Swirly Girl

A Million Possibilities

[Taken in Kauai this summer.]

On the one hand, when I read the bios of writers published in American Short Fiction and the resume of Mary Karr on the back of Sinners Welcome, her latest book of poetry, I wonder what area of my brain is so delusional as to believe I have the right to call myself a writer (or maybe I'm taking the wrong approach - maybe I need to consider that my entire brain is delusional enough to make me think I have the credibility needed to say this with conviction.)  Either way, I have been walking around lately asking myself, "Who am I kidding?" 

But.

I have also been walking around lately with a story swirling around in my head, a fictional story I have decided I need to actually write, and I have been obsessed with it ever since I started.  Obsessed, as in you might see me in the grocery store looking intently at the selection of breakfast cereals, but really I am envisioning a scene in my story wondering if it makes sense, considering how I might make it more real, examining different arrangements of words and how each composition might best express the mood, idea and feeling I am trying to convey.  I have been sitting down at my computer to work on revisions at, say, 11:00am, and the next time I look up at my clock it is almost 2:00pm.  Each time I give this story my full attention, time vanishes as quickly as a child's attention at the sight of an ice cream cone.

I have never written a piece of fiction before, aside from a couple of short stories required of me in high school, and I'm still not quite sure what to make of it, and not at all sure if what I'm writing is compelling, interesting or artful.  More than I am asking myself who I'm kidding, I'm wondering, "Is this a story worth telling?"  For while I literally feel electricity in the air as I work on it, I still do not know if that is because the stars are aligning such that a perfect beam of light is shining down upon my creative process or because I'm merely attached to a mishmash of ideas that only make sense to me and I'm giddy with the power I feel at being able to create absolutely anything I want with words.  Another way to express this experience is to say I feel like I am on a strange high, like I'm buzzed, drunk on all the possibilities, on this quest to write a story that makes sense and has meaning.

It is still a landscape of unknowns, but I'm daring to explore those fields, daring to wander out too far than perhaps I'm meant to, well aware I might have to make my way back to familiar territory with my hat in my hand, story a mess, nothing to show for all the time and energy I've been giving this endeavor.

But that's the deal, and I'm eager to run out into that field blindly, hair waving in the wind, no sunscreen, arms spread wide open, screaming like a wild banshee.  Sometimes our fiercest breakthroughs happen in the midst of total silence; when the howling of our souls lets us know what it means to be alive.

"When my thirst got great enough
    to ask, a stream welled up inside;
        some jade wave buoyed me forward;
            and I found myself upright

in the instant, with a garden
    inside my own ribs aflourish.  There, the arbor leafs.
        The vines push out plump grapes.
            You are loved, someone said.  Take that

and eat it."

~Excerpt from Disgraceland by Mary Karr

My Job

[Plumeria :: Taken last week in Kauai, Hawaii]

It is not an easy thing to describe feelings, philosophies and ideas with mere words.  How often has it been said that "words can't express" x or y - that "words aren't enough"or "can't convey" what we hold in our hearts?  As I was thinking about all the different stories I would be bringing back home with me from a journey to a beautiful island where I drank sunshine, spent hours in the ocean, and felt love oozing from my pores every minute, this phrase kept coming up.  As I collected ideas, they came to me in bits and pieces like broken coral and seashells along the shores of Kauai.  When I picked them up to consider where they might take me when I got back home, I kept thinking about how difficult it would be to describe the texture and feel of my emotions, epiphanies and transformations.  But after reading the first short story in Bruno Schulz's The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories, and nearly fainting over the way he turned words into a paintbrush, creating an image of a basket of fruit and vegetables like I've never experienced, I realized so much was possible, so much could, in fact, be expressed, explained and brought to life with words.  And that this is my job...this is my task now that I am back home at my keyboard, stories spilling out of my suitcase, still strewn all over the floor, having left a trail of scattered letters and images and thoughts all over my house.  It is my job to figure this out, and decide how to piece together all of these elements in way that leaves no doubt in the reader's mind what kind of joy swirled through my veins this week, and how it managed to seep through my skin in the first place.  That is my job, that is my task, to not just move beyond the "words can't express" roadblock, but take a sledgehammer to it, smash it to bits and find the way to create a connection between myself and whoever reads my stories, whereby the reader reads my unique arrangement of words and simply says, "Yes, I see."

"On those luminous mornings Adela returned from the market, like Pomona emerging from the flames of the day, spilling from her basket the colorful beauty of the sun - the shiny pink cherries full of juice under their transparent skins, the mysterious black morellos that smelled so much better than they tasted, apricots in whose golden pulp lay the core of long afternoons.  And next to that pure poetry of fruit, she unloaded sides of meat with their keyboard of ribs swollen with energy and strength, and seaweeds of vegetables like dead octopuses and squids - the raw material of meals with a yet undefined taste, the vegetative and terrestrial ingredients of dinner, exuding a wild and rustic smell."  -Bruno Schulz

I Am Here

One of the things I learned about in the Personal Essay class I took earlier this year was the process of submitting my work for magazines, anthologies, contests, websites and other publications that accept personal essays. Our teacher explained that we should have a plan in place for the day a rejection comes in.  In other words, as soon as one piece is rejected, we should already know where we want it to go next and get it in the mail immediately.

This is all still new to me, and for the moment I am working with a small number of finished pieces, but I have put my teacher’s advice into practice and am starting to develop my own small database of statistics.  My spreadsheet shows which essay has been sent where, what the end result was and where everything is at any given time.  I've submitted to magazines, essay contests, anthologies and websites.  I've been published, I've been rejected, and I've received my first check for a published piece of writing.  In other words, I've officially begun my journey as a writer, reached a couple of milestones, and see very clearly the wide open expanse before me.  Some days that feels overwhelming, other days thrilling, but most of the time I try to stay right where I am.

Structuring my life around writing is still something I am figuring out, and I feel like a toddler just beginning to learn how to write her own name.  I have, of course, set big goals for myself, which involve nothing less than my byline in The New Yorker, Sun magazine and the Modern Love column of The New York Times.  Oh, right, and another book that someday ranks up there with May Sarton and Anne Lamott and enables me to participate in a book panel discussion with Elizabeth Gilbert and Dave Eggers.

So there you have it.  My Big Dream List For What I’d Like To Accomplish As A Writer.

But as I said, I still feel like a toddler, and know it is going to take some time before The New Yorker comes calling and I’m sharing café au laits with Ms. Gilbert.  More importantly, none of my big bold dreams might ever come to fruition, and then what am I to do with myself?  As Nemo might say, “Just keep writing, just keep writing…”

I realized this weekend that I need to remember how precious this time is, this time as a toddler writer just beginning to find my way and figure out how to get where I want to go.  There are so many steps between where I am now and all those big sparkly dreams, and I have to take special care of this little bud inside of me that has only begun to blossom.  The New Yorker will always be there, and every rejection I receive is validation that I’m writing, I’m putting it out there, I’m doing the work writers do. 

I also need to carefully manage the pressure I put on myself to submit, submit, submit.  My goal for this summer is to create a beautiful book proposal, and maybe right now that means I don’t worry about where these essays of mine will go next.  Maybe they need to take a summer hiatus until my proposal is on its way.  Goals are good and deadlines motivate me, but too many at one time can muddy up the waters. 

My mission, more than anything, is to become a good writer, and that has to be the foundation of everything I do as a writer.  That has to be the driving force behind writing, editing, mailing out, getting published, and getting rejected.  That is the part that needs to remain precious rather than the pursuit of lines on my resume and publishing contracts.  Without that, my List of Big Dreams is hollow.  Without that, it’s all for ego.

Warriors

For the record:  personal essay writing is not for the faint of heart.  One must be willing to go to emotional extremes that are far beyond comfortable, the same way it might feel traversing to all of the extremes within our earth's atmosphere without oxygen or water, from the depths of the ocean to the heat of the Sahara to heights beyond Everest.  Not only that, but, as is true with any kind of writing, one must be willing to mold and shape a piece of writing through sheer force of will and dogged determination.  In other words, hard work and sustained effort.  Draft after draft after draft, writing ten pages only to delete eight of them, knowing that without the stumblings of first drafts, second, third and tenth drafts are not possible.

In personal essay writing, one does not just peruse the aisles of memories that shaped one's sense of loss, joy, trauma, fear and beauty.  One pulls them off the shelves, wipes the dust away, puts them under a microscope, and searches for the perfect way to express why they were meaningful, horrifying, magnficent and transformative.  Anyone willing to look that closely at one's own mishaps, fumbles, triumphs and vulnerabilities needs the same kind of courage the Cowardly Lion was so desperate for in The Wizard of Oz.  Times ten.  It is messy work, but when that perfect string of words is brought together in a way that lets the reader know they are being given a naked glimpse into the soul of another human being, well, that - that is simply magic.  Personal essay writing, at its best, is about a level of honesty with nary a layer of gloss or protective film.  It is about laying bare one's beliefs, dreams and philosophies, rays of light that are filtered through stories about things like Homecoming dances, marathons, rock concerts and chocolate sodas.

I had a long conversation with a dear friend today, and one of the last things she said hit me like a rainbow-colored lightening bolt right to my core.  She was speaking of her own writing, but I will present it here as a message for all of us, because I believe it is a jewel of wisdom everyone could use.  I am paraphrasing, but it went something like this:

"When we can trust the love we have - when we know, not just believe, that we have enough love - we are free to write honestly, even knowing that the more honestly we share, express and expose ourselves, the easier we are making it for some people to not like us.  This does not mean rejection or criticism will be easy, but it means we always have the safety net of genuine love and support to fall back on.  With this safety net, we are able to write as honestly as possible, and it is this kind of honesty that makes for the very best writing."

This is from the wise and magnificent Blue Poppy, who just yesterday wrote her final blog post, which is one of those brave, bittersweet pieces of writing that makes my heart sing and weep at the same time.

{sigh}

But I brought up the topic of personal essay writing for another reason:  To say thank you.  Last week I attended my last session of the Personal Essay class I have been taking since January, and as I walked out of the classroom, looking ahead to the next class I've already signed up for, I couldn't help but think, "Shit, it might just be all downhill from here, because that was pretty damn near perfect."  An insightful, inspiring teacher and a group of fellow students who were willing to brave the storms, shine a light on their deepest scars and read aloud pieces of writing they knew to be far from finished.  It was as if we all walked into a perfect little bubble every Wednesday night where every challenge given to us was offered on a soft velvet pillow that said "You are safe" in gold embroidery.  In this sense of safety, everyone was brave, sharing their light and their dark and much in between.

It is supposed to be true that an entity such as a writing class be a space of respect, safety and encouragement, but this is not always so.  It just so happens that I managed to land myself amongst a group of individuals who cared that this be true, who aimed to create a space that held each of us as gently as possible, and in that holding, brought us all a little higher, closer to our dreams as writers, closer to our very best selves.

Finding My Rushmore

["United Nations" Scene from Rushmore]

I had my writing class tonight, so sleep is still a distant idea.  It is now after 10:30pm, and I am usually sound asleep by now, but every Wednesday for the past eight Wednesdays this has been my routine.  I come home from class wide awake and energized to the point of feeling like I could write my next book before dawn.  This evening was made all the more tingling by the fact that I read one of my pieces in class, an intense piece that I've been working on obsessively since last week.  I started on it less than a week ago and am already on my eighth draft, and after tonight's comments and questions it will continue to evolve, grow, and change course.  It is as if I was given a gift last week when I wrote the first word of the piece, a gift wrapped in layer upon layer of colorful paper.  With each draft, a new layer is peeled back, and I don't know what I will find underneath.  I could uncover just one more layer and find the gift I have been searching for - the meaning and direction of the piece - or I might have to keep going and get to a point where I discover I have been unwrapping not one box but two or three.  This piece has a ways to go, and that is fine.  I feel this way about my writing in general.  There is so much more I have to learn and understand about writing, about my own writing, about my weaknesses and strengths, tendencies and shortcuts.  I am learning not only how to write but who I am as a writer.

My work as an artist has given me command of a number of tools I can use as a writer.  The idea of spending time on one draft only to alter it beyond recognition in the second, third and fourth drafts does not bother me.  I have spent hours and days on works of art that eventually got covered up by a new layer of paint, scraped off or otherwise completely covered over.  On one of my current mannequin projects, I spent all morning gluing on the first layer of papers - covering the entire torso with tiny, hand torn pieces - only to have them all fall off the next day.  (Note to self:  make sure glue to water ratio is carefully measured).  I also know when to walk away from a piece - artwork or writing - when I'm feeling stuck.  In those instances I have to listen to my instincts when faced with the choice of trying to push through or letting it sit quietly while I work on something else. 

I am still learning how to be more flexible as a writer, still trying to let myself write everything I need to write on a subject before I try to figure out what it means.  This is my biggest challenge - an area where I am getting in my own way of digging as deep as I can into all the tiny details that make up a story.  Searching for meaning is what I do pretty much all the time, so it will be interesting to see if I can let loose the reins on trying to decipher what every bloody experience in my life means as I learn how to write for longer stretches of time without needing to know what it is about.

I had a moment in class tonight where I almost burst out laughing - at myself.  I was feeling a bit nervous right before I read, and suddenly imagined finishing my piece and having everyone in the class burst into applause, teary-eyed and touched by how perfectly I placed every word.  It immediately reminded me of the opening scene in my favorite movie of all time.  I knew my piece wasn't perfect, knew it needed more work, knew every word would never be "perfectly" placed, because what does that even mean?  But it was a funny thought that calmed my nerves, made me think of my favorite movie and made me think of my favorite lines from that movie:

Herman Blume:  What's the secret, Max?
Max Fischer:  The secret?
Herman Blume:  Yeah, you seem to have it pretty figured out.
Max Fischer:  The secret, I don't know... I guess you've just gotta find something you love to do and then... do it for the rest of your life. For me, it's going to Rushmore.

Broken Streak

[May Sarton and Theopa Beets :: Photos taken last week]

I have been down for the count for the past few days, parked on the couch and sick for the first time in four years.  I am not quite 100% yet, but on the mend, working through a mellow to do list and easing back into work today.  I will continue to take it easy, but as soon as I feel totally recovered my first order of business needs to be exercise, as almost every meal I've had since Saturday has had the word cheese in it - grilled cheese, mac & cheese, cheese crackers.  Ah, how nice it is to revert back to my eight-year old self now and then, camped out vertically with my favorite pillow, blanket, DVDs and crossword puzzles, able to hide from the world, if only for a few days.

I uploaded the latest photos of my current mannequin projects.  I now have three in the works:  May Sarton, Theopa Beets and India.  I also received some exciting news last week - one of my essays will be published in next month's Skirt! magazine.  My first published, paid piece.  It is a milestone for me, and I am proud to be making my start in the writing world in such a colorful, inspiring publication.

“Trust in what you love, continue to do it, and it will take you where you need to go.”  -Natalie Goldberg

Intersections

I am working on a piece of writing, one I started early last week, that has grown more fascinating, intense and heartbreaking as I've delved into it.  It has to do with all the letters I received when I was running Swirly, and I am still in the stage of pouring words on page without worrying too much about what it all means.  Or at least trying not to worry too much about what it means, and I say that because my teacher has already - after just three classes - totally nailed me for being a tad too eager to figure out the meaning behind every new story.

So I am trying not to think too much about the ultimate structure of the story, but old habits die hard, so I've already dipped my toe into the process of mapping out the journey this story might take.  It is not a complicated story as much as it is a story ripe with interesting tangents and themes, filled to the brim with bits and pieces of insights into the human experience.  My challenge is figuring out how to pare it down and organize everything in a way that gives the reader a smooth sail through all the elements of a story that pulls fruit from many different trees.

I printed out what I had written so far yesterday and after some small edits, began cutting the pages apart - literally - by key topics.  I have basically put a number of small stories in one big story without any thought of arrangement or order, and now I need to start working on how this piece will flow.  I am probably getting ahead of myself, but to sit here at my desk with a stack of odd-shaped manuscript pages, knowing I am now free to play with the order as much as I want, gives me a giddy feeling.  It is kind of trippy to take my visual approach to creativity and bring it to a written approach, where the way a story looks on the page is just as important as the way it is written.  I am playing with using white space and imagining the paragraphs I've now physically separated as mobile entities that can move around as often as necessary to get it just right.  It feels more like a mystery to solve than a problem to dissect, where the story will tell me where it wants to go as long as I'm willing to sit still, listen and do the work.

Naked

Hello Lovelies...four new beauties who arrived at the end of last week.  While I haven't touched a panel or canvas since last month, I have been pondering oodles of ideas for more mannequin projects, so I decided to stop messing around and get down to business.  I'll keep track of the progress here over the next many weeks (or months, however it goes).  Today I have an entire day with nothing on my calendar so these beauties are going to get a lot of loving attention.

I must also carve out time today for my homework.  I am diving deeper and deeper into the Personal Essay class I am taking, in my writing, reading, and explorations of possible topics to write about.  Over the weekend I spent time with Writing Down the Bones, Plant Dreaming Deep and The Art of the Personal Essay.  In between that was some free-for-all timed writing (a lot of griping and groaning on those pages) and expansion of pieces I began last week.  Our instructions are to explain, describe and tell the stories of various memories we wrote down on the first day of class, and this week I have gotten pretty sidetracked by questions of why these stories have stayed with me in the first place.  Yesterday I moved very quickly from telling a story to a meandering along questions of "What is it about this story that is compelling to me?" and "How is this story related to the other one I've been working on this week, a story about nothing more than a breeze?"  My writing about certain events in my life easily slips into writing about the writing of the stories...what am I supposed to glean from these moments in time that have somehow managed to stay clearer in my memory bank than others?

So today I am committed to working on yet another story, but this time sticking to the story.  Doing whatever I have to do to let go of wondering why this memory is important, what it means beneath the surface.  I do not aim to squash down my tendency to dig deeper into my experiences, but in the first two pieces of writing for this week I feel like I have taken a handful of various seeds and tossed them haphazardly into the wind.  My instinct is telling me that those pages have a lot of great material, but I need to let it all sit for a while and do the work it needs to do to pop up through the soil and give me a better idea of what I really have to work with.  In the meantime, I will try to practice simply telling a story, and letting that be enough.

In these first two pieces I feel like I peeled back the layers in a way I'm not sure I ever have, and in this unveiling have exposed pieces of my past that have not seen sunlight in well over two decades.  I had a moment in one piece of writing where I shifted from a perspective that was very much outside of myself to one that was completely in my own skin, looking out through 16-year old eyes at all the details of the house I lived in, what my parents were doing, what sounds I heard.  What was so extraordinary about this is the way the energy of these thoughts changed, how my mind suddenly became incredibly quiet and my senses were able to hear and feel every tiny detail in my memory.  You know that buzzing sound you hear when a stereo is on and the volume is turned up, but no CD is in the player so all you hear is a steady, deep hum?  Imagine that volume knob being turned all the way down, and it is only then that you realize how loud that hum was.  This is how that moment felt, that I turned a corner in my memory and made the choice to examine one very specific part of my past and that volume knob went all the way down, and suddenly I saw things with fresh eyes and a clearer view.  Everything became very still and very quiet, and I was free to walk around and take notes.

In these journeys through my past I find myself feeling rather vulnerable, like I am walking through time bare-skinned - no combat boots, no armor, nothing to shield me from experiences that might be unpleasant or downright horrifying.  I keep having to remind myself I am free to share or not share whatever I am writing, and in that freedom trying to be brave, to not shy away from stories that are dark or sad or angry or shameful.  The fact that I am reaching spaces that feel deeply uncomfortable is a good sign.  I know the stronger the resistance I feel the more important it is I push myself farther.  It feels silly to talk about needing courage to write, but sometimes that is exactly what is needed - courage to sit still with things we don't understand, courage to let a day we were scared re-play in our mind like a scratchy film shown on a flimsy white sheet.

Swimming

As I drove home last night after my second writing class ended, I felt as if I were floating in a sea of stories - memories from childhood, college, last week and eight years ago, experiences, snippets and brief flashes of time that all seemed to be bubbling up at once as I swooped along Sunset Boulevard in the darkness.  Even the act of driving in a car by myself at night evoked memories from high school, a time during which I often dropped off my friends after a movie or a party and drove all over town listening to music.  Even back then I wanted time alone to process what I was experiencing; perhaps those quiet drives planted the seeds for my life as a writer today.

All these stories began to feel overwhelming last night as I made my way home.  Instead of feeling them gently brush past my feet just beneath the surface of a crystal blue body of water, I imagined a swath of ocean filled with debris – tables, chairs, a dollhouse, a bright yellow globe-shaped clock radio…ballet slippers, a German Shepherd, and a silver VW bug, all crowding around me, threatening to send me drowning.  It was a struggle to stay afloat amongst all these stories floating and bobbing and bursting up from the depths.

In Plant Dreaming Deep, May Sarton speaks of "experience [as] the fuel."  She elaborates by saying, "I would live my life burning it up as I go along, so that at the end nothing is left unused, so that every piece of it has been consumed in the work."  My writing has been fed by my own experiences, memories and interpretations of them from the beginning.  I have always been far too fascinated by the truth of my own stories - and those of everyone I know - to think about trying to create new ones.  When I re-read that sentence, it sounds terribly narcissistic, but it isn't about being so fascinated with ME as much as it is having a compulsion to dissect all my own points of resistance, my fears, quirks, blocks, beliefs and habits.  It isn't about looking adoringly in the mirror, but about stepping outside of myself and observing my own behavior, attitudes and reactions.

This writing class, more than anything else, is helping me do what I most need to do - write every single day about chapters from my life and what they have meant to me.  Each moment is a thread in the quilt, and my work as a writer is to follow these trails and see where they take me.  The afternoon when I rode horses on a beach in Australia in 1994 can be traced directly back to my 8th grade English class in the fall of 1981 when my best friend brought in photos from her family's European vacation.  Seeing those pictures lit a fire in my heart that evolved into an intense passion for travel, and I remember as if it were yesterday the decision I made then and there to see the world.  Did anyone else at school that day have a personal awakening, a revolution in their heart?  Can anyone else point to that classroom as the setting for a moment in time when a significant part of who they are today burst through the soil and began to blossom?

It might feel a tad daunting at the moment to think about wading through all the detritus filling my peripheral vision right now, but as with anything else, the best course of action is to simply begin.  To pick one object, one story, out of a sea of thousands and write about it, and on the next day, write about another one.  On and on the process will continue, and in the spilling out of words on a page, certain patterns will emerge.  As I wrote in my notebook last night during class, my work now is to pluck one petal at a time and explore all the details in each, letting them flutter gently down to the ground when I am finished, where they will nourish the soil beneath and help new stories grow.

Homework

[Taken in Raleigh, NC last week.]

I have homework...every day for the next solid week.  Even weekends.  Weekends!  But I have to say I felt like a bit of a writing geek when our teacher was telling us about this "boot camp" she wanted to put us through.  As I sat there listening to her discuss projects, prompts, assignments and readings all I could think was "Yes, yes and more yes!" 

What a nerd.

I was then reminded of the freedom of college life, where before my 7:00 - 10:00pm class began I must admit I was ever so slightly nervous about having to walk across campus back to my car alone, only to find people everywhere as I strolled to the parking garage after class ended.  And then I remembered - "Right, when you're a college student you (most likely) don't have, you know, husbands and wives and kids and car payments...mortgages and whatnot."  I then had the sudden impulse to run screaming through the groups of students "Enjoy your freedom!!!  Savor it for all it's worth!!  You are wild and beautiful and full of hope and possibility!"

I know this sounds like I am feeling nostalgic for my college days, but I am, in fact, quite happy being a grown up.  I had a ton of fun in college and in those first years after graduation where I was still granted a great deal of leeway in the dazed and confused department, but I would not go back if I could.  Still, I liked this up-close reminder of all the loose-ness college life provided (although it could easily be argued that the grown up life provides its own kind of freedom and wide-openness).  I had a similar feeling when my husband and I were honeymooning in Florence, Italy in 2007 when I saw all the backpackers sitting along the Arno drinking cheap wine and writing in their journals, where I wanted to go up to all of them and congratulate them on being bold enough to take the adventure they were on.  The hunt for the cheapest hostel, the thrill of finding dinner for under $5, the student ID cards, Eurail passes and loaves of bread, all of these details of traveling as a broke student are what made the experience so universal and full of life.

I am ready to dive into my homework and do the best job I can in this class, and to approach my new syllabus, writing assignments and class discussions from an entirely new perspective - that of an artist with a clear vision of why I am in this class in the first place, eager to soak in as much as humanly possible.

The adventure begins...