I want to qualify this post, and acknowledge that this one is extra narcissistic. But I think that might be a little redundant for a blog.
Right now, I’m waiting until September 13 to start working on my story again. September 13 is the next time my writing group meets, and the date has become an arbitrary marker of time in the way of all far off dates.
It’s weird to be waiting for feedback right now because I know my story isn’t perfect. I agree with what a lot of my other readers have been saying. The story is there, but there are like 18 sentences missing that would help solidify the characters. Eighteen is not a large or small number, but it’s a number that could make a difference. Think of how 18 home improvements or 18 pieces of clothes could change a house or wardrobe.
When I realized over the weekend that I needed about 360 more words to transform my story, I felt like my goal was closer or more tangible. But the more I think about it, the more I realize coming up with those sentences is the whole challenge.
In general, small things separate the good from the great. Even if it’s only one missing sentence, when it’s gone, its absence is the only thing that matters.
(Until about 20 minutes ago, I had never heard the original version of this song. I imagined it was by a Fleetwood Mac-like band, not the star of Popstars: the Rivals.)
I emailed the second official, and 11th unofficial, draft of my new story around to friends on Saturday, and since then, I’ve been spending my mornings cleaning, reading, and managing the email list for Making the Mountain. I’ve been productive, but I still feel pretty empty. It’s not like I think my writing is so great or could change any lives. It’s just that writing, for me anyway, is the only thing that makes life seem more than a variation of waiting on lines, looking for misplaced keys, and cleaning the bathroom mirror. This sounds self-important and melodramatic, but if I’m not writing, I don’t really know what this whole thing is about.
At the same time, work, which pays for whatever I’m waiting on line to purchase, all of the things my various keys open, and the cleaning solution for the bathroom mirror—along with summer fruit, weekend trips, and novelty yarmulkes—has been asking more of me, which is only fair, because it is my job.
This week, I’ve been fighting for my love, which means insisting on a schedule that gives me time to write, even if I don’t have anything to write right now.
When I was writing my novel, I thought I’d rather fail at it than not try, which is still true. My novel only exists in a drawer and my collection of short stories might have a similar fate. I’ve sent around five of stories, and all I have to show for it is a spreadsheet of rejection and one memento of kindness. There’s no guarantee that I’ll get anything published. The only thing that’s for sure is that my writing won’t get better if I don’t write, and that’s worth fighting for.
I used to hate when people complained about not having time to do something. It seemed like an excuse: no one has trouble making time to dick around on Facebook, but suddenly there’s no time to read or go to the grocery store?
But as I get older and collect responsibilities that I can’t shift around as easily, I’ve become more empathetic. Lately, with a puppy and more professional obligations, finding the time on weekday mornings to write—without the pressure to do more than stare at my computer and be in the space of whatever it is I’m working on—has been challenging.
To compensate, I’ve resigned myself to missing out on early morning weekend adventures. I can only seem to write before lunch, and it’s become a weird truth that I’d rather write one perfect paragraph before noon than do just about anything else. When I miss out on these outings, it’s not because I don’t have time, it’s because I’d rather be writing.
Even if I won’t be going on a day hike tomorrow, I realize this is one of the least obligated times of my life. Which is why I had some compassion for a woman I came across on my run yesterday. The track near my apartment was empty except for two women, probably in their 40s, and a bored nine year-old girl looking on. The track is the most pleasant way for me to exercise with my dog, Rex. She can race around and sniff, and I can run without worrying about her racing around and sniffing.
I did my first lap between the women’s 400s, but once they started again, Rex began running alongside them. One of the women, I like to think the mom, said in the loud, under the breath way of a passive aggressive without any power, “A dog shouldn’t be on the track.” Fair enough, and I left because in her tone, she was saying, “This is my moment not to worry about emails, or my husband, or the laundry, and even then, I had to bring my child, and you and your dog are ruining this.”
I felt bad, not for her disrupted 400, which to be nasty, wasn’t that fast, but for how little time she felt she had. Maybe I just felt bad for my future self, who one day will have a fuller life that I will try to escape in regular 90-minute increments to write. I hope that in those flights, I can be more at peace than that woman, but I’ll probably be just as anxious to do something with my bursts of freedom.
After the track incident, I took Rex to the park, and thought about the opening of “Pretty Hurts.” Like Beyonce, or her songwriter Sia Furler, my aspiration in life is to be happy. But more specifically, it’s not to worry about time or money.
I recently put together a night where people talked about what they make and why. Below is what I read:
I had a moment when I knew I wanted to write a novel. It was November 3, 2007. I was at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, New Jersey, and I was watching a 3-D movie about sunspots. I was not sober. I’d like to say that the inevitable destruction of our solar system made me think about my own mortality. But really, I was thinking about work.
I had recently changed jobs. I had been at a trade publication called “Sales & Marketing Management Magazine.” The best thing I could say about the job was that it provided me with health insurance. I had been trying to leave since I got there, and finally had. Now I was writing at a media blog, and it had felt like a big move. I had a ton of creative freedom and I was meeting interesting people. But watching this movie about sunspots, I realized that blogging for ten hours a day was not what I wanted either. I wanted to write a novel.
Some people know their whole life that they want to write fiction. I knew my whole life that being creative professionally is hard. My mom is a painter, and each night, she’d come home from work vaguely sad or with news that no one could relate to, like that she had moved a bottle two inches in a still life. Her work wasn’t fun, and she resented when people ask if it was. It’s her second most hated question, right after, “Are you still painting?” Growing up, I’d see her go to her studio every day with the inevitability of gravity, but people still treated her career like a hobby.
But watching this movie about sunspots, the loneliness and the statistical odds of a creative life felt irrelevant. I wanted to write a novel, and I’d rather fail than not try. And so it became my 2008 New Year’s Resolution to make an effort.
Which is more or less what happened in 2008. I gave up blogging and started writing. All the things I feared about having a creative life have proved true.
It’s lonely. The problems I have as I’m developing a character or a scene don’t make sense to anyone but me. My novel exists mostly in a drawer. But that feeling I had at the Liberty Science Center, of having to write, is still there. And now I’m working on a collection of short stories.
There are all sorts of practical things I like about writing short stories. Mainly that they are shorter than novels. But I’ve always loved short fiction. A short story doesn’t pretend to have all the answers; it’s a snapshot of a character in a moment that feels true.
One of my favorite moments is from the John Cheever short story “Clementina.” It’s about an Italian woman who becomes an au pair for an American family and has lost her visa. Marrying an older, slightly creepy guy is the only way she can stay. Here’s the scene where she makes her decision:
The room where she read these letters was warm. The lights were pink. She had a silver ashtray like a signora, and, if she had wanted, in her private bathroom she could have drawn a hot bath up to her neck. Did the Holy Virgin mean for her to live in a wilderness and die of starvation? Was it wrong to take the comforts that were held out to her? The faces of her people appeared to her again, and how dark were their skin, their hair, and their eyes, she thought, as if through living with fair people she had taken on the dispositions and the prejudices of the fair. The faces seemed to regard her with reproach, with earthen patience, with a sweet, dignified, and despairing regard, but why should she be compelled to return and drink sour wine in the darkness of the hills? In this new world they had found the secret of youth, and would the saints in heaven have refused a life of youthfulness if it had been God’s will? She remembered how in Nascosta even the most beautiful fell quickly under the darkness of time, like flowers without care; how even the most beautiful became bent and toothless, their dark clothes smelling, as the mamma’s did, of smoke and manure. But in this country she could have forever white teeth and color in her hair. Until the day she died she would have shoes with heels and rings on her fingers, and the attention of men, for in this new world one lived ten lifetimes and never felt the pinch of age; no, never. She would marry Joe. She would stay here and live ten lives, with a skin like marble and always the teeth with which to bite the meat.
We don’t get to know how her marriage works out, if she has kids, if she’s happy, or happier than she would have been back in Italy. We just know that in this moment, she made a choice to always have the strength to enjoy life.
In that way, the short form is more honest than the novel. The length of the novel implies that you’re getting everything. But there is no everything, there’s no whole story. What happens to Ishmael after the Pequod sinks? Maybe Moby-Dick is just a cover letter for his next job.
Cheever used to put on a suit each morning before he went to write in the basement of his apartment building in Manhattan. He wanted to feel like he was going to a job, even if it was only an elevator ride away. My method is to wake up early every day. I learned from my mom that making art doesn’t happen by accident. She still goes to her studio every morning, and I never presumed that I could make something any other way.
It’s not that I want to write every day. I could be very happy—much happier, in fact—watching reality TV every day. I write every day because I want to get better at writing. It’s a vague goal. But the only thing that’s certain is that I won’t get better at writing if I don’t write.
Most mornings, I don’t get much done. I do laundry, I make my bed. I stare out the window. It’s a weird time to be up.
For a while, everything is just black, except for the diagonal streaks of light from the big apartment building on the corner of my street. And then the sky turns navy, the kind of navy you want to believe is black if you made a mistake when purchasing stockings.
From there, everything gets bluer, though it’s still a dark blue, a blue that could pass for this season’s new black, and the naked branches of the trees become visible. Then the sky is really blue, a blue that, if you were being gender normative, would do well in a baby boy’s room, a blue so light it would surprise you, considering how dark it still is.
And then, I’m not staring out into total darkness, but the house across from mine, though I can still make out my reflection in the window. Each moment, the sky gets lighter and lighter, which feels like a betrayal of the night, which I suppose it is.
And it’s just like that Hemingway line about going bankrupt—slowly, then all at once—and then it’s time for the day to start.
(I wrote that a few years ago, while I was procrastinating.)
All of my early mornings are sort of like water on the rock. Every day, I wear away at my inability to understand my characters and connect words to their feelings, and eventually, something emerges.
Printing, or rather my continual disappointment of the life of inkjet cartridges, had been a source of some strain for most of my freelancing life. No longer! I got a printer that only prints and now I print, double-sided, old New Yorker articles like a baller/paralegal. Being able to look at the physical draft of a story I’m working on feels like the writer’s version of indoor plumbing – that is, a luxury that shouldn’t be one.
Ira Glass’s dance company came to Denver this weekend. Part of the fun was having no idea what a collaboration like this would look like. I went because I have faith in Ira Glass. The show is thought provoking and accessible, and only exists as a performance. It’s not a streamable experience, and if means allow, it’s definitely an experience that’s worth having.
Finishing a Story
I PDF’ed a story I’ve been working on off and on for the past 18 months, and I feel good about putting it behind the glass door of an Adobe file. I spend about seven hours a week writing, which isn’t that much. Most of the time, I feel like I’m not doing anything other than waking up early. Turns out, I was writing a story!
I tend to blog more when I’m starting a new writing project, as a way to feel like I’m doing something even when I’m not working. For me, blogging is a way to try out phrases and ideas. Even if I’m not writing fiction, at least I’m at my desk, staring at a screen, thinking about how words go together. Blogging is the writing equivalent of 30 minutes on the elliptical.
I’ve recently become obsessed with the idea that the best short stories are about a moment when something is true, or a truth about a character is revealed. So right now, I have a moment, but I’m trying to figure out who would be there and why. It’s confusing and difficult, and leads to a lot of moments of staring out the window and procrastination cleaning.
The more I think about this Moment idea, the more I think the short form is more honest than the novel. The length of the novel implies that you’re getting the whole story. But there’s no “whole story.” Things continue even after that whale hunt that changed everything. A short story doesn’t make a promise to tell the whole story. A short story is just a true moment in a person’s larger life narrative.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. I’ve also been thinking about how pleasant this fall has been in Denver. It snowed in the first week of October, but then, for whatever reason, the weather has stayed in the 50s and 60s. Fall and spring in the West aren’t as fragrant and lovely as they are on the East Coast, where things are more verdant and fast-paced. Most of the trees turn yellow here, but every once in a while, there’s a tree that goes orange or red. Last month, I was a foodie for fall, and I took pictures of any tree that reminded me that fall in Denver was still worth having. You know me, always capturing the small moments.
“Whenever I write a novel, I have a strong sense that I am doing something I was unable to do before. With each new work, I move up a step and discover something new inside me. I don’t see this novel as a departure, but I do think it has been a major step in my career. Formally speaking, this is the first full-length novel I have written from beginning to end in the third person.”
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- Haruki Murakami, the author of this week’s story, “Town of Cats,” talking to the magazine’s fiction editor, Deborah Treisman. Click through for the rest of their chat. (via newyorker)
I rarely get so excited about a new book that I buy it in hardcover. 1Q84 will be one of those exceptions.
Related: The worst part about not having a mailing address is not having my New Yorker subscription.
