I would really really like to think I can power through a full second draft of the book by DUE day ... but it will be a real push (no pun intended) and is getting less likely every day, honestly.

-- SPEC PILOT -- took my pass at the First Draft today, and think this is in pretty near ready-to-show-trusted-reader shape. Meeting with Writing Partner Monday night to discuss and um, come up with a title ;)

-- BOOK PROPOSAL FOR CLIENT -- finished a Rough First Draft a few weeks ago, and reading it yesterday am actually pretty pleased about the shape it's in. Just a few more hours on that and I think it's good to go ... which then, of course, sets me up to bid and write the SAMPLE CHAPTER ... jeesh.

And of course, if that weren't enough on the plate, what I really want to be working on is my short story collection ;)

But that's for another post.

Once again, MOTHERHOOD as the antidote to SLOTH

2008-08-01T13:21:00.000-07:00

Well, Baby 1 got me to finish Draft 1 of the novel before she arrived in January '07 ...

Baby 2 (who arrives Nov 08) has got me pushing hard towards (1) completing Draft 2 -- I'm in the middle of Chapter 8, which is about halfway through the narrative -- AND, SOMEHOW, got me to (2) agree to write a TV spec with a Writer Friend AND (3) take on a new client, for whom I'm writing a book proposal.

1. THE NOVEL -- I'm writing this draft while semi-con-currently showing chapter drafts to my Writing Group, who are being incredibly helpful. I'm desperately trying to complete this draft before Baby 2, with an eye towards writing Draft 3 in the first part of next year, giving THAT to a larger circle of Trusted Readers, and writing the FINAL DRAFT in the later part of next year ... and sending it out into the world early in 2010. In practical terms, this means I'm writing a minimum of 500 words per weekday, and by October will probably have to up it to a seven-day-week if I really intend to finish before Baby.

2. THE TV SPEC -- Nearly 10 years ago, I met Writer Friend at a dinner, over which we discovered a great love for all television things Bedford Falls. By the end of the meal he was suggesting we write together. For the next nearly 10 years, he continued suggesting that. I assumed he was making said suggestions the same way people say "Let's do lunch" ... but this spring, he handed me the first 18 pages of a pilot he was kicking around, I liked it, we sat down to start writing despite ALL my reservations about writing with other people (short version: I HATE DOING THAT MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE ON EARTH ON EARTH ON EARTH) and it turned out to be ... fun. And surprisingly easy. Since the end of June, meeting for a few hours one night a week, and writing a little bit on our own time, we've managed to come 11 scenes short of a Shitty First Draft. By Monday, we should be actually FINISHED with said Draft, putting us well on our way to having something sort-of-readable by Labor Day. Who knew.

3. THE BOOK PROPOSAL. Well, it had been awhile since I'd taken on clients -- before Baby 1, in fact. And I was approached by someone whom I like, with a project I find interesting, and some part of me, worrying I might never make a cent in my chosen profession again, agreed to take her on. It's been a learning experience, as I'm doing most of the writing, based on discussions and emails with her, and that's a little backwards for me, professionally -- usually, I edit more than write. And like all things of this nature, the further in we get the less simple the project is -- right now, in fact, I'm about halfway done with all the elements but have completed none. However, I'm shooting to have a First Draft of the proposal for her before we decamp for Colorado next week.

All this writing is a) great for my sense of accomplishment and therefore my scale of happiness and b) is making for a crazy-busy summer / ramp up to Baby 2. I haven't had a single moment to do any of the things I did the last time I was pregnant -- get my nails done, get massages, go to yoga, go to afternoon movies -- and I'm tired as tired can be.

All that said, I have discovered by necessity that I can accomplish an extraordinary amount of writing if I carve out 4 hours of working time a day. My basic working routine, in this four hours or so, looks like this:

-- drive to place where I can eat and sit for hours without disturbing staff
-- order a big enough meal to justify my sitting there for hours, and read while I eat
-- order a latte, write 500 words of my novel, then turn to either the TV Spec or the Proposal
-- drive home

Two nights a week, I take additional hours, which were meant to be Yoga Nights but have evolved into Writer Group meeting nights, TV Spec writing nights, or extra writing time ...

On nanny-days, I get a little more time. On no-nanny-days, it's a strict four-hour window, which I've negotiated thusly with Husband:

-- one of us gets 8am - to 12pm to ourselves, one of us gets 12pm - 4 pm.

So far, the system works great, and I'm hoping I can keep to it even after I become Mom of 2 under 2 ...

Famous Last Words

2008-06-02T16:22:00.000-07:00

See last post, dated 2007.

This is, obviously, the first post I've made here in over a year. This is not to say I've been completely UN-productive on the writing front -- I am five chapters into the second draft of the novel.

That said, I'm also 16.5 months in mothering Child #1: 17 weeks into growing Child #2; 10 months into running new business with husband; and a couple weeks shy of moving house to prepare for 18 month renovation of original home (not to mention the fact that I spent most of last year renovating the house we're moving into). So it's been a busy year -- but that said, words need to keep hitting the page and I'm hoping, still, against all hope, to finish the second draft of the novel before Child #2 arrives in November. That'll be a push, of course, but hell, if I can deliver a baby in under three hours, I can finish 2/3 of a manuscript in five months, yeah?

(Closing eyes and moving forward with the same blind optimism that led us to think having another baby right away was such a grand idea :))

Ironically, demands of mothering INCREASE productivity!

2007-04-27T13:28:00.000-07:00

I have returned to work. Small Child is now 3 months and ten days old, and I have been back at my desk for a few weeks now, having discovered yet another amazing talent Small Child possesses: she is about A THOUSAND ZILLION times more effective at rousing me from my warm bed than an alarm clock.

So for the last few weeks, I've been getting up to feed her around 4:30 am AND THEN GOING UPSTAIRS to the kitchen table to write until she wakes up for the day around 7:45. It's been an amazingly productive period, since none of the demands of Small Child, Husband, nor Things That Have to Happen Between 9 and 5 can claim me. In the last three weeks since I started doing this, I've made notes on my long story, "James Dean My Love My Copyboy"; read the first draft of my novel; and drafted the 30+ page notes memo for the novel, too.

I've loved working in the wee hours -- I've loved working! But a troubling thing has happened in the last couple of days ... Small Child has slept until 6. Which cuts my work time down by several hours, as that means I'm only alone at the kitchen table for about an hour before the household stirs around me ... Small Child is, of course, a rockstar for sleeping so well, and this of course makes me the one and only Mama on the planet who wishes her daughter would sleep LESS so Mama could be awake and working MORE ...

Drumroll, Please ...

2006-11-02T18:28:00.000-08:00

I finished the first draft of the book (aka "THE SHITTY EYES CLOSED FORWARD AT ALL COSTS DRAFT")! It's 342 pages and 2 inches thick -- and while it's no masterpiece, there is a beginning, a middle, and end.

Plus I managed to complete the mss in less than three years from first glimmerings of an idea in February 2004 to typing THE END today -- less than two years (20 months, to be exact) if you start counting from the day I began writing the first page of this most current and complete draft in March 2005.

I am very pleased with myself. I managed this while ALSO planning my wedding, taking the entire summer of 2004 off to wed and honeymoon, taking five weeks off in 2005 to gallivant around Africa, AND taking much of this summer off to work on my essay for "Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys."

So I rock. Especially since the last novel I wrote from start to finish took me eight years and eleven partial drafts before I completed a start-to-finish mss.

Now, before we all get too excited about this, let's remember: I finished the FIRST draft. There are at least two more draft coming before I'll feel comfortable showing the book to friends and family, much less professionals. So don't expect to see a glimmer of it until near the end of 2008 -- I'm going to put this draft aside through the holidays, read it with pen and post-its and a legal pad in hand in Jan '07, try to brainstorm the issues I discover during that read from Jan '07 through Memorial Day -- I'm assuming that brainstorming is all I'm really going to be good for in the first months of sleep-deprived baby-haze -- then try to start Draft 2 over the summer.

Draft 2 will be the "FIX THE STRUCTURE, PLUG THE GAPS, REALIZE THE PLOTS AND CHARACTERS AND THEMES DRAFT." Once Draft 2 is done, I'll start the process again: set the mss aside for a month or two, then come back to it with pen and post-its and a legal pad in hand, then brainstorm the issues and begin Draft 3.

Draft 3 will be the "POLISH FOR TRUSTED READER FRIENDS DRAFT."

Draft 4 will incorporate reader notes into the "AS GOOD AS I CAN MAKE IT DRAFT," and then I'll release it into the publishing world.

Wow. Amazing. Taking the next few days off to mark the occasion.

Then it's back to work, focusing on story drafts for my collection,

Resistance Resolved

2006-10-24T11:45:00.000-07:00

I returned to the novel a few months ago, surprised to find that I had a lot less to accomplish in order to finish this draft than I believed. I quickly wrote Chapters 12, 13, 14, and 15 in less than a month, and assumed I'd motor write through Chapter 16 -- the final chapter -- in a similar fashion.

And then I stopped.

I finished Chapter 15 on a Thursday morning, so I took Friday off (I try to take a day off when I finish a chapter or story, a recommendation I picked up from Dorothea Brande's fabulous book Becoming a Writer). That evening, Husband and I headed off for a weekend getaway to Berkeley, our last shot at some vacation time before the two of us become three.

Monday I returned exhausted, so I took another day off. Normally I might have pushed on through, but again, "woman's work" intruded--the exhaustion attendant to the growing of Number Three won out over my work ethic, and even dulled the guilt a little bit b/c it's not just me I'm thinking about when I sleep most of the day now.

Tuesday, I forced myself back to my favorite table at my favorite cafe--and discovered another problem related to Number Three: I'm no longer comfortable for long periods of time in the cafe chairs, so after several hours of producing NOTHING I gave up and went home. I spent most of the afternoon working on transforming our office to Three's room.

Wednesday I woke up determined to work at home, in my far more supportive chairs. We all know how it ends when I try to work at home. More energy pumped into Three's room.

Thursday and Friday I decided that as long as I was resisting work, I might as well give myself REAL permission to do so--and so I poured myself into Three-related projects, with no thought to the novel at all. The only condition: Monday I would return to work.

And I did! Yesterday I made notes for what will be the last chapter of the first draft of this book, and today I wrote the first 500 words of it!

Despite the "lost week," I don't feel as badly as I usually do about walking away from my writing. Part of that has to do with listening to the David Allen podcasts at www.43folders.com. One, in particular, is about procrastination, and ways around it/through it.

Regarding working THROUGH procrastination, it was suggested that often the problem has to do with the task at hand not having been broken down to the most basic WIDGET property of itself. In the case of Chapter 16, then, I set myself the MOST BASIC WIDGET STEP of reading the notes I'd been gathering for the last several years regarding the ending of this book.

But easy as that should have been to do--the notes are very neatly collected in a binder that is tabulated into three acts, and the acts themselves are separated into chapter groupings--I still didn't wanna. Part of that, obviously, is my general weirdness about finishing things--I get a little wonky when the end is near. I know that about myself, which I why I am a hugely happy follower of the WIDGET approach--tiny little baby steps distract me from the finish line. I'm not COMPLETING THE FINAL PAGES OF MY NOVEL. I'm "preparing the chain of events" for the chapter; I'm "writing 500 words"; I'm "writing 500 words"; I'm "writing 500 words"; and somehow, 500 words from 500 words from 500 words from 500 words from now, I'll surprise myself by making it to the finish line.

Which is how, of course, I got back to work yesterday.

But last week, I resisted the WIDGET approach, and still, I got a lot done. I moved Husband's clothes in the master closet, and turned what had been his closet into Three's domain. I sorted all the baby clothes my mother had saved for 30+ years into bins by size, and laundered the clothes appropriate for Three's early months. I sorted through 6--count 'em, 6 banker's boxes of Husband's unfiled papers, and filed them. And I started selling books we don't want, to make room for Three's first library and storage system. I didn't write--but I did something important, and pressing, and this is also GTD-appropriate. Like Allen said in the podcast, if you're procrastinating one thing, then you better have a lot of other things you're doing until the resistance passes--and I did!

That said, by week's end I was near my usual "I haven't written in a week and I'm falling mentally to pieces" point--I do get crazed when I stop work. That was sort of a relief, actually--I'd been worrying that maybe I'd be okay, not writing, just doing house stuff ... and I'm pleased to report, I'm not. I can do it about three days before I start to ache for my writing. By a week, the ache is a full-blown "get thee to a word processor!" scream in my head.

I'm guessing the moodiness isn't easy on Husband. But he did get a fully organized, color-coded wall of the master closet in return for my week at home. And I got reassurance that despite the unbelievable amount of time and attention I devote to Three's impending arrival, I haven't yet completely lost myself.

So I'm happily back to regular programming.

Another Vote For Throwing Money at the Problem

2006-09-11T12:07:00.000-07:00

I spend a lot of time thinking about gender issues in terms of marriage, about how I spend a lot of time doing dishes and laundry and paperwork and Husband mostly gardens, is in charge of buying and maintaining our cars, and feeds the cats. Note that what I do is a daily thing and what he does is less so, since he tends to walk out the door to work in too much of a rush to remember the cats, and I end up feeding them anyway.

Since he goes out to work, and I “work at home,” I also end up with most of the dog care. The “work at home” thing also means Husband figures I can be home for Fed Ex guys, or to make important faxes for him, or to get him the phone number for some person or another that he’s forgotten at home. None of this stuff is good for getting my work done so much as it is incredibly helpful for accomplishing his.

This was a struggle all summer, as he settled back into full-time, off-home-site work and I returned home from my rented office space. At first, I was thrilled to be home, because of the incredible savings on my office space rentals, but also because I could get chores done in the middle of the day, rather than waiting until I was so exhausted after dinner that things got lost in the mix.

Then he started calling. And calling. And calling. It’s nice that he likes to check in, and in fact I adore hearing his voice pretty much WHENEVER. But I like it less when I’m working, which tends to be in the mornings, before life is too distracting, and I like it LOTS less when the calls start, “Are you home?”

So I’ll be honest here: for a couple of weeks I just straight-out lied. My cell would ring, he’d ask, “Are you home,” and I’d say, from the comfort of my chair at our kitchen table, “No.”

That worked for awhile. But I was also battling the creep of personal affairs onto the territory of professional ambitions. Our life this summer has catapulted us into the realm of True Adulthood in a number of ways, and Adulthood requires a hell of lot of a person to do at home. It can take up every minute of the day, really.

The only thing to do when that happens is to get the hell out of the home, as quickly as possible.

This is not new information—I periodically realize I need to work out of our home. That’s why I rented office space. But I had just given up my office space, and it was hard to justify the thought of renting space when I had a perfectly quiet office space at home, thanks to Husband working elsewhere. Also, there was the question of the puppy. Can’t really leave the puppy home all day alone. She doesn’t like it, and she expresses her displeasure by ripping things up in a puppy-like way.

So, two problems: puppy needs exercise / baby-sitting, and I need a place to work that isn’t home. Solution: throw money at the problem.

On the puppy-front, we bought a monthly membership for daily doggie daycare, at a savings of $25 compared to what we used to spend for 3 days / week.

Even better, on the writing-front, there’s a fabulous wonderful café near daycare with ample outlets AND wi-fi and a space so large there is never any pressure to get up for the lunch time rush. Instead of spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars each month for my crack den office, I now spend about $3 in the morning for a latter, and $10 more at lunch on a sandwich – at a savings of about $400 / month compared to what used to be rent.

And I write like the wind. I’m now within 2.5 chapters of completing the first draft of this novel. Yippee! Go me!

Another triumph for spending a little money when you need to free up a bunch of time.

Role Reversal: The Editor is Edited

2006-08-21T12:41:00.001-07:00

This summer has been pretty interesting on a number of fronts, not least of which has been the experience of having my work edited.

I'm not fearful of critique, and in fact I sort of relish having my work torn up by discerning reader-writer friends, because that process always always shows me ways to deepen and focus what I'm trying to produce. But critique is not editing -- critique is a "Take it or leave it" sort of thing, a reflection on what your READER pulls from your work, and a suggestion about ways to fix it that are entirely left to your own discretion as WRITER, to do with as you please.

Being edited is another thing entirely, especially when the editor in question is an "endgame editor," the final authority on whether or not your work will see the light of day. The changes suggested and the notes proffered feel more compulsory when you're working with an editor, b/c ultimately your work has to fit the editor's vision even more so than your own.

As I've previously posted, I spent a lot of time this summer working and reworking an essay for the the collection GIRLS WHO LIKE BOYS WHO LIKE BOYS, which is to be published by Dutton / Plume next June. I wrote nine drafts on my own terms, then I sent it to the editors--and then the real work began.

I struggled with the first round of rewrites they wanted. Much of what the editors suggested was helpful and spot on, but still I struggled with notes and suggested cuts that I felt messed with not only the ryhthm and shape of my essay without offering alternative structure suggestions, but also erased my voice. Voice was a huge concern for me--I think personal essays are driven almost completey by voice.

Despite my misgivings, for the most part I complied with the editors' suggestions--this was their book after all, not mine. But with every change I made, I distanced myself more from the project, and the draft I ultimately returned to them was no longer something I felt I owned. I did my best to make it work, but I didn't like it.

The work I did on that draft made me think a lot about my own practices as an editor. Obviously, I am an editor of a different sort than the editors of GIRLS WHO ... I don't work at the end of the process, as they do -- I intervene at earlier stages, because I am working with my writers to hone THEIR visions, not my own. So when I make notes, I'm thinking about the ways I can help my writers achieve their own goals first--I try to help shape their project from within their own vision, I try to see what they see, to help them write the book that they want to write (not the book that I might prefer, not the book that I might write out of the same material).

Which is why it can be hard to see the changes an "endgame editor" requires. Part of this is ego--but another part is pride. One of my biggest challenges as a writer is my own perfectionism--I don't ever want to release a piece of work with my name on it unless I know it is the absolute best I can do, that it sparkles and shines as an expression of myself. This can be a handicap, obviously, since it means I spend a lot of time working on things that other writers might consider finished (Husband, for instance, always thinks I'm done many drafts before I do). So that first edit really bothered me, b/c I didn't think I'd manage to take the suggested edits and integrate them into a sparkling whole, nor preserve my true self-expression. The resulting draft left me cold.

Thankfully, as is generally the case, editors are editors for a reason--they're generally smarter and more insightful than they first appear. This is because what an editor does in concert with a writer can be compared to what a writer does on his own--draft, revise, polish. Round one of edits can feel a step backwards, as it often creates a messy and confused draft out of what you considered a finished product. But hopefully round two puts the pieces back together again, better than before.

Which is why I was thrilled with the notes I was sent for the second round. The new notes cut and restored and moved things around in just the same ways I think a real, down-and-dirty revision ought to. I was in my element with this second go-round, and really felt like the editors and I were in sync. I spent a long week in deep thought with the new edit, and what I produced was in many ways a completely different essay,than what I'd sent them in the first place. Tighter, more insightful, more balanced, more true to myself. I was thrilled to send it back to them.

Fingers crossed they feel the same way.

Back From the Deep

2006-06-28T12:39:00.000-07:00

I haven’t posted in awhile, mostly b/c I’ve been incredibly busy writing an essay I was invited to contribute to an anthology called GIRLS WHO LIKE BOYS WHO LIKE BOYS, which is due out late this summer. What a bear! Who knew writing a personal essay was so hard? As one Writer Friend put it while I was complaining about how lost and muddled I felt, “It’s not that hard … it’s like writing an email.”

Yeah, right.

I knew what I wanted to write about pretty much the instant I was approached for the collection. Then I started writing, and it started falling apart.

I began working on the essay three months before it was due. The first draft was eight pages of false starts. Seriously. Many many first paragraphs, a couple stabs at an outline—and since I don’t like to outline at the outset, you can see how desperate I felt.

The second draft was longhand—I was so freaked out by my inability to move forward in type that I chained myself to a table at Starbucks with a pen and paper and didn’t let myself get up until I had something resembling an essay, complete with beginning, middle, end.

The third draft took its shape from the second draft, but then I kept moving things around until the fifth draft. At which point I showed it to Husband, and he moved more things around and made me pull some stuff from the first draft. Husband thought this draft six he’d helped create was pretty good.

I wasn’t convinced, but I also wasn’t able to see the forest for the fucking trees at that point, so I took the sixth draft to Group. And they HATED it. Really really hated it. Which, to be perfectly honest, is why I love my Group. They tore it apart, but they asked a lot of important and interesting questions that had me scribbling tons of notes for the new version. I went home convinced I had to start from scratch, and completely freaked out that I now had only thirty days in which to bring this thing to life.

I had six drafts worth of not the most useful material, but at least I’d vomited up a lot of information—so I went through those drafts, looking to see if any of the spit-up was of use. Some was, most wasn’t—and in fact, in most cases, what was least useful was the prose I loved the best. That’s usually the way, actually—really sparkling words on the page can be a total roadblock to creation. You fall in love with those sentences, and then you start carving everything else around them—everything else has to be twisted and pulled to service those fabulous words. What generally happens is you then have six great lines and everything else is a mangled mess. Which, honestly, is what I think had happened here. I’d fallen into my own trap.

So finally, writing an outline came in handy. Drawing on the questions Group had posed, I made a list of points that added up to something new, and started drafting new stuff from scratch. Then I hit another roadblock—for a bunch of personal reasons, I stopped being able to concentrate on my work for more that forty-five minutes to an hour each day. For a woman used to writing for four or five hours at a stretch, this was very disconcerting. How on earth was I going to finish this new draft, and revise it, and get it to Group, and revise it again, and polish it, when I could only work for an hour a day?

Answer: by working an hour a day. Baby steps are better than not trying to walk at all.

In six days, I had a seventh completely brand new draft. It even had a new title! Three days later, I had draft eight. Draft nine followed two days later, and went out to Husband and Group, having been retitled yet again (I think the total number of titles chosen and discarded over the course of this project has been somewhere around eight).

And Group liked it. They liked it! They really liked it!

Because I had to be sure no one would be offended by the use of their real names, I then sent it to the people I’d been writing about—and they liked it, too.

And you know what? I like it. Three months of hard, frightening, confusing, voice and talent-questioning work later, I kind of like this essay. I hated it for awhile, I really really did, I couldn’t bear to imagine what the editors of this book were going to think of it and me and I just wanted crawl under a rock and wait for the deadlines to pass. I wanted to go back in time and un-sign that honestly pretty well-paid contract (I’m a girl whose used to taking payment in free copies, if you know what I mean). But now I kind of like it.

Here’s hoping the editors do, too.

I Couldn't Have Said It Better Myself

2006-05-02T13:02:00.000-07:00

As a Columbia MFA refugee, I wholeheartedly agree.

A House of My Own

2006-04-28T14:42:00.000-07:00

I’ve been meaning to post an ode to my office for months now. I’ve wanted to share the sense of purpose I felt each day, driving to work in my own private space. I wanted to talk about the joy of having all of my books and papers and files around me, arranged exactly as I wanted them, never touched or moved by anybody else. Nobody bothered me because I didn’t have a landline, and I didn’t send or receive mail. At my office, I could be totally the WRITER ME, independent of anything else. Plus I was two blocks from Starbucks. It couldn’t get any better than that.

Then something unexpected happened: Husband took a full-time job at an office out by the airport, and I surprised myself by deciding almost immediately to give up my lease and move my working life back home.

I first bought this house because it was small and bright and tucked high enough into the hills it seemed appropriately cloistered for a writer’s purposes. The views of Hollywoodland and Griffith Park were hypnotic and inspiring. I thought I’d get a lot done here, and I did—this was where I finally finished the MFA thesis I’d been working on for four years.

Then Husband moved in, and like me, he was a work-at-home type. The problem was the work he did. He’s in advertising, which means he has to deal with clients—dealing with clients means a lot of time on the ringing AND speaker-enabled phone. Being in advertising takes a special sort of person, a person who works and speaks in ADD-style bursts appropriate to short, grabby headlines and tiny chunks of punchy, easily-digested text. Which means Husband takes a lot of breaks throughout his workday, checks out a lot of streaming, audio-heavy content on the internet, sings to the cats, watches a hell of a lot of CNN.

I tried not to let his style bother me, but the fact was I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t get still enough to hear myself, and there was never any forgetting he was there. And the more present he seemed, the more difficult it was me to consider myself independent of him. When Husband is there, I am very much a wife. So I fell into wifely stuff—cooking, cleaning, organizing our lives.

I realized pretty quickly I need space where I was independent of him in order to write.

He wouldn’t rent space, so I did. I found a tiny little room near my gym. That was pretty much all that was good about it. It had a vent in the ceiling through which I could smell everybody’s lunch, and the guy upstairs was a sound engineer for the moves, who listened to every bit of music with the volume up high. Plus I shared the suite with two other people, one of whom insisted on constantly visiting with me, another who brought in people to help her handle big projects, groups of design students who laughed and smoked all day just down the hall.

I was almost relieved when I lost my lease. My new place was bigger, brighter, more private. It also cost twice as much, but I loved it enough to get there everyday and I really focused. I wrote several stories, two essays, two-hundred-plus pages of a new novel, and launched my editing business in a year.

But it wasn’t all perfect. First of all, I didn’t like paying the rent, which seemed incredibly inflated for a tiny space in an illegally subdivided house on a crappy street. I didn’t like that walking from my car to the door to my office required crossing a lawn covered in dog-shit and bordered with wildly overgrown aloes that obscured the perimeter path. I shared a bathroom with another apartment, and the doors locked from the outside. Plus the walls were paper-thin. First there was the single mom who left her kid with the grandmother for several weeks—all three generations were loud and mad. Then there was the woman with the vocal cat. Finally, recently, a girl’s moved in whose got a very very energetic boyfriend. They go at it top volume at least three mornings a week.

None of this was enough to make me want to give up my office. Despite the drawbacks, it was still, first and foremost and most importantly, MY SPACE. But then, last weekend, while trying to navigate the filthy lawn in a pair of Italian heels, I fell into one of the aloes and cut open my forehead.

When the landscaping attacks you, you stop thinking of anywhere as YOUR PLACE.

So I’m coming home again. Sure, I have worries about becoming distracted by the stuff of my day-to-day, and I’m not thrilled at being here for the UPS guy, or dealing with the ringing phone (which rings a lot, I’ve discovered—mostly telemarketers, especially a firm called SD&A which calls at least three times a day). But I’m also excited about coming back to a space where I have snacks in the cupboard, and my very own bath. And since Husband is away all day, the WHOLE HOUSE, at least from nine-to-five, is a room of my own.

Another one of those days & a new rule

2006-03-23T16:26:00.000-08:00

I'm having another one of those days ... spent the morning waiting around at home for a package that UPS had refused to deliver to our empty house twice in a row. The last 2 days, they showed up at 11 or so ... so I stayed home, did laundry, sorted over 1000 (yep, 1000) Kenya & Tanzania pictures into the appropriate digital files, and waited for the truck ... which didn't show until 1.

So I didn't get work done this morning. Arrived at the office after lunch, meaning to dive right into the EdMoi essay, but of course I killed two hours surfing workarounds for Blogger categories ... for some reason, I really want categories.

I've killed a lot of time this week, working on things like that, so that the mid-week review of this week's projects looks like this:

Draft EdMoi 1.0: In process. Have the first couple of lines, and a working structure. Still, that's a hell of a long way from a complete draft 1.0.

Move sklevy.com to dreamhost: Complete. Took the better part of a week, but as of today it's all up and happy.

Integrate blog to sklevy.com: Complete. Hence the new simplified layout and color scheme.

Integrate services page to blog and sklevy.com: Complete.

Four out of five by Thursday afternoon is nothing to sneeze at. That said, the pattern here is one I struggle with a lot: using housekeeping to avoid the much harder, far more important act of creating. This is particularly annoying to me because for several months now I've been convinced that I have this issue under control ... I've been working working working like crazy at the office, at the expense of keeping things up at home, and as much as it kills me to come home to the mess each night, I've been patting myself on the back for not cleaning the mess at the expense of sitting down and doing my real work.

And it's been working. Since the last post about my progress, I've written both those letters I'd mentioned, and received replies; I've finished a workshoppable draft of "Seven" 4.0, overcoming the structure issue by working working working through it; and I've completed a workshoppable draft of "JD" 2.0, a feat I'm particularly proud of because it involved my cutting the story from 12000+ words to just over 9000 (go me). So it's not like I'm slacking on the work front.

But that's no excuse for what happened this week. When I put all those site and blog tasks on this week's project list, I told myself that was "business development." Which, I suppose, it is. But it shows a bit of priority snafu-ness that I let myself put so much time into developing a "business" that is still damned short of work I consider strong enough to sell. So let's not sugar-coat it. This week's focus on my web presence wasn't so much biz dev as it was housekeeping of the virtual variety.

So, new rule:

WEEKLY "HOUSEKEEPING" TASKS (read: any task that doesn't involve THE ACT OF WRITING) are to be COMPLETELY IGNORED until WEEKLY WRITING TASKS are complete.

And with that, I seem to have worked up enough energy to dive into EdMoi. Onward!

Please bear with ...

2006-03-17T15:40:00.000-08:00

In an effort to integrate all the pieces of my online presence, I'm moving my site to Dreamhost.com, and this may lead to some funkiness for the next few days. I hope to back soon, bigger and better -- fingers crossed!

Last week / this week

2006-02-27T14:43:00.000-08:00

Last week's "top 3" progress report:

1. Revise "Seven" to a workshop-able draft
Spent 9 hours getting "Seven" to draft 4.0. Not workshop-able by a longshot, but at least I got the structure wrestled out.
2. Write and send letter to Friend re. her new, wonderful book
Nope.
3. Write and send letter to Writer Whom I Admire and would like to befriend
Nope.

Which means we're at it again, this week -- with deadlines!

1. Revise "Seven" FOR workshop (Weds Mar. 1)
Biggest hurdle: fix the ending. It loses steam in the last quarter, and of course, with all stories, the last quarter is really the whole point. That gives me another hour or so this afternoon, then all day tomorrow, and the morning of Weds to fix it ... and Weds afternoon to close my eyes and xerox it for critique (for better/worse).
2. Write to Friend
A good Thursday activity, as hopefully I'll be feeling productive enough in the wake of Wednesday's deadline to reach out and chat about the biz with this Friend who hasn't heard from me in a year or so.
3. Write to Writer I Admire
A good Friday activity, since the following week I'm going to New York and can hand this letter to my good friend, who is also the wife of Writer I Admire's best friend ...

Full stop? Or not?

2006-02-22T15:22:00.000-08:00

Argh. Killed TWO WHOLE HOURS surfing the web today. Husband gave the best pep talk he's really ever given me, and I still didn't pull it together. This is so depressing to type about that hopefully it will kick my butt into gear now ...

In fact:

One of the main tenets of Neil Fiore's THE NOW HABIT is that you must never end blocked or down -- you must always manage a half hour of real work before giving up. So that's what I'm going to go do now.

The other night, a Friend pointed out that this blog seems to be a good way for me to work through my process, to get my head around my work. I'd thought of it, until then, as pure reportage--"here's what I'm working on, and how." But he's right--today, just venting about how un-focused I feel has me feeling a little less unmoored than I felt before I posted this note.

Weekly Progress Report

2006-02-17T17:33:00.000-08:00

A very successful week -- 104 points, despite the (fabulous Valentine's day) interruption of the work week.

Status report:

Revise "Seven" to Draft 3.0 -- complete!
I finished the third draft of "Seven" yesterday. Unfortunately, it STILL doesn't work, so I launched right into draft 4.0, trying a completely different direction. Complete "Seven" Draft 4.0 is item #1 for next week ...

Draft critique of mss for friend -- complete!
I finished my notes for friend on Wednesday. Nearly 400 pp mss took me about a week to read and three more days to assemble written notes for, which is encouraging, considering I've decided to go pro.

Launch editing business with email blast -- complete!
Sent the email announcement yesterday, and created the site for my new venture today.

Anyway, I'm feeling pleased with myself, especially since next week looks fairly clear on the project-level, so I should have the entire week to try to wrestle "Seven" 4.0 into some semblance of workshoppable shape. "Seven" has been a real struggle -- I wrote a first draft over two years ago, and then last week I wrote an ENTIRELY different second draft, and this week, a COMPLETELY new third. Still, something's misising. It's ringing really empty still.

Hopefully a weekend spent away from the story will bring some sort of clarity or epiphany to my work next week -- it's rare that I have so much difficulty getting the bones of a story down the way that I want. It may be that this is just too close to the vest -- one of the things that I've found to be a failure with it is the tone (I tend to get breezy when I'm writing about things that touch me too closely).

It could be I just need to sit down with a pen and paper and write it longhand, try to get out of my head that way. Hmmph. Who knows. Frustrating to kick something around for so many years and still find myself stymied. I've tried as an exercise boiling down what I'm trying to say in a single sentence, but no matter how I frame the sentence, I'm having trouble figuring out how to dramatize it. Probably that means my focus isn't specific enough. Which means before I keep writing I probably have to go back to the brainstorming board, and boil down the question I'm attempting to answer here ...

I'm hanging up my editor's shingle!

2006-02-17T15:34:00.000-08:00

As most of you know, I’ve spent a good amount of time over the years reading, critiquing, and editing the work of my friends. Happily, lots of these people have gone on to great success with work that I’ve been lucky enough to help shape. I really enjoy doing this—my brain likes playing with logic and structure—and I believe what I’ve learned helping my friends has gone a long way to sharpening my own work.

Now I've decided to take what all my brilliant friends have been teaching me, and pass it on to the paying public.

I've posted a description of my services here:

EDITING SERVICES

Weekly check-in: The Power of Three

2006-02-10T16:14:00.000-08:00

This was the first week since the start of the year that I accomplished less than I'd hoped. There were a few reasons for this -- a little bit of a horse melt-down made it tough for me to concentrate at work, plus an unexpected visit from an out-of-town friend, plus hours wasted/spent researching, buying, and playing around with my new Treo (I dropped my old phone in a puddle). It wasn't a TOTAL wash, but I only gained 72 of the 100 points I was going for this week, so I don't get the pretty Timbuk2 case for my new Treo ...

Here's what I did manage to do, despite all the silly distractions. I chose three projects for the week, and made headway on them all:

1. Revise "Seven" to a second draft -- completed!

2. Critique mss for friend -- in progress -- read his mss, but still need to write up my critique notes for him

3. Launch editing business -- in progress -- collected comments on my one-sheet, but decided to wait until I was finished with friend's mss to draft the email blast about the venture ... Dilly-dallied as I debated with myself the pluses and minuses of opening shop, worrying about whether I can spare the time from my own writing to edit others on any larger scale than I'm already doing free, for my friends. But this afternoon I decided that I can always turn away clients if I need more time for my own work -- the point of this business is I can modulate it anyway I like. So next week I get this thing off the ground.

Looking over these notes, I'm feeling encouraged by the amount I accomplished despite this being a "bad week"-- go me. Once again, the power of three proves itself -- three projects is just enough to make me feel productive without feeling overwhelmed.

Next Week's Big Three:

1. Revise "Seven" to a third draft.
2. Complete and deliver mss notes to friend.
3. Send an email blast about my new editing business.

"ALBERT & NANCY" AND A FEW WORDS ON PROCESS

2006-02-02T09:51:00.000-08:00

Last night after Group, I sat in bed reading a roundtable of all the Best Pic directors in Newsweek. The guy who directed CAPOTE said something about Phillip Seymour Hoffman's having a "brutal process" as an actor that involves his becoming, about halfway through the process, convinced that he'll never succeed, that he can't get into the character, that the whole world is finally going to see that he's a fraud.

And I thought: yeah, well. Isn't that how this whole art thing works?

That's how it works for me, at least. Last night, I brought the second draft of "Albert & Nancy" to Group. I'm so deep in it I have no idea how it's playing, but Group seemed to love it. (They had amazing insights for deepening it, as usual, but general comment seemed to be it's damn close to done). So that was wonderful.

But rewind a week, and things really sucked. See here, direct from the pages of my notebook:

27 January 06 7:10 am Starbux

Tough writing day yesterday. I powered through the structure draft in the morning, only to return to it in the afternoon convinved it was unreadable and unworkable. That so freaked me out I spent the rest of the afternoon on other projects, like reading for Friend. Whas TOTALLY depressed by the time I left work after 4. Husband asked to look at it, so I let him, and then I went to wallow in a bath.

Which is where I decided the problem with the story was that it had the wrong protagonist--that it really ought to be a story following her. Husband disagreed. He liked it as Albert's story, liked the writing, thought for the most part it was working, just needed more of the WHY these people like each other, a little less stock-character stuff, and more evolution of the relationship, more WHY.

I got in the car to meet Friend at the Ahmanson, still disagreeing with Husband, head all abuzz with the possibilities for Nancy's story, called "The Good Nurse." Got to restaurant before Friend, and wrote out a series of note cards for the new version, then could barely watch the play because I kept hearing lines from the new version in my head. Went to sleep with the sinking feeling that I had to start completely anew and cobble together the new version in less than a week so I could submit it for Group.

But then this morning I wroke up and had a few insights into how to fix the current, Albert story. If I still hate it, I can always write Nancy's story, later. But I must commit to finishing this, to not sabotaging myself at the very last moments. So I have cards of notes I scribbled while brushing my teeth this morning, and today I hit these points ...

That's pretty much the way it always works. Which really sucks, especially when you know you've been depressed enough in your life that any time you're low for a day you're freaking out that means you're about to sink into the months-long morass. But the good news is, this time at least, I managed to identify the freak-out as self-sabotage WITHIN LESS THAN A DAY, which is huge huge huge for me, and work through it. The trick is this year's mantra of finishing things.

I can't say it too often. 2006 IS THE YEAR OF PUTTING THINGS TOGETHER.

MORE ON THE PRINTABLE CEO ...

2006-02-02T09:27:00.000-08:00

This new accoutability system rocks my world, plain and simple.

Last week, I set myself the goal of reaching 75 points over the course of the week. I so loved filling in all the task-tracking bubbles that I actually hit 110 points. Even more amazing: I let the laundry pile up, and we ate out A LOT. Husband even cooked. The world didn't end, and I wrote a TON, spending in excess of 12 whole hours TYPING. UNTIL DARK. IN MY OFFICE. I even found the time to do a little editing for a friend.

Prize: Levenger Pocket Folders for my work-bag. I've been jonesing on those for awhile.

This week I upped the ante to 100 points. Work continues hard and heavy, and I'm at 66 points as of this morning. It's shocking how motivating this all is.

Granted, it helps that I get fun prizes. This week I'm writing for a pair of noise-cancelling headphones like these, which are perfect for when I'm stuck working at Starbux or at home or on airplanes. (The price bump up from the Levenger Pocket Folders is determined by the fact that I actually FINISHED a damn strong second draft of "Albert & Nancy" in two weeks!)

Conclusion: Printable CEO rocks my world.

OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH 2006

2006-01-16T14:52:00.000-08:00

Finally back at work after a long holiday / travel hiatus. In the interim, I’ve bought a fabulous wonderful amazing new horse; packed up my childhood bedroom in preparation of pending sale of my childhood home; turned 30; and traveled all over Kenya and Tanzania for 5 weeks with Husband. All in all, not a bad way to ring out 2005.

But it’s now firmly 2006, and time to consider what I’d like the New Year to bring.

First step for setting this year’s goals is a look back at last year’s successes and failures on the same front. So, a quick re-cap of 2005:

Complete shitty start-to-finish draft of novel.

Reality check: Didn’t finish the draft. Did, however, write more than 200 pages of a draft I expect to run somewhere in the 350-400 page range. So that mitigates the disappointment of not finishing somewhat. Another consolation: I made it that far without once looking behind me and/or starting over, so that’s a big step, too.

Complete collection of stories.

Reality check: Didn’t finish the collection. Did, however, complete and submit one story from the collection, and complete a first draft of a second. Plus I brainstormed all the other stories for the collection, and have a working contents list.

Publish in three places.

Reality check: that didn’t happen at all. Which is not to say I didn’t make an effort—“Dirty Darlene” went out to forty-five venues over the course of the year. Still awaiting word from more than twenty of those publications, but my hopes for “Darlene” finding a home are not that high. It’s a pretty dark story. That said, the more high-profile magazines among my submittal list showed the most interest in “Darlene”—I had lovely personal notes about it from Agni¸ Zoetrope, and Esquire—so that’s something. Anyway, the lesson actually learned in this category is that I need more product if I want to publish, plain and simple.*

*That said, I did attempt to produce more than these goals make clear. Over the course of the year, in addition to my other work, I also wrote several drafts of a travel essay that it now seems clear is meant to be the germ of a short story, plus a novella-length story about a young acrobat struggling to fly free of her domineering dad.

Conclusions from 2005.

The failing on all counts is none of my projects progressed as quickly as I’d hoped. Mostly that’s because I let life sidetrack me over and over again at the cost of my work. At the end of the year, I had lots of good work in pieces, but no product.

Which is why I’ve decided 2006 is The Year Of Putting It All Together.

Putting the novel together.

I’ll complete that shitty first-draft.
Then I’ll complete the second draft.
Then I’ll hand out that second draft to friends and colleagues for critique.

Putting the collection together.

I’ll complete the collection, story by story.
And I’ll submit each finished story for publication.

Putting the miscellaneous pieces together.

I’ll finish the acrobat story.
I’ll finish the honeymoon story.
And I’ll submit both pieces for publication.

Obviously, to do all this, I need better work practices and strategies this year. As usual, I’ve gone looking for them in the GTD / Productivity websphere, and found a pretty cool framework I’ve decided to adapt for myself this year: David Seah’s Printable CEO.

What I like about the Printable CEO is that it’s big-picture organic to Seah’s larger career GOALS—the list of activities he deemed “Worth Doing” are all STRATEGIES that contribute to reaching his ultimate career goal. Even better, he took this list of things “Worth Doing” and assigned point values to each thing, so he could track the energy expended towards his goal—each day, he has to earn a set number of points pursuing things “Worth Doing.” And it gets even cooler than that! He’s even created a TACTICS tool, the Task Project Tracker, which breaks down those things “Worth Doing” another level. Now I can track my work by PROJECT and by WORTHY ACTIVITY! I told you this was cool.

So I got right to work brainstorming on his system. Here’s what I came up with:

MY LARGER GOAL

To answer the questions “What do you write? Have you written anything I’ve heard of?” with a confident, “Well, I’ve published here, and here, and here.”

HOW TO GET THERE

In order to publish my work, I have to write it. That means a lot of time alone at my desk. It also means a good deal of time face-to-face with friends and colleagues who can help me perfect my work. (Offering critique is also helpful in terms of honing my own work, and even better if I’m paid for it!) Ultimately, it means making sales by submitting to appropriate venues, which, of course, are made infinitely more “appropriate” by making myself known to them by previous, positively received work or social connections.

THUS, WHAT’S WORTH DOING?

[10] Words-on-the-page work
[10] Pen-in-hand editing

[5] Pen-in-hand brainstorming
[5] Submitting work for critique
[5] Submitting work for sale
[5] Reading / editing for money
[5] Posting to my blog

[2] Doing my morning pages
[2] Taking an artist’s date
[2] Reading / editing for friends
[2] Furthering social / business development

[1] Reading lit mags to find homes for my work
[1] Other market research to find homes for my work
[1] Maintaining old or making new relationships

So, as of today, I’m setting myself a minimum of 15 points daily, Monday through Friday. Any week I earn less than 75 points, I have to make up the points on the weekend. Any week I earn more, I get some sort of prize.

AARGH

2005-10-26T12:55:00.000-07:00

Crappy weather, still. And I killed all of yesterday going to see a horse who ended up being TOTALLY not right for me (I miss Nelson more every single day -- I was truly lucky to find such a sweet, athletic, smart, and correctly built horse, and even though we only had a few months together, it was life-changing, and I'm beginning to feel I will never replace him). This horse situation is starting to be a real problem -- I tell myself each morning "Don't think about horses until your work is done!" so of course, all I can do is think of horses. It's getting to be a total obsession, like I'm a 13 yo girl. And as if I didn't have enough keeping me from wanting to work, a dear friend has his 6-month CAT scan today and his freaked-outedness about it has me pretty worked up, too.

I know the only answer is to work through it, go to the page. But I don't want to go to the page. I just want to cry and eat chocolate.

I'm going to lunch. Maybe I'll feel more like working after I eat something.

I hate myself when I don't work. Really, really hate myself. And I've been on such a roll this month -- 13 days of a possible 16, and several of those days I managed 2000+ words! And then, of course, this morning, on the way to the office, I started to wonder if everything I've written on the novel has been wrong ... if in fact our hero isn't engaged at book's open, but rather still trying to get the ring from the man of her dreams, so that actually she's just gotten the ring in Chapter 9, and Chapter 10 starts the wedding madness ...

And I'm pretty sure that all this stuff happening in Chapter 10 needs to happen by Chapter 5 or so, and that this book is MUCH SHORTER than I think it is.

And this thought, of course, leads to my worry that I've spent too much time worrying about plot and not enough luxuriating in my characters.

Who scare the pants off me, of course. Playing with their lives worries me that I'm playing with fire too close to mine.

But what other choice do I have?

Aargh. Really that's all I can say about that.

Finally, I'm Live!

2005-10-20T17:53:00.000-07:00

Ten hours later, here it is folks:

www.sklevy.com

CREATIVE CRISES MANIFESTO AND EMERGENCY ACTION PLAN

2005-10-07T09:12:00.000-07:00

We accept that creative crises are a fact of life for any thinking person who wants to create anything. Crises are crippling, paralyzing things, and happen to anyone with half a brain who knows how to use it. Crises can make you doubt everything you believed about your own talents—they can make you think you haven’t an original, unique, funny, nor insightful cell in your DNA. But though creative crises come to all of us, they can be held at bay by certain actions, and even when they can’t, there are methods for weathering these crises, and even working through them.

CHECK IN WITH YOURSELF FIRST THING – ON THE PAGE!

I find that when I’m particularly stricken with creative panic, the first thing I stop doing is facing myself. I fill myself with other people’s words, other people’s music, and I avoid my notebook as if it were infected with the plague. Journaling and miscellaneous scribbled coffee-shop observations and little plot and character ideas I jot down while stuck in traffic cease completely. THIS IS AN ENORMOUS MISTAKE. Even when you feel you haven’t got a thing on earth to say that would be of interest to anyone else, even when you think everything you’ve created or attempted to create is crap, IT IS VITALLY IMPORTANT YOU KEEP CHECKING IN WITH YOU. You feel an overwhelming desire to stop “working” on your current project? Okay. Indulge it if you have to. But at all costs, keep talking to yourself in your notebook. Julia Cameron recommends daily “Morning Pages,” three pages of longhand journaling to clear your head. Dorothea Brande recommended this decades before Cameron, suggesting you write first thing, before even getting out of bed. I’ve been keeping a journal since I was eight or nine and first read Anne Frank, but in the last decade or so I’ve realized daily morning pages are indispensable to me. Even when I can’t write another thing, I can go about the rest of the day, post-morning pages, knowing I’ve exercised the writing arm for at least three pages … and usually more, since I’ve taken on Brande’s advice that you write these pages until the steam runs out.

REPETITIVE PHYSICAL ACTION IS KEY TO KEEPING THE GEARS OILED

I am not the first person to think a daily walk is key to keeping myself open and aware enough to let inspiration strike. This is not to say that on every walk I find myself fixing a problem in my narrative, or figuring out what it is I want to write next. Most days, really, I’m mostly thinking “Damn, it’s hot, and I really, really, don’t want to walk up that hill right now, but hell, I’m out here and the only way home is up it, so up it I go.” That said, after every walk I’m more focused, more dropped down to myself, and even if I don’t go straight to the page, I clean the house with real verve and precision. But with practice, when I manage to keep my daily walks actually daily for any extended period of time, I do find that more often than not, inspiration does strike, or better, the repetitive physical act of putting one step in front of the other quiets my worries enough to allow me to get back to work. Also, walking from here to there shows me I can get from start to finish with all my projects—if I want to get to THE END, then I just have to remember, I do have it in me walk up that hill. I do it everyday, after all. (Biking, riding, kayaking, surfing—these probably are equally good activities to attempt. As long as you can’t read the newspaper doing it, it’s a good repetitive physical action to try. This is why I don’t think the treadmill at the gym is a substitute for a good old-fashioned walk—watching Dr. Phil on the monitor, or skimming a magazine, blocks out every “I’m open, I’m open” impulse the activity I recommend is geared towards nurturing.)

SHOW UP

Don’t bring a stack of magazines. Don’t carry “other work.” Go somewhere where it’s just you and your notebook, or you and your computer, and be there. You can’t do the work if you’re not at the table. Period. You’re much smarter when you’re writing then when you’re thinking about it. Prove me wrong, why don’t you?

NO IMPULSE IS THE WRONG IMPULSE ON THE PAGE

That’s not to say that every impulse is right, but how are you to know the difference between right or wrong until you get to the end of your story and figure out what’s there? So don’t ever let not knowing what comes next stop you. Write down whatever comes to you, or skip to your next certain beat. You can always erase a misstep, or fill in the blanks to the next beat that’s calling to you—even better, often times, you’ll realize you don’t need to fill in that missing moment, it’s assumed just by getting to that next, vital, breathing beat.

DON’T EVER WALK AWAY FROM A PROJECT WITHOUT KNOWING WHEN YOU’RE COMING BACK

As I’ve said before, I generally get the impulse to walk away from whatever I’m working on somewhere in the middle, just as the first energies of the new voice I’ve discovered is no longer able to do all the work of supporting the story without something else to back it up. This, for me, is where my “I’m a talentless hack” song starts to scream at me so loud I can only silence it with an entire Entemann’s coffee cake. You’ve got a few options at this point. You can, if you’re a better, stronger person than I, skip the coffee cake and write through the internal screams, following the “NO IMPULSE IS THE WRONG IMPULSE” rule I’ve stated above. Or you can move to another project on your docket, and work on whatever is calling your passions more strongly for a little while. This is not exactly the wrong move, because at least you’re moving forward on something you love. That said, if you find yourself getting to a point halfway through that second piece where you stall out, thinking you’d give your left arm to be working on something else, you’ve got a problem. If this second roadblock sends you back to the first thing you’d walked away with, you may have a workable system, moving back and forth, back and forth, until completion of both, but if you’re anything like me, I’m assuming it’s not quite that easy. So here’s what I do:

1. WHEN BEGINNING A PIECE, I WRITE TO THE FINISH BEFORE STARTING SOMETHING ELSE.

This rule is easiest to accomplish with stories, essays, poems, articles—things in which you can actually envision the end of a first draft coming to you in under three months. Any longer, and it gets harder to sustain, so I no longer force myself to adhere to this rule with novel-length projects. Instead, I consider chapters of my novel discreet pieces of work for this project. That way, I can say, “I AM FINISHING CHAPTER EIGHT BEFORE GOING ON TO SOMETHING ELSE” as opposed to “I AM FINISHING THIS 400-PAGE NOVEL BEFORE GOING ON TO SOMETHING ELSE.” Much easier to swallow. And it may be, that after Chapter Eight, I decide Chapter Nine has my most passionate attentions, so Chapter Nine comes next. Or I decide to go on to a story or essay I’ve been thinking about for awhile—and I write that TO THE END before going on to something else.

2. SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO INTERRUPT YOURSELF.

Of course, sometimes life intervenes in your start-to-finish plan. Deadlines on other projects, or sheer panic, can lift you from what you’re attempting to write straight through. So promise yourself that once you’ve FINISHED this other, interrupting-piece, you will return to what you’d previously started, until you finish that, too.

These rules are why my writing docket looks like this right now:

a) COMPLETE DRAFT 2.0 OF TRAVEL ESSAY: My first priority, only because it has a deadline attached—I have to bring it to my Writing Group next week.

b) COMPLETE DRAFT 1.0 OF CHAPTER EIGHT: I had to interrupt work on Chapter Eight in order to complete TRAVEL ESSAY for Group, so once I’m done with Travel Essay, it’s back to Chapter Eight I go..

c) COMPLETE DRAFT 1.0 OF CHAPTER NINE or COMPLETE DRAFT 2.0 OF TRAPEZE NOVELLA or COMPLETE DRAFT 2.0 OF DOCTOR/NURSE STORY: What I do following Chapter Eight’s completion will depend where my head is when I get there.

d) IF I COMPLETE A NON-NOVEL PROJECT FOLLOWING CHAPTER EIGHT, I MUST RETURN TO THE NOVEL NEXT—I MUST NEVER MOVE AWAY FROM THE NOVEL FOR MORE THAN ONE PROJECT-CYCLE AT A TIME.

Finally, for endless inspiration:

SEE NEW MOVIES, READ NEW BOOKS, HEAR NEW MUSIC.

Enjoy what’s out there. That’s what you want to be a part of, right?

BUT ALSO, JUST AS IMPORTANTLY, SEE THE MOVIES YOU LOVED AS A KID, READ THOSE BOOKS, LISTEN TO THAT EMBARRASSING MUSIC.

Remember who you were if you want to really know who you are when it’s just you and your keyboard. That person who considered Skid Row deeply profound wouldn’t have for a second thought she wasn’t good enough to lay it all out for everybody on her own damn page.

August Check-in

2005-08-24T09:39:00.000-07:00

I finally found my summer groove! This month, I wrote a 13,000 word long story concerning a trapeze family and their middle daughter's struggle to fly free -- and I actually LIKE the first draft, and believe I can make something lovely from it.

Here's how I broke through the summer doldrums. As I've said earlier, my life was pretty upended by circumstances out of my control--my wonderful 5 year-old quarter horse Nelson, who came to live with me in May, became violently ill and had to be hospitalized in July. He very nearly died during his 4 1/2 week hospital stay, and I spent a lot of time on the road, traveling back and forth to see him. With Nelson in the hospital, I found myself waking up later and later, because I no longer had to rush to the barn at the dawn to ride. So between bed and the freeway, writing hours got shorter and shorter ...

With the result that I became more and more depressed.

Finally, the first week of this month, I reminded myself of what I know to be true about my writing habits, and yet so often let myself forget:

1) I write best first thing in the morning, preferably before I speak or see anyone, and much as I hate leaving our warm bed in the mornings, I work better if I get to the page while Husband is still asleep.
2) Writing 1000 words is ECSTACY. Pure and simple. Writing 1000 words is as good as anything anything anything gets. Writing 1000 words sends me off towards my other chores and responsibilities happy and care-free and high. Giddy with joy, even. Funny how, when I'm not writing, this is the thing I most quickly forget.

So I started getting up in the mornings again--up at 7, out the door by 7:15. First stop: Starbucks, where before my coffee I wrote a minimum of 5 pages in the journal, then ordered a non-fat latte and read until 9. At 9, I kept a date with my story, and wrote until 11 each morning, aiming for a minimum of 1000 words and hitting way past the mark several times.

The high that followed allowed me to cope with the stress of my horse's illness--recently, horrible as it is to say, he's taken a turn for the worse. It also helped me be sweet and kind and good to Husband, who in return did anything and everything to get me out the door mornings, even agreeing to go to sleep earlier than usual and not bitching about my alarm going off hours earlier than he likes to wake up. He even insisted I go to work in the mornings despite our having house guests (the amazing man sent me to the office every morning and took on hosting responsibilities entirely by himself).

So now, as we prepare to leave for our 10-day excursion to Maine, I'm feeling good about my work because I FINISHED SOMETHING!!!! I moved through the middle-of-the-draft problem, and shot straight through to the other side!!!

And even better, as I wrote the story, the synapses kept firing towards other projects: I figured out exactly how my story collection functions, came up with a new story for it that takes its inspiration from the Nelson tragedy (writers are vultures), and figured out how three other stories for the collection that I'd been percolating for awhile actually get from a to b to c--how I should approach and move through them, how they start and end and even, how the middle parts work.

Anyway, I can go on vacation breathing easier because of all this. But also, I can go on vacation knowing that I won't stop writing just because we're traveling--that I'll actually enjoy it MORE if I escape for a few hours every day and hit the page. So that's the plan, and that's the gauntlet I'm throwing for myself over the trip's duration:

I WILL RETURN TO LA WITH A FIRST DRAFT OF A NEW STORY.

Because only if I keep writing can I truly relax.

Takes One to Know One

2005-08-15T14:28:00.000-07:00

The best description I have ever, ever seen of writer-paralysis (and the very reason I have vowed to NEVER LOOK BACK, NEVER START OVER until a draft is done from start to end) is found in the story "Sunlight," by Matthew Kneale, which is collected in a volume called Small Crimes in an Age of Abundance (a collection I can best describe as Roald Dahl grows up, ditches his mysogyny and dependance on magic to drive plot, and travels the Global Village behaving badly -- wonderful stories that made me so uncomfortable I had to stop reading them before bed because thinking about them afterward made it impossible for me to sleep). Anyway, see here:

All his dignity would be restored once he finished his novel.

Unfortunately, he never did. Years went by, and the book continued to slip and slide from his grasp. The maddening thing was he could never quite see what was wrong. Everything felt fine when he was deeply absorbed, but as soon as he stood back, distracted by a few day's break, or even an absorbing program on television, it all seemed to fall to nothing: characters he had thought intriguing and complex became somehow indistinguishable from one another (changing their names, which he did repeatedly, never seemed to help). Likewise, plot lines that had felt ingenious suddenly appeared lacking in any sense of surprise, as if the whole story might be the background to something else more eventful. A number of times he tried to abandon the whole project, only to be pulled back, like a cart dragged into the same muddy ruts it has got stuck in ten dozen times before. How could he give it up whne he had already invested so much time? [...] So he worked on, accumulating first chapters--he never quite got started on a second--of wide variety, one opening with Lucinda dancing passionately in a 1932 Berlin nightclub, another beginning with poor Hermann breathing his penniless last breath in the chill wind of 1979 New York, a third starting with Leonora (previously Lucinda) weeping tight-lipped in her Stepney home at the news the Gerhardy (Hermann) has been reported missing in action from the Afrika Korps. The novel did not grow so much as spread, as pages of handwritten notes and printed openings piled up in his study, on shelves, in drawers, on the floor at his feet.

Story of my first novel, with the slight exception that I managed several awful complete drafts in addition to the dozens and dozens and dozens of first chapters that are archived in stacks of plastic file boxes in our garage.

Another Lesson Learned

2005-08-14T19:02:00.000-07:00

This morning I attended a bridal shower brunch for a very dear friend. She's a TV writer, very successful, and no one is more deservedly so -- she began as a receptionist and wrote her way up, and it's been a thrilling rise for everyone who loves her. Not surprisingly, many of the women at her shower were also TV writers, and that would have been just fine with me (I've never ever wanted to be a TV writer, I hate collaborative writing and I hate writing to deadline) had one of them not mentioned she'd just left her job to write a novel. That would probably have been okay, too, if she hadn't said it with such JOY, as in "I'm writing a book, and it's going great, I'm so happy, I've been at it a month and I'm hoping to find an agent by the end of the year" yadda yadda yadda.

And something about that just knocked me flat. Maybe it was her supreme confidence (which I wanted to believe was naivete) -- god knows this has not been the summer of Supreme Confidence for me. The combination of sun and kids running around and also the fact that my regular writing schedule has been sort of fucked up due to uncontrollable extenuating circumstances has made my sense of committment but more so my belief in my own abilities shrivel up and bake like a raisin. Add to that the "middle of the manuscript" problem, and it makes for a fine summer mess.

What, you ask, is the "middle of the manuscript" problem? Well, I have found over a long career that I tend to start strong -- disciplined, positive, productive, creative until, well, I hit the middle of the manuscript. Somewhere in the middle, I stall. I always stall. I know what comes AFTER the middle -- but for some reason, the connection between the START and the END goes blank. I begin to wonder if the beginning is any good, and if the end actually makes sense, and if maybe the whole project isn't completely empty or wrongheaded in the first place.

Then I dry up. I stop writing, but I keep showing up at my desk, and I beat myself up for the nothing that goes on there. Mostly nothing happens there because, though I'm at the desk, I find it impossible to actually open the appropriate document, so not surprisingly, I don't write a word.

So this summer, after much tsuris of the type described above, I eventually fixed on another tactic: I decided to work on stories for awhile, at least until I was ready to go back to the novel (in my head, ready = Labor Day, for some reason). Stories seemed manageable -- theoretically, they're easier to start and finish in shorter periods of time.

So I started a new story (now nearing 10,000 words, way past story length) and told myself I couldn't get back to the novel until I had COMPLETED a draft of the story. No more "stopping in the middles," I told myself, following a browsing of my files that revealed several half-drafts of various projects, "completing this story will give me a sense of accomplishment that will send me back to the novel feeling more confident -- finishing something will remind me I know how to do this, after all."

It's been tough. I constantly second-guess this choice, and wonder, on those days when I think "I should be working on the novel today," that maybe, indeed, I should go work on the novel. But then I wonder, "isn't going back to the novel while my story is middle of the manuscript just another act of procrastination against finishing the story?"

It's been a whole summer like that.

For the moment, I've decided to let process trump everything else, so I've made myself stick to the new story, and will do so until I reach THE END (hopefully this week). Then I will return to the novel -- and for now on, any time I want to stop work on the novel, I have to be AT THE END of a chapter, and I have to turn to another STORY and write TO THE END.

It's all about getting to the end, practicing completion.

Slow and steady, does, eventually, someday, over time, win the race.

As for my horribly depressing brunch experience, here's what I did next:

I went home, made a cup of coffee, and opened up THE STORY. I drank coffee and I wrote 527 words and followed them up with notes for the scenes I think follow next.

And what would you know -- that fixed everything. I did my work, and it felt great.

They Can Let Me Down Easy Any Time

2005-08-08T11:18:00.000-07:00

At the bottom of the form "no thanks" from Esquire, this lovely note:

Dear Sarah Kate Levy,

What a wildly entertaining read "Dirty Darlene" is! I hope you continue to submit to us. I'm sorry I can't place this piece.

-- MRM

Wish I knew who MRM was ... I'd send flowers. Really. I can hardly imagine a nicer thing to hear about "Darlene" short of someone wanting it. Made my whole weekend.

2005-08-04T09:34:00.000-07:00

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Faith?

2005-07-20T12:12:00.000-07:00

Hmm. I'm the girl who went around my synagogue hanging "Is there a god?" signs on all the sliding walls. But that said, this is still a vaguely encouraging story.

Monthly Check-in: June

2005-07-12T12:52:00.000-07:00

DAILY GOALS:

Write 500 words (min) each day.

NUMBER OF DAYS I MEANT TO WRITE 500 WORDS: 18
NUMBER OF DAYS I ACTUALLY WROTE 500 WORDS: 14

ANALYSIS: Not terrible, but then again, the “meant-to” bar was lowered by traveling to Buffalo & Cleveland for 5 days, and then a totally disabling bout of PMS-induced-depression that horribly happened to coincide with my finishing Chapter 6, and so made beginning Chapter 7 a horrifying, shame-spiralling exercise in “oh-god-don’t-make-mes.” Of course, as usual, it takes Husband to point out that the depression is probably PMS, and Friend to suggest that if I can’t get through the PMS-depression wall with my usual bag of tricks than really I ought to just turn to other things for a few days. So I did, turning to home fronts, and got lots on those home fronts done (not least of which involved getting professional help, finally, for our WiFi network at home—yes, this is a plug, and well-deserved. Geek Squad rocked out). Anyway, per Friend’s advice, PMS days are now marked on the office calendar so that I don’t sit around for three days making myself feel bad, rather than taking action in other quarters. That said, I’m pretty sure that had the PMS days not coincided with the sticky-start days of Chapter 7, but rather happened mid-chapter, when I’m more sure of where I’m going, I wouldn’t have been so thrown and could probably have barreled through, murkily, but forward nonetheless. Guess this month will test that.

MONTHLY GOALS

Complete 2 novel chapters each month

PROJECTS COMPLETE: 2 chapters + new first paragraph of travel essay (I’ve learned to pat myself on the back for even the most minor of victories)

ANALYSIS: So I actually accomplished this goal – bravo to me! I do think these chapters are probably ridiculously underwritten, but hell, all I’m doing with this draft is getting the fuckers down in some semblance of “here’s what happens.” I can make it good in the next go-round, and shitloads better in the draft after that. Feeling on track for my Novel Draft 1.0 Halloween deadline (unless, of course, the projected 15 chapters balloons to 20+, but I’ll cross that bridge when I have to throw myself off it).

~~Workshop 1 project/month~~ Goal Suspended Until November 1 (post-completion of Novel Draft 1.0)

UPDATE: That said, I am slowly reworking a travel essay that may make it to Group before then.

Submit current stories/essays for publication

“Darlene” went out to Another Chicago Magazine, The Missouri Review,, The Ontario Review, Chicago Review, Northwest Review, and BukAmerica.

Meanwhile, lots of other places turned “Darlene” down. Getting too depressing to list, really. That said, I am going to continue submitting to 5 venues each month through October. Come November 1, post-completion of Novel Draft 1.0, if “Darlene” remains unsold, I will spend some serious time with this version of the story and try to figure out (a) if it’s horribly flawed—and if so, try to fix it, or (b) I like it, everyone else is crazy—and if so, retire it from the submission cycle put it away for the eventual story collection, which I’m using November and December to work on, anyway.

Experiment: A Cure for the New Chapter OH-GOD-NO-DON'T-MAKE-MEs?

2005-06-16T11:07:00.000-07:00

Finished Chapter 6 yesterday. It's not the most inspired chunk of the manuscript thus far, but it's done, and at this stage in the game, "done" is the whole point. I'm going forward at all costs, and what's most interesting, I've discovered, is that with every new chapter I put to bed I am suddenly overwhelmed with strong and interesting ideas and situations to fix chapters that are behind me ... for instance, yesterday I figured out fixes for Chapters 1, 2, and 5 while printing out Chapter 6! So I've made notes on index cards with all those thoughts, and will continue forward into Chapter 7 as if all that information has already made it into the book, and then when I start DRAFT 2 I will do the actual creating of those new scenes and bits of information.

Of course, I was very excited about all of this and was thrilled about generating forward momentum into Chapter 7 earlier today as I made notes over a cup of coffee. Then I got to the office and the usual fears and procrastinations and negotiations with myself attendant with starting new chapters set in strong. I surfed and I emailed and I surfed some more, and finally I decided one more new working rule ...

NEW RULE:

From now on, when I can't seem to make myself stop avoiding sitting down to begin a new chapter, I will turn off the email, turn of the browser, and choose the item on my GTD task list that I have been most procrastinating and most dread doing and force myself to undertake it, in hopes that this horrible thing I really don't want to do will make sitting down and writing seem a much better deal.

In this case, the things I most don't want to do are clean out the microwave and mini-fridge that were included in my lease of this space. They are FILTHY -- really really really filthy, last-call-at-the-bar-women's-bathroom-filthy--but man would it be handy to bring leftovers to work and not only cool but also nuke them ... I've been avoiding this task since I rented this space March 1st, so today I attempt cleaning the microwave. Hopefully that will send me RUNNING back to my keyboard, and the threat of undertaking similar actions with the mini-fridge--tell me, really, how the hell do you end up with moldy cigarette stubs inside a refrigerator?--will keep me from acting similarly stupid about working in the near future ...

For What It's Worth, I'm Not the Only One

2005-06-10T17:44:00.000-07:00

See the first paragraph.

Monthly Check-in: May

2005-06-08T14:50:00.000-07:00

DAILY GOALS:

Write 500 words (min) each day.

NUMBER OF DAYS I MEANT TO WRITE 500 WORDS: 22
NUMBER OF DAYS I ACTUALLY WROTE 500 WORDS: 15

ANALYSIS: I lost 1 day accompanying Husband to doctor’s appointment (“Just like old people,” Mom says). I lost 5 more days to general malaise and some actual sick, though 2 of those 4 lost days I worked on the book by shoring up my notes, so that’s something. Lost 1 more day due to architect meeting, but heck, I’m counting that “research,” so there. All this said, my average daily word count for the month of May was in the 800+ range, so though I lost a lot of days, I got more words down than I could have.

MONTHLY GOALS

Complete 2 novel chapters each month

PROJECTS COMPLETE: 1+ chapter

ANALYSIS: I was supposed to finish Chapters 5 and 6 this month. However, schedule was a little bit messed up from the get-go, as I was still finishing up half of last month’s Chapter 4. So I didn’t start Chapter 5 until the second week of the month, and had my usual ARGH WHAT IS GOING ON HERE trouble with it just long enough to force Chapter 6 off the schedule entirely. Plus the loss of 7 working days just did not help at all. Ultimately, this month I was lucky to finish Chapters 4 and 5 … thankfully I managed high enough daily word counts (mostly hovering in the 1000 range) to do even that.

Workshop 1 project/month

UPDATE: Informed Wednesday Writing Group that I would not be workshopping again until the first draft of the novel is complete. Meltdowns ensued. Aftershocks still rippling through. High drama, none of it intended, all of it too much for me to want to deal with, really, but there you go. Hopefully equilibrium will quickly be restored.

Submit current stories/essays for publication

“Darlene” went out to The Journal, Frostproof, Gettysburg, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, and Hobart.

Meanwhile, Glimmer Train, Open City, and First Intensity all turned “Darlene” down.

* * *

All in all, a pretty crappy month for work—I got very distracted by life, which led to institution of NEW RULE:

EMAIL AND WEB BROWSING ARE NOT ALLOWED UNTIL AFTER WORD COUNT IS ACHIEVED.

This has actually been very successful in the few weeks since I enacted this change. I get to work unencumbered by all distractions in the early part of the morning, which means I’m more focused and also more energized, so much so that I often surpass or even double my daily word count minimums (thus my pulling May together by month's end). Most days, by the time I get to the web post-work, I’m so locked in to work-mind that I barely want to surf—I’m getting through my emails and my blog time much much more efficiently now, and have a lot more time for non-writing office work (research, office-nesting, brainstorming, reading for friends).

JSF & KRAUSS

2005-06-08T14:22:00.000-07:00

A few months back I made my feelings about Foer-the-person very clear here.

Not long after, the new book dropped, and I bought it, figuring it was no longer fair to keep ripping into the guy unless I actually read his work. To be honest, I dreaded reading the book, and let it sit on my bedside table for almost a month before I steeled myself sufficiently. However, eventually I did reach for it, and I have to say, I thought it was great from the very first page. I loved this nine-year-old and I willingly followed him all over the boroughs on New York as he battled his own inner demons and went searching for the lock to fit a mysterious key. I loved his friends, too, and his relatives, and not only did I laugh out loud at many passages, I also cried a great deal, too. So JSF got points on both those counts. Lots has been said in not very nice ways about the “gimmicks” in these pages (photographs, sketches, pages of number-strings) but I, for one, found them not gimmicky in the least (and let me be the first to say that I am always always reading with my gimmick-radar on, which is why I refuse to read 99% of everything that has any relationship to McSweeneys). I found all those photos and sketches and numbers to be completely character- and experience-revelatory. Ultimately, I liked this book so much that, finding myself with an hour to kill during errands last week, I chose to drive myself to the nearest bookstore and read the last 100 pages leaned up against a bookshelf with a store copy in hand, because I just didn’t want to wait until I got home. And I cried at the end, sitting on that bookstore floor while people stepped over and around me, so there you go. I said I’d withhold judgment until I’d read the new book. I read the new book, I liked the new book. The guy can write, and I wish him the best future career. That said, I also wish he’d keep his clapper shut.

Anyway, since I like books and I like marriage, and Nicole Krauss is married to JSF, and her new book dropped around the same time his did, I ordered both her new book and her first. I’m halfway through the first novel now and Jeesh, this woman’s imagination and her extraordinary, aching, precise prose are breathtaking in the extreme. I’m reading this book slowly because I don’t want to finish too fast, so yeah, I think she's pretty good, if not better than her husband, too.

The Trouble with New Chapters and the Power of Routine

2005-05-09T14:19:00.000-07:00

Starting a new chapter is always more difficult than I think it's going to be. Despite the fact that I have a good sense of where I'm heading, and even better, particular notes and thoughts and scenes and images in mind for "what happens next," I find when I start a new chapter, the events I thought "happen next" don't in fact "happen until something else happens," and I spent tons of time spinning my wheels trying to figure out what that "something else" is. This could be helped, I suppose, by just WRITING THROUGH THE PROBLEM until things fell into place, but of course, that would be way too easy.

Instead, I dither, re-reading all my notes, shoring up my outlines and research files, adding details to the big picture and moving events around.

And that's on the good days.

Consider this:

I finished Chapter 3 on 4/19. I had every intention to begin actual drafting of Chapter 4 on 4/20 -- and to be fair, I did start writing on 4/20. It wasn't good work, it was aimless casting about, but at least it was words on the page. But on 4/21, I got totally freaked out by the poor quality of 4/20's output, and rather than refocus and start again, I killed enough morning time surfing the internet that by afternoon my head cold was back with a vengeance and I went home to bed and didn't write a word. The following day, I wrote at home, and felt okay with the work -- not because it was good, but because, again, at least there were words on a page.

Then I spent 3 days, literally, cooking for Passover. Finally, I got back to the office on 4/25, but it had been so long since I actually dug deep into my work that instead of writing-writing, by which I mean, producing 500 words-on-a-page that take us forward, I made notes again. At least this time, the notes were somewhat original, new thoughts, which mapped the chapter, suggested the scenes and developments that would take me through--at least, now, I had a spine to hang my story. But actual words? No ma'am. I was still too freaked out to write-write, so I went home.

THIS IS VERY LAME, so I’ve decided to parse the causes of intertia in an effort not to repeat the same mistakes.

1. Partly, of course, there's the fear with each new chapter that I'll discover the story can't support the next step, that it's suddenly soul-less and mind-numbingly dull, not to mention a complete rehash of everything that I’ve written and worse, read, before.
2. And also, of course, there’s laziness. But laziness is not a real issue for me, in generally—as I’ve gotten older/married, I’ve found it harder and harder to sit still/be unproductive. I need to be accomplishing things, all the time.
3. Which makes me think the larger problem is lack of focus—and if that’s true, I need to take a look at my routine.

Routine is huge for me. Routine is how I stay feeling clear-headed and in control of my life. Routine is a free sort of anti-depressant, and believe me, it works.

Here’s a glance at my routine:

6:30 am – I get up early mostly because I have discovered if I don’t get out of bed with a flying start, I’ll spend the entire morning cuddling Husband, who tends to linger beneath the sheets. If I kill the morning, I enter a shame-spiral of “how could you lose so much time?” self-berating, which, of course, makes me just want to kill more time. Now, I would love to say that I get up that early because I wake every morning thinking, “I’m so excited to write today!” The fact is, I do actually wake up thinking that—really, I even say it to myself in this little whisper-voice a few times—but that ain’t enough ammunition when I’m faced with warm Husband in warm bed. What actually gets my feet on the floor is knowing I have an early morning appointment every day: a riding lesson.

7:30 am – I ride dressage every morning at a barn close to my house. I ride my own horse, in the company of my trainer, because even I am not responsible enough to make it to the barn that early in the morning if I’m not paying someone else for the time. But knowing I have to meet my trainer at 7:30 gets me up, and the act of riding itself gets me connected to the day. Plus, it’s me-time. Riding is something I do that Husband doesn’t, so it gets me up, out of the house, connected to my day, but also, connected to me as an independent being, which is halfway to me getting into writer-mind.

8:30 am – I have coffee and yogurt and biscotti at Starbucks (yes I know the coffee sucks at Starbucks and there’s something awful about buying into the chain-mentality, but it’s quick and consistent everywhere in the world, totally invariable, and for me, invariability is a pretty big plus when you’re talking routines). Over coffee, I write my morning pages, ala The Artist’s Way. I’ve been keeping notebooks since I was about seven and first read Ann Frank—thinking about how her words had granted her reprieve from the total erasure suffered by most other people in general and 6 million in particular is a large part of what made me decide to be a writer. But over the course of my life, I’ve had ups and downs in that department, and I recently discovered, to my horror, that the absolute hardest or most important moments of my own life—events that would come in handy for my work, for instance—are, for the most part, entirely unrecorded. Aargh. Clearly something kept me from the page, and that was damn silly. It would never happen today, however, because I have realized a coupla things from going through The Artist’s Way a couple of times (sometimes no matter how much someone’s touchy-feely-approach drives you crazy, they do have some interesting or useful things to say). One thing I learned was, dumping all my personal stuff into my notebook before starting work cleared my head for writer-mind and kept my personal distractions and anxieties on the back burner while I focused on the front. And even better, the more time I spent at the notebook, I realized, the more I wanted to get away from the crap there and REALLY WRITE. Which is how I get from Starbucks to my office.

9:30 am – 2:30 pm (or into the evening if I can steal the time) – I write 500 words minimum and pray for 1000 and more.

I mention all of this only because, once again, today I began a new chapter, and worse, on a Monday, after a weekend away from my desk and my notebook. This, of course, is the perfect recipe for creative stagnation and despair. Sickness and travel and Holy Days threw me off track in April, sure, but I refuse to let that derail me again in May. Today I got up, and got with the program—barn, notebook, office—and the opening for Chapter 5 followed, fitfully, to be sure, but still, I started typing, and the words were there. Good, bad, or ugly—doesn’t matter yet. I just made myself get going, 100 words, then 300, then 500, and then the scene was done. I got 520 words down on paper today, and opened Chapter 5 only 1 work day following the close of Chapter 4, and I thank my routines for that.

Monthly Check-in: April

2005-05-03T16:21:00.000-07:00

DAILY GOALS:

Write 500 words each day

NUMBER OF DAYS I MEANT TO WRITE 500 WORDS: 21
NUMBER OF DAYS I ACTUALLY WROTE 500 WORDS: 15

ANALYSIS: I lost 4 days to a trip to NY to attend a family wedding, despite packing my computer. I always think I’ll write on the airplane, but I never do, and this time was no exception—I spent the hours to NY and back catching up on my New Yorkers and New York Magazines. I also lost 2 days to the world’s worst head cold, though to my credit I did actually go to the office on those days, I just couldn’t bang anything out through the fog. That said, I wrote more than 1000 words for at least 5 of the days I did write, which brings my monthly word count up to cover days lost. HOWEVER, I still count this goal as NOT MET, because honestly, it’s more about the daily pen to paper than the statistical words.

MONTHLY GOALS

Complete 2 novel chapters + 1 other project = 3 pieces total

PROJECTS COMPLETE: 1.5 chapters of the novel

ANALYSIS: I think this new goal is silly and am going to revert back to original MONTHLY GOAL of 2 PIECES per month. Mostly because I always lost time to the “new chapter start-up” period (the time elapsed between Chapters 3 and Chapters 4, this months projects, was a record-breaking weeklong struggle), so 2 chapters takes more time than I thought. I’d rather have a goal that’s not-easy-but-doable (2 pieces) than one that’s optimistic-but-rather-unlikely (3 pieces), because who are we kidding here, completing two pieces is FABULOUS AND WONDERFUL AND NOTHING TO BEAT MYSELF UP ABOUT—I refuse to lose momentum due to shame-spirals, and am therefore dialing down the aspirations a bit. Slow and steady will eventually win the race. That said, I WOULDN’T HAVE MET THIS MONTH’S GOAL anyway, so there you go. It was a function of days-at-my-desk, clearly, and as you can see above, April suffered serious attrition for days-at-my-desk.

Workshop 1 story / 1 essay each month

Ha. Have also decided this is not the most productive goal, and am going to cut it, mostly because I have decided not to workshop the novel until Draft 1 is behind me, and as long as I’m trucking through Draft 1, it seems silly to divert attention to essays or story for workshop purposes, just so that I’m workshopping. More important, I think, that I be writing, and I’m writing the novel right now, so there.

Submit current stories / essays for publication

Last month I submitted "Dirty Darlene" to Center, Santa Monica Review, Bridge, Crab Creek Review, and Cream City. So far of this bunch, SMR has declined. Still waiting on everybody else.

The First Step is Admitting You Have a Problem ...

2005-04-28T09:59:00.000-07:00

... which I do. I can surf sites dedicated to organizational and productivity strategies for hours at a time. Yesterday, in fact, I killed FOUR HOURS doing it.

I know it was FOUR HOURS because one of the strategies I adopted to try to cut down on this time-vacuuming-career-draining problem was to begin a log recording how I spend my office time. Yesterday was the first day I did so, and here's what I found:

WEB & EMAIL & PLAYING WITH CALENDAR ON OUTLOOK -- 4 HOURS
WRITING -- 1.5 HOURS
READING MSS FOR FRIEND -- 1 HOUR
ORGANZING OFFICE (actually doing it, not just reading about doing it or making notes to do it) -- 15 MINS

So today's goals are to trim the surf time and beef everything else up. Granted, I still have a WiFi connection, so best intentions are pretty much poof so far ... though I kept my lit blog surfing to the 30 mins I'd planned for total web surfing this morning (and even managed to turn out the post below in that time), I couldn't resist quickly checking in on my favorite GTD sites.

And then it happened. There I was, minding my own business, procrastinating happily if guiltily, when I stumbled upon this take on writer's bl*** / debilitating procrastination in the most unlikely of places!

So sure, I may have a problem, but it ain't all bad.

On Rooms of Our Own (Again, Forever, Always)

2005-04-28T09:26:00.000-07:00

We're about to start a major renovation at home, which has me thinking a lot about how/what I want my workspace there to be. I've already told our architectects it has to be quiet and somehow "separate" from the house, so people have to think twice about bothering me, but also so I catch myself as I'm getting up from the chair to go do dishes and make myself sit back down. I worry lots about going home to work again -- having office space a fifteen-minutes drive from home has been a blessing upon blessings, really. But we're not building more rooms so that I can keep throwing rent money at the dog-collar wearing kid I'm renting from here, so that being said, I think I ought to forward this essay to our architects as a sort of guide to how a writing space ought to be.

Monthly Check-in: March

2005-04-01T12:45:00.000-08:00

Having a horrible time motivating today -- head cold is screaming "We told you to take a day off, now you're going to be sick forever!" and I'm starting to think this should be the day. But if I don't write, I'll already be a day behind for April, which is a complicated month anyway considering the shuffling around I'll need to do with the writing schedule to account for mid-month trip to New York and seder preparations later ...

All this means, of course, is I'm procrastinating, but at least I'm doing things that are on my Office Action List, so here goes -- The March edition of the Monthly Check-in. And:

Yippee for me! Goals mostly met this month.

DAILY GOALS:

Write 500 words each day

NUMBER OF DAYS I MEANT TO WRITE 500 WORDS: 24
NUMBER OF DAYS I ACTUALLY WROTE 500 WORDS: 23.5

Analysis: Not going to beat myself up about one 1/2 day lost, considering for much of the month my daily word count greatly exceeded 500. Plus I managed all this despite horrendous cold and horrific computer issues at home that have eaten up 8 hours of each of the last three days.

MONTHLY GOALS:

Complete 1 novel chapter + 1 other project (chapter, story, essay) monthly = 2 pieces total

NUMBER OF CHAPTERS: 2
OTHER PROJECTS: 1 (first draft of travel essay "Honeymoon Where the Sun Never Sets!"

Analysis: Very impressed with my output this month. In fact, have decided upon NEW MONTHLY GOAL in this category, as of APRIL -- Complete 2 novel chapters + 1 other projects -- to which end I am instituting 1 additional workday each month, on a weekend day, set aside for speed-writing one start-to-finish story or essay draft.

Workshop 1 story / 1 essay each month

Hmm. I brought first 20 pages of "Endurance" to Monday group on Feb 28, I think, and have sent "Honeymoon..." draft off to Sunday group already for reading April 2. Gonna give myself credit for a March workshop with the April 2 date, and shoot to get something else out there by the end of the month -- perhaps a completed draft of "Endurance" or a revision of "Honeymoon."

QUARTERLY GOALS:

Submit current stories / essays for publication.

This is my weekend to get "Dirty Darlene" out there again. Gonna change this to a MONTHLY GOAL so that more copies are out there, and so I can cycle in new work more quickly if and when new work is done. Last submissions 1/12/05 went to Swink, Open City, Tin House, One Story, and Zoetrope. Swink declined last week -- still waiting on the other four. Today I'm submitting to Center, Santa Monica Review, Bridge, Crab Creek Review, and Cream City.

Progress Report: Chapter 2

2005-03-26T10:36:00.000-08:00

Despite losing insane amounts of time to researching and implementing David Allen's Getting Things Done system* -- an entire workday, in fact (yes, I am aware of the irony) -- I have completed Chapter 2 on, and in fact, just slightly before, scheduled (initial deadline was March 31). Many discoveries made regarding structure of the novel as I pushed through this section:

(a) I'm 50 pages and 2 chapters into the mss, and in "Real Time" we've just progressed through a single day. Initial outliney-treatmenty-notes mapped the story out in terms of months, which I assumed would be chapter units, but it's clear now they won't -- which means my 11-12 chapter structure is probably out, too. Assuming I'm going to be working in the 20-30 chapter range now.

(b) That said, I think I need to make some changes to the the initial deadlines. Original plan, at 2 chapters a month, was set as followed:

9/1/ 05: Draft 1.0 (the messy, forward at all costs draft)
-- submit to readers

12/31/05: Draft 2.0 (the messy, everything moved around, cut, pasted, noted but not "polished" draft)
--structural changes as suggested by readers and my own notes

6/31/06: Draft 3.0 (first polished draft)
--submit to readers

10/31/06: Draft 4.0 (complete, finished mss ready for agent submission)

(i) Obviously, since I'm probably writing 20-30 chapters, I may need to push all those dates back a bit, though perhaps I'll write with such speed and discipline I won't have to lose much time -- in fact, as my writing stamina improves I may up the REQUIRED DAILY WORD COUNT to 1000 words from the 500 I'm currently pressing upon myself -- it's more psychologically daunting, to be sure, but the fact is my average wordcount has been hovering in the 1000-ish range over the last month anyway, so I know it's possible without burning me out or turning me into horrible, preoccupied, exhausted, irresponsible wife/friend (always always I am worrying about the WRITER/PERSON balance, especially in the face of new and wonderful marriage that I want to honor and strengthen as much as I possibly can DESPITE my anti-social writerly tendencies).

(ii) Bigger issue: I think I need to add another draft to the process. It occurs to me there's no way in hell I can release Draft 1.0 to trusted readers, considering I'm not re-reading nor even spell-checking as I go, and considering even as I scan the pages as they come out of the printer I can already see the ways certain paragraphs need to move and certain motives need punching up. However, I don't want to make the mistake I made with Hart, refusing to release it b/c I was so overcome with the flaws, and thus entering into a cycle of "this is so unfixable" paranoia that had me starting over COMPLETELY all the time until everything good about it had been diluted and lost. So, I'm thinking in the wake of Draft 1.0 I will give myself 1 MONTH and 1 MONTH ONLY to do BASIC CORRECTIONS ON THE CHAPTER LEVEL before going to my trusted readers with Draft 1.1. By no means will I attack overall, holistic mss. structure changes on the page -- I can keep a "kill list" and "structure thoughts" list, but the basic holistic structure of 1.1 must remain unchanged from 1.0. All I'm allowed to do to 1.0 is spell-check, move things around WITHIN CHAPTERS, and make margin notes for POSSIBLE CHANGES. This should effect the draft schedule thusly:

Draft 1.0 -- the messy, forward at all costs draft

Draft 1.1 -- the first reader-ready draft, still messy but slightly "fixed" (not to be confused with "polished") chapters, not affecting the shape of the whole

Draft 2.0 -- the huge, heavily notated structural overhaul draft, as suggested by readers notes and my own

Draft 3.0 -- the polished draft, based on structure of 2.0, to be submitted to readers

Draft 4.0 -- the complete, agent-ready draft

However, I'm not changing initial deadlines yet -- I'm going to press ahead at 2 chapters each month and see where that gets me by summer's end.

(c) But overall, I'm basically happy with where I'm going, story-wise. It's not perfect, I'm already questioning the start point, and the emotional plumbing leaves a lot to be desired, but I've begun to read The Modern Library Writer's Workshop and I think Stephen Koch is absolutely right on when he quotes Paul Johnson thusly:

"A bad novel is better than an unwritten novel, because a bad novel can be improved; an unwritten novel is defeat without a battle."

* More on GTD and my debilitating obsession with organizing processes in upcoming posts.

New Personal Best

2005-03-09T12:11:00.000-08:00

Chapter 1 of 2N is complete, at least as far as initial beginning-middle-end drafting goes. All of seven days work! I'm very very impressed with myself.

Am going to let it stay messy and move on to Chapter 2 tomorrow -- my best intentions are just to motor through as quickly as I can and get all necessary events and such down on paper all the way to story's end before I start prettying things up. Not even spell-checking, though I may have to do basic prose-prettying for various Writer's Groups just so I have something to submit . Will bring Chapter 1 to Sunday Group next week, and then I can always submit it again the following week for the floating Mon/Weds/Tues Group and just take all the notes and save them for when I'm through a draft and ready to look backwards. At that rate, if I can get another Chapter done this month, I'll be at least a chapter ahead of myself for Group reads, which would be good -- then at least I can see what's working and what's not as I move along. Granted, there is a risk here that listening to 10 people talk about current work will have me want to kill time going back for fixes -- so Chapter 1 will be the experiment. If hearing Group critiques slows momentum, I will cease bringing Chapters in to read and just soldier on in the dark. However, I do feel that my own personal sense of direction is much stronger than it was three or four years ago when I was first workshopping HART and getting sidetracked trying to deal with all and sundry suggestions. This time I'm older and more sure of my own perspective, plus this story is much better plotted forward and psychologically mapped than were early drafts of HART, so there you go.

Took Me Long Enough, But ...

2005-03-07T10:28:00.000-08:00

I have finally figured out, in less than a million words, what my Great Themes / Obsessions are. Sadly, they seem less great when boiled down thusly, but here I go:

The thing I always seem to be writing about, the thing that moves me to the page and informs every word, is love and compromise -- how men and women (and men and men, and women and women) negotiate intimacy, and how much compromising they do to pull it off, and how you figure out how much compromise is bearable/worth it, and how much is too much, and whether or not you can/should live with the way the other person changes you.

At least this is a minor improvement on my usual answer when people ask me what I write about: "Oh, well, you know. Love and stuff."

Something To Read Again When Losing All Hope

2005-03-02T10:25:00.000-08:00

The Guardian interviews first time novelists.

Progress Report: February 2005

2005-02-28T13:36:00.000-08:00

MONTH'S GOALS:

Number of Days I Meant to Write 500 words: 20
Number of Days I Actually Wrote 500 words: 12.5
Excuses & Days per Excuse: Move-In To New Office Days (2); Trip to Maui (4); Prep for Trip to Maui (1); "Thinking" (1); No Time (.5)

Writing Goals: 1 draft short story, 1 draft novel chapter
Actual Progress: About 20 single spaced pages of story that is slowly, slowly, achingly slowly and in many ways circular-ly, taking shape. More notes and ideas for novel, plus a little outline re-structuring, but no actual chapter-work undertaken.

Conclusions: Got better at carving out my 4 hours of sacred writing time as the month progressed. However, I tended to let my home life intrude even when I was at the office and wasted precious hours. New plan of attack has been instituted as of this weekend, and will be adhered to daily with timer in hand (no more messing around, time running short, aging accelerating, old friends out-publishing, etcetera etcetera):

Dithering and emailing: 30 minutes
500 Words attempt: 90 minutes
Dithering and emaling: 20 minutes
Finish 5oo Words* / Write/read for another project: 60 minutes
Read / Critique for friends: 30 minutes
Blog: 20 minutes
Back-up work, tidy office: 10 minutes

*if 500 words aren't reached by end of office time, somehow, somewhere, between laundry and dinner and endless housewifing, I must find time to complete them before day's end.

Did pretty well at all that today. Got 632 words in on story, so that was good, and read some diving essays I've wanted to read for novel, and started notes on a friend's novel mss which I finished reading last week (not as quickly as I'd hoped, but I am making an effort ;)).

A Plug for "Says You"

2005-02-23T12:40:00.000-08:00

By far and away the best programming on radio. Last night I stumbled upon it again after it went missing in the twice-annual KCRW schedule shuffle ... and was thrilled they'd started playing a brand new game:

Library Of Congress Categories.

Such as:

Q: "Psychology, regression -- Islands in Wake of Shipwreck, Plane Crash -- violence -- boys"

A: Lord of the Flies.

Points are awarded depending how quickly you can guess the book from its LOC subjects -- in this case, if you guessed the title based on only "Psych., reg." you get 10 points, then 8 if you add "Islands," and so on.

I found this to be wonderfully, fabulously, divertingly Fun -- Fun in an Aristotlean Absolute sort of way.

At Least If I Were On A Treadmill I'd Be Burning Calories

2005-02-23T12:33:00.000-08:00

I have written 600 words reworking yesterday's lost pages, which I think were probably better, but who the hell knows. I can't say I feel much like going further forward, considering the trauma. Will read pages of a friend's mss and see how I feel after that.

At least I'm sort of caught up, though the sense of running in place is nauseating in the extreme.

FUCK FUCK FUCK

2005-02-23T11:17:00.000-08:00

Dammit. Just as I was saying to Writer Friend that I thought I might be getting somewhere:

This morning I opened up the story I'm working onto discover NONE OF THE WORK I DID YESTERDAY was saved. Now, I know for a fact I saved it three times at the end of the day yesterday. AARGH. But stupid 'puter has seen fit to spirit it all away. I was finally feeling like I was getting somewhere with this story and BOOM! Gone. Lots of good good stuff that I worry I can not duplicate and which has me wanting desperately to throw in the fucking towel today. But I know I have to write my 500 words if my story and/or career and/or sense-of-self are ever going to get anywhere, so I'm stuck here attempting to pick up where this fucking Dell dinosaur has decided I should. DAMN IT. I was looking forward to actually MOVING FORWARD today and now I have to spend precious time back-tracking.

Fittingly, this story is titled "Endurance," and writing it has been an excruciating act of same.

New end-of-day rules for now on:
--Print new work
--upload to webmail folder
--save to hard drive
--Fridays: save to USB

AARGH AARGH AARGH AARGH.

Okay, enough screaming. Time to get back to work.

Losing the Thread -- Writer Seeks Seams!

2005-02-09T15:41:00.000-08:00

Daily word count becomes ever more difficult in face of impending Maui-trip (tomorrow!) and only half-set up office. Plus pressure to produce new story by 2/15 or so for Group on 2/20 makes me feel completely panicked that I've forgotten how to knit a story together. I have characters, ideas, ending, but I worry that I lack plot, so rather than write and write and write my way through it until plot emerged (the only solution, of course) I spent the day obsessively checking my email and arranging office items to satisfy requirements of feng-shui. I now have manifestation boards in my career, love, helpful people, and creativity centers. Desk arrangements reflect same. How LA-lame is that?

However, in the last draft of this entry, which I somehow managed to erase, I decided to stop trying to write/avoid the story and attack it in smaller pieces -- to wit:

WRITE ABOUT WILL'S ROUTINE (b/c falling in love with Mei Feng needs to disrupt it, and I can't exactly have her disrupt a routine I haven't figured out, can I?)

Also, I realized in a far more eloquent way than I'm about to re-express (damn stupid fucking wireless "connection") that it's not because of Benji that Will decides to give up Mei -- it's not Benji who is so desperate for routine, but Will, it turns out -- he's the one who is scared of what the future holds, he's the one who worries that big changes augur big ills. Benji's just his excuse.

I will stitch this together if it kills me, and fast, dammit!

Must re-post this right away before connexion craps out again.

Then may abandon office and go home and start packing, and try to come up with 500 words on Will's routine at home tonight.

Bon voyage to me!

From Under the Pile of Boxes

2005-01-31T15:22:00.000-08:00

For a tiny, 50 sq ft kind of space, I seem to have collected a shitload of stuff. Packing up to get all moved in to new space many miles from here ... goal is to be settled in by weekend and ready to be raring in new office by Monday.

Meanwhile, I have been coffee-shop writing the last 10 days or so, and it's been alright ... got some of the Mr. Orman story done, and am well into the travel essay I've been kicking around since July.

First Month of 2005 Progress Report Check-in:

FINISH DRAFT OF 2N CHAPTER: Incomplete but in progress.
FINISH DRAFT OF SHORT STORY: Incomplete but in progress.
4 HOURS DAILY OFFICE TIME: Transmuted into "500 words daily" -- that said, mission accomplished!

Ok, so I didn't get all I wanted done done. HOWEVER, I did write 500 words each and every weekday plus 3 Saturdays, so I am patting myself on the back and letting this month be a wash. There is something to be said for being midway through chapter, story, and essay: to wit, it's a hell of a lot better than NOT.

Goals for February:

SET UP NEW OFFICE -- complete with plants and candles
FINISH DRAFT OF 2N CHAPTER -- and get into NEXT CHAPTER
FINISH DRAFT OF SHORT STORY
FINISH DRAFT OF TRAVEL ESSAY
WORKSHOP TRAVEL ESSAY

With that, I return to the packing up.

Saturday Progress Report

2005-01-22T13:44:00.000-08:00

Feeling good-and-focused enough that I dragged my ass to the office on Saturday, though that's not my usual plan. However, 2005 GOALS require I complete drafts of 1 chapter (2N) and 1 story (collection) each month, and while I think the chapter completion likelihood is mostly sewn-up, until this morning, I hadn't started doing the actual writing-writing of my story.

So I struggled for the last 3 hours with "Endurance" and came up with the first 500 words plus a semi-structure, but man o' man was it tough. I'd hoped to be out of here by 1 pm so I could spend some time on the treadmill, but it's almost 2 now, so time has run too short (aren't I so punny we could all die). Must go forage for nourishment then pretty myself up for multiple cocktail parties this evening beginning just after 4. Oh the life.

Plans for Sunday work session are slightly up in the air. I can't let another week happen in which I don't grocery shop and cook for my husband; the guilt as well as the discomfort not knowing how/what we're going to eat turns out to be too much for both of us. So tomorrow I have to plan our menus, get to the store, and then make something like soup I can freeze for quick dinner. Hopefully I can also get 500 words in, but I'm not going to beat myself up forever if it doesn't happen. I need some down-time, after all, and the real plan is only to write-write 5 days/week anyway.

Process and Product

2005-01-20T13:47:00.000-08:00

Schedule a little thrown off by killing a few hours this morning between barn and meeting Husband at car dealer. (This Week's Lesson: Nissans even suckier than Fords.) Spent the time scribbling away at Starbux, netting seven long-hand pages, roughly 180 words per page, inventing two new characters who are supporting players in 2N.

Despite writerly thrills with this creation, and despite believing that more than sufficed for my daily word count minimum, I came to office 1) to escape house, which is filled by Husband, his germs (the poor man is dripping out of every facial orifice), and the horrifying spectacle of the televised CORONATION ($40M? Did they forget there's a war on and hundreds of thousands of tsunami survivors have nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat? Not too mention the general end-of-the-world state we seem to be in ...); 2) to stay in the habit of weekdays at the office; 3) because I really thought I might get 500 ADDITIONAL words done!

Sometimes life intervenes, however. Life, in this case, takes shape of Dear Old Friend, who is sick again and back in chemo. He's been one of my heroes most of my life, but if this latest challenge doesn't make him a contender for the World Champion Superhero title, I don't know what could. (Ok, well, I do have a couple of ideas, but I think after this he's pretty much off the hook and all we needy, anonymous Metropoli ought to go bother somebody else.) Anyway, I spent much of the morning emailing him, and now I just don't want to work anymore today.

Feng Shui Foolish

2005-01-19T13:46:00.000-08:00

Got to the office good and early today but still managed to kill nearly 90 minutes surfing the internet. Distraction inspired by an article in the Times today about a woman who Feng Shui-ed the apartment she shares with her husband. I'm not a feng-shui-er (in a supreme case of funny, I recently de-cluttered a feng-shui set I'd been given years ago). HOWEVER, I am about to have to move offices, and it occured to me that in setting up whatever new space I end up with, I might as well try a little feng-shui-ing, because seriously, every little bit helps, and it's not like it can really hurt.

Plus I live in LA and every once in awhile you have to give in to your flakier instincts. For instance, I periodically give in to yoga for a couple of weeks at a time before dropping it again.

Anyway, I ended up feng-shui surfing for a ridiculous amount of time today before finally throwing money at the problem and buying two feng shui books.

Despite my new-found fear that my blue desk may be "drowning" creativity--is that why I write from my red easy chair? And should my red chair actually be yellow? Where do you buy a less-precious water fountain?--I still managed 515 words on 2N.

And while I'm talking new office decoration, I think I deserve a better desk chair. I keep saying I'll cash in for a real chair when my novel's done, but I think that might be slightly bass-ackwards. As long as I have to sit in the fucking thing every day, shouldn't I enjoy sitting in it? Wouldn't I be more productive without the leg cramps and back ache?

And DWR sells the one I want in a lovely lime green. If I put a lime green chair with a blue desk, does that cancel out the "drowning" aspect of the desk, considering that green-blue colors are good for artists?

Happy 6 Month Anniversary, Mr Husband!

2005-01-18T13:04:00.000-08:00

611 words on 2N today, but it was a pulling-teeth coupla hours (3, to be exact). I had meant to do a little work on my new short story, "SIN," but scenes have yet to present themselves in my brain, despite all the notes I've been making for it, and my battle with 2N has me pretty mind-numbed ... so instead I'm going to go spend 45 minutes on the treadmill.

BTW: Starbucks is now putting little literary quotes on their cardboard cups.

Getting It Back On ...

2005-01-13T13:13:00.000-08:00

Ok, so yesterday I was still running around with what we prep-schooler's used to call "'rents"(perhaps because they paid ours?) but I still managed 2 hours of my own time, in which I made last polish to "Darlene," made 20 copies at Kinkos, and submitted it to a bunch of places, all of which liked "Soap" enough to send me lovely handwritten notes about the reasons they couldn't use it but would like to see more in the future ... well, the future may have taken damn near three years, but I ain't gonna sneeze at that, so what the hell, the future is now.

All that said, I am expecting the 'rents to check in around an hour from now ... have been to the barn and the grocery store, done a load of laundry, and assembled the lasagna for tonight's Parental Send-Off and Danielle-Welcome Party. While assembling said lasagna, I had all sorts of fabulous insights for my new story, so I am going to go see how much I can get done in the possibly an hour until I'm back on 'rental call.

Consider Myself Spanked

2005-01-11T17:58:00.000-08:00

Writer Friend sent me an email ass-kicking berating me for letting parents slow the roll, so despite wanting to curl up in a little ball and DIE for the 90 minutes I had to myself today, I sat down with the computer from 4:30 to 6. Revised character studies for 2N, and finally polished my new draft of "Darlene" to a finish. Not a whole lot got done, word-count wise, but finally being in another state of "done" with "Darlene" is nothing to be sneezed at. 'Specially b/c wonderful Husband's response to my being done was to say, "Print it out, I'll read it now."

He's a good good man.

On Books, Because Writing Has Halted Due to Parental Influx

2005-01-11T11:09:00.000-08:00

First off, if you've read DFW's Broom of the System, which yes, I did force myself to finish because I was in snowy Meeker, and really, there was nothing else to do, somebody, please explain it to me. I didn't get it at all.

But on the other hand, great book: Meg Wolitzer's The Wife. Too lazy to hyperlink today -- go look it up yourself. Perfect length for 2-hr flight from Denver to LA, and if you're a writer, it really does "the writing life" to a fantastic (by which I mean, totally imaginative to the extreme heights of possible career trajectory) and absorbing degree. I hate to fly, but the book kept me tuned in enough to not flip out entirely, and considering my general choice of flight reading is back issues of New York Mag and whatever tabloid has Jessica Simpson on the cover, that really is saying a lot. (Fair warning: if you're not, yourself, a wife, The Wife may not resonate as deeply for you ... don't say I didn't warn you. But for me, thought it was great, since I spend all my time thinking about issues like being a wife and/or writing. FYI, last year's I Don't Know How She Does It was similarly successful for me, so there you go.)

On the Loss of A Room Of My Own

2005-01-08T16:08:00.000-08:00

Thursday, I was informed I am losing the lease on my very inexpensive, very convenient-to-the-gym office space. (Come to think of it, that's probably why my work has slowed to a halt.)

Unmoored is not even remotely the right word to use here. How is it I finally get my bearings again just in time to be EVICTED?

Aargh. Need new office space ASAP. How annoying. I'd start looking this week, but wrinkle in this plan is the slight chance Husband may win exciting new job in NYC and we may be moving camp. Double argh. So I can't really sign a new lease until I know where I'm going to be living six months from now. Triple quadruple argh.

Famous Last Words

2005-01-08T13:19:00.000-08:00

Ok, all those things I said late Wednesday about all those things I was going to accomplish ... poof. Some combination of hypnosis (snow on mountains, light on snow) and hormones has felled me in my tracks.

But I'm still getting a lot of reading done. Abandoned Hedwig & Berti "toot sweet," as I like to say. I don't need "charming" Holocaust novels, thank you very much.

But Thursday night I read Lily Tuck's The News From Paraguay, and I'm here to tell you, it absolutely deserved the Nat'l Book Award. Totally absorbing, lovely prose, fascinating story, time/place fabulously rendered. Go Lily Tuck. All naysayers should just be quiet.

Have moved on to Xmas present from Husband, who upon hearing me say I was no fan of David Foster Wallace--Husband has been re-reading A Supposedly Fun Thing ...--offered me a copy of DFW's first effort, The Broom of the System, and said, "Try this."

Began it last night on a couch in the living room next to a roaring fire and was having NONE of it. Moved into the bedroom and it began to grow on me. So there you go. I'm only 145 pages in of this nearly 500 page paperback, so the jury's still out, but I'm sticking with it so far. It's a little bit Vonnegut-meets-Pynchon-meets-DeLillo, but since I haven't actually read any other DFW besides the first 30 pages of Infinite [Book]--has anyone ever read the whole thing, now, really, I mean, every single phrase, no skimming?--and the lobster article he wrote for Gourmet mag this summer (or was it Bon Appetit?)--maybe that's how all DFW is, anyway? I, for one, have little to no clue, really, except to find author photos featuring men in knit caps slightly ridiculous (see the photo in A Supposedly Fun Thing ... and I'm sure you'll agree).

And while we're on the subject, Lily Tuck's author photo sucked, too. How severe can one woman be? I mean, she might as well have been wearing a wimple.

On Being Home

2005-01-05T20:49:00.000-08:00

One of the benefits of being in any of my mother's houses is she always has a large stack -- more precisely, stacks and stacks and stacks -- of hardcover novels around, usually a) new; b) recently dissected by the NYRoB (my mother actually reads the NYRoB, unlike me, who before cancelling my subscription years back would just let it pile and pile until the pile was yellow and easy to clear out of my tiny West Village apt); or c) totally over my head, usually Russian or South American in origins. (This is a woman, who, in the last four days, while suffering the flu, has been watching Chabrol films on DVD, and describes "Before Sunrise" as "fourth rate Rohmer"). She does her shopping at Three Lives, which is about three feet from her apartment in NY, and she ships boxes of her finds out here to Meeker, which is why late last night I was curled up with The Master--final impression: gorgeous book, a perfect Jamesian ghost-story that is totally illuminating, and fittingly, haunting--and why today I finally got a gander at ...Max Tivoli. Wasn't as thrilled with that one as the Toibin; I felt that reading through the first two-thirds of Tivoli was harder work than a work that I wanted, but the ending was so lovely and heartbreaking I think overall it's a success. I cried, despite feeling slightly annoyed at how exhausting / ennervating I found the actual reading of the book to be, so clearly I cared more than I supposed. He snuck up on me, Mr. Tivoli did.

Which is pretty impressive, considering that when I was a child my best friend and I were convinced we were spawn of the planet Xabadiaxalo, where people grown down, and that we'd been in a scientific accident when we were what would pass for 11 here, and our aging process reversed, so that we were now cursed to grow up. Our fellow Xabadiaxalans sent us to Earth so we wouldn't feel like freaks. We wrote several novellas about our lost lives, and illustrated them too.

Anyway, snow came in last night and went all day and we have inchees and inches out here. Something about the snow made it tough to work most of the day, though I did get lots done on the 2N treatment late this afternoon. Tomorrow afternoon I spend some more time with Darlene.

Friday I think a bit more about characters for 2N, work up better histories for them that I can refer to later on in the process, when I get confused (which I know will happen, so better to get that packed away now). What is Daniel's actual family background? I sort of like the idea of Daniel's parents and sister being in a cult somewhere in the Northwest, whereas I think Nic has to be wealthily orphaned, sort of like my sister's old friend Thomas Shaw, who lives directly opposite my parents in the Village and who was left a Picasso that you can see hanging inside his living room, if you're gazing carefully from across the street in my parents' living room, which my sister and I, sometimes, are.

Then, Saturday, start the actual writing of 2N Ch. 1.

Then, when parents leave LA on the 14th, I need to turn my attentions to finishing Ch. 1 and having a finished finished finished Darlene to workshop, plus a new draft of a new story, if I'm not to get behind my New Year's resolutions just out of the gate.

MY NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS

* Produce a new chapter draft each month, plus a new story draft for collection each month
* Workshop a new story for collection each month
* Submit stories to lit mags in batches, quarterly (March 1, June 1, Sept 1, Dec 1)
* As soon as draft of 2N is complete, find readers -- (no endlessly tinkering with early drafts, as I did on Hart! Tinkering can be done AFTER first round of notes received ... must avoid losing steam in anyway I can this time ...)

To bed, perhaps with a copy of a novel called Hedwig and Berti that my mother handed me a few days ago -- comes highly recommended by Three Lives, but since I don't really know the "new" guy there, I'm not sure what that means, yet. Haven't been in there myself in ages, since I'm trying to watch the profligate spending habits and find that anytime I'm in a really good bookshop I walk out with too many hardcovers. (How else to explain my walking into Skylight just before Xmas to get a copy of Black Beauty for my cleaning lady's daughter, and ending up lugging home Dave King's The Ha-ha? Actually, there is an explanation: I knew him obliquely at Columbia, back in the day. Also, while we're on the subject, it was a pretty good book--he set himself a difficult task, narrating it through the eyes of a hero who can't talk nor read nor write but is otherwise completely able-minded, and I found that, despite this, he succeeded in finding a way for that hero to drive the narrative, not just have it happen around him. And he plumbed him deeply, too, and didn't beatify him in anyway either--he had warts on him, and he was totally realized, and though parts were a little cute--did his room-mate have to be an Asian-Texan soup-maker with an industry going on in the kitchen? did the kid in his charge have to be half-black? ((that said, it does make the movie-version seem inevitable, and I suppose that's what we want, right, we novelists who writing in a sea of other hopefuls are hoping somehow to hit it bigger than them? I can't blame him ... I mean, my agent said to me, when I first pitched her the plot of Hart, "who do you see starring in the movie?"))--it was overall a good novel about which, I kept saying as I read it, "Wow, he did a really lovely job," and if you don't believe me, ask Husband, who had to suffer through my saying it over and over again.)

Progress Report

2005-01-04T21:43:00.000-08:00

Got a pretty good plot-line map together today, so tomorrow I'm going to use it to fill out my existing treatment for 2N. Ending is still a little hard for me, despite the fact that the final scene was the first image I conceived for this entire story. Problem is, I think one of the characters must succumb to Hodgkins if the final image is going to work ... however, since this character takes a lot from a close friend who recently fought his own bout with cancer, and has made it through, killing off fictional character comes hard. But it's really beautiful, the final scene, if he dies ... really. Hmm.

Otherwise, spent the day gorging myself on left-over sweets from my parents' New Year's bash (my mother trucks in the entire contents of Dean & Deluca when she comes out here) and reading The Master, the Booker short-listed novel by Colm Toibin. Am loving it, not just for the lovely prose and imagination-mirroring-meandering of its narrative, but because I feel Henry James' pain (at least as it's created by Toibin) -- how hard it is to balance life with art, and not feel you are missing something at one, by favoring the other ...

OK, tommorow: 2N Treatment work
Thursday: Dirty Darlene work -- finish new draft!
Friday: Start working on 2N Chapter 1

Slight change of plans and weather

2005-01-03T20:08:00.000-08:00

Have extended my Colorado trip by 5 days, realizing that in lovely snowy Meeker, pop. SMALL, distractions NONE, I really have nothing to do but WRITE -- it's quiet here, and since I'm not home, I have no responsibilities to house, husband, or even cats and horse. So I'm digging in tomorrow, at what's essentially my own private Yaddo. Hope to get far enough along that I don't even suffer the smallest twinge of resentment when my parents descend on LA next week, making both work and workout time impossible.

Which is not to say I will be doing any real exercising here. Perhaps I'll walk up and down a hill or two tomorrow. OH! I can resume my walks! There is lots of lovely walking to be done in snowy Meeker.

PLAN FOR TOMORROW AND 5 DAYS FOLLOWING:

Arise, eat, email, shower, WORK, eat, email, WALK, READ, WRITE LETTERS, email, eat, sleep.

Tough life, this.

Friday Check-in

2004-12-31T13:36:00.000-08:00

Despite wishing I could stay home and drink hot cocoa and read novels all day -- rain, rain, and more rain here in sunny Los Angeles -- I got to the office and spent a coupla hours working on the Wedding Timeline, generating material for 2N. Am now printing that 35 page document at crawlingly slow deskjet speed (I knew there had to be a reason I picked up an HP for less than $300). Following that I need to print the 15 page Cancer Timeline, and the 28 page draft-in-prog of Dirty Darlene, all so I can lug this stuff to Meeker, where I look forward to some time in my old bed, papers spread all about, making more notes and more notes and more notes!

GOALS FOR MEEKER W/R/T WRITING PROJECTS:

1. Create a comprehensive 2N table that tracks Cancer, Wedding, and Renovations simultaneously

2. Update Character Studies for 2N

3. Update 2N treatment, according to 2N table

4. Complete new draft of DIRTY DARLENE

Obviously, that's a lot to try to accomplish in 2 days on the ground, but considering I wasn't initially planning to write at all next week--which is why, of course, I've been dragging myself to the office this whole holiday-ish week--if I get any of this done at all, I'm ahead of the game.

Happy New Year, everybody. May we all accomplish great things.

Trucking Along

2004-12-30T13:46:00.000-08:00

Pretty good session today. I missed yesterday because head cold has migrated south-chesterly and bronchial coughs prompted Husband to insist I stay in or at least on the bed. But all was not lost: I spent time among the pillows going through the monster Wedding Binder I assembled last year to assist in planning, and discovered I have a great resource for 2N: the 30-page checklist table I created to track progress.

So today I spent awhile generating the Wedding Plot Line for 2N, a project that should take me through tomorrow at least, and if I lug my laptop to Colorado next week, should busy me for awhile there, too. Would love to come home from Colorado with a working-ish 2N Comprehensive Outline that I can start writing from.

Also worked more on Dirty Darlene today. Want to come back from Colorado with a new draft of that, too.

Perils of shared office-space: someone is eating something FOUL that is coming through my vent. It smells like airplane-food crossed with school-cafeteria food, and as I've made a 29-year point of not indulging in either, I thank the gods that I managed to accomplish as much as I did before the stink began.

Through Wind and Snow ...

2004-12-28T15:27:00.000-08:00

Ok, so it's not snowing in SoCal, but last night's thunderstorms were close enough. House leaking, AGAIN -- it wasn't enough I was up at 2 scrounging for cold meds, clearly Husband and I needed that 4 am rush to plug leaky windows with spare towels and packing tape. Plus the mysterous, constant ringing of the fax line, and the crashing about of trees overhead ... Suffice it to say, best intentions to be out the door at 6:30 am scuttled. I didn't make it out of the house until nearly 11 am, and didn't get to the office until 1. But I am giving myself full-credit for a 4-hour work-session, despite only putting in 2.5 hours, because of head cold, lack of sleep, and also:

I did good work.

Worked on SECOND NOVEL (hereafter "2N") outline, and researched Hodgkins disease, which afflicts one of my central characters. Have developed a table to track "normal" Hodgkins-treatment timelines against the timeline of 2N, so I have a sort of sense of what happens when, cancer-wise and plot-wise.

Tomorrow I do the same for wedding planning, which afflicts another of my central characters.

Thursday, I continue to fluff out outline, and then Friday morning I put together the quick, key-word table that tracks various plot lines against each other for easy comprehension for one who, mid-process, is usually very confused.

All this as an attempt to put together the master 2N Bible, a project I'm going to attempt to pull together even as I'm in Colorado next week.

Surfacing ...

2004-12-27T13:56:00.000-08:00

6 weeks and 4 days later, I'm back in the office, renewed by all sorts of New Year's vigor post the election/birthday blues. I don't ever want to be turning 29 again, it was HORRIFIC, and thanks to rules of mortality and calendars, luckily I don't ever have to.

Quick updates from the depths of the last depressive month-plus:

Hart is dead. Long live Hart.
Have retired proverbial "first novel." I have done this before of course, but this time I think I'm really letting go of it--subject matter in that format is no longer of interest to me, so many years and drafts on. I have, of course, learned all matter of things about character, plotting, endurance, discipline, and of course, prose. My writing has come about a million miles from where I started on this project, back in the spring on '98. So all's not lost, really.

As for the "long live" part...
I've got a ton of story ideas set in and around The Hart School that continue to flood this consciousness, so I am working on a collection of those, instead of torturing myself with "first novel."

Meanwhile, I am moving on to what I will now refer to as Second Novel. It has a title, and a very good one at that, but I'm not sharing yet. (The story collection is also fabulously monikered, but like I said, there's a time for sharing, and that time ain't now.) Second Novel is much much more interesting to me, anyway, and has been for some time, so today I dove right in to the outline again, building building building. Plan for this week is to fluff outline until I feel okay to dive in to writing chapter one, which is plan for January.

Also in the cards for January is a "complete" story for the collection.

Have totally re-jiggered work schedule so that domesticity be damned. It's now 1 pm, I have been at the office since 9 am (following 7:30 walk, 8 coffee/journaling), and have accomplished great work on Second Novel outline and good work on Dirty Darlene story.

So there you go. Bravo to me. And with a head cold, to boot!

This Title Thing Ain't Gonna Happen Today

2004-11-10T15:06:00.001-08:00

Novel Progress:

Opened Chapter 5, wrote 567 words. I am not going to beat myself up about this -- I'm well over my usual goal of 300 words (silly NaNoWriMo folks, I barely knew ya) -- and anyway, new chapters are always slow-going before I actually figure out structurally how they're gonna play out.

Story Progress:

Spent the morning before starting on Chapter 5 to make more notes for "Darlene." Sorry, folks, but Darlene is most definitely gonna die. It may not be written right yet, but it will be -- people kill themselves every day, and there's no reason it can't be made to work -- sure it's probably gonna make me crazy 'till I hit it, but Darlene dies, period. That's where she is at this point of her life, that's what she does. She can not go ride off into the sunset, and she can't go limp off into it, either. This chick is gonna make the boldest statement of her life at the end of it, and I am going to make it sing somehow, so there. Melodrama is less in the event than in the execution -- I once knew a man who shot himself dead through the mouth in his bedroom, where his grandsons later had to scrape his brains off the wall. His horse attended his funeral. It might seem melodramatic here, but that week it was anything but. It was just life, and it was awful, but it was real, and I believe that you could write that in a way that would read like damn good poetry, not cartoon.

So I just gotta reach for the poetry -- I have two 6-hr LA/NY flights coming up for Turkey Day, and there's nothing easier to carry-on and shove into the less-than-three-inches of space that constitutes "economy seating" (read: STEERAGE) than a twenty-five page story and a coupla pens.

And The Sorts of Things That Keep Me Up Nights:

Despite the previous paragraph, I have yet to find the right sort of pen for air-travel. I favor fast-flowing ink, as badly-treated Lyme's Disease in the early-80s has left me with achy joints, and worse, hands that lock-up damn fast if forced to grip a (gasp) ball-point. But air-pressure seems to explode my Rollerballs and the like ... if they don't leak all over me at 30,000 feet they destroy the inside of the purse they're in sometime between landing and baggage claim ...

And God knows, in a five-day trip that includes not only a full day with my family but also visits on two other days with various and sundry parents-o'-Husband, there oughtta be pen-worthy-fodder-a-plenty for the trip back.

Day Two Curse Averted

2004-11-09T14:30:00.000-08:00

Well, two days plunged into new process and water is still fine ... 1721 words today, and Chapter 4 complete -- though, as always, "complete" is grain-of-salt for "has beginning, middle, end, and reasonable arc, but still requires psychological deepening -- good enough, however, for this 'rush-thru' draft."

Have also spent a few minutes playing with the last paragraph of "Dirty Darlene," which still is not quite right, but will take to Husband and ask his opinion tonight. Darlene still dies, but it's clearer that it's a choice she makes -- as a friend said about another woman I knew who killed herself this summer: "she made it very clear that [death] was what she wanted."

And there but for the grace of Whomever go all.

I Am Finally Back

2004-11-08T15:34:00.000-08:00

Work took a tumble when state of union seemed perilously close to disaster. Disaster not quite averted but it has been survived, so I am back at the office today with renewed vigor and focus and all those other wonderful things, which, in my case, are the product of a brand new candle burning on my desk, and a clearer sense of "office schedule":

90 minutes on the novel, in hopes of reaching min. 300 words ...
30 minutes lunch and surf internet and answer emails
90 minutes back to the novel, or onto poems, stories, or notes for novel #2
30 minutes blog and administer writing life (read for group, or read for other friends)
10 minutes clean up office and back up work on disc and paper

That schedule instituted with the help of a timer today, I have written 1400 words on Chapter 4! Yippee!

Three hours and twenty minutes later ...

2004-10-25T14:16:00.000-07:00

Ok, I've been at my office since 11 and aside from making the previous post, collating notes I received on what is now called "Dirty Darlene" (the short story I workshopped last night), and beginning plot notes for another short story, I can't say I've moved FORWARD significantly on anything this morning ...

Clearly I am listening to the wrong music. Will go change CD and see if I can't make massive improvements to "DD" in the next 90 minutes.

NaNoWriMo begins again ...

2004-10-25T13:21:00.000-07:00

One thing I forgot about in the holiday-rush -- some insane writer somewhere picked jam-packed NOVEMBER for the annual NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month is essentially what it says: Write a Novel in One Month, with "novel" defined as 50,000 words of fiction. Every year I think about it, and every year I say to myself, "SKL, you don't need them, you're mid-draft, this isn't your first stab at this book, 50,000 words written in haste does not a novel make ... etc."

But I've decided this year I might as well close my eyes and hold my breath and use NaNoWriMo for my own means. I'm about 15,000 words into my new draft of HART, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't try to crank out the next 50,000 as quick as I can, right? And since I write completely from scratch on every rewrite, I've decided that as long as I start where I am, p. 46, Chapter 4, and move FORWARD 50,000 words, I'm mostly playing by the rules.

Plus, any added pressure not to allow the holiday rush to pull me out of the office is most welcome.

SO, for those of you who have just joined me:

HART / ITS CLINGING HABIT (working titles) is the story of Anna Cohen, a senior at Hart Preparatory School, who attempts to dull her loneliness, isolation, and feelings of ordinariness by pursuing a sexual relationship with the school's popular new teacher, Marcus Green.

So Many Projects, So Little Time ...

2004-10-22T13:33:00.000-07:00

Have actually written a bit today -- opened Chapter 4, and moved plot points around a bit on the ol' bullletin board. Am not going to beat myself up about not doing enough -- until the New Year, I've decided ANY PROGRESS MADE on any given day is completely self-esteem-worthy, considering how much other "real/non-writer" life must be squeezed into the schedule in the next few months:

One week from now: Halloween -- requires costume (mostly taken care of) and cookies to bring to Halloween party (recipe chosen, but must buy ingredients and bake)

10 days from now: Election Night -- requires constant vigilance of electoral polls, voting, shopping for party, and baking.

1 month from now: Thanksgiving -- requires traveling east, fitting in Levy and Friedman family appearances, and assembling appropriate Thanksgiving Day outfit. Also requires dropping 5 of the 8 pounds gained since wedding before going home to family who would no doubt gloat at any widening in evidence. This clearly requires ceasing with candy and ice cream (sad), and ramping up dreaded treadmill time (sadder).

6 weeks from now: My birthday. Day to be marked, as in all birthdays past, by deep depression about life intruding upon work, and thus work being undone, and thus me being pathetic excuse for person who is just getting older and older with nothing to show for it. However, at least I get to go see "Caroline or Change" that night.

2 months from now: Christmas/Chanukah -- requires HOLIDAY CARDS designed, ordered, addressed, stamped, sent. Requires presents planned and bought and wrapped and shipped. Requires enormous amounts of baking. Also requires COMPLETION of wedding photo albums to give as gifts to relatives.

2+ months from now: New Year's -- requires leaving LA for parts not yet known. This requires choosing said part and getting there. Also I would really like to have chosen an architect by then so we can start the house project moving forward. This, obviously, requires calling and interviewing architects.

But damn it, if it kills me, I will get to the office every day, and I will accomplish SOMETHING novel/story-minded.

So, I repeat: I opened Chapter 4 today. I will settle for that.

Off to the treadmill.

Politics and Art

2004-10-20T14:45:00.000-07:00

I am finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate on my work in the final weeks of the presidential campaign. So many polls, so little time. If I'm not here I'm here or here or here. So many polls, so little time. It's enough to make you throw your hands up and go clean out the garage until the smoke clears.

Which, if 2000 was any indication, may be sometime MONTHS from now. But at least my garage would be clean. I read somewhere that Anne Patchett declutters for months, mulling over her books and not writing a word. Then, the closets spotless and cabinets sorted, she sits down at the keyboard and the first draft spills out.

It's a tempting thought, but in moments like these it is important to remember that for me, at least, any day without a bit of word-to-paper in it is a day I'm more likely to show the world the SKL who is an all-out raving, completely frustrated bitch.

On a slightly brighter note, I did finish a new draft of "Dirty Diane" in the last few days and have submitted it to Writing Group 2 for discussion Sunday.

But today, despite three hours in front of this computer, novel progress was a truly pathetic 3 sentences -- 193 words.

What's That Thing About All The Little Wor(l)ds On The Head Of A Pin?

2004-10-15T13:50:00.000-07:00

This has been one of those weeks where you can't help thinking that sometimes, writing a novel is like taking the SAT:

Your first guess is (often) right.

I say this from the perspective of a writer who has no fear of revising her work. I have never been a "dash it off and it's done" sort of person. This novel, for instance, is in its EIGHTH start-to-finish draft. And each draft I write is so unrecognizable from the last that it would be impossible for anyone but me to know that the novel I started writing in 1998 has any relationship to the one I am writing now. (All but the two main characters have changed. All but the central plot line is completely different, and even the central plot line has changed to a great degree. But nonetheless, THAT novel and THIS are the same.)

However, just because I have no fear of revising doesn't mean I have no PROBLEM with it. I have a huge problem: I see too many fixes. And because I see too many fixes, I write too many fixes, which means for every START-TO-FINISH draft, I have two or three FALSE-START drafts, which usually progress about three chapters into the mss before I talk myself into starting over. I have about FIFTY attempts at each of the first three chapters at this point, and even this current draft has about six different approaches to CHAPTER THREE.

But I have decided that this is my final attempt at a START-TO-FINISH draft of this novel. There will be no going back. I have now written a new CHAPTER ONE (previously PROLOGUE) and a new CHAPTER TWO. Here, then, I have been at CHAPTER THREE these last few days. My original intent was just to strengthen the CHAPTER THREE I drafted on my last FALSE-START pass at this book, because I liked that CHAPTER THREE BEST.

That is, until I decided it was time to re-do CHAPTER THREE, at which point I decided it was all wrong and spent most of yesterday panicking that I was lost again.

So Husband smartly said, pack it in, you've spent 3 hours worrying over this problem and you're worrying in crazy-making circles. Go to a movie. So I did, and I returned to the office today having decided to rework the CHAPTER THREE I already had. Meaning, not only was yesterday's worrying silly, but so was ALL of the work I did Wednesday. I mean, how boring was THAT?

So today I sat down to rework the original-this-draft-ish-Chapter-Three. I spent 90 minutes writing a scene for the middle of the chapter that doesn't belong there. I took it out. I re-read the chapter without the new scene. I pretty much worked already, I decided.

Because sometimes writing is like the SAT, and your first guess works.

Though I have a horrible feeling that this rule may not hold true for my earlier draft of Chapter Four, which I think actually really sucks, not just sort of.

But I am going to try to let go of this worry for now and turn my agonizing little brain to the new ending for "Dirty Diane," which I still for the life of me can't come up with. What the hell does she do if not run them all SPLAT into a schoolbus?

This Is Why They Call It Work

2004-10-13T13:42:00.000-07:00

Sometimes this is an entirely joyless pursuit. I have just spent the better part of 3 hours trying to shape Chapter 3. I have an opening, though I can't say I'm in love with it--I think tomorrow I need to rewrite the scene so that Anna and Ingrid and Elf and Charlie actually talk about what they're doing at Hart. Then, I want to skip the whole "Nic loves Elf" thing I was going to write, and go back into present action: Rosh Hashanah, and Anna meeting Christy. And in fact, the way out of that scene is for Charlie to arrive, and Nic and Christy to move tables when he does... and then Anna can say, well, so much for sentimentality, things are back to normal now. But she clings to history, b.c. history is everything at Hart ... I need to get that somehow back in. AARGH. Confusing writing day but I will muddle through eventually, as always, right?

"Do You Want What You Call The Jelly and I Call The Jam" ...

2004-10-12T13:53:00.000-07:00

... is a line from my favorite movie ever, International Velvet, which is not the Elizabeth Taylor movie you are thinking of but its far more interesting sequel, starring Tatum O'Neill. It's a wonderful film, but you seem to need to be a certain kind of person to appreciate it, as no one I've ever turned on to it has gotten it's appeal. BUT ANYWAY:

What was Chapter 1 and is now Chapter 2, is, for the moment, done. Which means I am into Chapter 3 tomorrow.

Have also started integrating notes into "Dirty Diane" and realize it is going to be slower going than previously thought. Biggest problem is going to be the ending, obviously, as I kind of like how macabre it is. However, I feared it was melodramatic to the extreme, and that was basically confirmed for me at Group. No one wants Diane plowing into a bus b/c they feel it's out of character, and I buy that. Trouble is, I LOVE HER PLOWING INTO A BUS. So a choice has to be made -- am I more in love with that final image or the person D. is now? One or the other clearly has got to give.

I seem to have made myself believe this whole story started with that image to begin with, but that's not true. Actually, this whole story came out of my remembering that the woman who inspired this story was rumored to actually LIVE in a school-bus.

I have school-busses on the brain, clearly, as my new Chapter 1 is school-bus-centric also.

My Workshop Philosophy

2004-10-11T13:32:00.000-07:00

1000+ words today as I continued re-working the graveyard scene. Will finish with this chapter tomorrow -- I only have a small two-paragraphs-ish change left, and then it's on to the next.

Sunday Group was productive, and I've decided to bring them "Dirty Diane" after I rework it to Wednesday Group's notes, seeing as the other story I'm working on just gets huger and huger the more I think about it and will by no stretch of the imagination have enough shape to it to bring it in by next week, when I'm slated to workshop.

Which brings me to my Workshop Philosophy:

I don't think it's helpful to bring pieces of things into workshop if they don't have a beginning, middle, and end. For instance, just bringing in the beginning of a story makes it impossible to critique anything but sentence-level concerns, and notes to plot/structure are not only meaningless, since you have no real idea of writer-intent and direction, but can also be very confusing to the writer, who may think she knows where she's going but be waylaid by her readers' best-intentions but generally useless ideas, given what little they have to work with.

That said, I believe beginning-middle-end drafts of short stories are best suited to the workshop format. Novel excerpts are a bit more problematic. Chapters with beginnings, middles, and ends, can be talked about as stand-alone pieces, obviously, but the bigger and often more useful question for the writer of "how this piece functions among the rest" can not be addressed in isolation. This is why so often I hear writers of novels in workshop say "but this DOES work, despite all your notes, BECAUSE OF WHAT COMES NEXT." We clearly can't verify that, because we don't have what comes next.

Of course, if you're not concerned yet with how one chapter functions in context, and just want stand-alone critique -- which is very useful for shaping chapters to stand alone for publication, for instance--then all the power to the novel-writer who wants to workshop chapters. I have been such a novel-writer. However, I have often suffered from workshopping chapters mid-draft because of the problem mentioned in the first paragraph of this "Philosophy" in regards to workshopping "pieces" of short stories: readers in workshop can not help but suggest to you where they think your novel is going, or where they want it to go. This is pretty standard workshop analysis, and I believe it is useful when working with a beginning-middle-end piece like a "complete" story or chapter because it functions as a gut-check: "I thought you were going one way because you set up XYZ, but then you went ABC and it didn't ring true for me." However, when you are workshopping chapters, if you don't know how your story plays out on the very last page of your book, and in fact, if you haven't already WRITTEN that very last page, often the "this is where I think you're going" notes taken in workshop on early chapters sneak into your work on new and later chapters and pretty well fuck you up, either because you spend your whole life RE-WORKING the early chapters so they don't "mislead," and therefore never move forward, or without noticing you're doing it, you write your new, later chapters in a direction you hadn't meant to go.

I have experienced all of this many many times because sometimes the thrill of finishing a chapter in isolation alone in your room makes you want to print it out and bring it around and find out what's working and what's not, WAY TOO EARLY. I have decided after doing this so many times you'd think I was as bull-headed and stupid as Shrub that I will no longer workshop chapters when I am mid-novel draft. I don't want "suggestions" to end up in my novel until it's finished to MY specs, and can stand a little "gut-checking" with everybody else's ideas.

So, my novel will not appear at workshop again until this draft it is complete, sometime in February, if all goes according to plan. This of course means I need to spend a little time drafting stories to workshop, because the process of being critiqued is hugely useful to writing life and energizing and necessary. Actually, I like doing the critiquing just as much being critiqued, and find that damn close to equally useful. But either way, I like the thought of birthing a bunch of short stories in the months to come.

Notes to Self

2004-10-08T13:52:00.000-07:00

Only 281 words today, but I'm incredibly happy with them, so I'm not going to beat myself up about that. This morning I decided to rework the Big Dog's funeral chapter, which meant essentially losing whatever I could lose but also deepening the characters, deleting all lazy shorthand prettiness for actual depth and meaning. So gone now is Nic's killer-opiate-smile (always hated that, knew it wasn't in anyway "real") and in its place, fearlessness that is "equal parts curiosity and short-sightedness" -- he is no longer the golden boy who can do no wrong because he's got such white teeth, but a guy who is brave because failure doesn't scare him, who messes up a lot but isn't upset by it, just constantly and not entirely unpleasantly, surprised. He's incorrigible, is his real deal, and that absence of learning curve combined with courage is very attractive to Anna, as it is to most people. It's loveable even as it's frustrating. THAT'S what needs to be expressed about him.

Also, amazing how one phrase changes and FOCUSES everything -- for instance -- earlier draft:

"it didn’t seem all that strange or surreal to me that we were presiding over a grave-digging on our first day back to school, or at least, no stranger than I'd grown used to life seeming here."

New draft:

"it didn’t seem all that strange or surreal to me that we were presiding over a grave-digging on our first day back to school, or at least, no stranger than anything else Nic had ever talked me into doing."

Lesson here: PLOT IS CHARACTER -- ACTION IS WHAT PEOPLE DO TO PEOPLE.

Big Gold Star

2004-10-07T13:43:00.000-07:00

551 words and Chapter 1 stands "completed"! Yeehaw. I deserve a good lunch.

Just Keep Telling Yourself It's All About the Process

2004-10-07T11:43:00.000-07:00

Came in to office this morning raring to finish my new Chapter One, because I think I'm about a paragraph and a polish away from putting it to bed and moving on.

But because I got such great notes on a short story I was working on at Group last night -- no, we're not all touchy-feely, yes, writer-talk is a helluva lot more helpful than talk-therapy -- I pulled out the draft/notes for another story I started working on last summer, around the same time that I drafted the story I got notes on last night, just to see what was there.

This new story is far less developed than the one I was working on last night. Mostly, it's a collection of scenes between best friends who are 7 years old and trying to figure out all the adult drama around them while also starting to experiment with their own physicality. It's very skeleton-ish -- mostly, I wrote it because I wanted a framework for the last scene, which I've been carrying around with me for twenty years, in which a boy takes our protagonist into the kindergarten closet to kiss her, and when they emerge, our heroine's best friend chases him down the hallways screaming "Kiss me too! Kiss me too!" I wanted to talk about how sometimes the people you "kiss" are interchangeable, but some times not -- but also how CHOOSING is what relationships are all about, and despite the "you should never choose your boyfriend over a girl" rule, that's COMPLETE BULLSHIT -- getting married and having kids and making a family life is all about choosing your boyfriend first. Anyway, I was having all these thoughts obliquely while writing this story last summer, but realized re-reading it today I was avoiding the hard stuff: THE AWFULNESS OF ACTUALLY MAKING THAT CHOICE as a grown-up, so really the easy kid stuff I wrote needs to be cut into the hard adult stuff of doing that for real -- cutting the cord with the friend, as it were. The story needs to follow our hero trying to justify/own her choice of leaving her friend behind so she can go forward (anybody see a theme in my work here? yeah, and what of it?).

But I have SO MUCH MATERIAL for this with these two girls--I mean, there's a 20+ year friendship in ashes I've been dying to mine, that's what writer's do, resurrect their little murders, right? -- that I worry about it becoming a very long long story or even a novella. And where the hell is the market for that?

WHICH IS COMPLETELY THE WRONG THOUGHT. I need to just write the fucker and worry about what it IS afterwards.

So today, I am going to "finish" my Chapter One and then start working on filling out this new story. It would be good if I could motor through a full draft of the story in the next week or so, so I can workshop it in my Sunday Group in two weeks, because though I could bring the story from last night to Sunday Group, I want to bring something less-worked-over in to them so I have two projects to work through BESIDES the novel and then NO EXCUSE TO EVER NOT WRITE because you can't be blocked on three things at once, it's just completely impossible, lightening can not strike three times.

The Little Engine That Could

2004-10-06T13:58:00.000-07:00

493 words.

"I think I can, I think I can."

Which really, when it all comes down to it, is the single most important life lesson EVER.

Oh and on This American Life ...

2004-10-05T14:07:00.000-07:00

A wonderful story on air this weekend that was so good I stayed in my car at the parking lot of my gym in the sweltering heat to hear how it would end:

"a story by Jonathan Goldstein about what it's like to date Lois Lane when she's on the rebound from Superman."

Hmm. Wonder if his novel Lenny Bruce is Dead is as crappy as the Amazon reviewers claim.

Slowly but Surely

2004-10-05T13:52:00.000-07:00

337 decent okay sorts of words and a font-experiment:

Last night, as I began reading Plot Against America, I was struck, as I always am, by Roth's sure touch. His sentences have a sense of authorial certainty that I envy to no end. Every word is perfectly chosen, every clause indelible, every detail indispensible. How many writers can really list all the ways women work, all the things they cook and clean and organize daily, filling a long paragraph with this list, and not seem like they're just jerking off on the page? (I didn't mean to conjure up Portnoy with that statement, but there you go.) I was ruminating about this, and then I began to wonder if maybe how his sentences LOOK, art-wise on the page, has anything to do with this --

-- so today I came into the office and surfed around to find a font that approximates that in the new novel and the copy of American Pastoral that's in the office. I ended up at fonts.com, where fonts aren't free but at least you don't have to wade through "surveys" to get to the good stuff. I searched by sight, and came up with a font called Hollander, which I bought and installed on my machine. Then I killed a bunch of time making my Chapter 1 look a lot like Chapter 1 of American Pastoral ... and I gotta admit, Maud Newton was right on the money:

My work looks better and I'm willing to convince myself it reads better, and with that Dumbo-esque metaphorical-flying-feather in mind, I managed to get Anna out of Hillsdale and onto Route 44. Yippee!

The #1 Reason I Got Married

2004-10-04T21:20:00.000-07:00

Husband claims all is NOT crap. Am feeling slightly better. Will go forward tomorrow NO MATTER WHAT.

Then I'll come home and make Shepherd's Pie from our leftovers.

Bloody Monday

2004-10-04T14:01:00.000-07:00

Ok, I opened the document that is my new Chapter One. I read the document. I made piddly edits. I tried to move the document further and mostly felt like, what's the point when it just sucks? And I now feel like it's all the worst crap I have ever ever written in my life. Which would be your regular run-of-the-mill writer worry except for this tiny wrinkle: for much of the last six years it's been the ONLY thing I write. Which means it's not just the worst crap but also EVERYTHING I write/have written is crap.

Fuck.