Dani Shapiro

On Getting a Great Review

2010-01-18T08:48:00.004-05:00

This just came in from Publisher's Weekly--a starred review!

* Devotion, Dani Shapiro. Harper

Shapiro’s newest memoir, a mid-life exploration of spirituality begins with her son’s difficult questions—about God, mortality and the afterlife—and Shapiro’s realization that her answers are lacking, long-avoided in favor of everyday concerns. Determined to find a more satisfying set of answers, author Shapiro (Slow Motion) seeks out the help of a yogi, a Buddhist and a rabbi, and comes away with, if not the answers to life and what comes after, an insightful and penetrating memoir that readers will instantly identify with. Shapiro’s ambivalent relationship with her family, her Jewish heritage and her secularity are as universal as they are personal, and she exposes familiar but hard-to-discuss doubts to real effect: she’s neither showboating nor seeking pat answers, but using honest self-reflection to provoke herself and her readers into taking stock of their own spiritual inventory. Absorbing, intimate, direct and profound, Shapiro’s memoir is a satisfying journey that will touch fans and win her plenty of new ones. (Feb.)

On Habits

2010-01-12T08:51:00.003-05:00

There are a lot of things I've done wrong as a writer. I published my first book before it was ready, and my second book too. I stayed with one agent far too long, and jumped ship before I had fully considered what I needed. I didn't plan out my literary career, to the degree that such things can be planned, but rather, allowed myself to be buffeted by the winds of other people's ideas and projections. I don't regret any of it, because seven books later I am aware that the bends in the road are part of the process. Change one thing, in the light of retrospect, and everything else changes too.

But one thing I have always been pretty good at is creating habits that support the work. People often assume I must be disciplined, but really, it's all about habit and routine.

What do I need to get my work done?

This is different for everyone, of course, and life circumstances also dictate some of the possibilities for routine. For instance, I once had a student, a psychologist and AIDS researcher, who wrote in the mornings--by which I mean 4 in the morning--before she left for work. She has published two novels. I don't know how she did that. I really don't. I have other students and friends who write in the middle of the night, when their families are asleep. I don't know how they do it either. But it works for them. Me, I keep banker's hours. I like to wake up in the morning, get my family settled in their lives for the day, and then make myself a strong cappuccino and sit down at my desk. If my cappuccino machine broke, I might have a problem working that day. I might have to drive to the Nespresso store and buy a new one. It's that much of a habit. Another habit is my yoga practice. At some point during the mid-morning, I try to unroll my mat and practice an hour of yoga. On days when I do that, my mind is clearer, longer. And I try--though this is a losing proposition--to stay off the internet while I'm working.

We get used to whatever it is that we do. Anything can become a habit, for better or worse. But the most important habit of all--whether night or day, yoga or no yoga, cappuccino or not--is the sitting down to write.

On the Noise in my Head

2010-01-03T10:20:00.005-05:00

How do we find the quiet space we need in which to write? By this I don't mean finding rooms of our own. I've written before about rooms of our own, which are important, if not essential. But physical space isn't the whole story. In order to write, by which I don't mean dashing off quick, half-thought-through emails or addressing envelopes, but rather, the process of being led to the page by the words and thoughts themselves, we need quiet inside ourselves. Emotional, psychological, spiritual, mental silence. A snow globe comes to mind; shake it up, watch the flurry of whiteness until finally it's all settled at the bottom and the thing itself--the image, the symbol, the panorama, is clear and visible.

Lately I have been having trouble with the noise in my head. There's so much of it! When I unroll my mat to practice my yoga, it's there. When I sit in meditation, it's there. When I'm at my desk, it seems to be coming not only from inside my head but from the world around me. It's on the internet, in my "in box", in the ticking clock, the ringing phone, the piles of papers and books and travel schedules. I developed many tools over the years to turn down the volume -- everything from yoga and meditation to a good strong cup of cappuccino to reading bits of Virginia Woolf's diaries (always, without exception, a tonic) but still, sometimes... all there is left to do is make peace with the noise. I tell myself that it's necessary, like a mountain I have to climb before I can see what's on the other side. After all, what else do we have but the contents of our minds? And how--as writers--can we possibly know ourselves, be our own best instrument--if we can't hear what's in there?

Sometimes it's appalling to listen, to really listen. Some of that mental chatter is inane. Embarrassing. Mortifying, even. Really? I think to myself. Really--that's what's in my head? Like an overflowing wastebasket, I try to empty it, a bit at a time. And truly--after all the other tools, the yoga, meditation, breathing, cappuccino, after the room of one's own, the closed door, the desk full of talismans, the best way I know to do this is to write. To write past the noise, to the other side of the mountain.

On Finding Your Teachers

2009-12-17T08:39:00.008-05:00

I have made many mistakes and missteps in my life, but looking back, one thing I can truly say I've always been good at is identifying my teachers--that is, the people who would respond to me, who were in a position to help me, who I respected and wished to emulate. Even in high school, during which I was otherwise a train wreck, I sought out the most engaging English teacher in the school and befriended him. We're friends to this day, and when I read in Boston on my last book tour, he was in the audience, and let me tell you, that meant so much to me I could barely trust my voice.

In college, I was still something of a train wreck (see: Slow Motion) but I also found my teachers, and I don't think it would be overly dramatic to say that I would have been lost without them. I remember sitting in Grace Paley's office, on the floor (somehow we always sat on the floor in Grace's office, and sometimes even in her lap) and Grace telling me that I was a writer and I should go to graduate school. I'm pretty sure she just pointed at the door to the graduate writing program at Sarah Lawrence and suggested I walk through it. What more, really, can a teacher do than guide a student to the right door? Then, in graduate school, I received a note one day from one of the professors, Jerry Badanes, who had read a short story of mine for a contest, and invited me to lunch. During that lunch, he and I discovered that a film he had written years earlier about shtetl life in Poland contained archival footage of my family: my grandfather and great-grandfather reciting the Mourner's Kaddish at the foot of my great-great-grandfather's grave in a tiny village.

The Shapiro footage, Jerry's face lit up. You're the Shapiro footage!
I knew then, that he would help me. That he had lived, in a way, with my ancestors. That he had things to teach me, and that I would learn from him.

Jerry and I spent years meeting at Edgar's Cafe on the Upper West Side, or sometimes at E.A.T. on Madison Avenue, when he was feeling particularly celebratory. He taught me a lot about craft, but even more than craft, he taught me something about what it meant to live as a writer, to work as a writer, to think as a writer. When he died, suddenly and far too young, it was like losing a member of my immediate family.

During the last two years, as I've been working on my new memoir, Devotion, I once again found my teachers. I didn't go looking for them; I didn't have to. Apparently, I was ready for them, and they appeared. The great Buddhist teacher, Sylvia Boorstein, the gifted yogi and author, Stephen Cope, and the brilliant rabbi, Burt Visozky. When I set out on the journey that became Devotion, I didn't know that I would meet a Buddhist, a Yogi and Rabbi who would be my guides along the way. Their willingness to be my teachers -- as was true with my high school English teacher and with my graduate school mentors -- has taught me a lot about the sacred nature of that relationship.

With my own students, I try to pass it on.

On Anxiety

2009-12-03T10:17:00.006-05:00

Of all the mental states one might find oneself in when sitting down to write, anxiety may very well be the worst of them. Of course we can't always approach the page with a sense of inner calm, of ease, of a mind ironed clean. Sometimes we're agitated--though a little agitation goes a long way. Rage, grief, longing, joy, frustration--all these have their place, though it's best not to write from the center of these feelings, but rather, from the recollection of them. But anxiety is, as far as I'm concerned, the enemy. It makes us write too fast, or too prolifically, or too self-consciously. I've seen more writers, over the years, felled by their own anxiety, by which I mean a very particular kind of anxiety: I need to get published, I need recognition, I need it now, or I will die.

Fantasies of publication--and there are always fantasies of publication--take over and become the reason for the work, rather than the possible happy byproduct of the work, that's where the trouble sets in. When I am at my desk dreaming of what my book is going to look like on the front tables of book stores, and what, exactly, I'm going to wear for my "Oprah" appearance, I am no longer a writer at work. I have lost the thread, and have entirely missed the purpose (not to mention the pleasure) of the process.

The pleasure is in losing track of time, in being so deeply engaged in a piece of work that hours drift by, unnoticed. You have entered what is sometimes called a flow state, or something bordering on a trance. This is why writers write. To write for any other reason would be crazy. Dreams of fame--anxiety about what will or won't happen--is not only disastrous for the work, but for the psyche. Grasping, needing, craving--one thing I can tell you from experience is this: Nothing will ever be enough. That big review in the important place, the bestseller list, the invitations to speak...whatever it is you think you need so badly...it will fall through your fingers like so many grains of sand. It's happened to me more times than I can count, and I still have to remind myself: What is it that makes me feel fully alive? What makes me feel a deep sense of contentment, satisfaction, even glimmers of euphoria?

Not the review.
Not the bestseller list.
Not the invitations to speak.

All of that is very very nice, but no. That profound sense that I am doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing only happens when I'm writing. Just writing. Not fantasizing, not checking my email to see if anything important has happened in the last five minutes, but simply putting one word down at a time until eventually I have something whole, something driven by my internal life--not my dreams of glory.

On Precision

2009-11-17T08:28:00.009-05:00

These days, I often tell people not to read my early books. I inwardly cringe when someone tells me they're reading either of my first two novels. Years ago, while talking with the writer Peter Matthiessen, he told me that his early books weren't worth reading. I remember, at the time, watching the old master wave his hand impatiently, as if swatting away a pesky fly. I realized, with a start, that he was dismissing more books than I had even written at the time. I couldn't imagine that I would ever feel that way. I had been profoundly attached to each book as I was writing it. I had loved them as if they were my babies--which, in a way, they were. How could I ever feel that they weren't worth reading?

I'm seven books into this life, now. Seven books, and I can say with clarity and confidence that each of my books has been better than the last. Slow Motion was a better book than Picturing the Wreck. Black & White a more controlled and disciplined novel than Family History. Devotion, I am convinced, is my strongest book yet. I stand by those books, but I also can see the progression. I have been learning on the job all along. Is there any other way for a writer to learn? Occasionally a story emerges of a writer who holes up, spends decades in a garret, wherever garrets still exist, and enters the world fully formed, clutching a masterpiece. More often, we develop as we go.

Which brings me to precision. When I was writing my first couple of novels, I was in love with language. I'm still in love with language--but that earlier love was a blind, passionate kind of love, the kind that doesn't allow you to see anything for what it is. I loved the sound of words, indeed, I often read them aloud to myself as I sat at my desk. When writing description, I believed that more was better. Why use one simile when you could use three? I heaped words onto the page until the very thing I was describing sank beneath the weight of the words, like one of those ice cream sundaes with too many toppings. The flavors competed. The cherry bled into the whipped cream. The whole thing melted into a giant, meaningless mess.

Over the years, my prose has become leaner. Adverbs have pretty much bitten the dust, and adjectives had better be doing their job or I show them the door too. And when I read, I am also looking for that precision. It's incredibly hard to find just the right word. So much easier to layer on pretty words that are the literary equivalent of distracting a toddler. Look, honey! Over there--at the red balloon! The reader's attention is diverted from the fact that the writer hasn't nailed it. Once, in graduate school, my favorite teacher and mentor warned me against exactly this kind of pretty language: "You know how to make something sound beautiful," he said. "Just be sure it's actually saying something."

Maybe it has to do with getting older. Maybe it has to do with the lessons learned from writing seven books. But now, when I sit down to write, I do so with the awareness that there is no clever substitute for exactly the right word. I'm less interested in writing something beautiful than something true.

On Being Smart

2009-11-05T08:32:00.007-05:00

Over the weekend, I was talking with a friend about a particular writer who shall remain unnamed here for reasons which will soon become clear. She's published quite a lot of books--fiction, essays, polemics--and in this case, we were discussing her fiction, which isn't, in my opinion, very good.

"She's a particular kind of too smart to be a good fiction writer," I said.

My friend nodded in agreement. That was it. Too smart.

I've told my students for years that we need to be dumb like animals in order to write good fiction. What do I mean by this? To try to understand what I mean, I've been looking at my two dogs resting by my feet for the last few minutes. They're relaxed but alert. Their ears are pricked, their bodies loosely spilled onto the floor, their eyes are open. They're ready for anything--ready to leap to their feet at the slightest provocation. They see, smell, hear, taste, touch everything in their environment--or at least I think they do--but from a place of calm attention.

That kind of relaxed attention has a lot to do with writing good fiction. If I am thinking too hard, or too much--if I am layering thoughts and suppositions on top of the tender, frail beginning of story before I've barely begun, what I end up with is a collapsing heap of abstraction. When a writer is too smart for her own good, you can feel the weight of her thoughts on the page, like a truck straining uphill. You experience the author's mental exertion, rather than the story itself.

The best writers, of course, are able to do both: feel and sniff their way through a story like a sure-footed animal through a thicket, and then, but only then, once there is a draft on the page, they're able to think about it. To become first, willfully sensate and dumb like an animal, and then to become smart, lucid, clear-headed when approaching revision. We all know writers who are good at one or the other. The best writers are good at both.

It's so easy to forget this. To think: I need to write something clever, something ironic, something The New Yorker might like. To think: but what's the big picture? I need to know the big picture before I begin. The paradox of the big picture is that it's only revealed one tiny picture, one small moment at a time.

On Self-Doubt

2009-10-26T08:40:00.006-04:00

Sometimes I wish I could feel less uncertainty, less raging self-doubt about my work. Shouldn't it stop, after a while? The questioning, the internal nagging feeling that I'll never get it quite right? Seven books into this life, and I still sit down to write with a flutter of dread in my heart. You can't do this, a little voice whispers. What makes you think you can do this?

I've been working on making peace with this voice. After all, it isn't going away. Colette once wrote: "The writer who loses her self-doubt, who gives way as she grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for her to lay aside her pen."

Many years ago, when I was at work on my second novel--which to my mind is the least accomplished of all my novels--I loved what I was doing. Oh, how I loved the music of my own words! I carried around pieces of my manuscript. I read passage aloud to friends. I read those pages over and over again, in the backs of taxis, while in cafes, or waiting in line. I wasn't reading them with a critical eye, but rather, a blind and adoring one.

With each of my successive books, I have loved my work a bit less. And, interestingly enough, the work has grown better. It seems that loving my work wasn't doing me any good at all. Grace Paley used to say that if she loved a sentence enough that she wanted to get up from her desk and walk into the other room to read it to her husband, she knew she had to cut it. At the time, as a graduate student, I wasn't sure what she meant. Wasn't it a good thing, to love one's own sentences? But as with many of the remarkable bits of wisdom Grace shared, this has bloomed in my mind, over time.

So where, then, is the pleasure? If sitting down to do the work is hard--and it is hard, it should be hard--and if the process of getting that work into shape is hard--and it is, hard, it should be hard--and if bringing that work out into the world is a roller-coaster ride, full of ups and downs, unanticipated curves, elation and disappointment constant bedrellows--then what could possibly be the point?

As best as I can tell, the absorption, the single-minded focus, the hours that pass while most engaged in the work itself is the point. When I am deep into a piece of work, actually doing the writing of it, I am not thinking that it's lousy, or genius, or anything in between. I'm not thinking about people reading it, or reviewing it, or responding to it in any way. I'm simply in the process--all the way down there in the trenches of the process--with my small, flickering candle, trying to tunnel through the darkness.

On the Bottomless Pit

2009-10-13T08:56:00.006-04:00

It came to my attention, a few years ago when I started actually paying attention, that I am unable to accept a compliment about my work. Oh, I can smile and nod and say thank-you-very-much. But what I don't seem to be very good at doing is taking it in.

I love your last book, someone might say.
It made me cry.
It made me think.

And me, I feel all squirmy and awkward. What is it that goes through my head in these moments? Part of me doesn't believe what I'm hearing. Part of me just wants to run and hide. Part of me is bursting with joy but can't allow that feeling in, because to allow that feeling is to believe the compliment, and somehow that is just plain unacceptable.

What is this bottomless pit that exists inside of so many of us, into which all compliments, flattery, good reviews, pats on the back seem to fall? I can quote you chapter and verse from the negative reviews I've received over the course of my writing life. I can tell you who wrote them, and how they made me feel. But if asked to summon even a fragment from the (fortunately larger) pile of good reviews, I would draw a blank. Or--worse still--sometimes I'll be trolling around on the internet and I will stumble upon something truly nasty. There are people out there in the great cyberverse who don't like me or my work at all. Why is it that, in these moments, I think that these are the smart, all-seeing ones, the ones who really know the truth?

Here's the only silver lining I can come up with for the problem of the bottomless pit. I think we writers need it. I think that the moment we start believing our own shit, if you'll pardon the expression, the minute we start thinking that we know what we're doing, we're lost. I've read books recently by writers who--I can tell--took in the praise heaped on them over the years. They've become parodies of themselves. They've lost that uncomfortable sense of insecurity that kept driving them forward, as if with an electric prod. They may be happier people, yes. But they've lost their hunger, and along with their hunger they've lost whatever it was that made their work sing to begin with.

So I guess I'll take the bottomless pit. I have no choice, really, but to reach down there and shake hands with it. After all, it helps keep me honest--even if, once in a while, I'd like to take in a compliment, and bask in its glow. Even for just a minute.

On Betrayal

2009-10-07T08:24:00.012-04:00

I have a galley of my upcoming memoir Devotion sitting on my desk, waiting to be put into an envelope and mailed to one of my relatives. It has replaced the bound manuscript which sat in the same place on my desk, which replaced the actual manuscript, which also occupied that spot for months and months. I have padded envelopes in my closet, stamps in my desk drawer. The post office just a five minute drive down the road. So what's my problem? Why haven't I sent my relative an advance copy of my book?

Because I'm anxious. Because I'm scared. Because this particular relative is an important character in my memoir, and I want her to love the way I've portrayed her. In writing about my own attempts to find meaning in my everyday life, I have written about a member of my deeply religious family who has lived her life with tremendous spiritual clarity, and for whom I have bottomless respect. There isn't a single unkind word about her in the book. Not one. So why am I afraid?

Janet Malcolm once famously wrote that every journalist who is not too stupid or full of himself to notice what's going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. Many times, while writing a story, I have an awareness of the way I am seeing my subject, as if all my senses have at once become wider, deeper, more discerning, more KNOWING--as if a lens inside of me has opened to its greatest possibly clarity. At these moments I feel a touch of Malcolm's moral indefensibility--because quite suddenly my subject has become a SUBJECT. No longer simply a human being, but part of the larger tapestry of a story. "Oh, that's good," I'll think to myself about a bit of dialogue. "I can use that." Use being the operative word. We writers do use stuff. We take what we see and hear and smell and taste and make it ours on the page. What else can we do? It's all we've got. Whether we're writing fiction or non-fiction, this is the case. It's not always a purposeful thing, or even a conscious thing--but it invariably happens. In fact, we lie in wait for those moments. Those are our instances of grace. We come across something--an image, a phrase, a slant of light--and we take it. Immediately, we appropriate it, and make it ours.

In the two years I spent writing Devotion, I had experiences I thought I would write about, but didn't--or tried to, but they didn't work on the page. And at other times, as I went about living my life, I had experiences that I had no particular intention of including, but there I found myself, widening, deepening, becoming hyper-aware--no longer just a person having an experience, but instead a writer, gathering, hording, pruning. Voracious. Thrilled. Ah--a little voice would whisper. This--this is perfect.

I suppose this is why I have that bit of trepidation about sending an early copy of Devotion to my wonderful relative. Will she think that when I was sitting with her, walking with her, having coffee with her, that I was really just a machine, taking internal notes? Will she feel betrayed? Is what I did, in fact, a betrayal of sorts? Is it possible to live inside a moment and outside of it at the same time? Perhaps that's the lot of the writer. Perhaps we're always hovering just a bit away from the center of things--feeling everything, perched on the periphery, taking notes.

On Taking Risks

2009-09-30T09:38:00.004-04:00

It's all a high-wire act, isn't it? The writing? The sitting down to write? The thinking that we have anything worth saying? Every bit of good writing emerges from a wild place. Whether you are a person of faith or not, still, setting words down on the page is an act of faith. Whether you think you are a courageous person or not, trying to craft a narrative -- in other words, trying to create something out of nothing -- is an act of courage. Now, of course we writers aren't necessarily faithful or courageous people. Not most of us. Not in our real lives. Not when we climb out of bed in the morning and meet our own faces in the mirror. Coward! The mirror might reflect back at us. Faithless one! You, there--brushing your teeth. Yeah, you. Why do you think you have anything inside you worth saying? Why do you think anyone will care?

Recently I was going through a list of small pieces, short fiction and essays that I've written over the past few years. The list is pretty long, actually. And I had a moment, looking through that list, of realizing that every single one of those pieces had begun with the same process of resistance, wildness, faith, doubt, and ultimately just enough courage. Here goes nothing, the little voice in my head whispered again and again. Here goes nothing. But still--in the faith of that potential nothingness--I plunged forward anyway. Doggedly, determinedly, forward. That small kernel of wildness aglow inside me.

Here goes nothing?
So what.
Maybe it will turn into something.
Maybe not.

Almost all of those pieces worked out. They were published here and here and here. I have to remind myself every day that it's a risk--all of it. Every day brings small satisfactions, small disappointments. Because my husband and I are both writers, our household is full of those ups and downs. The phone rings at dinner time with some crisis or another (the life of a Hollywood screenwriter). An email brings news that something I had hoped for is happening--or isn't. That roller coaster that is the life of two people who create. Sometimes, when I'm aware that our young son is watching us, I wonder what he sees -- and whether it looks good to him, or whether some day he'll opt for a more stable life with fewer ups and downs. A life with clear parameters, predictable days, concrete results.

Or maybe, just maybe--I'd like to think that he sees two people who are wrestling with their fears and insecurities, who hear their own internal censors, whispering Here goes nothing...but plunge forward despite our cowardice and faithlessness and uncertainty. Taking that daily risk despite ourselves.

On the Importance of a Room of One's Own

2009-09-21T09:52:00.003-04:00

As I write this, literally as my fingers move across the keyboard, one of my dogs is banging against the kitchen door downstairs. The reason he's banging against the kitchen door, hurling his whole little body with all his might against the dining room chair that I placed on the other side of the swinging door, is because he has--how shall I put this delicately--a bit of an intestinal issue this morning. I have spent the last several hours on my knees, scrubbing carpets and floors.

A good way to start the week? You tell me. But it's the price I pay for working at home. That, along with the ringing phone, the UPS truck, the FedEx packages, the occasional Jehovah's Witness ringing the doorbell. I used to have an office outside of my house. When we lived in New York City, I worked at a place called The Writers Room, a large loft space divided into many cubicles. Cellphones weren't allowed. Silence was the rule, except for in the kitchen and library, where a writer in search of conversation could always find a colleague taking a break. If it sounds like heaven, it really was. I loved that place, and it is the single thing I miss most about the city. It was the perfect environment for this writer: solitude without loneliness.

When we moved to the country, I rented an office in town. It was a retail space on the main road, with a picture window that overlooked a front yard and the street. I worked there for several years, wrote Black & White there, but then I gave it up. Every day, people told me that they saw me in there, through that picture window, sitting at my desk. It felt odd to be on display like that: resident writer at work. So I went back home, and over the last few years I wrote Devotion here in my small office on the second floor of our house. I like working at home--I really do. I can get up and stretch, do my yoga practice, take a shower in the middle of the day, go outside with the dogs (when they're feeling well). Except...when it feels like a domestic disaster. When the guys show up to clean the air filters, or the exterminator arrives for his monthly appointment. Or when the sheer encroachment of the rest of my life--the school medical forms, soccer schedules, food shopping--suddenly seem like too much. And I wish, fleetingly, for an office, but not just any office--a office in a warren of offices where writers (not just any writers, but my favorite writer friends) would be next door, near a good cafe with just the right music playing, and just enough bustle, and good cappuccino and biscotti. Does this place exist? If it did exist, would it live up to my expectations? Would I be more productive here? More content?

Here's one thing I know to be true. I have gotten some of my best writing done in less-than-ideal circumstances (on the subway, for instance) and often have had lousy writing days when circumstances are ideal. The possibility is always there for either scenario. Good writing day or lousy writing day; it almost seems as if we're in control, as if it's our choice. And to some small degree, it is. But to a larger degree, we writers are at the mercy of our own human selves: cranky, tired, happy, over-excited, grieving, nervous...whatever it is we're feeling, whatever it is that brings us closer to, or farther away from, the page. And perfection of environment is only one very small part of all that.

On Writer's Block

2009-09-14T08:44:00.009-04:00

I should begin with the question of whether it exists. What does it mean to be "blocked"? It's a term that fills writers with dread; a steady flow of creativity suddenly stopped cold by an enormous boulder tumbling from the depths of the psyche. Writer's block has always struck me as having a bit of magical thinking connected to it. Blocked? I mean, really? Have an espresso. Do yoga. Take a long walk. Smoke something. Switch the channels--get yourself out of it. But on the other hand, I have my superstitious side, and even as I write this I feel, just a little bit, like I'm asking for trouble by even thinking about it. Writer's block. How is it different from a bad day, or stretch of days? How is it different from a fallow period? I have a feeling it must be very different--like the vast chasm between common unhappiness and a major depressive episode.

John Gregory Dunne once said that writer's block is a failure of nerve. I've always loved that quote--I used to keep it on the bulletin board above my desk, along with a cartoon from The New Yorker, titled Writer's Block, showing two frames of a bespeckled man. In the first frame, he's is standing in a book-lined office, looking out a window. Temporary, the caption reads. In the second frame, the same man is standing in front door of T. Roger Claypool's Fish Store, wearing a white apron. Beneath it, caption reads: Permanent.

Dunne's definition of failure of nerve has helped me immeasurably over the years. It has staved off the other voices in my head--the ones that tell me I'm wasting my time, on the wrong path, taking the wrong risk (or not enough of a risk). If writing is, as I believe it to be, an act of courage--the daily triumph of faith over doubt, willingness over insecurity, hope over cynicism--then the inability to do so for days on end is a failure not of character, nor of biochemistry, but of nerve.

Each morning, when I sit down to work, my demons are lined up, waiting for me. There's the one who tells me that nothing will ever come of whatever it is I'm working on. There's another who tells me that I'm a horrible person for writing about my family. Still another one who tells me to fold in my towel, go back to school, do something else with my life--this, after seven books! I've come to realize that these demons are with me for a lifetime. Some demons whisper, some shout. Some go away for a while, then return. Futility, guilt, self-flagellation, self-consciousness, insidious doubt; all these hop up on my shoulders as I sit down to write. So it is nerve, nothing more, nothing less, that helps me to swat them away. Nerve that allows me to recognize those unwelcome visitors, to make peace with them. "Good morning," I silently say to them, even as I push them away. I think of T. Roger Claypool's Fish Store. "Good morning. Now, go away."

On Impatience

2009-09-10T09:43:00.005-04:00

It has always struck me as paradoxical that we writers--who are among the most impatient people on the planet--spend our days doing work akin to watching water boil. What could possibly involve less instant gratification than writing a novel? Or working for months (or years) on a single short story? Or slowly, painstakingly picking our way through piles of research looking for the right detail, the perfect gem, only to discard the rest? We have minds like fireflies, attention spans that wander...how else would we dream up our characters and their lives? And yet the harnessing of that light, that attention, requires an almost physical effort to stay in one spot, to work slowly, carefully. To whittle, to carve, to chip away at the words on the page. To remain dissatisfied. To throw away perfectly good work if it isn't serving the story. Not to leap ahead -- to daydreams of publication, of glory, of book parties and appearances on Charlie Rose.

Here's the thing--and believe me, I speak from hard-won experience: That's not the best part. The publication, the glory (such as it is), the parties and the media frenzy (hah!) of a book's publication is not the best part--far from it. I know this is hard for those who haven't experienced it to believe. I know there's some eye-rolling going on out there. But it's true--and not only is it true, it's the worst possible thing for the work itself to leap ahead to what might happen to it out there in the world. I remember, years ago, working on my first piece for The New Yorker. It was a personal history piece about my father--a story I had wanted to write for a long time--and after I got the assignment, I became completely and utterly stuck. I was--even though I hate the word--blocked. Each morning, I sat down at my desk and instead of working on the piece, I thought about The New Yorker. Which issue would it come out in? Would there be an illustration? A photo? I pictured my words in New Yorker font before I had even written them.

I had to shock myself out of that mental torpor and into a creative state. I played tricks on myself--writing in the middle of the night, which is something I never do. Writing before that first cup of coffee in the morning. I pushed myself past the wall of impatience and into that place where all that matters are setting down the words on the page. After all, in the hermetic, odd, often lonely and certainly out-of-step existence of the writer, setting the words down on the page better be the best part. The other stuff is too fleeting--if it happens at all--and unreal.

On Doing Nothing

2009-08-28T09:17:00.006-04:00

It's hard for writers to remember that doing nothing is as important--perhaps even more important--than doing something. I was reminded of this last week by Ian McEwan, who spoke eloquently at the Sun Valley Writers Conference about how essential it is for writers not to feel like we must be busy (or at least give the appearance of being busy) all the time. How are we going to feel that tap on the shoulder--or see Didion's shimmer around the edges--that leads us to new stories, new subject matter, if we're scrambling the hamster wheel of busy-ness?

People often ask me how many hours of the day I spend writing, and I never really know how to answer. How many hours of the day am I actually setting words down on paper? Not many. On a very good day, perhaps three? Four at the most? But those three or four hours require several other hours cushioning them. They require hours spent reading, running the dogs, doing yoga, meditating, shopping online for boots (just kidding). The work is at the center--way deep down at the center--of that puttering time. We writers are not machines. We can't just sit down and do it. Or maybe some writers can--but not this one.

The subtle distinction, though, is in the difference between good/useful doing nothing, and destructive/counter-productive doing nothing. And the distinction is, indeed, difficult to make out at times. Bouncing around the internet can be energizing and kind of fun -- but more often than not, it leads to a fizzy, buzzy, attention-deficit that can't be good for the writing. Ditto for talking on the phone. Over the years, I have become truly phone-adverse. Reading (as in, an actual book) is invariably good. Meditating, oddly, is not always helpful. An overly calm mind can sometimes shrug and just give up for the day. As a friend of mine once said, it removes the grit. Yoga, however, has never failed me. If I unroll my mat and do my practice, I sit back down at my desk afterward feeling clear-headed and refreshed. I would imagine this would be true for any form of physical exercise--or at least solitary exercise.

But there's another, more difficult kind of doing nothing, that exists in the months or even years between books. A writer finishes a book...and then what? Trollope was known to draw a line beneath the last sentence of a manuscript, and instantly begin anew. I love the idea of doing this--it does remove all possibility of self-doubt and fear--but somehow I know I never will. When I finish a book, I have nothing left inside of me. Nothing left to say. This used to bother me. (On bad days, it still does.) When I finished my last novel, I turned to a friend and said: "I've got nothing." But then I realized that having nothing was exactly what I should be feeling. It meant that everything had gone into the book I had just completed. And now I had to allow myself to do nothing. To understand that, for a writer, doing nothing is doing something. I had to push away the impulse to look busy, and instead allow the space and time for that tap on the shoulder, that shimmer.

On Writers Conferences

2009-08-16T15:47:00.009-04:00

I'm heading to Sun Valley, Idaho tomorrow, where Michael and I will be speaking at the Sun Valley Writers Conference. This particular conference is unusual in that no teaching is involved. Writers--some very famous writers--come and give talks, and the audience is made up of smart, literate people who may or may not aspire to write. It seems to model itself more closely on something like The Aspen Institute than say, a Breadloaf, or a Tin House--discussion, rather than implementation. Dialogue, rather than honing craft. I'm excited about this conference for lots of reasons: seeing old friends, gorgeous dry mountain weather, possibly even some white-water rafting or fly-fishing. But more than anything, preparing for my talk there gave me a chance to deepen my own thoughts about memoir. I've been thinking a lot about memoir lately, on the cusp of the publication of my new one, as well as the reissuing of a new edition of my first one. But musing is not the same as giving a talk. Giving a talk forces one to articulate ideas into a clear narrative. (It also involves being entertaining and funny. And the wearing of decent shoes.)

Sometimes writers ask me what I think about conferences, given that I direct one. It falls into the same general query about whether writing can be taught. Honestly, I don't think writing can be taught. I think craft can be taught, I think books can be suggested, minds can be opened to new writers, new vistas. But whatever that thing is--that combination of gift and tenacity and capacity for story-telling--that makes someone a writer, that, I'm afraid, can't be taught. Or at least I've never figured out how to teach it. So why go do these things? Why apply to Breadloaf or Tin House or Sewanee or Sirenland? Some aspiring writers go because they think they'll meet editors or agents, and while they very well may get a ten minute audience with any of the above, most of the time, nothing will come of it. Other writers go to network, to meet other writers, which is a completely valid reason--it can create a sense of community, reduce the sting of isolation. Other writers to go study with a particular writer they admire, or to workshop a story that isn't quite there yet. They go to be together. They go to validate what it is they do with their hours in front of the page.

As I pack my bags for Sun Valley, it occurs to me that no matter how different these conferences are--large, small, exclusive, exotic, intimate, businesslike--they all have one thing in common. In this time of doomsday reports about the decline of serious readers--when iphones and ipods and webisodes and an endless stream of apps vie for our attention--attendance at conferences is booming. We have a hunger, an appetite, a desire to understand how words, when put together in a certain order, create music.

On Self-Googling

2009-08-10T09:29:00.008-04:00

It used to be that I only knew what had been written about myself or my work when an envelope would arrive from my publisher. By regular mail. You know--with stamps, and everything. This envelope would contain a series of xeroxed reviews, profiles, little mentions here and there, often--I suspect--edited to keep out the negative stuff. My publicist would underline the nice things critics said with a yellow highlighter, along with cheery little exclamation points in the margins. Look over here! The envelope seemed to say. Don't look over there! No good will come of it.

These envelopes stopped arriving at around the same time it became possible to know absolutely everything about oneself from typing one's name into Google. Good, bad, indifferent--increasingly, it's all available. Reviews from a decade ago exist alongside blog mentions from yesterday. There are ratings of my books by readers who assign them five stars--or one. Comments see-saw from "Dani Shapiro is my favorite writer" to "What a waste of time."

When it comes to adhering to good writing habits, not googling myself is very near the top of my list--though sometimes I do fall off the wagon. Okay...OFTEN I fall off the wagon. What do I hope to learn when I type my name into a search engine? What am I really looking for? For writers who spend our days alone, who rarely have the opportunity to actually see someone else reading our books or stories, sometimes it's hard to know that we exist. That our work exists, out there in the world. The internet provides us with a mirror, of sorts. See? There you are! And there...and there...and...whoops that stung...and there, and...oh, ouch, that was mean... And so it goes. But that mirror is not a clear reflection--it's more of a fun house mirror: wavy, distorted, showing us our virtual likeness at any given moment, through random debris tossed about by an algorithmic wave. What does any of it mean? And more importantly--much more importantly--why does it matter?

As the years have gone by, I've learned a few things about myself, and paramount among them is that it requires a great deal to keep myself in good emotional, psychological, creative, and spiritual alignment. I need space, time, quiet, coffee. I need my yoga and meditation practice. But perhaps most of all, I need to be able to sit down at my desk in the morning and enter my internal world. How am I doing? Do I exist? Is my work worthwhile? The answers aren't out there. They never are.

On the Elusive Shimmer

2009-08-03T10:16:00.007-04:00

Joan Didion once said that she knew she needed to write about something when she saw a shimmer around the edges of it -- whether it be a person, a bit of overheard conversation, a landscape. It has always stayed with me, the idea of Didion's shimmer. It seems exactly right. I know when it happens to me it feels like a little jolt from behind. No words form, no shape, no coherent idea. Not even a conscious thought. Just a deep, silent knowledge that some day I will write about this, in some way.

I have a few assignments on my desk right now. Work I've already committed to doing, and in fact am looking forward to doing. An essay, a couple of speeches. But now that I'm between books--a strange, amorphous state--those shimmery bits and pieces collected over the past couple of years are calling to me, as if I had closed them off in a drawer as I finished Devotion, and now the drawer is ajar. Trying to get my attention. What next? The question follows me around. What next? I need to be writing. I'm not okay in the head when I'm not writing. My mind becomes, in some of my favorite words of Virginia Woolf, pecking and wretched.

But how do we make the choices we make? How do we know where to place our creative energy? That energy is finite, after all. I find I have maybe three good hours a day. I need all the other hours around those hours, but when I get right down to it, in terms of actual writing time, three hours and I've spent all my capital. So what to spend it on?

My husband--a screenwriter--has a big bulletin board in his office where he keeps titles and ideas for future projects within his line of vision. I love looking at that board--it's such a hopeful thing--all those possibilities. The future unfurling. A lifetime of work is on that board. And often we talk about it: which one next? Where to place the emphasis? What makes the most sense?

This much I know about making choices -- to a great degree, they must be creative choices. If they come from what a writer thinks she SHOULD do next...that's where the trouble begins. I try not to think: I need to write something funny/profound/commercial/short/long...whatever. This is always a bad idea, coming at the work from the outside in. From a place of thinking what the world might applaud, as opposed to finding the shimmer. For a writer, it's always there. All that is really necessary is quiet and careful attention to it.

On Being Literary

2009-07-31T12:22:00.013-04:00

People at cocktail parties often ask me what my books are about. It's one of my least favorite questions because it's so hard to answer pithily, so recently I decided I had to come up with a rehearsed response. "I write literary novels about family," I have started to say. "Literary novels about family secrets, dysfunction..." Which is true. My books tend to be about family. But what exactly do I mean by using the term literary? And why does it seem, as soon as I say it, that I detect a certain nervousness and boredom in my polite questioner? Could it be that literary immediately sounds...small? And possibly difficult? And maybe a bit dull? What am I even saying, really, when I call my books literary? What I intend to convey is that they're not potboilers, or romances, or mysteries, or thrillers, or any kind of genre fiction. But I seem to be saying more than that.

When I was first starting out, my MFA friends and I wanted nothing more than to be literary writers. Literary--at its pinnacle--meant reviews in the New York Review of Books and Bookforum. It meant grants and awards and fellowships. It meant invitations to George Plimpton's brownstone for his legendary Paris Review parties. But as the years have gone by, I find myself questioning my younger freshly-minted MFA ideas. Honestly, I think I was being a bit of a snob. I now know that calling a writer a "literary novelist" usually means that no one has ever heard of her. It means "destined to sell under 4000 copies unless something really unusual happens."

Especially these days, I get nervous when I hear myself described (even by myself!) as a literary novelist because readers are very important to me, and I want lots and lots of them. I want it both ways. I want the New York Review of Books AND the stacks in Barnes & Noble. I want to write page-turners that are also literature. I used to be insulted when I would hear from readers that they couldn't put my books down, or that they read a book of mine in a day. Now I love it -- because I know how rare that is, especially in our culture of distraction. Books compete with other, easier forms of entertainment, and so if a reader feels compelled to keep reading, something good is happening. Call it whatever you want.

Maybe the next time someone at a cocktail party asks me what kind of books I write, I'll just answer: hopefully good ones. And leave it at that.

On Being a Good Reader

2009-07-23T16:29:00.015-04:00

I had a drink last night with a friend who had just returned from a writers' conference. She is a serious writer, but had never been to a conference before, never pursued an M.F.A., had barely even attended a workshop, and I was very interested in her response to the whole thing. What had she gotten out of it? Had it helped? Hurt? Disappointed? Inspired?

"You know," she said, "I always thought I was a pretty good reader. I could read a manuscript of a story and see when something wasn't working, or seemed off. But I never really understood WHY something worked or didn't." Well, this seems key to me. In fact, this seems like perhaps the single most essential ingredient in making a workshop--or a teacher--good. Years ago, when I was first offered a job teaching a literature course to MFA students, I balked. "But I don't have a doctorate," I said to the head of the department. "That's not the point," he responded. "I want you to teach them to read as writers."

To read as a writer is to take the first step in becoming a writer. To read as a writer means not to simply think: I'm liking this, or this isn't any good, or I don't like it, or it doesn't ring true. To read as a writer means to stop and ask the question WHY. Why is this working? Or why isn't it? How? How was this done? We often have a natural resistance to pulling apart something we love, to deconstructing a great story to examine its elements. We're afraid that something of the mystery or the magic will vanish--and yet, this pulling apart, this understanding of what makes a story tick (or not) is the beginning of craft. Like medical students performing autopsies, we cut stories open. We look at their guts, their organs, the architecture and arrangement of their bone structure. In so doing, we learn something about our own craft, our own work.

Certainly there have been times I've wondered why I continue to teach. If writing can't be taught--and I am convinced it can't--then what exactly are we doing around those tables in those rooms, the delicate, marked-up pages of manuscripts in our hands? We are learning to read them with greater understanding and concision. And hopefully, that understanding and concision becomes a lens through which we can more clearly see our work.

On Being Open

2009-07-20T08:59:00.005-04:00

I've been thinking lately about what it means to be open--specifically what it means to be open to other writers. I've been on the receiving end of amazing acts of kindness over the years, and I've also been on the receiving end of the sort of parched, sour behavior that really says: there's only room for one of us out there, so get out of my way, I'm not going to even talk to you, much less help you. I'm going to horde all of my limited resources for myself. It's easy to see which of these two types of people behaving in these two types of ways is happier. Openness and generosity is the product of an unclouded mind--a mind at peace. And the nastiness comes from fear, anxiety, envy, competitiveness. I have tried to learn, over the years, from the former, and to understand the latter as a cautionary tale.

Our friend Frank McCourt died yesterday. Not only was he a brilliant writer, an unparalleled storyteller, a funny, droll man who at the same time knew how to wring every possible emotion out of a situation--but he was also astoundingly kind. He had time for everyone. He gave of himself, and gave, and gave--and guess what? There was still room for more. More great writing. More political fund-raising for our local congressman. More hours to show up for events such as this one, which support a community after school arts organization. He was a special person, one I feel lucky to have known. His loss is tremendous and will be felt across the many lives he touched.

What is this thing, this openness? Who do some of us naturally lean in that direction, while others slam the door closed? Why does it seem, to some of us, that being open will cost us something of ourselves, when in fact, what it really allows is more room? Frank rarely said no. His answer to most of what was asked of him was a resounding yes--whether that yes was to an invitation to a book party for a younger writer, or a benefit where his presence would be helpful, or a comment for the back of a book jacket, or just simply a fun evening out. I have no doubt that those yeses--that spirit--fed his work. Openness, kindness, generosity of spirit. Something to remember and keep remembering.

On Self-Protection

2009-07-16T09:57:00.007-04:00

I've heard it said that writers have one less layer of skin than most normal people. We walk around just a bit more of ourselves exposed to the elements, to snippets of overheard conversation, to something we see on the street, to the remarks of perfect strangers. Really, it can't be any other way. That sensitivity is also where the work comes from. But sometimes the sensitivity can be hard to take, especially when it comes to dealing with the response to our work out there in the world.

Lately I have been thinking of my new book as a very young, unprotected child--perhaps a child just learning to walk--shakily moving away from me. It's still many months before publication, but I can feel it: the way it will be come something separate from me, something other, something that people will have opinions about, will weigh in on. It won't be for everybody. Some critic will take a swipe at it. Recently, there was a kerfuffle on Twitter about a writer who publicly lost it after receiving a negative review. The immediacy that Twitter allows, combined with the possibility of a brief public melt-down going viral, created a big mess for her. But I've got to say, I know how she felt. A bad review is a little bit like a kid being mean to your kid. When I have seen a child be even slightly cruel to my son, I hate that kid. I want to kill him. And not to take the books-and-babies metaphor too far, but it's a bit like that with a piece of writing. It's something close to the writer's soul, something nurtured and protected until ready to see the light of day--and then--SLAM. Wow. How to avoid feeling vulnerable to that?

A few months ago, a writer who had written the single most vicious review I had ever received--over ten years ago it still stings--friended me on Facebook. No note, no nothing. Just a friend request. I stared at it for a few minutes, the words of his review as fresh in my mind as if I had received it that morning. (A universal truth for writers seems to be that we never remember a single word from our good reviews. Only the bad ones stick.) Eventually I did accept him as a friend. Why? I don't really know. Maybe enough time had passed. Maybe I was trying to be a bigger person. Maybe I wanted to show him that I didn't care.

But I do care--we all care. Whether it's a review or a remark or a misunderstanding or even perceived indifference, we do care more than most people. To go back to the Martha Graham letter I quoted from the other day, we writers do walk around experiencing that queer, divine dissatisfaction. Someone once said--I think it was Valerie Martin--that there are three kinds of dispositions: a good disposition, a bad disposition, and a writer's disposition.

So what are we to do with our dispositions? How are we to protect ourselves, our shivering, naked selves from our sensitivity to all that is? I think the only answer, if there is one, is this: we wrap ourselves in the writing. The work itself is our cloak and our shield. It's all we've got. And the rest of it is none of our business.

On Doggedness

2009-07-13T09:41:00.005-04:00

I have a love/hate relationship with the word doggedness. It means something more than discipline, but also implies a rather dull aspect. Dogged: tenacious, single-minded. Like a dog with a bone. But when it comes to a writing life, I think doggedness is underrated, and belongs on the list of characteristics every writer must ultimately have. I would say some of the other necessary characteristics, in no particular order, are:

Talent
Discipline
Patience
Fortitude

I was going to add "a strong constitution" to this list, but that one isn't strictly necessary. Just preferable, if a writer wants to live a long life. Maturity is helpful too, though I think maturity probably is included in the patience and fortitude departments. But so what do I mean by doggedness? How is it different from discipline? Discipline involves sitting down. Not making breakfast or lunch dates. Not answering the phone. Discipline means that your butt stays in the chair for a certain number of hours each day. Doggedness, on the other hand, involves staying the course. Putting on blinders to all that distracts you. Chewing and chewing on an idea like--yes, like a dog with a bone. Okay, and I hate to say this, but it's true, and most of us who teach writing won't publicly admit it--the all the doggedness and discipline in the world will only get you so far if you don't have talent. And talent is the thing that can't be taught. Craft can be taught, yes. But talent is ineffable. It's either there or it isn't. And some people have more of it than others. I've seen writers with buckets full of talent throw it over because they don't have the discipline or the fortitude or the doggedness. Or--and perhaps this belongs on the master list too -- the DESIRE. The burning, mad desire to do this thing, to organize words on the page until they form a picture. Until they make a kind of greater sense than you had even intended.

But one last thing about doggedness. In Ted Solotoroff's great essay "Writing in the Cold: The First Ten Years" he wonders where some of his most talented students have gone. Why he never sees their work in print any more. Why they seem to have disappeared. Perhaps writing in the cold was too much for them. They were talented, and determined. Certainly they had once been in the hands of a great teacher. Doggedness might have come in handy for Solotaroff's students. If the talent is there, the discipline, the willingness to stand a thousand small insults, the desire to be alone in a room creating, creating -- then add a small dollop of doggedness, and from that, maybe, just maybe, a lifetime of writing will emerge.

On Focusing on Results

2009-07-08T09:32:00.006-04:00

The other day, I had a long talk with a writer friend who's having a tough time. "If only I could see the future," she said, "then I'd feel better." I stopped myself from answering: "Wouldn't we all?" Wouldn't we all like at least a peek into a crystal ball? A life spent writing, more than most sorts of lives, is one lived as an act of faith. A glimmer of an idea becomes a sentence. A sentence builds to another sentence, then another. A paragraph. A few flimsy pages. Sometimes the whole mess gets thrown away. Other times, something begins to happen. A feeling, a sense of momentum, a shimmer around the edges that makes us thing that maybe, just maybe we're on to something here. So we keep going. If we're writing a book, the few flimsy pages become a pile of pages. The pile of pages becomes a novel, or a memoir, or a collection of stories. But still...there are no guarantees. Every writer I know has some version of the "if only's".

If only that literary magazine would accept my story.
If only I get that fellowship.
If only I sell this book.
If only I can sell it to a particular publisher.
If only they pay me _____.
If only they print enough copies.
If only it gets reviewed in ______.
If only Oprah picks it.
If only it becomes a (regional, national, international) bestseller
If only it moves from #16 to #7 on the list.

I promise you, all of these "if only's" are real, even though some of them might seem preposterous. When I was getting ready to publish my first novel, my agent at the time told me that she had an author who was #3 on the bestseller list, but was obsessed with #2 and #1. I was perplexed, somewhat disbelieving. Surely, I thought, a writer who has reached those heights of success would feel satisfied. (I still kind of think this.) But it did illuminate what I think is a universal truth for all of us writers, which is that nothing is ever enough. I've experienced this myself. I've received some great piece of news -- a rave in The New York Times Book Review, a second printing, a movie option -- and my mind almost instantly leaps to the next thing. Happy, certainly. Relieved, to be sure. But also, grasping. Wanting more. Wanting to see the future. Full of more "if only's".

I understand why this happens. It happens because in order to write anything good--anything that feels alive--a writer has put all of herself into the writing. Heart, soul, intellect--all in there. So what external result could possibly be enough, after years of immersion, years of struggle, of solitary grappling with the page? The answer is that there IS NO ENOUGH. The crystal ball, if we had one, would show us a landscape of peaks and valleys, ups and downs that are useless information for us.

All we have the right to hope for -- a teacher once told me -- is the chance to do it again. And again, and again. With no answers, no guarantees, no knowledge of the future. Only "a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching, and keeps us more alive than the rest."

On Being a Nomal Writer

2009-06-29T09:38:00.004-04:00

I've written about balance before. As in, balance is a myth. It doesn't exist. Balance is one of those pop-psych terms invented to make us feel that there's some better way of doing things, some easier, calmer way of living that is elusive--but possible if only we try hard enough. I'm here to suggest that we throw the whole idea of balance out the window because everything changes, all the time. Every day is different. Curve balls are not the exception, but the rule. If a writer waits for things to calm down, for the dust to settle, for a sense of normalcy to descend like a soft, comforting cloud--well,that writer may be waiting for a long time.

We had a funny moment in my private writing workshop yesterday, when a student wondered if she would ever be "a normal writer". What's a normal writer? Isn't that an oxymoron? There's nothing normal about spending days in solitude, alone in a room, sifting through an endless stream of words until a few of them, strung together, make some sort of sense.

Today--my first morning to myself so far this summer: my son was out the door before nine, with lunch packed, water bottle filled, a basketball jersey hanging endearingly on his little-boy frame. I settled down at my desk, the house quiet. I have what I need now--don't I?

A room of my own.
Solitude.
A quiet house.
A silent phone.
A stretch of hours.
Oh--and a cappuccino.

What's missing then? Why are some days better than others? Why does it seem possible, some days, to get good work done on the subway, while other days, with everything I think I NEED -- time, space, quiet, caffeine -- my brain feels water-logged? Perhaps the answer is less in the quest for the perfect writing environment, and more in simply the showing up for the work, and trying to leave the self-castigating notions of balance and normalcy at the door. Every day is different. And there is no such thing as a normal writer.