Last week while my mom was visiting, she, my girl and I went to Panera for dinner before Ma sweetly took my girl home so I could have a few hours to work on PARKER CLEAVES. As we ate, I found myself completely overtaken with the conversation of the two women behind me, who were filling out some sort of Bible-related workbooks.
Their conversation was HILARIOUS and not intentionally at all. I sat there, nodding and smiling at my mom and daughter because they thought they were talking to me, but they were not. They were talking at me while I listened with all my might to the women as they discussed their answers to the workbook questions.
When we were done eating, we walked out into the parking lot and I told my mom and daughter what they'd been saying. My mom laughed out loud.
Me: "I'm totally blogging this."
My Conscience My Daughter: "Mommy, what if they saw it?"
Me: "How would they see it? They don't know me. Plus, I don't know their names." (fully aware of how completely wrong and backward this conversation is)
My Conscience My Daughter: "MOMMY."
Me: "Twitter?"
My Conscience My Daughter: "MOOOOMMMMY."
Me: "Okay, fine."
So I told the story in my editorial meeting to my co-workers, and we laughed and laughed. And see, I found a way to blog it without violating the spirit of my daughter's wise words. The best part about this story: Right before I started eavesdropping, I was telling my daughter she can't have her own blog until she's 25.
I'll just find a way to work that conversation into dialogue in PARKER CLEAVES.
Last night I was having dinner with a writer friend of mine. I'd brought her my extra copy of THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO GETTING YOUR BOOK PUBLISHED by The Book Doctors (Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry, who let me introduce them and their darling child to Jalepeno's and Reading Reptile on their last swing through Kansas City). My friend left the table toward the end of the meal, and a man about my dad's age leaned over from the next table (which was very nearby), gestured to the book and asked if I was trying to publish a book.
I got to tell him my novel came out last month. That was super fun.
We got into a conversation in which he told us he is voracious reader on his Kindle, that his eyesight isn't so good for print anymore, and that he'd like to publish a book. His wife leaned in at one point to say he was a fine writer, a gesture so sweet and loving I almost fell out of my chair. He asked if I'd majored in English, and I said not the first time. He told me he'd been a lawyer for years because his father wanted him to, and he really hated being a lawyer but he liked to write. I ended up giving him my author card and telling him it's never too late to write.
Because it's never too late to write.*
*Sometimes it's too late to write well. This post could've been a lot better if I had more time. But it's a cool story, and I'll totally forget it if I don't put it down. So, sorry! But still cool, eh?
This morning I woke up thinking about falling in love. I'm not sure if it was the end notes of a dream or the cozy feeling of coming off three nights spent alone with Beloved and no little angel, but I woke up with that feeling in my throat of the first time someone says, "I think I love you."
A few minutes ago, I read Schmutzie's post on happiness, and I thought about waking up to thinking about love. My husband and I ran into a college kid on our recent trip, and the kid asked if we were married. "Almost twelve years," I said. And this kid, who up to this point had been bragging about getting 98 percent in a class without ever having cracked the book's spine and getting laid the night before glanced over with utter sincerity and said, "That's cool. That really makes me happy, that you guys have been together so long."
Well, son, I'm glad I restored your faith in humanity. Because let me tell you, being in love -- long-term love -- is awesome. It usually feels a little different than the falling-in-love, though, and that's a tough one to swallow. Falling in love lasts, what, a few months at best? Being in love -- now that's a different story. That can last forever.
There are ways to tap into that first-few-months feeling, though. I spent years thinking about that feeling while I was single and realized part of falling in love is getting to know a new person, but if I'm honest with myself, part of falling in love is finding a new audience for your tired old stories, a new person to feel new around. Part of falling in love is feeling interesting again.
Part of falling in love is falling in love with yourself.
Maybe that's part of why artists and performers and writers are so crazy about our work. Creating something new is like getting to tell your stories again, maybe even stories you just learned yesterday, stories you didn't even know you knew. Or maybe they are old stories but nobody yet has received them quite the way you were hoping for.
Falling in love, I think, has little to do with falling in love in the conventional sense.
Falling in love, I think, is being able to tap into the part of you that finds yourself still interesting after all these years.
I feel like I have been working on THE OBVIOUS GAME for a thousand years, even though intellectually I know it is three.I feel like I have read this manuscript so many times I should have it memorized, and yet I still found an errant sentence referencing a scene I cut twelvity million revisions ago not ten minutes ago.
I have read this manuscript over and over and over, as this week I turn it in and probably won't see it again before it goes to print.
Part of me, a very LARGE part of me, wanted to just hit accept changes and turn it in without another glance.
The part of me that is a control freak knew there was no way in hell that was going to happen, because if wasn't the way I wanted it and it went out like that, I would never forgive myself for setting aside two scrolling-related migraine headaches and ten hours of my butt in an uncomfortable chair scrolling, scrolling, through Word and through my Kindle and then back to Word again.
At some point, you just have to call it done. That is pretty hard to do. And yet effortless.
While I was waiting for a publisher to emerge from the ether, I started working on my new novel, THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES. I immersed myself in that novel, which is completely different from this novel. I outlined the entire thing. I bought software to help me avoid the structural mistakes I made in THE OBVIOUS GAME in its earlier drafts. I thought deeply about plot and character. I almost forgot Diana, the protagonist of THE OBVIOUS GAME. I kind of needed to forget about Diana, because it hurt too much to think about her never seeing the light of day except in my head for these three years.
Spending so much time with my manuscript after almost a year of trying not to think about it as as jarring as a 10-year high school reunion. Not enough time has passed to keep you from still being a little in love with those people. And now, diving back in and staring at every sentence, I'm so grateful for InkSpell and the opportunity for this book to see the light of day. I'm still in love with these people.
Last Saturday, I spent six hours removing a layer of July from my house. I put Killz on the ceiling where I had *thought* I'd shut the bathroom sink off after hand-washing the swimming suits. I scrubbed Okie dust off the windows. I attempted to open the door that's stuck shut because our house has settled due to lack of rainwater on the foundation. I scrubbed the floors.
Then, because Beloved had taken the little angel to one place I have absolutely zero desire to visit -- the Missouri State Fair -- I went to the swimming pool by myself with John Irving's In One Person. I stayed there for three hours, and in that time, I fell back in love with the writing of John Irving after several novels of "is what we had lost forever"? My John Irving high lasted through date night at Cafe Verona -- where we ate in the little courtyard and the waiter explained the locks hanging from the wrought-iron gates were engraved and hung on people's anniversaries to signify their forever love -- and well into the next morning, when we had a lazy breakfast and headed into the Plaza to get something I needed at Barnes & Noble and maybe browse with my gift card they gave me for Mother's Day, which was at least 50 95-degree-plus days ago.
The Plaza killed my high. I never actually *shop* in the Plaza, which for the uninitiated is a high-end four blocks of shops and restaurants. I love hanging out at the Plaza, but I never buy anything anywhere other than Barnes & Noble, because I don't have $375 for a handbag. We went into at least ten stores, but I realized I have grown really, really bad at shopping, because we've been trying to save money for so long I now fully understand that I really don't need anything and want everything. And everything I want costs more than the balance of the gift card. But everything I need I already have.
It's a quandry.
I ended up in H&M staring at all the cheap crap and ill-fitting clothes that would look good on my daughter but not on me and realizing there was not one thing in the entire Plaza that I wanted to buy. Then I saw a $12 white, gauzy scarf, the exact kind of scarf one would wear if one were riding in an open convertible and wanted to avoid mussing her hair, even if that convertible were built in 1997 and even if that woman were also wearing yoga pants.
I bought the scarf and we drove home, and I realized I'd forgotten that feeling of wanting to be a better writer that I'd pulled from John Irving's words. And it made me mad -- the Plaza made me mad -- myself made me mad -- I went from feeling inspired and content with my lot to grouchy and jealous of other women's shoes in one hour flat.
The next time I go to the Plaza, I'm spending the entire gift card at Barnes & Noble, and then I'm getting the hell out.
This past week has been extremely draining for me. Yesterday morning I was in such a dark mood I actually cancelled meetings so people wouldn't have to talk to me.
Last night, I went to an Indigo Girls concert in Kansas City. I named my first horrible and forever unpublished novel after a line in an Indigo Girls song, and I moved to Kansas City after really listening to "Least Complicated." I like a lot of music, but there are certain singer/songwriters who capture the human condition so eloquently it takes my breath away. Listening to the music last night reminded me that I have a thing that I do that can bliss me out as much as the bass player of the back-up band, The Shadow Boxers. (I wish I had taken video last night, because I have NEVER seen a bass player this jacked before. I found a video on their YouTube channel, though, because you really need the visual to understand this post.)
It wasn't just the bass player, though -- I don't know how young these guys are, but they looked a lot younger than my 38, certainly younger than Emily and Amy. And when the audience sang along to some of the Swamp Ophelia songs, the guys looked like they were getting a straight dopamine drip. The wheels turning, yes, this is what it can be like after all that hard work and heartbreak. As artists we get so few of those moments and so many of the moments of rejection and struggle. You have to bottle the good moments in your head and sip slowly so as not to use that joy up before you really, really need it.
I desperately needed that reminder last night that I can access my shot of bliss when I want to, too. I just have to sit down and search inside myself for the writing. I'm lucky and blessed that I know how to find my joy -- I just need to clear my schedule and make time for it more -- not just here, though I love writing here -- I love talking with you guys -- but the fiction. The new novel. (The second novel is with editors, it's a long story and there's too much uncertainty, which is why I never write about it. Honestly, it pains me to talk about it, because I've come so far in these past three years, but will it be far enough? I can't explain how painful and important this is to me.)
I can't remember what made me remember the poem I wrote right before I graduated from the University of Iowa OH MY GOD SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO, but I mentioned it to my friend Kristi last night in reference to some song lyric, and this morning I looked it up to see how much it sucked. It isn't my best work, but I can clearly see what I was thinking back then, so I thought I'd share it here in honor of the happy boys of The Shadow Boxers and my hope that people sing their lyrics with fervor. Good luck to you and keep loving life.
The Last Day
The last day of college collected no knowledge
different from all of the rest.
To the edge of ability
I tested virility
can't say it was the best.
The snowflakes come swirling with dreamlike unfurling,
covering the entire town.
Hot water rises with scented soap prizes
as I try to steam straight my gown.
They gave me two stars to represent wars
I fought with words and with pen.
To get their attention, attempting dissension
and failing to score in the end.
My work here is done.
My words have not won
the battles that ignorance wrought;
my lofty ambition
achieved no sedition:
I fear education is bought.
But hope will still flower
far from the tower
of ivory I've never seen --
thoughts of the younger
still here will blunder
and sleep in the places I've been.
And then while I was searching the Mac for "places I've been," I found this other one also detailing my obsession with other people who have lived where I've lived. What are their stories? Do they wonder about mine? What do we leave behind? A song? A poem? A smile?
Places We've Been
Lofted bunk on a college campus
somewhere in the Middle West,
I carved my initials in the closet
near where you rest your head.
First-floor walk-up in Chicago,
the corner of Clark and Halsted streets,
no parking, disposal or air conditioning --
do you find it had to sleep?
Historic building in Kansas City,
the very first space I called my own,
I taped poems to the cabinets
and never answered the phone.
Haven't built a house, always filled a space
vacated by somebody else.
I smell you, sometimes, before I drop off
to sleep, in the places you've been.
Today's a tough day. Hang in there, Aurora. Everyone go find your bliss -- every day is a gamble and a gift.
I spent several hours over the weekend reading all the posts that were honored as part of BlogHer's Voices of the Year initiative. Here are some quotes that stopped my heart with their beauty or their poignancy or their humor.
At one point, she said, ‘It’s wrong, this happening…the granddaughter washing the old grandmother,’ and then I told her what I’d been thinking, about the yellow bathroom and the big tub and the heater. I asked her if she remembered that, bathing me on those nights I spent with her. And she did. Then I told her what she didn’t know: how every time I had felt my back toasted beside the mouth of that heater, I’d think in my child’s mind, ‘This is happy.’ -- Amy Whitley
I felt panicky that he was out of my sight, and I made a mental note that even though he was about to start 7th grade and was probably more than ready to be on his own, I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t yet ready for him to be apart from me. When I told him I’d buy him 3 cars just for the heck of it, something he didn’t ask me to do, he was thrilled, even though it only cost me a whopping three dollars. Later that night he ordered another car off the internet, which arrived the day after he died. -- Anna See
It wasn’t a god with a soothing voice and gentle hand that guided me through, it was the black, bony fingers of grief that instead pushed me. It was those who left me and the children who were never able to find me. They spoke in unison, shouted actually, that my life belonged to me. Not to the four walls I decorated around me, not to the corporation. Not even to my beloved pets, friends and family. -- Dalene
And I nearly came undone by yet more incredible words from the late Susan Niebur, whom the community loved very, very much.
Am I sometimes envious of others, who may get forty-plus more years on this Earth than I? Sure. But I was never promised 80 years. I was promised a life. And boy, have I had a pretty incredible life.
I’m not done yet, but I am finally coming to understanding about the parable and about what I’ve been given, and I am again grateful, for God has kept his promises to me and I have lived the best way I know how. I have been truly blessed.
Let me take your shoulders and look you in the eye, and after we play a round of mime “mirrors” I will say yes Ann Krinsky Age Twenty you have talent. You have a lovely singing voice and stage personality, but the friendships you began in childhood, and that you keep rehearsing, become some of your most beautiful arias, highest hitch-kicks and most moving soliloquies. You never win a Tony, but you win an Erin, a Maria, a Megan—in fact, too many beloved friends to list. Competing for and winning Leading Lady feels so important to you right now, but the light these women bring to your life endures much longer than any spotlight.
You know what I really wanted to do? I wanted to stand up and get their attention. I wanted to announce, “No matter what today’s mammogram reveals, you will be okay. If it shows a suspicious mass and you are sent for a biopsy or an MRI and the result is positive? You will be okay. Yes, it will be one of the worst days of your life and yes, you will cry long and hard. But you will get through it with more grit and grace than you ever knew you had. And one day you will be where I am today, two years past diagnosis. Today, cancer is just a footnote in my life; it’s not anywhere near being my whole story. I’ve been through it. I’ve lost my breasts. I’ve gotten new ones. I’m comfortable with that. I’m happy with where I am and believe it or not, I rarely even think about the cancer or the mastectomy or the surgeries anymore. I made it through. And you will, too!”
We most see ourselves, the real and meaty complication of our interiors, when we see it in others, those who let those raw bits of themselves out into the wild to see what will happen, and that is the irony that twists what we've been trained to do on its head. All of the appealing, appeasing, ingratiating servitude we've been trained to see as our being so giving of ourselves is actually the tool that keeps us quiet, controlled, and cut off from each other, cut off from the kind of honest, vulnerable interaction that brings the most joy to people and communities.
I disagree, Mr. President. Mothering isn’t the hardest job. Parenting is. And if we’re ever going to get past the gender gap in this country, we need to shift our thinking about mothering vs. parenting.
I can't understand what it's like to have to wonder if new people will accept your family. I love this from Erika from Be Gay About It:
They will be home in time for dinner and we will eat something ordinary, negotiating at every turn to get them to stay in their seats and eat with their forks. We will tackle them for pajama time and read stories in the red chair. We will smile at them more wistfully than usual as they swallow their toothpaste, and then we will tuck them in, reminding them to sleep a big one for a mint. We are a family and, after everything it took for us to become one, ordinary is really all we need.
I chose this line even though the rest of the post by JW Moxie is about her children because it made tears spring to my eyes:
Just try your best, JoJo. Say whatever comes to your mind.” “I’m just so ... happy that you’re my mom.” His voice escalated into a higher pitch and another barrage of sobs stirred through his words as he said, “Thank you and Daddy for making me borned.”
Go over and read them all if you can find the time -- this is just a tiny portion of what I read. I was thrilled and honored to be included in this list in 2012 after trying for years. This blog isn't fancy or fabulous or high design. I don't devise recipes or do tutorials or spend hours optimizing or anything helpful like that, which could net me fame and fortune in the blogging world. But being honored in any way for my writing is a high honor, indeed, and one that means so much to me, more than gazillions of pageviews or unique visitors or Today Show tapings. I started this blog to write, and write I'll keep doing until they have to pry the laptop from me. When I need to feel inspired, I read other writers like the people I quoted above -- reading great writers pokes the muse within to get off my ass and produce something of which I can be proud.
I've had a rough few weeks in terms of ego. The self doubt creeps in, the why-am-I-doing-this, the what-if-this-happens-what-if-that-happens-what-should-I-do-next. Yesterday Beloved pointed out I'd forgotten an entire conversation with him because I was secretly stewing over something else.
I recently read Vanessa Williams memoir with her mom, Helen Williams, for BlogHer Book Club. I admit to never following Vanessa's career, and so I probably would not have picked up this book on my own. What I took away is that Vanessa has some serious fire in the belly. She never doubted herself, not when she was blocked from Broadway after the Miss America thing, not when she faced numerous professional obstacles that would've sidelined most actresses. Or singers. Or dancers. She apparently is all of these things. She wrote:
I knew it would be tough, but I also never doubted I would succeed. When you know this, you don't have dark days, you don't hit rock bottom. You just have days when you want to scream at people: "You have no idea what I can do!"
You need that kind of confidence, and of course talent, and a truckload of luck to succeed in any creative field. Creative fields are tough. Those in charge give your work (or good Lord, if you're an actress, your actual self) a cursory glance and make a snap decision, usually based on gut and whatever hole they're trying to plug that day. It's inevitable you will only be the right fit in certain situations, but in order to get yourself into the situations where luck might smile on you, you have to have the confidence to keep going, keep picking yourself up off the floor and resubmitting the work to the next gallery or agent or editor or producer.
I'm in a place where the next few weeks will result in euphoria or the need to pick myself up off the ground. I feel the need to start kindling the fire now, but I'm looking around my writing cave and finding very little firewood. I've been riding the wave of amped-up anxiety since January, trying to pack it back so I can read to my daughter or make dinner or attend meetings. It pops up at the most unexpected times, the ohmygodwhat'sgoingtohappennext, and sometimes it kills me that I have to keep on living normal life when creatively I'm hanging in such a big career balance, just swinging waiting to see if luck and talent will coincide with someone who needs something just like mine at this particular place in time in history and in publishing. It's been three years since I started dreaming this particular dream. Three years is a long time to keep a fire stoked, through rewrites and feedback and agents and writing partners and readers.
I'm looking hard at myself as I wait to hear what will come of this particular ride. If it doesn't pan out the way I hope it will, I'm going to have to start over, take another tack. Do I believe the world doesn't know what I can do?
I have to.
Congratulations to the winner of the Midwest Dairy Council's Get Mooooving gift pack on Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews!
In 1998, I moved to Kansas City from Chicago in search of a new start. In 1999, I enrolled in the graduate writing program at the University of Missouri -- Kansas City. I kept working full time, and it took me four years to complete a two-year program ... four years of nights and weekends spent absorbing a novel a week, my short stories and poetry, detailed analyses of the merits or not of some other writer's work.
Whenever someone asked me why I was doing it, I replied it wasn't for my work, I just wanted the degree.
I lied to myself.
I was afraid I couldn't make it as a writer, and if I told everyone I was going back to school to get better at it, then of course they would expect me to fulfill on that expectation. At the time, I'd been writing since third grade but had only had a few poems published here in there in the sort of chapbooks short on white space and long on printing margins. And also? The writing program itself was quickly shattering my confidence.
Advanced degrees will do that. You might be a big fish in the little pond of high school or even college, but when you get into a masters program, everyone there is paying dearly in money and time to accomplish something -- and they might be better at it than you are.
My ego took a huge beating. I had never undergone a serious writers workshop before -- the kind in which you turn in your short story and then sit there, silent, taking notes, while everyone around you describes what they liked and hated about it. They always started with the encouragement, of course, and I appreciated that, but I was eager and remiss to get to the part that would actually improve the work -- the critiques. And, they were sort of brutal. At that point in my writing career, my skin was translucent, it was so thin. I couldn't even handle criticism of my grammar, let alone my characters or plot. I held it together in class, usually, but the drive home would be clouded by tears. The worst part? The classes were at night, so they always ended at nineish or later and I would go home and be up until midnight contemplating my writerly sins.
Then I'd get up and go to work and if anyone asked, I'd tell them I just wanted to be a better writer, even if it never went anywhere.
And that was a lie.
Last Friday, I was gratified to spend a mind-blowing day with a bunch of truth-tellers at BlogHer Writers '11.
Beginning Thursday night with the opening reception, I talked to writers who were being completely honest with themselves: They wanted to write a book. They wanted to succeed. They were prepared to own that, with all the fear of rejection and potential social humiliation that might come of it. It wasn't a huge group -- around 200 or so -- and I got a chance to talk to probably a third of them over the course of the day. My biggest takeaway?
Stop lying to yourself.
Stop telling yourself you don't really care.
Stop telling yourself you can't handle rejection.
Stop telling yourself you'll only try until a certain date or some other arbitrary deadline.
Stop telling yourself you can only achieve success by one path.
Stop telling yourself it matters to your friends or family if you don't hit it out of the park immediately.
Stop telling yourself you have no platform, nothing to share.
Stop telling yourself the only book you have in you is based on your blog.
Start believing in yourself (a command delivered to me by someone I was supposedly mentoring, ouch, when I fell back into I'm-an-imposter patterns out loud, eek).
Start setting smaller goals: 500 words, one query, one scene outlined. Move forward every week, no matter how tiny that move might feel.
Start surrounding yourself with positive people and other writers.
Start reading everything you can get your hands on and noting what you like or don't like about that writer's style.
Start scheduling time with yourself to work on your craft. Schedule it like it's a meeting or you won't do it.
Start saying "when" instead of "if." Success comes to those who are relentless in their pursuits.
Start telling yourself the truth. In my case, the truth is this: I want to be a published novelist. I wish it were enough for me to be a published anthologist, but it's not. So I'm taking the next steps.
I left on Saturday morning having spent a lot more time alone with my thoughts than I normally do at conferences. On the plane ride home, I took a lot of notes for the next novel and made lists of how I could support the one I'm currently querying. It occurred to me if you had told 1999 Rita walking into UMKC's registrar's office for the first time I'd be doing that on the way home from speaking at a national writing conference, I would've punched you for getting my hopes up. Back then, I was afraid to hope.
