Meeting Challenges/Why I Write

Ready for a Challenge!

I thought I was well prepared for cold weather and was not surprised on Monday morning to learn that the outdoor temperature was a frigid three degrees Fahrenheit, not expected to rise above 10 degrees by afternoon. After all, that’s what the forecast had shown in preceding days. And it is January in northern Michigan. So, from under the bedcovers, with coffee and book and dog at hand, it seemed like a pretty ordinary winter morning until, finally, I noticed that the bedroom was colder than it should be, the house unusually quiet. Why wasn’t the furnace blower coming on? Up to investigate! Only 45 degrees in the living room? Even I am not that frugal! 

 

Four days earlier I’d checked the outdoor propane tank and called to order a refill, but no way could I have gone through 20% of a tank in four days! Checked the circuit breaker box. No problem there. Emergency call to my furnace guy (had to leave a message), and then Sunny and I went out for a very short, quick run. As snow quickly turned to ice between her paw pads, she gave me no argument about cutting short our first sortie of the day.

I won’t go through my Monday morning hour-by-hour but instead will cut directly to the chase to say that the furnace guy found the propane tank was empty, after all. I’d probably gotten a false reading from the gauge, he said, sharing that his home tank gauge had once read zero when the tank turned out to be 85% full. I called for propane delivery once again, explaining the emergency situation, and by 12:30 p.m. my house was on its way back to normal. By 2:30 the chicken I’d planned to cook in the big cast iron pot, braising with it vegetables, was at last underway, and I’d managed to read almost 40 pages of Eig’s biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., much of that reading accomplished—before the propane delivery—with a sleeping bag over my legs, throw around my shoulders, wool scarf around my neck, and knitted cap on my head. 

 

Life lesson: No one is coming to save us. Now that’s not 100% true, is it? After all, the furnace guy came, and the propane delivery came, and my goose would have been cooked—no, frozen!—without them. But, no one made the calls for me or unearthed the space heaters to aim at pipes under kitchen and bathroom sinks or filled the bathtub and kitchen sink and washing machine with hot water to keep things under control until the situation was resolved. Weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth wouldn’t have gotten any of those jobs done. Wishin’ and hopin’ and dreamin’ would not have accomplished a thing.

 

People are often asked what advice they would give to their younger selves, if such a thing were possible. I’d say, “Cowgirl up! What’s the first step? Take it! Then take it from there.” 

 

When someone says “Cowgirl Up!” it means rise to the occasion, don’t give up, and do it all without whining. [Source of quote online here.]

 

Sometimes, honestly, the first step is hard to see. What does need doing? What should I do? For me, even if I can’t see right away the first step to resolve a particular situation, there’s always something that needs doing. It may be completely unrelated, but experience has taught me (I only wish it hadn’t taken so long!) that doing anything constructive, even if it’s nothing more than cleaning the bathtub, makes me feel more effective, more capable in general, and that staves off the paralysis of helplessness and hopelessness. 

 

That’s probably the reason I keep writing these blog posts, these little-noticed bits of thought that I toss out into the great uncharted ocean of humanity, like messages in bottles, without knowing if they will ever even make landfall. Writing is something I feel capable of doing, and when I do it, I feel more capable of dealing with life in general. 

Strength comes from dreams, too.

“Honey, We’re Shrinking Our Brains!”

A New Device

A telephone company representative – a very helpful, pleasant young man, and I’m not blaming him one bit – convinced me recently to go for a new plan on my business phone line. Under the new plan, I would receive for ninety-nine cents a “tablet” that would let me do do everything but make phone calls. Hell, why not?

The tablet came, and it was cute. The rep thought it would arrive charged up so I could use it immediately, but such was not the case. The dark screen remained dark that first afternoon. I plugged it in and turned back to my bound and printed books, leaving the device to take on energy enough to be useful.

I won’t go into all the reasons for my disenchantment, because only one is pertinent to my point today: There is no keyboard. Oh, there is a tiny representation of a keyboard, but one cannot type on it. Not the way I learned to type, using all my fingers and whaling away at 120 words a minute. Impossible. Not enough room for hands. One is limited to poking at letters with a forefinger and hitting the wrong “key” as often as the one aimed at.

“This device,” I announced, “is not going to be my new best friend!” At this stage of the game, in fact, I don’t see myself using it at all.

Portability vs. Literacy

“But it’s so portable!” a friend urged in its defense, and I know that people love their small devices. The tablet, smaller than a pad and larger than a phone, fits nicely into a little leather zippered notebook carrier that can also hold all manner of cards and papers. It’s lightweight. Cute. Small.

But it is no use whatsoever for the things I do routinely on my Macbook, such as writing this blog post.

The tiny representation of a keyboard, limiting the user to forefinger poking or the two-thumbs method I see many people employing, discourages complex development of thought or imagery. It is ideally matched with the character limitation of certain kinds of social media, granted -- and we are told those limitations can produce a new kind of “poetic” expression. But how often, really, are word-limited blasts carefully composed and rewritten and distilled into anything memorable? There is more to a haiku, after all, than the prescribed limit of its syllables.

Real writing is real work. James Joyce’s “stream of consciousness” writing was not the author spewing out whatever passed through his own mind. It was his careful, line-by-line, imaginative construction of a created character’s thought process. Huge difference, kids.

The more difficult the mechanical composition process, the shorter the productions. The more instantaneous the forms produced, the greater the temptation to spew. To bypass reflection. To throw a rose or give the finger and move on, eschewing reason.

The debate over attention span continues: Is our attention span shrinking the more we read online, jumping from one screen to another like cats on a series of hot tin roofs? I submit that not only our reading habits but also our writing habits should be examined. Thinking, like sleep, can be shallow or deep. Lightweight devices, I’m thinking, encourage lightweight thought.

And no, not every communication needs to be a philosophical treatise. Of course not! But we don’t want to eliminate deep thought, do we? Make it obsolete?

A Shrinking Population?

When I began writing my first blog, Books in Northport, back in 2007, not everyone in the world was uploading photos and exchanging links on social media twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week; instead, most of us who wrote blogs and followed those of other people dedicated a certain portion of each day to these pursuits. We composed our posts thoughtfully, and comments sections encouraged substantive exchange.

It’s different now. People around the world live every waking moment in the virtual world but “don’t have time” to read blogs (especially, I’m guessing, the wordy ones like this). It’s like asking people to leave a cocktail party for a public affairs lecture. Ugh! Where’s the fun?

The online audience in general is not shrinking, but what about the audience for serious discourse? Cat videos are ever popular. Super Bowl commercials are viewed over and over. T-shirt and bumper sticking sayings, ready-made, fly around Facebook. It’s fast, it’s easy, it’s fun! Best part is, there’s no take-away, nothing to pack out and carry home.

This probably sounds like hectoring. I sound like a scold, saying other people should be more like me. I know how it sounds, but what I’m really saying is that it’s getting lonely on my virtual island. The cruise ships pass by, and tourists along the rail wave hankies and call out greetings, and that’s all very nice, but I am starving for deeper engagement. I am ready to listen to you, to read your words and reflect on them, and if you are willing to listen to me in turn, read my words, reflect on them, and respond in kind, you are a godsend! “We few, we happy few!” I want to shout on the rare occasion this occurs.

But I exaggerate. After all, I am blessed with a life partner whose active, nimble mind continues to engage with mine and with the world, and we have dear friends of whom the same can be said, whether or not they can navigate my blogging platform easily enough to leave comments. And anyway, I am what I am and have no real desire to become essentially different.

And so I go on, writing these long posts and corking them up in metaphorical bottles to be thrown out onto Lake Michigan. There’s nothing inherently wrong with cocktail parties. Some of us are just better in quieter contexts.

One Step Back

Let frustration get the upper hand, and you could soon be up to your eyebrows in regret.

It could have been much worse for me this week, however, which goes to show once more that many decisions are better for having been postponed. My last post here on this blog was an expression of frustration – frustration widely shared, apparently, because more than one person suggested, even requested, that I edit that piece down for publication in our county’s weekly newspaper or the daily paper in Traverse City. One request was especially fervent. What to do?

I was reluctant. I’d said what I had to say and was not looking for a wider audience. Would anything be gained?

“At least think about it! And would you call me back and let me know what you’ve decided?”

I spent the remainder of the evening paring down an original thousand words plus to a manageable three hundred. (I recommend this exercise, by the way. For a real wake-up call, edit yourself ruthlessly to a word limit. Can you say it in 800 words? 600? 400? Whole paragraphs reveal themselves as self-indulgent, unnecessary and/or redundant, while sentences purged of clutter emerge taut and clear.)

Finally more or less satisfied with the result, I pulled up an old letter I’d had published in a Traverse City weekly last year for comparison. The subject of the earlier letter was affordable housing, and I’d expressed myself to my satisfaction in 300 words.

But I was struck by the glaring contrast between the two pieces.

My older letter, a response to a previously published opinion article, focused on one particular issue and analyzed problems with the opinion writer’s statements. Our differences had to do with a situation and how to deal with it, and while he was clearly conservative and I obviously liberal on this issue, the disagreement was pragmatic rather than blindly partisan. The tone of my letter was – and not by accident -- reasoned, calm, and dispassionate.

The newer 300 words were entirely different. They contained no analysis and no new facts. The whole thing was nothing but finger-pointing.

Important question: What is the point of writing a letter to an editor or, if you’re the editor, writing an editorial? What is the point of writing an opinion piece? Why wade into those shark-infested waters at all unless you hope to open a few eyes and minds to a new way of seeing shared terrain?

Partisan finger-pointing, even absent name-calling (which I always try to avoid), will never change anyone’s mind. It is not reasoned argument and not presentation of new facts. Those who already agree with you will nod and cheer, while those on the other side turn away in self-righteous anger. Everything, unless made worse, remains as it was.

Many people in our country today do see politics as a war. True believers raise their voices ever louder in a kind of locker room hysteria – finger-jabbing, shouting, name-calling, metaphorically shoving and trampling their opponents. But to join in that fray, on that level, if this is what we oppose, is to become the enemy, to give up principles, to hand over victory.

I’m not saying I don’t still believe what I wrote about party politics at the county, state, and national level. What I’m saying is that saying it did no one any good. Putting my words “out there” temporarily relieved my unhappiness and gave a few others a brief sensation of solidarity. I expressed my frustration. But really, who cares? I gave in to basically useless self-expression. That’s all. Everything remains as it was. Not a single mind was changed or opened to change.

Instead of becoming more and more partisan, what we have to do in our county is to focus calmly on issues. Where facts are distorted, those distortions must be cleared away in a workmanlike manner. Where facts are absent, they must be brought forth. And as much as we talk, we all need to listen, especially where we disagree, because no one’s mind will be opened by being hectored or lectured or treated like an ignorant, willful child. Wouldn’t your blood pressure shoot through the roof if someone treated you like that?

So now, in the aftermath of my online outburst, I want to say that I think all the more highly of those in politics who can remain undistracted by frustration, who do not give in to it but keep their focus instead on the work at hand. You know who you are. Thank you for the work you do!

There is no way toward a civil discourse other than by adhering to civility. The next ten months will be a trying time, but that can be a good thing. Rising to challenges can be good for us all. I know all this. But how easily what we know can be forgotten in the heat of the moment!

Postscript: I was tempted to take down the previous post but am leaving it up, my moment of weakness exposed, as an example to others and reminder to myself of what is not worth doing.

Who Will Read Your Blog -- or Your Book?

I remarked recently to one writing friend (frustrated at a number of friends who had not read his book) that I think a lot of people resist reading novels by people they know out of nervous terror. What if it’s lousy? What if I hate it so much I can’t get through the damn thing? Embarrassed ahead of time for their writing friend by the possibility they won’t enjoy the book, they postpone opening it at all, and it gets misplaced or buried or put away on a shelf and forgotten. Better to make excuses for not having gotten around to it yet, they seem to think, than feel pressured to like and praise.

And life is so busy, dontcha know? Everyone is “busy,” in one way or another. I know I am. Aren’t you?

Coming home after my winter sabbatical, I could tell instantly who read Books in Northport once in a while and who never looked at it once while I was away. Anyone asking, “So where did you spend the winter?” or “What did you do all winter?” obviously felt no curiosity, because pretty much my whole winter was right there online, in words and pictures, for anyone to follow. No charge to read it, either. Free! Followers who couldn’t deal with reading online (one friend I know of for sure) could at least scroll through and look at the photographs and enjoy the images, and even the time commitment for speed-reading the rest could probably be satisfied in 10 or 15 minutes a week. Leaving comments was and is always entirely optional, as is giving me feedback in person when we’re back together in the same room.

So why...?

“I don’t have time to read blogs,” I hear from a couple friends routinely on Facebook, it seems, 24/7. Huh?  Some say, more honestly, “I never read blogs.” Okay, I know where I stand with them. The worst is the apologetic, “I should read it....” There is no ‘should’! It’s there for anyone who’s interested! Not interested? Not obligated!

But also, I couldn’t help noticing that when I wrote this past winter of travel adventures or posted photographs of Southwest scenery, a comment or two would usually result, while if I wrote of my novel-in-progress and how the writing was coming along, the silence was deafening. If a post combined writing news and topics unrelated to writing, the latter got the responses.

Again, I can’t help thinking it’s embarrassing to a lot of people when someone mentions working on a novel. It’s as if you’re claiming to have been Marie Antoinette in a previous life. Uh, yeah, sure, they think, praying you’ll change the subject.

Interest. Priorities. How well friends know you -- or want to know you.

My life, my blog, and my writing are priorities in my life but not necessarily priorities for all my friends. Other people have, each and every one of them, their own lives, their own priorities and interests. None of us can pay attention to everything.

Thinkin’ About It

It’s funny how variable one’s feelings about life can be. Obviously, I’m talking about my life and how I feel, the only experience in the world I can have, but in the interest of seeking, if not universality, at least confirmation from one other person, I asked David how he felt.

“Can you put the question more precisely?” he asked back.

Well, I told him, I’m thinking about whether or not one’s life feels meaningful and satisfying or just plain foolish and a waste of time, and for me a lot of that (this winter, anyway) has to do with how my writing is going.

When I have a day or two of the writing not going well, that is, when I’m not happy with my words, no matter how many I’ve churned out, my whole existence seems pointless. I ask myself what meaning there can possibly be in living this way, occupying a private dream world, peopled with fictional characters, day after day. Why am I struggling so hard to describe appearance and clarify the emotions of people who are not even real? Who cares? No one! If I were to give up this entire project, the world would never miss it, so why go on?

Then the next morning it goes well. A complex character emerges into the light, the scene around him illuminated, as well, and I’m pretty sure other people, potential readers, would be able to see it all just as clearly as if they were watching live actors on a theatre stage -- or their own neighbors at home and on the street. Now I feel on top of my personal little world! No one else has read the words yet, no one else knows the character, but I know him, and I care about him, and there he is! If no one else cares, I still do!

And that’s the thing, I told David. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. When it comes to the rest of the world, I am not cast down by rejection or puffed up by praise. I don’t really give a rip what anyone else thinks: it’s only how I judge it that determines my satisfaction or dissatisfaction. 

“That’s pretty egoistic, isn’t it?” I remarked as I was laying this out. Not apologizing, you understand, just saying. I mean, it isn’t that I don’t see my feelings for what they are.

“It’s pretty much the way I feel about painting,” David answered.

We talked about that some more. If a person is going to be swayed by others’ opinions, David says, which others will determine the value of the work? People will not agree, and the artist will always be changing course, trying to please everyone.

Yes. And besides, I chimed in, what standards are others applying? Do they have standards at all, and if they do, are their standards mine?

Again, the double-edged sword, the two-sided coin. Laboring in obscurity, without obvious recognition or reward, creativity can have the satisfaction of being true to itself, and that’s the bright side of the coin.

Of course, when I’m around horses I’m not thinking about any of this stuff and am simply happy to be alive!

One Life, Multiple Agendas

Lately, when we've finished watching a movie, and it's lights-out, go-to-sleep time, I turn mentally to my fictional characters. I've got a couple chapters under my belt and am well into a third of what I initially envisioned as a three-part 

novella that quickly began to sprawl towards being a novel. So I put my mind where I left off writing as I go to sleep, and I wake up with the characters still (or again) in my head, doing what I need to capture in words before the ideas slip away.

So up I get in the dark to make coffee and sit down to begin writing, either on laptop or, other times, as this morning, on yellow legal pad. A few pages later I'm distracted by thoughts of a bookstore event only one day away. Where is my recipe for peanut butter brownies, and what do I need to get at the store tonight for the tomorrow's event? Come to think of it, what do we need here at home that need to pick up at the store after I close the bookstore at 5 o'clock? 

All at once I remember a question e-mailed to me that needs an answer today. It's a number question involving percentages. Soon the top page of my yellow legal pad (because my draft fiction never begins on the top page, where someone might see it) is covered with lists and formulae. 

David gets up about then and brings his cup of coffee to the table across from me to update me on the latest world news, gleaned during his partially sleepless night. I tell him about my writing and listing projects. Sarah dances about the room with unbelievably fetching cuteness, tossing her pretty head toward her kong, in hopes we will load it with peanut butter. How can we resist her? We can't.

I got about three pages written this morning. Not bad, considering.

All Cranked Up: The Trouble with Leaving Out Commas

Might as well accept it: this blog is my cranking place! Sigh! Well, it is what it is, so here are a couple of peevish items for December:

First, here’s a sentence quoted from an advance reader’s copy of a novel reviewers are asked not to quote (and I take the liberty because I am not reviewing the book, and it came out in 1996, anyway): “The olive-green river slid smoothly between the high ochre buildings and the soaked terracotta roofs seemed luminous.” And yes, I would have used a comma before the “and” that joins the two independent clauses of this compound sentence. Why?

A visiting writer-researcher in the midst of a book she intends to self-publish told me recently, very, very firmly, that a comma was not necessary in a compound sentence. Oh, really? Well, here’s my problem: I’m reading along and I see the subject-noun phrase “river slid,” the preposition “between,” and then along comes “buildings,” obviously an object of the preposition, and there’s that conjunction, and then there’s another noun, “roofs,” and without no comma between the two independent clauses, I’ve been set up to read “roofs” as a second object, i.e., “between the buildings and the roofs,” which doesn’t make much sense, but that’s where the punctuation leads me – and then along comes another verb, signaling a second independent clause, and I have to backtrack and re-read the sentence! Damn, that’s annoying!

Two paragraphs down the problem occurs again:

“It was the ideal time to walk about and look at the city and the Marshal and his wife were always saying....”

You see what I mean? “It was ... time to walk .. and look at the city and –.” Huh? Look at the city and the Marshal and his wife? No, not at all. Well, how much trouble would it have been to use a comma before “and the Marshal”?

Writers who omit the comma in the compound sentence are probably the same people who come to an intersection and fail to signal their turns. Even if you are “following the highway,” how are other drivers supposed to read your mind and know that? Which way are you going? Give me a clear indication! Don’t leave me standing here on the curb when I could have crossed safely, and don’t make me read every one of your brilliant sentences twice, please.

The woman determined not to use commas in her compound sentences was also planning to write a history book without an index. Need I say more?

How Bad [sic] Do You Want It?

I have a saying over my desk–It’s not how good you are. It’s how bad you want it.

- mystery author Denise Swanson in interview with Diane Plumley

Performers, politicians – yes, I do believe that determination can count for more than talent in many of life’s endeavors. How determined are you? How hard are you willing to work? Are you stubborn enough?

There is another aspect to determination, and that is being determined not to go for what you want. Two years ago I decided to forgo coffee for the six-week period of Lent. Some of my friends thought I was crazy. “Why would you put yourself through it?” This year I raised the stakes: coffee, alcohol, and potato chips! Not a sip, not a chip! I’ve passed the halfway mark now and still in the race.

My husband asked the Why question, adding the obvious (to him) qualifier, “since you’re not religious.” I knew why I was doing it but had to think about how to articulate my reason to him. Okay, here goes: “It’s a way of demonstrating to myself that I’m not a slave to these things. I can live without them.” He nodded. He wouldn’t do it himself, but he could see what I meant.

Morning is the hardest time of day. I still get up first and still make coffee – for him. I just don’t have any.

The easiest aspect to this imposed self-denial is knowing that it’s only for a time-limited period. It’s like giving up doughnuts during pregnancy. Saying “No, thank you” for a set number of weeks or months really isn’t that hard.

Poem: "Watched Kettle"

Watched Kettle

Watched kettle resisting boiling point,

Toaster refusing to relinquish

       Or crisp the still-soft bread it holds,

Silent, stared-at telephone,

Cloudless, rain-withholding sky,

Bobber motionless on sun-struck water

Over baited hook awaiting fish—

All these stubborn deserts of waiting

       Stretch on day by day,

       While meanwhile

The children grow up overnight.

- P. J. Grath

November 3, 2012

Just Call Me "Nobody"

As in --

"Nobody reads books any more." (I do.)

"Nobody writes real letters any more." (I do.)

"Nobody uses e-mail any more." (They do everything through their "social networks"? Not me.)

So e-mail, send me a letter, or write me a book. I'll get the message.