Twin Peaks, Waterfalls, and Getting Perspective: Happy Midsummer Night’s Eve and Supermoon!

Yes, sometimes we have to get away from it all to get some perspective. After feeling worn out and sick as a dog for two weeks, today I woke up with the sun shining and feeling well enough to get around a bit. So we decided on a day trip out to Snoqualmie Falls (the Salish Lodge there was used as the site for Twin Peaks) and to Ollalie State Park Falls, a somewhat smaller and less touristy nearby waterfall hike.

It was 79 degrees, a breeze was blowing the waterfall’s mist up in our faces, and there was a rainbow. It was the biggest we had seen the falls in sometime – we have had some rain and snowmelt, but whatever caused it was amazing! It was great to drive into the cool mountains in the heat of the day, to watch Glenn walk around a tree about ten times as wide and wall as he is, to watch deer and eagles and stop and buy local honey, to see the storefronts with the famous “Cherry Pie!” discussed in Twin Peaks and antique trains.
This all reminded me of the things I love about where I live – twenty minutes from an ocean, twenty minutes from the mountains, it’s just the traffic and life that get in the way of getting to either, most of the time! And also helped me get outside of my own head – not worrying about jobs, or money, or books, or anything other than – should we make corn chowder out of that fresh corn we just bought? Or – what kind of odd duck and ducklings are we looking at? Was that a flicker or a stellar jay? This was one of the things I missed most about Washington when I lived in California – the Northwest mountains and waterfalls with their cool pines remind me of growing up in the mountains of Tennessee. It seems like taking these little breaks – no more than a few hours, but still a break – helps me remember why I am a writer, why I love where I am, helps me feel a little easier about a body that can be unreliable and cranky. I cut some sweetpeas from my garden, where our first strawberries are getting ripe, and put them in a vase by my computer.  This is what a midsummer night’s dream is all about – the enchantment of a glowing giant moon in the sky, the flowers nearby and water and feeling warm from the day’s sun, the birds still calling outside your window.

Sometimes Writers Need Friends

So, after my last post about the important of guarding your writing and not being too nice, this is a balancing post about the importance for writers of having friends. Friends give you perspective, give you support when you’re feeling discouraged, help you celebrate when you’re feeling encouraged. If you’re mean and petty and insist on seeing the worst in everyone, it will be hard to have or keep many friends – I’ve been reading a couple of biographies of Plath, and I think it was one of the main things that kept her so dangerously isolated – not only did she see the worst in herself, she saw the worst in her girlfriends and dates, the occasions around her – the world was full of shadows, and very little illumination, except in her beautiful words. Think how much happier she might have been if she’d given herself – along with some other people – a break and let them into her life a little more.

Having friends who are also writers is really helpful, because when they complain about how to hard it is to book a reading, or how nervous they’ve been about reviews, or how excited they were about a particular acceptance or bummed about a particular rejection, they will be reflecting back your own struggles – and remind you you’re not alone in your crazy ambitions and adventures. Like these girls flying into the great unknown future, most of the time we will be out on our own, piloting rickety craft across uncertain seas – so to get together and talk and laugh and share secrets of the trade is a great gift. Writing isn’t a competition, though it can feel like one – often, the most talented people you encounter – the one that make you bite your lip out of nervousness or even jealousy – are the ones that will help lift you out of yourself and help you see the next adventure on the horizon. Meet on a regular basis, talk about what you want to do next, exchange information about grants and contests and your wish lists. Talking about something doesn’t necessarily make it concrete – but putting things out “in the universe” in a group is often a huge motivator.

And let me say a word here about interesting misfits…sometimes your best friends will look just like you…but often they will not. They will be outliers, maybe a little awkward, maybe you can have friends with whom you discuss lipstick and others with whom you discuss particle physics. I have been surprised over and over throughout the years how the people who seemed like the biggest risks often have the most to offer, people who look, talk, and act in a completely surprising way. Diversity isn’t just a buzzword for the workplace, it’s something we should strive for in our own lives of family and friends, because there’s a danger in surrounding yourself with people who are too comfortable, too much like you – because those who cause you to push yourself will ultimately open some doorways in your mind and heart. Which is ultimately really good for your writing.

I’m grateful that I’ve come across so many interesting, entertaining people in my life that I can call friends, and that while I never feel I have enough time to socialize, I’m always happy when I come back from a writing group or a coffee trip with an old friend, I always feel less bitter/anxious/caught in my own head. This is also a thank you note to all my friends, across the country, old and new. You have all added tremendously to the sparkle in the world. There’s a verse in the Bible that I think applies to both marriage and friendship – yeah, I know, surprise, a Bible quote at the end! But it really applies especially to poets, who can feel lonely and isolated and slapped in the face by life, and I imagine that in the original language, it was probably pretty good poetry once: “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down,  one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.” Ecclesiastes 4. (PS If you only read one book in the Bible, that may be the one to read. I have always loved it.)

When to Be Nice – the Writer-Girl-Type Edition

You wouldn’t think a writer who wrote a book called “Becoming the Villainess” might struggle as much as I do with what I call “nice girl syndrome.” But I do. I don’t like to bother people or let them down, so at doctor’s offices, I don’t insist on one kind of treatment because I don’t want to assert myself, or in the writing world, I have trouble turning down offers to do things for others. (As you can imagine, this makes jobs like teaching – no, I can’t write a 23rd letter of recommendation for you – or a local city’s Poet Laureate job – sure, I can show up at blank event with five minutes notice and do anything you want – a little bit of a struggle, because without clearly defined boundaries – yes, I will do this, but no, I can’t do that – these jobs will take up your entire life.)

I started thinking about the problem of the “nice girl syndrome” a bit after this discussion, which includes a bit of argument – not from me – about whether or not it’s worthwhile for a writer/editor to prioritize being, in Mary Biddinger’s words, “kind.” (See interesting discussion between four writers here: http://www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/four-poets-read-poems-and-talk-poetry) Kindness comes up somewhere in the middle and sparks a debate. I am looking on silently in this debate, because honestly, I am wrestling with own feelings of how to balance “nice” with “self-preservation/success.” I actually think Mary does a model job with this balance – gracious but committed to her own work, too. So when does a writer put her own work second, to her teaching, to her spouse’s/children’s/family’s needs, to her four adopted rescue dogs, to the needs of everyone but herself?

I think kindness enormously expands our writing world when done in the right way – a thank you note to a writer who moved you or an editor who was especially helpful, blurbing or reviewing other writers, inviting someone you admire to come do a reading with you or teach a class or whatever – and that it is part of our writing community’s well-being that hangs in the balance between doing what’s kind and doing what’s in our own self-interest. Remember when we were writers just starting out, when a kind word or act made all the difference to us, and we should strive to include and encourage others in the same way. There’s an old saying to “whom much has been given, much will be expected” – so the more gifts we receive from the universe, the more we should give back.

On the other hand, there’s a terminal kind of niceness – the “can’t say no” kind – that will get in the way of your writing and publishing. One thing I’ve noted while reading these multiple biographies and memoirs of famous dead successful writers – besides the lack of happy endings – is that they were none of them known for being particularly nice. Egotistical to the point of delusion, sometimes – always aiming high and believing their own work had merit and deserved recognition – the women writers whose names we now know we know partially because they didn’t put up with a lot of crap, they took risks, they did what they pleased most of the time. They made a scene, they switched publishers because they weren’t happy with one editor or publisher’s treatment of them, they withdrew stories and revised til the last minute and went with the best-paying and most prestigious offers every time. Especially in the cases of Sylvia Plath and Flannery O’Connor, this may have been because, for two different reasons, they both knew they had limited time.

Those of you who read this blog on a regular basis know I struggle with various health stuff, that usually rears its ugly head at inconvenient times. At those times, I am forced to acknowledge I cannot, actually, do it all – and maybe no one can. (To illustrate – I was in the hospital on oxygen with two IVs in my arms with double pneumonia when I was writing to my students about being a day late to turn in grades…and I still felt so bad about it I actually finished grading in the hospital bed.) So if I’m going to stick to priorities, what are mine? What comes first? When do I need to face conflict, assert myself, say no? When do I need to say “It’s time to write” instead of one of the six-thousand other things I could be doing? I know I don’t like to let anyone down. It literally hurts me physically sometimes – stomachaches, migraines – to do it. But if I don’t, what opportunities drop away – the chance to write, to submit, to offer up an idea or start a memoir or take a risk – that might make the difference between a writer who makes history, and a writer who does not?

Happy Memorial Day! And thoughts on Writing Priorities and True Success

Happy Memorial Day Weekend Everyone! And thanks to all our troops who have serve or are currently serving!

This weekend, after scanning with some dismay the number of poems I’ve written and/or sent out in the past twelve months, I decided to make this weekend profoundly unscheduled – no parties, no readings – and just devote myself to getting back my brain’s space, writing, and trying to send out some work and revise some of my manuscripts. It’s been tough – I’ve been easily distracted – but I’m getting back into my old habits after a day or two – staying up late to write poems, starting in the morning before I get out of bed to go over XL spreadsheets and deciding where to send out or researching publishers and magazines. I want to have some sort of higher ambitions – I’ve been reading, a little bit every night, Flannery O’Connor’s Habits of Being , and have been really struck noting both her tough ambitions, her constant revisions and aiming high in her publications. (I have some other literary memoir-type things calling my name to read as well – Pain, Parties Work on Sylvia Plath, and Z A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald when I’m done with Flannery.) Note that things didn’t really end well for any of these writers. Oh well. I’m taking note of their good habits and ignoring the bad. After all, that’s what we do in real life with friends and mentors, right?

I have been thinking about notions of “success” for a poet/writer (as you may have notice from previous posts) and have come to an odd conclusion: you cannot compromise or let your writing become commercialized or fall victim to trends or else, like the tragic example of the brainy teen girl whose high school crush finally comes around when she puts on a short skirt and makeup – she’ll find the shiny object of her affections sadly tarnished. As a writer, what I really mean when I say “Success” is that someone (or someones – hopefully a larger number rather than a smaller number) – appreciates what is unique and special about your writing in particular, not your writing as part of a trend, or your writing for what it represents, but what is unique to you in terms of ideas, styles, slant, POV…you know, without the short skirt and makeup, with your hair in a ponytail and your glasses on. We worry about how to make our writing pretty and popular.  But inside, you want your audience to love your writing in the same way you want a loved one to love you – that is, to embrace not just the exterior, but the true nature of you. Of course it would also be nice to sell, say, 7599 copies of your new book! But really, what is the use of “success” with money or numbers if your work has ceased to represent the real you? In other words, don’t worry about sending your poems to that Reality Makeover Program. Editors and readers – the ones your writing is meant for – will like you just the way you are. (This is advice, by the way, that you cannot give a teenage girl. Do not try. They’ll figure it out for themselves.)