Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward, authors of Writing the Other, among other books, will be guest-blogging this week on Booklifenow. Please help welcome them–I think you’ll find their posts fascinating.
Here’s more about both writers…
Tag: ‘authors’
Tamara Sellman | 3 March 2010
Everything I’ve learned about writing this year I’ve relearned by watching the Olympics [series Part Two]
On Monday, I brought up some thoughts inspired by 10 days spent watching the recent winter Olympics in Vancouver on TV. Here are two more lessons I culled which offer relevance and perspective for writers:
◊ Expect to earn your medals every time.
Snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis kinda blew it in Torino. She hotdogged her way to a second place in women’s snowboard cross when she had the gold medal practically around her neck on that last slope.
Jacobellis has had to live that down for the last 4 years and went to Vancouver hoping to redeem herself. It didn’t quite happen: this year, (more…)
Jeff VanderMeer | 9 February 2010
Relinquish All Writing Fetishes: When Should You Hold Onto Them?
In Booklife I have a section on relinquishing all fetishes, which is another way of saying don’t let having to use a fancy pen or special desk get in the way of writing. As I mention in the book I’ve learned to write anywhere at any time, and to never stifle my imagination just because I’m not in the ideal writing situation.
I give this advice in the book because we most commonly procrastinate and find reasons not to write. But the fact is some “fetishes” actually aid our creativity.
Case in point—the photograph above. On the left is a leather-bound, hand-made writing pad I bought in Victoria on Vancouver Island while on my honeymoon. I’d had it in the closet in my office ever since then, more than seven years. Every time I pulled it out, I put it back in the closet again. The thing just seemed so nice, so opulent, that I couldn’t imagine writing in it. And yet I’d bought it because it was tantalizing–it suggested adventures I’d never write about in any other journal.
Well, this past week I finally found the perfect use for it. The paper inside is perfect for writing, but also perfect for art. I’ve started a rather odd story that includes extensive illustrations, and no other writing pad I have gives me the same sensation of effortless motion while both writing and drawing. Even the odd size of it helps, because it better accommodates the art and the words. Suddenly, everything about this impulse purchase that turned me off is helping me get into the groove of writing, energizing me, and recharging my imagination.
Meanwhile, next to it in the photograph is a plain black Moleskine notebook. In it, I’ve written several book reviews and a new short story–a very conventional, Southern Gothic-style story. The utilitarian look and feel of the notebook seems to help me keep focused and on task. I could no more write the reviews and the Southern Gothic story in the opulent oversized writing journal as I could create the illustrated strange story in the Moleskine. Each is perfect for its particular purpose.
So my question to you, because I’m curious, is: Have you had similar experiences with your writing tools, your writing surfaces, your writing life?
Jeff VanderMeer | 30 November 2009
The Perils of Success for Writers
(Always remember to celebrate your writing success…just don’t lose your head. Photo by Jeremy Tolbert.)
Success can be as difficult for a writer as managing feelings of despair at not being successful. For one thing, if your goal was to publish a novel with a major commercial publisher and you’ve suddenly achieved that goal after years of work…what do you do next? You may not have thought past that point, and thus feel at loose ends, drifting, at the very moment when most people think you should be celebrating. Or, you may have spent so much time expecting the worst and having to push up against gatekeepers and other obstacles…that the lack of an obstacle makes you stumble. You literally don’t know what to do without an obstacle in your path. It throws off your balance. Finally, success may go to your head and you may behave like a coked-up rock star for a few months, until reality hits you in the face.
One child prodigy I know had four novels out from Bantam by her early twenties but by the age of twenty-five had literally joined a circus and disappeared into Eastern Europe, never to return — as an author, at least. Another writer achieved great commercial success at the expense of mental health, ever more erratic in emails and face-to-face meetings, and eventually became a recluse. A third writer got a huge deal for three books and, with his day job as an anchor, proceeded to adopt an arrogant attitude, and blow almost all of the money on clothes, books, travel, and thirteen pairs of very
expensive shoes.
Failure’s easy — wrecking your life, not living up to your talent, can be accomplished painlessly over years, or even over the course of an afternoon if you really put your mind to it. But once you’re successful, you have real problems: expectations put on you, readers who correspond with you, and responsibilities you could never even imagine while you were typing away in your tiny office, certain no one would ever read your words even as you hoped
the opposite would be true.
Even a modicum of success can throw you off of your game, especially if there’s an unfair niggling little voice in the back of your head saying you don’t deserve it. Success is a form of praise, and praise can be hard to take, because it requires acknowledging a form of love. We’re generally not good with love, or being as generous to ourselves as we’re told to be to others.
Here are some of the possible untoward results, of success, sudden or otherwise:
• You quixotically quit your day job based on having won a lottery that you may never win again — namely, the big book advance — and run out of money within a couple of years. (Crawling back is much, much worse than never having left, or going part-time and gradually phasing out the day job once you’re assured of future writing income.)
• You turn into a horrible human being, a premature midlife crisis induced by your sudden change in status, and when you wake up from this delusion, you find the wreckage of your life all around you like an airplane’s burning fuselage. (In this case, you will probably have lost the affection of friends and family members, and possibly even the love of your spouse or partner.)
• You have trouble writing your second book because you’re too enamored of your own work, or because you’ve listened too closely to book reviewers or fans, relinquishing your vision in favor of a belief in theirs.
• You never write another book because you discover you don’t like everything that goes with having an actual career.
Can you avoid these outcomes? Of course — you may be the type of personality that is resistant to all the dangers of success; I don’t mean to suggest these scenarios are inevitable, or even likely. But if you are susceptible, you probably won’t avoid problems because of reading these words, although possibly you can limit their impact.
Alas, success is an emotional rather than intellectual experience. No matter what counsel I give you, you may still get the bends trying to adjust to success. All I can advise is that when success comes, try not to make any sudden changes in your life. Try, no matter how hard it might be, to simply enjoy it and incorporate it into your existing paradigm.
As for me, I was the jerk with thirteen pairs of shoes. They still stare at me from the closet, a Greek chorus shouting “idiot!” every time I walk past them.
>>Test this section of Booklife: What other problems does success bring to writers? What have you experienced?
