About a month ago, a good friend and I both found ourselves wanting to get back into a regular writing practice, so we resolved to write for just 15 minutes a day at least five days a week and report to each other how we were doing.  Fifteen minutes isn’t much time, but really it’s the time that matters most, because it’s the time you have to actually sit yourself down and try to write something.  And once you’ve managed that, it’s usually pretty easy to keep going for longer.  At the same time, knowing it only has to be 15 minutes makes it seem very non-threatening and achievable.

So far, it’s been equal parts fun and frustrating.  The fun part is that with such low expectations (you can’t usually do a whole lot in 15 minutes) and low pressure (if what I write is terrible today, that’s okay because I’ll be writing something else tomorrow), there’s a lot of freedom.  I’ve found myself writing things that are far more experimental and random than I might normally write.  The critic in my head is pretty much silenced by the understanding that it’s not really the product that matters so much as the habit itself, which gives me permission to play.

The frustrating part is that sickening drop in the stomach that happens when I’m sitting there with a blank screen or paper and have absolutely no idea what to write.  When I feel like I have nothing with which to fill the void or to pattern the blank space.  It’s just there: empty, waiting.  In a rather serendipitous coincidence, I’ve been making my way through T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets” lately and came across this chunk, which sums things up far better than I ever could:

Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion.

Later he concludes, somewhat more hopefully, that “For us, there is only the trying.  The rest is not our business.”  Of course, he’s talking about his own long career as a poet and a craftsman of words at the very highest level, but his observations are true even for me at my most basic, clumsy, and amateurish level–my 15 minutes a day.  Difficult as it may be, there is a value and satisfaction in the trying, in at least making the attempt to put some kind of language or form to those inarticulate impulses or responses of the heart and mind.  It is, in its own way, in the tradition of Adam and Eve giving names to creation, mimicking the Creator with an attempt to create something of substance out of words.

Photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson once stated, “To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression.”  Recognition of the significance of an event, and the precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression.  Those words could easily be applied to poetry as well, minus the “simultaneous” and “fraction of a second” parts. Rather than a fraction of a second, it might take months or years or never happen at all.  And that, too, is the wonderful and frustrating part–putting something down when you’re not entirely sure of its significance, and you’re definitely not sure about form.  That uncertainty is painful, but in many respects, it’s also a highly beneficial practice in faith and communion.  As Wendell Berry observes, “the given word implies the acceptance of a form that is never entirely of one’s own making.”

I think that’s my favorite part of writing–that when we give words to something and create our forms, it’s never entirely ours.  There’s no voice that’s purely my own–it’s  a manifestation of all the experiences and people and words and writers who have impacted me over the years, along with that ineffable Other that emerges in any creative act.  And if it should come out lumpy and crummy and not at all resemble what I’d hoped it would?  There is consolation for that too, again from the wise and wonderful Wendell Berry, who says, “The unknown is the mercy and it may be the redemption of the known.  The given word may come to appear to be wrong, or wrongly given.  But the unknown still lies ahead of it, and so who is finally to say?  If time has apparently proved it wrong, more time may prove it right.  As growth has called it into question, further growth may reaffirm it.”

The unknown has always terrified me and makes me want to grasp (however illusory it may be) whatever control I can.  But that same unknown is also the the one hope of it all turning out the way it was meant to be.  For the right form to finally emerge.

As of this past week, you can now purchase my novel here or download it from Barnes & Noble or iBooks.  Obviously, this is something that I should be feeling very excited about.  And I am.  But I’m also feeling kind of squidgy about it too.  Part if this might simply be the fact I caught the cold that’s been making the rounds at school and being sick always makes me feel not quite myself.  Part of it is that I experienced enough frustrations and delays over small technical issues related to the publication that I got tired of the whole business and am simply relieved that it’s finally over.  But part of it is going public with this and having it all out in the open.

I used to read interviews with actors who said they never watched their own films, and I always thought they must be lying.  Ridiculous!  How could they not watch their own movie?  But when I started re-reading my own novel after it was finally official, I immediately started seeing things I wanted to fix or change.  I had to stop because it was making me feel kind of awful.  So, actors, my apologies.  I now understand.  Someone once asked me, “How did you know your novel was really finished?” and the honest answer is that it’s not.  If I let myself, I could continue revising and rewriting for the next five years.  I am pragmatic enough to recognize that this wouldn’t be a very good use of my time, but a forced letting go isn’t quite the same thing as a peaceful/satisfied feeling of “hey, this is really good!  I’m finished!”  I am from a family, after all, where my brother once had to advise my sister that “sometimes, it’s okay to be sub-optimal” and that’s now become a kind of mantra for us.

This post in itself is evidence of why I’m not very good at self-promotion.  I read an article a couple years ago that said, “If you don’t believe in your work 100%, why would anyone else?”  That’s haunted me ever since because I don’t think there’s been anything in my life that I’ve done/created that I’ve believed in 100%.  Or even 90%.  I think I’ve made it into the 80th percentile a few times, but that’s about it.

Which is why it’s been such a tremendous blessing and challenge to have friends and family who believe in my work more than I do.  They’ve been announcing it on Facebook with all kinds of complimentary descriptions.  They’ve been telling their coworkers.  They’ve been calling me and e-mailing me about how excited they are for me.  The challenging part is that it’s been really hard for me to resist the impulse to qualify their enthusiasm with all the thoughts running through my head (“well, it’s not THAT good,” “You do realize I won’t ever even come close to being famous, right?” or, for those who haven’t read it yet and are expressing excitement, “It’s okay if you don’t actually like it”).  I’m the killjoy at my own party.  The blessing part is that, as uncomfortable as some of this is, these dear friends and family members are helping me be who I am, which is someone who loves to write and who, ultimately, wants to share that writing with others.

When I was in the eighth grade, someone talked me into playing the piano in the school’s talent show.  It was a piece with a lot of trills and runs that, because I was shaking so hard from nerves, I completely mangled.  I walked off the stage too miserable to even cry, and as I blindly pushed my way to the exit, my P.E. teacher, Mrs. Mahlstedt (who used to lead us in aerobic routines to Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” and “Papa, Don’t Preach” that left me feeling very conflicted), stopped me.  “Katherine!” she exclaimed.  “That was so beautiful!”  I thought she was just saying that because she was a teacher and that’s what teachers get paid to do–say nice things to miserable kids even if it means lying through their teeth.  But when she kept raving about my playing over the next few days, both to me and to others, it occurred to me that what I heard myself play might not have been the same thing she heard me play.  All I heard were my many many mistakes.  Mrs. Mahlstedt just heard some nice piano music and it made her happy.

Now I’ve got a whole community of Mrs. Mahlstedts, and while it’s hard–even a little painful–for me to prise a few fingers off my own view of myself and my work (I do so like to be in control, even if it’s a negative control), I am profoundly grateful for the love that forces me to.  True geniuses persist no matter what with their art, but I am no genius.  I am an ordinary person who needs others to believe in me, encourage me, support me, and remind me that even flawed things can bring others pleasure.  Thank God.

When I was a sophomore in college, the professor teaching my short story class invited me to be part of her advanced creative writing seminar, in which students would write a novella.  After an initial round of fits and starts that never got anywhere due to my paralyzing fear and perfectionism, my professor ordered me to stop thinking and just write.  In fact, she made me call her voicemail every night to report how many pages I’d written, something I now recognize as an act of above-and-beyond kindness on her part that I took for granted at the time.  By the end of the semester, I had a 120-page, single-spaced novella and a feeling of exhilaration and accomplishment like I’d never experienced before.  I remember watching the pages come out of the printer in the library’s computer lab and feeling the pile grow in my hands.  Among a number of critical comments from my professor, like “stop using exclamation points like a condiment” (apparently, my 19-year-old self thought they were needed to show strong emotion), was the concluding assessment that I really had something good and should “do something with it.”  Caught up in the glow of validation, I vowed that I would indeed do something.  But the glow faded, and the huge pile of pages in front of me that I had been so proud of became something unwieldy and overwhelming.  So I put it away somewhere and moved on to other things.  For about fifteen years.

About five years ago, I was reading a book of theoretical physics for laypeople called The Elegant Universe.  During that same period, I read a magazine article about some of the most haunted cities in Europe just before taking a nap.  During the nap, my subconscious made one of those “aha!” connections between the two things, and when I woke up, I had an idea for another novel.  My workplace at that time was a very unhappy place for me and many of my colleagues, and writing the first draft of this story I’d come up with during a nap was, at first, a kind of therapeutic escape.  Ten months later, I had a 98,000 word behemoth.  My friends were all very excited and, sweet as they were, talked about how it was going to be the next big thing, everyone would love it, etc.  Which was really nice, but also a complete fantasy.

I was starry-eyed and vain enough in the beginning stages to tackle the revision process with the belief that I had something that, while not the next bestseller, could get the attention of an agent and end up published by one of the big publishers. I did a couple rounds of catching typos, rewriting some dialogue, and cleaning up some awkward paragraphs and thought I was done.  I foolishly started querying agents at this point and was brought back to earth by a string of rejections.  Granted, rejections are par for the course when querying agents and trying to get out of the slush pile, but the actual experience of it made me take a harder, closer look at my manuscript and see it for what it really was–an early draft that needed considerable work.  One of the agents I had queried had been kind enough to write a personal note (a very rare thing from NY agents flooded with hundreds of queries a week) and make an editing suggestion about where my novel should really begin.  It meant cutting out the first two chapters entirely, which was a far more radical edit than I’d been prepared to consider before.  But at that point, I was ready, and the real work of revision began.

Over the next couple years, I labored over that manuscript, getting feedback from wherever I could–mostly friends, but also from a well-known YA author whose critique of my first 50 pages I won in an auction to raise money for an MFA program in Vermont.  I also entered it (midway through revisions) into the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest, made it to the quarterfinals, and got a review from Publishers Weekly that, while complimentary overall, had a couple critiques that also gave me direction for further revision.  I then started the query process again, and this time my results were a little better.  I was still getting rejections, but I was also getting more requests for full manuscripts.  But even though a few agents responded with personal notes (as opposed to the form rejection) telling me specific things they really liked about my novel, they all concluded that, in the end, it just wasn’t something they were passionate about and could represent.  After another hard look at the manuscript, I had a sense that while it was a much-improved version of the first manuscript I’d tried to shop around, it still wasn’t quite to the level it needed to be.  But I didn’t know how to fix it, so I put it away, not sure I’d ever return to it.

Last year, I decided to try again.  I recognized that I was learning valuable things through this laborious process, and there was some stubborn part of me that wanted to see this project through, to do what my 19-year-old self had failed to do.  To my relief and surprise, when I looked at the manuscript again after not reading it or thinking about it for an entire year, the flaws were obvious.  That year off had given me emotional distance, and I was able to ruthlessly chop passages and rework sections in a way that would have made my heart bleed a year prior.  Something else had changed as well–namely, my desire to continue querying agents and get published in the traditional way.  The thought of researching agents, crafting query letters, perfecting my pitch, etc. made me want to weep.  It wasn’t just the thought of more rejections–it was also the thought of how much time and energy it takes to do all of that.  As a full-time high school English teacher, I just don’t have a lot of free time and energy, and I didn’t want it to all get used up by the business of querying.  I wanted to use that time and energy to read and write.  And maybe hang out with some friends once in awhile.

The clear alternative, then, was to self-publish, something a couple of my friends had been encouraging me to do for a while.  Initially, though, I was deeply resistant to the idea.  It reeked of failure to me.  When you self-publish, you pay for everything yourself, which means no one has to choose you–there is no quality barrier, no ensured professional process, and thus there are a lot of really crappy self-published novels out there.  But, as my friends pointed out, there are also some good ones, along with some up-and-coming talents who are actively choosing to self-publish in order to preserve more control over their own work and profits.

When I really thought about it with an open mind, I realized that self-publishing was the best fit for me, especially since going the traditional route and getting an agent was no guarantee that any of the publishers would actually buy my manuscript and publish it.  And that even if they did, the process could take years.  I’m not trying to become a career novelist.  I don’t care about being a commercial success, which is a rare outcome even for most novelists published in the traditional way anyway.  I really don’t want to have to do publicity and promotion (most self-published authors do, but the appeal to me is that I don’t have to and no one can make me).  I don’t want a Twitter account.  I don’t want to interact with people on forums.  I just want to be done with this and have my novel available for the family members, friends, and handful of former students who’d want to buy it.  And if other people want to read it too, that will be great–the cherry on the sundae.

Even after recognizing that self-publishing probably was the best and most logical choice for me in the circumstances, it still felt kind of cheesy and embarrassing.  Determined to try and create a product as professional and polished as any traditionally published work, I hired a professional editor to help me iron out any remaining kinks in the manuscript.  I did considerable research on the best companies for formatting and publication, and I hired a professional graphic artist to design the cover.  I also submitted the finished manuscript to Kirkus Reviews despite the overwhelming tide of online opinion that it’s a terrible idea to do so given how mean Kirkus can be to indie novels (“indie” being the cooler/slicker term for self-published authors in recent years).  I was terrified of getting a disparaging review, but I was willing to take the risk because I was also deeply craving some type of industry validation of my work.  And I got it.  Kirkus awarded me one of their coveted starred reviews (WARNING: there are some major spoilers, so you might want to skip it if you intend to actually read the novel).

And yet, in some annoying way, that’s still not enough.  At church a couple weeks ago, an acquaintance who knew I’d been working on a novel asked when it was coming out (I love the unwitting optimism of people’s assumption that just because you’ve written a novel, it will automatically get published).  When I told her it would probably come out sometime in October, she got all excited and asked, “Who’s publishing it?”  I felt about ten inches tall when I said, “well, I am.”  She was very sweet about it, but I could see her expression change.  That was exciting, but less so.

In the end, I think my squeamishness is something that would probably be there even if I had managed to publish traditionally, because either way, I’m still exposed.  My work (which, in some ways, is hard to separate from me) will soon be out there at the mercy of anyone’s judgment, whether it’s a private thought or an Amazon review.  And that’s terrifying.  I might think that the validation of being vetted by an agent and publisher would offer more protection, but then I think of all the authors who get published traditionally and are savaged by critics anyway, or whose sales are so disappointing their publisher and agent drop them.  Whatever route it takes, the work is the work, and people’s responses to it aren’t going to be affected by who published it, for better or for worse.  I’m hoping for the better, but I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

Every day I make a to-do list, partly because I know I’ll forget stuff if I don’t write it down and partly because it satisfies that compulsive side of me that likes to see an actual list and each item crossed off after I finish it. It has become a sort of ritual for me over the years, and I find that when I make them I accomplish far more than the rare day when I don’t. Today I put ‘write’ as number one on the list, and now as the sun is setting and I’ve already crossed eleven other items off the list, I am finally getting to it. It was hard to start and even now that I am typing, it is hard to continue. All of this in spite of the fact that, theoretically, I love to write and I believe in making it a priority (it was #1 on the list!). Clearly, though, reality hasn’t quite matched up in the past two months since I’ve done so little, and the longer I go without writing anything, the harder it gets to start up again.

This past week I got a book called Manage Your Day To Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus & Sharpen Your Creative Mind. Even though it has the longest title ever, it’s a tiny book, and in just the first two chapters it’s (figuratively speaking) given me a brisk slap in the face, told me to stop moping and whining about not being able to write anything, and just get to it. One of the things this book reminded me of is that a regular habit of writing doesn’t mean that all the writing has to be good. In fact, writing daily means you’re going to be writing a lot of crap. One of the excuses I’ve been making to myself for not writing lately is that I am always so tired when I get home from work. Teaching 195 students and grading all their work every day can wear a person down. Like, really really down. Of course all I’d want to do is grab a tasty snack and watch some TV once I’m home.

I’ve realized, however, that what I’m specifically too tired to contemplate doing at the end of a long workday is produce quality writing. In my mind, that is daunting, if not flat-out impossible. But if all I have to do every day is sit down and write crap for twenty or thirty minutes, then there is no reason not to sit my butt down in a chair and get to it. Any of us can produce crap, especially when we’re tired. Of course, the idea is that by building a regular practice, eventually I wouldn’t just be producing crap anymore. Maybe a few days a month (and eventually maybe even a couple days a week), there will be something worthwhile, something I can develop, something I can turn into a scene or a chapter or a workable poem. But those workable bits won’t be there unless I am writing on a regular basis, and writing on a regular basis means being okay with writing stuff that stinks.

Another factor that has been paralyzing me is a sort of identity crisis with regards to what type of writing I want to do. Sometimes I enjoy writing poems. Other times I like writing essays (see: this). And then there’s that novel I wrote and an idea for another one that I keep obsessing about even though I don’t think I’m at all capable of pulling it off. Because I have so little time to devote to writing, it seems like I should just pick one genre and focus, otherwise I won’t really get good at any of them. But I can’t seem to choose, and this desire to pursue all of them while believing that it’s impossible to ever get good at any of them has led me to no writing. Again, this comes back to high expectations and a completely irrational notion that I must be excellent at something otherwise I am a terrible person and will disgust everyone around me. I am fully aware of how utterly ridiculous that notion is, not to mention discrediting to all the lovely and generous-hearted people I know, but fear is a hard bitch to kill.

Which brings me back to the whole crap thing. I’ve been trying like everything to avoid writing crap, and in doing so I’ve mostly just avoided writing at all or stopped myself mid-revision, mid-story, mid-process because I start to despair that it won’t ever be good enough. For what, I’m not sure anymore. What I am sure of is that it’s been really discouraging to have had so many weeks go by and have written so little, so I am trying something new: embracing the crap. Accepting that that’s what my writing is going to be sometimes, maybe even a lot of the time (including, quite possibly, this very entry—sorry, folks!), but at least I’m writing. At least I’m putting something down that wasn’t there before, which, I must admit, feels a lot better than wanting to write something so good that I don’t write anything at all.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I recently attended a poetry workshop led by poet (and Barrett Chair of Creative Writing at The College of the Holy Cross) Robert Cording.  Throughout week, he recommended a number of books and poets that could help us in learning and understanding how a good poem is crafted.  A few of the other attendees had their own recommendations as well, and I thought I’d compile a list of them here for anyone else who is interested.  Happy Amazon shopping!

The Poetry of Persuasion by Carl Dennis  (focuses on developing the speaker)

Fields of Light by Ruben Brower (for learning how to read poetry well.  This is currently out of print but is being re-issued in paperback this fall)

The Art of Syntax by Ellen Bryant Voigt (fairly self-explanatory; also on syntax–B.H. Fairchild recommended Virginia Tufte’s Artful Sentences:  Syntax as Style at another workshop a few years ago)

The Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus (for finding just the right word)

Poets to learn from:

Carl Dennis (for transitions)

Marilyn Hacker (for how to use rhyme and structure well)

Tony Hoagland (for using humor to undercut sentimentality)

Stephen Dunn (one of the “best writers of suburban messiness” & a “master at pointing out his own flaws”)

Donald Hall (for how to do a rant poem)

W.B. Yeats (for dialogue poems/anticipating and responding to an ‘opposing’ voice)

While I’m at it, I’ll put in a couple more that B.H. Fairchild recommended at a previous workshop that I’ve actually read:

The Poetry Home Repair Manual by Ted Kooser (a very accessible and enjoyable read; some good basics about writing poetry)

A Poet’s Guide to Poetry by Mary Kinzie (the opposite end of the spectrum from Kooser’s book–very dense and technical, it’s a kind of ‘graduate course’ in writing poetry)

If you have any additional recommendations, feel free to share.