March 31st, 2009
Not Terrible at All
Today this blog turns two years old and, possibly, enters its hair-pulling, tantrum-throwing, finger-in-light-socket years. We hope not. It’s been such a great ride so far.
One year ago I was here, being glamourous and alarmed. Two years ago I was starting this blog, and the first non-meta-blog post was this, about snark and story-telling.
Five jobs. Several publications. Myriad irritations. One book. Braces, illness, surrealism, and confusion. And…whatever post is after this one.
Cheers to that, and thanks for reading, responding, laughing and scoffing. It’s been so very much fun so far.
RR
Stuff going on
Tomorrow at Harbourfront: Bruce Jay Friedman, Robert Carr and George Elliot Clarke.
Pamela Stewart, Lien Chao and me! at the Art Gallery of Hamilton (part of Grit Lit).
Carmine Starnino, Dannabang Kuwabong, Derek McCormack, Alice Major, Nicole Markotić and Mike Barnes also at Grit Lit!
Strong Words with Featuring Leanne Lieberman, Ryan Kamstra and Krystle Mullin at the Gladstone.
It will end again in bullets
RR
March 30th, 2009
Clubbin’
“Once, in a bright and distant time, ‘a group of people joined together for some special purpose’ would have sounded pleasant, even inviting. But now, in these days of violence, sin and convenience foods, ‘club’ meetings invariably lead to confusion between the aforementioned special interest groups and ‘a heavy stick of wood used as a weapon.’ And such confusion, of course, can only lead to tears, chaos, and unsightly bruises.
“How can such an indiscretion have occurred between definitions one and two in my trusty Thorndike-Barnhart Comprehensive Desk Dictionary (Volume One)? Such definition disasters are in fact sadly common. An idle flip through any dictionary (come on, admit it, we all do it) will reveal questions like ‘why do we need twenty-three definitions for “in”?’ ‘What’s the difference between a couch and a sofa?’ ‘How come the people at Webster’s don’t spell spray-cheez like the rest of the world?’ ‘What’s the does the small-furry-mammal-bat have in common with the hit-the-little-flying-ball bat? In fact, wouldn’t a baseball bat have more in common with, say, a club??’ The plot thickens!!“
Who are those quotation marks quoting? Why, it’s teenaged Rebecca at her most facetious (and innocent of the correct usage of the word “indiscretion”), writing the Club Section intro to her Grade 11 yearbook. How much has changed, and yet, how little.
Half a lifetime later (no, really: almost exact math) I still love clubs and still regard them with some degree of trepidation. Last night, I was a guest at a book-club meeting where they were discussing *Once*! An amazing opportunity, because no author is ever really content with any amount of feedback–when you say you “enjoyed the book” we’re all actually dying to ask whether you thought the intentional misuse of the word “indiscretion” on page 45 came across as funny or obvious, and when you say you don’t recall that bit, we are assume you are lying to cover the fact that you actually hated it, and the rest of the text besides. To me, an entire evening to discuss the successes and failures of my book seems just about right! A terrifying prospect, naturally, for the same reason.
In the end, it was terribly fun, and everyone was super-frlendly and funny and articulate and very good cooks (that’s how all book clubs should screen members, I think). I was pleased that people were willing to talk about the book negatively without glancing over at me to see if I’d crumple to the floor in convulsions. No anti-*Once* rants, but not everyone loved every story, and I’m always interested in hearing about the whiches and whys of that.
And then there were lots of positive comments, too, which are always fun to bask in, and lots of intelligent questions and Dutch apple pie. When I said I was going to meet a book club, a few people wondered if that was a good thing for a writer to do, and so now my answer is *yes*! People who would bother to join a book club, and bother to read the book, are mainly astute readers, and it’s always valuable to hear what they have to say. There is a weird feeling of course to being a stranger at what is basically a low-key dinner party, and being the focus of attention throughout from people you don’t know well. Plus, one wants to be interesting and informative–they were giving me herbed brie, after all. I do hope my comments were useful; sometimes (well, mainly always, actually) I think *Once* is lot more interesting than I am. But us writers, we are flexible and fun, and so are readers, and I imagine that most who try this experiment with open minds and empty stomaches will will find the evening works out rather well.
I wonder what would happen if I–
RR
March 27th, 2009
Mr. Cheever, I hardly knew ye
Even before *Once* came out, I was amazed at how generous readers were in sharing what they thought of my work. It’s not like I’m deluged with fanmail, but a good number of people have bothered to send me a note, or say a word to me at an event, to share their reactions to my stories.
And though really that’s why anyone wants to publish anything–to get people thinking about these characters and situations that have been in the writer’s head–I didn’t really know how thrilling it would be see my imaginings refracted through other imaginations like this. I’ve enjoyed everything expressed to me, including “I just didn’t get it” (more than once)…it’s important for me to learn about ways my work can misfire. No one ever got better by dwelling on successes.
Of course, everyone’s been pretty nice–I’m sure I wouldn’t appreciate negative feedback if it came in the form of people yelling “you suck!” at readings. But there is one comment that’s come up a couple times, always voiced as a compliment, that does trouble me: variations on “I feel as though I’ve read your diary.”
A big scary hurdle of publishing is accepting the idea that I can’t control how people read the work once it’s out there; if people enjoy thinking of all the characters I write as manifestations of Rebecca Rosenblum…uh, I guess I have to go with that.
But I wish they wouldn’t. And not only because I am not a terribly autobiographical writer and that’s not how *I* read the characters. Of course I use real life sometimes–it is right there, after all. Besides, all my ideas come from inside my own head, so they all reflect me to some degree (I believe I’m paraphrasing Margaret Atwood there, but I can’t find an attribution). I’m sure if a person with the right degrees read any book with enough attention, he or she could construct a reasonably accurate psychological profile of the author.
My concern is that that doesn’t seem a terribly good use of anyone’s time, or their $19.95. You can hang out with me for free, after all (and then there’s the blog…). Also, I haven’t spent a lot of time coding myself into the book–I don’t know that there’s great reward for the reader in figure out the details of any author’s life through fiction. But I *did* spend a *lot* of crafting the imaginary characters on the pages–I worked really hard to make them fleshed-out people who live in the work, who talk and walk and think like people who might exist, even if they don’t.
Autobiographical detail: in my first year of university, I fell in love with a couple stories by John Cheever’s. That summer, I bought a collected works and read all of the man’s short fiction in chronological order. When I was done, I recall storming down the stairs of my parents’ house and announcing, “When he got old John Cheever was a misogynist.”
I was genuinely upset because I felt that this author that I loved hated me, or my kind (or would have, had he been alive at that point). And I was upset and confused, too, that even some of those later, woman-unfriendly stories were *good*–that I liked them and related to the characters stuck in realities I didn’t believe in. It was all very disorienting.
My father, a Cheever fan (but not a misogynist), tried to comfort me by saying, “Well, Cheever had some issues.” Really, he didn’t see why I was so distraught. The stories were what they were, after all, no matter who wrote them, and it wasn’t like I was ever going to have to sit next to Mr. Cheever on the bus (him being dead and all).
What my father did not say was, “Actually, Cheever was a homosexual.” Because he didn’t know, it turned out when I called to check (good times, being associated with me: early morning phone calls that begin, “Hi, it’s me, did you know John Cheever was gay?”) My dad didn’t sound that interested in Cheever’s sexual orientation when I told him, and really, why should he? Maybe a life in the closet affected the author’s perspective, and maybe he was simply consumed by virtiol. As readers, all we’ve got are some brilliant stories, some that are both hateful and incohrent, and some that keep both the brilliance and the bile.
We all have a point of view that we’re stuck with most of the time. I think the true thrill of narrative art is losing myself in other perspectives, one I’ve created or one someone created for me. Mainly I don’t care where they got the idea from, because I’m never going where the ideas came from; all I have is the imaginative space.
Facts confuse the matter. Once you have a few details about someone’s life, either by meeting them or reading some biography or hearing some gossip, it’s hard not to start mixing up the narratives. What looped me this week was the news of Cheever’s homosexuality. I found out from John Updike’s review of a new bio; found out that I’m the only one in the free world who didn’t know, and then realized that it doesn’t matter.
It never matters how true the story–it matters how *accurate* the writing is, how it feels. Because sooner or later, the author will be dead, and eventually all the facts become blurred. And though that’s when we’re left with only the story, I think that’s mainly what we had all along.
Which is all to say, read stories any way you like, mine, your own, and anyone’s. Myself, I prefer to stay out of the frame.
Sweet summer all around
RR
March 26th, 2009
For the love of little magazines
I tend to stay away from anything remotely political in public forums, not because I am not opinionated but because I am so pathetically ill-informed that I can almost always be counted on to have it all wrong. Already today I’ve been baffled and upset about Gaza and the seal hunt, and it’s not even tea-time yet.
But just in case anyone misinterpreted my blog-silence on the manner of the proposed funding cuts to small-circulation periodicals in Canada–including the lovely “little” mags that constitute so much of my reading–I am opposed. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t possibly have that much wrong.
For further wisdom, read John Barton’s piece on the Globe’s website. Mr. Barton, editor of the Malahat Review has been working amazingly hard to protest these cuts, and he expresses better than I ever could exactly what would be lost if our little mags disappeared:
“These magazines provide an essential service to the nation as incubators of creative innovation….
“To quote Phyllis Webb from her aptly titled poem Pain, little magazines “throw a bridge of value to belief.” Who can say which unsung contributor will some day be the toast of the world? An editor’s job is to support writers by giving them a chance.”
We can only laugh at these regrets
RR
March 25th, 2009
Writing exercises: how to get over yourself
I spent today running three workshops with 30 kids each–I can barely hold my head up, but the experience was amazing, and in a few cases I was genuinely excited about the promise of more work by these kids. The interesting thing about most of my students, and I’d have to gender-stereotype here and say especially the boys, is that they are in no danger of taking themselves too seriously. They don’t draft and they don’t fret; if it’s not good the first time, well, then it’s not going to be good. An amazing proportion of the work *is* good, that’s the startling thing, which speaks to a) natural talent and b) the power of egoless writing.
It’s harder for an adult to write without hoping to impress someone, even ourselves. We aim for perfection, truth and posterity, and are crestfallen when we just obtain accurate interesting prose. Not that a little truth and perfection isn’t a lovely thing, but writing fast and furious, without wondering, “But is it *beautiful*?” can often show a writer just what he or she is capable of.
Here’s a couple exercises given to me a few years back by my wonderous mentor, Leon Rooke. I had a bit more free time back then, but I’d still recommend doing these if you have a free weekend. They’re fun and low-pressure, if a lot of work. I’ll bet you’ll be as surprised as I was at how much good material you produce. Lots of nonsense, too, but you can’t make a cake without breaking some eggs.
1) Write 20 opening paragraphs. Go from one to the next if you can, and don’t follow up on any of them until you’ve got all 20 down. Use as many different voices, tenses, tones and styles as you can.
2) Write 3 stories in 3 days. I guess this one would take a long weekend, or you could space 3 days apart. But only 24 hours allotted to each story, which means you probably can’t revise at all on this draft. Which is ok. Really. I promise. Unlike the whippersnappers, I won’t check your work.
And now I have to go, because the funny thing is, *I’m* being workshopped tonight. It’s a theme day. And so, I must make pizza.
Sweet summer all around
RR
Goodness
As anyone who has ever gotten involved with Mr. Popsicle Pete knows, many things we want ardently in life turn out to be sadly disappointing. And yet some are better than we could ever have imagined. When I was but a naif last summer, I sure knew I was excited to have *Once* be published, but there are amazing things about the life of a book author that I would never have seen coming. Sometimes books get transcribed into Braille editions by the CNIB. Sometimes, you send your parents on a search for your first ever hometown review and they wind up meeting the staff of the H Mag. Sometimes children ask you if you know J.K. Rowling. And sometimes you get interviewed by a puppet.
I keep waiting to be blindsided by the converse downside of it all, but really, nothing thus far.
You came into my town / you came and you fell down
RR
Always highlights
On the macro, today sort of sucked, but on the micro, there are always highlights:
1) On the bus, the girl to my left starts to cry. Guy to my right watches with increasing concern, nudges me, makes meaningful eye-contact, then glances over at the girl. He wants me to ask if she’s ok, I guess, which I am loath to do, because I tuned in slightly earlier than he did and caught the cellphone conversation that preceded the tears. The tone of that chat (“He did? The fuck? No! I don’t want–No! Man, I really wish you had told me. Well, fuck that. No, seriously, I can’t listen to you–well, fuck that.”) indicated that these were more tears of rage than sorrow, and that intervention would not be welcome. After few minutes of both me and the guy trying to catch her eye, our girl dries her tears, takes her cellphone out of her bag, and gives somebody hell with nary a quaver to her voice. We the peanut gallery nod approvingly.
2) I have been sending out stories to be considered for publication for two and half years now, always with the same formatting (taught to me by Professor Pyper, which includes my phone number. Never, in creeping up on double-digit submissions, has anyone ever called me…until today. Thanks, echolocation!
3) echolocation‘s back. And my story, “Night Flight,” will be in their spring issue around the end of next month.
4) I swear the following dialogue is true, verbatim, and happened around 12:45 pm today in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada.
Me: Did you know that John Cheever was gay?
J: Yeah. Didn’t you see that episode of Seinfeld?
My mind is officially blown.
New York was great / I loved it all
RR
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