Hi friends,
This is my first spring in 6 years living in a place that has seasons. On my walks these days I’ve been watching buds on the trees go from nubs of potential, to little sprouts of light vermilion, to deeper, fuller forest green.
I’ve been sneezing a lot, too, but somehow, through my sniffling and itchy eyes and all around seasonal allergies, I’ve been noticing in full force just how verdant and lush nature is: the loud cricket song, the deer and its fawn, rabbits and geese and squirrels. Somehow, I never noticed this before! I look at each emerging blade of grass individually, then at all of them as a whole, watching nature color itself in like an illustration, bare trees getting greener and greener, filling in blank spaces of gray sky.
I have also taken to walking through graveyards—I feel happy there. The air is electric with leftover life, especially at twilight. I look at torches and lights and flowers on headstones. There is a statue of a lady in a flowing robe, hands pressed in prayer. She stands on a hill slightly removed from the rest of the graves. There are curved marble benches arranged in a circle, too. A good place to have lunch and feel past generations looking over me. I feel this proximity is a way of communicating without words. You don’t get that with the living, which is why I like graveyards so much.
I don’t take pictures of graveyards: I have in the past for art classes, but nowadays I’m a little woo-woo. For the past year, I’ve been wearing healing crystals (sodalite, onyx, angelite…). What I do is press the stones to my third eye while braying with grief. Did anyone tell me to do this? No, no one did, but this was my instinct. Perhaps doing this cheers me up because it’s so ridiculous. In the middle of caterwauling, I see myself clearly, as I really am, a desperate person sitting on their bed and holding a stone to their forehead. Then I laugh—in a very measured, well-adjusted manner, of course. But really: I imagine these stones sucking in all my anger and anxiety, eating all that bad energy and crushing it to zero, and then transmitting healing and groundedness into me.
Anyway, I’ve come to believe that taking pictures is disrespectful. Capturing people, dead or alive, in one moment, leaves out the rest of the moments when they might show other emotions or possibilities.
I feel really hopeful about my writing because I can still feel it developing, springing even further into life—just like nature is doing. I don’t know if it’s helpful to keep writing about writing, because I now have finished a short story I’m sending out. Should I maintain some sense of mystery? Well, I suppose I have none.
Anyway, the main thing that motivated me was getting into those MFA programs. I was afraid I’d go to grad school and then relax into mediocrity afterwards and never actually write anything. So I decided to see what I was capable of, sans any community. I don’t think an MFA program really is what makes you good. It’s just what you do on your own, and ideally, the MFA just helps you do your best work.
Thank goodness I was able to produce something that’s not that bad. Yes, that awful word “produce”, which brings to mind capitalism and self-worth based on productivity. Or the film industry ;)
Unlike my novel, I feel no psychic pull to this story, which is proof that I can just sit down and write without “inspiration”. This is good. I can do the work. Within a month, I can churn out a story of 8000 words (25 pages), edit it, and stare at every sentence until I feel like my eyes are bleeding, making sure every word works. So, I’m upping my challenge of receiving 100 rejections this year to 200. If I continue working at this pace, there’s no reason I shouldn’t hit that goal.
Well, wish me luck. The whole submission process is odd. You have to wait about 3 months to hear back from places. I had to figure out how to write a cover letter. (I used this article to help me, but if anyone has better resources, let me know…)
And then there’s also my expectation that maybe I won’t get published anywhere, which is actually ok, because I’m just glad I was able to churn out a short story. I can do it again. Prior to this, I had considered myself more of a longform writer….
I won’t lie: coming out of that decade of depression, my goal is to publish before I’m 30. This may be a modest goal, or not, I don’t know. All I know is I feel really behind because of all the years wasted to being sad. But recently I did my yearly rewatch of the 2016 Rio Olympic women’s triathlon. The commentary reminded me that it’s about loving the process and not the result. In the middle of a race, you think only about the act of running, or swimming, or biking, and not the possibility of a medal. I was also reminded that I’ll have ups and downs and that’s normal, and to remain steady through all of it (difficult for me)…. Control the controllables, ignore the rest. So, with some effort this time, I yet again pushed away thoughts of what people thought of me, what publishers are looking for, what other people are doing, and decided to write what I wanted to write.
To help myself, I have been reading the work of MFA grads or current students. I look at what magazines they publish in, look at their forthcoming novels, their agents, et cetera. I’ve learned a lot, actually. I don’t really enjoy reading short stories, to be honest, and it took some work to figure out what people do for a 1000 word short story, or even microfiction, which is less than that. That seems to be a separate artform. Even shortening my work to 8000 words has taught me how to condense: how to control speed, how to jump forward, how to use plot to move the story along, when to ease off plot and leave things open ended as a sort of gesture or exploration of life rather than closing down the story. I think it’s given me a bit more control, and I know I can get better. Mainly, I’m just relieved that there’s something in my life I can keep working and improving on no matter how much I progress. It makes me feel like my life is worthwhile.
I dislike talking about writing or even blogging about nothing, because what if I don’t publish anything? Then it seems like I talked a big talk but didn’t do anything worthwhile. I’m pretending no one reads this. I try to forget what I wrote in previous posts. I’m not a natural at blogging. Anyway, I’ll hush now and leave you with a book recommendation: Daddy, by Emma Cline.
What can I say? This is a book of short stories, and they’re astoundingly well written, a masterclass for me. My writing developed in a different style to Cline’s, so I read ten pages or so from the book before working on my own stories. I think I carry some of Cline’s steadiness with me that way. I will probably be copying one of the stories out word for word, just to get a sense of how she does it. Drama is infused without any melodrama, as are observations about life—she reminds me of a modern day Alice Munro. (Remember when my workshop professor last summer said my writing was melodramatic? LMAO. I think I see what he means, more proof that I’ve improved, however minisculely. And proof that all the best instructors I’ve had piss me off a lot. I can really say I did learn something, thank goodness. My continued ability to learn, in the face of all the time I spent rotting in front of the TV, is another thing I’m relieved by.)
The stories are fun to read because they’re set in our time, and you can see just how perfectly Cline is able to illustrate our lives with just a few strokes of her pen. In one story, she writes about an entertainment executive and the dialogue was spot on. You don’t often think of modern life in literary terms, so this was really remarkable. And I think there’s a wide variety of life experience captured in the book: from a man who feels irrelevant, to a girl working retail, to a Harvey Weinstein type figure. And you marvel about how much Emma Cline has either experienced, or how keenly she observes the world. I just can’t stop raving about these stories. They’re so smooth and intimate, and also so steady and contain a lot of finesse and style. They’re masterfully executed and can be read on the beach or as material for serious study.
Here are quotes from the second story in Daddy, Los Angeles, which are so pitch perfect they made me panic over my own life:
Happy Spring!