What We Do in the Ladies' Room

This morning I went to the CSUN campus to take an essay test. It's called the UDWPE, and it's a degree requirement for undergraduates at CSUN (and I think in the Cal State system entire, because a friend who's a professor at CSULA has to grade them, the poor guy). It's also a requirement for admission to the master's program, and even though that's still pretty far away for me, I thought I might as well get the test over with now instead of later. The GRE is still to come. I read the samples and signed up for the 8 AM test time and this morning, I dutifully went and waited in line behind the most fidgety human being I have ever seen, not excluding toddlers. Dude could not. stand. still.

Anyway, I was finished with my essay (for better or worse) when there was still a half-hour left, and we weren't allowed to leave early or read or do anything but work on the essay or stare at the wall until time was up. The testing room had a raft of old maps bolted to the wall above the blackboard, and one of them, about a quarter pulled out and stuck there, its bottom dowel tucked behind the newer pull-down screen for the projector, was in German. I looked at the maps for a while and thought about teachers who had to use them and students who had to learn from them; how frustrating to the school's budget that borders changed so often; why was this one in German?

I raised my hand, the proctor took my exam temporarily, and I went to the bathroom. Two women were inside. One was in extremis of some kind. The other chattered nervously.

"I'm sure she'll let you out, I'll just tell her."

(murmur)

"It'll be fine, don't worry, I'll just explain."

(murmur) "I don't..." (murmur)

"I'll tell her the whole thing and she'll let you go."

I flushed and went out. The one woman rubbed a paper towel between her hands slowly. Her eyes were frightened and threatening to spill. Liquid of some kind spattered her shirt. Although I don't know what her voice ordinarily sounded like, I knew this was not it. She talked as if through mud.

The other woman had darker skin and black, slightly greasy hair. She kept up with the reassurance, detailing in what direction she would walk into the room and describing the clothes of the person she would speak to after she left the ladies' and, presumably, went back to a testing cell.

I waited until there was a pause and then asked the woman with the full eyes the questions I'd rehearsed in my bathroom stall. "Are you all right? Do you need help?"

"I should be fine now," she said, glancing down at her shirt.

"All right," I said, smiled at her, and left.

I wanted her to need help. I didn't know what ailed her, but twenty more minutes of staring at the maps over the blackboard was all that awaited me in the classroom, and I wanted something to do that was more interesting and urgent than that. And I very much wanted to help someone who was so plainly distressed.

She probably threw up, I thought on the way back. Maybe a stomach bug. Or just nervousness. Or something else more severely wrong, although I hope not.

With nothing else to occupy my mind, I marveled again at how little real humans in trouble resemble actors in trouble. When there's something wrong with someone near you, it's apparent, and not from the histrionics you see in movies but from the cast of a complexion or the strange animal quality in a pair of eyes. People always act differently than you think they will - I believe this may be a truism of life in general - and laughter within grief or sudden calm in the face of horror makes far more sense in the moment than it does in fiction.

One of the things that I'm concerned with in my writing is bringing the influence of fiction on us humans into sharp relief. My characters are often preoccupied with what would happen in a fiction when something "real" happens to them.

I'm looking at this knife, and I'm thinking, oh, come on, this isn't really happening, someone come and tell me I've been Punk'd. <-- from my first published story, written, oh, 2003ish. 

In the movies, they always say It isn’t what you think or It wasn’t like that, both sentences I might have said when my mother caught us, me and Ariana Daly, tangled together in heat on the couch. <-- from a story I wrote this spring. 

The tale of the woman in the bathroom is barely a footnote to my life, but I could make it into a big thing if I wrote a story about it. I could make her me, or I could make her my best friend, or I could make her a stranger upon whom a great deal hinges. But I couldn't replicate her sludgy voice and the off-right color of her skin, both of which I'd have to exaggerate or explicate in different ways to make it clear to the reader that Something Is Wrong. It's little detail that the lizard brain in us locks onto in order to make sense of our families and our predators and our situations. But that stuff is too small, too instinctual, to make sense in fiction.

It's a shame. That was a real scene in there.

Take Another Little Piece of My Heart, Last Bookstore

I read a delightful book in three sittings over the last week and a half: Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple. There was so much to like about it that I can't even explain. A specific positive thing: for a large portion of the book we heard directly from Bernadette, and then for a while we didn't. When her voice came back toward the end, it felt like I was hearing again from an old friend whose mannerisms and quirks I'd somewhat forgotten, and I was instantly familiar with them again as soon as I heard her voice. That's how much Semple brought these characters to life.

One of Bernadette's main character traits is how bothered she is by the hassles of daily life. Long lines, philistines, chitchat, not being able to dig her keys out from the bottom of her purse. This type of thing has occupied my mind almost without fail in the recent past - how much trouble everything is, from daily hygiene to getting downtown. Like Bernadette, I too understand how impossible it is to Create when there's so much of this stupid stuff dragging you down.

Yes, I'm making excuses. I should've been writing lately but I haven't.

Yesterday morning I revised one story a little bit and another story heavily, and I gave genuine, actual thought to starting a new story, one about a journalist and a bad person (two separate characters). I also did five loads of laundry and started the process of eating all the bits and pieces of leftovers that stuff our fridge from the holiday bacchanal. (BTW, I have a new favorite drink: the Hotel California. Matt found it for me after I wailed "Isn't there a drink with champagne AND tequila in it?" whilst beached on the couch. Turns out, there is, and it is perfect.)

Another thing that happened over the holiday: one of my stories appeared. The publication is Wilde Magazine, the story is "The Hands of Men," and it's the second piece of fiction in the issue. You can find it here, although unfortunately the magazine is not free to read. (Trigger warning for sexual violence.)

And I got a few "we liked it, but it's not for us" rejections. Sigh.

I finally made a pilgrimage to The Last Bookstore in downtown L.A., and it's really not to be missed. The music, the smell, the art collective. I had this full, trembly sensation in my heart about halfway through exploring the space. It was the feeling of being moved profoundly by the wonderfulness of a place, how it was created and nurtured and believed in, but it was also the feeling of heartbreak, because no matter where I wander, no matter where I roam, no other place in the world will ever be so perfectly suited to me.

Picture from the LA Times

Oh, well. At least I found it, right?

Resolute, 2013 Edition

Every year, I post last year's New Year's resolutions with a short analysis of how well I think I succeeded at them, and then I post this year's. So, here are last year's (in greater detail here):

1. Buy less. I call this a success. I still bought lots of stuff, but I bought a LOT fewer DVDs and books (books especially). Mostly I went to the library and used Netflix and Amazon Instant rather than buying, buying, buying, and I stuck to my budget a hell of a lot better. The gnawing feeling in my gut for more stuff has lessened a lot, particularly when I go into stores. My debt is lower and my student loans are getting paid faster, although they're also adding up faster due to CSUN.

2. Be reticent. Utter fail. It's possible that keeping myself to myself is not who I am. Particularly not in classes.

3. Learn to apologize less. Success. I no longer really care if you think me liking the shit I like is stupid. I liked Silver Linings Playbook, do you hear me? I liked it, and I'm glad I bought the DVD, and I think I'll watch it today.

4. Keep reading. Big success. I did all the things under this number over and over this year. Most times I considered oatmealing out on the computer in front of stupid junk, I thought don't get dead, and I read or watched something new instead. (Most times, not all times.)

5. When writing, live in beginner's mind. I think success. Every new story feels like a new experience, now. But the way that I look at writing a story has changed entirely, so I'm not sure if it's beginner's mind or just...different.

6. In friendship, roll with the punches better. Good success here. Not so much with family, but with friendship, better.

7. Finish KUFC and write another book. Success on the former, fail on the latter. But I did write a slew of stories. Seven or eight, I think. Not enough for a book in terms of word count, but it's okay. I did not dally.

And, for 2014, here are my goals/intentions/whatever:

1. Remember how good accomplishment feels. Highly effective people don't procrastinate, but as far as I can tell, everyone else does, and as you likely know, it's a rotten way to live. For a period of a few weeks, usually, I'm able to keep up with my life, and I always feel better (and sort of smug) when I do. Slips start happening, though, and before I know it there are no clean dishes or clothes and we're eating out of the freezer and I have no idea where that smell is coming from. (Allie Brosh told this story far better than me.) But when I manage it - when a story gets written in a week instead of a month, when we eat home-cooked six nights out of seven, when I meet my work quota every day for two weeks in a row - I like myself a lot better, and I need to keep that feeling more prominently in mind than the feeling of "but I LIKE eating goat cheese out of the wrapper on the couch in front of MST3K."

2. Watch less MST3K. Because really, it's not normal.

3. Fucking revise Highbinder already. I need to rewrite the climax completely and rework some other small things that the new climax will hang upon. It's probably not even a week of work, but I'm a little stumped about what actually to do in place of what's already there, and I (irrationally, terribly) don't want to break up the as-is manuscript to fuck with it. It will be SO much more effective after the changes, but I do not want to make them. Of course if I have a whole year to accomplish this, I'll do it, right? (I've been putting it off for six months.)

4. Go on at least one adventure. Whether it's driving somewhere cool in the West, or camping at Joshua Tree, or going to Sequoia National Park to hike on Endor in the forest, or something. Not a luxury adventure, either, like going to Vegas. A real one.

5. Adjust expectations about writing projects. In 2013 I learned that trying to execute big ideas can end in heartbreak. Yet I also learned that little ideas can yield very satisfying results. Critically, I learned that I will always have my notebook: as long as I write down whatever I want to write about, I can go back to it months or years or decades later and it will still be there for me to write or rewrite. I still have a few big ideas that I haven't tried yet, or that I haven't executed to my satisfaction. Maybe I'll try writing them in 2014, and maybe I'll learn that they're not ready, that I should try again in 2019. I need to realize that it's okay for them not to be ready, or for me to try and fail at big ideas. The notebook will be there every year. I'm getting closer to accepting this, but I'm not there yet.

6. Balance more toward writing than submitting. The latter is, ironically, not how you build a career.

7. Get better at setting boundaries. I flunked the boundary test a few times this year and I want to do better at it.

8. Re: school, slow and steady wins the race. I tend to rush through lots of things, and I don't want to do that with the CSUN experience. My first semester was fun, and I want school to stay fun, instead of pressuring myself to hurry up and get the degree.

I have a little sign taped over my desk that says "Do your best," and I try to actually see it every day (rather than seeing it as part of the common noise of my desk). That's the general resolution for my whole life, and it applies to the normal New Year's things like exercise and work and so on. Not just do those things, but do my best, not my half-assedest, at them.

What do you want to do your best at?

Near-Fetched vs. Not

One of several books I read over the holiday was Bel Canto, a 2001 novel by Ann Patchett which won several prizes upon its release. I had read her latest book, State of Wonder, this past spring, and I really didn't know what to make of it. At the time I said this:

It's the first of her books I've read. ...I found myself looking forward to finishing, but also reading with enjoyment (Patchett creates narrative tension extraordinarily well)...much of its plot struck me as outlandish. Yet when I was in the last chapter, I felt like I'd been through a remarkable experience. I looked back at the journey of the novel with amazement and pleasure at what I and the characters had been through. Ultimately I am confused about it. 

State of Wonder gave me a great deal of food for thought; I've been thinking about it on and off since I read it in May. "Outlandish" is still the best word I know to describe the plot of the book, and yet I never scoffed and gave up because Patchett had written something that wasn't believable on the human scale.

The question I found myself asking after I read State of Wonder was whether it matters that the world of a book is far-fetched, as long as the author has confidence and skill. I thought State of Wonder worked, and I enjoyed it in the process of reading it, but when I was finished, the down-to-earth side of my brain protested that such a wacky premise should never have gotten on the page at all, much less published.

What's the point of novels, anyway? To build a world that's so realistic, on its own terms, that no one will question that they're reading something that could actually happen? Or to build a world, any world, into which the reader can tumble, entire, like Alice into the rabbit-hole? State of Wonder made me ask these questions. A book that casts a complete spell the way it did really reorients my view on fiction, and reminds me of how books felt when I was a little girl - how much I viewed them as utter escape from the present. A magic carpet, bound and glued, that took me wherever the author wanted me to go, no matter whether the destination was a real place or not. Wonder was maybe not realistic, but it was spellbinding, and it reminded me that there are more things between paper covers, Hemingway, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

I've read weirder stuff, sure. Sci-fi and fantasy books go way outside the realm of near-fetched. But Patchett is a contemporary literary author, and I don't think Wonder is meant to be magical realism. Even if it is, it doesn't read that way; it reads like...crazy realism? Exotic realism? I don't know that there's a term for it. It reads like it's outside the rules of any one genre.

But I fell head-over-heels into it, and I did the same for Bel Canto, which is not equally far-fetched, but close. It's based (loosely) on a real incident, but truth is stranger than fiction and this is pretty strange fiction. I loved the characters, I raced through every page, and I was slightly bereft when I was finished. I bought into every detail even as that other side of my brain tapped a foot and sniffed highly improbable. Once I was used to the outlandishness, I was sorry to let it go to return to more firmly realistic fiction.

I think the old truth about the rules of writing fiction - the importance of not breaking them is inversely proportional to how good your work is - applies here, but I still couldn't nail down for you exactly what rules it seemed to me like Patchett was breaking. There's no rule that says your scenario has to be believable in the real world. State of Wonder made me see that potentially, the most important rule is that the reader has to want to turn the page and read what comes next.

I guess the takeaway is that every writer needs to build a rabbit-hole - a consistent, intriguing world in which it's safe to suspend disbelief. Maybe that world is 90s-era Portland, where young grungers fall in love and have unsafe sex (Girl); or it's an otherworldly backcountry that's populated by fairies as well as credulous, romantic young men (Little, Big); or it's Viking-era Greenland, so thoroughly historically accurate that the novel can be used as a secondary source (The Thrall's Tale). Make me a sound rabbit-hole, and I'll tumble in without a thought.

Maybe another takeaway is that I need to suspend that foot-tapping self a little more often. She's kind of awful.

Marking Time

I haven't written anything in a couple of weeks. I haven't read much, either. The end of the semester seems to have let all the air out of me and I'm expending energy on everything else but reading and writing.

A rainstorm a few weeks ago evidenced a massive leak in our bedroom ceiling, and yesterday, workmen tramped in and out of the apartment all day...doing...stuff. This was the result:

Yeah. Reassuring. We're looking at other apartments in the area; asbestos is kind of the last straw with this place.

We're sleeping in the living room. During the day, the box spring and mattress lean across the couch. Like a Murphy bed, except a lot more work. They still have to put actual drywall in the ceiling and presumably paint it with that popcorn crap. So there will be more tramping. For some reason, I am incapable of being pleasant and shit-happens-y about all this, even though it's just a couple of days of inconvenience. All I want to do is bitch.

At the end of this week I travel to Florida for the Christmas holiday. After that will come a couple of weeks of taking it easy. Everything in between the Vegas party and New Year's feels like marking time. I am not in the holiday spirit, and I'm not ready for 2014, and I really just want to sleep in my bedroom.

Sorry. There'll be actual Fictating sometime soon.

What I Did on My (Second) Vegas Vacation

Names have been changed for the author's amusement, and because she is terrible with names.

Prologue: November 28-29

Thursday, AM: Drive the five hours between Los Angeles and Las Vegas with husband and friend. Rent supercool Dodge Challenger. Have rip-roaring time.

Friday, AM: Drive home.

Chapter the First: One Week Later

Thursday, December 5

Morning: "Race" husband to Vegas. His company Christmas party is there, tonight. We leave the house at the same time. I drive, he flies. He beats me by about 90 minutes.

We're doing it this way because his flight is free; because I prefer driving to flying, while he is the other way around; and because I have to go to a class on Friday that starts at 11 AM. If I don't attend this class, I lose the equivalent of 5% of my final grade. I have explained the situation to my professor, and she has said she'll understand if I'm late. But I'll have to leave insanely early in the morning - after an epic Vegas party - to get back to L.A. in time, and I don't want to subject husband to such evil. So.

Librariana

I keep wanting to write a post on how I feel about the holidays and stopping myself. My inner Grinch is on the rampage this year, and I don't necessarily want to expose her to friends and loved ones.

I finished Airships. Heavens above. I've really picked some incredible books of short stories to read this year! If you want to be amazed, read that thing. There was also an interesting treasure in the inside cover:

Space Library: 1999!

I took out Under the Volcano from the library to read next, but I am so tired of men's writing that I just couldn't take it. Nearly everything we've read for my UCLA class this semester has been by white men, as have most of the books I've read for fun over the same period. I'm used to this, of course, but the insistent feeling of standing outside the party has been a lot worse lately. Male writers often (unintentionally) (?) create worlds in which I stand apart, where all the characters who look like me are trophies or objects or barnyard animals. So I fled to the girliest unread book on my shelf: a Georgette Heyer. I gobbled it in less than 24 hours and I feel such relief. Yes, I do exist after all.

I'm also following two comic books right now: the Matt Fraction/Chip Zdarsky collaboration about which you will get the wrong impression (and I'll draw unfortunate searches) if I name, so I'll just direct you there; and the Kelly Sue DeConnick/Emma Rios book Pretty Deadly. I adored PD #1, but #2 was...largely confusing (and OMG learn to use commas, whoever letters these books). I still can't wait for the next one. The pleasure of following a comic book upon release, book by book over several months, is one I wasn't familiar with until now. And a pleasure it is, indeed.

Matt and I and a lovely friend spent Thanksgiving Day in Las Vegas this year. It was a very cool trip. On the drive back, Matt and I developed an idea about a Western that I am now committed to writing. The landscape inspired us. I've sketched out the idea, and I've already fallen in love with the main character. She's like a much more damaged version of the main character of Highbinder, one who believes in revenge instead of not. I really want to just write it, go go go, but I feel I need to at least read a couple of Westerns before I do; thus far all I've read are Elmore Leonard and Annie Proulx stories. Anybody know if Lonesome Dove is really that good?