A Geography of Reading

"It is by reading novels, stories, and myths that we come to understand the world in which we live." -Orhan Pamuk

Living and Sustaining a Creative Life by Sharon Louden

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Living and Sustaining a Creative Life Sharon Louden

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be a writer and how I can do this thing that feeds my soul and still feed myself and my family. I was thrilled to achieve one of the markers of success as a writer this past year, but it hasn’t made “being a writer” easier. So when I saw Living and Sustaining a Creative Life by Sharon Louden, I knew I had to read this book.

Living and Sustaining a Creative Life is a collection of 40 essays by visual artists about how they are making art and life work together, and it should be required reading in any MFA program for artists of any kind. Here are a few things that really connected with me.

What does Success Look Like?

“I remember the first time someone told me that many artists with apparently thriving careers and gallery representation still had day jobs. It was the first of a very long series of realizations that the art world is at least 50% smoke and mirrors. At the time I felt an almost personal betrayal at the realization that artists I had already perceived as incredibly, unattainably successful still had to find another way to pay the bills.” – Jennifer Dalton

I loved this quote because I could feel the anger and disappointment in it. We all want to succeed at what we love in life. But I don’t think most of us know what that means until we’ve already “succeeded” which can make it hard to help others get past the goal line. In the case of writers, I feel like we’re pushing to get published in a magazine and then the next goal is the first book.

On the outside, my writing career looks very successful right now. I’m publishing two books this year, Polska, 1994 and Clear Out the Static in Your Attic: A Writer’s Guide to Turning Artifacts into Art. If I was an established writer, I think that would still be cause for celebration. As a newbie, I’m ecstatic. But it doesn’t mean I can quit my day job, nor can I retire to the beach and write full time and that leaves me feeling a little disappointed. I’m sure some part of me knew I wouldn’t retire off my first book (or my 20th), but I was so excited to get past that goal line that I thought everything would be magical fairy princess unicorn land afterwards.

I’ve been wonder where my skewed vision of success comes from. I think part of it is that it’s gauche to complain when you’ve gotten the thing that you and so many people have been striving for. In that spirit, I’m doing my best to enjoy every round of edits and compiling databases and checking contracts. But I am aware, too, that by not talking about that process, I’m helping to hide how much work takes place after you get the “we’d love to publish your book” gold star.

Another part is that it’s easier to shoot for a dream than a reality. To be perfectly honest, friends have told me some of the work that goes into publishing, but I just stared at them and concentrated on the “yes, but you’ve gotten what I dream of” look in my eyes while covering my ears to the reality. I think I could only process one step at a time. If denial about the amount of work that goes in after the writing is part of what got me to this step, then I suppose I have to embrace the denial because I am happy to be here. And even knowing now that the process is a lot more time-consuming than I could have imagined, I still want to write.

It does all leave me a little shy about what happens next in the land beyond the goal posts, but I will report on it here. I have no idea if my experience is universal, but I am happy to share it in case it can help writers in the way reading Living and Sustaining a Creative Life did for me.

Non-creative Work

“These tasks also include things like packaging artworks for shipping, preparing canvases and panels for painting, writing press releases and artist’s statements, keeping records for tax purposes, and vacuuming dog hair off the rug and furniture before it has a chance to migrate to the surface of my works in progress.” – Laurie Hogan

Obviously some of the tasks visual artists have to do are different from writers. Some of the things I find I have to do to maintain a creative life are: gathering tax info, cleaning my office, maintaining my computer, social media, reorganizing my drafts and my bookshelf, editing, more editing, even more editing, compiling lists of people who might be interested in my book, writing a glossary and translation notes, research.

There is a lot of work that I do which isn’t typing my next book. I try to maintain what Laurie Hogan describes as a “conscious effort towards efficiency” and use each task as a way to learn about myself and my process. I’m surprised sometimes at the ways those little things are an important part of the process and can be nurturing if I let them. For example, as I wrote a glossary for Polska, 1994, I remembered part of what had made me excited to write the book in the first place which is information I’ll share later in an interview. Vacuuming is time away from words when I can let creativity germinate. Social media is a chance to find new inspiration. Even these book reviews are part of that process and as I find a way to communicate with you what I have learned from a book, taking initial impressions and forming them into complete thoughts, I’m teaching myself too.

Creative Community

The way I have found to balance art/life is to try to maintain an equilibrium between social space and solitary space. I need a lot of solitary space both to work and to just ‘be.'” – Julie Langsam

Artists need each other. Sometimes to feel sane, sometimes for honest feedback in a world that doesn’t yet understand the boundaries you’re trying to break. But the more I’ve worked on my books, the less time I have to spend with my friends and that hurts sometimes.

I’ve been worried lately that I’ve withdrawn so far into the work that when I’m ready to come back out, there will be no one to play with. Luckily I have fabulously interesting friends with full lives. By being forced to retreat just from the sheer volume of things I have to do, I am learning that sometimes when I don’t hear from those wonderful people, it’s because they are this busy (or even busier). I miss them when they retreat and I miss them now, but I am grateful for a community that understands.

Partners and Families

“Because we shared everything, we enriched one another’s education.” – Maggie Michael

I feel amazingly blessed to share my life with a creative man. My husband is a visual artist and got his BFA in painting and photography before I could even admit that I wanted to be a writer. Unfortunately for him, when he graduated, neither one of us knew enough to know that the likelihood of him getting to be just an artist was slim. I pushed and prodded and I think a lot of the fun of the art went away for him. We’re in a place now where he’s starting to explore that again, but I wish I could have been as good of a creative partner to him when he graduated as he was to me when I did.

But I am grateful to share my life with someone who values aesthetics as much as I do and who can talk about art movements and big ideas. I don’t expect him to care about epistrophe, but the way he looks at the world enriches my thinking every day. And sometimes, when I’m on deadline, he takes over the cooking for weeks at a time (and does a better job at it then we do together).

Parenthood

“Many people seem to give us extra credit because we involve our child in our life as artists.” – Dan Steinhilber

One thing I have been very concerned about in choosing a creative life is how to support kids both emotionally and financially and still finding time to write. I’ve been very impressed by my writer friends who’ve had children and continue to write. Some say it teaches you efficiency. I think if I get any more efficient I might just crack, but I’m willing to try.

On the financial front, we’ll figure something out when the time comes, but I was very heartened to read Julie Blackmon’s essay and how she handles parenthood. She says, ” I give myself permission to be a really bad mother for a few days” and the way she describes chips for dinner and other insanity makes me realize that it’s a vacation for the kids too. We all need to let our hair down sometimes.

Living

“Life has to be nourished first. Creativity follows sustenance.” – Justin Quinn

Today I will let my hair down. I’ve turned in final edits on two books in the last month. I’ve written that glossary and those translation notes. I’m halfway done compiling a marketing list. I’m way behind on organizing a panel for AWP, and I had to ask for an extension on a magazine writing project I care very deeply about. But it’s time to recharge so I’m off to Port Townsend for the day with my husband and his camera.

I realize I’ve told you very little about Living and Sustaining a Creative Life and rather focused on how I live and sustain mine. It’s an essential book, and I hope you’ll read it when you are feeling the pressure of deadlines or your day job or just wishing your friends could come out and discuss what it feels like to lead a creative life.

We learn from each other I’d love to hear more about how you do it all in the comments below.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of Living and Sustaining a Creative Life from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Looking for Writing Help and Inspiration in the New Year

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I’m not very good at asking for help. Most of the time that’s okay because writing is such a solitary activity, but there are times when I reach a writing plateau that reading 1,000 books won’t budge me from. At those times, the best thing I can do for myself is take a writing class.

I was stuck this year. More stuck than I had been in a long time. I was working on a book I started just after grad school (three years and counting) that never went anywhere. It got longer but not more defined. The theme shifted as I grew, but the writing wasn’t looking more like a book. I needed help.

Reaching Out to a Writing Community

The safest place to turn for writing help (before I get up the gumption to take a class) is another writer. I spent a wonderful October afternoon with Liza Wolff-Francis in Austin, TX talking about writing and, more importantly, about not writing. We visited independent bookstores and confessed our difficulties. It felt amazing to share the problems I was having with someone who knew exactly what I felt like.

ModPo from Coursera and the University of Pennsylvania

Liza also told me about a modern poetry class she was taking online, ModPo from the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania. It’s a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) which means that the barrier to entry was low–I didn’t have to know how good of a student I’d be before I signed up–and that it was okay I was starting the class a month late.

The class was wonderful and I couldn’t get enough. I read poets and poems I knew and ones I’d never heard of. I was inspired to re-examine books I’d read and dismissed as I watched videos of the class TAs discussing the poems and learned about the many ways to read a poem. Through the weeks, I started to feel like I was at that table with new friends discussing poems I liked and others I didn’t but came to understand. There were tens of thousands of students from around the world but the experience was so intimate that I felt like I was part of a writing group that met whenever I had time and would pause for me when I needed to make coffee or breakfast. I did not write the papers in the class and I’m actually still working through the poems in week 8, but I’m so thankful that this resource was available.

I’m grateful to professor Al Filreis, to the TAs, and to Liza. I’m still not working on the new book as much as I’d like, but that’s not because I’m adrift without knowing how to get to shore, it’s because I’ve been blessed to have two books slated for publication next year. I am inspired and I can’t wait to work on distilling the language and ideas for that new book.

ModPo doesn’t start again until September of next year, but if you are curious, it’s worth waiting for. Set yourself a calendar reminder to check this link around that time and sign up.

Sharing Inspiration with Others

Cheers to you, dear readers, because sharing books with you is a constant source of inspiration. The conversations we have in the comments help me think more deeply about the books and knowing that you’re out there keeps me honest about posting regularly. I know my timing has been a bit off over the holidays. As soon as I get these book edits done, I’ll be back on track. Thank you for reading. You are a very important part of my writing community.

If you are feeling full of writing goodness and want to pay it forward, I’d encourage you to support your favorite writing groups with your year-end giving. Two of my favorites are Richard Hugo House (where I’m a board member) and the Kelly Writers House (home of ModPo). Of course it’s the people who make these places alive, but cash helps keep the lights on. You could also bake some cookies for your favorite writing buddy or the person who makes you dinner while you write, or buy a brand new book (preferably from an independent bookstore) to support publishing in general.

I’ll be back in the new year to share with you the books I’m reading. Until then, I wish you a very happy new year full of writing, reading, and inspiration. Much love!

Celebrating Christmas with Literature

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You might have guessed, reading was a very important part of my upbringing and the holidays were no exception. Besides the requisite viewings of whatever interpretation of A Christmas Carol we were ready for that year, I always remember my dad reading aloud to us on Christmas Eve. It’s a tradition I brought with me as I made a new home in Seattle.

The Gift of the Magi

“One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.” – “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry

So this year, as in all the years past (and future?), I will be snuggled up by our tree with some cider reading aloud to my husband. The set list hasn’t even varied. I’ll start with O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi” and weep my eyes out. The “the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house” has always touched me very deeply and every year I better understand how wise Della and Jim were in their love and their sacrifice.

Christ Climbed Down

“Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no intrepid Bible salesmen
covered the territory
in two-tone cadillacs
and where no Sears Roebuck creches
complete with plastic babe in manger
arrived by parcel post
the babe by special delivery”
– “Christ Climbed Down” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Once I’ve somewhat recovered, I’ll pull out Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind, turn to page 69, and read “Christ Climbed Down.” In the twinkling light of our (natural) tree, I’ll think about what’s important to me about the holiday. I wasn’t raised with religion (although I dragged my mom to a different church every Christmas and Easter), so I don’t really have a relationship with the Baby Jesus (even though I display a creche every year). That makes it especially important for me to question my relationship with the commercial Christmas and Ferlinghetti’s poem is the perfect start.

I’m missing my “clever cornball relatives” already.

Regardless of how you spend the holidays (and which holidays you celebrate), I hope the coming days find you snug and surrounded by love. And if your holiday traditions involve books, I’d love to hear about your favorites in the comments.

You Can Hear the Echo by MK O’Donnell: Revisiting the Day Kennedy Was Shot

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Very few events shake a nation to its very core. In my lifetime there was September 11, 2001. I remember catching the Today show that morning after the planes had hid but before the towers collapsed. I sat riveted and watched wishing I could reach out to Clayton who was already away at school and without a cellphone. In my parents’ generation, fifty years ago today, event that changed everything was the assassination of John F. Kennedy. You Can Hear the Echo by drops in on a family in a small Texas town just as shots are fired from the book depository on that Friday and follows them throughout the subsequent weekend.

Why this Book Now?

Although today is the fiftieth anniversary of that unforgettable day, that is not why I bought or started reading this book. I found it used at a local store and I was entranced to have a look into how events like this shape our lives and our culture. I’ve been unable to read fiction about September 11 even now, and I was curious what and how O’Donnell had captured as she wrote this book just two years after Kennedy was shot.

I also wanted to know more about my family. My parents both grew up in Texas, though I’m not sure if my mom had already moved to New Mexico by then. I know she was in school when the news broke. My father though was 19 and already in the Marines. Because I once asked, they’ve both told me exactly what they were doing when they heard the news, but the memory wasn’t visceral for me so I promptly forgot. I am sure their memories of 1963 are as clearly imprinted on their minds as 2001 is on mine.

It wasn’t even until I was nearly finished reading the book that I realized this anniversary was near.

What Did I Learn?

O’Donnell presents a wide and representative array of characters in this book. From the conservative father to the new wife who worries that he could have been part of the plot and the liberal son who loved Kennedy and suffers greatly and openly for it. They have neighbors who are former communists and a former maid who rounds out the story with a look at an African American woman in the still-segregated South. I was not emotionally invested in these characters. Even when the son nearly shoots his father, I was not roused. Instead they feel like set pieces laid out to each show what that type of person would have felt. That was a failing of the book, but a part of me understands creating that kind of emotional distance from a tableau that must have felt fresh. Still it surprised me because the setting of this book was so domestic and I expected to empathize more with the characters.

What surprised me about the book was that the conspiracy theories about Ruby were surfacing so early. I’ve read Libra by Don Delillo and American Tabloid by James Ellroy, but I always just assumed (regardless of the truth or fiction behind either book) that all of that information surfaced later. I found myself wondering throughout the book what else the characters had access to because when I think of that day in history, all I can see is the Zapruder film, but how different it must have been to hear the news first. I wondered also if that footage would have even been shown on television then in all of its gory detail.

What I Still Don’t Know

As much as I love fiction and prefer it both to nonfiction and in many cases real life, I am not sure if fiction can capture the full or true essence of events this momentous. Poetry can, and I found some solace in Poetry After 9/11 even as I failed to connect with Falling Man by Don Delillo and chose not to read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. Even in War and Peace I skim over the war bits to read the juicy love story.

It’s not that I don’t care about these events. I care about them in a place so deep inside me I can’t even talk about it. As a student of politics and humanity, I want and need to know how we function as a society and as individuals in times of great loss. I’ve read everything I could ever find about the Holocaust. Maybe it’s because those are all things that happened to other people in other times and fiction and literature are the only way that I can connect with them that I accept the imperfect facsimile.

Maybe I’ve seen the Zapruder film and watched the towers fall too many times. But when it comes to events that feel closer to me–my grandparents knew Lady Bird Johnson and Nellie Connally, even if only peripherally–I know that there is something in my heart that is not described by these social commentaries.

So I’ll disappoint you today and avoid talking about the craft of this book. But what I’d love to know from you is where you turn when you seek to understand the evils of the world. Do you look for and find solace in literature? Have you read pieces about these events that you care to share? Or do you want to share that most intimate gift, your own story about a day in history?

I’m off to ask my parents once again what they experienced on November 22, 1963. Maybe this time I’ll write it down.

A Tale of Two Worldviews: Alice McDermott vs. Tim O’Brien

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Sometimes what makes you love or hate a book isn’t the characterization. It’s not the plotting or the setting or the quality of the writing. Sometimes what you love or hate about a book just comes down to the message. That’s what I realized when I read July, July by back to back with Charming Billy by this weekend.

Tim O’Brien

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know by now that I love Tim O’Brien. In fact, reviewing Going After Cacciato showed me that if I looked hard enough, literary language was all around me. So when I bought July, July, I knew it wouldn’t sit for long on my too-read shelf. I knew he was going to be playing with time and a myriad of characters and I couldn’t wait to see what he did.

I hated it.

Don’t get me wrong, the book is very well written. The characters are interesting, O’Brien plays with the edges of magical realism, and he does this thing with interspersion of space in the last few pages that blew my mind. But it was a miracle that I made it to the end of the book, because from the very beginning I just wanted out of the miserable lives of the characters as they sat at their college reunion rehashing all the horrible things that ever happened to them and all the horrible things they ever did to each other.

I realized that what the book jacket described as “a portrait of a generation launched into adulthood at the moment when their country, too, lost its innocence” was maybe too good of a portrait. And I wasn’t sure that most of them were adults. They were selfish, damaged, and childish. I recognized some of their behaviors as my own and it terrified me. The book made me want to hug my husband. Forever. And maybe not leave the house again.

I read the book in one night because I do adore O’Brien and I was looking for some redemption (for the characters, for me). But when I read that last period, I knew I was going to need to get out of bed and fetch myself a palate cleanser.

Alice McDermott

By contrast, Charming Billy by Alice McDermott has sat on my shelf for I don’t know how long. The sticker on the front says the used store bought this copy in 2000 and I could have been shifting it around since then. But it was just what I needed Saturday night after closing July, July. I know it was just what I needed because I fell asleep twelve pages in. My brain had finally found a place where it no longer felt assaulted and I could relax.

That does not mean the book was boring. Nor was it especially uplifting. The book actually starts in a bar following a funeral as neighbors pass around gossip about the deceased (Billy) and his widow sits almost entirely offstage. I did not know what to expect. What I found, though, was this tightly-knit world of several generations of Irish-Americans. Their lives are not idyllic and many of them are alcoholics. But they love each other and they act in each others’ best interest. The book shifts back and forth in time–covering more than half a century–and I fell so hard for these people.

The writing is good and sometimes quite pretty, but it was McDermott’s spirit that captured me.

The Quest for Happiness

“Billy didn’t need someone to pour him his drinks, he needed someone to tell him that living isn’t poetry. It isn’t prayer. To tell him and convince him. And none of us could do it, Danny, because every one of us thought that as long as Billy believed it was, as long as he kept himself believing it, then maybe it could still be true.” – Alice McDermott

My generation is really busy right now trying to figure out what’s going to make our lives happy. We’ve been told we can be anything, except there aren’t really all that many jobs. We’ve been told we are special, except that few people want to pay us to be special. In contrast, when Billy’s cousin and best friend, Dennis, comes of working age in 1937, his father gets him a job at Con Edison because “The greatest city in the world will always need electricity.” This is a man who knows that having enough money to feed your family is happiness. There aren’t a lot of strivers in this book and I found that refreshing, especially after reading July, July where the strivers were the unhappiest of the lot. As I think back on it, maybe both books were telling me the same thing, but the positive example was a lot easier to listen to.

Maybe it’s a generational thing–the Greatest Generation vs. the Baby Boomers. All I know is some of the brightest minds of my generation are either setting up jobs completely on their own terms or they are walking away entirely. They are working part time or using their Ivy League educations to set up farms and grow enough food to feed their families.

Ain’t Capitalism Grand?

The other thing I watch in my everyday life is how we all talk about the economy, waiting for it to get better. And we’re told the best thing we can do to make it better–the best thing we can do to create jobs for those who don’t have them–is to buy more and save less. We have to put our money to use. We have to want more things.

I don’t know about you, but my house is full. I have so many things I can’t even give them all away. And not a one of them makes me happy. I understand that capitalism is built on growth and that growth is built on consumption, but it feels like all of that rests on a bubble of rapidly-cooling air. I can’t buy a better coat that will last longer because it might put someone out of a job. I can’t buy coffee in bulk bags because those horrible, single-use plastic cups require more manufacturing and cost more money so they equal prosperity (and then even the man at the landfill has a guaranteed income). Oh, and I have to do it all on credit because my income won’t go up until I stimulate the economy.

In Charming Billy, when Dennis asks his step father (Mr. Holtzman) for a loan so that Billy can send for his bride from the old company, he says, “You boys will never have any money if you spend everything you make before it’s earned.” Imagine if the government worked that way. Imagine if we were talking about paying down the deficit instead of raising the debt ceiling. On a good day the best we can muster is balancing a budget so we don’t add to the debt.

A Life Less Ordinary

I thought of Mr. Holtzman today when the repair bill for my car started to approach the car’s actual Blue Book value. As my husband and I discussed the worth of the vehicle, the life still left in it, and whether we should replace it, I was proud that we sounded more like Holtzman than John Boehner. I was glad that my husband agreed the car is worth repairing. I was grateful that it is, unlike so many of our electronics these days, still somewhat cost-effective to repair.

I know that if we all walk away from the malls and refuse to buy the latest iPhone our way of life will change. Our GDP will shrink. The stock market will lose value. People might well lose jobs. But that last one is the only one I worry about because none of these objects I’m supposed to want make me happy.

What does make me happy is to come home every night and snuggle with my husband. Our jeans might be a little ratty. We make coffee in a cheap French press that only gets replaced when I shatter the carafe. And we’re repairing our nine-year-old car like a couple of old fogeys. And maybe that means I’m not ambitious enough, but I don’t care. I don’t care because it makes me feel like an adult to take care of the things I have instead of throwing out something that isn’t perfect. I don’t care because I share my life with friends new and old and not a one of us gives a rip about what material goods the others possess.

I could go into how the impulse to toss out things that aren’t working relates to divorce rates, but you can make that inference on your own. I just know that if I treated my writing like we are taught to treat our material objects and each other, I’d have a waste basket full of shitty first drafts and very little personal development (and very few final products) to show for it all.

So the gift I received this weekend from two very talented authors is the inspiration to dig deep and think about my values. What books challenge you? Do you feel the tide changing like I do or do you think I’m full of it? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

If this review made you want to read either book, pick up a copy of Charming Billy or July, July from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.