Thanks for your advice Katie, Kim, and Tom. I decided to drop the class. I'm sure it would have been great and all but I also realized something else: I love my job. And a 28-year-old with as much work experience as me (but a masters from the Kennedy School) is shaping up to be my new boss. So, instead of a fun writing class, I will be learning how to manage non-profit organizations (financially no less) so that I can keep my new boss in line (and some day give Harvard a reason to make me my own boss).
Creatively, I'm a disappointment, I know. For once, practicality wins.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
I second that emotion
There's something to be said for letting the story stand on its own. So I guess in that way I agree with Shana's fancy Hahvuhd teachuh. I know in my writing I have a hard time keeping hands off-- seems like I'm always judging my characters or inserting my emotion into the scenery and language instead of just letting it be. But no emotion, period? Then why tell the story at all? Maybe your instructor just means the old show-don't-tell: choose the right story, tell it simply and honestly, and it will affect your readers personally without you having to beat them over the head with it. I've been reading Lawrence Wechler (a seminal Kim fave), and he does non-fiction unbelievably well, just by noticing how different pieces of the world fit together. Maybe check him out.
In other news, I got an interview at Harvard for this Friday! ...hopefully I'm not jinxing anything. So as you may have guessed, I'll be in Boston this weekend, and so excited to be back so soon after graduation. Maybe we should have a meeting of the Midnight Society, um, I mean, The Attic Office...a little tea, a little 'I Remember'? Also, can I invite Sara Rice to join? She's BC 08, former president of the English Association, and actively writing. (It's true, she just sent me a poem the other day.)
In other news, I got an interview at Harvard for this Friday! ...hopefully I'm not jinxing anything. So as you may have guessed, I'll be in Boston this weekend, and so excited to be back so soon after graduation. Maybe we should have a meeting of the Midnight Society, um, I mean, The Attic Office...a little tea, a little 'I Remember'? Also, can I invite Sara Rice to join? She's BC 08, former president of the English Association, and actively writing. (It's true, she just sent me a poem the other day.)
Monday, June 23, 2008
after reading google docs, a long p.s.
So, I'm reading these gorgeous poems and pieces on google.docs and feeling something between the lines, something like when does this all add up to something? or how do I go on doing this and why? I don't have answers to these questions (sometimes they aren't even questions. They're like a constant pressure.), but I thought before I left I'd remind you of some things I've found helpful as you start moving (and we're always returning to this place--between projects, when we change jobs or geographical location, etc.) between being a sprinter to being a marathon runner. So, some thoughts:
Remember that everything you do to empower a clear, gentle internal voice/presence/self inside yourself is helpful.
Everyone comes with one of these, it's just that some of us (and although I don't know the details of each of your histories, generally speaking writers share a little trauma, a little outsiderness) have very loud and painful contradictory voices that drown it out. Sometimes it's tempting to think that we need to build up an inner cheerleader to counteract the inner critic. In my experience it doesn't work. It feels false. A little cheerleading is good, but you don't basically trust it. What you do trust (because it's deeper than trust. It doesn't ask for your acknowledgment) is that part of yourself that can look on your worst qualities without getting panicky and angry and your best qualities without trying to cling to them or wear them like a little good-person outfit. You might have become aware of this part of yourself when you've finished sobbing yourself into silence or been in extreme physical pain (childbirth comes to my mind) or that strangely clear moment when you get great news, just before you start grasping it. In any case, it's important to remember that it's there.
Commentary and feelings that come from this place share a tone that you can learn to recognize--there is usually a quality of clarity or simplicity (like a glass of fresh water, a single leaf) and a tone of gentleness.
You can pretty much count on the fact that anything that sounds angry, funny but slightly hating, desperate, depressed, etc. is not from this place. Nothing wrong with those emotions--that's the materials you get with this incarnation. It's your party package. It's what you are destined to create with. It's all good from the creative's perspective--but don't let those voices have the final say. Don't make decisions about your writing from that place, and try to keep one hand on the truest part of yourself at all times.
A note: you may notice that when the writing has taken you under its wings, and you are just watching that ink, that you feel something akin to being written through. People feel inspired, that is--in spirited. Depending on your spiritual orientation you might say with a Christian, "I let the divine in me speak," or with a Buddhist "I wrote from a state of luminous emptiness" or with a more secular mind, "I was in the zone." All valid. It is a wonderful state--usually brief and totally involving. We can be writing about the most gut-wrenching things and the most exhausting pitch, but what is carrying us is that calm, kind watching part of ourselves saying, "Go ahead. Yes. And yes. Yes."
The question is how to empower this part of yourself that allows you to stretch out into larger projects, to do the deep spelunking that helps you discover the subject matter, etc. There are no tricks here. Some people find that stretches of repetitive motion is a helpful way to quiet all those other freaked out voices (grasping, aversion, and passivity are the usual categories)--swimming, long walks (get off the bus early. Drive your car to a different lot.). Some of you may have found long car trips do something similar. After a while you're going to get bored of your usual mental loops and deeper clarity arises.
Sometimes it helps to read a book or be with a person who embodies that voice. What's important here is to remember that they are only a reflection of what is already inside you. In fact, that's my biggest hint about this--the most important thing, the most stabilizing thing you can remember as you sit down to write and every section of your ego starts dancing the hootchie kootchie around your worst fears is that there is a clear and gentle part of yourself under that noise. Sometimes we've had things happen in our lives or been so poorly parented (or worse) that we can think that we simply don't have that quality, that we have to find it outside ourselves. For writers this can lead to needing to get some reinforcement from outside--and if you're a beginning writer, there will be precious little of that. You can spend a long, long time and loads of energy trying to get reinforcement that won't feel nearly as good as that quiet place in yourself. (Hemingway said that the worst thing that happened to him was the Nobel Prize.)
So remember that it's there, that no one can or every could take it from you. Even if you can only feel it .001 percent of your time at the table, you can trust that it is there in you, and when all the ego freakout ends, it will be lying there at the bottom of the pool like a gold coin.
And no, there are no exceptions. It came with you from the factory. Everything else is story--wonderful, terrible, vivid story. And when you can see that, it's so much easier to tell them.
Love to you and the work that's inside you,
Kim
Remember that everything you do to empower a clear, gentle internal voice/presence/self inside yourself is helpful.
Everyone comes with one of these, it's just that some of us (and although I don't know the details of each of your histories, generally speaking writers share a little trauma, a little outsiderness) have very loud and painful contradictory voices that drown it out. Sometimes it's tempting to think that we need to build up an inner cheerleader to counteract the inner critic. In my experience it doesn't work. It feels false. A little cheerleading is good, but you don't basically trust it. What you do trust (because it's deeper than trust. It doesn't ask for your acknowledgment) is that part of yourself that can look on your worst qualities without getting panicky and angry and your best qualities without trying to cling to them or wear them like a little good-person outfit. You might have become aware of this part of yourself when you've finished sobbing yourself into silence or been in extreme physical pain (childbirth comes to my mind) or that strangely clear moment when you get great news, just before you start grasping it. In any case, it's important to remember that it's there.
Commentary and feelings that come from this place share a tone that you can learn to recognize--there is usually a quality of clarity or simplicity (like a glass of fresh water, a single leaf) and a tone of gentleness.
You can pretty much count on the fact that anything that sounds angry, funny but slightly hating, desperate, depressed, etc. is not from this place. Nothing wrong with those emotions--that's the materials you get with this incarnation. It's your party package. It's what you are destined to create with. It's all good from the creative's perspective--but don't let those voices have the final say. Don't make decisions about your writing from that place, and try to keep one hand on the truest part of yourself at all times.
A note: you may notice that when the writing has taken you under its wings, and you are just watching that ink, that you feel something akin to being written through. People feel inspired, that is--in spirited. Depending on your spiritual orientation you might say with a Christian, "I let the divine in me speak," or with a Buddhist "I wrote from a state of luminous emptiness" or with a more secular mind, "I was in the zone." All valid. It is a wonderful state--usually brief and totally involving. We can be writing about the most gut-wrenching things and the most exhausting pitch, but what is carrying us is that calm, kind watching part of ourselves saying, "Go ahead. Yes. And yes. Yes."
The question is how to empower this part of yourself that allows you to stretch out into larger projects, to do the deep spelunking that helps you discover the subject matter, etc. There are no tricks here. Some people find that stretches of repetitive motion is a helpful way to quiet all those other freaked out voices (grasping, aversion, and passivity are the usual categories)--swimming, long walks (get off the bus early. Drive your car to a different lot.). Some of you may have found long car trips do something similar. After a while you're going to get bored of your usual mental loops and deeper clarity arises.
Sometimes it helps to read a book or be with a person who embodies that voice. What's important here is to remember that they are only a reflection of what is already inside you. In fact, that's my biggest hint about this--the most important thing, the most stabilizing thing you can remember as you sit down to write and every section of your ego starts dancing the hootchie kootchie around your worst fears is that there is a clear and gentle part of yourself under that noise. Sometimes we've had things happen in our lives or been so poorly parented (or worse) that we can think that we simply don't have that quality, that we have to find it outside ourselves. For writers this can lead to needing to get some reinforcement from outside--and if you're a beginning writer, there will be precious little of that. You can spend a long, long time and loads of energy trying to get reinforcement that won't feel nearly as good as that quiet place in yourself. (Hemingway said that the worst thing that happened to him was the Nobel Prize.)
So remember that it's there, that no one can or every could take it from you. Even if you can only feel it .001 percent of your time at the table, you can trust that it is there in you, and when all the ego freakout ends, it will be lying there at the bottom of the pool like a gold coin.
And no, there are no exceptions. It came with you from the factory. Everything else is story--wonderful, terrible, vivid story. And when you can see that, it's so much easier to tell them.
Love to you and the work that's inside you,
Kim
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Whale Cove
Hey Attica Officini,
I'm off to Whale Cove this week, so I wanted to say goodbye and surf around the office and admire. All sorts of wonderful things going on everywhere. Don't think I'm not wishing you well when you don't hear from me or that I don't like what I'm reading. Remember I'm supposed to disappear. That's my Cheshire cat-like job. Then you go on adventuring, hopefully with a sense of my smile encouraging you from somewhere over your left shoulder blade.
No, a little lower. Farther to the right. Yeah. Right there.
Keep doing what you're doing, and even a little weirder. A little strangeness is a very good thing. And I'll be admiring.
Go ahead and write without judging. Follow those little painful places where the pulse is. I've got your back.
Love,
Kim
I'm off to Whale Cove this week, so I wanted to say goodbye and surf around the office and admire. All sorts of wonderful things going on everywhere. Don't think I'm not wishing you well when you don't hear from me or that I don't like what I'm reading. Remember I'm supposed to disappear. That's my Cheshire cat-like job. Then you go on adventuring, hopefully with a sense of my smile encouraging you from somewhere over your left shoulder blade.
No, a little lower. Farther to the right. Yeah. Right there.
Keep doing what you're doing, and even a little weirder. A little strangeness is a very good thing. And I'll be admiring.
Go ahead and write without judging. Follow those little painful places where the pulse is. I've got your back.
Love,
Kim
Friday, June 20, 2008
So I got angry at Rolling Stone for being so cool...
and I just sent a song, 'boom,' to "Theatticoffice" Gmail account, so you can all access/ download it. Let that count for my submission, and maybe I'll dig up something else. The song is new, hasn't been revised, and I kind of like it as an opener for this ep project I'm doing with a former student of Kim's (Dan Viafore -- BC grad a few years ago: anyone know him?). Any ideas would be great - whether it coheres, what it's saying, I'm not sure. I think it needs to find its form still. I have an idea for a new ending already. [technology wise -- it was originally a .wav file, but I converted it to .mp3 (I think)].
I second the welcome, Caitlin. And I'm working towards the comments, it's been a busy week. By sunday.
Let me also recommend Luke Oleksa for admittance to the Finer Things Club. He's an interesting guy; it's not like we roomed together in Bath, England for a semester. Something tells me Katie had Luke in mind too. I read minds, I'm just that mis-styxal.
I second the welcome, Caitlin. And I'm working towards the comments, it's been a busy week. By sunday.
Let me also recommend Luke Oleksa for admittance to the Finer Things Club. He's an interesting guy; it's not like we roomed together in Bath, England for a semester. Something tells me Katie had Luke in mind too. I read minds, I'm just that mis-styxal.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Two posts in one day...
I need a life. Or a job.
Welcome to the blog, Caitlin!
And to everybody: can we invite more people to join this, if we know they're writing and have an interest? Or should we keep it to writers who are connected through the wonderful Kim?
Do we vote?
Welcome to the blog, Caitlin!
And to everybody: can we invite more people to join this, if we know they're writing and have an interest? Or should we keep it to writers who are connected through the wonderful Kim?
Do we vote?
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