More than an essay
When I started writing group, when I started writing all together those many months ago, I knew that I had a particular destination in mind. My group didn’t know it, so it was nice to hear them tell me that I should be heading in that direction anyway.
So far, in three of our four group assignments, I’ve written about a single year of my life, my last year in Fredericksburg, Virginia. It’s a town that I could have sworn had some kind of spooky energy flowing through it. Now, I’m not so sure it wasn’t my spooky energy that drew me to a year so filled with drama.
Each story has been around the same length, and each has focused on a single thing. The adorable apartment where I lived for that first year. My friend Heather. And my birthday just after I arrived. And there are so many more stories to tell. With each assignment comes another essay, with each essay a different voice or style or focus, so creating one cohesive piece still feels a little distant. But more than ever it feels possible.
Especially after last week, when I wrote and recited the story of holding the keys to my friend Anne’s car in my hands just hours before she died in a drunk driving accident. My group, though they were curious about the personal side of the experience, asked some provoking questions about the process of writing the story. As usual, they were in awe of my ability to tell the truth about my life in writing and share it publicly (which continues my craving for some non-fiction writing peers). But more than anything, what they were starting to hear was the beginning of a collection.
What they heard was more than an essay; it was a chapter in a book. They wanted to hear more, and to help to find the thread that would tie that more together.
Two of the other writers in the group also wanted to expand on past pieces, so our assignment this month is to write what we want. Instead of a prescribed style or prompt, we have a prescribed duty: we each have to write every week and collectively report on how much we’ve written so that none of us can have the excuse of “I did this at the last minute”, a common favorite for when we’re feeling uncertain about a given piece.
Hopefully blogging about it first counts as some time clocked in on the process. But to be safe, I’ll have to find some way to get myself started before the first check-in later this week. Like the little sticky note on my computer says, “don’t just sit there, write!”
The fine art of self-preservation
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about self-preservation and the countless things we do to protect ourselves. From heartache, from illness, from getting so annoyed we might want to learn how to set people on fire with our eyes.
My personal strategy is an aggressive form of tuning out. If I’m feeling a little under the weather I’ll stock up on tissues or Tums and then tune it out for as long as I can. If I’m in a bad situation, I’ll loudly process my anger or annoyance and then tune the situation out until I’m back in it again. No sense in letting it linger.
I’m amazed at the ways people choose to protect themselves, and what they chose to protect themselves from.
Aging, for example, seems like a bizarre thing to spend so much time worrying about. And it’s created a quite literal form of self-preservation just a few steps shy of people napping in giant jars of formaldehyde.
Gossip is another interesting form of self-preservation. Telling other people’s stories to distract from our own, to allow us the opportunity to declare we are not like “that”, whatever the “that” may be.
Of course, there’s healthy living. Ah, the elusive healthy living. If eating right and exercising are the keys to longevity, then I’m sunk.
Lying is perhaps the one trick of the self-preservationist that bothers me the most. And that’s not to say that I haven’t ever done it myself, in my young, messy days. Now a lie seems like so much work. I happen to have a clear view of a woman who has told so many lies that she no longer has a truthful path available to her. So, daily, she spins more and more stories to cover for her original untruths, at times getting so tangled up she is literally unable to finishes sentences. The only option available to her now is retreat, escape, departure, an option she is wisely choosing.
In the meantime, how do I avoid searching online for “instructions set fire with eyes” during the times that I need to preserve my own self? What strategies will I adopt to ensure that I’m not splashed by someone else’s formaldehyde, or tangled in someone else’s web of gossip or fantasy?
Aggressive avoidance remains the key. Although I occasionally emerge from my hiding place to seek out escape routes and make small rackets, self-preservation sometimes means flying under the radar until I’m ready to jump.
When the words don’t come
What does it take to keep going once I’ve started writing? Is there any guarantee that this time will be different than the 50 other times I’ve started a journal or book, only to abandon those endeavors weeks or months or maybe just days later? So far, the writing has been working out. Writing group is a help, although the composition of the group has dramatically changed, and it feels a little less about writing and more about hanging out now. It was our targeted focus on our writing process that made the first few sessions together so inspiring. But what I don’t need is coffee klatch. I’m determined to take this as seriously as I can.
Maybe I need a group filled with people I don’t know. But in the meantime, how do I let life, and my job, and relationships not get in the way of actually sitting down and putting words on the page?
It’s been a while since I finished my last piece for writing group. And I’ve had a hard time even setting aside time to think about my next. My job’s been crazy, my life is perpetually busy – but that was true at the beginning of this process. Is it a 5 month slump? I wonder if I could look back on all of my failed attempts at being a regular writer in the past and find the average length of time those attempts have lasted. It would probably be about 4 months.
So, here it is – the test. It actually feels a little like my relationship with Jack. When we made it past 4 months, I knew it would last forever. Could that be the same for my life as a writer?
I hope so. Even lamenting my lack of writing by writing about it feels promising. What else can I do? Write some more, obviously. But even as I’m sitting here at my office desk, I’m eyeing my brightly colored Post-It notes and…done! A hot pink note to myself on my keyboard reading: Don’t just sit there —WRITE! Maybe egging myself on will help.
Then, I’ll need to figure out if this group, productive though it is, is the right group for me – a lonely non-fiction writer in a world of women with unending imaginations. Many of the questions that I still have, that I had from the beginning of this project about how far I can take non-fiction, will never be answered by this group, because from the start they admitted that they’re afraid of non-fiction, and would rather take out their real life feelings in a made-up world.
So, I guess I’ll just have to do it. Maybe I’ll go back to my own non-fiction writing prompts in between group assignments. I know a few other writers, maybe there’s a non-fiction writing group I can join. I want to be challenged by other writers, pushed. And, knowing what I want should be the key to getting there.
The Dube Phenonemon
There’s something going on with my Twitter account.
Before I continue, I should probably stop right here to admit that I’m a bit of a Twitter neophyte. I like being able to sum up my moment in 140 characters to be shared with a bunch of people I don’t know. And I use it to find out about what’s happening within my profession and for learning new ways to hunt for a job. But I don’t really know how to work it per se.
Here’s how it all went down. I joined Twitter and found a few people to follow. Some of them even followed me back. Then, after a couple of weeks of being new, I’d gathered up a couple of dozen followers and hit a plateau.
And now, the phenomenon, which I shall call “The Dube (pronounced doo-be) Phenomenon”. It started happening a few weeks ago. A man who lives in New England and is a life coach (one of my areas of interest) started following me. His last name also happened to be Dube, like my own.
Then two more Dubes started following me, one right after the other.
What is happening?I wondered. Has some call been put out to the Dubes across Twitter to band together? I wasn’t sure what to do. Should I follow them back? Should I seek out other Dubes? Does sharing the same last name mean something in the land of Twitter?
So, I followed them back. What else could I do? I’m hoping that more will come of this – a Dube meet-up with a Dube secret knock. An all-Dube list of references for job interviews. When all the Dubes of Twitter band together we’ll be unstoppable! Right?
Today I did a search for other Dubes on Twitter. I thought about following all of them just to see if they caught on to the trend, but it seemed somehow creepy. Like when people from America are in a foreign country and they get SO EXCITED to meet another American.
Still, maybe there’s something to be said for connecting with the other Dubes, maybe we’re actually related somehow, that’s a friendly thought.
I wonder how many Lizas there are out there…
Sally at the Bank
So, here it is. A rough draft of my first fiction piece in a long long time. And I’ve been just falling all over myself with joy. The process was so fun and satisfying. The character came to life for me. And the concept was really freeing. More of a character study than an event-driven piece, Sally at the Bank feels like the beginning of something kind of fun with the character. I’m hoping future assignments allow me to bring her back in new ways.
In the meantime, here it is!
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Sally was unimpressed to say the least. She’d been standing in this line for at least ten minutes now and there seemed to be no end in sight. It had barely moved, as far as she could tell. Un. Im. Pressive. Not to mention that, also, the people all around her seemed to be totally unaware of the Universal Law of Personal Space. Touching the person in front of you doesn’t actually get you any closer to the front of the line. That’s a fact.
She was just going to have to leave the line. Just leave it. She would just leave it. She would, too. If she hadn’t already been standing in it for TEN MINUTES. Then she definitely would have left it. She never would have even gotten into that line in the first place if she’d known how long this was going to take. Fact.
Well, fine then. She would wait. It wasn’t like her time was really that important anyway. Although if it was, she could probably be using this enforced down time to come up with a list of things to do for the rest of her afternoon.
This was really the only errand she had planned to run for the day, this one single thing. But now, of course, she was going to have to write a letter to the stupid management of this stupid place so that she could complain about the length of the wait. That was obvious. And she’d probably need to schedule in a good thirty minutes, no make that an hour, to complain – in person – to her mother who couldn’t run her own stupid errands and without whom she wouldn’t even be standing in this stupid line in the first place.
This wasn’t the first time Sally had to let’s just call it educate her mother on how valuable her time was, either. That silly woman wouldn’t know about time management if it bit her in the ass. Not that it could find her ass, what with it having been wedged into that wheelchair for so many years now, anyway. But still, if it could, time would be there munching away at her mom’s butt and her mom wouldn’t even know it.
Otherwise, why else would Sally be out here now in the middle of the day on this wild goose chase of a line?
“Some line, huh?” The woman in front of Sally suddenly turned around and attempted to strike up a conversation. Probably an attempt to pleasantly pass the time.
Sally grunted in response and directed her eyes to the floor. What could she have possibly done to make this woman want to try to talk to her? She’s usually so careful to avoid eye contact. She’d probably lost her focus when she started making that mental list. Dammit. Was that woman still looking at her?
Sally slowly raised her eyes, careful to keep her head pointed toward her feet, to see if the woman in the line was still facing in her direction. No. The grunt must have done the trick. It was a little conversational element Sally had picked up from her father during all of those insufferable family dinners before he finally wised up and left. A well-timed grunt could put a grinding halt to any conversation that might be on track toward the pleasant or the inane.
Ah! Movement! Sally’s focus on her stationary state was now back in high gear. If they were going to be opening up another window than she was going to get to the front of that line no matter who she had to run over. It looked like there were quite a few pregnant women up ahead. They should be easy enough to beat if it came down to a foot race.
She would just wait and see what everyone else did first.
All that grunting really had brought Sally’s dad back into her mind, a place he wasn’t usually welcomed, but as long as she was thinking about him, she may as well finish whatever thought might emerge. Even though she couldn’t blame him for running off, if he had stayed she wouldn’t have to be standing in this line thinking about him right now.
“Looks like we missed our chance,” the woman in front of Sally smiled a pathetic little smile at her. Why was she still trying to be friendly? This time, no grunt, Sally thought. That incorrigible woman obviously needed a clearer message from Sally that she was not interested in being her line friend. And the clearest message Sally could usually think of was no message at all. She stared at her shoes until the woman finally looked away. That ought to do it.
As obnoxious and in her face as she was, though, that woman was right. Somewhere in Sally’s reveries about her parents, half the people from her line had moved over into the line that just opened up. And Sally seemed to have managed to remain in exactly the same place. Which seemed simply impossible, if you asked her. If half the people had moved over, how could she not have gained any kind of advantage? She looked behind her and realized that most of the people who’d been building up past her backside were now in the lead, one line over. Dammit.
Wasn’t that just always the way? Sally never could really figure out a way to get ahead. Maybe if she paid better attention for longer stretches of time than she’d ever seemed to be able to manage before, she might spot some new opportunities for gaining something. Even if it was only a stupid spot in a stupid line.
That was it. Sally was really angry at her mother now. None of this would be happening to her if it weren’t for that woman. What a disaster. Sally hated to think about how high her self-esteem could be if her mother wasn’t always putting her in these kinds of positions where she was just set up – set up! – to fail.
She probably wouldn’t have gained all that weight that one time, for one thing. That was directly related to her mother, and that’s a fact. First, there was that stupid car accident that paralyzed her mom from the waist down – which was stressful, thus promoting Sally’s weakness for emotional eating. And then there was all the sitting around with her Sally had had to do since then. There! That should be reason enough to leave this line right now and not even go back to her mom’s house. Well, their house really, but whatever. It’s not like Sally paid rent there or anything.
It was then that Sally felt a tug on her pant leg. She looked down to see a little boy, maybe four or five years old, with his arms wrapped around her leg. He looked up at her with a face that his mother swore could melt the coldest of hearts. Sally looked back at him. She examined his deep blue eyes with a feeling of equally deep surprise. Children didn’t usually like to be around her, what could this little boy possibly want?
Then, pure annoyance spread over her entire body like a fever. Her expression of surprise quickly changed to a scowl, often considered terrifying by people her age, but which made her look exactly like one of the monsters from that book Where the Wild Things Are to the little boy looking up at her from below.
His mistake would have been traumatizing enough, clinging to the wrong pant leg, thinking it was his mother. But to have clung to the let of this suddenly horrifying woman was more than any five year old should have been asked to bear.
Then Sally spoke. “What. Are you. Doing?” Her words came out in a clipped growl. Sally had never tolerated children, even as a child, and she was not about to begin now.
The little boy continued to hold on to Sally’s leg, frozen by fear. He longed to let go, to run to his mother, to anyone other than this woman, but his feet would not move. His five year old imagination had him immediately convinced that if he took his eyes off of her for even a moment, she would swoop down and devour him. So he stood paralyzed, staring into her narrowed eyes.
After what seemed like an eternity, for both Sally and the boy, the friendly woman one place ahead in line turned around and could not believe what she was seeing. The Grunter, as she’d named Sally only moments before while she was crafting a story about the woman in her mind to tell to her husband when she got home, was caught in what appeared to be a staring contest to the death with a four year old boy.
She’d noticed the boy first, his eyes wide, his mouth agape, his knuckles white from the apparently fearful clutching of The Grunter’s pants. When she looked up to see how The Grunter was responding to this infraction in her personal space, the woman knew she had to intervene. It appeared as though, if the boy took his eyes off of The Grunter’s face for a moment, she would have swooped down and devoured him.
The woman got down to the little boy’s level and spoke softly, “Where’s your mommy, sweetheart?” She practically whispered, hoping that maybe The Grunter would not overhear. Without taking his eyes off of that horrible face, the little boy slowly shook his head from left to right.
“Let’s find her,” the woman whispered. Removing the boys hand from The Grunter’s pants, she led him away, careful to avoid The Grunter’s gaze.
Relief washed over Sally along with a cold sweat. That little boy may have thought he had the best of her, but she was no fool. She wasn’t going to be tricked into whatever kind of gypsy thievery he had planned. She couldn’t believe it, but she actually felt gratitude for that obnoxious butt-in-sky that had been standing in front of her in line. If she hadn’t stepped in, who knows what kind of trick that little pixie might have pulled?
And, wouldn’t you know it, thanks to that brat’s now foiled plan of attack, she was one position closer to getting out of this place. She hoped the woman who had been standing in front of her didn’t think she’d be getting her spot in line back, just because she’d performed her little good Samaritan show. Because once you leave a line you are SOL shit out of luck and that is a fact.
The opposite of me
What could possibly be the opposite of me? Our next writing group involves writing a story from the perspective of someone who we are absolutely not and I’m having a bit of a hard time with it.
I’ve had a few suggestions of specific people who are not me from friends, but not any specific characteristics that I could create a totally fictional person from. So, my exercise for today is going to have to be digging into the world of self-awareness and the thesaurus to see what I think I am and am not.
First, my own descriptive words. One would think with all the Facebook quizzes and introspective blogging that this list would emerge easily, but I’m feeling decidedly un-self-aware in a very self-conscious kind of way. And now here is me getting over it because I have to get this story done!
I am…
opinionated
reflective
outspoken
generally good
smart
funny
occasionally daring
loving
intuitive
clear in my beliefs
Okay! So that means that I am not:
indifferent
unthoughtful
shy
vicious
dull
serious
timid
mean
calculated
uncertain about what I believe
That sounds like a very unsavory character. Maybe I should take a cue from one of my favorite books, Confederacy of Dunces, and try to turn an unsavory character into a comic anti-hero.
Every time I tried to create the “opposite of me” character up until now, it was always such a downer. The voice I kept creating was so mean and intense, adding comic circumstances might be just the trick!
Of course, the other challenge for me with this assignment is that I have to write a fictional story. Although my group-mates are all fiction writers, I’ve been gleefully culling from my own experience to create descriptive non-fiction creative essays. Now I have to fully engage my imagination. Good thing I got back into practice using it throughout Italy a few weeks ago!
I had also kept going to the obvious opposite for my previous attempts at this character – male. But now, looking at the traits that are emerging and imagining them in a woman is really appealing. I wonder what her name will be…
On the other side
So, here I am – two weeks into married life, back from our Italian honeymoon, sitting in my office trying to sort out what I’ve learned. I was told it would be a lot different here, on the other side of marriage. Maybe that comes later. So far, it’s been mostly the same.
We talked about that one day, when I’d asked Jack if he felt any different. He thought maybe we didn’t because we’d been behaving as though we were married from very early on, when we realized without ever saying it that we’d be together forever.
So, the other side of marriage hasn’t been too different after all – not yet at least.
And on the other side of our trip to Italy there seems to be more. Though both of us have been abroad before, it was our first time in this place, our first time speaking a foreign language when we could or had to. Or first time taking a long trip abroad just the two of us, so that we weren’t influenced by people different from us, or a big group. We let Italy wash over us, we made mistakes and learned from them, we relaxed, we never over planned.
On the other side of Italy, I’m wondering about the way we live – in our hurried manner, in our frenzied way – eating lunch at our computers and trying to just get dinner over with.
I recall noticing so many times pairs of people, two young women or a couple of old men, perhaps, standing on the sidewalk engaged in a long conversation, groceries laid down on the ground because they had been standing there a while. Cigarettes burned down to the filter, dogs asleep at their feet.
On the other side of Italy, I want to live as though I were always there, with dinners that last for hours, and siestas in the afternoon, 3 week vacations, and time to chat with friends on the sidewalk.
Slowing down made me take more time to look around and, in doing, find a number of people who have informed possible next characters for writing group. I’ve seen in a new way the benefits of living like an artist.
On the other side of Italy, I am feeling inspired.
What we don’t see in a picture
For the second week in a row, my story for writing group came out of real life. The next assignment is going to make that a little harder, but this story was one I’d been trying to write for a long time. I would often go through my piles of old notebooks to find the beginning of this story, put my pen to the page, and wait for the rest to come out. And it never did.
Even writing it this time felt like a physical effort. Each paragraph felt like a convulsion, like a heave of energy to get the words down. And still, just before the very end, I choked. I couldn’t tell the whole story. I realized in writing it and then reading it aloud to my group that this one was far from finished. But it was the ending that I came up with that made me look forward to, instead of dread, completing this tale.
So, instead of including the whole story, I’m just going to write the ending, or the new beginning…
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It lasted that way for 3 months, the two of us, spiraling down in her split level suburban house. That was when I really started to see Heather more clearly. The strong, beautiful woman who laughed easily and was the first to get on the dance floor wasn’t really her.
I often caught her sitting crossed legged on the floor of her room, or lying back on her bed, or sitting in the middle of the living room, completely silent.
And I could see her life crashing around her as though she’d found an empty space on the ocean floor, where she could just sit, as the waves exploded in the front and back of her and on either side. It was chaotic, and turbulent, and she was trying as hard as she could to just be perfectly still because if she moved, and got caught by any of the waves, she would drown.
I moved out shortly after that. We’d both found ourselves drowning in our personal dramas and beer and shots of Jagermeister. For years afterwards, I tried to replicate her stillness, but I realized that I would never be so close to drowning even in my worst times as she was nearly every day during those yeas I knew her. I would never need to be that still.
Getting Married Is Distracting
So, for about the past week or so, Jack has been emailing our bartender friend who is also supposed to be doing our wedding. We had to tell him that we’d changed the venue from City Hall to our living room, and send him our final vows.
Well, 3 emails later, he still hadn’t answered us, and we were getting a little concerned.
THEN! He suddenly joined Facebook. So, in a last ditch attempt to contact him before storming the bar, I made him my friend and then wrote on his wall. Are we still on for Tuesday? I asked.
Meh. Kind of but maybe not, is the gist of the reply. Mark is the general manager of one of our favorite haunts, and a few weeks ago he had to eject two guys who came into the bar visibly intoxicated. They were a bit of trouble, so he personally escorted them out the front door. There he discovered that not only were they hammered and trying to drink more, but they had also left a little 2 year-old girl, one of their daughters, in the car while they popped in for a pint.
Now he has to go to court to serve a witness to their particularly disgusting crime. And their court date is Tuesday morning.
He wanted to get together to discuss a Plan B, just in case the court system suddenly became outrageously efficient and he was allowed out in time for our 11:30 AM ceremony. Maybe we could reschedule it for the afternoon and just get married at the pub!
I decided that if I had to have a Plan B, I would rather just make a new Plan A. So, I’m waiting for him to call so that we can break up with him.
In the meantime, I put a new Plan A into action and now my brother is on his way to 
being an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church (be ordained in 24 hours and receive the handy certification on the right!) and my mom is putting his application for an “out of state minister” to perform a one day ceremony at the top of the pile after he faxes it in to the Secretary of State’s office, where she will also pay the fee - her job once again coming in handy for my general needs.
So, now my adorable brother who knew that Jack and I were going to get married before we did will be the one marrying us. It seems like a better fit anyway, and just another hilarious story to add to the general oddity of our wedding day.
Creating White Space
A funny thing has started happening. I’m not sure if I can relate it to cabin fever, or the fresh start of a new marriage, or my magical new chiropractor, but I’ve been having the urge to clear things out. To de-clutter. To create white space.
Maybe it’s the fact that none of the clothes I wear actually come out of my closet, but instead come from a separate nook in my bedroom. Same with the shoes. Maybe it’s because I’ve been enjoying the clarity of one writing assignment at a time instead of the overwhelming idea of writing EVERYthing down. Maybe it’s because we’ve had moving on our minds as we prepare for Jack to get accepted to grad school.
Maybe the reason doesn’t matter. And I should just de-clutter that concern right out of my head.
So, how does this all relate to what I’ve been writing? I recently read an article by a friend about finding a job for her actual self, instead of the the image of herself that she created. And I found it incredibly inspiring. As I sat down to begin writing the second story in my writing group series, I realized that I was already struggling with the image that I’d created of myself as a writer within that group.
In an evening of dark and touching stories, mine was lighter, and funny. But for my second story, even though I’d found a photograph to write a story about, and was truly inspired, I struggled with the idea that the story I had in mind would most likely not be as light hearted as the first, and wondered if that would now be expected of me in the group. One story and I’m already cornered into a single point of view.
But as I started to write, and took my image of myself as a writer and as a member of the writing group out of the equation, I realized that what mattered wasn’t me at all. It was the story. Sure, writing group is about getting responses to what you’re writing, but certainly not about getting responses to who you are. My opinions of my group members didn’t change based on the stories that they read.
