Writing

Dear Jackass

/ Ashley / Leave a comment

I’m in the process of moving. Like most people, I hate the idea of packing everything up because it requires a lot of time and energy. I do, however, love the necessity of going through everything to see what objects I once deemed necessary to hang on to. I found that I had made nice folders containing old syllabi, class readings, writing exercises, and manuscripts from classes I took at UW-Milwaukee. The class folder I just went through was from my Intro to Fiction course. Me writing fiction is a silly thing when I think about it. The true fiction that I wrote seems very silly. I never have a clear picture of where I want my fiction to go, much less a greater moral or deeper truth to the piece. Anything readers claimed to have found in my fiction was a product of their active imaginations and literally nothing I had intended. I sort of felt like I was playing a joke on the readers. “Haha, this piece is about nothing. Good luck finding meaning in it!” I wonder if I’m the only writer to feel like that. It’s been a while since I’ve written fiction, but I remember just letting the story go where it wanted to. 

I was a moderator on a fiction board for a writing forum. I had posted a story about a guy who kept pacing back and forth on a street, popping quarters into parking meters, only to be deeply disturbed when he saw his ex-lover walking in a scarlet dress with her fiance. The penultimate moment was when he dropped a red bead from his pocket onto the street. Readers in the forum claimed there was this deep significance – lots to do with the Catholic church (seriously?) and a wandering soul. I was just like, “Yeah, that’s an interesting read on it.” In reality, I had just thought it was a cool image – this crazy guy obsessed with saving people, however little the action was, then finally casting aside the woman he never could save.

Okay, that’s actually kind of a cool concept. I still don’t know how they got the Catholic church involved.

Other than the joke-fiction I wrote, most of what I tried to pass as fiction was really just personal narrative. This gave a lot of the pieces really emotionally-charged details and anecdotal side notes. For instance:

You turned on music – The Shins, most likely. We were always listening to The Shins. How many playlists and mixed CDs did I try to make in the months that followed, just trying to create the perfect blend to capture that damn summer? I have sifted through all the evenings to pick out the music that captured us (that romantic notion of “us”). Owen, Broken Social Scene, matt pond, Sufjan (Soof! Come to Wisconsin! I have the tallest man with the narrowest shoulders! This man of suburbia will not steal your heart!), Bob Dylan, Eisley, Psapp (remember I laughed? I said it sounded like a zoo? I’m not laughing anymore. They suck), Josh Ritter, the Weakerthans (those damn underdogs! I loathe you for this!), The National Splits, Tegan and Sara (I’m no longer walking with a ghost, you pompous piece of shit), and for Christ’s sake, who could forget Radiohead? You were obsessed with Pablo Honey that summer. That album sucks as badly as a Radiohead album can suck. Thom Yorke sounds like a high school sophomore on that album. The only halfway decent song on the damn CD is Creep. And maybe Ripcord, but the rest suck – especially the one you loved some much, Thinking About You. That has to be the worst Radiohead song ever. Upgrade your taste to OK Computer and quit it with your elitist bullshit. 

Many of the details were fabricated ones – ones that don’t apply at all to the relationship on which this piece was based, but there was a lot of bitterness I was attempting to work through with this piece. I accomplished this too. I did a full-class workshop on this piece, and it gave me a sense of closure and retribution when it was all said and done. Airing out the dirty details and humiliations was electrifying.  Reading the piece, I can point to the areas where I changed the details in a cheap attempt to fictionalize it (instead of pesto pasta, we made marinada, instead of blue raspberry popsicles there was ice cream bars, etc), and it’s funny, because with a little editing, the piece functions almost perfectly as a personal narrative, which is what I intend to do with it.

Since I’ve matured since that class (it was in 2008. I’d like to think I am no longer as whiny as my 20 year-old self), I didn’t think I would find anything of worth in the folder. I figured all that I wrote then could and should be regarded as dribble. However, it gives me great pride to see what I was capable of creating. I was brutally honest in that piece, and I see now that I am capable of such honesty; I am able to forget about that somebody looking over my shoulder while I write.

I remember feeling caught off-balance when I first had an advisor ask me if I was a writer. I didn’t know how to answer at the time, because I didn’t know the qualifications. I posed that quandary to the readers of my blog at the time, and they responded with answers that basically amounted to “Yes, you moron. You are a writer.” In this moment, I don’t feel I need the outside affirmation. I can say with the utmost certainty: Yes, I am a writer.

After a night of champagne

/ Ashley / 3 Comments

Last night, Bill and I had a date. Our dates basically consist of us sitting in front of our computers and talking like we usually do, except we call it a date. We’ve gotten dressed up and made dinner “together”. We’ve played games online (that time I learned that I have been playing checkers incorrectly for the last twenty years). Usually what differentiates the date nights from the daily videochats is that we have drinks.  We chose to drink champagne last night. Of course since we didn’t share a bottle, we ended up each drinking our own. Healthy choices!

I woke up groggy and forced myself to go into the office. Two or three readers were supposed to be there to start reading, but none of them decided to show up. Great work ethic! Anyway, I spent an hour opening a pile of mail, and realized a few things. First, poetry gets way more submissions than fiction does. Second, cover letters all look the same, and they’re pretty boring to read. In the last two years I’ve worked as a fiction editor, the only memorable cover letter was one that included a short bio. Under her credentials, she included writing post-it notes which she frequently lost, taming two puppies, and owning unimportant five-year old copies of the New York Times. I can’t remember if we ended up publishing her work or not, but I wanted to just publish the cover letter out of pure glee. It was more impressive than writers who print cover letters on Harvard stationary but seem to have no connection with the university other than having stolen a few sheets of paper. The final thing is that I just like seeing my name followed by the term “fiction editor”. Makes me feel important, though in the large scheme of things, I’m really not.

Anyway, from what I understand, Bill didn’t wake up till after three. By that time, I had taken a nap.

I decided to tell him about an essay I started writing last week, which is something I probably wouldn’t have done had I not had three flutes of champagne, especially since the essay was about him. What I hoped to illustrate with the essay was how drastically intimate our relationship had become – how after a year of being together, we no longer lived under the impression that either of us was a heavenly being without flaws. Time had sharpened the soft focus of a new relationship – our bodies sometimes produce surprising blemishes, and instead of passing them over in that blissful haze, we acknowledge them. It was an essay of early domesticated love. He said it sounded like a genius concept, and I couldn’t help but agree since it was my own idea.

The problem was that it focused on his blemish, not my own. I realized it was a way of distancing myself from the work. I don’t think that I made him look like a fool – and that obviously wasn’t the point. But as far as the essay went, we were the only two characters, and I certainly didn’t present myself as the joker of the two. What frustrates me is that I have an episode that would illustrate my point just as well, if not better, in which I am the one with the blemish that Bill tolerates. We had a discussion about my responsibility as a writer – I didn’t want to victimize or betray those to who I am closest. I realized I’m will to be self-deprecating in my head, but rarely on record. If I’m not willing to make myself look the fool, I certainly have no business doing it to the people I love.

I realized this after coming across David Sedaris’s essay “Old Faithful“. The betrayal business was something I was pondering since I heard “Repeat After Me” on the Carnegie Hall recording. [“Repeat After Me” is a stunning essay that will never leave my head, and if you haven’t heard it, you must. You can also read it on the transcript of the episode. I don’t care how you do it, just experience it.] This frustrated me for two reasons. First, Sedaris had already written an essay conveying the exact same topic I had hoped to illustrate. Second, Sedaris had been the one to reiterate the fact that I owe it to myself, my readers, and to Bill to put the focus on myself before I put it on anyone else. Not only is that just a more kind concept, but it’s more honest and will just make an all-around better essay.

Bill suggested I write to David Sedaris. Of course, I protested. He gave me several reasons why I should, and now I’m actually considering the idea. There’s really nothing to lose. I’m sure the most I’ll get back is a generic response letter, but it certainly can’t hurt anything. Maybe I’ll get some fantastic response with advice I’ll never forget. Or maybe he’ll write an essay about me and share the profits with me so I can buy a car that isn’t on its last leg. The possibilities are endless!

In other news, I organized my desk  and now have my three books to read sitting next to my computer in hopes they will beckon me with responsibility and anti-stupid when I’m wasting time on facebook.

The “Plan”

/ Ashley / Leave a comment

I went home after work last night continuing to feel sorry for myself. I blame it on this damn weather and my best friend moving 900 miles away. I think those are acceptable excuses to be down, no? They are. Anyway, after talking with Bill for a while (and being pathetically weepy for what feels like the 20th time this week), I blurted out an explanation for why I’ve been so down lately.

I’ll sum it up the best I can. Basically, I feel great and on top of my game when I have specific things I need to do. A schedule is good for me. I like when activities suck up chunks of my day, and as of late, I don’t really seem to care what those things are, as long as my day is eaten up. So I like having work to go to, which is why I work about 25 hours a week and I’m taking 17 credits. I can usually handle this load. The trouble comes when I have down time. So far this semester, my homework load has been pretty light. The reading I’m doing for my classes goes by quickly (Driftless by David Rhodes, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Candide), then I’m left to my own devices. This is when my mind gets active. I feel purposeless and then I want to relax with Bill. Trouble is that he’s 900 miles away and busier than I am. So then I’ll try another social outlet. The trouble comes later, when I find that I’ve accomplished nothing for myself. I haven’t read anything I want to read. I haven’t written anything I wanted to write. I just fill my days with activities to get by. It’s not a great feeling. I haven’t found a balance of social and personal time, and it’s surprisingly exhausting. I’m realizing that I have to take time for myself, for my projects and my goals.

So, I’m starting my own projects. I’m going to do research about freelance work. That will include reading the book that I mentioned yesterday, as well as hopefully finding and pursuing some freelance writing opportunities. November is coming up also. November is National Novel Writing Month (from here on, it will be abbreviated to NaNoWriMo). I am going to actually participate this year. The idea is to write 50,000 words in a single month. That averages to about 1,700 words a day, which is about 2-3 double-spaced pages. That is completely doable. When you think about it, that’s really only about 90 pages, which isn’t really even much of a novel, but it’s more than I’ve ever completed. To prepare for this, I’m going to start digging in some other reference books (this, this, and this) I bought years ago and never bothered to finish reading because, as I’ve already established, I’m sort of a moron.

I also have a seminar paper to plan and read, so I will have plenty of things to occupy my time. There will no longer be any excuse for me to throw pity parties.

Pity Party

/ Ashley / Leave a comment

I was at my gyno’s office the other day, and I had this conversation:

“What do you do?”

“I work two jobs and I’m going to school for English.”

“How long do you have left to go?”

“This is my last semester.”

“That’s exciting. Are you going to teach?”

“No.”

At that point I wish the conversation would have just ended. But of course it didn’t.

“Oh, so what do you want to do?”

“I’d like to get into editing. I’d like to sit around and write stories all day, but I have to pay the bills somehow. I might do some freelance work too.”

That’s my standard response tossed with a little something extra. The freelance business is something I’ve never said before. But apparently that’s what I’m looking into now. It seems like something I should do, right? I like to write. I can bullshit things. I’m quite good at it. In a few months, I’ll have a degree to prove it. Also, cool people have done that. People that contribute regularly to This American Life. They travel all over to hunt down stories. I just wonder how that actually happens. I mean, how do you actually track down freelance jobs? I’m sure these are all things I should have figured out before I tell people that’s what I want to do. Not that an OBGYN nurse is really going to hold me to whatever I said while a doctor is examining my lady parts.

Anyway, this conversation is just one more addition to the pile of anxiety that has become my life. Is this normal? I’m assuming if it’s not normal, it’s at least not unusual. I’m sure anybody about to graduate with a liberal arts degree goes through this to some extent unless they’re headed for grad school or have some fantastic editoral position already secured. I used to think that business majors were sad people who had no passions to pursue. Turns out they’re just the smart ones who have a decent game plan. Their degree is an employable one. What the hell are liberal arts people supposed to do? Write academic papers on the true cult of feminity or Jane Austen novels? Nobody cares about either of those things. In fact, unless you’re in academic circles, you probably don’t care about what anyone with a liberal arts degree has to say. Unless you’re doing research for a freelance job, right?  So maybe all those succsessful academic people can assist me in my newly declared freelance career.

Anyway, I don’t know what I’m freaking out about. A few years ago, I bought a book titled “The Freelance Writer’s Bible”. I never read it, but that should tell me everything I need to know, right?

Ugh. I’m sort of a moron.