Pleasing Grandpa

I don't know what to write lately. The ideas that appeal to me most include a memoir about my relationship with my mother, and a short story written from the point of view of a young, floundering urbanite trying to find meaning in the modern world. Vague, the both of them.

But this second idea leads me to something I've been thinking a lot about. I think that in many ways I aim to please my dead grandfather in my writing. This is ludicrous for many reasons, not the least of which is that he's dead. I didn't like my grandfather, he thought being an artist was a total waste of time, he forced me to sit through his dry readings of romantic English poetry, and my outlook is completely different than his was. On a bigger level, I aim to write like those dry English authors because that is what has always been given to me as examples of exemplary writing. Nobody ever handed me something written by Jack Kerouac and said, "This writer is amazing." But I found him somehow, and was blown away by his contemporary, spontaneous, personal style. He's not polished or careful, but he's important and fun.

I've had a copy of Anna Karenina on my bookshelf for years. I've tried to read it several times but it fails to absorb me. Yet I cling to this idea that THAT is how writing should be. So I bore myself with my own writing! As an experiment, I am going to refuse to read classical, traditional literature. I'm also going to refuse to read modern writing that emulates aforementioned literature. I am going to seek out and explore experimental, modern writing. Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson springs to mind.

One of my first great loves was e.e. cummings. But I've let myself believe all the teachers and critics who say that cummings is inferior to T.S. Eliot and other linear, rational writers. I still prefer cummings. Somehow he managed to strike a balance between expressing his heart and being understood.

Since Feeling is First... (VII)

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

e.e. cummings

(photo of e.e. cummings)

Shit and Gold

I've earned many jobs by lying about my past experience. I was hired as a gardener, bartender, and camp counselor based upon fabrications. I had no qualms about doing it because I wanted the jobs and knew I could do them. And I did them!

Before my first bartending shift, when I was twenty-two, I studied several handbooks and had my stepfather show me how to shake drinks in a mixer and how to pour beer from a tap (he was a bartender, also). Nobody ever suspected me.

But when it comes to writing, where does that confidence go? I've been thinking that I should try a little experiment. I should bluff my way into being a writer, just like I did with those other jobs, and just pretend I am one. Just start doing the work with all the false confidence I can muster. Who's gonna know? Besides me?

I wasn't afraid I'd fail at those jobs. I knew I could do them. I knew I could mix drinks and keep them flowing, knew I could carry large bags of dirt and prune delicate exotics, knew I could steer a large group of children and keep them safe. But I don't know that I can write something other people will want to read. Something that is smart, entertaining, worthwhile, new, and important all at once. How do I do that? Perhaps that's the biggest difference between myself and "real" writers. They don't wonder how to do it.

When I was eighteen, I had this glorious few months where I did almost nothing but write poetry and draw comics. I'd dropped out of college the day before classes began and moved myself from New York City to Portland, Oregon. I rented a small apartment with my sister, got a waitressing job at a doomed restaurant, and spent most of my non-working hours in front of an old typewriter at my kitchen table. I was prolific! I'd write for five to ten hours at a stretch. I have no idea where it came from, that inspiration and willingness to spend all my free time typing out lines that would never... I was about to write, "would never amount to anything", but that's not true. They made me a better writer.

I've long believed that when one begins on the path of the artist, they produce 100% shit. After a time, if they stick with it, they'll start to produce 5% gold and 95% shit. Gradually the percentages will change, until one day the artist might be producing equal amounts shit and gold. But you have to make the shit to get to the gold. There is no other way.

Perfectionists like me are too afraid to produce shit, so I will never get to the gold. If you can't write, lower your standards.

(photo of jack kerouac)

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I really thought I was posting on here more frequently! It's been ten days... Not much to report. No writing happening, though I've had plenty of ideas.

Feeling depressed about many things. How did so many writers manage to write interesting things while being such depressives? Maybe they didn't write while depressed. This will pass. I should be writing anyway, not letting my moods dictate me.

Need a routine... Need a routine...

(photo of sylvia plath)