"A writer generates anxiety as a lamp does heat."

Uncomfortably accurate statement from Susan Bell.

I identified perhaps a bit too strongly with this Sunday's story about anxiety in the New York Times Magazine. I had to laugh when Baby 19, one of the most anxious babies in a long-term study, turned out at age 15 to be interested in writing. Of course, of course!

Apparently, even Princeton students face writing anxiety. I wonder what it is about writing that seems so profoundly connected to anxiety. Is it the craft, the nature of revision that implores us to think about all the tiny (and huge) implications of a single comma or article? Perhaps it's simply that "the anxious temperament does offer certain benefits: caution, introspection, the capacity to work alone." Without these traits, I'm sure few of us would have the discipline to keep our asses in our chairs.

I've found for me that anxiety stands in the way of my work. It can fuel the editing process - it ensures that each word ends up just right. But when the anxiety knocks on my door at any other time, I end up not working at all.

Dr. Alice Flaherty's phenomenal book The Midnight Disease explores many of the writer's mental quirks, among them writer's block and anxiety. Framing the blocked writer as one with performance anxiety, she asks:

Is alcohol's temporary effect on anxiety one reason why so many writers and other artists have become alcoholics? (Of the seven U.S. Nobel laureates in literature, five have been diagnosed as alcoholics.)

The alcoholic writer. It's a cliche for a reason. I highly recommend Flaherty's examination of the creative brain - exploring the strange frequency of anxiety, alcoholism, and depression among writers - revealing along the way interesting bits of trivia, like the fact that James Joyce may have had schizophrenia (word salad, anybody?). There's a lot of hope in the book, too - she offers truly practical advice and shares her own personal experience as a neurologist once addicted (literally) to writing.

Anxiety, I think, is an occupational hazard. Whether cause of the writer's habit or symptom of it, I think it's just one of those inescapable things (for most of us, anyway.)

As for me, I recommend avoiding alcohol as a buffer and instead giving acupuncture a try. I started acupuncture treatments this summer and it's really worked well for me. I used to feel constantly "jazzed up" - as if I'd drunk too much caffeine. Now I spend less time worrying about whether my writing's good enough, and having a lot more fun with my work. Although I still worry about most things, I find that I'm no longer so worried about life that I'm not living life at all.

In other news, I'm still walking almost everywhere lately. (Walking, I find, is another way to calm the nerves. Plus, it doesn't hurt that you can't help but notice the world around you.) I've been trying to keep track this week of the birds of downtown Omaha. A couple examples:

"A writer generates anxiety as a lamp does heat."

Single vs. Multi

I have been provoked by a Gene in the comments below, so will post a new entry!

I've been busy rolling out materials for this new semester, meeting a few deadlines, and moving to a new apartment. I now live only two blocks from my day job at a concert hall in downtown Omaha, and have thoroughly enjoyed my little jaunts through the park each morning. I find myself wishing for a dog to walk.

While finishing the project that has consumed the last 4-5 months of my life last week, I thought about a few work habits I've acquired in the past year or two. I took a brief break from the project to start a new story, which brings up two dualing notions of writing habits:

A. (From Julie Orringer, Frank Conroy, etc.) Work on one project at a time. Focus on it until it's done.
B. (From Aimee Bender, Lynda Barry, etc.) Work on 2 or 5 or a million projects at a time. This way, when you get the urge to procrastinate, you can switch projects and still get something done! Work on what is drawing your attention.

I think B. seems more logical/practical/exciting. In fact, I offered it up as a good idea to my amazing students last week. However, I found that when I started a new project and went back to the old one, the two projects sort of cannibalized each other. I think I'm more of an A. writer. I like to be subconsciously working on my one project all the time -- particularly on lovely fall morning strolls through the park. (And when I'm in the shower, or seeing something weird at a bar.) I put in everything about my life at a certain time period into a project -- new things I've learned, new friends, new observations, new snippets of conversation. I like this about my personal process and can't avoid it actually, no matter how unlike my life a story seems to be... And thus, when I switch attention between two (or more) simultaneous projects, I steal good lines from one to put in the other, and the voices/forms -- which should be distinct -- start to blur.

However, even Julie, who as you'll note above was the first to mention the A. process to me, worked on a story about strange hobbit-like people as a break from her historical novel, and both are dazzlingly different and remarkable projects. So who knows.

How do you work best? Do you find that your habits change to fit whatever you're working on at the time?

Single vs. Multi

My favorite short story, now in cute video form!

Seriously, so cute! And I've always wanted to hear "Vhd Vhd" out loud. Translation gets a little strange, but only a little.

My favorite short story, now in cute video form!

Contamination as art: Contest

Found on Brevity's blog: a pretty cool contest for nonfiction writers.

From Dislocate, the journal:

Contaminate’s root is the Latin word tangere, “to touch,” and contamination usually refers to “touch that makes bad.” But there are ways that elements become stronger as a result of corruption: steel gets stronger when tempered in extreme heat, and chemotherapy purifies the body by nearly destroying it. In literature, stories are retold and recontextualized in an endless and productive series of contaminations. Perhaps, even, the limit toward which we speed is for every sphere of life to be contaminated by every other sphere. The question looms: How do people survive, and even thrive, within this contamination? You need not answer this question directly. But let the question contaminate your work.

Your essay may be contaminated in form…

What happens to the essay when we contaminate it with heterogeneous elements? You might add photographs or screenshots from a PowerPoint presentation. You might mix up formal conventions, and make the piece extremely short, or especially lyric. You might transcend generic boundaries and integrate elements of fiction or poetry.

You may contaminate your process…

Write under the influence of giardia, or in traffic jams, or in the presence of small, demanding children, and find ways to incorporate those impositions into your text.

Guidelines:

Length: Up to 3,000 words.

Deadline: December 1, 2009

Contest Fee: $15 (includes at 1-year subscription to dislocate)

1st Prize: $400, publication in dislocate #6, and 4 contributor copies

Go here for complete details.

Contamination as art: Contest

There Be Monsters

The above is the title of a wonderful short story by Karen Shephard.

I've been having an email-based discussion about revising and editing with the wonderful 2009 Aimee Bender workshop alumni, and Sessily W. had this to say about being clear about motivations/language when you edit, but not uncomplicating the mysteries of life as a human being:

Maybe the uncertainty has to be in the exact contours of the why...that is, we hint at the why, we give it some vague shape, but you don't color it in, you don't connect all the dots in the course of a paragraph. I'm thinking of the idea that the scariest monster is the one we don't entirely see. The horror movie or novel gives hints of its outline, but as soon as its colored in and explained it loses its edge.

There Be Monsters

During the editing of this project, I am trying to remember:

Simplify.
Streamline.
Clean up.

But do not uncomplicate.
Do not reduce or boil down.

During the editing of this project, I am trying to remember:

The Hang-Up or Layout

From Susan Bell's wonderful The Artful Edit:

THE HANG-UP OR LAYOUT

Twenty-five years ago, I visited an artists colony set in the woods of southern France. From that visit, I kept the memory of a string that stretched across the length of one poet's studio. He had hung his poems up, like a recent load of laundry, and read them standing or pacing around.

[...]

There are many benefits to the line method. There is the increased alertness you feel when you read on your feet, as well as the disorientation -- we're not used to reading upright, and the novelty of it helps make our material feel new.

Also, to read pages horizontally is quite different from reading them in a stack, where you see only page at a time. You can see proportions better when you read across, page to page to page, glancing back and forth, and stepping back to take in a view of the whole typographic design of a chapter. You will more easily see whether you've used too many tiny or lengthy paragraphs in one area. If you have a specific concern, use a highlighter or the bold key on your computer to make it stand out, then hang the pages up and observe where the color or bold type is either dense or absent -- this may tell you if there is too little of one person, for instance, too much of one verb, too little dialogue, or too much of a leitmotiv.

On hearing of the laundry-line method, Laura Kipnis, author of Against Love, said, "O no, I could never do that. I have to lay it all out on the floor." She walks or crawls around on top of her pages, reading and moving them as pieces of a puzzle.

Jim Lewis tapes his pages to the wall. He will print his manuscript out in a tiny unreadable font size, so he can hang the entire book up. He will look at it like a painting or a map, searching for topographical imbalances.

I am trying this method as we speak!!! This horizontal edit thing has totally got me charged up right now! I'll let you know if it pans out for me.

UPDATE: In action.

The Hang-Up or Layout

Tin House Workshop Video

Check out the hottie in the red sweater, 3:08.

Tin House Workshop Video

Creative work becomes an elective after 7th grade

I've posted about Lynda Barry's book What It Is on (ahem) other blogs. Her premise is that creativity changes profoundly after childhood, largely because of the forces of the adult world. She tries to get us to tap into what it was about our creative urges as children that made us want to draw and paint and run at all hours of the day.

(By the way, drawing and moving the body are the same thing. According to Lynda. Also: "Our only movement as adults is exercise, which is the saddest movement of all... And you have to wear a special outfit so people know what you're doing.")



The book changed my life. No joke! It's an incredible read, perhaps the most intensely engaging read of my adult life -- probably more so because I was mired in writer's block at the time I read it and knew I had to do something big in order to avoid being stuck there for the rest of my life.

At the time I needed to read the book, I found that my inner urge to be creative was totally squelched by real effing life (and my evil always-editing brain). Now it's been two weeks after my magical writer's workshop and the most fruitful creative period I've had in years, and already I feel real life creeping in again. Lynda Barry's words and voice and everything are keeping me afloat! Soon as I'm done with this post, I'm digging into a short story and I. Can't. Wait!



Look at those floating words. Why do How do What do we Compose? Each of these ideas are parts of each other. They are not separate. Lynda asks us to hold all of them in our minds at once!



My blocked brain was thrilled by small exercises such as the one above: are you located in time? Or is it only space? Can these things be separated? Then... There... You see them at the same time and thus they are both together. And is imagination a time or place? Can you be located there? Can you live there, maybe build a home for yourself there?

Thoughts like these build on each other over and over.

While reading this book, I felt compelled to really think about every question -- of which there were often many! -- about creativity on every page of the book. I would ask or remember whatever she was asking me to ask or remember. My head hurt the whole time. My heart hurt.

She also tells her own story -- a moving memoir of her childhood and of her creative life. She's a great writer. I'm reading her novel Cruddy next.

The interview I've posted below is laugh-out-loud funny, and also happens to be a great microcosm somehow of her gorgeously written and illustrated book. You'll get the point, basically, but please don't deprive yourself of her wonderful book! What's cool is that, in this outstanding interview, she talks about the difference between childhood and adult creativity. In the book, however, the strange reading process actually has an affect on your brain somehow, even for just a moment or two at a time. You won't just think about or read about it -- you'll actually feel a certain child-like wonderment -- where maybe you get into "cereal trances" or see the eyes of cats move in photos. It can be uncomfortable to get into this state of mind, but also wonderful.

Ultimately, two interesting thoughts from the interview:

1) Why is that as adults we feel that we can't do anything creative if we end up throwing it away? Why is the urge itself not worth everything?

2) Play is not the same thing as fun. We confuse this. Children playing are often dark, dangerous, bizarre, intense. To write or create anything can be a deeply spiritual experience when you're really tapping into a good rhythm; it's play, but it's hard work and scary and depressing and lonely sometimes. Doesn't make it any less satisfying!

Love Lynda's discussion here about the neuroscience/psychology behind this. Think of a kid who wasn't allowed to play until he was 18. Or who wasn't allowed to play -- but was allowed to watch a video of others playing. No! You have to actually PLAY to not end up a quiet, well-behaved young man who's also a serial killer!

I love her. LUFF HIR. Listen, listen, listen.



Listen!

Creative work becomes an elective after 7th grade

WNYC - Radiolab: Time (April 24, 2007)

This episode of Radiolab is phenomenal for many reasons. If you're interested in how time works -- which I always am -- you'll love it.

But as a spinner of yarns, I find myself particularly intrigued in the slowing down and speeding up and relativity of time. Pacing and story structure can often be as important to a story as the characters themselves, and this discussion really got me thinking about the frequent importance of slowing everything the heck down just exactly when you want to speed right through a scene.

I'm also interested in the idea of relativity. Perhaps out of two characters, one is running and the other is standing still. Although from the outside, it seems as if time is passing equally quickly for the both of them, within their own worlds, things are radically different.

Two pieces of sound art here are particularly fascinating: a girl sped up from babyhood to adulthood, and a hair-raising presentation of Beethoven's 9th -- slowed down to be heard over the course of 24 hours.

I love when they're listening to the climax of the piece, and one of the listeners says, "It sounds like there's no climax at all!" And yet, in the background, you can feel the crushing weight of it all.


WNYC - Radiolab: Time (April 24, 2007)

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WNYC - Radiolab: Time (April 24, 2007)

Steve Almond on getting dirty on the page.

"But enough about my raging manbat. Let’s get started. The central obstacle to writing about sex seems to be that people are embarrassed, so the first thing I thought we’d do is go around the room and have people disclose their most humiliating sexual experience. Now, that’s mandatory, but the optional part is you can come up and we can do an interpretive dance, or perhaps a pantomime.

Kidding!"

Great advice about how to write a terrific sex scene. Check it out!

Steve Almond on getting dirty on the page.

WNYC - Selected Shorts: Strange But True: Aimee Bender and Etgar Keret (July 26, 2009)

Featuring the delightful Aimee Bender and new fave Etgar Keret.



The reader of Aimee's stories is a little over-the-top, but a great show about the writing process of these two unique artists, magical realism, politics in Israel, writing communities, and more. You'll find the mp3 if you search the podcasts link on the left.

WNYC - Selected Shorts: Strange But True: Aimee Bender and Etgar Keret (July 26, 2009)

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WNYC - Selected Shorts: Strange But True: Aimee Bender and Etgar Keret (July 26, 2009)

Why, hello, old friend.

I recently attended the Tin House Writer's Workshop, where I participated in a workshop with the wonderful Aimee Bender. There were also incredible lectures by some of my favorite writers of this new century, and the week was, all in all, the most fun I've had in years.

The conference really was a shot in the arm for my writing, but even more so for my teaching, as Aimee's non-traditional approach to the workshop method really felt right for me. At the beginning of the year, I discovered a book about writing the unthinkable, What It Is by Lynda Barry, on Aimee's website. Barry's book explores the subconscious and a certain organic writing method that made me rethink craft in a whole new way. Aimee's class solidified what I'd learned in the book. Our main question was "How can we help this story be most itself?" We also hunted for really good sentences and paragraphs -- as Aimee said, the places where the writing is weak or dull usually indicate the writer is forcing the story/plot/character to do something it shouldn't be doing.

The lectures were particularly interesting, as most of them assumed we'd all taken many writing classes before and were in desperate need of breaking bad workshoppy habits. Some tips and tricks that really hit home for me:

1) Obsessive characters are fascinating. Some of the most lauded books and stories in America are about characters obsessed with one person, one thing, one desire. The key is to make sure there's actually a narrative underpinning the fantastic obsessive voice. Shame is the path to truth. Self-regard is less important than self-revelation. (Steve Almond, author of The Evil B.B. Chow and Candyfreak, "Obsession, The New Musk")

2) a. Your character needs to want something tangible. Think the antique handgun or the shirt, instead of world peace or unconditional love.
b. Fiction is about the exceptions, not the rules. This means that an 84-year-old grandmother who wants a handgun is more interesting than the antique handgun dealer. This also means, don't waste your time establishing the mundane boring day -- the breakfast tea, the lame stuff at the office. Get to the weird stuff as soon as possible -- the affair, the alien landing, etc.
c. The character does not need to change. The character does not need to acquire that tangible thing it wants. All that matters is that there is the believable possibility of change, the believable possibility that the character will get what he or she wants. The character might just be in the same place he or she always was by the end, and that's okay -- but there needs to be a change in the reader, always. Mentioned: Cathedral by Carver. I also think of Chekhov.
d. Plot is about making sure everything in a story is causally related. It doesn't need to be a thriller or a suspense novel. It's just that everything you represent should be logically connected to everything else. Sometimes it helps to plot backwards. Look at "A Good Man is Hard to Find" -- there a car wreck on the side of the road, caused by the cat that got loose, and the cat was there because the grandmother was irritated at the family and wanted to bug them so she hid the cat in the car, and the grandmother was irritated in the first place because they were going on a trip even though there was a murderer on the loose.
(Bret Anthony Johnston, Director of Creative Writing at Harvard, author of Corpus Christi)

3) Every piece you write should have its own form, its own unique structure and set of rules.
(David Shields, author of a bazillion great books, "Reality Hunger")

4) Let your story bear fruit. There doesn't necessarily need to be a narrative arc, but there does need to be this feeling of blossoming inside the reader that comes from what's on the page. This is about the organic process -- through words, sentences, and paragraphs that build on each other -- of planting a seed, letting a shoot grow up, watching the tree trunk grow thicker, seeing the leaves appear, then the blossoms, and finally that useful and delicious whole ripe fruit. Let the story be itself and not what you think it should be.
(Aimee Bender, author of The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, An Invisible Sign of My Own, and Willful Creatures, "Fructification")

5) Beginnings of stories are about "braiding strands of bees." The beginning is a prospectus for the rest of the story; you're setting up drama-charged breadcrumbs that will lead us to all that is about to happen.
(Karen Shephard, author of Do I Know You?, "Beginnings")

6) Let your story be a little messy. (Charles D'Ambrosio, author of The Dead Fish Museum, "The Slick Short Story")

I learned a lot more, but these are the lessons (surely filtered through my own unique concerns) that stood out for me. I highly recommend summer conferences to everyone -- well worth it.

Also, books purchased at Powell's and the Reed campus bookstore and thus added to my reading list:
-Tumble Home by Amy Hempel
-The Night in Question by Tobias Wolff (am particularly curious in "Bullet in the Brain")
-The Girl on the Fridge by Etgar Keret
-Like You'd Understand Anyway by Jim Shepard
-The Dead Fish Museum by Charles D'Ambrosio
-Naming the World by Bret Anthony Johnston
-Blood on the Dining Room Floor by Gertrude Stein
-Lifting Belly by Gertrude Stein
-Cruddy by Lynda Barry
-The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford by Ron Hansen
-Almost No Memory by Lydia Davis
-The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead by David Shields
-The Tin House Writer's Notebook

Why, hello, old friend.

The Caretaker's Dream

Next Saturday, enjoy some art, writing and delicious free food from Dixie Quicks (recently featured on Food Network’s Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives):


RNG Gallery Presents

Chapter Two:
The Caretaker’s Dream
(Le Song de la Garde)
A Photographic Exhibition with Text

Skyelar Hawkins and Katie Wudel

Saturday, September 6, 2008
7-10 p.m.
RNG Gallery (connected to Dixie Quicks)
1915 Leavenworth Street
Omaha, NE

My writer's statement:

The photographs in this series are part of an epic visual fable in many chapters by Skyelar Hawkins. I was struck by the sincere -- and dark -- fairy tale narrative working through the imagery of Chapter Two. Although committed to bringing out these elements of Skyelar's work, I felt that any attempt to mimic the language of fairy tales might come across as disingenuous in our cynical era. My approach instead was to gather up many old storybooks and to literally take my words from their pages.

These works are artifacts of their era. When we open a storybook, we step into a very old shared consciousness, represented by archetypal characters and even the dusty paper the story is printed on. Thus, everything in their pages -- single letters, whole phrases, illustrative elements -- was fair game. By cutting out and repurposing small fragments from these stories, I was able to compose a modern response that was very much my own. There was a sense of danger and fun in this process -- haven't we all wanted to scribble in or otherwise degrade something pretty, sacred and old? And I felt a certain freedom when taking on the cloak of old fable language. This writing is more genteel, old-fashioned and -- innocent? trusting? childlike? -- than the majority of my work.

My hope is that this response retains the archaic, ominous, and somehow magical sensation of reading a classic fairytale. I also hope that in some way, the text here has turned our exhibition into a reverse storybook: the writing is meant to illustrate the images.

This gallery space is a storybook for adults. Have fun in here.

The Caretaker's Dream

This little dude was hanging around outside my office.

Where did he come from? It is an arid, concrete jungle out in West O! He did a little bunchy hip hop dance. Graceful little guy.

Writing Exercise: Compose a flash fiction about a creature (human, mantis or otherwise) trying to make a life for him/herself in a hostile environment.

This little dude was hanging around outside my office.