On Cleaning House, Theater, and Not Being a Team Player - or - How to FIND FOCUS

I am not a good team player.   I work best, most effectively, most efficiently, when I work alone.  For a person, this is not necessarily a good thing, but it works for a writer.

This all came into my head recently when I made a work-trade with a family member and her husband - I’d clean the apartment they’d just moved out of, if he would come clean my gutters and install the leaf-shields I just bought.  Even with my tallest ladder, I (short sh*t that I am) couldn’t reach the gutters, and he (“a thousand feet tall” according to my daughter) can reach them.  I went over to

clean the apartment, and, as is often the case with a young family moving out, there was a fair amount of mess.  I set to it, and in a couple of hours had it cleaned, sparkling.  Looking around, I realized it was the kind of work I’d engaged in with groups of people that, even with more people working, had often taken considerably longer.  A former roommate of mine learned to leave me be when I was in what we termed “a cleaning frenzy” - because she knew I’d get far more done (and be happier) if left alone than if someone were trying to help me.  In team work for employers I am always happier (and more efficient) if I’m either leading the team, or have assigned tasks I can do on my own and bring to the group when finished.

From "The Last Days of Judas Iscariot"
2012 Production

The one area of my life (other than writing) where this has not been true has been theater - when I am cast in, or on the crew of, a play with others, I feel completely a part of the cast, fully focused and genuinely collaborative in a way that’s difficult (not impossible, but damned hard) for me with other teams.  I think this is because of focus.  In a play, the cast and crew all have the focus - the story - provided for us by the script.  We all, each in our own artistic ways, find our way to see, interpret, and work toward that focus under the guidance of the director.  It’s creative, it’s expressive, and it’s all about the story.  

In work tasks, on the other hand, everyone’s individual focus is about getting done, and everyone has different ideas about how to do that.  Even under the strongest leadership, people are often tripping over their fellow team members varying interpretations of how the task should be done, and it slows down progress.  Often, that is ok, because good ideas come up, and the team adapts, but it is also frustrating for all involved.

There are frustrations in plays, too (lord knows):   the cast member who doesn’t have his lines when everyone else does;  the actor getting the sillies and dropping out of character when everyone else is focused;  the director who gives conflicting directions or who is a martinet.  But the focus remains a constant - the story, the embodiment of it through ourselves.

So, this is why not being a team player can be good for you if you are a writer:   it is all about the story, and the focus for that needs to come from just you.  Uninterrupted, uninterpreted, unassisted YOU.  That is not to say that you remove yourself from life - you cannot be a writer if you are not engaged in life and with other people - but when you write your stories, the FOCUS needs to be yours - what YOU see as the heart and soul of the story (or article or essay or play) that you are writing.  

So struggle with those team assignments at work or in the classroom, trip over your friends who are trying to help you move or fix your car or make a Christmas present - but when you write, get rid of them all, sit down, and be alone.

On Michael Moore, Aaron Sorkin, and why Accuracy F*&**ing MATTERS

I write a lot about the mindset for writers, because I believe it’s important.  If you’re the writer who wants to focus on writing only for the market, then my words are not for you.  I think, as writers (as anyone engaged in creative work) we have an obligation to write what we feel needs to be said, and worry about marketing it later.  That, to me, is the difference between engaging  in your art and practicing your craft (both of which are necessary).   If it’s worthwhile, it will find a market.

That is not to say that you should not consider your reader.  You should.  If you don’t make them believe you, then what’s the point?  That brings me to something that’s been on my mind a lot lately:  accuracy.  Which, it should go without saying but appears not to, requires careful research.

A couple of years ago, I was working on my most recent novel, The Hapless Life of Samuel Joseph.  I wrote a passage where my character was trying to convince his uncle, who was a profound inspiration and influence in his life, to go hang-gliding with him.  The uncle refused, and Samuel called him a wuss.  I stopped, looked at the passage, and then wandered out into the living room, where I asked my then-housemate,  “When did we start using the word ‘wuss’?”

She looked up at me.  “I dunno.”

It took me three days and hours online on linguistic and etymology sites to find out that I was about a decade too early to have Samuel use that term.  I changed it to “wimp.”  (Which, by the way, dates back to a 1927 Poppye cartoon - found that out, too).

What does it matter?  It matters, and here’s why:

Some time ago, I went out to the theater to see the film “The Social Network” with three friends, all of

This never happened, by the way

whom are fellow-educators.  Afterwards, we went to dinner.  At dinner, one of my colleagues, let’s call her Blah-Blah (those who are HIMYM fans will know where I got that), was going on about Zuckerberg’s character and the things he did.

“Blah-blah,” I said, “We don’t know that he actually did that.”

“But,” Blah-blah  looked confused, “It’s right there in the film.”

“Exactly,” I said, “it’s a film.  It’s Hollywood - who knows what they invented.”

“Oh,” she said with confidence, “Aaron Sorkin wouldn’t just invent things.”

Oh? …  thought I, but went back to my dinner and let it drop. Sort of.

Aaron Sorkin

Over the next few days, I researched both the film and Aaron Sorkin.  In an interview, someone questioned him about the accusations of inaccuracies in that film, in other films of his, in The West Wing, etc.  His response?  ““What is the big deal about accuracy purely for accuracy’s sake?” (to New York magazine - link to source below)

A few years before that, I was reading (because one of my book groups was reading it) .. well, let’s just say it was a book about horses.  And Montana.   And a best-seller.  It was beautifully written, but I was pissed off.  The valley in which the story is set is a place I spent a great deal of time in my youth, and I knew it well, and the author had both the geography and the weather and much, much else completely wrong.  I couldn’t finish the book.  I hear the film was awesome.  I couldn’t make myself go see it, because I knew that place and those people, and he was just.  Completely.  WRONG.

I researched the author and found he’d never been to Montana, had, in fact, never spent any significant time outside of London.  Yeah.

If this were a problem only for fiction, I’d shrug my shoulders and blow it off.  But this attitude of “what’s the big deal” has completely worked it’s way into our culture in a way that is destructive to many of the foundations of our culture.   As a “f’r’instance” (as my mom used to say) - another book I read for a different book group was Stupid White Men by

Michael Moore

Michael Moore.  I admire a great deal of what Moore has done - Roger and Me and Columbine were ground-breaking, and essential to transparency.  But, his books I have problems with.   I laughed my way through Stupid White Men and then, as I am wont to do, got into research before going to the book group meeting.  

I selected 40 quotations and statistics he used, looked them up in his bibliography, then went to check the sources directly.  Twenty-nine of them (29 out of 40!) were inaccurate, totally absent from the source he’d cited, quoted out of context, or edited to fully change the meaning.  So I checked a few more.  Same results.  I wrote Moore a letter to which he never responded.  

At the book group meeting, I brought up a few of these inaccuracies, and was waved off.  So I got out my list, cited the actual sources, told them how freaking many I had found - (72.5% of the sources checked were just plain wrong).  There was silence for a moment, and then they began arguing with me.  We need to support Michael Moore, no matter what.  He’s on our side, Judy.  Then, it hit me:   they were mad at me.  Not mad at Moore for playing fast and loose with the facts, but mad at me for questioning something that held up their belief system.

And that, for God’s sake, for the absolute love of God, is why accuracy is important.  That, Mr. Sorkin, is why it is, in fact, a big fucking (pardon moi) deal.  Putting down things in print is a tremendous responsibility, precisely because, no matter how much you quote artistic freedom, there will be people who will believe you, and act on those beliefs.

‘Nuff said.

Aaron Sorkin critique

How Aaron Sorkin responds to accuracy critics

Michael Moore critique - worth a read

Greeting the Reader - Adventures in Namibia and Helena, Montana

Just  the fact of saying hello.  Of greeting another person.   It’s not something we think about a lot, but maybe it should be.

I recently took a long road trip back to my home state of Montana.  I don’t go as often as I might like.  I’m a person who feels a sense of connection to place, and the mountains of western Montana are one of the places on this planet that call to me.  I loved the trip - I like driving, and lots of the drive was through very beautiful country.  I noted runaway truck ramps in the mountains, now looking much more like they could stop tons of speeding metal than they did when I was a kid.  I saw sections of

highway in Idaho and Montana which seemed to have been tinted before they were laid down - some a pale green, others rose-colored or orange.  I saw a sign outside of Missoula, Montana advertising the Testicle Festival.  (You need to have been raised near ranches to know what that means).  I loved the road rolling under me, the vast stretches of sky, the abandoned farm buildings roadside with their ramshackle and unlikely beauty, the long stretches of road with nothing but trees, land, and sky.

I spent time at my sister’s house, cooking, talking, laughing, and catching up.  We didn’t go out much, but when we did, I found myself struck by something.  Walking into or out of a store, if someone - a man, a woman, old or young - passed by me, they’d say hello and smile.  The first time or two that it happened, I was startled enough that I didn’t have time, by the time I collected myself, to respond before they’d walked on.  When I thought about it, I had to smile.

You see, I’ve experienced it before, but from the other side.  Eight years ago, I spent a few months teaching in Namibia in southern Africa.  I was assigned to a small school in northern Namibia.  In “the North,” we were told in orientation, there was a very important local custom:   greeting.  Any person

you encountered, you greeted - not to do so was to insult them.  In Oshiwambo (the local language), the greeting went like this:  

Person A:  Wu uhala po.  

Person  B: Ee-ee.

A: Onawa tuu?

B: Ee-ee, ngoye wu uhala po?

A: Ee-ee.

B: Onawa ngaa?

A: Ee-ee, Onawa.

Roughly translated as:   How are you?   I’m well.  Really?  Yes, and you?  I’m well.   Good.  Yes, Good.  

You did this greeting with every person.  It was an adjustment, feeling awkward at first, but I came to love it.  I particularly recall walking along a path through the brush near the village of Onankali.    I had come there to visit another volunteer, a friend, and we were on our way to a church service in the village.  An older woman came around a bush on the path ahead of us, clearly in her Sunday best, and greeted me, and smiled with delight, taking my hand and speaking in rapid Oshiwambo when I responded.  I didn’t know much of the language, and could only continue the greeting with her, but she was delighted.  At the school where I worked, most of the daily greeting was done in Namibian sign language, as it was a school for the deaf, so I hadn’t learned much of the dozens of variations of the local language spoken in the region, but she didn’t care - I had greeted her appropriately.  When we got to the church, she introduced me to the other women as “kuku McKenzie” - “grandmother McKenzie” - in their culture, a high honor.   I also remember the times I failed to greet appropriately, and being taken to task for it once in a taxi with another woman, who told me I should learn better.  

It was this training that stayed with me for some time after I returned.  When our group returned to the States, we landed at Dulles International, and a group of us stayed the night at a local hotel while we waited for our outgoing connections the next day.  At the hotel that night, we wanted some ice in the room, so I walked down the hall to the ice machine, and, when a man was walking toward me down the hallway, I greeted him with a Hello.  It was automatic - one greeted people.   He looked at me as though I had shouted at him, and scurried away down the hall.  After a startled moment, I laughed - I still often laugh when I think about it.  This is how I felt in Helena, Montana when people greeted me.  

The population density in Montana and Namibia is about the same - about 6 people per square mile.  Maybe when there are less people, it becomes more important to connect.

This is what has me thinking about the relevance of all this to writing.  In writing - there are,in a very real way - just two people:   you and the reader.   What we need to do as writers, each and every time we sit down to write, is to greet them - they are a part of our story, and we need to remember their faces as we work.  We need to turn, see them, and make sure they are there with us by acknowledging that they are something more than anonymous passers-by.