Fiction Daily

The first school bus drove past our house this morning and with it, summer draws to an end. The days have been cooler and over head, a certain crystal sunlight that only comes in autumn.

With it, a cerulean color that comes this season. It’s time for football, blankets, cool mornings and leaves falling.

It’s been a fast summer, but then again, as a writer summers usually mean more work, as everyone tries to catch up from the year. In this deeply agricultural place, where many of us grew up working on a farm, living on a farm, or around a farm … or our parents or grandparents did … we follow the same traditional cycles: Summer is for working. Fall for canning. Winter is for learning and reading. Spring for getting ready.

As we pick the last of the strawberries and peaches, I remember the days at my Grandparents’ house, churning ice cream in the back yard while the “women” cut fruit for freezing, vegetables for canning. The big mason stove in the back yard burned all day long with the large pot on top, as they boiled vegetables for canning.

Talking with a friend yesterday gave me a chance to tell someone about the two volumes of Debussy (complete works for piano, by Jean-Yves Thibaudet) that have just come in the mail. They’re loaded onto my iPod and have already gotten some serious airtime.

Music is like breathing to me. No, I’m not myself in any way musical, and struggle as a writer to bring melody and sonority to my words. For years I was a clarinet player, in wind ensemble and even one summer at Governor’s School in an orchestra. What an eye-opening experience to play Bartok, Ligeti and Respighi at 17 years old!

I was not, however, in any way a standout.

Today, music allows me to find peace when my insides are churning. Interviews, talking and visiting empty me. Writing pulls everything out of my brain. Sitting at a desk all day makes my physical self feel alien. All of these forces leave me a stranger in this world.

Many writers, I believe, get exhausted by the world and their work … just look at the ranks of alcoholics, smokers and opium users. Fortunately, I don’t turn that way. So what’s left? Well, the little writers secret we don’t talk about is food … and that’s often the way we will replace what writing takes out of us. That’s no good, either.

After years’ struggling to know how to restore some sense of peace and wholeness, I realized it’s been there all along. Music. My mother played Debussy on the piano when I was a small child, and I still remember seeing white stuff when she played “Snowflakes are Dancing.” At 13 years old, “Ancient Airs and Dances” was my first “classical” LP, and at 16, I discovered Gershwin.

Of course, pop music of all kids followed me through those years … in college, I played Joe Jackson’s “Night and Day” every single day after classes, before trudging back to campus to close down the library each night. That record … the LP I mean … now resides in my iPod, recorded, with scratches intact.

These days, listening to Debussy piano music is like breathing fresh air, one strain at the time. I also drink up Joshua Bell … anything he plays, really, but especially his collections. Yo Yo Ma, the Unaccompanied Cello Suites, is also a favorite.

I had to trade in my old iPod yesterday for a new one (I had a “replacement plan,” thank goodness; the battery stopped working). Today, it’s sooped up with all four discs of Debussy, all the Joshua Bell I own, Beck and Madonna and yes, Joe Jackson.

You never know what kind of day it’s going to be.

Again a Monday, and there are lots of assignments on tap for the week. After completing a draft of a lengthy, complex magazine article, I’ve found myself … well … at a loss for words.

You’ve probably heard the term “writers block.” It’s something romantic types like to use to describe the so-called angst and suffering they feel when penning their thoughts.

The term “writers block” doesn’t exist in my world. Think about it: Writing is never easy. You just sit in the chair until you finish. To moan doesn’t help. What’s more, if for one minute I thought I could be somehow “blocked” and unable to write, it would be like a carpenter losing a thumb. You can’t work like that.

Writers block, then, is a cop-out, an excuse. Still, there are times when I simply have nothing to say. The past few days have felt like that — after wrapping up such a long piece, my mind is empty, but not in that good Buddhist way. It’s empty like a pot that’s drained. No more soup to stir.

Sitting down today and counting up the assignments, deadlines and calls to make, I feel apathetic about all of them. It seems overwhelming to try to bring meaning and significance to these topics — and yet, that is the very thing I must do.

One of the hardest jobs in a newsroom is writing editorials. If you don’t believe it, just try one day, sitting down and writing with great passion about a 1/2-cent sales tax or government-bond issue. Editorials are tough because you have to persuade a reader … you have to write with energy and conviction. Yet, they’re usually short — a few hundred words — so once you muster the passion, you only have to maintain it a little longer.

As anyone who writes for a living will tell you, our job means mustering that conviction and energy for every job, for every article, every day. If you don’t care about your subject, the reader won’t, either.

On days like today, I have to remind myself I have the greatest job on the planet — that I am a lucky dog to be able to make a living without a tool or skill … and using only my mind.

Under these circumstances, how ungrateful it is to complain of something like “writers block” — it’s just like any other job, sometimes you feel a little tired, but you get started and remember that it’s what you do, who you are, and it’s like coming home.

FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING

All week it seems I’ve constantly had something to do next … meetings, phone interviews, bills, dogs to walk.

Because traditionally it’s hard for me to get anywhere on time, I usually feel anxious when I have an appointment.

As I was washing the dishes rapidly before leaving … that’s one of the reasons for being late; the house should be neat before I shut the door … a childhood memory came clearly to mind of a phrase my mother used all the time.

I was in a swivet.

Can this be a real word? I wondered. Or is it just a cooked-up family expression?

Real, it is. And it may be a word that was brand-new in my grandmother’s time, meaning that my mom may have been a second-generation user of the word.

Swivet means a fluster or panic. The origin is unknown, but believed to be late 19th-century. That means my great-grandfather would have been among the first to hear it used, possibly with my grandmother, who laid it on my mom, who used it with me.

Now you might say, why be in a swivet, when you can be in a tizzy?

A tizzy has a slightly different sense of being in a state of nervous excitement; there is a sense of looking forward to something.

An older word you ask? Not at all. Tizzy came into use in the 1930s. You can just imagine the first stars of the silver screen causing people to feel in a tizzy every time a new movie came out.

Speaking of movies, leaving the house was always a production when I was little. We lived several miles outside of town, in the country as we used to say. Going to the mall or downtown required getting things ready … shutting up the house … getting into the car (a big event for us) … and pulling away for our adventure. So mom had lots of expressions to refer to leaving.

One of them I thought was our own … in fact is shared … and it goes like this: Leaving like a terd of hurdles. That dear mixed-up phrase is more common than you’d think.

The real expression goes like this … to leave like a herd of turtles … the image is clear … And they’re off! but apparently the play on words is lots of families’ private joke.

Today, no appointments, thank goodness, but lots of deadlines, so I won’t have to leave the house at an appointed time. I can sit here in my own kind of swivet trying to finish my articles before they’re due.

So after starting the week with the sober topic of revising our work we now turn to an even more important topic in Fiction Dailyland.

Ping. Yes, Ping.

These days a “ping” is a message of some kind, sent from blogs or e-mails or Web sites. It’s a way we connect over the Web, share ideas and give each other props for original thinking.

I love the word. Ping! It sounds so cheerful. It brings a much-needed boost to any business conversation … Don’t worry about the deadline, I’ll ping you when we need it … When I read this item I had to ping you with the link.

Ping!

Yet there’s another Ping we must honor … and that is Ping, the Duck, created by Marjorie Flack in The Story About Ping the Duck.

Ping was a duck who lived on a ship in China. Everyday, Ping and his family would go out to fish and at night, the fishermen would round them back into the boat. The last duck on board got a swat with a switch. Ping despised the switching, and when he saw he was destined to be last again, he decided to spend the night outside the boat. Adventures ensue!

This dear book still has meaning for me … as I have become a Ping of the adult world. I’m always traipsing around in last place, carrying too much stuff, slowest one, just like Ping.

That little duck is with me today, still swimming just beyond the ship hoping to avoid the sting of the switch.

Some may find today’s entry wandering, and you will probably be right.

You see, among the page hits for this blog, I see what are called “trackbacks.” I have tried to trace them to their sources, but alas, they are anonymous, unsigned messages washing on the shores of Fiction Dailyland.

When readers link to me from their blog, I am notified; others will leave comments (thank you, dear readers).

When these things happen, I receive a “ping” alerting me that someone has linked. The trackbacks, however, just sit there. I can’t figure out what they represent, really. Spam? A fan in Ukraine or Turkey? Random hits from a Googlecrawler?

If you have left me a trackback, I thank you for your interest.

And if you have left me a ping … all the better … am I the only one who remembers the story of Ping, the little duck, from childhood?

TOMORROW: Ping

So you’ve written your first poem … short story … novel chapter. You’re dying for someone to read it.

Who’s the first person you show it to? Your mom … sister … boyfriend … girlfriend.

Bad idea.

Oh I’ve done that most of my life, so I’ve learned this one the hard way. It’s just a bad bad idea.

My first short stories and poems were written when I was still a teenager, so it was natural to show them to Mom. She had no idea what I was trying to do, and said, Marion, I get the feeling you take a lot of pleasure in confusing people.

In my 20s, I went through a period of showing my work to people I respected, or who I thought would understand. Baaaaad ideas. One woman, a college professor from eastern North Carolina, sent me a scathing letter criticizing every word I sent her. As if making her point ultra clear, she wrote in conclusion: These poems are unpublishable.

Writing means take big risks and most of us are too afraid. That’s why our All-American novels sit in boxes or never make it onto paper.

A few times in my life I’ve managed to take the kind of risks that pay off in writing. One of them came in 1995 when I sold all of my belongings and moved with my beloved tabby cat, Norma Jeane, to Prague.

There (along with some day-trippers) was a small, serious group who also gave up a lot to move to Prague. It was a priceless time for me to live in a rarefied world where writing was everything.

These days, I have one or two close writer friends with whom I can share my work. They understand what I’m trying to do and respect my voice. They are also professionals who know good writing from bad. They will level with me and not tear me down; give me inspiration without letting me be lazy.

More than anything, writers long for approval and yes, even love. If we really want to write anything of value, we have to give up those ideas completely.

THIS WEEK: On revisions

Was it E.B. White who said Writing is rewriting? It was a hard lesson for this writer, penning my first stories at 18 and dreaming of my own brilliance … nurtured in college on the Kerouac myth of spontaneous prose and not knowing what I do now about the years of writing Kerouac put in before “On the Road” erupted in a three-week spasm.

There is simply no way to sit down and in a single take write anything worth reading, much less saving. You can stare into the mirror of your own words, but it doesn’t make you beautiful, just vain.

True, there are writers who have energy and fire, such as Hunter Thompson, but there is a vigor there that comes from a worked intensity. It’s not just flinging words around and admiring your own genius.

I believe it was Anais Nin and Henry Miller who conversed about the heat of a first draft: When perched over your own words, you are feeling your own emotion and often deluded into thinking you’ve captured it in prose. When you read it the next day you find it flat. Many times I’ve wanted to throw away what was written the day before.

Even now, I have been working on a feature article for about four weeks and imagined it had verve and energy. Yesterday I printed a copy and it read flat and dull to me. The real work for a writer is to hang in there, to have faith, to polish and deepen in the right places, to add enough and not too much, to know where the heart isn’t beating and get the blood into those places.

Yesterday driving home with unexpected relief after a stressful appointment in Chapel Hill (nice people, stressful circumstances), Greg and I had time to let off steam and laugh about things.

At one point he goes, Here’s something that really gets my gourd.

You see Greg has a talent for confounding figures of speech, twisting and mixing them into almost expressions that are still recognizable, but somehow not right. And you can’t figure out why. I’ve heard it called malaphorism, but not sure that’s a real word.

Since we were driving, I did not have a dictionary on me and was forced to sit there and whine, Honey, are you sure that’s right? That doesn’t sound right to me. But I couldn’t think of what it was supposed to be.

Now, armed with my trusty Oxford English Dictionary, I can at last settle the matter.

My husband, I’m afraid, was a little out of his gourd, what with the long drive and stressful situation yesterday when he was trying to express himself.

Out of your gourd means to be out of your mind, or crazy. It also refers to being under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

What he meant to say, I believe, was Do you want to know what gets my goat?

I have no idea why we refer to this beleaguered ruminant to express irritation, but that’s the common usage. To get your goat means it gets on your last nerve.

If something gets your last goat, you could say it really galls you. Gall means impudent behavior … coming from the bile-filled organ we affectionately call the gallbladder.

Used as a verb, it is transitive, and means to irritate or even give rise to a sore on the skin, such as when a bridle abrades a horse’s coat.

Of course it it were me chomping at the bit, it would probably get my goat. But that’s a horse of a different color.

Cherson!
Cherson!
You aint just whistlin
Dixie, Sea –
Cherson! Cherson!
We calcimine fathers
here below!
Kitchen lights on –
Sea Engines from Russia
seabirding here below –
When rocks outsea froth
I’ll know Hawaii
cracked up and scramble
up my doublelegged cliff
to the silt of
a million years –

Shoo– Shaw—Shirsh
Go on die salt light
You billion yeared
rock knocker

Gavroom
Seabird
Gabroobird
Sad as wife & hill
Loved as mother & fog
Oh! Oh! Oh!
Sea! Osh!
Where’s yr little Neppytune
tonight?

Excerpt from Sea: Sounds of the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur by Jack Kerouac. 1962, Penguin Books, New York, N.Y.