Have I Been Wasting My Life?

"The world does not want you to fail. The world is forever supplying you with the information you need to do exactly what you want. ...Do not fear the information. It is always friendly." (William Kenower)


Once a therapist told me I needed to get quiet so I could hear my intuition. That's how we know what life is telling us: by getting quiet.

Not I'm-so-pissed-off-I'm-shutting-down quiet.

But I'm-watching-the-clouds-roll-by quiet.

When I shared my memoir manuscript with two writer friends, they suggested big changes of different sorts. I was thrown. Did they hate it? Did they hate me? Was my book a piece of crap? Was I a piece of crap? Had I been wasting my life?

Painful revision? 

I sat back and watched my mind spin fearful worries, justifications and explanations. I got quiet, watched it all like bad weather.

And then one day, in the calm after the storm, I faced my manuscript and it was perfectly clear what needed to be done. I followed the advice of one of my friends and sliced out 1/3 of the manuscript. It was like pulling weeds. What remained blossomed.

The other advice, which had involved structural changes, I now knew not to be true to my vision. Still, I was grateful she spent her living time on my book.

And she had been helpful. Because knowing what I don't want helps me get clearer about what I do want. The trick, though, is to not linger in the unwanted. Instead, I use it to springboard me in the most helpful direction.

"Go only forward; that is the direction of life." (William Kenower)

Where It's At

Eight-year-old Olivia's drawing of me on book tour.

I sent out the first draft of my memoir to several writer-friends who will generously provide feedback. One already sent me a message that so far she thinks it's "fan-fuc*ing-tastic."

That's encouraging!

I'm sure my friends will have suggestions that will improve it. That's how much I trust this group, my tribe. I've read a lot of their work over the years too, in unfinished and finished forms. I've taught some of their work in my classes. It's a wonderful thing having a tribe.

Dave says "first draft" is a misnomer because I've re-read the whole thing a few times, smoothing out the sheets, adding and omitting and refining. Plus, I read it aloud to him.

He was very helpful. He could hear when I'd repeated a word, or used a clunky one. He also corrected some details and asked me questions that helped me dig deeper.

I wasn't sure he'd want to hear the whole book because there's some raw stuff in there.

A friend of mine asked him if hearing so much about my past bothered him. He said, "No. I have a past too." In fact, we are grateful that the past made us what we are now. 

Besides, he's proud of me. He thinks it's a good book.

My friend said, "He's a rare guy. Most guys wouldn't want to hear all these things." I wonder if that's true? I wonder how others have felt about their spouses' memoirs?

Dave has given me a gift, encouraging me to be true to myself . My mom gave me a similar gift years ago, telling me to never worry about what she might think of my writing. That's in the memoir. My working title is: The Footholds Will Appear: An Odyssey of Love, Sex, Spirit and Travel.

Soon we will be back in the Bay Area briefly, sorting through the remains of our things. I don't know what to do with the two boxes of journals--written from ages 8-51--that have been sitting in the dark for so many years. Now that I've written the memoir, they feel superfluous. I'm not a fan of re-reading my journals, anyway. Writing stuff down supports my creative process. I don't have to revisit them.

As I wrote the memoir, I combed through last year's journal--and now that journal also feels like old news. I've thought maybe I should ritually burn them to set the past free. Or have a party where everyone reads pages aloud at random before I toss them.

I've already started a new journal. It has a purple cover and beautiful, blank pages ready to be filled with the future.

Shall I Practice What I Preach?

I'm always talking to my students about opening their stories in a way that intrigues the reader. The opening needs to reflect something about the story's main conflict and issues--which means you'll probably need to revise your opening after you've written the story and discovered what it's about. One good way to do this is to drop us right into meaningful action.

And, ahem, that's the exact advice I received from an editor of a publisher who is interested in my novel Complementary Colors. The opening was too slow, too focused on setting things up--things that didn't necessarily resonate with the heart of the novel.

I revised the opening, thinking I'd fixed it. A participant in my manuscript group (there are four of us who exchange full manuscript edits, a kind of bartering system) said it still didn't start at the heart of the story. I looked at it again and realized there was still too much "throat clearing." And the first line was boring! It had nothing to do with the true struggles the narrator faces.

So I rewrote it again. The first sentence now has more depth. It carries multiple meanings. And there, on the first page, is a key action that plunges the reader right into the story's "trouble." The "trouble" that leads to transformation.

I've now sent it back to the editor. I'll let you know if she thinks I was successful.

Novelistic

A small press is showing interest in one of my novels. An editor has asked me for some revisions, which I've been working on all day--and last night since I couldn't fall asleep (for reasons to be discussed in another entry, once I can share them).

On the reading front, I've been luxuriating in Joyce Carol Oates' journal. Here's an excerpt written in March 1975:

"The novelist is an empiricist, an observer of facts . . . objective and subjective 'reality' . . . he must guard against the demonic idea of imagining that he possesses or even can possess ultimate truth. . . . The person who completes a novel is not the person who began it. Hence the joy of creation, the unpredictable changes, transformations, some minute and some major. As soon as the novelist stops observing, however, he becomes something else--an evangelist, a politician. . . . When one believes he has the Truth, he is no longer an artist."

She often mentions in the journal her husband, Raymond Smith, founder of the Ontario Review. I just googled him and was stunned to find out he died two weeks ago. They had been married more than 45 years.