Word After Word

Western wear, women in western wear, and quoting Mark Twain

Kentucky

A very large formal portrait of himself with a silver afro

Fish and smoked fish

Cooking, iron skillets

Dogs. All dogs. Little Bobby.

The idea of large backyard parties with messa fish smoked by him

Tile

Having a garden out back

Gene Nable

His mother Ruth

That his grandmother Mallie smoked a cigar

That he ate possum and squirrel as a boy

Talking

Dancing with women on parquet dance floors in small bars

Ruby

Cards

Freddy Fender, Willie Nelson, etc.

Excellent furniture, modern design, smoked glass

Extravagant Hand Gestures

Onions, garlic, salami, BBQ, liverwurst

Saying Interesting Ridiculous Things (like when he is in the hospital after cardiac arrest   and asked what happened, “I got bit by a dog.” He says these things always in

            a serious and very intentional way so you think there’s layered meanings and humor but you aren’t ever sure.)

Orientation. He never got lost.

I asked a friend of mine how her semester was going and she said, “Heather, I’m completely satisfied in all aspects of my work.” She beamed and beamed and ordered a Blue Moon.

I couldn’t get that sentence out of my head. I started saying it. It cracked me up at first because I have never said anything like this in my life. Soon it was very clear that this statement was a lot more fun to say then complaining about this or that little work thing and the listener-person seemed relaxed and I realized my friend’s sentence was more true and accurate than the whining. I really am satisfied with all aspects of my work. I absolutely have the job I’d always dreamed of. I love it. It’s great work and I love working.

But I’d gotten caught up in complaining, which can be like chewing gum was for me when I was ten. I didn’t really like it but I could not stop—I had to have blue gum. It held me together.

Yesterday I told my friend all this, how her words had gotten me to notice a whining addiction. “I say your line all the time,” I said. She said, “I have no memory at all of ever saying that.” She said she liked her students a lot but this year school was kind of driving her nuts.

When you are going through a difficult time people are going to tell you what to do. They will be very certain: Hire this person. Don’t speak to that person. They may even suggest excessive faxing, filing, and phoning. They will say what you should let go of and not think about and what you should also be thinking about constantly. Everything they are saying is good and right. You will be told to take care of yourself and also make everything go great. They’ll see the order and logic of the situation—and so will you. The perfect world is easy, clear, comprehensible, and agreed upon. It’s like pie or good TV. Moral vision is not complex or difficult—it makes sense to all of us.

But the world can’t line up straight with moral vision. The world always refuses to co-operate. The friendly, good well-meaning advice all contradicts itself and makes no sense while also making the perfect (moral justice) sense.

My friend B calls this poetic justice. The situation unravels, glorious, messy, overwhelming, petty, and sad, and true.

David Whyte writes that the only antidote to exhaustion is whole heartedness. Engagement with the writing life (or anything like your writing life, such as Friday Night Lights, Prospect Park, the beach in autumn in Michigan at mid-morning, a volume of Rilke, Olds, or a little Lear, or the children’s section in the community library) is how to bridge the gap between moral (in)justice and poetic justice.

the minor surgical event (fine) and then I left town for two days and when I came back, after not sleeping well at all because of Certain Casino Hot Tub People (5 am and 2 am?), my tiny frail Alzheimer’s mom was missing. On the same day, my father’d had a cardiac event and was sent to a nursing home without my knowing, against the social worker’s instructions and many not-right things surrounding this sequence of events exploded in vital and upsetting ways. And, David Junior went to boot camp and the handout said emphatically and mis-spelledly Do not send anything, your person will be mocked horribley; you can write a letter in two weeks. I accidentally brushed my teeth with a medicinal tubed ointment. When I came home, Cubby immediately rolled in poop. And, I discovered my fridge had died, all my beautiful food melted and stinking and turning to green juice (all food turns to green juice in a closed, hot space). I got down on the linoleum on my knees. And I threw away all the food, even the freezer containers. I threw away the piece of wedding cake I’d saved during my short marriage and long, long, long post-marriage.

Writing has to be done on these days. It does not seem possible. Contemplating writing in such stressful conditions feels like you weigh hundreds of pounds and you are about to begin a running program. You know it’s good, and you know you need doctor supervision. And you  know how hard it’s going to be. It’s going to hurt. But writing is one of the most vital ways we have of being truly ourselves and present and that is the only that helps on days like this.  You have to find a way to put yourself into experience so deeply.  You have to have a moment in the day, Blake writes, where satan can’t find you. Writing offers this. As does a walk on the coast. I did both.

The word prose (unlike poetry) contains in its history the wish to get from one place to another in a straight line. Poetry stops, starts again, breathes, becomes breathless, chants, prays.  

If you can break through the thick seal that is the pain of the hard days you can keep a part of yourself open that will heal not just you, but others around you. The demons can’t reach you when you are writing and you must—I must—fight my way to that space. The writing doesn’t need to be good. The point is to let that part of yourself that is wise and true and calm and really you come forward. Writing makes space. It’s like a second set of lungs. Your power lungs. Your pain-management lungs. The words, strung out, make a line to follow and following it, you have, perhaps, all of the sudden, one good breath.

So, when I sat down to write, my electrician called. (I need a whole new plug because new fridges are grounded; I am not.) He said, “Don’t you think it’s safe to say I illuminate your life?” And he told me about the books he’s read and the books he’s writing and it’s good.

Write fast. The middle is where you want to get to — that’s probably where you will start anyway.  Starting slowly is death. It’s torture. Always start writing fast. Plan on throwing the first three pages away, always. Write more middles and fewer beginnings. Get out of the speed of thought. Speed date your writing life.

I wrote hundreds of pages this summer. I wrote every day. I rewrote, polished, revised, reconfigured, dressed up, dressed down, cut pasted pasted cut, threw out, shaped, modified, reworked, redreamed and did do over after do over. I have two favorite scenes in the whole stack of pages. And you know what? I wrote the mom-driving-the-truck-up-Orange scene in twenty minutes. And the looking-for-dad scene? Less than twenty. I wrote them in the minutes before class after not having slept at all.

Revision is key to good writing, it is. But we all know something else, too–don’t all of us know this? Sometimes great stuff comes out really fast and it’s perfect. One famous writer says there’s nothing more focusing, more key to writing well than having someone standing outside the door of your writing room, waiting for you. That’s how the writing classes I took this summer worked, that’s when I did the Two Great Scenes. I had to be in class at 9 am with writing to read to the group.

This might be the main reason to take writing classes. They focus you, they concentrate your vision. The other reason? I don’t know, always, when I need to apply the hundred gallons of pressure per square inch (revision) to a page, and when it’s truly good, done, shining.  When I finish my writing for the day, I usually think both things are equally true: this is the worst writing on the planet and this is the best writing I have ever done. A class helps you know what you do that’s great.  You learn, with that audience, when it’s flat, when it’s good, and that your own judgements about your own work are a) unreliable and b) necessary to learn more about.

Revision is interesting. It can improve your work. It can destroy your work. Most things I’ve published, I’ve revised seventeen or thirty or more times. But then, once a summer, there’s these gifts….these shining pieces breaking through.

“I’ve hunted high and low for some sort of writing companion that parallels the experience of writing a book only to find many manuals and books professing the secrets to a great novel. Those books did not speak to me, but yours delivered warm, friendly advice and support and I found a new best friend. It sits right next to me when I write and when I’m not writing it sits on the top of my pile of books next to my couch so I can see it and grab it whenever I like–your book has become one of the symbols I use to surround myself with constant reminders of my work-in-progress. It’s kind of like my book’s big brother just hangin’ out and waiting to see my project manifest–it holds no judgment, no inner critic, no ridiculous demands; simply a warm and patient smile as it sees the pages of my manuscript grow.  It is much more gentle than any of my friends that I tell, “I am writing a book.” Your book doesn’t force a smile and nod at me when I’m looking and then roll its eyes and shake its head the second I turn my back.

I must say, I love the size and style of the actual book itself. It is such a beautiful book– the colors on the cover, the design of the pages–it really is so nice.  It’s a showpiece all on its own.”  Gemma (Canada)

Thanks, Gemma!!!

“I am so sick of this town. I can’t write in this town,” D. said. D.’s super smart, a senior this year, and she’s really sick of our town, which is small, but not that small–there’s three Blockbusters and three big grocery stores and three lakes and a shop that sells only cigars. This town thing. It’s hard to explain. But it’s not the town we get sick of.  You can’t be in the wrong town. When it comes to writing, if you are living a life where your basic needs are met–you aren’t in fear or illness or despair–you are in exactly the right spot. The perfect spot.  The stuff you need to know, to look at, is before you, around you, you are in it. Don’t move away. Move towards yourself.

It is true that when we are around funny people, we get funnier, and when we are around smart people, we speak in longer sentences, just as when I play tennis with Tracy, who is great, my game is better than when I play with someone who never ever plays, who hates tennis.  So, I can see moving to a lively literary town.  We all want a tribe. People who are doing what we are doing, who value our books and notions and clever comments and tea. But I wish D. had other reasons. I wish she loved here, where she is.  I’m worried about her because I think writers–young writers especially–must practice noticing everything with accuracy and moving–fast, feary, full-frontal–might closing one’s eyes. (Plus, it’s annoying when people think your own town is a dumb town.) There’s plenty to write about here. There’s more than enough. There are so many stories and couches and computers and there are some places to read and sell and buy art and work in progress.

I don’t think it’s the town. I think it’s our own psyche. I think we’re looking for a better, brighter, more shiny, more cool self and we mistake geography for hard work. (I did this.) I think if we find a way to groove on the whole town–its provincial mores, its gawky frowning citizens, its quiet Sunday self, its fear of success–we enlarge ourselves. And our writing is richer for it.  I might be dull. And this is perhaps why I do not mind a dull town. I don’t really believe a place is a “thing.” It’s alive. It’s always moving. I can spend the day at OK Tires and feel like I’m in a Larry Brown novel. 

Mid age. Mid west. I don’t think I can handle more drama.

My student K. wrote me all frantic and frustrated. Her writing wasn’t coming, it wasn’t good, she hated it, she was stressed. My friend L., also a writer, said the same thing last week.  “It takes me hours to revise ten pages,” she said.

We already know this is how it is. That we don’t get to a place where it’s otherwise. That the hard horrid days of doubt and distraction are part of it, and we pass through them, as illness passes through us. 

When I don’t have a cold, I can’t imagine I will ever get one again. I fear if I try to imagine feeling sick, I’ll doom myself to fever. My throat feels scratchy just writing this. I’m looking longingly at my hand sanitizer now. We push ourselves from the bad days, feeling talented, genius, righteous and cured during the good days.

It’s easy to remind L. that the work always takes way longer than we think it’s going to–cleaning out the garage or clearing out Chapter 12.  Me? My book isn’t done. It’s come out nothing like how I thought it was going to come out and I mostly loathe most parts of it. (I wrote a love letter to a sofa–I’m really proud of that passage, but in my writing group–deafening silence! and a comment: “may not need.”)

I think the days we have nothing to write, nothing to say, nothing but hatred for the work are the days God designed expressly for reading the Notebooks of Checkov, the letters of Flannery O’Connor.  Or memoirs by Abigail Thomas.  She always makes me feel happy and strong and proud of all my weaknesses.

When I sit down to blog, I feel the absence of the gap. 

Good writing always involves space, a kind of gap.  Blogging–it’s easy to fall into the trap of writing to everyone in the world and really say nothing to anyone anywhere at all. The closed loop: you are writing in your head, talking out loud to yourself.  Sort of taking notes on what you really want to say.  The voice is a kind of generalized, companiable chat. It makes one feel thick, wan, plain, rounded. My impression reading a lot of blogs (including my own) and a lot of beginning student work is that the voice is “notes towards a life” and the writing isn’t interesting to read because there’s no gap.

The gap is artfulness.  Bloggery is so literal and direct and solidified, it’s like cement sidewalks. Gapwriting involves driving down hard into your voice, the true thing you’re going to say, and revealing more than you intended. A controlled free fall. It’s like meditation. You can’t go and meditate. Meditation is a state that arises naturally when you are focused and concentrated. How does the blog impede that state? How does it enhance it?

I want that gap in my work. I want to focus on the thing I want to say and let it take me not where I set out to go (get off the sidewalk).  When I put two things that don’t go together together–that always creates a gap. 

There was a comedian on Terry Gross the other day talking about the notes on slips of paper he finds all over his apartment, notes for jokes. Most of them don’t make any sense.  He said it’s like finding little messages from a bad wisdom fairy. This reminded me of blog writing in reverse. Instead of getting little notes from ourselves, we’re sending them out, leaning in towards the nibble.