Gustave Flaubert

“Talent is long patience.”
— Gustave Flaubert

A few years ago I lay on the couch in my living room, curled up into a fetal position, intermittently groaning and blinking back tears.

I felt as though everything I had worked for had been ripped away from me, as though I had arrived at the party to which I’d been invited, only to have the door slammed in my face, as though the fragile mask of competence I’d been wearing had been torn away, and the whole world now saw what a fraud I was.

I felt that although I believed I had been faithful to what I perceived to be The InEffable’s intention for my life, I had been betrayed, since every path was now barred.  It had, I feared, all been a cruel prank.

In short, I believed (with some evidence to support it) that my career as a writer was over.  After publishing a collection of short stories and two well-reviewed novels, my publisher had dumped me, refusing my next two manuscripts.

It was a horrible black pit of depression out of which it took me several years to crawl.

But I made it.  And during that period of loss and exile, many people told me it would all work out. They told me if I just stuck with it one day I would publish again and all would be well.  Look at Madeleine L’Engle, they said.  She was rejected for years, and then she published A WRINKLE IN TIME (rejected 29 times) and won the Newbury Prize.  Think of Kerouac with his briefcase full of rejection.  Joseph Heller, Stephen King, Jack London, Herman Melville, William Faulkner, Samuel Becket, all suffered rejection. Colette was told in a letter of rejection: “I wouldn’t be able to sell 10 copies.”

Fine, I thought, listening to all these tales of pluck and eventual success — but for every one of those stories, there are hundreds and hundreds of writers who persist and never publish at all or, having published once or twice, never publish again.  Damn fine writers, too, who for reasons known only to their tight-lipped rejecting publishers, are now lost on the winds of literary amnesia.

No, I insisted, if one’s mental health depends on the bedazzled carrot dangling out there at the end of the brittle branch of public success we’ll all die crazy as a drove of demented donkeys. We’ll die hope-starved for acceptance and recognition.

We have to find another reason to keep going, to keep writing.  We have to find a reason that is not dependent on the subjective, arbitrary whims of strangers.

And what might that reason be?  A big question, and perhaps one which can only be answered by the individual writer.  For me, though, the only way I was able to keep on going was by first accepting I’d probably never publish again and determining if I still felt I was compelled to write.  Did I still wake up in the morning feeling nudged to the page?  I did.  Was I still less crazy when I was writing than when I wasn’t?  I was.

Besides, a wise friend of mine pointed out — Even if you were created with the sole intention of being a writer, no one ever promised you a publishing contract. Publishing and writing, while connected, are very different animals.  Writing is, for one thing, entirely within your control.  Publishing success, good reviews, book sales, prizes and so forth, are not.  Okay, you can self-publish if you like, but that’s certainly no guarantee of success (i.e. lots of happy readers), and like anything, there’s a price to pay.  (You can read more on my thoughts about self-publishing by clicking here.)

And so, with my pen in one hand and a wad of paper in the other, I started writing again, because I still felt (even if no one agreed with me) that I ought to be writing, that it was what I was made for.  If I never published again, so be it.  And after a while it felt pretty good, and my life was good again and I taught and wrote and read and lived my life in as full and useful a way as I could.

And then, the first book — OUR DAILY BREAD — which had been so definitively rejected found a home with a small publisher and lo and behold it started getting great reviews and was named on some “Best of the Year” lists.  Huh.  And the original publisher came back and said maybe they’d made a mistake, they’d like to publish it.  And I said okay.  And then, rather quickly for me — four months — I wrote another book, called THE EMPTY ROOM.  My agent submitted it and yesterday we got news that Harper Collins Canada will be publishing it in May of 2013. Hopefully a US publisher will follow shortly.

Huh.

And now I feel like one of those people who go around saying, just stick with it and it will all work out!  But I still believe that’s a lie, because although I’m pleased with being able to publish again, I will never forget what I learned during that long cold winter (a season which will doubtless come round again, since seasons are like that): that  it’s fine and good to publish, but if that’s why you’re writing, if that’s how you define your self worth. you are walking a treacherous path.

The writer’s life is about much more, I’ve re-discovered (and I say ‘re-discovered’ since I’m sure I knew this once, long ago before I ever started publishing), than successfully publishing.  It’s about sitting quietly in a room with your thoughts, and observing the world carefully, and examining what’s happening around you, and feeling empathy and bearing witness.  It’s about being faithful to what you believe your purpose is in life, regardless of fickle fortune.  By this I don’t mean you decline to support yourself, living parasite-like on the largess of others; or that you write while neglecting your responsibilities to your self and your friends/relations/neighbors, but I do mean you keep the flame of your voice alive, even when it feels there’s very little oxygen to feed it.  If you do that, everything will be all right, although perhaps not in the way you expect.

Life is nothing if not surprising.

In case you’re interested, my review of Anne Tyler’s new novel, “The Beginner’s Goodbye” is up other at Truthdig.com.  You can click here to read it.

I just got back from Ottawa, where I was at the “Politics & the Pen” gala dinner, which raises money for the Writers Trust of Canada, and then over at the Ottawa Writer’s Festival.  Had a wonderful time, but I’m pooped and about to grab a bit and then go to bed incredibly early!

Music to create to . . .

Still, there is one thing I do all the time: I listen to music.

Now, that doesn’t mean I listen to the same music all the time.  Each book seems to require its own soundtrack.  In fact, I actually included a soundtrack to my novel, THE RADIANT CITY, which you can find in the back of the paperback edition.  THE STUBBORN SEASON was written to a background of Noel Coward, Gershwin, Billie Holiday, Fat Waller, Jelly Roll Morton, Hoagy Carmichael, Cab Calloway, Art Tatum,

Music seems to open up certain creative pathways for me in the way I once thought scotch did.  (Scotch DIDN’T, by the way.)  I have a large collection of music of many genres and delight in creating play lists for different projects.  One rather mystical list contains nothing but music from the extraordinary Djivan Gasparyan, Anouar Brahem and Armand Amar & Levon Minassian.  There’s something about this ethereal, magical music that helps me drop down into the writing zone.

For concentration it’s Mozart, Satie, Vivaldi, Ludovico Einaudi (whose music I first discovered through the film “This is England) and several compilations of the “Best Study Music,” “Music for Thinking,” variety.  They’re surprisingly good as it turns out.  And opera, if I’m really in need of a kick in the pants.  Nothing like a little Maria Callas to amp me up.

I recently finished a first draft of a new novel about alcoholism, and listened to a LOT of early Tom Waits (sound track of my own drunken 20s and 30s), Leonard Cohen, Jimmy Lefavre, Patty Griffin, Ricki Lee Jones, Bessie Smith, Janis Joplin, Mary Gauthier, and so forth.

At the end of those writing days, I resurfaced to Mary Chapin Carpenter’s “Why Walk When You Can Fly.”   In fact, if I have a personal theme song, I suspect this is it. I’m also a sucker for The Staple Singers, Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell, Annie Lennox, Bettye LeVette, The Neville Brothers. . . ack!  I could go on and on.

Apparently I have 17.5 days worth of music on the old iTunes.  I’m thinking it’s not enough. Music as consolation, motivation, recreation and certainly inspiration.

Right now, these are the first five songs on today’s playlist:

Listening to Levon – - Marc Cohen
Driving with the Brakes on – - Del Amitri
Timshel — Mumford & Sons
The Real Thing — Sahara Smith
Blue Chalk — Maura O’Connell

So tell me — what are you listening to?

1. I cook a really mean lamb tagine (and will share the recipe if you want it.)
2. I have a secret crush on Vin Diesel. I also have a secret crush on Jeremy Irons. I think there’s nothing odd about having a crush on those two, albeit dissimilar, men.
3. I believe in ghosts. Thus far, they’ve been fine company.

If you’d like to read the rest (hint — disappearing churches and natural anti-depressants), you can do so my clicking here.

Thanks very much!  And here’s a picture of Vin Diesel, just because:

What can I say?

Here’s the beginning of it:

At a dinner party recently, someone brought up the topic of Israel and Palestine. Within moments, an educated and well-traveled individual I’ll call Joe stated Israel is a much-maligned island of moral purity in a sea of barbaric, immoral hatred. Israel, he said, has committed no atrocities, done nothing illegal or unethical, whereas the enemies of Israel have slaughtered children in untold numbers and desire only to drive Jews into the sea.

“And what,” I asked, “would Israelis like to do to Palestinians?”

“They have to go,” Joe said, eyebrows bristling in my direction.

I asked if it wasn’t possible both sides had more in common than not. After all, they are descendants of Abraham, they believe in the One God, they consider Jerusalem a holy city, and they would perhaps even like to live in peace, to tend their olive trees, to laugh with their children.

“No,” Joe insisted, “they are not like us. It’s a fallacy that if people get to know each other they like each other better. Often they like each other less.”

“Familiarity breeds ferklempt?” I asked.

If you’d like to read the rest, you can do so by clicking here.  Thanks very much.

Canadian edition of OUR DAILY BREAD

Well, OUR DAILY BREAD is out in Canada now, and I’m delighted with the Canadian edition.  Beautiful new cover, deckle edges, French flaps.  I think Harper Collins has done a terrific job, and so far the response from readers has been good.

Which means, of course, I have to start thinking about what I’m going to write next.  Actually, I’ve just finished a new novel, a speculative look at what a day (okay, a REALLY BAD day) in the life of a woman very much like me might look like, had I not stopped drinking seventeen years ago.

Nothing has ever filled me with  gratitude more than imagining what might have happened had I not put down the booze.  Just for starters, I never would have published anything — I never wrote anything WORTH publishing when I was drinking and for the last few years of my drinking I couldn’t write anything at all.  Husband? Home? Dog? Friends? Work?  None of the good stuff would have happened.

I consider myself extremely lucky.  As many of you know, my brothers, Ronnie and Bernie, weren’t so lucky.  Both of them took their own lives as a result of addiction.  Bernie on Easter Sunday, Ronnie on Good Friday, twelve years apart.  (If you care to, you can read more about that by clicking here.)  I look back at the way they were feeling, the way they were perceiving the world and their place in it at the times of their deaths and what still rips me apart is how wrong they were, how their perceptions were faulty, and let them down.

Getting sober certainly saved my life, and writing saves my sanity.  No matter how difficult the writer’s life is (and even though I consider publishing to be a miracle and a joy, it can be pretty psychosis-inducing), I am infinitely saner when writing than not.  Just ask My Best Beloved.

The Magical Book-Fruit Tree

So, after a week or two off when I’ll read a whack of books and lie about daydreaming, making notes, playing the ‘what if’ game . . . I’ll start on something new.  I have a couple of ideas.

People often ask writers where our ideas come from.  Alas, I haven’t found a book-growing tree yet, and that little shop in Moosejaw, Saskatchewan that shipped ideas to me via parcel post has closed down.  Thus, I’m left with no recourse but to start paying attention to what’s bugging me.  What’s obsessing me?  What’s annoying me? What’s rolling around in my head and keeping me up nights?

Given the level of vitriolic spew on the political front these days, you’d think I’d want to write a political novel, but frankly, I haven’t the stomach for it.  Besides, I doubt anyone would believe it.  Snort.

Every book I’ve written has come from that deep place inside where an unresolved question lurks, where something nudges me, like a tiny sharp pebble in my shoe.

Lately, I’ve been surprised, and somewhat taken aback, by the number of people who are convinced OUR DAILY BREAD is about them.  Some in Toronto, some in Nova Scotia, some in New Jersey . . . and that’s just the ones I’ve heard from.  Perhaps there is something in the images of child abuse (although there is really only one such image in the book) that are so similar as to be universal.  I’m not sure. Still, it’s got me thinking about how easily we misunderstand each other, and how we are really at the mercies of our experience in the world, and the conclusions we draw as a result, which are frequently misleading.

Of course, I think that’s a theme in much of my work — how we can’t seem to get out of our own way, how we can’t step outside our own perceptions. As Anais Nin said: “We don’t see things as they are.  We see them as we are.”

So, I’m curious, have you ever had the experience of being utterly sure about something, and then discovering it wasn’t at all what you thought it was?  Had a conclusion you’d drawn about someone proved wrong?  Had a cherished belief torn to shreds? Or how about the reverse — have you ever believed something wasn’t true, only to experience something which changed your mind?  I’d love to hear from you.

Winterson's scalding new memoir

Jeanette Winterson’s novels circle round the same themes—the power of story and mythmaking, the fluidity of gender, monstrous mothers and the loss of love. Her pages are filled with references to the Bible and to fairy tales, and are often artfully disjointed. “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit,” for which Winterson is rightly famous, was directly inspired by the author’s life. “Sexing the Cherry” is less overtly autobiographical but still contains some autobiographical elements, such as the echoes of Winterson’s mother in the giantess character, The Dog Woman, and of Winterson herself in Jordan, the orphan The Dog Woman rescues from the river. “Written on the Body” is a rage-filled cri de coeuragainst the betrayal and flimsiness of love. These themes return in her poignant memoir, “Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?,” as does the duality of Winterson’s work—fact and fiction, love and loss, male and female. “I know now,” she writes in her memoir, “that the finding/losing, forgetting/remembering, leaving/returning, never stops. The whole of life is about another chance, and while we are live, till the very end, there is always another chance.” Here is a terrible fragility, but a fire-forged strength as well.

The first section of the book deals with Winterson’s years as a child in Lancashire, England. She was adopted as a baby by a woman referred to throughout the book primarily as “Mrs. Winterson,” an evangelical Pentecostal Christian who hung a plaque with the words, “He Shall Melt Thy Bowels With Wax” in the outhouse.  Winterson describes her mother this way:

“She was a flamboyant depressive; a woman who kept a revolver in the duster drawer, and the bullets in a tin of Pledge. A woman who stayed up all night baking cakes to avoid sleeping in the same bed as my father.”

If Winterson upset her mother, which she frequently did, Mrs. Winterson told her the devil had led her to the “wrong crib.” She should have adopted the other baby, a perfect little boy. She also detested books because, she said, “You never know what’s in a book until it’s too late.” (Frankly, I can’t think of a better way to make books irresistible.) She locked Winterson alternately in the coal cupboard and out on the stoop regardless of weather, regularly deprived her of food and had a violent exorcism performed on her daughter when Winterson fell in love with a girl. When Winterson refused to give up the girl she received an ultimatum from Mrs. Winterson and chose to leave home at 16. As she left she told her mother the girl made her happy. Her mother responded, “Why be happy when you could be normal?”

You can read the rest of the review on Truthdig’s site by clicking here.

"I've got a few things to say to you."

When I answered the phone someone asked, “Is this Lauren Davis, the author?”

“It is.”

“Well, then,” said a woman’s voice best described as brittle with tension, “I have a few things I want to say to you.”

I intuited they weren’t going to be compliments. My heart did a little rhumba. “Is this Donna?” I asked.

Not five minutes before the phone rang I’d read an email from my agent who said he’d received a call from someone identifying herself as Donna Goler, a woman made reluctantly famous by being a survivor of the abuse which I heard about years ago and which haunted me so much I wrote OUR DAILY BREAD.

“Just give me 30 seconds, okay?” she said.

“You can talk all afternoon if you want.”

Donna was angry.  And justifiably so.  She had heard people in Nova Scotia talking about my novel as “The Next Installment in the Goler Saga.” She says journalists looking for a story are already calling her asking for her reaction. She tells me of people making Goler jokes and how the buzz and flap of gossip is fanning old wounds, again.

“Just stop writing about us,” Donna said. “I’m tired of it.”

As well she might be.  She’s not alone in her anger.  This reaction makes me angry, too.  How ironic is it that this book might be used to hurt the very people to whom it’s dedicated?

I explained to Donna that my novel – a work of fiction — isn’t about the Goler Clan.  I told her that yes, it was inspired by the horror that’s haunted me ever since I heard about the Golers’ story back in 1972 when I lived in Nova Scotia, and yes, several lines of dialogue in the final chapter were taken from court transcripts of the Goler case cited in an earlier, non-fiction book, but that’s all.  I created a fictional town – Gideon — with fictional characters:  The Erskine Clan who live on a nearby mountain,and the Evans family and Dorothy Carlisle, who live down below.  The mountain people in this book are not the Golers, any more than the people in Gideon are the people of Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia.  (The people of Annapolis Valley should be pleased to hear this, since the towns people in the novel aren’t terribly good people, by and large.)

I am horrified a book I wrote with the specific intention of enlarging the reader’s sense of compassion could be used as a further opportunity for unkindness and prejudice.

I want to be clear about this once and for all:  this novel is NOT based on the Golers.  Inspired by memories of tales I was told once upon a time when I lived in Nova Scotia, yes.  But I didn’t set it in Nova Scotia for PRECISELY this reason.  I didn’t want anyone confusing fiction with past tragic events.  To do so would be to re-abuse the people involved.

Donna has spent her life defending herself, first from her abusive relatives, and then from the media and her neighbors and co-workers.  She does it remarkably well.  I liked talking to her a lot.  She sounds tough, smart and fearless.  But enough is enough, surely.

By all means, let’s talk about our polarized society, about marginalization, about poverty and hopelessness and yes, about child abuse, but let’s rise above.  If you really want to talk about something, Donna has suggested, and I wholeheartedly agree, that you talk about “The Kids’ Helpline” (1-800-668-6868) and perhaps even make a donation.  That will surely make a positive difference in the lives of those who needs it.

And if you have any questions about the book, feel free to ask me, okay?

Oh, dear.

Back at the beginning of time, before self-publishing became so popular, writers developed over years, sometimes decades.  A writer became a writer by spending a lot of time reading, figuring out how writers he or she admired crafted wonderful books and, in turn, spending a fair period of time (often years) learning to do this him or herself.

There are, of course, some notable exceptions –  John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces, for example.  The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers, for another.  S.E. Hinton’s Rumblefish and The Outsiders.  All young writers who seemed to arrive at the page fully formed. I’m sure you have your own list of such prodigies. They are exceptions to the rule.  Maybe you are one such prodigy, too, but probably not.

Samuel Beckett. He failed beautifully.

Not being anything like a prodigy myself, I learned to write by antique methods.  I followed Beckett’s advice from Westward Ho: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” I think that’s still the way I write.

Unless YOU happen to be a child-prodigy (and again, maybe you are) I think slowly is a good way to learn the craft of writing. Taking one’s time to develop as a writer, to find a voice, to read many, MANY books and, perhaps most important of all, giving oneself permission to fail in private, rather than in public, are good things.

I find fewer and fewer emerging writers willing to do this, however.  With the bedazzled carrot of self-publishing dangling before their eyes, they are impatient.  They want to be authors NOW, rather than writers for life.  Like contestants on one of the television singing competitions that are so popular, they want to show off their literary chops to the world immediately.  Convinced of their own talent, they are confident they will naturally rise above the dross and sail into the stratosphere of instant celebrity.

Sigh.

How many emerging writers of real potential, like the writer mentioned in the opening paragraph, do we lose, I wonder, when their first, half-baked efforts are failures, when their dreams of fame and accolades lie cracked and tarnished at the bottom of their computer screens?

Here are some truths:

1.Publishing is one tough business.  It always has been.  Very few people have anything like even a modicum of success, if success is measured in terms of money and fame.

2.Most people who think they can write a good book can’t.  Just because you can talk, or write a witty email, doesn’t mean you have what it takes to write a good book. In fact, just because you have a wildly entertaining story to tell, doesn’t mean you have what it takes to tell it.

3. Just because you publish a book (and especially if you self-publish a book), doesn’t mean it’s very good, or that you’ll ever publish another one, or that you’ll have a career as a writer.  These days anyone at all can self-publish, and I have yet to hear of a self-publishing company that didn’t tell the ‘writer’ her book was better than others.  Sorry, I know that’s harsh, but it’s true. Consider yourself warned.

4.Becoming a fine writer takes a long time.  You will probably have to support yourself at another job as you develop.

5.You will probably have to support yourself with another job AFTER you develop and even after you’ve published with a decent publishing house.  Writing pays very little for the vast majority of people.

6.  And this is a big one — you will write a lot of garbage.  Even good writers write a lot of garbage.  It is best to do this in private or within a circle of gentle supporters, like a really good writing group or class.  Having your work decimated by uncaring strangers is one of the best ways I know to shut down your emerging talent.

Storytelling has been around a while. Always will be.

7. You will think I’m lying here, but I’m not:  there’s no rush.  People have been telling stories to each other for thousands of years.  Regardless of the technological shift in delivery methods, we’re going to keep right on doing it.  Take your time.  Learn your craft.  Find your voice. Experiment.  Stretch. Write a couple of bad books, but DON’T publish them.  Although you’ll learn an enormous amount from your failures, there’s no reason to flap them out there on the street in everyone’s face.  They won’t love you for it.

8. If you give yourself permission to write but NOT to publish immediately, you’ll be amazed at what you accomplish.  You will give yourself the gift of possibility, without having the critical reader hovering over your shoulder. If, however, you do want to publish, how about trying to get some short stories or op eds or essays published first.  That can be tremendously sustaining and affirming as well as good for your potential career.  And, because the stage is smaller, if you fail there, well, there’s not so much at stake. Either way, don’t take the cake out of the oven before it’s cooked.  It will fall.

9. Don’t write unless you HAVE to write.  If you’re not a real writer — by which I mean someone with the obsession (disease) that manifests itself by not allowing the afflicted to do anything else without feeling as though their hair’s on fire – then there are thousands of more pleasant, less neuroses-inducing and far more lucrative ways to spend your time.

10. If you really must write, then do that.  Keep doing it.  Don’t worry about publishing so much until you’ve truly mastered your craft.  Don’t rush it.  Bad things will happen to the person who takes control of an aircraft’s control panel before they’ve learned to fly (and land) the plane.

In short, protect your talent — don’t toss it out in the world before it’s ready just because all the other kids are doing it.  A slow-simmered stew often leads to better results than a short-lived greasy flare-up.