Month: May 2008

The Talent of the Room

Several years ago, the writer Michael Ventura very graciously gave me permission to republish on my website his essay The Talent of the Room. I recommended it to someone yesterday and re-read it again myself, and thought again how marvelous and smart and true it is.

The essay is, in my opinion, a must-read for any writer, although I think it’s an ought-to-read for anyone who wants to undertake something for the long term (going walkabout, entering therapy, moving to a strange city, getting married…). It’s cogent and clear and honest about the fact that talent for a thing isn’t always enough. That kind of talent is about being — a talent for an art, medicine, understanding animals, healing plants, whatever. But Ventura’s focus is the talent of doing — what you have to be able to do in order to express your talent of being (my words, not his). I don’t know what that is for doctors, or lawyers, or architects, or anyone else, although it’s fun to imagine. But I know that Ventura is right — for writers, it’s the talent of the room.

And so I am delighted to find a follow-up of sorts, an extension of the conversation, in this 2007 essay : Creative Writing — a Caution. And this is all true, too, especially the part about being careful of feedback from people who are not better writers than you. If I had a dollar for every hopeful writer I’ve met who is in a writing group where they think they are the best writer… well, it makes me crazy. If you actually want to learn something about your work, why would you want to be in a group where no one’s better at it than you? Why would you not run desperately into the night and try to claw your way into the best group of writers you could find?

If you’re not familiar with Ventura, well, here’s your chance. To call him a writer is a bit like calling Wal-Mart a store — there’s just so much more inside than the word perhaps implies. He’s a novelist, essayist, screenwriter, culture critic, an explorer of the American psyche. If you like these two essays on writing, go read his Letters at 3AM column in the Austin Chronicle. Like these:

(and take note, the website is infernally slow to load, at least today, so you might have to walk away and make coffee or something…)

Why are you still here (grin)? Go read some Michael Ventura!

You grow, girl

This is one of my favorite comics ever because it reminds me of myself. (Clicking on the image will bring it to full size.)

Calvin & Hobbes (click for full-size image)

The thing is, learning and growth are essential for me — mainstays of my identity, huge expenditures of my time and energy, driving factors in my most important decisions. I pursue learning and growth in ways that seem nearly random to people who don’t know me well (and sometimes to the ones who do, and sometimes even to me… although I can see the connective tissue much more clearly now than I could 20 years ago). I have left a lot of people blinking and bemused by the way that learning and growth drive me. (Nicola has taken to referring to them as the Evil Twins).

In order to justify myself, I have invested a lot in the assertion that Growth Is Good and Learning Is Fun.

And so they are. But that’s not all they are.

So these days, whenever I stop and ask myself any of these questions…

  • Why am I so tired?
  • Why am I so stressed?
  • Why am I feeling like a failure?
  • Why are my personal boundaries so fragile that I am crying over a story about an earthworm in Patagonia or feeling defensive because Nicola says there is too much milk in her tea?
  • Why am I scared?

… this comic pops into my head. Because sometimes learning is really really hard and scary and makes me just feel like shit for a while. Sometimes there is too much of it, too fast. I do think Growth Is Good, and I’m also starting to believe that sometimes it’s good to not do it all right this minute. It’s okay to do as much as I can handle and then just sit around like a string bean for a while.

Why is this a hard lesson? Because somewhere along the line, I began treating this part of me as if were the only thing that would save me from… from what, exactly? I dunno. From Bad Things. From making mistakes. From failing. From being thought stupid or weak or incompetent. From being left behind. From the limitations of the class I was born into. From people’s disapproval. From my own flaws. From fear itself.

But of course, it’s not that easy. And it turns out that learning and growing often make me fail, make me afraid, make people disapprove of me, reveal me as incompetent and weak and sometimes just damn stupid. Go figure. Or as we like to say at our house, another fucking learning experience.

The Evil Twins aren’t really evil. They are passionate and demanding and ultimately disinterested in my outcome. The universe doesn’t really care whether I grow or not. Caring about it is my choice. I do care about it, and I will keep doing it. But I’m going to try to remember that breaking myself in the process isn’t the greatest long-term strategy. That if I really want to keep growing, sometimes I have to stop, unless all I ever want to learn is how much damage I can take, how long I can go without sleep, and how weird I can truly get when I feel overwhelmed.

Wow, I feel smarter already! (grin). Or maybe I’m starting to grow up a little.

DBAA, round 2

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about why it’s important not to be an asshole. And because sometimes the Universe provides its own object lessons, here’s another really good reason not to be an asshole, especially if you’re a writer: because the Writing Pond is really really small, and if you swim like an asshole, the Internet Will Ridicule You.

You can bet dollars to donuts that this person’s name is spreading among agents and editors faster than grease on a griddle (golly, I seem to find myself in a Southern mood today). If this person ever gets published, it’ll be a miracle. It really does matter how you behave, you know? People talk about it.

There is absolutely no percentage in behaving like this person did. Professional rejection happens all the time. Agents say no. Fiction editors and Hollywood script readers dismiss your months or years of work with no more than It’s not really right for us (if they’re having a polite day). If you do get published, critics and amazon reviewers and random bloggers say mean stuff about your writing and sometimes about you. It’s no fucking fun, precious, and we doesn’t like it, no. But if we’re smart, we never never never presses the send key on those special emails….

Kindness feels good

Earlier this week I saw Lars and the Real Girl and if I can convince even one person to see it, I’ll feel like I’ve added a glimmer to the general light in the universe. It’s a beautiful, fine movie. I laughed out loud, I cried, I loved every single character, and when it was done I felt terrific.

And you know why? Because it was 106 minutes of people being kind to each other. A community of folks confronting difference in one of their own and responding with compassion and kindness. And that is all that happened. Someone was frightened; people were kind; and it helped. I kept waiting for the cruelty that I knew was coming because that’s what happens when wacky people make themselves vulnerable, right? But it never happened.

Isn’t that extraordinary? A movie so confident in the power and wonder of human kindness that the kindness is all we need to see. Without a trace of anything sentimental or silly. It wasn’t a fairy tale — it was a simple story of the extraordinary kindness that people are capable of in the smallest acts. It was about how we really all do make a difference to each other. And for my money, there’s more power and human truth in this movie than in all the hip ironic let’s-plumb-the-depths bullshit I’ve seen or read in the last ten years.

I’m not linking to the trailer because it spoils some of the nicest moments. Just rent the movie and watch it.

And here’s a more immediate kindness fix in the meantime (gakked from my friend Dave — you rock for making me aware of this, bro.)

I hope this story makes you feel as good as it did me. Because it’s true that the simplest kindness can change a mind or a life. And all we have to do is see past what’s awkward or scary or inconvenient or icky about someone else, to put being human above being different from me. And that matters so much.

It’s a human thing to use our differences to demonize — dehumanize — each other. It’s a human thing to let our fear make us indifferent or cruel. But it is also a human thing to be kind, to be joyful, to find love and beauty and hope where we can…. and so I find joy and beauty and hope in the kindness — fictional and real — that I have seen in the last couple of days. I believe that such kindness could save us all.

New review and interview

The Short Review reviews Dangerous Space.

They’ve also posted an interview which, as my editor at Aqueduct has pointed out, does not mention the word “gender” a single time. I get the impression she thinks this is a miracle for me. But in fact it’s not all about gender, really. Sometimes it’s about sex other things.

Enjoy.