Oh, Go Play!

Strong National Museum of Play

To Hell with "Growing a Thick Skin".

I never understood the "get a tough skin"
or "thick skin" thing. Or rather I've never
been able to or maybe simply never wanted to.
I been at this a while & have no tough or thick skin
yet against the slings and arrows
of either outrageous or fair criticism.

AT FIRST, my blood feels like it's boiling.
I flush and my heart pounds & I start thinking of
revenge fantasies. AT FIRST. So what? It won't
kill me. It passes. My writing is one of the most
important things in my life & I expect to go ouch
on several levels if it's criticized.

And I have plenty of confidence in my talent & my writing.
But I also know that any work can be made better & stronger
& that I have blind spots that others can see clearly.
It's always about the work.

After I burn a while, I see what in there might be useful,
true. Reading & responding honestly & concisely
with a clear eye & a fair tongue is an art that few have down.
If anybody is waiting for the perfect critiquer
to come along before they'll listen, wait
on. A lot of people are uncomfortable giving critques, some are
critiquing lummoxes and either dont know or dont care or like it
that way or cant help it. I can be hurt and enraged AT FIRST and
THEN helped by anybody--when the hurt and anger subside & I
remember it's about the work, the writing, not the worker,
not the writer, not me.

Again, so what if it hurts. Let it hurt. I dont need
to develop a thick skin to protect me from critiques.
I hurt or see red & my heart slams with outrage and even
idiotic shame and I'm ALIVE! and THEN I see if
there's anything there worth taking to heart, worth implementing.

Yes, as others have said, if the clumsy or even mean
critique is the only one saying such&such, maybe it's nonsense,
but even then--maybe it's right. Maybe everybody else is wrong.
Even an oafish moron can see something others don't & help the work.

What every writer who's in it for the long haul has to develop
(besides or instead of a thick skin) is an ability
to discern bullshit, whether it's wrapped in
a Molotov cocktail or in pretty bows.

If you dont have enough confidence in your work
to carry on in the face of criticism, then you need to
develop it, and you develop it by writing, writing, writing
& then rewriting, rewriting, rewriting. Yes, find a couple people
you trust who won't bullshit you and maybe even know
how to say well what they see wrong or missing or confusing or tepid
in your work, in your writing, or the story at hand.

IF you love writing, and IF you believe in your work
& your talent, then one critique or review or ten, oafish
or refined, wont stop you. It/they might hurt like holy hell,
and set the mind in a feverish venegeful spin, but
it'll pass, and then the simple question will remain: Can I use
this or any of this to help this work or future work?

When I got my ms back from my wonderful editor David Adams
with a thousand remarks, suggestions, questions, recommendations,
criticisms, and everything else you can imagine, big and small,
and all said with the greatest sensitivity, I went straight
to bed and fell into a profound & staggering depression--
for about ten minutes. Then I got up to start at the beginning
& see where I could make the writing & story better.
It turns out he was right 95% of the time, the book
is a lot stronger, and I lived.

So develop a thick skin if you want & if you can
and if that'll help, but know also that it's possible
to keep at this over the long haul with just a normal
human skin & live & dig it all.

Writer's Block?

"There is no such thing as writer's block
for writers whose standards are low enough."
-William Stafford

The first time I read that, I thought it was a joke.
Then I realized it was a very practical insight.

When I'm working on something & I get writer's block
it's just about always something to do with some scene
I'm afraid that I can't write, or can't write good or true enough.

It just happened to me as a matter of fact on a new book.
The problem was with this guy who is organizing a group of people
ostensibly for a good purpose (and also to make a few bucks)
and he realizes he's starting a cult, and now what is he going to do,
stop or continue.

So, per Stafford's quote, I wrote the scene
with the lowest of standards, just as if I were a simpleton
in as simple a language and style as possible, bare bones,
putting details in as they came: an exchange of money,
something ambiguous somebody said, the silence,
the feeling the guy has of his potential power,
a lie he tells as he decides to keep it going
until he can decide if he wants to keep it going--
until I had enough of the bones of a shape of a scene
to build on & play with.

So for me, it has to do with my fear
of a particular important part of the story
I don't want to face for whatever reason, psychological,
creative, and the cure is facing it with no thought
of making it perfect or even right or good or logical,
or anything but a kind of almost idiot's step-by-step
take on the basics of it.

mixed animal

The Fear of Finding a Literary Agent (Again).

When I got my first agent, I read sad tales of writers
who had had no success with an agent & had to decide to
let that one go and begin the miserable hunt for another.
I was glad such a nightmare would never happen to me.

And then it did.

I got my my first agent after about 30 queries.
"They" had a "highly recommended" rating at
preditorsandeditors, a number of major deals, no slouch,
but couldn't sell the novel in question, Oranges for Joe.

When I sensed the agent's disinterest in a second work,
and a few cases of, um, miscommunication, I ended the relationship
amicably, and set out across the desert for another agent for
that second work.

After ten queries I got an "intrigued" response from
Michelle Brower at Wendy Sherman Associates. She subtly
urged me to expand what was basically a novella,
which I did.

That turned into Mixed Animal, and a few months
later MacAdam/Cage in San Francisco acquired it. David
Adams was my editor until he was let go in the midst
of our economic situation. I will forever be grateful to
him and his laserly insightful help in strengthening
& focusing the book (despite the fact that I have
withdrawn the book from MacAdam/Cage after discovering,
again & again, that they were not what they appeared to be).

So, my point, or one of them, is that if you're not
happy in your relationship with your agent, and it becomes
increasingly clear that nothing is going to happen with
that agency as far as your work goes, and communications
are breaking down, don't be afraid to pull the
plug (amicably & professionally) and look for another
outlet.

And, of course, if you believe in your work, as I have
always believed in mine, in the face of absurd odds,
never give up.

The Writer in Winter

By John Updike, November 2008

Young or old, a writer sends a book into the world, not himself. There is no Senior Tour for authors, with the tees shortened by 20 yards and carts allowed. No mercy is extended by the reviewers; but then it is not extended to the rookie writer, either. He or she may feel, as the gray-haired scribes of the day continue to take up space and consume the oxygen in the increasingly small room of the print world, that the elderly have the edge, with their established names and already secured honors. How we did adore and envy them, the idols of our college years-Hemingway and Faulkner, Frost and Eliot, Mary McCarthy and Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty! We imagined them aswim in a heavenly refulgence, as joyful and immutable in their exalted condition as angels forever singing

Now that I am their age--indeed, older than a number of them got to be--I can appreciate the advantages, for a writer, of youth and obscurity....

(Click on Post Title for complete wonderful essay--money back guarantee)

Henry Miller: "I began from scratch ... "

From The Wisdom of the Heart:

"I began assiduously examining the style and technique
of those whom I admired and worshipped: Nietzsche,
Dostoyevsky, Hamsun....

"I imitated every style in the hope of finding the clue
to the gnawing secret of how to write. Finally I came
to a dead end, to a despair and desperation which few
men have known.... There was no divorce between myself
as writer and myself as man: to fail as a writer meant
to fail as a man. And I failed. I realized that I was
nothing--less than nothing--a minus quantity.

"It was at this point, in the midst of the dead Sargasso
Sea, that I really began to write. I began
from scratch, throwing everything overboard, even those
whom I most loved.

"Immediately I heard my own voice; I was enchanted: the fact
that it was a separate, distinct, unique voice sustained me.
It didn't matter to me if what I wrote should be considered
bad. Good and bad dropped out of my vocabulary. I jumped
with two feet into the realm of aesthetics, the non-moral,
non-ethical, non-utilitarian realm of art. My life itself
became a work of art.

"I had found a voice, I was whole again. The experience was
very much life what we read of in connection with the lives
of Zen initiates. My huge failure was like the recapitulation
of the experience of the race: I had to grow foul with knowledge,
realize the futility of everything, smash everything, grow
desperate, then humble, then sponge myself off the slate, as
it were, in order to recover my authenticity. I had to arrive
at the brink and then take a leap in the dark."

Carved Tiger & Heinz Beans

Want to tell the old lady who feeds pigeons
across the street, Stop feeding them
or else. Want to show her my car,
but she's too blind to see the permanent little etchings
& doesnt understand English.
She talks Spanish to the pigeons.

I watched The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off
on PBS after finding the pigeon scars
in my old car's brand new black paint.
I never watch shows like
The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off.
This 36-year-old man has a disease
in which his skin is so thin
anything can cause a sore.
Through the years the sores have welded his fingers
together, his toes, too.
At the end, when he was dying, in this documentary,
they show the sores in all their glory
as his mother changes his bandages.
His entire back, on this frail man's little child's body,
is one big sore.
The back of his head, one whole sore.
70 percent of his body is a sore, an open sore.
He's in such pain from changing the bandage
he is drooling and snot is running unchecked.

At one point his mother removed the bandage too fast
and he went into an agony.
They both stopped for so long a time
I thought it was a still frame.

His skin developed a rare & fatal skin cancer
on top of everything else, & he determined to live
an "extraordinary" final few months.
He flew in a glider, hosted a party,
visited 10 Downing Street, and planned his funeral.
Just say, "Thank God that old fart has gone."

This little man,
who never had puberty because of the disease,
is dying and he dies in the show and we see his funeral.

On his coffin he had them carve a tiger,
a symbol of freedom & strength,
and put a Heinz beans label on there, too,
just to get people talking about what it means.

The old woman is out there again
in the cul de sac, bent over like a 7,
feeding corn slop to what some call flying rats.
I wonder what she says to them.
I wonder if she knows them as individuals.
I'm going to go out there & try to talk
to her, about the birds, not the car.
They'll fly away when they see me coming,
but when they see she's talking to me,
they'll come back & resume.
I can see it now.
It'll be a little afternoon tableau
suggesting for the moment that everything
is all right with the world:
two neighbors are standing & talking
while birds eat corn in their shadow.

THE PIANIST

When I finally saw this film--the cruelty,
the evil, the suffering--I almost had to
stop watching. For most of it I wanted
to go kill every fascist who ever lived.
By the end all I wanted to do was bring
a little beauty into the world.

New Exciting Ideas For Hit TV Shows:

ZOMBIE HOSPITAL:
A hospital where the whole staff is zombies,
except for one normal human nurse who also
happens to be an undercover agent for Homeland Security.

THE PRIVATE EYE PRESIDENT'S GARDENER:
The President is also a secret private detective,
solving quirky cases in disguise in his off time.
A gardener at the White House finds out
about it, and then becomes the President's
confidante and goes on cases with him.

FOREIGN BABY DODGE CITY:
A Western where there are two towns in conflict.
In the main town all the people are infant farmers
who have adult voices with accents from
different countries. In the other town it is all
adult ranchers who act like babies.
The two towns have an ongoing range war.

SUPER SLOW EXCEPT FOR LORI:
A show about a village where everything
is in super slow motion, except for one mysterious
woman who comes to town and moves at normal speed.

Clarity of the Mystery

I used to see myself as a fella who knows
what I think about everything. Writing novels
has cured me of that. I give up perfection.
(How many novels are about a fully enlightened
& complete personality?)

I give up on the idea of getting it
just the way I want. I would just keep
writing it over and over from the beginning.
From day to day and week to week I'm a better writer
intuitively and at the same time more comfortable
with the incompleteness of my knowledge of anything.
So, it's a good place to be, to see how unfinished
I am, my work is. It's a more precarious place,
as a person or writer, but it's liberating too
because it's real, it's where I truly live.

Any story I'm writing isn't worth a thing
if it doesn't have a fundamental mystery at its heart.
If it doesn't have that unknowable watching me
from the corner of the dream.

When I start a novel I hope the mystery of it will
sustain me to the end. How can something be so clear
and familiar and remain such a mystery?

Many times late at night I think I know what the mystery
of the novel is, what the elemental image means,
and the next morning it's a sphinx again, blinking only
when I blink.

What I love most in stories and books is the clarity
of the way the mystery is pursued, flirted and danced with,
mined and brought forth and then lost in the finding.
Which is more complete and fulfilling in The Treasure of Sierra Madre,
the long arduous finding and gathering of the gold,
or the sudden total loss of the gold in the howling wind?