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Procrastination, Part 2, OR The Loneliness of the Long-Format Author, Part 3

In 2009, a groundswell of activity on Facebook led to the inimitable Betty White hosting Saturday Night Live.  A radiant and bejeweled 88 year-old Betty came through that door that so many hosts have walked through since SNL’s inception, tackled those stairs in low heels, and faced a roaring audience.  In her opening monologue, she acknowledged her fans, and the power of Facebook, admitting that before all of this, she had absolutely no idea what Facebook was.  “And now that I do know what it is,” she said, I have to say it sounds like a HUGE waste of time.”

Well, I gotta say, that is precisely how I always thought about blogging.

I just didn’t get it. 

To me, it seemed like the worst possible combination of live-out-loud, no-personal-boundaries-whatsoever, in-your-face social media and a rampant look-at-me narcissism that seems more celebrated with each passing day.  But alas, after years of working with different literary agents and facing a thoroughly recalibrated publishing world, I, like so many others, made the decision to self-publish my two novels, and to do so electronically.  I remain entirely confident that this was the best decision (lo these many weeks after their April 2013 publication date!), but that decision brought with it a whole new world of figuring out how to Get The Word Out.  There is a VAST amount of information out there, thank god, and though much of it is contradictory, there is amazing consensus on one point:  creating a blog stands as perhaps the single best vehicle for introducing people to your work.

Sigh. 

Crap, I thought.  Just…crap.

Well, guess what.  Around about the time I posted my second blog entry, the most amazing and wonderful thing happened — I actually got responses.  Immediately!  From people who were touched, or moved, or had some idea they wanted to share, or a great story, or whatever!!  Now for the long-format writer — who sits in front of blank screen day after week after year, living with characters in an attempt to crawl so far inside their fictional souls that they tell you their tales and you tell the world — this is nothing short of a miracle.  A gift.  An immediate connection that takes something abstract and in the future — “The Reader” — to someone real, and in the Now.

And you know what else?  Turns out that “blogging” is an unbelievably fun way to PROCRASTINATE from that Other Thing you are (putatively) writing.  It’s necessary!  It’s fun!  It’s writing practice!!  Oh My God, who thought of this?!?  It’s the best thing ever.

 

 

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My Brother Missed His Son’s Wedding

When a family member misses such an important life event, the air in every room is noisy with his absence.

He was not in the car when his wife picked me up a the airport, nor was he waiting back at the house, in the kitchen, with that slight frown of intense concentration that always accompanied his slow, deliberate, quietly jubilant cooking adventures that lasted full days.

His wife threw a party the day before the wedding, her sisters-in-law abuzz with busy helpfulness. Both sides of the family gathered, old friends, new meetings, hearty hugs and rich laughter abounded. The hum of celebration grew large, peals of laughter regularly piercing through. Still, the roar of my brother’s absence remained.

He did not see the expression on his son’s face when he saw his bride for the first time, coming down the aisle of the sweet chapel on her father’s arm. He missed it all.

As my daughter and I sat in the first row, waiting for the ceremony that would make my brother’s son a married man, my daughter whispered to me. She asked me if I missed him.

Oh yes, yes I do.

My brother Roy died on December 6, 2001. He died in Ecuador, on the side of a mountain very near its summit, immediately and without warning. And I think it would not be false to say that his absence, and my missing him, has been with me since. The loss of him, of a living brother, the little boy who was already there when I was born, the skinny, freckled, snake-catching, marble-collecting, bow-shooting, cowboy-playing, fly-tying person whose living presence told me that my own life and experience were true. He helped me know who I was. Every day he did this. Just by being alive.

I read this poem, by Rilke at his funeral:

Interior Portrait

You don’t survive in me
because of memories;
nor are you mine because
of a lovely longing’s strength.

What does make you present
is the ardent detour
that a slow tenderness
traces in my blood.

I do not need
to see you appear;
being born sufficed for me
to lose you a little less.

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PROCRASTINATION, or, The Loneliness of the Long-Format Author, Part 2

I am almost always on time, and very often early.  I tend to be one of Those People who, when faced with a deadline, will map out a calendar — working backwards from the deadline — and determine exactly what needs to be done, when and how.  I was one of Those People who, when in school, would read through the entire syllabus on the first day of class and have a pretty decent sense of how to map out the fifteen-week course, day to day, and week to week.

So, although not in any way an “anal” person (as anyone who has set foot in either my house or my car can verify), it is not generally in my  nature to procrastinate.  Except when it comes to writing.  Because — following from from the “writing-as-torture” paradigm I set forth in yesterday’s blog, it generally strikes me as always a great idea to procrastinate on writing, and I believe I have come up with some interesting and creative ways in which to procrastinate while  [mostly] fooling yourself into believing that you are actually working very hard on your writing.

First among these clever strategies is — research.  What a wonderful thing the internet is; I mean, we’re all on it right now, right?

Trust me: there are always an infinitude of subjects you can find that absolutely must be researched before you can possibly go one step further with putting words onto page.  For instance, right now I am working on my 3rd novel, which is narrated by a 100-year-old character. The character was born in 1913, exactly one hundred years old right now.  Well, needless to say, I needed massive amounts of factoids and tidbits of information about all of the interesting things that happened in 1913 — who was born, who died, etc., etc.  I mean, you can’t be a slacker here — this is research!  You simply must take the time to do this carefully and thoroughly, which is bound to take many hours, possibly many days.  And of course you must make sure that you do your [extensive] research in one of the places where you know you do your best work and are able to achieve your best concentration.  For me, this is generally in one of my favorite local coffee houses.  And — very important to remember here — if you find yourself at aforementioned coffee house eavesdropping on all of the myriad conversations around you, remind yourself that this is NOT procrastination!  This is likely to be critical research which could spark an idea that is seminal to your writing.  Perhaps years from now, but hey, research does not come with absolute guarantees.

Here is how a whole bunch of data collection got condensed down to one paragraph.  Albeit a long paragraph.  Obviously, more research is needed…

“The year that I came into this world was nineteen hundred and thirteen.  That’s right: one thousand nine hundred and thirteen.  It was a year not so unlike any other, I suppose, people getting fired up and killing each other all around the globe.   There was some things that came down the pike just then that do still tickle me to this very day.  For instance, somebody got the notion to put the first-ever prize in a Cracker Jack box.  It was the first time somebody ever jumped right on out of a traveling airplane using this thing called a parachute.  A Frenchman, of course, cause who in the world could possibly have the arrogant bastard confidence and the blind crazy stupidity to jump out of an airplane but a Frenchman.  Also, the very first crossword puzzle ever seen got printed up in some New York paper.  And guess what.  That statue of The Little Mermaid that’s way over there in Denmark got finished and put out there on its rock; and if you don’t think it’s a nutty world then I guess you ain’t heard about that statue’s head getting cut off back there in the 1960’s, and then put back on and cut off again, and then the right arm, too.  They finally had to move it out farther into the water, so you can’t hardly see it no more just so it wouldn’t get any more beat up than it already did.

            Lots of folks got born of course same year as I did, including the likes of Richard Milhaus Nixon, Rosa Parks, the greatest coach who ever lived Woody Hayes, and Jimmy Hoffa.”

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Why Write, OR The Loneliness of the Long-Format Author

 

“We use words to tell stories for different reasons, all of us.  Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas said that he wrote for revenge.  My friend Linda said she writes because it is either that or vomiting.  Because it wells up inside of her, fills her, threatening to burst from her if she doesn’t first disgorge it in the form of words, clicks on her keyboard.  My daughter Kate said she writes to make things more real.  A flower that would otherwise be shriveled, decayed, lost forever; any moment, perhaps the first tentative smile that suggests a flicker of interest between a boy and a girl; any gesture, perhaps when he nervously reached up to scratch the side of his face in his shy hopefulness.  Any of these, all of these, can be detailed, described, made to last forever, made real when they would otherwise be lost, gone.”

That is a quote from YOU, IN YOUR GREEN SHIRT, my first novel.  I have been thinking a lot about this again, this business of why we write.  I am brand new at blogging, and have been browsing through other writers’ blogs, many of which have names such as “The Joy of Writing” and “Ecstasy of Words.”

Really?  I mean: really?  Am I that different from so many of my brethren?  Am I alone in thinking that writing is, generally speaking, one very small step away from torture?

This reminds me of when I began running, more than ten years ago now, and knowing my newbie status, everyone kept asking: “How about that runner’s high!?!”  “Don’t you just love that rush you get!?!”  So for weeks, which turned into months, I thought I must be doing something wrong.  I waited for it.  I watched for any little sign.  Mostly I felt like I was going to keel over or vomit every single second, but was pretty sure that neither of those feelings qualified as a “high.”

What I did experience was this: jubilation when it was ALL OVER!!!  When the run was complete, and I had LIVED (!) and could feel an enormous sense of relief and a slight feeling of accomplishment.

So, yeah, that’s pretty much what writing is like for me.

The process of it, the putting forth or words onto a page (ha-screen) is something I find arduous (and can I just mention here that I went through 40 HOURS of labor with NO MEDICATION, so I KNOW arduous), soul-sucking, lonely, grueling, and yes, at times, truly torturous.  So why in the world do it?!

Because when it is done, when the words are on the page, and you know, really know, that you have managed to say exactly what you wanted to say, there is no better feeling in the world.  None.

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OMG it’s an author blog!

Which I have every intention of attacking with great seriousness of purpose, just as soon as I determine exactly what a blog IS.  I have two published novels, which I strongly encourage you to READ, REVIEW, and be in touch with me about anything and everything you got in the way of commentary and feedback.

I am currently hard at work on my third novel; and unless blogging and life in general prove too distracting, watch for it before the end of 2013.  It is tentatively titled PUSHING THE RIVER.  Hey, why don’t I post the first page!  Here goes….

            I am the heart of this house.  The soul, too.

            I am one hundred years old, will be come this spring anyway.  I am one hundred years old and I have reached the point where I ain’t no earthly use to nobody.  I am used up, washed out, spent, good for goddamn nothing.

            Last few years, I been tired as hell, too.  Oh, every so often they bring somebody in who looks me up and down and says, “tsk, tsk, my oh my,” and sticks things at me and does a tinkering here and there before saying the same damn thing: “I’m so sorry, but there’s just nothing we can do.”  Oh, course they lah-di-dah about how well I’m holding up, considering my years and all, but then they  point to the same damn parts every time and say, “here’s where the problem is, right here,” and they scratch their dang chins and shake their dang heads and look all hangdog long-faced forlorn, talking about me like I ain’t even there.

            Well let’s see just see how dang well YOUR parts hold up when you reach the age of one hundred years I think to myself, let’s just goddamn see.

            Shit show.  That’s what these last four months of my life have been.  Never thought I’d live to hear myself to use such language, neither, but there just ain’t no other words for it.  I learned that expression from the little one, too, except of course, she ain’t little any more, she is all grown up.