That's What Friends Are For, and, First Paragraph

It's been a very long time since I last posted an entry. But that doesn't mean I haven't been writing. I have! I am nearly done with chapter 2, which introduces some important characters and concepts, which makes me feel incredibly pressured, like I'm at a job interview for a position I am totally unqualified for.

Attempting to move this story along is daunting. I alternately hate myself and love myself. I alternately think this book is going to be wonderful and that I am wasting precious time. We all die, my mind reminds me, as I sit at the computer for three hours and manage to eke out one unsatisfying paragraph. We all die, and you're dicking around with this goofy idea that won't appeal to anyone but yourself. What's wrong with you?

This is what friends are for. They won't tell you your book sucks. If you start to second guess yourself, here's a tip: Send your work to your maid of honor. She will assure you that you are a genius. She will promise you that if she came across this book in a book store, she would buy it. And after she tells you these things, and you blot the tears of gratitude from your eyes, you will grab your laptop and drag it to the nearest coffee shop and pound out three more pages. Thanks, Hillary!

I realize that I haven't bothered to mention what this book is about. And that's because there is a deep-seated fear that if I do, the reaction will sound like a million balloons deflating. Hisssssss, plbbbbbt. I'd have to preface any plot description with no less than ten disclaimers.

While I work up the nerve to write a summary of the book to share here, I'll post the first paragraph of the book. You will notice that I went with the first sentence that my four blog readers voted on. Thanks, guys!

Chapter One: What It’s Like

Some people work for something and others just work; Grace Lowe, like every Lowe, didn’t have a choice. In the small of the morning when her desperation was at its mildest, she was cocooned in her favorite fantasy, where the day waited on her, and not she on it. She would let the sleep slowly fall from her shoulders and then shuffle naked into the kitchen to make rich, dark coffee sprung with real cream. In the kitchen by the door hung a hook and on the hook was a lightweight white robe that she put on to walk out into the garden and sip her coffee from a chair facing the sun, and the air would be just crisp enough to turn the coffee into a song down her throat. And a very big book would be in her hand, one so thick she couldn’t hold it comfortably until she was halfway through and it would fall evenly enough to lay flat. The book would be very good. It would say things she always wanted to hear, open boxes in the attic of her mind. The book would get her mind humming, a thrum that drove her to excited distraction, and she would battle back and forth: Keep reading? Or pick up the notebook? The notebook held thick lined paper with a little slickness to it, just buffed enough that a pen seemed to move itself. The notebook was a house that she was building, an untouched expanse of land that needed clearing and digging and foundations and the lumber of thoughts. Grace would put her feet up on a little stool and write. She did not know what she was writing; she did not care whether it was any good. And here the fantasy spooked itself, because Grace was incapable of daydreaming the passing of hours, it was impossible to imagine what it looked like to sit in the sun and write. A tease of a daydream, a pleasure in the beginning and a slap of frustration at the end.

I Have a Chapter

This weekend, I finished Chapter One. At least I think I did; I'm finding it very difficult to tell whether its length is acceptable or whether, on a little book printed page, it would be very short.

But the important thing is that I did it. My plan, after much overthinking, was to have the first chapter serve as an introduction to the world without telling every single detail of the world Grace lives in. This was difficult for me. It would be so much easier to say, "And the house looks like this. And Grace is like this. And her town is like this. And her mother is like this. And then later This will happen and That will happen and you will be intrigued." Moving the story along while providing glimpses and hints is a big challenge for me.

I also discovered that I have a brevity problem. If I kept writing as succinctly as I began, the book would be five chapters long and would read like a section of the bible (you know, so and so begat so and so and then the sinner messed up and then things were fixed or they went to hell--a life story in as few words as possible). I found myself covering entire days in one paragraph. I had to return to each paragraph and flesh them out. This is where writing poetry is not helpful when writing a novel.

Discipline is not my strong suit. When I had the itch to write on Saturday, I realized I wouldn't be able to do it at home. I always think I''ll be able to sit at the little blue desk Ian made for me and pound out a couple of pages, but when I sit down, I find myself on Facebook after five minutes.

Because Saturday was a beautiful day, I decided to take my laptop to a coffee shop. Arlington is not Milwaukee, and finding a little coffee shop to spend your day at is as difficult as finding parking in Clarendon. So I went for convenience and headed to a place near my office, where I had seen outdoor tables.

The place was surprisingly dumpy. Not only were there cops inside taking notes when I arrived, but the coffee was bad and the outdoor tables were littered with cups with lipstick marks. I really hate lipstick marks. But I forged ahead. After an hour, I went back inside to order the crappiest bagel on the planet. I went in to pee and there was no toilet paper. After two more hours, I went to pee again, only to find the doors locked and the bitchy barista shooing me away with her yellow gloves.

It was 2:00 p.m. The hours posted stated the dive was open until 6 p.m. Bitchy barista knew very well that I was sitting right in front of the freaking store working away. There were no trash cans outside. So, nearly pissing my pants (I swear I felt a trickle) I carried not only my laptop but my empty coffee cup and the remainder of my wretched bagel with me to my car.

It didn't matter, though. Because I was on a writing high. Writing highs are kind of like running highs, but running highs don't come with the bitter hangover of a writing high. The hangover that says, "You fool! You thought you wrote something really good! HA! Read it again, Sucker. Read it again."

The same remorse, regret, and utter depression will occur after I finish Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5 . . . you get the idea. And I can live with that.

Exercise: First Line

Oy. I keep commiting to things on this blog that I actually don't want to do at all. I mean, that was the point: accountability. But this latest idea of mine really takes the idiot cake. What kind of masochist puts themselves through this kind of stress? "Gee! You know what's a good idea? I'll write some potential first lines of my completely unbegun novel and then I'll post them for people to look at and realize that I shouldn't be writing a book at all! That'll give this ole horse some git up and go!"

Ugh. Vote for the one you hate the least.

1. Some people work for something, and others just work; Grace Lowe, like every Lowe, had no choice.

2. On her eighteenth birthday, Grace could only think of it as the five-year-anniversary of her life dying.

3. She would never call herself a slave.

4. With the morning always came the reminder: You're still here.

5. Bless and curse this house.

6. In the small of the morning, the desperation was mild.

Do I Make You Sleepy?

I've battled insomnia for years, and have come to accept it as something that Sucks About Me. I won't take sleeping pills because I have an addictive personality (cigarettes; cheddar and sour cream chips; chocolate croissants; wine; chick lit) and I'm running out of room under my shame bush. Not to mention that in my younger years, I saw my insomnia as a virtue of sorts. I didn't need sleep! How cool was that? In high school, I could stay up until 5 a.m. reading in bed and be at first period only ten minutes late. (Like, every day. It's amazing I didn't get in trouble more often.) In college, I took a full course load, worked two jobs, ran five miles every day, got drunk nearly every night, and still managed to write when the rest of the town was asleep. I'm not saying I produced good work, but at least I could get it up. I had more energy than a coked-up seven-year-old boy.

Folks often lament that they "had so much energy" when they were young. These people are usually in their forties or fifties. What they don't tell you is that the torpor starts as soon as you trade in your Applebee's khakis for a fugly J.C. Penney suit. When you're twenty-two, not forty-two. Before you've had kids, before you've bought a condo, before you've really put that energy and wakefulness toward whatever big-effing-dream you had.

I still have insomnia, but I no longer have the energy for insomnia. It's not a virtue anymore, it's a curse. Instead of twenty-one productive waking hours a day, I have twenty-four hours of foggy confusion. Because I need to eat, pay rent, and go to happy hours, I have to keep a job. Keeping a job requires sleep, and so I've been forced to develop strategies to put myself to sleep, from breathing techniques to visualizing strange-colored animals. (The how-to: Close your eyes and say in your mind: Green bunny. Once a clear and detailed picture of a green bunny appears, move on to, say, purple tiger.)

And about a year ago I developed a very successful strategy: Build my dream house in my mind, room-by-room, in excruciating detail. Occasionally this exercise is distracting because I become depressed at my chances of ever owning this home. But, usually I don't get past the Italian tile and brick kitchen before I fall asleep, which translates to twenty-five minutes from the start of the exercise to snoring and sleepy ass-scratching. Before this, I had never been able to fall asleep in just twenty-five minutes.

But now I'm down to five minutes. FIVE MINUTES!--without four Strongbows. Right now the four of you reading this are asking, How Katie? How on earth have you reduced your time by Impressive%? (I tried to do the math but I don't think 212% is the correct answer.) What forward-thinking and creative technique have you pioneered?

I'll tell you, but I'm going to preface it with: I think it's ironic. (I can never really be sure with irony.)

The new technique involves trying to stay awake. How is that for reverse . . . psychosis? I've been beckoning, inviting, my insomnia, which has written some of my favorite things, in order to work through the first paragraph of my book in my mind. I call it mind-writing (catchy, eh?). Mind-writing allows ideas to grow like weeds in the fertile soil of your soul. Weeds are an integral component of the Garden of Ideas. Weeds can be identified and eradicated later, because they will have also fertilized big leafy plants of genius! One cannot recognize a flower without first naming the weeds. Mind-writing shall produce a stunning first line of prose that encapsulates all feeling in the world! The previous four lines will be the blurb for my new self-help book, Mind-Writing Your Way to the Bestseller List.

But I keep falling asleep before I mind-write the first line, let alone the first paragraph. My book is already a snooze and it's not even written.

But I need to write this first line. There is no book without a goddamn beginning. For inspiration, I have reviewed this amazing list of the 100 Best First Lines from Novels as chosen by the American Book Review. Inspired, I will draft at least five (well, if you know me, that means five) first lines to my novel. And then the four of you readers will vote! And then I will pretend to take your input into consideration! Watch this space, as they say somewhere I can't remember.

My Friend the Published Writer

I need to give big ups to my friend Jessy, who has recently achieved the impossible dream: publication. Jessy (Ms. Jessica if you're nasty) is currently in the Non-fiction MFA program at George Mason and has been working her butt off. She wrote an incredible short piece called Arlington which, to me, reminds us of how our past throws our emotions in our face at unexpected times.

Enjoy!

Jessica's Piece in Flashquake

Exercise: 5 of 7 in 7

Sixth Grade, New York

It's cold and I don't have a winter coat.
But my mom has one from the seventies.
Lilac corduroy, pleats, an oversized
peter pan collar filled with down.
It does not bear the name of a sports team.
My name appears at the top of the Big Tits list,
which finds its way to me in assembly.
Number two on the list is pregnant
within two months. She tells me over pizza
and I take her to the penny candy store,
fill her little white bag with whatever she wants.
At a sleepover in her huge Victorian
her mother pulls a knife and tells her to die.
In November I shoplift at the mall: hair clips,
silver nail polish, multi-colored button earrings.
I am caught and I think my dad won't love me
anymore. He does. Christmas is so white
we can't get our car out of the driveway
and we walk to mass in snowsuits. In the spring
my parents abandon their faith but make us keep ours.
My brothers wait until the car is out of sight and split
to smoke in the alleys and god knows what else.
I go in and I pray and sing the songs, and when I leave
the priest holds my hands and wishes me peace.

Exercise: 4 of 7 in 7

So, I missed yesterday because I had too much to drink at happy hour. Therefore, you get the special treat of two really self-absorbed poems in one day! Yes, it is your lucky day. The following two poems are what I call "drafts so rough they'll skin your knees."

Fifth Grade, Arizona

Of course it's hot. But hotter even
than I dreamed. Everything changes now,
the slice of life I knew dripped itself into a puddle
that disappears on the pavement. I spend
a lot of time alone. The house is empty of people
but I am given a cat. My new friend's parents
forbid her from my house: it is lawless,
we sit on the roof and we go to the playground
at midnight and no one is there to tell us not to.
In school I am considered very white
and there is a group of Mexican girls
who make a hobby of kicking my ass.
Meet us at the hill. I go, every day, for weeks
to take my beating. They throw me by my long hair.
One day I cry in the bathroom because
I have a knot in my hair larger than a grapefruit.
It's underneath but it begins to show through
the few untangled strands covering it. I cannot
brush it out. The brush is now stuck in the knot
which is stuck in my hair. One of the Mexican girls
rubs my back while I sob. In the long
sepia mirrors we look like friends.
Later in the year I do two amazing things.
I win a spelling bee. And I save a woman's life.
She was on the ground, flailing, pointing to her throat.
Her bike was beside her in the dust.
I ran very fast to the Circle K and soon the ambulance came.
I rode my bike miles to visit her in the hospital.
She promised me all the books I could ever want.
I wrote them down with my address in purple ink.
I never heard from her again.

Exercise: 3 of 7 in 7

This was just fun to write. It's difficult to write love poems of any kind, but it's a hell of a lot easier when it's a little baby niece like Wren.

Learning to Say

Wren says Hi!
when you enter, when you leave,
when you come back.
Wren says Hi! if you gush
at her over the phone,
Hi! if she sees you
smiling at her.

Wren's bow mouth makes little
oh sounds. She has something
she wants to say.
Wren says whoa
when she means whoa
with happy punches to the air.
Where did she learn that,
we ask. Little baby genius
says wow now. Wow at the cat's
swishing tail. Wow at her big
brother bouncing a ball. Wow
to a window pane shiny with sun.
Wren walks with the help of just
your pinky. Wow, wow.

Wren says more. More water,
more milk, more mini piles of mango.
Wren says baby. You say I love you,
baby. Wren says Hi!

Exercise: 2 of 7 in 7

This poem was very difficult to write, and I am not at all happy with it. But those are the breaks. I committed to this stupid, infuriating, dehumanizing exercise, and damn it, if it leaves me curled up in a ball on the bathroom floor twitching and writhing, I'll finish it.

The reasons this was difficult:

1. My closeness to the subject matter.
2. Using pop references in a poem is very tricky. You don't want to spell too much out, but you limit understanding if people don't know to what you are referring.
3. It's got a clunky metaphor, and that's never easy. How obvious do you make it? Is it too vague? Are you only seeing the sense behind it because you know what it means?
4. I've wanted to write this poem for several years and it never worked. Which is why I chose to write it when I have no choice but to write something. But that doesn't always produce good work.

Without further whiny disclaimers:


Christmas Music

Our first Christmas as a family of just four
brought snow as high as the windows.
A small morning in a small house.
We had a real tree. We would never
not have a tree, no matter what else
was missing.

My father put on The Carpenters Christmas Portrait
and made coffee. My first soothe
of milky darkness. Let your heart be light.

Two brothers: one found his affection
and it smoothed my hair. The other
gave me a cd wrapped
in Sunday comics.

Later there was a party across the snow city.
Our little Nissan slid its way,
Merry Christmas finger-written on the windows.

My brother pushed in the new cd.
The song turned our faces away from each other.
She's a brick and I'm drowning slowly.

We thought of the same brick.
The brick flew through our windows.
The brick landed on our toes.
The brick had a note taped to it
that we didn't need to read.
The brick sat cold.
The brick didn't move
if you kicked it.
The brick didn't hear
if you cursed it.
The brick wasn't a night light.
The brick didn't want you.
The brick may be affixed to your feet
as a means of finishing you off.

One of us hit play again.

Exercise: 1 of 7 in 7

Ways It Might End

i
Between your heart and my heart
is a big lake. With piranhas.
They arc toward us,
hideous dolphins.

ii
I can hear you breathing.
In whistle out whistle.
Blow your nose? Close
your mouth?
Maybe just stop
altogether.

iii
On a bench in the sun
the air agrass, the swings
holding children.

iv
From the side
sometimes you look
like my mother.

v
On a dark and stormy night
after two bottles of wine
and a fight over 
the last pickle.

vi
Do you love me?
Do you love me?
Do you love me?
Do you love me?

vii 
I'm too sad for kisses;
I would sob 
in your mouth.

viii
Too much Morrissey. 

ix
Here, I wrote you 
a poem.

x
When we're so old
the crushes have gone
the heat feels like home
our hands look just alike
the bed adjusts
one of us 
goes first.

Introducing Write Without Pay's First Exercise

I wrote poetry before I wrote anything else, and that's what I spent the vast majority of my time in college working on--both in my free time and in workshops. I really love poetry. I really loved writing poetry. But much like the rest of my writing, I just stopped.

My friend Jessy keeps encouraging me to go back to poetry. Her points are valid: I care about it; I was once good at it. But most importantly, she's right that it's writing. It's another way to keep writing.

Being the good friend I am, I listened to her. I recently returned to a wonderful community of highly critical poets (www.everypoet.org/pffa). I spent a lot of time there years ago. They welcomed me back with a challenge: Join the Seven/Seven adventure. The idea is to write seven poems in seven days. Egad! It can take me two or three weeks just to eke out a rough draft of a poem; the twenty-three revisions it then goes through adds several more months or years to the process.

I don't believe poetry can be rushed. I don't believe it can be churned out. However--forcing yourself to finish a poem in a set timeframe creates a point of departure. It exercises those ragged muscles called wordplay, sonics, metaphors, and so on. ATTENTION: These are not polished poems. DO NOT JUDGE ME, YOU JERKS!!

The challenge starts today and runs through Saturday. I bring you 7 in 7. 

I Need a Uriah Heep.

Last entry, I made a wee promise to myself that I would finish my book's outline by this Wednesday. I'm proud to say that I only half-broke my promise, in that I did outline quite a bit of the book. The best part of the exercise is that it bred other ideas. The plot was popping and crackling behind my eyes when I tried to sleep and caused me to clap my hands in excitement while toiling tirelessly away in my little gray cube. Not all of the ideas were good (I don't think I'll be introducing a musical prodigy named Symphony) but some of them I have come to believe are crucial to the plot. One of those ideas was the realization that my central conflict needs a villain. Okay, the more literary term is "antagonist" but "villain" implies all that fabulous slimy sneaky stuff that I'm going for.

And I want a subtle, non-violent villain. The kind that give you the heebie jeebies but are seemingly innocent. The kind of sleazy asshole that you probably have to work with every day. That guy who starts sentences with "Well, in my opinion . . . " He doesn't say anything directly rude or creepy, but it's there. And then one day you find out that he collects finger nail trimmings and has been mailing them in scented envelopes to his co-workers.

It's not surprising that the first villain I thought of was Uriah Heep, because David Copperfield is my favorite book. Not a popular choice with English majors, but I'm a maverick. (Just like McCain!) I'm not one of those people who claims they were reading 900-page classics at absurdly young ages, but I did first read David Copperfield at the age of seven. Of course, it wasn't until I was fourteen that I realized my treasured and worn copy was an abridged version. A very, very abridged version made just for little kids. It was probably shorter than Logan Likes Mary Anne (BSC foreva!) and was missing a lot of the sad parts. But I loved it. And when I realized that there were another 860 pages to the story, it was like finding that Kit-Kat you hid in the way-back of the fridge so your husband wouldn't eat it. 

One of the brilliancies (er . . .) of David Copperfield is the characterization. And Uriah Heep is one of the best-drawn characters in literature. He's so described. The way he moves, the way he looks, the way he talks. Just writing about him now has my lip curling in the thrill of distaste. 

Here's one of David's first interactions with Uriah Heep, when David is a child and Uriah a young apprentice, probably about sixteen or seventeen. 

Seeing a light in the little office, and feeling myself attracted towards Uriah Heep, who had a sort of fascination for me, I went in there instead. I found Uriah reading a great fat book, with such demonstrative attention, that his lank forefinger followed up every line he read, and made clammy tracks along the page (or so I fully believed) like a snail.

And if you've ever read the book, you'd recall Heep's writhing out of eagerness to please, his sweaty palms, which he wipes on a pocket handkerchief, and his constant references to being "ever so umble" (humble with an accent). It almost doesn't matter what his crime is; Dickens could have him save a house full of puppies, and we'd still hate him.

I want a Uriah Heep for my book. But he can't, obviously, be Uriah Heep. I can't steal him or re-invent him. I just want my bad guy to be as good.

You four loyal blog readers: I'd love to hear your favorite literary antagonist. I want to study up on this.

Getting Formal with It

Currently Reading: Bird by Bird

My friend Matt gave me Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott as part of our work friends' yearly Secret Santa exchange. (My Friend Matt serves as The Writer I Know. This is why he thus far appears more popular and significant than Jesus.) 

Secret Santa was only one of the distractions we created to prevent our souls from rotting like a crab apple caught beneath the floormat of a car left for days in the Virginia welt of summer. But the distraction that has taken on unparalleled nostalgia is Gash, our fictional goth-rock band. We had stage names. We wrote pages of song titles, penned haunting (no, really, truly haunting) lyrics, and a few melodies almost as sophisticated as Mary Had a Little Lamb. The point is: We were creative geniuses.

Receiving Bird by Bird was flattering (who doesn't want to be encouraged to do what they want to be encouraged to do?) and daunting. It felt like a gauntlet had been thrown. Write, the gauntlet said. I thought you said you wanted to write? 

The conversation went something like this:

Matt: I found this book really helpful. 

Me: Oh yes, I read bits and pieces of it in college.

Matt: It gives you ideas for how to get started!

Me: Indeed! Wow! Thank you so much. This is really awesome. This is just what I need. What a great gift! It will come in so handy as I flesh out this novel. Really. Wow! Thanks!

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Jesus. You got that book for Christmas, and here it is May, and I bet the point of this blog is that you're a lazy--and disingenuous--bastard and you haven't even opened the book yet."

Well, you're wrong! 

It wasn't this past Christmas. It was three Christmases ago.

So, I've been reading it, nice and slow, a page at a time. And it's both enlightening and disturbing. The disturbing thing is that the book makes you realize how unoriginal all of your obsessive self-conscious thoughts are. Lamott talks about what it feels like to try to write. 

What trying to write feels like to me is always one of two things: either the stabbing pain of inadequacy or the happy glow of conviction that I am the next great American writer. There is no in between. There is no "Oh, that's not too bad." Or, "Hmmm. This could be nice with a few tweaks." No. Instead, it's either "Fuckfuckfuck why do I do this I suck so bad at this what was I thinking and why does everything I write sound like a Cat Stevens lyric?" or it's "Oh, yes, Katie. Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes. Brava, you little minx!"

That's kind of what Lamott is saying, too. But she's much smarter than I (duh). She says you have to write anyway. You're supposed to write drivel. You're supposed to keep spewing. You're supposed to hate yourself most of the time. 

She says:

You are desperate to communicate, to edify or entertain, to preserve moments of grace or joy or transcendence, to make real or imagined events come alive. But you cannot will this to happen. It is a matter of persistence and faith and hard work. So you might as well just go ahead and get started.

Brava, Anne Lamott, you little minx! 

I will have a rough outline of my percolating novel done by Wednesday.

Write without pay, eh? What's that supposed to mean?

I have a bad habit. Well, I have a lot of bad habits, but the most injurious is starting not-even-that-ambitious projects and abandoning them after, on average, 4.2 hours.

I'm such a whiner. I'm like, "Yeah, I'm in sales. But I'm not a salesperson. I mean, what I really want to do is write. But that's a tough thing to do, you know?" The truth is, I haven't actually committed to writing since I left college. It frightens me to admit how long ago that was (sometimes I even wonder if my degree is valid. I think I owe the University of Iowa bookstore $300.) but I could have finished four novels in that time. Or four collections of poetry. Or 2,000 blog posts. 

But no more. My friend Jessy has returned to school, pausing her successful career to return to writing. To immerse herself in it and get better at it. To go back to writing every day. My friend Matt has an agent, for crying out loud. And what am I doing? Watching reruns of the original 90210 on Soap Net.

Mark Twain said "Write without pay until somebody offers to pay you. If nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for."

I think Mark Twain was very wise. And thus my plan. Write for three years. Write in a committed and invested way for three years. See what happens. Don't jump ship. Read a lot, write a lot, and talk about writing a lot.

Here goes.

Post script: I thought it worth adding that I have edited this first post something like eight times. This past edit, in which I changed the blog entry title (that's gotta be a blog faux pas, but considering I have five followers, I don't anticipate an uproar), I realized that my compulsive editing of one freaking blog entry is a symptom of my much larger problem: I can't ever finish anything because after completing one paragraph, I spend another hour editing that paragraph. I need to develop some kind of exercise to help me out of this habit.