Ask Cartoon Girl | writing naked

Dear Cartoon Girl,

Once I wrote a short story. It really happened, but I pretended like I’d made it up. Then I took a nonfiction class and rewrote it as the truth. It’s about my high school boyfriend and me having sex and what happened afterwards.

When I read it to my husband he said, "You're not going to submit that to The Sun, are you? I mean, a story about you having sex? Do people do that?"

Besides suggesting that he branch out from American History and read some memoir and autobiography, what should I say to him about how I'm going to write my truths and try to share them with the world?

– Creative Exhibitionist


Dear Creative,

The answer to your husband's question is, "Yes, sweetheart. People write about sex all the time."

Of course, you and I know he didn't ask you his real question.  Maybe he wonders why you’re thinking about the old boyfriend. Maybe he's afraid your essay isn’t ready for publication and doesn’t want to say so.  Maybe he's afraid it will be published to great acclaim and your marriage will somehow be undone by your success.

What I think he's asking is, "Where does the nakedness end? Are you going to expose me?"

A fair question. But, let's be clear, it's not a question about writing. Nobody and nothing but your own heart can tell you what to write, as I hope your husband knows (and if he doesn't, find a kind, clear way to tell him; as a student of history, surely he'll appreciate your fascination with your past and how it's made you who you are).

I think this is a question about publishing. What happens when sharing your truths means exposing the truths of others?

I have friends who’ve written exquisite books they would not have dared to publish during the lifetimes of certain family members.  Others take an I’m-a-writer-first approach.  (Remember the Joni Mitchell line, "Will you take me as I am?"  Meaning, "even when I write sad confessional songs about you?")  I don't know what your priorities are, Creative; all I know is, when you publish – anything, but especially personal nonfiction – you should be ready to live with the consequences. Some people will take you as you are: a writer trying to make sense and meaning and, let's just say it, art of your life.  Some won’t, and of those, some will matter to you more than others.

Your husband, who matters to you, brought this up for a reason. Ask him what he’s worried about. Tell him what sharing your work means to you.  Maybe he’ll calm down and trust you.  Maybe you'll make a deal: you'll never expose his dangly bits without asking him first.

Whatever happens, I wish you good luck with The Sun. I have a feeling that once you've started publishing personal work, both you and your husband will get the hang of it.  Wink wink.

Love,
Cartoon Girl

Ask Cartoon Girl | shortcuts to inspiration

Dear Cartoon Girl,

Every night I ask my darling husband what he'd like for dinner and he sweetly answers, "I don't care." Should I quit asking or stop cooking?

-- Fresh Out of Ideas

Dear Fresh,

I like you.  You're funny.  Pithy like I wish I were.  Have you ever thought of starting your own column?

So, you have carte blanche in the kitchen.  (Can you tell I'm practicing to go to France?)  I'm guessing your husband eats whatever you cook, and is appreciative or at least uncomplaining, and that you're doing the cooking according to some division of labor you've worked out that seems, on the whole, balanced -- oui?

This, then, is purely a problem of inspiration, one well-known to writers as well as cooks.  How do we work when we aren't inspired? 

We turn to our Lists of Favorites.

In the room where I write I have a special shelf of books whose language is so crystalline and compelling I need read only a line or two and, voilà!, my own imagination is fired up.  James Salter, Amy Hempel, Angela Davis-Gardner, Wallace Stephens. 

In your kitchen, keep a list of your favorite meals, dishes that are fresh and tasty and healthy and quick and easy.  You can grab ideas anywhere -- restaurants, cookbooks, the newspaper, magazines in the checkout line at the grocery store (I'm a sucker for these), dishes your friends make, your own concoctions.

Use your favorites list to plan meals, keeping in mind what's in season.  Take it with you when you shop.  (If you don't have a garden or belong to a CSA, be sure your shopping includes a trip to the local farmers market.)  Buy enough ingredients for several meals.  If you're cooking something that makes good leftovers, cook extra.

Next, and no less important: tunes.  Keep a music player in your kitchen, and make a CD or playlist of your favorite songs.  Play it while you cook.  Play it loud.  Sing along.  Dance!  Have so much fun your darling husband gets jealous and wishes he were the one doing the cooking.

Finally, Fresh, if all else fails, consult the other list you should be making: favorite places to eat out.

Bon appetit!

Love,
Cartoon Girl

Ask Cartoon Girl | going away

Dear Cartoon Girl,

 

Have you ever gone to an arts colony -- you know, one of those places where you have a beautiful, inspiring workspace and a big chunk of unstructured time and someone to cook for you, and when you're not working you get to hang around with other writers and artists and composers? This has always sounded like heaven to me, so I decided to apply for a residency and got one. I was all yay at first, but now, with the time approaching, I’m terrified of leaving my day job and my life. There’s so much to do before I leave. I’m overwhelmed, past the point of exhaustion, almost paralyzed.  Can ANY experience be worth this much effort?

— Hyper-Responsible

Dear Hyper,

It’s a little like death, isn’t it, to imagine the world getting along without you.  Sad.  Scary.  But liberating, too -- to be unmoored, away, incognito, invisible.  To shake off expectations, think thoughts you might never have thought, write things you might never have written.  Your every breath so inspired it needs its own exclamation mark! 

That's why people go to arts colonies.

Arranging to take time off is always hard.  It's especially hard for you because you're Hyper-Responsible.  When you get to your colony, you may need to spend a few days sleeping.  Then you'll wake up in that delicious, drooly, half-dream state that's so good for writing, and you'll have free time and no distractions, and whoosh!  Yes.  To get to that place is worth the effort.

You're still in the guilty-about-leaving phase, Hyper.  Your guilt is a problem that, like most problems, can be cured by writing.  Make a list of all the things you'll do (you promise!) when you get back home.  Even if you never look at it again, the list will make it easier for you to leave.  Think of it as your permission slip.

Love,
Cartoon Girl


Need advice about your writing life?  Ask Cartoon Girl.

Ask Cartoon Girl | impetus to write

Dear Cartoon Girl,

What ever made you think you could write?

—Curious and a Little Rude

Dear Curious,

Reading Raymond Carver.

I know, I know, it's such a common answer I'm almost embarrassed.

I wish I could give Judith Guest's answer.  She says she picked up a book of poetry called Fruits and Vegetables by Erica Jong before anyone had heard of Erica Jong and read a poem about cooking an eggplant just after she'd spent the morning chopping eggplant for ratatouille. She says Erica Jong's poem gave her the epiphany that you can write about anything.

Isn't that answer swell?  I wonder if Judith Guest made it up.

Anyway, I had the same epiphany, minus the eggplant coincidence, reading Raymond Carver -- how  you can make literature out of even the smallest things, the most invisible people.  For me, writing is about paying attention to what others might not notice or think worthy. 

Love,
Cartoon Girl

Need advice about your writing life?  Ask Cartoon Girl.

Ask Cartoon Girl | the five P's of attending a reading

Dear Cartoon Girl,

I will soon be attending a reading by one of my favorite authors.  Actually his novels are just okay, but HE is absolutely gorgeous.  How do I catch his attention without appearing over-anxious?

-- Counting the Days

Dear Counting,

Remember the five P's.

1.  Be purposeful.  Show up for the reading like this is where you mean to be.  Don't come dressed in gardening clothes.  No tennis togs.  Wear what you'd wear to lunch with a friend in a nice but not fancy restaurant.

2.  Be punctual.  Show up early -- how early will depend on the writer's popularity -- and get a good seat, not necessarily front-row but close enough so that the experience will feel intimate. 

3.  Be prepared.  Come with an intelligent question in mind, one you'd genuinely like an answer to, and don't be shy about asking it -- but wait for the Q&A.  Raise your hand politely; don't wave it in the air.  Don't sigh aloud if someone else gets called on first.

Some good questions: "What gave you the idea for this book?"  "All of your books are set in [Appalachia, the desert, the jungle, outer space, Michigan]; would you talk about the influence of geography on your work?"  "How do you know so much about [taxidermy, geology, music, pyrotechnics]?"  "How did you decide what form this book should take?"  Writers love talking about these things. They love readers who give them a chance to. 

Questions not to ask: "Do you use a pen or a pencil?" "Is this novel true or is it fiction?"  "How much money do you expect to make?" "Do you ever worry your good looks keep you from being taken seriously?"  "Does it bother you not to have won any awards?"

4.  Be pleasant.  As you watch him read, let your eyes be soft, kind, encouraging, forgiving, never hungry or crazed.  Smile when you hear a well-turned phrase -- a slightly dreamy half-smile, like you're remembering some private joke.  Laugh at his jokes, but not too loudly or for too long.  Contain yourself. 

5.  Pay.  Buy the book and get him to sign it.  Thank him.  Maybe as he's passing it back to you your hands will lightly touch.

Love,
Cartoon Girl

Need advice about your writing life?  Ask Cartoon Girl.

Ask Cartoon Girl | jealousy

Dear Cartoon Girl,

I've hit a rough patch in my writing.  Meanwhile, my friend’s book is a bestseller being turned into a movie with a big star and a big director. I want to be happy for her but I’m jealous of her celebrity and, just between you and me, I’m not a big fan of her work. How do I keep from being eaten up by negative thoughts?

— Ashamed of myself


Dear Ashamed,

I bet she’s beautiful, too, with a nice narrow face, hair that does right, and long, shapely legs. I bet she has 20/20 vision and doesn’t have to wear glasses but does anyway sometimes, to make herself look smart. I bet she has a patient husband and well-behaved children and faithful, adoring pets.  I bet she never gets lonely. I bet she’d kill for a little loneliness, in fact, now that she's famous.  An afternoon or a whole day or even a week of being lonely, when she wouldn’t have to act humble and gracious all the time, when she could complain (if there were anyone to complain to) about how everything has changed so much she doesn’t know who she is any more.

As for you, Ashamed: I think you know the way out of your jealousy, the way through your rough patch, the way to become a famous writer like your leggy friend, if that's what you want.  Keep your head down and keep writing.  Try writing a paragraph that doesn't contain the word "big."

Love,
Cartoon Girl 



Need advice about your writing life?  Ask Cartoon Girl.

Ask Cartoon Girl | substance abuse

Dear Cartoon Girl,

I drink every night. I smoke pot all day. I can’t write if I’m not f****d up. What do you say to that?

— I’ve Published More Books Than Anybody You Know So Don't Tell Me I Can't Drink and Write

Dear I’ve,

Why the asterisks? Don’t be afraid to use words. I know you're trying to be inoffensive, but I’m sure any word you might substitute would be better than asterisks. Fizzed, fecked, fogged, flumed, flared, fuffed — see?  Words, even if they're plain, unpoetic, silly, or made up, are almost always better than asterisks.

About the drinking and pot-smoking: I suspect your problem isn't so much writing as everything else, I've, all the ordinary life stuff that has to be blotted out before you can get to the deepdown place you write from.  Here's a trick I learned from an Amy Hempel character: listen to the song "Jesus Is Waiting" by Reverend Al Green over and over and over again.  Addictive, but not so hard on your liver.

Love,
Cartoon Girl

Need advice about your writing life?  Ask Cartoon Girl.

Ask Cartoon Girl | success

Dear Cartoon Girl,

After years of toiling in obscurity I am finally getting some attention for my work — and not just in literary circles. I’m talking success beyond my wildest dreams. How can I appear calm and gracious when my insides are doing an all-out happy-dance?

— Unused to the Limelight


Dear Unused,

Well, la-dee-dah, aren’t you special!

Seriously, Unused, it’s okay to be exuberant. You just need to figure out which of your friends can stomach it and hang around with them as much as possible. It’s important (and not just for wildly successful people like you, but for the rest of us, too, still toiling in obscurity) to have friends who are willing to celebrate when good things happen so that we don’t end up exuberating all over everybody (remember poor Sally Field at the Oscars?). Or worse, acting modest when we aren't feeling it. 

Here's what I say: Call up your old teachers.  Take them out for drinks. Give them all the credit. They probably deserve it.

Love,
Cartoon Girl

Need advice about your writing life? Ask Cartoon Girl.

Ask Cartoon Girl | despair

Dear Cartoon Girl,

Does it ever seem to you that your life is not your own? That you’ll never have the time or energy or inclination to write again? Do you ever despair, Cartoon Girl?

— About to Give Up


Dear About,

I can’t count the times I’ve decided to stop writing and throw myself full-force into everything else — my day job, the garden I’ve always meant to plant, the rooms that need painting, windows that need washing, clothes that need mending, shoes that need shining, knives that need sharpening. All the movies I’ve never watched, the books I’ve never read. The family and friends I’ve neglected. My cat.

No one ever tries to change my mind. No one shakes me by the shoulders and says, Snap out of it, Cartoon Girl! Go back to your writing! The world is waiting for your magnum opus!

Somehow, though, I always do snap out of it. My day job wears on me. The garden — I forget how much more to it there is than planting. There’s also watering and weeding, and then what do you do with all those vegetables? As for housework, a single Saturday spent cleaning out closets can send me flying to my desk, pen in hand, my hair on end.

Remember that verse in Ecclesiastes, a time to take in, a time to write down? Declare this your time to take in, About. Don’t allow yourself to write at all. Do everything but. See how long you can hold out.

Love,
Cartoon Girl

Need advice about your writing life? Ask Cartoon Girl.

Back in my studio after a long hiatus

 

The littlest things are the funnest.

Choosing a pen to sign the documents with (the Pilot Precise V5 RT rollerball, guaranteed to make you feel authoritative).

Choosing stamps for the envelope containing the documents you've just signed (two Wendell Wilkie 75s, two Samuel P. Langley Aviator 45s labeled "US Airmail," and a Frank C. Laubach 30-center).

Making a label for your new hanging file, "book contract," when you're too excited to get the lettering centered on the label, too excited to care.

A writer's library



Strunk & White: The Elements of Style, illus. by Maira Kalman

Charles Baxter, Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction
Madison Smartt Bell, Narrative Design
Anne Bernays & Pamela Painter, What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers
Dorothea Brande, Becoming a Writer
Renni Browne & Dave King, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers
Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction
Julia Cameron, Letters to a Young Artist
Raymond Carver, Fires
John Gardner, The Art of Fiction and On Becoming a Novelist
Philip Gerard, Creative Nonfiction
Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones, Wild Mind, and Old Friend from Far Away
Karen Elizabeth Gordon, The New Well-Tempered Sentence
Ariel Gore, How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead
Diana Hacker, Rules for Writers
Ted Kooser & Steve Cox, Writing Brave and Free
Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
Mario Vargas Llosa, Letters to a Young Novelist
Ron Padgett, ed., Handbook of Poetic Forms
Nancy Peacock, A Broom of One’s Own: Words on Writing, Housecleaning and Life
George Singleton, Pep Talks, Warnings & Screeds
William Stafford, Writing the Australian Crawl
William Strunk Jr. & E.B. White, The Elements of Style
Abigail Thomas, Thinking about Memoir
Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write


Writing advice from Ruth Harrap

Whenever I start to take myself too seriously, I reread Penelope Lively's “Crumbs of Wisdom.”  In the story, Elaine, a writing teacher and "published writer ... whose two novels, long out of print, could occasionally be tracked down in public libraries," is thrilled that she and her students are to be given audience with Ruth Harrap, a once-famous romance novelist.  In this scene, Elaine and her students are gathered in Ruth Harrap’s flat.

At this moment there came the unmistakable sound of a lavatory being flushed. Ruth Harrap re-entered the room, adjusting her skirt, and sat down again without a word. The group fidgeted uneasily.

“Have a look round the garden if you like,” said Ruth Harrap.

The group gazed out of the window, beyond which the conifers and a rectangle of lank grass were almost obscured by a curtain of drizzle.

“Well ...,” murmured Elaine. “What we’re all wondering,” she went on brightly, “is ... what advice would you give to the aspiring writer?”

“The who?”

“Aspiring writer. The ... you know ... person who wants to write.”

"You needn’t spell it out,” said Ruth Harrap tartly, displaying her first sign of animation. “I couldn’t hear you, that’s all.” She paused. “Don’t. That’s what I’d say.”

Elaine laughed merrily. “Oh, I do understand. I mean, in my humble way I’ve toiled in the vineyard as well. I know. It’s grueling. Punishing. But the rewards, Miss Harrap! And I don’t of course mean financial rewards. The artistic satisfaction. All that.”

There was a silence. The author stared at Elaine, her face knotted in disapproval. “That may be your experience, for what it’s worth. It’s not mine. I never wrote but for cash. I wanted to be a buyer in a department store. Never got promotion. Ten years in china and gifts, I was, and then all those books, and I don’t know which was worst.” She heaved herself to her feet again. “You’d better have some tea before you go. How many with sugar?”

. . .

Broccoli

I'm on Falls of the Neuse Road, stuck in traffic behind a wreck, not far from the house where Aunt Helen lived before she left Raleigh to escape the traffic.  I don't blame her for leaving.  I never blamed her, though I did miss her after she moved away.  I remember a night she had me over for supper -- I was new to Raleigh then -- and as an appetizer served raw broccoli florets with a curried mayo dip, thus commencing my long love affair with curry, which I had never before tasted, and which was more exotic and wonderful than I could have imagined.

I'm sure Aunt Helen forgot about the broccoli right away, but I never have. 

I'm driving around the wreck now, no one hurt.  I'm getting off Falls of the Neuse, heading downtown to the grocery store. 

I don't have a grocery list, I just know we need food for supper.  I walk in the store and, without stopping to think, make a beeline for the broccoli and pick out a nice head, which tonight I will cook with a curry sauce in memory of Aunt Helen, who opened new worlds for me.

"Emma called, good news"

Maybe my favorite note from my husband ever . . . so I called Emma back, that's my agent, and the good news is, BYRD will be published by Dzanc Books in spring 2014!  Let the celebrating begin, and go on and on and on . . . .



painting by Anna Podris

 



Blue Nights



Providence, May 2011

"During the blue nights you think the end of day will never come. As the blue nights draw to a close (and they will, and they do) you experience an actual chill, an apprehension of illness, at the moment you first notice: the blue light is going, the days are already shortening, the summer is gone."

The last book I read in 2011, a Christmas gift from my husband, was Joan Didion’s Blue Nights, a brief, quiet memoir that turned me inside out. Didion's daughter is gone now, and her husband, and her own health is fragile. She lives alone, her home no longer a nest but a closet full of mementoes, reminders of things she does not want to remember.

Reading the book, I thought of all the people I have lost, and how the words we summon to honor a person at death, no matter how honest or eloquent or incisive, no matter how Didionesque, are never adequate, never exactly right.  Some things cannot be contained in words.  Art, like life, like death, is never perfect. But, as evidenced by Blue Nights, the very act of reaching for words, putting words to paper, may be honor enough.