The Ups, The Downs

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.

Bloody Monday

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.

Seasonal Affective Disorder

Days like this are EXACTLY why I left New York. I hate grey skies -- they make me mopey and tired and sad.

Granted, it could also be guilt about spending so much time yesterday playing in blog world that I didn't even get to my 300 words. Plus Writing Group 1 was cancelled at the last possible minute, so I didn't even talk about my work (much less DO any).

Ick. I have written 500+ uninspired words this morning, at least, but it's just so fucking grey around here I want to punch someone.

Ok, so maybe the NYTBR isn't all that bad ...

Friday was a horrible horrible writing day. The sort of day that starts bright and shiny and has you racing through your shower to get to your computer, where you open to the chapter in progress, put your fingers to the keys ...

... and become overcome by some form of writer-narcolepsy. You are suddenly so tired you have to put your laptop on the floor and snake into a armchair-and-ottamon-appropriate napping position which is made ever more frustrating by the knowledge that you ABSOLUTELY CAN NOT NAP WHILE WRITING!!!

Two hours into this I called my husband and went for a drive, hoping he would Fix My Book. This is a conversation I have ALL THE TIME, mostly with myself: How do I fix my book? I bothered asking my husband this time b/c he's been nagging me to let him help me, b/c he did actually pull it all together for me one night over ceviche a few months before the wedding, at which point I realized I really should marry him, b/c not only did he love me but he Got My Work. His nagging me lately to let him help me (again) is a little like my father telling my mother the two of them ought to get cracking on their mother's eulogies--this despite the fact that both mothers in questions are in great form for 80-pluses. I think my father's impulse has a lot to do with the fact that he delivered THE BEST EVER Daddy-of-the-bride speech this summer-- no seriously, it wasn't just me that thought so--and he liked the spotlight. He wants to pull it out again, and no venue is too depressing, it appears.

ANYWAY. Friday drive was not a success. My fears were I had lost "the point": what was I trying to say? Dave kept saying, "I thought you had a theme," and I kept saying, "Theme doesn't matter, what the fuck is going on with my CHARACTER, WHY does this story have to be told, and why now?"

He wasn't helpful. I was depressed Friday night and Saturday that once again after a few weeks of digging in and really working, all had come to what felt like a project-ending grinding stop.

And then today I actually read the NYTBR from cover to cover, and here is what they said:

Some people take forever to write books.

And, in a review for "Joy Comes in the Morning," which I now intend to rush out and get, they quoted Talmudic scholar Ben Bag Bag (tell me there isn't at least a short story in his name alone): "Turn it and turn it for everything is in it."

And I thought, back in the day when I wrote the play that was in some ways an expression of this book, Anna's problem was LETTING GO, because this was a woman who felt she had been so often LEFT.

So, the WHY AND WHEN OF THIS STORY ARE: Anna has recently had another assignation with her old lover Marcus, now a husband-and-father-of-twins. This despite the fact that she thinks she's in love with Danny, and wants very much to have a real life with him. But for over a decade she's held on to Marcus, despite the fact that so much of their relationship has been under cover of darkness/moral mud. So, that night alone in Falcon Ridge, she can't sleep b/c she feels badly about fucking M., and she ends up at Hart, where she relives the start of their affair for much of the book. Then, we learn she and he kept it going for many years, on and off, despite their life changes, and despite her knowing it wouldn't or shouldn't work, b/c to her the CRIME OF HEART is LEAVING, that you STAY NO MATTER WHAT (b/c she has abandonment issues due to mom & dad). Even seeing Lasky and Rita in New Haven that time, and later, seeing they'd married, and knowing that would never be the right choice for her, she has always held on. At the end of the book, she confesses to Olivia that Danny even has a ring for her (he's peripheral for much of the book). HER BIG LESSON: You have to let go of that "grand romance," see it for what it is, in order to grow up and have a real life of your own.

Anyway, THIS at least makes sense to me, and gives me the juice of: what happens when they actually act on this promise they made when she was 17, that no matter what, despite everything, wives and lovers, every once in awhile, they would still meet? It lets me throw her under a truck, so to speak, and lets me complicate her, show how her moral view is not so goody-two-shoes black-and-white.

Today I am going to a bookstore and buying things I read about in the NYTBR (gotta give SOMETHING back, right) and picking up some Booker books ... And tonight I have the first meeting of Writing Group #2. So tomorrow, back to the office with a bang bang bang (and it even means I can get great if slightly dark sex into the PROLOGUE of the book!)

O Shaudenfreud, Shaudenfreud...

Writing Group #1 got back underway last night, thank god. Great to see everyone and get back into the work ... Mostly, though, it was nice to hear that two of the most productive people in the group recently suffered terrible crises of confidence, not because I wish them the brain-gnashing, pill-popping agonies that I experienced last week, but because it's a HUGE RELIEF to know people I consider together and motivated and talented -- hugely talented -- are feeling stymied in the ways that I so often let myself feel stymied. Crises of confidence make you feel completely alone, the least talented hack in the universe -- nice to know you have a group of comrades in the trenches with you, experiencing the same things. And nice to know they push through it. For this reason, I say, all writers: Get thee to a writing group! Even if you don't need deadlines, and feel completely comfortable with where your work is or is going, (and if so, you're lying, admit it), the comraderie and "been there-ness" is incredibly incredibly important for those of us who choose to work alone in our tiny quiet rooms.

And remember:

Crises of confidence are like depressive episodes, in that YOU ALWAYS GET THROUGH THEM and IT ALWAYS GETS BETTER, but it's impossible to know or see that when you're experiencing crises like that.