Killed a Tree to Write a Book

 

Today I printed out the uncompleted draft of the possibly endless novel I've been writing, off and on (mostly off), for years.  

So this is what 89,000 words, 280 pages, looks like when you print it out.  It's a big stack, and drained an entire printer cartridge. (Note to self: buy less crappy printer someday).  

There are, I am aware, massive problems that need to be corrected. The largest of these is writing at least 50 pages to complete the (in the words of Anne Lamott) shitty first draft.  There are also many, many hanging and sometimes contradictory plot threads that require trimming and weaving.  

I am hoping that being able to hold the book in my hands and scribble on the pages will allow me to hold it in my head and actually finish it.  Aspirations are low: I've no dreams of publication much less fame, fortune, and a Pulitzer.  I just want to finish it because I need to know what happens to these characters, need to figure it out, if only for myself.  

Vocal Health and Safety for Female Voice Tour Guides

One hot chick

1. Stay hydrated! 

A Hydra is a water serpent with many heads, each of which, if cut off, grows. So remember, if one voice is chopped off, two more can take her place. Hercules (so like a man) killed a Hydra by cauterizing the necks as he cut off the heads, burning the witches (how unoriginal), but the genus Hydra maintains and populates, presenting vocal opportunity and many-sided problems for the old boys. 

To maintain hydration, drink plenty of non-caffeinated beverages, and say juicy words like fennel and ferment to keep vocal chords lubricated. If you clear your throat often you may be dehydrated, un-watered, cauterized, or overfull and not knowing where to begin.  Toast a Hydra, start from the center, and speak. 

Caution: Do not drink while speaking, as during deep delving diving, this can lead to drowning -- fear-, exclusion-, and/or love-based. See Kate Chopin’s The Awakening.  Repetitive clearing may also lead to a sore throat, as stuck words fester and clog like Samson’s hair in the shower drain. Drink water, and then speak. 

2. Avoid Drinking the Wrong Liquids!

Try not to drink acidic juices (apple-flavored greed, sour grapes, patriarchal orange, etc.), milk (excepting mother’s or wet nurse) or other dairy products before giving tours. These liquids coat the vocal chords and muffle sound, which may cause breaks in speech or from reality and the feeling of needing to clear your throat but, again, being unable to speak. 

If you do consume these items, try drinking water from female fountains to thin the stickiness of mucus. Some anecdotal evidence also suggests that gargling with semen may provide occasional symptomatic relief, as physical contact may reduce the explanatory vocal requirements of the tour, but this remains a personal choice for each guide. 

3. Use good vocal production! 

Enunciate words at the front of your mouth and speak in a comfortable range, neither too high or too low.  Don’t whisper. Whispering stresses your vocal chords and life experience because you have no support. Mumbling is only advisable when plotting an overthrow. 

On average, people use a lower speaking range than is healthiest for them, and thereby fail to ascend to more satisfying, frustrating and complicated realms. If the area above your vocal box (larynx) feels like you’ve been pressing down on it at the end of the day, you are probably talking too long about too little. Try loosening up your need for societal approval, and speaking in your natural range. 

 

4. Use your diaphragm for good projection! 

The diaphragm is also a thin muscle that runs horizontally underneath our lungs which we can control for good breath support.  Somehow as we grow up our innate sense of breathing and diaphragmatic support gets fouled up when we find ourselves in situations where we need to project who we really are.  Yelling and straining are bad for the long term health of our vocal chords, resulting in labeling of angry bitch and hysterical feminist.  Enunciate with passion and clarity, and remember to breathe from your belly, the center from which you began, embryonic.   

Remember, squashed language is harmful to the environment. 

Please discard antiquated language in the dictionaries provided.

What I Learned in May

The omentum is an apron-shaped layer of fat lying over the belly. Tumors from ovarian cancer sometimes spread to the omentum. As an outdated evolutionary safety feature from pre-surgery days, the omentum sometimes curled around an unhappy appendix, controlling the spread of poison if it burst, allowing for survival.

Portland Head Light

An extra hour driving through Pennsylvania beats New Jersey Turnpike tolls and traffic.

When I'm nervous, I repeat myself, restating information gleaned from other people to verify it.

Lawyers sometimes hug clients.

On some superstitious level, I think my mother having an admission nurse named Grace who just came back from doing mission work means we have a good word in with God. The Grace of God.

Fresh asparagus tastes better.

Of the many smells permanently fixed in my brain, one of them is that of my brother's spit, which still clings to his toys stored in the basement of my mother's house.

Maine drivers are polite, but gratingly slow. Lights are badly timed in Portland.

Sitting by Back Cove

A dog that is sitting has a much harder time barking.

Low tide in a small cove looks like the plug has been pulled on a dirty sink; rather than the swaying grasses and blue water of high tide, all that's left is ring of muddy pebbles and gray, murky water.

Hospital beds have amazing hydraulics that lift them in all manner of ways, safety rails to keep patients in, and emergency CPR releases to flatten the bed down if needed.

Swelling after surgery is common. Combining swelling with the mellow tones of morphine makes for different facial expressions.

Dilaudid, a relative of morphine, can be administered via IV or in pill form.

Staples from abdominal surgery are informally referred to as a zipper. They come out two weeks after surgery.

Crescent Beach in fog

Two weeks of gray weather is a recipe for depression. The whole city slows down in drowned dismay.

Gardening is just not my thing. I like flowers, but I'm not inclined to put them in any order and I'm not crazy about dirt under my fingernails.

Postoperative ileus is common after abdominal surgery. The intestines, angry at having been moved around during surgery, are slow to wake up their nerves and do their usual work of coordinated contraction. To a point, the solution is to withhold food, hurry up and wait, hoping the nausea and vomiting settle.

Tommy's Tree
 Limerick, Maine

The memorial tree planted at the school where my brother spent over twenty years of his life still looks a little new and spindly.

In some ways, I am more grown-up and capable than I thought. In other ways, I am much, much less than I thought.

Dreams about coffins and rats nipping at your legs are not a sign of optimal mental health.

Fake trees decorating the produce department of the grocery store feel wrong.

An NG (nasogastric) tube can be inserted up the nose and down the throat into the stomach in order vacuum out food thereby ending nausea from ileus or bowel obstruction. While inserting the tube the patient is instructed to drink water through a straw as the swallowing motion moves the tube down the throat. Airplane glue is used to provide extra security when taping the tube on the nose.

Seagull, Eastern Prom

Seagulls seem bigger up north. Maybe they are bigger.

I am spacier than I realized on visual details. I did not notice that my mother's kitchen was gray until she told me. In my head, it was white.

The irony of getting a cold from a germ picked up at the hospital, and therefore not being able to go back to the hospital until I recover from said germ, does not make my fever drop any faster.

"Optimal debulking" is good news.

Petco makes a canine supplement to discourage dogs from eating their own excrement. This is good and bad if said dog is a sneaky pooper that likes to leave deposits on the dining room rug.

Maine Medical nurses are almost universally nice. Some are chattier than others.

For six months or so at Maine Med, medication charting is now handled with a hand-held device that scans the patient ID and then the medication, charting the time.

I have in me the makings of a compulsive hand washer. But not a gourmet cook or neat-nick.

Ruins of Goddard Mansion
Cape Elizabeth, Maine

Changing roles does not change history.

Squirrels really like tulip bulbs. But they leave the flowers for bouquets that liven up a hospital room.

It is impossible for me to look at tulips in a hospital room and not think about the Sylvia Plath poem “Tulips,” which begins with “The tulips are too excitable” and ends with the line “from a country as far away as health.” It is possible for me to not mention that at the hospital though.

Psychological discomfort also manifests as physical discomfort. One solution is substituting in a different discomfort – run faster, walk further, get tired.

If you cry while running in the rain, no one pays you much heed. Who really looks happy running anyway?

Conversely, physical pain inspires psychological discomfort. How do I fix this? What is wrong? Am I all alone here?

Spaghetti squash spaghetti tastes like pasta spaghetti.

Physical contact is comforting. Hold hands. Hug.

Lobster trap washed ashore
Crescent Beach

A parking ticket because you got lost walking for an hour because you forgot to note where you parked your car somehow seems unfair.

If your mother has cancer, you may be able break the rules of a Boys Only Weekend and spend some time drinking with festive, fraternal men who will buy you a mustard colored t-shirt that says “Get Lucky at Ri-Ra!”

Heparin, used to prevent clots, is injected in the upper thigh. Shots sometimes burn.

I will watch five hours of detective shows given access to cable tv and a desire for escape. I should never have cable TV on a permanent basis.

Fog rolling in scares me on some unspoken, primal level, the cold approach of oblivion, even while I consciously marvel at the beauty and power of nature.

Toes at Fort Williams

Anger unexpressed curls the body into odd shapes, closes in on itself, shoulders covering necks, arms across chest, muscles tensed.

Potassium levels must be in the normal range before being released from the hospital. Potassium administered via IV can burn. Liquid medication tastes foul. Pills are large. 

Throughout many years, my cats have seen me through a myriad of events across the country and still come over and purr next to me. And yak up hairballs under the bed at 4am.

To discourage clots in the leg after surgery, patients are encouraged to sit up and stand the same day as surgery. The more movement, the better after surgery, as it inspires the body to wake up and get busy healing. Medical personnel tend to leave out details on just how painful this will be. 

Also to discourage clots, patients often have motorized compression pumps velcroed around their legs, expanding and deflating in rhythmic rounds. Some nurses call them Electric Socks.

Dock, Eastern Promenade,
Portland, Maine

Anger, fear, sadness and love mix up, move around, run away, hit you in the face when you're not looking.

Being the youngest person in the room by ten or twenty years still makes you the baby even if you're 42. This is good and bad.

Taxol is a favored chemical for ovarian cancer chemotherapy.

You can know people all your life and still not really know them.

AWP finale

One of several busy rooms at the
AWP bookfair. MFA programs
and small pressed abounded.

The Super Bowl snuck up on me, as I was still hanging out with writers at AWP. Conversation at the Wardman Marriott leaned more toward parataxis than playbooks. I managed to explore the bookfair on Saturday and sit in on a panel (Leaping Prose: Alternative Shapes for Approaching the Novel with Peter Grandbois, Carol Moldaw, Kazim Ali, and Carole Maso) where, ahem, I learned the work parataxis.

Having been absent from academic speak for quite some time, twas an enjoyable place to visit. Hearing master craftsmen consider the complications of their work inspires.

Reconnecting with my own literary community, friends and mentors, fired me up more than any panel. I've already written with or about Neil de la Flor here and here, so I'll just add, really, you should buy his book, Almost Dorothy.  And you shouldn't let him near plastic frogs on your dashboard.  But I also got to connect with a few other people.

On Friday, I saw A. Manette Ansay at the UM MFA happy hour at Tryst. She's published six novels, a memoir and a collection of short stories, all of which you should also buy. Limbo, Blue Water and Sister are my favorites. As far as I know, she's safe around dashboard frogs. And her daughter is adorable. 

Me & Manette

During my time in Miami, she read many, many versions of the godawful novella that was my thesis and commented with insight, warmth, wit and enormous patience. Just last month, in a grand fit of organizing papers (reshuffling), I found myself re-reading her comments. Most notably, she understood central elements of the plot well before I consciously put them together, busy as I was writing my way up and down tangential alleys.

Andrew

Also at Tryst, I got to see friend Andrew, who is hard at work at his first year of his MFA at Ohio State in Columbus. While it is not at all my doing, I feel an unjustified stake in his career as I wrote a recommendation for him for grad school. I don't think it was even for OSU. But in any case, I have exchanged stories with him, commented on his work and receive his insights into mine, so when he hits the bestseller list, I'll be able to say I knew him back when.

A good week of writing and friendship for me, although sadly, just at the moment, I'm succumbing to the halo of germs that surrounds conferences and am now scaring the cats with my sneezes. 

AWP MFA WTF

I got to try on an MFA hat yesterday.

My poet friend, in town for AWP, wears hats, hip little denim fedoras, and I'm so pleased to see him and be able to steal his dashing headwear.

In the symbolic sense, the MFA hat feels increasingly distant, for good and bad, as I graduated and, in some ways, fled full steam away, years ago. As I re-realized recently at an intensely educated happy hour, while I am well-educated, I'm not much of an intellectual. Analytical, yes. But I have a terrible memory for quoting authors, and I haven't even read Nietzsche.  And really, when I meet people, I don't want to get at heads, but at souls.  I get all fired up about how folks feel about their projects and hats, their triumphs and struggles. I want to dissect character, not hypotheses, although I will do the latter to get at the former. 

So far, it hasn't been the most remunerative hobby. But I keep doing it, endlessly fascinated by the oddities of people's stories and hearts. I suppose I'm just nosey. The gift is knowing a fascinating group of friends. 

Thumbing through the catalog for AWP brought up nostalgia for authors I've read, literary centers at which I've taken classes (The Loft in Minneapolis is fantastic; I still miss it), workshop names that spoke to my issues with plot, memoir, whatever. I orbit on the outermost fringe of that academic community and only connect to the traditional publishing world in that I know published authors, have read their novels and poems and memoirs. 

It is oddly fitting that AWP is happening right now, at the precise time when I am consciously trying to write more, to rediscover the uses, joys and pitfalls of writing. When I started graduate school, I thought I would be signing up for that academic team, the conferences and panels and teaching and publishing.  Nope.

One of the few quotes I do know (and love) is by Joan Didion.  She said, "We tell ourselves stories in order to live."  I don't know why other people write.  And certainly there isn't just one reason for anyone.  For me though, I know stories have the power to make sense of the world, give me a version of the many truths from which I can move forward. 

Neil's hat

As I busily hatch new plans and try to avoid picking at old wounds, I am keeping close tabs on the story I tell myself.

The character I am going with today: after a period of turmoil, and then of rest, our plucky heroine is ready to take on bigger challenges.  I'm heading out into the wide wide open.  Whatever that means.

I'll bring a few different hats.  It can get cold out there.

AWP & Groundhog Day

The 2011 Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference & Bookfair starts today in Washington, DC, so if you feel the literary climate of the city suddenly expand, that's why. If you need to impress a writer, throw this word into conversation: omphaloskepsis.  It means contemplation of one's navel. 

Politics and Prose is the official bookstore of the event and conveniently lists the free events on its Web site: http://www.politics-prose.com/2011-AWP%20

Today is also Groundhog Day.

Coincidence? I think not. 

For the few people who haven't seen the Bill Murray movie "Groundhog Day," here is the premise: a weather man named Phil (Murray) is trapped reliving the same day, Groundhog Day, over and over again.  Over the course of a many, many years trapped in Groundhog Day, he acquires new skills and (eventually) a considerably nicer temperament, but no matter what he does on that day, he wakes up at 6am to the same song, Sonny & Cher's classic duet, "I Got You, Babe" on his clock radio.  Everyone he knows remembers nothing of the endless permutations he has had of that one day, successes or failures. 

Revising can feel a lot like Groundhog Day. You take the same scene and tweak a few words and not much changes.  In another round, you change one character's response and the scene goes off in another direction -- but who's to say that direction is any better? You're still waking up to Sonny & Cher, coming back to the scene knowing it doesn't work.  You experiment wildly, as Phil does.  You kidnap a groundhog and kill off characters.  You learn the piano and change point of view. You add characters back in, the same, only subtly different. You become exhausted by the monotony of almost-repetition. "I Got You, Babe" plays endlessly.

And then one day, finally, the scene works. February 3rd arrives! And you start revising the next scene.  Over and over and over again. 

Of course, in the midst of those days, you might have moments when you're a wee bit unhinged. 



Happy Groundhog Day!

Not Gertrude

I wrote the first & third sections of "Not Gertrude" (below) around in June or so of 2009 when  I started planning the road trip I would go on that summer. The idea was to find a way to recycle sections of the GodAwful Novel (used in the 2nd section) that I wrote in grad school. I still like the contrast in the voices - one harsher, one more lyrical - but I'm not sure that the piece has enough oomph to stand alone as a short story, and I'm not sure there's a way to sustain that dynamic over a larger piece, the intersection of the Cynthia-as-narrator (but not me) and Maddy story.

The GodAwful Novel is, largely, about a woman driving across the country dealing with the death of her brother many years before. In my real life, last summer, on August 30th, 2009, while I was driving across the country, my brother Tommy passed away unexpectedly. Today, on the anniversary of his death, I'm posting this to say that he was before his death, and continues to be after it, a part of my life in ways I still don't entirely understand. Family, blood, genes bonded us in complicated ways despite radical differences between us, or so I believe.  I can tell you for certain that he liked Reese's peanut butter cups and hot dogs. 

W. S. Merwin wrote, "Your absence has gone through me / Like thread through a needle. / Everything I do is stitched with its color." 

-----------------------------------------
Chapter One: Not Gertude

Shortly after I turn 40, I decide to go on a road trip, write one or two books, and figure out what to do about Maddy. My theory is that since my two college degrees haven’t taught me what I really need to know about writing or myself, I’ll be able to ferret out what’s next if I see a lot of road and a lot of old friends. Plus, I’m sick of walking dogs. And I’d like to leave my boyfriend for a time without actually having to break up.

It’s not that I mind the dogs. Their jowly smiles as they pant in the heat lends them an extra friendly summer veneer. After two years, off and on, I’m am officially Leader of the Pack. Amid the non-speaking, I am Alpha. Amid the roaring of humanity, not so much. Writers tend to be like that.

I don’t mind Mike, the boyfriend, much either. I just seem to have not all that much to say. The pheromone haze after years of celibacy has lifted enough for me to notice…eh. It’s one of those so-this-is-it? moments. Nothing wrong that I can pinpoint. But no violins.

So there are the dogs and the books to be written with Maddy (my fictional counterpart) and my new car. Before I leave on the trip, I must name the car. Sitting in the Drifting Nomad coffee shop with Andrew, my writer friend from a cubicle job in which I lasted three months, I entertain suggestions. The first name he tosses out is Milly (the woman he’s currently interested in), followed by Debbie (his mother’s name) and Lydia (his ex’s name). I wonder about him sometimes. He is ten years younger than I am, and a better writer, both of which annoy me, particularly given that he can be weirdly obtuse.

“I’m thinking the name of a diner waitress with blue eye shadow that calls you ‘hon’ but is still willing to pour hot coffee in your lap if you’re a pain in the ass’” I tell him.

“Gertrude. Gertie.”

“Too militant. Sounds like an overbearing German nanny.”

Our conversation is interrupted by the appearance of Brad, formerly a graphic designer and currently an artist since his Chinatown mugging head injury. Andrew tried to set us up about a year ago, which I open to, and Brad, apparently not, although he politely requested my phone number so he could not use it.

Andrew is saying hi to Brad. He looks older, more gray. I suppose the same goes for me, although I quietly pray I am not already stooped over like a sexless old man. I wish I had showered this morning. I can feel the grease shine on my face.

“You remember Cynthia," Andrew says.

“No.” Brad gives me an eyeless stare. I think, although I am not sure, that he is full of crap, but it’s hard to say on these things. He did have the head injury. He meets a lot of people. We did have quite a few beers that night. And it was a while ago. But mostly it’s: Wow, I’m SO not memorable. Stylin’. Another reason to leave DC.

An hour later, as I’m walking a bulldog named Uma, I decide to name my car, a tidewater blue 2009 Honda Fit, Alice. Alice is a good waitress name a la Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. And, according to Arlo Guthrie, You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant. If I can get anything I want out of this road trip, then maybe I’ll finally get something done. It’s about time.

----
Maddy is the main character of the atrocious novella I wrote in grad school. She has some family hang-ups and a tendency to drive around the country, so you can see she and I have, ahem, similar issues. The interesting thing about Maddy is not that she mirrors many aspects omy life. The interesting thing is that I wrote some plot elements into her story before the correlating events occurred in mine. So, for instance, I wrote that she runs into an old boyfriend before I started dating Mike a few months ago, Mike who was also my boyfriend in high school.

Maddy has brother issues. I’ve started the novella (now a novel) in a million different ways, but currently, it starts with a prologue, a scene from her childhood. It goes like this:

My Hello Kitty alarm clock paws showed it was three in the morning when Cory tried waking me, but at ten years old, I slept as if drugged and never woke with glee. His gentle prods were incorporated into dreams until the malty cozy odor of his breath permeated my consciousness. He leaned in to touch my shoulder, saying, “Wake up, Maddy May.” I broke down and opened my eyes to see his pale face smiled down on me. In the room lit only by the dim watery shadows sneaking around the window shades, his features fell into shades of gray, like the hero of a 1950s matinee: straight nose, high cheeks, round eyes with the outrageously long lashes that threw shadows and made strangers call him pretty as a child. With his changed voice finished with cracking and shoulders broadening by the day, girls turned to look at him in the supermarket. Even the mothers too, sometimes. His classic symmetry would have been dull if not for the dark blue of his eyes, unnervingly liquid like a bottomless lake. He reached out to push a strand of hair off my forehead, and I heard the rustling of the nylon in his jacket, the swish of his restless motion. “Time to explore,” he said. I sat up in a rush of understanding. Road trip. These night wanderings were our time, unknown to anyone except us and unspoken of between us during daylight. He handed me my wool coat as I stumbled around the darkened room pulling clothes over my pajamas. “Dress warm -- it’s cold,” he said. 

Once bundled and already beginning to overheat under my layers, he took my hand and led me through the darkened house down the stairs. At the second to the last stair, as always, I paused, and he grabbed my arms and swung me over the stair that squeaked and I remembered not to giggle at my moment of weightlessness. We slipped out into the kitchen, where light pouring though the glass of the back door. I knew then that Cory had chosen this night not just because he’d already spent the early part of the evening before curfew sneaking beers in Marty Spinks’ basement down the street, but because the world outside was transformed. No one, except us, yet knew.

Snow, wet, fat flakes, fell gently over the yard, clinging to the maple and apple trees, outlining every branch. Several inches already obscured the grass and the slate stone path. Street lights reflected wildly off whiteness. Our bad weatherman had missed this, predicting a cold sleet, but here was a world untouched by muddy drizzle.

Walking down the street, we listening to the drifting of flakes and the sound of puffed-up water collapsing under our feet. Neither of us spoke, although Cory pointed once, to a tree branch leaned over under the weight, forming a snowy cave. At Pearson Elementary School, where I would be not attending the fourth grade the next day because of the snow, we had the playground to ourselves. No one would see our tracks there until the sledders arrived after late breakfasts and hot chocolate.

We might have been the last people alive. Certainly, we were the only ones awake for miles around. We paused at the top of the stairs leading down the jungle gyms. He took my hand again, and said, “I wanted you to see this, Maddy May. You’ll always remember, won’t you?” I nodded my promise. Then, with a whispered whoop that echoed unevenly in the gray sky, he dropped my hand and said, “Race you to the bottom.” He rushed forward, one gloved hand clutched to the banister, pushing off the snow. I hurried behind, falling and sliding in his snowy footprints.
------------------
As a beginning, it’s a little schmalty, but I’m fond of the image anyway. In graduate school, I once got a long, long lecture from Professor Goran about how one should never, ever use a prologue. But really, it’s relevant. We love people in our childhood as we can’t as adults. Fearlessly, before trusts are broken. I wanted that as the premise. Maybe disillusionment and innocence lost is a little passé. But I’m OK with that.

I too have brother issues. My brother, five years older than me, is autistic. He doesn’t speak, will never speak, and has been institutionalized since he was seven and I was two. My sister recently told me, however, that when we were kids, my mother used to lock him in his room, using a roll of socks to jam the door, because otherwise, he’d wander around in the middle of the night, going from room to room.

Maybe he stood and stared at me in my crib. Maybe I knew that.