The Phantom Interview, part 2

Recently I read an interview with William Gibson in the Paris Review.  It's pretty good stuff, even if every single science fiction writer he lists is a guy.  I like when he talks about the end stages of writing a book, when "the state of composition feels like a complex, chemically altered state that will go away if I don’t continue to give it what it needs. What it needs is simply to write all the time...downtime other than sleep becomes problematic."  I'll raise my glass to that.

The Paris Review hasn't called me for any interviews lately, but in my phantom interview, I was asked about what my friends and family thought of my work.  This was a pretty horrifying question.  Why on earth would I show my work to friends and family?  It's like, "What do your friends and family think of your underwear?" or "What do your friends and family about your bank balance?"  Because (1) I wouldn't share my underwear habits or my bank balance and (2) I sincerely hope they don't show me theirs.

Maybe underwear and bank accounts aren't apt analogies, so let's try a baby picture.  You have a baby, and you show a picture of it to your friends. You are not asking them for honest feedback.  You are asking for praise.  You are asking for acknowledgement of this wondrous and sleep-depriving and drooling and amazing thing in your life.  Any friend or family member who says, "This kid's pretty ugly" is bound to get a big black mark in that secret ledger of your heart, even if it's true.

(I remember thinking Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen were the homeliest toddlers I'd ever seen.  Guess they took that to the bank, huh?)

I don't want my friends and family to read my work because I protect the baby (and my own ego).  But also, showing it to them would start to change the work - I'd be seeking approval, consciously or unconsciously, instead of being true to whatever inner voice I've listened to so far. Writing the difficult, the strange, the uneasy or the weird is hard enough without worrying if Aunt Jennifer or your best friend from high school will "like" it.

The only one in my family who reads my work is my Mom (hi, Mom!) and that's only after I've sold it.  I value the feedback and input of my critique group and writer friends, but only after I've gone over the draft enough to be know my own goals and intentions.  Some other special readers offer advice, too, and I'm always grateful.

But it's like the saying goes:  friends don't make friends read their stories.

The Phantom Interview part 1

Lily, the publicist for gay teen mystery #1, sent some bad news:  an interview with me was being cut from a newsletter because of space reasons.  So sad!  I enjoyed the questions in that one, and it took time away from actual fiction writing, and I actually ended up doing it after class one night while I had a migraine.  The newsletter editor offered to run it when book #2 comes out next year but by then we might be in the next Ice Age or suffering the zombie apocalypse or all dead from bat-pig-flu (bonus points to you if you can name those 3 movies).

Anyway, one of the questions I answered was "Do you have any suggestions for new writers?"  My first answer to that is always B.I.C. - Butt in Chair.  I didn't come up with that, but it's always worth passing on.  Butt in Chair, fingers on keyboard, turn off the internet (or use Dr. Wicked's writeordie.com, one of my favorites), and make sure that writing is in your top five things to do each day:  if you consistently get the dishes done, but don't get the scenes written, you've accomplished cleanliness but are not any closer to publication.

My second, third and fourth suggestions for new writers have to do with finding reliable critique partners, cultivating a thick skin, and getting things into the mail (or email, since I can't remember the last time I submitted something via USPS).  Other people have written about these tips in ways that are much more eloquent than mine, though I tried to be witty and smart.

Suggestion number 5 comes out of the zazen I've been doing this year.  Zazen is Zen Buddhist meditation, and it means you sit on a pillow and lower your gaze and put your hands and legs a certain way, and you keep sitting, and you keep sitting, and you keep sitting.  There is no goal.  Unlike other types of meditation, you don't chant or focus on your breathing or try to achieve stillness.  You just sit.  And this is the absolutely hardest part of my day.  even harder than trying to squeeze out just 500 more words at midnight or trying to write an important email while senile!cat yowls at the walls.  Try it for just ten minutes.  Hard!

In zazen, we have no hopes or expectations or goals.  There is nothing to achieve.  The only way to do it wrong (whatever "wrong" means) is not to do it at all.
And so my fifth suggestion is to write without expectations.  Write without worrying about whether it will sell, whether others will like it, whether it works or not, whether it achieves anything.  Write the story that arises, and write it as truly as you can, and pay attention to every moment of its creation, and then let it go like a balloon into the sky.

P.S. Here's Lily, who is fabulous!  She and Bob the warehouse guy went out for Halloween dressed as ElectraWoman and DynaGirl.  I'm still trying to get a photo of that.