Sentence Length (Despite the Failing Economy--Personal and Global)

A million little thoughts are dancing in my head about writing despite the thunderous weights of the disasters that are our own personal lives that threaten to descend at any moment and squash my dancing filaments, (you know, the usual suspects--finances, fatality, failed romances, fuel depletion, etc.) And yet, ridiculously and miraculously I am thinking about sentences. And tricks. And love.

Today I went to my internship at a small but mighty publishing company, a place I love for its location within a building for artists and for its old-fashioned printing presses that are still used with honor and love, and as usual I felt a certain pride and excitement at being involved in "the process"--that magical germination of a manuscript from slush pile to bestseller. Granted-I mostly see the slush, and very rarely does a gem make it all the way to bestseller, but nonetheless--I honor my craft and I love the editorial journey. I thrill to examine manuscripts and determine what exactly would make it work, make it great, and make it sell. 

Except today was different. Today I looked at the introductory pages of a work already well on its journey to publication and I was disappointed. There were many spectacular and brilliant aspects of this text, but for me the point of view was arbitrary and irritating. This is a subject I could ramble on and on about in a boring way for many paragraphs and it would probably matter only to me, and so I jump to a far more fascinating topic: sentence length, the subject of irritation for the other intern on duty. And of course, given the topic of all of my blogs, I must address one more topic: love. 

(Hah! You think--how will she pull this off? A blog about sentence length and love? Just watch.)

Yes- LOVE and SENTENCE LENGTH. Here goes: 

[the following is a play depicting the conversation about sentence length I had with Fellow Intern... the love comes later, in the third or fourth act]

ACT 1. Picture two erudite interns sipping caffeinated beverages. Neither wants to admit they are dismayed by the manuscript they are reading.

Intern me: So, what do you think?

Fellow intern: I'm not sure I even want to say right now.

Intern me: Yeah.

ACT 2. The plot thickens--the two interns begin to discuss language and semantics and syntax. Whoo-hoo!

Fellow intern: I'm reserving my judgement, but the language of a story is so important to me and there's just nothing happening so far in this work. 

(to the author's credit, an author probably pulitzer-prize bound, we are only 26 pages in, and we're interns... what do we know?)

Intern me: Well, for me, it's the POV that is a problem. I felt like the language was ok; the sentence structure at least was engaging. The pace increased at times of action, you know, when the sentences stretched on and on forever, no periods in sight.

Fellow intern: Sure... I can see that, but it's just such an old trick, you know?

ACT 3. Stop. The actors on stage freeze and the lights begin to swirl. The phrase "old trick" echoes through the theater. As the audience, here's where you think about the words old trick and interject an interpretive dance scene of your choice. Think of a love triangle between writer, content, and form. Feel free to dress interns up in masks and feathered attire if you feel you must. 

ACT 4. Here's where the action slows just a little, in Shakespearean tradition. 

Intern me: Sure. Huh. Old trick? Hmm... Internal rumination occurs.

ACT 5. The dramatic conclusion! Brace yourself!

Intern me: Well, I'm outta here. Have a good afternoon!

Fellow intern: Ok. See ya. She smiles cheerfully.

*****

Ok, before the tomatoes start landing on stage, let me, as director explain that the most dramatic action, of course, happened off stage, in my mind, as I started thinking about old tricks and sentence length and love.

See, here's the deal-- sure, any writer can do what this writer did, let a sentence run on and on without a period in order to emphasize the drama and tension of the scene, such as a young boy getting beat up by resident gang members. The run-on sentence serves to enhance tension, suspense, fear, urgency, and horror. But is it done as a trick? Because it has been done before is it just a routine card trick? Is it just a tired old rabbit popping out of a hat, red-eyed from partying the night before?

True,  any writer could use this technique. In fact, I could teach my Pre-AP 9th graders to use just such a trick. We could have a mini-lesson and workshop the idea in partners, and then individually they could imitate this "trick" in their own work. But here's the thing--all of the 109 9th graders in my charge will achieve a run-on paragraph; only 3-5 of them will give me chills. Those 3-5 kids who do it right aren't just on stage showing us a trick; they are performing magic.

I use the "trick" of run-on sentences myself. I like to think when I do I'm not using it as a trick. As writers we need  to address the theory of our craft and acknowledge the responsibility as artists to push on the edges of what has already been established. We need to explore language; paint lexicon; play on the jungle gym of syllables and letters that make up our discourse. We need to avoid falling into common patterns; we need to avoid relying on "tricks".

At the same time, like staring at one of those magic pictures, we need to keep a trance-like gaze on our content and let the content dictate our form. If the content calls, truly, for a run-on-no-period-paragraph, it will let us know. It will demand it from us, authentically, and it won't feel like a trick to the reader.

This is the kind of love I'm talking about today: love for our stories, love for the amazing gift language is. And it is a kind of love that means relaxing the brain and letting go and feeling the story rise out of the page in whatever length sentences it desires, waiting only for our pen to add ink to its letters.

And of course, love between people must be like this too. Love must be relaxing the mind and letting the story unfold as it will.

(See? Told ya. Sentence length and Love. What now?! Yeah, that's what I thought.)

Freaky Friday

You just never know how things are going to go. Especially while at a writing conference. In Chicago.

I planned to go to a panel at noon, another at 1:30, the art museum at 3:00, dinner at 5:00, and a reception at 7:00.

Instead, I took a nap through the noon meeting, showed up for 20 minutes of the panel at 1:30, went to Buddy Legend's at 3 for a burger and to use their wifi. Instead, little writing got done but I talked to the precocious and not-at-all shy daughter of a local headlining blues singer, chatting it up with a fellow AWP attendee, and watching SNL skits with the staff after wishing one person luck on applying to Northwestern and listened to them give each other shit.

It's a strange day. I think it will only get stranger.

It is Friday the 13th after all. 

And I realize this is not only something that occurs while at a conference. This happens while writing, dating, existing, etc. And sometimes you have to look at the strange patterns that spring up in your life and try to make sense of them.

In my fiction I have a pattern: my stories involve parent-less children. Moms abandon daughters. Boys survive mom's suicide. And babies drop out of the sky, no parents to be found.

In my dating I have a pattern: guys without mothers. Some have lived through moms leaving after a divorce. One was abandoned completely. One sat in the doctor's office while his mom had an aneurism outside.

Today, being a strange Friday falling on the 13th, I am forced to examine these patterns. Just what is going on? I posed the question to a friend.

"Do you think they're looking for you to be a mother?" she asked.

"Or am I looking for an orphan?" I replied.

Both are equally disturbing. 

Really frightening when I stop to think about it. Obviously abandonment is an issue in my life. I can't deny this--it shows up in my writing, my dating, my crying tendencies during movies like The Hotel for Dogs when orphan siblings are separated. I'm not really sure yet why this issue keeps coming up in my life, having been raised by two parents married for 34 years, but if there's one thing I know about my fiction writing, the issue will eventually reveal itself. I just have to be patient and keep noticing the patterns, keep asking myself why all of this is going on.

As for the surprising pattern of planned situations turning to surprising encounters at the blues  joint down the street? That's easy. I just like to have fun.

Doing the Write Thing

I'm sitting here in a Caribou on Wabash and 8th street and trying to think of what to do, what to write. There are escapee writers from the annual AWP conference crawling all over the coffee shop and everyone is networking and strategizing and planning and selling and schmoozing and handing out business cards all over the place, all of this while buzzing on caffeine and the intoxication that washes over a group of nerds who usually work in solitary spaces when they suddenly encounter thousands of their own kind in the marble and carpeted Hilton in downtown Chicago. There are a lot of fragile egos all over the place.

Including mine, of course. Fragile ego, fragile sense of stability, fragile first foot-hold in this new world I want to become my life. 

And I want to throw up a little. 

Perhaps it is just the overstimulation and overcaffeination, but suddenly I feel like everything must happen now--my writing needs to hit the pages now--I need to find ways to fund my life through grants now--I need to make all of these connections with people now. Not tomorrow. Not next year. It must all occur now.

And yet, much as I compelled to figure it all out now, I find my wheels are spinning. Do I get my stories in shape to send out? Do I search for viable grant sources? Do I start adding bunches of people to my facebook account? Do I update my resume? Start a website? Update my blog?

The process overwhelms me. 

And yet--what I have chosen to do, with this list before me and only 40% of my battery available on my laptop, what I have chosen to do with my precious time is write on my blog. My shoulders are dropping back into their normal place. My breathing is slowing. My stomach is unclenching. 

And suddenly, now, as I am writing this, ignoring the tweeded-out writers that are chatting and scribbling around me, watching my fingers click over the keyboard, and watching letters form on the screen, I am understanding that this is a good sign. I am meant to write. Writing brings me clarity and relief and release from the insanity that is my life--my lack of routine, funding, constant companion, stable career, and on and on. I can come back to the writing for sanity. I can come back to the screen and find solace. 

Here, now, in the Caribou on 8th and Wabash, I am starting to feel like myself again. I am starting to calm down. I no longer want to throw up. I have no idea how I will go from wannabe-writer to Writer with a capital W, but I think I must be on the write track. 

Every Frog Has a Silver Lining

So I was sitting with some girlfriends at dinner last night and as talk turned to my dating life I pulled up my sleeve to reveal something shocking to them all: a hickey. I have not had a hickey in over a decade, so it was traumatic to have to share this with them, but I was also bubbling with information about the crush who had been the one to give me the hickey.

"What happened?" asked one of my friends. "I read your blog on Friday. Last I heard you were..."

"Getting stood up?" She nodded with a smile. To which I replied, "Oh, that."

And so began our discussion of what has in a Minneapolis minute become the whirlwind of my dating life. In less than a weekend I have shifted my mindset about dating: no longer am I pining and whining and wishing and hoping. Now I am researching, exploring, trying things out, making observations, not committing to anyone and saying yes to most invitations--in short, when it comes to dating, I have become a guy. 

Or perhaps a biologist.

It has occurred to me that the best tool in the dating scene is a certain degree of levity and amusement. Thus, I have given up the fairy tale, foregone the romance of movies, and stopped expecting the frogs to turn into princes. Now I just see them as frogs who will stay frogs. The question is what kind of frog do I want to hang out with?

In my research so far, I have catalogued a number of different species, with Darwinian zeal. There are the vile cane toads, that awful invasive species now poisoning everything in sight in Australia. To be on a date with a cane toad is to be looking for exits in restaurants. Then there's the garden toad--fairly harmless, but the kind of date that makes you question why you got off the couch and out of your sweatpants. My favorite amphibian to date is the shiny green tree frog. They are charming and adorable and have soft, white bellies, and occasionally they will even chirp in a moderately endearing way. 

I have also learned, in my exploration of this amphibious species, that it's smart, sometimes, to give a frog a second chance. My frog from last Thursday, (not the hickey-giving frog, but the one that stood me up because I suggested it to him) contacted me all weekend, and so I gave him another chance and suggested we hang out Monday (post-dinner with the girls). Monday night came and so did frustration. In two hours of sporadic texting we could not come up with a plan to hang out. I was losing patience with the frog. I thought to myself--at least he's taking himself out of the running. Now I won't have to worry about how I will squeeze him into the line up. Like Darwin pointed out--a species must adapt or become extinct. There has to be a way to thin the heard in the quest for finding a decent frog.

Just as I was about to mark this strand of amphibian legally extinct in my observation notebook, he called. He proposed we grab a drink. I was already in sweatpants, and the vindictive side of me wanted to say no, but then the explorer side of me said--it's in the name of research! And so I went.

Here's what I learned: some frogs let you down and stay their normal lumpy, slimy selves; some frogs surprise you and put on a top hat and tap shoes and start singing "Hello, my baby, hello, my darling" just like the delightful little frog on the WB. This particular frog was just such a frog. He put a smile on my face and I learned all sorts of new facts about the species. In fact, this frog once did the worm in a chain with four other guys in high school during a pep-fest while wearing overalls and wife beaters with one strap undone. Such hilarious information is bound to make any good researcher smile.

Even when she gets home.

Even when she wakes up the next day.

Zombies and Vampires and Other Scary Things

Well, tonight I got stood up.

Or maybe I stood myself up.

It's a little hard to say. A cute guy and I made tentative plans which I cancelled and then we rescheduled with trepidation for a dubiously late hour cocktail after my evening class. Class ended; we exchanged texts and I gave the cute guy two outs.  He eventually took the out, and then I did what I always do when I'm slightly annoyed and disappointed, I made a joke and let him off the hook. He said he felt like a zombie and wanted to stay in; I said I preferred going out for drinks with vampires anyway.

I may have sabotaged the date from the start. 

Then, I called my soulsister and together we analyzed the situation. He's busy. It's late. We planned the whole thing last minute anyhow. I cancelled our original plan. He probably thought I wasn't really interested. Of course it wasn't like he was standing me up. Of course he's interested. Of course things will eventually work out.

But the analysis didn't work. I still felt disappointed. 

Never mind that I was a little tired myself. Never mind that I started thinking of all the things I could get done if I didn't go out tonight. Never mind that I know I am not interested in a lifelong sort of relationship with this cute guy. Never mind that I have other dates, other guys, other mild flirtations brewing in the future. Never mind that even if the cute guy did suddenly develop a devoted passion for me I would panic and worry about crushing him; I wouldn't want him to get hurt.

I still felt put out.

I began to rail against this guy in my mind. Just what was he thinking? I went out of my way to be ready to go out with him. Didn't he know what he was missing? Why did he act interested if he really wasn't? And he must be interested, right? Because if he wasn't.... well, then I'm uninteresting?

And so began the self mutilation. I must have said something wrong. I must have given off the wrong signals. I must not be so fabulous after all. If he's not interested in me, I must not be interesting to anyone.

Round and round my mind spun. Finally, it occurred to me stop. I realized I was using reason to fight off emotion. I was arguing my way out of feeling. I was pretending there was a catch, a trick, an equation I could solve to fix the problem. I was pretending not to notice the feeling that wanted out.

I finally sat down on the couch and let the feeling wash over me like a wave. It was sadness. And I stopped moving, became still, under its weight. Miraculously, the yorkie-poo who had been nothing but irritable and demanding all day stopped too and crept onto my lap. Together we were just still and sad for a minute.

Then I laughed a little, in a kind way, at the girl in my head who does this, the girl who beats herself up when something like this happens. The girl who thinks that it is her responsibility to keep people happy, keep peace, keep smiling no matter what. If someone is angry, it is my fault. If someone is sad, it is my fault. I determine my own worth by making people approve of me.

Of course, my brain knows this isn't true. And I've been able to let so much of this complex go. I can watch friends argue and know it has nothing to do with me. I can calmly sit in the middle of chaos while my mother goes slightly crazy preparing holiday meals. I can disagree with a friend and know that I do not need her approval of my opinion in order for it to be valid. 

But I still get stuck with my particular strand of neurosis--peoplepleaseria-- when it comes to dating. 

Tonight, yorkie-poo on lap, I felt my sadness and then I let it go. I chuckled kindly at that girl. I let her say her piece and then I hugged her and said, "honey, you're amazing." 

And the scary thing is, I suddenly knew it was a little bit true. I felt another wave, a wave of certainty, wash over me. I suddenly knew that I am meant to experience these bumps, that I am meant to write about it, and that someday, maybe not too far away, I am meant to find that person in my life, that great love. I suddenly knew all this and I shivered.

And I don't know which is scarier, thinking no one will ever love me, or knowing someday someone will.