Getting Started with Fiction

This morning I fiddled with fiction again for the first time in months. I'd been doing research on the Chant biography and working with clients and, in recent days, preparing to start teaching fiction writing at Duke for this semester that starts next week.

On the strength of the wonderful short stories I've been reading to prepare for the two courses, and the fear-blasting effects of Unlock Your Creative Genius which I reviewed in my previous post, and excitement about the idea that cropped up during the week of vacation I took between Christmas and New Year's--I jumped almost-first-thing today into THE MOST DAUNTING PIECE OF WRITING I COULD CONTEMPLATE. I didn't even bother to take my coat off. Just sat (checked e-mail) and started work.

It came out pretty well. I was pleased with what I did in this crack at it.

I didn't feel I was driving with the brake on, as I very often initially do. I had no conscious fear or hesitation. I did, however, eat FISTFULS OF ANIMAL CRACKERS while I worked. If that's what it takes--fine! I don't mind a crutch that works. I count it a very good morning.

And now back to work on the class syllabus.... I hope it will inspire the students as well as it did me.

Real Solutions to Problems with Creativity

I'm so excited about recommending a book I was given at Christmas. It has the somewhat hypy-sounding title of Unlock Your Creative Genius.

But the fact is: the approach described in this book works. It's working for me in dealing with moments of thinking: I can't do this... and variations on that. Or moments of not even thinking, but instead feeling a leaden drag when I approach a daunting bit of work.

If you ever had a moment's procrastination in starting your creative work, buy this book and use it. (And add a comment on this blog about how it works for you.) I've never seen such a practical answer to the problem pulled together anywhere else.

Also, the chapter titles offer little epiphanies in themselves. The one I most identified with was "No One Is Going to Tell Me What to Do--Including Myself." That sure hit home.

To give credit: the author is psychologist Bernard Golden. The publisher is Prometheus Books in Amherst, NY. The person who chose this book for me was my columnist sister-in-law Ruth Sheehan. She said it was just the kind of thing I like to write about on my blog.

The 5 Things

A "virtual happy hour" on Toby Bloomberg's Diva Marketing "tagged" me to answer this set of questions that's making the rounds: What 5 Things You Don't Know About Me.

So here I go:

1. I love celebrity gossip, watch E!, subscribe to People magazine and Vanity Fair, etc. Annual highlight: the Oscars.

2. I was a pretty decent fifth-grade tap dancer.

3. While I'm reading on my sofa, I eat vast quantities of Raisin Bran dry out of the box.

4. I long to get an artist to paint blue morning glories all over my '92 Camry.

5. Sorting things into piles--putting all the apples together, all the oranges together, etc-- is soothing to me.

Okay, now here's who I'm tagging to take up the challenge: Billie Hinton, Sarah Blackmon, JA Konrath,and Budd Parr.

Dancing in the Streets

Ever gone herd dancing? That's when a group of people dances (fast-dances) together, without regard to gender or couples. It's a great thing. Not that the two-by-two thing isn't good too. But a gyrating group is exhilarating.

That's the subject of Barbara Ehrenreich's new book, Dancing in the Streets--or, why we don't indulge more often in what she calls "collective joy."

According to a review in the January Elle magazine, "she accumulates a compelling case for the benefits of serious partying." She finds that our forebears were much more likely to take part in group dancing and chanting, and that in more recent centuries, elites have attempted to discourage that kind of behavior, in an apparent effort to KEEP THE MASSES UNDER CONTROL and hold onto their own dignity.

Well, I've never responded well to being told by someone on a stage to hug the person next to me, or some such.

But I do like voodoo drumming (and old rock and roll) and group dancing that goes on and on. Don't do enough of it either. Perhaps I'll arrange a change.

Today's bit of boldness: My wear-under-sweaters white turtleneck was too long for the sweater I put on this morning. So I cut about six inches off the bottom. There's nothing sacrosanct about the way it came from the store.

Thought for the future: Next time boldly measure first.

Topnotch Reading List

The Raleigh paper's book editor Peder Zane has a new book coming out from Norton next month that is essentially a recommendation of a lot of very good novels, plays, and poetry: "The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books,"

In the meantime go to the Top Ten website and have a look at the list. Some titles are predictable, some are surprises.

Then POST YOUR OWN LIST there. I found it an interesting exercise. I was startled to find that in addition to my beloved Henry James, V.S. Naipaul, and Anita Brookner, I also listed Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon, the retelling of the Arthurian legends from the women's point-of-view. Sentence by sentence, the language in that book isn't up to that of my other favorites. But so what? It's mesmerizing, and it is one of my favorites. So -- my little bold act of the day.

Feel free to post your list here as well.

How to Become Great

"To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great." Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

This Hegel quote was part of the signature of an e-mail I received from a staff person at Penguin Putnam dealing with some bit of business about my novel Sister India.

It's tough to hang onto this philosophy when one has been for long involved in the publishing business. We've been having a lot of conversation lately on this blog about market requirements, and what to do about them.

To meet Hegel's standard of indifference to public opinion and to get published would require one of several STRATEGIES, it seems to me:

1. Make the work of such transcendent quality that it might eventually be recognized for its value, though not necessarily in the writer's lifetime. And trust to either luck or young proteges to see that that reevaluation happens.

2. Self-publish, like James Joyce, among others.

3. Do such amazing and relentless self-promotion that a new standard, a new market is created.

4. Rely on accidentally meeting the requirements of publishers while doing one's own thing.

5. Meet enough market requirements to get in the door, while ignoring others. Make only the tolerable compromises, without damaging what feels vital. Promote like crazy.

Number 5 is my current choice.

How about you? OTHER OPTIONS?

(Every time I think I'm going to write for only a line or two, turns out that I'm wrong, I go on...)

Holiday Innovation

We're all aflutter at my office building today because this house, built in 1910, is on Raleigh's 35th annual Historic Oakwood Candlelight Tour.

The queen and owner of the building, Carrie Knowles, shares my views about creativity and self-expression. Her studio and writing office are called Free Range Gallery. Here's what she just had painted so that you see it as soon as you come in the front door.


And here's the Christmas/holiday/winter solstice tree: it's made of cans of food that will be given to a soup kitchen when the tree comes down. This construction, a piece of art in itself, was made by Carrie's 16 year old son Cole Leiter and his friend Wilson Sayre.

Happy holiday preparation!--whatever you celebrate. I hope you'll take pleasure in doing it your way.

The tree of cans is a good demonstration that self-expression isn't necessarily selfish at all, can be quite altruistic in fact. For more on this, see The Healing Power of Doing Good.

The Luminous Egg: Visual Suggestion

Remember that floating orb I wrote about? It's the piece of art I bought by/from my artist-buddy Carrie Knowles. I had to have it because it looks like the image of a floating ball of light that inspired both the biography I'm working on, and the new novel (tentatively "Pascal's Fire") that I have also (barely) begun.

Here you see the ball of light, in the center of the mantel in my office. I'm delighted to have it there. And it's not just to make the place look more interesting.

I find if I put a visual image of a goal before me, I'm more likely to reach that goal. CONSTANT SUBLIMINAL SUGGESTION works wonders on my typing fingers. I've found it almost magical.

Anybody else had any experience with this sort of thing?

Please Note

Good conversation going on in the comment section of the post titled: "An Extremely Bold Question."

The subject has evolved to WRITING FOR THE MARKET: is it damaging to art? and if not, how do we psyche out the current market requirements.

Do join in with your own view--here, or in the comment section to the earlier post.

Do you tailor your writing to what you perceive market requirements to be?

Authentic Speech

Check out a feisty blog, Inventing the Rest of My Life, on the More magazine website.

More is an excellent magazine aimed at women over forty. I think the More articles would be of interest to a much larger group, but then I also read a number of men's magazines, and, more shocking, some aimed at 20-something fashionistas: "Drew, Ashlee, Kelis... share their secret shopping lists...," etc.

"Inventing the Rest of My Life" is written by 65 year-old Suzanne Braun Levine. "Recently," she writes, "an invitation to speak to a large national women's organization was withdrawn when the planners visited my Web site and saw the phrase 'the fuck-you fifties.'" That's the lead-in to her discussion of "appropriate" language and behavior.

I love her conclusion: "What I hope to see is not that the coarse language becomes commonplace, but that we get to the point that we Second Adulthood women don't have to call attention to ourselves in order to be noticed. Then each of us can find the words to speak out in her own voice and on her own terms." That's my wish for everybody.

The Courageous Miss Chant's Cottage on Cottage Lane

The exceptionally bold Miss Elisabeth Chant, the subject of my biography-in-progress,lived in this house about 70 years ago in my gorgeous and charming hometown of Wilmington, NC. I was there for Thanksgiving with my family and took a few pictures.

I especially want to show the house, because one of her descendants turned up in the comment section of my previous post, the one where I asked: why don't more of you comment? I'm so glad I asked that question.

Chant, a painter, was exceptionally BOLD in that she was a full-time artist, and single woman, who traveled the world alone in the first half of the 20th century--and she had the nerve to go around in my small Southern town in medieval clothes with hair like Princess Leia--and to confide, when it wasn't fashionable, that she was being led in her choices by Athena and several dozen other spirit guides. Any one or two of those situations is enough risk for most folks.

An Extremely Bold Question

How come most of y'all come and visit and let me blather on and yet don't comment?

Has this blog attracted all of the world's shy people?

I'd love to know. And I'd be grateful to anybody who answers here about the reason he or she keeps silent. You can even be Anonymous. Or Startlingly Revealing. Or Controversial. Or...you tell me....

The Fundamental Trick of a Writing Career

Underlying most of the decisions I make about my work is this: to what degree will I alter the work I feel called, even created, to do, in order to meet the requirements of the marketplace?

My standard for myself is that, in revising for the market, I figure out how to, at the same time, make the work better overall. I find a way to do what an editor wants (or that I'm guessing an editor wants) that better serves my own purposes as well. And what a wrestle with the work that can be!

On the other hand, if I'd gone farther in the direction of the market in my career so far, more people might well be reading my work. It's very hard to see the line between too much compromise and not enough. By the time we find out, it may be too late. The work is diluted and published, or the work is rejected.

I'm not one who is opposed to revising, to working with an editor. Not at all. I believe in selling, in publishing. Part of the job I feel I've somehow been assigned in life is getting the stories, not only written, but published. So the question rolls on, I've had to resolve it anew with every new project.

I never quit until the work both meets my standards and is published. But damn, it's right wearing sometimes.

At the same time, I'm grateful for my strong clear sense of mission. If I didn't have it, I expect I'd be wrestling with whether I was doing the right work.

"Take each day with no backward look."

That advice -- "Take each day with no backward look." -- just jumped out at me when I went to visit Scott Burkhead's site, Daily Spiritual Guide.

It's from Hazelden's Touchstone Meditation Series. What a VIVID and LIGHT-AS AIR life I'd live if I thoroughly managed to do that!

If one is prone to a bit of scrupulousity--did I say the wrong thing? Did I say the wrong thing that day 18 years ago?--this could be a LIFESAVER. With the aid of meditation, medication, and exercise, I'm about 98% better at that than I used to be.

Taking Charge of My Workday

I'm feeling unusually CLEAR-EYED today, because of an exercise in time-monitoring.

For the next couple of weeks at least, I'm tracking HOW I SPEND MY WORK TIME AS A WRITER and where I spend my money.

It's a trifle irritating to be watching myself so closely. One the other hand, the effort is giving me a POWER RUSH. I feel as if I'm in charge of what I'm doing.

Of course, being self-employed I should feel that way. But often instead, I feel that time has slipped by and I'm not quite sure where. Same with money.

Now I'm watching where they go, with special interest in time, whether any given moment is spent on art, administration, consulting, or promotion of my work.

It makes me feel uncommonly brave simply to be willing to do this. Because I suspect that some days I HIDE OUT by busying myself with administration--tearing the edges off sheets of stamps, etc.

I tried this monitoring once before, very briefly, and it made me much more effective and CONFIDENT. I'm curious to see what fuller information will do.

Visionaries Wanted

Here's a powerful resource for social entrepreneurs. That's you, if you're somebody with an idea or plan to CHANGE THE WORLD.

ECHOING GREEN offers big fellowships to help set world-changing ideas in motion.

I learned of the site through Naomi Wolf's Woodhull Institute newsletter, and found it an inspiring place even to visit.

Visit soon. The next deadline is the end of this month.

Floating Orbs, Synchronicity

I just bought a small piece of grown-up art. It's the one in the lower right hand corner with the red dot on it that means Sold. I was astonished when I saw these pieces because the image of floating orbs of light, central to all of these, is also central to the biography I'm working on, and the novel which will follow.

These prints were made by my friend and office partner Carrie Knowles. I watched her putting up this series for an open-to-the-public show on Sunday, November 19, 1-5 p.m.
A couple of years ago, sitting at lunch chatting with a reiki teacher, I saw a small ball of light rise from the top of her head, zigzag upward, and vanish a few inches from the ceiling. Nothing like that had ever happened to me. And at the same time it felt perfectly ordinary.

But this "ordinary" event was a big deal. (I think I've written about it before on this blog.) It became the seed for a novel I began.

Weeks into the novel, I felt seized by the need to find out more about a painter I'd heard of in my hometown in my youth.

I tend to FOLLOW THESE URGES WHEN THEY COME. So I did a bit of research.

I struck pay dirt on my second or third dig into archives. In an art library at UNC, I found a bit of her journal, in which she'd written a note that people sometimes see a light over her head.

That was my eureka moment. It was clear to me that I had to write both books, and the biography was what I wanted to do first.

When I saw these floating lights go up in the room next door, it was just as obvious that I needed one of them for my room, for a book cover, for a talisman. It felt like a good celebration of the ongoing projects, and of the good results from following mysterious urges.

If you're in Raleigh and loose on November 19, stop by and see this collection. My personal floating orb will be there, with its red dot, through the end of that afternoon.

Yes, You Can!

Around the corner from my office, a church sits up on wood blocks. A bold-thinking downtown developer, Greg Hatem, had it scooped up from its old site and moved to what was a parking lot.

A lot of people might think that a church building stays where it's planted for as long as it exists. And the same with parking lots.

This guy wasn't stopped by that kind of silly assumption. Now he's spiffing the place up to rent, and it's a lovely addition to my leafy old-fashioned neighborhood.

I so admire this move: TO SIMPLY DISCARD THE IDEA THAT SOMETHING CAN'T HAPPEN. The world gets much richer if we step right through the conventional wisdom. In fact, a lot of improbable and amazing things can happen with perseverance, imagination, and looking past the frozen ideas of what's possible.

In it most radical definition, a church embodies a sky's-the-limit view.

Quaker Wisdom from a Catalog

In one of the million catalogs that arrive at my house, often in duplicate, I found a nice bit of wisdom.

Signals sells "gifts that inform, enlighten, and entertain." Among these is a framed print with the Quaker saying:

LET YOUR LIFE SPEAK

The selling copy contains some possible interpretations: "Live authentically. Let others know what matters to you. Embody your truths and values. Follow your vocation." (boldfacing mine)

Nice work, copywriter. It's a rare thing when ad copy enlightens, or re-enlightens.

For many years of my freelance career, I wrote ads and catalogs and brochures, etc. in maybe half of my time. I still take on such jobs occasionally.

But I never have gotten such an inspirational message across. Not even in the sappy inch of copy I wrote for an ad in inflight magazines advertising a teddy bear to take home to the kids. Though writing it managed to bring tears to my eyes.

So now I ask myself: what does "Let Your Life Speak" mean for me today? (Long break for thought.) It means: step lightly, listen to small whispers of impulse and consider following.

What I hear first as I listen: my stomach gurgling. I'm going to run out and get some lunch.

Medical Test Reveals Current Mission in Life

This morning a doctor gave me an all-clear you-are-not-malignant diagnosis.

I didn't really think I would hear anything else. But last week's routine test didn't look right and had to be further investigated. Even though that's very common and usually isn't a problem, still...

The interim of five days allowed me to think things over.

If I had only a short time to live, what I'd say to God is: make it long enough for me to finish this biography of Elisabeth Chant. Because I think it's part of what I'm here for.

So now once again I have "all the time in the world." And it's very clear which item I ought to put at the top of my to-do list every day.

Even a hint of mortality can be very clarifying.