On Self-Googling

It used to be that I only knew what had been written about myself or my work when an envelope would arrive from my publisher. By regular mail. You know–with stamps, and everything. This envelope would contain a series of xeroxed reviews, profiles, little mentions here and there, often–I suspect–edited to keep out the negative stuff. My publicist would underline the nice things critics said with a yellow highlighter, along with cheery little exclamation points in the margins. Look over here! The envelope seemed to say. Don’t look over there! No good will come of it.

These envelopes stopped arriving at around the same time it became possible to know absolutely everything about oneself from typing one’s name into Google. Good, bad, indifferent–increasingly, it’s all available. Reviews from a decade ago exist alongside blog mentions from yesterday. There are ratings of my books by readers who assign them five stars–or one. Comments see-saw from “Dani Shapiro is my favorite writer” to “What a waste of time.”

When it comes to adhering to good writing habits, not googling myself is very near the top of my list–though sometimes I do fall off the wagon. Okay…OFTEN I fall off the wagon. What do I hope to learn when I type my name into a search engine? What am I really looking for? For writers who spend our days alone, who rarely have the opportunity to actually see someone else reading our books or stories, sometimes it’s hard to know that we exist. That our work exists, out there in the world. The internet provides us with a mirror, of sorts. See? There you are! And there…and there…and…whoops that stung…and there, and…oh, ouch, that was mean… And so it goes. But that mirror is not a clear reflection–it’s more of a fun house mirror: wavy, distorted, showing us our virtual likeness at any given moment, through random debris tossed about by an algorithmic wave. What does any of it mean? And more importantly–much more importantly–why does it matter?

As the years have gone by, I’ve learned a few things about myself, and paramount among them is that it requires a great deal to keep myself in good emotional, psychological, creative, and spiritual alignment. I need space, time, quiet, coffee. I need my yoga and meditation practice. But perhaps most of all, I need to be able to sit down at my desk in the morning and enter my internal world. How am I doing? Do I exist? Is my work worthwhile? The answers aren’t out there. They never are.

On the Elusive Shimmer

Joan Didion once said that she knew she needed to write about something when she saw a shimmer around the edges of it — whether it be a person, a bit of overheard conversation, a landscape. It has always stayed with me, the idea of Didion’s shimmer. It seems exactly right. I know when it happens to me it feels like a little jolt from behind. No words form, no shape, no coherent idea. Not even a conscious thought. Just a deep, silent knowledge that some day I will write about this, in some way.

I have a few assignments on my desk right now. Work I’ve already committed to doing, and in fact am looking forward to doing. An essay, a couple of speeches. But now that I’m between books–a strange, amorphous state–those shimmery bits and pieces collected over the past couple of years are calling to me, as if I had closed them off in a drawer as I finished Devotion, and now the drawer is ajar. Trying to get my attention. What next? The question follows me around. What next? I need to be writing. I’m not okay in the head when I’m not writing. My mind becomes, in some of my favorite words of Virginia Woolf, pecking and wretched.

But how do we make the choices we make? How do we know where to place our creative energy? That energy is finite, after all. I find I have maybe three good hours a day. I need all the other hours around those hours, but when I get right down to it, in terms of actual writing time, three hours and I’ve spent all my capital. So what to spend it on?

My husband–a screenwriter–has a big bulletin board in his office where he keeps titles and ideas for future projects within his line of vision. I love looking at that board–it’s such a hopeful thing–all those possibilities. The future unfurling. A lifetime of work is on that board. And often we talk about it: which one next? Where to place the emphasis? What makes the most sense?

This much I know about making choices — to a great degree, they must be creative choices. If they come from what a writer thinks she SHOULD do next…that’s where the trouble begins. I try not to think: I need to write something funny/profound/commercial/short/long…whatever. This is always a bad idea, coming at the work from the outside in. From a place of thinking what the world might applaud, as opposed to finding the shimmer. For a writer, it’s always there. All that is really necessary is quiet and careful attention to it.

On Being Literary

People at cocktail parties often ask me what my books are about. It’s one of my least favorite questions because it’s so hard to answer pithily, so recently I decided I had to come up with a rehearsed response. “I write literary novels about family,” I have started to say. “Literary novels about family secrets, dysfunction…” Which is true. My books tend to be about family. But what exactly do I mean by using the term literary? And why does it seem, as soon as I say it, that I detect a certain nervousness and boredom in my polite questioner? Could it be that literary immediately sounds…small? And possibly difficult? And maybe a bit dull? What am I even saying, really, when I call my books literary? What I intend to convey is that they’re not potboilers, or romances, or mysteries, or thrillers, or any kind of genre fiction. But I seem to be saying more than that.

When I was first starting out, my MFA friends and I wanted nothing more than to be literary writers. Literary–at its pinnacle–meant reviews in the New York Review of Books and Bookforum. It meant grants and awards and fellowships. It meant invitations to George Plimpton’s brownstone for his legendary Paris Review parties. But as the years have gone by, I find myself questioning my younger freshly-minted MFA ideas. Honestly, I think I was being a bit of a snob. I now know that calling a writer a “literary novelist” usually means that no one has ever heard of her. It means “destined to sell under 4000 copies unless something really unusual happens.”

Especially these days, I get nervous when I hear myself described (even by myself!) as a literary novelist because readers are very important to me, and I want lots and lots of them. I want it both ways. I want the New York Review of Books AND the stacks in Barnes & Noble. I want to write page-turners that are also literature. I used to be insulted when I would hear from readers that they couldn’t put my books down, or that they read a book of mine in a day. Now I love it — because I know how rare that is, especially in our culture of distraction. Books compete with other, easier forms of entertainment, and so if a reader feels compelled to keep reading, something good is happening. Call it whatever you want.

Maybe the next time someone at a cocktail party asks me what kind of books I write, I’ll just answer: hopefully good ones. And leave it at that.

On Being a Good Reader

I had a drink last night with a friend who had just returned from a writers’ conference. She is a serious writer, but had never been to a conference before, never pursued an M.F.A., had barely even attended a workshop, and I was very interested in her response to the whole thing. What had she gotten out of it? Had it helped? Hurt? Disappointed? Inspired?

“You know,” she said, “I always thought I was a pretty good reader. I could read a manuscript of a story and see when something wasn’t working, or seemed off. But I never really understood WHY something worked or didn’t.” Well, this seems key to me. In fact, this seems like perhaps the single most essential ingredient in making a workshop–or a teacher–good. Years ago, when I was first offered a job teaching a literature course to MFA students, I balked. “But I don’t have a doctorate,” I said to the head of the department. “That’s not the point,” he responded. “I want you to teach them to read as writers.”

To read as a writer is to take the first step in becoming a writer. To read as a writer means not to simply think: I’m liking this, or this isn’t any good, or I don’t like it, or it doesn’t ring true. To read as a writer means to stop and ask the question WHY. Why is this working? Or why isn’t it? How? How was this done? We often have a natural resistance to pulling apart something we love, to deconstructing a great story to examine its elements. We’re afraid that something of the mystery or the magic will vanish–and yet, this pulling apart, this understanding of what makes a story tick (or not) is the beginning of craft. Like medical students performing autopsies, we cut stories open. We look at their guts, their organs, the architecture and arrangement of their bone structure. In so doing, we learn something about our own craft, our own work.

Certainly there have been times I’ve wondered why I continue to teach. If writing can’t be taught–and I am convinced it can’t–then what exactly are we doing around those tables in those rooms, the delicate, marked-up pages of manuscripts in our hands? We are learning to read them with greater understanding and concision. And hopefully, that understanding and concision becomes a lens through which we can more clearly see our work.

On Being Open

I’ve been thinking lately about what it means to be open–specifically what it means to be open to other writers. I’ve been on the receiving end of amazing acts of kindness over the years, and I’ve also been on the receiving end of the sort of parched, sour behavior that really says: there’s only room for one of us out there, so get out of my way, I’m not going to even talk to you, much less help you. I’m going to horde all of my limited resources for myself. It’s easy to see which of these two types of people behaving in these two types of ways is happier. Openness and generosity is the product of an unclouded mind–a mind at peace. And the nastiness comes from fear, anxiety, envy, competitiveness. I have tried to learn, over the years, from the former, and to understand the latter as a cautionary tale.

Our friend Frank McCourt died yesterday. Not only was he a brilliant writer, an unparalleled storyteller, a funny, droll man who at the same time knew how to wring every possible emotion out of a situation–but he was also astoundingly kind. He had time for everyone. He gave of himself, and gave, and gave–and guess what? There was still room for more. More great writing. More political fund-raising for our local congressman. More hours to show up for events such as this one, which support a community after school arts organization. He was a special person, one I feel lucky to have known. His loss is tremendous and will be felt across the many lives he touched.

What is this thing, this openness? Who do some of us naturally lean in that direction, while others slam the door closed? Why does it seem, to some of us, that being open will cost us something of ourselves, when in fact, what it really allows is more room? Frank rarely said no. His answer to most of what was asked of him was a resounding yes–whether that yes was to an invitation to a book party for a younger writer, or a benefit where his presence would be helpful, or a comment for the back of a book jacket, or just simply a fun evening out. I have no doubt that those yeses–that spirit–fed his work. Openness, kindness, generosity of spirit. Something to remember and keep remembering.

On Self-Protection

I’ve heard it said that writers have one less layer of skin than most normal people. We walk around just a bit more of ourselves exposed to the elements, to snippets of overheard conversation, to something we see on the street, to the remarks of perfect strangers. Really, it can’t be any other way. That sensitivity is also where the work comes from. But sometimes the sensitivity can be hard to take, especially when it comes to dealing with the response to our work out there in the world.

Lately I have been thinking of my new book as a very young, unprotected child–perhaps a child just learning to walk–shakily moving away from me. It’s still many months before publication, but I can feel it: the way it will be come something separate from me, something other, something that people will have opinions about, will weigh in on. It won’t be for everybody. Some critic will take a swipe at it. Recently, there was a kerfuffle on Twitter about a writer who publicly lost it after receiving a negative review. The immediacy that Twitter allows, combined with the possibility of a brief public melt-down going viral, created a big mess for her. But I’ve got to say, I know how she felt. A bad review is a little bit like a kid being mean to your kid. When I have seen a child be even slightly cruel to my son, I hate that kid. I want to kill him. And not to take the books-and-babies metaphor too far, but it’s a bit like that with a piece of writing. It’s something close to the writer’s soul, something nurtured and protected until ready to see the light of day–and then–SLAM. Wow. How to avoid feeling vulnerable to that?

A few months ago, a writer who had written the single most vicious review I had ever received–over ten years ago it still stings–friended me on Facebook. No note, no nothing. Just a friend request. I stared at it for a few minutes, the words of his review as fresh in my mind as if I had received it that morning. (A universal truth for writers seems to be that we never remember a single word from our good reviews. Only the bad ones stick.) Eventually I did accept him as a friend. Why? I don’t really know. Maybe enough time had passed. Maybe I was trying to be a bigger person. Maybe I wanted to show him that I didn’t care.

But I do care–we all care. Whether it’s a review or a remark or a misunderstanding or even perceived indifference, we do care more than most people. To go back to the Martha Graham letter I quoted from the other day, we writers do walk around experiencing that queer, divine dissatisfaction. Someone once said–I think it was Valerie Martin–that there are three kinds of dispositions: a good disposition, a bad disposition, and a writer’s disposition.

So what are we to do with our dispositions? How are we to protect ourselves, our shivering, naked selves from our sensitivity to all that is? I think the only answer, if there is one, is this: we wrap ourselves in the writing. The work itself is our cloak and our shield. It’s all we’ve got. And the rest of it is none of our business.

On Doggedness

I have a love/hate relationship with the word doggedness. It means something more than discipline, but also implies a rather dull aspect. Dogged: tenacious, single-minded. Like a dog with a bone. But when it comes to a writing life, I think doggedness is underrated, and belongs on the list of characteristics every writer must ultimately have. I would say some of the other necessary characteristics, in no particular order, are:

Talent
Discipline
Patience
Fortitude

I was going to add “a strong constitution” to this list, but that one isn’t strictly necessary. Just preferable, if a writer wants to live a long life. Maturity is helpful too, though I think maturity probably is included in the patience and fortitude departments. But so what do I mean by doggedness? How is it different from discipline? Discipline involves sitting down. Not making breakfast or lunch dates. Not answering the phone. Discipline means that your butt stays in the chair for a certain number of hours each day. Doggedness, on the other hand, involves staying the course. Putting on blinders to all that distracts you. Chewing and chewing on an idea like–yes, like a dog with a bone. Okay, and I hate to say this, but it’s true, and most of us who teach writing won’t publicly admit it–the all the doggedness and discipline in the world will only get you so far if you don’t have talent. And talent is the thing that can’t be taught. Craft can be taught, yes. But talent is ineffable. It’s either there or it isn’t. And some people have more of it than others. I’ve seen writers with buckets full of talent throw it over because they don’t have the discipline or the fortitude or the doggedness. Or–and perhaps this belongs on the master list too — the DESIRE. The burning, mad desire to do this thing, to organize words on the page until they form a picture. Until they make a kind of greater sense than you had even intended.

But one last thing about doggedness. In Ted Solotoroff‘s great essay “Writing in the Cold: The First Ten Years” he wonders where some of his most talented students have gone. Why he never sees their work in print any more. Why they seem to have disappeared. Perhaps writing in the cold was too much for them. They were talented, and determined. Certainly they had once been in the hands of a great teacher. Doggedness might have come in handy for Solotaroff’s students. If the talent is there, the discipline, the willingness to stand a thousand small insults, the desire to be alone in a room creating, creating — then add a small dollop of doggedness, and from that, maybe, just maybe, a lifetime of writing will emerge.

On Focusing on Results

The other day, I had a long talk with a writer friend who’s having a tough time. “If only I could see the future,” she said, “then I’d feel better.” I stopped myself from answering: “Wouldn’t we all?” Wouldn’t we all like at least a peek into a crystal ball? A life spent writing, more than most sorts of lives, is one lived as an act of faith. A glimmer of an idea becomes a sentence. A sentence builds to another sentence, then another. A paragraph. A few flimsy pages. Sometimes the whole mess gets thrown away. Other times, something begins to happen. A feeling, a sense of momentum, a shimmer around the edges that makes us thing that maybe, just maybe we’re on to something here. So we keep going. If we’re writing a book, the few flimsy pages become a pile of pages. The pile of pages becomes a novel, or a memoir, or a collection of stories. But still…there are no guarantees. Every writer I know has some version of the “if only’s”.

If only that literary magazine would accept my story.
If only I get that fellowship.
If only I sell this book.
If only I can sell it to a particular publisher.
If only they pay me _____.
If only they print enough copies.
If only it gets reviewed in ______.
If only Oprah picks it.
If only it becomes a (regional, national, international) bestseller
If only it moves from #16 to #7 on the list.

I promise you, all of these “if only’s” are real, even though some of them might seem preposterous. When I was getting ready to publish my first novel, my agent at the time told me that she had an author who was #3 on the bestseller list, but was obsessed with #2 and #1. I was perplexed, somewhat disbelieving. Surely, I thought, a writer who has reached those heights of success would feel satisfied. (I still kind of think this.) But it did illuminate what I think is a universal truth for all of us writers, which is that nothing is ever enough. I’ve experienced this myself. I’ve received some great piece of news — a rave in The New York Times Book Review, a second printing, a movie option — and my mind almost instantly leaps to the next thing. Happy, certainly. Relieved, to be sure. But also, grasping. Wanting more. Wanting to see the future. Full of more “if only’s”.

I understand why this happens. It happens because in order to write anything good–anything that feels alive–a writer has put all of herself into the writing. Heart, soul, intellect–all in there. So what external result could possibly be enough, after years of immersion, years of struggle, of solitary grappling with the page? The answer is that there IS NO ENOUGH. The crystal ball, if we had one, would show us a landscape of peaks and valleys, ups and downs that are useless information for us.

All we have the right to hope for — a teacher once told me — is the chance to do it again. And again, and again. With no answers, no guarantees, no knowledge of the future. Only “a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching, and keeps us more alive than the rest.”

On Being a Nomal Writer

I’ve written about balance before. As in, balance is a myth. It doesn’t exist. Balance is one of those pop-psych terms invented to make us feel that there’s some better way of doing things, some easier, calmer way of living that is elusive–but possible if only we try hard enough. I’m here to suggest that we throw the whole idea of balance out the window because everything changes, all the time. Every day is different. Curve balls are not the exception, but the rule. If a writer waits for things to calm down, for the dust to settle, for a sense of normalcy to descend like a soft, comforting cloud–well,that writer may be waiting for a long time.

We had a funny moment in my private writing workshop yesterday, when a student wondered if she would ever be “a normal writer”. What’s a normal writer? Isn’t that an oxymoron? There’s nothing normal about spending days in solitude, alone in a room, sifting through an endless stream of words until a few of them, strung together, make some sort of sense.

Today–my first morning to myself so far this summer: my son was out the door before nine, with lunch packed, water bottle filled, a basketball jersey hanging endearingly on his little-boy frame. I settled down at my desk, the house quiet. I have what I need now–don’t I?

A room of my own.
Solitude.
A quiet house.
A silent phone.
A stretch of hours.
Oh–and a cappuccino.

What’s missing then? Why are some days better than others? Why does it seem possible, some days, to get good work done on the subway, while other days, with everything I think I NEED — time, space, quiet, caffeine — my brain feels water-logged? Perhaps the answer is less in the quest for the perfect writing environment, and more in simply the showing up for the work, and trying to leave the self-castigating notions of balance and normalcy at the door. Every day is different. And there is no such thing as a normal writer.

On Routine

First of all, to my loyal blog readers I know I have been slacking off. I can explain this–and promise to try to do better. When I finished Devotion last month, my delicate little routine went out the window. The fact that finishing my book dovetailed with the end of Jacob’s school year, with its attendant field day/concert/awards ceremony/class party/commencement compounded matters. By the time I came out of every mom’s haze of end-of-year school events, I had lost the thread. My manuscript was at my publisher, already beginning to head down the conveyor belt toward publication. My kid was out of school and camp didn’t start for another few weeks. My precious routine–getting him off to school first thing, sitting quietly at my desk, practicing yoga, working, thinking, reading, writing–all suddenly felt so far away. And blogging fell down that rabbit hole too. Because blogging was part of the routine.

How could it happen so fast?
In the same way as a few weeks without yoga and my body feels like it’s falling apart, so too does the creative process–that daily beast–need to be fed. I tell this to my students all the time. Habit, I tell them. Even if it’s an hour in the morning. Even if it’s twenty minutes. Sit down with your work every day. Stay connected to it.

I need to practice what I preach, of course. Ideas float through my head like bits of ash off a bonfire. Should I write that short story that has been tapping me on the shoulder for a few years? Should I adapt Picturing the Wreck as a screenplay — also something I’ve been thinking of doing for years? Should I start a new book (I actually have an idea)? Meanwhile, these bits of ash go nowhere right now. The windows of time are too small, between dropping Jacob off at tennis camp (I have three hours by the time I get home and before he gets picked up) and the UPS heading up the driveway with busy work, delivering the copy-edited manuscript. More small changes to be made on Devotion. Changes that feel, in the words of Grace Paley, enormous, at the last minute.

Does it sound like I’m complaining? I’m not–I swear I’m not. I’m more like an archaeologist of my own life. Digging. Trying to sort out what matters and what doesn’t. How to prioritize. How to once again create a routine. And most of all, what next.