Mette Ivie Harrison's Blog, page 67

Writing Wednesday: The Fame Thing Isn't Really Real, You Know

Today's theme is taken from Notting Hill, which for all the problems it has, holds a fond place in my heart and has become a family favorite, which we quote all the time (mostly from Spike). This is something I tell myself a lot and I think it is a useful mantra. When you see other authors getting interviews or starred reviews or giant advances or awards or NY Times Bestseller status or movie deals that you think you want, remind yourself that it isn't really real. And by that I mean, these things are largely exaggerated. And also, they don't make any difference to the actual writing of the book, which remains hard for every writer and can actually be made harder by the distraction of this kind of hype. I know a lot of writers who, after a major award, lose a full year of active writing because of the time they feel obliged to spend touring and giving interviews and just plain trying to live with the anxiety of--what do I write now that will top that?

I wrote 20 novels before I got published, and I bring up this number a lot, partly because I like to remind people that writing one novel does not mean you "deserve" to be published, nor does writing any number. Also partly because I like to remind people that a lot of hard work is the main thing that makes the difference between writers who get published and writers who don't. We sometimes imagine that it's "genius" or "talent" or even "luck" and we give up when we're in the middle of the hard part. You never know when you've written the book that will get you published, but if you give up before you've written 20, I honestly don't have much sympathy. Sorry, I don't. I've never met ANYONE who has written more books than that without being published, but I suppose it's possible. The good thing about writing 20 novels before I got published was that I got used to finishing a book and then moving on to the next book. I got used to finding my own reasons for writing that were completely internal and had nothing to do with the external reaction to my writing. Even if my writing was crap, I still enjoyed doing it and it has become a habit that not much gets in the way of. I like the internal feedback that writing gives me. I don't actually need anything else. I like it. Don't get me wrong. I long for reviews and awards and popular acclaim, but I'm also aware of the fact that it isn't real.

If you are a writer or even an aspiring writer and you become discouraged by the news of someone else's sale, perhaps someone who you think isn't as good a writer as you are, or on a book you don't love that much, remind yourself that it isn't real. In the announcements of good news there is always about a 50% inflation rate. Sometimes it's because the reported amount of a deal includes multiple books in a series which may or may not come to be. Sometimes it's because the publishing industry vastly over-reports how many copies of a first print run they will be making (in order to increase the hype and to get Hollywood interested). Sometimes a reported movie deal is all air, in which the author will receive about 10 cents, relatively speaking, and Hollywood gets to hold onto rights for the next 20 years while the publisher gets a lot of the money. Sometimes a starred review just means that a book happened to get assigned to the right reviewer who "got it." You can't control any of these things. You can't make them happen, and there is no point in being upset about them. Go back to things you can control. Your writing. And actually, your life.

A writer who makes it big isn't transformed overnight into someone who is suddenly a better person. Money may or may not make that writer's life easier. It may make it harder. But the point is, their relationships aren't better than yours. What money buys them is not going to do what you think it will. They still have to do laundry, make dinner, and pick up the kids from preschool. Life goes on. As Julia Roberts' character points out, she's never been able to have anything real with anyone real. Sometimes fame and success actually make life more difficult because they make other people believe that you are no longer a real person, and this is not a good thing. I'm not trying to say that we shouldn't try to be successful. I'm just saying that you need to make sure you don't let your energy get eaten up by useless jealousy. Unless, of course, that fuels your writing in a good way. Then go ahead. But don't imagine that the success is real.

Unpublished writers look at writers who have a contract and think--if only I had that, then my life would be different. Guess what? It's not that different. You've sold one book. It isn't a golden ticket. You won't sell everything you write after that. Once you've found an agent, your agent will not love everything you write. Being a NY Times Bestseller won't mean that your publisher will suddenly want to look at your trunk novels and send you on tours. They might, but no guarantees. There are new anxieties and challenges to be face at every stage of life. Be prepared for this. The glittery view that we have of movie stars and perhaps even successful authors is something *we* put on them. It isn't something that grows out of them. They are just people. One of the things that has surprised me the most as a writer is meeting other writers and realizing that they are all in the same boat, consumed by worries and by the need to create. I like to talk to them, but not because I think something is going to rob off. I like to talk to them because we are in the same boat. If you understand that as an aspiring writer, you are a step up. You're going to make more friends among authors by being real than you ever would by being successful. It's not that we hate success. It's just that we know it isn't real, now that we're on the other side of it.

If you want to see the clip, go here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RESwG23_YGw

Monday Recs (on Tuesday)--The Book of Blood and Shadow by Robin Wasseman

This is a book that doesn’t have any easy answers about love, betrayal and forgiveness. It won’t give you a warm romantic feeling. You won’t want to reread the most romantic moments when you’re sick or need comfort. It’s not a book that’s an easy read in any way. It’s fast paced, and it certainly has romance in plenty, the expected and unexpected kind. It’s also a book about religion and science from a time when there was very little difference between the two translated into our world, where the two are enemies. The main character isn’t a believer, and even at the end, she would prefer to believe a more rational explanation than the one which her senses and memory give her.

The basics of the plot line are that Nora has been given the chance to translate some letters in Latin from 400 years before that have something to do with the “Voyniche” manuscript. These letters lead her into a centuries old conflict between two groups who will stop at nothing to keep her from finding out the truth about a machine designed to give the power of God. In the end, Nora’s life lies in tatters, her friends dead, her love ruined. But she has found the truth, as horrible as it is.

What I loved about the book:

1—the relationship between Nora and Elizabeth, a girl who has been dead for 400 years, but whose voice still insists on being heard and understood. Even without the superficial similarities between these two, there is a connection there. The way that Wasserman is able to make Elizabeth come alive for the reader when the whole novel is narrated in Nora’s first person is really a testament to her skill as a writer.

2—the final climactic scene where Nora is “fed” to the lumen dei. The writing here is some of the best writing ever, taut but concrete and in the minute.

3—the romantic suspense with all three main guys. It’s hard to really feel like you’re on one “team” or another, but until the last moment, you are kept guessing who is hiding what secrets. The feeling reminded me very much of Cary Grant in Suspicion or Notorious. I’m aware these are not his favorite movies, but I think his acting was superb and the effect is just what Wasserman is getting at.

4—the linguistic fun. I speak a smattering of various languages and I so much enjoyed getting to use a bit of that in the Latin, German, Hungarian, Czech, phrases here. (Although I will say that the audio reader was not so great with the German and Latin.) I love linguistic puzzles and there are plenty of them here. I love that Latin in this book still matters, when so few people study it anymore.

5—The darkness of it all. I loved that Nora is wrong and wrong again and then yes, wrong again. She is smart, but she doesn’t expect that love will make the people around her do the things they do. And then it turns out she isn’t exactly blameless in it all, either.

Friday Tri: Know Yourself

I was talking over my race last weekend with a friend who is a newer triathlete, but an experienced runner. She ended up in the water with a lot of people who were a lot slower than she was, but apparently did not know how to tell what their estimated swim time would be. This happens all the time in races where you seed yourself in triathlon. The main problem is that the newer you are, the less you are able to gauge your own abilities. You don't have the judgment that more seasoned athletes do. And yes, there are seasoned athletes who are not great swimmers, but they still know exactly what their time will be out of the water, and how they will make up their time in other disciplines. An experienced runner tends to have that ability to make judgments about herself, cares about her time and has done the timing of her swimming in recent weeks to have a proper estimate. Someone entirely new to racing does not.

I have found that I tend to ask people questions about their swimming and racing that are not necessarily time related, in order to figure out how to place myself around them. The most important question for me isn't their time, but if they do flip turns or not. Why? Because swimmers who do flip turns are people who know the rules of the swimming pool. They are generally former swimmers (as I am) and they are not upset about being passed. They move over and don't hit you in the face with their feet. They also know how to pass properly if the reverse is true. And they don't hang on the walls making it impossible for me to do my flip turns which reduce my overall swim time enormously. I also find that the closer they are to an exact time, the more accurate they are. "Under 5 minutes" is not as good an answer as "4:42." If they say they are a breaststroker, this means something. If they wish we were diving in, this means something.

I have been thinking about how this applies to other areas of life. Watching So You Think You Can Dance for the first time this season, I was struck by how easy it was to tell who was a dancer and who wasn't simply by how they walked on stage and held themselves during conversation. How they looked, how muscular they were, how they had dressed for the audition. Of course, you don't skip the audition and just go for the looks, but these were people who knew themselves and that spoke volumes. As a writer, I have found that I have become more and more confident in myself as a writer. This doesn't mean that I don't write crappy first drafts. I do. But I know that is part of the process and it doesn't bother me as it once did. I also know that they are crappy, and don't think that anything I write is wonderful at conception. When I talk to beginning writers about their work, they tell me a lot when they use certain terminologies or name agents they've submitted to or conferences they've been to. I don't give them extra points, but it shows me that they are on the path to self-knowledge, which is enormously important.

As a parent, I think the same thing applies. Knowing that your children are going to act in certain ways at certain ages because you've read it in a book is different than having been through it five times before. Book learning helps, but it's better to remember how to stand, to tell yourself that you've been through this before and everyone survived, to remember to vent privately and not at the child, and to be wise enough to accept that if you've had a bad day with a child today or for the last year, that doesn't mean that you should give up or that you are a terrible parent. It's just par for the course, and you keep going. You buy some chocolate, remind yourself that you do other things well, and read a good book. You don't flail in the water because you're in the first race of your life. You breathe deeply because you've done it before.

When to Self-Publish

I apologize to those of you who are doing self-publishing the right way and who were offended by my post yesterday. I did not mean to suggest that all self-published authors are obnoxious, in-your-face self-promoters. It feels to me like 90% of the ones I've met are, but that may simply be because they are louder and feel like more.

Legitimate Reasons to Self-publish:

You know a particular niche market and are in a unique situation to market your books to that market. (Example: David Farland's In the Company of Angels for the Mormon audience. Or a book targeting your audience as a motivational speaker where you know who you're selling it to and a publisher couldn't really do it better.)

You are writing a book for a limited audience, such as family/friends for a specific event. (Example: family histories.)

You are publishing the final books in a series which a publisher has elected not to continue with, mostly for the sake of fans who want to read more and feel cheated not to read the ending you intended. (In this case, it isn't about money at all. It's also not you pushing your book on strangers, but offering it to those who express an interest.)

You have the experience in writing to believe there is a market for your book and are willing to pay for the editorial help and the artistic help necessary to make a good quality book.

You have no intentions of being a published author, but just want to have a copy of something for yourself in a more durable form, to show you've achieved a given level of expertise. (Sometimes schools do this for children, though I sometimes wonder if this gives the wrong idea about publishing.)

(Possibly) If you are an adult and you feel that you may be able to get enough exposure from a self-published book that is very well done to attract a national audience and publisher. (I don't recommend this, but I do think it's legitimate. Sometimes people do end up selling a self-pubbed book, but a lot of the time agents won't even look at them. Examples: Time Stops for No Mouse(which I like), The Christmas House (which I dislike) , Eragon (which I really dislike), Hank the Cowdog (also like). My caution here is to be open about being self-published and your reasons for it without necessarily slamming the national industry. You want success there, so why would you be rude?)

You are in the comic book world, where self-pubbing is done all the time, and is basically the only way to work if you aren't with Marvel or DC. (My sister at mleiv.com does this and I think she does wonderful work. Also Howard Tayler who does Schlock Mercenary is great at this.)

Books I have self-published:

1. A family history for my parents' 50th wedding anniversary, which I gave out to family members. Also, a family history for my father-in-law's 70th birthday party, also a giveaway.

2. My dissertation, of which I have a copy somewhere and the other 2 are at the Princeton University library. Also, my Honors Thesis from BYU, and my Master's Thesis from BYU.

3. My oldest daughter's illustrated book about the birth of my youngest daughter, complete with some fairly graphic illustrations for a 6 year-old.

4. The Princess and the Horse, the fourth book in the series that began with The Princess and the Hound, and which Harper declined to publish. I expect to publish a fifth book in the same series next year. I may publish other books this way, as ebooks, but I won't be hocking them at events.

Writing Wednesday: 33 Self-Publishing Myths

Last week, I ended up at an author's night at a local school. I had done some great school visits at the school, and they had actually paid me. I don't do a lot of school visits, not because I don't like them, but because I don't go out of my way to get them. I'm happy to do them, but am not much at self-promotion. My school visits are about teaching kids to write their own fairy tale. I actually read every story the kids write, give them written notes for revision, and then take in my own manuscripts complete with editor's scribbling notes so that they can see what it's like to really revise. I think I'm awesome at this, but suppose there may be some teachers who don't much care for my attitude about grammar, which I refuse to correct. I'm all about content revision, and the grammar is left to the teachers.

Anyway, I was very impressed by this charter school's attempt to improve writing in lower income kids who have failing scores. Getting authors in is a great way to get kids excited about reading and writing. A few of my local author friends had done the same school visits and I was excited to see them. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that we were outnumbered 2 to 1 by self-published authors. In fact, the flyer that was sent around had giant photos and blurbs about two self-pubbed authors I had never heard of before. I knew immediately they were self-pubbed. How? Bad cover art, self-promotional language, and the fact that I'd never heard of them. I know local authors. I spend a good deal of time knowing the national publishing scene.

When I got to the school visit, the first thing I saw was one self-pubbed author alone on his own giant table, complete with huge posters, T-shirts and buttons for sale, and everything that makes me cringe. He was engaging the crowd easily, joking around and telling parents about what a great "message" his books had for their kids. My eyes rolled. I was annoyed now with this school. How could they be fooled so easily by this guy? Why did they let him horn in on what should have been a great event? And now I had to deal with all these self-pubbed authors on a Q&A panel for half an hour. The only good thing I saw was that inside the school, there were two tables, one set up by The King's English, our wonderful local independent. On this table were all the "real" books (if that sounds snobbish, sorry!) for sale.TKE takes credit cards and cash. On the other side of the room was a table with the self-pubbed books for sale, each with a little sign up explaining who the check should be made out to--the self-pubbed authors, of course.

The Q&A session was about as disastrous as you might imagine. I narrowly avoided jumping out of my seat to strangle the self-pubbed author next to me, who accused me of being mean because I said I had no interest in giving away my books for free because people don't value things they get for free, and who also said that I shouldn't be spending so much time every day locked away in my basement office, actually writing. I should be out "with the children" like he was, entertaining them and really giving to them on a daily basis. (*Gag*) I promptly came home and wrote the following list of myths of self-pubbed authors:

Myth #1 The publishing industry is just publishing a bunch of crap anyway. Go into any bookstore and you'll see it.

Myth #2 Editors at NY Publishers are only publishing things from their friends or other people they already know.

Myth #3 Once you have it made in publishing, you can get anything published no matter how bad it is just because it has your name on it.

Myth #4 Editors at NY Publishers want to change your books so that they can promote the evil messages they believe in.

Myth #5 You can't break into publishing unless you are willing to sell your soul.

Myth #6 All books published by NY Publishers have a liberal agenda.

Myth #7 Children's books should all have a “good moral,” because kids need to learn lessons from books, not just be entertained.

Myth #8 If your friend is a good artist, you should get her to do your picture book art for free and then you don't have to pay her.

Myth #9 Once you get published, all you care about after that is making money.

Myth #10 Giving away books for free is the true sign of a nice person/author because why would you want to make money off your art?

Myth #11 Authors who spend most of their time writing should make you suspicious. They should spend more time out in the real world, connecting with real people.

Myth #12 No one can tell you how to make your book better. Only you can see the true worth of your book.

Myth #13 Sometimes a first draft is just really, really good and it deserves to be published without a single word change.

Myth #14 I don't need a copy-editor because all my typos get caught by Word.

Myth #15 Authors published by NY Publishers are all trying to push the boundaries by adding as much sex and bad language and violence as they possibly can to children's book.

Myth #16 You can tell if you've written a great book because your kids and your friends' kids and all the kids at your local library loved it when you came and read the book to them.

Myth #17 The way to get attention for your self-published book is to make up really big signs and posters, give away T-shirts and buttons, and hard-sell people at your local Costco/bookstore.

Myth #18 Selling a book is all about how awesome the costume you wear is.

Myth #19 Selling a book is all about having a great bookmark and/or free candy to entice people to talk to you.

Myth #20 Just talk louder than any of the other authors at your local book signing. That way everyone will know you are the “real” author.

Myth #21 If you are your own publisher, than that's not called being self-published. It's called owning your own business, even if you publish no one else's books.

Myth #22 The lower the price you sell your book for, the more copies you will sell. It's simple supply-demand economics.

Myth #23 Remember that you're selling your books to the parents, not the kids. So make sure that your books are about things parents care about: potty training, grumpy behavior, bedtime.

Myth #24 Getting your book stocked at a local bookstore is all about calling them over and over again and trying to find “the boss” who can make a real decision.

Myth #25 Paint your car and get your whole family to join you in the book-selling effort.

Myth #26 Hire people to write “blurbs” of your book. That's how all the big authors do it. They blurb each other for money and we all know it.

Myth #27 Anyone can write a picture book. It's less than 100 words.

Myth #28 Cover art is over-rated. Just slap some free art on the front and put on your title, and you're good to go.

Myth #29 A publisher has only one book they want to promote each season and they sabotage all other books.

Myth #30 People who “care” about children the most are the ones who make the best writers for children.

Myth #31 Grandmothers/parents/teachers are the ones who know the most about children, and therefore make the best writers.

Myth #32: Never have a child doing something wrong in a book. It is a bad example to your readers and makes your book content “bad.”

Myth #33: Having your name on a book is what makes you a “real” author and now you can talk to others about how to fulfill their dreams of publishing.

TV Tuesday: Downton Abbey's ladies

What I love about Downton Abbey is the strong women and how they are strong despite the ways in which their social expectations are so completely different from ours.

Violet Crawley (the Dowager Countess)
Of course, it's almost impossible not to love Maggie Smith in anything, but this role allows her to be the curmudgeonly grandmother. You could easily argue that she has no power. It's her son who is the heir, and she is only a woman and all she has is words and nasty looks. But boy does she use those to her advantage, and she tends to get what she wants.

Cora
The American woman who has married the British earl and had three daughters and no son/no heir. It would seem that she is also powerless. But she isn't. She has a much milder personality than her mother-in-law, but she never allows herself to be run roughshod over. She makes things happen more quietly, and she pays more attention to her daughters' needs, and makes the world run more smoothly.

Mary
Her job is to get married to the heir. We could spend lots of screen time with her complaining about that. Instead, she has an affair with a complete stranger, almost gets caught, then falls in love for real, refuses to do what she is supposed to do, and spends a lot of time finding a husband who is wealthy, rich, and powerful and who can actually help her save her reputation. Until she decides she doesn't care a hoot for that. And in the meantime, she is actually not mean to the woman who has become engaged to the man she really loves.

Cybil
Becomes a nurse and falls in love with a completely unsuitable man, runs away with him, then comes back and decides to do the brave thing and force her family to accept her life decisions.

Isobel Crawley
The mother of the heir Matthew, she sticks her nose into Downton Abbey, insists that they use the house for recovering soldiers, and generally makes things HAPPEN.

Mrs. Hughes
The housekeeper who is in charge of a lot more than the house. She is the manager of everyone and everything in Downton Abbey, far more than really either of the nominal heads of the house are.

Mrs. O'Brien
Cora's maid, she knows far too much and is determined to use what she knows not necessarily to her own benefit but just because she can. Talk about unexpected power.

Anna
The housemaid who falls in love with a married man and won't take no for an answer. Even when she knows he is likely to be convicted of a crime, she demands that he marry her before he is taken away by the police, and she has her wedding night.

Daisy
Gets talked into marrying William, and she could certainly tell herself that she is in love with him. Her life would be a lot easier if she would just let herself believe. But she resists that story all along, and insists on telling the truth loudly, no matter who it discomfits.

Mrs. Bates (the first)
All her husband wants is a divorce, and she won't give it to him. First she demands he pay her, then she wants more. She wants him back, but only to torture him. And why shouldn't she? He is in love with another woman, a prettier, younger, thinner woman. She is so fun to hate, but why do we hate her? Because she is powerful and she is standing in the way of a man getting what he wants: true love.

Ethel
Who falls in love with the earl, knowing that there is no possibility of it being anything more than an affair. She's had affairs before and she knows the consequences. But she accepts that. It's not she who finally breaks it off and how many of us wish she hadn't?

Lavinia
The very nice woman Matthew decides to marry. We all expect to hate her. She is almost too sweet you think she is weak. But I think the writers narrowly avoid the trap of making her unbelievably good. She dies, yes, and that is a little too convenient. But she is never a perfect angel. She knows what she wants, and she tells Matthew, even when he doesn't want to hear it.

Monday Book Recs--See You At Harry's by Jo Knowles

I didn't know what this book was about before I read it. People said things like "heart-breaking" and "tear-jerker," but all of Jo's book could be described in that way. I could have poked around on-line and found out more, but I figured that I would just let the book unfold on its own, the way that good books always do. I was sure that the story was about a young teenage boy who was dealing with coming out to his family, and that resonated a lot to me because we have a young family friend who came out as transgender in the last year. That was the first part of the book I read, and I went to sleep and came back to it the next day.

*warning spoilers*

And then it happened, the part of the book where I got the rug pulled out from under me. Yes, a lot of middle grade books are about dealing with death. You can even play a game where you decide who is going to die. If I'd had to bet, it would have been the gay teenager because then the family would have had to deal with their lack of acceptance and gay suicides have been a lot on my mind in recent months. But that's not what happened. The character who died wasn't the one I would have expected and suddenly I wasn't reading a book anymore. I felt like I was living in this world, had been drawn in and I wasn't at all sure that I wanted to be there. So this isn't so much a book review as it is a very particular reader's reaction to a very well written story about a child's death.

First of all, I was ANGRY at the mother for the way she reacted. It wasn't because the main character was angry, I don't think. This was my personal reaction, as a mother. A mother is not ALLOWED to react that way. She HAS to be the one to pick up the pieces. She doesn't get to hide away in her room while the kids fall apart.

In some part of my mind, I knew that this reaction was because I had been the mother who dealt with the death of a child when
my youngest daughter daughter died at birth almost 7 years ago now. I did not allow myself to fall apart. I cried a few tears at the funeral, and occasionally I would cry alone, in the middle of the night when no one could hear me. But above all, I was a mother of five other children and I made sure that they never had to deal with my grief, and I tried to help them through theirs. It didn't occur to me for years later what it would mean to my children to see me NOT cry, and how my numb insistence on routine would turn me into someone who did not have normal emotional reactions. To this day, my children say that they can't gauge my emotional reactions about anything. One daughter claims she has never seen me cry about anything ever and believes that, in fact, I never have, and that I am simply "too strong" to cry. She feels guilty because she cries about things very easily--and very normally.

It's obvious to me now that I fell into a deep depression that I am only in the last year mostly recovered from. I'm not sure it was as obvious to people around me, because I remained so utterly capable. I continued to do everything that I had always done. I may have seemed quiet, but there were very few signs that I was suffering so enormously, because I became very, very good at pretending that everything was fine. I also spent many hours alone, bitterly angry that no one seemed to be able to tell that I was falling into a very deep pit of emptiness. I never thought I was that good of an actress, but was astonished at how many people thought I was some kind of inspiration. But the clothes were washed, dinner made, the dishes cleaned. I did an Ironman, continued to write books and raise my kids.

The characters in Jo's book seemed to me to have a more open grief, and I envied them for that. Fern believes that she is at fault for what happened, for not watching her brother Charlie closely enough. There are some people who blame themselves for tragedies and some people who don't. I suppose from my perspective, I wish that I were one of the ones who didn't, but I am like Fern. There is still a part of me that believes that if I had gone to the hospital earlier, or if I had not chosen to go with a lay midwife for the birth, or if I had not gone running the week before, or if I had eaten better--or SOMETHING--then my daughter would not have died. Maybe it is true and maybe it isn't. In the end, you stop living in the world of "what if" and move on to the world of "what is." Not because you want to live there, but because you do, and you get used to it.

I also connected strongly with Fern's brief temptation to dull the emotional pain of her loss with physical pain. This was a very real part of grief for me. I tended to use exercise, specifically training for an Ironman, to keep myself sort-of-sane. I would sometimes train in the middle of the night if I couldn't sleep. Or I would do an extra session mid-day, to get me through. An intense exercise session is very effective at dulling out other pains for a few hours. It also helped me create a sense of time that otherwise would have been lacking. Each day, I could visually cross off that day's training, and so time moved on. Without that, I suspect I would have felt a very strange sense of no movement forward. I kept hoping that there would be a way to get to the place other people kept promising me would be ahead, where I would be recovered from the grief. That was pretty much all I wanted, to either be the person I was before, or rush forward to the person I would be after.

Fern goes through a funeral where the minister offers a poem (in fact the same poem that Jo sent to me, all those years ago) that says "When all that's left of me is love, give me away." I wish that my experience with religion had been like this. Instead, I felt pressure to say "I understand why this happened. It has made me a better person." To this day, I reject this way of thinking. I reject that I will ever say that my learning and growing was worth the cost of my daughter's death. That doesn't mean I haven't learned and grown. I have, but I don't know that I could not have done that in only one way. I also think that I probably would have grown more without the five years of depression where I stopped interacting with the world and feeling things as a normal person does.

When the neighborhood tries to be kind to Fern's family and brings them tray after tray of food, which Fern's father takes to the restaurant because no one wants to eat, I thought again of how frustrated I was that I would answer a doorbell ring and see someone bringing more food. Fern throws up soon after she realizes that Charlie is dead and for days, no one in her family can eat, which seems to me the only normal response to a death like that, but people just keep bringing food for some reason, as if food fights grief and pain. I don't understand this, but I remember it. I had to spend time finding space in my fridge for this food which we could not eat, and say thank you to people who were well-meaning but not really understanding. Or maybe the food was just their way of connecting.

In the Homecoming scene, Fern and her brother go out dancing and have a grand time, though there is a bittersweet sense of loss that hangs over them despite the sense that Charlie would have wanted them to be happy. This is truly one of the worst parts of grief, that we move on even if we don't want to. For us, the living, life keeps going. We don't have the choice of going back. We only have the choice of being sad or being happy. Being happy brings with it an enormous sense of guilt, as if we can never be happy again if someone has died. But we are, and Harry's ends on this happy note.

I turned the final page and thought how much longer the road of grief would, of course be, for this family. But it's a good stopping place, and that's what books do. They have stopping places, unlike the real world where we continue to live, go back to grieving and guilt, and swirl around in the cycle of denial, anger, depression and acceptance for years on end. There is a stopping place, but it doesn't last for long.

Friday Tri: Nerves

Everyone is nervous before a race, but triathlon has extra chances for nervousness because there are so many technical transitions. In a running race, you put on your gear before the race start and the gun goes off and you simply run. It's possible to take a wrong turn, but it doesn't happen often. In a swim race, you are usually in a pool and the problems you have are limited. In a bike race, you can get lost or crash, but still, you are dealing with bike problems only. But in triathlon, because you are doing three different sports, your chances to make a mistake more than treble. You must learn to seamlessly move from one sport to the next, despite the different gear that each sport requires.

Three things that help me deal with nervousness before a race are:

1--going through the transitions, practicing them the week before in real time, and thinking about them in my mind.
2--realizing that nervousness is actually energy that will help me once the gun goes off and the race begins.
3--having confidence that I will be able to deal with whatever happens. (This is helped by the fact that I have dealt with almost everything in the past from rough swims in open water to terrible wind to bike crashes and mechanical problems.)

If you can practice the transition from swim to bike before a race, you will know that you feel strange suddenly moving from a horizontal position to a vertical one, and to suddenly begin running upright rather than swimming can make you feel dizzy or nauseous or simply unable to move quickly. You may be cold from the water, and your fingers will not work properly. You have to think about taking off the wetsuit, taking off goggles and cap, and getting to your bike. Which bike rack is it on? And when you get to it, what do you have to put on?

I always think of a short list of things I have to do to move from bike to swim, and then I repeat it in my mind at the end of the swim, until I am on the bike. Lately, I have made the list smaller as I have decided not to wear socks in most races and to leave my shoes on the bike so that I slip my feet in later, while the bike is moving forward. This is tricky and I don't recommend it to beginners. It's taken me eight years to be ready to do it. But it does make transition faster to only have three things to do, take off goggles and cap, put on helmet, grab bike. 1, 2,3.

In general, I think that the same rules of dealing with nerves applies to almost everything that life hands to you. You practice what you know you will have to do until at some point it becomes automatic or at least easier. You make lists in your mind that help you get through. You accept that nerves are a part of any difficult endeavor, and you learn how to put them to use as raw energy. And you do what you can to deal with what will happen, then accept that you cannot control everything but believe that you will be able to deal with it when it happens.

There are things you control. There are things you do not control. The things you can control, you control vigorously. The things you can't control, you let go of.

A friend of mine was talking to me recently about her nerves. One of her specific concerns was if she had a mechanical problem with her bike. She didn't know how to change a tire, she said, and she didn't have a kit on her bike with an extra tube and air. I told her that she should never ride without those things and to go immediately and get a kit from a bike store and spend an hour learning how to change her tire. If you can control something, then do control it. Don't worry about it needlessly. But it's also true that the nervous energy she has will be expended in learning how to change a tire and it won't be as hard to go to sleep the night before the race.

Don't worry about things that you can control. Control them. Don't worry about things you can't control, either. You can't control them. It's as simple--and as complex--as that.

WIFY

I will be teaching a week-long class focusing on sf/f June 18-22 in Sandy, Utah. There are still a few places open, if you are interested in coming. We will have a grand time:

http://www.wifyr.com/

Thursday Author Interview: Sara Zarr

Here is another interview with Sara Zarr, author of the wonderful books I have recommended on numerous occasions, Sweethearts, Story of a Girl, Once Was Lost, and How to Save a Life.

MIH: There is a great series of interviews available on youtube with actors called "Inside the Actors Studio" which has part inspired my wanting to do these interviews with authors. One of the questions that is always asked at the end is, what profession would you choose if you were not an actor? And what profession would you absolutely not choose?

As a variation on that, what would you do if you were not a writer--if you lived in a world in which books did not yet exist or were never invented? I imagine that I would end up telling stories anyway. I am very self-conscious and therefore tend to shy away from performance art in general, but I did do some theater in high school and I do oral storytelling at home with my kids. So I suspect that I would end up doing that kind of storytelling, perhaps only as a hobby and not as a career. But that might be utter wishful thinking. If there were a world in which there were no books, maybe there would be no story? Can humans exist without story? It seemed like our lives would be utterly different, unreflective. If I had to choose a job that would actually pay me regularly, I might go back to being a secretary. I worked as a secretary during grad school to get myself through and it wasn't horrible. It was better than flipping burgers. I found that I still enjoyed typing words and fixing letters, etc, even if they weren't creative words. It could be exhausting, but there was also a good sense at the end of the day, that the day was over, that my time was now my own, that is not necessarily true ever of life as a writer. There is no time on your own, no moment when you are not thinking either consciously or not about a story problem. Or at least that is my experience. What do you think?

SZ:I can't even conceive of a world without books. It's like trying to conceive of a world without the sky, or air. I don't mean that metaphorically, like, "books are air to me!" I mean, truly, ever since there have been humans, there have been humans documenting the human journey, from cave paintings to Kindles. So, yeah, I don't know if the human race can or would ever exist apart from that aspect of us as a species.That said, if I weren't a writer? I do think some kind of performing would always be in my life. This could manifest directly, as in being on stage, or could (and has) expressed itself as being the one who try to makes everyone at the water cooler laugh. I agree, too, that there's something wonderful about administrative jobs. Come in, do the stuff on your to-do list, and leave. If I had the fortitude and money to go back to school, I'd study human nutrition as it relates to disease management. It's a fascinating topic to me, and one that's had direct impact on my life, and is something I could be passionate about.

MIH: I have a nephew with diabetes, and I wonder what makes you passionate about it? I watch my sister deal with my nephew while doctors are telling her she isn't doing good enough with the numbers, despite the fact that she keeps the more obsessively careful records of anyone I know. I have another friend whose son has diabetes and the people who are in charge of his job have given him a car so that he doesn't have to walk or bike places, as if that will help his disease. And then there are the people who try kindly to offer advice to diabetics about not eating any carbs and all meat (which may work for some people, but certainly not everyone and not kids who need sugar for brain development). Any funny stories you want to share? Any annoying people you want to target metaphorically on-line and set straight? What do people not get? What do they think they get and get wrong?

SZ: Okay, it's funny you ask these things, because I recently made a resolution to stop talking about diabetes for awhile, but since I (sort of) brought it up... I'll say that probably the most frustrating thing is this: I can't think of another disease that people who don't actually suffer from it think they know more about or feel more entitled to comment on as if they are experts. It's a very individual disease, with facets far more complicated than "type 1" or "type 2". For example, though I was not diagnosed until age 38, I have a kind of type 1, known as LADA (late autoimmune diabetes in adults). There is no single management solution for everyone, and it's frustrating for sufferers to hear from non-sufferers, "I had a cousin with that and she...(x, y, z'd herself into a 'cure'" - or "What do you mean you can't eat that? Can't you just take more insulin?" or "Oh, type 2, yeah, with diet and exercise you can totally cure it." Even type 2 is not all about lifestyle; there are many, many complicated genetic factors that are not completely understood. Or, yes, doctors who basically accuse you of not following orders if the numbers don't line up because they can't accept that conventional wisdom is not working on their patients. You get the idea. Anyway, I'm passionate about nutrition for how I've seen it help me with not just diabetic issues, but mental health and general wellness. 
MIH: What are your writing habits? Do you try to write every day? Do you set word count goals that you try to reach? I found that I had to stop doing that because it made me focus on the wrong thing, on production of words, rather than production of story and getting myself to write the parts that hurt and really matter. Lately, I've been trying instead to do a certain number of hours per week of work, but as long as I am actually working, I try not to worry too much about whether I'm doing a set number of words.

I know that you have had an outside office in the past. Do you still use it? Why do you think it might be important to have an office? What does it do for you mentally and emotionally as a writer to have that separate space? Or is it about funding your writing and treating it like a profession?

What is your process, if you can be said to have one? What happens as you move from draft to draft? For me, I find that I like the first draft the best, when I am in that ultra-focused Zen phase, but only because I am able to so completely tune out the editor's voice that is so critical. Later drafts are more painful because I don't get to be the reader Mette who enjoys books uncritically. And also, I have to face the reality of what the manuscript is, and not the dream of what I imagine it will be. Do you have a favorite stage of writing or a least favorite stage?

I know those are lots of questions, but I think they end up circling around the same issue. I find other writer's habits to be endlessly fascinating, not because I think reading about what they do will serve as any kind of magic bullet for me or for other readers who are aspiring writers. I think everyone has to find their own method, but there is something behind the method, I think, that is instructive. The more I talk about writing, the more I realize that what I learn has less to do with the concrete facts and more to do with the emotional reality of being a writer. Does that make any sense?

SZ:
My writing habits are ever-changing. My routine sort of depends on what irons I've got in the fire, where the deadlines are, and what my non-writing life is looking like. Like you, I used to be a bit more obsessive about word counts or pages, but I've found that it all somehow gets done, and I enjoy the process more if I'm not constantly measuring.Generally I have found that I like mornings for doing my non-writing stuff - breakfast with my husband or a friend, journaling, working out, going for walks, running errands. Then between lunch and dinner is when I really work, and sometimes after dinner. Of course when a big deadline is looming, I'll more or less work all day.I rented away from home for awhile because there wasn't a closed-door space in my house for me. Then when our upstairs neighbor moved out, we took the upper unit of our duplex along with the bottom, and that's my office and guest room. I don't always work there, though. Often I'm most comfortable at the kitchen table, or at a coffee shop or library, if I'm lonely. I do think it's important that my own space is there, if I need it. I think everybody, writer or not, needs her (or his) own space. If you're married, this is extra important and sometimes takes more effort.Unlike my routine, my process has been pretty stable. I write a first draft and try not to let it get TOO messy. Then I print it, read it, take notes, maybe do some research, and for the second draft I start all over. That is, I don't edit it on the screen - I retype it, re-create every sentence. That's the draft, usually, my editor sees, and we go from there. My favorite stages are when I'm starting something new, and when I'm doing the very last edit. I mean, the very last edit is actually usually pretty painful, but I "enjoy" it because I know the hard work is soon to pay off. FINALLY.And I totally agree about the emotional reality of being a writer!

MIH: I've been talking to other writers about professional disappointments and difficulties AFTER the first sale. It's not because those are harder than the other, but only because I think they can seem somehow less expected. We all know about the querying stage, about how many years it takes, how many books we write and rewrite and then give up on before we finally find our own unique path to publication. But it seems as there is this idea that once you are there, you have it made. It reminds me of the old story of the mother whose daughter says on her wedding day, "I'm at the end of all my troubles," and the mother wisely says, "Yes, dear, but which end?"

For me, I've dealt with editors who didn't really fit my style. I've changed houses four times now. I've realized that once you have an agent, that doesn't mean he likes everything you write--and he's often write. I've made some great friends of other writers, but I've also broken up with writer friends I thought I would work with forever. And of course, the whole publishing world is going through upheaval right now with the combined problems of the economy and the need to adapt to ebooks. Thoughts on any of these things?

SZ: Whenever I'm talking to authors who haven't yet been published, I try to highlight this stuff. That is, life after publication rarely feels or looks like we may have expected. There are always new comparisons to make, different kinds of disappointments, stressors, etc. And, like you point out, being published doesn't mean that writing books is no longer difficult, or that suddenly know what you're doing.I've talked about this elsewhere, before, but a piece of advice I got before I was published: Enjoy this time, because once you're published it's never the same again. It's nearly impossible to really hear this when you're in the pre-published stage and desperate to be on the other side. I don't know if it's the kind of advice one can truly put into practice so much as look back on and think, "Oh yeah, shoulda listened to that." I've found it to be very true, though. Enjoy the time while the work is all yours, you've got nothing to lose, and you're delighting in the process.Once you enter the marketplace with a product that has a price tag on it, everything changes. Which is not to say it's a bad change, but it brings up a new layer of concerns that can't help but infiltrate the writing that used to be all yours.I've been pretty lucky so far in the specific careery things like relations with publishers and editors, but the state of the publishing industry is a wee bit concerning and we don't know, as authors, how it will all shake out for us. Can I rely on writing income? Should I start making sure I'm qualified for some other job? How long can I ride this train? I try not to spend too much energy on those things though of course you want to be prepared for anything.Anyway, yeah, all of this stuff is just more reason to write what you love and do your best to enjoy the process.