On the Noise in my Head

How do we find the quiet space we need in which to write? By this I don’t mean finding rooms of our own. I’ve written before about rooms of our own, which are important, if not essential. But physical space isn’t the whole story. In order to write, by which I don’t mean dashing off quick, half-thought-through emails or addressing envelopes, but rather, the process of being led to the page by the words and thoughts themselves, we need quiet inside ourselves. Emotional, psychological, spiritual, mental silence. A snow globe comes to mind; shake it up, watch the flurry of whiteness until finally it’s all settled at the bottom and the thing itself–the image, the symbol, the panorama, is clear and visible.

Lately I have been having trouble with the noise in my head. There’s so much of it! When I unroll my mat to practice my yoga, it’s there. When I sit in meditation, it’s there. When I’m at my desk, it seems to be coming not only from inside my head but from the world around me. It’s on the internet, in my “in box”, in the ticking clock, the ringing phone, the piles of papers and books and travel schedules. I developed many tools over the years to turn down the volume — everything from yoga and meditation to a good strong cup of cappuccino to reading bits of Virginia Woolf’s diaries (always, without exception, a tonic) but still, sometimes… all there is left to do is make peace with the noise. I tell myself that it’s necessary, like a mountain I have to climb before I can see what’s on the other side. After all, what else do we have but the contents of our minds? And how–as writers–can we possibly know ourselves, be our own best instrument–if we can’t hear what’s in there?

Sometimes it’s appalling to listen, to really listen. Some of that mental chatter is inane. Embarrassing. Mortifying, even. Really? I think to myself. Really–that’s what’s in my head? Like an overflowing wastebasket, I try to empty it, a bit at a time. And truly–after all the other tools, the yoga, meditation, breathing, cappuccino, after the room of one’s own, the closed door, the desk full of talismans, the best way I know to do this is to write. To write past the noise, to the other side of the mountain.

On Finding Your Teachers

I have made many mistakes and missteps in my life, but looking back, one thing I can truly say I’ve always been good at is identifying my teachers–that is, the people who would respond to me, who were in a position to help me, who I respected and wished to emulate. Even in high school, during which I was otherwise a train wreck, I sought out the most engaging English teacher in the school and befriended him. We’re friends to this day, and when I read in Boston on my last book tour, he was in the audience, and let me tell you, that meant so much to me I could barely trust my voice.

In college, I was still something of a train wreck (see: Slow Motion) but I also found my teachers, and I don’t think it would be overly dramatic to say that I would have been lost without them. I remember sitting in Grace Paley‘s office, on the floor (somehow we always sat on the floor in Grace’s office, and sometimes even in her lap) and Grace telling me that I was a writer and I should go to graduate school. I’m pretty sure she just pointed at the door to the graduate writing program at Sarah Lawrence and suggested I walk through it. What more, really, can a teacher do than guide a student to the right door? Then, in graduate school, I received a note one day from one of the professors, Jerry Badanes, who had read a short story of mine for a contest, and invited me to lunch. During that lunch, he and I discovered that a film he had written years earlier about shtetl life in Poland contained archival footage of my family: my grandfather and great-grandfather reciting the Mourner’s Kaddish at the foot of my great-great-grandfather’s grave in a tiny village.

The Shapiro footage, Jerry’s face lit up. You’re the Shapiro footage!
I knew then, that he would help me. That he had lived, in a way, with my ancestors. That he had things to teach me, and that I would learn from him.

Jerry and I spent years meeting at Edgar’s Cafe on the Upper West Side, or sometimes at E.A.T. on Madison Avenue, when he was feeling particularly celebratory. He taught me a lot about craft, but even more than craft, he taught me something about what it meant to live as a writer, to work as a writer, to think as a writer. When he died, suddenly and far too young, it was like losing a member of my immediate family.

During the last two years, as I’ve been working on my new memoir, Devotion, I once again found my teachers. I didn’t go looking for them; I didn’t have to. Apparently, I was ready for them, and they appeared. The great Buddhist teacher, Sylvia Boorstein, the gifted yogi and author, Stephen Cope, and the brilliant rabbi, Burt Visozky. When I set out on the journey that became Devotion, I didn’t know that I would meet a Buddhist, a Yogi and Rabbi who would be my guides along the way. Their willingness to be my teachers — as was true with my high school English teacher and with my graduate school mentors — has taught me a lot about the sacred nature of that relationship.

With my own students, I try to pass it on.

On Anxiety

Of all the mental states one might find oneself in when sitting down to write, anxiety may very well be the worst of them. Of course we can’t always approach the page with a sense of inner calm, of ease, of a mind ironed clean. Sometimes we’re agitated–though a little agitation goes a long way. Rage, grief, longing, joy, frustration–all these have their place, though it’s best not to write from the center of these feelings, but rather, from the recollection of them. But anxiety is, as far as I’m concerned, the enemy. It makes us write too fast, or too prolifically, or too self-consciously. I’ve seen more writers, over the years, felled by their own anxiety, by which I mean a very particular kind of anxiety: I need to get published, I need recognition, I need it now, or I will die.

Fantasies of publication–and there are always fantasies of publication–take over and become the reason for the work, rather than the possible happy byproduct of the work, that’s where the trouble sets in. When I am at my desk dreaming of what my book is going to look like on the front tables of book stores, and what, exactly, I’m going to wear for my “Oprah” appearance, I am no longer a writer at work. I have lost the thread, and have entirely missed the purpose (not to mention the pleasure) of the process.

The pleasure is in losing track of time, in being so deeply engaged in a piece of work that hours drift by, unnoticed. You have entered what is sometimes called a flow state, or something bordering on a trance. This is why writers write. To write for any other reason would be crazy. Dreams of fame–anxiety about what will or won’t happen–is not only disastrous for the work, but for the psyche. Grasping, needing, craving–one thing I can tell you from experience is this: Nothing will ever be enough. That big review in the important place, the bestseller list, the invitations to speak…whatever it is you think you need so badly…it will fall through your fingers like so many grains of sand. It’s happened to me more times than I can count, and I still have to remind myself: What is it that makes me feel fully alive? What makes me feel a deep sense of contentment, satisfaction, even glimmers of euphoria?

Not the review.
Not the bestseller list.
Not the invitations to speak.

All of that is very very nice, but no. That profound sense that I am doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing only happens when I’m writing. Just writing. Not fantasizing, not checking my email to see if anything important has happened in the last five minutes, but simply putting one word down at a time until eventually I have something whole, something driven by my internal life–not my dreams of glory.

On Precision

These days, I often tell people not to read my early books. I inwardly cringe when someone tells me they’re reading either of my first two novels. Years ago, while talking with the writer Peter Matthiessen, he told me that his early books weren’t worth reading. I remember, at the time, watching the old master wave his hand impatiently, as if swatting away a pesky fly. I realized, with a start, that he was dismissing more books than I had even written at the time. I couldn’t imagine that I would ever feel that way. I had been profoundly attached to each book as I was writing it. I had loved them as if they were my babies–which, in a way, they were. How could I ever feel that they weren’t worth reading?

I’m seven books into this life, now. Seven books, and I can say with clarity and confidence that each of my books has been better than the last. Slow Motion was a better book than Picturing the Wreck. Black & White a more controlled and disciplined novel than Family History. Devotion, I am convinced, is my strongest book yet. I stand by those books, but I also can see the progression. I have been learning on the job all along. Is there any other way for a writer to learn? Occasionally a story emerges of a writer who holes up, spends decades in a garret, wherever garrets still exist, and enters the world fully formed, clutching a masterpiece. More often, we develop as we go.

Which brings me to precision. When I was writing my first couple of novels, I was in love with language. I’m still in love with language–but that earlier love was a blind, passionate kind of love, the kind that doesn’t allow you to see anything for what it is. I loved the sound of words, indeed, I often read them aloud to myself as I sat at my desk. When writing description, I believed that more was better. Why use one simile when you could use three? I heaped words onto the page until the very thing I was describing sank beneath the weight of the words, like one of those ice cream sundaes with too many toppings. The flavors competed. The cherry bled into the whipped cream. The whole thing melted into a giant, meaningless mess.

Over the years, my prose has become leaner. Adverbs have pretty much bitten the dust, and adjectives had better be doing their job or I show them the door too. And when I read, I am also looking for that precision. It’s incredibly hard to find just the right word. So much easier to layer on pretty words that are the literary equivalent of distracting a toddler. Look, honey! Over there–at the red balloon! The reader’s attention is diverted from the fact that the writer hasn’t nailed it. Once, in graduate school, my favorite teacher and mentor warned me against exactly this kind of pretty language: “You know how to make something sound beautiful,” he said. “Just be sure it’s actually saying something.”

Maybe it has to do with getting older. Maybe it has to do with the lessons learned from writing seven books. But now, when I sit down to write, I do so with the awareness that there is no clever substitute for exactly the right word. I’m less interested in writing something beautiful than something true.

On Being Smart

Over the weekend, I was talking with a friend about a particular writer who shall remain unnamed here for reasons which will soon become clear. She’s published quite a lot of books–fiction, essays, polemics–and in this case, we were discussing her fiction, which isn’t, in my opinion, very good.

“She’s a particular kind of too smart to be a good fiction writer,” I said.

My friend nodded in agreement. That was it. Too smart.

I’ve told my students for years that we need to be dumb like animals in order to write good fiction. What do I mean by this? To try to understand what I mean, I’ve been looking at my two dogs resting by my feet for the last few minutes. They’re relaxed but alert. Their ears are pricked, their bodies loosely spilled onto the floor, their eyes are open. They’re ready for anything–ready to leap to their feet at the slightest provocation. They see, smell, hear, taste, touch everything in their environment–or at least I think they do–but from a place of calm attention.

That kind of relaxed attention has a lot to do with writing good fiction. If I am thinking too hard, or too much–if I am layering thoughts and suppositions on top of the tender, frail beginning of story before I’ve barely begun, what I end up with is a collapsing heap of abstraction. When a writer is too smart for her own good, you can feel the weight of her thoughts on the page, like a truck straining uphill. You experience the author’s mental exertion, rather than the story itself.

The best writers, of course, are able to do both: feel and sniff their way through a story like a sure-footed animal through a thicket, and then, but only then, once there is a draft on the page, they’re able to think about it. To become first, willfully sensate and dumb like an animal, and then to become smart, lucid, clear-headed when approaching revision. We all know writers who are good at one or the other. The best writers are good at both.

It’s so easy to forget this. To think: I need to write something clever, something ironic, something The New Yorker might like. To think: but what’s the big picture? I need to know the big picture before I begin. The paradox of the big picture is that it’s only revealed one tiny picture, one small moment at a time.

On Self-Doubt

Sometimes I wish I could feel less uncertainty, less raging self-doubt about my work. Shouldn’t it stop, after a while? The questioning, the internal nagging feeling that I’ll never get it quite right? Seven books into this life, and I still sit down to write with a flutter of dread in my heart. You can’t do this, a little voice whispers. What makes you think you can do this?

I’ve been working on making peace with this voice. After all, it isn’t going away. Colette once wrote: “The writer who loses her self-doubt, who gives way as she grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for her to lay aside her pen.”

Many years ago, when I was at work on my second novel–which to my mind is the least accomplished of all my novels–I loved what I was doing. Oh, how I loved the music of my own words! I carried around pieces of my manuscript. I read passage aloud to friends. I read those pages over and over again, in the backs of taxis, while in cafes, or waiting in line. I wasn’t reading them with a critical eye, but rather, a blind and adoring one.

With each of my successive books, I have loved my work a bit less. And, interestingly enough, the work has grown better. It seems that loving my work wasn’t doing me any good at all. Grace Paley used to say that if she loved a sentence enough that she wanted to get up from her desk and walk into the other room to read it to her husband, she knew she had to cut it. At the time, as a graduate student, I wasn’t sure what she meant. Wasn’t it a good thing, to love one’s own sentences? But as with many of the remarkable bits of wisdom Grace shared, this has bloomed in my mind, over time.

So where, then, is the pleasure? If sitting down to do the work is hard–and it is hard, it should be hard–and if the process of getting that work into shape is hard–and it is, hard, it should be hard–and if bringing that work out into the world is a roller-coaster ride, full of ups and downs, unanticipated curves, elation and disappointment constant bedrellows–then what could possibly be the point?

As best as I can tell, the absorption, the single-minded focus, the hours that pass while most engaged in the work itself is the point. When I am deep into a piece of work, actually doing the writing of it, I am not thinking that it’s lousy, or genius, or anything in between. I’m not thinking about people reading it, or reviewing it, or responding to it in any way. I’m simply in the process–all the way down there in the trenches of the process–with my small, flickering candle, trying to tunnel through the darkness.

On the Bottomless Pit

It came to my attention, a few years ago when I started actually paying attention, that I am unable to accept a compliment about my work. Oh, I can smile and nod and say thank-you-very-much. But what I don’t seem to be very good at doing is taking it in.

I love your last book, someone might say.
It made me cry.
It made me think.

And me, I feel all squirmy and awkward. What is it that goes through my head in these moments? Part of me doesn’t believe what I’m hearing. Part of me just wants to run and hide. Part of me is bursting with joy but can’t allow that feeling in, because to allow that feeling is to believe the compliment, and somehow that is just plain unacceptable.

What is this bottomless pit that exists inside of so many of us, into which all compliments, flattery, good reviews, pats on the back seem to fall? I can quote you chapter and verse from the negative reviews I’ve received over the course of my writing life. I can tell you who wrote them, and how they made me feel. But if asked to summon even a fragment from the (fortunately larger) pile of good reviews, I would draw a blank. Or–worse still–sometimes I’ll be trolling around on the internet and I will stumble upon something truly nasty. There are people out there in the great cyberverse who don’t like me or my work at all. Why is it that, in these moments, I think that these are the smart, all-seeing ones, the ones who really know the truth?

Here’s the only silver lining I can come up with for the problem of the bottomless pit. I think we writers need it. I think that the moment we start believing our own shit, if you’ll pardon the expression, the minute we start thinking that we know what we’re doing, we’re lost. I’ve read books recently by writers who–I can tell–took in the praise heaped on them over the years. They’ve become parodies of themselves. They’ve lost that uncomfortable sense of insecurity that kept driving them forward, as if with an electric prod. They may be happier people, yes. But they’ve lost their hunger, and along with their hunger they’ve lost whatever it was that made their work sing to begin with.

So I guess I’ll take the bottomless pit. I have no choice, really, but to reach down there and shake hands with it. After all, it helps keep me honest–even if, once in a while, I’d like to take in a compliment, and bask in its glow. Even for just a minute.

On Betrayal

I have a galley of my upcoming memoir Devotion sitting on my desk, waiting to be put into an envelope and mailed to one of my relatives. It has replaced the bound manuscript which sat in the same place on my desk, which replaced the actual manuscript, which also occupied that spot for months and months. I have padded envelopes in my closet, stamps in my desk drawer. The post office just a five minute drive down the road. So what’s my problem? Why haven’t I sent my relative an advance copy of my book?

Because I’m anxious. Because I’m scared. Because this particular relative is an important character in my memoir, and I want her to love the way I’ve portrayed her. In writing about my own attempts to find meaning in my everyday life, I have written about a member of my deeply religious family who has lived her life with tremendous spiritual clarity, and for whom I have bottomless respect. There isn’t a single unkind word about her in the book. Not one. So why am I afraid?

Janet Malcolm once famously wrote that every journalist who is not too stupid or full of himself to notice what’s going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. Many times, while writing a story, I have an awareness of the way I am seeing my subject, as if all my senses have at once become wider, deeper, more discerning, more KNOWING–as if a lens inside of me has opened to its greatest possibly clarity. At these moments I feel a touch of Malcolm’s moral indefensibility–because quite suddenly my subject has become a SUBJECT. No longer simply a human being, but part of the larger tapestry of a story. “Oh, that’s good,” I’ll think to myself about a bit of dialogue. “I can use that.” Use being the operative word. We writers do use stuff. We take what we see and hear and smell and taste and make it ours on the page. What else can we do? It’s all we’ve got. Whether we’re writing fiction or non-fiction, this is the case. It’s not always a purposeful thing, or even a conscious thing–but it invariably happens. In fact, we lie in wait for those moments. Those are our instances of grace. We come across something–an image, a phrase, a slant of light–and we take it. Immediately, we appropriate it, and make it ours.

In the two years I spent writing Devotion, I had experiences I thought I would write about, but didn’t–or tried to, but they didn’t work on the page. And at other times, as I went about living my life, I had experiences that I had no particular intention of including, but there I found myself, widening, deepening, becoming hyper-aware–no longer just a person having an experience, but instead a writer, gathering, hording, pruning. Voracious. Thrilled. Ah–a little voice would whisper. This–this is perfect.

I suppose this is why I have that bit of trepidation about sending an early copy of Devotion to my wonderful relative. Will she think that when I was sitting with her, walking with her, having coffee with her, that I was really just a machine, taking internal notes? Will she feel betrayed? Is what I did, in fact, a betrayal of sorts? Is it possible to live inside a moment and outside of it at the same time? Perhaps that’s the lot of the writer. Perhaps we’re always hovering just a bit away from the center of things–feeling everything, perched on the periphery, taking notes.

On Taking Risks

It’s all a high-wire act, isn’t it? The writing? The sitting down to write? The thinking that we have anything worth saying? Every bit of good writing emerges from a wild place. Whether you are a person of faith or not, still, setting words down on the page is an act of faith. Whether you think you are a courageous person or not, trying to craft a narrative — in other words, trying to create something out of nothing — is an act of courage. Now, of course we writers aren’t necessarily faithful or courageous people. Not most of us. Not in our real lives. Not when we climb out of bed in the morning and meet our own faces in the mirror. Coward! The mirror might reflect back at us. Faithless one! You, there–brushing your teeth. Yeah, you. Why do you think you have anything inside you worth saying? Why do you think anyone will care?

Recently I was going through a list of small pieces, short fiction and essays that I’ve written over the past few years. The list is pretty long, actually. And I had a moment, looking through that list, of realizing that every single one of those pieces had begun with the same process of resistance, wildness, faith, doubt, and ultimately just enough courage. Here goes nothing, the little voice in my head whispered again and again. Here goes nothing. But still–in the faith of that potential nothingness–I plunged forward anyway. Doggedly, determinedly, forward. That small kernel of wildness aglow inside me.

Here goes nothing?
So what.
Maybe it will turn into something.
Maybe not.

Almost all of those pieces worked out. They were published here and here and here. I have to remind myself every day that it’s a risk–all of it. Every day brings small satisfactions, small disappointments. Because my husband and I are both writers, our household is full of those ups and downs. The phone rings at dinner time with some crisis or another (the life of a Hollywood screenwriter). An email brings news that something I had hoped for is happening–or isn’t. That roller coaster that is the life of two people who create. Sometimes, when I’m aware that our young son is watching us, I wonder what he sees — and whether it looks good to him, or whether some day he’ll opt for a more stable life with fewer ups and downs. A life with clear parameters, predictable days, concrete results.

Or maybe, just maybe–I’d like to think that he sees two people who are wrestling with their fears and insecurities, who hear their own internal censors, whispering Here goes nothing…but plunge forward despite our cowardice and faithlessness and uncertainty. Taking that daily risk despite ourselves.

On the Importance of a Room of One’s Own

As I write this, literally as my fingers move across the keyboard, one of my dogs is banging against the kitchen door downstairs. The reason he’s banging against the kitchen door, hurling his whole little body with all his might against the dining room chair that I placed on the other side of the swinging door, is because he has–how shall I put this delicately–a bit of an intestinal issue this morning. I have spent the last several hours on my knees, scrubbing carpets and floors.

A good way to start the week? You tell me. But it’s the price I pay for working at home. That, along with the ringing phone, the UPS truck, the FedEx packages, the occasional Jehovah’s Witness ringing the doorbell. I used to have an office outside of my house. When we lived in New York City, I worked at a place called The Writers Room, a large loft space divided into many cubicles. Cellphones weren’t allowed. Silence was the rule, except for in the kitchen and library, where a writer in search of conversation could always find a colleague taking a break. If it sounds like heaven, it really was. I loved that place, and it is the single thing I miss most about the city. It was the perfect environment for this writer: solitude without loneliness.

When we moved to the country, I rented an office in town. It was a retail space on the main road, with a picture window that overlooked a front yard and the street. I worked there for several years, wrote Black & White there, but then I gave it up. Every day, people told me that they saw me in there, through that picture window, sitting at my desk. It felt odd to be on display like that: resident writer at work. So I went back home, and over the last few years I wrote Devotion here in my small office on the second floor of our house. I like working at home–I really do. I can get up and stretch, do my yoga practice, take a shower in the middle of the day, go outside with the dogs (when they’re feeling well). Except…when it feels like a domestic disaster. When the guys show up to clean the air filters, or the exterminator arrives for his monthly appointment. Or when the sheer encroachment of the rest of my life–the school medical forms, soccer schedules, food shopping–suddenly seem like too much. And I wish, fleetingly, for an office, but not just any office–a office in a warren of offices where writers (not just any writers, but my favorite writer friends) would be next door, near a good cafe with just the right music playing, and just enough bustle, and good cappuccino and biscotti. Does this place exist? If it did exist, would it live up to my expectations? Would I be more productive here? More content?

Here’s one thing I know to be true. I have gotten some of my best writing done in less-than-ideal circumstances (on the subway, for instance) and often have had lousy writing days when circumstances are ideal. The possibility is always there for either scenario. Good writing day or lousy writing day; it almost seems as if we’re in control, as if it’s our choice. And to some small degree, it is. But to a larger degree, we writers are at the mercy of our own human selves: cranky, tired, happy, over-excited, grieving, nervous…whatever it is we’re feeling, whatever it is that brings us closer to, or farther away from, the page. And perfection of environment is only one very small part of all that.