the pieces of my life

My husband is taunting me with pictures on Facebook of elegant dining rooms and lingering dinners. He texted me a photo of the snacks at one of his meetings: a bucket–yes, a bucket–of gummy bears. He went to bed last night with no one kicking him in the ribs.

I–oh, wait a minute. I just stepped in a pile of Kix lying on the floor and have made a huge mess. What was I going to say? Whatever it was, suffice it to note that I am not having the elegant time of my husband, who has been swept off for the week for a conference in Berlin.

But alas it is not all bad here. Well, the sobs from the girl about missing Daddy, the boy’s refusal to practice his viola, and the insult-to-injury early release day today notwithstanding, things are going just hunky dory.

For starters, I’ve learned my daughter will not only live with me her entire life, but I shall have the privilege of chauffeuring her until the end of my days. In the car, we had this discussion:

The girl: When Doodles goes on his retreat this weekend, I get to be alone with you and Daddy!
Me: Yes, you do.
The girl: Doodles, you had two years alone with Mommy and Daddy.
The boy: Huh?
Me: Yep. Before you were born, Doodles.
The boy: Oh.
Me: But, Pie, you’ll have two years alone with us when your brother goes away to college.
The boy: But I want to go to M.I.T., so I won’t be going away.
Me: Even if you do get to go to M.I.T., you’re going to want to live on campus.
The boy: I can do that?
Me: Yes. It’s part of the college experience, moving out of the house, living with friends. It’s something you’ll be ready to do by the time you go to college.
The boy: Okay.
The girl: Not me! I’m not going to college because I don’t ever want to leave home!
Me: You may find you feel differently when you’re 17.
The girl: No way! I just won’t go to college.
Me: Well, if you feel that way, we are in a major college town and there are plenty of schools you can go to and still live at home. Heck, there’s a college just 15 minutes away.
The girl: And you’ll drive me to class?
Me: Uh, no. You’ll drive yourself to class.
The girl: No way! I’m not going to college unless you’re driving me to classes!

Let’s re-visit this blog post in 2023, shall we?

In the meantime, I’m getting a decent amount of editing done on my novel, and I’m feeling good about the changes I’m making. And I just had a short-short accepted for publication in the Sierra Nevada Review, which is always an exciting thing. And I know I have a big bag of gummies coming to me at the end of the week (are you paying attention, Adam?).

Back to writing. Gotta get as much done as I can before I’m expected back behind the wheel. Ta ta!

I feel so big time! So, not only is my essay live on the Bellevue Literary Review site, but there’s actually a study guide for reading my essay!

Bellevue Literary Review posted my piece online! Read “The Codeine of Jordan,” if you care to know more about me than you ever wished to!

For those who have been with me during the misery of the blurbage process, I found this article, “Six Writers Tell All About Covers and Blurbs” to be really comforting. I paricularly like Mark Jude Poirier‘s take on it:

Asking for blurbs is humiliating and horrible. If your editor and or publicist can do it for you, you’re lucky. If left on your own, ask writer friends or professors. Because I know how awkward it is to ask for blurbs, this is what I usually say when I’m asked to blurb someone’s book: “I’d be happy to blurb your book, but are you sure you don’t want to ask someone with a fan base that isn’t limited to his mother’s book club?” If you ask someone for a blurb, and they write you a decent one, use it! I once was asked to write a blurb for a friend so I diligently reread his novel—I had read earlier drafts. He didn’t use my blurb, which was a good blurb, damn it! I would have understood if my blurb had been knocked off the jacket by blurbs from Philip Roth and Salman Rushdie and Annie Proulx, but no; my blurb was knocked off by blurbs from writers just as obscure as I am. Feelings check: hurt.

And with that thought in mind, I am officially going to not mention anything else about my novel until a) my agent sells it or b) my agent tells me it’s not going to sell. She has not yet sent my novel out on submission, but the entire thing is simply too stressful to think about, so I’m pushing it out of my mind and focusing on my next novel.

Which, by the way, is also extremely stressful. I find that once I have a rhythm going, I love to write. But these first steps, when I’m figuring out my character, trying to plot out the action, I’m a bundle of nerves. I read too much, trying to do research, most of which is never used. I obsess too much, toying with the characters in my mind while I’m running in the mornings. I jot too much, and I end up with random pieces of paper with strange lines of dialogue I’ve overheard or an idea I thought of. At some point, it all comes together, but it hasn’t yet for me. I have two main characters in my next novel. One I have a very clear idea of who she is. The other is still a foggy notion for me. I know some basic facts, but I don’t know her, and until I know her, I can’t be sure what she’s going to do. As my agent so wisely told me, the plot doesn’t drive the character; the character must drive the plot. In other words, what your character does must make sense, must move the plot forward. You can’t simply change your character to make sense of a plot.

Now if only my character would come out of hiding. I can just barely glimpse her….

Reading your own work is painful. Reading it multiple times is akin to water torture.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not talking about revising. I’ve grown to really love the revision process. Revision is welcome because the bones of the piece are down. I don’t have to worry about “where is this going” and “what happens next.” True, these things sometimes change in revision, but the structure is there and the revision process is simply to make it better. The best revising is when you get great feedback (my agent worked miracles with her suggestions!) and can see the improvements as you’re going. It’s exciting, it’s invigorating, it’s intoxicating.

No, I’m talking about rereading when it’s a done deal. When it’s in print and ready to go, or even worse, out there for the world.

I recently received the page proofs for the essay I have coming out in Bellevue Literary Review this fall. (Page proofs are your story typeset and laid out, so you can simply check for typos.) When you see your pages, there’s an initial feeling of elation. “Look! It’s my name! In print!” And then you start reading your work. First of all, when I’m done with a piece, truly done, I disconnect from it. It represents a different time and place for me, and it’s always strange to revisit it, as if going to a high school reunion and trying to reconnect with friends from whom you were once inseparable. It’s never quite the same. Second of all, revision never ends. But page proofs are too late to be making changes, so even if you think, “Oh, it would be better if it said QRS instead of XYZ,” unless it’s an actual error, it’s too late.

The thing with submitting stories and essays is that, generally, I don’t. Many writers create pieces and send them off. I tell myself that I’ll do that, too, because that’s the best way to get published. But I don’t usually work that way. I write a piece. I leave it. I edit it. I leave it. I edit it. And at some point I forget about it. Then, if I happen to see–on a Web site, in the back of Poets and Writers, through a friend–a good fit for the piece, I’ll remember it and submit it. But because of that, I often submit things that are older. The piece that’s coming out now is an older piece, written about traveling before I was married, when kids weren’t even a tiny thought yet. So looking back is odd, trying to remember who I was at that time.

Don’t get me wrong: I still like the piece. I’m very excited it’s going to be published. And I hope you’ll read it. But now you’ll understand why I won’t.

The other night we watched Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (and by “we watched,” I mean, I watched while Adam fell asleep on the couch. I admire Joan Rivers a lot. It’s easy to joke about the plastic surgery and the QVC stuff she does, but she really has—to quote Michelle Bachmann—a lot of “choots-pa.” She has done amazing things with her life. But what stuck out at me most about the documentary is how, at 75, she still fears being judged. She’s still completely insecure. She put on a play in London to a standing ovation. Yet the reporters were lukewarm on it, so she refused to put the play on in New York for fear of what the critics would say.

That’s the thing with any creative field. And I don’t think I realized it until recently. An entire hierarchy exists in which, if you can just get to the next point, everything will be okay. But the problem is, that next point doesn’t exist. There’s always the point after.

Once upon a time, I was a lonely little writer sitting in my illegal first floor apartment on 10th Street in the East Village of New York City. I had a box of a computer with the black screen and a copy of WordStar. I worked as an editorial assistant for a now defunct book packaging company, and while during the day I churned out book proposals for work, at night I spent every free hour that wasn’t drinking, doing freelance proofreading (because at my peak in this company, I earned $16,000, which even in 1990, wasn’t enough to live on in NYC) and working on “my writing.” “My writing” was this ambiguous thing in those days, scrawls that filled notebooks and half pages of WordStar files. When I was feeling brave enough, I’d print them out and bring them to a writing group, filled with folks like myself—overeducated, underpaid, young New Yorkers who longed for a more literary era. Personally, I fancied myself a Dorothy Parker.

Each writing group was fraught as we gently tried to help each other improve. Sitting there silently as others judged your writing was a challenge. But it was a necessary evil as three years later I decided I wanted to do something with “my writing” and I applied to MFA programs.

Talk about brutal. I knew that once I got into a program, everything would be okay. I’d be validated about my writing and I’d begin a successful career. Never mind the rejection notices I received. I had pretty much despaired, planning on skipping out of NYC, finding a place to wait tables somewhere out West, and just write, when I came home late one night, half drunk, from a friend’s show at Sin-e on St. Mark’s. I actually remember the night pretty well, because there was another guy sitting there, writing, while the band was playing and he was wearing headphones, listening to something else, which I thought was pretty rude. I confronted him on it, because that’s the kind of thing I do. He claimed to be a musician and not into my friend’s music, and I thought he was an ass, and continued to think he was an ass, even though it turned out he was a famous ass and then a tragic one when he died a few years later.

But, as usual, I digress. The point is, I came home that night, opened my mail box, and cried when I saw the thin letter from the University of Washington. In the hallway, I started just sobbing. I really wanted to go to the University of Washington. I was going to put the envelope on the table to deal with the next morning, but didn’t want to wake to misery, so I opened it, thinking “It’s odd that they’re pleased to reject me,” taking a full five minutes to realize that, thin or not, it was an acceptance.

And so my life was made. I was set! Until I had to produce, three pieces a trimester, to be—not gently—ripped apart by my peers, constantly worried that I was the fraud, that I was the one who didn’t belong. Trying to keep up, trying to produce work. Trying to complete my thesis. And, finally, so I did.

And so my life was made. I was set! Well, until I started trying to get published. Once a literary journal had accepted me, I’d be validated about my writing and have a successful career.

And the journals have come. Very slowly. Painfully slowly. Dribbles here and there amidst the multitude of rejections. I save my rejections in a folder, hold onto them for the day I can say, “See! I told you I could write!” But it turns out publishing in journals isn’t enough.

I had to write the novel. And I did. Four of them actually (if you count my grad school thesis). But finally I wrote the one I thought would work. It passed the muster of my writing group. But I needed an agent. So I put myself out there again. I queried and hoped and revised and because once I got an agent, I’d be validated about my writing and have that successful career. And it happened. I got my agent. My wonderful agent who put my novel through the wringer to make it not just a good novel, but what I hope is a great novel. So I’m there. I’m validated. I’m done.

Except, of course, I’m not. Because, after watching Joan Rivers tonight, it’s been hammered in what should have been so obvious to begin with. If you choose a career like writing, there is no validation, there is no content with a successful career. Because when you’re writing, you’re always auditioning.

Now, I sit and wait for my agent to submit the novel to editors who will then judge my writing. And in the meantime, I submit my novel to writers whom I admire to see if they will blurb my book, and I wait, anxiously, for them to judge me. And—if—an editor makes an offer on my book, I’ll wait to hear what readers, what critics have to say. And then there will be the pressure of the next book, where it starts (almost) all over.

How many times have you picked up a published book and thought, “Eh? Didn’t love it.” And there are even times you pick one up and say, “This was terrible!” Not everyone will love every book. I have to remind myself of that. Not everyone will love my novel.

I’m not going to spout platitudes about how simply writing is validation. It’s not. Simply writing is simply writing. I guess the key is to give up looking for that validation, although, let’s face it: That’s not human nature.

A story for you: My grandmother was an incredibly well read woman. We traded books fairly frequently. She was also a very harsh woman, a woman who rarely had a kind word to say to anyone’s face. I’m not sure why I did it, but shortly before she died, I let her read one of my novels (not the one that’s being shopped around; one that I keep in my bottom drawer). She read it. She called me. She told me she was proud of me for writing a novel, she didn’t know how I did it with kids and working and keeping my home, and it was marvelous that I had done it. She was so impressed. And, then, she started the critique. And, oh what a critique it was. I don’t even remember half of it. Except for one part. “One of the problems with the main character is all she does is get drunk and get laid. That’s it! She needs to be a more three-dimensional character. There has to be more to her than drinking and sex.” Valid point. And then she said it. The words that shall live in my heart forever. “She’s you, right? Your main character is based on you.”

You can’t escape being judged. Sometimes not even by your own grandmother. But learning to live with the judgements is easier than not being a writer. So go ahead. Judge away.

One thing about being a writer is that when you’re not actively in a project, you feel unmoored. I had been feeling this way since I turned in the revision of my novel to my agent. Sure, I got a lot done. I co-chaired Teacher Appreciation Week with Beetle. I’ve been writing for our town’s overide, the Yes for Arlington campaign. I organized the spatula drawer in the kitchen. It’s a great spatula drawer now, by the way: quite pretty and crumb-free.

But none of these were a worthy substitute for the high you get when you’re lost in writing. I actually thought, “That’s it. I have nothing left to say. Maybe I’m a one-book author.” (Which the other three novels in my bottom desk drawer would belie; the novels I wrote but deemed not worthy of being released into the world.)

But then, one thing led to another. I re-discovered the album Red, Hot + Blue on iTunes, which put me in a Cole Porter state of mind. I began playing around with Ancestory.com, which put me in a historical state of mind. And on my runs, I let my mind go into free fall, refusing to make my to-do lists or sort out the day’s calendar while I ran.

And it happened. I got an idea. I got an idea I really liked. I don’t believe in talking about story ideas before the book is complete, but I will say that it’s a historical novel (taking place in the 1930s—if anyone has any good research materials on this period in New York/New Jersey, let me know!). As fate would have it, I was looking at the Grub Street web site and they were offering a class called Encountering the Past: How to Research and Write Your Historical Novel. Fate, no? With Adam’s blessing (blessing required because the class was for a full 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on both a Saturday and a Sunday), I signed up for the class.

That’s it, right? Now my head is spinning. I’m starting my research. I’m becoming immersed in 1930s New York. I’m finding books at the library, buying issues of magazines from the 1930s, finding people to interview. I’m taking a class that’s helping me expand my research ideas. I’m so in the mindset…

Until. Always an until. Until I get an e-mail from my agent: “While I’ve got your manuscript, maybe you want to start on the other components that I’ll want from you… I’ll want a brief synopsis, about the author, reading group guide, marketing/publicity and comparable titles.”

Nothing like a dash of cold water to jolt you from your writing reverie. Don’t get me wrong; I’m excited to be working on this. I’m a writer! This is real stuff! But the thing about noveling is you immerse yourself so completely in the world that sometimes you look up and are surprised to find your real life around you. My novel (which is titled, at the moment, Continuity, but that’s subject to change) takes place in the world of Orthodox Jews. To write the novel, I read books, both fiction and nonfiction, newspapers, blogs, articles. It also has a strong film element. So I watched movies. Like crazy! I scoured IMDb for movie tidbits. It’s about adoption. I read adoption blogs, researched how adoption works, how it affects children and parents. I listened to the music my characters would listen to. I tried to think as they would think. I was completely in that world. And now I’m in another. But I need to take a vacation from the 1930s and head back to Yiddishkeit.

I’m not sure how this will work, jumping from world to world. How do other writers manage this? And readers’ guides? Marketing plans? My palms are getting sweaty just thinking about it!

If I seem a little scattered the next time you see me, just give me a moment to catch my bearings, figure out if I’m in an Orthodox shul, a 1935 Newark apartment, or 2011 Arlington. And if I look truly befuddled, just hand me a martini and back away slowly.