Bookmark

In a used book I ordered off the web there is a bookmark from Island Books of Mercer Island, Washington. I've just lost half an hour on the Island Books website and wish it existed here in Syracuse. Since we don't have a store like that but I have the bookmark, I'm imagining Island Books and the person who bought this Dani Shapiro book only to give it up.

Still Writing is a nonfiction book subtitled The Perils And Pleasures Of A Creative Life and I wonder if the person buying it dreamed she would become a writer. I imagine her wanting to be like Dani Shapiro, writing memoirs, novels, essays, and maybe someday even a book about the craft. I imagine that woman back in 2013 holding the book in that faraway bookstore — a place in which it seems magic could happen almost regularly — and thinking, yes, it's time to tell my stories. Hearing her voice, I invent her name: Sarah.

I bought the book used from Better World Books, so the end of Sarah's writing story is cleae even if I haven't yet finished Shapiro's book. Sarah didn't write books, essays, stories, or much of anything. She bought the book and went outside into freezing rain. She hadn't worn a hat or a warm enough coat. There was a slight tear in her shoe or maybe the leather just soaked through on the way home. By the time she made it to her apartment she had grown deeply cold. She could not seem to stop shaking. The book felt clammy in her hand as she drew it from the cotton bag she had carried.

The book remained on a table for months. She started reading it a couple times, but it wasn't a page turner. Anyway, Shapiro's seeming effortlessness mocked her. Sarah moved the book to her shelf where it mixed with other books she had or hadn't read. Sarah went to work, met friends for drinks, and on a warm summer evening she sipped coffee at an outdoor table and saw a woman at another table look away each time Sarah looked up.

Three days later Sarah saw her again, this time at a friend's birthday party. "I'm Alice," the woman said. They talked through the evening and walked out of the party near midnight. At a corner where the woman was proceeding straight while Sarah turned left, they talked some more, neither wanting to say goodbye. Alice reached out to hug Sarah who took a chance, held Alice's gaze, and then kissed her. After that, there were very few more evenings when going home led them in separate directions.

Only weeks later, Sarah moved from her apartment into Alice's. Just months after that they found a small house with a view of a mountain that sprang from the earth as if out of nothing, magical and impossible. Having culled books once, Sarah again spread them on the floor of Alice's living room and made three piles: to keep, to go, to decide later. She pulled books from boxes and added them to the piles trying to get rid of as much of her old life as she could. Still Writing went to the third pile with four others. Three of those joined the small stack to keep but as for Shapiro's book, Sarah no longer remembered the day she had bought it. The book and her urge to write her story both went to go.

A postal carrier delivered Still Writing to my home in Syracuse. I'm on page 52 and still reading. I'm already telling my stories, but I appreciate the book's gentle nudge to go on. The book rests on the coffee table. I imagine it waiting for me to finish writing, something for which it waits patiently. Outside the wind blows hard and is full of snow. The bottom quarter of the window is frosted over.

Through the top I see hills, not mountains. These are are drumlins, elongated hills, heaps really, left behind as glaciers receded. The drumlins, dozens of them, are aligned all in the same direction and obscured by trees and the houses built along and atop them. The long slow inclines up one side drop sharply off the other. Our home is nestled in a hollow between several drumlins through which the wind is rushing. The furnace sounds in the basement and hot air blows through the grates. I type my story and send it out into the world where someone, maybe even someone in a bookstore on Mercer Island, might wonder who I am and what the rest of my story might be.

Cover Me

from Dani Shapiro's Still Writing:

Had I not, as a young woman, discovered that I was a writer, had I not met some extraordinarily generous role models and teachers and mentors who helped me along the way, had I not begun to forge a path out of my own personal wilderness with words, I might not be here to tell this story. I was spinning, whirling, without any sense of who I was, or what I was made of. I was slowly, quietly killing myself. But after writing saved my life, the practice of it also became my teacher. It is impossible to spend your days writing and not begin to know your own mind. (3-4, emphasis mine)

My job has been trying to kill me for years. Had I not been writing, had I not given myself to writing, I might not be here at all. I wonder, is it melodramatic to think of writing saving my life? Is it melodrama to even imagine I would have given myself over to suicide, lost myself in sickness, or betrayed my life in some way had I not been writing? If that is melodramatic (and I think it is) take comfort in knowing that writing saved us from the melodrama of those sad stories.

I don't remember any one time when I thought, Ah, writing! You have saved me! but I recall many times when depression swallowed most of me and I stopped writing thinking I couldn't make meaning in such darkness. I also remember how when I returned to writing — when I gave myself permission and command to write things that were lousy, awful, imperfect, ordinary, and generally yucky — the darkness began to subside. Writing cures depression? Sounds like more melodrama, but I can live with that because I came out of depressions in large part because writing felt like living.

As I write this I am in the middle of some darkness. My job is so bad my therapist called it "soul sucking" and explained that she was not reverting to cliché but felt that I was actually losing my soul to the job. My car is in hospice care and we have to come up with money to buy another. My wife's job is difficult. Our friends' house burned down. These are tough times and just getting tougher.

However, today I have written three morning pages which led to pieces that feel like parts of a short book. I created two essays for my blog. I've read a few pages of Dani Shapiro. I've made notes about other things I want to write. And now I've set this to type. All of this while feeling sick to my stomach and almost disabled by the job.

It's like Springsteen says:

The times are tough now, just getting tougher
This whole world is rough, it's just getting rougher
Cover me, come on baby, cover me
Well I'm looking for a lover who will come on in and cover me

I love writing. It covers me.

I Write Fast

Writing fast isn't a virtue but it is a tool that allows me to better open myself to ideas. Careful, deliberate, self-conscious, slow writing often closes me, shuts the writing down. Fast writing allows me to begin with no more than a flash of an idea and write my way into and through it. Most of my fast writing occurs at a keyboard because I type faster than I write by hand. Once writing, I try not to stop or even pause because speed encourages me to let go and see what the ideas have to say for themselves. Words lead to words if I let them.

If you're the type who needs to know the process, here it is:

1. Have just the beginning of an idea.
2. Sit and write as though a countdown is ticking. Hurry!
3. Stop when the draft is done.

I write fast without much worrying in order to get a complete first draft. Most people don't get as far as a complete draft. Hell, most writers struggle to get that far. If all I get out of fast writing is a draft that's good enough. I've done the hard part. Next up: revision.

I make a game of it. Other writers put the draft away but I go right back in with the aim of cutting at least twenty percent of the words. I read through until I have cut words doing no good work. "Omit Needless Words." Every extra word loses a reader and I have too few readers to let them get away. While cutting, I organize, insert missing pieces, and do other rewriting. The whole process usually requires two to four readings. Once in a while a piece dies in this process, but not very often.

Again, if you need the step-by-step:

1. Count words and calculate the 20% threshold.
2. Read the draft at least twice omitting all needless words.
3. Read the piece aloud before publishing.

Yesterday's 1,400-word fast draft became, in under three hours, an 1,100-word finished piece of which I'm happy, maybe even proud.

---

Keith Olberman writes fast too and describes that process in an excerpt I call "On Composition."

Gift Giving

Probably the toughest thing about running a blog and any writing is wondering, as Roger Waters did, "is there anybody out there?" You post things and then post some more things. You tweet links, share on Facebook, post to Instagram. Maybe you even publish a newsletter. And still you wonder, "is there anybody out there?" It's the sort of thing that can feel discouraging pretty fast.

But only if you let it.

Here's the thing about running a blog: every post should be a gift. If you think that sounds hokey, wait until I get started on Rachel from Friends.

There's an episode in which Rachel receives a present and right away is set to return it for something she actually wants. The giver is offended and Rachel seems petty and self-centered. I've had this experience from both sides. You too.

Be the giver. You've thought about the present you're giving, made some logical assumptions, tried to figure out just what would have the right effect on the person and get the right reaction. You give the thing and they aren't thrilled. Damn it all. The experience doesn't crush you exactly but you come out of it dented, offended, disappointed. Well, of course you did! But don't get too attached to your righteous indignation. Let's flip this thing around.

There was this time a friend's mom got me a sweatshirt for Christmas. It was a brown, polyester-blend sweatshirt with tight, four-inch cuffs and a crew neck. The best part? The front of it sported an eight-inch tall band of faux-leather into which was carved the brand name of the sweatshirt. This was the nineties and my friend's Mom may have thought I was making MTV videos. Whatever she thought, I thanked her and that day took it back to the mall. I got a Fossil watch instead. I had to return it, right? Well, of course I did!

I'll get back to blogging and writing at some point. Hopefully soon. Of course it may not matter if or when I get back to it because I'm still wondering is there anybody out there? Even if there isn't, this gift stuff still applies.

When you give Rachel or anybody else a gift, you have to give the whole thing. You have to give it all the way which means you have to let go of the expectations of how it will be received. Remember what I said about picking out the gift? You tried to figure out just what would have the right effect on the person and get the right reaction. You know what the right effect and reaction are in this case? They are the ones that makes you feel better. Maybe now you're seeing the problem.

A gift well given doesn't depend on the person keeping or returning it. A real gift is given with thought and feeling for the person to whom it is given but no expectation of return on investment for the giver. It's pretty Zen stuff and I don't want to give the idea that I'm a Zen master. I'm not even sure Zen should be capitalized.

My friend's mom meant well giving me that gift. One thing of which I'm proud is that I received it politely and gave an earnest and real thank you. I could have really flubbed that one had I not Mom trained me to do these things right. There's no gift so terrible I would ever want to offend or disrespect my friend's mom. I love her too much. Even now I feel grateful she gave me that terrible sweatshirt. It was so awful I didn't even put it on, but that doesn't mean it was a bad gift. It just wasn't one I kept.

Consider this: she didn't get me a cheesy, horrible sweatshirt; she gave me a Fossil watch I wanted. How kind was that?

Okay, okay, back to blogging and writing now, but you've already figured it out, right? There are two levels on which is there anybody out there? doesn't matter.

First, I give these posts as gifts to whomever does or doesn't read them. To expect people to shower me with praise, send hundreds of dollars, and hook my up with a publishing deal is to expect too much and forget what I'm doing. That people comment and thank me as often as they do is an embarrassment of riches and has to be at least a little bit beside the point. If I aim to get just the right effect and reaction, I've gone down the wrong road.

Second, each one of these has to be a gift to myself. I'm blogging to learn and explore the craft of writing. It's slow going but the trees outside my window eventually grew to twice the height of the houses. The writing of each post is a gift to my present self and the me waiting far down the line. I'm the type of writer who can't get enough of pounding the keys and pushing the pen. This is all I want to be doing. What other gift do I need?

None of this means you can get away with giving just anything. My wife doesn't want a new vinyl record, an old typewriter, or a Tesla Model 3. Those are what I want. A true gift given to her will be filled with my thinking of what she wants and needs and how much we love one another. The gift well given must be well considered.

If she loves the gift, that's wonderful, but if she doesn't, then I've learned something and we get her something she will love. The gift is to make her happy. When I have helped to make her happy, my work is done.

I wrote this post to stop myself from falling into disappointment. This despite having more interaction with readers than I expected. I'm reminding myself what I'm really doing, what I've done, what I might do. None of that is discouraging. Just the thought of it gave me the idea to write this and I offer it as a gift for anyone who cares to receive it. Feel free to exchange it for whatever helps you feel better. Tomorrow I'll post another. For you and for me.