Anne Bean

The following AWESOME THINGS shall be written in CAPITAL LETTERS.

1. JAM. I totally MADE SOME JAM. And it was REALLY CHEAP because the fruit was FREE from MY YARD. We called it “BLAMBERRY”, i.e. plum and blackerry. I baked some SCONES and we had them with butter and the jam. Delish.

2. REAL CHAI. Then, if my weekend wasn’t awesome enough, my new roomie busted out with some REAL CHAI brewed in a pot with milk, tea, and SPICES. Yum.

3. OTTERS.

Yep. Otters are awesome.

I was out working in my garden yesterday, trying to get it semi-tidy before the autumn rains set in. I know it’s still August, but the chilly wind and low-angle sunlight made it feel like fall. (Fall and spring have always been my favorite seasons. Thus me moving out to the Pacific Northwest rather than Colorado, wherein fall and spring are each one week long.)

Anyway, I did some much needed pruning and brush-clearing in my large and absurd yard. And thoughts bubbled up in my head, like they do when I’m doing repetitive physical activities (Julia Cameron calls them “Artist Brain activities”). I was thinking about how well writing practice and gardening parallel each other. Gardening in the Pacific Northwest is easily a year-round endeavor. (Unconvinced? Check out this, the most awesome PNW veggie gardening book ever!) Writing is a year-round endeavor. Both have seasons of more intense labor. Both require daily maintenance for best results. Both can be kept up surprisingly well if you spend half an hour every day at them*. Noveling is more like upkeeping the whole damn yard: epic, takes a long time to come to fruition. Short stories are like container gardening: attention must be paid to each plant’s exact location. Poetry is like bonsai: every twig matters.

Now, with this beautiful metaphor and all, there comes reality. In reality, my morning pages** are like the stack of unturned compost in the corner of my garden. The chaos that is most of the overgrown herb beds is like my novel draft. The two functioning (ish) vegetable beds are like the chapters I’ve revised. For both my novel and my garden, it’d help if I really did work on them daily and keep the big picture in mind.

So, the nice metaphor is not necessarily ruined by the desiccated wasteland that was my lawn and the undealt-with piles of branches from my pruning efforts…neither my novel nor my yard are particularly well-maintained at the moment. And that’s okay. Because I’m working on both of them. Every damn day.

*Writing advice from my two favorite writers:

"30 minutes every day. Every damn day!" -Terry Pratchett

"And finish things. Then start new things. Then finish them..." -Neil Gaiman

**I write brain drain journaling for half an hour every morning. Julia Cameron calls them “morning pages.” They are important. Now, if I could manage to work on the novel for half an hour every day too, then that’d be closer to Terry Pratchett’s plan.

Or, some thoughts on time management.

I am thinking about times in my life when I’ve worked my ass off. Times when I’ve been pulling ridiculously long days and (mostly) enjoying it. Most of those times involved one or more of the following: 1. college, 2. a theater production, and/or 3. a writing project with an immanent deadline. The last time I’ve worked really hard and gotten a lot done was probably last November, during NaNoWriMo. Before that, it was working to get the dang novel edited and out the door in 2009. In both cases, I had an outside force working to motivate me. Even though they were both my projects, having an outside agency (other WriMos and the NaNoMeter of how many words I’d written, a self-publishing company) was vital to my success.

It rankles me that I work so much harder for other people than for myself. I think of all the times in college when fearing the wrath of a scary professor or the shame of late assignments was all that kept me going. I wasn’t always motivated out of Maslow’s Highest Tier in the Hierarchy of Needs…nah, much of the time I was motivated by fear or guilt…I worked out of “safety” needs rather than “self-actualization.”

Why is that? Why do we need to be motivated by fear to get really important personal stuff done? Why do we give our time so freely to others but struggle in giving it to ourselves? I’m not even talking about a ubiquitous “We”, I’m talking about me as a female in American society. I am programmed to respond to others before myself, which is a noble quality that will not get my novels written. I am programmed to deal quickly with things that are urgent, which is a useful quality that will not get my novels written.

I had a time-management class with the brilliant Wendy Call, who talked about to-do lists. To-do lists, she argued, are more or less crap. If you have a list of items, you will first do what is urgent, not necessarily what’s important. Better to have goals, she said. Better to think about concrete goals that you can do, like upping a word count or sending out a given number of manuscripts. What this said to me was, Best not to make my writing life an option. Make it a requirement. Get it done. And if it takes Write or Die to do it sometimes, well, I’m not sure that matters.

Some people hate this mindset. Some people I’ve talked to can’t stand the thought of forcing writing ever. Writing must be spontaneous to be any good, they say. Writing comes from a higher source, and you are a channel. You must wait to be in the mood, Inspired. Think about the word inspiration. It means breathing. Breathing is something that you do all the time, but becomes a powerful tool when made conscious. Likewise, I think that writing is something that is most powerful when made conscious, but really should be done ALL THE TIME. That spiritual source of writing is a radio station; it’s always on, you’ve just gotta tune in. So it’s not that I am a soulless unspiritual writing-forcer, it’s that I don’t think I want to wait around for inspiration to strike me. I want to keep the pump primed so that on the days when it does come, when I am writing out of a place of self-actualization, I can have a greater outpouring. If I write every day, then the blank page isn’t so scary, and sometimes I go to the mountain of Inspiration instead of waiting for it to come to me.

Here’s an assignment I gave myself this week: Do at least one thing you fear, or makes you nervous.

My successes include:
1. Signing up for classes at the Richard Hugo House. I signed up for a fiction critique class with Nancy Kress (to which I will bring a big ol’ chunk of Novel No. 2), and a master class in poetry (scary!) taught by David Waggoner. Hopefully I get into both classes. In any case, I’m excited.
2. I blew bubbles on my commute home, during the bit where I’m stopped on the 520*. I blew bubbles out of my window, and a few inside my car. No one seemed to notice or showed any noticeable reaction, although that is Seattle for you. If the zombie apocalypse came to Seattle, people would probably feign indifference and attempt to go about their daily routines.
3. I took an Intense Cardio “Martial Arts Bootcamp” class at my gym. It was really intense and I was sore later, but I didn’t totally hate it. This is a major step for me, as I generally avoid all things cardio. Actually, speaking of the zombie apocalypse, my secret motivation for running on the treadmill is imagining zombies chasing me. Not saying it’s healthy, just saying it works.

ANYWAY. I pass the challenge on to you! This week, do or try out one thing you fear.

*Dumbest highway ever. It goes between Seattle and Redmond, Washington. It is a special hell.

Who loves dystopias? Me, clearly, because I wrote one, but still. A good dystopia story is totally cathartic, the ultimate act of schadenfreude.

Holy crap. Too many big words. To review:

Dystopia: a “negative utopia,” i.e. a supposedly perfect world gone horribly wrooooong.

Schadenfreude: A German word meaning “happiness at the misfortune of others.”

…Anyway, dystopias. I’m sure you were forced to read one or two in school, if you went to school in the US…in any case, here’s a few of my favorites, in no particular order (with Amazon links for your convenience):

Utopia by Sir Thomas More

This is worth a read for sure, even if it does mean putting on your Literature Hat and slogging through some archaic language. A traveler is describing this perfect land of Utopia that he’d visited. I was interested in what parts of the society actually seemed like a good idea (women working) and what sounded like utter crap (people will stop caring about gold is we make our toilets out of gold and don’t use gold for money).

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

This is a rebellious book. It was first published in Russia in 1921, and immediately banned. While it was available in other countries, Russia kept it banned until Glasnost in 1988. I think anything worth strict government quashing for 67 years is worth reading! Really, We is a Classic Dystopia, in the vein of 1984 and Brave New World. The society in We is authoritarianism complete with names-as-numbers and lack of emotion. It wrestles with the question “How do you break out of your own mental prisons?”

Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

I admit it: I have never seen the movie. While I intend to, I think I’ve been putting it off because film can never capture the voice of the book. The story is told in first person from Alex’s point of view. For those who aren’t familiar, Alex is an insanely criminal 15-year-old in a dark future England whom the government tries to “fix” with mind control. The entire book is written in dialect, a strange Russian-based language to which you don’t know all the words and have to pick up as you read along. The language removes you a bit from the visceral violence of the plot, and allows you to read with more of a cold, Alex-like mindset. Whether or not you liked the movie, the book is absolutely worth reading.

The Giver by Lois Lowry

Yes, you probably had to read it in middle school. Here’s what I appreciate about The Giver: While most dystopias are a conservative or authoritarian society gone wrong, The Giver is a liberal society gone wrong. When I read it again recently, I was a little embarrassed to admit that I really liked a lot of the things in their society…the lack of cars, the open sharing of emotions, the coherent role for young adults… of course, there’s a lot about it that is Horribly Wrong as well. Lois Lowry actually wrote two sequels, Gathering Blue and The Messenger. They were good, but not as genius as the original. I think the ambiguous ending was one of the great things about The Giver, and its sequels make it a little less ambiguous. Nevertheless, they’re interesting enough to read and draw your own conclusions.

Y: The Last Man (series) by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra, et al.

In 2002, a mysterious plague wipes out any animal, embryo, and sperm with a Y chromosome. The only survivors of the plague are a man named Yorick and a male capuchin monkey…and, of course, all of the females in the world. Perhaps this series is a little more “post-apocalyptic” than “dystopian,” but in either case, its vision of what the world would look like if all the men died is pretty damn fascinating.

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

I’m about a third of the way through this so far. I am reading it in small doses, because it’s depressing as hell. I think it’ll actually have a redemptive ending, but good lord. I have to be in a masochistic mood to read it; it’s set in a grim and horrible future America where crime and corruption are so rampant that people live in these little walled enclaves, growing their own food and trying not to get robbed/raped/shot.

In another post, I’ll touch on dystopian film, which is a delicious subject too big to be broached here. Lately Mikeatron and I have been doing double feature movie dates, where each of us rents a video that the other one hasn’t seen. So far I’ve managed to pick out weird and disturbing movies (Cube, eXistenZ), and he’s managed to get heartwarming 90s films (Enemy Mine, The Professional). I don’t know what this says about our respective personalities. Perhaps he is a big softy at heart. Perhaps I am not. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence.

Apparently, it’s Things That Bother Me Week. Well, who am I to say no to the opportunity to complain on the Internet. (Complaint is the purpose of the internet, after all. That and porn.)

So. Something that bothers me: Chick Lit.

Chick Lit, to me, literature by women for women that probably has some literary merit, but at the end of day is about Getting A Man. It’s Bridget Jones’ Diary, Sex in the City, modernized versions of Jane Austen that don’t involve zombies* (e.g. Clueless), and other works of literature where sassy spunky heroines decide that their existence is sad and pointless without a man. Chick Lit is the magical lifestyle that Cosmopolitan is trying to sell to you. Chick Lit is close to a lot of feminist ideals that I treasure (sassy spunky heroines, for example), but then falls on its face and undercuts said ideals. Bridget Jones must lose weight to feel worthwhile. Charlotte isn’t allowed by her friends to stop dating just because she has a more fulfilling relationship with her sex toy than she does with men. I love Elizabeth Bennet to death, but she really couldn’t function without eventually finding Mr. Darcy.

The biggest appeal of Chick Lit, to me, is that most of the heroines are Bad Girls. Cameron Tuttle, author of Bad Girl’s Guide series, says, “Bad girls make it happen. A bad girl knows what she wants and how to get it. She makes her own rules, makes her own way, and makes no apologies. [...] A bad girl is you at your best–whoever you are, whatever your style.”

This sounds remarkably like my definition of badass. I’d like to see more Badass Girls.  I’m talking girls with a wide range of interests and abilities, for whom romance may be a factor of life, but is not the be-all and end-all of existence. (Who knows, perhaps I’m just sick of stories about marriage.) Now, I’ll admit that I’m a sucker for a woman who’s willing to kick butt and take names, but that’s not the only type of Bad-Ass Girl I can think of. I’m thinking of women who can hold their own, keep to their ideals, and shape their own destinies as much as possible. To name a few:

• Scout Finch, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Emilia, Othello by Shakespeare (tragically bad-ass, but still.)
• Molly, Neuromancer by William Gibson
• Mary, Mind of my Mind by Octavia E. Butler
• Morgaine, Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
• Tiffany Aching, The Wee Free Men and series (In general, Terry Pratchett’s writing is filled with Bad-Ass women.)
• Many many heroines of young adult literature. Really, most female characters in the fantasy genre tend to be quite Bad Ass…except Bella Swan, who is the most milquetoast human being possible.
• And, I’ll admit, of the 1800s British Chick Lit characters, I find Elizabeth Bennet and Jane Eyre to be the least obnoxious. Secretly, though, I think they’ve got nothing on Becky Sharp out of Vanity Fair…

Anyhow. While making that list, I found that it was way easier to come up with Bad-Ass heroines for whom marriage wasn’t an option: the very young or the very old. Also, a lot of young adult literature is filled with exciting strong women. So then what happens to our girls (and boys!) who grow up reading books filled with strong girl characters? As adults, the literature featuring women that gets any kind of publicity is Getting Married Stories with varying levels of Sex and Plot. I guess it begs the question: How much of modern femininity is still defined by the woman’s societal duty to marry and/or pop out babies? Am I just jaded because so many of my high school and college friends’ Facebook pictures are weddings and pregnancies and babies?

I’m curious. What’s your take on Chick Lit? How do you define it? Do you find it appealing? Worthy? Vile? Subconsciously antifeminist? What say you?

*I have not yet actually read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and I think I should. Perhaps I would like it better?

I am at heart a novelist. In part this is because I suspect I do not always wield the razor edge of language necessary for poetry, say, or short stories which will be read over and over. I get my kicks in dealing with bigger stuff: plot, character, and idea.

Nevertheless, I found the following list very interesting. Some of the rules hit home as things I agree with, some as things I don’t do and probably should, some as just funny. It’s from Terry Bisson, who is a totally rad science fiction author. I recommend his book of stories Bears Discover Fire quite highly. Anyway, without further ado–

Terry Bisson’s 60 Rules for Short Science Fiction (and Fantasy)

To begin with, David Foster Wallace.

I’m not his number one fan. I don’t dislike his work. I have a love-hate relationship with his writing in that I can’t decide if it’s tripe or genius; it flip-flops in my brain like one of those optical illusions where you’re seeing the old woman and the young woman at the same time. The man had a very laissez-faire attitude towards sentences, and tended to avoid paragraphs in many of his so-called “short” stories. I have yet to attempt his epic novel Infinite Jest, which is 1,079 pages long, has its own wiki page, and I suspect the joke is on the reader.

None of these is the reason why I’m mad at him. In 2008, he hung himself in his home. Now,  I know suicide is something that famous writers do, from time to time. And I know he got a major posthumous publicity boost. But that’s not exactly why I’m mad at him, either.

I’m mad at him because he knew exactly what he was doing, and did it anyway. What do I mean? In 2006, I saw him read at my college. It was a pretty big deal. David Foster Wallace. He read some of his unpublished stuff (never to be published stuff?) that I thought was pretty good. I gained a lot of respect for his style after hearing him read out loud. His stream-of-consciousness rambles make more sense when rambled aloud in a stream of, as it were, consciousness. At the end of the presentation was a question-and-answer session. I got to ask a question. I was trying to think of something clever. I asked him what the strangest piece of fan-mail was that he’d ever received.

He said, “That’s a clever, witty question to which I have a serious answer. A man once called me and told me if I didn’t call him back, he’d kill himself.” He called the guy back, and their correspondence lasted a few weeks. He said it was “the most devious piece of sadism” that he’d ever experienced.

So what the hell, David Foster Wallace? What was your intention? Did you only want to be sadistic? Did you forget what happened, or did it eat away at you and eventually kill you? Not sure if I’m justified in this line of thought, much like I’m not sure if I’m justified in my like and/or dislike of his work. (In either case, there’s a part of me that wants to reanimate him, just so I could punch him.)

But so it goes, as they say. So it goes.

Last Thursday, I was part of a panel at SoulFood Books with ten other local women authors, most of whom were primarily self-published. It was a great evening and a healing experience on many levels. It reminded me that yes, I am perfectly legit as a self-published author: my experiences of writing and creating are very real and valid. I think it’s easy to question yourself as an artist at any point in your creative life: the voices in the back of your head start playing up, saying stuff like, “Is she for real?” and “Well, this has worked out so far but I’m sure it’s a fluke” and “Well, it’s not like she’s properly published except in literary journals put out by colleges and those don’t count because…” etc etc. In her excellent book Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott calls this Radio KFKD and has some great tips for how to tune it out. Going and hanging out with a group of empowered women authors was a pretty good one, I have to admit.

It was interesting to hear what everyone had to say…one thing that surprised me (not that it should’ve, given that it was a new age bookstore and deep in my wormy little scientists’ child heart I know more spiritual truths than I am willing to admit) was how much everyone talked about the experience of writing as a spiritual experience. There was a lot of talk about being a conduit and having the writing naturally flow through you, of writing as a spiritual experience.

There was also a goodly mentioning of how hard writing is, which was important…otherwise I was starting to wonder if these enlightened and self-empowered ladies ever have days like I do when they can’t even muster the courage to roll their faces across the keyboard, much less write down actual words or sentences.

But at the end of the day, I admit that there is a very important spiritual component to writing. For me and fiction, it’s about surrender. Getting some words down means not obsessing over each one, means not standing on the edge of the abyss and quietly freaking out, but rather diving in and thrashing about until I get somewhere. I am not afraid to write bad prose, and I think that is one of my biggest strengths as a writer. Because if I can write a terrible piece of connective tissue binding two decent scenes together, then I’m one step closer to getting that second draft of the novel. I have faith that my bad prose will eventually turn into good prose, with pruning and revision and dear trusted friends telling me when they don’t care about my characters or have no idea what I’m saying. In the meantime, every day that I sit down and turn to the page is a good day. Nothing bad can come from me writing. It’s a lesson that’s easy to forget (especially when there’s laundry and commuting and sleep to be had).

So. Today counts as a success then.

Also, the video from the SoulFood event will be available soon on ustream….I’ll keep you posted!

Once again, SoulFood Books in Redmond is kind enough to host me as part of a panel women authors. In particular, this panel is aimed at women who are looking to publish and get further into the writing life.

The event is tomorrow, July 21st.

Here’s their press release:

Do you have a book waiting to be born? Have you considered collaborative authorship? Do you have recipes or music that needs to be published? Come explore these and other questions with us and hear from eleven successful woman authors who have gone before…… you that are right here in our own community.

This free event is for all women who are interested in writing or who are looking to make connections with Eastside authors. Whether you write recipes, fairy tales or music, this is a great chace to learn and connect.   Each of the following authors will give a brief talk about their journey and their book, followed by Q&A and open mingling to make new connections.

Marcia Shaver, Author of The Artists Way

Anne Bean, Author of Freedomland

Sandra Rodman, Author of Parallel Universe

Marsh Rauser, Author of Guardians of the Innocent

Doris Cope, Author of Freed Woman’s Dance

Sheila Baker, Author of Practical Shamanism

Trish Knox, Author of Circle of Life

Leta Hamilton, Author of The Way of The Toddler

Dena Marie, Author of Our Energy Matters

Schamet Horsfield, Author of Om Baby

Maria Dancing Heart – The Last Adventure of Life

This event is FREE, so please plan to purchase refreshments from the Soul Food Cafe to help support the best place to buy and sell books on the Eastside.