Mardi's Link

5 Reasons to Fight the Fear

Fall is here in northern Michigan which means it's time to winterize. Time to put away the window air conditioners, time to cut back all the perrennials, time to add Stabil to the lawn mowers and the tillers, time to store the fishing boat.

Winter can be scary here along the 45th parallel if you're not prepared. Being prepared is a good way to fight that fear.

Watching my husband hitch up the boat trailer and move Moby Dick into the barn, it reminded me of what happened when he brought it out last spring. It was early May when he pulled off the tarp, swept off the cobwebs and dust, and rolled Moby -- an 18' Starcraft decked out with downriggers in the stern, fish finder, drink holder, and ship-to-shore raidio next to the steering wheel, and a big cooler bungie-corded at the bow -- into the sun.

I stood nearby and watched his grin spread. The man loves to fish. Then, something odd. Interrupting this annual ritual was an unexpected sound. Mewing. Mewing and hissing.

A barn cat had kittens over the winter and one of them was hiding deep in the boat's motor compartment. My husband spent more than an hour taking the whole back of his boat apart, but the kitten just kept squirming deeper and deeper. Eventually, the black bag of fuzz lodged itself into a recess too small for my husband's hands to fit into, and too far back for my arms to reach. We couldn't just leave it there but we couldn't get it out, either.

Enter my middle son, Luke.

His arms are long and thin, his hands dexterous, and his heart brave and kind. Which was all good, considering that this kitten was wild, afraid, and fully aware of the power of its teeth and its claws.

(It might be tempting here to remind me of the importance of spaying and neutering. It would be in vain. My pets have always been spayed and neutered but accomplishing this on a barn cat is tantamount to capturing a small panther.)

Gloved and resolved, Luke pried the kitten loose. Just after this photograph was taken, it spit in his face and shredded his gloves in appreciation of his heroism. She didn't trust him; she had no idea he was just trying to do the right thing. These days, trust seems just as rare in the human world. 

I was reminded of that this past weekend at the Grand Rapids Public Library's Book Fair. After giving a talk on "Funding the Writer's Life," a small line of people gathered to chat. I've found myself in such a line when I've gone to hear a writer speak, so now that I'm sometimes the one at the podium, it's interesting to experience it from the other perspective.

I was anticipating questions about literary contests, agent searches, and Kickstarter. I certainly wasn't expecting questions about copyright, but that's what I got.

The first three people in line asked me versions of the exact same thing: "I'm worried about editors stealing my idea. Do you copyright your work before you submit it?"

And it occurred to me that while trust is unthinkable for a kitten stuck inside Moby Dick, it can be just as difficult to master for a new writer trying to get published.

My answer to these three writers was probably not all that helpful. I told them that I'm a trusting person by nature, and so I send my work out, cross my fingers, then start a new project. I've published two books, I told them, plus hundreds of articles, essays, and opinion pieces, and I've never had anything stolen.

"Not that you know of," one writer said, walking away scowling.

I've spent some time thinking about this issue since then and here's how I wished I would have answered the question.

Which brings me, the long way round, to my Five Reasons to Fight the Fear:

1. Being afraid is no way to go through life. Think of the joy you're missing out on if you're constantly afraid, constantly thinking the worst of people, constantly expecting the scary to come true. Expectations are reality. If you expect the publishing industry to be a scary place where everyone is out to cheat you and no one values your work, you'll act accordingly and surely find the one bad seed in the sunflower. Try focusing on how happy the whole flower is instead. Try a positive attitude. That might sound hokey, but try it anyway.

2. Being afraid is no way to gain readers. Think about the books, essays, magazines you like to read. Is it all paranoia all the time? Of course not. Even peoople who like to read horror or thrillers enjoy them because of the contrast between safety and danger. If all they had was fear, they'd be boring. Your attitude permeates your work. And if you come to your work from a place of fear, your work will be one dimensional and boring. Fear comes from a sense of scarcity. Ask yourself, is what you're really afraid of that you don't have any more ideas?

3. Your writing is already copyrighted. According to copyright law, your original work is copyrighted the second you put it into print. Note I said "print," not "publish." You own the rights to your work until you give them away or sell them.

4. Editors are your friends. Chances are, the editor you're sending your work to has spent years honing his or her craft. They live for the day they find something fresh, something helpful, something entertaining to publish. Finding good work is a reflection on them, on their taste, their eye, their connections. Editors see hundreds, sometimes thousands of ideas a week. Theft is a product of scarcity and scarcity is not an issue for editors. They'd like nothing better than to open your submission and find something publishable.

5. Fear is an excuse not to write. It's easy to say that you haven't sent your work out because you're afraid it will be stolen. It's much more difficult to spend the time crafting something of value, revising it, researching markets, following submission guidelines and sending out work you care about and worked hard on. Fight the fear with preparedness and hard work.

So then, about that kitten.

After Luke freed it from the boat, he put it into a plastic bucket, I covered the bucket with a towel, and carried it, scratching and hissing, back to the barn. Once inside, I took off the towel and gently tipped the bucket on its side. The kitten fled into the dark. A few weeks later, a sighting. It was running behind it's mother in the field, hunting mice.

MFA: Master of Frigging Anything

I have always thought that online nit-picking was silly.

I mean, Twitter wars? Facebook fights? Grow up, people.

I enjoy social networking, mostly for keeping up with friends and family, funny one-liners from my favorite writers (Moms Who Drink and Swear!) and photos of picturesque places around the Midwest. But if I want bickering, I can just tell my sons to mow the lawn or clean the bathroom in the real world. I don't need the internet for that.

But then I stumbled on a seemingly innocuous question (it's always the innocent looking conversations that get me into trouble . . . ) in the Book Publishing Professionals group on Linkedin.

"I was accepted into an M.F.A. in Creative Writing program, at a senior stage of my life, but a junior stage of my writing," asked a group member named Phillip F. "I feel I am starting at the right time; others say I'm too late. Ideas?"

Bring on the warm fuzzies, I thought to myself, and the responses were almost all encouraging. "Sometimes it takes a lifetime of experience before you have something worthwhile to say," was a standard reply. 

Then, this reply showed up in the discussion: "DO NOT PAY FOR AN MFA," someone named "Amy Charles" lectured. (Amy, lowercase letters are your friend.) "Unless you really want to make a gift of money to the university and the professors in the writing program, who make more money than you likely ever will from writing."

About this same time, I clicked over to some blabbering in the London Review of Books that advised writers considering an MFA to get a real degree.

And I am here to tell you, I nit-picked. And I bickered. Since when does someone named "Amy" know what's right for every single writer? Since when does the London Review of Books get to compare Master of Fine Art in Creative Writing programs to "Stuff White People Like" and get away with it?

Not here and not now. I'm paying for an MFA, I'm white, and you know what? I don't like that stuff. Not at all.

Blanket statements get me riled up because no matter how well intentioned, they are the voice of the oppressor. Do as I say, or else.

Well, my life to date is practically a living, breathing monument to doing the exact opposite of what people in authority have demanded. And you know what? Things have turned out even better than I could have hoped for. And, unintentioned side benefit? My struggles have made a half-way decent story.

Looks like I've made it this far; there's no reason for me to start listening to bad advice now. Guess what, Amy? I'm currently a tuition-paying MFA student in Queens University of Charlotte's low residency program. When I graduate in another couple of years with my MFA degree, I plan to be a Maelstrom of Future Action. If I really apply myself, Marshal of Funky Authority is not out of the question. And maybe, just maybe, if I keep up with all the required reading, this intense and devoted study of writing will truly make me a Master of Frigging Anything. 

You don't earn a title like that by paying attention to blanket statements that begin with "don't," "can't," or "won't."

Hey, stranger things have happened. And you know what? Most of them have even been good ones.

 

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?

 

Wiffle Ball Rules & Memoir

The first day of June and this (not-so-very) young woman's fancy turns to . . . Wiffle Ball. After extra innings this weekend with the family, it occurs to me that there are parallels between the rules of memoir and the rules of Wiffle.

And hey, Mortenson, Frey, Defonseca, Khouri, Jones and Rosenblat. You are not on my team.

From the Official Wiffle Ball Inc. rulebook: "The WIFFLE ball is thrown like a baseball and will curve very easily. Experiment with different grips and releases to find the pitches that work best for you. There is no need to throw the ball hard to produce results!"

"Experiment" doesn't mean invent out of thin air. Plus, there is no need to lie so hard to produce results. Truth can be thrown like a baseball and will curve easily. Curve, not spin. That's what craft, emotion, imagination, and work is for. It's for gently curving truth with the wind of your words into a compelling narrative. That's where home plate really is, anyway.

Here are some memoirists who hit home runs and whom I would draft in a Michigan minute: Rick Bragg, Nick Flynn, Thomas Lynch, Rick Bragg again, and Noel Perrin. And I can't forget the gals; Anne LaMott, Annie Dillard, Joan Didion, Mary Karr and Rhoda Janzen. Now that there is what I call a Wiffle Ball team.

Here's how a game with these folks would go down: LaMott would give the convocation then Bragg would lead off the game with a Sourthern-style double. Didion would need just a single pitch to tap a perfect sacrifice fly ball to put Bragg on third. Karr would get the RBI for her triple effort, and Janzen would show up late to the dugout but she'd have a plate of fresh Zwiebach with her to share with the team. Instead of taking his at bat, Lynch would announce the game in his hypnotic Irish brogue, while Flynn tossed Janzen's extra dozen or so Zwiebachs to hungry fans and Perrin grazed his sheep in the outflied. Out in right field, a butterfly would land on Dillard's glove so she could observe its compound eyes up close.

This game is, of course, fiction. I may have wanted it to happen but it didn't. The fake memoirs we've all winced over of late feel just like my imagined Wiffle Ball game. Authors Mortenson, Frey, Defonseca, Khouri, Jones and Rosenblat may have wanted the things in their books to have happened, but they didn't.

I have no idea whether or not author Tracy Seely plays Wiffle Ball. Her new memoir (one I'm looking forward to reading) is titled, My Ruby Slippers, not My Ruby Sneakers. But she does have some illuminating things to say about memoir rules here.