"The key to success is staying organized."

It’s common knowledge among writers that the key to success is to just “stay in the room.” It certainly says something about the nature of this art when so many writers reluctantly drag themselves to their work. We resign ourselves to the commitment of writing like it’s a diet or a 12-step program.

But what happens after you make that commitment? You are seated in a solitary carrel at the library, or you’ve just returned home with your favorite caffeinated concoction. The cursor keeps blinking, but you have no tolerance for excuses and will not leave the room. Now what do you do?

Eleven months ago, I made the crazy or genius decision to quit my day job to pursue my career as a writer. After almost a year of drafting, re-writing, revising, plotting, outlining, reading my work, starting a writing group, scrutinizing the language in everything I read from my favorite fiction to the descriptions of dinner meals on restaurant menus, attending conferences and workshops and lectures and readings and tearfully thanking my family every day for their unwavering support, I have come to the conclusion that, after “staying in the room,” the key to success is staying organized.

Organization (or the lack thereof) means something different for each person, and of course individual writers have their own needs. I have found that, though I exist on a baseline of “organized clutter,” each of my projects demands different methods of organization. While short stories can happily co-exist in their own pocket folders, my blog posts are kept online in various states of completion. Longer projects, such as novels and collections, require file folders with tabbed dividers for each draft.

Though new technology boasts “an app for everything,” many writers are still unaware of computer programs designed to help them stay organized. Software like StoryMill, Scrivener, and yWriter can keep your desktop–both on the computer and your home furnishings–clutter free by streamlining all of your notes, drafts, character sketches, and bits of dialogue into a single program window. Many of these applications also boast tools like name generators and cliché meters, as well as progress reports to help you maintain your goals.

Screenshot of StoryMill writing software

Whether you are a writer of prose poems or radio drama, finding a way to get organized so you know the current status of your work—which story is plotted but still needs to be drafted, which chapter is polished but awaiting feedback from your trusted readers—is beyond beneficial. Maybe you require an ongoing to-do list, or use colored-coded post-its on your kitchen window. Maybe you develop a spreadsheet to help you track the scenes in your memoir that still need to be reworked. As your work advances from “in-process” to “ready for publication,” effective organization guides you through the multi-tasking required to submit and self-promote while also pursuing your next project.

Personally, I prefer to maintain ongoing “To-Write” and “To-Read” lists in the back of the journal I carry everywhere. Every month I set goals for my “Major Projects,” “Submissions,” “Business,” “Events,” and “Reading.” I try to attend at least one writing event, read two books, and update my blog twice a month while also working on longer projects and ensuring that I constantly have short pieces in an editor’s inbox for consideration. To make these goals more manageable, I select no more than five tasks for each week.

Whatever method you choose, organization will help you determine your next step and set reasonable goals which will make staying in the room a little less scary. And never forget to back up.

Art by Philip Bitnar.

You may already know, but there’s currently a debate raging about whether handwriting lessons should be taught to the children of today. It amazes me to think that the concept of penmanship might be lost on our future generations. As a result, the art of writing stories or poetry by hand may also be on the verge of extinction. On many levels, it makes sense. Writing and reading thrive in today’s digital age with the ease of reproducing and accessing content. Heck, I consider myself to be a relatively tech-savvy chick, and I find word processing to be convenient and fast. So why do I feel like something is wrong with this picture? It all seems logical, and yet why is it that when I get an idea for a story, I am more compelled to reach for my journal than to open my laptop?

What’s even more fascinating to me is that I’m not alone in this sentiment. There are hordes of writers who keep their notebooks so close that it’s practically another body appendage. I feel almost naked without mine within arm’s reach. Maybe this makes me old fashioned. And perhaps that’s true, but I also like to think I’m preserving the age-old tradition of writers throughout history. After all, it’s what connects me to Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde, Leo Tolstoy, and all of the other literary geniuses that produced some of the greatest timeless works still known today.

But there has to be more to it than that. I gave the matter some considerable thought as I scrawled the first draft of this article onto a page of my favorite suede-covered journal. There’s something visual, something tangible that appeals to me as I write in ink. Sure, the words are the same as they would be on a screen, but on paper, they’re in my own handwriting. As a person’s handwriting is as unique as a fingerprint, it dawned on me that I felt a sense of pride, of ownership that I wouldn’t have otherwise gotten from pressing buttons on a keyboard. And though my cursive isn’t always completely legible, it sometimes feels like I’m drawing. I enjoy the studio art aspect of it just as much as creating the words, and I admire those who can implement beautiful styles of calligraphy. In this way, writing becomes a compound art form, a bit like singing and dancing at the same time.

Your word processor wishes it was this cool.

I also noticed that when writing by hand, it forces me to think about each and every word as I take the time to form the curves of the letters. If I’m stuck and don’t know what to write, I like having the option to doodle instead of stare at a blinking cursor. If I find a mistake, I can make arrows or scribbles, which give the draft a more organic feel. I can write sideways or make notes in the corners. This is much easier to do on paper and gives me more control over my own thought process. Plus it’s way more fun. In fact, I often use unlined paper, which allows me complete freedom to be creative and express myself exactly as I want to in any given moment.

As an interesting parallel, my best friend, an amazing chef by day (musician by night) once engaged me in a discussion about cultures that eat entire meals by hand as opposed to using utensils. He said that biologically, using your hands to eat gives you a greater satisfaction with your meal, as it’s more interactive and less detached. Apparently, the brain registers the texture of the food as part of the entire eating process, in addition to taste, smell, and sight. I find this principle to be the same with my writing. I do feel a greater sense of completion and satisfaction when I write by hand, sensing the coolness of the paper under my wrist, the smoothness of the ink as it rolls out of the pen, the swerve of my hand as I shape each word. By comparison, my laptop, while I think it’s a fantastic invention, seems sterile. There’s no scent of paper or binding, and my brain, after typing so long no longer registers the texture of the keys. The font is not my own creation and sometimes seems foreign, disconnected.

Of course, writing by hand can only get you so far. At some point, you do need to type it up if you want to share it. But that may not be a bad thing. As Patrick Nathan discovered in his article on the beauty of using a typewriter, when you don’t use a word processor for your first draft, it forces you to do a revision when you finally do transfer your work to the computer. And hey, if your computer crashes later, you’ll always have a hard-copy first draft to refer back to. The important thing to remember is, there’s no right or wrong method or medium. Writing is hard work and a rewarding endeavor no matter which way you choose to do it.

Photos by bhav.bhav and L. Whittaker

Barista Publishing Corp.
5385 Pacific Coast Highway
Huntington Beach, CA 92605

Dear Fiction Editor:

Before considering The Cabin for publication, please understand that my writing is a bit rusty. You should know what happened last year, even if you don’t believe me.

You see, I’m a hemophiliac. I’ve never been “diagnosed,” but I was hospitalized after getting a paper cut. At first, one red drop mushroomed on my right thumb; however, once I realized I was cut, the blood streamed down my wrist and dripped from my elbow. I had seventy pages left of my Nicholas Sparks book, so I just bled into an empty coffee cup. By the time I finished, I swear the blood was spilling over the rim. Luckily, I dialed 911 before passing out. The operator sighed when she heard my voice.

All my lousy insurance covered was a four minute doctor’s visit. But it was just as well. Those nurses–I’m married–make it hard to concentrate in a hospital. That’s why The Cabin took so long to write.

And not writing makes me nervous. I bite my fingernails. I spit them, and they stick on the computer screen like crescent flakes on a windowpane. Then I nibble the thin layer underneath and dirty fragments fall between the buttons on the keyboard. I bite lower and lower every time I can’t think of a word. Have you ever seen someone without a thumbnail? It’s abject, that gooey, strawberry tissue blackened with burst vessels.

Halfway through writing The Cabin last year, I chewed down to the lunula–that’s the white part at the base of the nail. Clear fluid oozed over my laptop, and my right thumb got infected. The doctor called it “subungual abscess” and drilled a hole to drain the pus. After he bandaged it, I couldn’t type for two weeks. I never cleaned the keyboard. My fingers still stick to some buttons, so if this letter has typos, you’ll know why.

My poor right thumb. I’ve always mistreated it. When I was a kid, I sucked my thumb. During spelling tests, alone in a dark bedroom, when my brother made me watch Tales from the Crypt…I sucked with nervous abandon.

Then one day at McDonald’s, my stepdad yelled at me for being a messy eater. I had slopped extra ketchup on my hamburger, and the red paste had dripped on my hands and clothes. “Look at this waste,” he said loud enough for the fry-cook to hear. “Stupid kid.”

I quickly licked my fingers clean, sucking the last bit off my thumb. It tasted sweet on skin, much better than on salty French fries. I stuffed thirty packets of McDonald’s ketchup into my pockets. That night in bed, I squeezed every last one flat, dressing my thumb in tomato blood.

And there you have it. Instead of buying G.I. Joe action figures with my allowance, I bought 64 ounces of ketchup at Thrifty each week. My brother ate his ice cream while I spent those summer days sucking my ketchup Popsicle.

Eventually, my thumb became a piece of art. There was no dead skin or calloused edges. My tongue sculpted it into a soft pink, the tip was slick and round and shimmering in the glow of the television.

Mom didn’t intervene until after my first communion. “The body of Christ,” the priest had said. “Ah-mah,” I had replied with mouth-of-thumb. I removed it so the wafer could dissolve in my mouth. Mmm. . . It could’ve used ketchup, but when you haven’t eaten all morning, that stale bread tastes real good. Pop! Back went the thumb for dessert while God’s eyes watched from every pew.

Mom started painting my thumb with clear nail polish before school each morning. It tasted awful, particularly when sand and dirt clung to it. However, with extra ketchup, I sucked off the bitter coating by lunchtime.

Next, Mom Duct-Taped it. The kids at recess pretended to suck their thumbs. But I didn’t mind being made fun of. The real problem was that Mom had wrapped it with four layers of the thickest tape on the market. All day I gnawed that gummy onion but could strip only the top half before she picked me up. She rewrapped, and I had to start over.

Then on May 21st, 1992, I accidentally bit my nail instead of the tape. I call it a productive bad habit. Your nails have to be trimmed, right?

Yet, from all those years of sucking, I have a shrunken right thumb. Seriously, it’s noticeably small. When I meet people, I shake with my left hand. When I write at Starbucks, I sit on my right hand and type using my left. It takes longer this way, but at least the new girl behind the counter doesn’t know it’s small. The old cashier smirked when she saw it. I rearranged my writing schedule so I’m not there when she works.

My wife, Jennifer, says it’s cute. Instead of holding hands, she holds my thumb. She assures me it’s big. She caresses the knuckles with her fingers and then grazes her lips over the tip. I tell her to let go so I can go write.

Just to clarify, my thumb issues and hemophilia didn’t completely ruin my writing last year. Although work on The Cabin was delayed, I did revise some old short stories. I’m a mature writer now, so it’s easy to spot amateurish flaws, such as clichés which stick out like soar thumbs. Thank God you editors rejected them when you did! What if those clichés had been published?

I’m such a better writer now. The Cabin is fabulous, even if it took forever to write. You see, revision is like a mule tied to a stake: I circle round and round, thinking I’m doing something new every time. I replace old words with new ones, then delete those ones and retype the original words. Then, while I’m sitting back, pleased with my day’s work, I wonder if the whole section might be omitted. For example, this paragraph is exactly one hundred words up to this point. Go ahead and count. After changing it thirteen times, I’m now deleting the whole thing. It’s boring and unimportant. However, if you’re reading this, that means I retyped it again.

Here’s another one. In a story about a lawyer who goes to heaven called “Postmodern Christianity,” I edited forty pages for profanity and blasphemy. Why? Mom had come to stay with us, and she always inspects my stories. So I entertained her with Jennifer’s yoga videos while I escaped to Starbucks each morning to revise. However, somewhere in those two weeks, the lawyer became a prostitute and the title became “Mary’s Universal Flavor.” It was fine work. But once Mom learned I had a new story, she demanded to see it. She had started drawing up her will, so I censored it.

That’s when Starbucks really became my sanctuary. Jennifer is the only attorney in Orange County who doesn’t like coffee, so it’s a great place to focus on writing. My order is a venti caramel macchiato with extra whipped cream. I ask for skimmed organic milk because artists should have basic, ethical diets. Since the classic coffee cake is a tad dry, I drench it in ketchup. My stepdad said that people who put ketchup on everything are idiots, but I get a fruit and a vegetable serving, and he died from heart disease.

I’m on Twitter while I write. Multitasking separates the professionals from the amateurs. Everything important is streamed right to my laptop, so it’s easy to keep up with the contemporary publishing trends. I listen to my iPod simultaneously, drumming along with a pencil against my thigh. One time, during a Nine Inch Nails song, I hurt myself. I drummed so hard that I tore the skin.

That’s how I met Keez. He was sitting at the next table when it happened. Apparently, he overheard the 911 operator refusing to send me an ambulance. He whipped out a sewing kit from his fanny pack. I trusted him because he wore an Eagle Scout uniform, and those merit badges didn’t sew themselves on. Besides, even if the paramedics got me to the ER in time, I would’ve bled to death while they sorted out my insurance.

After borrowing a Bic lighter, he laid me on the restroom floor. He threaded a needle. “According to Yahoo! Answers dot-com,” he said, burning the metal point over the flame, “needles harbor spore-forming bacteria which can reproduce in the blood stream. I’m not saving you now if you’re just going to die from infection.” He rubbed soap in my wound. “It burns!” I cried, pounding the sticky tile. The sting was almost as bad as when I masturbated with shampoo when I was thirteen.

“Now this is gonna hurt,” Keez said, raising the needle. I took a deep breath. With my right hand, I clutched the porcelain rim of the toilet bowl. As the water warmed my fingertips, he pricked me.

Have you ever had your nipples pierced? Well, I have. My brother bet me that you could milk a man. He used a rusty bobby pin he found in the garage. I won six dollars. The supersize bottle of ketchup would’ve been worth it except Mom made me get a tetanus shot when she found out how I got the money.

The pain lasted much longer this time. When Keez pulled the needle through, the rough thread scraped underneath the skin. He zig-zagged, resubmerging the metal into my flesh each time. My shriek echoed off the walls. At some point, a man knocking on the door asked if I knew I was in the wrong restroom. He apologized when Keez said “We’re almost done.” Keez yanked the thread tight before snipping the end with the mini-scissors on his Swiss army knife.

He helped me up. “Way to go, big guy,” he said, high-fiving me. Our hands peeled off each other. I bought us the signature red velvet cupcakes and gladly let some ketchup make my hands even stickier.

Later that night, Jennifer cooked a Valentine’s Day dinner, and I told her all about him. “His real name is Keith, but he goes by Keez. He used to play bass in a ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic tribute band, but now he plays in a World of Warcraft guild. He’s worked on his novel for nine years and says it’s almost done. It’s about two FBI agents, Mullet and Ginger, who investigate alien abductions and the government conspiracy surrounding them. He calls it Paranormal Truth and says it’s inspired by real events.” She smiled. “Your friend sounds nice,” she said, touching my thumb. “I gotta go,” I said, pulling away. “He’s gonna show me Venus through his telescope.”

We started meeting at Starbucks each morning. It’s important to correspond with older, established authors, especially when they’ve got connections. His girlfriend, whom he met in a reptile enthusiast chat room, works at a Dairy Queen two blocks from The New Yorker. This is to inform you that there are other publishers interested in my novel.

I apologize, dear Fiction Editor. You’ve probably read Keez’s work. Back to why The Cabin took so long. Last January, or maybe the one before that, I finished it. Back then, though, it was Three Men Trapped in a Cabin: careers and wives had distanced three childhood friends, but they rediscovered one another while being snowed in. It was a happy story about the most important thing in the world: friendship.

Anxious, I put the manuscript in a shoebox and picked up Keez on route to the post office. While standing in line, I thought about the two hundred and fifty-six double spaced pages. My blood was in these pages. It was 100% genuine. No publisher could deny it. “Please let us sell your book,” they’d say and pump ketchup into my empty swimming pool: “You want mustard in the Jacuzzi, too?” Anything I wanted.

But when the teller weighed the manuscript, I shook my head at the numbers of the scale. “Twenty-one ounces? That’s going to be expensive to mail.” I returned the manuscript into the shoe box. “It’s got to be shorter. No publisher will want to print all those pages.”

On the drive home, I asked Keez how to reduce the page count. He replied that tag lines were unnecessary. “There’s no reason to write ‘she said’ or ‘the man said’ after every line of dialogue. It’s obvious a character is speaking aloud if you use ‘quotations.’” He bent his fingers when he said quotations.

Ignoring Jennifer’s “Congratulations, Mr. Author” cake, I removed every “he said” from Three Men Trapped in a Cabin. It dwindled by two and half pages. To save more weight, I used scissors to cut off the blank part of the last page.

My new technique was avant-garde, marketable, and environmentally sound. Everything you needed to win a Pulitzer. Yet, since you get one crack at publishing before you’re labeled a reject, I visited a Barnes and Noble creative writing workshop.

The attendees were amateurs. They all had day jobs. One man who wore scrubs and tennis shoes stressed about finding time while paying bills. David, the workshop facilitator, answered: “Make writing a habit no matter how busy you get.” He was an English professor at the local community college and edited their literary journal. I scoffed. I didn’t need some menial job so I could write.

“What should I write about?” a fat woman cried. David smiled. “Your job, your problems, your friends and family. Whatever is most important to you.”

I decided not to stay. These donkeys didn’t know anything. They’d probably try to steal my ideas. Before leaving though, I asked David to scan my manuscript since he probably had connections as an editor. He wrote a suggestion on the first page.

“You got ink!” Keez exclaimed the next day. He was right. David had written, “Two of the characters, Matt and Mark, are indistinguishable, not because it’s unclear which man is speaking, but because neither man has his own voice.” When I reexamined the dialogue, Matt’s first line, “This cabin is freezing,” was eerily similar to Mark’s “It’s freezing in this cabin.” Since they were the same flat character, I combined them into a super round character, Miguel, and aptly changed the title to Two Men Trapped in a Cabin.

My writing consumed me during these revisions. Without my noticing, Jennifer spent a week in San Diego defending some teacher in a sexual harassment case. I didn’t know I was alone until the manager of a 24-hour Walmart called saying Mom had been in the store for three days. “That’s the last time I drop her off,” I said.

When Jennifer came back, I announced that, for the first time in my life, I had mailed my writing. I had submitted to three different publishers. She kissed me and added something about her firm offering to make her a partner.

No responses arrived over the next few weeks, which meant my story had passed the preliminary editorial cuts. Every writer knows the worst stories are weaved out first. So while Two Men Trapped in a Cabin was in limbo, I pursued other talents, namely golf.

Golf and writing are similar; both are lucrative and easier than they appear, and all professionals lead friendly, leisurely lives. I haven’t followed the PGA too closely since dedicating myself to writing, but I’d say that Tiger Woods is the most respected man alive, besides, perhaps, Dan Brown.

One afternoon I got paired up with this older guy who coughed in my backswing on the first hole. Embarrassed, he apologized that he had just gotten over pneumonia and that it was his first day outside in two months. While bedridden, he had coughed so much that three of his ribs had cracked. “I’m better now, though,” he said tight-lipped around a Marlboro Red while limping up to the tee box. After he swung, he grimaced.

This continued throughout the round. Every time he hit his ball, he coughed and clutched his side while hobbling back to the cart. Luckily, the slow pace didn’t matter because we were the last golfers of the day and weren’t holding anyone up. In fact, the tempo was the perfect rhythm for me. Each drive, fairway shot, chip, and putt brought me closer to breaking my best score.

I had tuned out his coughing, that is, until the eighteenth hole where he took such a mighty hack that he collapsed. He lay on the grass, holding his chest and gasping for air. Sweat marbled his pale face. Then his eyes glazed over. He was dying right in front of me.

Of course this happened. I was this close to my best score, but what could I do? There comes a time when you learn what’s most important.

Without picking up my ball, I rushed to Starbucks and immediately informed each publisher that I was withdrawing Two Men Trapped in a Cabin. The story needed a third character: a dying man in need of medical attention. The ending needed to be depressingly realistic, not tied up in a happy bow. I worked until closing and then went to Denny’s for six hours before Starbucks opened back up.

The plot transformed. Instead of rekindling friendships, now two men argued while their wounded friend bled to death. I typed the last line: “At that moment, blame was more important than telling their beloved friend they loved him.”

When I sat back, my vision was blurry. I had typed for twenty-six hours straight without distraction. There wasn’t a fingernail on the keyboard. It was one of those grooves where you don’t realize how hungry or tired or horny you are. Your hands can’t keep up with your mind. You don’t stumble for the right word; it comes to you like that perfect Tetris piece.

Then I reread the entire novel, pretending I was an editor.

It’s absolutely terrible. None of it makes sense. The protagonist is unlikeable. There is no feeling when the man dies. The writing is bad. Why aren’t there any taglines? The story is contrived. You clearly haven’t suffered. You live in a six bedroom house in the hills with your wife. You have to have a shit life to be a writer. All you have is a shit thumb.

As I bit hard on my nail, Keez walked into Starbucks. “Big news, buddy,” he said. “I’m moving to Brooklyn. I’m finally meeting my girlfriend. I’m gonna work as a chief distributer for The New Yorker and some other big-time publications. Check out my office!” But he must’ve showed me the wrong photo because the picture was of a magazine stand next to a subway entrance. “I listed you as a reference,” he said proudly.

The news didn’t upset or inspire me. My life was a waste. Remember when I said that I’m like a mule tied to a stake, circling round and round? Well, it’s much worse than that. At least a mule doesn’t consciously do it. I’m the guy who goes by himself to Disneyland on Christmas so he can ride Space Mountain over and over without getting off because the crowds are at home.

I chewed my thumb driving home. When I turned on to my street, I ripped the nail clean off. The whole thumb was next. My teeth grinded the knuckle. I’d have done it too, if it weren’t for the two cops standing on my front porch. What’d they want? I’d probably forgotten to pick up Mom again.

“Mr. Schulzé,” the female cop said, walking toward me. “Yesterday, a man died of congested heart failure on Strawberry Farms Golf Course. The employees informed us that you were golfing with him. . . Are you bleeding?” Her partner examined me. “Jesus,” he said. “This looks serious. You need medical attention right away.”

I said that an ambulance wouldn’t come. I wasn’t a hemophiliac. I just made that up as a sob story to slap on a book jacket. But I couldn’t even make up a story that the 911 operator would believe, let alone a fiction editor.

The cops drove me to the emergency room anyway. Thirty-eight stitches, an acrylic nail, some drugs, and a lumpy hospital bed for the night. They questioned me the next morning. “We know there’s nothing you could’ve done. He would’ve died anyway, but why didn’t you report what happened?”

“Honestly?” I said. “At that time, I didn’t want to waste the story.”

The cops weren’t satisfied, and neither was the dead man’s wife who filed a criminal suit. Jennifer was my lawyer. She held my thumb in the courtroom the day the judge read the settlement. “For the criminal charge of negligent manslaughter, you will not be prosecuted,” he said. “However, for your gross incompetency and incredibly poor judgment of priorities. . . Twelve months house arrest.” He slammed his hammer. Jennifer smiled. She’s a good lawyer.

Jennifer declined her promotion to be partner. Instead, she started working from home. Every night, she strokes the soft scar tissue where the stitches used to be while we watch romantic comedies. I like the genre. I even wrote something about a honeymoon in the mountains, throwing in some dark humor to make it less conventional.

We take Mom to mass on Sundays. Afterwards, they get manicures while I read The New Yorker. I don’t need a manicure. I use the nail clippers on the Swiss Army knife that Keez sent me.

Writing at home is the best. I stay there all day, kind of working. . .But I’m really just spending time with my wife.

I hope you like The Cabin. It’s a simple story with simple prose. Every word is important. And if they’re not, I’m moving on. I can’t waste my whole life trying to write one story with one hand.

You know what? My thumb isn’t so small after all.

Sincerely,

Michael J. Schulzé

Michael J Schulzé: I’m from Orange County, California, but I currently live and write in Xinzheng, China. Their government has forbidden me from listing my best seller publications–I swear–so, if “Cover Letter for The Cabin” isn’t enough, visit michaeljschulze.weebly.com for more embarrassing stories.

Photo by Hello Turkey Toe.

Writer’s block sucks. So that’s why when it happens, it’s critical to create an environment for yourself that is conducive to generating inspiration. However, if you’re anything like me, you may be hit with a fleeting idea at the most frustratingly inopportune time. This seems to happen to me consistently when I’m in the shower. I’ll get a great opening line for my next chapter, or premise for a new story, and each time, I swear to myself I’ll write it down as soon as I dry off. Well, by the time I’m done fixing my hair, putting on my face cream, etc., the thought of writing it down is completely gone, along with the idea itself. Then when all’s said and done at the end of the day, I’m left with another blank page and a sense of defeat.

The shower isn’t the only unfortunate place of lost inspiration for me. This also happens while I’m driving alone, while I should be concentrating in my little office at work, or while I’m trying to fall asleep at night, snug as a bug under my gazillion blankets. I do carry a small journal around in hopes to catch at least some of these ephemeral blips of imagination, but who wants to get up and turn the lights back on once they’re comfortable in bed? And I’m not sure about you, but I’m not about to hop out of the shower with shampoo still in my hair to type out an idea and short circuit my computer in the process. Not to mention I’d run the risk of getting fired or causing an accident should I even attempt to record my ideas while working or driving.

So what’s a writer to do? Well, I’ve actually attempted a few potential solutions such as scribbling a note to myself on my steam-covered mirror or writing in soap on my shower door. I’ve also been known to toss something (usually my empty glasses case) onto the center of my bedroom floor if I get an idea in the middle of the night in hopes that upon seeing the displaced object in the morning, I’ll remember that I had an idea that required jotting down. However, none of these solutions seemed to pan out very well until I realized an interesting pattern. All of these missed opportunities seem to occur when I’m confined in a small area, left to my own devices with no people or distractions, where my mind is free to wander as it pleases. It’s usually a place where I’m relaxed, yet still alert. So then I thought, instead of going crazy trying to capture all the ideas in these inopportune places, why not recreate the type of setting in which these ideas occur in the first place? Essentially, I’d need to enclose myself into a metaphorical box in order to think.

Here’s what I recommend, and mind you this may sound absurd, but if you’re really stuck, it might just work. Find yourself a comfortable bean bag chair or cushion and shut yourself into a closet or tiny isolated room. It should have little to no decoration, which will prevent you from being distracted by your surroundings and will instead force your mind to begin wandering. If you don’t like your closet, try sitting under a sheet or in a dry bathtub (water off, of course). Perhaps go spend a few hours outside in a tent or in your car. If you want, be completely literal and go find a giant box (say from a refrigerator or washing machine) and hang out in there for a while. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so get creative and have fun with it. Don’t be afraid to be weird. If anyone asks, just explain that you’re a writer. After all, everyone knows that artists usually have some streak of eccentricity. Embrace it!

Put in some earplugs, or put on some music. Do some deep breathing, yoga, or meditation. Relax. Be sure that you are confined, but comfortable. Let your mind be free to go wherever it wants, and see where it takes you. Be patient and stay as long as it takes. Then as soon as you get a glimpse of an idea, open your computer and fire away, no matter how terrible you think it is. Don’t stop or look back, just keep going until you work the writer’s block clog out of your system.

And if, after all this, you find that it doesn’t help your process, you’ve at least tried something new and can write about what it’s like to be confined in an odd place. Good luck!

Photo by Tony the Misfit

A not-so-recent article in the New York Times raised the question of the writer’s isolation, going so far as to say we all belong behind bars. That, apparently, is the only environment in which we’re capable of creating our masterpieces. Regardless of whether or not we agree with this statement, it goes without saying that there’s something to be said for distraction. In Stephen King’s On Writing, he claims that if there’s anything a writer needs it’s “a door which you are willing to shut.” “The closed door,” he adds, “is your way of telling the world and yourself that you mean business.”

But even behind the safety of that closed door, if you’re taking King literally, is your writing machine. Given that we’re already well into the second decade of the twenty-first century, I’m willing to bet that your writing machine is also an e-mail machine, a blog machine, a magazine and newspaper machine, a Facebook machine, a Twitter machine, and in some cases a pinball machine. Even if the door to your office or bedroom or walk-in closet is shut tight and the cracks have been stuffed with strips of foam, the metaphorical door is still open. The e-mails are still coming. The tweets are still tweeting. Your friends are still unfriending you over all the gay rights stuff you’ve been posting¹.

For most of us, writing is our core interest. It’s our passion, and every day we make more changes to our lives until they’re structured around first drafts, revisions, cover and query letters, class proposals, etc. If this sounds unfamiliar to you, I hope you’re enjoying your brief foray into an entertaining hobby before you move onto something more fanciful, possibly involving toothpicks. If this does sound familiar—excruciatingly so—then you’re also aware of the corollary truth about writers: the act of writing is agony. Of course there’s something exhilarating about it—something riveting—but if it were all roses we wouldn’t be notorious procrastinators. King advises writers to set a goal for themselves—a daily minimum—and to lock yourself in that closed room until you meet that goal. It sounds like punishment, when he says it, and in a way it is punishment, but without a doubt the kind that teaches us a lesson, that helps us grow. If we get one or two thousand words out of that confinement, we can’t hate ourselves for the pain we went through.

The problem, of course, is that metaphorical door left wide open, all manner of Internet blowing in with the leaves.

Over a year ago, I was trolling the basement rooms of an antique shop here in Minneapolis. I have a penchant for buying silver² and was in the market for a butter dish. What I came across instead was a 1940 LC Smith Super-Speed—a behemoth of a machine that weighed a good 45 pounds. The ribbon was completely spent, but otherwise all the keys worked and the little bell rang every time I reached the end of a line. I had a friend with me and she told me buying a typewriter was the stupidest waste of $40 she could imagine. I ignored her, of course, and brought it home with a smile on my face. A few weeks later, after my ribbon had arrived in the mail, I used it to type a letter to my mother.

That’s what it was, primarily, for the first year I owned it—a letter writing machine. I love getting letters in the mail, and part of getting them is to be sure you send them. I had fantasies about using it for fiction. I imagined hauling it up to a cabin somewhere and writing a novel over the winter. I’m a romantic. Fault me for it if you wish. Even with that temptation, I kept writing all my fiction on my laptop.

I’m not sure what exactly triggered the decision to finally try it out for fiction. It was probably around the time when I decided that every single thing I wrote—120,000 word novel or 500 word character vignette—would require a completely rewritten second draft. Everything I did would be retyped, no matter what it was, for the sake of getting the damn thing right. With that thought at the forefront, I decided I’d give the typewriter a shot for my newest short story. It would be a shorter one—that I understood—and I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted it to look like. The results were startling.

I’m not a very fast writer. A first draft of a short story can take me a week or two, depending on how engaged I am. Other writers may find my predicament familiar: you finish a scene—even a short one—and lean back away from your computer like you’ve just run around a lake. The idea of jumping right into the next scene makes you sigh—you literally sigh, there at your desk—and instead you get up and go rummage through the kitchen, because surely there’s some coffee left in the pot.

What happened when I wrote at my typewriter was the exact opposite of this, meaning I didn’t even realize that time was passing. I sat down on a Saturday morning and wrote 3,000 words with a three minute break in the middle to get a glass of water. The whole story—and I’d written the whole story—took 90 minutes. Sure it was rough—sure it had its share of typos and crossed out sentences³—but the first draft was fucking done, almost like writing was something that didn’t require a little sweat, that didn’t feel like punishment. It was even fun, sitting there clacking away and listening to the bell ding every few seconds.

I wrote first drafts for five new stories in July. That’s a pace completely alien to me, meaning I have never worked that fast in my life—not even when I was in college and had no apparent familiarity with any tense but the present4. Four of these five drafts were done on my typewriter, averaging 1,500 to 2,000 words per hour. Again—these are only first drafts, and a good strong rewrite is needed for all of them—but you get the point. For the way I work, I’ve reached an ideal solution, using a machine that lacks not only Wi-Fi but every other use imaginable other than putting words on a page (quite literally, as it turns out). In fact I’m such a convert that I recently acquired another typewriter—a 1933 Royal Portable that’s so impossibly cute than I get all giggly every time I walk by it in the dining room. With the Royal, I’m one step closer to making my dream of writing a novel at that snowed-in cabin a reality. I am, by the way, planning on writing the next novel on a typewriter. If that seems crazy, remember that I wrote my first draft for my first novel in three months, going between a desktop and a laptop. I imagine I can one-up myself with my newfound process. If that’s the case, I’ll be sure to brag about it.

***
1: “Can’t you just chill out and post pictures of cats and Lady Gaga like the rest of us?”

2: ie: trays, teapots, coffee urns, sugar bowls, serving platters, and any other variety of early 20th century paraphernalia that would go a long way in hosting a brunch replete with catty homosexuals, strong coffee, and ouefs en meurette.

3: The keyboard on your run-of-the-mill vintage typewriter is not the same as the keyboard on your run-of-the-mill modern computer. Shift+8 = apostrophe, for example. Shift+2 = quotation marks. Lowercase L = the number 1. Enough said.

4: Just to be clear: I was writing garbage in college. Garbage. But we all have to start somewhere.

Of course a drawback to maintaining a public image while working on your novel is the fact that often you have no idea what you’re saying and therefore often appear to contradict yourself and look foolish. What you have to realize is that there’s nothing you can say with any certainty, especially something like “The novel is finished.”

Because it isn’t finished, the novel. That’s exactly what I’m saying. That, at least, I can be certain about.

The realization came at two separate moments, in two very different stages. Sometime in June I became all too curious and picked up Rebellious Bird—this manuscript I’d queried eight literary agents about early in the year—and read through the first few pages. It was like encountering this friend from high school who’d been tolerable then because you too were a loser, but now, with so much behind you, his presence had become shameful. It didn’t at all seem like a book I could’ve written, but this was all due to very minor things. I started editing the novel and found that only a few alterations could make all the difference in the world, could breathe life into it and make it less formal and stuffy, because it was formal and stuffy, like it was trying to be another writer’s book. So that’s what I started doing, reading through it, picking apart sentences, experimenting with language.

Meanwhile I’d given the book to my significant other. This was back in February or March, I don’t remember. He’s not a literary person, meaning getting him to read fiction is sometimes like convincing compassionate and educated human beings to vote for Michele Bachmann. So he read it slowly—and this was my first warning. By the end of July he’d finished it, and we sat down in the back yard to talk about it.

Taking criticism from a loved one is no easy task. A writer I know has a longstanding friendship overseas. They’ve known one another for over a decade—she’s always recounting fond memories of their apartment in Chicago, years ago—yet when it comes time for them to edit each other’s work, they stop speaking. They stay out of touch for weeks. My first reaction, when my partner and I discussed my novel, was rage. You didn’t read it closely, I was thinking. You missed the underlying themes. You didn’t give it the attention it deserves. Instead of saying any of this I sat there fuming, listening to him tell me that he wasn’t invested in two of the three central characters, that there should be tension where there isn’t, etc. The novel, he said, is stretched out over too long a time span, and it suffers.

An instinct you may have, as a writer, is to try to process criticism as it’s happening. You may hear something and instantly try to think of a solution. What’s terrifying is when you reach the point where everything you’re hearing is overwhelming, when there is no solution—at least no easy one. That’s the point at which you shut down and give yourself over to the moribund arc of the fabled literary bipolar disorder.

When the anger faded, I was crushed.

Here was a book I’d worked on for thirteen months straight. Here were six drafts of varying severity that were torn apart and stitched back together. Here were characters I’d grown to love and admire, and most of them elicited nothing more than apathy. How could I have wasted so much time?

But the time wasn’t wasted—not at all. After we came back inside and I moped for a while I came to the realization that this was only my first attempt at a novel, that while I’d written dozens of short stories I’d never completed anything like a novel before, so how could I expect to have done it without flaw or failure?

I started thinking about it in the shower, the novel. I started coming up with all these solutions—these avenues to explore, these changes. Without any warning I was no longer depressed—not even upset—but invigorated. More than invigorated—you could even call it ecstatic. I had an opportunity again. The novel had more potential. I could be creative again. I could pay attention to all the nagging little voices that had been in the back of my head for months. They’d been there, the voices, and they’d been saying all those same things that Michael said, and I hadn’t listened. I could take the novel and make it cohesive, make it fluid. I could write a better fucking book, and that thought gave me an entirely new outlook on life (as dramatic as that sounds).

Since that day at the end of July I’ve been pecking away at a revised outline for the novel. A lot of the same scenes are there, at their root, but they’ve been altered to better fit into the story as a whole. One character’s sexuality has been flipped, and suddenly he’s sympathetic, while at the same time giving more depth to another character. I feel like I’ve been freed from the confines of the novel I wrote last year, and that now I can use my imagination. There’s nothing like it, imagination. I recommend it.

The next few months are going to be given over to rewriting. I have a six page outline with extensive notes. The first six chapters have already been revised (they didn’t change much), and the twelve chapters after that will all be rewritten. Sometimes you have to realize—you being the amateur novelist—that nothing you put on the page is permanent. Sometimes you have to get over that fear of changing everything, because once you change everything, you understand just how magnificent it is to have that freedom.

I’ve missed writing my novel, and I’ve missed talking about it. Let’s make the last month of summer the most literary month of all.

***
Photo by Casey David

Photo by John Loo[/add_caption_link]

One of the questions that torments me as a writer—and trust me, there are many—is the question of free will. Do I believe that individuals have the freedom to choose their own destiny? Or do I believe in a deterministic view, which holds that social, psychological, and economic realities are the shaping force behind our actions and desires?

I am partial to the latter view. While in my daily life I make choices—what to wear, what to eat for breakfast, what to read—I am aware that ultimately these are not really choices at all. I wear what I wear because I am offered particular items at the clothing stores where I can afford to shop. I eat what I eat because of how I was raised (in a socio-economic milieu that valued flax seed over Doritos, for instance.) I choose my reading based on what’s available, what I think I should be reading in order to keep up with my peer group, as well as which books play into the fantasy of the person I’d like to become (a fantasy to which I’m drawn because of the values and norms of my class, social location, etc.)

These ideas may be clear enough when we talk about buying things. But what about when we talk about the more complex aspect of morality? If you can believe that the small choices I make about my clothing and breakfast are a product of unseen cultural/economic forces, then does it follow that my code of ethics is derived in the same way? That an individual’s morality is not his or her own, but rather a manifestation of society at large?

So. How does this relate to writing? Well, this is where it gets tricky. If my job as a writer is to tell good stories, to examine the individual in order to expose the universal, how do I reconcile that with my view of human nature as culturally and economically determined? How can I allow my characters to choose, when, in fact, I believe the very idea of “choice” is artificial?

For answers, I turn to the experts. One of the finest examples of a novel that incorporates the deterministic view of human nature is Richard Wright’s Native Son. Here we meet Bigger Thomas, a poor black teenager who gets a job as a chauffeur for a rich white family. Bigger is out of his element and vacillates constantly between fear and rage, both leading up to and subsequently after one of the most violent and gripping scenes I’ve ever read.

Wright’s prose is beautiful and Bigger is a complex character with whom it is easy to sympathize. Yet what I admire most about this book is Wright’s ability to portray Bigger as both a person and a social construction, his actions and behaviors both his own and also a product of a violent and unjust society.

Here is Max, Bigger’s lawyer, at the end of the book:

Do we think that the laws of human nature stopped operating after we had got our feet upon our road? Have we had to struggle so hard for our right to happiness that we have all but destroyed the conditions under which we and others can still be happy? This Negro boy, Bigger Thomas, is a part of a furious blaze of liquid life-energy which once blazed and is still blazing in our land.

Note how Max does not simply describe Bigger as having “a furious blaze of liquid life-energy,” but rather being “a part of” it. Thus Bigger’s actions come to be seen as part of a historical continuum. Additionally, Max does not talk about making Bigger or people like Bigger happy. He instead discusses “the conditions under which” people can be happy. In other words, individual happiness is contingent upon social conditions.

Another great writer whose work occasionally expresses a deterministic view is James Baldwin. While Wright and Baldwin disagreed on political grounds (Wright was a member of the Communist Party, Baldwin was not; Wright wrote Native Son, Baldwin criticized it heavily in Notes of a Native Son) both men were committed to social justice and expressed their commitment in their writing.

Here is the narrator in Baldwin’s short story, “This Morning, This Evening, So Soon”:

…For everyone’s life begins on a level where races, armies and churches stop. And yet everyone’s life is always shaped by races, churches, and armies…The habits of public rage and power would also have been our private compulsions…

Incidentally, both Wright and Baldwin emigrated to Paris in the early 20^th century. It’s no wonder: It is in Paris where we have the birthplace of the novel as social criticism.

In the 19^th Century, Honore de Balzac was one of the first writers to popularize the form we think of today as Social Realism. He did this not only by taking us into the squalid streets of Paris, the rickety carriages and the impoverished boarding houses. He emphasized a deterministic view of human behavior. In Balzac’s world, characters are not motivated by “free will”, their “choice” to be “greedy” or “bad” or “selfish”. Rather they are the products of a corrupted society, one which values superficial displays of wealth over providing opportunities for the poor.

From Le Pere Goriot:

To an observer, and Eugene had quickly become one, her words, her look, and tone of voice were a historical summary of the character and habits of her caste. He recognized the iron hand in the velvet glove, the egoism and selfishness under the breeding, the wood under the polish, the WE, THE KING that extends from the plumes of the throne to the crest of the smallest gentleman.

Here we see how the woman’s gestures and words are not unique to her but rather an expression of her class. Thus the scene accomplishes two things at once: We get tension between two central characters, plus a bit of social context thrown in. If we are to take this novel as real social critique, we see that the ills of society do not fall upon a handful of “corrupt” or “greedy” individuals, are rather shaped by norms and institutions at large.

If we head over to Normandy a few decades later, we see something similar in Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. Here Flaubert gives us one of the most reprehensible and unlikable female characters in the history of literature. Emma Bovary is selfish, spoiled, narcissistic, and cruel. She would sooner see a young boy lose his leg than suffer a moment longer in a boring marriage. She squanders the family’s wealth on petty, superficial things. She abandons her child. She deceives her husband. She drags her family into ruin, destroying both her husband’s life and her daughter’s future.

Perhaps one of the reasons this book was so controversial when it originally appeared is not because of Emma’s wanton sexual escapades, but because of what her reckless narcissism reveal about the society in which she was created. Just as Bigger Thomas is a construction of racist attitudes and institutions, so Emma Bovary is a product of sexist norms that fed her luscious fantasy life while keeping her from social mobility.

Indeed, in the 1949 film version, James Mason plays the role of Flaubert on trial. When asked how he could create such a despicable character as Emma Bovary, he replies simply that he did not create her. Society created her.

When I said earlier that I was tormented, I suppose I meant it in the best way possible: I want my characters to be small in that they are recognizable and knowable to the reader. Yet I want them to be big too, larger than life, as large as the social institutions and ideological principles that created and shaped them. Bigger.

What do you think? Do you struggle with portraying social forces within your narrative? Do you think your character’s actions are motivated by social norms? How does this affect your writing?

Photo by Emilian Robert Vicol[/add_caption_link]

Although one doesn’t necessarily want to quote Tom Wolfe if one can help it, in this case it’s rather irresistible:

That’s the kind of thing writers always want to know: What are other writers doing?

Undoubtedly it’s one of the symptoms of such a solitary line of work. Being so alone we want to know about the habits of other writers—their fixations and trials, their daily spectra of emotions and thought processes. It may be that struggling and aspiring novelists suffer from this voyeurism more than others. For the purposes of this experiment that is what we will assume.

Over at Writer Unboxed, author Lydia sharp has proposed the “7 R’s of Positivity for the Unpublished Novelist.” She encourages us to—among other things—remind ourselves of our successes: “Reminding yourself of the good others have seen in your work is an effective way to squelch any self-deprecating thoughts before they become so ugly that you consider giving up.” She begs us to reignite our passion: “Don’t underestimate how a small shift in perception or viewpoint can light a proverbial fire under your ass and put you back in the race.” In addition, we are to rejoice, redirect, remove, redefine, and rejuvenate. These are all necessary steps toward a healthy mental state for the unpublished novelist. Speaking from personal experience, it’s painfully easy to spiral into a detached and melodramatic state in which all you can feel is your heart pounding, in which you’re screaming as loud as you can and no one is listening or even turning around, in which you’re absolutely convinced that you’ll never—not for the rest of your life—see an acceptance letter of any kind. We all have to maintain sanity and Sharp’s simple list goes a long way to remind ourselves of that requirement, though she forgot something that might be too obvious to even mention. But we’re going to mention it anyway.

It’s crucial that we relax. Waiting for responses from agents and literary magazines and awards committees and in some cases graduate schools it’s no surprise that our hearts do what they do. You’re all too familiar with it, that sensation of your blood turning to mercury and tightening up all the already too tight places in your chest. Maybe today will bring good news, you’re always thinking, and when you do receive a response the rejection fills you with inconsolable doubt. You obsess over it, placing so much importance on the outcome—you absolutely must sell this book. You absolutely must find your way into a good magazine. The alternative is failure, is an eternal day job so disparate from the things you love that driving in every morning ties another knot in your noose. You convince yourself that your life is an unhappy one—all because of this seeming stagnation.

Over the first weekend in April I went backpacking on the north shore of Lake Superior. Our cabin was a backpack in only site and was built right on the shore of a small frozen lake. I woke up early the next morning. The woodstove was still warm. There was snow coming down over the lake. I went outside and stood on the porch and just watched it. There are so many clichés built around the idea of getting out of the city, of getting away from your life, but of course most clichés become so because of some element of truth. In the complete silence looking out over that lake I asked myself if it was really worth getting so bent out of shape over something like a query letter or a short story submission. When I came back inside I read for a while by the fire, then wrote a few pages in my journal. I realized, by some miracle of the heart, that I need to stop doing this to myself. I need to relax. We all need to relax.

Of course by relax I don’t actually mean relax. I mean that we must change our outlook and perception of this whole process. In truth, what do we find most relaxing? When are our minds at their most recumbent yet fulfilled? It’s not the business side of writing—not at all. Do any of us really enjoy writing query letters? That involves some kind of extroverted act—a form of reaching out to another in such a direct way that it feels alien. What we prefer is the more indirect route—the separation of communication. There’s nothing we writers love more than writing. There’s nothing more relaxing than pushing sentences across the page. That’s what we need to do.

As mentioned above, relaxation is simply a state of mind. It’s the absence of worry and anxiety. It’s the moment at which you remember that there’s only one thing you can do and that is write. Once a short story leaves your desk—once a query letter meanders off into the ether—the only thing left to do is turn back in on yourself, scour the dark places of your heart for inspiration, and keep dragging sentences from its depths. Even if the work you’re sending out is rejected you must remember that one doesn’t become a better writer by wringing one’s hands and imagining all the possible consequences of a little envelope in the mail. One becomes a better writer by writing. So go back to your desk and get creative. You’ll be happier that way anyway, and what matters more than happiness? Even if it takes ten or twenty years to get that acceptance letter, at least you’ll be doing something you love all the while. So relax. Shut out what you can’t control and get back to work. It’s what we live for.

A few years back, I won a short story contest. So excited was I that once my hands quit shaking, I picked up the phone and called my brother. “Hey!” I said. “Remember that anti-____ phase you went through in your twenties? You know where you had very strong feelings about ____ and you did all these terrible things like _____? And mom and dad were really worried because you ____, and then you _____ and the police had to _____?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said. “What about it?”

“Well guess what! I wrote a short story about it and I won a prize!”

Silence.

“Isn’t that great?” I asked. “Aren’t you happy for me?”

Silence. Then, “I really wish you wouldn’t use my life in your writing.”

Boom. In a single instant, my first big break as a writer turned out to be nothing but heartbreak. I hung up the phone deflated, ashamed, and frightened of what lay in my bedroom upstairs: an entire manuscript of short stories detailing everything from my brother’s experiment with ______ to his obsession with _____, and the long phase where my whole family had to ______ to help him deal with his ______.

A mere child in the ways of the world, sensitive to every ripple in the pond of my literary creations, I stopped writing about my family. I moved on to other topics, larger social issues like criminal justice, and imaginary people I had never met in person and so could never actually hurt.

But recently, something happened. I got older. I got wiser. And after seven years of pounding my head for material, I had an epiphany: My family can suck it.

I mean, what’s the point of being a writer if not to let your resentments build over a lifetime so that you may one day slay your family members through the refracted mirror of art?

So dear hard-working writers, you loving siblings, devoted sons and daughters, so careful to toe the line, ever so protective of your human relationships, I say, get over it. It’s just family.

If you’re not sure how to proceed, here are some fun and easy things I’ve done. You may want to try them too:

Mother

I have a great mother. As a child, she bathed me, clothed me, and even fed me on alternating Mondays. But after a lifetime of protecting her feelings and safe-guarding her privacy, I’m done with the good daughter thing.

These days most of my short stories feature mothers that are monsters. They eat their children. Their skin is made of rippled leather and they have bloody yellow fangs for teeth. Smoke oozes out of their eyeballs while black ink dribbles out of their ears. Their voices rub like sandpaper on an open wound. Their breath smells like death.

When my mother reads these stories, she always thinks it’s about her, and by extension, that I am making a statement about my own childhood.  “Was it that bad?” she whimpers.

For the sake of playing along, I say, “Don’t worry, mom. It’s not based on you.”

“Really?” she says.

Then I tell her, “No. I was just kidding. They’re all based on you.”

“The lizard mother who feeds her children shredded glass and then lights them on fire? That one’s based on me?”

I nod. “That one especially.”

Father

Men are notoriously delicate creatures. While it may seem that their broad shoulders and hard biceps function as shields against emotional pain, most men are easy to make cry. My dad is no exception. Throughout my childhood, I often watched him weeping at the dinner table. “Dear Lord,” he would cry. “What have I done?” Sometimes just looking at me would set him off: “When will this agony be over?”

Because of my father’s extreme “nervous condition,” I have tried hard to protect him from my own self. But I’m not getting any younger. If I want to make it as a writer, I’ve got to tell the truth. So I’ve decided it’s time for my father to know the real me: Becky Tuch, Drug, Sex, and Yogurt Addict.

Since my dad insists on reading everything I write, last week I went ahead and sent him my latest work of autobiographical fiction. It’s a short memoir/novel excerpt called, “My Life of Constant Drugs, Sex, and Yogurt.”

Personally, I think it’s one of my better works. Where else will you find two transgendered space aliens having sex with a curly-haired heroin-junkie, while snorting cocaine off the lid of a yogurt container?

When I called him yesterday, our conversation went like this:

“Hey, Daddy! Did you read the thing I sent you?”

“Um…yes…sweetheart.”

“Well? What do you think?”

“I…It’s very good, sweetie…You’re really…growing as a writer …Your style is…um…”

“You hate it.”

“I don’t hate it. I just wonder…is this based on…?”

“Don’t worry, Dad! It’s just fiction!”

Then I hung up the phone. The Dannon truck was passing my house.

Grandmother

I’ve been writing fiction since I was eight years old. That means that I’ve spent the past twenty-three years of my life looking for ways to offend my grandma. At last, I think I’ve found the perfect story:

A young girl takes a bus to Connecticut to visit her grandmother. Over the course of dinner, the young girl announces that she’s eaten enough and pushes her plate away. The grandmother says, “Sweetheart, would you like some more food?” The granddaughter, smiling politely says, “No, thank you, grandma. I’m full.”

The End.

I’ve already tested this story out on a few of the local grandmothers in my neighborhood. After reading the part about the young girl turning down food, I observed their lips pucker into horror as their hair turned from white to purple to cerulean. “This is very upsetting!” they cried.

Mission accomplished!

Significant Other

My boyfriend’s an asshole. I’m not even exaggerating. He sucks.

On the scale of terrific relationships, with one being the lowest and a hundred being the highest, my relationship falls somewhere between negative infinity and imaginary numbers.

Fortunately, I can write whatever I want about him because my boyfriend—the slimebag—happens to be in Canada right now.

What’s that you say? They have the internet in Canada?

Come on.

Really?

Children

This is a tough one. Children, being simultaneously jaded by mass media and also extremely naïve and gullible, are perhaps the trickiest family members to offend.

I can’t exactly speak to this, as I do not have children.

But I am the child of two very deranged people. And I can tell you, as a child, just about everything my parents say and do offends me.

So, if you are a parent looking to offend your children—don’t worry. Your very existence is offensive enough.

Photo by Alan Cleaver[/add_caption_link]

The process of writing is thrilling. Even in the last stages of revision the amateur novelist is overwhelmed by the potential, by all the ways in which this novel could be perfect. What makes writing bearable is the fact that the writer is in complete control. Everything that goes into it is yours. Every design is yours—every clause and simile and iamb. There’s nothing that’s beyond you and there’s nothing that can elude you. As long as you are working on the novel the possibility of perfection is still there.

Unfortunately there comes a time when you can’t stand it any longer. In pregnancy these are the days when your ankles crack in the morning and you can only lie on your side, when even the thought of getting up in the night is unbearable but wholly necessary. Get this thing out of me, you are thinking, and one day—it’s all very sudden—you have a beautiful baby novel slick with blood and sweat.

Now you have no control. You are sending your novel out into the world and what is completely unavoidable about this is the waiting. An agent’s response—if he or she does respond—generally comes within two to four weeks, but in our amateur novelist’s experience is usually closer to four. During those four weeks all control has been surrendered and everything about the novel is now out of your power. And you thought the mood swings during the writing process were unpleasant. One day you scribble the usual angst in your journal and three days later you’ve never been more optimistic. You write letters to your friends and acquaintances in which you profess yourself to be unable to take another day of waiting. As you haunt the front hallway waiting for the mail, constantly checking your e-mail on your phone, that day passes, and of course nothing changes. The tectonic plates don’t move and the sun doesn’t vanish and the rivers don’t turn to blood. You keep waiting.

What does one do in this situation? In your letters you keep mentioning that in all this chaos there is only one thing still under your control: writing. If it’s so easy to identify, why can’t you internalize it? Why can’t you forget about the agents and the editors and the literary magazines and simply peck away at the next short story, at the outline for your next novel? Why is it so easy to get caught up in the fantasy of acceptance letters and manuscript requests?

Regardless of the temptation you must exert that one remaining element of control. You have to keep writing. The rejection letters will come in and the cover and query letters will go out and you will keep trying. In the meantime you must write. It’s the only way, you’ve come to understand, that you can be happy. Write every day if you can because every day needs some hint of hope. That’s what it all comes down to really, that little doe-eyed hope that keeps offering itself up for immolation, over and over, every day. You watch that hope crumble into all its little snowflake ashes, knowing you’ll offer it up again tomorrow. You’ll keep trying and you’ll keep writing because that’s what you do, at least if you want to call yourself a writer. We’ve all heard it before. Writers write. It’s what separates us from the “writers.”

So no, there’s no need to panic.