Consistency: The Peaks and Valleys Challenge

Readers, I have been to the peak and to the valley this week. I much prefer the peak. 

In case you were wondering how my 66-Day Challenge chart is doing, I will show you. But first, let me tell you about my week. 

But before I tell you about my week, I have to tell you about a book I read a couple of months ago. It was a memoir by Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. Or possibly A Thousand Miles in a Million Years. I can’t remember. I heard about it from someone on the Internet who posted a list of her favorite memoirs. Anyway, it was a good memoir, about Donald Miller’s life, about how a filmmaker contacted him about making a movie about one of his previous books about his life. The filmmaker and his cinematographer and Donald Miller spend a lot of time together, and they tell Donald Miller about this seminar called Story, taught by a famous teacher, Robert McKee. McKee is this guru of the film and TV writing world. Everyone famous goes to his seminars. So Donald Miller goes to it, too, and the memoir A Million Miles or Years turns into a book about writing a story, too. There’s a funny bit about how Donald Miller fills almost an entire notebook with notes during the three days of seminar, while his roommate, who also attends, leaves with this: A story is about a character who wants something and overcomes obstacles to get it. Or so. Anyway, reading about the seminar piqued my interest, because I also like to tell stories in writing, and I’m kind of bad at the plotting of stories. My novels have foundered on this.

So I looked up this seminar Story, which Miller described, and discovered that the famous guy who teaches it four or five times a year around the world would be teaching in New York City right around now. It was expensive, but not out-of-the-question expensive. So I talked about it for a while. I talked about it with the husband, who encouraged me to do it. But I didn’t sign up. I talked about it some more. I googled it. Is the guy who teaches it for real or a crook? Is the thing actually world famous, or is it just a line, like “Going out of business. Liquidation sale” on one of those stores that never closes? It just hangs the sign there permanently. I didn’t sign up. 

I asked the MIL if I could stay with her while I took this seminar, and she said yes. I still didn’t sign up, though. What about the 10th grader’s eye appointment on Friday? What about my hair appointment on Thursday?

What if attending this seminar poisons whatever intuitive sense of narrative I have and I feel oppressed and start writing by the numbers? 

Maybe that would help me sell my writing.

I told myself it’s good to learn theory. It doesn’t mean I will be a slave to it. More likely, I will assimilate this knowledge the way I assimilate all knowledge. I will suck it in and it will turn into a sludge pile somewhere in my unconscious, or my subconscious, and will become part of the intuitive process.

I texted my cousin’s son who works in LA in the business, but he didn’t text back. I thought he might have insider information, and he might, but I haven’t heard yet. Still I didn’t sign up. But finally, on a Thursday, after walking the dog and listening to a podcast on which Dan Pink mentioned the importance of telling a story in all kinds of work, I hit the tipping point that sent me home and got me to register for the seminar. I even bought the train tickets.

So I went to the seminar, and it was sublime. Fascinating. Exhausting. Three days of lectures, starting at 9 a.m. and ending at 8 p.m., with three twenty minute breaks and one hour for lunch. I learned a lot about structural analysis of story, and it made me think about my current and past books in a new way. I also met some fascinating people, from all around the world. A TV producer from Finland, a marketing executive with a desk drawer screenplay from Toronto, a textbook writer and YA novelist from England, a TV writer who does something I’d never heard of called Second Screen writing for TV shows who wants to write her memoir about transitioning to female, and a prolific and famous writer of nineteen novels. We all felt the seminar was transformative. 

I also delighted in the lattes with oat milk I’d read about months ago and was finally able to try at the cafe on the corner. 

I arrived home at midnight on Saturday, and by 1 am, was trapped in the valley. The 16 year old became terribly ill, all night, and ended up in the ER the next day. The husband spent the afternoon and evening in the ER with her, and when they admitted her, I spent the night in the hospital. By the time we got home Monday, all memory of the seminar was as remote as if it had happened ten years ago, or possibly to someone else, on a TV show. 

But the 16 year old is fine. As I write, she’s playing tennis. And after a few days away, for the seminar, which I counted as writing days, and for her illness, I am back to my 66-Day Accountability worksheet. 

Annals of Successful Parenting: Writing

The 10th grader is annoyed with her English teacher, Mrs. Bombadoodle. Annoyed is perhaps too mild a descriptor. She’s been fulminating against Mrs. Bombadoodle. Mrs. B is requiring from her a five paragraph essay of 800 words, comparing and contrasting The Odyssey and The Wizard of Oz (the movie). She’s been complaining about how she can never write only eight hundred words and how unreasonable that is. And she can’t get started. She had to write one paragraph for homework the other night. Then she has the weekend to finish the draft of the essay. Then she will have to rewrite it and hand it in. This job feels impossible to her. 

This is one of those parenting moments when my desire to be Supportive Parent runs alongside my Beleagured Writer. Supportive Parent would listen and say, “Oh my. My, my. You can do it.” Beleagured Writer would say, “Uh, yeah. That’s called drafting, revising, and editing. That’s called writing.” Educators call this “the writing process.” They would, wouldn't they? 

It just so happens I am reading Draft No. 4 by John McPhee, which is about writing. Honestly, I have been mostly a fiction writer, and John McPhee is a famous nonfiction essayist whose work has been often in the New Yorker. By which I mean, in a roundabout, indirect, and therefore perhaps poorly executed way, to say that I haven't read all of his work. However, he is a professor of writing, and he's written a book about his writing process. I have been struggling with my writing, and when I struggle, I dip into inspiration via other writers’ books on writing. The eponymous essay has a great section on writer’s block and self-doubt. In short, the message is that he suffers from it, mostly during the time when he’s trying to write the first draft. Best of all, for this Beleagured Writer, he says that anyone who doesn’t is not to be trusted. I would insert a quotation here, but I’m writing from an undisclosed location apart from my book. Namely, from my father’s apartment. Furthermore, I smell like rancid body lotion, which is not pleasant. While packing, I tossed into my suitcase a hotel bottle from my stash. Apparently, it turned. 

McPhee also says that writing is all about revising. This is my truth, too. Once something is on the page, it is much less frightening and daunting to work with. But getting started. Oh my word. 

And then he has a great passage about trying to write and not being able to, and so writing Dear Mom, and then complaining all about what you’re trying to write but can’t. And then cutting out the “Dear Mom”.

That made me laugh, because he wrote it funny, and it is funny and well-written. Also, it reminded me of probably the best writing advice I got in college. Perhaps ironically, this advice came not from a professor, but from a classmate in my dorm, Darlene. One day, I was whinging about having trouble starting a paper, and Darlene, who was from some place in South America, and had creamy skin and soft brown eyes and hair with bangs that fell over her eybrows, and long limbs and delicate fingers, but whom I had never thought of as any kind of writer, said to me that she just wrote her papers in the first person. “What?” I gasped. I had never considered anything so informal, schooled as I had been in the thesis, supporting statements, conclusion five paragraph essay format. The ten commandments of school essays. First person and flow and informality in an academic paper? What about topic sentence, quotations, and references? 

“There aren’t as many “I’s” as you think,” she told me. “You can just take them out afterwards.” 

Darlene wore pleated jeans. They were fashionable back then. We agreed that our desert island makeup would be mascara, definitely. Darlene had a handsome boyfriend named Peter, who also had dark hair and eyes. I believe they got married. 

When a professor later told me I wrote well and my essays had a nice intuitive flow, it was because of Darlene. 

As for which part of me wins the race with the 10th Grader, Supportive Parent or Beleagured Writer, let’s just say I offered the comment that being forced to write with limits can be helpful.

I added, “It’s all about revision,” which was not what she wanted to hear. So it made me feel better to learn from John McPhee that he told his daughters the same thing. It is all about revision.

And where I am I with my book’s revision? I’m at the stage of avoidance. John McPhee also cops to it in his book, thanks God (as my sister the psychoanalyst says). And he told his daughter to put her draft away for a little while and then go back to it. That is what I told the 10th Grader. She listened, although I must admit that she had already decided to take a break. “These things need to sit for a while,” I said. She was halfway up the stairs by then. 

They need to marinate. I believe in steeping, the subconscious, the unconscious. I believe, as John McPhee says in his book, that while I’m not writing, the work is still percolating in the background, maybe even working itself out. 

And I said it first. 

At least in my life. 

The tenth grader turned in 900 words. We shall see how strict Mrs. Bombadoodle is. Writing is about rules, as so much of life is, and also about knowing when and how to break them. 

News and Tidbits

Hello, Readers. It’s taking a monumental amount of willpower to avoid the big, combed-over elephant in the room. The news has been riveting. But I am not writing about that. And I’m trying to marinate in it less overall. What this means is a short and scattered blog post. 

Tidbits and News:

Following my own advice from last week’s post on dealing with distraction, I have tried, somewhat successfully, to limit my exposure to the media, both formal and social, and to focus on my writing. That advice really came from the example of my friend C, mentioned last week, who has found the months since November 9th to be some of the most productive of her career. I tried to follow her example and to forge ahead. The result is that I do have a rough draft of approximately 90,000 words. All written last week. 

No, not really. That’s about 240 pages. Not possible for me to amass in one week. But the draft did start to coalesce over the last week. I read a little of Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird every night to inspire me. In case anyone in the world hasn’t read that book, the title refers to advice her father gave her brother when he had a report on birds to write from scratch and it was due the next day. Take it bird by bird, was the advice, extrapolated to any writing and by larger and further effort to any daunting endeavor. Bird by bird. A way to get one’s writer self into the chair. 

Turning off the web browser is another crucial element I employed last week. 

In other news, the dog is afraid of the kitchen. I think he’s actually afraid of bees, but more specifically of things that buzz, including but not limited to bees, and by extension he is afraid of the places where things that buzz have recently been buzzing. That would be the kitchen. 

Now I’m not going to have any of that. He needs more grit, does that dog. And also he needs to be reprogrammed to like the kitchen again. I am hopeful that a little play therapy with him in the kitchen every day will work magic. I started out with one of the puzzles I bought him during a phase when I felt extremely guilty for his under stimulating life. And he does love the puzzles, which he solves with nose and paws, and which reward him with treats. 

Anxious dog

The college student is home for the summer! I picked her up on Saturday at noon, and I am happy to report that she was all packed up and ready to load the car. This kid is no snowflake. This kid has grit. What she doesn’t have is a job. She thought she had one, but it fell through. So she has been looking, along with every other recently arrived home college student who didn’t get a job over spring break. Which she did. But I guess not really. 

I read Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders, and I liked it. I didn't love or lurv it, but I did like it. I liked its Buddhist elements, such as how life is full of suffering people and how we all need to be compassionate towards one another - and towards ourselves.

That’s about all. I think all that writing while trying to avoid getting sucked all the way into the news used up my available willpower and I’m depleted. That happens with willpower. It’s something that can be strengthened, according to Roy Baumeister and John Tierney, but it also has limits. Like a muscle, it can grow stronger by use, but it can also fail from overuse. However, overuse, like a vigorous workout, will lead to strength. Unless of course you tear something. I haven’t torn anything, but I have worn out my willpower muscle. So keep me away from the cookies and the chocolate. And please consider this post a gentle limbering exercise.

. 

To Thine Own Self Be True

Nora Ephron’s voice reminds me of mine. It’s a lot stronger, more confident, more full of panache, but the inflections and repetitions are like mine. I was thinking this while reading Heartburn in my Nora Ephron reader instead of writing this morning. It’s a funny book. I was listening to the sounds in my head. It read like a movie script. It read like her essays. Her voice came through even in that novel, which I think was her only novel, published in 1983. She wrote most everything she became really famous for after that novel, for which she became famous, and which she published at 42, if Wikipedia is correct. I was lying in bed in my fuzzy bathrobe with my feet under the quilt thinking my writing sounds kind of like Nora’s. Then, before I could stop myself, I was also thinking about the article I glimpsed in the  Sunday paper but was too traumatized by to actually read. It was an article, probably in the Book Review, about an author who was a huge bestselling writer in the 1950s, a huge - yuuuuge - success in other words, but who is now forgotten. I’m sure it was about how often that kind of thing happens. The being forgotten part, I mean. It’s about what I aspire to, isn’t it? I mean, it would be foolish to aspire to more than being forgotten. I mean, no one thinks they’re going to be Jane Austen. Or Jane Jacobs. No Janes. The most people think about when they think about writing success is The New York Times Bestseller List. No one thinks beyond the list. Everyone wants to be on it. But how many people on it today will be remembered tomorrow? 

Just glimpsing that article and skimming the first paragraph was enough to trigger a total confidence meltdown and an upsurge in my sense of futility. This coincided with me coming across a job opening at a good non-profit company that does Important Work. They are looking for a manager of the communications department, which reminded me that perhaps I would have been and maybe still would be much better off with some kind of office job involving writing, no matter how boring, because I would be able to look people in the eye and say I was something and did something. And prove it. I could wave a pay stub at them. Or maybe an employee identification card of some kind. Plus I would see other human adults every day. And I would have to get dressed. Lately I am interested in both dressing nicely and also remaining attached to my fluffy bathrobe. When I say attached, I mean inside it. Like, wearing it. 

Why was I lying in my fluffy bathrobe on my already made bed instead of working on my book? Well might you ask, Readers. After all, I have had a discussion on a telephone involving an agent and an editor at a reputable publishing house that has resulted in an invitation to submit more work. So why am I not scrabbling and scrambling to pull together more work? 

Two reasons. One, I have an overly expansive view of time. I’m “taking a couple of days”, suggested by my agent, to think over the conversation with the publisher before fishing around in my book drafts for more material to revise. A couple of days from the conversation would have brought me to Saturday. Today is Wednesday following. See - expansive. But I don’t think my agent meant to include the weekend. I went away for the weekend to visit family in Washington. So how could the weekend count. So, really, it’s only been four days….

Two, I am procrastinating. 

Look how cute my dog is.

The shade of Steven Pressfield holding a copy of The War of Art in one hand and Do The Work in another is looming. I suppose this means there is a third reason why I’m bathrobe reading. It’s called resistance. This is Steven Pressfield’s big thing. His hook. His battering ram. Artists must battle the forces of resistance before creating art, and resistance takes many forms. Resistance is the obvious, the procrastination, for example, which bleeds into that overly expansive view of time that stretches a couple of days into several, then weeks, months, and years. Resistance, I’m sure Steven Pressfield would say, is also the sense of futility and the fear underlying the futility. So in a sense, there is only one reason I’m not working on the book. Resistance. It’s kind of the alpha and the omega of excuses. 

Maybe this is a good moment to mention the episode of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt in which Titus gets back out there and goes on auditions for bit parts. Titus comes across an older actor, kind of his nemesis. Nemesis is the wrong word. This actor is the thing Titus fears turning into if he actually gets out there and tries. An actor whose most prominent roles have been as corpses on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. An actor who has been attending the same auditions for the same bit parts as Titus - for fifty years. Titus is depressed by this. As am I. 

This actor has attained kind of the level of success I have as a writer, in other words. Only this actor is pretty happy with his career and his life. He’s satisfied. 

And then he dies. And Titus goes to his funeral. And all the other bit actors on Law and Order are there, and Ice T, the rapper/actor gives a eulogy. Ice T says this guy, this older actor, had a full and happy life. Ice T says this actor was a success because “he was to his own self true.” Which brings me back to Nora Ephron and her voice. Which is really about me and my voice. Which is really about you and your voice. Voice here represents not just expressing yourself in writing, but expressing that thing that is most you. To do that - well, it’s a deceptively simple thing to do. It's also the thing that will fill you with purpose, and therefore, it is the thing you must do.

But to get back to me. In writing, the voice is the thing that brings readers. Nora Ephron found her voice and she expressed it in novels, essays, and on film. It’s a consistent voice - because it’s hers. And who the heck knows if anyone will remember any of it in fifty or a hundred years? The point is not to think about that. (She said, reminding herself.) The point is that if you need to express your voice, you gotta to thine own self be true. Forget about who said it (Polonius to Hamlet) and therefore whether it is actually good advice. Sadly, or happily, that is me. I’ve found my voice these last few years, through my blog. I have the need to be true to it. It’s similar to Nora’s (maybe), but also different, since it’s mine. Sadly, Nora isn’t here anymore to write in her funny, wise voice. I’m here, though. I’m available to write in mine. It’s a bit grandiose and presumptuous to think this - and yet, splayed on the bed holding the very thick compendium of her writings, which includes her screenplay for When Harry Met Sally, I did think that perhaps I can pick up her baton. Since she’s not here anymore, I mean. There’s room for my voice. I intend to use it to carry my book. There’s room for my voice. 

Nora Ephron and Me, Exhaling

I feel vindicated. Judith Shulevtiz’s article in the Sunday Review* pretty much lays out all the conflicts I have felt about choosing to put mothering as my top priority, all the while watching my “viability” as a worker erode and the lost financial rewards pile up. It’s a lot of pressure either way, trying to maintain a career while being a parent, or trying to parent without feeling like you f***d up by not having a career. Or trying to parent while cobbling together gigs and part time work - forget that lofty ideal of a career. I realize that’s a privilege when so many people just have to make ends meet. 

She says, “What if the world was set up in such a way that we could really believe - not just pretend to - that having spent a period of time concentrating on raising children at the expense of future earnings would bring us respect? And what if that could be as true for men as it is for women?”  

But I don’t wanna talk about that. I wanna talk about Nora Ephron. I picked up a tome at the Wellesley bookstore, The Most of Nora Ephron. She was a Wellesley grad. And now I want a round dining room table again. I say again because several years ago I read Nora’s piece, “About Having People to Dinner,” on not getting wazzed out over the food (my paraphrase, not her terminology), on giving people a seating plan - “they get very nervous when there isn’t one” - and on the absolutely “essential”  round dining table. So you’re not “trapped talking to the people on either side of you.” I wanted a round dining table after reading that piece then; and I want one again, after reading it again last night. 

Shall I ask the universe for it? 

Or perhaps our accountant?  She will gently remind me that we have college tuition to pay - for the next eight years - and that the FAFSA believes that our household could actually contribute $94,500 of tuition per annum. Seriously. I kid you not. So, instead of purchasing a round dining table, we might consider selling every bit of furniture we do own, and moving into a refrigerator box. Then she will tell me she’s leaving for a two week cruise. 

Why am I not an accountant? 

But I digress.

And anyway, the idea of a cruise is not so appealing. All that potential for gastrointestinal illness. 

But the round dining table? That is appealing. The husband and I argued about the feasibility of such an item in our dining room after I made him listen to me read aloud Nora’s essay on knowing all along who Deep Throat was. Perhaps it made him grumpy - we have a detente on reading aloud to one another, since, as charming as it sounds to share tidbits in turn, and indeed, whole marriages have kept romance alive by doing so and then trumpeting this strategy to readers like me, the truth is that neither of us likes to listen to the other read. We only want to read aloud:

Deep Throat and Me: Now It Can Be Told, and Not for the First Time Either

For many years, I have lived with the secret of Deep Throat’s identity. It has been hell, and I have dealt with the situation by telling pretty much anyone who asked, including total strangers, who Deep Throat was. Not for nothing is indiscretion my middle name.

Come on, that’s really funny. (It’s from 2005, around when Deep Throat came out in Vanity Fair.)

Anyway, as I said, that might be why the husband insisted that a round table would not work in our dining room because the room is rectangular. I countered with my in-depth knowledge of geometry that a circle can fit inside a rectangle. I power-beamed a diagram at him telepathically

It was a more basic diagram, but I couldn't make it work today. 

but he would have none of it. He continued with his St.Aubyn and I with my Ephron. We chuckled to ourselves in our little pods.

The table talk, so to speak, was purely an academic discussion, because what we do have, and what we will continue to have as a dining table, is a plank of plywood 8’ by 5’ atop a smaller IKEA table. This serves us well at Xmas time, when we have a sizable number of guests for a couple of days. However, it’s a bit large for the usual evening party, when we have only a couple of extra people .

Anyway, this is all  a distraction from alligators eating two year olds and the NRA allowing unstable people to massacre innocent people at a gay club and Doonuld Drumpf revoking the privileges of the press at his campaign events and insinuating that President Obama is secretly conspiring with terrorists against the US. 

This is a distraction from the Senior’s impending graduation and the planning of the party for this event, and from the inevitable end of summer, when we drop her off at college and have to return home. What shall we do then?

Immediately buy a dog?

Readers, I do not know. I do not know many things. But I am glad Nora Ephron wrote so much to amuse us, and continued to work and live and be vibrant and upbeat even when she knew she was dying.   

So I will leave you with this quotation from Nora Ephron, on blogging, which she did, by the way. 

"...one of the most delicious things about the profoundly parasitical world of blogs is that you don't have to have anything much to say. Or you just have to have a little tiny thing to say. You just might want to say hello. I'm here. And by the way. On the other hand. Nevertheless. Did you see this? Whatever. A blog is sort of like an exhale. What you hope is that whatever you're saying is true for about as long as you're saying it. Even if it's not much." 

Amen. 

*http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/opinion/sunday/how-to-fix-feminism.html

Success? Well-Being? Catch-22?

Ok, so last week I failed. I failed to put up a blog post. What is my excuse? Summer? Sure, that is part of it. 

Another part of it, though, is that I’ve been in a holding pattern for awhile now with my book proposal. My agent has done a great job of getting my proposal to the desks of editors at publishing imprints that I’ve heard of  - and now we are waiting. Some of the editors have passed, but all have had reassuring reasons. They just took a title too similar, for example. That’s one. That’s pretty reassuring. Of course, I am very quick to turn that into big frustrated sigh that I wish I’d gotten my act together and gotten that proposal to that editor SOONER, so that MY book was the one they were using to turn away others. Oh, sure a couple have said the story needs to connect more broadly to the issue of success or something like that - which it does, actually, or could, if I wrote the book. That is the plan, and maybe it doesn’t come across fully in the proposal. My agent says the proposal is good and doesn’t need tweaking. Stay the course, she said. Well, she didn’t actually say that, because she’s not a seventy year old bearded sailor, she’s a thirty-something savvy urbanite, so she said something equivalent. Something that I have apparently translated into nautical terms for no good reason at all. 

But anyway, it’s the closest I’ve been to publication and I’d love to feel really great about that. But of course, it’s very difficult to feel great about this situation, because no matter how promising these rejections are, they are still, you know, rejections. And at some point I’m going to have to have more than a good story about how I ALMOST sold my book proposal.

Except that the idea that I “have to have more than a good story” is an example of magical thinking. Who says? What entity is keeping track of my attempts in its virtual ledger-book of life frustrations? Is this entity actually going to tally things up at some point and say, “Okay, it’s Hope’s turn now for something really meaty, an unequivocal achievement she can brag about at cocktail parties?” Which is, you know, ridiculous, because I never go to cocktail parties, and because of my furtive, neurotic nature, bragging is not what would happen. I promise! An apologetic admission of my big, meaty success is all it would be, I swear. I might even keep it within the family and just put on a lot of makeup and make kissy-faces at myself in my bathroom mirror. 

So, no. Reality says that this really might be all I get, in terms of my publication story. That story might just be that my savvy, urbanite agent sent my proposal off to five, ten, twenty, fifty editors at imprints of diminishing impact and they all said, “Thanks but no thanks.”  I will have to live with that. And worse, I will have to live with having shared it with you, Readers. Maybe I will have gotten your hopes up and you’ll be discouraged for me. Maybe I will have annoyed you and you’ll have your anonymous schadenfreude. It’s a big risk. 

But would it have been better never to have taken the chance?

Actually, no. No, it would not have been better. And here is why. Regardless of my ultimate success, my well-being depends on it. Well-being is a good and worthy goal, if it can be a goal. Having a sense of well-being is probably even more important than feeling successful. So I was interested to read this post in Scientific American’s blog about positive psychology research to determine the elements of well-being. I’m now passing them on to you. Please note the one on the right:  

http://scottbarrykaufman.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/PERMA.png

The one on the right is Accomplishment. As in, achieving stuff, reaching a goal, having success.  Accomplishing things - or at least feeling accomplished - is one of the five main components of well-being.

Ok, this is a catch-22, isn’t it? It is, indeed. These five elements of well-being are closely interrelated. According to research, people who scored high in one area of PERMA tended to score high in the other areas; the inverse is also true. People who scored low in one area tended to score low overall. 

So. Yes, this is a fix, in a way. Or maybe it is proof that I don’t need to waste time apologizing for wanting to feel successful and achieve stuff. 

Which leaves me with this advice: ultimately, you have to keep going, and you have to find ways to feel like you are achieving in life. The trick is to celebrate the steps along the way, the mini-accomplishments. Like close-calls with Big House Editors.

Interestingly, the two character traits that are the biggest predictors of well-being are Gratitude and Love of Learning, closely followed by Hope, Honesty, Love, and Humor. I can say I've got those, some days more, some days less.

So how are you doing? I think I’m actually doing fine. 

A French View of Success

You know, until I got well into this success thing, I thought there was something wrong with me. I seemed genetically incapable of holding down a full time office job without plunging into depression. I assumed my need for blocks of free time and my tendency to grab a few moments to sit in a chair and stair out the window indicated lower energy than a “normal” person, or perhaps congenital laziness. This idea of laziness sharpened against my conflict over earning money versus time to write. Or, in plainer English, what I mean is that I felt like a hypocrite because while I wanted plenty of money, I didn’t want to do the jobs that would earn me it. So what did that make me? A big baby or a hypocrite, both terrible things for an adult to be. Especially a feminist adult. 

Then, when I got married and had babies and ended up staying home with them, well, the things wrong with me multiplied. I was a sell-out for staying home, and a bad feminist for the same reason. I was clearly lacking in some element that would allow me to have energy for parenting, being a spouse, AND writing. Did I mention the part about being supported by the husband? I was dependent on someone else for my financial security. That was a big no-no, for sure. 

Let’s see, what did that make me? 

• genetically incapable
• depressive
• lazy
• abnormal
• low-energy
• hypocritical
• greedy
• a baby
• bad feminist
• sell-out
• dependent

Oh, yeah, and 

• writer

Yikes. What a loser. 

However, I no longer feel that way, usually. Usually. I have my moments, but right now, I feel okay. Perhaps it’s the night time affirmations I do sometimes. Perhaps it’s all the reading I’ve done on creativity and flow and success and happiness and motivation and self-control and on and on. It’s all drip-drip-dripped against my brain and worn it down a bit. 

Or perhaps it’s some smaller successes along the way, like having more than 7 readers (Thank YOU), and a couple of publications in the NYTimes and so on. Nothing like external validation to prop up a lazy hypocrite. 

Into this little trickle of brain drips flowed this little piece in the NYTimes by Francophile Pamela Druckerman, American ex-pat (PDAXP) living in Paris. It is a cute little piece about giving a commencement address to an American school in Paris with French and American students. A commencement address is, according to PDAXP, a quintessentially American thing that boils “down to: Yes you can. Here’s how.”  That would not fly with a largely French audience. “A French commencement address,” she says, “would probably boil down to: No you can’t. It’s not possible. Don’t even try.”  

Well, Readers, you know how taken I am with French style. In fact, just today I tried this French dry shampoo, which is what it sounds like, and makes your hair look clean without having to wash it. If this sounds strange and unnecessary to you, then you must never have had a great blow-out at the salon and then got sweaty exercising. That’s all I have to say. Except - doesn’t my hair look great?  It’s Klorane Shampooing sec. I got it at Sephora, FYI.

But I digress. I was talking about the article by PDAXP. And so I read on with interest how she resolved her dilemma of delivering a very unFrench address in a French style. She chose, she said, a common French saying, something “optimistic, but not grandiose.” 

So practical, those French. Here it is:

Vouz allez trouver votre place. 

You will find your place. 

PDAXP goes on to talk about some rules for being a creative person and finding your place in life. And they are so, um, validating. What a nauseous word. You can look it up. Her list, I mean. I’m not writing about creativity rules today. Except the part about sticking to it, and about creating blank space for yourself. And about paying attention to what you do on the side of what you do to earn money, because that gives you big clues as to where your place may be. Yes, validating is the word. 

If you’re wondering what I’m on about, this is it. Finding your place. That is success. Some people do it without much fuss, some people have more trouble. I have, no doubt, been one of the latter. I have had so much trouble. Partly because of who I was raised to be, and partly, again without doubt, because I am a creative person. A “creative”, as I’ve seen it nominalized. Like a lawyer or a doctor or a teacher - a creative. The word sounds a little weird like that, with an article, turned into a noun. I used to hate it, but I’ve just this second convinced myself I kind of like the term. Making a description into a thing in this case is helpful, because a description is abstract, but a thing - well, a thing can find its place. 

Why Do I Do This?

I'm in limbo at the moment. I sent draft #14 of my proposal, including two sample chapters, off to my agent, and now I’m waiting to hear from her. Which leaves me in limbo. O, there are things I ought to do – get camp medical forms to the pediatrician, buy a new lock for the 7^th grader’s locker, and set a regular schedule for blogging outlets, for example – but I am not doing them. I did manage to send off the baby gift to my friend's granddaughter.

So, here are highlights of my thoughts and activities this week. 

Overall, I have spent way too much time 'pon Pinterest, looking at casual fashion.

I spent my birthday, which wasWednesday, in good company. I’m talking ‘bout Sir Elton John, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Gloria Steinem. Speaking for all of us, I can say that we are all glad to be here, and we didn’t need any extra medication to get through it. The family and I went out to dinner and I had a mini-bottle of champagne to myself to celebrate. There was a small contretemps regarding the celebratory cake – as in, someone didn’t order one - but in the end, there was something for me to blow out. A Price Chopper cake with a star candle I saved from the husband’s birthday the other week.

In re: fashion. I have now belted my sweaters twice. That doesn’t mean I put on two belts. I mean that on two different occasions I added a belt OVER my sweater. I accessorized. This is something I never thought I would do in this way. The belted sweater has always seemed too-too. But never say never. Except to culottes, also known as gauchos. Say never to those.  And to jumpsuits. Say never to  any garment you have to remove entirely in order to use the facilities.  

In re: fashion. Due to Pinterest, I have gleaned the following: flared jeans, also known as bell-bottoms are big. Very big. As corroboration, I offer this information. The 13 year old’s school had a career day this week, and she reported on the various careers represented by parent volunteers. Air Force pilot, scrap metal dealer, emergency room doctor, among others. Then, on the way home from my birthday dinner,  she told me that there was a lady at career day wearing flared pants who looked really fashionable. So fashionable, in fact, that she at first thought it might be (from behind) her social studies teacher. But this lady turned out to be a “real estate something” (I quote my child here), and that doesn’t even matter, because the point was that the 13 year old said the flared pants were very flattering and made her legs look really long.

To which the 16 year old said that no one young would "ever ever ever wear flares". To which I said, “never say never” and she said that maybe flares would be popular among the mom crowd, but never in her generation, because HER generation grew up knowing the truth about flared jeans: they are atrocious.

This is a truth I also grew up knowing. Flares, aka bell-bottoms, were feh. As were sweaters with belts. So I remain mum on the flares, aka bell-bottoms question. But not about the gauchos/culottes, or the jumpsuits.

I wish I could tell you that we discussed Kant, or something even more deep. But I cahnt.

In re: success. I had my monthly conference call with my mutual support group, my mini-master minds group a la Napolean Hill, my tiny Junta (Juntita?) a la Benjamin Franklin. An idea and support-sharing group to encourage ourselves to move forward in our lives. Many, many clichés come to mind here. But my point, Readers, was that one of my group members, who is very Type A, told me that after reading my blog about the Pomodoro Method, as well as another article about the same approach, she used it to get through a work deadline. Instead of a tomato-shaped kitchen timer, she used her iPhone’s timer. She set it for fifteen minutes, and every time it sounded, she just hit reset again, until she was done.

Now, I would like to point out that part of the Pomodoro Method is taking short breaks inbetween segments of intense work. Even if you don’t feel like stopping when the timer dings, you are supposed to stop. STOP and recharge. Look at Pinterest, even. I cling to that little break to get me going in the first place. But that is what makes us all so different and interesting, isn’t it? Instead of taking a break, my Type A friend just reboots herself. Pressing the timer seems to be all the break she needs. Gotta love that. I am so not that way.

Other topics: one piece of information I have come up against repeatedly in my success research is this idea that to be really successful, one must engage in meaningful work that benefits others. If you recall, all the way back to Stephen Covey and his 7 Habits of Highly Effective (euphemism) People, he talked about building upon strong values and specified that a goal of making money, say, was really not the right approach. One must approach money sideways- like it’s a skittish horse, perhaps. (That's not what S. Covey says, it's just my interpretation.) Because going after money is going to prove ultimately a false value. Money, after a certain amount, doesn’t increase your happiness. But things that make you happy include blah blah and blah and helping people.

So I have asked myself, Readers, how is my research on success going to help anyone? How does my blog help? Will my book help? Well, in conversation with my support group, as one of us talked about a workshop she had attended about newfangled brand building and self-empowerment and stuff, I suddenly saw how I might help others. Because, it has become apparent, I’m not coming up with a definitive definition of success .

I wrote in my journal, my intention is to “go there” in myself – to be open and honest and (one hopes, funny and entertaining) about things that other people might feel a bit uncomfortable exploring. Because my working hypothesis about me and my thoughts and feelings is that if I think it or feel it, then most people do. I'm not so special. So why not get it out there under the light and take a look at it? Reminds me of one night, when I was a kid, and I checked under my bed for monsters, and I saw a grey spot, and I was terrified that it was a big spider. Eventually, I worked up courage to get my father to come in and take it away. And the spot turned out to be a dust bunny. Kinda like that.

Also reminds me of years ago, when the younger daughter was in preschool. I made a less than Pollyanna-like comment about motherhood, possibly something about wanting to flick my children in the backs of their heads from time to time because they were so irritating; the teacher said it was really refreshing to hear someone talk about the frustrations of parenting. And I thought, really, this is unusual? Doesn’t everyone feel this way?

I think that it’s all that therapy I’ve had. I’ve become quite comfortable with layers of ambivalence underlying the most intimate relationships.

Just yesterday, I caught a snippet of a radio interview with some singer-songwriter, talking about how writing about the regular, daily personal stuff is boring; but writing about the deeply personal stuff is not. The deeply personal taps into the universal, and that’s what makes it resonate. Which is what my painter friend Karen Kaapcke said to me once. We were at the Armory Exhibition at the NYState Historical Society. Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 was truly spellbinding. That I should just go deep, because that’s where people would meet me.

Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2, M. Duchamp. 1913?

So that’s what I do here. I hope. ON a good day. Which I don’t think today is. But.

And with that in mind, I will tell you that I spent part of my birthday in the office of a physical therapist for my pelvic floor. But I will not bother you with details about that. I simply write it for you so you know that such a type of physical therapy exists, and that if something is funky with your pelvic floor, there is someone out there who can help you. Me.

Trusting that You Care About My Thoughts (Excuses)

Can Miracle Gro fix this?

Hi, Readers. Things have gone on. I’d like to offer you insights, but really, I don’t have any. I haven’t been meditating. I’ve been doing Kegels. If you know what those are, well, you know. If you don’t – well, there’s always Google. I haven’t been reading the paper. I’ve been reading my Twitter feed. I haven’t been reading about success. I’ve been reading Flowers for Algernon for one book club, and A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki, for another book club, and The Woman Upstairs, by Claire Messud, for a third book club. And Gunn’s Golden Rules, by Tim Gunn of Project Runway for fun. (Lots of meow in that one.) I haven’t been writing my blog or my book proposal, I’ve been writing for pay. Meagre pay, I hasten to add. Very meager. Embarrassingly so, in fact. But it’s pay. 

Then, just when I thought I was getting myself together, the husband fell apart. Appendicitis. Appendectomy. Hospital stay. Thank goodness for friends, who took the kids and fed them and offered them shelter for the night, and who walked the dog, and mowed the lawn. And thank goodness for morphine. For the husband. And Xanax. For me. Because, in case you hadn’t heard, hanging around the emergency room is a real blast. The sounds and sights of psychotic breaks, the hacking and barfing, the suicidal teenagers. I’m not cut out for that crap. Although I was prepared for the shackled prisoners and correctional officers because I watch “Orange is the New Black.” And the husband on post-op meds was kind of amusing.

I might as well come clean. The other thing I’ve been doing is ordering a lot of clothes online, trying them on, finding they don’t fit, and collecting the boxes to send back to the store. Who has time to write a blog when there’s a Diane Von Furstenberg wrap dress half price at Nordstrom, and it fits - but the 15-year-old objects to the eye-popping graphic design? This eye-popping graphic design might be the reason the DVF classic wrap dress is half price. It just might be too much for my 5’1.25” self. But I can’t decide. Not deciding takes time. And I have to wear Spanx to try on the dress – and Spanx take time. And in short, I haven’t shown the dress to the husband or the 12-year-old yet, because there has to be a moment when the lighting is good, I feel like rolling on the Spanx and wrapping the dress, and the moon is in the seventh house - and moments like those are few, especially when one or the other of us insists on falling apart periodically. It’s hard to fit it all in.

Also, the 15-year-old left for her summer dance intensive earlier in the week, and preparing for that took a lot of time. The preparations also encroached on my workspace – the dining room table. There were a lot of leotards. A lot. I was thankful that she could travel with a friend and the friend’s parents. Since I have that meager paying work, it was not a good time to fly south myself. However, I spent a lot of time and energy feeling guilty that I wasn’t going and guilty that I was relieved not to go. These emotions required naps to alleviate. You know how it is.

Since I’m clearly not one of those single-minded, monomaniacs driven to pursue one goal nonstop, I didn’t squeeze efficient writing work into all spare moments. I used those for surfing the interwebs. And for watching “Orange is the New Black” with the husband.

Now is the time of year when I usually post something complain-y about my garden. Well, this year I’ve had the perfect excuse to let everything go to hell. The husband’s appendectomy. However, that was two weeks ago, and now the weekend approaches and there are so many weeds. Just so many. I might as well report that I haven’t been totally negligent about the garden. However, I seem to have killed a hanging basket of something lovely purchased at the farmer’s market. Also purchased at that market: four baby kale plants, which I planted. Yes, I did. I planted them among the surviving rose bushes that once lushly flanked our patio. The next day I noticed that the little plants were leafless nubbins. And the day after that, I saw a cute little bunny loping past.

 

Kale nubbins, rose nubbins, tomatos

Tularemia, I thought. (Google it.) I used to love bunnies, but not now. Tularemia. I think I’ve mentioned before that I ought not to read the Diagnosis column in the NYTimes. Yet, I seem unable to resist it.

To plant those kale plants for the bunnies, I had to weed part of the rose bed. Even though I wore gloves, I developed some kind of itchy rash on my arm from something nasty. So, forgive me if I’m just not that enthusiastic.

I have to say that I do love a garden. I even love planning a garden. It's the gardening part of gardens that I find troublesome. So the husband’s surgery has been a handy excuse in that arena. Silver lining and all that. However, now he’s better, and the weeds are bigger, and the weekend’s approaching, and there are no more good excuses. Except –hey, I have one: I’ve gotta work on my book!

Ahhhh!