I hate summer (with expletives)

Fuck your slushies. Please come to my house.

There. I said it. I've written about Seattle's intolerably gorgeous summer before, right here, but I think I was being too positive. Really, summer is just wrong. It's cruel, especially when the writing isn't going well, and really the being-alive thing isn't going well-- because the writing isn't going well, so nothing can-- and I look out at the bright blue sun and the expanse of yellow sky and I think: I have no life. And it's all my fault, because I'm always stuck in this room here, trying to write.

Really, why would anybody choose to write? It's absolutely impossible, a dreadful profession. I should be one of those people who reviews books for a living. God, how fun, to just judge books, instead of writing them! To compose sentences like, Really, this is a middling effort from Philip Roth. Or, It's not Toni Morrison's best work, but it has glimmers of her earlier greatness. Oh, to sit up high, looking down, instead of squatting here, in the muck, wondering if any of this will ever be worth a good goddamn.

If I were reviewing books, I would be out right now with fashionable friends, holding forth on the great and the unworthy, making snide comments about Salman Rushdie's lesser novels and pithy asides about the weaknesses in Mark Twain's prose, waving my glass about confidently, always confidently, so confident.

(If you've enjoyed this foray into fantasyland, I also have magical theories about how good I would feel about myself if I were directing plays; an academic; a priest; one of those people who live in shacks in the mountains, watching out for forest fires . . . I will cycle through those fantasies in the future, when the writing sucks again. Probably tomorrow, if I'm still working on this motherfucker of a short story.)

So, yeah. Instead of being out in the gorgeous green day, I'm alone in my hot room wrestling a couple of strangers to the ground, strangers I created in my own head, neither of which will go have a drink with me or go for a walk with me or listen to me kvetch about my writing because they ARE my writing. They are ASSHOLES who don't want to get WRITTEN. These half-written characters of mine, they're just running the fuck away on their half-written legs, sticking their invisible tongues out at me from behind surprisingly well-drawn trees, and meanwhile the rest of the real world is out, surely enjoying a margarita somewhere. A real margarita, with, like, real alcoholic molecules.

Meanwhile I've skipped yoga and resented myself for it, I've thought about how I'm supposed to get a standing desk and learn how to write while standing. I've thought about how every moment I sit here, thinking about writing and not writing, wondering how soon I can get back on the internet and check the latest inanity on Facebook or Twitter, every moment is one moment closer to death, because sitting kills. That's what they say. Did you know this about sitting? It kills. I am killing myself right now.

So instead of thinking: what would this character do in response to xyz? instead I'm thinking about dying-from-sitting and how that's not what I'm supposed to be thinking about and besides, besides: what the fuck am I doing writing fiction anyway? I read somewhere recently that novels are the new short stories and that short stories are the new poems, and everybody knows that nobody reads poems, which means that nobody reads short stories. And I made the mistake of telling somebody (who doesn't read) what my new memoir is about, and they said, Seriously? Who would want to read that? And now I look at the 200+ pages of that first draft and think, seriously, indeed, who would? I don't even want to read it! I want to be drinking margaritas! On the street! With ALL OF HUMANITY. If we're all going to die in some La-Z-boy seated apocalypse, we might as well have a margarita in our hands, AMIRITE?

Oh, I promise to write again soon with a happier dispatch, one in which I argue that actually, there is no greater life than the writing life, that it's all orgasms and jellybeans, that all this intellectual clenching is making my ass round and succulent. But for now, let it be known that I am giving myself deep vein thrombosis in honor of a short story that might, by tomorrow, look like a big steaming pile of elephant dung.

Professionalcrastinator

Professionalcrastinator: when you're so good at procrastinating, you should charge for it.

 

Look at this neat drawing I found today!

Last Monday was my first day back at the desk. And yes, I was at my desk all day. I even came close to opening the document I intended to work in. And then I decided to check out photographs from Tiffany's wedding in Rome. Tootle around Facebook for a few minutes. Watch a video of a cat barking approximately twelve times. (The first two hits were just for me; the subsequent ten viewings were to watch my cat's reaction and then laugh and then hit play again.)

Monday was the throat-clearing day. The running start that ended just at the lip of the cliff from which I meant to leap. A few years ago, days like that made me nearly suicidal with self-loathing. The walls of my house are pocked with scars from those days. Slammed doors, temper tantrums. God forbid someone should call me during one of those fits; that would be enough to convince me that I had to move away to the country, or better yet, leave the country entirely, go someplace where there will be no distractions at all.

These days I find this period disagreeable but necessary; the wasted day typically ends with me writing miserably in my journal and making vows to do better tomorrow. And more often than not, I manage to fulfill that promise within a day or two. On Tuesday I sat down with that worm in my stomach, the worm that turns at the sight of the blank page or my hands at the keyboard. I sat and stared. I didn't know what to do. I knew that the story was now in Europe, and that I wanted to say something about how I arrived in Dublin to find I wasn't as brave as I had hoped I would be. I was actually terrified; nineteen, away from home for the first time, with no real plans other than to not leave Europe for many months. But I didn't know how to frame it. Actually, I didn't really know how to write at all anymore. All that Italian food made me soft and stupid and all I wanted to do was go loll around in a park somewhere and drink prosecco until my every ambition had drained away.

But then I had a thought: what if I just write the shittiest thing I've ever written in my life? I mean, at this point I'm basically writing in order to find out what the story is, so why not start terribly and see if it leads somewhere interesting? So I wrote a sentence that sucked. And then another one. And it was sort of fun, just writing shitty sentences. Freeing. And then I wrote this sentence: The Irish wouldn’t stop touching me.

That one sucked less. It kind of made me laugh a little. So I built on it, and just like that, I was back at work. 

Priscilla Long wrote a wonderful book on writing called The Writer's Portable Mentor, which I have found enormously useful in the often-harrowing process of writing my second book. One of the best pieces of advice she offers is to write for fifteen minutes every day, no matter what. I didn't manage that during my European vacation, but when I'm home I use that rule to make sure that a day doesn't go by without my rubbing at least a few words together. This keeps the urge alive, that little spark that wants fuel. 

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were all great good writing days. Today, however? Today I am such a magnificent procrastinator I am thinking about opening up a consulting business for writers who are too disciplined. I will teach them how to google funny cat videos and clips of girls crying while saying funny things about cats. I will insist that they interrupt their writing sessions to email dear friends about wall sconces and a wonderful new face serum. They will tweet and 'like' many things on Facebook. They will learn of Peter Falk's death and google every obituary out there and then make a list of favorite Columbo episodes to send to their friend Kate but then get distracted halfway through by an overwhelming urge to declare on Facebook that today is Hangover or Food Poisoning day, because I got one of those last night for sure.

Ahem.

So, in short: today I have written for fifteen minutes. I have written this blog post for fifteen minutes, maybe even more minutes than fifteen. And tomorrow, I will be back on the book.

Oh, but what I really wanted to say was this: my goal of finishing the first draft of the book by the time Yoga Bitch hits bookstores August 16th? Ah ha. Hahaha. Ahahahahahahahahahahaha. 

Revised goal: Um, I will, uh.

FOOD POISONING OR HANGOVER DAY COMMENCES HERE. ALL WORK MUST HALT AT ONCE AND ALL ASSES MUST FIND THEIR WAY TO COUCHES. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MESSAGE. FAILURE TO COMPLY WILL RESULT IN A STARING CONTEST WITH MICHELLE BACHMANN. 

Ciao, netlings!

Second Book, First draft: Banish the Editor

Here's the latest dispatch from my Huffington Post blog.

This new story is a big one, about love and betrayal, sex and identity. When I fantasized about writing this book, I imagined it bursting from my fingers like sorcery. I forgot how treacherous a first draft can be; how words elude me, how my voice betrays me, bopping about from hysterical to ironic to desperately sincere. Only six months ago I was working on a final draft. That stage in the writing couldn't be more different. Six months ago I felt as confident as a calligrapher. Now I'm a four year old holding a jumbo crayon. 

My editor self squirms at the work ahead of her.

Le temps perdu

I've been in the cave. Caught up in building the foundation for my new book, and the idea of breaking away to write something for actual human consumption has felt tantamount to being ripped out of the womb four months early. But today, I'm ready. The first chapter's about launched, and I think I know where it needs to go, and now it's time to rub my eyes and look out at the world again.

Ah, but I'd rather think about the new book. I've spent the last month holed up in my room reading old journals, listening to old music, looking at old pictures. My friend Erin gave me some letters I wrote her from the time I'm writing about, and I've spent much of this morning reading them.

There is something oddly moving about peering into the past like this. I'm revisiting my eighteenth to twentieth years of life, when I left my parents' house in order to work and travel around Europe before I came home to start college at twenty-one. It's moving-- and it's mortifying. Absolutely excruciating to revisit my obsessions over boys and friends, my pagan-feminist revisionist histories. There was a lot of talk of goddesses. Erin called me a goddess, I called her a goddess, we had long conversations with our girlfriends about whether we were an Athena or a Hera, a Hestia or an Artemis. (I considered myself to be a rich and easily misunderstood stew of all four, natch.)

Then there's the confusion. God, I was confused. And frustrated. It's easy to forget, in my advancing thirties, how frustrating it is to be a teenager, to forever be told you know nothing, that you must follow the leader to college, to work, and back to the suburbs where you belong. To be treated like a child when you feel like an autonomous adult, ready to live on your own terms. It was awful to know so little and sense so much.

I wanted to write so badly. I wrote poems (more of that feminist-pagan thing, ouch). I wrote stories (based on myths and fairy tales and bible stories turned on their heads, like the one about an "immaculate" conception between a girl and her contortionist boyfriend) but I rarely finished them. When I was living in Munich I worked on a novel inspired by Hermann Hesse. But I still thought that writing was supposed to be an operatic act of inspiration, all orgasms and jelly beans. I thought that if I wasn't feeling inspired to write, I couldn't write. It wasn't until shortly before I left Europe that I began to understand that writing was work.

I used to wander around Munich's central plaza, Marienplatz, watching the tourists, waiting for inspiration to strike so that I could find my way to my favorite cafe in Heidhausen and finally write. If inspiration didn't hit, I just wandered, a spirit in limbo.

Last year, I was back in Munich for the first time in thirteen years. On my third day in town I took the train to Marienplatz with my friend Cathy, and we parted ways. I had about fifteen minutes to collect my thoughts before meeting my German agent for the first time. Yoga Bitch had recently been sold to a German publisher.

Thinking of writing as my job, as work, has gotten me through many years of setbacks. It takes a long time, and a lot of suffering, to get launched as a writer. I'm still in the thick of that launch, and so I rarely allow myself to sit back and enjoy the small successes along the way. It feels like bad luck to do so; also, I'm trying to stay busy actually working. But walking around Marienplatz in those fifteen minutes before my meeting, I felt so buoyant, so lucky. The only thing that could have made it better would have been to bump into my nineteen-year-old self. I know she would be confused and frustrated and unsure of what to do next. And I would tell her not to worry. Just get working.

Reading, Writing, Rehearsing, or: The Post-Book Blues

1. I turned Yoga Bitch in to the publisher nearly three weeks ago. Final draft. No more changes. It's done.

2. Since then, a publisher in the Netherlands has decided they would like a Dutch Bitch. I am very happy about this.

3. I have been writing, sort of. Notes and notes and notes for the new book. These notes are staring at me right now. Notes that read: "The burden of history," and "Failure as a noble pursuit," and "Sex should be funny." (Still trying to remember what I meant by that last one.)

4. I have been reading, sort of. Here's what:
A. C.S. Lewis: what a man!
B. Colette: what a voice!
C. Christopher Isherwood: God, I love him. I was thinking about him the other day, and it occurred to me that I finally had an answer to that question: If you could have dinner with anyone famous, alive or dead, who would it be? I've never been able to answer that question-- too much pressure. I mean, it would be fascinating and all to meet Cleopatra, or Jefferson, or Tolstoy or Shakespeare, but over dinner? I don't know. I think I would get heartburn from the stress of thinking up intelligent questions to ask them, and then I wouldn't enjoy my dinner. Plus, what would we eat? Drink? Who would do the cooking? Certainly not me, so would we have to hire caterers? And what if Tolstoy has disgusting table manners? Would that ruin Anna Karenina for me? Couldn't we have a coffee or a drink first, and then see if we want to progress to dinner? But dinner with Christopher Isherwood would be like meeting an old, dear friend. We could talk books, or not. But I think we'd enjoy ourselves. I'd start smoking again just for the occasion.

5. I've started preparing for meetings in New York in a few weeks. Now that the writing of Yoga Bitch is done, it's time to start thinking about the selling of Yoga Bitch. August 23rd, my book will be on the shelves. That thought is exhilarating and terrifying and, for the moment, ever-so-slightly paralyzing. New York will be just the shot in the arm I need: I must journey to the land of shameless self-promotion and drink of its waters. When I come back, I'll be slicker'n cat shit.

6. I've been staring at the cover of my book! I must say, I have a bit of a crush on it.

7. You know, turning in a book must be rather like sending your child off to school for kindergarten. On the one hand, I wonder how my child will do in the big mean world, where I can't protect it from the bullies, and on the other, I wonder how I will ever fill the hours that have been devoted to its care. I'm a bit adrift. This book has taken up room in my head and heart for a long time, and I long to be engrossed again.

8. Ah, but here's a final note-to-self staring at me, written at some point in the last two weeks, perhaps on my first day back at the desk:

"Guess what else was hard?" it reads. "Writing and revising and rewriting and revising again until YB was done. You didn't always know where you were going or what you were doing. If new stories feel hard, it's because ALL WRITING IS HARD. Keep working."

On that note, I will try.