On Titles

Thursday, April 23, 2009

I am in need of a title. Devotion, which I have thought all along would be the title of this book--and which, in fact, occurred to me before I even understood what the book was really about, now--unsurprisingly--no longer feels like the right title. This has happened to me before (she says, trying not to panic). When I had finished Slow Motion, I also didn't have a title. I remember driving the hills of Vermont with Michael, stopping in bookstores, buying endless volumes of poetry and searching, searching for a title that felt right and true. It came to me in the form of a poem by Adrienne Rich.

I then excitedly called my editor and told her I had found it: Slow Motion! It was perfect for the book.
Hmmm, my editor responded. I'm not sure about the word slow.

So here I am again, reading poetry, combing my bookcases, the quotes I have gathered, the bits of wisdom, looking for just the right word, just the right phrase, and this morning--though I have not found it--I did find this fantastic little quote from Annie Dillard's Afterward to The Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, in which she writes about her confusion during the book's publication:

"Later a reporter interviewed me over the phone. "You write so much about Eskimos in this book," she said. "How come there are so many Eskimos?" I said that the spare arctic landscape suggested the soul's emptying itself in readiness for the incursions of the divine. There was a pause. At last she said, "I don't think my editor will go for that."

On Confidence

Monday, April 20, 2009

I think there is a difference between approaching the page with confidence, and actually possessing confidence about the work itself. One of the above is good for the writing; the other can be quite disastrous.

A writer has to approach the page with something like confidence, otherwise why approach the page at all? There's a feeling inside all of us who write, as small but determinative as a gene, that one has something worth saying. That there is a possibility that wrestling with words will produce a result that might be worth reading.

But there is a different, deadly kind of confidence, in which the writer believes that if she simply commits her thoughts and feelings to paper, those thoughts and feelings will have a universal coherence--simply because she's had them. I've seen this again and again--I can only call it a mess on the page. And I've come to realize that when a piece of work is impenetrable, often it's because the writer suffered from over-confidence.

Sorry to say that self-doubt, bordering on self-loathing, insecurity and a general sense of terror are completely appropriate...no, more than appropriate, necessary for good work to get done. A contented writer is a deluded writer. Because the truth is that the work can always be made better. That a finished piece of work is simply the best the writer could do at the time. And confidence--while it might be a very nice way to feel--is no help at all. It's only the queer, divine dissatisfaction as Martha Graham once put it, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the rest.

On Doshas

Monday, April 13, 2009

Over the weekend, I had a consultation with an expert in Ayurvedic medicine, an ancient form of traditional medicine native to India. I went on a whim. Call it a midlife crisis. I had just had a birthday. Anyway, I had been interested in this form of medicine and philosophy for quite some time, but didn't know very much about it. I was also curious to have my dosha identified and explained to me. Doshas are concentrations of elements in the body, and people generally have one dominant dosha, which influences their emotional, psychological, spiritual and physical life. For the curious, you can even get a sense of this by taking this quiz.

After talking for quite some time, then reading my pulse, the Ayurvedic consultant identified my primary physical dosha as Pitta, with a strong elements of both Vatta and Pitta in my mind. This made perfect sense to me, particularly in relationship to my life as a writer. Vattas have airy, spacey, creative, anxious natures. Whereas Pittas are organized, disciplined, possibly tending toward the overly controlling. As the consultant described the personality traits of these two doshas, I found myself thinking about my relationship to my work, and the very delicate balance I constantly try to maintain between air and fire -- between a kind of spaciness and a need to control. Between free form and structure. Too much air and nothing gets done. Too much controlling and...you guessed it...nothing gets done. At least nothing worthwhile. The relationship, see-sawing between the two, is where it all happens. I felt like she was describing not only my internal make-up, but a combination of doshas that is probably in some proportion the make-up of most creative people who actually manage to get their work done. Of course, some days are better than others.

Today, as I sit down to work on my book, I will try to take my Ayurvedic temperature, so to speak. Am I more pitta today, or vatta? Maybe this will be one more tool in my tool box. One more way to find my way into my work, each day.

On Tenacity

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

When I was in graduate school, I read a great essay by Ted Solotaroff called "Writing in the Cold: The First Ten Years". I used to give a copy of that essay to all my students, and I probably still should. In it, Solotaroff muses about where all the promising young writers he's taught over the years have gone. A decade goes by, and he finds only one or two of their names occasionally in print. Did they give up? Disappear? Call it a day? Did the cold get...too cold?

I think one of the most overlooked traits that separate writers who find their way to publication and writers who don't is tenacity. Of course there are other important--some would say more important--traits, such as an ear, an eye, a sensibility, a creative gift. But these all are useless without tenacity. In fact, it seems to me that in certain cases, tenacity replaces talent and there are certainly some writers whose whole careers are based solely on it.

But what is it, exactly? Yesterday I worked and worked on one very small section of my book. Even though I'm nearly finished with a draft, I went back to the beginning because something wasn't quite right. And as the day wore on, as I moved sentences around, cutting them, replacing them, ditching them, loving and wanting to hold onto them, ditching them anyway... the image that came to mind was that of a dog with a bone. (It helped that my puppy was lying next to me, chewing contentedly.) But I wasn't content. I was rabid, quite insane, really. I wasn't going to stop until I got it right--or at least as right as I could get it for that day.

A writer with her work needs to be like a dog with a bone all the time. She needs to know where she's hidden it. Where she's stored the good stuff. She needs to keep gnawing at it, even after all the meat seems to be gone. When a student of mine says (okay, whines) that she's impatient, or tired, or the worst: isn't it good enough? this may be harsh, but she loses just a little bit of my respect. Because there is no room for impatience, or exhaustion, or self-satisfaction, or laziness. All of these really mean, simply, that the inner censor has won the day.

On Sitting Down

Monday, April 6, 2009

I've heard it said that the most difficult part of writing isn't the writing--it's the sitting down to write. This is complicated for many of us by the fact that sitting at our desks can involve all sorts of other things. Paying bills, filling out forms, surfing the web. I recently read an interview of a writer who has two desks with two computers in his study: one for non-fiction, which is hooked up to the internet, and the other for fiction, which isn't. This struck me as a really good idea, though my study isn't big enough for two desks. I like the idea of work spaces kept separate for separate activities. I try to keep the surface of my desk neat, and to keep only calm-inducing, non-distracting objects and papers within my sight lines.

This doesn't always work out. This morning, as I write, there are forms to be filled out for all sorts of things. (How many camps can one child attend during the course of one upcoming summer?) Bills to be sorted. A pile of books, a pile of notebooks. Piles are never good. My datebook, open, scattered with piles of extra little pads and post-its upon which lists are scribbled. Doctor's appointments. Jacob's tennis lesson times. Dinner party list. The stuff of domestic life.



For the past few days, as I've been getting back into my book and breathing into the home stretch, I have been practicing yoga first thing in the morning, then sitting for at least ten minutes in meditation. After that--without stopping to check email, or pick dirty laundry up off the floor, or even take the dogs out--I sit down with the intention of starting to write. And it works--it really does, to sit down with that intention. I may not have the two (or three) desks that I need for each of the different aspects of my life, but I can set that intention. Once I've started, once I've gotten that foothold, I often find that the distractions don't set in. I can check email, straighten up the house, walk the dogs, and then just come back to the work. The work is waiting for me, because I've already started.