Italics are mine

More Writing Habits

I found a wonderful article in the Jan/Feb 2012 article of Poets & Writers that discusses something I feel quite strongly about: the pull of the Internet in making us procrastinating and the difficulty in clearing this mental clutter to focus on writing.

As Susan Orlean mentions in the article, "writing always requires the kind of focus that being a living human makes challenging, whether it's the distraction of friends, or if you're in an office with people, or if you work at home." This is true online and off: people have always been able to procrastinate by, say, re-arranging their living-room furniture or going shopping. But the Internet offers new challenges in that it distracts people at home where they can tell themselves they will only take a one-minute break, checking email or glancing at the front webpage of the New York Times.

The article's author spends a few lines on Creativity by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, which lists five stages for creativity: (1) preparation, (2) incubation, (3) insight, (4) evaluation, (5) elaboration ("of these it seems that at least three, if not four, are incompatible with the constant influx of new and fascinating information we encounter online") and four major obstacles to creative accomplishment: (a) psychic exhaustion, (b) easy distraction, (c) inability to protect or channel creative energy, and (d) not knowing what to do with this energy, all of which can be affected by the Internet. (He also, of course, mentions The Shallows by Nicholas Carr, whom he quotes, but he doesn't discuss the book in any depth.)

As I've mentioned in an October post, I write at home at my living-room table - occasionally at my parents' living-room table too - and despite my best efforts I have been totally unable to write in coffee shops (where I loved to study when I was in college, enjoying the white noise of conversations around me) or in hotel rooms (when I travel for conferences, for instance). I start with pencil and blank paper, and I often put details I want to check later - on the Internet - between straight brackets so that they won't stop me. (If online research is necessary for the plot, I do it at moments I don't write.)

I also revise using pencil and paper until I have a version I am reasonably satisfied with, and only then do I type on the computer - in my living-room again, where I don't have wired Internet access. (I stay away from wireless Internet because I have little faith in its security.) It is only at the iteration before last that I head to the Internet world to research the details I need, and for the very last iteration I go back to my Internet-less living-room table to read the draft in long stretches. Every time I stray from that process, I end up wasting significant amounts of time browsing the Internet.

I was thrilled to learn from the P&W article that I am not alone in feeling the pull of the Internet and finding it detrimental to my work. As a professor in my day job, I constantly have to remind students they shouldn't check their text messages or email in class (I don't let them bring laptops, but they hide their smartphones under the desk on their lap). But some students aren't willing to recognize the emails they are receiving aren't so important that they require an answer within the hour, and don't realize how much it saps their focus. They have enough free time for now that time-wasting habits aren't as much of a problem for them than for me.

The P&W article quotes Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing (in her lecture after receiving the prize) about the often-asked question of how writers write - in longhand, etc - and the more important but less-often asked question of "Have you found a [mental] space, that empty space, which should surround you when you write?"

It also states that "[o]ther writers such as Zadie Smith, Jonathan Franzen and Jonathan Lethem have gone on record saying they write on Internet-disabled computers." This was wonderful news for me to read. Benjamin Percy is the only one who seems to be able to maintain a healthy attitude toward Internet, keeping only Google open (his research habits seem similar to mine, which I described in another October post); additional writers are mentioned too, but you'll have to read the whole P&W article to learn what they think.

The excitement of looking at the clock after a productive stretch of writing and realizing that two hours have gone by makes this discipline very worthwhile.

Update on Madame Bovary

I finished reading Madame Bovary in the new translation by Lydia Davis and ended up loving it for its eerily accurate portrayal of small-mindedness in the provinces. It is a clear-eyed book that makes no attempt to turn its heroine into a lovable character, and yet we all know an Emma in our lives, someone who is incapable of enjoying what she has and destroys herself because, for a reason known of her alone, she believes that she deserved yet better than all that.

The end clinched it for me - the behavior of the townspeople after she dies, especially Homais who badmouths the blind man in the newspaper to draw attention away from the fact he wasn't able to cure him and then positions himself to receive the Legion d'Honneur. In these days of anonymous comments on the Internet, unabashed posturing online and campaigns of character assassination with a hidden motive, Flaubert's novel resonates more than he could ever have imagined. (The part about Homais is only a few lines long, but the spare prose is even more effective than an elaborate description of the articles he pens.) Of course, Leon who gets married and Lheureux who attends Emma's funeral both deserve a mention as well.

As I wrote in my previous post and above, part of my newly found appreciation for the book is in no small part due to the firsthand experience I have gained in observing people like Emma. (You don't think about such things about when you are in high school and you have so much hope for the future... I don't even remember being able to fathom Emma's bitterness as to how her life turned out. To echo words I posted on my Twitter page: this book is wasted on the young.)

But another reason is that I know a small town that could be Yonville. Many people who gain power in such places know they are not Paris-material, not even Rouen-material in fact, but they manipulate others well enough to thrive in that sort of environment while defeating better-educated people: think of Homais who, after Monsieur Bovary's death, routs several physicians attempting to open an office in town, despite his lack of medical license. (I distinctly remember reacting with a profound, thoughtful comment when I reached that part, along the lines of <squeals> "this book is so good! this book is so good!" <squeals, paces the floor, giggles> "Flaubert, you're a genius! this book is so good!" I can be deep and intellectual that way.)

I don't usually read nineteenth-century novels - I prefer more contemporary settings - but Madame Bovary proves that a novel from 1856 can be just as modern as, and probably more timeless than, a volume published last year. I'll re-read classics more often from now on.

Re-reading Madame Bovary

I am re-reading Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert for the McNally-Jackson book club in a few weeks – I had read it in French when I was in high school, of course (is there any French student who avoids reading Madame Bovary in high school?) and now I am reading it in English in the new translation by Lydia Davis. I am still quite lukewarm about it but I do like it better than the first time around. Now that I am older I notice more of these “desperate housewives” with dreams of greatness that go unfulfilled, so the story has taken a vividness that it didn’t have when I was in my teens.

But the reason I wanted to write a post about this book isn’t to reminisce about my teens. It is because Flaubert breaks all the rules. He has some expository dialogue (especially early on in the book), he changes points of view, he uses ellipses and exclamation points…! and even italics. Italics, people. And he does it regularly. When is the last time you came across a book that made heavy use of italics when it wasn’t to quote a letter?

I am not saying this is a style I want to emulate. I am still trying to find my own style, as a matter of fact, and I alternate between long sentences (think of Claire Messud in The Emperor’s Children) and spare prose (à la Simone de Beauvoir in The Mandarins or She Came to Stay). But I find myself inspired by the freedom Flaubert felt in writing however he saw fit. Of course it was a different time, without agents and in a different publishing world, but feeling free to write a book on your own terms can’t be a bad thing, even in the sales-driven twenty-first century.

I don’t have a formal training in fiction writing but I took a few online courses with the Gotham Writers’ Workshop (most of which I liked, although it depends heavily on the instructor) and in hindsight it strikes me how much the training is geared toward commercial fiction. It makes sense, since commercial fiction is a far bigger market than literary one, but I had never realized it before since the workshop did not emphasize genre fiction at all.

My favorite instructor at Gotham indeed wrote thrillers – I also remember we studied The Maltese Falcon by Raymond Carver among other things – but I liked how she helped tame my long-winded sentences into shape. (I am not so sure about the advice I received from my classmates regarding revisions for my previous book.) A MFA graduate who edited one of my stories (that was my 30^th birthday present to myself) also improved my style and I continue to follow her advice. This was all good. What is not all good, however, is this constant feeling that you have to fit into a very specific mold, and that mold had better be a people-pleaser because agents won’t take you on if you can’t make them enough money, and you end up self-censoring and writing the book the way you feel it should be written instead of the way you want to write it.

So Flaubert is helping me reclaim my voice and steel myself against the market pressures of the American publishing world. I’ll do things my way, thank you very much.

Wise Words

Here are wise words from the late father of Egyptian novelist Alaa Al Aswany to his son, as told to New Yorker staff writer Wendell Steavenson in “Writing the Revolution”, which appeared in the January 16 issue: “The first [piece of advice he left] was that he should take up a profession, because writers never made any money in Egypt. (Even Mahfouz worked all his life as a civil servant.) Second, he told his son that he was very talented, but that this was just the starting point: in order to succeed, he must make writing his priority.” The article continues: “To support himself, Aswany chose dentistry, but he gave up a prestigious residency in oral surgery to devote his time to writing.” He continues to practice dentistry part-time to this day to keep in touch with his long-time customers, although he could stop.

This reminded me of the “slashers”, as Marci Alhober calls them: the people who, like me, make their life work by pursuing several career paths simultaneously. Sometimes it is good to be reminded that, as much we would all like to win the lottery and focus solely on our passions, it does not always happen – and , as I’ve argued elsewhere, it might not be the best for a writer to spend all of her time on writing (or reading). Another job forces her into the world, observing people she might not have chosen to interact with otherwise. It informs her writing. Aswany might well agree. The New Yorker journalist writes: “He spent three years in Chicago getting a master’s in dentistry, but returned to Cairo afterward, because he believed that “a writer should live in his own country”.” Why else would a writer live in his homeland if not to observe its mores and residents? And what better way to do that than being a dentist, chatting with clients of all ages and walks of life? Dentistry may not have distracted Aswany from his writing after all.

Indeed, Aswany’s office was indeed located in the Yacoubian Building, which became the title of (and provides the setting for) his first, and very successful, novel.

R.I.P. Sarah Burke (1982-2012)

Canadian freestyle skier Sarah Burke died on January 19 at age 29 of injuries sustained in a training accident in Park City, UT on January 10. I had never heard of Sarah Burke before her death but find myself very moved by her story of perseverance and its tragic ending. By all accounts, Burke was a pioneer for her sport – inspiring girls to push beyond their limits – and campaigned tirelessly and successfully to have superpipe skiing included in the 2014 Winter Games. She had been the first woman to land several difficult jumps in competition and was regarded as the early favorite to win the gold medal. Her other love was her husband, a fellow professional skier, who is featured with her in a 5min excerpt of a documentary entitled “Winter” that the Ski Channel posted on YouTube. Their enormous love for each other is readily apparent in the video. The fact that she had decided to donate her organs if something were to happen to her also documents her exemplary character. Tributes to her have been pouring in since her untimely passing; the one at the Winter X Games in Aspen, CO last week was particularly moving.

I am not sure why a stranger’s death means so much to me, but I suspect it has something with the way she lived her life, just like Tim Hetherington’s death also moved me back in April. (From the ESPN tribute to Burke: "It has been said that the great do not live forever, but the cautious do not live at all.") In both cases there has been a small chorus of voices saying that the two tempted fate (Burke’s accident actually involved an awkward landing after a routine jump; this caused a tear in an artery bringing blood to the brain).

On the other hand, when it comes to the passing of a certain former head coach of a football program at a state university not too far from where I live, you had to bear with an enormous amount of media coverage where grief by strangers reached levels frankly unseemly, in my opinion, for someone who appears to have done very little to protect children from a predator. Yet you are supposed to cry and wait for hours in line to pay your final respects and maybe even (almost) collapse on the pavement beating your chest in despair… few heads of state, at least in democratic countries, can hope to provoke such displays of emotion if they decease while in power. Yet I didn't read much along the lines that these reactions might be a tad exaggerated. On the contrary! More people now doubt that the decision to fire him was the right one and several journalists lionized him. He won many games for many years and donated much money. For me nothing can erase the stain of the recent scandal, even if he is not the one who perpetrated the abuse. I guess I have a different way to look at the world than most.

Anyway, I have a lot of respect for the way Sarah Burke and Tim Hetherington lived their life. They had a passion and they stuck with it. They put in countless hours to perfect and promote their art. They were defined by these choices, which is what they wanted. This was not a convenient pastime for them – this was not only what they did for a living, but who they were. They lived with an intensity and a commitment that many of us can only aspire to, and I certainly dare to dream a little higher after I read about such role models.

I'll admit that I doubt Burke and Hetherington would have received so much attention from the media if they had not been handsome. Their looks were specifically mentioned in several articles I came across (in Hetherington’s case, it seems that every single article referred to his “good looks”; in Burke’s, a journalist dared write that she was “too pretty” and “too smart” to go this way, I kid you not.) Hetherington’s companion, the very accomplished photographer Chris Hondros, who was not quite as much a model of male hotness, faded from the public consciousness much faster. And yet I choose to be inspired by the talented people I do hear about rather than thinking about the talented people I will never know about because the media did not bother to make a story about them. I wish I could know the latter too, though. I am sure I would be very impressed.

As a side note, you learn a lot about others from their reactions to such tragedies. On the one hand, Burke was uninsured in the US at the time of her death in Utah but almost $300,000 was quickly raised to help pay for her medical expenses and relieve her husband from the enormous financial burden. On the other hand, some people’s meanness was revealed not only in nasty comments on YouTube but in the fact that someone posted a ridiculous 12-second video of himself failing a stunt in the snow pretending (in the title) that it was Sarah Burke’s crash footage, and promptly gathered over 200,000 views. Occasions like these show good people at their best and bad people at their worst, especially when they can hide behind a computer screen.

No matter what the reasons for the media coverage of Burke’s passing and the reactions of others, I will remember her as a smiling blond woman only five years younger than me who dared to follow her dreams even when others told her that they were not possible because she was a girl and was beloved by her tribe of fellow skiers. She brought down the walls that had been keeping her out of the sport she cherished. She trained very hard and achieved mastery on her chosen path, mastery that took the form of four Winter X Gold medals in halfpipe skiing. Gone too soon, but always an inspiration. Rest in peace, Sarah Burke.