Category: writing

It’s never too late to bloom

…sometimes genius is anything but rarified; sometimes it’s just the thing that emerges after twenty years of working at your kitchen table. — from “Late Bloomers” by Malcolm Gladwell, in The New Yorker, October 20 2008.

Thank you, Jennifer, for pointing me to Malcolm Gladwell’s article on “Late Bloomers.” I very much enjoy Gladwell’s work, but I have fallen behind on my reading (and everything else), and so had missed it. (The writer hugs the internet for redefining “behind” to mean well, we’ll just be over here waiting for you to catch up as opposed to gone forever and you missed it, now go sit in the corner and sulk.)

In the article, Gladwell discusses recent ideas of economist David Galenson on creativity: specifically, that the accepted cultural model of the creative prodigy isn’t the only way that creativity expresses itself successfully. There are young people with Big Ideas who burst full-blown onto the scene; they’re the brilliant first novelists, the astonishingly original painters, the people who stand things on their heads and create works of Staggering Genius right out of the box. There are also the experimental artists, the late bloomers, who take a long time to peak because their process and their creative goals are fundamentally different. And — here’s the the really radical notion — genius is found as often in works of late bloomers as it is in works by prodigies.

This may seem totally obvious to you — it certainly does to me — but step back and think about it. Our cultural assumptions about the early manifestation and realization of talent run deep and generally unchallenged. Everyone knows that Real Creative People hit their stride early and make their mark emphatically. I can go on at length about this, but Gladwell has already done so, very well, in this lecture he gave at Columbia University1. I encourage every artist, and anyone who has ever felt like you were in some kind of a “race to produce” that you didn’t sign up for and find somewhat bewildering, to take 52 minutes to listen to the lecture. It’s worth it.

What Gladwell takes to task in the Columbia speech (and I wish he’d gone into this deeper in his article) is that our cultural bias toward the prodigy model of creativity denies many, many potentially good or great or genius artists the chance to reach their peak — simply because we are not willing to be patient. Gladwell cites the music and publishing industries: if a first album doesn’t sell well, the band is seen as not commercially viable; if a first novel doesn’t do well, people assume that the writer is a bad writer, not that this novel didn’t work. And that’s the fallacy in a nutshell: if the first product of an artist is not A Work Of Staggering Fucking Genius, then the artist isn’t a Real Artist after all.

This attitude kills artists.

And we’re aren’t the only ones who suffer. Gladwell shows how the prodigy model underlies our expectation that kids must do well in high school or it means they are done in life. He talks about how the prodigy and late bloomer models play out in the auto and pharmaceutical industries, and in what projects or ventures get funded. This model drives cultural assumptions about what is worth supporting. And when an entire style of creativity — and its results — are unsupported at best and discouraged at worst, then we’re all losing out.

I’ve spent my life seeking, wandering down paths that compel me without always knowing why. What I bring back from those journeys goes into my work, whether it’s my writing or my consulting or the posts on this blog. My work is more than the sum of my curiosities — at its best, it’s an exponentially greater recombination of what I have seen and felt, what I’ve understood and what still mystifies me. A stranger’s private smile over the zucchini in the market, the precise way that a blue sky over Mérida is different from one over Chicago, the vertiginous moment when you know the news is bad, the taste of honeydew melon, what it’s really like to give yourself to art, what’s it’s really like when art gives itself to you…

I’ve always characterized myself as a writer who maps the internal human landscape. That’s not like inventing Cubism or being the youngest person to win a Booker Prize. What it is, in the eyes of many people, is unimpressive, underperforming, not living up to my “promise.” Huh? I don’t remember promising anything.

I’ve recently taken myself out of this game. I wrote that post with no knowledge of Galenson’s theory or Gladwell’s ideas about it, after a year or so of wrestling with the deep discontinuity between my own experience as an artist and the cultural paradigm that defines success in ways that I can never achieve. I am grateful for “Late Bloomers,” and even moreso for the Columbia lecture (again with the hugging through the internet, which is perhaps the best way to hug a stranger, you know? Apart from buying his books…). Malcolm, thank you for strengthening the foundation of this place where I am trying to stand.

You can bet I’ll be reading the Galenson book, as well as the Charles Tilly book referenced in the lecture. I’ll let you know what I think.

We have to expand our definition of what greatness is, and we have to be patient. It’s not over at 22; it’s not even over at 42…. I find it such a wonderfully liberating thought… — Malcolm Gladwell, speaking in a New Yorker podcast about his article on creativity.

Me too.


1 — I’ve blatantly swiped this audio from the New Yorker website, where it was cut into three files and presented on player technology so frustrating to use that I nearly put my keyboard through my screen a couple of times. They can come and get me for making it easier for people to listen if they want to.

If you’re interested, there’s also a 30-minute Q&A that follows the lecture.

Art and money

I used to spend time struggling with the idea of “fairness.”

Do you, ever? Do you think about whether people or situations or the universe itself are fair to you? Or to other people? I’m not even sure I know what fair means anymore… but I’m pretty sure that it’s meaningless to talk about it in any context beyond that of specific personal interaction.

I think it’s fine to tell a friend I think they are being “unfair” — they aren’t taking something into account that they should in this moment, or they are judging me without empathy, or…. well, there are many ways that people who are vulnerable to each other can be unfair, you know? Perhaps fairness and vulnerability are linked in this way… I don’t know, I’ll have to think more about that. But I do know that part of my definition of closeness is that there is space for me to speak and be heard.

But, you know, Life and The Universe and the Random Strangers Of The World do not have to listen to me. It’s not a rule. And so how can I possibly expect fairness from them?

It’s nice to think that things happen for a reason — good things and bad things — because it makes it seem possible to control them if we only understand the cause. It makes it seem that we can interject an element of fairness into these universal transactions. But, you know, it’s not “fair” that Nicola has MS, and it’s not unfair either. MS is in the world, and people get it. It’s not fair that our beloved cat died this summer and broke my fucking heart and that I still cry so hard I get nosebleeds, but it’s not unfair either. All living things on the planet die. It’s not fair that I have specific opportunities that other people don’t, and it’s not unfair either. It’s the result of a million choices that I made, and that some of those Random Strangers made, that ended up bringing us together in ways that changed our lives. That’s what happens. (I recognize that many of my opportunities are a result of social injustice to other people — but I’m not sure I wish to apply the word “unfair” to that anymore. Wrong? Yes, that’s a good word. But this idea of fairness is something else.)

And in the midst of thinking about fairness, today I read this post on Seth Godin’s blog: Maybe you can’t make money doing what you love.

I’ve long felt this way. I knew I would not make a living as a writer at the beginning, and that’s why I was so happy to find myself at Wizards of the Coast, doing work that I could really get behind, that changed me in ways I will carry with me for the rest of my life. That’s where I made the money that let me stop working full-time and focus on my art. And you know, it never occurred to me to think it was unfair that I had to do that. Why should I expect people to support me — to pay for my life on the planet to whatever standard I set for myself — just because I want to express myself? Just because I want to make art?

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that people make a living as artists, and I would like to do it myself — but I sure as hell don’t expect it, and I don’t think it’s a direct measure of the value of my art if I do, or if I don’t. I think it’s just what happens.

And the interesting thing to me is that, like Seth Godin, I have lots of negative capability around this stuff. Screenwriting fascinates and compels me because it is both art and work, in all the ways that I understand the latter — creative, collaborative, communication-dependent, and focused on results that do not necessarily reflect only my needs. The opportunity to do it was one of those million-choices confluences. And it gave me the enormous gift of rediscovering pure passion for my writing, and the equally great gift to walk away from standards of commercial success that I could not live up to.

But you know what? If it works out, I’ll have found a way to make money through art.

I used to spend time struggling with the idea of fairness. Now, I’d rather spend time making choices. And seeing what happens.

Friday pint

Every Friday I transfer posts here from the Virtual Pint archives.

  • Lindsey’s mom (April 2003) — Because sometimes the most human thing you can do is buy vaseline for a hurt snake.

  • The men of Solitaire (April 2003) — Are the men in the book weak? Mileage varies… Plus, wars stories of Life In Television.

  • I believe in stories (May 2003) — More on Bonnie Main, the power of story, and my impending high school reunion.

Have a lovely day.

Like a writer after all

Robin and I are having an interesting conversation over in “Multitudes,” and she asked:

What is it like to be you today?

Well, here’s what it is. I have been nose-to-the-grindstone-focused on my new business project for several weeks now, and it’s starting to get to me. I will tell you all about it very shortly. It’s a cool project, cool enough that I’m a little worried it will change my life in ways that I’m not sure I want or am ready for. Or maybe it won’t. It’s hard to know. So it’s exciting…

…but it’s not creative. Or at least not the particular kind of creative I need to keep the channel open inside me, that passage to the deep places of myself. When I do the kind of work I’m involved in right now, I become microscopically focused on the details of what must be done. I line them up and knock them down. And when I pull my focus back, I don’t find myself tired-but-fizzing with work well done, bright with some new life lived for those hours. I just find myself tired.

And so last night I ate an entire 11″ South Philly with spinach after-bake pizza all by myself, drank a little too much beer, didn’t sleep that well, got up thinking I would get back to work on the project…

… and found myself doing this instead.

[scrippet]

FADE IN…

Onto a small-town commercial street at dusk… as a pirate runs shrieking from a hardware store, chased by a princess with a sword.

GO WIDER: Other kids in costumes. Parents chatting. College youth sauntering into bars. Halloween is in full swing in a small college town.

ENGINES GROWL as two motorcycles turn onto the street. Both RIDERS wear battered leathers and full-face helmets.

The locals stare. RIDER #1 stares back, invisible through the black-glass visor. RIDER #2 gives the little princess a wave.

They park outside a hotel next to a bar, Rider #1 with visible reluctance. Engines OFF.

Rider #1 begins to pull off the helmet…

EXT. HOTEL – DAY (DUSK) – CONTINUOUS

Several DRUNK COLLEGE STUDENTS have paused outside the bar. One girl gives the bikes — and the Riders — an appreciative look. Her boyfriend tugs her against him possessively as Rider #1’s helmet comes off —

— and reveals a woman. RAE DONOVAN, 40’s, a little detached, a lot tough. Always on alert.

The college girl looks confused. The boys react predictably to a woman in leather. Rae gives them a dismissive stare.

Behind Rae, Rider #2 removes the helmet. She is STELLA DONOVAN, early to mid-60’s. No Botox, no surgery, just strong and sexy straight out of the box.

Stella gives Rae an impatient look. Rae grabs a bag from the back of her bike and stalks grimly toward the hotel entrance. As Stella follows —

DRUNK COLLEGE BOY
Yow! Bring it, granny!

STELLA
I’m not your fuckin’ granny.

RAE
(doesn’t look back)
Mom.

The college students jostle each other as Rae and Stella enter the hotel.
[/scrippet]

What’s it like to be me today? A little bit more like being a writer. And that feels good. And it turns out that western civilization didn’t end just because I took my eye off my other project for a couple of hours.

Thanks for asking!

Formatted using the extremely cool Scrippets plugin.

Multitudes

Another in an occasional series of posts about being human.

I am large, I contain multitudes. — Walt Whitman, from “Song of Myself”

Having many selves is one of the most human things people do, and one of the most fascinating. I was reminded again of this by a quotation that Karina posted a while back. Here’s a part of it:

A self is deciduous, it leafs out as one grows, changes with one’s seasons, yet somehow stays briskly the same. The brain composes a self-portrait from a confetti of facts and sensations, and as pieces are added or removed the likeness changes, though the sense of unity remains, thanks to well-furnished illusions. We need illusion to feel true. A medley of different selves accompanies us everywhere. Some are lovable, some weird, some disapproving of each other, some childish or adult. Unless the selves drift too far apart, that solo ensemble works fine and copes well with novel events. As the psychoanalyst Philip M. Bromberg writes in Standing in the Spaces: “health is not integration. Health is the ability to stand in the spaces between realities without losing any of them. This is what I believe self-acceptance means and what creativity is really all about — the capacity to feel like one self while being many.”
 
— Diane Ackerman, from An Alchemy of Mind

So many doors fling themselves open in my mind and spirit when I read that. The book is here on my desk, waiting to be read in whole, and I can only imagine what treasures await me!

But in the meantime, here is what Ackerman and Bromberg are talking about: from the Aubrey/Maturin books by Patrick O’Brian. These are beautiful books, stuffed full of humanity. I think O’Brian is possibly the best writer I’ve ever read at expressing the inner multitudes of characters. This series of 21 books traces a decades-long friendship between Jack Aubrey, sea captain in the 18th-century British Navy, and Stephen Maturin, physician and British spy. They’ve spent more time together at sea than they have with their wives and families. They talk often, deeply, intimately together throughout these books. And it’s one of their long-standing customs to play the violin together at every opportunity. Music is also a daily conversation between them.

Jack and Stephen are men by every measure of their time — they are mainstream in gender presentation and sexual expression, culturally entitled, unafraid of physical hardship and stoic about bodily suffering, fully engaged with their culture’s notions of honor and bravery that “real men” were assumed to embrace without question. And at the same time O’Brian gives us two people who deeply love each other, who share the secrets of their hearts with trust, who are unafraid of the sentimentality that occasionally rises between them. It’s a magnificent demonstration of how to write gendered characters without assuming that gender limits their ability to be human, to feel and yearn and wonder and love as humans do.

In one of the earlier books, Stephen is tortured and his hands are badly damaged. In this scene, many books and many years later, Stephen is visiting Jack at his estate.

Stephen had been put to sleep in his usual room, far from children and noise, away in that corner of the house which looked down to the orchard and the bowling-green, and in spite of his long absence it was so familiar to him that when he woke about three he made his way to the window almost as quickly as if dawn had already broken, opened it and walked out on to the balcony. The moon had set: there was barely a star to be seen. The still air was delightfully fresh with falling dew, and a late nightingale, in indifferent voice, was uttering a routine jug-jug far down in Jack’s plantation; closer at hand, and more agreeable by far, nightjars churred in the orchard, two of them, or perhaps three, the sound rising and falling, intertwining so that the source could not be made out for sure. There were few birds he preferred to nightjars, but it was not they that had brought him out of bed: he stood leaning on the balcony rail and presently Jack Aubrey, in a summer-house by the bowling-green, began again, playing very gently in the darkness, improvising wholly for himself, dreaming away on his violin with a mastery that Stephen had never heard equalled, though they had played together for years and years.
 
Like many other sailors Jack Aubrey had long dreamed of lying in his warm bed all night long; yet although he could now do so with a clear conscience he often rose at unChristian hours, particularly if he were moved by strong emotion, and crept from his bedroom in a watch-coat, to walk about the house or into the stables or to pace the bowling-green. Sometimes he took his fiddle with him. He was in fact a better player than Stephen, and now that he was using his precious Guarnieri rather than a robust sea-going fiddle the difference was still more evident: but the Guarnieri did not account for the whole of it, nor anything like. Jack certainly concealed his excellence when they were playing together, keeping to Stephen’s mediocre level: this had become perfectly clear when Stephen’s hands were at last recovered from the thumbscrews and other implements applied by French counterintelligence officers in Minorca; but on reflexion Stephen thought it had been the case much earlier, since quite apart from his delicacy at that period, Jack hated showing away.
 
Now, in the warm night, there was no one to be comforted, kept in countenance, no one who could scorn him for virtuosity, and he could let himself go entirely; and as the grave and subtle music wound on and on, Stephen once more contemplated on the apparent contradiction between the big, cheerful, florid sea-officer whom most people liked on sight but who would never have been described as subtle or capable of subtlety by any one of them (except perhaps his surviving opponents in battle) and the intricate, reflective music he was now creating.
 
— from The Commodore by Patrick O’Brian (Book 17 of the Aubrey/Maturin series)

I hope someday that I can say so much about this essential human thing, this multiplicity of self that we all manage every day, sometimes with grace and wit, sometimes with struggle and bitterness, sometimes with confusion, sometimes with joy… I hope someday that I can so simply and so elegantly write of this as O’Brian has here.

Sparkle sputter

Well, I tried, but it turns out I have nothing of interest to say today. It’s a damn shame, but there it is. So instead I will share Other People’s Things in the hopes that they will be so interesting that you’ll think wow, that Kelley Eskridge sure does have interesting things to share! and not notice that they aren’t actually mine (grin).

This is my second favorite Far Side cartoon (actually, I have about 10 second-favorites, since I think that math is just as relative as everything else, but that’s another topic).

The Far Side by Gary Larsen

And if anyone has my favorite strip, I will be superfreakingrateful and publicly bow to your superior archival skills… it’s the split panel of a man and woman in separate beds, thinking what they’re thinking, and therein lies the punch line of “Same Planet, Different Worlds.”

And for the left side of your brain, this New York Magazine article takes a long and interesting look at the current state of publishing, which has interested me for a while, possibly because I am no longer playing by all the rules.

Back with more sparkle tomorrow, I’m sure. In the meantime, go talk to Nicola, she’s way more interesting than me today!

Finding the balance

hi,

i read your book (solitaire, not dangerous space. apparently my city’s library does not possess copies of dangerous space?) a few months ago. and i thought it was amazing. i’m just letting you know that. i really did like it. now i am so scared of crocodiles, like terribly concerned about the prospect of their existence, in my mind and in the world. this is sad, because i have crocodiles painted on my bedroom walls. but i also thought it was one of the best ways to describe the voices in your mind that are always there ready to poison things. i could never figure out what was happening before.

i also really liked the concepts used. the descriptions were really vivid. you know this, i’m sure. it is, after all, your book. i thought it was really nice, by the way, that you had the relationship between snow and jackal without editorializing about the difficulties of samesex relationships, and focusing the relationship on the people, not how difficult coming out may be, or how prejudiced the surrounding culture was. i’m sure that there are probably many books like this in that respect (i hope) but solitaire was the first one i have read.

i’m fifteen. i guess that explains a lot? or maybe nothing at all.

i think i might be using run-on sentences. i’m sorry if this message is not quite clear. i write the way i talk and so….yes.

what i was actually wondering was what kind of degree and career training you would have to go through to become a facilitator or project manager? what things would be a good idea to major in?

okay, thank you even simply for reading this. i really did enjoy your book.

have a good day,

kelsey

Hi Kelsey,

I’m glad you liked Solitaire. Thanks for taking the time to find me and let me know.

You’ve caught me in a thinking/talking space, so this is a really long response. Hope that’s okay. Sometimes too long can be just as frustrating as too short.

I’m sorry your library doesn’t carry Dangerous Space, although I can understand it — the book is from an independent press, and sometimes either those books don’t come so easily to the attention of libraries, or the libraries choose to spend their budget on books from trade (major) publishers.

My library system has an online order form where I can request that they either buy a specific book, or get it for me on interlibrary loan from another system. Maybe yours will have that service available. If so, the publisher is Aqueduct Press and the publication date is June 2007.

Ah, the crocodiles. Here’s another conversation I had about them, if you’re interested. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t have that voice inside, which I believe is the voice of fear. Not fear of spiders or fear that the cop behind me is about to pull me over for speeding, but the Big Fears that we all carry… I think of them as fears about our own identity. The big insecurities we have about ourselves, the fears that we will be “not good enough” on some level. Some people are terrified of intimacy. Some people are terrified of showing how smart they are. Some people are terrified that they aren’t smart enough. And so on… everyone’s crocodiles are different, because they belong to us, you know? They are tailor-made for us.

But here’s the thing. Crocodiles are part of being human. We all carry them with us. Don’t be fooled by the people who seem like they’ve never had an insecure thought in their lives — they are either covering like mad (because they are afraid if people find out their insecurities, they will use them as weapons), or they are not yet self-aware enough to know that the crocodiles are there. That’s not about age, it’s about maturity. You know it at fifteen, but some people don’t know it at eighty-five. Not being aware doesn’t mean that we don’t have fears — it just means that we will never be able to see how they affect us, and we won’t be able to do as much to help ourselves.

Quieting those crocodile voices is a life-long process. Sometimes you shut them up for a while, and sometimes they come back and bite hard. I don’t think they ever go away completely.

There’s an idea I came across when I was learning about conflict resolution (as part of facilitation stuff, more about that later). The idea is that conflict makes us feel off-balance inside, and people avoid having conflict because we don’t like that feeling — which only means that we repress our disagreement or anger and it builds up and gets worse.

Peole are always looking for ways to not have these feelings. We think that if we feel knocked off-balance by someone’s anger or disagreement, it means we are weak. But that’s not how it works. The real trick is not to keep our balance — it’s to keep finding our balance again and again and again. All through life. Whether we are arguing about who’s turn it is to do the dishes, or listening to the crocodile tell us we will never be good enough writers to sell a book. It’s all about finding our way back to our own center, in small everyday ways and in big life-changing ones.

I have actually been thinking about this a lot lately. There are things happening for me right now that make me feel off-balance, and I’m coming back to center over and over. It’s a skill. It gets easier with practice, and I’m good at it. But even so, I still have to go through it. Being good at it only means that the curve is shorter.

I’m glad Jackal and Snow’s relationship in Solitaire works for you. I think it’s good and important that there are books about coming out, about dealing with cultural disapproval, yadda yadda, but I get tired of reading them. Revealing oneself to others is not the only part of being bisexual or gay or trans or polyamorous or BDSM or queer in any other way. There are all the other human experiences — falling in love, being loved back, not being loved back, discovering sex and finding people to have it with, negotiating relationships through our differences, making a long-term commitment, losing a lover…. All of it. We all have those experiences, regardless of our sexual or gender identity or class or race or religion. We’re all human beings.

There are definitely other books out there that show people just being human without the cultural hetero-normative baggage. You can try books by Nicola Griffith (here’s her website and her blog). I am biased because she’s my partner, but honestly, there is no better writer. She’s an awesome storyteller.

You can also look for Mary Renault’s books about Alexander the Great (seriously, really good stuff): Fire From Heaven, The Persian Boy, Funeral Games. Or anything by Renault. Melissa Scott writes queer science fiction (try Trouble and Her Friends). Emma Bull’s Bone Dance is a great book about identity in all kinds of ways (here are more of my thoughts about it). Tripping to Somewhere by Kristopher Reisz is about teenage lesbian/bisexual girls searching for the Witches’ Carnival — there’s a lot of angst about love, but not a lot about sexual expression.

Hmm. That’s just off the top of my head, on only one cup of tea. More caffeine would probably bring more titles to mind.

Okay, I went and made another cup of tea, and thought of some more. Elizabeth Lynn’s Watchtower series (start with Watchtower). Ellen Kushner’s Swordspoint, and The Privilege of the Sword. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness.

On to facilitation and project management. I learned these things over a period of time in my 20’s and 30’s, mostly by teaching myself, watching other people, and reading. I did go to a couple of workshops — these sorts of things can be pretty interesting or really lame, and it’s hard to know which ahead of time.

In terms of majors, there are no “facilitation” majors that I’m aware of. Here are the things I think might have some relevance: psychology, organizational development (this is often a grad-level course of stufy, but not always), communication. I majored in theatre, which I’ve actually found quite useful in facilitating (grin). There are generally electives you can take in project management (you’ll sometimes find them in the engineering school or in the business school). You can major in business if it interests you, although honestly I don’t imagine you’ll get much in the way of communication, effective management, facilitation, etc. there. That’s one of the big problems with business education, in my opinion.

Facilitators have to understand about how communication works. Any books, online articles, workshops or electives that deal with topics like active listening, interpersonal communication or interpersonal dynamics, conflict management, negotiation, ladder of assumption, etc. might be interesting. Although personally I would stay away from pop-culture books like “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.” Anything gender-based, anything that claims that men and women are separate creatures, is not useful right now. Focus on the things that are common to all of us as humans.

The best book I know about communication is Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen. This would be a great place to start. Your library should have this or be able to get interlibrary loan for you.

Wikepedia on facilitation and what facilitators do. Just a place to start getting an overview. There are links to books that you could request from the library if you were interested.

But many of those books will be pretty in-depth, so I also recommend you look for some basic books on facilitation skills. I actually suggest starting with your library for this — there are so many books out there on the subject, and no one book is necessarily better as an introduction. They’ll all give you a good overview. Same with project management. It may take a few tries to find something that gives you the big picture as well as some of the basic details.

Project management is a very dry thing to read about and study, but it can be a lot of fun to do. You need to truly enjoy managing details, organizing information, solving problems, and working with other people to find those solutions (that’s a big part of where the facilitation comes in, as well as in keeping the entire project moving forward). Facilitators and PMs don’t do the actual work of the project themselves — that’s what the experts in the group are for. The facilitator/PM is the person who organizes the process, keeps everyone headed toward the goals and deadlines, and has the big picture of the overall activity. So it’s like having a dual focus — on the one hand, you are the Big Picture person that everyone trusts to manage the overall process, and on the other hand you are constantly down in the weeds with all the minute details. That “balance” thing again… And having facilitation skills — communicating clearly, knowing how to have effective conflict (so it doesn’t get personal), making sure you get all the input you need, having good systems for making decisions, etc. — really helps when you are trying to keep everyone marching forward to a plan, because when a person or the project itself loses balance, you can help describe what’s happening and help people find the way to get back to center.

The best thing to do is to find a real live human being to sit down with and talk to about their work. You’ll find all different approaches to project management (some of it all based on schedules and checklists, some of it much more focused on “people management”) and different styles of facilitation (some of it focused on business meetings and activities, some on more personal coaching and interventions, etc.) If your parents have friends or business contacts that might do this work, that’s a place to start. Or if there are any teachers you think have good communication/classroom management skills, ask them for ideas about people to talk to.

Is any of this helpful? If not, or if you still want to talk about it, just say so. I will be happy to focus on whatever you think would be useful.

As for being fifteen, I think age has both everything and nothing to do with anything, if that even makes sense. We are where we are in life. We know what we know. We have the experiences that we have. That’s partly due to how long we’ve been on the planet, but also due to what we do with the experience we have so far. How we use our experiences and thoughts and feelings, our hopes and fears, our sense of joy, whether we are open or closed to the world and other people, all of that stuff. It all goes into making our “self.”

You’re in a stretch of time right now where your brain is madly hard-wiring all kinds of connections. You’re building yourself in very real ways. That self will keep changing and growing, but the actual biochemical and physical changes are pretty massive in one’s teen years and into the 20’s… I always felt like I was standing in the eye of a hurricane, and then bam! I would tumble out of my safe place and get swept up in the storm, and then have to find my balance again (see, it’s all connected…). I still get swept away sometimes (grin) but for different reasons now. And now, it’s more of a choice.

I hope you have a good day too. Write back anytime.

—————
You can start your own conversation now or anytime — just use the “Want to talk?” link on the sidebar or email me.

The wordlessness

Nothing I have to say today is more important or exciting than this:

Art is the need to reach out and touch the wordlessness and then to share it. — Nicola Griffith, talking about something wonderful

An artist goes the wordlessness within her and brings back whatever she finds, in whatever form is hers. Words, music, movie, paint, sculpture, dance… We translate the wordlessness as best we can and give it away.

But what happens when someone takes that art and dives with it into their own wordless place? What happens when people respond to art by making art of their own, and then give it back?

Something wonderful. A great mad gift. Thank you, Karina.

Just say no to gender stability

Hi Kelley,

I finally got our library to get Solitaire, and I read it in two days. What an amazing work! Thank you for writing it… my thoughts will be crunching away at some important ideas for a long while.

I went back to re-read “And Salome Danced,” and read much of the conversations about what whether Mars was male or female. I noted that most of the conversational focus was on Mars, and less was on the gender ambiguity that Jo(e) presents.

In your last paragraph in “The Erotics of Gender Ambiguity”, you write:

I guess [this story] might be construed to be warning us against absolute refusal of a stable gender identity. I say ‘˜guess’™, because I’™m speculating, and can’™t be sure I haven’™t made a mistaken inference somewhere along the line. It’™s tricky, thinking about these things. But the important thing, is that we do think about them, we do inquire about them, without ceasing.

…and I thought, wow. I really must be in a different place. If that’s true, I wonder how I got here.

The background is that I was raised to be a girl, but the tomboy in me refused to be quiet. In fact, I could never imagine myself either male or female. I was just me, with a girl’s body parts, but without any sense of how or where I fit into the gender continuum. I have failed my whole life to present any particular way.

During my college years, I decided to look into gender reassignment, but never followed through on it, because I would feel no more male than I feel female. I have friends who are biologically female, but whose name and (sometimes) gender expression is decidedly male.

You bet it confuses people. But perhaps a warning “against absolute refusal of a stable gender identity” is less…needed? Many people consider my friends and acquaintances sexually appealing, and their continual gender morphing non-threatening.

My partner is a minister, and she often complains that the point she tried to get across in her UU (Unitarian-Universalist) sermons was completely missed. I fear that I may have done just that with your wonderful story, but I thought I might ask you your thoughts about my experiences/interpretations.

Thanks for your amazing writing!

Janine

Hi Janine,

And thank you for taking the time to read it and think/feel about it. I appreciate it.

But I do think you have misread. “The Erotics of Gender Ambiguity” is not my essay, it’s an online discussion by feminist critics, writers and academics of “Salome.” I didn’t participate in it at all. The quote you’ve referenced was by Timmi Duchamp, the editor of Aqueduct Press and the author of a formidable oeuvre of feminist fiction and criticism.

Looking at the formatting of the title of the piece, I can see how it might appear that I was claiming authorship of the discussion rather than the story itself. I’ve made some changes to clarify that.

Timmi has a lot of cool ideas about gender and other issues. But I don’t agree with all of them, including this speculation about “Salome.” I don’t at all see the story as arguing against refusal of stable gender identity. That’s not what I intended when I wrote it, for sure. Not that such a reading is necessarily “wrong” — simply that is not my reading, and was not part of my writing. But we all bring different concerns and interests and experiences to our reading of fiction, and those things filter our response to it… and so the responses of the online panel are fascinating to me, all these different perspectives brought to bear on the work. Very flattering, honestly, to have so many people talk about something I wrote. I love that ability of fiction to engender (hah! I made a pun!) this kind of engaged conversation.

But my conversation would be — has been — different. The essay “Identity and Desire” is my response to the online discussion, and that’s where you’ll find my then-ideas about gender. My most recent (published) thoughts are in this interview at the Aqueduct blog. I think you’ll find my notions are a lot more in line with yours (grin). I’d love to hear more about what you think.

I never felt like much of a “girl” growing up. As you’ve said, I was just me. I have been through phases of not really expressing gender in any active way; I’ve made deliberate choices to transgress against the gender norms of my time/culture; and I’ve made deliberate choices to express myself in “normed” ways as a source of power and play. Mostly, I’m a mix. Nicola calls me a “gender warrior,” which I find amusing and cool, but really I’m not fighting. I am having fun. And I am, in fact, refusing a stable gender identity. I make my choices, and then when I feel like it, I change them. I no longer feel any need to justify them to anyone except myself — not to the cultural-normative-standards police, the feminist community, the women-over-forty-should-or-shouldn’t brigade… they can all go talk to someone else about their choices. I’ll be over here dancing.

Of interest to writers

Agent extraordinaire Colleen Lindsay has been publishing a series of posts with tons of useful information for writers or anyone interested in becoming one. Check them out if you want to get down in the details of how book publicity and marketing really works.

Be sure to read the discussions going on in the comments section as well. There’s so much here that writers can learn from. Thanks, Colleen!

And also check out Joshua Palmatier’s Query Project, in which more than a dozen writers share successful query letters and commentary.

It’s so important for writers and publishing folks to share this kind of information. We need to know how to best work with each other, how to behave professionally, how to help each other get books to readers. We need to be honest with each other about how to break into the business, how the money works, the importance of playing nicely, and the changes that may be coming our way.

If you have links to share that you think are useful to writers, please post them in the comments and I’ll do a round-up post at some point down the road.

The days of information = power = all of us wandering around in various stages of ignorance need to be over, brothers and sisters. We need to help each other. We’ll all do better that way.