Chutzpah and the Writer

Michael Schiavone says in his short essay on Glimmer Train's website that he would "rather address my irrational fear of being followed (I always run up stairwells for this reason) than announce to a stranger that I'm a writer. The shame I endure should be reserved for ticket scalpers and animal abusers, yet I feel like a sleaze when I confess to being a writer."

Now this is a writer who has been published in numerous literary magazines and won several contests, who has earned close to $5000 so far this year, and who has an agent "with a New York zip code." But he fears that he will never consider himself a writer until he has a book on the New York Times' bestseller list, an appearance on Oprah and his work is made into a movie. But from what I've heard about successful writers, even they suffer from the feeling that they are never quite good enough. They fear that they aren't quite there yet.

If we could only tell ourselves that we are successful as soon as we set pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. Because it is a major accomplishment when we are able to put our thoughts into words. Even if no one ever reads them. We need to recognize the sheer brazenness of the act of writing. It takes a lot of chutzpah, which is defined in Wikipedia as a "non-conformist but gutsy audacity." And that's exactly what it takes to be a writer.

We are already non-conformists because we assume that we have something new to say. There would be no point to our writing if we were just going to repeat what someone else has written. So we break out of the pack and set our sights higher than the average person does. To do that we need supreme self-confidence or we wouldn't even try. The trick is to keep believing in ourselves throughout the entire process. We not only need the nerve to start writing in the first place, we also have to have the gall to send our work out for others to read. Even a letter to the editor in your local newspaper causes anxieties we'd rather not encounter--but we do it anyway.

Michael Schiavone titled his essay, "Must I Write?" and he concludes that he has no choice. No matter how anxious or depressed he gets about his (lack of) progress, he knows that he's stuck; writing is in his blood. It feels almost genetic, the way that an athlete has a body designed for physical activity. Even when we fear that we are not the best writers that ever lived (and who really has that distinction anyway?), we feel compelled to keep on trying to express ourselves through words.

But it goes a step further than that, if we're honest. We must write because we want to be read. This is the part of being a writer that we are reluctant to reveal to others: our need to be heard. It takes real chutzpah to admit that we want attention, even fame. But what's wrong with that? What would be the point of writing if we didn't care about communicating our ideas to others? That means putting ourselves and our words out there. We already have chutzpah or we wouldn't write or call ourselves writers. So let's just muster some of that outrageous energy and send our words out into the world. What do we have to lose?

The Courage to Write

I am currently reading Ralph Keyes' The Courage to Write. It's not a very long book--203 pages, not counting the notes and bibliography. It was written in 1995 and you can also find it in paperback. I forget where I heard about it. It might have been when I was browsing at Barnes and Noble. Instead of buying books I might not like, I write down the titles and try to get them from the library. Then if I do like them, I buy them, but usually from Amazon or Half.com. I'm not sure if I'm going to want to buy The Courage to Write yet. But so far it seems promising.

Here is an excerpt from page 7:
"I've learned that a rising tide of anxiety isn't necessarily bad. It's a sign that I'm getting serious. Nervousness keeps me alert. Fear forces me to focus and to work longer hours. Restless nights mean I'm gaining momentum. The end is in sight. Getting there isn't always pleasant. Neither is running in a marathon. Or staging a play. Or climbing a mountain. All such activities take courage. And all reward those who complete them not only with an unparalleled feeling of achievement but with a thrilling sense of adventure along the way."

I don't know about the thrilling sense of adventure, but the part about anxiety makes a lot of sense to me. I suffer from anxiety anyway, about everything. I take medication for it, but it creeps into my psyche several times a day. And it is worse when I'm trying to write. I get so far and then start feeling anxious and can't continue. Apparently this isn't as unusual as one might think. But it sure wreaks havoc with my writing career.

If I could just learn to work through the anxiety, I might be able to finish more pieces and even submit them. But I even experience anxiety about writing query letters. The only reason I'm able to write my posts for my blogs is because they don't feel real. I don't think anyone is really reading them. So I can make mistakes, write sloppily, even be incoherent and who's going to know? I almost dread the day when (if) someone lets me know that they're reading my posts. I wonder if I'll start experiencing anxiety once that happens and not be able to write them anymore.

Right now the blog posts I write are the only writing outlet I have, besides my journals. I've gotten addicted to them. I don't often write good ones, but every once in a while I think I've done a pretty good job and then my spirits soar. But it's very hard for me to maintain a sense of self-confidence. Especially when I'm working on other things besides blog posts. I've started countless essays and I just can't finish them. I've written over 50,000 words of a novel and it's awful, but I don't have the guts to start over.

Maybe this book will give me some insight into why I let myself choke so often when I'm writing. I'll keep you posted.

Thoughts on Writing

I've heard some writers say that they hate to write. I don't believe them. Maybe they hate to rewrite; I can understand that. But I can't imagine why anyone would do this if they truly hate it. The closest I come to that is when I hate what I've written--that's actually a common experience for me. But that doesn't negate the pleasure I get from putting the words down in the first place. It's just that they don't always work out the way I'd like for them to.

My doctor recently told me that I should do something for myself at least once a week. What he doesn't realize is that I do that every time I sit down to write. I agree that it's good to do something different every once in a while or else your writing becomes sterile. You need to feed your mind. Of course, I do that every time I read a book about something I never knew that much about before. I'm so busy writing and reading, I rarely find time to go outside the house. I worry that I'm becoming a recluse. But I'm happy in my little world. So why should I have to change what I do and the way I do it?

I could make some improvements, however. I read a lot of non-fiction, but the fiction I read is usually genre stuff. I'm especially drawn to books about serial killers (I know, I'm sick). But I can't imagine writing one, even though I've often heard the advice that you should write what you like to read. Perhaps the reverse is also true: you should read what you like to write. I have trouble making myself read the classics and literary giants. That could be an indicator that I'm not meant to write like those authors. (As if I could.)

What I really like to write are essays. Which is a pity, because essays are as hard to sell as poetry, in my opinion. And I do read a fair amount of essays. I love essay collections. I fell in love with essays years ago when I read Gift From the Sea, by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. And I also love memoirs, which are really book-length personal essays. I should probably write a memoir some day. One reason I have trouble writing anything other than essays is because I keep trying to interject my life experiences into what I write. So maybe I need to get that all out at one time and get it over with. But can you ever exhaust your life experiences as material?

Maybe I'm destined to write about myself and my opinions for the rest of my life. I'm not sure how I feel about that prospect. I keep thinking that I should be able to write all kinds of writing (see my post "A Real Writer?"). But then I keep writing the same old thing. I don't know why I disparage my efforts. What's wrong with striving to excel at essays? If that's what keeps coming out of my mind, who am I to question it?

A Real Writer?

I have a confession to make: I'm not a real writer. I must not be because I can't seem to write fiction. And real writers can write anything. I can't even come up with ideas, let alone be able to write the story afterward. Every idea I do have is about something that really happened, and then I find myself wanting to write an essay instead. I just can't get away from wanting to write the facts, and just the facts.

I know that fiction can be as true as nonfiction and maybe even more so sometimes. I get that. But I've always thought, "Why gussy up an idea and hide it in a story? Why not just come right out and say what you mean to say?"

I don't think I'm a bad essay writer. But essays don't get noticed. And I find it hard to find markets for them. A lot of journals and small presses take what they call creative nonfiction, but I'm not even sure that I can write that. I took two courses in writing creative nonfiction and it turned out that I didn't write enough scenes; my essays weren't enough like stories to qualify as creative nonfiction.

I also took a magazine article writing course and felt a little more comfortable there, but I don't have the guts to query magazines with my article ideas. So the bottom line is, I don't get published. Which further proves that I'm not a real writer.

And yet I feel like a writer. I've felt like one ever since I started writing stories and poems for my grandfather when I was a little girl. He paid me fifty cents for the stories and a quarter for the poems. So I guess I was a professional (read: real) writer even then. What happened to my ability to write fiction?

They say that children are naturally creative and that school and life experiences (including that of growing up) gradually leach it out of them. I wonder what leached it out of me, if I indeed had any to begin with. What I don't understand is that my dreams are incredibly vivid and inventive. If my brain can do that while I'm sleeping, why can't it do it while I'm awake?

I suspect that it's not true that a real writer can write anything. But I used to believe that I could. And I feel like a failure because I can't. I envy short story writers (I'm not even getting into how I feel about novel writers!) for their facility for telling stories. I seem to have lost mine.

I truly believe that God gave me the talent I do have and that He means for me to use it. But how? I already write every day. I write posts for my blogs, work on my essays, and if all else fails, I write in my journal. But I tend to judge myself on whether or not I get published. I've had a few things published, but that was a while ago. It would be a little hard for me to get published now because I never send anything out.

I need to be patient with myself. It hasn't been that long since I've been able to devote myself to my writing. I'm still developing the discipline of writing every day and finishing what I write. The next step is to submit. I'll get there, I know. I feel overwhelmed by the prospect, but because I can't stop writing, I know that eventually I'll get off my duff and get my stuff out there. I'll keep doing it until I get published and then I'll keep on doing it.

And then maybe I'll feel like a real writer.

A Writer First?

In Marion Winik's book, Rules For an Unruly Life, she writes that she finally got to the point in her life where being a writer wasn't her be-all and end-all. (pp. 86-88) She actually took a four-year hiatus from writing. She ended up going back, but with a different perspective: people are more important than any achievements, even as a writer.

I, too, took a hiatus (except for writing in my journals), but it wasn't by choice. It was during the years when I was having and raising children (four in six years, before I was 28). I've often said that having children is like having ADD: you can't keep your mind on what you're doing for two minutes at a time. If I tried to write, something always came up with the kids. I finally gave up.

It wasn't until I was forty that I found real chunks of uninterrupted time to write again. My then-husband bought me a Brother word processor for my birthday, bless his soul. It changed my life. Most of my submissions and acceptances (and just a few rejections) took place in the three years afterward. But then I got waylaid by my parents' deaths, a divorce, and a "breakdown" and I found myself in another hiatus. After that I went back to school, where I finally got my bachelor's degree. I did a lot of writing in those three years, but it was for school, not publication.

I've been struggling ever since I finished school to "get my groove back" as a writer. I've found that I'm not the writer I used to be. I don't have the same perspective I had when I was forty, let alone when I was twenty. But one thing that hasn't changed is that writing is still more important to me than anything else on earth (except for reading).

I feel terrible admitting that. Don't get me wrong: people mean a lot to me. But without writing to help me sort out my feelings and my actions, I don't think I'd be worth all that much in the people-department. My writing keeps me from going crazy. And yes, it gives me a sense of accomplishment (on the days when my writing goes well, I'm much happier). In fact, I would love to achieve some level of fame, as a way of validating--and perhaps justifying--all the time and effort I put into writing.

But at the same time, without relationships in my life, what would I have to write about? Part of my problem in finding things to write about is that I write too much about myself and not enough about and for others. That's probably why I get so bored with what I write: I'm not that fascinating of a subject. But it's more than that. I need interaction with others to give my life real, not artificial, meaning. My essays and stories tend to be dry and intellectual. I live too much in my own head.

What I know about life I get from my reading. Oh, some of it comes from my own life, as I've lived it. But I don't often make the connection between my truths and universal truths. Or maybe I do too much of that instead of using my writing to open up the worlds of others.

If I were to describe myself in order of importance (to me), I would say that I am a writer first, a mother second, a wife third, a Christian fourth, and a friend last. That doesn't mean that I don't value my friendships, just that I don't spend as much time cultivating them as I do my writing. It doesn't mean that being a mother doesn't define so much of who I am, I can't tell where one begins and the other ends. Nor does it mean that I don't know that I owe my very life and well-being to God. And as for husbands, well, I've had four: I'm still not sure that I'm getting that part of my life right. (Just kidding, hon!)

I guess I don't want my tombstone to say: "Beloved writer, mother and wife." Or do I? Okay, maybe not in that order. But it would mean everything to me to know that my words and my love of words left an impact on people's lives. To do that, though, I need to have a better idea of what others' lives are like. I need to work on this.

Realizing that I put writing first is quite a revelation to me. If that's true, then I need to be taking it even more seriously than I already do. I need to allow myself to put it first in fact as well as in my heart. Writing every day is one way to do that. Opening my heart is another.

Fire in the Belly

The other day I read this advice: To write a best-seller, you should write from the fire in your belly. That until you do this, you can't move onto the next thing. I agree with that. It's just that many things fuel the fire in my belly and I can't distinguish the one that generates the greatest flame.

There is one thing that lurks in my mind and my heart that I hardly ever write about. And that is my faith. I'm what I consider to be a "born-again" Christian. I was raised in the Lutheran Church, baptized as an infant, confirmed at fifteen, accepted Jesus as my personal savior when I was 21, started to attend a Methodist church, was baptized again in light of my renewed faith, married a man who became a minister, and was a minister's wife for ten years before we were divorced.

That was a major blow to my Christian life. I lost the church we had been attending (I'm the one who had to leave) and many of our Christian friends. I briefly took my kids to an Episcopal church, but because I got a job which required me to work on Sundays, I soon stopped attending church altogether. I didn't start attending church again until after I was remarried, at my new husband's request. We were active in that church (another Methodist one) for another eight years, until that marriage ended in divorce as well. I attended that church a couple of times after that, but since I had moved out of the area, I found it too inconvenient and stopped going. The last time I attended church was at a Catholic mass. I cried my way all the way through it and I haven't been back since. That was in 2000.

Sometimes I look back and wonder how I got here. I also wonder how I could get back to where I once was. But do I want that? I still consider myself to be an orthodox Christian, but I hesitate to write about my faith because I'm afraid that I wouldn't be considered to be "legitimate." Not unless I had a new experience in Christ. An indwelling of the Holy Spirit. A renewed commitment to Jesus. But I hold back because I don't want to become a "Bible-thumper." My beliefs don't line up exactly with the evangelical or fundamentalist communities. Is there a place for a Christian writer who doesn't go to church?

Perhaps this is the "fire in my belly." At the very least it feels like unfinished business. But I feel stuck. I don't know where I want to go to church. I don't know that I do want to go to church. I do want to be closer to God and I don't know how to get there. Perhaps I'm at a crossroads and I need to choose a direction before I can get where I'm meant to be.

My Blogs

Most of the writing I've been doing these days is posting to my blogs. I actually have five, but rarely write in two of them. They are:
Femagination
Urbia
This one: miteypen.blogspot.com
ADD Women
German(e) and Human(e)

The first one is a feminist blog. I've considered myself a feminist since 1971 and lately have become much more interested in feminist issues. Recently I've been writing a lot about politics (what else?): Hillary, Sarah Palin, Obama, and mothers' political movements.

The second one is about city living. I moved into the city (of Columbus, Ohio--yes, it is a city) about ten years ago and I love it. It's not for everyone, but I use this blog to encourage those who are thinking about a similar move.

The third is about writing. I have been a writer all of my life, but only in the past sixteen years have I taken myself seriously as one. Still, I struggle with the whole process and that's what this "sounding board" is all about.

The fourth is about women with ADD. I was diagnosed with ADD eight years ago, when I was 48. It's not widely accepted that adults can have ADD, nor do most people think of it being something that females have very often. I like to shine a light on those misconceptions.

And the fourth is about all things German. I call it "German(e) and Human(e)" because its premise is to show that the German people don't deserve the prejudice that is often leveled at them. (Even though I understand it.)

Posting to these blogs is great exercise for a writer, but it is also an escape from my other writing. When I'm having trouble writing an essay or working on my novel, I find that I can almost always think of something to write about for one of my blogs. Whether or not what I write is interesting to others is something I have yet to discover. I have received only two or three comments among them. But one of my posts was cited on Mothers Book Bag in connection with a review of The Maternal is Political. ("Taking Mothers Seriously," Femagination, July 15, 2008). I felt very good about that.

I don't know how bloggers get their blogs noticed. I keep hoping that someone will stumble across one of mine some day and spread the word. But in the meantime I'm going to keep on "bloggin'."

Fear of Offending

I have a dilemma common to most writers: I'm afraid to write freely for fear that I'll upset someone I care about. I thought that once my parents died, this would no longer be an issue. But I forgot that there are plenty of other people I could offend, including my children and husband. For instance, I have four children: how do I write about parental favoritism without making it sound like I do have favorites? Or, when writing about my marriages, how do I write frankly about my marital satisfaction without upsetting the one(s) who come across unfavorably?

I realize that the chances of ex-husbands or lovers reading my work is not high (unless my work becomes well-known--which of course is something I want, but am afraid to expect). But my family is very interested in my writing--at least my husband is--and wants to read what I write. I also want to share it with them. But how do I do that and be completely honest about certain things? It's no good to try to cloak what I have to say in fiction--in fact, that's almost even worse: I might want to embellish something that happened to me in real life and the embellishment might be interpreted as something that's real. If I write about a married woman who has taken a lover, or wants to, will my husband think that's what I've really done or thought?

This reminds me of the joke about the one-hundred-year old couple who go to a lawyer for a divorce. The lawyer asks, "Why did you wait so long?" And they reply, "We wanted to wait until the children were dead." Do I have to wait until every one is dead before I can write exactly what I want to write? Chances are I won't make it.

One alternative is to write under a pseudonym. Donald Westlake writes about doing that in his essay "Pen Names Galore," but he never says that he did it to protect the feelings of people he was writing about. His reasons were mainly so that he could write prolifically, or change his style, without spreading his own name too thin. He doesn't address whether or not pen names are a good idea to protect the reader.

Some writers protect their loved ones and even acquaintances by disguising who they're writing about. But how does that help when you're writing about your husband and you only have one?
Or one of your children? (As if they couldn't tell which one you're writing about.) Or the person you've been friends with since the sixth grade? Some people might not know who you're writing about, but those you're writing about will?

I guess the only answer is to write freely and the consequences be damned. I'm just not sure that I'm ready to do that. The problem is, until I am, I probably won't be the writer I long to be. Because writing requires honesty. I can't cheat by pretending to feel differently than I really do. The result will ring false. Writing also requires "opening a vein"--letting it all hang out. Not every little detail, but the deepest meaning of the details you do include. Otherwise your writing will be flat. Mine often is, and I've diagnosed my problem as fear of offending. I need to get off this fence, jump in the mud and get dirty. Worrying about what others think of me is only going to give me writer's block. And it has.

Writing Memoirs

"I can't stress enough how different it is to write about the real and the unreal. When I started writing my memoir my whole metabolism changed. I'd just turned 50 and I assumed it was just age, but I didn't want to get out of bed in the morning and I had the most delicious lie-ins of my life! It was just sheer emotional exhaustion, I now realise. Communing with your significant dead is what it amounts to, and that is an exhausting thing. Not unpleasant, but still hard work."
Martin Amis

"For me, the memoir is not autobiography. It's very, very distant from that. There's no attempt to give a chronological rendition of one's life. I was looking at the traces of the legacies. I used the novelist's skills of going into the minds of the people you know least - namely my parents before I was born! These are totally mysterious others. You also need to be able to set scenes and to be able create movement in the text and create characters the way a novelist would."
Lisa Appignanesi

"Lisa Appignanesi and I may have had peculiar lives but they're also fundamentally universal. The only things that really matter are births and deaths and separations and unions - and we all have them. This is the advice I'd give a prospective memoir writer: the critic leads the reader from quote to quote, but that's also what the memoir writer does - you're quoting from memory, and what stays in your memory is the interesting stuff and that's the stuff you should quote. And if these things hang together at all, you're on to something."
Martin Amis

"I think the first thing to do is to select out. Otherwise you'll have no time to live as you recollect the past - there is a great deal of it! So select out for the moments that have a particular resonance for you. Play with those and see where they take you. They may take you into interesting places and not necessarily the places where you thought you might visit."
Lisa Appignanesi

Suggested Memoirs

I just finished and am still mulling over the book The Memoir and the Memoirist, by Thomas Larson. It gave me a lot to think about. It also made me want to start reading memoirs and personal essays like crazy, to see if I can apply the observations he made to each work. Here is a list of the books he discusses throughout the text:

The Kiss and The Mother Knot: A Memoir, by Kathryn Harrison
Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt (Also 'Tis and Teacher Man)
The Liars' Club, by Mary Karr
The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother, by James McBride
Fierce Attachments: A Memoir, by Vivian Gornick
This Boy's Life: A Memoir, by Tobias Wolff
A Hole In The World: An American Boyhood, by Richard Rhodes
The unexpurgated edition of The Diary of Anne Frank, by Anne Frank
Autobiography of a Face, by Lucy Grealy
Prozac Diary and Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir, by Lauren Slater
Light Years, by Le Anne Schreiber
Anna: A Daughter's Life, byWilliam Loizeaux
Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi
Moments of Being, by Virginia Woolf
Lost In Place, by Mark Salzman
My Father's House: A Memoir of Incest and Healing, by Sylvia Fraser
Tuesdays With Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lessons, by Mitch Alborn
An American Childhood and For the Time Being, by Annie Dillard
Firebird and Still Life With Oysters and Lemons, by Mark Doty
Fault Line, by Laurie Alberts
Fat Girl: A True Story, by Judith Moore
Intoxicated By My Illness, by Anatole Broyard
This Wild Darkness: The Story of My Death, by Harold Brodkey
Crossed Over: A Murder, A Memoir, by Beverly Lowry
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, by Dave Eggers
Breakup: The End of a Love Story, by Catherine Texier
Fugitive Spring: Coming of Age in the '50s and '60s, by Deborah Digges
Paradise: Piece By Piece, by Molly Peacock
Fear of Fifty, by Erica Jong
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, by Maxine Hong Kingston
Are You Somebody? The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman, by Nuala O'Faolain
A Walker in the City, by Alfred Kazin
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, by Mary McCarthy
All Over But the Shoutin', by Rick Bragg
Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America, by Elizabeth Wurzel
Omaha Blues: A Memory Loop, by Joseph Lelyveld
An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness, by Kay Redfield Jamison
Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness, by William Styron
Lucky, by Alice Sebold
My Life in the Middle Ages: A Survivor's Tale, by James Atlas
Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris
Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith, by Barbara Brown Taylor

The author of The Memoir and the Memoirist does not so much review these books as dissect them and that alone would make reading them along with his book worthwhile.

A Writer Reads

Bill Roorbach, in his book Writing Life Stories, insists that writers must do two things in order to become good at their art: 1) write, and 2) read. The first is self-evident, although I'm sure the author meant that we should write a lot. But what about reading? Is it really necessary to be a reader to be a writer?

I would guess that it's the rare writer who doesn't read. Most people fall in love with the written word when they're first learning to decipher it. Not everyone who reads will be a writer, but the two go together like torturing animals goes with being a sociopath. (The association between reading and writing is more benign, though, needless to say.)

I read for many reasons. It used to be that I read almost exclusively for entertainment and escape. I still read for that reason (usually to mask a bad period of depression or anxiety), but I also read for information and inspiration. I have several non-fiction books going at the same time. I read a little in one, until it gives me an idea that I find I want to write about and then I pick up another and read it until it does the same. Rarely do I read a non-fiction book straight through. I have fifty-some books out of the library right now. I'm not reading them all at one time; I tend to shift around to three or four and then switch to another group. Sometimes I don't read more than a couple of chapters before deciding I don't need that book anymore. Sometimes I find that a certain book just isn't that interesting. But I like to have this many on hand--just in case.

In case I can't think of anything to write about. In case I get bored. In case I feel curious about something. In case I want to expand my mind. Right now I have several books about feminism and about writing. I have a book about Catholicism and one about the black experience in America. I have a couple about personal finance. I have two autobiographies set in Berlin during the war years. I have three or four recently released novels. And these are just my library books. My personal library is all over the place: history (German, Islamic, Indian, World War I and II), religious books, collections of essays, poetry and literature, books on ADD, German language textbooks and tapes, gardening books, reference books, memoirs and biographies, social commentary, literary criticism, children's books and feminist writings. And of course that's not including all my writing books, which I will go into in another post.

I hold onto my books forever. A few years ago when I was really broke, I sold quite a few of my books on half.com. But most of the ones I sold were "new" books that I picked up at garage sales and discount bookstores. I still have all my textbooks from any class I've ever taken. All the books I've received through introductory offers from book clubs. And of course the ones I've been given. I keep them all.

Just in case.

The Angelic Spy

Jayne Anne Phillips, in her essay in The Washington Post Book World's collection, The Writing Life (2003), calls the writer an "angelic spy." Writers are entrusted with the secrets we spend our lives discerning and attempting to reveal as truth on paper. The tricky thing is to do so without betraying the trust of those whose secrets we carry.

I once wrote an essay about my then step-daughter and it was published before she even knew that I had written it. I didn't reveal a big secret; it was about a gift she gave me. But even so, she was upset that I had written and submitted it without telling her first. I contended that it happened to me, so it was fair game (although I said it a bit more diplomatically). I defended myself more vigorously when my sister-in-law criticized me for using someone else's life to further my craft. But if we don't write about others--or what happens to us in our relationships to others--what do we have to write about? Every encounter has an element of secrecy to it. Everyone assumes that what they say and do is going to be kept sacrosanct by any witness. That's not realistic. We talk--and write--about each other as a way of telling stories. Call it gossip if you will. It sounds better to call writers angelic spies, but it amounts to the same thing.

But there is a difference. Gossip implies a certain maliciousness. Most (but not all) writers carry no malice when they write. We are attempting to tease the truth out of what happens in life and reveal that truth through our use of language. But others may see us as outlaws, living outside the boundaries of accepted behavior: we tell on people. We spy on them and then reveal what we discover to the world.

Our defense is that we do it for "angelic" reasons. We do not seek to hurt, but to heal. Secrets can be poisonous, festering in the minds and souls of those who keep them. The sensitive writer is not trying to "out" her subjects. She just wants to help the reader make sense of his behavior. Perhaps the reader has had the same thing happen to him. Perhaps he has done the same thing to others. Reading about these "secrets" can be cathartic. It gives the reader a chance to look into the souls of those who have tried to keep them and to learn the lessons they learned--or should have learned.

Saying that what writers do is angelic implies that we are above the world, seeing all and carrying messages from God. Isn't that exactly what writers do? There is a spiritual aspect to all writing, whether or not we are religious. There is a higher power of some kind at work as we seek to delve beneath the surface of a person's soul. I have used the word "soul" three times in the above sentences. That's not because I can't think of another word; I just can't think of a better one. Emotions, actions, thoughts, personalities all add up to the soul, that deeper entity that defies facile descriptions. That's why writers spend their lives trying to unravel the secrets others, and we ourselves, carry. We know that no life is fully described without revealing at least some of its secrets.

And so we spy. We witness and we record. And we attempt to explain, either directly or indirectly through the use of parable, analogy, simile and metaphor. We have come to earth to speak to the hearts of ourselves and others. You could even say that we have a divine imperative to do so.

It's not easy to be a revealer of secrets. It requires a certain sensitivity and discretion. We need to speak the truth in love. That is what angels do.

My Map Story: Two Houses

A little girl rides up and down on her tricycle in front of a brick ranch house. She does this every day until a woman finally comes to the door and asks if she wants to come in to play. She never goes to the door herself. She always waits to be asked.

That little girl was me and this is a metaphor for my life.

I was always intensely shy and waited for everything that came to me. My sister, on the other hand, reached out and grabbed what she wanted. When we were pre-teens my mother told us that we could have our rooms decorated any way we wanted. My sister was quite specific: miniature yellow rose wallpaper, green carpet, frilly white curtains, white painted bed and dresser. I said I didn't mind leaving my room the way it was. It was already wallpapered by the previous owners and although I hated its pink gingham design, I hated to ask for a complete makeover. It would be too much trouble. It wasn't even that that bothers me now. It was that I didn't even know how I really wanted it. It might have partly been because I'd been forced to leave my special bedroom behind when we moved down the street to an almost identical house from the one I lived in from the ages of 5 till 12.

In our previous house I had asked for and gotten a room with three red walls and one white. The wall color was called "Apache Red." (It had either been that or "Canary Yellow.") I used ticky-tacky to put up maps all over the walls that I'd gotten out of our National Geographics and was particularly proud of the perfect accent: the globe that sat on my desk. In the new house, I didn't even have a desk, just a huge ugly gray dresser and two twin beds. I don't remember now how I ended up with the pink bedroom. In the first house it had been the master bedroom but a larger master bedroom had been added to the new house and I suppose because I was the oldest I got the next largest.

I liked the size of the room, but I never did anything to make it my own. I was twelve and the move wasn't easy on me. Even though it was just down the street, it took me away from the immediate circle of friends I'd had at the first house. The two houses were exactly alike except for the raised roof in the back of the second one that enabled the addition of a new master bedroom and bath. And it had a basement. But I never warmed up to the new house. I lived there for seven years--the same amount of time I'd lived in the old house--but I always thought of the old one as my true home, as if the second one was an imposter.

I still dream frequently about the first house and rarely about the second. I loved the shake shingles of the first, painted gray with white trim, the rock garden that Mom had built in the back yard, the brick patio with its huge awning outside the family room window, the pitch black attic where my sister and I tried to scare the bejeebers out of each other and our friends. We were the first family to live in that house. Our back yard was a sea of mud that first year. I remember falling into it and thinking it was hilarious.

Our dog became famous at that house. He followed us everywhere, to school, where we could hear him howl when the principal shut him up in the boy's bathroom until my mom could come get him, or to the grocery store where he learned to let himself in using the automatic door. Everyone in the village knew Jojo. He was de riguer at birthday parties because he would "sing" along with "Happy Birthday." The neighborhood kids were always trying to get him to howl to that and the Mickey Mouse Club theme--those were the only songs that did the trick.

When we moved to the new house, I had to leave all those memories behind. I felt homeless. I never settled in. It didn't help that I moved to middle school shortly after we moved and I began to have to navigate the waters of prepubescence. That wasn't the hardest part, though. We had originally moved to the new house so that my maternal grandfather, who'd been a widower for many years, could move in with us. I adored my grandfather and couldn't wait. I still remember the day he called and told us that he was getting married and moving to another town instead. I was crushed.

I was crushed a lot in that house. I had all of my first loves, requited and not, while living in that house. My mother and I began to fight bitterly during those years. And not five years after we moved there, my grandfather died suddenly of a heart attack.

With all of that, why would I care about pink gingham wallpaper?

Writing Exercises

I hate writing books that sprinkle writing exercises throughout their text. Like medicine, I know they're good for me, but I find them irritating. I usually don't feel like doing what they prescribe. But I've admitted my need for outside advice. So why do I resist taking it?

Sometimes I just don't connect with the exercise. It seems too obvious, I've done something like it before, or I don't have the patience. But I often resist because of the author's tone: in Writing Life Stories, the author doesn't just suggest that you do his exercises, he demands that you do. I don't react well to that. I'm not saying that the exercises aren't valuable. I just want more meat in the text before I jump into a writing exercise.

One thing that throws me is when I don't know how thoroughly I should do the exercises.The first one Bill Roorbach presents is to make a map of your childhood neighborhood. He's used this exercise in classes he's taught and the response has been everything from a quick sketch to a collage. Another assignment is to make a timeline. Again, he's received the bare minimum to a color-coded life-long calendar. How detailed do I need to be? Isn't it enough that I have the map or timeline in my head? I can see the value of these exercises, especially if you're getting ready to write a memoir, but I'd rather come back to them later, if at all. I want to hear more from the author about his own writing and teaching experiences.

But it seems that this book is very much an exercise book and it seems that for maximum benefit I need to do the exercises in order. I bridle at that. I decide to compromise: I won't draw the map or the timeline, but I will do the writing exercises he assigns to go with them.

The first one is to tell a story from your map. Mine starts out with "A little girl rides up and down on her tricycle in front of a brick ranch house. She does this every day until a woman finally comes to the door and asks if she wants to come in to play. She never goes to the door herself. She always waits to be asked.

"That little girl was me and I've waited to be asked all my life."

Learning to Write

I have approximately 75 books on writing, on topics ranging from instruction to inspiration. How to write query letters, how to format a manuscript, how to do interviews, travel writing, screenwriting, romance writing, memoir writing, novel writing, science fiction writing, how to get organized, how to make time, how to make $25,000 to $50,000 or more a year as a freelance writer, how to get an agent, how to get published, how writers write, what writers think, and of course, basic how to writes--the list goes on and on. And that's not counting my subscription to Writer's Digest magazine and my yearly purchase of Writer's Market.

You'd think I'd be a successful writer just from looking at my library. How could I read all these books and not be?

The truth is, I haven't read all these books. I probably haven't even read half of them, not all the way through anyway.

But I keep on buying them--and checking them out of the library--as if somehow, just possessing them will turn me into the writer I long to be. And I keep on getting nowhere.

I'm not saying that reading all these books would automatically make me successful. (Read: published.) But they could help to fill the void in my writing life, the one where I don't have a writing teacher or writer's group to give me feedback and encouragement. I haven't taken a writing course since I was in college three years ago and then I only took two of them (both in creative nonfiction). In fact, those are the only writing courses I've ever taken.

It's hard to find writing courses outside of a college setting. Sometimes the local adult education program has some kind of writing course, but I'm not really interested in taking courses taught by writers who are only slightly more successful than I have been. I want a real challenge, like I had in college.

Then again, I'm leery of taking courses at all, or of attending writer's groups. I don't think my ego can take it. Of the two courses I have taken, one was a positive experience and the other was negative. I left with more doubts about myself as a writer than I started with. I was sure that I didn't measure up to many of the others in my class. I couldn't seem to write what I wanted to write or say things the way I thought I wanted to say them. I did learn some things, but looking back, I feel like I need to unlearn some of them. There was this tendency on the part of the teacher to say that creative nonfiction had to look exactly like "this." Maybe it wasn't so much that she was wrong as that I don't do well with rules. They fill my head when I start to write something and I freeze. I've been freezing ever since I graduated.

So I've decided to take a different tack: I'm going to start reading all these books on writing and try to get what I need from them. If I run across one that isn't helpful, I'll lay it aside. If I find one that seems to resonate with me, then I'll milk it for all it's worth.

I'm going to start with Writing Life Stories by Bill Roorbach. It's a new book (2008) that I just checked out of the library. It's subtitled: "How to Make Memories into Memoirs, Ideas into Essays and Life into Literature." Sounds right up my alley. I've only read the introduction, but so far so good. The author is writing to people just like me, writers who can't seem to write and don't know why. He insists that it is necessary to turn back the clock and become a beginner again, a learner. Somehow I think he's right.

I'm going to give it a try and report on my progress (or lack thereof) in this blog.

Memoirs

Chuck Sambuchino writes this about memoir writing in his blog, Guide to Literary Agents. After reading the advice he and some literary agents had about memoir writing, I couldn't help but apply it to my own life. What makes my life interesting enough to make someone want to pay $25 to read about it? And what would my memoir have as an overall theme?

Good questions.

As the blog suggests, you either have to have had something really unique happen to you or you have to have a fantastic voice in order to get a publisher interested in your memoir. No one wants to read the ramblings of a writer recounting his entire life. He has to emphasize the juicy parts. I've had a lot happen to me in my life, some of it exciting and unusual, a good deal of it boring and pedestrian. How do I determine what's worth writing (and reading) about?

Like most people my life could have many themes: love and hate, spirituality and religion, mental illness, motherhood, marriage, to name just a few. My memoir would be very different depending upon what theme I choose to base it on. How do you reduce a person's life to a theme, like some kind of television show? But that's exactly what you have to do to make your memoir commercial. That may not satisfy the chronicler in you, but if you're serious about becoming published, you have to put your ego aside and look at your life the way a stranger would.

When you write a bio, how do you sum yourself up? When you're getting to know someone, what tidbits do you share with him or her? We tend to cater what we say depending on our audience. So maybe the first question you ask yourself should be: who is your audience? Who do you think would be interested in the story you choose to tell? And then pick those themes or parts of your life that would be the most interesting to them. If I were writing to women of a "certain age," I might want to emphasize my mid-life crises, my multiple marriages, the fourteen-year age difference between me and my husband (he's younger), or what it's like to be a grandmother to a boy after having had four daughters. If I were writing to younger adults, I'd need to pick up on the themes that are universal: self-esteem, leaving home, sexuality, education, career, political involvement, socialization, or relationships with our parents and our peers.

What are your triumphs in life? Your failures and disappointments? What have you done that you want to be remembered for? That you normally wouldn't want anyone to know? What have you always been interested in? Struggled with? Done well? Answering these questions can be key to helping you establish the themes in your life.

But don't be surprised if you still end up with a big, sloppy mess. That's what life is like. The role of the writer is to sift through all the junk and end up with the core truths. If you're writing about your own life, you have to do the same.

My Writer's Block

I have plenty of time (I work at another job, but only part-time), a new laptop, an encouraging and supportive husband (who doesn't expect me to do housework) and a certain amount of faith in my writing ability. So why am I having so much trouble writing?

It occurred to me recently that I'm not having as much trouble as I think I am. But I'm obsessing about how hard it is for me to finish anything, let alone submit it somewhere (which automatically means no publication). And I think the reason I'm obsessing is the same reason I don't feel good about myself and my life in general: my clinical depression and anxiety. Not so much because I still suffer from those two bogeymen of the mind, but because I still act and think as if I do. I haven't revised my behavior and thinking to correspond to the strides I've made in achieving mental health. I'm used to being down on myself, because mood disorders make you feel that way. You can't control how you feel or think because your depression, anxiety or whatever is doing the controlling.

How do I break through the control that depression and anxiety have over me? One technique is to act "as if" I am no longer controlled by them, to step out in faith in myself as a new person. Easier said than done, I know. But imperative if I'm going to get anywhere with my writing.

Writer's Block

Lack of inspiration. Scarcity of ideas. Insecurity. Laziness. No motivation. Fear of approbation or rejection. Disorganization. Unwillingness to work hard. Mistaking being published for being a writer. Paralysis. Perfectionism. Procrastination. Inability to follow through. Low energy. Depression. Anxiety. Trying to write outside your comfort zone. Being impatient. Insufficient time. Lack of faith, in your talent or your efforts.

These are both reasons for and descriptions of the block all writers experience from time to time. Most of them are normal. Some present a unique challenge to the writer trying to overcome his or her inability to write. But the more of these that are on your list, the more severe your writer's block will be.

It's important to identify the true parameters of your block. If you don't know what your weaknesses are, how are you going to compensate for them? What you don't want to do is try to justify them. They are what they are. Some blocks have only one reason and are easily resolved. Most blocks are more complicated than that. And it's not easy to fight writer's block on many fronts at once.

There are two components to writer's block. One is external--no place to write, inappropriate writing utensils, lack of materials and resources, distractions. The other and perhaps more formidable one is internal--insecurity, fear, anxiousness, depression. How do you change the very essence of your mind? You can always buy a new computer--you can't exchange or upgrade your brain. You have to learn to work with what you have.

A Place to Write

Some writers can write anywhere--or so they say. Others need very specific conditions in order to write: favorite music, an inspiring view, easy access to their files, reference materials right at hand, a comfortable chair, just the right height of desk. I haven't yet decided which kind of writer I am. Maybe that's part of my problem.

I've set up offices in my bedroom, the laundry room, the living room and the kitchen. I've had rooms to myself and shared a room with another. Once I turned the entire front room in my apartment into an office. That was probably my favorite. I had plenty of room for my books and filing cabinets as well as tons of desk space. And if was all for me. What a luxury!

I don't need a view. When I'm writing, I'm only thinking about the words, not trees or sunshine or landscapes. Sure, that's nice when I take a break, but I can go to another room for that, and probably should, to really give my mind a chance to rest.

I've often dreamed of having a little writing cabin at our place in Canada. I could write in the large cabin, but there's not enough solitude when I'm there with other people, which I always am. Also, until recently, I didn't have a portable computer (i.e., laptop) and I've gotten used to writing on one. I don't know if such a venue would make it easier to write.

I do have trouble finishing projects. Maybe if I was isolated--no TV, no television, no drop-in visits, I'd actually get something done. Oh, and no Internet, because I spend a lot of time looking things up that way. Of course, I also submit and query by email sometimes, although, to be honest, I don't get very many responses when I use email.

As it is now, I sit on my living room couch with my laptop literally on my lap. My files and books--except for the ones I'm currently using--are upstairs split between two bedrooms. I'd prefer one room like I once had, but I don't have the room right now. Maybe if I ever move from here, that will be on my wish list for my new home.

Distractions

What distracts me from my writing?

1. My grandson, when he visits. He loves his cartoons and I need peace and quiet. Last year I was doing a NaNoWriMo type project only in June instead of November. Because of that I made it very clear that I had to write a certain amount every day. And lo and behold, Will left me alone during that time. Why can't I do that more often?
2. My kids. I always drop everything whenever they need something. Sometimes it's just phone calls, but they can be long ones. I can't tell them I'm writing either.
3. My job. On the days that I work, I rarely write, even though I only work part-time and often don't even go to work until 5 at night. In fact, whenever I have to do anything, like doctor's appointments and errands, I tend to skip writing that day.
4. Surfing the Internet. I like to have the Internet on when I'm writing on the computer, supposedly so I can do research. But I spend more time checking my email and reading various blogs and articles than I do writing.
5. Worrying. About money, about my writing, about marketing my writing, about my kids and grandkid, about my weight, my age and my mortality...the list goes on. If I give too much energy to worrying, I have too little left for writing.
6. Snacking and smoking. These are delaying tactics, things I do to avoid what I should be doing.
7. Reading. I know a certain amount of reading is good for a writer. But it obviously depends upon what you read, and I often read junk. I do this for the same reason that I snack and smoke. I sometimes do all three at the same time.

Notice that I didn't list housework as a distraction. I use my writing as an excuse for not doing any.