The Creative Habit

I look exactly like Anne Sexton only not so leggy and without the cigarette.

This is my "week to write," meaning the kids are in daycare full time and I can leave scabby breakfast dishes on the table all day without repercussion (we artistes get a lot of leeway).

Like everyone else, I'm working on a novel. This is daunting in so many ways, but especially because I am already a proven literary failure. Years ago—maybe six now—I completed a novel. It was ok. It had its moments, but it wasn't going to take the literary world by storm, or inspire any movements, or get translated into Urdu. But, I had a fancy agent who sent it to fancy publishers and one very fancy and famous editor in New York liked my book and wanted to meet me.

I walked through the streets of Greenwich Village in a gritty windstorm to her office and then spent the entire meeting acting like a monosyllabic mouth-breather and trying to free tiny grains of sand from between my teeth. I think I said "That's cool" a lot. In parting she said, "Well, Samantha, I'm not going to publish your book, but I did like it quite a bit and I want to see whatever else you write."

It only went downhill from there. Rejection after rejection after rejection. Until there was no one left to reject me. And, here I am, living proof that your dreams do not necessarily come true. Or at least they don't come true in time for you to be a young literary phenom.

But, bootstraps and all that. Six years, two anthologies, and a set of twins later, I think I may have mustered the courage to have another go. Fifty-four pages down, 250 more to go. Too bad the fancy editor is no longer in the biz. I'm sure she's been waiting with bated breath.

Last night I started perusing Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit, a book that has been on my nightstand as long as my last novel has been in a box in my garage. I believe in taking one's creative endeavors seriously and I thought she might have something righteous and helpful to offer. And she does. She's very tough and no nonsense. She says things like, "I hope you've been to the ballet and seen a dance company in action on stage. If you haven't, shame on you; that's like admitting you've never read a novel or strolled through a museum or heard a Beethoven symphony live. If you give me that much, we can work together." Luckily, I meet her standards and we can work together.

Except for page 26, where she is talking about distractions and how to get them out of the way. She writes, "I try to cut it all off. I want to place myself in a bubble of monomaniacal absorption where I am fully invested in the task at hand. As a result, I find I am often subtracting things from my life rather than adding them."

Ok, I get that. But what's weird is how resistant my three-year-old twins are to being ignored. Try as I might to achieve a state of monomaniacal absorption, there are still the lunches to pack, the breakfast to make, the socks to put on, and the dance moves to witness.

And here's my question for you: Motherhood and creative pursuits, how do you do it? Is it possible (without the full time cadre of nannies, I mean).

Sylvia Plath is NOT my model but I do sympathize

The dangers of old sperm and a pox on Tina Fey

Today just a quick link to an article about old sperm from the NYT.  I think she goes a bit far, but I'm all for leveling the playing field.  What do you think?

Okay, now I have to get back to watching episode after episode after episode of 30 Rock on Netflix. And this, my friends, is why the great American novel languishes.

A thing I like

These amazing 3D paper cutouts by Helen Musselwhite that I saw on Design Sponge. They are at once completely old fashioned (remember the silhouettes your grandma had?) and modern.  I love people with weird, esoteric skills that take a lot of patience.  Probably because they fill a void left by my careening impatience and lack of spatial skills.  Also, she likes birds and I like birds.

What didn't happen in 2008

The end of the year is coming and so my mind turns to lists and accomplishments and—alas, it is hard being me—failures.  

Ten things that didn't happen this year:

1. My anthology proposal failed to "inspire the proper enthusiasm" with my new agent.

2. I did not get a job blogging.

3. I did not win the Narrative Magazine First-Person contest.

4. I did not get tickets to Obama's inauguration.

5. The New York Times' Modern Love section did not publish my essay about hating my dog.

6. I did not plant a veggie garden.

7. I did not finish papering my hallway doors.

8. I did not discover my god-given talent for performance story telling.

9. I did not achieve the proper "body after baby" according to People Magazine

10. I did not always remember my pledge to reach out with kindness to everyone I know.

But stay tuned, because tomorrow's list is Ten Things That Did Happen This Year.  

Plus, there's still time: 22 days to be exact.  That's 31,680 minutes of potential.

Literary failure, square dancing, and Stinson Beach

Well, there is good news and there's bad news.  And there is some medium news. First the bad.  Apparently my spit shining skills aren't up to snuff because the new agent on second thought just sort of dumped me and my little book proposal, leaving me stranded once again in the literary wasteland. 

The medium news is that because I am now so mature and well-seasoned I can see this with a modicum of perspective and attempt to take a few lessons. 

Here's the first, an oldie but goodie: don't write with "the marketplace" in mind.  Just write what you want to write and try not to think about how anthologies are dead and memoirs are in.  Kay Ryan, our new Poet Laureate wrote a terrifically funny essay that is in part about all the extraneous chattering that writers do in an attempt to connect, when really, just maybe, what they should be doing is writing. Read it here. Really, it's so good.

The second lesson I am gleaning from my most recent literary failure is that one should never send an agent a poorly formed, undone half-book hoping that said agent will recognize in said mess of pages a true spark of genius.  It's not how it works.  Duh.

So, as Howard Junker says, Onward!  To what, I don't know.  I'm thinking of becoming a nurse or maybe a nursery school teacher.  

Ok, now the good news: Mark & Chelsea's wedding was super fun in a million ways.  

The mister and me at the wedding

A few highlights:

Stinson Beach's most perfect weather of the year.

Wedding vows exchanged against the backdrop of kids and dogs frolicking on the beach.

Eating leg of lamb around a campfire and then getting to go back to our nice beach rental and sleep in a bed.

Mark's sister's family band consisting of her seven children, two of whom were wearing kilts.

Following mother-daughter fiddlers through town to the reception.

Two clogging nieces.

Late-night chicken wings (an true moment of wedding inspiration).

Learning a wedding reel dance that included do-si-doing and swinging our partners.

Square dancing

Dancing for non-squares

Hip hip hooray for love and marriage and all that fun stuff!