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.

Energy Cycle/Courage Cycle

This morning I was struck for the first time by a pattern: I realized I have much more gumption later in the day than I do in the mornings. And that has been true for as long as I can remember.

The energy version of that idea is familiar, that there is a daily pattern of peak and low energy periods for each person. You know, everybody is "a morning person" or "a night person," etc. I've always held that I was a "lunch person." My energy level in the course of a day is actually pretty even.

What does form a daily pattern is my PEAKS AND LOWS OF COURAGE. In the morning, hard phone calls and hard projects are intimidating. I procrastinate (I've read that that's nature's way of getting desk drawers cleaned out.) I answer e-mail.

After lunch -- now, for example -- I'm starting to feel pretty capable. By late afternoon I'm on fire, and do what needs doing without a moment's hesitation. And then by about ten o'clock, I can't see that there's a whole lot that needs doing.

Could be I should stop berating myself for my morning hesitations. But I've spent years thinking everybody else in the world is efficient and fearless all day. I still want to be that way. It sounds so grown-up and productive.

A Writer Taking Voice Lessons

Here's a great example of THE VALUE OF CROSS-TRAINING, recently added to the comments on an old post. From Stephanie Bass:


"I am a writer, and have been taking voice lessons for about four months now. I'm rediscovering how to produce the mezzo soprano tones that made me so happy as a teenage choir member. And, I am working through decades of 'muck' to find the head space and body space for what my teacher calls 'free singing.'

It has everything to do with being bold, being completely taken by the pure expression of voice, simply hearing the tone and letting the body repeat what it hears. In those rare moments when a full, resonant, clear note soars from my throat I feel as if I've been struck by holy fire.

Last week my teacher told me, "the voice HATES IT" when the singer is shy, holds back, cringes in anticipation of getting it wrong. I get my best sounds when I imitate Julia Child-- in her full-bodied, all-butter, drenched-in-cream joyfulness. There's bold for you. And creativity."


Isn't that lovely?

On Waiting to Hear from an Editor or Agent

I hit total impatience occasionally and then it eases off again. The scary thought is that the impatience is going to last until I get a deal. It never does.

But it will crop up again after I get the deal, though the focus will be about the next stage of publication. Never-ending, but at least it's only occasional.

Yesterday morning was very frustrating. Today I'm cool.

Office Napping

I've read that SHORT NAPS while you're processing a problem can help creativity. And that pondering while lying down leads to solutions more quickly.

This morning I took that to an extreme: lay down on the rug to close my eyes for a minute and woke up three hours later. My phone had even rung and that hadn't stirred me. I found I'd slept through a monthly lunch group a friend and I started years ago; a few folks with shared metaphysical interests, a gathering we call Mystic Pizza.

Think I must be tired. I didn't take a break after finishing COBALT BLUE because I was so eager to get to the biography I've begun. And of course my work with other writers continues as books come and go. Also, two dear friends have had health crises in the last two weeks. One is now fine; one is over the worst. In any event--as most of us usually can say--"I got a lot going on."

POST-NAP, I feel less fuzzy-headed, a little feeble, not necessarily more creative, but then I never feel the process when my imagination is doing it's best work. It's always something I notice after the fact.

Southern Dishes for Southern Authors

Technically I'm a Southern writer, but I don't write about the South in the rural way that is usually associated with Southern writing.

My feeling is that there are many kinds of Southern. In fact, we've had towns here for a long time. And I like writing about places like India, anyway. The research gives me a good reason to travel.

Still, I've lived in North Carolina all my life and when it's time to break for lunch, I most often go to the nearby K&W cafeteria for Southern vegetables cooked the simmered-with-fat way I grew up on.

Today was a particularly good day at the K&W. My office partner, author-artist Carrie Knowles, and I celebrated her birthday there. The menu?

I consumed:
fried broccoli
lima beans
watermelon
sweet potato pie
sublimely sweet iced tea

Carrie celebrated with a slice of pudding-y chocolate pie with a fluffy white topping.

Some years ago I attended a small dinner for a visiting author, the wonderful short-story writer Lorrie Moore, of NY and Wisconsin. It was one of these Southern affairs, and dessert was a mammoth, meringued piece of lemon pie.

A half hour later, Moore was upstairs in the auditorium reading a short story to a sizeable audience, when, apparently to her surprise, she came upon a section of the story that was very witty and ironic on the subject of a similar meal, including a daunting piece of pie topped by a snow bank of meringue. She winced. I snickered and glanced around for my fellow diners.

A funny moment. At the same time, that was an excellent piece of lemon pie. So was today's sweet potato "tart." Good fuel for this afternoon's literary output. I recommend it to anyone.

Writers and Artists Seeing Ghosts

Do you suppose that artists of various sorts are more likely to have encounters with ghosts than other people are? (When I first wrote that sentence, it sounded like writers encounter more ghosts than people.)

Last night I had dinner with another novelist who told me the story of her experience with spirits. And that of a writer-friend.

A high percentage of the artists I know have seen apparitions, or had some other physical encounter that they matter-of-factly attribute to a ghost.

In a way, I'm envious. I've never met a ghost--though I did see a ball of light rise off the head of a reiki teacher once. I've enshrined that experience in my memory.

I do love to write about mystical subjects.

In my novel Revelation, a liberal preacher hears the voice of God, seriously, and his skeptical congregation thinks he needs psychotherapy.

In Sister India, an American woman living next to the Ganges develops in a crisis a sort of personal omniscience.

A lot of my interest in this stuff is wishful thinking. On the other hand, when I heard last night about my friend's experience, I was glad I wasn't there.

There's a writers retreat nearby where four novelists I know have independently had extremely spooky experiences. I have an interest in going; and I may do it. I'll certainly take a friend.

New-Book Nesting

I've been seized by the getting-into-a-new-book phenomenon of MAKING SPACE FOR THE NEW PROJECT.

This is quite a strong urge. I liken it to what pregnant women do in getting a house ready.

So I just walked into my office with a treasure that took me many stores to find: a cabinet of the sort that's used for filing mail for the different people in a small business. There are 24 boxes in this rectangle, each slightly larger than an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper, and it cost $8.99 at the Goodwill. Please note the photo to the right.

This is where I'm now going to file the notes for the various chapters of the biography I've begun researching: of an obscure but weirdly fascinating painter of the early 20th century. Right now about 30 pounds of notes are piled up in one drawer, which is about to become impossible for finding anything in.

In a few minutes, I'm going to get this item dusted off, glue some felt pad to the bottom so I can get the envelopes out from under it and not scratch the floor. Then start sorting by chapter and topic. At that point, I will know that this new book is WELL AND TRULY LAUNCHED.

(I also intend to get a new trash can: one with a lid on it, so that I'm not looking down into my trash all day.)

These things are not frivolous and they're not procrastination. For me, they're essential to move into this next stage.

Turning a Journal into a Book

(This post is a handout for a panel I was on Saturday about The Writer's Life at Peace College in Raleigh, for the spring conference of the NC Writers Network. Instead of actually handing out these sheets, I've placed them here, for anyone who might be interested.)


How to find the book(s) hidden in your journal


*Look for the quest. A story is one main character in search of something specific and crucial, the efforts to reach the goal, and the obstacles that get in the way.

*Let your journal entries jog your memory. Remember the events you didn’t write down…the little details, bits of conversation, things that might not have seemed important then but in retrospect might turn out to be a significant part of the story.

*Let the writing in your journal be the starting place for deeper exploration. Even if you already told all, ask yourself: what was really going on then? what was I trying to do? what was my most urgent motivation?

*Remember that it’s the obstacles that make the suspense in the story. And that it’s the hero/ine’s efforts, rather than a perfect outcome, that create a satisfying tale.

*As you continue writing in your journal, be sure to put down sensory information, and specific details. That’s what will bring the experience back full force. To say “this afternoon was nice or dreary or amazing” does not take a reader to a particular day with particular weather, it doesn’t recreate how it was to be there. But if you say that rain was pouring off the edge of the roof, the house smelled like gardenias and burned cookies, and you just heard a sputtering that sounded like a motorcycle shutting off in your driveway, then you have the material to recreate how it was that day, whether for a book or your own memories.

What to Write About?

(This post is a handout for a panel I'm on, Saturday, May 20, at Peace College in Raleigh, for the spring conference of the NC Writers Network. Instead of actually handing out these sheets, I'm placing them here, for anyone who might be interested.)


Find The Writing Topic To Inspire Your LASTING PASSION

*FOLLOW A LEAD, no matter how flimsy. If something about a piece of green glass or the memory of a coffeehouse in Krakov has an uncanny appeal, free-associate on paper. Let that take you where it will.

*Understand that SMALL DISTINCTIONS MATTER. What we wind up passionate about is very particular. So pay attention to those distinctions. You may not care about Egyptian history, yet be drawn to know everything about the pharaoh Hatshepsut. Is it the tea or the rose on the teacup that touches your soul?

*Before you go to sleep, tell yourself you’re going to DREAM of what you’re most called to write. The moment you wake up, write down every detail you can recall, whether the dream seems to have any value or not.

*NOTICE: What do you spend most of your time thinking about?

*WHAT WOULD YOU WRITE, if you couldn't fail? (somebody else wrote this line, don’t know who)

*Without looking, PUT YOUR FINGER ON A WORD in a book. Write about that word and what it evokes for you. Do it several times, perhaps over a period of time, then look back at any themes or images or phrases that recur.

*Write and write, following where WHIM takes you, all the while keeping the writing to what is experienced through the senses. They’ll get you to the good stuff.

Sidewalk Blogging and Elisabeth Chant

I'm on my way home from two days of research on a biography of a painter, a book project that I began in the fall, and have just gotten back to after a bout of novel revisions.

On the road the last two and a half hours, I pulled over to check e-mail and chat on my laptop in a little town I knew had a wireless network on its one downtown street.

This feels like a nice break, sitting in the cool on a park bench between an insurance agency and an ice cream shop. I've been living in 1922 for the past two days, the winter my subject arrived in my hometown of Wilmington, NC. My 57 year-old heroine (my age, too, as it happens) was walking on Jan. 12, 1922, from the train station in Wilmington to the "prestigious Hotel Orton." I was trying to find out what she saw on those few blocks. Not easy!

Now I'm back to technology. And so I'll take an Internet approach to this work:

DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY KNOWLEDGE OF A PAINTER NAMED ELISABETH CHANT? IF SO, PLEASE GET IN TOUCH.

The Birth of an Art Opening.

All week as I've sat at my computer, I've watched an art show being assembled in the adjoining rooms.

My office is in an old Victorian home owned by my good buddy artist-writer Carrie Knowles,pictured here. The downstairs contains my office and her Free Range Studio, where the mantra is "Creativity should have no boundaries and dreams no fences..."

On Sunday, May 21, a week from Mother's Day, she's holding her first opening in this (Raleigh, NC) building we moved into early last fall. And YOU'RE INVITED. Carrie's a printmaker, and doing gorgeous pieces that use photos she made of cobblestones in Brussels, where her son is a classical musician. In these prints the stones seem to float.

For a thoroughly verbal sort as I am, it's a rousing thing to see, as I work, new prints spread out all over the floors drying, to watch the work go through various stages, and see the show start to come together. It sparks my own imagination to see all this going on around me. This work of hers is evocative and surprising, good qualities to have around when you're writing.

Next Sunday's party is open to the public. Come look if you're in this part of the world. It's at 410 Morson Street, near the Capitol, 1-5 pm. A handbag designer will be showing here at the same time. And I'll be here as a guest, with my own office neatened up a bit.

Access to Creativity

Artist Patricia Roshaven asked in a recent comment here how I get access to my own creativity.

In the course of working with other folks, I've put together dozens of tricks for doing that, but I'm going to ponder here what I regularly do myself to GET TO THE DEEPEST, WILDEST STUFF:

1. I start work, in my case, writing. The result may be awful for a while and then get better. And ideas emerge while I'm working.

2. After working--maybe later in the day--I do something physical and mindless: exercise, take a shower, eat lunch, do the laundry, run errands. After I've been writing, ideas pop up when I'm doing something physical and routine.

3. I've learned this one only in the last year: Keep a little sign on my computer that helps me remember the point of what I'm writing: insofar as I know the point. This may seem obvious, but what I write seems to come from preconscious material, and it slips away very easily. Here's a post about the therapy session I had that brought me to a breakthrough on this.

4. At times when I've felt gripped by fear, I've taken short breaks every hour and read something that helped me keep the floodgates open: in writing the first chapter of Sister India, I kept stopping to read a couple of pages of Natalie Goldberg's Wild Mind. At another point when I was feeling shocked by what I was writing, I read bits of an autobiography by a friend, Lucy Daniels, With a Woman's Voice, which was startlingly personal and disclosing. I kept thinking: if she can do this, I can surely keep on spinning this fiction.

5. Having lots of toys and visual stimulation has helped me when I needed to write an ad on a deadline. (I used to do a lot of this kind of work.) Also, meditation has worked well for this: read the basic information, then sit and not-think about it for half an hour. Several times I've opened my eyes and had the idea present itself full-blown.


Part Two of Patricia's question was: what causes creativity to stop for me. One word answer: overwork.

Please suggest some of your own creativity tricks in the comments section, if you will.

The Good News Blues

Used to be that at the completion of each draft of each book, I'd go into a three-day emotional hell that I referred to as POST-DRAFT NERVOUS BREAKDOWN.

This was like an amplifed version of coming out of a movie into bright daylight: *light too bright
*sounds too loud
*real world appears badly managed and in need of a wash
*irritants become infuriating
Fortunately, I seem to have gotten over that.

This weekend, I surprised myself with a writerly emotional phenomenon that I'd forgotten: AGENT-LOVES-MY-BOOK JITTERS.

As I boasted in my last post, my agent reported Thursday that she's quite keen on my novel. She's enthusiastically sending it out.

So this weekend, I spent much of Saturday BERATING MYSELF for:
*being too fat (false)
*being out of shape (somewhat true)
*wasting a lot of time (mostly not true)
*house in a perpetual mess (mostly true)
*berating myself (true)

Of course, I barely thought about the novel and its future at all.

On Sunday came STAGE 2 of the jitters:
*mind calm
*painfully tense neck

Still no thought of book going out this week to editors.

Today, Monday: So far so good, which will likely continue. Working tends to distract me, which is a damn good thing.