On unfinished projects

I’m stuck, again. By which I mean, I am not writing. It’s not a block, exactly, but a sort of paralysis. It’s about looking at something as a Big Project, rather than just “a short piece I’m working on.” This is something that’s happened before. Every time I even think the word “novel” I seem to freeze up.

But this time is different, because I know I’m farther along into a Big Project than I’ve ever been. I’ve completed or mostly completed 5 linked stories. I see these as, down the road, a full-length novel-in-stories, or perhaps after some serious revision, a full-length novel written from multiple points of view. I have pages and pages of notes on these characters. I have done research on the time periods involved in this project. I have some books I keep in mind — and on my nightstand — as model texts, books which have something in common with the one I think I am writing, or want to write, which serve to inspire me and from which I can learn.

In my personal history of writing novels, this is a lot of progress, and I am far enough along that I have become attached to the project and the characters in a certain way. I’ve become attached to the idea of finishing this manuscript. (Perhaps that’s the problem?) And yet, despite all of this progress and work and effort, or perhaps because of it, I’m stuck, not writing.

In my attempts to continue, by which I mean, my trips to the coffee shop with my laptop that result in becoming overcaffeinated and reading through what I’ve written so far and then moving on to skimming other long-forgotten pieces on my hard drive, I stumbled upon another novel. Yep, that’s right, I opened a Word document on my hard drive and realized I had written 125 pages of another novel a couple of years ago. And then abandoned it. I remembered writing the beginning of that novel, but I’d completely forgotten I’d gotten so well into it. It’s not horrible, this half of a novel, and despite several years having gone by since I wrote it, I know what will happen next. I could write to the end, I feel. That half-novel doesn’t deserve to be just a half, is what I think.

The New York Times recently ran a piece about why writers abandon novels, which included comments by authors such as Michael Chabon, Jennifer Egan, and Junot Diaz about their failed projects. Chabon said whenever he sat down to work on what would have been his follow-up book to Mysteries of Pittsburgh, “I would feel a cold hand take hold of something inside my belly and refuse to let go. It was the Hand of Dread. I ought to have heeded its grasp.”

I have had questions about this as long as I’ve been writing. How do you know if you’re feeling the “hand of dread” because your work needs to be abandoned or because writing is hard and you’ve hit a rough spot and you want to abandon it? How do you press on when you’re not sure which project might be the winner?

That, there, is why I’m stuck. My aforementioned novel-in-stories is the book I want to write, but can’t seem to at the moment. The recently rediscovered 125-page novel beginning is a book I know I can write, but might not be the intricate literary novel I dream of writing. And discovering that 125 pages has me flustered. If I could write 125 pages and actually forget they exist, might that not also happen to the novel-in-stories-in-progress?

And then, there’s this question: Which project should I proceed with right now? I don’t want to think of those 125 pages, but I find myself working on that novel in my head. And then I’ll think about the other. All the while doing nothing on either one.

I offer this glimpse into my paralysis, because, like that NYT article, I think it’s useful. The NYT piece is ostensibly about abandoned novels, but if you read it optimistically you’ll see that it isn’t. “Sometimes a novel thought long dead can come back to life, brush the dirt off its pages, and shuffle back into an author’s career.”

Perhaps this is true of all “abandoned” writing? All writing is practice for other writing: Egan wrote a novel which she abandoned but which she later rewrote as her first published book, “Invisible Circus.” Chabon, obviously, has had success since his failed novel (an excerpt of which is now seeing some notoriety in McSweeneys, complete with his snarky commentary about it, so in a way, it’s not a complete failure, right?). Sometimes it’s helpful to write something in order to know what you don’t want to write. Or to find your voice, or play with plot and structure.

As mentioned in that NYT piece, Stephen King’s recent Under the Dome is a complete rewrite of a failed novel from 30 years ago:

“The character list kept growing, and they didn’t connect, and I just got to a point where I dropped it,” King remembered. But three decades later, a fresh shot at the concept worked: “It was like my mind was working on it underneath.”

I think about these examples and I wonder about my own work. Was the 125-page half-novel practice for the next one? Or is the novel-in-stories practice for re-writing that previously abandoned project? To me the question should not be whether or not to abandon a project, but rather what is this piece of writing practice for? And when, if not now, is the time to return to it?

 

the perils of self-doubt

This morning I opened a Word document I hadn’t touched in several weeks. It’s the beginning of a short story* – one that I’ve gotten sidetracked from. I wrote the four pages that exist in the Word document in one sitting and I haven’t looked at them since. I had, in fact, forgotten what I had written in those pages. I mean, I knew who the main character was, and what, generally was going to happen in the story, but I had no recollection of the tone, the mood, the point of view… or even, how far I got. And, for some reason, I had convinced myself in the weeks since I created the Word document that what I had written was horrible. I remember feeling frustrated with the way the story was going when I saved and closed the document, and that feeling was what stuck with me in the subsequent days and weeks, not the good feelings about having made a start.

This morning I stumbled upon the title of the document as I was looking for the other, linked story. I read “hurricane.doc” and thought, hurricane? what is that? That’s how disconnected I have been from that story, and from writing in general. I opened “Hurricane” and began to read. And read. I was pleasantly surprised. Not bad is what I thought. And then I thought about how often this sort of thing happens: I’ve barely finished writing for the day, and already I’m telling myself it’s awful. Sometimes, as in this case, I’m barely into the story or essay that I’m berating myself about, and it has detrimental consequences. My hard drive is littered with beginnings I’ve deemed not worth finishing.

After I read this section of story, I thought about how pleasant it is to be surprised by what you’ve written. It’s a great feeling. And, unfortunately, it’s one that’s short-lived. Writing is always like this: it’s a bit of a manic hobby/profession/obsession. Most writerly people I know experience these highs and lows, the self-criticism and doubt, along with brief, brief moments of elation.

I don’t have a solution, I’m just noting some observations. These sorts of emotional ups and downs are on my mind right now, as I’ve been polishing a story to submit to the writing workshop I’ll be attending later in the summer. I haven’t been workshopped since finishing my MFA coursework in the spring of 2006, and I have little experience with fiction workshops.** I have until quite recently been focused only on nonfiction writing. I told myself that I was not good at fiction writing; that fiction wasn’t for me. Self-doubt that I listened to for a really, really long time. Even now, now that I’ve allowed myself to experiment and focus on fiction for a while, now that I’ve gotten a story accepted by a lit mag, and now that I was accepted to the workshop itself, these doubts persist. And so, I’m still nervous about sending a story off to a workshop full of people I’ve never met, run by a well-known, published author.

I’m trying to look at this way: after sending the story off, I will have a month away from it. And when I come back to it, in the workshop, it will seem (I hope!) better than I thought, just like with the four pages I reread this morning. And, after all, isn’t the point of a workshop to get feedback so that you can improve your writing?

*It might even be the beginning of a novel-in-stories… I’m not sure yet. I’ve written another story with the same characters, and it seems to be something I want to continue. The idea of writing an entire novel, now, while I’ve got a lot of other (mostly domestic) things on my plate, freaks me out. The idea of writing a novel in bite-sized chunks makes me feel slightly better about it. As long as I don’t think about the novel part.

** I took only one fiction workshop as part of my MFA — I took nonfiction workshops, publishing-related courses, and various fiction and nonfiction lit classes instead. The fiction workshop I did take was run by a sweet woman with a few story collections under her belt who did not criticize or offer constructive feedback, ever. It’s nice to have encouragement, and it was especially nice for me, since I felt so uncertain about fiction writing, but ultimately I didn’t feel I got much out of the course.

Cool Ranch is a mood.

I went to a favorite local independent bookstore yesterday, and two weird things happened.

1. I left without buying anything. Highly unusual.
2. I freaked out about the plot I’ve chosen to write next month.

I went there in search of travel writing about Thailand – not
guidebooks, but essays or travel memoirs. My thinking was, hey, since
my novel is to be set in Thailand, it would be a great idea to get in
the mood by reading about someone’s journey there. I have some
guidebooks, and I plan to surround myself with them this weekend and
next month, but I wanted to get inspired about Thailand by being taken
there by someone’s else’s writing. The problem was, I found nothing. I
was looking for this, and they didn’t have it. I browsed the store and
was reminded that the writing I tend to see about Thailand has to do
with drugs or the sex industry there — basically the seedy side of
Thailand — and I was looking for a nice, wholesome travel memoir. Ah
well.

Maybe I will re-read this collection of short stories, and scour
some travel writing anthologies I’ve got around the house.

Somehow though, in the process of looking at so many books in the store, I
began to worry that I might not be able to successfully write about
Thailand. Or write a novel at all. I wondered if I should switch my
setting to Japan. I wondered if I should have my main character live in San Francisco and spend most of the book there rather than in Thailand. I wondered if my plot would carry me through the month. I thought about how I really wanted some Cool Ranch Doritos. I thought about how my main character could be obsessed with Cool Ranch Doritos, and how that was ridiculous, and how I was projecting.

All of this crazed and jumbled thought led to me leaving the store, no books in hand (which bummed me out) and walking over to a Walgreen’s, where I promptly bought a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, practically snatching them from the stock girl who was putting them on the shelf. I demolished half the bag before I even
walked the three blocks back to the office.

Clearly, Cool Ranch Doritos are not a solution to plot woes. Or maybe they are. I’m
not sure what my point is, but I’m feeling unsettled. The fact that I
couldn’t zero in on a book I wanted to read always leaves me feeling
strange. So many lovely books, and not one grabbed my attention today.

I was supposed to go to San Diego this weekend, but now I am not, due to
the fires and the smoke. My friend (the one I was to visit) was
evacuated but has now, thankfully, been able to return to her home (her
neighborhood was untouched by the fires). Still, the air is bad, and
many businesses are closed. Not the best time to visit, and the change
in plans has thrown me off. I have a weekend ahead of me that I wasn’t
expecting to have, and for some reason I’m feeling unsettled about
that, too.

I’m feeling unsettled about the fact that I am
supposed to write 50,000 words next month, and because I have been
having troubles churning out blog posts, for example, without a great
deal of pondering of word choice, this is worrisome. I have been
writing so little in the past few months that I feel I have become
sluggish. I’ve lost my writing voice a little, too. I need to write for
a while to get it back, so I guess 50,000 words can’t hurt.

And
I’m feeling unsettled and slowed by my wrist, which continues to ache.
I suspect I need to go computer-free this weekend, to recover. Which
means no writing, no blogging, no Flickr-ing…. which gets me back to the unsettled feeling again.

I think I need more Cool Ranch Doritos.

Wrestling revision demons

Yesterday I took my book out for coffee. I packed my computer, my manuscript, a notebook and my favorite pens and walked down the hill to my local cafe of choice, where I immediately proceeded to procrastinate. I wrote some in the notebook, I doodled, and I googled. (Free wireless, how you are a double edged sword!) Finally, I could put it off no longer, and I took the book out of its plastic folder and started to read.

It only took me about 8 pages until I got completely overwhelmed. There is, I feel, so much to do, and I don’t know where to begin. I suppose that it’s useful that I know what some of the things are that would make this a better book, based on comments from readers at school and elsewhere. For example: I’ve been told by just about everyone that I need to go back and develop an undeveloped character. Some think I need to rework the ending to focus it a little more. There was general agreement in my thesis defense that I need to add an author’s note of some kind at the end. I think I need to improve the writing in certain chapters, maybe in all of them. And, after re-reading 8 pages, I see that I need to go back and proofread again….

When I think about actually making all of that happen… I hear a little voice in the back of my head translating those ideas into “What you really need to do is write this thing over again. And better.” And then I freak out, because I don’t know if I have another revision/draft in me. I start asking questions, like: Is it worth it? Should I just put these 270 pages in a drawer, and be happy that I have written a book, then use the experience to write another one that’s, well, better? Are the flaws in this book something that can be overcome? I even started to wonder if I should hire an editor/writing coach. I googled some more, along these lines. (But then, another round of questions: Is it worth it? Won’t he or she just tell me to do the things I already know need to be done? Can an underemployed MFA grad with student loan payments justify hiring someone to help?)

It’s not that I doubt myself or what I’ve done, I’m just trying to be realistic. Does this manuscript have a future? The problem is that I have worked so hard to produce this thing that I can no longer see the big picture, even after a month and a half away from it. I know it has flaws. I know it has its good points, too. The question is, are the flaws deep enough that the book is unsalvagable? How will I know?

As an aside, I read an obit of Sydney Sheldon the other day in which he said he did 12-15 rewrites on every book he wrote. Which makes my hemming and hawing about another draft seem ridiculous. How many have I done? Four, five?

So after pondering these many doubts and questions last night, I came up with a couple of manageable things I can do to the manuscript without getting overwhelmed and wanting to throw it against my spackle-patched office wall. For example: I can proof it again. Yes, I can handle that. I can write an author’s note. I think I can handle that. I can probably rework the ending a bit. So that’s the gameplan for now. It’s a one-day-at-a-time approach that hopefully will keep all of these questions at bay.

On another subject or two:

• Ethan Watters has a post on his blog about setting up a writer’s grotto, and man, can I relate to this:

When you’re all alone in a home office day after day, you can spend whole afternoons staring into refrigerators or examining suspicious skin discolorations. Isolation breeds inertia, and some freelancers experience a sudden loss of creativity or productivity, as if their abilities were somehow tied to the social expectations of working with a team.

I suppose Flickr is my refrigerator and the plants in my backyard and my neighbor’s cat are my versions of suspicious skin discolorations… Having a writer’s grotto sounds pretty fabulous.

• California Authors.com has a list of upcoming releases, by, you guessed it, California authors. More books to add to my reading list!

• On a random note, this is very clever. (Also available in Lionel Ritchie!)

Lit magazine mysteries

The day before I left for Boston, I got three pieces of unexpected mail from three different literary magazines.

Two were copies of literary magazines. Except that I don’t remember subscribing to either of them. For a brief and narcissistic moment, I imagined that I was being sent copies of these magazines because they had secretly accepted some manuscripts of mine and never told me. I even, I am embarrassed to say, scanned the tables of contents for my own name. Ha.

Then reality returned. Duh, Elizabeth, you probably entered a contest at some point, paid the reading fee to the magazines (which usually includes a subscription) and there’s been a delayed response in said subscription kicking in.

Sigh. The other explanation for the magazines’ sudden appearance in my mailbox seemed better, somehow.

The other piece of mail was a rejection letter, in response to a piece of writing I submitted back in May. I had given up on that batch of submissions — I think I sent out about eight copies of the same essay at once — because of the responses, or lack thereof, that I have received in return.

Several elicited rejections fairly quickly — within a couple of months. Several magazines that I queried after four months or so claimed that they had no record of my submission, which I thought was even more demoralizing than being rejected outright. One, an online magazine, claimed that their response must have gone into my email spam folder, since anything they received they would have responded to within a month. When I asked for a copy of said email, they couldn’t find record of my submission or their response, and claimed that my email must have gotten lost in their spam folder. Whatever. Note to self: There are plenty of other, more well-run magazines out there.

After all that runaround, I decided to forget about the ones I hadn’t heard from. If I got a response, great, otherwise, I didn’t want to know how my carefully packaged submission was mismanaged, lost, or ignored. (This is not my policy for all submissions, by the way, I just thought that particular batch seemed cursed and so I decided to leave it alone and move on.) Anyway, the rejection I got last week was in response to a submission from that ill-fated mailing. It turned out to be the nicest rejection I’ve ever received.

I think.

The rejection was a standard form response on a tiny square of photocopied paper. But on the back, a personal note that went beyond the usual “thanks for submitting” or “sorry we couldn’t place this one, maybe next time.” I felt pretty encouraged: Someone liked my piece of writing, they just couldn’t place it! Then I read it again, and the self-doubt hit. The reader called my essay “interesting.” Did they mean interesting-good or interesting-different or interesting-weird?

Finally, I pushed the self-doubt back into some recess of my brain. I decided not to worry about it. After all, I had given up all hope on that submission and then I actually got a response, albeit six months later. And it had a nice hand-written note on it. The nicest I have ever received (if I ignored any possible sarcastic meaning behind the word “interesting”).

Maybe my essay can find a home somewhere. I’m printing up a new batch of submissions to send out this week.

Ok, not *really* out of words.

Ok, so I didn’t really run out of words. Maybe I just ran out of focus and calm. I definitely have not been in my happy place, if you know what I mean.

Thanks for the encouraging comments and emails — for some reason it is always reassuring (in a dark sort of way) to know that other writers struggle too.

I’ve been totally swamped…and stressed! I’ve got less than three weeks left to finish my thesis, and for some (moronic!) reason, I agreed to take on some freelance work. Now, at crunch time. This was a bad plan leading to much insomnia and anxiety (although the cash will be nice).

But in not posting here for a couple of days, I managed to a) finish a chapter (!) and b) get through most of a freelance project that has been hanging over my head. Whew! I’ve got to finish chapter 10 and write chapter 12 still, and ok, there’s an epilogue, but I am close. So close. Still, it’s going to be a hectic couple of weeks.

One of the things I make sure to do when stressed or keyed up is go to the gym. It always helps. Yesterday, while I was doing some cardio I listened to a podcast of “Meet the Writers” from BarnesandNoble.com (downloaded for free at iTunes). It was an interview with Nicole Krauss, whose writing I love. I first discovered her when I read the short story “Future Emergencies” in a Best American collection. I haven’t been disappointed yet by either her stories or her two novels, Man Walks Into a Room and History of Love. I hear her poetry is quite nice, too. Anyway, the “Meet the Writers” podcasts are not in any way groundbreaking, as you might expect from BarnesandNoble.com, and the interviewer is kinda loud and doofy and asks waaay too many leading questions, but…Nicole Krauss was interesting to hear. She was almost frustratingly modest. She admitted to struggling with writing novels, learning the hard way. And she said she wouldn’t wish writing on anyone! For some reason that made me feel better. She admitted to wanting to quit sometimes (also made me feel better) and to being “addicted” to writing — thus she couldn’t quit. And, I found out something I didn’t know, which is that she’s married to the novelist Jonathan Safran Foer. What a literary power couple. Aren’t they both under 30?
Sigh.

feeling highly un-spectacular

and un-reasonably down on self today. This comes from a) comparing self to others (I know, an ugly road to go down, as it results in jealousy and unreasonable expectations, and b) not making book progress and c) feeling like said book is, well, just plain horrible.
In reference to:
a) this woman just wrote her second book. That’s cool, right? In Eleven Weeks. She wrote a book in eleven weeks. I’ve been writing the same damn book for over a year and I don’t even have a full draft. It’s hard to avoid comparisons in that scenario. Also, a friend of mine just got a teaching gig. Teaching college! She’s 24. I’m almost 34. I don’t have a college teaching gig. I am jealous of the motivation/success occurring there, as she has a very cool full-time job in publishing, too. I have no cool full-time job or teaching gig. And no first book, let alone second book written in 11 weeks..
b) I’m stuck on wedging this one #@!%#@!! scene in to the book (where??!) and time is running out. Stress!
c) I hate my book. There’s not much else to say about that.

Ok, pity party over now. I must get to work. Apologies for this maudlin post.

Is it time for a makeover?

I’m thinking of revamping this blog. I don’t mean the design, or the name. I mean the subject matter. The intent of this thing was to write about writing, a plan that conveniently coincided with two years spent in a graduate writing program.  I had lots of material and constant stimuli in the form of classes, readings, professorial advice and so on.
But recently things have taken a bit of a slide. This blog has gone from “My Discoveries as a Would-be Writer” to “The Occasional, Scattered Whinings of a Work-From-Home Freelancer and Thesis Procrastinator.”

Not exactly compelling stuff.

Not only that, but I am finding myself writing less and less about my writing process than I am about why I am not writing, and what other people are saying about not writing. It makes me cranky. There’s a lot of gut-wrenching and navel-gazing, both on this blog and others. There are some positive posts occasionally, but I have never been into the touchy-feely inspiration stuff that surrounds writing communities and infuses innumerable writing guidebooks. Frankly, I want to write about it even less than I want to hear or read about it.

And let’s face it: There are a million-gagillion-zillion blogs out there about writing, the struggles of wanna-be writers, MFA students, and freelancers. What am I offering that’s any different? These feelings reached a new low yesterday, when as I was surfing around the Net, I came across this Author’s Blogs page. First of all, there are soooo many blogs listed here. Second of all, when I clicked on the “add me to this listing” link (purely out of curiosity, I assure you), I read that the listing of bloggers “is meant to provide an index chronicling authors’ journeys  as they struggle with the industry and their muse.”
That phrase seemed to sum up what I was doing on my blog — at least before the summer doldrums set in. I simultaneously recognized the sentiment they were after in my own blogging and hated myself for being so gosh-darned cliché.

Then, I started thinking about all of the big, existential (sort of) questions. Why am I blogging anyway? What am I trying to do? When I was in school, I had answers to those questions. Blogging was a way for me to document my bicoastal life, my journey into an MFA program, and what I was learning as a writer.
But now, I am not sure I have answers for those questions. And frankly, I am not really enjoying my daily rants, whining and blathering about why I am not writing, what other writers are doing and so on.

So, in keeping with my aforementioned declaration of focusing my creative life and doing what I love, Fluent is taking some time off for assessing, reevaluating and, perhaps, refocusing the subject matter offered here. In fact, I would have been taking a bit of a hiatus this month anyway; I’ve got relatives coming into town and have a ton of catching-up work to do on my thesis. Did I mention I’ve been procrastinating?

Anyway, to clarify: This blog isn’t disappearing, I’m just taking a break. How long of a break? Perhaps not that long, maybe just a couple of weeks. Please check back soon to see what direction Fluent goes in next. In the mean time, if you have any suggestions for the future of this blog, feel free to leave a comment below. Or email me at: ebrowne1 at gmail.com

Thanks for reading.

turning points

I have just consumed my one annual meal from McDonalds. I have not eaten well — or enough — in the past 24 hours, and suddenly I craved fat and red meat. I tend to listen to my body’s cravings (except for its almost daily need for ice cream) and so I walked a few blocks out of my way to my local McDonalds before heading to my apartment this afternoon. When you are really craving a burger, a burger tastes pretty darn good, that’s all I have to say.

I had my last class of the week today — Writing the Nonfiction Book. There are 10 students, and everyone has really interesting projects they are working on. There are several travel writers, and I actually knew just about everyone in the class. That’s a first since I’ve been in this program, and a nice change. I hate having each class feel like I am starting school all over again. It’s always motivating to me to hear other people discuss what they are working on, too.

We had an in-class writing exercise, to write about a turning point. Usually in-class writing makes me self-conscious, and I have trouble turning out anything of substance. When I read my results out loud, as D, our professor, asks us to do when he assigns exercises, I get short of breath and wince at all of the bad sentences. But this time I produced a quick and not-half-bad piece about Korea. After I read it out loud to the class I realized that what I wrote about is a jumping off point for the next section of my book. It’s funny how our brains know what to do next, they just don’t always let us in on it.
I came away from class feeling inspired and ready to get to work, for the first time this week.

It turned out that I rather enjoyed my first literary party last night, and I knew a lot more people there than I thought I would.  There were so many people there you could barely walk around, and the heat and humidity were awful. I was sweating buckets. All of these literary minded people wandered around drinking red wine, which I couldn’t even think of drinking because it was so hot. I downed a water and eventually got a beer, because it seemed cold and that seemed good. A number of classmates were there, mostly people from my year. W, the woman who I went with, knew a couple of people there too, and we chatted with them for a while. One, a freelancer, took my email address and promised to forward article requests she gets from one of my favorite travel magazines, which I am quite excited about. The chance to write for a real magazine… sigh.

Last night was a bit of a turning point in its own way. I chatted with a few people from my program, several women with whom I have had some classes and generally like, but who are younger and seemingly more ‘with it’ than me, in terms of wearing cool clothes and going to all the parties, knowing everyone in the program, etc. etc. In the past I have been concerned with whether they liked me or thought I was stodgy or whatever — in short, I have been concerned with their opinions and bothered when they didn’t ask me to join them on the weekends.

One in particular I have been…I guess jealous of. She seemed always to be one step ahead of me in terms of getting internships, TAships, classes, etc. She would tell me about all the cool things she did over the weekend, but despite knowing (because I told her) I wanted to be included, she never invited me to join her.

Well, last night I felt … comfortable. She clearly was nervous and even clung by my side for a while, despite the fact that our conversation waned. But — and I don’t mean this to sound like bragging, it was just that for once, the tables were turned — I was the one who introduced her to one of the editors of a lit mag. And I wasn’t as well-dressed or as hip, but I was the one who had gotten a cool freelance tip. And it felt good.

Then later, I stood talking with a group of these female classmates. One of them, who had asked me to submit one of my essays she had read in our class to the graduate literary journal (where she is a nonfiction editor) haltingly explained that she was sorry she never got back to me. She then told me an odd story about someone else’s submission. I read into it all and realized she was trying to tell me, nicely, that the journal had rejected my piece. I said, “No worries, I had no expectations.” Which I honestly hadn’t. For some reason it seemed kind of funny, having her struggle to tell me that I had been rejected. It was nice of her, really, she didn’t have to tell me at all. For some reason, I even felt relieved that it was not accepted.

The group later — after we had moved closer to the bar — began talking about a party tonight that I wasn’t invited to but have heard about. But while one woman (whose birthday fest it was) talked about some drama related to people who planned to come or didn’t want to due to some offense — she didn’t ask me to join, despite the fact that I was standing right there, obviously listening to the conversation. In the past, I would have been hurt and angered by this. For some reason, last night, I thought it was funny. I thought they were all funny; so wrapped up in themselves.

And so I ignored them and began talking to the woman who had given me the freelance tip again. She had just met Susan Orlean, who was standing a few feet from us, surrounded by people. The freelancer had just walked up to her and given her a copy of a lit mag a friend of hers ran, and Susan Orlean was gracious and very nice. She even came over to us and thanked the freelance woman again. Though I didn’t meet her myself, it occurred to me that had I been standing with my classmates still, I would have missed the whole Susan Orlean exchange in favor of grad school drama and talk of parties, which was not at all why I came to the gathering in the first place. And for the first time I didn’t worry about whether they thought I dressed well or whether they wanted me to come to their parties or not. I was doing just fine without them. W, the freelancer and I left soon after to go to a (mercifully cool) bar, and I waved goodbye to my classmates, who were still sweating in the hot room, consuming as much of the free wine as they could.

Susan Orlean, by the way, was both older-looking and more petite than I expected. (It’s hard not to think of Meryl Streep when you think of her, after watching “Adaptation.”) She must have been dying of the heat… she was wearing a tweedy looking suit jacket of some kind.

foiled again

When I finished my Korea book, I planned to market it to publishers using this very important selling point: There are no armchair travel books about Korea.
Unfortunately, that’s a statement I can no longer make.
Simon Winchester has rereleased his 1988 book Korea: A Walk Through the Land of Miracles. So now, not only is there an armchair travel book out there about Korea, but it’s written by one of the best nonfiction writers out there.
If my attempts to be the first writer of an armchair travel book about Korea have been foiled, at least I can do is read the competition. So I bought the book. I haven’t started it yet, and I have a lot of emotion about the thing. I even admit to being jealous. And now that I own it, I know that if I read it and think it’s good, I will want to finish my own book even less. I am sure that it is going to frustrate me more than I am already frustrated by writing my book. (As you may have guessed, I am experiencing another day of writer’s block on that particular topic.)
Here’s a story that adds insult to injury. I had asked my good friend Amelia if she had kept any of the letters I wrote her while in Korea, and it turned out that she had. I am finding my own letters to be a valuable resource in writing this thing. She vowed to send them to me, but wanted to be sure I would give them back. Well, yesterday, I pulled a large envelope out of my mailbox and got all excited about the prospect of reading the letters. The envelope felt awfully light, which made me suspicious, particularly since there were about 10 stamps on it. It turns out the envelope was empty. The letters that were inside…gone.
My continued difficulties writing and researching this book, and the existence of Winchester’s book have me thinking about writing a collection of travel essays again, rather than a single book on Korea.

more lost files

I discovered yesterday that it wasn’t just the one file that was lost, but 5 or 6 files, all of which I had updated recently and most of which I hadn’t backed up yet. Argh! Completely demoralizing. It feels like someone is trying to tell me something about this book. Something like, “Hey, don’t write it. Write something else.”

book proposal

For our the last meeting of my nonfiction workshop, we were asked to write a 4-5 page overview/summary of our book projects, as if we were putting together a full book proposal. For those of you unfamiliar with nonfiction book proposals, the overview would serve as the first intro into the book and the proposal itself. It might be followed by sample chapters or chapter summaries, suggestions on marketing and potential competition, and info about the author’s expertise.

I wrote a 5 page overview for a book about the year I spent living in Korea in 1995-1996, and found the experience very difficult. It’s hard to summarize a)something you haven’t written yet, and b) something about which your ideas aren’t fully formed.

I did know that I wanted to convey that the book would extend beyond my own experience into the stories of my students and others I met in Korea. Underlying all of that would be the news events that affected everyone, usually involving North Korea, thereby making it relevant to a wider audience and giving it a connection to now.
I was prepared to have my summary slashed by my classmates, but they reacted quite enthusiastically. Several suggested that I go back to Korea with B. and create a new narrative to go with the old one, how Korea has changed since I was there previously…possibly because part of the interest in the earlier narrative was that the country was changing so rapidly.

I still have a lot of doubts about whether I can make this project come together, mostly owing to my bad memory, but it helped to get so much encouragement.