Moving Forward, Eyes Closed. (Voice)

I haven't been sleeping.  It's not because I've been watching tv late into the night.  It isn't because I'm not tired.  I am so tired.
There's a long list of things I need to do.  A long list of things I am trying to do right now.  Things I am trying to be.  Accomplishments I haven't achieved.  Goals I'm not following through on.  Dreams I am forgetting.  Dreams I keep on forgetting when I need them most.
Sundays are my least favorite day.  I'm just wishing I had Saturday all over again so I could do something with my life, or maybe sleep more deeply, or maybe make a list of all the things I have to do to calm me down while I still have time to do it all.  But I don't have the time anymore.  Not really.  I just want to know what I've got to do.  It makes the stress less painful.
I stopped praying and I'm not sure why because I think God is still listening, but I've stopped asking Him for what I want, what I think I need, because I don't know what I want anymore and I don't think about what I need, besides more time, which I sabotage every time I get it, because I don't know what I really have.  I mean I count my blessings every once in a while.  A heartbeat is a blessing, but I've had it for so long, I don't remember what it feels like to recognize how much I need it and how lucky I am, except for when I haven't had it, times I can count on my fingers.
But I'm always thanking God for my feet.  How they move with the ground as I go, even when I'm not paying attention.  How even when I don't know what I'm doing or where I'm going, they still seem to know how to get there.  How to continue on, blindly.

Tandolfo the Great (Reader Response 9)

Part of what I really liked about this story was that it illustrated very clearly a point I made in my last post -  'Fiction allows for us to see the internal life of a person, to know with near certainty their motivations and find ourselves rooting for people we might never support in the outside world, hoping beyond hope that they will succeed or be happy or just survive.'
When Tandolfo has his mental breakdown and succumbs to poor behavior, he tells us that,

"he wants to let them know he's not like this all the time; wants to say it's circumstances, grief, personal pain hidden inside seeming brightness and cleverness; he's a man in love, humiliated, wrong about everything".

This scene captures the difference between characters and people, fiction and reality in a way.  We can see that Rodney's behavior comes from a variety of problems he's facing in his personal and professional life, which drive him to drink before his performance and behave so inappropriately at his show.  The reader sees and understands this, feeling compassion and hoping he will get his act together.  His actual audience, the fictional group of parents and children watching him perform, however, see his actions only, not inferring his circumstances or even questioning his reasoning.  Therefore, in the eyes of the reader they might be seen as uncaring.

The reality however, is they serve as a representation of the reactions any sane person might have.  If you were met with Tandolfo, and he showed up drunk at a party you hired him to preform at, how would you react?  Probably not with the same personal connection as if he explained his day and why he what acting so strangely, as he did in the story.  We understand his internal life, and therefore we are best able to see his experience as justified.  We see the scene through his eyes, not out own.  Therein lies the magic of character.

Beyond the brilliant illustrations of internal perspective, the imagery is beautiful in this story too.  The description of the sad cake, sitting on the sidewalk and Rodney, sitting in his car, staring at it, the picture of derangement, just waiting for a car to pass by and splatter it, helped to create an ending that captured Rodney's character.  This image, depressing and disturbing, but brilliantly vivid, helped to devise an ending that lent itself well to furthering the character.  By the end, I was certain this could be the only possible ending, and that Rodney, in his breakdown, could only find closure and satisfaction in the cake's destruction.  I couldn't see it ending any other way than with the reader waiting and hoping in the passenger seat of Rodney's car, eagerly watching the street for any sign of a car that would destroy that awful, miserable cake.

Character Essay (Reading Response 8)

Character is the life-blood of writing, no matter what kind of creative writing (perhaps even academic writing, too...) you do.  Sometimes the character is human, sometimes not, sometimes it is just an object in an empty room.  The character is someone or something that drives the work.  It gives it life and intrigue, without which the story could not be as interesting or as valuable.

A reader might forgive an author for a sup-par plot.  They might forgive unclear setting or language that doesn't match the voice.  A reader might even forgive god-awful writing, so long as the character is given the necessary attention.  What reader would ever forgive an author for writing its characters with no development, no fine weaving into the text, no dynamic journey?  It is a part of what we cherish most, the thing that give fiction some of it's greatest value.  Richard Bausch puts it well when he explains that:

"We know these people, therefore, better than we ever really know anyone in life".

 Fiction allows for us to see the internal life of a person, to know with near certainty their motivations and find ourselves rooting for people we might never support in the outside world, hoping beyond hope that they will succeed or be happy or just survive.  Some of my favorite books captured me by showing me characters I would likely never befriend, and showed me their world, their fears and experiences, letting me understand and connect with them emotionally.

Without character, we wouldn't be able to make these connections.  Think for a moment of a tv show you've loved.  Perhaps you watched it religiously.  Perhaps you wrote stories based off the characters.  Think of why you loved it so much.  What drove you to keep watching?  If you didn't feel that way about television, what about movies?  Books?  What captured you the most?  It was probably the characters.  Something they did, things they said, their feelings, their masks, something made them more real than any person you might've ever met.  It's why we love stories so much.  For all the things they show us of our world, they tell us a million more about people.  About who we are and why we do the things we do.

That is life.  That is magic.  That is art.

It's All Downhill From Here (Reader Response 7)

In "Downhill", a story published in the New Yorker in 1975 and a part of her New Yorker compilation, Ann Beattie writes about a woman whose paranoia and imagination run away with her.  Capturing her downward spiral and self-doubt, the main character's relationship with Jon is paralleled against her relationship with her dog, who despite her worries and fear that Jon has left her, seems to be her truest companion.
Beattie's language is absolutely beautiful and captures her characters emotions and movements in a way that turns something sad and dismal into a beauty that shows the full extent of her spiraling out of control.  Her fear that she will cease to exist without Jon is both a gorgeously romantic thought and terrifying representation of her perspective and mental state.
It's this interior monologue of hers that takes us through this loss, and eventually his return, showing exactly how she shrinks back into herself when she's left only with her thoughts, how her imagination runs wild in awful, beautiful ways.

Therapy (Reader Response 6)

I wouldn't call myself a fan of Lena Dunham's work.  I just don't feel passionately about it.  Some days I find certain works interesting, other days I just don't invest my time.  That's all.  I do other things.  Watch and read other things.  "Difficult Girl" is one of her stories I did find interesting, particularly because although it reveals a very personal experience, which I don't fully identify with, its candor and voice is still captivating and makes for a good bit of reading.
Lena's story drew us into her experience with vivid imagery that took the reader by the hand and showed us the way she grew up perceiving the world, the kinds of things she noticed and the things she got stuck on.  In many ways it is one of the better representations of mental illness that I've read in a long while.  She also captures emotions without definitions in beautiful ways.  A particular favorite of mine came when she stopped working with Lisa.

I miss her the way I missed our loft after we moved in seventh grade: sharply, and then not at all. There is too much unpacking to do. 

I said I didn't fully identify with her story, although I'm certain a few would, but little bits and pieces reminded me of moments I've experienced and feelings I've shared.  Her hypochondria and self-diagnoses spoke to me not only measures about what she went through, but also how I see the world and the things I am afraid of.  I could count on one hand the number of times I've sat down with a psychologist - a fact that makes me feel both regretful and satisfied - but I can understand the sentiments Lena shares about her therapists.  Her descriptions are raw and revealing and it's difficult not to feel like you understand her experiences, when it is laid out so clearly and openly.
So I guess you could say I liked this one.

Standing By (Reader Response 5)

It was May 19th.  I was onboard a flight to Heathrow, sat in my seat, eagerly awaiting the flight waiting for me in England, one which would bring me home after nearly 5 months away.  We still had not gone toward the runway and already at the point in time when we should have landed.  Me, I was freaking out as usual.  Layovers give me an awful bout of nerves.  I get restless and concerned and my heartbeat feels all wonky and even the slightest delay off schedule is a moment of high concern.  So a full hour delay?  That's a damn catastrophe.
When I say catastrophe, I know it isn't really.  But it sure feels like the end of the world.  I don't really know why it seems so important in the moment, or why I sometimes still complain about it.  But that day was already a long day and it was only noon.
I hadn't slept the night before and that hadn't helped the situation.  So when the pilot informs us we will be clear to arrive at Heathrow in approximately two hours, mere minutes before the gate for my flight home would close, I was a mess of tears and panic and everyone around me looked like I was a bomb ready to go off, unsure if they should do something or if that would only make the explosion come sooner.
Once the flight landed and I was just about done with tears, I had to wait in a 4+ hour long line to be told that no other flights would be leaving, and that though the storm that delayed my incoming flight was still there, it didn't delay any of the several outgoing flights to Los Angeles that day, and I would have to take a flight in the morning.  But after wallowing in misery and watching as customers yelled, some for a full hour, at the counter attendants, I couldn't help but try and be nice.
They say you catch more flies with honey.  And it's true.  Sometimes it's sweet for the trapper too I guess.  

I Should Be Doing Something Else

He knew he should be doing something productive.  He had everything out and ready, too.  His tablet sat on his leg, threatening to slide off at any moment (It was a miracle it hadn't already considering the quivering state it was in, barely handing on as he tapped his foot along to a song.)  It was relatively slow, a nice, steady, pulsing beat to get him relaxed.  He'd get some work done after this song.  Yeah.  Just one song and then he'd focus.  It was three minutes max.  It wouldn't make or break him.  He clicked the button hanging along the earphone wires, the bump getting louder, his tablet shaking stronger and he tapped his food and bobbed is head.  When the song was over he pulled the earphones out and opened his notebook.  He was going to get something done.

No, seriously he was.  But the girls next to him were talking kind of loud.  Their hushed whispers felt unrestrained as the gestured wildly and snickered and sipped on their already empty coffee drinks, trying to get some melting ice coffee water through the straw.  Every sip was a loud whoosh of air through a broken straw, and the one nearest to him must have been desperate to get it all drank because she would not stop.  SLUUUURP.  Swoooooosh.  Sluuuurppp.  Swoooosh.  But it must have been nice.  Some refreshing water, even if slightly coffee-ish.  And maybe a nice bagel...

Damnit.  Now he was thirsty.  And hungry.  He gathered his things, zipping up his red backpack and pulling it across his back before pulling up the hood of his gray sweater.

He watched the girls as he waited in line to order himself a bagel sandwich and buy a bottle of water.  The line was pretty short today, especially for this hour, but he had to wait forever for them to finish his sandwich.  If he had really tried, he could've worked on a reading in line.  But no.  That would be a good idea, and he wasn't making many of those today.

He sat back down, already salivating at the thought of finally eating something today.  He put his foot on a weird stool that looked kind of like a dinosaur vertebrae and rested his tablet on his leg again.  He opened it back up to a browser page for streaming the most recent episode of Mad Men.  Just five minutes, he thought.  Five minutes of this show and I'll buckle down.  Just while I eat.  He pressed play and leaned back, losing track of what he was doing.  He didn't move until the entire show had finished.  Once it did, he shut the tablet and set it aside, checking his phone.  Shit.  He had three minutes to get upstairs before class started.  He'd finish his work during his next lecture if he could.

Bullet in the Brain (Reader Response 4)

Very infrequently do I find myself showing little compassion for the protagonist of a story, or even the antagonist.  I kind of liked being thrown off guard with this one.  I felt strange reading Bullet in the Brain by Tobias Wolff, mostly because it was concerning to me that I felt no compassion or pity or anything for Anders, from the moment he walked through the door of the bank all the way until the bullet hit him.  Even through the beginnings of describing the moments he didn't see flashing before his eyes, my feelings were minimal and simple.  But as it went on, things changed.

I believe that the things that aren't said, shown, or suggested are the things that matter most.  The arguments an essayist doesn't discuss speaks volumes of their character if you're paying enough attention.  Perhaps that is why I liked reading about all the things Anders didn't think of as he died.  Those moments, lining up an Anders that the author didn't show us, a less jaded and critical Anders, made the piece for me, as I believe it was intended to.

Approaching the moment he did think of, I started to feel something different.  I felt the regret I thought Anders should be feeling, a wish to take it all back and try again.  I felt some sorrow that he had been living, but not truly living, becoming just a hollow shell of the character he once had been.  The shift in my emotions still left me with no pity for Anders at the time of his death.  But perhaps it was because it seemed to me that Anders had died a long time before, but was still somehow breathing.

Find and Replace (Reader Response 3)

I had not read any of Ann Beattie's work when I sat down to listen to her reading of Find and Replace for Narrative Magazine.  I was not surprised to find I liked her work, and found myself wrapped up in ways Ann represented her interactions, not only with her mother, but also with the stranger she encountered.
Ann's mother and my mother having nothing in common really.  My mother and I are close.  If I was one of Ann's friends, I would be one of the ones she mentions visits their parents every weekend.  Or one of the ones that calls every day.  When I lived in Ireland, I FaceTimed my mother several times a week, for hours at a time - and that was when I was restraining myself.  That's just how I function with my parents.  We talk constantly and about everything.  I don't have problems with telling them everything most days.  Heck, my friends tell them just about everything going on in their life, even when it's borderline too private a thing to share. [you know who you are].  It's just the type of people we are.
Still, I found myself amused by Ann and her mother's relationship.  Familiar, but strained, it was easy to see how their relationship had developed over the years even though the story was limited to only one major moment.  It was very showing.  I think perhaps it was Ann's delivery, but as a credit to her, her writing exudes her own voice, a brilliant, take-no-crap, sarcastic tone that permeates the entire piece.  It would have made it difficult not to like her in that moment.
I think it's critical to maintain a real voice when writing.  Sometimes I read my own work and wonder if someone might recognize my work without my name attached, that It would speak for itself and remind them of something of mine they'd read before, in a new exciting way, but still sounding like me.  I am still looking for my voice I guess.

Ducks in a Row (Reader Response 2)

I cannot begin to explain how much I enjoyed reading Danielle McLaughlin's In the Act of Falling.  From her stunningly real characters to her way of presenting the world around her, McLaughlin captured me from beginning to end.

What grabbed me most throughout the piece was the unabashed, but still understated Irishness of the piece.  McLaughlin made few references that would pinpoint the reader's attention to Ireland, but she captured a spirit that lingers in contemporary Irish fiction.  Having lived in Dublin, her descriptions of St. Stephen's Green and her description of their Portlaoise home brought me in and kept me grounded in my memory of living in Ireland, making the story feel so real.  I could picture myself walking past the LUAS stop, visiting the ducks and pigeons before my walk back to Rathmines. (I was surprised she never spoke of those pigeons - I swear they were horrifying most days.  And probably plagued, too.)

Her story, bringing in Bill's unemployment and their struggle following the crash in 2008 captured a hesitancy and fear that seems to envelop a lot of Irish life.  Having read works that preceded and followed the crash in either setting and composition, it is always intriguing to see how the economic climate affected this generation of literature, a change which McLaughlin wove into each aspect of their lives.  From the frivolity that marked the boom, seen in Bill's fancy shirt and their home, to the plummet which finds them struggling and living in a home which for all intents and purposes seems to just be another old Irish home falling apart and not much more livable than those abandoned in the 1960s.  In a way, it is another reminder of how their lives, and their family as a whole, is falling apart at the seams. 

And it seems like our narrator is the only one who knows.  Besides the last line, which hits us with the macabre tone McLaughlin uses throughout, the scene in St. Stephen's Green captured our narrator's place in the story, the knowing victim of an awful trap of a life.

If she hadn’t cut through the park yesterday morning, if she hadn’t taken lunch here today, she might even have thought, next time she visited, that they were the same ducks. There was trickery of a sort at work, a sleight of hand that suggested that the first ducks had never existed, and only she alone, in silent witness, knew better. 

The fixation with birds, and Finn's desire to catch them in the act of falling really piqued my interest, since I've always had a fascination with birds, though not nearly as macabre as in this story.  Still the fixation on death, with the birds being the harbingers of death, only made the piece fit better into the realm of contemporary Irish fiction, drawing on the theme to grapple with the internal problems of the family and the narrator's own insecurity and anxieties.  Is the story dark? Yes.  Is Finn's attempted dissection of a 'plagued' bird borderline terrifying?  Without a doubt.  Did I love every second I spent reading this story?  Absolutely.  

And now I miss Dublin all the more for it.

Collecting Things (Reader Response 1)

Ever since I was small, I've collected words.  Little bits and pieces.  Advice, prose, a verse of a poem, a moment of poignancy.  It didn't matter.  If I thought it was beautiful, I wrote it down somewhere for safekeeping, some inspiration for a rainy day.  These days, I've been finding scraps of paper as I clean through old homework and notebooks, little bits of advice and love from a younger version of myself.  perhaps that's why I love listening to the advice of writers.  It is like finding those papers, but this time, they are collected and more refined.  What I'd expect from myself if I could send the little papers back in time and instead was finding notes from me in twenty, thirty, or forty years.  Neil Gaiman and John Steinbeck, two authors I read growing up, offered advice that really resonated with me.

Gaiman's advice is a step by step model, how to start writing and never stop.  How to take criticism and how to approach your own writing.  How to deal with what you've created and move towards that satisfying near-perfection you've been striving for.  I think his eighth bit of advice hit me most.

The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it ­honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.

It's never easy to write.  I won't try to pretend otherwise.  But writing with confidence can feel next to impossible.  I self-correct constantly and question what I'm trying to say and wonder if I'm any good constantly.  It doesn't take much to get me off track.  But sitting down and saying I am good enough and ignoring all the comments I'm making in my head, that is strength.  In rare moments when I can do that, I feel like I am writing my masterpiece.  And it doesn't matter that I'm wrong.  At least I can feel it.

John Steinbeck's words of wisdom help create a mindset that can help to develop a better creative mentality.  My favorite piece of advice is on finishing.

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.

I like to surprise myself.  To defy my expectations.  I like to call it cautious optimism.  A friend told me she likes to 'walk in hope'.  Regardless of what you call it, expectations, especially your own are the worst kind of pressure.  Losing yourself in the writing and the feeling you have is a stronger foundation for your work.  Or at least it is for mine. His advice urges to forget the audience, the advice, whatever else might clutter our minds and write for the sake of writing.  This list, put up against his earlier anti-advice advice portrays to me the significance of determining what advice and criticisms are useful to us and discarding anything that does not help us.  No one is going to find that every person's advice to them is helpful.  There are too many contradictions, too much to focus on, that we will never finish out work if we fixate on it.  Instead, gather together the parts that make you better.  When I was younger it was scraps of paper.  I collected words.  I like to think this is kind of the same thing.

Instead of Sleeping In

I'd have crawled across a sea of glass if I had known it was him at the door.
But the brat next door keeps ding dong ditching or asking to play with the dog and I don't feel like answering anymore and every time the telephone rings I tell them "Mommy isn't home right now," even though the idea of kids is a nightmare. I've started treating my own doorbell as a telemarketing call.

'Sorry, I'm not home,' even though I haven't left the house in three days and my car is in still the driveway and even my dog gets up when the doorbell rings but I can't bring myself to anymore.
If I had known it was him at the door I would've gone to bed early last night instead of staring at my ceiling for four hours.  I would've taken out the trash so this place wouldn't smell like a goddamn cemetery.  I would've done my makeup - maybe.  I would've let that brat give my dog some company, or maybe some exercise.

(I would've had a shot by now.  For the nerves.)

I would've deleted his phone number.  I would have left his stuff in a box outside.

Instead, I am laying on my couch in stained sweats, feeling mildly like I'm hungover, crying, watching every movie where the dog dies, all red and blotchy and not in the mood to move.

And the second bell rings and I almost tell the kid to leave me alone because I don't want to deal with him today but I'm too tired to care so I stay and try to fall asleep to my movie, but I hear his knock.  I hear his damn knock firm against the door, already giving up on the telemarketing, trying to coax me outside with every splinter of the door under his weight.  I'd have crawled across a sea of glass if I knew it would be him at the door.  Knowing now, I'd have walked over lava barefoot or swam through a pool of needles or gotten a thousand tiny paper cuts if it would have let me be anywhere else but here.

In Which Good Writing Avoids a Proper Definition... Again.

Somewhere, deep down, it feels like none of us really know what we are doing until it's done and all we have to show for our process is the endgame.  I think we do actually know what we are doing, but sometimes it feels like what we think we should do and what we actually should do are completely different.  It's not like a writer sits down to try and make a masterpiece and can't even remember how to spell the first word.  But some days it feels a little like that.   Good writing captures the reader and makes them feel something.  It's a spark between audience and reader that lets the author share themselves with whoever is listening.  And the reader gets to fall into feeling something new.  Good writing is a challenge to itself - great writing?  That's something else entirely.  I'm still figuring that one out.  But good is good enough for now.

I can't even remember when my writing life began.  Growing up reading was a competition.  Who could read the most - who remembered the most - who loved it the most.  I was never quite in first place, but I was always near the top of the list, devouring whatever I could get my hands on.  Books with no pictures?  Give me more.  Reading level?  As if I cared.  Eventually, once in a while, a book I loved left me wanting to write a new ending or write a song (most of which just turned out to be really bad poems but it was fine.)  One day, it just morphed.  One day, the stories I had told myself seemed as exciting as the books in the library, so I would set down my books for a while and starting creating.

Sometimes reading and writing feel the same.  On days when winging it feels like the proper framework for a story, sitting down at my desk, it's like I am reading to myself, telling the story in someone else's words, like a choose your own adventure book except without any pages wasted on the middles and ends you aren't planning on exploring.  Studying creative writing in college seemed to be the natural progression.  

I don't understand the idea of studying something you don't love.  Maybe that's just me, but I couldn't do it.  Writing, and reading, was always what I loved most.  It makes me the happiest most days.  Some days, maybe it's just an escape.  But others?  It feels like I'm seeing the world in a way I can deal with, a way I can appreciate, so I want to portray it better and explore it.  And maybe someone will read something of mine, point at a line or two and say "I get it.  I feel that way too."  Most days that's a good enough reason to stick with it.