Waiting

Last fall, amidst the kind of “well, what now” crisis of self us 33-year olds are good at, I decided to stop being so damn practical about my career as a writer and just embrace my fiction writing whole heartedly. Being of the cohort who gets degrees, I applied for MFA writing programs.

After polishing my best short stories, writing different personal essays for each school, taking the GRE and begging for recommendations from some of the kindest people in the world, I am now waiting. One rejection tumbled in a week ago, needlessly long and polite. I’d be happy with a 3x3 card with a big YES or a big NO. You’d think a writing program would keep to the old axiom that brevity is at the foundation of quality writing. Leave the long-winded, soft letdowns for professionals who don’t spend 95% of their careers opening rejection letters.

Four more schools have not yet responded. One is the Big Daddy school whose acceptance of me would be both profoundly surprising and fabulously validating. The others are more likely shots, drawing to the flush rather than the inside straight. Any school would be nice. No school would be disappointing but writing ain’t medicine, they still let you do it even without a degree.

It’s the waiting that makes it painful. I’m good in a chase, quick, resourceful, tenacious to the point of being infuriating. I’m pretty good with results too, appropriately humble or stoic depending on the outcome. But I suck at waiting. I fidget, I obsess, I drink, I write blog posts that are neither interesting nor brief. I grew a goatee that revealed my scraggly Irish heritage in full, patchy glory. I shaved it. Now I’m considering abusing the concept of sideburns.

Soon I’ll know what the Great University Readers have decided and I can go on, make plans, stop leaping to my feet the moment the mail smacks into the box. I hope for the best, I expect something less. But I just want to know. I hate living in the in betweens when you can neither prepare nor recover.

Then We Came to What Exactly?

I have high expectations for fiction. I want stories that are exceptionally well written, offering up a unique way with words as subtle and gripping as the performances of the best musicians. I want deep characters who propel plot and are not merely propelled by the plot. And I want a story that is compelling to read, that is not bleak for the sake of bleakness, clever for the sake of cleverness or so self-possessed as to be terminally boring.

That said, my tastes aren’t particularly divergent from the usual cohort of reviewers and awards panels. I usually like most well-reviewed and/or award-winning books and, if I don’t, I at least understand what other people saw in them. But I am at a loss to explain the acclaim received by Joshua Ferris’ novel Then We Came to the End.

The trick of this workplace novel is that it’s told in first person plural. The use of “we” is apparently designed to make us feel part of this group of characters but it generally made me feel as if the novel had no center, no one character or characters for whom I was inclined to root. Instead, we get a whole novel featuring secondary characters, almost all of whom are petty, annoying, paranoid, frightened little people devoid of anything but the most transient of heroic or even noble characteristics. They are “real” in the sense that they are believable but they are not compelling.

Normally I’d lay a book like this down after 100 pages, but the novel’s acclaimed status as well as the thought that “certainly these characters will redeem themselves” kept me reading. I wanted to find out what became of these people but, at the end, I was disappointed with how little anyone had changed despite the histrionics throughout the novel. I suppose that’s how things are in the real world – slight shifts, small turns – but I expect more oomph from a story. I expect more consequence.

The writing itself is decent with some excellent turns of phrase, some keen observations and some nicely funny moments (although it’s not nearly humorous as reviews would have you believe). But for the most part the writing is flat with all the economy of a Hemmingway but little of the poignancy. The first twenty pages are so devoid of style that I’m guessing Ferris had the good fortune of never having to get this piece by a first reader. If I think “I write better than that,” there’s clearly a problem. My usual reaction to a good book is “I’ll never be that good.”

As for the plot, it’s about an ad agency that’s going under in 2001 and how the tide of layoffs is affecting the staff (the “we”). Maybe to all the reviewers who’ve spent very little of their life in an office, this was a revelation, a peek into the pathetic yet strangely vibrant lives of office drones. To me, it was mundane – even the parts that dealt with life and death seemed somewhat ordinary. I desperately wanted to be moved by these people and their circumstance but I just couldn’t bring myself to truly care. A plot driven by the need not to get fired (or not to stop working) is a weak basis for a story. Our lives have far more dramatic moments, which is why the office novel is a less-than-vital literary subset.

If the novel had received little notice, I probably would have enjoyed it as a nice diversion, some fun little stories about some odd little people. But with acclaim comes greater critique and I can’t say this was a noteworthy work of fiction. Good, sure. Great, not so much.

It Tolls for Thee

I wasn’t an English major so I never had a huge pile of classics assigned to me. I’ve had to catch up with them on my own time, usually knocking back a couple canonical titles a year in between reading contemporary literature. Most of them are, if not excellent stories, at least important cultural touchstones. A few, however, merit every bit of their acclaim. For Whom the Bell Tolls is one of those.

I’ve always liked Earnest Hemmingway’s pop-you-in-your-mouth prose but his work, particularly his earlier novels and stories, lack a force of purpose beneath their compelling themes and language. “Isn’t it pretty to think so,” may be one of the most incredible lines of dialogue in American literature, but The Sun Also Rises as a novel is too full of disaffection to really knock you off your feet. It makes you sit down, despair a little and then get on with other things.

For Whom the Bell Tolls, despite centering on a near hopeless mission in the middle of a dismal war, has not at all left me dispairing. It’s left me completely revived. In the novel, Hemmingway captures both the abject bleakness of war and the unstoppable human hope and determination that makes men and women achieve great feats of bravery. Even though causes are corrupt, leaders are puerile and victory is seemingly impossible, Hemmingway’s band of characters attack the world head-on, convinced that their great sacrifices for small objectives can make life better for everyone. This is not naiveté (these characters are quite aware of reality and the harshness of their circumstance). This is bravery, without cynicism.

Hemmingway himself was, of course, a miserable bastard. That shows through in a lot of his work. But at his best, here and also with The Old Man and the Sea, he reveals a powerful defiance in the face of despair. I cannot help but think that’s how Hemmingway went on being brilliant for as long as did before finally succumbing to his demons. He was miserable but he was not about to go gentle into that good night (to quote another fantastically talented, utterly despondent writer). He was going to fight and, in his best literature, he shows us that it’s that fight, not the circumstances or ultimate outcome, that matters – that makes us human.

I can only hope in my life and in my writing I can give such fight.

Me in Six Words

Have you heard about the six word memoir? Kinda cool. Dyre42 reminded me of it. I’ve been meaning to post mine, so, here it is:

Searching is fun. Finding, less so.

One More Fatherhood Moment

Inspired by my friend’s fatherhood poem, I add this bit of a story. All true expect for the names:


The day's last moments lingered in the ribbons of pink clouds dipping to the west. They could still hear the carnival, the children's voices endless like a waterfall, the deeper hum of parents conversing, laughing, scolding. They had barely pulled Ian away, spending the last of their cash on a child’s football game requiring too much skill for a three-year old. The game operator gave him a toy anyway, just enough of a bribe to get the boy to finally leave.

He sat now in Dad's arms, clinging on in that way only tired children do. "We go 'gain tomorrow?" he asked.

"It's just here tonight," Dad answered, pretty sure the carnival would be around tomorrow but damn sure he wouldn't be going back.

"I wanna go tomorrow," Ian insisted.

"We're done with the carnival. It'll be back next year."

"I wanna throw foo'ball 'gain."

"We'll throw one at home."

"I wanna win."

"You can win." Dad stopped there, suddenly aware of a warm wetness against his side. "Ian?" he said, not really wanting to ask. "Did you just pee?"

"Yeah," the boy answered, drawn-out as if he too had just realized what happened.

"You peed on me."

"Yeah." There seemed to be almost a giggle to Ian's voice.

Feeling the wetness spread across his ribs and down his side, Dad walked on. There were three more blocks to go and he couldn't set Ian down now. In the end, the son always wins.

Nothing on TV and That's OK

I watch a lot of TV – during any given week I’ve got a good 10-15 shows being taped by TIVO. Or I should say I HAD 10-15 shows being taped. With the writer’s strike, the number of programs with new episodes is quickly approaching absolute zero. That’s fine. I will endure the dearth of good television and the reality show diluvian as long as it takes the writers to get a fair agreement.

You don’t have to know anything about the studio’s position to know that they are trying to screw the writers. Writers always get screwed. That’s the way it is and has always been. In many ways, it’s unavoidable. Stories are not like paint on canvas. Stories breathe and evolve on their own, separate from their creator. The very best of them all but divorce the original writer completely, becoming a part of the cultural fabric. Just ask Shakespeare.

Over the long haul, a writer cannot reasonably own a story or a character. But they should absolutely be allowed to profit from the original content’s distribution. A writer who creates a great character for Law and Order will never see a penny from that character’s exploits in later episodes not written by the writer. So shouldn’t the writer at least profit from the sale and resale of the original episodes he or she wrote? Isn’t that basic fairness?

The studios disagree. They want to carve out an exception for so-called new media distribution (a.k.a. anything sold and transmitted through the Internet and its iPod, cell phone, futuristic ocular implant receivers). Despite the fact that it’s clear to anyone with any sense that Internet distribution will continue to grow exponentially, the studios claim that since they aren’t making any money on it this second, they want to “wait and see” before giving writers a reasonable cut on future profits.

The writers, not wanting to get stuck with the same bum deal they got for VHS and DVD sales (when they bought in on the studios’ first use of the “wait and see” b.s.), are standing their ground. Yes, they are basically going on strike to earn themselves a percentage of a number currently below zero, but they understand the future.

The Internet will be the primary form of entertainment distribution. If the studios want to be a part of that, they will have to share the proceeds. If they don’t want to share, they can try to survive the transition without writers. Hey, there will always be a demand for stories. There doesn’t always have to be a demand for major studios. For once, maybe the writers actually have the upper hand. They at least have my support – for how ever long it takes.

*disclosure* Yes, I am a professional writer but I am not a member of any union.

Rest in Peace, Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut has died. I’ve never been a huge fan of his novels, although I do admire his brazen genre-bending style that so few writers even attempt.

But what I will always remember about Vonnegut is the lecture he gave at my university. My writing life was fundamentally changed by his description of what a perfect story should be. I can’t repeat the lesson here as it is long and requires graphs. What I can say is that he analyzed Hamlet and the result was a straight line. That probably makes no sense out of context but, to me, it’s a lesson I’ve lived by ever since.

Many today will mourn Vonnegut the writer. I mourn Vonnegut the teacher. Kurt, you never knew me but I have to say thanks. You inspired me.

“I guess it was a perfect profession for someone who was putting off being someone.”

The quote is from Amba in a post about her years of ghostwriting. She is talking about how ghostwriters imbed themselves in another person’s life to the detriment of the writer’s own self. But damn-it-all if that one line doesn’t hit me square in the gut.

Unlike Amba’s ghostwriting, my copywriting does not lead me to impersonate. Mine is the art of unsubtle persuasion, constantly the carnival barker shouting “here, buy this, it will improve your life.” Yet much like the ghostwriter, I do not own the words I write. There is no attribution. No assurance that what I write won’t be changed by others a hundred times over before appearing in print.

I tell myself “at least I’m a writer.” Writing has been my passion since I was scribbling stories in crayon. Shouldn’t I rejoice in knowing I’m one of the lucky few who can make a living as a writer? Why do I feel that this advertising profession of mine is just a fallback – a bland snack while others feast?

The answer is this: I am putting off being someone. Amba’s words are just right. It’s not about waste, for I believe I’ve wasted little and live a pretty nice life. It’s not about failure, because I have achieved many things. It is, at the heart of it, about leaving too much of my talent off the table. I have let myself be content with a gruel of mushy success, just filling enough to let me sleep but too plain to truly satisfy.

What I want is to be a writer of fiction. Yes I have written many stories and have even had a few short pieces published, but I’ve never made a strong push to be more than a hobbyist. Lately I’ve even toyed with the idea of relegating the whole notion of fiction writing to that same back shelf where I store the old dreams of being an actor or an astronaut. At least then, I figure, I could stop the gnawing sense that I am not being that someone I could be.

But I cannot hide away this particular passion. I can only follow it or pretend I’m living it. I’ve been pretending for awhile. And now the self-deception has ruptured – it’s been threatening to do so for a good while.

This all means nothing to Maverick Views. Blogging may take time but it has its purpose. There are many more habits I can cast aside if it’s time I need. But time appears when the will demands it. The will is what I need now. I’ll let you know the progress.