Category Archives: writing, writers, and stuff we like

I’m Glad You Asked

Posted on January 19, 2011 | 49 Comments

I read this great post on Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist blog: “How to answer the question, What do you do?” It’s all about how awkward that question can be, not just for people who don’t have a job but for people who don’t want to talk about the job they do have.

I think the question is misguided. I always have. It’s not even really what we want to know about a person, is it? What we want to know is what interests them. What makes them feel alive, passionate, energized, driven. If that’s their job, great! If not, who cares how they earn a salary?

Here’s what I love best in the post. Penelope says your answer to the question “What do you do?” matters because it “frames your story for you in a much more visceral way than it frames it for everyone else.” Answering the question with what excites you – if not your job, then your hobbies, your goals, what you’re learning about, what you’re attempting, what you believe, where you’re headed – reaffirms your direction and gives you something real to talk about. Let’s face it. If your answer reflects your discomfort with the question, there’s not going to be much to say. On the other hand, if your answer is about the thing that’s lighting you up inside, there will be plenty to talk about.

I love that. You should read the whole post… right after you play with me. Her post got me thinking about what I could say next time someone asks me what I do. Penelope says to focus on where I spend my time and energy and what I’m learning. So okay… here are three possible answers to the question, What do you do?

  1. “I’m a writer of secret documents.” I will say this with a solemn, regretful expression that conveys my frustration at not being able to tell them more, thus avoiding the whole “What do you write about?” question which really is worse than the “What do you do?” question.
  2. “I have this Love Project I’m working on.” I love talking about love. I can see myself following people around, going on and on about how I think love really is the answer, how powerful even the smallest gestures can be, how I think the Beatles had it right – not the part about love being all you need, but the part about the love you take being, in the end, equal to the love you make. They’ll stare at me, these people who have asked me what I do. They’ll look dumbfounded and maybe a little overwhelmed. I’ll smile reassuringly. I’ll decide it’s in the best interest of everyone that  I refrain from actually following people around.
  3. “I take care of two slightly neurotic rescue dogs; I just read Miranda July’s book, No one belongs here more than you and I’m about to start Jennifer Egan’s A visit from the goon squad; I do yoga, and hike, and wakeboard, and compulsively consume political news; I’m becoming a vegetarian; I’m learning to cook; The Boy has been teaching me about the history of gas masks; I’ve been trying to read more poetry; I recently saw the Coen Brothers’ True Grit and then came home and watched the original so I could compare them. I don’t think either version quite nailed the ending…” Here is where I might pause to breathe.

My point is that you can handle the question anyway you want. You can talk about your job if your job is what defines you, or you can talk about the things that make you feel most alive.

So, what will you say the next time someone asks you what you do?

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A book review, an interview, a give away, oh my!

Posted on January 2, 2011 | 43 Comments

In December, I read Julie Klam’s book, You Had Me At Woof: How Dogs Taught Me The Secrets Of Happiness.

It is divided into 11 chapters, or lessons, and it’s more than a little wonderful. I have long believed that the lessons we learn from our pets –  in patience, acceptance, love, grief, happiness, abandon – are intense, accelerated lessons in life. This might be especially true with dogs, because they tend to be less independent than, say, cats or goldfish or tarantulas; they are more apt to crave attention, be underfoot, offer their people a slobbering, rambunctious, very-in-the-now sort of love. Julie writes “I’ve always thought that dogs are spiritually superior to humans, which is why I think they have such abbreviated lives. They do their business here on earth and then move on.”

She would know. She has learned a lot from dogs. From her first true love (and heartbreak), a sweet, funny, bug-eyed Boston Terrier named Otto, she learned “the give-and-take that is needed in a relationship.” As a volunteer for Northeast Boston Terrier Rescue, she learned that “the rhythm of rescue involves expecting anything at any time.” Moses, a somber faced Boston Terrier foster-turned-adoption, taught Julie how to love again… and then, achingly, how to grieve… again. One of my favorite lines in the book is this: “I know I’d rather have any amount of time with a dog I love and suffer the mourning than not have the time at all.”

I don’t think you have to be dog lover to love You Had Me At Woof. Julie’s writing is often hilarious, as when she describes her sleepless nights with a new baby and a new puppy. “I started to cry and think that maybe in the morning I’d be able to have myself committed to a mental institution – just for a couple of days, so I could sleep.” There is a brisk, breathless quality to You Had Me At Woof, reflective, I guess, of how it feels to live the life of a wife-mother-writer-rescue volunteer in New York City. But once in a while, Julie slows the pace down just enough, and the scenes that unfold are so poignant – beautiful and heartbreaking and miraculous –  like the very best scenes of our own lives.

I so loved the book that I asked Julie if she’d let me interview her here on ZS, and she was just goofy enough to say yes… and awesome enough to agree to sign a copy of her book for one of you. Leave a comment here, and I’ll put your name in The Boy’s top hat. I’ll draw a lucky winner in time to announce it as part of the Friday List.

~~~~~~~~~~

j: Hi, Julie. I want the dog on the cover of your book to be Otto. Is it? (You can lie to me.)

Julie: The dog on the cover is Otto in the way that the cover of In Style Magazine is me. It could very well be, but it isn’t.

j: In your book, you say that “dog” is its own category of “love.” I agree. I have two big, messy, exuberant rescue dogs. I definitely work harder at our relationship than they do, and I’m willing to do that for them in a way I’m not willing to do with most people. Why do you think our dogs so completely capture our hearts?

Julie: I think some of it has to do with their completely lovely gracious spirits and the fact that they can’t talk back or disagree with us. Some of it is just an X-factor which I guess was what I meant about the dog category of love.

j: I’m curious about fostering. It seems tricky to me, taking in dogs that won’t stay, giving them love… but not too much of your heart. Some of your most hilarious stories are about dogs you’ve fostered (Sherlock just about killed me). Fostering seems so very selfless. What do you think people should think about before they decide to foster?

Clementine Eve Bows (Julie's new foster)

Julie: First if you are part of a family, you need everyone to be at least somewhat on board. It’s a big responsibility. Also, when you get a foster, you are pretty clueless about what you’re getting. The dog that walks in your door is not the one whose going to walk out it. They get more comfortable and become ‘who they are.’ And it’s your responsiblity to figure out what forever home would be the best for them. Our group has a minimum foster time of 2 weeks but you could have a foster for months before you get it vetted and assessed and find the right family. Once we find someone, we do reference checks and a home visit which also takes time, so you need to be prepared for a long-term guest. If you have the support of a good group it makes all the difference.

j: Your foster, Dahlia. Wow. That’s not really a question.

Julie: Word. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t read it, but let’s say if She Is Woman!

j: Your book is doing really well. I’ve heard many dogs have come to your signings. How does that work, exactly (asks the owner of two dogs who could seriously disrupt a reading)?

Julie: It’s AMAZING! Having done a book before that had only human signings, having a dog suddenly start barking in the middle of your reading is heaven. The atmosphere is totally different, and you really get a sense of someone based on their dog relationship.  It’s also been quite eye-opening to find out just how many dogs can read.

j: Why do you think dog books are so popular right now?

Julie: Times are hard, dog books are not.  My publisher (the great Geoff Kloske) said they’re feel good stories and you know when you read a dog book you aren’t going to get to the end and find out that the dog is actually a war criminal. I think that’s true… for the most part, anyway.

j: While I was reading about your valiant struggle to walk four dogs at once down a NYC street, two poodles sitting outside Peet’s began to bark, and right at that moment, Chad was sitting across from me reading The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, in which dogs figure quite prominently…. What do you think it means?

Julie: Dogs are preparing to take over the world. Right?

j: Exactly.

Buy You Had Me At Woof from Amazon.com or an indie bookstore near you via Indiebound

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Grabbing hold of what stirs you

Posted on December 28, 2010 | 35 Comments

I’ve been a little enamored with manifestos ever since I read Danielle Laporte’s Manifesto of Encouragement and this one from Holstee. They are beautiful, provocative, kickass and inspiring. Can’t ask for more than that.

Well, actually, you can. You can write your own beautiful, provocative, kickass, inspiring manifesto. I wrote mine in just a few minutes today (though, in fairness, I’ve spent all of December thinking about where I am, where I’m headed, and what scary, scenic, surprising roads I might want to take in 2011).

I had fun writing it. And since part of the definition of a manifesto is that it be a public declaration, here it is:

I will…  be j; aim for fearless love; act how I want to feel; connect mindfully, soulfully; inspire; be awed; attempt to affect how people see their world; touch and be touched; leap; believe in myself; trust; create; know my motivation; question; dance; make noise; be present; let go; embrace the messy; listen; collaborate; risk; and…

write about it all.  Like a mother fucker.

Here’s what I’d love. If everyone reading this would take a few minutes today to grab hold of what stirs them and write a manifesto. Then publicly declare it here, a chorus of kickassery.

*************************************

At Fear of Writing, I wrote a piece, “From the Rooftop,” all about the value of publicly stating your goals.

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Wild Thing

Posted on December 12, 2010 | 22 Comments

A few days ago, the wonderful Jennifer Garam tweeted this quote from Isadora Duncan: “You were once wild here. Don’t let them tame you.”

It spurred some fun conversation about our wilder selves, and inspired Jennifer to write a great post about hers. You should visit her blog and maybe post some of your own wild times. (Then tell me you did, so I can go read them.)

Meanwhile, the Isadora Duncan quote has been rolling around inside me like something popped loose ever since I read it. It’s a voice whispering in my ear… “How alive are you willing to be?”

As 2010 comes to a close and 2011 looms large, I’m thinking about who I am and who I want to be, plotting my course, setting goals and priorities, checking my inner compass for north. I don’t mind this process at all. In fact I like it. Clarity for someone like me can be very seductive.

And yet…

There is another part of me that rears back from my lists and maps and plans. “What about the surprises?” it asks. “What about the cool things you never thought you’d do because they never crossed your mind until the moment they fell into your path? What about being open to the unexpected, the ill-advised, the daring… the wild?”

It’s the same voice that told me the summer before last that I was way too old to never have been skinny dipping. It’s the voice that told me at 31 I should quit my job and go back to school, learn how to be a programmer; the same voice that totally ditched that programming plan about half way through my first creative writing class. It’s the voice that told me I should get out of the cave, start a blog, write a book, attempt scuba, make a life list, beckon the lovely, jump off a cliff, collaborate, teach a class, adopt an 8-year-old Ash… all unmarked territory, without a map, without a real plan.

I’ll still finish this process, this mapping. In setting goals and making plans, I’m figuring out what makes me tick, pinpointing that place where my heart and my work connect. That’s good. Necessary.

But so are the spaces… the unplanned hours and days, the sun-drenched rides on winding roads, the fields, the shores, the words and pages and stories and worlds I didn’t know I’d write… didn’t know I’d live.

This is my one precious life, and I will be wild here. Will you?

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Her Best Life

Posted on December 6, 2010 | 20 Comments

I read this post over at Scoutie Girl all about how to deal effectively with criticism. It’s smart, helpful. You should read it. But there were two sentences in particular that struck me. In discussing fear of failure, Tara Gentile wrote that if our wildest dreams succeeded, we would revel in those successes and plan for our next ones.

“But,” she says, “creative people fail. A lot.”

I read that, and it was like the sun breaking through a cloud bank for me. It was the beginning of an epiphany, one of those very cool, very rare, soul-shaking sort of realizations that usually only happen when you sell everything you own and travel to a foreign country with little more than the clothes on your back.

Creative people fail. A lot. They fail because they are willing to try things. Scary, inadvisable, evolutionary, unconventional things. New things. Creative people spend a lot of time as beginners. Over and over again. They take risks, stretch themselves, reach for something more, leap.

For a long time I’ve been struggling under the weight of my mistakes. I’ve made some big ones, and I’ve spent a lot of time feeling guilty and lost and self-conscious because of them.

What I realize now is that I’ve been focused on the wrong thing. It’s not about the mistakes I’ve made (and learned from), it’s about my willingness to make them in the first place.

Creative people fail. A lot. Sometimes spectacularly. I suspect the potential for colossal screw ups is directly proportional to the amount of time one spends leaping into unfamiliar territory. Creative people do that a lot too – leap into unfamiliar territory. Because they know that’s where all the real learning takes place, the real challenges, excitement, passion, joys, successes. They fail because they’re willing to fail, even though it sucks and it hurts and sometimes it’s devastating. They know, eventually, it becomes the next jumping off place, as long as they’re willing to jump.

You can only get somewhere new by going somewhere new – in your head, in your heart, in the world. Instead of punishing myself for my missteps, I’ve decided to start loving the girl who seems so willing, always, to step off the beaten path, convinced, despite the more-than-occasional floundering, that that’s where her best life is.

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The Truth Post

Posted on November 28, 2010 | 33 Comments

I’ve been carrying this post around inside me for a while, thinking a lot lately about truth. Like everyone, I guess, I’m drawn to a notion of truth that is sturdy, pure, unyielding. You can build a nation on the kind of truth I’m drawn to, expose corruption, solve mysteries, fight evil, save your soul, set yourself free. It is powerful, inalienable, solid.

And I’m not sure it actually exists.

I had a falling out with a friend. “A falling out” doesn’t feel like the right phrase, but for purposes of discussing truth, it will do. We, my friend and I, shared the experience of our relationship, its ups, its downs, its ultimate demise. We shared the facts of it, but our stories are drastically different. I feel sure that my version, which does acknowledge my role in the drama, is right. True. It stuns and humbles me that my friend believes his version is true as well.

As a writer, this question of truth presents particular challenges. I believe that writers cannot shy away from the truth. Even in works of fiction, the goal is truth. A writer must depict humanity honestly (and lovingly, I think, despite all our obvious shortcomings, but there may be room for debate on that).

As I blog and begin to write more personal pieces, I come to this place of questioning again and again: how truthful, how open and brave and unflinching, am I willing to be?

I just finished reading Stephen Elliott’s memoir, The Adderall Diaries. In his (open, brave, unflinching) book, and elsewhere, he talks a lot about truth. He says the people in his life should expect to be written about. He usually changes their names, and his intent is not to hurt anyone, but sometimes he does. He is prepared, always, to accept the consequences of his writing.

I wonder if that’s what it comes down to… being willing to accept the consequences of writing your truth, realizing that it is, in fact, only your truth. I asked a friend if it was hard to write honestly about her mother. She said, “No, but I waited until my mother was dead.”

I know this: truth is related to, but not synonymous with the facts. It may be universal but it is also deeply personal, and conveying it – in writing and in life – requires bravery more than poetry. It requires being open and curious and, I think, maybe generous. It involves an acceptance that truth does not lie simply in a statement of facts, but rather it is mixed up in our understanding of those facts, our experience of them. Truth is its own concoction, part verifiable details and part psychology, emotion, personal history. Truth is in our blood and bones and breath; it is the space between words just as forcefully as it is the words themselves.

Writing (and living and loving) truthfully is a commitment. It’s not necessarily about sharing everything with the world, but it does mean giving fully, openly, compassionately what we do share. It is the attempt, I think, to shine a light so everyone can see… even knowing that what we see, each of us, won’t be exactly the same.

Over at The Rumpus, Sari Botton is writing a series called “Conversations with writers braver than me.” It’s wonderful, and valuable to any writer navigating the tricky waters of memoir… and/or truthiness.

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Fearless

Posted on November 17, 2010 | 26 Comments

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.  ~ Ambrose Redmoon

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be fearless. Not the dictionary definition, but the one my life has written for me, on my heart, in my soul.

It’s not about the things you might think. It’s not about being certain, or having confidence in myself, or being strong or surefooted or righteous. All of that would be great, but what I aspire to doesn’t require any of it. It requires that I do the things that scare me.

I once said that to a friend and she said, “I’ve had enough fear in my life. I don’t need to do the things that scare me. I need to do the things that make me happy.” I get that. For her, the things that make her happy and the things that scare her are not the same.

For me, they very often are.

A professor once asked me what kind of writer I wanted to be. She said that I was clever, and I could make money as a writer being clever if that’s what I wanted. “But every now and then, you go beyond clever,” she said, “and you grab hold of something honest and real. And sometimes, right before you get scared and back away, you write a little magic.”

She said a lot of other things too, not all of it easy to hear. It was a tough love speech, after which, I didn’t write for six months. When I finally started writing again, I wrote stories that were earnest and awkward and not at all clever. They weren’t good either, but they were brave. I had decided what kind of writer I wanted to be, and those stories were the beginning.

Now I’m at that place again, only it’s not just about writing.

If I had a life professor, this is the part where she’d ask me what kind of person I want to be. She’d tell me that I’m nice enough and funny enough, and I can have a pretty good life being nice and funny.” But every now and then you go beyond nice and funny,” she’d say. “You leap when you can’t see your landing, give your heart when you fear it might get broken, write words that scare you and then show them to people who might reject you. You risk, and, lo and behold, you land. You love. You tell your story and are understood… You live a little magic.”

She might say other things too, not all of it easy to hear, but it doesn’t matter because I don’t have a life professor. I just have me, standing at a crossroads again, not without fear but making the judgment that something else, in fact a whole damn world of something elses – honesty, passion, adventure, truth, forgiveness, flight, love, magic – THAT life is more important than fear.

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What is your sentence?

Posted on November 10, 2010 | 49 Comments

Those in the know always advise writers to come up with a sentence – one sentence – that will sell their book to an agent or publisher or potential reader. The elevator pitch. The idea is that you’ve got just a few seconds to grab someone’s attention and make them ask for more, so the sentence has to be hard-working. It has to describe the book in a way that is intriguing, unique and truthful.

Oh, and if you can manage to also be engaging, hilarious, haunting, profound and dazzling, all the better.

Needless to say, it’s a daunting challenge.

A week or so ago, my friend sent me a link to this post by Daniel Pink, which is all about coming up with a sentence that distills your life, not where you’ve been, but who you are, why you’re here. “It’s tough, but it’s powerful,” Pink says, and I believe him. I can feel the power in it, in having that kind of clarity, a place to touch down all the time.

Daniel Pink’s sentence is: “He wrote books that helped people see their world a little more clearly.”

Not sure why it’s in the past tense. I think your life sentence should absolutely be an immediate, alive, in-the-now kind of thing. That aside, I love the plain unadorned heart of his sentence. It’s not dazzling; it’s just true. It’s a definition of North for him, a reminder, a one-sentence internal compass. It’s general enough to allow him room to rock the writing world in a lot of ways, but it’s specific too. He is a writer first, not a coach or a motivational speaker or any of the myriad of things that come to mind when I think of Daniel Pink.

I clicked the video he mentions in the post and in it, he talks about two questions you should ask yourself all the time. The first is “What is my sentence?” The second is “Was I better today than yesterday?” The first, I think, grounds you, and the second encourages evolution, risk, even flight.

Anyone who reads ZS regularly (or even irregularly) knows that I’m restless, curious, distractible, prone to leaps and bouts of whimsy. It surprises me that I’m drawn to this idea of a life sentence, but I am. I like the challenge of a sentence that gives me direction but allows for exploration and adventure.

When my friend sent me the link, her subject said simply, “Do This.” So I’m going to. Before I put up Friday’s list, I’ll come up with my sentence and write it in the comments. I wanted to invite you guys to do it with me, because it’ll be fun, and because I don’t think I’m the only one weathering the occasional existential crisis. And I think there’s value in asking yourself periodically why you’re here.

What do you think?

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When It’s Not A Blog Post

Posted on November 3, 2010 | 45 Comments

I’m late getting this post up. Not late-late. It’s still Wednesday, post day, but late in the sense that I usually post in the wee hours of the morning. The hour is not wee anymore, and for some of you, it’s not even morning.

I tried to write this post last night. A post about why I’ve been having some trouble blogging lately. I was going to make it applicable to non-bloggers too because I love my non-blogging readers more than I can say, and I never want them to feel left out. (Hi, mom!) And anyway, my troubles staying focused, managing my time, being creative in the midst of chaos, holding tight to my sense of self feel universal. I felt confident I could write a post for everyone.

So last night I sat down like I always do and started writing about how busy I am. Crazy busy. A bit overwhelmed, in fact, but I am not one who thinks that’s a bad thing, even if it does make blogging on a schedule  harder. I started writing about that, but soon I was writing about something else, something more personally thorny and frustrating and confusing, something I’ve been trying to work my way through for a while. I wrote a lot of words before I realized it wasn’t a blog post. I’m not sure what it was. A journal entry, a monologue, a letter to whom it may concern, a therapy session maybe…

But not a blog post. At least, not a Zebra Sounds post.

So I deleted it (and by delete I mean that I created a folder called j-works-through-her-shit, and I put it in there), and then I went to bed because I couldn’t figure out what to do with this space, and I didn’t want to subject you to a desperation post. (You’re welcome!)

But this morning I thought I should tell you what happened, because in this day of instant mass-communication, where a tweet can be seen by thousands of people in an instant; where a Facebook status written in frustration can have widespread, unintended consequences; when a YouTube post can spread like wild-fire and not for the reason its creator intended; when “going-viral” is every writer’s (filmmaker’s, artist’s, pundit’s) goal… I think you have to ask yourself all the time… what kind of writer/blogger/tweeter/facebooker do I want to be?

I realized last night that the stuff I’m working through isn’t bloggable – not yet – and the question I have to ask myself every time I post is, “why?” Am I writing this to reach out, touch, connect, inform, entertain… or am I writing it because I’m hurting and I want the person who hurt me (or pissed me off, or treated me unfairly) to read it and feel bad. I think questioning our motivation might be even more critical on Twitter and in Facebook, where it is so easy to dash something off out of anger or fear or frustration.

I’ve done it. And regretted it.

Have you? Does our easy access to literally millions of people mean that we have a greater responsibility than ever to consider what we say before we say it? I think it does. But I also think that the most valuable writing is sometimes the most vulnerable, the most naked and honest and fierce. Is it a matter of balance? Of considering the consequences and deciding if you can live with them?

I’m not sure… What do you think?

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The Friday List 10/22/2010

Posted on October 22, 2010 | 20 Comments

Every Friday, a list of things I’m dying to tell you about.

  1. I find this photo,  The Cloth in the Green House, from Drmstream, mesmerizing, as well as what he writes about the beauty of ordinary (and forgotten) things: In decay, “they dis­cover a disheveled grace, like an aged beauty cap­tured in a soul-searing smile.” Wow.
  2. I love everything about Beautiful Oops. I’d like a t-shirt that says Beautiful Oops.
  3. The Oatmeal strikes again! I could not stop laughing at “This is what my car needs.”
  4. In case you were worried,  here is why Google will never rule the world.
  5. Okay, Bestie x Bestie is completely silly. It has no redeeming value… except for the therapeutic value of a good giggle.
  6. I don’t even know exactly what “textured pictures” are, but I know what I like, and these “24 Wonderfully Textured Pictures” are captivating. I think I’m going to write stories about them.
  7. This 3-minute film, Preguntas Hermosas is absolutely stunning.

Time for some fanfare! On Wednesday night, I attached my manuscript to an email expressing my undying gratitude to my two readers, took a deep breath, and hit SEND. Yay!

What did you do this week?

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