Failure, or something like it.

So, it is 8 pm.  The deadline for a contest has just passed, and when I say just, I mean five minutes ago.   I intended to send something in, something that was going to knock the socks off everyone, but of course I didn’t.  I didn’t because while it sounded like a good idea to sign up for a contest where you are handed a set of characters and a situation and are expected to turn in a play in 24 hours, in reality the 24 hours translates to about 6.  Even if I wrote feverishly, all I would end up with would be a shitty first draft (I thank Anne Lamott for that every time) and who wants to read that?   Perhaps another reason I can’t just go ahead and send half-assed things out in the world is because I have tried it.  Some have gotten rejected–lesson learned.  Others got published–*cringe*  Now there are things out there in the world that will forever be associated with me and some part of my brain will never let me forget them.  Like bad fashion moments.  Or the guy you never want to admit you were head over heels for (Ugh for Ughly).

So, I let my inner critic have full reign.   We had tumultuous ups and downs.  We fought.  We made up.  But right now, as I watch that 8:00 pm deadline in my rear-view mirror, I’m thinking this is not my fault.  Maybe what I was working on was good enough.  Maybe I didn’t have to flush hours worth of effort down the trash.  Yeah, you know what.

You, there…Yes you.  Sitting nicely and innocently on that red velvet couch wearing that stupid silk smoking jacket (who even wears those anymore?)..this is your fault.  All you. You are pissing me off, and here is why:

1. You never apologized the last time we had this conversation.  I am still mad about it.
2. You have a pre-emptive strike policy.  We all know how those work out.
3. Every time I listen to you, I have performance anxiety for months.
4. You think you know everything about everything.  What was the last thing you wrote?
5. You look like a combination of Hugh Hefner and Elliot Gould. Not sexy.
6. You are just jealous of my relationship with the Muse. Yes, I see the way you look at us.
7. You have never, ever, ever been happy with anything I have ever done. Ever.
8. Your smug smile.  Yes.  That one.
9. I’m pretty sure you are out there saying nice things to other writers.  Don’t think I don’t know you.
10. You made me write a top ten list, and now I think I might be addicted.

On selfies

(reposted)

Call me conflicted, a hypocrite, or just plain old-fashioned, but when I find myself celebrating songs like “Let me take a selfie” for its satire, and singing along while actually considering whether to take a selfie, I wish the camera phone had not been invented.

Gone are the days of the old school film, the dark rooms, the composition of a shot that wasn’t just a click and shoot at anything and everything. Gone are the days of a measured study of a subject, replaced by the frivolous and almighty “self-portrait” known as the Selfie.

Now, I have been known to take a “selfie” or two. In fact, back when I was studying photography and sitting near the window of my Via Macci apartment in Florence trying to figure out the right natural light, we called these things self-portraits. We studied Helmut Newton, Man Ray, Sally Mann. We looked at the compositions of photographs, examined their contexts, tried to dilute the complexities into meaning or the experience as we understood it. The idea, then, was that the artists, having put themselves in front of the camera, broke a wall and created an intimacy between the world and themselves. That the eye turned inwards, sending a message, posing a question, and perhaps even making a comment on a social or political issue as in the case of photographers such as the American photographer Laura Aguilar whose self-portraits set in nature speak to the body, in all its shapes and forms, being a part of the natural world and comment on the politics of self-image, perception, and nature.

These portraits said something, something worth listening to, something that provoked thought.

Many have argued that “selfies” do the same, making artists of us all, if you will. That this new form of self-portraiture is in itself a portrait of our times, bringing photography into Everyman’s hand as opposed to being the domain of a few. After all, you only have to click through a few Facebook profiles to see shots of beautiful scenery, real life ironies, and lots and lots of creative “self portraits.” All of a sudden, we have insight into people’s lives, their moods, and best of all, their closets and social lives. I cannot count the number of times I have seen a picture titled “Lunch” featuring a pouty selfie in yet another fabulous pair of sunglasses and wondered what it was that was for lunch–the subject of the photograph? Or the sunglasses?

Perhaps it is worth considering if accessibility to the feeling of being artistic is the only virtue here, and if the art of photography has lost its depth because the lenses are now everywhere, no longer a particular vision or an eye with which the world is seen.

We seem to have become our own favorite subjects. And not like in the case of artists like Vivien Maier or Diane Arbus who took photographs of themselves to illustrate something and not merely as a narcissistic exercise, but because it is gratifying, in some way, to see your own face staring out at you in soulful, delighted, thoughtful, expressions. I say this because I understand it, the pull of the selfie, the power to present yourself to the world in any way that you wish, that perception of others feeding into self-perception until there is no difference between the two and you are, at the end, that pouty, sexy, doleful, gorgeous, filtered creature that you see in your camera screen. I do this. I pose, filter, instagram. I selfie.

But, I realize, that I and other selfie takers are helping the world around use shrink and that photography, the medium that many have looked to, and still do, as a means of expansion, as a doorway into other worlds and moments, has been corrupted, narrowing the lens so much that each individual “artist” is concerned only with their little world, their view, their creation.

Where once self-portraiture was the thing that opened up the mind, the eyes, letting us be voyeurs for a second, understanding the mind that was behind the photographs that helped us see the world, it is now doing the opposite, pointing us only inwards and yet showing us no interiority, nothing but a glossy version of ourselves so similar to many others.

Perhaps a lens pointed outwards is the real way to get at the inside of a person. Perhaps. But first, let me take a selfie!

Ready...set? Panic! OR Writing as a competitive sport.

(Written for Lipstick Junkies)

I am not neurotic.  I promise.  Although I suspect there are people who might disagree with me on this.  But I’ll tell you neuroses regarding public bathrooms is not the same as neuroses in general.  It’s just not.

But I digress. Here is the thing: I believe in Panic.  With a capital P.  With the frantic heartbeat and the short breath and the WHAT THE HELL IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO ME kind of internal dialogue.  Panic propels my writing. Panic has helped me shift gears to working on a longer writing project. Panic rules.

No, still not neurotic.

See, K.K and I may have mentioned that we are both currently working on collections of short stories.   So, naturally,  things come up:

Do all the stories need to have a connecting character/theme/thing/anything?

What will the title be?

How long does each have to be?

I wonder if this is a good idea?

How many goddamn stories do I have to write?

How is everyone writing so much faster than me?

Who will even publish these?

I am writing shit, aren’t I?

Why am I even doing this?

K.K deals with these things as she deals with most things: With patience.   She sits back, she looks at the problem, she lets the freakout moments pass.   For the most part, she is pretty composed and even when she isn’t, a conversation helps propel her back to her steady and strong pace.

I admire this.

I, however, have found myself oscillating between paralysis and a frantic work pace, much like swinging a wild hammer in order to break myself out of the tunnel that is the long steady path to completing a book. Reasoning with myself hasn’t helped.  Neither has telling myself that most self evident of all truths–it will only get done when you sit your ass down and do it. I have felt like I am not working enough, not working right, not working fast enough despite sitting down to write almost daily.  I have felt like I have needed to justify my quitting the University job in favor of the scraped together odds and ends of acting jobs so i can have “time to write” by actually producing a manuscript at top speed.

I’ve been a little panicked, frankly, and then I’ve been panicked about my panic. So, you know, it’s been hectic in there *points to head*.

See, somewhere between fully crushing my own sense of competence as a writer and determinedly forging ahead, there is this place where I feel like a 9-year-old me. That 9 year old ran a lot of races.  Relays, 100 meter dashes, 400 meters.  She stood at the chalked lines, she felt the muscles ready in anticipation, she felt wind on her face, the Panic in her stomach when she sensed someone else at her heels, that Panic that made her push herself and made her squint her eyes at the finish line, and think of nothing but running across it. She always smiled when she crossed the finish line; you can say she learned that short spurts of speed were the way to win. And to feel good.

That girl would never grow up to be a distance runner.  She just didn’t have the time, or the patience, or the inclination. She also didn’t learn how to sustain that feeling of Panic for an extended enough period of time. As I look at my life now, I see that that the whole short, strong, bursts of effort thing seems to have carried over to other areas in my life, but nowhere is itmore apparent a mode of operation than it is inmy writing.
When I started this longer project, it was a struggle: A sprinter in the middle of a cross-country race kind of thing.  I would speed up, stop.  Then sprint. Then stop.   That worked, in my experience, forthe Bradbury challenge or creating short stories that were independent of each other and did not belong to a cohesive project. But, thinking of a longer work, I found myself unable to sprint at the speed that I had been used to, despite giving my work almost daily time.   This was new territory where I could clearly see that steadiness wins the game.

But one’s nature cannot be so easily altered.  A low, steady run (so to speak), would undoubtedly have forced me into something like complacency by removing the sense of urgency which I need, as a writer and person, to cross finish lines. Panic makes me push myself, always has. I have had toreach back, to find a place, formy old friend Panic who can sit on my shoulder and point out the steady pace at which everyone else works, or tell me that I am missing my own deadlines, or point out that my own failure is at my heels. Whatever it may be.  This has meant, I am more patient with my work, but I am not above kicking myself in the ass when it’s been a few days and I have not returned to the stories.  It has also meant I am okay spending a little more time on the stories which, wait what, why didn’t anyone tell me, makes all the difference (The things you know and then know again and then know one more time). I am settling into a speed which allows for the finish line to be far away and yet accommodates for sprints for short distances. Hallelujah: I have adapted.

And the most comforting thing, ironically, in the settling into this new pacehas been learning to accept that not everyone need to just “relax and write.” Some of us need the speed and the freakouts. Some of us need to look over their shoulders.  Some of us need to Panic.Because when it’s competitive, it’s competitive.

Note: Neither am I in the attached picture, nor is this how I ever looked.  But in my head, that blur, that whooosh….oh yeah…it happened!