Play Your Own Tune

Remember the mad genius mathematician in A Beautiful Mind? I've been reading that book about John Nash by Sylvia Nasar because my biography-in-progress is about a woman who conversed with spirits and was hospitalized--against her will.

Nasar quotes an item found in Nash's mother's scrapbook, which she placed there when Nash was a child, no doubt in an attempt to reassure herself. Mrs. Nash is quoting Angelo Patri:

"QUEER LITTLE TWISTS AND QUIRKS GO INTO THE MAKING OF AN INDIVIDUAL. To suppress them all and follow clock and calendar and creed until the individual is lost...is to be less than true to our inheritance....Life, that gorgeous quality of life, is not accomplished by following another man's rules. It is true we have the same hungers and the same thirsts, but they are for different things and in different ways and in different seasons....LAY DOWN YOUR OWN DAY, FOLLOW IT TO ITS NOON, or you will sit in an outer hall listening to the chimes but never reaching high enough to strike your own."

I don't know who Angelo Patri is or was, but he's onto something there.

Speaking of Elves and Faeries

I've just come from the monthly get-together that I fondly call Mystic Pizza. It's a few people--frequently very few--who get together at a local K&W cafeteria to talk about metaphysical subjects.

This time the talk ranged from the story of a FAIRY SIGHTING to the question of whether cause-and-effect rules the universe.

Everyone seemed open to the most extreme possibilities. On each subject, at least one person had no doubt.

I've read that something like 42% of Americans believe in ghosts. But most of us don't go around in the world at large talking about such things. And that's understandable. For one thing, it could put a job at risk. (In my first novel Revelation, I wrote about a minister who heard the voice of God, and TOLD, and his liberal congregation began to question whether he was well.)

I wonder WHAT THE WORLD WOULD BE LIKE, IF WE ACTUALLY TALKED FREELY ABOUT WHAT WE REALLY BELIEVE.

For myself, I face no risk at all. As an artist with a metaphysical bent, I have a cultural sanction for being wacky. It's expected, nearly obligatory. The fact that I tend to wear classic clothes (with a twist) instead of flowing gowns with moons and stars on them is probably more of a liability than claiming gnomes are doing my garden chores. But I boldly go on with my quiet presentation.

At the same time, I find that, with nonbelievers, I talk far more skeptically about the "supernatural" than I am. I'm completely willing to believe stories of ghosts and fairies etc--and I want to get to see them too. Sunday I went to a Body, Mind, Spirit Expo, and bought a fifteen-minute reading from a guy, Christian von Lahr, who sees "little people." The way I tell the story of that intriguing conversation varies depending on who I'm talking with. I've heard myself speaking with a lot more skepticism and irony than I feel.

As the popular saying goes: what's up with that?

One of the Paradoxes of Creativity

It's easy to think of bold creativity as a move to be louder or faster, or working longer hours, being more offensive, more "different."

But that's not necessarily true. At times, it's better for our work to have the guts to be slow or scared or silent or child-like. IT TAKES GUTS TO "REGRESS", but it can be just the right thing for the best function of the senses and the imagination.

My husband Bob's Turkish Kangal Dog, Kaya, is very bold about regressing. He goes back to being a puppy whenever he feels like it. Here's a moment from this past Christmas when he was feeling like a child again.

A Very Assertive Girl

Lee Smith's new novel coming out next month is about A NOTABLY BOLD CHARACTER. I like that this protagonist is a teenage girl. On Agate Hill is the story of a 13 year-old during the Civil War. From Lee Smith's website:

“I know I am a spitfire and a burden,” she begins her diary. “I do not care. For evil or good this is my own true life and I WILL have it. I will.” She keeps the diary in her treasured “box of phenomena” which contains “letters, poems, songs, court records, marbles, rocks, dolls, and bones, some human” by the time it is found during a historic renovation project in 2003. These items tell the story of Molly’s passionate journey through life.

The Missing Link to Oprah, Etc.

About that story on writers' attempts and strategies for getting on Oprah. Sorry I left the link out of my previous post. I still can't make it work; I get nothing but pop-ups. But if you want to go hunting for it, the piece is "Oprah Means Business for Authors" in the August 8, 2006, Chicago Sun-Times.



And here is the sea-going pedal-kayak that was supposed to go with the earlier coastal-retreat post. Actually pedaling this vessel out in the mile-wide Core Sound behind the Outer Banks is a wonderful meditative little adventure. Now, as I look at this picture, it seems quite a bit like the writing/artistic experience: setting forth alone in one's little boat, afloat on a mysterious medium.

Getting on Oprah

Check out this piece on how writers have managed to get themselves and their books on Oprah, and how they've embarrassed themselves trying.

I once had a writer attend a workshop I was teaching who'd been a guest on Oprah with her book and sold a pile of them, and still wondered if she was "a real writer." Dear God! Does self-doubt never end?

I've never been on the show myself, not that I haven't tried. I collaborated on a book The Healing Power of Doing Good, with Allan Luks who previously had been on the show to talk about the message of the book. When the publication date came, the producers felt they'd already adequately covered the subject.

Then when Oprah came to Raleigh to speak, I hired a courier to take a copy of my novel Sister India to the stage door and do battle through the crowd for me. I was told that somebody there had taken the book off his hands.

That's been a few years ago now, but you never know when Chicago is going to call.

Deadly Serious Career Planning

Here's a writing assignment guaranteed to clarify your goals in your art career and in every thing else: WRITE YOUR OWN OBITUARY. I gave it a try and I promise you, it is immodest.

MY FAKE OBIT:

Nobel laureate and bestselling novelist Peggy Payne, 3-time winner of the National Book Award, died yesterday at the age of 122, at her home after a brief illness.

An outspoken advocate for self-actualization Payne also wrote a number of nonfiction books, including a much-loved biography of painter Elisabeth Chant.

Her books combined her explorations of the supernatural and paranormal with her travels in exotic and enticing locations, including India, Ireland, Greece, Brittany, and the city of New Orleans. Her work has been published in 42 languages. She continued to travel and write and lecture, and to work with other writers, until weeks before her death.

Most of her novels were made into movies and a script she co-authored received an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

Born in 1949 in Wilmington, NC, to Margaret and Harry Payne, she lived in North Carolina throughout her life. She and her beloved husband psychologist Bob Dick celebrated her hundredth birthday on a round-the-world cruise on the QE2. To the end of her life she maintained a close relationship with her family and friends, continuing to have tea with her writing group each Thursday she was in town.

In the second half of her life, she amassed great wealth and created a foundation to support artists, inventors and start-up businesses in imaginative undertakings.

Having wrestled with obsessive-compulsive disorder in her early years, she achieved in her fifties a state of inner peace that she considered her greatest achievement. Her explorations of the supernatural led her to ecstatic experiences of God and to an intimate connection with spirits.

She is remembered also as an enthusiastic gossip, a fan of old rock and roll, a magazine junkie, connoisseur of thrift shops, slapdash gardener, sometime clothes horse, and reader.

The Duke pep band will play at her funeral.

Inventist.com

"Don't just walk on water. Hop on it."

That's the slogan for the Aquaskipper, one of the cool inventions at the site called Inventist.com.

I consider inventing gizmos to be one of the finest of the fine arts. This inventive site features peculiar vehicles for transporting the daring individual--designs that go far beyond the pogo stick and the unicycle. The Aquaskipper, for example, allows you to scoot across water in a very undignified rabbit-like motion.

The site is worth visiting for entertainment value alone. The video of a guy hopping along the water should qualify for "America's Funniest Home Videos."

And one of my bold fifty-something brothers bought one of these items and gave it to his wife for her birthday. Talk about bold!

A Decent Income for a Writer

I do admire an artist who manages to BILL BOLDLY and be well paid. This item is from Bookslut and may be of special interest to my fellow writers in NC where Charles Frazier got started.


"Cold Mountain author Charles Frazier made headlines by getting paid $8 million, 17 NFL teams, and the state of Delaware for his new novel, Thirteen Moons. Kirkus has the first review of the forthcoming novel, and they find that Frazier's BIG-ASS PAYCHECK was totally worth it."

(The caps and boldface are all mine.)

Re-entry

Today is my first day back after vacation. I haven't adjusted to getting up at work-day time. I don't like some of my e-mail I found waiting. And I woke up feeling beat all to hell from miles of kayaking on Core Sound.

WISH I WERE STILL THERE.

Boldly Sashaying Out My Office Door

As of 4:30 today, Tuesday, August 1, I am on vacation until Monday.

This is A BIG MOVE for me. I don't do it often enough--though, God knows, I fritter away big chunks of time on a daily basis. But I'm assured that vacation is very good for one's writing. And I've seen that myself, though it's always hard to remember from one time to the next.

Anyway, I'm going to the beach, leaving normal life in the care of a house-sitter. I plan to venture out into the Atlantic in a one-person, pedal-instead-of-row sea kayak--and, during the heat of the day, to read in the shade. I will come back so refreshed that you probably won't recognize me.

Just wait and see.

Getting Unstuck

If you happen to be in central North Carolina Friday, you might be interested in this event:

My psychologist husband Bob Dick is running a HALF DAY SEMINAR, helping people to USE HYPNOSIS to get unstuck, whether the issue has to do with creativity, relationships, career, health, etc.

I went to one of these once myself and got myself out of a sticky writing spot, through a wonderful hypnotic trance dream. Long story: but basically I went down a well, literally got stuck there, settled in, and a door opened onto such light that I had to squint. I also came out of the afternoon with a practical idea that helped solve my problem.

Call 919 929-1227 if you're interested.

Bold and Passionate

Here's an UNUSUALLY BRAVE EXAMPLE of somebody making a leap on behalf of her true purpose. This little tale comes from a cool site called BLOGGER STORIES.

"Nadia Muna Gil stepped off the tried and true path to follow her passion. She left a well-paying job, at a prestigious Wall Street firm, to pursue CHEESE BLOGGING and education full-time. The Cheesaholics Anonymous blog is more than a blog about cheese .. it is also a woman's dream to tell the world about artisan cheesemakers."

Turns out (when I visited her site) that her company also does cheese education events, at least one of which has been featured in The New Yorker. Not bad!

Writing and Teaching at Duke

My career will take a new and intriguing turn this coming spring.

I've accepted a one-semester-long position called SCHOLAR-IN-RESIDENCE in the English Department at Duke University.

So for four months I'll be teaching two fiction writing seminars to undergraduates. I've done a lot of kinds of teaching, but this particular job already feels especially satisfying. I graduated from Duke -- and I love the place -- and there's a nicely circular feel to coming back there now.

Of course I'll continue writing and consulting...though far less than usual during this spring.

I look forward to a taste of campus life again. I always loved living in a dorm with a cafeteria downstairs, though I understand that this is not part of the deal.

Literary Feedback: Writing Group Hates My New First Chapter

I read the first chapter yesterday of the biography I've just begun to my long-time writing group (23 years). It was the WORST REACTION I EVER GOT FROM THIS GROUP.

I kind-a like the chapter, and so did the only other person who has read it.

The most encouraging response I got out the meeting was: well, you always make it work in the end, so you'll no doubt do it again.

WHAT THEY HATED: the way I used PERSONAL MATERIAL as well as the stuff about my biography subject. One person wanted me to turn it into a novel. They also didn't like most of the references to the sources of the information I got; instead wanting me to just tell the story, without interruption, and put footnotes as needed. (That makes a sort of sense, but I'm always interested in THE UNDERPINNINGS OF A STORY.
Also, I started life as newspaper reporter, so I'm inclined to attribute.)

WHAT I'M GOING TO DO: Let it sit for a few days then see how it looks to me. What I now expect is that I'll stick with the approach of including my own piece of the story, and perhaps go a little deeper into one piece of that, hold some of it back until a later chapter, and then make the reason for my own WEIRD FASCINATION with the bizarre artist who is my subject part of the discovery process for both writer and reader.

EMOTIONAL RESPONSES:
1. Well, shit...how inconvenient that I need to take time to think about their reactions, to figure out how to make the story widely accessible without abandoning any of my purposes in writing it
2. Refreshed...this is not a healthy response, my being so kneejerk rebellious that I feel energized by opposition
3. Grudgingly glad to have early notice of what I'm up against in meeting readers' needs with the way I present this project
4. Startled by the vehemence of some of the reaction
5. Wearied by the knowledge that I've taken on something complicated. (My psychologist husband Bob has always said that I like "Great Wall of China projects.")

IN THE SHORT-TERM: I got my car washed this morning. This felt very pertinent, somehow. I also once again have the impulse to paint flowers on it.

Deadline for Perfection

Sunday is the deadline I gave myself to become as physically fit as I can possibly be, or give away any clothes that don't fit -- no more saving them until I get around to being that size.

This may not seem related to bold creativity in art or any other field. But it is.

What I mean by fit, I regret to say, is movie-star perfect muscle tone. Ripped. Never mind that I'm 57 years old.

For me, THIS PREOCCUPATION IS RELATED TO CREATIVITY IN 2 WAYS:
*it's wasting mental time
*it's a bit perfectionistic, and perfectionism is a notorious hindrance to trying out new ideas, and getting work finished

Probably I should settle for reasonable fitness -- which I already have -- and quit being an idiot about this. But I had an eating disorder in my twenties, and those things die hard.

The main thing going on with me though is not about muscle tone and appearance. It's that I'm having trouble MANAGING MYSELF. I tell myself to jump rope. Then I quit after about ten jumps. This is new. And very unnerving.

I'm not quite sure what to do. My whole being rebels against the idea of giving up.

My First Writers' Retreat Experience

Last night, I got back from Weymouth, the writers hide-away in Southern Pines, NC.

I am A NEW CONVERT to this approach to writing. And I'm surprised. I've always thought I would hate going off somewhere with a laptop and a lot of silence, when my formative writing experience is a newsroom.

The way I worked it, though, it wasn't so silent. It was more like taking my toothbrush and moving into a newsroom, day and night. And I loved it.

The way I got my noise quota, was to have an adjoining room with Billie, the friend I went with. We kept the door open and could toss comments back and forth occasionally.

Also, the gorgeous grounds of the place are used for weddings and such, which are visible from the upstairs writer rooms, and were very entertaining. At one point, Billie, who had a better view of those events than I did, reported, "THE FLOWERGIRL IS NOW BITING PEOPLE." (This is possibly one of those had-to-be-there items, but it was wildly funny and companionable at the time.)

At the same time, I got A HUGE OF AMOUNT OF WRITING DONE. I wrote the first, second and third drafts of the first chapter of my new book, a biography of a painter, Elisabeth Chant. And I spent 18 hours on work for a client. We were there Wednesday afternoon through Sunday afternoon, and walked into charming downtown Southern Pines for most every meal. I got that much work done and still it FELT LIKE A VACATION.

I highly recommend it. And if you're not a rowdy sort of writer, you can arrange to be as quiet and solitary there as you want.

NOW ABOUT THE GHOSTS: in planning my trip to Weymouth, I was very interested in tales I'd heard from other writers-in-residence there of ghostly encounters. Bottom line: I didn't see any ghosts. But still, there were a number of peculiar things going on.

GHOSTLY CLUES:
*A closet door opened by itself
*A chair twice appeared to be slightly moved
*Two nights in a row there was a sound like cardboard boxes being pushed around overhead
*A latch of a room down the hall made some clicking noises with no one around
*And others

I thought of perfectly ordinary explanations for all these things. But I HOPE I'M WRONG about those. If you're a ghost hunter (or skeptic), please feel free to weigh in on this.

Off to Weymouth

Most of next week I'll be holing up at Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities in Southern Pines, where I'll be a writer-in-residence.

This will be my first experience of working at a writers retreat.

My plan is to, among other things, write the first chapter of my biography of painter Elisabeth Chant.

Also, I'm hoping to see a ghost; the place has a reputation for being haunted. I know five credible people who have had ghostly encounters there.

Ideally, I'll see the ghost of my biography subject. That would definitely be worth the trip.

I'm not sure how I'll react to working in a quiet place. I live in the country and I drive into Raleigh to work to make sure I have enough people and noise around me. This will be an adventure, and pretty likely to stimulate some different brain cells.

I will report back, about the book and the ghost.

Career Success Barbie Doll

Some time back, I promised a picture, and then couldn't find the picture. The file finally turned up, and here it is: my Career Success Barbie Doll.

Sorry that the picture is lousy. It's a photo of a photo, with a camera I'm still not used to.

Here's the reason for this little tableau. By accident, I had discovered that VISUALIZATIONS CAN REALLY WORK. And putting before me in physical form an image of what I want works even better.

I learned this when I found that I'd unwittingly reproduced, with real flowers, a floral arrangement that was on a picture near my computer.

If an image could work that easily to get me to produce the real thing, I wanted to apply the principle to something more important.

So I set out to EMBODY MY CAREER GOALS. Here, on the grungy window sill of my office at that time, is the doll I "dolled up" to be a visual symbol of the success I wanted.

This doll has a photo of my face attached, with the hair cut to the length of mine then, and tiny mockups of my books, existing and planned. Four of those are now published, which is one -- or two? -- more than were published then. And another is recently finished.

Note in "my" right hand the pink quill pen, and in my left, the cell phone and the Oscar. I do now have a cell phone. That much of those items has come true.

I haven't exactly come to look like that. But I find in the photo on the bio page of my website, I'm at least wearing the same color.

Perhaps it's time for another version of my icon, to project a few more books down the road. Or one to focus entirely on publication of the just-completed one.

A Writer's Mid-Career Continuing Education

When I read last week in my local alternative weekly the horoscope that said I was facing A MINOR COME-UPPANCE that would turn out to be a gift, I assured myself that it wasn't so.

Well, it was.

This past weekend, I attended a three-day course led by feminist writer and leader Naomi Wolf, at the lovely country campus of Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

The topic was "CAREER BUILDING FOR THE SEASONED WRITER: Cracking the Mass Market." I went to learn more, for myself and my consulting clients, about writing nonfiction book proposals. I learned that and a whole lot more.

This three-day experience updated all my magazine and newspaper business skills (I spent the first 15 years of my career writing almost entirely for magazines and newspapers.)

In these 10 am to 9:30 pm sessions, we wrote pitches, lots of pitches of story ideas and op-ed ideas and book ideas. It was a bit like being on a quiz show where you race to write and speak a few persuasive lines while a light blinks and a bell will soon ring.

At the same time, I, and others, were wrestling--in my case, re-wrestling--with the difference between the inevitable formats and formulas of writing for periodicals, and the writing we each most admired.

The pace and tough feedback and mostly-inner CLASHES OF VALUES felt so intense that in the first day my face broke out and my hands started to peel (which my derm calls "stress-induced eczema")and that night I dreamed my teeth were dropping out.

DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE: The faculty seems to expect that sort of thing because a psychotherapist was a full-time part of the program, offering a daily group session and/or individual meetings for anyone interested.

My experience of the weekend was humbling and -- and then re-invigorating -- and, finally, A VALUABLE GIFT. I got the piece of education I went for, in the company of a couple of dozen fascinating folks, and I made excellent contacts, including an editor who is interested in both the novel I just finished and the biography I'm just beginning.

I highly recommend the course -- whenever it should happen again-- for writers of strong ambition and sturdy constitution who want to write for the largest markets and audiences.