I found more advice, in line with a comment left by Holly Jahangiri on yesterday’s post. This time, artist/writer/musician Summer Pierre serves up motivational, inspirational words of wisdom that pierce me straight through the heart. (Found via Girl at Play.)

Yesterday I sat with a friend who is a gifted writer, but isn’t writing and has been sharing with me for months and months all his PLANS and IDEAS and THOUGHTS about his writing, other people’s writing, and writing in general. I won’t say all the things–the BIG LIFE things–he has gone through in order to save him from his writing. Finally, after spending another lunch listening to his MACHINE OF THOUGHT, I stopped him and said more or less: BUT WHAT ABOUT SITTING DOWN AND ACTUALLY WRITING?

Her friend sounds just like me. Unfortunately.

The truth was I just needed to sit down and DO. What this required was [being] willing to feel like a complete loser, to be boring, to be really BAD…

Doh. I don’t like being bad at things. (Who does?) But I think maybe she’s right, that I’m petrified of being BAD. Especially after reading the impeccable Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri. When I finished that book yesterday, I was crying with sadness (and a little bit of anger) at how it had ended, but also, at the fact that it HAD ended. I wanted more of those characters, more of Lahiri’s quiet, masterful writing. I want to be able to create something that GOOD. Was she ever afraid of being bad in the same way that I am?

Ways in which blocks can manifest themselves: I need to do more research, I need more inspiration, a new place to create, more coffee, chocolate, a new place to live, more time, a new job, etc. Well, maybe you do, but when does that end?

Hmm, let me see if I can identify with this one. New job? Check. New chair? Check. New desk? Check. New laptop? Check. Finished novel? Uh…

I believe life is magical, but sometimes the most magical things are the most ordinary and boring like cold, hard, action. I told my friend yesterday that in order to get to the romantic magical part of it again, he needed to be willing to go through the dry, MEANINGLESS parts too. A commitment is not a single moment, it goes on and on and on. It may seem impossible, I know, but this is the toughest kind of love–to show up when it gets hard and say this means enough to me to try and have that be enough.

Alright then. This means enough to me to try. This is the only thing that means enough to me to try, to risk failure, poverty, embarrassment. I am only 23. I have only been at this, really really, for 5 months. I’m at the beginning of a journey, not the end of the line. I will not get discouraged, I will not be afraid, and most importantly, I will NOT be the one to stop myself from succeeding.

A commitment is not a single moment.

Unfortunately, this is exactly what I needed to hear right now:

Do not spend a single second making your prose readable until you’re absolutely, positively sure that you have your story locked down. This is the single most important bit of advice I have, and I ignore it all the time and have wasted years of my revising life because of it. The impulse to snappy-up dialogue and make sentences eloquent is almost irresistible at every point in the revision process. It makes sense: We’re surrounded by so many big, messy plot and character problems that it’s nice to seek solace in tidying up sentences. It’s a finite task, it’s instantly gratifying, and it makes us feel like we’re making progress on our books. The sadness comes when we spend six months transforming our first three chapters into Pulitzer-worthy gems, only to realize that none of those chapters will actually end up in our novels because they don’t work with the ending. This happens over and over and over, and it will kind of make you want to die. My advice: Think of your second draft as a house that you’re building. You need to pour the foundation, frame the walls, and get a reasonably waterproof roof over your head before you start to think about putting art up on the walls and installing the basement bowling alley and aviary. Let the art-hanging and bird-bringing be the treat you give yourself for all your manual labors with the cement mixer and nail gun.

Siiiiigh. Excuse me while I go knock down this beautiful front hallway I’ve been working on and pour some damn foundation instead…

Because Andy and Riley and I have been on the road for 8 hours today, and we’re about to have a delicious dinner with Andy’s family, I’m going to make this post brief. These words are not my own, contrary to what Natasha Bedingfield may think. They are from Tu:

to grow we must be willing to let go of the things we think we know about ourselves and embrace the possibility of accomplishment. my dreams are big and failure is inevitable. it will hurt more because i will care more. incompetence will greet me and become my training partner. i am bracing myself to grow into the person i want to be. deep breaths and eyes closed.

Last night I was talking with Marci about Sex and the City and Grey’s Anatomy, and how Carrie & Big are essentially Meredith & Derek, or vice versa really since SATC came first. Marci is not a big fan (to put it mildly) of how fuc– erm, complicated, these relationships are, yet how they are protrayed as true love. I told her that as someone who has had 2-3 breakups or breaks or whatever you want to call them with my current boyfriend, I was hardly in a position to judge. However, in my relationship, no cheating was involved. Mostly it was miscommunication, and/or being 20 years old.

Anyway, what I realized today is that my relationship with Andy is by no means the most fuc– ahem, complicated, relationship I’m in. May I present to you…

Writing a Novel: A Love Story

It’s not The Notebook, but it’s pretty darn accurate. It’s also not written by me, but read it anyway.

From “John McEnroe Visits Seven Months” by Sean Aden Lovelace, winner of the Crazyhorse fiction prize:

He says, “John, you make me ill, physically ill. Listen: every person has one thing they’re placed on this earth to do, born to do. Think Mozart, think Pistol Pete. Most people — I bet ninety-nine percent — never find their one thing. Not ever. They live miserable lives, half-lost, feeling like something’s not right. We’re one of the lucky, John. Born in the right place, right situation. Fate is smiling and you’re just going to shit on it. Throw it away! So, I ask you again — what-the-hell-are-you-doing?”

I hang up the phone.

From “Reasons for Concern Regarding My Girlfriend of Five Days, Monica Garza” by John Tait, also in Crazyhorse:

Feelings I Must Fight in the Wake of My Split (?) from Monica Garza

A dread that, by losing Monica, I’ve lost my one late opportunity to become a person who continues to grow and change along with a growing and changing world rather than shutting myself fearfully away with the rest of the people like me. A naive optimism, fueled by well-intentioned movies and TV shows, that we Americans can overcome all barriers between us and embrace each other based on our shared humanity. A recognition that even though the above is a crock, it shouldn’t be. The worry that I am more concerned with what others think of me than with my own happiness, a fact that makes me wish I was miles from every other human being—maybe on some unpopulated island or at least archipelago, though when I imagine myself in that desolate place it seems only natural to add a companion, leading to fantasies (about M. G.) that are both pleasant and troubling.

I think the second one may be set in Houston? Anyway. Both pieces are more experimental than what I usually write, and I enjoyed them immensely (the second one slightly more so).

As always, reading these stories made me think. What was I put on this Earth to do? (Write!) What-the-hell-am-I-doing? (Procrastinating…) What feelings must I fight? (Impatience. Fear of failure. The munchies.)

What about you?

Sweet baby Jesus, I have 3 2* months to whip my manuscript into shape.

On Feb 2, 2009, Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Contest returns for a second year

This time I’m going to enter.

*Edit: Uh, yeah, I can totally do math.

Yesterday I had a brief conversation with the master himself, Kurt Vonnegut.

… i.e., I read “How to Write with Style” by Kurt Vonnegut and thought about what he had to say. The highlights of our “discussion” are as follows:

The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not. Don’t you yourself like or dislike writers mainly for what they choose to show you or make you think about? Did you ever admire an emptyheaded writer for his or her mastery of the language? No.

Hmm, no. Good point.

I am not urging you to write a novel, by the way — although I would not be sorry if you wrote one, provided you genuinely cared about something. A petition to the mayor about a pothole in front of your house or a love letter to the girl next door will do.

Hehe. You’re so cute and funny, Kurt! But there’s only a boy next door, and he’s sixteen, so that gets into some sketchy territory. Also, I have a boyfriend.

But I bet a petition or a love letter would be a lot easier than banging my head against my keyboard every day…

Simplicity of language is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred. The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing skills of a lively fourteen-year-old: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”

I haven’t read that much of the Bible myself, but I see your point.

Thank you, Kurt, this has been very enlightening. No wonder you were such an awesome writer! I will try to keep your sage widsom in mind as I proceed, ever so slowly, on my own path as an author. Hopefully this will speed things up a bit, i.e., help me get published, because if that doesn’t happen soon, I may throw my keyboard away and go join the circus. Specifically, Cirque du Soleil. Because they have like a bajillion shows, all of which are popular. And I’m part Chinese, so I could probably twist myself into little pretzel-y shapes like those ten year old girls, right?

Note: Usually I reserve my book responses for iluv2read, but I may start cross-posting them here… Not sure yet.

The Kitchen God’s Wife was not my favorite Amy Tan book, but I did love it. More than any other, this focused on the mother’s story in China, and it was a wrenching one. (Usually there’s a pretty good balance between the mother and daughter generations.) Because of what I read in The Opposite of Fate, Amy Tan’s memoir of sorts, I found myself thinking of this as her own mother’s true story, which may or may not be a fair assumption. And my heart broke for this woman and all that she endured, all her suffering, the lows and — thankfully — the eventual highs. It made me wonder about my own mother, how little I know, how much she might have to tell me. Will we wait until we think it’s almost too late to finally share all our secrets with one another? Will I have to reconstruct her life in a novel in order to understand her?

Anyway, good book. Check out my iluv2read post for favorite passages.

Isn’t it funny how right after I post about how I don’t like to post about politics, there are all these political posts? HAHAHAHAHAHA.

Ahem.

No but seriously, this is relevant to literature, which is the only reason I offer it up here now:

Last winter, Nobel laureate Toni Morrison received a phone call from Sen. Barack Obama, then the underdog to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Obama had contacted Morrison to ask for her support. But before they got into politics, the author and the candidate had a little chat about literature.

“He began to talk to me about one of the books I had written, `Song of Solomon,’ and how it had meant a lot to him,” Morrison said in a postelection interview from her office at Princeton University, where for years she has taught creative writing.

“And I had read his first book (`Dreams From My Father’). I was astonished by his ability to write, to think, to reflect, to learn and turn a good phrase. I was very impressed. This was not a normal political biography.”

For Morrison and others, the election of Obama matters not because he will be the first black president or because the vast majority of writers usually vote for Democrats. Writers welcome Obama as a peer, a thinker, a man of words - his own words.

I wonder if I should read his books? I do love the title “The Audacity of Hope”…

“But finally having a writer-president — and I don’t mean a published author, but someone who knows the full value of the carefully chosen word — I suddenly feel, for the first time, not only like a writer who happens to be American, but an American writer.”

She was a stranger, and she kissed me. Just for being an American.

Mostly I loved that line. But the rest of the article is good too.