The Space Between

Posted on December 16, 2011 by Lindsey Crittenden

Last weekend, I went on silent retreat, as I have for the past eight Decembers, at the Bishop’s Ranch in Healdsburg, California. I mark the season of Advent—the four weeks leading up to Christmas—by fleeing shops and noise and email, by going inward, for a few days or an entire week.  Silence, of course, can have the effect of turning up the volume in our minds, of escalating the chatter of anxiety or doubts or second guessing—which explains, in part, why so few of us choose it on a daily basis.  If we get quiet, what might happen?  When I tell people about going on a silent retreat, the inevitable question comes up:  “So what do you do?”

One summer many years ago, I took a book-design class as part of a six-week publishing course.  We learned about fonts and leading, kerning and serifs.  It was the first time anyone pointed out to me the concept of negative space—of the space between the lines, the silence between the musical notes, the power of what isn’t written.

I knew the lesson intuitively, I suppose, as we all do.  I’d made enough batches of chocolate-chip cookies and typed out enough melodramatic poetry on my mom’s Royal typewriter to understand that what we leave out matters as much as what we put in.  But I’d never heard anyone articulate how silence and space, as much as line and form, can be a conscious consideration in the creative process.

When I discovered prayer as an adult, I stumbled into the power of silence.  Of getting beyond words.  I found what mystics had long ago described as the via negativa, the approach to the divine often termed “apophatic,” from the Greek for “to deny.”  God cannot be defined in language, cannot be known by or reduced to a statement or image of who, or what, God is.  God, however, can be experienced through the path of unknowing.

Writing, of course, depends upon language, although we like to think of our statements and images not as reductive but as illustrative of some truth.  Language, as any postmodernist knows, can go only so far.  But it’s all we’ve got.  By recognizing its limitations, we can use it more discerningly.  I’ve spent hours re-arranging sentences, sentences that I later cut. I’ve fallen in thrall to imagery, imagery that sounded so good but in the end said little.  These hours have been among my most focused and satisfying; I never could have finished two published books without them.  And yet, by deleting or eliding, I’ve often found a richer resonance.

In her book When God Is Silent—based on lectures given at Yale Divinity School in 1997—Barbara Brown Taylor writes about the power of silence in a world where “vine-ripe tomatoes” taste like sawdust, where words have lost authority and authenticity.  “Silence,” she writes, “has become God’s final defense against our idolatry. By limiting our speech, God gets some relief from our descriptive assaults.”

Our descriptive assaults—I love that.  Not just assaults on the consumer of fresh produce but on the notion that we can say what God thinks or wants.  Assaults on readers, on the page, on truth itself.  “When we run out of words,” Taylor writes, “then and perhaps only then can God be God.”

Whether or not you believe in God, that statement—“when we run out of words”—presents a stark yet liberating opportunity.  It’s an odd thing, for a writer to speak favorably about running out of words.  But, this year, one of the fruits of silence has been to see how, in my own writing, words can serve as defense and distraction, mediator and manipulator.  Get them down, sure, but don’t let them fill up all the space.

 

 

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Why I Teach

Posted on December 9, 2011 by Lindsey Crittenden

Last Monday, at the second-to-last meeting of my Writing Skills Workshop class at UC Berkeley Extension, one of the students said, “I don’t even want to think about saying good-bye to everyone.”  Her large, expressive eyes opened even wider, and she shook her head.  “It’s been so … intimate.”

Another student had just asked where to go for feedback after the class ends. “We’ll get to that next week,” I said, as I always set aside time during a final class session to talk about finding a writing community, sustaining a writing practice, and other ways to keep going.

But S had put her finger on something essential, not only in terms of wrap-up discussion topics but in terms of why, after more than a decade at an underpaying teaching job, I keep teaching.  Year after year, not in every single class but in most, I get fantastic students.  Interesting adults who write about cooking shows and in-vitro treatments and birding and bar-mitzvahs; who reveal themselves in ways that restore my faith in writing.  Not that every student piece is flawlessly crafted, or even publishable.  But the fact that fifteen adults have grappled with words in an effort to get what’s on their minds onto the page in a coherent way, and with integrity and often humor – well, that never fails to cheer me up. And, more than the latest issue of The New Yorker, remind me of why I write.

This class bonded strongly from the get-go. For the first three sessions, I got about halfway through my lesson plan when it was time to go. What took so much time?  Students making observations, asking questions, wanting clarification, offering input.  All great stuff, and so what if we didn’t get to every single item on my agenda?  The energy was fabulous, infectious.  A class of opinionated extroverts.  What fun.  Three hours passed in a flash.

Some evenings I had to cut students off, of course. When A went on too long about Joan Didion’s anti-academic attitude; when M offered up too many details on his mom’s politics; when L deconstructed the po-mo artifice in a paragraph handed out for examples of the introductory clause – at times like those, I had to move us along.  We were examining sentence structure, after all, not PhD-level literary theory.  But what a treat, to have too much to talk about in three hours and to say, at 9:30 p.m., “See you all next week.”

Until next week, that is.  As S pointed out, our last class approaches.  Fifteen adults who were strangers have now read – and talked about – each other’s revelations about sexual identity, searches for Jesus, embarrassing forgetfulness, abiding love for hummingbirds, and being too choosy in looking for love.  Revelations of themselves – as well as of the power of manipulation in the use of a subordinating conjunction or a well-crafted metaphor.

Next week, I’ll give my usual last-class pep talk about keeping at it, about finding compatible readers, about staying true to their voices but not getting so precious they stop working.  I’ll remind them of what they already know: writing is hard work.  We’ll say good-bye and good luck, and I’ll look forward to two months with no papers to grade.  But secretly?  I’ll be eager for the next group to remind me why I keep teaching.  And – with their nervousness, their risk-taking (OK, not all of them, but all you need to restore your faith is one or two willing to go out on a limb), and their belief that words matter – why I keep writing.

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Read Anything Good Lately?

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Lindsey Crittenden

I own many books. I have piles of magazines going back I don’t want to say how many months. Reading material covers every surface in every room I live in.  I belong to the Mechanics’ Institute, whose wonderful library has a terrific Fiction selection, and every time I visit the second floor, I pick up a hardcover or two.

So why, when asked who my favorite authors are or what I’ve enjoyed reading lately, do I draw a blank?

Oh, I can come up the usual suspects.  I wrote my senior thesis on Nathaniel Hawthorne and – yes, it’s true – The Scarlet Letter is one of my favorite books.  As is The Great Gatsby.  I love Alice Munro’s stories (what writer would claim otherwise?) and when the world looks daunting, I cleave to Jane Eyre.

My love of Rebecca at age thirteen caused me to bond with Leslie-down-the-street, now one of my dearest friends.  I can feel the sand cooling beneath my feet as I lay on the beach in Amagansett, New York, in 1993, reading Lonesome Dove for hours, as summer afternoon turned into evening.  And I recall, on the train back to Penn Station the following day, reading the final pages over and over because I wasn’t ready to leave Gus.

You’d like a more recent example?  Can we come back to the question in a minute?  Oh, did I mention Alice Munro?

In junior high, answering questions such as What’s your favorite song?  or What TV shows do you watch? dictated social standing for the rest of the year, and if you answered “Seasons in the Sun,” say, or Mary Tyler Moore – well, better get used to eating lunch on the far benches.

We’re a long way from seventh grade, but I feel a similar peer pressure when asked what I’m reading.  A self-inflicted peer pressure, of sorts:  As a writer, I’m supposed to name someone clever, literary, possibly obscure.  I’m supposed to be selective in my tastes.  (Which, of course, have changed. I went through a serious Pat Barker phase around the time of her Regeneration Trilogy and count her character Billy Prior as one of the most indelible I’ve ever encountered; I haven’t read a book by Pat Barker since a disappointing novel in 2001.)  I’m supposed to keep up with the literary chatter over Who’s Great Right Now.

All of which makes me want to run in a corner.  With a book, OK, but not necessarily the latest by one of the 20 under 40.

The best way to learn to write, everyone knows, is to read, read, read.  Sometimes when I read, I wish I were a dentist or a marine biologist.  No more thinking I can do better than that or I’ll never do anythng that good.  No more analyzing of narrative structure or balance of backstory to present-day. As a writer struggling with such concerns in my own work and as a teacher pointing out what works well (and what doesn’t), of course I can learn.  But often the sheer volume of Published Writers on my shelves seems daunting.  We did it, so can you – on a good day.  We did it, you didn’t– on a bad.   As a child, I read because I loved getting swept into other worlds – whether the writer was literary or not.  I learned about structure and character development along the way — and yes, I thought, I want to do that! — but I didn’t read to analyze. Now, when asked the question Who do you read?, I anticipate the follow-up, in my own mind if not in the questioner’s:  And what have you learned from that?

The books I’ve most enjoyed lately are those I picked up randomly, without hearing or reading about them ahead of time.  Mr. Pip by Lloyd Jones, and The Rain Before It Falls by Jonathan Coe, for example – books that would have completely escaped my radar if I hadn’t picked them up at a vacation rental or a giveaway shelf at church.

And maybe that’s the trick:  serendipity.  Nothing wrong with reading Michiko’s top-ten list for the year (few surprises there).  No fault in asking fellow writers their thoughts – after all, a friend in my writers’ group suggested David Vann’s Caribou Island, a taut, terrific novel with the gutsiest ending I’ve ever read.  But when I want to curl up and read for the sheer pleasure of reading, the book I’ve never heard of fits the bill.  Sometimes, I just want to read.

 

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One Fewer Thing

Posted on November 18, 2011 by Lindsey Crittenden

There will be no post Friday, November 25.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Those three words have been my mantra this week, something my husband has reminded me of as he leaves in the morning and as we talk midafternoon.  I work from home – writing in the mornings; teaching and related tasks in the afternoon – so I have a tendency to think I can do a few loads of laundry, organize my messy desk, make soup, and still get a chapter cranked out by noon.  And the afternoons?  When did shopping for food start to take so much time?  Why does a swim seem to eat up two hours when I’m only in the pool for 45 minutes?  Will I ever get through the issues of Poets & Writers threatening to topple from the tiny table where I’ve stacked them?  And what about those yellowing NY Times Book Reviews?

My shoulders are seizing up, and I’ve written only one paragraph.

Hence the mantra.

Last week, I had an ugly, exhausting confrontation with someone I love. I won’t go into back story or details – so we’ll leave it at this:  afterwards, I felt hurt, angry, and worn out.  I spent hours sobbing and wandering the apartment, not knowing what to do.  Finally, I heated soup and ate it, still crying.  I slept nine hours, and I woke up.  Crisis over.  Things to do.

Then, that evening, I couldn’t find a parking place.  Class was starting in fifteen minutes, and I needed to pick up a sandwich, and why were there no spots here on Sacramento Street, here where I’d parked easily for weeks? Before I knew it, I was sobbing into my husband’s voice mail.  He met me at a parking garage, brought me a sandwich, and sent me into class.

The next day, I felt fine until about three, when – rushing home to pack and get ready to leave for a weekend out of town – I discovered that we were out of kibble for the cat.  The store across the street sold only Puppy Chow.  I bought a sack and fretted about how I could have let this happen.  And what about possible feline digestive enzymes that react fatally to anything meant for a dog?

Why is it that we don’t always pay attention to how upset we are until we run out of kibble or can’t find a parking spot (or, last night, a receipt), and then we implode?  I can’t do anything right!  My life is a disorganized mess!  I’m becoming a hoarder!

Last weekend – the weekend the cat ate Puppy Chow (and survived) – we drove three hours north to a hot springs retreat.  There was no Wi-Fi, no cell reception.  Guests were asked to leave electronic devices at home.  The day seemed much longer, more spacious, than a 24-hour Saturday at home spent Doing Things.  I soaked in mineral baths, ate delicious food, and had weird dreams.  We got home, Sunday night, to the same piles of papers and dirty clothing, the myriad lists, the familiar clutter.

I won’t lie and say they don’t still get to me.  But I’m trying to learn that by scaling back, by doing less, I have more – more resilience, more attention, more openness.  Not just to myself and others but to my work.  And more patience with a crisis, on the page or in my kitchen.

Many times, I’ve rushed through revisions, happily making small changes in syntax or refining imagery.  Good work, sure, and necessary.  But too often, for me, it has taken the place of the heavy lifting a story really needs.  You know, those major shifts, those periods of not knowing where the hell you’re going.  I hate them.  I want the answer to a narrative puzzle, the key to a character’s actions, and I want it Now.

On a good day of writing, I can feel a bustling energy not unlike the caffeine-fueled intentions of a To Do Today list.  But when I make myself sit with one comment for a while, not racing to strike it off the list and move onto the next, I write and think better.  And when my morning’s over, I might still have time to get to the store and go for a swim.

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Some of My Best Friends Write Fiction

Posted on November 11, 2011 by Lindsey Crittenden

It’s true.

It’s also true that some of the most difficult interactions I’ve had in recent years have been with fiction writers.

Here’s an ugly little not-so-secret fact:  Fiction writers are competitive.  Fiction writers aren’t always straightforward, or sincere. We’re good at manipulation on the page, after all; what’s to keep it from spilling over into real life?  Someone once said to me, only half-kidding, that she prefers poets as friends because poets aren’t cut-throat. There’s no money in poetry, so they don’t have to be.  Anyone who has spent time in an MFA program or at a residency knows that the social dynamics at the fiction table can be as duplicitous and charged as the stuff that seventh-grade girls impose upon each other.  I prefer sitting, most nights, with the visual artists.

Is it always that bad?  Of course not.  I came out of grad school not only happy but with good fiction-writing friends in the bargain.  And I’m in a writing group with fiction writers I trust and care about.  So why am I so susceptible, among certain writers, to feelings of insecurity and fierce competitiveness?  Am I really that vulnerable, that petty?  Or is something about writers in a herd, writers with our public faces on, that brings me back to junior high?

My reactions have little to do with writing merit; there’s just something about Writer A that makes me grimace whenever I read of his latest publication, whereas I’m filled with joy at learning that Writer B has won a certain award.  I may or may not know either of them, but over the years, something – their affect, their eyeglass frames, their posture at a reading – has short-circuited all my years of supposed social maturation and taken me back to age twelve, when I knew instinctively whom to avoid.

Sure, there are blatant cases.  The writer I’ve met ten times who, each time, looks at me blankly.  The two who said No when, new at a teaching job, I asked if I might share their table.  And, on the other hand, the novelist I first met when I was her student; after ten years, she greeted me with a smile and asked if I still wrote about ghost towns.

Do I expect fiction writers not to be human, not to be as varied on the likeability scale as, say, house painters or musicians or attorneys?  No, but I don’t care about house painting or the law or even music – not the way I care about fiction.  Perhaps I’m stunted, or overly sensitive, but I’ve learned that some other writers can bring out a side of me that I don’t particularly like.  And when that happens, I may give as good as I get.  Yikes.

For years, I’ve told myself to Get Over It.  To go out and attend events, to schmooze, to hobnob, to network.  And I’ve felt miserable when doing so under that kind of direction, with that kind of expectation – or when, looking around the crowded room of chatting writers, I feign interest in the nut bowl.  But when I go to hear a writer I generally admire, or to listen to a group of writers whose names I’ve never heard before – out of curiosity, out of eagerness to hear people read aloud – then I’m brought back to the joy and, yes, solidarity that can be found in such venues.

I wish I could balance both pieces – the public and the private – more consistently.  My email in-box is full of notices of readings throughout the Bay Area.  I should go to more of them, right?  Maybe not.  Maybe it’s OK to realize that balance isn’t always available, at least not while I need to put more energy into the private side, into the writing.  When I’ve got a chapter I feel good about, a story I’m ready to send out, then I’ll call one of my writer friends.  “There’s a reading tonight.  Wanna go?”  We’ll go, we’ll listen, we’ll laugh.  And I’ll remind myself that I don’t have to like all the kids, nor do they all have to like me.  But it doesn’t hurt to hear their work — with an open mind.

 

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