On Returning to Work
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
I'm back from Sirenland and just about recovered from jet lag, and my promise (mostly to myself) to continue blogging while I was away went right out the window. The conference was such an intense experience, so busy, so stimulating, so...over-stimulating. Not in a bad way. Not exactly. In fact, I loved every minute of it. The teaching, the fantastic students, the dancing until the wee hours.
But it does make it difficult to re-enter the cave. I often think that's one of the most emotionally and psychologically taxing aspects of being a writer: the going in and out of the cave. The cave being the place where real work gets done. The place of disconnection from the outside world. Many writers have rituals to allow them access to the cave--their own special "open, Sesame" tricks of the trade. I, for one, need certain things to happen.
I need an empty house.
Check. Today is Jacob's first day back at school after a three week break.
I need order in the empty house.
Check. The beds are made. The kitchen sink clean.
I need the dogs to be calm.
Check. The puppy settled down on the floor this morning with a soft thud of fluffy hair and bone, and looked at me dolefully, as if he knew it was time.
I need a cappuccino.
Check. My second cup of the day is next to my computer.
I need to avoid the internet like hell.
Check. So far, all I've read this morning have been a few paragraphs of Virginia Woolf's diary.
This morning's entry, which I happened upon by randomly opening the book, reads: "I think I shall initiate a new convention for this book--beginning each day on a new page--my habit in writing serious literature. Certainly I have room to waste a little paper in the year's book. As for the soul; why did I say I would leave it out? I forget. And the truth is, one can't write directly about the soul. Looked at, it vanishes; but look at the ceiling, at the cheaper beasts at the Zoo which are exposed to walkers in Regent's Park, and the soul slips in.
That's what all the habits and rituals are meant to do, really. Create the space, the possibility, for the soul to slip in.
On Sirenland
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
I'm writing from Positano, Italy. It's early in the morning--very early--and room service coffee is on a tray in front of me. The windows are flung open to the balcony overlooking the staggeringly steep coastline and the sea. In the distance, my favorite islands. We are at Sirenland, the conference Michael and I started three years ago, along with our friend Hannah Tinti, editor of One Story.
Each year, I am amazed when we arrive here. We never set out to create something like this. It wasn't a goal, or a dream, or even a faint ambition. It happened over dinner at a friend's house in Connecticut a few years ago, when we met the owners of Le Sirenuse, and they asked if we'd like to bring a few writers over to Italy for a class. Those few writers have turned into this: 
Jim Shepard and Peter Cameron are here, teaching workshops. Students are laughing and crying and learning--and staying up half the night in the bar, drinking tea and cognac. Bonding. Last night, one of them pulled out a guitar and began to sing. This year's Rome Prize Winners--Brad Kessler and Dana Spiotta--are visiting from The American Academy. They gave a reading last night, and joined us for a few days. 
How did this happen? The way the best things happen. By accident. Without agenda or motivation. It happened organically--built from the smallest seed of an idea--the way, come to think of it, fiction is written. By following the line of words.
On Readiness
Monday, March 9, 2009
The other night, at a dinner party, I had a long conversation with a wonderful new friend about readiness. She's a highly-regarded photographer who has been working and teaching for thirty-odd years, so she knows something about this. I had been telling her about a former graduate student of mine who published her first book before it was ready. It was a cautionary tale, ending in the second book never being published, and the first book eventually going out of print. I also knew something about this, because I had published my own first book before it was ready. No one could have told me that, at the time. I mean, my literary agent and publisher thought it was ready...so who was I to disagree?
I learned to write in public. On the one hand, it was an enormous privilege. It's so hard for young writers to get published. I hear bulletins from that front every single day. Nonetheless, if I could have a do-over, career-wise, what I would choose to do over is my own impatience, my own need for validation when I was in my mid-twenties. I would strike my first two novels from the record. Most people don't even know I wrote them. They're out-of-print, and I would prefer for them to stay that way. I know my blog readers will accuse me, as you often do, of being too hard on myself. Surely there were good things about those first two books. Several critics even liked them. But I now know: I wasn't ready.
I remember once interviewing Peter Matthiessen, a literary hero of mine, and with the sweep of his hand, he said of his own work: the first five books aren't worth reading. At the time, I had written three books and was working on my fourth. I was in my early thirties, Matthiessen was in his seventies. I realized with a jolt that the number of his own books that he was dismissing was higher than the number I had written. It was horrifying, but also edifying. Because what he was really saying is that he had gotten better with each book. He felt more in control of his craft than he had earlier in his writing life. That's a wonderful thing to be able to feel and to say.
Of course, all of this can only be seen in hindsight. How do we know when something we're working on is really ready? I think we know by listening. By seeing and hearing the signs around us. By having trusted readers and being unafraid to hear what they have to say. By trusting the little voice inside of us -- the quiet one underneath all the fear and insecurity -- that tells us we've taken this thing as far as we can. For now.
On Balance
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
I've been thinking about the idea of balance. Is it possible to live a balanced life as a writer? Does balance even exist, or is it just some sort of marketing strategy? Magazines--even magazines I write for--tell us this is possible. Shrinks talk about balance. But...really?
On an given day, I want to do the following: work well, spend quantity and quality time with my son, do yoga, meditate, read something nourishing, put a delicious dinner on the table. And on any given day, I usually manage to accomplish two of these things, in ever-different combinations. Writing and spending time with Jacob. Spending time with Jacob and doing yoga. Meditating and putting a delicious dinner on the table. Oh, and did I mention my husband? A day in which three of these happen is a fantastic thing, a gift. A day which includes all of them? I can't remember the last time that happened.
This morning, I sit at my desk in my bathrobe. My work beckons. My yoga mat beckons. The refrigerator is empty. A pile of books I'm dying to read sits at my feet. This is the last week of Jacob's school before Spring Break--which means that after-school activities are suspended, and pick-up time is at three in the afternoon, which means...even fewer hours than usual. In less than a week, we depart for London, then Positano for our writers' conference. I have miles to go before then, and the trick--it is a trick--is to remind myself that there is no such thing as balance. Not for a writer who is a mother. Maybe not for a perfectionist like myself. Maybe not for anyone at all.
On Interruption
Monday, March 2, 2009
Last week I got no writing done. Oh, I wrote my monthly column, I took care of some other magazine business, I taught my private class--in other words, I took care of other pieces of my life as a writer. But I didn't work on my book. There were hours, here and there, during which I might have been able to sit down to write. But the shape of the week didn't allow for it. My beloved Uncle died last Sunday, and the funeral was in Boston on Monday. Tuesday, Michael spent the day reading the first 200 pages of my manuscript, so I was paralyzed, waiting for his response. Wednesday, we were in New York for a day full of meetings. Thursday--the one day I had the hours to write--I was so exhausted, so emotionally and physically drained from the sadness about my Uncle, the relief that Michael thought my manuscript pages were good, the busy day in the city--that I curled up into a little ball and...slept. For hours. Friday was Jacob's 4th grade field trip to Ellis Island, which began at 5 in the morning and ended at 9 at night. So. It was a week full of interruption.
How to keep the thread, when life intervenes? I no longer even imagine that I will have stretches of weeks with no distraction, no lost days. There are always lost days. The question, really, is now to tolerate them. How to breathe into them and simply understand them to be part of the process, rather than to allow them to get the better of me.
Today is a snow day. (I feel less alone in this than usual. Usually here in our little snow-belt micro-climate, I call my friends in New York and they have no idea what I'm talking about.) Most of the Northeast is blanketed today, and kids are home from school. Chances are, I'm not going to get work done today. I'll get other stuff done; stuff that needs to get done, that always gets shoved into the corners: camp forms, school contracts, haircut appointments, banking. In a way, I'm making room for the writing by taking care of all this other business that clutters up my head. But really--enough already with the snow. 
Today will be full of household activities. The making of fires, hot chocolate, soup. Downstairs, my husband is cleaning his office; Spring cleaning during an early March blizzard. I'm reminded of something Sharon Salzberg said during a meditation retreat about a Buddhist teacher she had met in India, a woman who had many children, little time, and much hardship. When asked how she maintained her practice, her focus, she responded: I stirred the soup mindfully.
