Category Archives: michael chabon Love

So create

Posted on March 1, 2012 | 35 Comments

“When you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. Your tastes only narrow & exclude people. So create.” 
~ Why The Lucky Stiff

A friend shared this quote with me. It was tweeted by a guy who called himself “Why The Lucky Stiff.” I know. It’s quite an alias, and the guy was, apparently, quite a computer programmer (prolific writer, cartoonist, musician, artist). He’s very enigmatic and mysterious, and I spent way too much time learning about him and his virtual disappearance in August, 2009.

But this post isn’t about him. It’s about that quote, which has been rolling around in my head ever since I first read it. It feels very powerful to me, even though I’m not sure what Why meant when he wrote it.

Here’s my stab at it though…

Creatives need to create – to feel whole, to feel purposeful, to feel alive. Every writer I’ve ever known feels terrible when they aren’t writing. And maybe “terrible” isn’t even a strong enough word because I’m not sure it gets at the guilt, self-loathing and existential angst that writers who aren’t writing face every day. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this is true of all artists. Painters need to paint, musicians need to play, dancers need to dance.

When we don’t, we must define ourselves by lesser things – our “tastes,” which are, by definition, narrow and exclusionary. For example, if I say that I loved, loved, loved the Twilight movies, I will find my tribe, no doubt, but I will also lose a bunch of people, because that’s how tastes work. We naturally align ourselves with like-minded beings and to some degree judge the ones that don’t share our preferences.

I sincerely believe the reaction would be different if I were to say that I made the Twilight movies. Even if you didn’t like them, you might be interested in how I got into making movies, what drew me to the Twilight project, what’s next on my obviously enormously exciting horizon.

If someone tells me that they read mystery novels, our discussion will be short. I don’t read mystery novels, and I can’t think of very much to say on the subject. On the other hand, if they say they write mystery novels, I’m suddenly full of interest. I want to know if they’ve been published, how many books they’ve written, how does one write a mystery – beginning to end, or the other way around. I’m interested in the process, the experience of being a mystery writer.

There is a certain excitement around the act of creation, almost no matter what is being created. “I made a film.” “I painted a portrait.” “I started a company.” I danced, acted, sewed, knitted, wrote, built, launched… I created. There is passion there, and it’s the passion as much as the achievement itself that is fascinating, big, inclusive.

Of course I’m not saying the reason to create is so that we can be more interesting at parties; that’s just a bonus. I’m saying (or I think Why was saying) that in the act of creation we expand ourselves. We give expression to our ideas and passions, and in bringing them into the world, we are able to connect with each other; in the words of Michael Chabon, “Every work of art is one half of a secret handshake, a challenge that seeks the password, a heliograph flashed from a tower window, an act of hopeless optimism in the service of bottomless longing.”

Yeah. It’s like that… so create.

I’d love to hear your take on the quote, if you like it or don’t, what you think it means.

(Important Note: I’ve never seen or read Twilight. I have no opinion.
Please don’t yell at me.)

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The Upside of Crazy

Posted on October 20, 2010 | 54 Comments

… Yet, I would do it all over again in a hot second, mistakes and doldrums and breakdowns and all. Sometimes I could not tell you exactly why, especially when it feels pointless and pitiful, like Sisyphus with cash-flow problems. Other days, though, my writing is like a person to me – the person who, after all these years, still makes sense to me. ~ Anne Lamott, bird by bird

For the last few days, I’ve been deep in the novel-revision trenches. Having committed to my readers that I’d get them my manuscript this week (after missing my original self-imposed deadline of September 30th), I’ve been buckling down. Instead of doing my yoga, or meeting my other commitments, or keeping in touch, or eating, or brushing my teeth, I’ve been revising. I’ve reread every page I don’t know how many times, gone over every scene, every sentence, every word.

Aloud.

I’ve paced and mumbled and pulled out my hair. I’ve written myself post-it note reminders in the middle of the night that in the morning I could not decipher. (I hope those weren’t my best ideas.) On the back of a Safeway receipt, I wrote, The streetlight is important, having realized it as I slid my ATM card through the scanner at the checkout stand.

On Monday, near the end of my manuscript, I questioned whether I’d adequately justified the irrational actions of a rational character. Deciding that I hadn’t, I went back to find the places where I could pave the way more clearly, and while I was there, I found two chapters that, if split and interspersed, would move more briskly, build more tension. I printed the pages, wrote notes in the margins, circled passages, drew arrows. At one point, I had three versions of my manuscript open on the computer and in various stages of dissection.

I was frazzled, lost to the physical world around me, playing with language and plot and character and pacing, and when I finished I was exhausted. And wired. And rarefied. And I thought this…

I’m never more a writer than when I write.

It sounds funny. Obvious. But writers are notorious for not writing, and I’m no exception. Even though not writing makes me feel guilty and irritable and lesser and fluish, I sometimes avoid it. Michael Chabon has written that every work of art is an “act of hopeless optimism in the service of bottomless longing.” I agree. And frankly there are days when cleaning the refrigerator, and walking the dog, and rearranging all the furniture seem preferable to yet another day of hopeless optimism and bottomless longing.

And yet…

Monday was awesome. And Tuesday was pretty great too, and the truth is, even without the promise of publication, I’d  rather be pulling my hair out searching for the best phrase, the perfect arc, the right narrative shape, thrust, pace, voice. I’d rather be writing than… well, anything.

Yesterday I got this text from my son who will one day be a big-time filmmaker:

So here we are, waiting for an unscheduled train that might never come so that we can get that perfect movie shot, and I find myself realizing that this is what I live for… sitting at a relentlessly sunny train station for an hour to get ten seconds of artistic perfection. This is the life I want.

I texted back:  Yeah. I get that.

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Wiggling my toes

Posted on May 29, 2010 | 43 Comments

I’m intrigued by the barefoot philosophy, which is all about living light, being aware and present, being non-conformist, non-consumerist and, well, naked. Here’s what Leo Babauta, author of Zen Habits, says about that part of the barefoot philosophy:

Without shoes, you feel a bit naked, and being naked in public is scary. But it’s also an exhilarating feeling, and once you get comfortable with that nakedness, it’s kinda fun. Blogging can feel this way — you’re putting yourself out into the world, naked, and that’s scary at first. Doing anything different, where you expose a piece of yourself, is like being naked…

Nakedness is a condition I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, as a writer and as a person. I am not naturally guarded. While I can be shy sometimes, it results in a hesitance on my part – a momentary distance – not a wall. People reach across the space I create all the time, and I grab hold. In the middle, where we converge, that’s where the magic happens. It’s where hearts soar and sometimes break, where exhilaration and longing are really just two sides of the same coin.

I can be quite fearless there, one on one.

But naked out in public – in my work, on the blog – that’s harder. Ultimately, I think it’s worth it. Not every piece I write, or every post I publish, requires me to write close to my heart, but when they do, when submitting the work or pressing the “publish” button feels scary, that’s when I find the most meaningful connections occur, when I find I’m not as alone as I thought I was.

In his essay, “The Loser’s Club,” Michael Chabon writes, “Art… asserts the possibility of fellowship in a world built entirely from the materials of solitude.” For me, that’s true. I write to communicate and in communicating, connect. It amazes me how lonely we can feel in a world so crowded. I think that’s why little acts of kindness never feel little, why we are biologically altered by each others touch, why love makes us feel so alive and endings sometimes feel like little deaths…

So maybe in my physical life, I’m only comfortable going barefoot at the beach. (I love my tennies.) But in my mind, in my heart, in the words I offer up, I will strive to be barefoot… even if it means, occasionally, someone’s bound to step on my toes.

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10 Things You Might Not Know, Part 20

Posted on April 25, 2010 | 22 Comments

Okay, seriously, what better way to start your week than by learning ten new things? Or if you’re a super smarty-pants, you can just be shocked and dismayed by all the things I used to not know.

  1. First, something useful… Eating asparagus can prevent a hangover by breaking down the alcohol in your system.  Not only did I not know that delicious fact, I didn’t know that once you have a hangover, “eggs, toast, and bananas help replenish lost nutrients and set your body into toxin breakdown mode. Crackers with honey will also help flush out lingering alcohol.”
  2. I love this sentence: “The Icelandic Phallological Museum is probably the only museum in the world to contain a collection of phallic specimens belonging to all the various types of mammal found in a single country.” (I can think of nothing to add that you couldn’t learn by visiting the website.)
  3. And speaking of websites, the AP Stylebook has officially changed “web site” to “website.” I’m just dorky enough to think that’s interesting, but here’s the part I like the most. “Mashable applauded the move, while New York Times technology columnist David Pogue wasn’t all that thrilled.” Public reaction!  I am not dorky alone!
  4. Ten things in one! Here are quite beautiful pictures of the “10 most amazing transparent animals in the world.”
  5. But wait, there’s more! Water bears! I’d never heard of them before, but they are adorable AND badass! I love them!
  6. Have you heard of the Bloop? I hadn’t (until The Boy brought it to my attention). “The Bloop is the name given to an ultra-low frequency and extremely powerful underwater sound detected by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) several times during the summer of 1997. The source of the sound remains unknown.” Cool, right? (Incidentally, The Boy was also my source for #2. He’s kind of a bad influence.)
  7. The thing is… if you’ve only ever seen it written, how can you know for sure you’re saying it right? A cheat sheet – how to pronounce Michael Chabon’s name (among others).
  8. Twitter’s entire archive is headed to the Library of Congress. Every tweet since March 2006. (Immortalized. Typos and all.)
  9. And while we’re on the subject of social media (sort of), Foursquare (a mobile location-sharing application) has become a great predictor of divorce. (These stories always scare me… and remind me why I like that my cell phone is just a cell phone.)
  10. Originally, coffee was eaten… that and 15 more fun coffee facts here!

There you have it, boys and girls. Ten new things to impress your friends with. (Which makes 200 things since we started this game. Feel smarter?)

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Faking It

Posted on April 2, 2010 | 27 Comments

One of my favorite essays in Michael Chabon’s Manhood For Amateurs is called “Faking It,” and it’s about how men do that, how they tend to act like they know things they don’t and are expert at things they’ve never actually tried. (I know. Not all men. But for the sake of this post, which has absolutely nothing derogatory to say about men, stay with me.) Here is the line in “Faking It” that I love:

Perhaps in the end there is little difference between keeping one’s head and appearing to do so; perhaps the effort required to feign unconcern and control over a situation itself imparts a measure of control.

Number 3 on my list of personal commandments is “act how I want to feel,” because I believe what MC is saying is absolutely true. I remember one vacation when my oldest son was maybe two or three, my husband suggested we rent a hobie cat. I might have asked him if he’d ever sailed a hobie cat before, I don’t remember. It wouldn’t have mattered. I’m pretty sure my husband has never let a lack of experience deter him from anything, and I’m a sucker for an adventure. (The stories I could tell you…)

So, with a dry bag carrying some clothes and our lunch, we piled onto the hobie and set out. It was beautiful – bright sunshine and just enough wind to keep us skimming along without being scary. Our son, his little face partially obscured by his life vest, wore a heart-melting, exuberant grin. We were on vacation, on the water, and we were happy!

(Yes, now, cue the scary music.)

In my memory, the change in wind is sudden, a breeze to a hurricane in the space of an exhale. Our boat began to tip wildly. My husband leaned way back trying to gain control. He looked a little nervous until he caught me watching him and then he smiled heroically. In the moment that it became clear to me we were going over, I swallowed panic, leaned down and whispered in my son’s ear. “We’re going in the water now,” I said, like it was a game. “This is going to be fun. Hold onto mommy.”

I am not good in emergency situations; I still can’t believe I did that. We capsized, and my two-or-three-year-old son was gleeful. He laughed and splashed, held afloat by his life vest and unaware that this hadn’t been part of the plan.

Over my desk is this quote: “Courage is not the absence of fear but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” We make that judgment easily on a capsizing boat when there is no time to think and someone little and precious is depending on us. I think maybe the key to living a big (messy, exciting, full) life lies in doing it the rest of the time – in judging our goals more important than our doubts about being able to pull them off; honest communication (be it raw and edgy, or giddy and wild) more important than our dread of being misunderstood; connection and intimacy more important than our fear of being vulnerable, our fear of being hurt.

And sometimes, the only way to get to a place of confidence (or love, or forgiveness) is to act like you’re already there. Act how you want to feel.

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One Half Of A Secret Handshake

Posted on March 23, 2010 | 37 Comments

I’m reading Michael Chabon’s Manhood for Amateurs, which, of course, I’m loving. I’ll have more to say about it when I finish, but I wanted to share this, because it’s stuck with me since I read it in the first few pages of the book. It’s from the essay, “The Losers Club”:

Every work of art is one half of a secret handshake, a challenge that seeks the password, a heliograph flashed from a tower window, an act of hopeless optimism in the service of bottomless longing.

An act of hopeless optimism in the service of bottomless longing. I love that. When I decided to write a novel, that’s what it was. I knew the odds were against me getting published from the start. I’ve written a quirky literary novel about love and family and mental illness. There are no vampires, no zombies, no secret incriminating documents, no only a few steamy sex scenes. I wrote it anyway. And now I’m revising it, anyway. My act of hopeless optimism.

And here’s what I think. The world needs more of this particular brand of crazy. The naysayers will always be here, telling us to be careful, to stop, to consider all the valid reasons not to leap. The cynics are everywhere, and they’re noisy. My favorite professor once said to me after one of my stories was rejected, “Fuck the naysayers, j. Don’t let them turn you around.” It was good advice. I have it posted on the bulletin board above my desk.

I guess what I’m trying to say is this: I’d rather be engaged in an act of hopeless optimism than standing on the sidelines, telling people braver than I am to be careful, to stop, to consider. I’d rather leap and fall, believing my net will appear.

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2009 Bests (part 2)

Posted on December 23, 2009 | 20 Comments

Time for ten more best of 2009 challenge prompts.

Here we go…

  1. Best place. This year, I started writing in coffee shops. I’m on a quest to find the best coffee shop for scribes. My favorite so far is Bellano in Santa Clara, where the wifi is free (and doesn’t require a code), the coffee is good, the baristas smile, and they always make my latte into art.
  2. Best new food. Chad learned how to make this, and it is now my favorite food (next to cheesecake) in the whole world.
  3. Best change to the place you live. My new bathroom, of course!
  4. Best rush. This will probably sound like a cop out, but the whole year was kind of a rush. This is, after all, the year I learned to howl.
  5. Best packaging. What? Really? Now, see that’s just stupid. Packaging. I invite you all to tell me the best packaging of your year.
  6. Best tea. I did have an awesome tea at Peets last week, but I forgot to write down the name and so I’ll have to just try all their teas until I find it again. (Or call my friend and ask him what we ordered that time we stopped for tea.)
  7. Best word or phrase. Adorkable. Hands down.
  8. Best shop. Rakestraw Books. They’re an independent bookstore in Danville. I saw (touched, spoke to, possibly drooled on) Michael Chabon there. Need I say more?
  9. Best car ride. My friend Jason drove me to Half Moon Bay in September. He drives like a video game. It was dizzying.
  10. Best new person. I’ve met a lot of new people this year. Funny, creative, smart people who are making me better all the time. I can’t pick just one. I think that makes me a very lucky girl.

Got a best to share? (If it’s “packaging,” I’m on the edge of my seat.)

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Can’t resist a challenge…

Posted on December 17, 2009 | 16 Comments

There is a blog project going on now called the The Best of 2009 Blog Challenge. It’s cool. There are prompts, one for each day in December, and hundreds of bloggers all over the world are responding to them – creating hundreds of “best of” lists for 2009.   I have not been doing it. (I laughed typing that. Like maybe you’d think I was doing it, and you’d be scratching your head going, “j’s best list is very unclear, and stupid.”)

But now, suddenly, I’m interested – mostly because it’s the first time I’ve actually had a minute to check out the project. Since we’re already so far into December, I’m going to do mine in list form. I’ll do the prompts for the first 10 days now, then later, ten more, and then at the end of December, the last eleven. You play too, okay? I am actually far more interested in your lists than mine, but I will kick things off. Here goes…

My bests of 2009 so far…

  1. Best trip. Definitely that tiny little camping trip at the end of the summer when we realized we couldn’t stand the thought of a whole year without a vacation. It was spur of the moment and almost everything went wrong, but it was also incredible and moving for reasons I never did blog about, but will. Remind me; it’s cool. In the meantime, for those who weren’t reading me in the summer (or those who like reruns), I did get this post out of it: What I Didn’t Google on Vacation
  2. Restaurant moment. During the summer, I went out to dinner with The Boy. Just me and him. We’ve gone out together before, but never for dinner. We sat outside at an Italian restaurant. We watched people go by and listened to music being played in the amphitheater across the street. We engaged the waitress in a discussion of the best way to run off without paying the bill. We had a blast. We did pay the bill… we so need to do it again.
  3. Article. What Makes Us Happy by Joshua Wolf Shenk in the Atlantic. It’s long, but it’s fascinating.
  4. Book. I’m going to have to go with The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, by Michael Chabon. (And no one is surprised by that.)
  5. Night out. This one’s hard because I don’t get out much. (I laughed typing that too, though sadly, it’s true.) That said, tonight I went out with my amazing, wonderful friend (JB when she comments here) to see Where The Wild Things Are. Wow – the movie, the coffee afterward, the hour and a half gabbing in her car after they kicked us out of the coffee shop, all wonderful and soul-filling and worthy of making my best of list. So here it is.
  6. Workshop or Conference. I’m going to cheat on this one and say the Artist’s Way, even though I didn’t attend a workshop or conference (though there are such things). I’m doing the 12-week creative recovery program on my own. I’ve blogged about it before, though not nearly as much as I would have liked. Sometimes I feel a little like a zealot when it comes to this book. I picked it up because, over the years, many writers have recommended it, and this year feeling adrift and uncertain, I was drawn to the idea of a “recovery.” I will be finishing it in the next couple of weeks, and I’ll write about the experience, but for now… definitely a best of 2009.
  7. Blog find of the year. This one is hard. I’ve been blogging, and active in the blogging world, for about a year, so almost every amazing blog I’ve found, I found in 2009. I guess I’ll point you in the direction of my blog rolls. (And when you answer this question, don’t say Zebra Sounds. We’ll just all agree to let me believe it’s your favorite, but I’m hoping you guys will turn me on to some stuff I haven’t found yet. Think of this as “the best blog I want to recommend to j.” Unless I’m the only blog you read. And if that’s the case, I love you even more than I did before you told me that.)
  8. Moment of peace. I cannot think of a single best 2009 moment of peace, but I did discover yoga this year and I think that is as close as I come to “peace.” I’m actually okay with that.
  9. Challenge. My biggest 2009 challenge? Nano. No doubt about it. November was insane – I’ve never written so hard for so many days in my life. It left me exhausted, out of touch, massively behind, and in terrible need of a shower… and I already want to do it again. I need my head examined.
  10. Album. I didn’t buy many albums this year, but another wonderful friend (Tall Pajama Man to you) introduced me to Ottmar Libert’s Barcelona Nights, and I LOVE it. I play it all the time because it takes my breath away (and also there are no lyrics, so I can write to it.) Here’s a taste.

Okay, there you have it. J’s first ten “Bests of 2009.” I’d love if you did yours, and if not all ten, just pick one or however many come easily to you. Come on and play with me. You’re good at that. :-)

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