And I can't believe I was here first. A year ago, I didn't know what a blog was, and probably still wouldn't know if I hadn't decided I needed to learn some web development. But she's here, and I've linked her blog in my 'and so on' section, but she posted this reply to my 'Damn!' post of 6/21.
Nice piece. (Leave that alone...) Seriously, the blocked-writer-but-unblocked-editor in me says, send this thing to a magazine that prints essays/creative nonfiction whatnot in December (lead time!) and see what happens for next year.
I started to respond thus:
This post or my blog in general? I tend to blog here because it's simpler than updating the Lobster or figuring out how to make it interactive.
In any case, I tend to feel guilty for the time I spend putting my 'world view' on this Big Chief tablet instead of working on the novel. Or participating in one of the three online workshops I'm in.
And then I decided that if I wanted that kind of back and forth in my comments, I would have to learn php and set up a damned bulletin board, and I'm not ready for the 'net to take up even more of my life.
But as to Lizmo's point, or Yorkist's reply to my Father's Day blog, for that matter, I really don't think of myself as a remarkable writer. That probably sounds like I'm fishing for compliments, but I've never been much for fishing. If I want to sit outside and drink beer, I don't see the need to burden the experience with bait, tackle, fishing licenses, etc. And since the only people outside my house that have ever read my blog, as far as I know, have already complimented my writing, I'm probably not even on a bank where additional compliments could be caught.
So if I don't think I'm a great writer, why am I spending time and energy on a novel? I can blog here for free, why do I need the constant reminders that I'm not a great writer in the form of rejection slips and no-replies?
As I mention in one of the rarely visited pages of Lobster Land I've been 'starting' to write a novel as long as I can remember and in a way, even before. I'm in love with storytelling, probably even more than I'm in love with music or beer. It's beyond love, it's addiction. A junkie is certain they'll die if they don't get their fix, and they even have biological/chemical evidence for the claim, and that's the way I am with stories.
There was a time when I didn't re-read books, but a lot of that had to do with two factors: I was reading crappy books, and I have a sharp memory. Hard to dig hard on a Ludlum riff when you remember all the surprises. But something like 'Underworld,' you can read that as many times as you like and you'll find shit you missed. It's like watching a clever movie and seeing the hidden guns you missed. Every time I watch 'Fight Club,' seems like I see another
It's that way with 'Survivor,' Palahniuk's best so far in my view. And I don't know if I'll ever tired of reading Mark Richard's 'Strays,' even though I know all the plot elements by heart.
Em asks me to tell her stories about when I was little. This is a family trait, I hounded my father for the same, and he picked it up from his father, a man I never met. My Dad's father died when Dad was a freshman in High School, and unlike a modern family, that translated into him being dead long before my memory picks up.
But Em doesn't say, 'I heard that one.' If anything, I have to sell her on a new story, because she never tires of hearing about me eating the jar of cake frosting on the sly, trying to hide the evidence, and eventually getting busted. My Mom always kept a box of cake mix and a jar of frosting in the pantry, so I don't know why I'd think she would fail to miss it. In Mom's universe, it's impossible for the pantry to have a box of cake mix and no jar of frosting. When you use them, you buy replacements for both. Not right away, on your next scheduled grocery trip, which is always the same day. I don't know if we had meatloaf every Tuesday, but I'm certain there was a circadian rhythm to the salmon patties that only my Mom actually liked.
But the stuff I write for the blogosphere, I try to treat it as a diary. If I write assuming I have no audience, I write less self-consciously. But it’s still the leftovers, from times I can’t bring myself to cope with the edits of ‘Wealth Effects.’ That manuscript is in such disorder, I forbid anyone to read it if I die as I damned well ought to have three years ago next week. It’s an incomplete, worse than an ABD. Someone who doesn’t know all the backstory I’ve cut or the way I want to reconcile some of its gaps, someone who isn’t me, well if I was still alive I’d probably be having to worry about SRS coming for my kids. My wife might divorce me, and not for the good reasons I’ve given her, but for the un-reasons that are in the manuscript as it presently exists.
Remember the TV show WKRP? It was one of my faves as a pre-adolescent, not sure how it would play to the adult version of me. But I remember an episode where Johnny Fever was giving advice to Bailey about her own show. ‘Pretend you’re talking to just one person,’ he told her. ‘Which in this case is probably true.’ Of course the show demonstrated that Johnny had an audience, an obedient one at that, and it freaked him out so bad he almost couldn’t continue being a DJ. That’s how I approach my blog.
This is the leftovers, from times I:
- can’t focus on my book.
- am tempted to burn my book.
- have had a couple of beers and feel unfocused and blabby.
- have some personal shit I want to get off my chest but don’t want to go to the effort of fictionalizing.
- would probably be in some bar talking to a stranger but I mostly don’t live like that and couldn’t afford the tab if I did.
So basically, I don't feel like I'm a great writer, but I keep plugging away at my current novel, trying to knock the dust off it. My stepbrother is now in the same town as me, and he makes a good workshop, because he doesn't talk back. He groans at times, and I feel like if he makes that kind of effort I should make an effort to read meaning into it.
Barry Hannah's first novel was a finalist for the National Book Award, and no one's heard of him, even though he wrote nine more books after that. I'm definitely not saying that 'Wealth Effects' is going to be on a 'Geronimo Rex' caliber as much as I'm saying, if I don't aim for that home-run, I'll never get on base.
When I finally start pestering agents (way behind my New Year's goal of next month) about my novel, I aim for it to be polished.
Which is to say a better example of my writing than anything I put up in the Blogosphere. Or for that matter, my numerous non-fiction publicaitons to date. When I crashed on Karl's couch, he pulled up a CD review I'd done and asked why I hadn't given him any props for taking me to that show, where I first heard Steve Cardenas.
But hearing him read me aloud, in a publication that exists in 10,000 magazines as well as on the 'net, it hurt my ears. I couldn't believe I'd ever written something so childish.
So I'm no great writer, but I'm at least improving at it. Maybe by the time I'm 130 I'll have something I won't be ashamed of having in print...
2 comments:
I was actually trying to post to your father's day thing, but no matter. Please go read Anne Lamott's essay about shitty first drafts. Actually, just read all of her book Bird by Bird. I read that any time I can't stand my own writing and think that writers shouldn't be as weird as I am. She always sets me right.
Ah, I'll have to look up the Lamott once I settle up with the Library hit-squad.
I miss the good old days, when the library kept records on pencil and paper, and you could just lie, say you returned that book or paid that fine. Now they play hardball, almost as bad as the video store.
Just read 'Writing the Breakout Novel' by Donald Maas. I normally don't go for how-to books on writing, they tend to be written by people who only write who-to books on writing. Or by celebrities who have been told their worst vices are their greatest assets, and with the royalty checks, why wouldn't they believe it?
Amy Hempel and Barry Hannah say they don't revise a lot, but I think they tend to think about it a lot before they put the sentence down. At the other extreme, Craig Clevenger talks about twenty rewrites, and I've seen Palahniuk claim thirty before an agent sees it. His latest, I don't think it got that kind of workover. Some of the short stories in it are very entertaining, but the connective material and so-called poems are awful.
I blog diary-style, with ficiton I try to work out the conflicts, experiences, memories, etc., in my life and mind through allegory and myth. And in a way, that's more personal and revealing, which is probably why I put as much worry into it as I do.
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