In which I make a brief appearance to talk about books and writing and the hectic pace of modern life.

Ahem. Hello? Hello. Is this thing on?

Apparently it has been two months since I last posted here. Yikes. Hello, dear patient reader.

The summary version is this:

- In early October, I wrapped up a six-month editing gig at the newspaper where I have been employed on and off for years. I vastly underestimated the impact working there part-time would have on my writing and parenting, as well as, let’s face it, on how clean the house is and the likelihood we would all be eating frozen pizza for dinner. So the past months have been more hectic and unpredictable than months already are with an energetic toddler in the house. I’m in catch-up mode now.

- Somehow, during the past six months, I have revised, finished or polished 3 short stories and two sections of two different novels. I am enrolled in a short story workshop right now, which has been instrumental in pushing me to get a move on with two of those short stories. The workshop has been reminding me how much I like to be involved in workshops, and how I would like to teach one someday soon. And how much I really need to get a writing group going.

- My brother- and sister-in-law and their twin girls recently moved to Australia, and as a result I picked up Bill Bryson’s In a Sunburned Country. I had forgotten how much I enjoy Bryson’s writing, his humor, and his masterful way of meshing information with experience. So I picked up A Walk in the Woods, which I also liked (though I didn’t think it was as strong a book as Sunburned Country, which is interesting, since Walk appears on numerous lists of top 100 nonfiction books, but I suppose that has more to do with some kind of American self-centered-ness. Ahem.) Anyway, the point is, Bryson has inspired me to think about writing more nonfiction, which as you may recall, was the focus of my MFA degree, and for a long time, the only genre I wrote in. So, I’ve been reading, for research, and making some notes on a potential book idea which I am quite excited about. If I could grab enough uninterrupted time to get going on it in earnest, that would be, well, great, but something that is unlikely to happen until after the New Year.*

-I have been trying to put my writing before social media and blogging, which I suppose is the biggest reason why I haven’t been posting here. I am easily distracted, especially, I find, by Twitter. So I’ve been trying to lay low(er) and devote what little time I have for writing-related tasks to actual writing. (What a crazy idea!) This doesn’t mean I’m off social media, or that I will stop blogging, but if I disappear for a while, that is one reason** why.

-I’m currently wading through David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas which is good, overwhelming, hard, six books in one, and brilliant, if a tiny bit gimmicky.

-Two days ago, I returned from a weekend in Denver, where it was beautiful and 80 degrees and the trees were in full fall colors. Today Denver is expected to get a foot of snow.

So there you have it. Hello again.

____

*See also, upcoming travel, visitors, holidays, spouse business trips, toddler tantrums, toddler birthdays, etc. Whew.
**For other reasons, see above.

Every day I write the book.

Or so sang Elvis Costello.* I cannot say the same.

The other day, Nichole Bernier tweeted a link to a year-old piece on the LA Times’ website, “A Working Mother’s Guide to Writing a Novel.”

Wow, did I feel ashamed after reading this piece.

I know, it doesn’t do to compare yourself to other writers who work in different, seemingly better ways. And by better, I mean, more productive. Comparisons only lead down a path of guilt, self-disgust, writer’s block, etc, etc.

But I digress.  This working mom, Mary McNamara, offered a list of 10 things that need to happen in order to successfully juggle work, motherhood, writing, and the rest of your life. (If indeed there is one.) The list is, I think, both motivational and sobering, and not just for writing moms and dads but for anyone who happens to be juggling other roles in their lives while attempting a writing career. Some of McNamara’s guidelines are fairly obvious: Have a laptop, for example, because you as a busy, working parent don’t have time to write longhand, then type it up, and you’ll be writing in various locations such as cafes, your kids’ ball games, the car, etc. Other suggestions are less obvious: Be discreet about what you are doing, because talking about writing a book and writing a book are completely different things.

The piece of advice that got me was this: “You have to write Every Single Day, and I mean it. Obviously there are exemptions for death and illness, but it’s like dieting or working out — if you start skipping one day or two, it’s all over.”

It’s not like I haven’t heard this advice before. Of course you have to write every day, is what I thought as I read the piece. And then I saw it. My inability to stick to writing every day had landed me where I am these days, which is, well… nowhere in particular. I have started a novel (or two?) and written several short stories in the past few months. Some of them I’ve completed, some of them I have not. In the past two months, I’ve written almost nothing, and have even lost track of what my most current project is/should be.

When I read McNamara’s advice I saw what my casual attitude of late with regard to writing has done to all aspects of my writing, the routine, the output, the quality of that output, and my motivation level.

It happens that I have recently resolved to get more exercise. My workout routine has gone much the way of my writing routine. I go to the gym once or twice in a week, then miss the next week, or multiple weeks. McNamara is right — skipping a day or two, or a week or two, means it’s all over. I have just as much trouble getting back to working out, and getting back to the fitness level I was in before, as I do getting back to my writing when I’ve been away from it.

So what’s the fix? I have grown accustomed to giving myself a lot of slack in recent months. And by slack, I mean making excuses. You’re doing the best you can, is what I frequently tell myself when I let my daily life take over my writing life or my workout routine.  You have a kid to take care of, a dog to walk, work to do, a relationship to maintain, dinner to cook, sleep to get, etc. etc. After reading that piece, and after trying to run at the gym for the first time in months, and after sitting down to write today and not being able to remember what project I was last working on, I see that I have not been doing the best that I can.

McNamara writes that she arranged with her husband to write at night, while he put the kids to bed. She cut out a lot of other activities. There are plenty of moments when I have been lounging about on the couch in the past few months (or years), in the evening, after my son has been put to bed, and I’ve been doing nothing in particular, which is to say, I’ve been watching TV and/or reading headlines and checking Facebook and Twitter on my iPhone. I have been telling myself, when my guilt about not writing or blogging or doing whatever else makes itself known, is that I am doing so many things during the day that I deserve these few hours of nothingness. In truth, some days I do need a bit of nothingness. But not every day. I could be writing during those times, is what I thought when I read McNamara’s article.

And so. I see now that writing every day involves breaking out of habits as much as developing new ones. It means snapping out of laziness and a cycle of excuses. And, toughest of all, it’s about being a hardass about making writing a priority, not something you can set aside because a preschool event has come up, or because you need to buy groceries, or because you feel like doing nothing instead. Writing, if you’re serious, is not a special hobby you get to when you’ve cleared your to-do list of everything else.

___

*Back in the day. The Charles and Diana aspect of this video seems baffling now, though no doubt in 1983 I thought it was great.

the writers’ conference experience

I began the week full of nervousness: at meeting new people, interacting with published authors, participating in a workshop for the first time in four years. On top of that there was the personal: anxiety about leaving my 20-month-old son at home with my husband and in-laws and guilt at being away from them all for six days. And there was the physical: I was exhausted after a few months in which my husband has been traveling a lot and working long hours, and I have been the primary parent. And there was my mood: It’s been foggy, gray, and cold in San Francisco all summer – not exactly uplifting.

Last Sunday I left my husband, son, and in-laws and drove out of the fog. I mean that literally —I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge into brightness and warmth and a California summer landscape full of fruit trees and vineyards and belted cows. But I also mean it figuratively: Within a day I felt my exhaustion fade, my mood brighten, and my enthusiasm about writing soar.

I spent the week meeting other similarly minded writers who are working hard on novels, poetry, short stories, and novellas; writers who have been toiling, unpublished, for years, and writers who’ve just begun their journeys. Some had MFAs, some did not. Some wrote for a living, and some had completely unrelated careers but have been writing, secretly, for years. We read each others’ work and we discussed our manuscripts with a thoughtfulness I had not been sure I could expect.

Most nights there were faculty readings scheduled, and we gathered in beautiful spaces at wineries and elsewhere to hear their poetry and fiction. There was an intensity to all of this that I had not expected, and that I felt sometimes overwhelmed by, but in the end appreciated. I did, after all, spend five straight days completely immersed in writing. Two hours of workshop a day, craft lectures, and readings. It was impossible, the rest of the time, not to think about books and writing – my own and others’. That time to think about writing was luxurious to me, both because I do not have the ability to spend that kind of uninterrupted time on writing at home, and because I did not realize how much I missed it.

If that weren’t enough, I received tremendous encouragement from a well-known author whose work I greatly admire, and from those in my workshop I’d just met. I suppose there is a right time in one’s writing life to attend a gathering like the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, and for me it couldn’t have come at a better one. For the most part I have been working alone, and being around a community of writers like that was inspiring and motivating. I came away with a writing plan, some much-needed confidence, and connections to a group of people I hope to keep in touch with. OK, and I got some sleep — a lot of sleep. I felt more rested than I have since before my son was born, which is not to be underestimated in so, so many ways.

Getting unstuck, part II

I’ve been thinking about my previous post on how to get unstuck/reinspired when mired in an all-consuming (read long and difficult) writing project … I’ve got some more suggestions. Three, to be exact. The first is simple, the second, a little tougher, and the third — very difficult.  I suppose these (and the list of ideas in the previous post) are applicable when dealing with writers’ block, though I’ve been trying to avoid that term which I prefer to look at as more severe in scope than what you might experience on a daily basis while struggling with a piece of writing. Perhaps the term “writers’ block” is anxiety-provoking and therefore self-fulfilling?

Anyway, more on how to get unstuck:

• Get some exercise. Sounds hokey, perhaps, but it works. Go for a long walk. Visit your local gym. Attend a yoga class. I’ll be honest — the last thing I want to do when I’ve had a rough day on the writing front and am not feeling good about myself  is to go work out. But every time I turn on my inner drill sergeant and get myself moving, my head clears. It doesn’t have to be strenuous exercise — a nice walk works just fine, as long as you’re walking in a peaceful place. You may find that your head clears and you can move forward with your writing immediately; or, you might find that the rest of your day is still blah, but the next morning you wake up feeling better about your writing project. Either way, exercise helps. It really does.

• Start over on a blank page. I don’t mean throw away what you’ve done so far. I mean, put aside what you’ve done, and look at the point at which you got stuck. Perhaps it’s a paragraph, perhaps it’s an entire chapter. Work from that point forward on your blank page, without looking at the previous version. I find that there’s something freeing about starting again on a blank document. You can escape whatever voice, tension, mood, structure, etc. you’ve got going on the earlier version. You don’t have to worry about the surrounding graphs and how things flow together. Just rewrite and rethink. Allow yourself to do it completely differently. It’s not easy to break free of what might be an entire book full of constraints to write the same information in a different way, but the blank page or new computer document provides a symbolic break, a sort of “what if I wrote it like this?” opportunity.

• Get at the truth. Yep, this is the hard one. And perhaps the opposite of the point I made in my previous post about returning to a project after a break and finding that it is in better shape than you thought. I think I may have mentioned previously that I heard a Joyce Carol Oates quote (I can’t find it anywhere, alas) somewhere in which she said something to the effect of: I don’t get writers’ block. Writers’ block is what happens when you are being dishonest in your writing. (Major paraphrase. Sorry, JCO.) And so, what if you return to your project after a break, only to discover that you haven’t been honest with yourself; that is, your story isn’t conveying the emotional truth it needs to convey in order to be successful. This is the hard one, because it means (in the event that the emotional truth is absent) making some hard decisions. This is, I now believe, why I got stuck in my travel memoir about Korea, only I couldn’t quite have articulated that at the time. I’ve now got a couple years of perspective on that project, and I can see that I worked really, really hard at telling the story the right way, in terms of structure, dialogue, characterization, etc. But I didn’t get at my own emotional truth. As a result, the book feels hollow. It’s flat. There’s a lot of interesting information and it’s well-organized. But it lacks soul.
I bring this up because I think diagnosing the problem when you’re stuck is as important as finding solutions. And I really believe that not getting at the emotional core of a story is, potentially, one of the things that can cause writers to hit a wall.

As for solutions, well…more on truth in my next post.

How to turn mired into reinspired

An old post of mine, Hello, Book?, recently brought a question from Richard, over at Narrative. At the time I wrote that post, I was mired in my MFA thesis, a full-length travel memoir about a year I spent in South Korea. When I say mired, I mean, I was absolutely overwhelmed. Hindsight has brought a little more clarity on the situation I was in: I’d reached the point in the book where I had accomplished quite a lot, but all I could see what was needed to be done still. After all, the book was by no means finished, there was a lot of material left to add in, some restructuring needed to accommodate said material, and revision, revision, revision. I was so overwhelmed by the project that I couldn’t seem to work on it anymore. Richard asked: “What got you going again, if anything?”

Good question.

I had never written a book, and I did not know what I was doing. I think I’ve learned since then that it doesn’t matter whether you’ve written a book before or not — every book is different, and every story presents its own set of challenges. Because of that, every book you write becomes the first book you ever wrote. Which is to say, I think it’s normal to lose confidence mid-way through a big project like that, to feel like you don’t know what you’re doing, and to wonder if it will ever be finished. And that kind of thinking, combined with the tediousness of working on the same piece of writing for a very long time, can bring on a kind of writers’ block. In my case, it wasn’t that I couldn’t write at all, but when I tried to work on my book, I felt lost, confused, overwhelmed and, yes, I’ll admit it — bored. I don’t mean that I thought my book was boring. I mean, that I had been writing the same thing for two years, and I longed for a change.

So, what to do? You’ve got a book you want to finish — after all, you’ve put in so much time and effort, it would be a shame to stop now — but you can’t seem to jumpstart that part of you that was so enthusiastic at the beginning. I’m no expert, but here are some things that have worked for me when this happens:

• Give yourself permission to take a break. Stop for a month. Make sure you define how long the break will be: you don’t want a brief pause to become a permanent one. Also, make sure you’re taking a break from your project, not a break from writing altogether.

• Write something else. I found that giving myself complete freedom to write something I wouldn’t normally write did a lot for my confidence and creativity. If you’re working on a memoir, write some fiction. If you’re working on fiction, write a personal essay or a poem. Loosen yourself up. When I was working on that Korea memoir, I stopped and wrote the beginning of a crazy short story involving quirky characters, talking animals and lots of footnotes. In other words, everything that wasn’t going on in my memoir. It was fun. I didn’t push myself to finish the story, or to obsess over the writing or the content. I just let myself type and shake things up a bit. I still read over that half a story when I’m feeling uninspired, and it tends to perk me up.

• Read something that inspires you. I recommend NOT reading the genre you are writing in. Doing so can lead to inevitable comparisons and unintended blows to your self-confidence regarding your own project. My MFA professor suggested having “models” for the kind of book you want to write — that is, other books whose content, structure, and writing style are similar to what you’re writing. I had a couple of those for my travel memoir, and I referred to them a lot while I was working on the book. Those books were inspiring, in a way, but they were also like co-workers — they were involved with my project. It was when I stepped away from my book and those model books and read a well-written novel — something different — that I was inspired and remembered why I wanted to write my book in the first place.

• Get some feedback from some supportive, inspiring people. My MFA classmates read a number of chapters from my book and that was really helpful to a point. But no one had read the book as a whole. When I had a few people do that, I got the encouragement and perspective I needed to see me through some tough spots, structural problems, and a lot of self-doubt. Even spending time with people you find inspiring or creative but who have not read your work can also help jumpstart your creativity again.

• Don’t discount the possibilities. Your project may be better and farther along than you think it is. It’s easier to say that than to think it about your own work, I know. But sometimes when you can’t seem to work on a piece of writing any more, your brain might be telling you that you are finished. Perspective is so important. I’m a perfectionist about my writing, and I tend to overdo and overthink. It never fails to surprise me how discussing a piece of writing with a friend, or taking a break from it, will make me realize that I just need a few tweaks, not the big, stressful changes I was thinking I might need. I’m often surprised when I return to a piece of writing after a break to find that it’s in better shape than I thought.

• Small steps. One reason I was having trouble when I wrote that blog post was that I didn’t know where to begin to get back into my book. I could see the big picture, but I hadn’t broken that down into smaller, more manageable steps. I found that making lists helped a lot. Make them specific, as in, “add a paragraph explaining X on page 14 of Chapter 1,” or “rewrite ending to Chapter 6 to bring character Y more into the action.” Once I wrote some lists for what had to be done in each chapter, I could sit down at my laptop, look at my list for the chapter I was working on that day and go. No hours wasted considering all of the things still to be done, just an assignment for what had to be done that day.

Part II of Turn Mired into Reinspired

On commitment

I’m notoriously commitment-phobic. (Though I prefer to call it “indecisive,” or say that I like to “weigh my options.”) I don’t just mean in terms of relationships, though it did take me six years of dating to come around to the idea of marrying my now-husband, despite the fact that I had known him for at least a decade before that. I’m the kind of person who can’t walk out of a bookstore with just one book, because what if it’s not good, or when I sit down to read it, it turns out I’m not in the mood for that kind of book? I like to have backup plans. I like to have options.

When it comes to my writing, I’m the same way. I’ve always got a handful of new project ideas swirling in my head. I start one, then abandon it to work on another. It’s not that I don’t want to finish the first, but… Well, they’re good ideas, and I don’t want to let any of them go.

But the truth is, you can’t play the field and expect to be in a monogamous serious relationship at the same time. You can’t juggle a novel, a memoir, some essays, short stories and a blog and expect to make a lot of progress on any one of those projects. Yes, sometimes it’s nice to take a break form one project and work on another – but not if you end up losing sight of your progress on the first.

This morning, in an attempt to commit to one project, I made a list of all of the writing project ideas/beginnings I had. I came up with seven. Seven! Even I wasn’t aware of how many projects I had swirling about in my head (and on my hard drive). Two novels, two memoirs, a book of essays and a book of short stories. Oh. My. God.

So I wrote brief synopses of each project, and it soon became clear which were just ideas, and which I really wanted to move forward with. Writing a description of each helped me see how viable (or not) each project was, as well as how well thought-out each one was. Some of the ideas clearly needed more time to simmer.

I absolutely recommend this exercise if you’re waffling, between projects, feeling an overflow of ideas, or just not sure what to do next. I quickly saw two projects rising above the others. One is a novel, one is a book of essays.  And I committed to working on – gasp! – one of them. I revised an essay this morning, and it felt really good to be attaching myself to a project, to focus, and to move forward.

December writing links: The inspiration edition

Oh, hello. Somehow the month of December passed me by and it is January. It is 2010. That sounds a lot like the future, except suddenly it is not. I spent most of December in a fog of sickness, and the rest was a blur of holiday travel,  relatives, and jet lag, from which I am having trouble regaining traction in my normal life. December? Hello? What happened?

I finished November hopeful about writing, after banging out 30,000 words in National Novel Writing Month, only to loose my footing completely in the whirlwind that was December. Now I’m trying to figure out how to get back on track. I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions – or, well, I often make resolutions all year long, only to break them soon after. I think most resolutions are a lot like most diets — too radical to be sustainable in the long run. Which is why I liked this essay by author Ann Patchett so much. The more time you put into your writing, the greater your output will be. What a concept! And so, an hour a day for the first 32 days of the year. The idea being that you can set the tone for the year in the first month. Makes sense. Makes a lot of sense.

Another piece I liked quite a bit: this guest post at Writing Under a Pseudonym about balancing motherhood and writing by Meghan of Writerland. Finding a balance doesn’t have to mean ignoring your kids, but it does mean sacrifice. Meghan describes choosing running over yoga because it takes less time out of her day; she finds herself curled up with a laptop after the kids go to bed rather than on the couch watching a movie with her husband; she loses some sleep. I loved this post for Meghan’s clarity on the subject; I’ve been struggling for a year to discover what I’m willing to sacrifice for my writing and what I’m not while I balance a writing/editing career with taking care of a child. I’m still having trouble reminding myself that I don’t have time to surf the web, that I can’t fritter away a free hour the way I used to. This is my greatest challenge for the upcoming year, and if I had to make a resolution I suppose this would be it: To find balance between writing and the rest of my life.

Perhaps it was holiday spirit in action (or something like that) but this December edition of writing related links is full of inspiration. In this case, I’m talking about this post by Debra of Write On Target, describing how she acquired an agent. Take note: Debra’s blog and Twitter account feature prominently. Congrats, Debra!

Some more practical links to round out December:

Amazon will be accepting submissions to its annual Breakthrough Novel Award contest, starting January 25.

Freelancers: Now is the time to write those seasonal essays – for next year’s holiday season. Via Lisa Romeo.

10 tips on building your author platform.

The plus side of self doubt. There is one. Really.

October writing links

Hello, reader. Here’s a little tidbit for you: I’m a mad documenter of the past. This, no doubt, has something to do with having two historians for parents. I grew up knowing words like “archive” at a very young age. Anyway, I’m always trying to preserve moments in time. For example, October.

I thought I’d share the writing-related links* from October that most moved, inspired, thrilled, saddened, and in the case of two book reviews, surprised me. In other words, worth reading:

Alexander Chee‘s wonderful essay on Annie Dillard and the Writing Life.

An excellent question posed on Practicing Writing. I could probably write a blog post about my experience with age in my MFA program. Oh wait, I did. All I can say is, if you’re not in your 20s, make sure you visit the program and/or find out some specific age demographics before you go to make sure it’s a good fit.

The decline and fall.

A pretty rough review of John Irving’s latest novel from Michiko Kakutani. One of several harsh book reviews I’ve read recently. This one follows the nearly complete evisceration of Richard Powers’ entire body of work in the New Yorker. I’m not against negative reviews…it’s just, well, it’s always unsettling to read a harsh one, particularly when it’s the work of an established writer.

Scrivener, the helpful writing software, is offering a discount to NaNoWriMo participants. The more you write, the cheaper it gets! I don’t use Scrivener all the time, but I absolutely love it for organizing lots of shorter documents, or trying to get my head around a big project. I’m a big fan of the cork board.

This has made the rounds but it’s an amazing story of almost giving up on writing (but not!) and so I include it here.

*There’s a nice little feed of what I’ve been bookmarking on de.lic.ious on the right side of the blog  that you can see if you click through from that handy feed reader you use to keep up with all the bloggy goodness out there. But if you’re in a hurry or just don’t feel like clicking, I’m here for you. Thus the October roundup.

There’s a pug in the produce aisle, and not nearly enough caffeine in my system.

Certain events should not be paired. For example: 1. Being awakened when there’s a 4 on the clock should not, under any circumstances, be combined with 2. Running out of coffee and having to substitute decaf just to make one measly cup.

Maybe I should rephrase that. Certain events should not take place, period. For example, 1) Being awakened when there’s a 4 on the clock, and 2) Running out of coffee.

This is, obviously, not how I wanted to begin my day. I’ve been tossing around writing ideas all weekend — big, book-length ideas.* Because Monday is one of the days I’ve got childcare, I was eager to get cracking on fleshing out one or both of my ideas today. Alas, certain environmental factors are not conducive to productivity. See also, sleep deprivation. See also, running out of coffee.

Anyway, despite my low levels of caffeine, I managed to leave the house, stagger through some semblance of a workout at the gym, and drive (accident and road rage free!) to the Safeway in the Castro. It should be noted that of late I have been spending more time in the Castro Safeway than seems remotely necessary or healthy. What can I say? I’m a poor grocery shopper/meal planner and everyone in my house is way too hungry. Alas,  the Castro Safeway. It is … other-worldly. It is San Francisco. Homeless people abound. Activists with clipboards assault all those who enter. (Please sign to help us legalize marijuana!”) Shoppers are always talking to themselves, and they are never speaking about groceries.  Signs proclaiming “no dogs allowed per San Francisco health code blah blah blah” are taped on all of the doors, yet someone is always walking his or her dog down the baking aisle or through the meat section.  This morning, a Jack Russell with an adorably scruffy beard was sniffing the cereals. On every visit, I encounter someone who has flagged down a Safeway employee and is dragging said employee all over the store. As in, the shopper has a list, and they are making the Safeway employee lead them directly to every item on the list and place said items in their cart for them. I have never seen so many lost shoppers in a grocery store before.

In the Castro Safeway I have seen a woman carefully select some bagels from the bins in the bakery section, place them in a bag, dump said bag out on the floor, and then return the bagels to the bins for some unsuspecting shopper to buy and eat. I have been approached in line by a teenager “trying to get back to Las Vegas” who begged me for a donation of $50. I have seen dogs in baby strollers. I have seen dogs in backpacks, purses, and shopping carts. This morning a man looking for cake flour (and led to it by a Safeway employee) kept repeating “you’d think that it would look like what it is!” until the Safeway employee had no choice to agree (though he was clearly humoring cake-flour guy and very confused) that indeed, cake flour does not look at all like what it is. This morning a woman knelt on the floor in front of the milk case, reading her grocery list, despite the line of people waiting to open the case and get out cartons of milk. They clustered around her, all of them afraid of interrupting her thoughts. When, finally, someone did, she simply got up and out of the way, no apology, no apparent surprise at holding up five people from their shopping. This morning someone got on the intercom and said, “Safeway employees, I need some productivity.”

I once ordered a coffee at the in-store Starbucks, only to have the cashier burst into tears and walk away.

This morning, my cashier, who as I was to discover was Norwegian, told me that he’s recently noticed an uptick in the number of former Catholic priests coming through his check-out line. (How does that come up? “Do you have a Safeway card? By the way, are you a former Catholic priest?”) And then he told me about how he once carried 60 packages of Peet’s Coffee home to Norway for his family, only to be held up in Helsinki by the authorities, who thought he was smuggling drugs. He kept describing how “they kept sniffing” the coffee, and finally I had to speak up — it should be noted that thus far, I had only nodded and smiled politely. I said, “you mean drug-sniffing dogs?” He did not mean drug-sniffing dogs, and I left the store imagining Finnish customs officers taking long, deep sniffs of the rich scent of Peet’s. I did not blame them.

–

*Frankly big book-length writing projects are not necessarily what I need to jump into right now, but here I am thinking about them anyway. I’m considering doing something for National Novel Writing Month, which starts in less than a week. I have no reason whatsoever not to do NaNoWriMo, though I keep providing myself with all sorts of excuses (I don’t have time! I might have another tendinitis flare-up in my arm! What about all my other half-written projects? etc.) But, hey, why not? I need a kick in the pants. Right! Right?

linked stories

I’ve become enamored of (obsessed with?) linked stories/novels-in-stories/fractured narratives. This is what happens: Every time I read a novel-in-stories or a collection of linked stories (where is line, when do linked stories become a novel-in-stories? Is there a line?) I am so wowed by the form, and then I think about it constantly, wonder what other books are out there in the form, vow to read them all immediately, and then pick up a novel or a memoir and forget all about it. (What can I say? I am easily distracted.) Until the next linked story collection appears on my nightstand.

I was first made aware of the form in grad school, when I was assigned The Beggar Maid, by Alice Munro, for a lit class focused on short stories. (Quite possibly the best class I took in my MFA program, writing classes included.)  It wasn’t that I’d never read linked short stories before, but that class was the first time I was made aware of the concept, and could put a name to it. This summer I read Elizabeth Strout’s beautifully written Olive Kitteridge.  A couple of weeks ago I got lost in Japan, in Christopher Barzak’s ethereal The Love We Share Without Knowing. The fractured narrative seemed particularly appropriate to convey the confusion of being an expatriate, as well as some of the mysterious (to an outsider, anyway) conventions of Japanese culture.

Reading these two books reminded me how much I love the concept of linked stories, and I started poking around on the web for any commentary from writers on the writing process. Every collection of linked stories I’ve read has seemed, despite the skips in time or the switches in point of view, to have a certain complexity that I saw as possibly being quite difficult to create. Or was it easier to write a novel-in-stories? I just wanted to see behind the scenes.  Alas, my dreamed-of “Authors Talk About Writing Linked Stories” book proved elusive. I’m still looking for something out there on the process of producing a collection of linked stories and how it differs from sitting down and writing a novel from start to finish. (If you’re aware of any, please let me know!)

Anyway, one of way of answering these questions might be… writing some linked stories myself. Hmm.

In the mean time, I’m putting together a linked stories/novel-in-stories reading list. Suggestions welcome.

How an essay comes to be.

A pigeon falls on your windshield. Or a similarly odd, potentially transformative event happens to you. Despite the fact that you’ve been remiss in your commitment to write regularly, you feel that familiar tug… you want to describe the incident of the bird falling on your car (or whatever. insert your event here). When you begin to type you realize that there’s something else going on, something beyond actual events, i.e. a pigeon falling out of the sky on to your windshield as you hurtle down the highway at 70 mph. Whump! As you describe how the sound of the bird hitting the glass was so loud that you thought your windshield might crack and how your heart pounded and how you felt thankful that the bird was not, say, a tire, or a ladder fallen from a truck, or a boulder, you think back through the flashing reel of other events in your life involving birds and realize there is pattern, and metaphor, and the potential for an essay, were these bird-related incidents grouped in the right way and tied to other meaningful moments. You may also consider that it’s a little odd that you’ve had so many accidental interactions with wild birds, but you let this thought fly away, unexplained. There is an essay forming in your mind, and you being to chronicle other times when your life has collided (so to speak) with a bird’s or birds’. In doing so, the other stuff, the meaningful moments, the life-changing events that were already occurring when the birds found their way to you or you found your way to them, that stuff comes out. Suddenly it’s on the page, and while it may be rough and perhaps a little odd, this intersection of life and birds, it’s soon an essay, one you want to rewrite and polish and send out to magazines. And it never would have come to be without that pigeon falling out of the sky, wing over wing, beak over tail, and leaving a gray smudge on the glass, a fog through which you must travel from now on.

2008 Plan of Attack

2008 feels like the future. But also a little like the present has whomped me on the head with a stick.

On the one hand, it seems impossible that we could have arrived here, at this year. 2008?! It sounds so very sci-fi. On the other, here I am in 2008, and there are many writing-related accomplishments I’d like to have achieved by now. But I haven’t, and the passage of time is a reminder and, to some extent, pressure to get to it.

I’m not much for New Year’s resolutions — most resolutions I hear about are too vague (“I resolve to get organized”) and people tend to make too many to keep track of (“I want to lose weight, get organized, shore up the finances, and spend more time with family and friends”). The resolutions always leave out the details of how and by when. How much weight? Will you join a gym? What is it that needs to be organized? Will you throw away that box of junk in the closet that you’ve been holding on to for years?

Maybe I’m cynical but my theory is that in most cases, resolutions are a set-up for further failure. If you resolve to do something, and then lose sight of the goal or never lay out a plan for how to get there, you feel a double disappointment — not only did you not succeed at the task you’d resolved to do, but you didn’t stick to your resolutions either and you can beat yourself up over that too.

Most years I don’t even think about making resolutions, though it’s hard not to use that flip of a calendar page as a way of making a new start on certain things. This year, though, I feel the pressure of time. Perhaps it’s because it’s the second New Year’s in a row where I’ve found myself working from home and only partially employed. For the most part, my time is my own, and yet I’ve written less and published less than I might have hoped when I finished my MFA program. But wanting to write and publish more are just like those other vague resolutions — “I want to get organized” — there is no how, no plan of attack. And so, this New Year’s, I am making one. (If you think about it, “Plan of Attack” is a much more rousing phrase than “resolution.”)