A question of strength

Today marks the 86^th straight day in which I’ve done some rough draft work. Sometimes just a poem, other days I’ve written as much as 2000 words. The important thing for me right now is the act of showing up. When I do that, my moods are more even and I tend to be more creative overall. It’s the kind of streak that won’t last forever, but it reminds me why taking the time to commit to my work is important.

I'm kind of more in the blue circle right now.

That being said, I’m struggling with the work—particularly the part where I’m supposed to focus on rewriting and making the words sing, and the part where I need to send stuff out and collect rejections, and the part where I should probably make a list of agents and polish the novel query like I’ve been meaning to do for over a year now.

I’m really reluctant about that part, almost on a molecular level. Bit by bit the urge is returning, because I do want to share my work with others. That being said, writing to get published was a huge factor in the massive depression from which I’m emerging, which makes me leery of the risks involved. Not just rejection, though that’s never enjoyable, but the sense of futility and invisibility that have dogged me.

Let's face it, none of us will ever be as awesome as Helen Mirren and Judi Dench.

So here’s what I’m wondering, my fellow creative types: Do you know how to distinguish between legitimate self-care and recalcitrant foot-dragging? How do you tell them apart? Have you found a way to give yourself the courage to fail, while still making a safe space for the fragile parts of your soul?

I could really use your advice.

Do What You Love (Badly)

A while ago, the Spousal Unit and I were talking about our high school days, and about doing sports in particular. (I was a track rat who specialized in throwing heavy objects because I was even worse at jumping and running; he was a swimmer and water polo player.) I love to hear tales of his wild days, and the torturous regime of practices his coach put him through. One of his teammates subsequently tried out for the U. S. water polo team, and the whole group often went to the regional championships in California.

I asked him, “Do you miss it?”

“Well,” he said, “I was never very good.”

“That’s not what I asked. Do you miss playing?”

He was quiet for a moment and then said, “Yeah. Yeah, it was fun, and I miss it.”

I once read that, if you ask a group of kindergarteners if they’re artists or dancers or singers, they will generally agree in a heartbeat that they are, in fact, totally talented. And they have fun with it. But if you go back to the same group of kids a few years later, and ask which of them identifies as an artist, very few will raise their hands.

I think that’s sad. (I also have this cockamamie theory that our warped view of talent and creativity worsens the epidemic of mental health and substance abuse issues in our society, but that’s probably a post for another day.)

A lot of us, like my spouse, have absorbed the idea that after a certain point, if you’re not demonstrably good at something, you lose the right to enjoy it. You’re off the team, as it were. Maybe it’s a self-inflicted judgment, or maybe a host of bad reviews and snarky comments have worn down hope. And attempting any kind of creativity as a business proposition is its own special kind of hell. Trying to balance the need to make things and the need to eat, putting your deepest and most fragile self on display and hoping no one utterly stomps on it . . . That’s a tough life.

Yeah, that.

I’m small potatoes in the writing world, but I’ve listened to a lot of other writers—amazing writers, people you admire—and they all struggle with keeping that love of creating alive. Maybe there’s a point where someone is so successful and popular and beloved that they never, ever feel bad about their work. But I haven’t met that writer yet, and I kind of suspect that if I did, that writer would be, you know, dead.

In some ways, this is a great time to be creative. You can reach an audience anywhere in the world, make connections and collaborations to an almost unlimited degree. At the same time, it’s easy to feel lost, with the relentless sense of competition, calculated cruelty, and looming invisibility, especially when you factor in the tendency of every artist ever to feel inadequate to the task.

My first crochet project--sort of oddly shaped

I think I mentioned that I’ve been learning to crochet over the past few months. Slowly, and badly. The Spousal Unit tells me scallops are ‘in,’ but I think he’s just being kind about the wobbly edges of my projects. But you know what? I’m having fun crocheting badly. I am sucking magnificently, with some pretty yarn and shiny hooks. It’s good to have a reminder that being brilliant is not the be-all-and-end-all of existence, and learning to love new things and take risks should be a big part of life.

What if we all made the choice to do what we love, regardless of whether or not we met anyone's standards--even our own--of 'good enough'? And what if we reached out to others and encouraged their efforts, not with false praise, but genuine affection and appreciation? If we're all going to suck anyway, what if we did it with joy and enthusiasm?

So while I’ve recommitted to growing and improving as a writer, I’ve also given myself permission to do it badly and enjoy it. Unlike ballet—or brain surgery—writers get unlimited revisions to make things better. The magic happens as much from love and joy as from hard work. I don’t want to forget that again.

I'm learning to be okay with this.

Journeys

Tomorrow, when I make the drive from Buffalo to Maine, that will mean I've driven all the way across the contiguous United States on my own.

From the Maine coast . . .

To the Oregon coast (and many points between)

Before he died, my great-uncle Ed visited every state in the U. S. I'm up to 32 now, so I need to plan some new travels soon.

Snippet: Prophecy of Bone

The prosecutor leaned close, her breath stinking of sausage and stale beer. “Do you hear them? They want blood, and yours will do.”

Through the dull roar of pain a sharper howl reached his ear, a wild animal with many throats. He couldn’t make out the words, but he suspected this stout, humorless woman was right. “You are willing to bet . . . your office . . . on my guilt?” The words tangled on his tongue, and he drew on the last dregs of his strength. “I saved General Tugg . . . from an assassin in Kethmira.”

She snorted.

“How I came to his . . . notice.” He flexed his fingers, shocked at how cold they felt. “For your sake . . . I hope your protector has more power.” Dev choked and something wet erupted from his chest and sprayed over his chin. Blood, probably, from the taste. The pain seared his chest, lanced down his back. At least he wouldn’t have much longer to wait for death, he thought. “Neera,” he whispered. That would be his last regret: that she would have to bury him, so soon after her husband.

A booming crash shuddered through the thick stone walls of the building. Another followed close after, then another. The prosecutor was barking orders to subordinates outside the cell, but the words no longer made sense to Dev. He wondered if death would come as a bright light, the way his father’s people taught, or if he would find himself in a slow-moving river full of blossoms, as his mother had sung of before her own demise.

Someone cursed loudly, right in his ear. He’d have flinched away from the spray of spittle on his ear, but he couldn’t move his arms and legs.

Another resounding crash gave way to the sound of squealing metal. Dev found himself flung back, in mind if not in body, to the train accident: Pain. Noise.

Darkness.

Latest publications

Hey, everybody! Just a quick update to let you know where to find some of my new work. In a couple places, it's even free to read. Everybody likes free, right? Okay, here we go:

The second half of Uncanny Magazine's issue 9 is online. My poem "The Book of Forgetting" is here. (But you should also read the excellent poems by C. S. E. Cooney and Brandon O'Brien. I'll wait.)

If listening is more your thing, there's also a podcast.

(And as a sidenote, there's a companion piece, "The Book of Longing," that's here.)

Another poem, also available online, appeared in issue 2.3 of Mythic Delirium, which you can read here.

And if fiction is more your thing, I've got some stories in anthologies. There's "Cover Her Ghost in a Feathered Cape" in Ruins Excavations from Hadley Rille Books, which you can find on Amazon here. And if you want something even spookier than ghosts, there's "Wandering Swallows" in the Triangulations: Lost Voices anthology here.

ETA: Also also, because I'm forgetful, I didn't mention the Angels of the Meanwhile anthology, which you can check out here. All proceeds go to help my friend Elizabeth McClellan through some tough times, and there are a whole bunch of fabulous authors featured!

How did you know he was the one?

Last week, the Girl!Twin called home from college. I miss having her around, and it was a good talk. I’d posted on Facebook about the day her dad proposed to me, and how I hadn’t taken him completely seriously at first because it was April Fool’s Day.

This is the Girl!Twin, headbutting a goat. As you do.

She asked, “How did you know he was the one?”

[I should add a caveat here: I don’t believe in The One. I do think some people are more suited than others, but a mature, basically decent human being can build a life with any number of potential spouses. We all have so many choices in life, so many varied experiences. And the idea that you have to somehow stumble upon the one right person, at the right moment? That seems like way too much of a crap shoot for my tastes.]

One of these fabulous beasts is the Spousal Unit.

Looking back, I can’t say there was one defining moment when I looked at the Spousal Unit and thought, Yep, that’s the one. More like a series of moments, when I saw the pattern of our lives intertwining, when I recognized in him someone I’d enjoy being with for the long haul.

But there was one conversation early on, which caught me off guard in the best way possible. It was late 1990, early 1991, just before the first Gulf War started. The future Spousal Unit were driving around—probably headed out for shakes at that great little place off campus in Provo that doesn’t seem to exist anymore—and discussing current events. I don’t recall what we disagreed about. It wasn’t an argument; I just expressed my opinion, and then commented that he probably wouldn’t want to date me again.

I do remember, vividly, what he said next: “I think it’s sexy that you’re smart. I’m tired of dating girls who couldn’t find Afghanistan on a map.”

Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how badly I needed to hear that from my significant other. I’d dated a few guys before that, some of them nicer than others, but not one of them—not a single one—ever made me feel that the quality of my mind was important. I’d long since decided not to play stupid for anyone, because that’s a horrible way to live, but I’d gotten used to boys politely ignoring that part of me. Having any measurable degree of intelligence was at best the sort of defect that someone could overlook if I had enough acceptable traits. I’d never imagined that holding my own in a discussion of geopolitics might be a selling point.

That’s the story I told my daughter. And I said, “The right person for you is the one who loves your whole self.” Too often in life, we accept less-than because that’s how we see ourselves. Even the good parts of us can make some people feel uncomfortable. But that’s not the kind of person you want to wake up next to for the rest of your life. The right one fuels your good ambitions, because they already see the culmination of them in you.

It’s good to be loved for being a whole person.

We were both fairly intelligent people until we had children, and we've been wrong and stupid pretty much every day since then. True story.

[Side note: If you ever meet the Spousal Unit, and happen to ask him who’s the brains of the family, he’ll probably say it’s me. Apparently he’s known for bragging me up behind my back. But you should not believe him, because he’s an absolute whiz at a number of things that stump me, and he’s one of those people who’s always willing to learn something new. Which, to my mind, is one of the best measures of intelligence.]

The obligatory 'Where do you get your weird ideas?' post

I had a variation of the ‘where do you get your ideas’ question on Twitter last week. Since I’m not famous, it’s not one I have to answer very often, but it’s definitely not the kind of thing I can fit into 140 characters, either. So this is my (admittedly limited) knowledge about ideas.

First of all, if you court ideas, you will end up with more of them than you can ever hope to use in a lifetime. A few years ago when the Spousal Unit and I were vehicle-hunting, a car salesman found out that I’m a writer, and he spent as much time trying to get me to ghost-write a book for him as he did trying to get me to shell out for a car. “It’s a great idea!” he said. “It’s a science fiction novel, and you write science fiction! I’ll split whatever we make on it!” He was very enthused about this plan. I was rather less so, inasmuch as he was offering half the profits to me while asking me to do all of the actual hard work. I told him what I always tell people in that situation: Write it yourself. If the idea makes you feel that way, then you can do better justice to it than I ever could. And anyway, since I usually have a good half-dozen novel ideas besides the one I’m currently writing and the three I need to revise, it could be a while before I get around to you.

This is a good reason why you should write your own damn book.

Connie Willis is known for saying that ideas are like the leeches in The African Queen. “You don’t get ideas,” she says. “Ideas get you.”

This is more true than non-writers realize. I find ideas are especially pestiferous when I’ve reached a slow spot in the current work-in-progress. I’ve made a wrong turn, or need to think more about the characters and their motivations . . . and suddenly there’s a shiny new idea jumping up and down and waving its metaphorical hands in the air. Like the know-it-all in fourth grade, it yells, “Hey! Pick me! Pick me!”

And I can never resist taking a little peek. Here’s the thing about ideas for me: they aren’t like a dry memo from some corner of my brain. I get movie clips and sound bites, but only long enough to intrigue me, and then they’re gone again. So I’ll overhear a couple characters having a heated argument about the heist they’re planning, or I’ll see someone about to step into a dangerous situation. For the story in the Ocean Stories anthology, a young woman who’d suffered a devastating loss was stuck at a social event and trying to stay out of sight when a mysterious stranger showed up—and shifted shape between when my character saw her and when everyone else noticed her. Everything else—the whole world—grew out of that moment.

Last week turned out to be a week for writing poetry. (Poems and stories have completely different energies. Usually if I’m writing one, it’s difficult or even impossible to write the other—but that’s a post for another day.) I wanted to experiment with formal poetry—sonnets, villanelles, and the like—so I got some of my poet friends to make requests and suggest words. So far I’ve written eight new poems, mostly generated from those suggestions.

I realize this is how many of you think of poetry, but I like you anyway.

Sometimes I read something and it strikes a creative nerve. The current project grew out of a true-life account of some very weird circumstances on a ranch in northern Utah that my friend David suggested I read. But it may not be as obvious as that. A whole poem may spring from a phrase in a history book that hits me in just the right way. (I realize I’m using a lot of violent verbs here, but for me there’s an intense, often physical reaction when an idea shows up. The best ones make the hair on my arms and the back of my neck stand on end. I’ve learned not to ignore it. It’ll knock—really loudly—but if I don’t answer, that idea will leave again without warning.)

Ideas aren't going to listen to your requests anyway. Get used to it.

This is why I’ve learned to tolerate the distraction of shiny new ideas. While it’s important for writers to finish what they start—ask anyone who’s been reading the Game of Thrones books how we feel about unfinished projects—creativity is an organic process. Nurturing the energy that churns up new ideas can be as vital as enduring the slog where it seems like the story will never come together. And sometimes, the lizard hind-brain knows things my conscious mind hasn’t yet processed. The image that seems like it has nothing to do with the current story somehow fits into the pattern, making the whole stronger than it would have been otherwise.

And I know I’ve been using weasel words in this: ‘somehow’ and ‘sometimes.’ Maybe you want a road map to writing a story, and I’m giving you a couple of sketches and a nice soundtrack instead. But that’s the part where the magic comes in. You can cultivate that moment by showing up, by feeding your brain with interesting pictures and words and experiences. The magic happens in its own time, though.

When I was a kid, I’d visit my grandmother, who lived in a 250-year-old cottage on the coast in Maine. There was no electricity and no running water, so we had to use the hand pump in the yard that brought up rust-colored water that tasted like iron. If you’ve ever done that, you know that when a pump goes unused for a while, it can lose suction or whatever it is pumps need to do their job. You have to prime the pump, pour a little water down into the mechanism, and that’s enough to get fluid moving in the right direction again. Creativity is like that—it needs a little inspiration sometimes, but once that energy starts flowing, it’s hard to put a stop to it.

I totally miss the good old days of going to the outhouse in the middle of the night and hanging my naked ass over a hole filled with angry spiders. No, wait, I don't miss that.

So prime that pump with the most interesting words and pictures and people you can find. Try something new. Be brave, and be hopeful.

And when those ideas are mobbing your doorstep, don’t forget to take a moment and let them introduce themselves, even if you’re already busy. Write them down, so they don’t wander off.