Rewriting Miss Penny

In July, I fly to NYC to pick up a manuscript that has been long in the writing to do a bit of editing, re-structuring and generally pulling the storyline together. It has taken Penny 10 years, maybe more to put it together, but even longer than that when you count the years it was tumbling in the writer's mind.
I know the manuscript already, had seen it in a very very rough stage at a writer's workshop at UCLA. So that part is good, but the real allure was the writer herself.

They just don't make 'em like this anymore.

Miss Penny grew up in Manhattan during WWII. Her parents were wealthy, and so Penny enjoyed the type of private school where you throw ceramics and talk about communism while planning your next trip to Paris or Madrid. She was a model, John Ford was entranced by her and flew her to Hollywood for a screen test. She became a writer, a journalist, then a successful Chief Editor of a fashion magazine based in NYC in the 60's and 70's. She worked for the papers, she knew all the designers, she drove a convertible sportscar and bought a huge 4 story townhouse in Greenwich Village.

She used to swap parking spaces with Calvin Trillin, dated other famous authors like Tobias Wolff who decided she liked poodles more than men. And speaking of, she had several husbands though only one daughter. The author traveled through Bamiyan in the 1960's, left publishing and became a filmmaker. She is the most fun person to have a drink with, the worst driver when sober. Needless to say, this woman has a history and stories like hers are ones that you come across and think, "No, that can't be true."

But then you find out that it is.
Oh, how much fun I'll have!

Irreverent Conferencing

Fellow writer John Yelverton shared this with me. This passage is quoted in The Long Embrace, a biography of Raymond Chandler by Judith Freeman.

Raymond Chandler wrote this in 1950 called "A Couple of Writers."

"...Just a flat emptiness. The emptiness of a writer who can't think of anything to write, and that's a pretty awful painful emptiness, but for some reason it never even approaches tragedy. Jesus, we're the most useless people in the world. There must be a hell of a lot of us, too, all lonely, all empty, all poor, all gritted with small mean worries that have no dignity. All trying like men caught in a bog to get some firm ground under our feet and knowing all the time it doesn't make a damn bit of difference whether we do or not.

We ought to have a convention somewhere, some place like Aspen, Colorado, some place where the air is very clear and sharp and stimulating and we can bounce our little derived intelligences against one another's hard little minds. Maybe for just a little while we'd feel as if we really had talent. All the world's would-be writers, the guys and girls that have education and will and desire and hope and nothing else. They know all there is to know about how it's done, except they can't do it. They've studied hard and imitated the hell out of everybody that ever rang the bell. What a fine bunch of nothing we would be, he thought. We'd hone each other razor sharp. The air would crackle with the snapping of our dreams. But the trouble is, it couldn't last. When the convention is over and we'd have to go back home and sit in front of the damn piece of metal that puts words down on the paper. Yeah, we sit there waiting--like a guy waiting in the death house."

John thinks that Raymond was down when he wrote it.

So now, fifty-eight years later, the lady (me) speaks to the grumpy protagonist in the late Mr. Chandler's story:

Oh, why bother with the pretense of a writer's conference? Especially if we know the crackle and sizzle just won't last? Who needs to be reminded that the lady in front of you submitted a short story to journals 77 times before having anything accepted? Or the girl who spent $60 grand on an MFA can't get a job at a University, nor can she afford to move to NYC and no one wants her manuscript? Do we need to get embroiled in the font controversy and hear that if you submit in Courrier rather than Times, the lackeys below will think you're a neanderthal? Does it really matter whether or not the group you've been assigned to think your trans gender protagonist would be better as a metro sexual male, and do we really need handouts with passages from Wittgenstein and Gardner with no opportunity to discuss what they were saying or acknowledge the crossover between fine arts and writing?

No. I say go on a cruise. Why not a cruise of writers, where the pages are lost below deck, everyone plays drinking games, goes for broke in the casinos and then uses rusty social skills and reacquaints themselves with the concept of "dressing for dinner?"

At least the booze would be decent, we'd know the life stories were bullshit and there'd be time for outrage and fun. That's exactly what I think of the $1500 spent for a conference fee. Better to upgrade and get a balcony view room on a good cruise line, workshop lightly, flirt outrageously with someone you'll never see again, and have a really great time. And there'd be no academia la la la.

And if Josephine Damian and Chumplet Writes came along, at least there'd be a few saucy minxes.

Writer Impossible: Addicted To Workshops

Workshop Writer 1: The writer has been taking ten-week workshops for years. He has enjoyed the weekly inspiration, finds it necessary to continue writing, loves the camaraderie of other writers, and yet, the writer has not finished his novel, in fact, still stumbles with the style, and has yet to figure out how the novel ends. When he takes a few weeks off, he quits writing, but claims that the 3 week boar hunting trip he took in Texas served as great material to be inserted somewhere in his book.

Workshop Writer 2: This writer has a 1000 page novel and has been working on it steadily for about 7 years. It is written in multiple perspectives, has a storyline that goes beyond War and Peace. He attends conferences regularly, jetting off to Squaw Valley, Maui and driving anywhere within a six hour radius. Sometimes he hears the same speakers. Often he signs up for the additional workshops and takes the same teacher. His pitch is quick and efficient because he has been pitching the same three chapters for seven years. He can say "Your protagonist does not have that... je ne sais quois," hand your paper back, while blowing smoke from a Gitane.

Workshop Writer 3: This writer takes workshops paid via credit card, a home equity loan, or by a spouse or much younger girlfriend who has it on a promise that when they finish the book, the writer will sell it, get a 7-figure advance, and they'll be swimming in money. Despite his arrears, he too finds it difficult to finish his book. He struggles with money and has mentioned that maybe a rich relative will die and leave him a bundle so that he can live the life of Henry Miller in Big Sur, with a new wife or new much younger girlfriend.

Workshop Writer 4: Works all day, takes an occasional workshop at night. Works on his novel sporadically, as time or inspiration permits. Has to miss some meeting because, well, life is busy. When he doesn't go to the workshop, he doesn't write. And even when in the workshop, he'll often dash off the week's pages in one sitting in an afternoon, or worse --egads! at work. When he passes them out to his peers for critique, he apologizes profusely for the quality, saying he didn't have time, dashed them out at work --as if no one else is as busy or even busier.

Yet any one of these could make it someday. Life's a crap shoot that way, innit it?

When I decided to take the jump into fiction (and long after I'd gotten my baccalaureate in fine arts), I decided to enroll in classes at the university extension writers' program. I found the experience invaluable. So I took them for years, passing through workshops on short story, literature, poetry and novel writing. It was my education, more to the point, it was where my skills were honed. But as would be expected, eventually the same things were being repeated. This wasn't a bad thing, rather it was an indication that I'd learned everything from them. It was time to write on my own. This wasn't as hard as others might think. It's how most writers write. By themselves, with the feedback of just a few other writers. In fact, I found it liberating to finally move away from the university stuff, and work on many projects, really stretching myself. I've managed to keep track of friends by helping form a group, The Writerly Pause.

Lesson learned: If you're taking workshops, do a reality check. Workshops are expensive ($500 for a ten week course, not including parking, gasoline, food, supplies and your time), so the pay off has to be not only to be in gaining the strength to do it everyday, but also improving and becoming a deeper writer. Make sure that it's not the taking of workshops that makes you identify yourself as a writer, but the reward of steadily working on your own --doing it everyday, learning, improving and finishing a piece.

Writer Impossible: Hammered By The Critique

Recently, I was googling a favorite author of mine, Joan Didion. Among the many articles I came across was one that had been written in 1987. It was posted because it was part of a university class curriculum. It was by a woman journalist, who loathed Didion and detailed the reasons why. She ripped her prose to shreds. She also got personal and ripped Didion too.

I looked up the woman. She died 20 years ago. This was the only piece of her writing I could find on the web. She must've done more. Yet, this venal example of her abilities is the only thing left. I just thought what a truly shitty thing to be remembered for. Something so out there, so mean, an outright rant.

In the same vein, last night I talked to an old writer friend. He's an editor of film, even teaches. For the past few years he's been taking writing classes and working on a novel. He's noticed that the feedback he's getting from peers is brutal in a way that made even him pause. In other words, it wasn't constructive. Is it the isolation of blogging, the chatter of forums, has this free for all passed into circles where trust is a necessary ingredient to helping someone become stronger, more perceptive? I knew what he meant, and frankly, I've often had the same worries.

Every writer has peers either in their critique group or in their writing programs who just can't resist putting forth vitriol at your expense. Or as an instructor once said, "Often, the worst offenders are expressing their feelings about the weaknesses in their own writing onto yours."

If I had an award to give to the world's worst amateur critics, it'd be to these two characters. One had the habit writing notes in the margin in very large CAPITAL LETTERS. I knew it was nothing personal, but it felt like shouting. He also used cheap shots, comparing characters to cartoons, bad movies ("WHY IS EVERY CHARACTER LIKE A BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIE?"). He'd always lead in with every negative thing he could dredge up. Worse, when he got feedback on his own stuff, he'd play himself up as the victim, ("I'M SO GLAD YOU USED ME TO LEARN ON.") Feckless bore. The other was known to use arch sarcasm, indirect points, ultimately trying to make himself look smarter. Oh, here's a third: a very overweight, unhappy lawyer who'd look up over her reading glasses, shake her head, and do the "tsk, tsk" thing to the writer.

Mind you, critiques are supposed to point out weaknesses, inconsistencies, and stretches of unbelievability. If you're not responding to something as you think the author has intended, it's perfectly valid to say so. If something is dragging, you can write, "tighten," or "pick up the pace," or "you've said this before." If there's a character who isn't quite clear, you can write, "tell me more," or even "not clear." The point of this being, is that it is possible to be specific about what isn't working without being dismissive or sarcastic. It's also important to show them what is working, and if ever there's a place for capital letters in the margin, it's there! "THIS WORKS! DO MORE!"

Now, the surprising thing was this: they were the most passive individuals you'd ever meet. However, they had major streaks of passive aggression. And none of them had the writing chops to show someone how to push something forward and make it stronger.

Anyway, if any of the three have blogs, I'm sure they're absolute hell.

But mostly on themselves. Because unless there's ever a universal meltdown of servers, what they say or write will be there forever. It'll be a reflection on who they are, what they think of themselves, and how they treat others. So I guess in this age of unprecedented self expression made easy by the internet, it all comes down to this: what isn't said is as important as what is.