About DoriBlog
owning our stories
May 8, 2012
Last Saturday, Writers in Progress hosted an open house and reading to celebrate the work of the 2010-2011 Manuscript Intensive Series... All five writers are at different stages of writing their books, but the overwhelming sense I had, listening to them read, was that over the course of the year they really had found their stories--after months of following dead ends and circling back, hacking paths through unknown territory, visioning and revisioning... One writer, MaryAnna, commented that she'd spent the whole year trying to figure out how and where to begin: but now she knows. It's beautiful to watch this process unfold, to see people learn to trust the story that wants to reveal itself. And my experience, after years of leading workshops, is that our stories do reveal themselves, if we are patient, receptive listeners. If we do the hard, hard work of showing up and stepping out of our own way, not forcing our agenda on the work but letting it take shape, the story does emerge finally, seeming to have been there all along.
Congratulations to these five brave writers!
Posted by: Dori
Dealing with Praise and Criticism
November 25, 2011
So, a lot of people have been asking how I feel about the dubious honor of being nominated for the Literary Review's "Bad Sex" awards...
Although not truly among my life's cheif ambitions, who wouldn't feel honored to be in such company--David Guterson, Haruki Murakami, Stephen King (past nominees include Updike, Marquez, Allende, Roth and Franzen)... Makes one sort of pine to be included every year.
I do find it curious that my own 'bad sex' passage is the same one that Literary Review writer Jonathan Barnes dubbed 'exemplary sex' in his August 2011 reveiw of Outside the Ordinary World... Makes you wonder, doesn't it? Exemplary, or bad? Does this confusion mirror a kind of schism in the British/American psyche around sex itself? Or maybe mine was simply one in a tiny number of novels by women to even show up on Literary Review's radar this year... Hard to say.
Either way, I love the contradiction implied here. That one LR reveiwer deems 'exemplary' what the other LR reviewer dubs as 'bad' truly highlights the radical subjectiity of this business. And also the author's imperative to dismiss both praise and censure, which are equally irrelevant to the task at hand.
Writing with an eye toward avoiding all criticism (even public humiliation) or garnering praise, you will risk losing your way completely. At the end of the day, what others say about your work must take a distant back seat to the desire and vision that brought you to the table in the first place.
And as with everything, it helps to have a sense of humor.
Posted by: Dori
Trusting
September 19, 2011
Ok, I've got hundreds of pages now of 'stuff,' notes, free-writes, character exercises, rough outlines, first stabs at beginnings, and more notes... This week, I'll start writing my first draft in earnest, which really means, I'm just going to start throwing narrative down, as fast as I can, trying not to censor too much as I go, trusting that the story will reveal its own shape...
Trusting that the story will reveal itself... The longer I work at this craft, the more I value the idea of trust—that we can relax a little if we trust we're doing what we need to be doing. That there's something within that guides us if we let it. I don’t mean to get too new-agey here, but truly, there is nothing that gets in the way of creativity so much as self-doubt. Nothing that gets in the way of truth so much as censure. Nothing that prevents love more than fear.
How to trust, then? How to stay open to the truth that wants to be told through you? That’s the nut I’m trying to crack, the question I’m throwing out today. The answer that comes echoing back, small but clear through my hunger and headache, my insecurity and longing and ambition, clear and calm if I allow myself to listen, is just that—to listen. To stay curious. To remember what it is to play.
When I listen to my 8-year old tell a story; she isn’t thinking so much about where it’s going or how it’s going to turn out, whether it will be good or not... She’s just telling for the joy of a good yarn. She’s enjoying getting stuff off her chest. Loving the sound of her own voice. Curious to see where she’ll go with it, wondering where it will take her. Often amazed by the emotion she can evoke within herself and others.
If we knew exactly what we were doing at the outset, then what would be left to find out? If we knew how it all ended, what would we have to disover?
So, why doesn't this make me feel any better about not knowing the structure of my story?? Why am I still so scared?
Posted by: Dori
What's Essential
September 16, 2011
Birthdays are times of reckoning – days when we think about what’s essential – unless we can stay busy enough to avoid such awkward analysis. On my own birthday this year, I woke to fever and a burgeoning headache, and knew I wouldn’t spend the day distracted by friends, as planned. ‘Do you at least have a good book?’, my friend wailed when I called to cancel our lunch date. After driving my kids to school in the drizzle, I lit a fire and scanned my precarious bedside pile of novels, choosing The Scent of Rain and Lightning, by Nancy Pickard. A literary murder mystery – not my usual fare, but the title perfectly mirrored this day: rain was now lashing the windows in time with my headache. Thunder brewed darkly over our neighborhood. I can’t really say much else about what happened in our neighborhood that day: from Pickard’s first chapter, I was gone, whisked to a resession-era west-Kansas cattle ranch where the seed of old resentment sprouts into something more sinister. I had, as John Gardner says, stepped into the ‘continuous dream.’ I was so engrossed, I don’t really remember rising to make tea, feed the dog, throw wood on the fire; I just know these things happened. Around mid-afternoon, I shook myself from the spell to finally dress and walk the dog, noticing that the rain was clearing, that I no longer felt so sick. During my walk, I thought about life without books. Hard as I tried, it was impossible to imagine surviving without the redemptive possibility of inhabiting other lives, opening to the voices that find us, against all odds, across borders of time, space, circumstance. The power of stories is so profound; in fact, it seems almost to come from another realm. At least, it’s been this way for me since I was ten and first discovered Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. Later, it was Tolkien and the Brontës, then Moore and Morrison, Kincaid and Kingsolver… During my angst-ridden adolescence, I burned through books the way my peers consumed sex and alcohol: only the archetypal shape of stories helped me make meaning from the chaos of my life. When I began writing my own fiction, the world offered itself, for better or worse, as grist and fodder: nothing could happen that I couldn’t somehow make use of, spin into narrative. There’s something slightly utilitarian and addictive about this. My husband teases me that stories are my crack – when I’m not engrossed in a good one, I’m jumpy, irascible. Non-fiction books don’t quite answer the itch, though poetry might sooth it momentarily, as will a good film. But it’s not long before I’m scratching at my novel pile, thirsty for that essential spark of connection – that friendly and intelligent voice in the universe that says things are better, or perhaps worse, but certainly more meaningful than we thought. As I finished my walk, the late afternoon sun had made its appearance, streaking sideways through dissolving cloud. My husband and daughters were due home soon and there would be take-away food, birthday cake... I only had five chapters left of Pickard’s riveting tale, so I settled back on the couch, savouring the luxury – no, necessity – of this solitary immersion. Fever and botched plans notwithstanding, the day was, in fact, perfect.
Posted by: Dori
Letting go of Perfectionism
August 12, 2011
“The real writer is one who really writes” —Marge Piercy
So much of the difficulty in writing resides in our own resistance, our own negative self-perceptions or the stories we tell ourselves about why we can’t write:
I just can’t find the time
I’ve got nothing new to say
I’d like to write but I’m just not sure I have enough talent
When I sit down to write, nothing comes
Who do I think I am, trying to be a writer, anyways?
The act of writing requires courage, even for experienced and published writers. Even published writers often feel overwhelmed—by their own clamoring critical voices and the seeming impossibility of the task at hand. One way I try to combat this resistance is to “trick” myself into writing—a little at a time. If I pretend that I'm just playing around, not taking it too seriously, I find I can approach my work with less fear and loathing (and less procrastination!)
Never sit down and declare: “Now I’m going to write a great short story,” or “Here begins the first chapter of my new novel.” Most writers, if they take themselves this seriously, will instantly freeze. Each sentence feels like it has to be a perfect sentence; two hours later, you might find that you’ve only written two of these sentences, and chances are, they'll feel stiff and awkward.
Instead, I'll often give myself 15 or 20 minutes to write about a certain topic or character or scene, the only rule being that I keep typing the entire time. Or I promise to show up and write 500 words—even if those 500 are the worst I've ever written. Tomorrow, I might find a gem buried in those terrible 500 words...
Allow yourself the flexibility to write a less than perfect first draft. Allow yourself to let go of perfectionism. If you can approach your work with generosity, curiosity and playfulness, you'll be a happier, more productive writer.
Posted by: Dori
Good and Bad News about Time...
November 24, 2010
Mood: resigned
A few weeks ago, in preparation for speaking on a panel about time management, I chatted up my writing buddies, and discovered some good and bad news about this time issue… The bad news, my friends, is that you’ll probably never have more time than you do now. During my informal interviews, I found that pretty much everyone is overscheduled, regardless of numbers of offspring, levels of employment or income… (well, with the exception of two 80-year-old retirees). There seems to be an osmotic pressure ruling our hours: got a free space in your week? Something will inevitably flow in to fill it up.
The good news, though, is that needing reams of time to write is actually a myth. I know this, because in 1999, I won a $12,500 Massachusetts Cultural Council grant. I was a part-time working mom, writing grants 15 hours a week, for $15 an hour, and the grant would allow me a long-coveted 6-month leave—time enough, I figured, to finally dust off my poor, neglected manuscript and complete it.
Somehow, the pressure to perform put me off my game. Terrified of failing, I ran lots of errands during my fifteen hours, sorted through stacks of baby clothes... In my defense, I did write a chapter or two. I think I finally sent out birth announcements, too, though my daughter was nearly two and everyone was quite aware of her existence. Long story short, having extra time didn't solve my writing dilemma! I’m a big supporter of grant money for the arts, but I bet I’m not the first writer to unwittingly waste hers. I just wasn’t ready to buckle down.
When I turned 40 and realized I no longer had unlimited swaths of time before me, I got determined—or maybe desperate. I now had two kids and was teaching and running a literary arts studio—my time more taxed than ever! But I knew if I didn’t finish a book soon, I’d have to admit that writing was a pipedream, like learning to speak fluent Chinese or reading the complete works of Hegel.
Julia Cameron, in her book The Right to Write, says, “The trick to finding writing time is to make time in the life you’ve already got. Stop imagining some other life as a ‘real’ writer’s life.” Once we learn to write from the sheer love of it, she says, there’s always enough time, but it must sometimes be stolen, like a kiss between lovers on the run… While finishing Outside the Ordinary World, I finally found the will to rise at 5 am, four days a week, though I'm allergic to mornings… I also learned to utilize that “waiting mother” time—during flute lessons, dentist’s appointment, soccer games—perhaps the most abundant untapped resource moms have access to. (I once completed a chapter during a 40-minute dance practice).
And when these stolen moments didn’t add up to a publishable book, I swiped weekends: every six weeks I’d spirit off to a writer’s retreat in Ashfield and shut myself in for 3 days straight—I was that hungry for silence and solitude. Did I feel guilty leaving my family? Yes. So I channeled the angst into my novel; I created a fictional affair. I figured that was a much better deal for my husband, anyways...
Speaking of affairs, Cameron also likes to point out that the busiest, most important woman in the world can still find time for someone she's in love with. True? If something is important enough, we do somehow find a way.
Posted by: Dori
What good writing should do...
November 3, 2010
Ok, so I admit that my TV watching is about a decade behind, thanks to my lovely daughters. Lately, I've been watching recorded episodes of the HBO show, The Wire, and I'm hooked.
It's a terrible thing, really, my new addiction. I find myself sneaking off with my laptop and disks in the middle of family gatherings, or staying up (as I did last night) until 1 or 2 in the morning, riveted to the urgent, often unsavory dilemmas of McNulty, Daniels and Barksdale. (Last night, Greggs was shot and is now in ICU, her life in the balance)...
Ok, it's a little rough, this show. A little gory. But what I love about it is not just the adrenaline rush--the taut, incredible pacing, which always leaves you hanging and breathless at the end of an episode. In addition to that, the writing and the acting are just so good. The characters and situations in this series so multi-dimensional, so intricately complex, it's impossible to identify 'heroic' characters from 'evil' ones, impossible to draw lines between black and white, good and bad. Politicians are corrupt, yes, but not irrevocably so. The murderers are twisted, and yet, you find yourself sympathizing with them, even, sometimes, rooting for them. Your favorite detective may also be a lousy father, or a drunk. Just when you think you have someone pegged--as a prototype loser or a hero, a waste case or butt-kisser, that character completely surprises you, pulling from their depths a humanity that forces you to reconsider.
In short, the show does what good writing everywhere should do: it embraces the contradictions in life and human nature, revealing that people and situations are never simply one thing or another and rarely what they seem--multiple realities dwell beneath the surface for anyone daring enough to uncover them.
Posted by: Dori
Repeating our Parents' mistakes
November 3, 2010
Some readers are finding themselves angry and frustrated with my narrator, and rightly so: she certainly doesn't behave very well! She allows herself to be drawn into an adulterous situation that could have devastating consequences, even though she herself suffered through similar consequences as a child. What's up with this chick?
I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding out there about the effect of childhood trauma on adult behavior. People often assume (understandably) that if you go through difficult circumstances as a child, you will obviously avoid those circumstances as an adult, right? It only makes sense. If Sylvia's mother led a secret life that led to tragedy for the family, wouldn't it stand to reason that she would do everything in her power to avoid making similar mistakes? And if she finds herself blundering down the same sorry path, how can we possibly sympathize with her?
in his New Lectures, Freud talked about the compulsion to repeat the past as a powerful force driving human behavior--an instinct that he described as "enormously developed" in all living creatures, responsible for the spawning migrations of fishes, the migratory flights of birds... Charcot, Janet and Jung also explored this instinctual tendency toward re-enactment, noting that traumatized people tended to expose themselves to situations reminiscent of their original trauma. We've probably all recognized this in some form or another: the war veteran who enlists as a mercenary, the childhood sexual abuse victim who is raped as an adult: the abandoned daughter who finds herself drawn to an unavailable partner..
Not to say that we are solely creatures of instinct, our past alone dictating our future. We do have some say! Sylvia does, after all, end up making a different choice than her mother, though in order to reach that decision, she must take a rather painful and destructive path.
The first step in breaking away from old patterns is transparency: one must see, recognize and understand the pattern before one can disassemble it. In the case of my narrator, who has shoved her history under the proverbial rug for 30 years, the awakening requires walking right to the edge of ruin...
Posted by: Dori
paths not taken
October 25, 2010
As an adolescent, my path was laid out as neatly as Dorothy’s yellow brick road: I was supposed to be a heart surgeon like my father, whose thoughtful, ambitious nature I’d inherited. All through boarding school, the idea of finally pleasing my temperamental dad shimmered like an illusive Emerald City, shooting me to the top of even the dullest science classes (though secretly, I lived for Mr. Stevens’ Honors English).
During my second year of pre-med, my dad invited me to observe a quadruple bypass. The patient—a man in his 50s—was lying exposed on the operating table when I took my place at his inert head.
I looked on for over three hours while my father and his partner severed the poor guy’s sternum, pried apart the ribcage, siphoned his blood through a heart-lung machine, excavated for veins, all the while talking about the A’s win on Sunday; their golf handicaps; plans for the upcoming weekend. By now, the patient was flayed like a salmon. Dad cracked jokes and listened to Miles Davis. This was how they endured a typical workday, of course. These guys were pros. I admired them. Still, I couldn’t imagine ever taking on this level of detachment. I couldn’t stop thinking about the state of the man’s soul, his relationship with his wife, the terrible job that had probably led to his heart condition, his family waiting in the outer room: did they know that their loved one was being brutalized in the name of healing? I kept wondering about the spiritual implications of having your blood siphoned through a machine… Would this change him in some fundamental way?
This line of questioning fascinated and exhausted me, and in the middle of the 4th bypass, I fainted. I would have tumbled smack into the open chest cavity, but one of the nurses caught me, escorting me to a metal chair on the sidelines, where I sat out the remaining hour in shame. When it was over, my father stood before me in his scrubs, pulling off his white latex gloves, shaking his head.
It seemed I wanted to get inside people, only a bit less literally. So a year later, having abandoned my pre-med studies, I was packing my things to drive to Massachusetts, where I’d been accepted into an MFA program in writing.
I wish I could say it was easy from there—that I published within months. It actually took another decade or so (and many false starts, and enough rejections to paper a small room). Once you veer off the well-trodden path, there’s a bit of bush-whacking to do. But for me, there was simply no turning back, though I do sometimes wonder how the folks are doing in Oz. I do occasionally sigh over the ski vacations my heart-surgeon alter-ego is enjoying. And a few weeks ago, after reading my novel, my dad called. He wanted to say that he liked the story, and he’d decided that perhaps writing was a good choice—something I ‘might want to pursue,’ after all…
Posted by: Dori
Best Laid Plans and Bloody Paw Prints!
September 30, 2010
I knew yesterday was going to be hectic, but I had no idea what was in store... I had everything laid out: after my eye doc appointment, I'd run home, squeeze in a couple hours of writing on the new book and answer my email... I'd walk my dog on the way to town, where I had errands to run: then on to the post office and the bank before collecting daughter #1, who had to be dropped off with a friend at the athletic club on route to grabbing daughter #2 from her playdate... Then back to Northampton for piano lessons and dinner and so on...
This is often how my days go. As a working mom/writer, I've got multiple balls going, and I get a thrill from keeping them airborne. It's a little bit like the juggling you do when working on a novel--you have to keep track of half a dozen characters and their detailed backstories, several narrative threads and motifs, numerous plot-lines and interwoven research... When you feel in control, it's thrilling.
When you don't, well..
So, what I didn't count on yesterday was that my eye appointment would leave me blind for three whole hours--during which I stumbled around my house, incapable of looking at a computer screen or doing much of anything. I took my dog for a walk, wearing my dark glasses, and couldn't see well enough to notice that she'd punctured her paw (and an artery) on a piece of glass. Sticking to the agenda, I blindly put her in the car and went to run my errands. Needless to say, when I got back, I was in for a shock: by now, my vision had returned sufficiently to see the inside of my Toyota looking like a slasher movie: bloody paw prints everywhere, on every seat and floor mat. Blood dripping down the arm rests, the center dividers. My dog, still bleeding and clearly in distress.
Out went the bank, the post office, the athletic club, and all the other afternoon plans! I raced to the vet with daughter #1 and her friend, who, instead of going rock climbing, had a lesson in canine vascular anatomy and got to hold a newborn kitten. Daughter #2 got picked up by her dad, and they spent some rare time together singing every song from High School Musical and talking about friendship. The dog was fixed up with surgical glue, the afternoon oddly salvaged.
It's often this way with writing: the best laid plans go completely haywire. Imagined plots get tossed aside. Outlines don't work. But what emerges from the chaos can be richer and more interesting than anything your conscious, planning mind might have concocted. Best just to go with it, let the story have its way.
Posted by: Dori
Finding Time to Write (as if)
September 24, 2010
The irony of my situation this week hasn't escaped me: I agreed to write a blog about finding time to write, but I've been unable to find the time. There were the girls' dentists appointments, the emergency teacher conference... My daughter needs a tutor, so I had to ma ke a half dozen calls. New workshops demanded my attention, as did a pile of student manuscripts. There was the student who needed help on a cover letter, an old friend in crisis, and a new friend wanting to have coffee. I spent three hours this morning frantically cleaning my house for my mother's upcoming visit... The list goes on. The writing kept getting pushed aside. All the while, the question was spinning through my mind: how do we find time and space to write? What tips and advice could I possibly give to others on this subject when I’m doing such a lousy job myself eeking out time and space? I finally decided that it’s less a question of logistics and more one of validity. The issue for me is not so much about “finding” time to write, but learning to call myself a writer—even after a published book! For many of us (especially women), it’s so frightfully easy to believe writing isn’t that important, and everything else—children, spouses, friends, jobs, housework—ends up taking precedence over this activity which seems so inherently asocial. So evidently selfish. How can we justify sitting alone in a room, staring vaguely into space and moodling over the right way to capture some illusive sensory image when dishes are piled in the sink, children are hungry, the planet is dying? What gives us this right? I think we have the right because stories are essential. Stories heal us, help us define our world and our place in it. We have the right because we are born with a deep urge to name things, and because naming gives us insight, satisfaction, and understanding. Whether or not we are “professional” writers, the need for creative solitude and expression is viable, and vital: without it, we wouldn’t have art. Once we make the decision that our writing is just as important as, say, talking with a needy friend or getting the kids to dance (and perhaps more important than folding the bloody laundry or weeding the garden), then creating time and space gets a bit simpler. You will not suddenly discover reams of unencumbered hours, but you might be able to say ‘no’ to what’s not essential more often. As Julia Cameron says, “If we learn to write from the sheer love of it, there is always enough time.” If we learn to claim it as essential—something we have the right to—then we begin to honor it, no matter how busy our days…
Posted by: Dori
Book Review
September 7, 2010
Just finished reading True Notebooks: A writer's year in Juvenile Hall, by Mark Salzman.
This book is a remarkable journey. We follow Salzman through his year of teaching writing at a Juvenile detention facility in Los Angeles, which he embarks on reluctantly. He soon becomes intrigued by his group of young offenders, many who are facing life sentences.
I found the structure of this book very rewarding: we're drawn in slowly, getting to know the details of the setting, meeting the characters, learning about the system. From the beginning, we are given bits and pieces of the boys' actual writing, along with Salzman's own reflections... After a few chapters, I was completely invested in Salzman's group of young writers, who made me laugh and cry. These kids spill their guts on the page, in their own unique voices, about their moms, their homies, their regrets, their longings, their terrors... Sometimes hysterically funny, sometimes infuriating, sometimes heart-breaking, these boys, many of whom are charged with gang-related murders, reveal themselves as human beings--full of hope and despair, longing for a reason to believe in themselves.
Salzman doesn't sentimentalize them. He resists glorifying or justifying their crimes. Rather, he paints a heartbreakingly complex and disturbing portrait of children caught in a broken society, and living out their days in a system that discounts their humanity. Perhaps they lost that right when they committed their crimes, Salzman wonders. Perhaps he could be doing more good working with kids who haven't yet been incarcerated. But it's clear that he's giving these boys a chance to be heard and understood--to "feel special,"--however briefly, before they're sent off to the grim fates awaiting them.
One line from this book really stayed with me: "there can be no justice without compassion, and no compassion without understanding." This book brings us a step closer, then, to true justice. I highly recommend it.
Posted by: Dori
Women and Desire
September 6, 2010
I've been guest blogging at the Mira site this past week and one of the questions that came up from a reader was whether or not I'd had concerns about writing a book "about adultery." This reader was wondering if I'd been worried about trying to sell a book with a narrator who cheats on her husband...
It was an interesting question, and one that I've fielded in many forms since the book was released. While I was in the process of writing the book, I honestly didn't think too much about whether or not it would sell: I wanted to write the story that felt potent for me, and tell it in the best way that I could... But once I started 'shopping it around' to editors, some were reluctant to take it on due to the fact that I had an adulterous narrator. I found this fascinating. Adultery is one of those deeply human themes that's been discussed in literature for centuries, by writers such as Tolstoy, Flaubert, Hawthorne, the Brontes ...
But when you think about it, not that many women have written adulterous female narrators. And several editors objected to the fact that my narrator doesn't get 'punished enough' for what she does! Even though she is wracked by guilt, haunted by her past, nearly loses her family, and is deeply repentant, that wasn't enough. They wanted blood! This brought up a lot of questions, about double standards (surely they'd have been more at ease with a male narrator who goes outside his marriage?) and how uncomfortable we are, as a society, with female desire... What expectations do we hold up for women, for mothers? And what does it mean to sympathize with a character who does something we don't approve of? What fears does this bring up about our own potential desires and weaknesses?
Anyways, my final answer to my reader was that I think Outside the Ordinary World is not simply about adultery, but about the complexity of human relationships, coming to terms with one's past, and the difficult work of forgiveness. I wanted Sylvia to have the experience of walking in her mother's footsteps; not only so that she could find empathy, but also so that she could go through the crucible of self-forgiveness, and essentially, face a real choice about her own life and marriage. Hopefully, that's what resonates most powerfully by the end...
Posted by: Dori
Slugs, Thistles and Rapture
August 30, 2010
The other day, my neighbor proposed to help me with my gardening. Most likely, she was sick of staring at my riot of bug-chewed perennials—choked with thistles and overrun by Queen Anne’s lace.
I accepted her generous offer, knowing I could benefit from her know-how and help. She’s one of those gardeners who’s out there every morning, dutifully picking off the slugs and splicing the bulbs (do bulbs get spliced?!) regardless of how she’s feeling. She has discipline—something I crave in both my gardening and my writing life.
My husband says I’m a gardener in theory. Unlike me, my alter ego grows tidy beds of perennials, knows the names of every plant that takes up residence in her half acre, and understands exactly what to do with bulbs. She is a diligent woman who rises with the sun and comes out before breakfast in her straw hat and gloves. She probably doesn’t have children, or books to write, but if she does, she manages it with balance, sensible aplomb, and the kind of serene wisdom garnered from spending so much time with fingers stuck in the soil. She doesn’t get bored by weeds, or discouraged by rain and Japanese beetles. She doesn’t spend hours staring into space, or dreaming up characters—imaginary people (like Tai, in Outside the Ordinary World) who actually know about gardening!
Perhaps my idealized alter ego is an inherited vision, garnered from my genetic pre-disposition toward the harvest. I come from a long line of diggers and planters: my father’s ancestors were immigrant German farmers who, during the rein of Catherine the Great, immigrated to Siberia to teach the Russians to farm. They later staked their agricultural claim in Nebraska. My father’s grandfather was known county-wide for his prize-winning roses and my sister and I, as children, would play hide-and-seek between his voluptuous rows of hydrangeas and peonies.
My mom’s dad grew up on a raisin farm in the San Joaquin valley and later cultivated a 3-acre orchard in the Lafayette hills—the beloved setting for parts of my novel, and for much of my childhood play. His wife, my no-nonsense Grammy, talked to her fuchsias and went into spiritual ecstasy over the blooming of her Pacific Dogwood. My parents always carved out space for a veggie garden too, even when we moved to a gated development in the LA suburbs. Every Sunday, my workaholic doctor father would pause long enough to pamper his precious tomatoes, fuss over his pear trees, fiddle with the automatic sprinkler system…
And so, I persist, despite my lack of time, inclination or true talent. Every spring, as the New England earth softens and the crocuses poke miraculously through those last vestiges of snow, something as old as my childhood stirs, dreaming of perfect raised beds and clusters of daylilies. Unfortunately, my April enthusiasm is usually spent by July. By late August, I’ve mostly given over to crabgrass and cockleburs, and I tend my garden the way one tends a neglected elderly relative—with a mixture of reverence, resignation and extreme guilt.
But over the weekend, as my neighbor and I worked to get my poor disused garden back in shape, I remembered what I love: gardening is so physical, unlike writing. You get to be in your whole body, squatting and sweating, getting dirt under your nails and sun in your eyes. In other ways, it’s not really so different from working on a book—the way things get weeded out and transplanted; how some plants flourish and others get removed. As my neighbor and I began to clear out the ragweed, dandelions and thistles (we left the Queen Anne’s Lace, and the wild purple Asters—a mysterious gift!) the true shape of my garden emerged, and I remembered the original, joyful impetus, back in April, that always gets me digging in the first place.
Writing is very much like this. Sometimes you have to let things go for a while, let things grow a bit wild, in order to remember what you love. Always, you must weed and prune, dig deep and rearrange. Sometimes the universe sends you an unexpected gift when you’re staring into space. But ultimately, it’s a lot of plain, old-fashioned work. So if you’ve neglected it for a while, just roll up your sleeves and get back in there, get your hands dirty again, find the shape you were after. At the end of such a day, you get to stand back, wonderfully tired, and marvel at the bounty of creation.
Posted by: Dori
The Book Launch
August 7, 2010
Wow--it's taken me a while to stop my head spinning long enough to write about the book launch last week... It was one of those extremely rare, magical moments in a life where everything actually goes right, where the pieces come together and you feel as if you're being raised up in the gentle palm of the universe...
The magic started around noon, as I was sitting on the examination table in my doctor's office. I was feeling blue in my little paper dress (the kind that opens in the back, revealing your whole tush), having just discovered that I need to schedule a minor surgery (nothing serious). My kids were at home waiting for me to return; the house a mess; it was one of those steamy, oppressive New England summer days when the air clings to you like a sticky gym sock. In short, I wasn't feeling very celebratory, and wasn't sure how I was going to get in the mood for my reading that evening...
Just then, my sister, who lives in Indiana, called on her cell and asked if she could help me get in better spirits for the evening... It turns out she was on her way from the airport--a complete and delightful surprise! We got a sitter and spent the day together shopping, getting our nails done, having lunch--things we haven't done without children for at least a decade.
The reading itself was spectacular. Over a hundred people crowded into the Odyssey bookshop in South Hadley--the very place where I first worked hawking paperbacks (and dreaming about writing one) the summer I moved to Massachusetts from the west coast, over twenty years ago. Standing at the podium in front of so many friends, family members, students, old teachers, fellow writers, I felt supported and buoyed in a way I'd forgotten was possible. The energy in the room was palpable, electric, and it fueled me as I read. The bookstore ran out of books, but luckily I had an extra box in the back of my car. I signed for over an hour.
Huge thanks to all who came out on the 28th to make this a memorable night. No matter how the book does, I will not forget being surrounded by the love and support of my community!
Posted by: Dori
The next coolest thing
August 2, 2010
If the most delicious thing for a writer is immersion--complete and total absorption in an imaginary world of one's own making--then the next coolest thing is undoubtedly having your work find its readers.
I'm not talking here about just being read. We writers all want to be read, yes, even gobbled up and passed around, and we are unabashedly greedy for an audience, without which the circle of the story just isn't complete.
I mean think about it: we are read to as children. We hear stories around the campfire. We get on the phone, we tweet, we FB, eager to share our 'stories' - the woes and exaltations of our days - to our group of friends and followers. It just wouldn't be the same if no one was listening! We need our stories, and storytelling is an inherently social art form, even though writers spend inordinate, unnatural amounts of time sitting in isolation before a computer!
Without readers, we are not authors, but journalers. Still, that second coolest thing in all the world I'm getting at is not about being read, or even published; it's about being 'gotten.'
To have a particular reader pick up your book at a particular time and place in her life... so that all the pieces click into place. To strike the right set of chords so that everything you intended in the piece--all the little subplots and undercurrents, all the setting details and motifs, all the symbolism and causality--all this suddenly strikes and resonates in another human being, who looks up and says, "Ah." That moment of complete comprehension is the writer's nirvana, and it happens only rarely. It happened for me today.
If you have a moment, check out Caroline Leavitt's brilliant review in the Boston Globe: http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2010/08/02/outside_the_ordinary_world_revisits_the_sins_of_the_mother/
Back to work now...
Posted by: Dori
Four Days Left
July 23, 2010
The countdown is on... Four days until Outside the Ordinary World hits bookstores, and it's hard to think about much else. I'm managing my day job (barely), and getting my kids to camp, walking the dog, making dinners... But underneath and through it all, there's this ever-increasing hum, like an electrical charge ramping up, or like a train that's zipping in to the station, straight toward our town.
People keep asking me, "what are you going to do on Tuesday--publication day?" And honestly, I don't have any plans. Wednesday, the day after, is the book launch and reading in South Hadley, but Tuesday? I hadn't really given it much thought. What do authors do? Crack open bottles of champagne? Sneak around incognito to all the bookstores to take a peek...? Or just go about their day, pretending not to have noticed that the world's just burst open like a ripe fig.
Maybe it will be a day like any other day: I'll run a few errands with the kids, take the dog for a walk, pay some bills, try to get some work done... Ha.
Through all of this, it's become increasingly challenging to continue my regular writing practice. Ok, nearly impossible. There's the excitement, yes. But also, nothing dries up the creative flow like distracting thoughts of public opinion! Whether you have a book coming out in four days or four years, thoughts of reviews, sales figures and the literary cannon can stop you cold. It's like trying to make love in the middle of a supermarket check-out aisle.
But what are we really afraid of here? Is figuring out how our books will sell or what the public wants really our job as writers? Or should we do our darndest to leave that to the marketers, while we slip quietly into our studies, turn off the internet, and try to keep our inner critiques from masquerading as the Voice of the People.
I think the only antidote to this kind of fear and self-censorship is engagement.
Allegra Goodman once said, "Nothing frightens the inner critic more than the writer who loves her work. The writer who is enamored with her material forgets all about censoring herself. She doesn't stop to wonder if her book is any good, or who will publish it, or what people will think. She writes in a trance, losing track of time..."
That creative trance, that sense of complete engagement is writer's true prize--far more rewarding than external praise, which is fickle and never enough--it certainly can't fill the void left by the work we've just launched, the characters who inhabited us so convincingly, so urgently, for all those months, or years... Only another work can take its place.
Posted by: Dori
On Retreat with Pip
July 15, 2010
Mood: frustrated, grateful?
Up here in Maine, on Peak's Island, taking a week to read and write, to work on the next book and try to stop thinking so damn much about the book that's coming out in 12 days...
I had it all figured out: I'd get myself focused again, do scads of research and basically crank out the first 50 pages of my new novel. Or, at the very least, I'd log in 500 words a day and take a few walks.
Except... I couldn't stop thinking about the novel that's about to appear in bookstores at month's end (will it do ok? Will it prosper or flop? Do other writers concern themselves with such worldly nonsense?)...
And as if my head wasn't muddled enough, I got a wretched cold on day #2. And then the rain set in...
Add to this scenario my Australian Shepherd, Pip, who seems to think this vacation is all about her, and requires a minimum of 4 walks a day in this lovely island setting. I walk her for an hour in the morning, another in the evening. It's great, actually--a perfect excuse to get away from the agony of my thoughts, leave the computer screen and see some scenery. But Pip wants a walk at 10:45, too, and another at noon... She whines and scratches at my leg, stares at her leash dolefully, places her ball in my lap. Then comes up close and breathes humidly in my face as I'm trying to compose. When I ignore all these pleas, she barks once, sharply, as if to say, How can you just Sit there like an idiot? So out we go again.
Needless to say, I haven't gotten a whole lot of writing done. But Pip and I have explored this island, front to back to sideways--the harbor and the backshore, the two short sandy beaches where the children play, the half acre clusters of woods where horse flies rush at us like kids at an ice cream truck. We've seen Whale Rock and Davey's cove, the World War II bunkers and the marshes swollen with cattails, the quaint side streets lined with shingled cottages, the more stately 4-season residences with their sweeping lawns and harbor views. It's a shame, really, that my novel isn't set here; at least then I could claim to be doing research.
So, ok. It hasn't been such a prolific week. But I've logged in my 500 words, between outings. I've read a few pages. I've sworn to keep on plugging away. Besides, the dog has kept me from taking myself too seriously, which as writers we are always in danger of. Just as I am really hungering after some slice of brilliance, some little piece of posterity, she places that ball on my knee, looks at me with those toddler eyes, as if to say, Why so serious, Dor? It's true--I often forget how to play. I often forget that unless I'm having a good time, the reader certainly won't.
And the walks themselves have been productive, in a way. Brenda Ueland used to take a six mile walk every day as part of her writing routine, just to allow her brain time to 'moodle,' as she called it. Just to allow her thoughts to center and spin, her creativity to blossom. Or maybe she just had a dog like Pip. Uh oh--here she is at my knee again, staring at me with those eyes. time to go out...
Posted by: Dori
Writing OTOW
May 28, 2010
Mood: supernatural
People have been asking me frequently about the process of writing Outside the Ordinary World... So here it is: I began the book in my late twenties, as a kind of self-torture, or maybe you could call it therapy. I wanted to write about growing up in the 70’s, in the Seventh-Day Adventist church and in a family that was coming unglued. But whenever I sat down to write, I found myself sliding into fiction: I needed to play with chronology and history, to invent characters and contexts that would better capture my themes. Gradually, the story morphed, growing wings and scales. But it still contained the painful nugget of truth at the heart of every family’s dysfunction—how the dilemmas our parents fail to solve get handed to us.
After completing my first draft of that childhood story, which ended up being about a thousand pages long (no kidding) I sent it to agents with the over-eagerness of a toddler showing her first crayon drawing. Of course, I was blasted with rejections. It didn’t have a cohesive arc. They couldn’t figure out what genre it was… Devastated, I put the book away for about seven years, during which I got married, started Writers in Progress, began teaching and had two daughters.
But the story was like an annoying stray dog that wouldn’t go away. James Baldwin once described it as “something that irritates you and won’t let you go. You must do this book or die.”
So a few years ago, I dusted the creature off and started taking weekends away, much to the consternation of my husband and young daughters. Every month or so, I’d sneak off to a writer’s retreat in Ashfield, MA, about an hour away in the Berkshires. No phone service, no email, no student manuscripts. I didn’t know yet how to fix the book, I just knew it needed a contemporary frame. Strangely, it was the difficulty and necessity of these weekends—of leaving my family in order to write—that gave me the idea for Sylvia’s affair. The guilt and desperation I felt each time I drove off with my 2 kids crying in the driveway and my husband looking spent and longsuffering—all this made me feel I was having an affair, with my book. I understood suddenly what that particular awful pleasure must be like…
John Irving once said that he feels the story he is writing existed before he existed and he’s just the guy who tries to find it and do the characters justice.
This really is how it felt finding the Ashfield story. Every time I went up the mountain to write, I discovered something—a 20 acre parcel of land with an old farmhouse that could be Sylvia and Nathan’s farmhouse; an old hippy woman who drove to town with her goats, who became my character Roz Benton, a cottage in the woods that looked exactly like the cottage I’d envisioned for Sylvia’s lover… I started to feel that the story was living through me, that I was simply there to find it and get it down.
One early morning at home, I was trying to capture a moment where Emmy, the 4-year old in the story, gets her head split open by a goat’s hoof. I was wondering how much blood there would be, whether she would need stitches or a trip to the hospital, when suddenly I heard a crash behind me: my own 4-year old daughter, coming down the stairs to find me, had fallen and split her head open on the radiator. So I found out exactly how much blood there would be, and what it was like watching someone sew up your daughter’s head. That event spooked me so much, I didn’t write for two weeks!
I’m not a big believer in psychic phenomenon, but I do think there’s a kind of magic that happens when you are writing a story you are completely invested in. The membrane between worlds becomes very thin indeed...
In all my writing, I'm fascinated by the intersection of realities, the knowledge that two or more divergent worlds might exist side by side and we can, and must, travel between them. It's true for everyone in some way. And it's what we're after, isn't it, when we read and write fiction?
Posted by: Dori
Recommended Reads
May 28, 2010
Mood: appreciative
Just finished reading Girls in Trouble by Carolyn Leavitt, and was really drawn in and charmed by this book--the story of an open adoption gone wrong. Leavitt has such profound and sympathetic insight into her characters that you can't help but love them too. She has an amazing gift for plunging deep into wildly divergent perspectives, somehow allowing us to appreciate and empathize with all sides of a very complex and emotionally charged dilemma. Though the prose here isn't particularly lyrical (it's more spare), Leavitt's poetic gift is in her almost psychic understanding of human nature--what makes us vulnerable, where we are blind, what brings out the worst and best in our natures. Each of the characters in this story has something huge at stake, each makes dreadful errors. But ultimately, they do the best with the choices they have made. A humane and psychologically compelling read by a gifted author!
Posted by: Dori
Do all writing days have to be productive ones?
April 19, 2010
Do all writing days have to be 'productive' ones? I am forever reminding my students of the importance of showing up on the page, by which I mean you must, as a writer, fight the good fight, log in the hours, sit your butt in the chair--if not on a daily basis, then at least for few decent chunks a week. But often, new writers will ask me, ok-- but what then? What if I show up and nothing happens? What if I come to the page, poise my fingers to the keyboard, and the story just isn't available that day? Or the writing feels dry, hackneyed and idiotic? What if I end up writing my grocery list, or pulling at the hairs on my chin or reworking the same tired, over-worked paragraph of dialogue five, ten, fifteen times? Sometimes, well, that's just ok.
Walter Mosley once wrote that the most important thing is to re-enter, each day the 'dream of the work,' because re-entry is essential to keep it alive for another 24 hours. He said that nothing we create is art at first. It's simply a collection of notions--a dream that reality fights against. That in order to keep it going, we must revisit it on a daily basis, no matter for how long. I like to remind myself of this when I have a writing day like today, when I accomplished several pages that went straight to the recycling bin.
Another thing I ask myself is whether or not I'm allowing the story to tell itself. Am I truly open to what wants to occur on the page? Whatever wild, random image, event or snippet of conversation might want to shape itself into the piece? Will I allow myself to go into the head of a 14-year old Puerto Rican boy if that's what the story dictates? Or am I trying too hard to control it? Thinking I know the answers rather than allowing the story to unfold, which is always preferable.
My friend Peter Levitt always said, Follow your joy. Write what you love. Yes, it's good to know what your characters want, what motivates them, where the story is heading, but perhaps even more important to know about your own desires, fears and obsessions, so that they can infuse and enliven your work. And besides, it's more fun that way.
Posted by: Dori
