Word After Word

My book of poems The Boys I Borrow is a finalist (along with books by Ron Padgett, Laura Kasicske, Bob Hicok!) for the Balcones Prize. 

More information to come. Happy. I’m just so delighted about this and eager to read the winner’s book and the finalists’ books–I’ll post links to their work here soon.

Hunting for morels is writing. It’s the same. I learned how to look for them–scanning lightly, choosing a slope makes it easier to see. You want to look for something upright on all that flatness. That’s the trick. And with anything you find, you can’t really find it, it has to find you. So you scan, scan, scan, get really bored with scanning for stupid fungus, bored to the point you are thinking who ever thought eating moist dark freaky looking things made any sense at all? who put the first one in his mouth? You have to be that bored, so bored you Look Away. Only then, when you Look Back, without expectation (I’ve written about this a lot) will the mushroom appear. It’s so easy to see him. You can see nothing else.

How is this like writing? You work and walk and worry the work, pushing pushing pushing. Not writing, spewing lots of bad pages, wondering what to write, wondering where to start in again, pushing hard against it. Willing it. I MUST BE WRITING! or I AM WRITING! You have to get past that part of yourself. You have to look away, not try anymore and then when you look back–deep in the trance of the work but not expecting anything good to happen with it, either (it often takes hours to get to this place with shrooms or writing), there it is. You are doing it. Gold. Not the false morel. The real morel.

That’s what I noticed mushroom hunting. When I looked away, and then looked back, concentrating but not on mushrooms exactly, letting what was there be seen, instead of working so hard to see, I found one. It felt exactly like the writing process.

I spent all day walking around the woods and I came home tired and happy just like after a day of writing. Same work. Same process. Same fun.

My perfect Michigan weekend: I found my first morel (by myself). There he was, at my feet, like a little grouchy gnome whispering quit trying. I screamed so loud I shocked the forest, scared many morels away. I saw a loon and a bald eagle. The eagle was standing by the side of the highway in this bold shaft of light looking fake, bold, important, presidential. I was listening to a book on beauty (thanks, Minton!) and the author was talking about how when we die, we don’t just miss a place, that place misses us, and mourns for us. Across from the eagle there were the crosses marking car crashes, death. Sunday afternoon, a terrific portal. Driving home. I wonder where my home really is. I feel like I moved to Michigan significantly this weekend, finding the morel, seeing the loon, watching the moon over larch trees.

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?