What you do with what you’ve got.

the stick after he made art with it

the stick while my kiddo played with it

Sometimes I think I need more talent, more drive, and more brains–as if I’m the first person in the history of inadequacy to feel that way. The most common thought is–if I were smarter, I’d know how to fix this (this being my writing).

Other days, I think I am not a disaster and I’ve done all right enough with what I’ve got. My writing may be weird, but it’s mine. I made it. I quite like it flaws and all. And then I worry–is that vain?

Maybe it is art. Maybe it is a bunch of sticks held together with 20 year old silver tape.

What skill (ability, talent, quality, thing) do you think you still need to take your writing from a bunch of words to the real thing? Or if you know that you have written the real thing (i.e. a finished, polished, ready for publication novel), what skill (etc.) helped you get it there?

Are you focused?

“You can’t just walk out of class when another student is talking,” I say.

He laughs and nods. “Okay.”

“And it would be better if you didn’t keep you head down on the desk during class,” I say.

“I’m sick,” he says.

“Then you should be at home.”

He laughs.

“Really. If you’re sick. Go home. But if you’re in class, you need to listen.”

“I am listening.”

“Well, okay. But you don’t look like you’re listening. You look like you’re bored.”

“It is not my fault if I’m sick.”

“Of course it isn’t your fault if you’re sick. I’m saying you need to listen in class.”

“I do.”

“But when you’re head is down, you can’t talk to your classmates.”

“What do you mean classmates?”

“The other students. We were having a conversation in class and you had your head down. I want you to talk to your classmates.”

“Why?” he asks.

“Because it is language class. You have to talk.”

He shakes his head. “No. I don’t want to.”

“What? You have to talk. You’re learning a language.”

“No. If I want to talk, I will talk to my roommate.”

“But I need you to talk to your classmates. You’re part of the class.”

“No. It is not necessary for me.”

“Yes, it is.”

He shakes his head. “It is not necessary.”

“I have 12 years of teaching experience, and I can tell you that if you want to get the most out of my class, you need to talk to other students.”

“No.”

“Why? Do you not like them?”

“I don’t care about them. I don’t need to talk to them.”

“Then maybe you need a private tutor.”

“No. I can’t do this.”

“If you’re in my class, you have to participate.”

He shakes his head and laughs. ” I’m not talking to them.”

“We’re going to be in class together for 15 weeks. It would be nice if you would talk to your classmates.”

“No.”

During our next class together, he sits in the back of the room, outside the conversation circle. I make no effort to include him.

Moments like this I think–I could be working on my screenplay. I could be making art. Why am I having this argument?

I come home and stare at the GRE study guide and think about this student. What should I have said? Why did he come thousands of miles to refuse to talk to other people? And why do I feel insulted? I should be writing!

Why can’t I just quit and work on my writing and art? (Oh, yeah. The money.)

Do you let your daily life get in the way of your creative efforts? Do petty arguments disrupt your motivation or trip up your muse? What do you do to put the noise away and let out the inspiration? We’ve all got to figure this out, because the mess isn’t ever going away on its own.

(I posted more pictures of the silver trees because they cheer me up after a rough day, and they remind me what is possible when you give your imagination more power than your distractions.)

I can’t tell you what it is, but…

I subscribe to a artist newsletter, and today’s edition came with this observation–

Perhaps a lot of Western Art has tipped too far toward our personal demands for private joy. Further, many artists are trying to combine casual pleasantries with secure cash flows. It’s nice work if you can get it, but it may just be mastery that gives the truest joy. “The secret of joy in work is contained in one word: excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.” (Pearl S. Buck)

Do you think we have tipped too far towards private joy? What is excellence? Do you know it when you see it?

making something

Pretty Expectations

The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

Can art or story be too pretty to be any good?

I’ve heard people say that art shouldn’t be ugly. I’ve heard people say pretty art has no depth. A story with a happy ending isn’t literature. A story with a tragic ending is pretentious.

What are your expectations when you walk into a museum or open a new book? What expectations do you have for your own work? And how often do you challenge these expectations?

silver trees

(We went to the Modern Museum of Art of Fort Worth this weekend–the building and the art were great by the way.)

This is what I want you to see.

standing on my balcony looking into my 3rd Bulgarian kitchen

We’d been married a week when my in-laws came to see our first apartment. My husband, my mother-in-law, an aunt and uncle stood in the bedroom.

“Can I look in the closets?” my mother-in-law asked.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” I said.

She stepped closer to a closet door. “But you were so excited about having two walk-in closets.”

“I do love my walk-in closets,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean I want people looking in them.”

“Oh,” she said. “Okay.” She moved away from the closet and I sighed with relief.

My husband’s aunt said something thing and I turned away. A while later I walked into my kitchen and my mother-in-law was there opening the cabinets.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I wanted to see how you had your wedding presents put away,” she said and opened another cabinet.

“Um,” I said. “Really, I don’t really want people to look in my cabinets.” I thought of my mother who had died seven years earlier. She wasn’t the sort to open other people’s cabinets. “I mean…”

“Oh, Marta. They’re just cabinets.”

In writing I intend to reveal certain things and keep quiet about others. Perhaps you glimpse things I don’t realize are showing. How private can a writer be in this modern age? And would it be better if the web could forget the things we reveal?

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

third grade

Words on a page are not exactly bits of glass in the only food left to eat. Why do they frighten so many of us? Look. Lines. Marks. Put together and arranged to tell you something. That’s it. Yet many of us will do anything to avoid arranging these marks ourselves.

I love people who don’t get in their own way–even if I don’t like their work. While I loved Twin Peaks, I wouldn’t go see a David Lynch movie for the love of my very own star. No way. But I love the way he just goes and makes what he wants. You can understand it or hate it. He’s off making something else.

And I love Russell T. Davies. His ending of Torchwood: Children of Earth was horrific. I can’t imagine that many television writers taking a story that far. BBC executives must have been gnawing off their own thumbs, but they let his vision stand. Hats off to them.

Tell me a writer or artist who you think is brave. Who takes chances? What writer or artist do you admire (like is optional) for their mix of crazy vision and fearlessness?

This Takes Me Back

back in college

“You’re so tall! You can wear anything!”

Sure. Anything that fits. And when you are 6’1″ very few things fit. Only in the past few years have I been able to find jeans that are actually long enough–and I pay plenty extra for the privilege. Some stores have tall sizes–tall meaning 5’11″. Sleeves are never long enough unless I buy a shirt that falls off my shoulders. Cuffs? Never. Cute jeans with pretty stitching? Never. Slacks? If I tear out the hem and have frayed edges.

For years I couldn’t find shoes in my size. Or I could, but they were boat shoes. Fine for nursing uniforms, but not what I wanted for a party. I’d go in to department stores and ask if they had anything in my size. The clerk would frown or laugh and then say no. Through my teens and twenties I wore shoes that didn’t fit, and I’ve got permanently damaged toes to prove it.

Details are important when writing. Perhaps you describe what a character is wearing or the car she drives. Perhaps you have a character using a particular appliance or using a special catchphrase. Details should make the world real. Right?

But when do details make a story dated? Why do some details work forever and others make you put the book down? Where does historical become dated? What is the difference?

If you invite yourself to the party, who will find you entertaining?

the high school where I taught in Gabrovo, Bulgaria

Possibly I’ve picked this picture because we’ve had 55 days of triple digit heat here in Texas and I needed to be reminded how much I hate to be cold.

Classes started at 7am. Well, when we had the morning shift. The building was used by another high school, and so for one month we had the building from 7 until 1. The other shift was from 1 until 7pm.

Due to the water regimes I had running water in my apartment from 6am to 10am. And again from 6pm to 10pm. There was one space heater for the entire apartment. The walls and floor were concrete, which held in cold really well. My refrigerator, the kind that college kids rent for dorm rooms here in America, was on the balcony, but I discovered that my kitchen was cold enough in winter that I didn’t need the fridge at all.

There was no washing machine or laundromat. Everything was hand washed in a bucket and hung on the balcony to dry. I discovered that clothing can freeze and that you should never hang your laundry out when the baba upstairs plans on beating her carpets.

There was no money to de-ice roads or sidewalks. There was no money to heat all of the rooms in the school (or light all the hallways in the hospitals). They told me the school was up a hill. Hill, I discovered, is really a matter of perspective.

At the bottom of this hill were about twenty steps. The iced filled the steps and turned them into a slide. Someone would come by and hack grooves in the ice–enough room for one foot. Then the steps ended. I discovered I didn’t fall as much if I reached for hanging branches to walk up to the first turn in the path. Students passing me laughed.

Sometimes a fellow teacher took my arm and helped me up the next part of the path. I discovered at that height the thick brownish yellow factory-made cloud was at eye level. Sometimes the wind blew the cloud into the side of the hill. The picture shows the school from the last turn on the path.

I’d get to class and the students ignored me. The chalkboard had holes it. The bucket of water and a rag were the eraser. No fresh water for the bucket was available. I discovered that no running water isn’t that big a deal if the toilets are holes in the floor.

I had no textbook and no access to a copy machine. Some students played cards, read the newspaper, or didn’t bother to come at all. Some students, four or five out of 27 or 28, listened and took notes. Some students who had never spoken to me, suddenly had something to say when Kurt Cobain shot himself. I was not allowed to fail certain students.

Some fellow teachers became friends. Some were sure that something was so wrong with me that my government had sent me to them to get rid of me.

I discovered that few students cared how hard I thought things were. They didn’t care how raw my hands got hand washing sheets, how the first stage of frost bite felt on my feet, how long it took me to hand copy worksheets for them, or how many hours I spent trying to come up with lesson plans to educate and entertain 230 teenagers. It’s not like they invited me. It’s not like it was going to be my life forever.

I’ve discovered that agents don’t care what I go through to send them a letter. The writing and rewriting. The making of art. The giving up of most television and socializing. The nice things others say. The forgetting of birthdays and phone calls. The sacrifice of career advancement in order to write. The agonizing over every word on a query letter–and the formatting and the address labels and the everything. It’s not like they invited me to this writing life.

But it isn’t like the Peace Corps where I knew in a couple years I was going to pack my bags and go home.

What have you discovered through all your hard work?

Beauty is as beauty does.

posing

When I got out of the pool, a group of boys shouted at me, “Hey, you’re ugly.” I was 19. They were 12. And though I know better, it has been near impossible not to equate beauty with success. Or more to the point–if I were prettier, I’d be more successful and more talented. More the fool me.

Anyway. I saw these videos which I can’t manage to post here, but it would be grand if you went and had a look. (And told me what you thought.)

How about you? Do you ever think (wonder) that you’d be more successful if you looked different?

More Credit–Less Angst

I’m throwing myself into my own crash course on screenwriting. Part of the so-called curriculum is watching special features on DVDs–specifically those from movies made from books, interviews with writers, that sort of thing.

In spite of my rampant insecurity and angst, I think this process might be fun. I’m stripping my novel The Labyrinth House down to the dialog and then I’ll see how to rebuild it from there. Adapting my own novel! To meet the MFA application deadline, I don’t have time for something completely new.

Anyway, as I watch and cut and watch and cut, I remembered how much I love the end credits to A Series of Unfortunate Events. You see, this is one of those confessions that cause me stress because I’m sure you will see this and question my judgment, but then again, perhaps it is too late to worry about that.

So, to lighten my mood and forget the angst for a while, I’m posting these credits simply because they make me happy. That’s it. Have a great day!