I didn't mean it like that

Someone called me a “Jew bag” recently. It was not in the context of two people, of the same tribe, ribbing one another in that way that people of the same tribe can and do…Not to mention this is not an anti-Semitic slur I’m familiar with (and I think of myself as pretty informed of anti-Semitic slurs. I always think it’s good to know these things). I also am not one to use anti-Semitic slurs to be funny—even in an ironic way.

This came out of the blue and really didn’t fit the context of the situation: A bunch of friends who hadn’t seen each other in awhile getting together…and we were not discussing anything about race or religion.

The comment came after I received my drink order from the waiter and saw that it was wrong, asking the waiter to change it:

 “You Jew bag.”

When I asked the person why they called me a “Jew bag” they said it was because I complained…ha, ha, ha.

I’m not going to play the painful and embarrassing scene out beyond that. I will tell you that the upshot of the incident is that the person later said, “I didn’t mean it like that…” My response: I hugged the person and moved on.

Obviously I really haven’t.

I can’t help but replay those words I didn’t mean it like that.

So how did s/he mean it?

***

Disclaimer: I am not mad at this individual. What I am is scared…not of the individual…but of what will happen after you read this. As I share it with the world, I’m pretty confident there will be some kind of negative response mixed in with empathy. But the negative will stay with me far longer.

But, I’m more afraid of is what happens if I don’t share this with you. If I am silent, I don’t have the opportunity to tell you why this remark was hurtful and wrong...

***

Someone said to me that what happened was a “teachable moment”, that it was my duty to inform the person that what they said was wrong, and I should tell them why it was wrong, why it wasn’t funny to me.

That, of course, made me feel responsible for the remark.

When I said to the individual that s/he had crossed the line, s/he said, Why? What do you mean? You talk about being Jewish all the time…implying that since I make self deprecating (note: ironic) comments about myself, the remark was okay.

Was it?

***

In the moment that s/he said those words “Jew bag”, I felt unsafe, and as I responded to it in the moment, as I gathered the courage not to pretend it away, or laugh it off as I have in the past, as I actually defended myself, I found that the people around me (who heard it) were speechless (some hadn’t heard the remark), or if they did come to my defense, I didn’t hear it. The feeling of confusion and hurt cut deeper and deeper until we all left, and it was over.

I’m left with two questions haunting me:

Why was it wrong for me to defend myself?

Why do I still feel so responsible for the remark?

***

Defining myself as a Jew seems to be tinged with apologizing and making self deprecating remarks…I do this to some how diffuse the bomb that might go off if I don’t…Almost an anticipated counter-attack. Why do I feel the need to block a potential attack? I don’t have an answer to that. It’s funny when you make fun of your own tribe, because it is ironic. But when someone else does, it just feels threatening.

When I relayed the story to a friend and fellow tribeswoman of mine, she suggested that maybe this person feels close enough to me to think that s/he can make these remarks, as if s/he were an honorary member of the tribe…For me, no matter how I look at the incident, no matter how much I try to understand the other side, the remark hurt and caused something inside of me to wonder…

Writing Anxiety

Writer’s Block

I can’t think cohesive thoughts. 

The idea of trying to write what I want to or about what I want to seems overwhelming:

·      A blog entry about this.

·      The whole "Jew bag" incident.

·      A teenage whisperer/ a writing instructor/writing coach/magazine editor/tutor? Worrying that maybe these are too many hats to market properly, yet wanting and needing all these hats on—at the same time—because I'm a Gemini.

·      Mother guilt over my Chels’ b-day party has to be canceled due to not enough kids able to come... also I work on her actual b-day...and general guilt about ALL I am….and cannot be as a mom...

·      My need to get back to yoga and how to make that fit in daily.

·      How much I NEED to teach my Women's Writing Workshop...and am considering running it, even if the current enrollment remains at one.

Maybe I will stop here.

If I post this, you will all want to know about the “Jew Bag” incident. Some of you will already know about it. I’m not ready to talk about it. But it hasn’t gone away like I wanted it to, and there’s something in it that lingers. I'm afraid of what I will discover if I write about it. Which, of course, means I should.

If I share this as a blog, it would be to demonstrate how to get back into writing when you have stopped for a while. You have to just start writing freely and see what comes out and be okay with it. Know that whatever the content is, it doesn't matter. It's writing, and that, in and of itself, is reassuring.

It's not that I have stopped writing entirely, but I haven’t done any creative work since I sent my revised novel off to my agent on Dec 22. I’ve been editing for the magazine and putting together some marketing materials for various projects, but nothing creative... until January 6^th at the residency where I scribbled in my notebook a page of a new adult novel about a group of writers in a residency program. : )

And now this…I feel so free and perfect and good while I write the words. Watching the thoughts in my head slide out, down into my arms, curl up into my hands, and leap out of my fingers.

That has to be enough for now.

NAMASTE

Based on an assignment called "You Know What I Hate"

 This is an intentionally raw, unedited piece of writing. Sometimes you gotta just vent.

You know what I hate….I hate when I fail…You know what I hate? I hate when I‘m misunderstood…You know what I hate? I hate when I think that I really am right about something in that in-your-gut way…But actually I am DEAD wrong. You know what I hate? I hate wasting time. I hate disappointing people that I respect. I hate not hitting the ball out of the park. I hate, hate, hate when there is only one way to do something. I hate when someone tells me that I’m bad or wrong or stupid for not believing what they believe or the way they believe. I hate when someone judges before they have looked at the entire situation. I hate when people resist the change they want to be. I hate when someone refuses to self reflect or refuses to try because they don’t think they can do it “right”. I hate waiting to hear if something is a "yes" or "no" because I always think that if it’s going to be a yes, then it will be immediate–like if someone asks you to marry them and there’s any kind of hesitation before the "yes", you know it really should have been a "no". I hate rules…arbitrary, one-dimensional, no-exception-no-matter-what rules…I hate when someone doesn’t trust the professional to do the job…

I hate using the word hate because it’s too definite and while I am decisive, there’s nothing in me that is definite or all one way except to say that I am always hardworking and that is a definite.

REALITY BITES

Will I Ever Stop Avoiding My Reality?

Preface

The following items have caused me to write this blog entry:

1.  The Guest House

A poem that a student brought to my attention  yesterday. It describes the human as a house where feelings are guests that come and go, but no matter good or bad, we must “welcome and entertain” them. In fact, Rumi suggests that we: 

“Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.”

2. “The realistic odds are that you’ll earn more working a regular job in an office than you will trying to invent fictional worlds and then invent new ways of selling them. There’s only one good reason to do that kind of thing: because it makes you sane and whole and happy.” -Cory Doctorow

A small tidbit from an article that my friend/mentor Tanya Whiton  posted on Facebook. It discusses the author’s experiences with the harsh reality of  book promotion (both as a mainstream affair and DIY).

Part A

On why these items linger with me

I came across the link from Tanya this morning whiling working on  SUCKER (my indie lit mag I started in May) and my own work (a WIP that needs revision and is the 4th in my failed-to-be-launched-by the mainstream YA series).

I think you might know where I’m about to go with all this…

I’ll start with the article: First of all, I’ve read stuff like this before. Hell, I have lived (my Maddie books) and do live (SUCKER) this. And second–I try not to read these articles because they hurt my head. I mean I already know this. Why beat that dead horse again? After all, it won’t make it come alive.

Which actually leads to The Guest House: I avoid inviting and entertaining those feelings around my reality with my writing. Yeah, sure I’ve talked about it in my blog ad nauseam. I’ve advised other writers and clients about the reality of promoting their DIY books. But I never have allowed myself to bring this Truth into my heart, into my core.

Part B

On The Pain of Reality

To avoid inviting these feelings in, I create an imaginary world where all my efforts with my Maddie books and SUCKER pays off. An agent says "yes" to my work, we fall in writer-agent love, and she sweeps me off my feet to a lunch in NYC, where we sign my contract. Then six months later there’s an auction between two huge houses and voila! I have not just a book deal but a five book, book deal! (the four Maddies and my short story collection).  This imaginary world looms large in my head on long bike rides to Starbucks, or as I fall asleep at night and want to avoid the voices in my head obsessing about my work, my children, and my husband. These images of my agent and me at lunch in the city hovers over my shoulder when my inbox is filled with rejections or sort of rejections (you know, “I love your voice but it just doesn’t come together for me, blah,blahblah).

Pain of rejection, of no, no, no, of work-myself-so-hard-at-my-writing-that-my-elbows-develop tendonitis, do every thing you’re supposed to (see my list here)...Oh I feel it all right, but the minute depression, anxiety, fear, and disappointment walk in, the burning in my heart starts, so I try to shut the door–

Part C

On The Pain of Avoidance

But the feelings–man!–they put their fingers on the door jam. So when I slam it, it f-ing hurts–because I’m slamming the door on myself. This results in to-the-bone bruising that lingers for a long time. And since I continue to try to shut the door over and over, I rebruise and eventually break those fingers.

Part D

On Using My Imaginings Wisely

To face these feelings, I’ve created another fantasy:

I stand in a dark room, my hand wraps around a doorknob. When I turn it, the hinges creak, and I peer out into a hallway where I see Depression, Anxiety, and Fear. I step out and gesture with my hand, “Come in.”

Epilogue

 “There’s only one good reason to do that kind of thing: because it makes you sane and whole and happy.”- Cory Doctorow

Writing is my light. It makes me happy. My focus needs to shift to that, but all the while entertaining and offering a cup of tea to my feelings. Because “each has been sent/ as a guide from beyond”.  Depression, Anxiety, Disappointment might just have something to say to me, and the only way I’ll ever hear it, is if I sit down and share that cup of tea.  

Part 6, The Dream Ends

Don't forget part 1,  part 2,  part 3 ,  part 4, or part 5.

Day 9
COMMENCEMENT

From Meg: Have a regular date with your desk. Doggedness separates  a successful writer from an unsuccessful one.

From class speaker Jina Simmons

• This is not how the story ends…This is the part where anything can happen... We are not the same people we were when we started.
• We are each others tribe.
• And we have, despite some reluctance, let each other in.
• Delicious challenge.
• This is not where the story ends; it is where it begins.

Alum next to me…Cindy, Erin, Joe, Mike, Kerry, Donna

"Benevolent bullying", Cornelius Eady about Meg getting him to be the speaker today.

• The commencement speaker is the cork between the event and the party.
• You have not made a bad decision. Just a weird one.
• Exotic ambitions
• Who do you think you are…this program answers that.
• Either changes your mind or realized you were writ right all the time.
• Nothing will stop it.
• You will cheer on your friend’s success…
• Time and luck won’t bend
• You will miss this place.
• You will live your life. Opportunities will come and go. You will write. You will want time and sometimes more than money.
• Make the words dance make the reader laugh then hurt.
• Hold on to this moment and put it in your pocket and rub it like a lucky charm.

We (alum) sit knowing all Cornelius Eady says is true.

***

A week later, I sit typing this last section, trying to find the perfect way to end my blogging of the residency as the first GA for Solstice. But all I can think of is John Gardner's fictive dream concept: That the writer's job is to create and sustain a dream state for the reader so that they will read all the way to the end, and then wake up to reality. That's what this residency felt like for me. The fictive dream state. Then, the end. Wake up and reality, when I first came home, "by comparison, seems cold, tedious, and dead.” -John Gardner's On Becoming a Novelist.

Living The Dream, Part 5

Don't forget part 1,  part 2,  part 3 , or part 4.


Disclaimer to Part 5
-I've left out a whole lot of what happened during residency, more dinners with the faculty, meetings with first semester students about their work and the program, lunches with some of our guests lectures and readers, and the many private conversations I had with students and faculty. These were precious times for me. It's valuable to list these items for you, dear reader, in case you want to apply for the GA or learn more about the going-ons of the program. But to divulge the inner-workings and conversations that occurred would be to sacrifice the sacred...

So I bring you the highlights:

DAY 4

GRADUATE LECTURE: WOW, THAT DESCRIPTION MAKES ME FEEL BAD
Laura Jones

• The visual info provides thematic hints.
• If a character walks by a baby deer versus road kill…different tone
• B/c it’s there (passive imagery). You feel something, not plot. 
• Images can go beyond (literal interpretation). 
• Style versus content. Images can make for a pretty reading.
• Using style of image to convey information.

EXERCISE: Take this bare-bones statement and make it visual.
                               "I road a horse to my friends house." (The Fall of the House of Usher).

MY EXAMPLE:
I rode past the general store and waved hello to Mary the shopkeeper. She stopped and wiped her hands on her apron and grinned. "I’ve got some candy you can take to Marybeth’s." I slowed Nelly down and hopped off. I ran to Mary. “Hold tight a minute. I’ll get it.” I pulled on my shirt to get some cool air. When she returned, she handed me a bag. I peeked inside and saw the shiny candy red coating on the apples. Then I said goodbye and hopped back on the horse to hurry to Marybeth’s.

• Content based imagery- objective description of what’s there
• Tone based imagery- subjective experience of narrative voice

DAY 5
STUDENT READINGS

A few snippets from the crew.

Kassie Rubico
“A comma splices through my fragmented thoughts.” From her piece about teaching her first grammar class.
Gabe Cleveland
“I don’t know who’s in my bed!” What he whispered to his roommate across their bedroom when he waking up to a strange girl laying next to him.
Sally Stanton
“A scaredy cats fear is not a wall built in a day.” From her middle grade novel.
Sheree Renee Thomas
“Nothing on his mind but the heat…he don’t know the heat’s gonna bring him down.”
“Heart lookin’ like a crooked knife.”
Beth Richards
“Those things might make people think the wrong things and we don’t want that do we?” “No one was willing to correct me in detail.” From her piece about the first time she came out.
Beth Grosart
“No way I was buying sex items in the same place my mom bought chicken.”
“Even though I currently qualify as a thief, I had a hard time lying.”
Alexis Croteau
“Why is he taunting me? Doesn’t he know I’m about to die?”
Lauren Kelly
“I hate white cars. They make me want to kill my mother.”
Alison McLennan
“It is neither repelling nor inviting. It just gets you through the day.”
Jackie Brown (intro)
“The only thing these poems have in common is that they have people in them.”
"If that mocking bird don’t sing. It’s dead.”

DAY 6
GRADUATE LECTURE: CROWD AS CHARACTER
Jim Kennedy

Individuals (people on a highway)–in a major traffic jam–get out and talk–camaraderie, boundaries gone.

This morning’s Boston Globe
Porter Square yesterday, 447 passengers trapped

•     No cell phones
•     Helplessness
•     Then, camaraderie
•     Haircut appointments and meetings and job interviews

The T guy shepherded everyone.
   
Cinematic and fiction crowd characters

Cricket in Times Square- destructive, crowd character

Seven Chances- 1000 brides show up, crowd chasing, credible. Angry, wanted to destroy him.

Crowd influence
   
GRADUATE LECTURE: EASING ANXIETY ABOUT UNDERSTANDING POETRY
Teresa Sutton
Exercise: In A Dark Time Theodore Roethke
1.    Write three words to describe how you feel before you read the poem
2.    A few people to share
3.    Now teacher asks for volunteer to read the poem aloud
4.    Then ask, what do you notice about the poem?
5.    After you discuss it, then rate how you feel on a scale of 1-10, Light bulb!

If you get a whole class, it brings a lot to it. Teacher doesn’t need to say much during this.

DAY 7
Graduate Lecture: THE FICTIVE DREAM AND ITS IMPACT
Melissa Ford Lucken

Fictive dream, commercial versus literary.

What’s the difference?

Wants us to think about this.
Discussion in small groups.
Then she goes through what we have put on the board:

• More accessible language
• Entertainment versus art
• Craft versus form

Commercial about making money, high concept pitch, conceptualized product, target audience within general, 3 sentence pitch: Dystopian YA, Paranormal romance, erotic, erotic romance, chick lit…

Literary

•     Themes
•     Motifs
•     Enveloping action
•     Exposition (not in commercial)
•     Read aloud

Commercial
    Close 3rd person (author intrusion is a bad thing)
    Branding, swag, promo, prepackaged and shaped.

DAY 8/9
HIGHLIGHTS

Lunch q & a with Iain Pollock

Iain considers audience, wants reader to be conscious of the racial perspective. Cites Robert Hayden.

Wants to push reader to have to do the research but not Google everything.

He says to us to think metaphorically when you are reading poetry. This happens faster in poetry than in fiction. Descriptive 'cause short.
That’s why reading out loud is so important.
The poem must resist the intelligence
. Almost successfully.
People feel shut out by poetry. How do you feel? Iain asks his students this.

Tomorrow read Part 6...the dream ends.

Living the Dream, Part 4: Day 3

Don't forget part 1 or part 2 or part 3.
  
Day 3

GRADUATE LECTURE: “Practice doesn’t make perfect: A Case For a Better Practice”
Seth Edwards

• Define Process: What you do as a writer. The motions you go through. NOT your process by which you improve your specific piece.
• “I don’t think I have anything truly unique to add to the conversation” (about process).
• Analogy to improving golf game.
• Instructed Gabe to come up and putt. Then showed him intense instruction on it…resulted in not getting it in.
• “Drive” is for show.
• “Putt” is a science.
• Haphazard routine with no awareness. If you just stand up and putt around for ten years, you might improve…
• Phase I: “Just do” or “Just putt” No method, no awareness, [I would say almost compulsive maybe.] Here’s where he learned that practice makes perfect doesn’t work. It’s absurd. Yet as a writer, this is what he was doing.
• Phase II: Too much too soon. Coaching and instruction overload, resulted in tensing up. MFA program.
• Phase 3: 3,6,9 method for golf. Put the ball at 3, 6, 9 feet..
• The moment of discovery.
•  What am I doing while I putt? When I was putting during the process of practice became aware of how my body was being held and what time of day it was, what mood I was in. Discovered I was really tense.
• “I became self aware of how I practiced–NOT the practice itself (not the game or drill itself).
• Yet as a writer I wouldn’t do this…
• “Writing is like…”
• What are the implications? Make your practice better. Get intentional.
• How do you writer? What do I do? I better get intentional.
• Can I become a better writer?
• Yes….Figure out how and then replicate. Good habits and bad habits.
• No…because they won’t do the work.
• Is talent enough? No.

• Strategies to improve.
• Francine Prose Read Like A Writer
• Can you really know what you did after you did it?
• Speculate. Avoid navel gazing though. Analysis. Anti-thesis of writing for most of us.
• Mind/body. Art/Science
• Chapter 2 of Burroway…added later in second edition.

• Study your process: 1. Imitation of whoever’s writing you love. 2. Visualization
• Exercise: Writing is like….Making lasagna…eventually you stop following the recipe and make it your own....Ballet…drill, dance, rehearse, perform.

Q & A with Jackie Woodson

• “When I sit down to write, I avoid newspapers, cell phone, etc. I use a playlist and replay it over and over.” For the Tupac book she played Tupac and Eminem and Lauren Hill. House has to be really clean no distractions. Get into space and not getting interrupted. Be aware of limited time to write because kids come home. When I’m stuck, I read or listen to books. Her go-to books are Member of The Wedding, To Kill a Mockingbird, anything by Raymond Carver.
• Listening to books versus reading. If it’s really well written, wants to read. If it’s factual information, wants to listen to retain.
• Cathy asked how to you figure out the vessel for the story? Picture book, YA, Middle grade, poem? Jackie says that the age of the character dictates.
• First line matters.
• Poetry line-by-line, but with urgency.
• She reads out loud. Not very concerned with language in Pecan Pie so didn’t read aloud.
• She says she is a minimalist as a writer. Brush strokes of appearance of characters and setting. Desire for reader to meet her half way.
• “I get to choose my illustrator, but I can’t talk to them.”
• Pictures and words are independent
• Translate internal thoughts of character to the stage for her play version of Locomotion. And keep the integrity of the story the same. 7 characters into 3.
• Jackie “Plot happens. It’s the thing that will happen…If you get 2 people in the room, conflict will happen.” What do they want and how are they going to get it?
• It’s all about HOW the story is told.
• When writing characters that are not nice you have to have compassion for them and that allows you to find the broken place in them to make the reader have compassion.
• “In the act of writing I do not try to look for the universal. Rather, I assume we are all connected. The gaze has to be bigger.”
• Walk through the world with eyes wide, wide open.
• She doesn’t outline or plan.
• “If your story is trying to say something, say it.”
• She doesn’t write the curse words besides "damn" or "hell". Instead she says they cursed a lot and let the reader decide which ones.
• She doesn’t read a lot of craft books but mentioned Bird by Bird and John Gardner. Also The Hero’s Journey.
• Says uses the fiction as her craft books.
• Picture books are the hardest. Adult fiction can look back and YA no looking back. 

Part 5....tomorrow......