You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
Why do these old places
with false teeth
and pickled eggs matter?
Did Grandma ever take her black
thick-heeled shoes off
to wade in a cool stream?
Our people were all here
as stubborn peaceniks
well before the American
Revolution but have
ultimately stumbled away
mostly far from home.
Look in the public media around you and tell me where you see your life presented. Is there anywhere in TV shows, movies, advertising, magazines, newspapers, or novels that reflects life as you know it? Beyond that, is there anywhere that voices your aspirations and values? You know, where you want to be?
Writing this is a painful admission, but true. Somehow, though, I don’t picture myself in a typical suburban strip mall, either, no matter how often I’ve wound up there or been stuck in associated traffic.
What I do see, though, points to the reality that so much of what’s being presented and ingested is an escape from the daily grind. I don’t intend this as a judgmental stand, though I would counter it with the spiritual approach of trying to live in harmony with life as we encounter it in a specific place. Still, what I’m seeing generally rings hollow.
I’d issue a call for revolt but doubt that anyone would follow. Oh, well.
My, I didn’t expect to be hitting at the psychological malaise in the national soul, definitely not this quickly, but here we are. Just don’t hand me a cape and expect me to save anyone. I’m just a lowly writer, remember? Well, you could hand me a very dry martini (gin with an olive), but that would be my own favorite escape.
Now, to return more or less to the topic.
During my stint as a field representative for a major media syndicate, I called on newspaper editors in communities across 14 states. What struck me was how little sense their papers gave me of a unique local identity. There was rarely a distinctive voice in the generic mix. Maybe I’ll wax on some outstanding exceptions as a future post. I did try, mind you, to accomplish some of that where I was as an editor.
~*~
When I entered the workaday world, it was in the height of the hippie explosion, as well as the Vietnam quagmire and the first moonwalk and civil rights and, well, you could say generally everything was in flux and has remained so.
The pace of daily journalism, however, left me feeling there was so much change in the works that we were overlooking, especially in any in-depth way. For me, my impressions became fodder for fiction, which would allow me some leeway and definitely free me from footnotes and fact-checkers, not that I’ve veered from relating what I witnessed or even imagined as truthfully as I could, even with a degree of inventiveness and aspiration.
In that journey I wound up living in places that were outside of the big media spotlight, and what I faced ultimately differed from what was coming out of New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, or similar backdrops. My record reflected, I hope, just everyday folks who had to muddle on, best we could, in irreplicable circumstances of human progress or tragedy.
Ultimately, I tried to distill what I experienced from these unique viewpoints into novels that originated as “contemporary fiction,” though I’ve come to see the paradox of the label. Even without the scheduling conflicts of working a “day job,” I was caught in a time-delay of drafting and revising, even before trying to find publication. At the least, that would be a two- or three-year gap before a piece became public. Tastes and trends drastically change in that span. And here I am, shrinking from the crap shoot of fashion.
Or, now we are, decades later, perhaps trying to make sense of it all.
Not that I was alone. Every book author was running behind the frontlines where even the boldest got shot down, should they make it that far.
The consequence, quite simply, is that too much has gone unexamined beneath the superficial rush of what we once Baby Boomers and now creaky seniors and perhaps great-grandparents lived through, individually and jointly, from Watergate to today. No wonder things are such a mess. Look, kiddos, it wasn’t all our fault. Do note, I’m among those who wants to lend you a hand.
Mea culpa, then, though I’ve left some evidence of sorts to build on. Please stay in touch. That matter of “Don’t trust anyone over 30” was a brilliant slogan but ultimately BS.
As I’ve noted, we definitely needed elders. And so do you, on the frontlines now.
You can find my ebooks in the digital platform of your choice at Smashwords, the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook retailers. They’re also available in paper and Kindle at Amazon, or you can ask your local library to obtain them.
I don’t do “resolutions,” which all too easily become self-defeating. Goals are more like compass readings when you’re trying to get somewhere and want to leave some flexibility for when problems arise. So here’s what I’d like to improve in my life in the upcoming year.
If we’re counting from the time I got hooked on what became a journalism career, I’ve pursued a writing life for six decades now.
It began with hope, of course, including the dreams of glorious success and celebrity. You know, prizes and bestsellers and fame plus fabulous romance, family, and social life all reflecting intellectual brilliance. These were all wrapped up in the dream of a teen and beyond.
The reality, as you’re probably already about to pipe up, is that the practice of writing – whether literature or any of its other forms, including newspapers – is ultimately grubby work with none of those high-life perks for most of its faithful ranks.
That side’s not any different from all the fine pianists in our communities who never solo in public, despite their talent and passion, or the athletes who exercise daily and play unpaid in the parks on weekends, or a minister’s lifetime of well-crafted, scholarly Sunday sermons. The list of examples can go on and on. Practice, as I’ve come to embrace, is essential in many life activities, even in medicine and law. Forget the results, just do it.
While daily journalism paid my bills for most of my adult life, I was shunted to the editing side of the field, sharpening the prose of other reporters and correspondents and crafting headlines to capture the essence of their dispatches for a parade of readers rather than appearing under my own byline. Spare me the liberal elite label of the rabid right, please; real journalists, unlike the folks at Fox, put their leanings aside before touching anything. Facts are facts, which I see as important in fiction and poetry, too. Well, let’s not rule out their role in anything smacking of rationale behavior.
As far as my own writing pursuits went, I engaged in my free time in what I consider “the real stuff” – poems, fiction, work somewhere in between – much of it getting published in underground literary periodicals around the globe. It was enough to sustain me in the larger quest, no matter that the big successes kept eluding me, despite some near misses.
So here we are, at the beginning of another new year and a birthday soon to follow, and I have to admit the impact of aging, this time from the perspective of a writer. Narrow that to novelist, poet, blogger, and Quaker. One who finds there are still too many piles of drafted material remaining in the way to wherever comes after.
While I don’t have a new major writing project on the horizon – especially no new novel – I am feeling drawn to see what might still have energy in some of the drafts I’ve done in support of my earlier literary projects. There may be some fresh lessons to be gleaned or perhaps even wisdom in the light of time. It’s even an opportunity to reflect on a writing life.
An important elder for me has been the poet Gary Snyder, usually at a distance. This time, it’s from his Zen perspective of reaching an advanced age, almost a generation ahead of me:
My wife is gone, my girl is gone,
my books are loaned, my clothes
are worn, I gave away a car; and
all that happened years ago.
Mind & matter, love & space
are frail as foam on beer.
So for now, I’ll be going through the piles and clearing them away – before someone else has to. Yes, sort through the debris and move on.
It’s one more step in the practice of writing, something like daily prayer, something that needs to be done even if it seems nobody’s listening.
Now, let’s see where it leads.
With that insight from English essayist and poet Charles Lamb, let’s consider ten more quotes befitting a new year.
Here we go again. As if we need an excuse to party and pop bubbly.
All those hours away from family and friends or at least video viewing or home repairs or whatever writing I intended weren’t like sitting there simply yet pleasurably reading. No fault to other authors, by the way.
As for riches, I would have been better off financially by investing those savings I had back in Baltimore and later by working an overtime shift once every week or two, back when they were still available, an option that had vanished by my last five years in the newsroom, a time when I had instead thought I might indulge in fattening the nest egg for retirement now that the kids were off on their own.
Back to that urban studies certificate. I loved big cities, at least the ones I had visited. Museums and classical music, especially, were the big draw for me, along with the kinetic buzz of a place. I might not be able to afford all the fashion and bling, but I could admire. Binghamton afforded repeated opportunities to hit Manhattan and its other boroughs.
What New York City had new for me was the subway, an initially terrifying underground that turned into a kind of amusement park, once I acquired a few ins and outs for navigating it. So much for a prompt.
How ironic, then, to think that I’m now living in a very small city where the entire year-‘round population would fit aboard a single NYC subway train.
By the time Hitchhikers appeared in print, I was living in New Hampshire and had added the subways of Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington plus the Seattle monorail to my rail mass-transit rail checklist.
I had even lived in Iowa, not far from where I had placed Kenzie’s childhood.
For the most part, my creative writing focused on poetry, which fit around my paying and crazy work schedule better.
An intense round of editing reshaped the book to its original scope and produced a lacy air, something that reminded me of the Robert Rauschenberg pop art collages of the period. But it also left me with many pages of outtakes. Could I salvage them? I believe I did and then some.
For half of my life now, I’ve felt the time for literary success was running out, both on the project at hand and my own life. I could start with one apartment’s neighbors and a fire and the new owners in bankruptcy. After that, just as I was moving across town, I got a nibble. But no sharp editing help.
In terms of writing fiction, I’ve been solo. Believe me, I would have loved to have had an editor, someone to guide me through the ropes and help me see what I was really hoping to develop. Instead, I worked on a manuscript, put it aside to season, and came back to it months or years later, usually on a vacation week dedicated to the project.
Curiously, working in that role that guide for a friend who has a truly amazing concept, I recently got a look at an evaluation of his manuscript by a literary agent and her two associates. While they were passing on the book, their reactions fit in that old-fashioned close combing of the manuscript and pointing us toward a right pathway for the next steps on transforming the opus. I’d be envious if I weren’t so impressed and grateful.
~*~
Much of this series of posts has reflected the role of deep revisions.
An insight I haven’t yet mentioned is what I’ll call “finding the zipper,” a perspective that pulls everything into place – a new, better place. A big book might have several.
In What’s Left, the zipper appeared when Cassia’s childhood black clothing of mourning evolved into goth during her adolescence and then Eileen Fisher when she starred as a young adult high-finance exec. That move also spurred some crucial scenes in her teen years and helped bring her oldest cousin to the fore as a character. Another zipper came in peppering the dialogue between Cassia and her best friend with texting slang. WTF, but I feel it works.
Another helpful approach is the use of photo prompts, especially when a stretch of dialogue falls flat. Online searches are helpful in building look books, which in turn can provide sharp details I would otherwise overlook in real life. Just how does a particular character look in contrast to another? It definitely stretches my thinking.
Satellite photos have also helped me reconstruct physical locations and also revealed how many of my residences in my moves across the country have been razed. Health hazards? Fires? Condemned? Mine really has been a tenuous journey.
One other technique I’ll mention is editing from the last chapter forward, especially in a later revision. We tend to put most of our effort into the opening chapters and then peter out toward the ending. Reversing that provides some extra sharpness and also encourages foreshadowing in the earlier parts of the work.
~*~
In the old days, when I began, newspapers had copy desks, which was where I wound up working. They were usually U-shaped, with a chief editor, called a slot man slash copy-desk chief, sitting in the middle surrounded by the rest of us. A lot of serious editing and rewriting still took place, especially at the first paper I interned at, but already I was hearing the laments of how standards were declining. I can’t help picturing Harry Perrigo, sucking on his pipe while evaluating a headline and story before sending them up the pneumatic tube to the composing room or casting them back to the rim editor for another try. Once computers replaced typewriters, that physical configuration generally faded from the newsroom. Still, I now see that as my introduction to intense revision. A story had to go through a series of hands and eyes to make it into print, even on tight deadlines.
In contrast, in my literary efforts, I was working solo. As I’ve said, the best I could do was work intensely on a piece, put it aside for a while to season, and sometime later to return to it afresh.
Much of my work fell under the label “experimental,” along with the accusation that I’m more of a poet than a novelist, as I heard from one of the best novelists.
Whatever the case, having something of my own in hand still feels good.
a slice of rubber Swiss cheese in the mail … no envelope, either, just a tag with my name, address, and postage
blown-glass Galileo weather globes
bottle of dishwashing detergent and two towels on our wedding
The pagan origin of many of the winter holiday’s customs is something I’m all too aware of. For starters, Jesus was likely born in the springtime, not the December 25 Roman festival of Saturnalia, honoring Saturn.
I’m not against acknowledging the winter solstice and the wonders of its long nights, but here are some other dark sides to consider. Not that I want to dampen anyone’s spirits.
Thanks to Good Housekeeping
Looking back, I am surprised to realize how much of my fiction remains, at heart, reporting. Yes, despite elements of surrealism, fantasy, even absurdity.
Do I regret all the time and effort that have seemingly gone nowhere?
Sometimes, yes, but there’s also a sense of pride and a better sense of identity because I have these in hand. The sense of loss would have been greater otherwise.
Along the way, family and friends were slighted, along with public service or political activism. Even outings to the mountains or beach became less frequent. From what I’ve seen, writers make lousy spouses or partners. Consider yourself warned.
I am surprised by the amount of labor that took place in my odd free hours after my sabbatical. Also, by what a bold and risky move taking that year off had been. It did nothing to enhance my resume, for one thing. And I’ll return to the lack of health insurance but spare you the rant about how the current system, even with Obamacare, inhibits entrepreneurial advances. It’s something I couldn’t have done if I weren’t single, not unless I had a very supportive partner. (And then I would have felt guilty. Go figure.)
Let me confess my obsessive (Pollyannish?) looking for natural beauty, wherever; my need to have a connection to soil and water while overlooking the obvious ugliness. Applicable to the hippie thing, too.
And then there was the emotional pain buried in my psyche, a deep well to tap.
I’ve said nothing of the years of therapy since leaving Baltimore or the ways they’ve enriched the writing. Here I had thought such “healing” would impair my writing, but it’s not so. Both long rounds instead opened emotions to me, not just the intellect.
I’m still baffled by the lack of novels by others closely reflecting the places and experiences I encountered.
Jeffrey Eugenides has come closest, though he was still off in the future. Not just his Greek-American perspective, but his Midwest roots not that much different from mine.
Richard Farina’s Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me and Norman Gurney’s Divine Right’s Trip catch other corners. Tom Wolfe’s Electric Acid Kool Aid Test misses altogether, and, besides, it wasn’t even fiction. Or was it?
Well, I can go back to Richard Brautigan, at the outset of the ‘60s, including his Pacific Northwest flavor.
Beyond that, though, I turn to the poets.
Also, what if I had recast my novels more as a genre? Or even taken the big books apart for shorter series?
Well, it’s still one writer’s life. Make of it what you will.
