Word After Word

I’m teaching the May Term–best class ever. I’m using my textbook The Practice of Creative Writing and we are all working hard, so hard, writing much every day. The class meets for three hours a day, every day.

Yesterday, we were going to run over. We weren’t done but we had to be done; I pride myself on perfect landings–I’m saying my last sentence of the teaching day at exactly 3:59:30, every day.

“We can go over,” Charlie said. “We want to.”

I said No. We can’t! We have been here three hours.

“No we really want to stay.” I’m sure not everyone in the room felt this way, but enough of us did. Making this the high point of my life as a teacher. (This glorious event–staying after on purpose–was followed by gorgeous gifts and a heartfelt amazing tear-creating thank you letter from my stunning student of four years, Miss E, and hours of good craic, well, Wednesday sure was a good day.)

Here’s a funny thing, too, which relates to Ignoring/Distrusting Praise-Believing Criticism, which I wrote about earlier this month.  I read the email from the director about the Balcones Prize (”It goes to a book, not a person,” he said) I immediately forgot about it.

I went on to other things. Later in the day, I scanned over my inbox and there it was. How could I have forgotten this, not called him? How can I chew over the possibly minor Wrong Thing I said this morning and not remember this?

We’re insane.

I just want to be writing. All day. I want all day to write.

But I am teaching a class–we meet every day for three hours. Here’s the thing. This is the Best Class Ever. Amazing class. Usually, it takes five sessions for our in class work to kick in. This group? First time. They go so deep — so fast–their work is blowing me away. They are not afraid to go slow. This group has been around the block. They know fast. They appreciate slow. They seem, unlike any other class I’ve had, respectful of fear, not freaked out by it.

So, I’m happy I am teaching. Much happier than I thought it would be and it’s hard, harder than I thought it would be. I get up very early and get the writing done and wish I had four more hours to write.  I do not have time for free cell, email, my super long poetry bath, dog walking, very much yoga, or laundry, etc. I just have to get in there and get started. This is very refreshing. No time to be blocked.

If I didn’t have to be out of the studio at noon to go and to go see these Focused Darlings, my May students would I be working so concentratedly? I don’t think so! I think I would probably be less focused. Spongy. I am not sure. I wonder.

So, it’s ten hour days, intense focus. (The teaching is so much like writing, so much.) But it’s lucky work, great work, comfortable good work, work that means a lot to me. Both sides of it, the revising and the teaching.

I’m happy I have six great writers in my studio half the day. And I am exhausted and it’s only Day Two.

Now, I’m going to Pizza Hut to get Jacob some breadsticks. He’s exhausted too. He has three more days of high school. He says it went way too fast, so weirdly fast. He says he wishes he would have enjoyed his vacations more because he sees the road ahead–no long breaks. What would you have done on your vacations? I said. He wasn’t sure.

But something. He would have gotten more out of them. Of that he is certain.

“One should not pray or meditate with any thought of gain. Hold no expectations. Then the rewards will come. Praying for results brings no results. The true spirit appears only when there are no expectations to hamper it.”  Deng Ming-dao

This passage fits perfectly what I want to teach my students this term–today’s the first day of May term, creative writing class. I want to remember this lesson for my daily writing, too. Teaching and books prepare us for what we will experience when we write. But teaching is always a descriptions of what we will encounter. Not something we don’t know must know.

I love this paradox. It is in meditation and love and writing practice. “Sit down with no thought of results and you will go naturally and spontaneously” to good work, the right state of mind. We know what to expect, but we must not expect it!

I had a Cinco de Mayo party on my porch on Friday night, with tamales and tulips and good friends. And some new friends. One of whom, Andre, told me, inside when we ran into each other in the kitchen, he wants so much to start his graphic novel. “I have to get my courage up and just do it,” he said.

To which I said, quickly, without thinking, “Andre. You will not get the courage. You have to start it without the courage.” Bossy Heather. Hostess with platitudes! But I was in my pretty new flowered skirt which grazes the floor (a star chart prize, it’s true!), and my turquoise jewelry and I felt like the Fairy God Mother and Luke Skywalker combined.

And I keep thinking about what Andre — a superbly talented super genius–said. And what I said. And it’s true. You have to start (I know, this sounds like my least favorite platitude, feel the fear and do it anyway) your book (project, whatever it is.) You can’t wait to feel differently. That’s a different book. To write this one, you start now. Tonight.

And you do it every day.

 You don’t get the courage. You live with mind-numbing soul-killing self doubt and it crushes you. But you have that anyway! You write underneath all this, on the sly, trying not to think about it, never talking about it. Just do it! (That’s supposed to be funny.)

Every day I write, I get a gold star.

I got the star chart idea from my friend Dee, when she was toilet-training her daughter. I love my star chart. I’ll do anything to get my star. I have introduced friends to the concept, but no one I know really likes it or needs it. (They are fully trained, I supposed, and not having accidents.)

I am supposed to write every day. It’s good training. I like to have a system. I like to know where I am in the little scheme of things. All this score-keeping…I know it is annoying for some people.

We go sit where we are supposed to sit and do what we are supposed to do. And we get a star. Ten days, at least nine stars, and there’s prizes. Stickers. A new book. Today? The cutest pair of jeans. I will give these jeans a good home.

I think it’s good to treat the writing part of self like a fabulous noisy buoyant child.

Writing the Australian Crawl by William Stafford
The Necessary Angel by Wallace Stevens
The Uncertain Certainty by Charles Simic
Telling Time by Nancy Willard
Grammars of Creation by George Steiner
Conversations before the End of Time by Suzi Gablik
The Gift by Lewis Hyde
The Geography of the Imagination by Guy Davenport
Living by Fiction by Annie Dillard
Don’t Ask by Philip Levine
No More Second Hand Art by Peter London
The Demon and the Angel by Edward Hirsch
The Healing Art by Rafael Campo
Poetry as Survival by Gregory Orr
Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland
The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life by Thomas Moore
Most anything by Parker Palmer

My dear colleague Jack Ridl is retiring. It’s a huge loss to our creative writing program, our students. This is one of his lists–a list of books creative writing students will love. A list of books that feed us, help us survive well.  Thank you, Jack. I’m missing you a lot.

If we listen to the praise for our work, and believe it to be true, than we must listen to the criticism, and take it to heart. And vice versa.  But what about conflicting feedback! One reader loves the

One of my writing students, a client-friend, Sam, sends me work every couple of weeks. Sam is brilliant, well-read, accomplished: a successful professional, a thoughtful engaged mother of five who writes from South Texas. She’s a crack writer. I was telling her during our phone conference how much I loved the way the patio functioned in the party scene, how alive and scary the patio stones were, how gorgeous the writing was. I thought it was amazing how she’d made the scene come to life. It had so much weirdness and pain and beauty thrumming under the surface. It was amazingly great writing.

“This feels good to hear,” Sam said. “But can I trust it? I’m not sure. My writing group had a lot of changes. Mostly criticism. I want to think it’s good. But how do I believe you?”

I laughed. This is what we do. It’s such a funny thing. We believe all complaints and instinctively mistrust praise.

I do this every single day: take all the criticisms as gospel. And I resist the praise—I don’t want to be hoodwinked! I think the praise-givers have no standards. I think the critics are crabby geniuses who have something I am missing. I doubt the praise, wholly. I don’t to want to be walking around mistakenly thinking I’m Miss Thing when I’m just another mediocre writer. For shame, for shame.

For example, my friend Bill recently told me my new prologue for the memoir didn’t shine. Didn’t shine!? I was devastated. I heard him saying Heather you do not shine and you never will.  It was horrible. And I believed him. I threw the pages out. I didn’t ever consider, “Can I trust his comments? How do I know they are true, right, useful, good?” I shoved the work overboard, was embarrassed of it. Then, yesterday, when he told me the new new new prologue did shine, I assumed he was just trying to be nice; he knew he’d hurt my feelings last week.

I didn’t trust the praise at all. I saw a hidden agenda.

Why do we “trust” criticism, give it more weight, than praise? Do we need a whole new relationship with Showing Our Work? 

Yes.

Very very much. 

First, we have to — Slow Down – showing our work. We’re getting one reader’s well-intentioned but probably limited reaction to a work in progress. People out there do kind of generally know what’s good writing, what isn’t. But no one knows as much about the work as we do.  We are better served to show it to ourselves first, and then clarify what we want out of the response we ask from others.

I tend to show too early, from a place of fear, in a child-like way, hoping an authority, some magical perfect fixer-knower person, will show us the Truth, what to do. I think I’m secretly asking for the work to be rescued when it isn’t even in trouble! No wonder I’m confused about conflicting messages (Give it life support! No, let it run around in the yard! No! add a monkey!). No wonder I do not know what to trust, how to proceed. I want the work to be rescued, it isn’t in trouble, I show it to someone and they try to fix it or they love it. Yipe! All wrong. I reject both responses, but I sure do feel the negatives and push away the positive praise….

Readers are like dragonflies. They zoom all over the piece, buzz buzz buzz. They might know helpful things. They might not. Most likely, we won’t be able to tell “the truth” in what they say—praise or criticism. It’s a reader, having a reaction. Bzzzzzzzz. Bzzzzzzz.

What can I meta-notice here?

For better or worse, there isn’t a Fixing Machine we can run our work through, an entity or energy that knows the Truth.  The fixing machine is the process of writing. It’s done alone.

I suspect I show my work as a child shows art—mostly I want a hug, a kiss, some treats, and more art supplies, permission to spend the afternoon continuing on this path, making. I want affirmation—you are a great artist, more fingerpaint! Don’t worry if you make a mess! I will clean it up for you! Enjoy! Have fun! I can’t wait to see what you do next! No surprise when a reader says exactly this to me I feel let down. It’s not enough, not adult enough, not complex enough.

The best readers I’ve had (Lorraine, Jackie, Annie-Turtle) articulate the place—the deep emotional place—the work has taken them to, and the point to the places, the actual words that launched them into very specific insights and reactions. They see patterns and show them to me. They see things the work is reaching towards, sending out tentacles to, and they name the things, enabling me to nurture those tentacles, grab on with them. They read into the work. They show me what it’s like to be them reading it. That alone is what I need. It isn’t praise or criticism. It’s as though they become the guy in the dictionary with the see-through layover pages, the plates that show circulatory system, nervous system, skeleton. They show me how it is for my work to be inside them, how its systems function when inside their particular humanness. They point to places where the workings are fuzzy, where I’m not fully layered, fully human. Or lying, pretending, fooling myself. The best readers I have had talk about other books, making road signs for me, so I know where I am in the dark heart of the piece I’m making. The best readers are like flashlights, sent down from above ground, on strings, hovering for awhile in my mine.

The best readers perform a kind of reading that is exactly like writing. It’s hard work, this kind of reading. It takes enormous focus, energy.

* 

We can’t trust the praise we get. We can’t trust the criticism we get. We can only trust that we know how to get into the good writing mind, we’ve done it before. If my readers’ comments make me want to go write, just as a great book makes me go write, I know I’m showing it to the right person, for the right reasons, at the right time. If, after showing the work, I shut down (this doesn’t shine, Heather doesn’t shine) I’ve shown too soon, or allowed a child part of myself to do all the showing, all the hoping. It’s likely I don’t know yet what I want to know (I just want love and candy and stars–but they aren’t going to make me feel really good, or sustain me.)

I’m curious–what do you know about this process?

What kind of feedback helps you most? Who have been your best readers? What did they do? Were they better at some kinds of your work than others? What comments have devastated you? Who in you was devastated? Do you read other people’s work regularly, keep your chops up? do you think that process—actively reading, being a fellow writer’s flashlight—directly improves your own truth-finding process, your own self-editing, your own craftsmanship? Are you most comfortable with criticism or praise? What do you really, truly trust?

What if we always trusted the praise and doubted, questioned, turned away from the criticism? what would happen to our work, our writing lives?

I have my students make chapbooks of their work at the end of the semester, and they make a copy of their beautiful book for everyone in the class. I encourage them to get booky–I’ll write a blurb for anyone who asks (”it was luminous!” “Kruyf is Stephen King on Lorrie Moore!”). They make fake blurbs (”I couldn’t put it down. It was literally stuck to my hands…glued on! –Tom Stoppard on Isaac Droscha) and write dedications and this year Sarah1 did an index (boys on every page).

Marty’s acknowledgements caught my attention. In his thanks he writes to his parents, for telling him the way he wrote before this class is better, the best way, to keep writing the way he wants. To let nothing stop him from his dream. Marty, who was quite a bit older than the other students in the class, loved to write about interplanetary travel and science and helpful freaks. He had a lot of ideas.

At first, I was surprised, and then I felt bad. Had I failed Marty, trying to get him to examine why he chose adverbs, to consider other ways to see a thing than through abstraction or figurative langauge? Had he gone home to his family and told them this hideous class was breaking his soul?

Agh.

I’m not sure what we are supposed to do, really, in class. Most of the students, almost all, say at the end of the class they are thrilled that they write better, more easily, and they can’t believe how flat and plain and cliche their work from the early part of the term is. “I would never write that way now.”

I think part of my job is to figure out what each students wants, and help them to what they want to do. But when what they want to do (interplanetary travel) is so different from what I know how to do, what I value (travel in time, travel to the bad night that got worse, travel to the heart of hearts), what happens? Do we meet in the middle? Do I have to live with not being able to help? At all?

I wish Marty felt I was on his side. I wish he felt writing class held lessons that applied to him.  But maybe this thing he is doing is glorious and perfect, and his parents are protecting him from something he should be protected from. He makes these dreamy structures. I want to change them into something else. I wonder what he wanted from the class, how he wanted it to be, what he wants to learn.  I think he wants a space to write things how he wants to write them. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to make my class like that.

I wonder what my students think.

The posters are all over campus. It’s a boy-man in a jester suit, on bleachers, half-dancing, sort of frolicking. He looks sober. If insane is sober.

I get the point. The posters are supposed to help the students not drink too much.  But each time I see one I think this is like writing by hand! this is just like writing by hand! When I write by hand I feel like this bumbling joker. I feel hideous and slow and standout-ish, in a bad way. It’s horrible. It’s soo horrible. Writing by hand is dancing sober.

I told a friend of mine, a poet, a great poet, how my students write by hand. I was bragging. He gave me the blankest look. “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “We all do it. Write by hand.” I was crowing. He stared and stared at me. It was as if I’d said “My students write using words, isn’t that so inventive and cool? Words!”

Poets. They are dancing sober all the time.  Thank god for poetry.

From her new book Thinking About Memoir:

“But life doesn’t arrange itself conveniently into chapters–not mine anyway. And I didn’t want to write a novel. My life didn’t feel like a novel. It felt like a million moments. I didn’t want to make anything fit together. I didn’t want to make anything up. I didn’t want it to make sense the way I understand a novel to make a kind of sense. I didn’t want anywhere to hide. I didn’t want to be able to duck. I wanted the shock of truth. I wanted moments that felt like body blows. I wanted moments of pure hilarity, connected to nothing that came before or after. I wanted it to feel like the way I’ve lived my life. And I wanted to tell the truth. My truth doesn’t travel in a straight line, it zigzags, detours, doubles back. Most truths I have to learn over and over again.