Diet and Writing Books

Here’s the thing about diet and writing books: they worked for the person who wrote the book. That doesn’t mean it will work for you, or rather, me. Don’t eat carbs. Don’t eat meat. No sugar. Raw foods only. Or. Write everyday. Write an  hour a day. Two hours Three. Ten. Write all you can. Stop writing in the middle of a sentence. Write at home. Write in coffee shops. Make an outline. Under no circumstances should you ever use an outline. Write first thing in the morning. Write at night. It’s crazy-making.

Here’s what I’ve learned: you have to discover what works for you. Sure, go ahead and read the books. Get some ideas but then you need to listen to your body, to your mind and adjust it to work for you. That’s what I am doing now, but in a gentle and kind way. I am experimenting with veganism. No huge proclamations that I will never ever eat another animal product again. I am not only taking it day by day but meal by meal. Leaning into it. I have read many articles lately that lead me to believe this kind of eating is better for my body, health and the planet so I am playing with it. Not black and white, all or nothing. Just eating in a clean and conscious way and then seeing how I feel. So far, after over three weeks without meat, minimal dairy and minimal sugar, I feel great. Lighter, physically and emotionally. More balanced.

Same with writing. I am experimenting with what works for me. Right now I am writing first thing in the morning after a ten minute meditation. I write morning pages then do a warm -up from “Naming the World” edited by Bret Anthony Johnston before revising existing stories. I spend about two hours then take a break to eat breakfast, workout. I’d like to write more in the afternoon and use a writing textbook as a structure. But again, I am treading lightly. Being kind to myself which those who know me know is a new and different path for me.

The point is, it’s all a process. A process of listening and trusting myself instead of looking out there for all the answers.

New Blog

So I’ve started a new blog devoted solely to writing and reading. Not sure if I’ll be maintaining both blogs or if I will slowly let this one go. In the meantime, you can visit me here.

Books Read in September

“A Prayer for Owen Meany” a novel by John Irving
Okay, so I came a little late to this particular party. This novel has been on my to-be-read list for years and years. Both of my sisters have raved about it for years and years. And I’ve tried to read it for, you guessed it, years and years. But I could never quite get into it. Could never get past the first fifty pages or so. Determined to read it, I suggested it for my book club and had the entire summer to read it. Turns out I didn’t need the entire summer. Turns out I can’t figure out why I couldn’t get past the first fifty pages. I was hooked from that fabulous first sentence: “I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice–not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.” I mean, what a great first sentence. Irving even says, “ I may one day write a better first sentence to a novel than that of “A Prayer for Owen Meany”, but I doubt it.” The entire noel is encapsulated in those few words and they reel the reader in. Who doesn’t want to know about this small boy with the wrecked voice who killed this boy’s mother and made him believe in God? Owen Meany is one of the most captivating characters I have ever had to pleasure to encounter. Lesson? Never give up on a book.

“Paper Towns” a YA novel by John Green
I fell in love with his previous two books. This is his latest. Just as I was able to get a library copy, the paperback edition came out. While I enjoyed it, I wasn’t quite as enamored as with his other novels. There was still a truly engaging voice and some laugh out loud lines like: “Talking to a drunk person was like talking to an extremely happy, severely brain-damaged three-year-old.” But the popular girl with mysterious deep angst just didn’t ring true this time for me. I liked it but am okay with not owning my own copy.

“The Glen Rock Book of the Dead” a memoir by Marion Winik
I ordered this little gem after it was recommended by Heather Sellers for a writing class I took with her. It is barely a hundred pages but each page is powerful. It is a series of portraits of people Winik has known who have died over the years from the eye doctor to the counselor to the nurse. Each portrait is tender and raw and each one pierces your heart leaving you a little breathless. It left me reeling with ideas of my own portraits and how to write about people in such a way that they as well as you are revealed. Riveting.

“Miles from Nowhere” a YA novel by Nami Mun
Joon is thirteen, her father has left, her mother has retreated to a place that Joon can’t reach so she sets off on her own out into the world of NYC in the 1980’s. It is not a pretty journey. Mun’s prose is raw yet poetic as we follow Joon from a shelter to strip clubs through addiction to a place fragile place of hope, I found myself underlining sentences like: “The dress tongued the floor behind her as she walked up to Lana…”

“Livability” stories by Jon Raymond
The last story in this collection, “Train Choir” is the basis of the movie “Wendy and Lucy” with Michelle Williams. Amazing but sad story. Not sure I cold watch it as a movie. All of the stories feature characters who struggle against the inertia of their own lives whether it’s a man who invites the Mexican landscapers he hired for the day to a feast he’s prepared or a recent widower. We are allowed such emotional access that we want to look away but like passing an accident it is hard to shift our gaze. And that is Raymond’s strength as a writer, he doesn’t avert his gaze nor does he wallow in what he sees.

“Normal People Don’t Live Like This” a novel in stories by Dylan Landis
I read a review of this in More magazine and had to get it the day it came out as it is similar to a novel in stories I have been working on for years now. Both feature an adolescent girl growing up in the seventies. I learned something about structuring a novel in stories. Every story doesn’t revolve around Leah. The stories follow Leah Levinson and the dark world of girls’ lives murky with secrets and sexuality. Beautiful and hypnotic.

Incivility as Entertainment

There’s been much made by some recent high profile incidents of incivility. First, Joe Wilson screamed “You lie!” at President Obama during his Address to the Joint Session of Congress. Second, Kanye West took the microphone away from Taylor Swift as she was accepting her first ever VMA award, pointing out that he felt it should’ve gone to Beyoncé. Last, Serena Williams lost a game after being called on a foot fault and proceeded to berate the line judge responsible for the call.

We all act like we are shocked and outraged by such behavior but I think we are less shocked and more titillated. Forget “mere” incivility. Being outright crude, lewd and insulting has become a national pasttime. It’s our entertainment.

It is Wednesday night and all the major networks are offering are reality TV shows. Reality TV courts incivility, and worse. In fact, it insists on it. They deliberately cast at least one loose emotional cannon to guarantee drama. If there’s not drama, there’s no reason to tune in each week. If you visit online message boards you’ll see that rudeness has become a measurement of how clever and passionate you are. Talk radio regularly litters the airwaves with accusations, name-calling trying to stir up moral outrage on a regular basis. TV pundits do the same thing. I sometimes find it hard to even watch liberals like Keith Olbermann because many of his valid points are lost in his passionate diatribes designed to entertain us.

Are we entertained? I’d say so. Otherwise these shows would not be on the air. What’s the answer? Is there an answer that doesn’t totally demolish our freedom of speech? I don’t know. I do know that it is ludicrous to rant against “incivility” (which is a benign term to use in many cases) while it permeates every aspect of our culture from religion (recall the minister in Arizona who announced that he prays for our President’s death?), to sports, TV, radio, music and politics.

Link Love

• Check out this site for some inspiration and company on this often solitary writing path.

• Five questions to keep in mind as you write a story from a master storyteller.

• A new challenge awaits you here if you are up for it.

• This looks like fun.

• An intriguing article on the push and release of the creative process.

Books Read in August

“Certain Girls” a novel by Jennifer Weiner
When I was a kid, our small-town paper published wedding announcements, with descriptions of the ceremonies and dresses and pictures of the brides.

We meet Cannie Shapiro again after her debut novel, loosely (or maybe not) based on her life became a huge success. That success sent her scurrying out of the limelight and into a quiet life as mother to Joy, wife to Peter and the writer of science fiction books under a pseudonym.  The chapters alternate between Cannie and Joy as they attempt to navigate the natural pulling away between mother and teenage daughter. Joy, feeling her mother is hiding a huge part of her life, sets out to discover what she is hiding. As the mother of two teenage daughters, I was surprised to find myself with a lot of empathy for Joy. Cannie’s overprotectiveness felt stifling and I didn’t always get where it came from. I won’t spoil the ending but when I got near the end I was so surprised (and maybe a little annoyed) by what happened. But it kept me up past midnight so I could finish it and when I did I realized that it had to happen.

“The Slippery Year- A Meditation on Happily Ever After” a memoir by Melanie Gideon
One day when I was sitting in the carpool line waiting to pick up my son from school, it occurred to me that I had been sleepwalking through my life.

Okay, so I think she wrote my memoir. So many similarities: we are both 44, married for 20 years, moms, on a quest for a new mattress. (Like her, I was considering the tempurpedic but now, not much) Like her, I also have this low-grade (sometimes not so low) anxiety that thrums beneath the surface of my really blessed life. I keep waiting for the Bad thing to happen. We also have the same relationship to camping, liking it in theory more than in reality. She explores the angst of letting her nine-year-old son go to camp. This summer I have had to let my 15 year-old-daughter go several hundred miles away as a mother’s helper for six and half weeks. I think a good book reminds us that we are not alone even in our darkest most neurotic hours, and Gideon does precisely that.

“Home Safe” a novel by Elizabeth Berg
One Saturday when she was nine years old, Helen Ames went into the basement, sat at the card table her mother used for folding laundry, and began writing.

Yes, I am always a sucker for a book about writing. I devoured this one in less than twenty-four hours. Berg is always immensely readable. It’s like she’s dropped by for a brief visit to fill you in on what’s been happening to some people she knows. In this case, it’s the life of Helen Ames who has been recently widowed. In the midst of her grief she finds herself unable to write and extremely dependent on her twenty-seven year-old daughter, Tessa. When she makes the shocking discovery that her husband withdrew most of their retirement saving shortly before he died without her knowledge, everything she thought she knew about herself, her husband and her marriage is up for grabs.

“The Lair’s Club” a memoir by Mary Karr
My sharpest memory is of a single instant surrounded by dark.

How did I not read this before now? I’ve heard about it. I’ve seen it. It blew me away. Karr does this tricky thing with memory and tense that absolutely works. Most of the memoir is told in past tense except when we are in the midst of some harrowing memory then it is in present and we are right there with her as she tries to piece it together. This is also one of the few memoirs I’ve read that talks so openly about memory, admitting that it’s often unreliable, letting the reader know that she is struggling to remember what she remembers but is quick to point out hat perhaps her sister might see it another way, polar opposite of what she just wrote. As dark as the story is, it is also laugh out loud funny. It is never maudlin or melodramatic. The tension is pitch perfect, taut all the way through. Amazing, truly.

“My Stroke of Insight- a Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey” by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D.
Every brain has a story and this is mine.

My sister showed me this clip and I knew immediately that I had to read Taylor’s book. I borrowed it from the library but now realize that I will have to buy my own copy to refer to again and again as well as be able to underline passages that speak to me. Jill Bolte Taylor was a thirty-seven-year-old brain scientist when she experienced a massive stroke that obliterated her left brain on December 10, 1996. It took eight years to fully recover but as you will read, what does recover truly mean? She explores and explains what happened to her brain during the stroke and subsequent recovery in terms that are not only easy to understand but also fascinating. I joked that if I had a do-over I would seriously consider going into brain research. She shares the insight she had about how we can all access a true inner peace, feel at one with the universe and how we always have a choice about how we respond to any situation. Did you know that an emotion such as anger takes 90 seconds to physiologically course through your body? After ninety seconds, it’s done. If you are still angry, you are choosing to stay angry. This is a book that everyone should read. It’s invaluable to those who may know somebody who has had a stroke but also to any person wishing to have more insight to this beautiful creation we house in our head called a brain.

I also read some great short stories from the current issue of “The Missouri Review” as well as “The Atlantic Fiction 2009″. I am eagerly waiting for the BASS 2009, edited this year by Alice Sebold.

Book Read in June/July

“Why I’m Like This” true stories by Cynthia Kaplan
There was always one girl at camp whom everyone hated.

Kaplan has been described as a cross between David Sedaris and Anna Quindlen. Her true stories delve into a therapist from hell, bizarre grandmothers and the rest of her family and friends. The book is both hilarious and heart-breaking.

“If I Stay” a YA novel by Gayle Forman
Everything thinks it was because of the snow.

This is Mia’s story, recounted after a devastating accident. She is not dead, yet. She is able to observe what is going on around her, see her family and friends gathering at her bedside, at the hospital. Woven in are bits of her life, before the accident and the realization that she has the ultimate decision to make. A fast, engrossing read.

“Matrimony” a novel by Joshua Henkin
“Out! Out! Out!” The first words Julian Wainwright ever spoke, according to his father, Richard Wainwright III, graduate of Yale and grand lubricator of the economic machinery, and Julian’s mother, Constance Wainwright, Wellesley graduate and descendant of a long family of Pennsylvania Republicans.

I’ve always loved learning what goes on behind the scenes. This novel gives us access to a marriage as well as the writing life. We follow Julian from his days at Graymont College, where students could receive comments instead of grades from the professors, to a post-college life that involves his college love, Mia, and Carter with whom he has a strong but strained friendship. One of the things I really admired about this book is Henkin’s skill at creating scenes that move seamlessly in and out of the past and present. An absorbing portrait of a marriage and a creative life, both of which I found rich and textured.

“The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society” a novel by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Dear Sidney, Susan Scott is a wonder. We sold over forty copies of the book, which was very pleasant, but much more thrilling from my standpoint was the food.

Shaffer spent twenty years writing this book. Once it was accepted for publication she was too ill to finish the revisions so she asked her niece, Barrows to do it for her.  The novel is told in letters from various characters and reveals the story of the German Occupation of the island of Guernsey. It’s a charming tale the shines a light on an obscure (to me anyway) piece of WWII history.

“Florida” a novel by Christine Schutt
She was on her knees and rubbing her back against parts of the house and backing into corners and sliding our from under curtains, rump polishing the floor, and she was saying, “Sit with me, Alice.”

A powerful novel of a mother and daughter told in sparse but precise and intense vignettes. It almost reads like a prose poem.

“The Next Thing on My List” a novel by Jill Smolinski
Next on the list: kiss a stranger.

So starts June Parker’s mission to complete the to-do list of Marissa, a passenger who is killed in a car accident while June was giving her a ride home. The tasks range from the mundane (eat ice cream in public) to the profound (change someone’s life). It’s a quick, delightful read that got me thinking about my own list of things I want to do in my life.

“The Wednesday Sisters” a novel by Meg Waite Clayton
The Wednesday Sisters look like the kind of women who might meet at those fancy coffee shops on University– we do look that way– but we’re not one bit  fancy, and we’re not sisters, either.

The open notebook filled with writing on the cover is what drew me in. I’m a sucker for any book that features writing or writers. This particular book features five women who meet as young mothers in the late sixties and form a writing group. We follow them through their personal creative struggles, relationships, medical issues as well as the changing world around them.

“Real Life & Liars” a novel by Kristina Riggle
My tea tastes so fresh and this joint is so fine, I might melt right into the red velvet cushion and run down the walls into a silvery pool on the floor.

Once I was able to get past the fact that this was written by somebody I actually know, I slipped right into the Zielinski’s family life. One thing I appreciated as a writer is how the novel is focused on one particular weekend, a 35th anniversary party. It made me consider the structure of some of my longer projects. Also, the chapters are told in alternating points of view: the mother is in first person while the three adult children are in third. I also enjoyed reading a story that takes place in a setting I am familiar with- northern Michigan. An engaging story of family and how we continue to bump up against each other throughout our lives.

“Do Not Deny Me” short stories by Jean Thompson
The heat in Penrose’s office had not worked properly all fall.

Jean Thompson is one of my favorite short story writers. Her collection “ Who Do You Love” is on my permanent writer’s bookshelf. This latest one will also occupy a space there. Some of the perfectly drawn characters we encounter are a young woman whose boyfriend unexpectedly dies, a couple in dire financial straits and a man trapped by his stroke. This is a book I will read again and again, this time with a pen in hand.

“The Angel’s Game” a novel by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or a word of praise in exchange for a story.

Yes, it is another story featuring a writer but so much more happens in this intricate world he has created in these 532 pages. We are drawn into the world of publishing, art versus commercial, mysterious benefactors whose motives are questionable to say the least, love triangles, murders, arson, theft, police corruption, magic. This book has it all. The plot is as ornate and intricate as the intriguing city of Barcelona where the novel is set. If you’re looking for a lush story to sink into and lose yourself, then this is it.

Plus you get little gems of writing advice: “Routine is the housekeeper of inspiration. Only forty-eight hours after the establishment of the new regime, I discovered that I was beginning to recover the discipline of my most productive years. The hours of being locked up in the study crystallized into pages and more pages in which, not without some anxiety, I began to see the work taking shape, reaching the point at which it stopped being an idea and became a reality.”

“Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It” stories by Maile Meloy
Chet Morgan grew up in Logan, Montana, at a time when kids weren’t supposed to get polio anymore.

I strive to write stories as vast and precise as these.  Each one feels staggeringly unique even as they explore familiar themes of grief, yearning, fraternal rivalry. I could not put this book down. It was like eating potato chips– just one more. Okay, one more.  And I was so disappointed when I read the last one. I would love to take a writing workshop with her but in the meantime her stories have so much to teach me.

Word by Word

“You must always keep changing your process!” Maria Irene Fornes says. “Because there are two of you, one who wants to write and one who doesn’t. The one who wants to write has to keep fooling the one who doesn’t!”

This is from Heather Seller’s blog, Word by Word, which you must check out if you haven’t already. I’ve read all her books on writing plus I have her textbook, which I love, as well as her collection of stories “Georgia Under Water.” I’m thrilled to see that she has two new books coming out next year. Her memoir on living with face blindness is due out in the fall. “The Nighttime Novelist” will be published in the spring.

Sellers writes, “I worry too many writers write too fast. They master the basics of plot and character…they do everything “right” and still the book doesn’t get finished, or, worse, the book is finished but it doesn’t sell. No one wants to read it. My goal in this new craft book is to help new writers create a book that is beautiful and important and masterful and wild and real. Break the rules. Be weirder than you are right now. Write the book only you can write. It’s a slow and difficult process, but also the most rewarding work I’ve ever engaged in, writing a novel. I have a plan for tackling this work that allows more room for the unconscious mind and all its detours, a plan that involves focusing on how artist’s play, I’m eager to see what readers think!”

And I am eager to read it. I don’t buy many writing books anymore. I’ve discovered that the only real way to learn to write is to write. A lot. And read. A lot. But sometimes you need someone to shine a flashlight into the murky swamp of the creative process. Heather Sellers holds that light. She acknowledges that yeah, it’s messy and dark and hard but look here, she’s done it and it can be fun and wonderful and weird too. In one of her books she recommends that you select several writing guides in the form of books that you can return to again and again for motivation and inspiration. She is always one of the guides that I turn to as I navigate my way into and through a writing life.

A New Focus, A New look

I’ve been thinking of updating this blog for awhile now but wasn’t sure what direction I wanted to take it. Finally, I realized it’s not one blog, but two. Soon I will link you to my writing only blog. That blog will be the start of my “writing platform.” I’ll whine less about the lack of writing and focus more on the process of creating a writing life that will include the process of publishing at some point.

This blog is now all about the process of living a creative, rich, fully engaged life moment by moment. I spoke with my dad a few months ago about this. He was refinishing some furniture. Maybe upholstering it. As he described how he was going about this particular task, I commented that it sounded tedious. He agreed that it was, which was why it was so important to enjoy the process of doing it, otherwise, what was the point? Indeed.

If I had been a cartoon, a bright lightbulb would’ve glowed above my head. As a  kid I was able to live in the moment more frequently and enjoy the process of building a tent or fort, or reading a book that carried me away, or creating a fair for the neighborhood kids. It was less about the product and more about the process. Most adults reverse that and that’s where I’ve found myself, thus this new focus. Some processes you’ll read about in the future are: the process of meditation, yoga, exercise, letting go, parenting, reading, creating art, working through depression, growing up/older but mostly the process of living life each day with passion and awareness.

Books Read in May

“An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination” a memoir by Elizabeth McCracken
Once upon a time, before I knew anything about the subject, a woman told me that I should write a book about the lighter side of losing a child.
(This is not that book.)

I don’t know how she wrote this book without it becoming sentimental or maudlin. I mean it’s about the loss of a baby. A baby dies. So many ways the writing of that particular story could go wrong. But not here. Not here at all. She tells it slowly, calmly and deeply.  Each page is filled with joy, grief, clarity and tenderness as she explores what she calls “the happiest story in the world with the saddest ending.”

“Falling Man” a novel by Don DeLillo
It was not a street anymore but a world, a time and space of falling ash and near night.

From the first line we are back on that fateful day of September 11. We follow Keith from the ruins of the towers to the doorstep of his estranged wife, Lianne, and their son Justin. We watch as they try to cobble a family life back together, attempting to maneuver through this new world they find themselves in. Not only do we see the events through their eyes but also those of one of the terrorists. The story is haunting and beautiful.