The Reason I (Am) Here

(Yes, this lovely little ditty is showing up at 5 am.  I wake up at weird hours and use the time to write.  The fun side of being a creative.)

Present and future tense.  I've snatched at it lately, like music.  I am here.  I have a reason to be here.  When I get married.  It's shadings like this that make a girl hopeful.

I'm working on my novel more and more right now; with the holidays the job search and inquiries can pretty much be wrapped up in 90 minutes a day and then I sit down and work on being productive, in any sense possible.  I blog about customer service finds and frustrations.  I read.  I write on what I read.  And then I work on the novel.

My character in the novel is a woman with a lot of similarities to me.  She's a baseball fan.  She works in an industrial setting.  She suffers a workplace injury.  She spends about 60 percent of her free time alone, and, in the off-season, 100 percent of her free time alone.  (To be fair, she has differences from me as well.  She doesn't think women should play professional baseball.  She's thin.  She's of Irish descent.  She has no siblings.  She's not a writer and she doesn't read fiction.)

The one aspect of her that is easiest to write is her solitude.  My protagonist is the definition of "If a tree falls in the woods and there's no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?"  For some odd reason, I always think of Isak Dinesen's accounts of Africa when I think of that phrase..."will Africa remember me?"  Was I really here?  At several points in the novel the protagonist does the incredible--she has batting practice with the San Francisco Giants before each of their home games, for FOUR YEARS.  As they say on the social networks these days, "Pictures or it didn't really happen."  But she agreed not to take pictures.  She agreed not to tell anyone.  And her love for the men she plays with is strong enough that when another character asks, "How am I supposed to believe that?  Why would I believe that?" her answer is, "Then don't."  Alone, sitting on everyone else's more credible and documented side of the world, more people have doubted her, and contributed to her self-doubt, than these 25 men in a batting practice that she can't prove.  They not only believe her life but they want to be part of it.  Her loyalties lie with those who think she exists, and who acknowledge her existence.

I often wonder if I exist, living as solitary as I do.  Social networking responses to my work often shock me not for their content but for their appearance.  I was speaking with a friend yesterday about this, and he was patient and kind enough to explain why it was so rare to connect with others on social networks, and what other factors are involved when the tree falls.  He didn't lecture, he didn't instruct, he just posed considerations.  There's a small chance I'm heard.  There's a minute or no chance that I'm acknowledged, and I'm looking in the wrong place for that acknowledgment.  It was good to have that kind of weighing in, and then go to writing group afterword, where others were grateful that I had hosted the group and made them comfortable.  I could see my contribution to the world reflected back for an afternoon.  There IS a reason that I AM here.

Present tense.

I hear leaves rustling in the forest.  :)

Twenty Pigeons, Twenty Doves

Art in Afghanistan was a moot point for years during the rule of the Taliban, but recently journalists have been returning to the country to find recovery in the form of art.  I recently listened to a writer on the voyeuristic program "The Moth" who had traveled to Afghanistan in search of art, any art, and he was told by government officials and liaisons that there was no art in Afghanistan, still, and he decided to wander among the people to see for himself.

This writer had a history of depression, and he commented, to the amusement of the audience, that Afghanistan was probably not the best place to go if you suffer from depression.  Still, the story was one of progression and discovery; he told of finding painters who were hired to paint over people in the museum portraits, musicians silenced, poets invisible in burqas.  The painters who covered the portraits came back after the liberation with water and soft cloths and uncovered the paint.  The poets still wear burqas because they would feel exposed if they removed them, and they liked finding stories in what Harry Potter tried on for those of us in the western cultures, the invisibility cloaks.  And the musicians dug their instruments out of piles of kindling and played from practiced dreams.  One man was asked, "Didn't you go crazy, not having any music, or not knowing when you would have music again?"  The man answered, "I thought I might...but then I went to the market, and bought twenty pigeons and twenty doves, and that was my music."  His house was "a mess," told the writer, but he had music, any form of music.

A writer, a creative, looks for the smallest thing to stay alive.  I can't say that I'd buy the birds.  But I already have a burqa--not one of cloth, but one of network.  I am invisible.  If stories be found there, then I should be able to rival Joyce.

Listen.

Write on.

Encrypted

I've been carrying a Moleskine journal with me more and more lately, a soft companion with no rules.  I clip a gel-writing pen to the cover, usually with some outlandishly-colored blood in its veins, and I sit in bars, coffee shops, bookstores (not for the faint of heart, that; staff may think you are writing in a book of theirs) and park benches, spilling the beans.  I sometimes get out my BlackBerry and take pictures of the evidence, and put it on Foursquare for geographic reference or on Facebook with a fat cookie or cake piece to get comments...and I do get comments.  For the sweets.

Rarely do I get compliments on Facebook for my writing.  I'm starting to wonder if it's because I write in cursive, and if the friends who follow me on Facebook can read something that isn't a downloadable font.

I'm a minority in the pictures of this subject.  I'm also a minority in my writing groups.  Often in a group of three to fifteen people I am the only one going analog.  I adore analog.  I'm truly myself with analog, free to stumble, run, swim or fly over the pages.

Sometimes, though, the pages represent time wasted eternal to an outsider.  "You go to so many writing group meetings," say non-writing friends, and even some fellow members.  "Is your bedroom overflowing with filled journals?"  No, but more because I am a slow writer, a careful writer, even in private.  I got my very deliberate cursive from a strict teacher in the sixth grade, who told me my handwriting was awful (it was legible), and that if I made a concentrated effort to improve it, then I would be accepted into her special class for something called Calligraphy, where I could dip a pen in ink and create fancy letters like the ancients.  Few kids bit at this bribe, but I was lonely enough then to bite at anything...sort of like I am lonely enough now to bite at any social networking site or technology just to find companionship.  With the calligraphy class I learned to change my handwriting (my fifth-grade handwriting and my seventh-grade handwriting look like two different people--I'm lucky I didn't have to sign things at that age), and grip the pen with such worry that two things happen when I write:

• You can't take my pen from me--the hand will come along for the ride;
• I cramp up about a page in and can no longer feel my middle finger at the tip.

I have been told to loosen up by other teachers, physiological medical professionals, even psychiatrists.  I've tried, but then the distinctive art is lost.  I would rather be in pain and combative when it comes to my writing than relax and lose the picture.

Occasionally, someone will shock me and be on my side.  I'm used to my handwriting, so the shock comes from seeing the beauty again from the outside.  There's a cafe in North Beach in San Francisco that has fallen in love, collectively, with my pages--I have been known to get free drinks with my letters.  I've written for charity without a laptop, contributing by the page, for the penmanship.  And occasionally someone in the writing group will see me prepare for the session and their jaw will drop on the table.  "That paper is unlined," they'll say, and point, as though I just hurled a submarine pitch and the ump called it fair.  "How come you can do that and the paper is UNLINED?"  Because I'm a freak, I think, but just smile to the inquisitor.  My control issues work FOR me in this department.

This afternoon I was skimming my news feed through Twitter and found this, tucked in amongst the baseball stats, Kindle Fire announcements, and publication pointers.  My favorite journal manufacturer is sponsoring a project to collect something that may be a lost art in just a few generations, and that art is HANDWRITING?  You mean at some point someone is going to need a comparable Rosetta Stone to decipher me?  You mean that I, the least hip person and probably not one of the smartest people on the face of the planet, is using something akin to Navajo spy messages or passing down an oral tradition in recipe?  

Or code?

And all of the apathy toward my life from outsiders, all of the things I'm not smart enough to see and all of the things I have to keep up with to be published and "liked," were washed away.  I have a gift.  I have the writing equivalent of the knuckleball, long lost to pitchers because they can't maintain control of it.  I can maintain control of it, in the knot between my fingernail and my hand.  I have the ball at the seams, and I send the curves flying, so slowly that the page thinks it can be hit out of the park, still swinging at something lost in the tomorrows.  Suddenly, I feel relevant, and...surprisingly precious to an unsuspecting world.

Write on...a lost art.

'Faced & Twitterpated

It's official--I've given up social networking for the sake of "promotion."

To be honest, I've given up Facebook entirely on a surface level. One look at my Facebook page makes people think I'm still there in full force, with the occasional post about writing or baseball, but closer looks reveal the truth--I'm posting "via" a remote site on everything from GoodReads to the Rumpus to Blogger to MLB.com.

I wish I could say that I miss Facebook--involvement with such a site means that I'm normal and can play well with others, right? But I just can't bring myself to go there anymore. I like myself and my writing so much better without it. It's like walking away from the funhouse mirrors to outside and catching myself reflected in a garden pond. The introspective view is better, less self-focused strangely enough, and allows me to be more creative and speak with my own voice. (Emerson would roll his eyes at me, but let him--he didn't have this crowd to work with.)

As to Twitter--I used to have two outlets for Twitter: my laptop and a BlackBerry application called OpenBeak. OpenBeak wouldn't let me post pictures on Twitter, but it did this other lovely enabling action where it started the tweet stream right where I left off last time I logged in, and allowed me to scroll up to catch up. I call this an enabling action because it forced me to clear the que every two hours or I'd have all kinds of crap to scroll through (after waiting forever for it to load), so I could easily read EVERYTHING. That's part of what fed my frustration with social networking--having to be on top of every news item for writing, publishing, baseball, etc, when there is no way in hell you can do that unless it's a full time job that you're paid for. I wasn't getting paid. So I switched to Twitter for BlackBerry, which lets me post pictures, doesn't make me read EVERYTHING to catch up, and, if someone wants to get my attention, an @mention finally works to alert me on my phone desktop. (With OpenBeak, I had to go in and check for them.)

I'm trying to get away from @mentions to others myself--they don't get responses and that seems to feed back to the "no one's listening" aspect of my social networking frustration. A little over a week ago a friend of mine suggested that I was writing for all of the wrong reasons, and suggested that I might want to re-evaluate why I write. (This was after revealing to her that I wouldn't be blogging as much.) I didn't agree--I've loved writing for all of time, and didn't necessarily strive to publish it until friends in Missouri accused me of hiding my light under a bushel by not publishing it. Publishing my work on-line was like a bad boyfriend--maybe if I do this, this, and this over here I will get vindication for publishing--so I was networking and publishing for the wrong reasons, and therefore re-evaluated why I publish and social network. And it all comes back to what my mother used to tell me about the phone: "Sadie, the phone is there for your convenience, not theirs." I see Twitter and Facebook the same way, and use them accordingly.

Sadly enough for the friend who recommended that I re-evaluate my reason for writing, she's on Facebook. Well, when I'm ready to see who's won what Mafia war or whose kids have made honor roll, I'll tune back in...at my convenience. Meantime, I have tales to get down on paper.

Write on.

Rotten Tomatoes, Via Apathy

Here's an excellent story idea: fiction writer from the past is forced to grapple with modern writing networking tools.

Hemingway would be great with Twitter's format. But he would hate its audience. The Great Gatsby would have never been published by marketing on Facebook.

Here's dangerous mettle for you...silence. Perhaps you've experienced it. You call someone, and your call is never answered. You write something, and the publisher never even bothers to reject you (an ironic form of rejection). Or, we can go more subtle...you post things on vast, virtual walls, and they are greeted by...

SILENCE.

That's been happening to me for three days. It's on par with the unkind self-assumption that others have given up on you, or are rolling their eyes at you (dumb c***, who does she think she is, doesn't she know how to do that in this age and with this kind of communication, etc), laughing at you...

By the middle of the afternoon today I had been ignored long enough. I shut off the phone and the computer. I picked up a paper book and finished it. When I turned the phone back on there was a text message for me, from a guy who had ignored my texts the first two months after I left my last workplace, someone who I thought was a friend, after all that silence. His message was simple--to sneer at me for the Giants' performance in Cincinnati. He wasn't just teasing--his message was to rub my face in a dirty diaper.

[I don't own the Giants. I love them openly, which I guess, in the words of "The Franchise," puts "a target on my back" too. Everyone hates the Giants and hates Giants fans, so I'm either going to get ignored...or insulted. That's after three days of being ignored trying to play the networking game on Twitter and Facebook. That's after trying to mingle in the "virtual cafe." I sent him back a two-word reply.

I'll let you guess what it said.]

The last three days have reminded me, very pointedly, that I need to remember why I write. I have to write for me. I have to write regardless. And I have to write quality stuff for my sake, not write just to stay in the game in hopes of keeping people interested. I don't monitor my "views" and try to increase them or weed them out. I am balls-out, accelerator to the floor. Every time I try to do that network/stats stuff I just feel like slitting my wrists. Hell, I didn't even check the stats today...I knew that NO ONE WAS READING. So I have to go back to writing stuff I would want to read, and sail back to the water in between for a while.

There was hope, though...Becky Levine, a children's author on Twitter, posted the following message to the world:

"Think. Write. Repeat and rinse."

So simple and so helpful. So I re-Tweeted it.

And she thanked me for doing that. Not everyone thinks I'm invisible...after all, she knew what I needed in the smallest of gestures--a thanks for the shout-out.

You're welcome. Write on.

From the Department of "Well, That Was Dumb"

I'm having one of those mornings where I got off to a weird start. I bought yet another laptop bag yesterday, and in the transfer of writing supplies to take with me to the library I forgot my pouch of back-up pens. I've Tweeted the fact, Facebooked the fact...I'm obsessed. This was supposed to be a writing session.

And it was. Just an on-line one, is all. I'm still working on adaptability issues, obviously. City writer, country writer. :) (Thanks, Robin.)

And for those of you following my bag count...I picked up this little gem at the outlet mall, Kenneth Cole, $17, AND it matches my current handbag. Oh, I'm such a girl.

I'm at the Carlsbad City Library this morning, the Georgina Cole branch, while Serena volunteers at the Senior Center. Yes, I could have volunteered with her. Yes, I was selfish about my writing and chose that instead this week. I'm used to the San Francisco Public Library, which isn't much different from this library at the satellite branches. The two biggest differences are:

• The librarians here are so friendly they greet you coming in, and they invite you to stay and read a while. "It's hot out there; you better stay put," was my instruction on Wednesday. I readily complied and read for two hours that day. (Had plenty of ink and I read the whole time--oh, for God's sake, let it GO already, Jo...) The San Francisco librarians are pleasant, but you have to get in front of them and make yourself known. I suspect that has to do with the second difference, below...
• About 30% of the patrons at the SF Public Library are homeless people, camping in the temperature control with free knowledge. I don't begrudge them that, although it lends an unmistakable aroma to a library in San Francisco that for the most part does an excellent job of keeping me from curling up with a book there. In this library there is just one homeless person, and none that I could find at the main branch over on Dove Lane. The homeless woman here seems disturbed but well-behaved--I imagine she doesn't want to be thrown out in this heat.

I love the Main Branch of the SF Public Library for it's grandeur, but I must say that I love these little libraries for their humanity. Today I had to journey upstairs for a vacant writing table, but Wednesday I got a table right by checkout, and got to talk to children. One little girl who I swear came up to my knee insisted on showing me the correct way to self-checkout (Tina Fey, Jr.), and another little girl passed my table and demanded that she wish me goodbye and that I have a good day. This friendliness seems consistent with much of Carlsbad--Mike and Serena's neighbors invite me over to their units and show me pets and renovations with relish, offer up sunburn cure-alls, and ask if I'm looking for a vacancy down here. They even nod in agreement about my love of San Francisco--"Oh, I understand, hon. Just saying you have a home here if you want it." At the cafe yesterday two people stopped to ask me about the library book I was reading, and if I was reading it for work. STRANGERS. It's like Mayberry meets Surf City.

Well that's enough writing for now...I'm going to finish that book I started on Wednesday and wait to see what the tide will bring.

Write on. :)

Clutter Patrol

Heh, heh...just organized all of my favorites on Safari, so now I get to do mind melt every time I try to find stuff for a little while...

Have had a really good couple of days of writing, and so was absent from here yesterday. I'd like to think of this as a running on-line journal, so when I miss a day I start to get that feeling like I mis-buttoned my shirt or something. But most of the day happenings for yesterday and today went into a blog post on Sea Level that I'll point out on Facebook tomorrow. I am trying to get in the habit of only going into Facebook on Fridays, with marginal success. It's a work in progress and a goal I'm not going to hit overnight, but I'll still try for it. The plan is to only hit up Facebook on Friday, and on Friday on Twitter point my Twitter followers to Facebook for news. Changes things up and maybe some of the readers will follow back and forth. We'll see.

Twitter = Reader's Digest Condensed Book.

Facebook = Reader's Digest Condensed Book with the paper illustrated book jacket still on

Debating an event tomorrow night...the Bookswap thing at Booksmith. The weather is supposed to be crappy, I want to give readers a chance to go, I've never been to Booksmith (and yet I write about 'em--just call me Stephen Crane, war hero, and get it overwith), and I don't have a book to swap because I give all of them away as I read them, damn it. On the other hand I just added "Writing Down the Bones" to my Kindle and have a pocket copy that I could trade. That book has probably been the greatest writing teacher I have ever had. I was going to give the pocket copy to a friend of mine, but only because her therapist has her journal-writing, and not because she is normally a writer. Probably not the best reason if I don't want this copy to get dusty. We'll see. I'll head over there now, see if there are tickets, and check out the store. (Removes a couple of the cons on the list, I guess.)

You ever hit one of those strides where you don't care if anyone's reading--you're just glad to be writing?

Hells, yeah. I'm there.

HOME RUN

Here's a note to say that if you're debating something, take a chance.

I was published twice today on one article. Once by me, and once by a bookstore who loved my post announcing a slightly quirky event that will occur on Friday.

Behold.

And people LIKE the article. Like, Sally-Field-like the article. Holy reaching the reader, Batman.

Strangers like my article. And Booksmith shouted out the article to my employers on Facebook, so now I've kudos. TWICE.

Cue "Song 2" by Blur. The Giants' biggest fan just hit a personal home run. Ever try not to scream from your bedroom at 10:30 at night? (Uh, don't answer that.)

Ok, time to shut up now, Jo. Celebrate in the morning.

Write on.

Resolutions, a Work in Progress

Good morning, kids, and welcome to a long-lost blogger. Posting here will probably prompt a barrage of crap from a number on-line pimp stores for Asian porn (don't ask me why, they tend to love me), but I'll risk it to post my latest offering, a work in progress we like to call "New Year's Resolutions."

Here's the first draft:

• Try one new thing every day
• Do not buy any new books in 2011--if I want to read a book, I have to beg, borrow, or steal.
• Do not buy any new pens in 2011--I have enough now to last me through Armageddon.
• Give up Facebook.
• Tweet more.
• Blog more, regardless.

Read on, dear reader...hopefully. :)

Size Matters: Status, Tweets, and Prescription Pads

Overheard at the last SoMA writer's Meetup:

What's with Facebook status? Do people think I care that they went
out for a cup of coffee? I'm sorry, but I don't understand
Twitter...people have too much free time.

I guess I can understand this frustration--there's about a gazillion cyber trends we're supposed to be hip on right now. (Yesterday on "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me" a contestant nearly missed a question on Twitter, but completely missed a question on Starbucks, which has to make you wonder.) I just discovered a couple of Google items--the Reader and Latitude--so I have no real room to speak much to squelch the frustration, but it reminds me of other statements to writing culture...

When I write, I try to cover the gammit of formats. Natalie Goldberg writes that the size of your paper has the capability to shape your thoughts. Write on a humungous sketch pad and you have big thoughts--with her focus on meditation, she writes that you have to have a big intake of breath to get across a sketch-pad page. If you want to go tiny that's okay by her too, but it will create small thoughts. Here she points to one of my favorite poets--William Carlos Williams--and how he wrote his poems on prescription pads. Williams was a doctor and most of his subject matter was about doctor visits to his patients. Williams also wrote short stories, which weren't miniscule; "The Girl With a Pimply Face" was a fair-sized piece of short fiction. I don't know what he wrote his fiction on--seems a short story of that size would take up a lot of prescription pads--but the point of Williams is that either by brief snippet or lengthy pagination, he wrote. He didn't care what the format was.

Back in the 1800's and early 1900's, there was this wonderful thing called a telegram. "BABY BOY BORN STOP CHARLES ELMER ATKINS STOP SEVEN POUNDS AND FOUR OUNCES STOP MOM AND BOY FINE STOP." Flash-forward about hundred years and you have text messaging, with a language all on its own. There was the worry among the grammarians of the West that text messaging was ruining our use of the English language, until some of the grammarians pointed out that our English skills weren't ruined by the telegraph. And I have found in the workplace that the more you utilize colloquial and formal language in balance, the more you are seen as a deft communicator. If you know how all language works in terms of English, you can communicate with more people. Sort of like writing for any audience--be it Twitter, Facebook, or blog.

There's great site on the web called Six Sentences, a blog devoted to six-sentence stories or anecdotes. The best posts on that blog are those that tell the most intricate story from start to finish in six sentences, as tightly and completely as possible. I've seen stories that have six very short sentences where the post takes only three or four lines of copy on the screen, and then I've seen posts where the sentence length was long enough to make that post gray with copy and a large block. Drifting back to my meditative teacher Ms. Goldberg, I think of Hemingway. Goldberg was enamoured by the length of Hemingway's sentence structure, and particularly amazed because he word choice was so simple. You can glower at Hem for his views on women, but he could write a sentence that was so easily readable but was winding-train-in-the-woods long, without making it seem like a run-on. Some of the Six Sentence authors pack punch, shortened jabs in the dark. Some take a deep breath and control-dream out a whole wish, as though blowing out a sheetcake full of candles. Either format is impressive and successful.

*****

Here are my takes on the formats, and what I strive for:

• Facebook: I try to post a status that cracks people up. My sense of humor can lean toward the dry, so I don't always succeed, and other times people are all smiles.
• IM status: See for Facebook, above. I do this for work or home.
• Twitter: If I have a little story to tell, sort of like Six Sentences, then I put it on Twitter. Twitter is my best friend on the cell phone for quick stories on the rails or road. (I can blog on the Blackberry, but typing it is tedious--Twitter is more managable.)
• Six Sentences: I hope to submit someday. Right now, I'm too wordy for that format--I can't control myself.

All these things are one more thing to follow, yes. But occasionally, in the litany of words, they shed gems. All I can think of when I hear the itty bitty bits here and there is of one of the worlds longest pieces of fiction, stream-of-conscienceness, found in Joyce's "Ulysses."

Yes.

I said yes.

I will, yes.

[Editor's Post Script: Found another lovely little site this past week called quillpill, which allows you to write a book or story with Twitter-like capability, on steroids. I've signed up for an account and hope to put a short story on there sometime in mid to late June. Stay tuned...]