Mardi's Link

Writing for Revenge

Believe me, I’ve checked, and when it comes to revenge writing, the universal advice is, Don’t Do It. Ever. Do Not Do It. Don’t even think about doing it. And if you do somehow manage to fantasize about doing it, even in private when no one is looking, well, you should just stop. Right now. Writing out of some twisted and infantile need for revenge, the conventional wisdom goes, is bad form, bad news, and just plain bad juju.  

“If someone is writing to take revenge, or embarrass or punish someone, it’s not going to be a very good book. It’s immoral, and it’s bad writing,” says Heather Sellers, author of, You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know.

“It is a natural fantasy to imagine getting even with someone by exposing them in your memoirs, and revenge can fuel great writing, but for the most part complaints suffer like bad novels from one dimensional characterizations and an overly simplified Manichean vision of the world,” says Tristine Rainer, in her classic how-to guide, Your Life As Story.

I didn’t read it myself, but I have it on good authority that Donald Rumsfeld’s 815-pager, Known and Unknown, falls prey to the exact problem Rainer explains.

There are, of course exceptions. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough when reading Joyce Maynard’s At Home in the World. She balances confusion and youth with focus and revenge and the result is a memoir I devoured. Most of us are no Joyce Maynard though; we were not on the cover of the NYT magazine as a teen, and didn’t spend strange months in rural New Hampshire with iconic literary hermits.

Marion Roach, the author of a readable and newly published guide on memoir writing, The Memoir Project, has a list on her blog of eleven no-no’s to observe when writing about one’s own life. They include tips like don’t make your writing only about you, don’t give readers a boring list of events, and don’t complain. By my calculations, pushing back against an urge for revenge factors in on numbers three, four, five, six and eleven on her no-no’s. That’s almost half.

And yet, and yet. I feel myself slyly protest this “No Writing For Revenge” rule, hypnotized as I am by the sheen on a cold antipasto platter.

Salt, vinegar, and red meat. Yummy.  

Ah, Revenge, that tasty appetizer before the power steak, served bloody. Because however fleeting, exacting revenge with words will make the writer feel strong and back in control. For about ten minutes. Ten glorious, fang glinting, back-arching, howl into the emptiness minutes.

But then what?

The real problem of acting on this dark urge in print is not only that it’s wrong. The real problem is that by doing it, you’re using someone else’s story to tell your own. Writing for revenge gives away your literary power, instead of claiming it.  

Joan Didion says that writing itself is, “an aggressive, even a hostile act.” True. Writing dares to say I’m here, I matter, Listen to me. But aggression and hostility are emotions that move a story forward; while bad-mouthing –i.e. revenge- is just the soggy leftovers.

This topic has some resonance for me, after winning Creative Nonfiction’s Anger & Revenge personal essay contest. I was – am- thrilled the editors selected my work. And, a bit daunted, too. My submission detailed what happened to my wedding dress after my twenty-year marriage ended. How to reconcile my own two personal essay writing rules – 1) tell the truth, and 2) don’t give your power away to anyone else – with being recognized for something many writers I respect say is forbidden?

I spent not a small amount of time wondering about this internal conflict.  The conclusion I reached was this: I wrote the piece not for revenge, but to offer my mother an explanation of what happened to the wedding dress she and I hand sewed together, more than two decades ago. And that is just as good an impetus to write as any other.  Right?

 

 

Beginings

Here it is, almost the end of January, and I'm still thinking about beginnings. I'm pretty sure that's because I'm mulling over how to start a new project.

From a recent NPR interview with one of my heroes, Elmore Leonard, here's how the great man sits his story down:

"I have no idea where it's going to go. I don't want to know, because the idea is accumulated in the four months, five months, six months. . .  of the writing process. You get better ideas while you're writing. Ideas come to you, scenes come to you that (are better) than if you were to sit down and list scenes. So I don't outline."

The "to outline or not to outline" argument is one writers have long grappled with. And not allowing rigid A, B, 1, 2 scaffolding to dictate to creativity has always been my instinct, too. I didn't outline either of my two previous books and when I finished them I was convinced that lack of early structure helped, rather than harmed, their narratives. The ideas did arrive just as Mr. Leonard said.

And, I had a pretty good idea of where the story was going when I began my latest project, a memoir now in the hands of my editor. Not because I outlined it first, but because, well, I lived it. 

When you're writing from your own experience, my logic went, it's even more impossible to get off track than when you're telling someone else's story. Stick to the truth, mine your emotional highs and lows, and, as Mr. Leonard also advises, "leave out the parts that people skip."

Do all that,  everything is sure to turn out just dandy, I reasoned. Outline? I don't need no stinkin' outline.

Revisions, though, have a way of picking up the glare the warm sunshine of just writing away, free and easy, without a care in the netherworld of your imagination, misses. I ended up crafting a detailed outline after I finished the first draft.

It was a good exercise, and helped me identify both the cuts and additions the book needed in a way my own "just sit down and write" process had not.

So, despite the advice of Mr. Leonard, I've reconsidered the value of outlining a long work first, before beginning to write. I'm starting to believe outlining will organize my creative impulse, not stifle it.

Writer and writing teacher Adair Lara has a great article about how to do this here. Good advice for those of us writing about our own lives, particularly if, like me,  you have previously eschewed outlines.

January feels like a great time to sit down and dig in to something new, doesn't it?

 

Go ahead, send me your holiday newsletter. I dare you.

 

Rhymes With "Bold"

After reading this, then being horrified by this, and finally this too, I feel I must offer a personal response, in the form of five women who have lived long enough to actually have something important to say.

Here, in no particular order, are five "rhymes-with-bold" biddies who kick ass.

1. Helen Mirren, assasin

 

 2. Joan Didion, change artist

"Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends."

(From The Year of Magical Thinking, her memoir which won The National Book Award in 2005 when she was 71.)

3. Madeleine L'Engle, explosives tech

“One day while I was happily pretending to myself that I was Madame Curie, I blew up the lab.”

(From her address to the Library of Congress on Nov. 16, 1983. At 15 she was pretending to be Madame Curie; when she addressed the Library of Congress, she was 65. And had won the Newberry Award, the USM Medallion, the Smith College Award, the Sophia Award, the Regina Medal, the ALAN Award the Kerlan Award and was President of the Author's Guild.)

4. Diane Wakoski, truth teller

"You ride a broken motorcycle, You speak a dead language, You are a bad plumber, And you write with an inkless pen."

(From her poem, "Dancing on the Grave of a Son of a Bitch," published when she was about 50. Backstory here.)

5. Dora Hain, trailrider, trailblazer, ukulele player, long-distance swimmer, sport fisherwoman, campfire chef, and my maternal grandmother.

"Cryin' about it will get you exactly nowhere, Mard. Now, do you want to swim across the lake or go pike fishing?"

This is my hero, who's yours?

What 50 Looks Like

I got a little nostalgic yesterday and I blame it on two things: The New York Times and my impending milestone birthday.

An article in the newspaper's Style Section introduced a handful of photogenic brainiacs and their recently launched online magazine of literary criticism, The New Inquiry. Bravo, kids.

It's an old story, buffed and polished for the internet. Shunned by the establishment, these younsters started their own literary gig. Marcel Proust did it once, and so did Queen Christina of Sweden, The Bluestockings got their thing going, and these ruffians did, too.

Yours truly has fond memories of following this same bliss. Back in the prehistoric year that was 1998, I helped get this going concern off the ground.

On April Fool's Day that year, Victoria Sutherland, Anne Stanton, and I plotted to launch a book review magazine to give independently published books their due. It still amazes me that I was standing at the top of the escalator at BookExpo America in Chicago just two months later, eager in my new lime green suit to hand out copies of our first issue of ForeWord to the rising throngs. And boy, did they take them! And read them! And visit our booth to subscribe! We had launched!

Then, some spoil sport called security.

Apparently even back in 1998, you couldn't occupy such high dollar real estate for free. No, the book fair had a protocol for guerilla marketing like this and said protocol involved a fee for exhibitors who greeted attendees with swag. And no quarter was given for high brow literary swag, either.

But no matter. Even two of McCormick Place's thuggish rent-a-cops couldn't wipe the triumph off our faces that fine day.

Tomorrow I turn 50. And you know what? I've still got that lime suit.

What's your gig?

Gratitude & Gravy

Two days from now, the Big Valley will be full up.

My parents and my brother will be here, along with two thirds of my three sons, my husband, his two sons, a one-time girlfriend, her mother, and a new baby daughter. The artist couple who rents the house my husband used to live in before he married me will probably stop by for dessert, and so will some other friends from the township.

There will be dogs. There will be wine. And we'll open the last bottle of leftover wedding champagne.

If we are lucky, my father will give the blessing and then read a Maya Angelou poem, like he did a few years ago, plesantly shocking us all from his patriarchal spot up there at the head of the table.

There will be gluten-free pies and a high chair and baby cereal and an organic bird from Circle B Turkey Ranch and my mother's applesauce and a Fiestaware gravy boat filled to the top. There will be football and there will be naps.

And in this pause before my favorite holiday I'm feeling the gratitude. For a life that includes all these good souls and for a home that draws them in. For the table in another home with other people where my oldest son will be sharing a meal and helping to plan the menu for a new restaurant. For one day together.

And for the words from that Maya Angelou poem that might have been written as a lament but that when spoken by my father, seem more reverent than sad: "Nobody, but nobody can make it out here alone."

Author Platform

 

I am suspicious of buzz words. Of jargon, sales talk, spokesmodels, infomercials, and even ventriloquists. Maybe especially ventriloquists.

Remember that crazy Howdy Doody-looking dummy from The Twilight Zone? To recap, in case this is not the stuff of your childhood nightmares: Cliff Robertson plays an alcoholic ventriloquist who tries to convince his agent that his dummy, Willie, is diabolically alive. He fails, his agent thinks he's crazy, and Willie begins to take over their stage act. In the final scene, Willie has become the straight man and the wooden dummy on his lap has the face of Cliff Robertson. Very disturbing.

What, you may be wondering, does any of this have to do with author platform?

Well, when something is being concealed, I always wonder what it is. And I always assume it's bad. Because if it's not bad, why conceal it?

(Yes, I do live out in the country and sometimes things are indeed this simple for me.)

So when a friend and fellow writer's book went out on submission recently and was rejected by several editors because she didn't have an "author platform," I felt my innate distrust of buzz words grow.

I did some looking around to understand what exactly an author platform is. I learned that there are celebrity author platforms and online author platforms, fiction author platforms and non-fiction author platforms. 

An author platform is simply your soapbox. A combination of your speaking engagements, blog subscribers, book sales, publicity, reputation, contacts, marketing skill, and ability to deliver. Author platform then is your (caution, another suspicious word ahead) "brand." Ok, so now I understand the concept, but I still don't feel much better about it.

Because my friend with the rejected book is a very good writer and a super hard worker. And she was writing with authority and had something new and useful to say about a topic that not only had a huge audience, but one she knows a whole lot about. Parenting preschoolers. This book could change the way we parent our children. In amazing, true, confident and loving ways. But, it was her first book, and to the publishing world, she didn't have enough "platform" to sell it.

And that's my problem with the concept. She had the skill to write it, just not the public presence to sell it. She was a sober, reasoned, and skilled Cliff Robertson with no Willie maniacally grinning on her lap. She researched self-publishing but decided that it wasn't for her. She wanted to be conventionally published, preferably by one of the Big 6.

There are certainly books that tanked despite the author having a very big author platform. And so I started to wonder if the reverse was also true. If a writer can get published and sell well without much of an author platform at all.

In fiction you certainly can. Look at novels like, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski, Tinkers by Paul Harding, and Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon. But there are non-fiction surprises out there, too. Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand, Heaven is Real by Colton Burpo, and a new one, Go the F**k to Sleep by Adam Mansbach.

I understand the push by agents and publishers for their authors to have an author platform. I just think its overated. Maybe that's because my friend's story has a happy ending (And you know how I feel about those!)

An editor at one of the Bix 6 bought my friend's book. This editor has preschool children of her own and tried out some of my friend's ideas when her four-year-old had a meltdown. And they worked. Instantly.

When the screaming hit the eardrum, I'd be willing to bet all thoughts of branding and sales figures evaporated. Skill will always trump platform at such moments. As it should.

What other books suceeded without benefit of a big author platform?

 

 

Repurposing is My Weakness

Perhaps I have pilgrim DNA. Or, maybe it's The Great Depression memories my mother has frequently shared with me. (Lard on toast anyone?) Whatever, I abhor waste.

And when you have a dominant character trait like this, it spills over into everything. I abhor waste in my menu planning, waste in my writing, and waste in my powerbrokers.

Because of this, I have been known to repurpose. Some may even call it recycling. (Though I am not anywhere near the level of this guy.)

Still, that leftover rice? Cabbage rolls. That three thousand word stream-of-consciousness on violent and sudden loss? Chapter Two in my memoir. Political hornswogglers (see above) dominating the headlines? Crow repellant for my vulnerable and just-planted sweet corn.

There is something deeply rewarding about finding a purpose for what otherwise might seem useless. Just be careful not to do this or this.

Happy Endings = Badass

 



Last month I posted a happy ending lament. Ok, not a lament, a gripe. I griped that happy endings in contemporary literature aren't taken seriously often just because they are happy. Not because they don't work, not because they aren't satisfying, not because they ignore plot, but just because they are happy. And I think that is b.s.

I am tickled to see that I have some high falutin' company in that regard. AbeBooks.com has a list of Feel-Good Reads for those in need of some redemption and author Alexander McCall Smith wonders why literature has to be so gloomy. And novelist J. Robert Lennon not only likes happy endings, he respects them. Because they can be, his word, "badass." He talks about this in his Ward Six post, Gimme some happy.

I was lucky enough to have Lennon as a workshop instructor a few years ago. In the spring of 2004 his novel, Mailman had just been published, Library Journal compared him to Joseph Heller and Ken Kesey, and he was hired on to be an instructor at the Bear River Writer's Conference. I was the woman sitting in the Adirondack chair scribbling away like mad, trying to write down everything he said.

Seven years have passed, I'm still scribbling (and occasionally getting my badass on - see above) and I caught up with Lennon on his blog, Ward Six, just as he decided to shut it down. Ending, yes. Happy, no. To quote Axl Rose: Every rose has it's thorn.

Look Out Mama, There's A White Boat Comin' Up the River

Ever since I've been writing, people have asked me if I'm in a writer's group and I've always said no. Not that I haven't tried.

I've been in lots of meetings about writer's groups, emailed other writers to ask them if they were interested in a writer's group, tried to gather the women I'd met in various writers workshops into a writer's group, and even been recruited by other writer's groups to join up with them.

Still, somehow none of that ever stuck. Until now that is. Until (blaring trumpets and drum solo, please) the Powderfingers.

Finally, I'm in a writer's group and now I know what all the fuss is about. And, I wonder how I ever got along without our monthly get-togethers. Our group's name, by the way, comes from that Neil Young song about backwoods conflict, and being as we are from northern Michigan, the writers in my group are all about that.

I joined up to get some objective (and free) readers of my own work and for the comraderie. I'm pretty sure the other three women in the group joined for the very same reasons. And even though there are only four of us, we Powderfingers are kicking some serious literary ass.

Our veteran and Queen, Anne-Marie Oomen, fresh from finishing her third memoir, is  debuting Chatic Harmony, a collaborative work of dance, language and art honoring Gwen Frostic. Our poet, Teresa Scollon, has a new book of poems forthcoming and just won an NEA literature fellowship. Our pragmatist and close reader extraordinarre, Heather Shumaker just signed a deal with Penguin/Tarcher for her parenting book. (Yours truly turned in her memoir and is a ball of anxiety, rolling around hither and yon, waiting for feedback.)

Bully for us, you may be thinking. But here's the thing. None of us joined the group to get an agent, a publisher, or a grant. We joined up to work. To become better writers, better editors of our own and others' work, and to feel connected to a writer's community. Even a small one with four members who can only carve out enough time to meet once a month in the cafe of a local grocery store. Behind the donut case and across the aisle from the liquor.

And that's what I love the most about being a Powderfinger.  Our time together - however brief - still feels long term, as if it is a long-lasting part of a bigger whole, set off to the side from the momentary rush that sugar and book deals and alcohol and fellowships provide.

At this point, it's appropirate to give a nod to Mr. Young, for our namesake song and for this verse especially: "It don't look like they're here to deliver the mail."