Of Building Patios and Stories

I am building a patio in back of  my new house.  I started it during the days when my daughter was in recovery, and I needed some hard, physical work to distract me from the fact that there was nothing I could do for her.  Besides, the back yard of my new house has needed some serious tending to since I bought the place six months ago.  I thought it would take a week or two.  It's been two and a half months, and it is still several rows of stone away from being finished.  I lay down a stone pattern, and then check it for level, pull it, re-level, lay it again, and move to the next.  This morning I noticed a whole section had gone off-kilter when a stone I laid above them was not actually square.  So I will pull all 10 sections, re-level, lay them again.

Last night I sat with all the pages, handwritten, typed, word-processed, that I have for the story that has been haunting the back of my brain for months, and laid them all out on the floor, thinking, re-arranging, making notes, and it occurred to me that this process of building a story is much like the process of building that godforsaken patio.  When I started it, it was exciting - I posted on social media how much fun I was having doing this myself.  Then, the muscles began to hurt from digging and leveling ground over and over, from hauling and placing and lifting twenty-pound stones, and then the frustration of stepping back and seeing whole rows or sections off-kilter, needing to be pulled and laid again, of living with dirt constantly in your skin and fingernails and hair.   But there is also satisfaction.  The satisfaction of finding and filling the pocket that is causing one section to keep sinking, of watching the bubble in the level come out perfectly when you check, of standing back and seeing the pattern you envisioned realized in the stone. The satisfaction of seeing the beauty emerge from patient and careful placing, stone by stone. 

The main character in my current story, Tom, has been elusive.  As often happens, I thought I knew who he was, what his story was, and just a few pages in, he took over, but he has still been hiding in the shadows of my brain, just letting me know with that little itch, that odd discomfort when the wrong words go on the page, that I have not quite got him yet.  So I dig.  I do all the things that writers do when a character needs more depth, more focus - brainstorm, character development activities, writing letters to him, trying to coax him to speak back.  Page by page, I stand back and I can see when the stones are not level, when I have not been patient enough with placing his words on the page.  It is hard work.

Sometimes, a character comes fully formed, ready to speak.  Just yesterday, I was at a book fair, and a woman stopping at our booth looked at the cover of my last book and asked, "Who is Samuel Joseph?"  And I could tell her - I know him, and could use words to describe him the same way I could describe my best friend.   Tom is not there yet, like that pocket under the sinking stones, he is still hidden from me in many ways, but decidedly present.  I just need to get my fingernails dirty enough to find him. 

Of Auto Shops and Inspiration

"That's some real-life shit, Judy."  A guy named Jim, who works at a local auto shop, said this to me recently.

I've gone to the same auto mechanic for several years.  It's a good shop, among the best; so good that they don't generally take new clients.  I got in several years ago because a friend who'd been their client for decades recommended me when my last car began having serious problems.  In the years that I've taken my cars there, I've gotten friendly with one of the younger mechanics who works there, who usually handles my car, gives me advice, and makes referrals for outside work when I need it.  Jim. I trust him. 

Last week, when I took my car in for its annual check-up and a tune-up, he and I got to talking.  His father had died recently, and, after sharing sympathies, questions came about my family, and I told him about my daughter's recent diagnosis with colon cancer, and described the harrowing two weeks we spent waiting to find out how bad it actually was. His father's illness and funeral,  my daughter's diagnosis and experiences with surgery and treatment.  Some real-life shit.

I grew up familiar with auto shops, and the shop where Jim works feels very familiar to me - like visiting my Dad's shop when I was just a girl.  My father and two friends started Kalispell Motor Supply before I was born, and I grew up visiting him and "the guys" in the shop, familiar with the smell of the pits and machinery that was ever-present, and the air and sunlight that came from the ever-open front door of the shop, open even in the cold Montana winters, open to the street where their clients drove cars in for them to fix, open so that local folks could call in hellos from the street as they wandered by.   Dad lost his share in the shop when, at 39, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, spread so widely through his system that they weren't even sure where it had started.   Real-life shit.

 I haven't written much in recent weeks.  Instead of the long blocks of focused time I am used to spending at the computer or with pen and paper, I am scribbling lines here and there, often just before falling into bed.  Real-life shit is at the center of my life, now.

This has happened to me before.  Real-life shit overpowering everything else.  But I have always kept writing to some degree, at some level.   I have had people ask me how - how do I keep writing, keep going in life, when things (medical or personal or financial) fall apart.  Part of it is my basic nature - my late husband used to say that I "think on paper" - that when I needed to work something out, he knew he should hand me a pad of paper and a pen, and let me go at it for a while to figure things out.  Part of it is very good training.  In my Creative Writing master's degree program, my adviser was always challenging me, no matter what else was going on.  She pushed me, over and over, to put truth - real-life shit, if you will - on paper.  Not biographical, not memoir, but knowing that what you feel, how you struggle is familiar to your readers, and putting that same sense of struggle on the page connects the writer with the reader in an essential way.

And, it doesn't hurt that pouring my emotions into a character's troubles is cathartic for me, as well.   In the imaginary lives of imaginary characters, very real humanity is reflected.  Real-life shit.   Both the imagining of it and the perception of it when I read the works of others is a foundation - a place of growing strength both for me as the writer and for the developing sense of characters as they emerge on the page with their challenges and problems - their own real-life shit. 

Artist's Rights

An old friend sent me this via email this morning.   She didn't have the attribution for who originated it, and I couldn't find that.  In any case, it's spot-on.

Artist’s Rights

1.     You have the right not to care about what other people think. These days, it seems like criticism is both endemic and a market for those who don’t/won’t think for themselves. Spending too much time trying to please everyone results in pleasing no one and will make you inefficient and unhappy. Bottom line? Screw ‘em if they don’t get it.

2.     You have the right to require time alone. Much of the work that creative people do is done alone.  Allowing yourself precious private time is essential, as is keeping people who are full of shit out of your circle and your headspace.

3.     You have the right to take your time. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Some books/films/paintings take years. Art that is personally authentic and substantial is worth waiting for, and you have the right to insist on taking the time you need to make something beautiful.

4.     You have the right to claim some authority over what you’ve spent time doing. You are allowed to insist you know what you’re talking about based on your considered experience with, and practice in, your art. You don’t have to have a phD to get people to listen to you if you have clearly devoted yourself to a practice.

5.     You have the right to grow and change artistically.  People often tend to categorize an artist based on the first successful thing they did. People will continue to pigeonhole you. Change anyway.

6.     You have the right NOT to talk about your work. Art can make some people uncomfortable.  Intellectualizing art is a great way to avoid feeling the emotions that can come up when experiencing it. When someone insists you explain your story/song/picture you are not obligated to tell them. Really. Allowing yourself some secrets will preserve you as a creative person.

7.     You have the right  not to market your work. Not everything worth making must be sold.  Structuring your work for the biggest dollar can put instant limitations on work that could otherwise be groundbreaking. Similarly, you have the right to not “follow the rules.” It can help to know the rules, but it really isn’t a requirement. What some call “Folk” or “Handmade” Art has a deep wisdom to it.

8.     You have the right not to be a role model. Making art that puts you in the public eye should not also demand that you become a saint. The best work is often made by people who have explored all the vagaries of the human condition. Give yourself a break.

9.     You have the right to be passionate. Some artists can get consumed by their work. These moments are like an illness that overtakes them for a time. If this happens, try and allow yourself the experience. Censoring your passion so that others will feel more comfortable doesn’t do you, them, or the art any good.

10. You have the right to keep your own hours. The muse strikes when she is good and ready, and often it is in the middle of the night. If you tell her, “Come back after I’ve had a cup of coffee,” she probably won’t. Don’t let other people give you a hard time about WHEN you need to write, edit, practice, draw, or compose. If you don’t listen when the call comes, who will?

FOUND SISTERS

FOUND SISTERS

We stood there like a couple of idiots, whooping and hollering under a sky filled with lightning. It was the Flathead Valley in western Montana, a summer evening, and the rest of the family had adjourned from my mother's house down the street to the home occupied by my youngest sister - they were having a card game.  Two of us, my sister Jean and I, perhaps a bit disgruntled by the normal bickering that comes when a group of weary travelers gathers (especially when that group consists of all family) had stayed behind, feet propped up on my mother's porch rail, chairs leaned back on just the back legs (something I was always scolding my children for doing), smoking and taking in the high-mountain silence.  

Amidst a family crowded with sisters, Jean and I were a pair - after her untimely death, I found that she had written all her journal entries as letters to me.  "Dear Judy, here's what happened today...:"

That night, though, we were just two weary young women in tennis shoes, glad for the quiet of my mother's porch and the street in front of it.  A slight wind stirred the old maples that line the street, neighborhood dogs wandered about, and we could hear dishes clanking in someone's kitchen through an open window.  Then, suddenly, a flash in the sky, followed closely by a deep rumble.  Then another, and another.  We ran to the railing, leaning out to catch more of the deep blue of the evening sky over the valley. And, in moments, lightning filled the sky.  The next day's paper told us that in less than an hour, 1600 bolts had lit up the sky over town, while Jean and I danced underneath them.  

Jean was, in addition to being my sister, my best friend.  I am fortunate to have a family filled with remarkable women, but there was something more than just sibling admiration here - there was connection, and understanding.  She was an accomplished actress, I am a writer.  We shared a love of road trips and stories and magical moments.  Annually, we'd gather to lay in the dark and watch meteor showers, mostly in silence.  When one of us needed a lift, it was the other we'd call first - we had a code:  we'd say "just tell me" (not even bothering to say 'hello' first) and the other would unfailingly answer, "It's going to be alright."  And then, whatever it was, we'd talk it out.  Or not.

In the years both before and after her death I've found others who filled a similar place in my life - an innate trust, a connection.  I have taken to calling them my "found sisters" - sisters not of the same blood, but whose sisterhood is evident to me, and to them. Some of them, I've lost, as I've lost now two of my blood sisters.  I daily miss the presence in the world of my sister/friends Delna and Darlienne.  

The loss of a sister, whether a sister of blood or a found sister, changes everything in you.  Sibling loss is a shock to your identity, your sense of security, of self, of the entire world.  About four months ago, I found myself in a cabin at a remote writer's retreat, and there, under another sky filled with lightning, I began to write about the loss of a sister, about the pain that follows, about the struggle to become who you are without her in your life.  I've communicated with several friends, and am gathering stories of the loss of a sister as experienced by others.  

Meanwhile, whenever there's a lightning storm, I rush to stand under it, to look up and count the bolts, to breathe in the charged air.  That night so many years ago, Jean and I danced and laughed, pointing this way and that as the bolts exploded above us, until we couldn't any more, until the sky was alive with fire and it wasn't possible to move and point fast enough, so we wrapped arms around each other and stood and watched in silence.  That great power and our silence were one thing: one indestructible, shining thing.  

It was a thing - that night, the fire in the sky, our joy - that did not die with her, but lives on as something changed.  

STORYTELLING

Every day....every single day.... I am in the midst of a story.  It doesn't matter how many words I get on paper or type into my hard drive - the stories are there, every day, in my head - following me around, whispering at the back of my brain, waiting for me to hear them.

I am a storyteller.  For years, I called myself a writer.  I titled this blog "A Writer Seeks," but, in the end, it is always, for me, about the story.

This was always my problem with the publishing industry.  The training you get when you follow the path of traditional publication, (i.e, finding an agent, getting published, pursuing sales, etc) is to make it all about that instead of about the story.  And that's fine - pursuing publication through traditional channels helps you hone your craft, hear what readers (or at least editors) want, learn to edit fiercely - and that is important training.  But that is training in the business of writing, and, for years, as I published my first novel, then two nonfiction books, then a textbook, I was troubled by the notion that, in the pursuit of the business and the craft of preparing works for the market, that we were forgetting the art - forgetting the essence of the story - the real purpose that stories serve in our lives.

We are, have always been, a storytelling species.  It is how we learn, how we teach others, how we warn children, how we communicate our hearts and souls to others on the planet.  Someone once said (and I have searched vainly for the origin of this quote) that  "he who controls the storytelling of a society controls the society."   And therein, I think, lies the problem.

In our times, storytelling is largely communicated through the visual media.  This is both a good and a bad thing.  Through quality programming on television and quality movies, we are exposed to some transformative storytelling.  Sometimes.  The bulk of that media, unfortunately, has gotten us used to the quick fix, the easy story, being entertained.  One of my favorite authors, Neil Postman, wrote a book several years ago titled "Amusing Ourselves To Death" in which he examines that phenomenon in depth.  It is worth reading, more than once.  But my point here is that this trend has also affected the publishing industry.  What gets published is what will sell, and what will sell is driven by the market of entertainment-hungry consumers. Transformative storytelling is not the goal.  Sales are.

And that became my problem with the traditional publishing industry - work driven by the market, by sales, instead of driven by the story.  This is what drove me, a couple of years ago, to go the route of self-publishing.  When I publish an e-book or a self-published novel (I have three out, now, and plan to release a fourth when I feel it's ready), I can write for the story and forget the rest, until it's ready to "go up."  Then, if I haven't done my job, readers will let me know.  And I love that.

When I published my first story, it was the second sci-fi novel I'd written.  The first didn't feel done.   I published Somewhere Never Traveled as an e-book first, and was stunned by the reaction it received - making it as high (at one point) as #17 on the Kindle sci-fi list, and quickly garnering six 5-star reviews.  Two of them I solicited (but asked the reviewers to be fully honest if they chose to review) and the rest were complete surprises to me.  As were the sales, which were remarkable for nearly six months.  That success led me to rush the second book (The Heretic's Song) to publication - and readers let me know that was a mistake - hardly any sales at all for long periods, and only one tepid 3-star review ("A good attempt at first sci-fi novel, but it has problems.") I should have listened to my heart.  Which I did do when preparing The Hapless Life of Samuel Joseph for publication. I took it through  twenty-seven full revisions (and many smaller ones) based on feedback from eleven readers and their feedback before publication.  And, when it finally went up, it got three immediate 5-star reviews (one solicited, the rest from random Amazon readers).

At a recent lunch with a friend, she remarked to me that I was "living my dream."  And she was right - though I haven't published anything in the "traditional" market in a few years (and haven't submitted anything for more than three years to that market) I am, in fact, living my dream.  I want to tell stories that speak to people - whether they are marketing successes or not, I want my stories to bring readers into the world I create, and make them care about it, and perhaps look at their own world a little differently thereafter.

There is a lot of debate about what the e-publishing industry is doing to reading, to the market, to traditional publishers, to the art of those who write.  I'll leave those debate to others.  For me, it is a free market that allows me to offer stories to readers, and hear what they tell me in return.  That, as a storyteller, is all I need.

Becoming a Collector

Where do the ideas for stories come from?  There are formulas you can use, workshops to help, and you can study the issue.  I did, in grad school.  I taught those same strategies in creative writing and composition classes for years. And I still don’t really know where it is that the indefinable spark finally comes from when it comes.  If it comes.

You can consciously construct a story – gathering all the elements essential for a precise story arc and gluing them together.  But HOW you choose to glue them together, what it is that makes you reach for that setting rather than this one, this structure rather than that one – how the story, how the heart of it, forms, is quite simply mystery. 

For me, becoming a collector was an essential step in eventually becoming a storyteller.  I have stacks of notebooks and writing pads filled with snippets, moments, observations, news clippings – things that strike me for reasons I can’t even pinpoint. They pile up there in notebooks and often, unwritten, in the back of my brain.  Then, something – a sight, a sound, a news story is an unexpected (sometimes even unwelcome) catalyst, and six or seven or ten of these disparate elements fly together from parts of memory and thought, and the process begins.  Begins, and leads me.  More often than not, purpose is the glue that holds draws them together and sets the story in motion.  The purpose may be what I hope the story will say, or how the reader of it will feel, or what the story will show of us and to us. 

One story began when I walked into an old and run-down trading post on a back road in Montana, and wondered what it was that was behind the eyes of the three old men who sat at the lunch counter.  Another began when someone asked me what it would be like to be the only one of your kind, anywhere.  Neither of these stories made it to paper till long after these incidents, but the process was begun, and the various pieces of memory and sensory impression and information began to move together to form a stage on which the characters could develop.

So how, when you want to make a story, when you feel that urge, do you make it happen?  He answer is both simple and a lifelong pursuit:   attend.

Pay attention. Attend.   To life, to people, to surroundings, sights, sounds, smells, instincts.  Listen to the words of your favorite writers, of the great writers, of writers you know, when they talk about what they do.  Young and old, modern and ancient, popular and obscure, working writers pay attention.  

A Recipe for Characters

I used to love to watch my late husband cook.  For years, he’d dreamed of being a chef, but had gone into computer science, both out of a love of technology and its possibilities, and a desire for a career that would best support our young family. But even deep in the years of software and computer keyboards, WANs and LANs, programming language and code, he found the most joy in the kitchen.  When he finally became a professional chef and we opened our own restaurant, his joy was even more evident. Watching him in the kitchen as he prepped up to create a new dish was truly watching an artist at work.

I think about this now because I have lately been involved in many conversations about the nature of art and the artist, craft and the craftsman, and the process of creation itself, especially as it relates to writing.  It is not likely that anyone will ever define “art” or “the artist” to the satisfaction of all, but it occurs to me that every person engaged in creative acts has much to learn from others who have mastered theirs.

I see him now, with bowls of prepped ingredients spread out, and a large salmon on the cutting board.  When developing a new dish, he never looked at a recipe, and he also never faltered.  He would begin with whatever was the basic flavor he wanted to add, and move from there.  If he began with that cut of salmon, he’d begin with that flavor in mind, and reach for whatever additive most seemed, in his mind at that moment, to enhance it in the most basic way he wanted, and then build his “recipe” from there. He explored and discovered each new dish as he went, and, if it was not what he’d hoped for, he’d start again. 

Recently, my writing group went away with an assignment in character development.  I thought about it, and sat down with thoughts of two of my most recent characters:  Sammy, the lead character in the novel I just finished (The Hapless Life of Samuel Joseph) and Carson, the main character in a novel I’d put away two years ago when it went off in the wrong direction.  I knew what made Sammy laugh – he’d laughed often in the course of his story.  Carson, a much darker character, was another matter.  I thought more. 

What ended up occurring to me was that I couldn’t fit the development of these characters into any one mold, any one ‘activity.’ When I began the Samuel Joseph story, I began with him, with the character.  I’d had a notion for some time of what the story should accomplish, and, as I thought about that, the character of Sammy emerged.  At the beginning of the Carson story, I had an image and a name, and no more.  The purpose of the story did not occur to me till recently, as I began to get back to my character and get to know him in the context of that image I began with. 

In both cases, much like my late husband as he began to develop a new dish, it was a matter of discovery, and I could no more use the same methods on both than he could have in developing a seafood dish versus a vegetarian dish.  The path of discovery is driven by the material you begin with, and the chef/the writer attending to that with clarity.