January 2023: in praise of editors

Posted on January 23, 2023 | 1 comment

From the simplest lyric to the most complex novel, literature is asking us to pay attention. Pay attention to the frog. Pay attention to the west wind. Pay attention to the boy on the raft, the lady on the tower, the old man on the train. In sum, pay attention to the world and all that dwells therein and thereby learn at last to pay attention to yourself and all that dwells therein.

Frederick Buechner, b. 1926

I had the pleasure of finalizing proofs for my story with Chelsea Lemon Fetzer, of Little Patuxent Review, in early January. Because of what she paid attention to, I discovered that my timeline was inconsistent, as was my use of bulleted lists. The first is a Big Deal for the flow of the story; the second is a Smaller Deal that would distract only the copyeditor-inclined among us. But both made me think harder about the story, the questions it raises, and how choices large and small impact its effectiveness.

And that thinking in turn led me to ponder all my other life editors. My friend who reminds me that my tendency to go from “not-too-hungry” to “gotta-eat-now” was present when we met each other, thirty+ years ago, so maybe that trait isn’t an indicator of oncoming type two diabetes. My ex-husband who reminds me that once upon a time, I didn’t give a rat’s ass about accurately measuring coffee and just drank whatever–so maybe I can rethink my current practice of ditching an espresso shot that is a few grams above what it should be. My young-adult children, whose continuing participation in family traditions show that I did some parenting well and perhaps I could stop beating myself up about my mistakes. My current partner, who points out that I drive myself literally nuts when I try to do more than one thing at once–so maybe I can consider not-baking a (literal or metaphorical) cake from scratch. My own journal entries, which reveal that I’ve struggled with consistently submitting stories for my entire wiring life, and so maybe it’s time to stop spending time resisting my resistance, acknowledge it’s a thing for me, and move on. Because the odds of getting to learn from editors of all types and stripes increases when I accept that I don’t know what I don’t know, open up, and engage anyway.

May it be so for you, too.

Giovanni Mannozi, “Death Seated on Political and Religious Trophies,” study for the ephemeral decoration for the funeral of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Which I interpret as: pay attention and give it a go, we’re all gonna die anyway.

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December 2022: Waves

Posted on December 7, 2022 | 20 comments

Anyone older than a New York minute knows that when bad stuff happens, it seems to happen in waves. There’s a year or three where everything goes ass-over-teakettle: skin cancer, fractured ankle, job loss, death of a beloved pet, divorce, heat wave/drought/flash flood, new wrinkles that you think are from sleeping hard on a creased pillowcase but no, they stay all day and then you look exactly like your grandmother but your knees are too achey to sit and meditate long enough to come to peace with that reality so: back to the blank page, where we are only as old as we feel/write.

Feeling younger inside than we are outside is kinda funny, for a while, but it’s also kinda stagnant, to stay the same despite having wheeled through multiple decades. It perhaps has to do with our culture’s ageism, and the ways we’ve all internalized prejudice against aging/elders (see Priscilla Long’s latest book, Dancing with the Muse in Old Age for some terrific wake-up calls about the results of that bias). When I heard that a story I wrote when I was younger will be in Little Patuxnet Review‘s forthcoming Winter 2023, I was of course tickled: Publication is how writers share our work, but it is not, for me, why I write. I write because I can’t not write; I write because characters keep showing up and yammering at me. And getting that particular story published didn’t fix the thorny patch my current story is stuck in. It didn’t mean the perfect word for my current character’s ennui magically appeared without me hunching over the thesaurus for half an hour (still looking, BTW).

Ten days after that good news I learned a flash essay that was published back in 2014 will be republished this coming weekend, through Creative NonFiction’s “Sunday Short Reads.” (You can sign up here.) I had a half-day of feeling that all my best writing happened when I was younger (see internalized prejudice reference above), and then realized that I didn’t submit my work regularly when I was younger, because: life. Duh.

The empty nest has given me the gift of enough time for the administrative aspect of my writing life, and the good stuff happens in waves, too. I’m going to enjoy riding these until I’m tumbled ass-over-teakettle back onto the shore, and then I’ll pick the sand out of my undies and dry off and find the thesaurus and spend half an hour looking for the best way to say: still going.

May it be so for you, too.

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November 2022

Posted on November 2, 2022 | 3 comments

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another, and evenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations. (Anaïs Nin, 1903 – 1977)

So many months–18!–since last I posted here. Y’all know all the climatological, viral, and political shenanigans that we are all operating under, with, beside. Those are nothing new under the sun, in the big picture, though yes yes yes the speed of climate change is human-sparked. Not so speedy as a meteor crashing into the planet but still. We are influential.

Re: influence: I asked my elder young-adult son for his perspective on his role, as a white male with all its attendant privileges, what he sees as his role as vis-a-vis BIPOC, and he thought and then said he tries to not take up space. H’mmm, I thought, maybe that’s what I’ve been doing by not-blogging: I’m not-taking-up-space.

Being silent is a form of influence, too. The silent treatment was regularly deployed in my family of origin and to this day silence triggers my body’s fight-flight-freeze response. (Which I will refer to from now on as the FFF response. Which sounds, IMO, the way I feel when panic is short-circuiting my nervous system. I often also say f*ckf*ckf*ck so this works on two levels.)

I can notice this reaction before choosing my response more frequently than I used to. I often opt to ask a question, or just take a breath and wait.

But when I received a “friend” request from someone I knew years ago, someone who is one of my #metoo experiences, I FFFed and freaked and blocked and chose silence rather than engagement.

And then felt cowardly, wimpy, weak: I don’t even have the ability to say no, retroactively! On the other hand, maybe that was a case of manifesting my body’s wisdom: life’s too short to engage with someone who no longer has influence over me or others.

I argued both sides of that proverbial coin in a long conversation with an old friend, a conversation wherein I was the opposite of silent, and her influence helped me untangle myself. Steady myself. Re-orient myself.

Nothing new under the sun, indeed. We hurt each other. We learn from each other. We need each other.

May it be so.

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