--WE'RE WELL ON OUR WAY

...Hey, I really hope you have a magical New Year's Eve and a fantastic new year in 2012.

…Before I forget, I had a couple of things published recently:
“Just Do What I Do” at Pipe Dream
“Together” at Rusty Truck
Both are here under “Words In Print.”

…They’re all important, of course, but a year like 2011 felt especially important in the scheme of things, in the scheme of learning and growing and fucking up.

As usual, I pushed myself to be productive, but what was even more important was meeting people, doing things and going places that took me well out of my comfort zone.
(Being uncomfortable is often a really good idea if you find yourself in a rut.)
(Being uncomfortable is important provided there’s a potential happy ending in the outcome.)

At AWP, I was completely overwhelmed.
I felt like a little kid peeking through a cracked door, listening to adults discuss classical music or quantum physics.
Even with snow storms that disallowed many from attending, there were still 9,000 writers there.
I felt very small and insignificant. For a good part of the time I felt lonely.
However, I did meet some of my favorite internet writers/people, thereby making them real--Roxane Gay, xTx, Aubrey Hirsch, Heather Fowler, Nicole Monaghan, Matt Bell, Rae Bryant, Randall Brown, Steve Himmer, Mel Bosworth, Tim Jones-Yelvington and many others….

…I saw Junot Diaz, listened to Mary Gaitskill read.
I stood in line for coffee behind a frail, bug-eyed Joyce Carol Oates.

…I did my first readings ever—at The Cell Theater in New York City, for Housefire in Portland, OR, and twice at Iowa City, Iowa.

I read for two audio podcasts/radio shows.

I did ten or so interviews…

The Summer Writers Workshop was a thrill.
Being in Iowa is the opposite of being in New York, yet for a writer, Iowa City is hallowed ground.
You’re walking where Carver walked. Where Robert Frost and John Berryman walked.

I had stories accepted. I had stories rejected. I ended the year with just under 600 acceptances in the last two and a half years. Once I hit 500, something odd happened. I felt deflated and uninspired. I slowed way down. I got introspective. Roxane G. helped set me straight about quantity versus quality.

I did not get an agent for my novel this year, nor did I get a publisher for my story collection(s). So those goals will swing into the New Year.

My mother died this year. She’d been in ill health for quite some time and her death was not sudden nor a surprise.
Still, I didn’t expect it to affect me the way it did. She was a complex woman, a pivotal figure who shows up in the majority of my writing and who perhaps is the main reason why so much of my writing is dark.
My father asked me to write her eulogy, which was extremely difficult for several reasons, chief being the challenge of portraying her honestly without denigrating her.
But I did, I wrote it and read it.
A writer friend posted the eulogy on her wall (which was perfectly fine by me) and a huge number of people commented. Most of them misread what I wrote, thinking I'd made her superhuman when what I was really trying to do was make her "humane." That difference of perception really caught me off guard. It made me wonder how much of my writing is misinterpreted. It made me question my ability to make a poignant point that is clear enough to be understood.

I've got my New Year's Resolutions done for 2012. If you want, I can share them with you.
As I've said, there are some carry-over goals from 2011.
A lot of them are statistical.
Taken as a whole, it sort of makes me look like a "human doer" again, as opposed to a human being.
But I need that--landmarks in the sand. Lots of stakes in the ground. I can't wait for a muse to show up. Otherwise I get lazy. Life really is short. I'm more than half way through mine. I wanted to be a writer at age nine and waited almost forty years to finally do so.
I've got a lot of catching up to do.

--I'M A RAGDOLL BOY


…As we approach the new year, here are some things I recently happened upon that have meaning for me:

"There's a line in Don McLean's 'American Pie' that goes, 'Do you believe in rock 'n' roll?/Can music save your mortal soul?' and I say, no. I don't believe in rock 'n' roll. There's always a great side to it, and there's also a phony, bullshit side, which is a lot of guys selling sex, and this sort of all-American confidence, and selfishness and getting wasted, and all that is a way of life that transcends all others, and I don't believe in that. But can music save my mortal soul? yes. I write when I'm falling apart. For some reaon that's when the songs come. I never sit down to write a song. It happens on its own. And I allow it to. Then why do I feel the need to record and be in a band and all that? I don't know. There's an element of this that I don't want to figure out."
--Christopher Owens, of the band "Girls"

"Peace and love is all good, but it's nothing without forgiveness."
--Bob Dylan

"Negative self-talk is toxic to a person's self-esteem, sense of efficacy and, ultimately, their self-confidence. We start to buy into our own negative press and begin to believe that just because we think and feel something negative, that that must be the truth of the situation. All of this poison feeds a generalized sense of helplessness, which saps our motivation and energy to be proactive and try new things, and undermines our ability to be creative.
The good news is we can break the cycle at any point…We have the choice to believe in the good or the bad about ourselves. It's never too late to change the direction of your thinking and start the journey to a more optimistic, happier and healthier version of you."
--Arlene Cook, clinical psychologist

"The journey from the head to the hand is perilous and lined with bodies."
--Ann Patchett

--I THINK THEY CAN GIVE YOU SOMETHING FOR THAT


…I never read "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" or the other two in the series, but I did see the film yesterday.
Then I saw it again today.
Saw it twice in two days. I've never done that.
The film sizzles. Holy Hell, does it ever.
Rooney Mara is mesmerizing. She needn't even speak to convey her strength and fear, her complexity and vulnerability. There's never been a character on screen like the one Ms. Mara plays. Someone please throw an Oscar nod her way.
The score, written by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, is superb. It takes the heartbeat out of your chest and stuffs it inside your eardrums, ratcheting up the tension (of which there is mounds and mounds) through the entire film. At 2 hours 40 minutes, the movies ends in a blink.
There is a fair amount of candid sex.
There are several brutal scenes, including two gruesome rapes.
Many people die, or are shown to have died.
But this is as fine a film as I've seen in a while. It's got it all--tension, spot on acting and casting, wonderful cinematography, action, drama and it never talks down to the audience.
It's a must-see movie.

…There's a new site called Wish Tank @ deathwishing.com where you can post what you would want to have happen on your death bed. It's kind of a cool idea.

…I got side-tracked trying to write a love poem for a site today doing a themed issue. Usually pieces just jump out of me, but this one, like the last couple of stories, has been a bit constipated.

…There might not be a more romantic song than "18th Floor Balcony" by Blue October. Please see for yourself.

…Something that makes me very happy is hearing children laugh or giggle. That's the sad thing about getting older--you spend less time around kids.

…Studies show the most common birthdate is September 16th, exactly nine months from now. It has to do with a combination of the rainy season colliding with the holidays.
Get some rest tonight.

…I like these a lot:

“The first product of self-knowledge is humility.” Flannery O’Connor

“She sat and thought of only one thing, of her mother holding and holding onto their hands.” Eudora Welty

"Fifteen years old is the middle of my life, regardless of when I die." Edouard Levé

"Your Jesus is my mother is someone else’s turtle." Sugar

--YOU ARE MY SWEETEST DOWNFALL

…Yesterday I woke before anyone.
The house was quiet although you could hear the wind pressing in against the windows, sort of eavesdropping. I read some. I turned on the fire. It was nice and peaceful.
…After present opening, I colored with my two kids. That was peaceful, too. It takes a lot of patience to color.
…I got a lot of music in the mail from Amazon: The Civil Wars, Fences, Mayer Hawthorne, City in Colour, new Cold Play. It’s all good.
Oh, and Christina Perri. I’m not a big tattoo fan, but she’s kind of hot with hers. And “Jar of Hearts” may be the greatest female FU song since Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know.“
Sample: “Who do you think you are? You’re gonna catch a cold from the ice inside your soul. So don’t come back for me.”

…There’s a lot of writing online. Massive amounts. Quite a bit of it is mediocre. A fair amount is just plain bad. It makes me wonder if mine is any good. Perhaps I just think it is.

…I love pens. I have a bad habit of filching the ones I like when I’m at a restaurant or doctor’s office. I prefer the fine point kind that make your penmanship middle school sharp.

…The day before yesterday I wrote a story called “Hominy” about a poor kid raised by a cruel German grandmother.
Yesterday I wrote a story called “Tiny” about a bus driver named Tiny who is actually 400 pounds. I kind of fell in love with the guy.

…The other day I made a list of my new year’s resolutions and after I was finished something weird happened so that when I clicked on the document the words crumped into the black messy cluster, the way a spider folds in on itself it if gets too wet.
So I’ll have to make a new list.
People have accused me of being too goal-oriented, too fixated on numbers.
One person said I should try being a “human being” instead of “human doing.” That particular person wasn’t being cruel when they said that particular thing about me.
I’ve tried that person’s advice. I tried it most of the last half of 2011. It made me feel lazy. I was lazy. I got very little done. I wasted a lot of life.
So in 2012 I’m going to be a “human doing.” I’m going to get shit-tons done.
Just watch me.

…”My favorite sexual position is long division.” Madison Langston

--IT HELPS IF YOU LEAN INTO THE FALL


…I’m back after five days down south in Mexico.
For whatever reason, while I was gone I got quite a few responses from queries:
--one rejection on a story collection I’d sent a publisher
--two rejections on my novel from agents, both form letters
--and, one request for material (the first 50 pages) of the novel.
I’ll count that last one as a win. Just getting over the query hump is a feat in and of itself.
A body’s got to start somewhere, right?

…I didn’t read as much on vacation as is my habit. In the past I’d plough through a dozen or more books.
This time it was just two…

…One was about finding God in unexpected places.
In the book, I learned lots of random yet fascinating things.
--In it, I learned that half the world’s citizens still get by on less than two dollars a day.
--In it, I was reminded that there are more stars than grains of sand on earth i.e., there are over 100 billion galaxies, each containing in excess of 400 million stars.
--Polar bears aren’t really white, but there hairs are actually transparent, acting like fiber-optic tubes that trap in heat, making them seem white.
--On their trips south, some geese maintain a speed of 50 miles per hour and fly 1,000 miles before making their first stop for rest.
--In the book, I learned that 2 weeks after 9/11 only five percent of the missing bodies had been found. Rescue dogs got so discouraged that their handlers had to play games with them to keep their interest up. The dogs searched all day and found maybe a piece of clothing or an elbow or scrap of skin. They cut their paws on the sharp edges of steel and whine in frustration because, like the human rescuers, they had so little to show for their efforts…
--In the book was a wonderful excerpt from Phillip Roth’s, “The Ghost Writer”:
“I turn sentences around. That’s my life. I write a sentence, then I turn it around. Then I look at it and turn it around again. Then I have lunch. Then I come back in and write another sentence. Then I have tea and turn the new sentence around. Then I read the two sentences over and turn them both around. Then I lie down on my sofa and think. Then I get up and throw them out and start from the beginning.”

…The other book I read a fantastic collection of non-fiction feature pieces written by two time Pulitzer Prize winner Gene Weingarten.
The book is called “The Fiddler in the Subway” and it has some terrific true life stories, many of which seem to entwine the impossible with reality.
The title story is about an experiment The Washington Post undertook by having Joshua Bell—who received The Avery Prize, recognizing him as the finest classical musician in the world—play violin at a busy bus station in affluent, erudite Washington D.C.
…Here are some excerpts:
--“The idea was to discover if in a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?”
…It was January 12th, in the middle of rush hour. In the next forty-three minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by. Only three stopped to listen, while 27 gave money for a total of $32 and change.
Bell, a child prodigy, had the night before filled Boston’s stately Symphony Hall. His talent commands $1,000 an hour.
Bell, whom Interview magazine once said of his playing ‘does nothing less than tell human beings why they bother to live…’
So some of the obvious retorts are:
-- What was he doing in a busy bus station? People probably grouped him with other street musicians.
-- It was rush hour. People were on their way to work. Who has time to stop and listen?
…But some people did stop and listen, if only for a few minutes. They caught the magic. Art transcended the banal.

…What I wish for you this Christmas and Holiday Season is a childlike sense of wonder. I hope you can be entirely present in the moment.
…Merry Christmas!

…”What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.” W.H. Davies

--I AM A LOT LIKE YOU

...Iḿ in Mexico typing on the hotel keyboard staring at a gigantic flat screen TV where everything is connected--phone, computer, cable television, you name it.
This hotel is the fanciest place I have ever stayed in.

They have many pools here. Some of the rooms open up to pools so you can open up your patio door and dive in straight from there.
Not many people are reading books.
There are a lot of very bad tattoos. I mean, really bad. I have (Iḿ not using many contractions because this keyboard is giving them the Hispanic umlott you see in the word Iḿ) become a fan of tattoos, but these here are really awfully. It is as if every person here had one or more appendages dipped into a vat of ink and then it sort of whorled around on their skin.

I ran five miles this morning. At one juncture, I came to this cove with a sandbar surrounded on both sides by water, shallow water, and Iḿ pretty sure I saws an alligator lurking topside of the water surface, just waiting to have me for breakfast, so I turned around and sprinted the other direction.

The last few months of this year have been lazy ones for me. Relatively speaking, they have.
I have been taking it easy, not writing or reading much.
I have been doing a lot of thinking, though, contemplating why I write, what I want to achieve and why I want to achieve those things. Iḿ almost to the point where I have answers for myself, conclusions to the questions Iḿ asking.
When Iḿ all the way there, I will share them with you.
My goal is 1-1-12.

...I hope youŕe having a good week. It is strange to be in another country this time of year, to be hanging out in shorts and a t shirt while back home it is parka weather.
People are fond of saying how small the world is, especially now with technology being what it is, but really, the world is quite large.
I hope you are having a splendid week wherever you are in the world and I will write more Saturday.

--NOBODY KNOWS IT, BUT YOU'VE GOT A SECRET SMILE AND YOU USE IT ONLY FOR ME


--By year, average number of Christmas gifts people said they would buy:
2007 -- 23
2009 -- 18
2011 -- 15

--On Average, how many holiday cards do you usually receive?
0 to 10 -- 33%
11 to 25 -- 35%
26 to 50 -- 23 %
51 to 75 -- 6%
75+ -- 4%

--Have you ever re-gifted an item?
46% -- never
29% -- a few times
18% -- once
7% -- many times

…This was kind of interesting and surprising:

Psychologists at the University of British Columbia and the University of Oregon say that their study demonstrates that anti-atheist prejudice stems from moral distrust, not dislike, of nonbelievers.
"It's pretty remarkable," said Azim Shariff, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Oregon and a co-author of the study, which appears in the current issue of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
The study, conducted among 350 Americans adults and 420 Canadian college students, asked participants to decide if a fictional driver damaged a parked car and left the scene, then found a wallet and took the money, was the driver more likely to be a teacher, an atheist teacher, or a rapist teacher?
The participants, who were from religious and nonreligious backgrounds, most often chose the atheist teacher.


--Here are some disturbing findings:
The military divorce rate is at its highest level.
In 1999 30,000 military marriages ended

--Nearly 1 in 5 women report being raped in their lifetime.
30% report being first raped when they were between 11 and 17 years old
12% were 10 or younger
Nearly 1 in 2 women and 1 in 5 men experienced sexual violence other than rape at some point in their lives

…This is good to know:
The act of smiling alone makes you happier. The muscles in your mouth send a signal to your brain to produce a drug that makes you happier and helps you live longer.

…I like these to start a new week:

"If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than
because he was he, and I was I." Michel de Montaigne

"The idea is to write it so that people hear it & it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.” Maya Angelou

"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn
how to do it." Pablo Picasso