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This Morning

Dusty Leave a comment

This morning I am thinking about procrastinating.

Not for myself — though I’m not entirely against procrastinating — but because my students were assigned an essay about challenges they’ve faced, problems they’ve solved, and several of them wrote about their struggle with procrastination. My seniors are far worse about it: they take pride in their refusal to get anything done in any kind of timely manner. “Senioritis!” they cry.

Bullshit, I say.

Sure, seniors suddenly get several notches lazier in the second semester. They’ve gotten into college, they know they won’t fail their classes — they’re not that lazy — and so they will definitely graduate and go on to the next stage of their lives. That being the case, it’s hard to see the need to complete vocabulary assignments just like the ones they’ve been doing for years, now, and which, in a few months, they’ll never have to do again. (Not that they like thinking about graduating in a few months and being done with high school forever. It’s a tempting prospect, but also terrifying, because that, they know, is when they get sent out into the Real World, which they have been taught to fear throughout their time in high school.) And sure, I get that. But “senioritis” implies first that it is something out of their control, an inevitability, a condition that afflicts people in their situation; and second that they haven’t been pulling the same crap for years now.

There are exceptions, of course. A few students get all their work done on time regardless of the relative value of the work; in fact, they take pride in completing both the large difficult assignments and the measly, mindless ones, because that way they show that their work ethic knows no bounds, that no grade is too big, and no grade is too small. There are students who were slackers, but who pick it up in their senior year, though even they tend to fall back into old habits as graduation day approaches. There are, of course, seniors who really do get lazy only at this final stage of their high school career, who go from diligent to dilettante once February rolls around.

But for the most part, it’s not senioritis, it’s studentitis. And it’s not that: it’s just procrastination. But here’s the thing: procrastination doesn’t have to be bad. It usually isn’t. It can be, of course, but for the most part, it’s simply — prioritizing. A student has an assignment due on Friday, and that student knows they can get it done in two hours; there’s no particular reason to do it Wednesday night instead of Thursday night. They may get a surprise assignment on Thursday and have to do two things Thursday night, but usually not, and if they do, they simply give up some sleep, which they don’t mind at all. (Students are divided into two groups: those who do nothing but sleep — the sloths — and those who only sleep a few hours a night — the squirrels. Sloths mind giving up sleep, but they make up for it by sleeping 18 hours the next day; squirrels are already awake until two or three in the morning every night.) The assignment that isn’t due tomorrow is a low priority, so it doesn’t get done until it is a high priority; it’s not lazy, not irrational, it’s nothing more than what we all do all the time. This last Sunday I had time for one chore, and I had to pick between cleaning out the birdcage or vacuuming the floors; I cleaned the birdcage because the floors weren’t that dirty. Because unlike the bird, we don’t crap on the floor. Priorities.

It’s more troubling when the work is daunting, and they have time to do it, but they put it off anyway because they’d rather not do it. Not managing their time, perhaps short-sightedly but reasonably; this procrastination just keeps going, past when they have a reasonable chance of doing the work, sometimes past the due date entirely. This is the kind of procrastination my students wrote about in their essays, as a problem to be overcome, a challenge they have to face. Because now the procrastination causes stress, and makes them miss out on things they don’t want to miss out on, things they care about more than sleep. This procrastination is especially troubling because often, the activity they choose over completing their work is — nothing. Watching Netflix or YouTube. Laying on their bed and staring at the wall. Saying to themselves, “Wow, I really should do that thing I have to do.” And then not doing it. Over and over.

But even this, I would argue, is prioritizing: something in that lack of activity, that laying on the bed, that video watching, is more important than getting their work done at that moment when they make that choice. I think the two best possibilities for their reasons are, one, that they are so completely stressed and anxious that they are desperate for anything that can help them calm down — more common among today’s youth than you would like to think, but if you knew how many of my students are in therapy and on mood-altering drugs to handle their anxiety, you would know this is not an unlikely reason for procrastination — and two, the work is so unimportant that they refuse to do it, because doing it feels almost demeaning, almost insulting.

This is how I felt about high school when I was in it. It was beneath me. It was a waste of my time. I thought the teachers, who weren’t any smarter than me, were giving me homework just to push me around, and by God, I wasn’t going to let them get away with that. I would show them: I wouldn’t do the work! I’d take that F! That’s right, teacher, I’ve called your bluff: what are you going to do now? Huh?

Nothing. That’s what I thought.

Exactly what I do when my students don’t do the work. Because I don’t actually assign work to push my students around. And if they don’t want to do the work I assign, that’s their choice. Hell, if they don’t do it, that’s one less paper for me to grade. Win-win.

In either of those cases, crippling anxiety or petulant rebellion, procrastination is not laziness. It’s prioritizing. They may not be doing a good job of making those decisions, but they are making decisions, not just blowing things off for no reason. Because of that, I think that a student who procrastinates should be allowed to make that choice, and then face the consequences of that choice, of their own free will, which is why I don’t hound them, asking if they finished their work yet. They’ll finish it eventually, or they won’t; either way is their choice.

Just so long as they don’t call it senioritis.

This Morning

Dusty Leave a comment

This morning I’m thinking about words.

I’ve got lots of word-nerd books. A dictionary of 2000 Obscure and Challenging Words; a History of the English Language; a Pirate Primer on how to talk like a pirate. And I have this book:

Image result for the book of random oddities

My copy of this has a different trivial fact on the cover: and the one above just BLEW MY MIND!

This book is excellent, because while it has some interesting trivia, it’s mostly word play and word games, quotations and riddles and interesting factoids about — language.

And while reading, I found out some things.

A “dignotion” is a tattoo, birthmark, or other distinguishing mark.

“Bucculent” means wide-mouthed.

“Illecebrous” means pretty or attractive.

“Bathycolpian” means having large bosoms and deep cleavage.

“Imberb” means beardless.

“Leptodactylic” means having long, slender toes.

“Lentiginous” means freckled.

“Kalopsia” is the overestimation of beauty.

“Circumbendibus” is a roundabout process or method, especially a circumlocution: and so is “circumbilivagination.”

 

The collective nouns for these animals are:

A sloth of bears, a singular of boars, a business of ferrets, a peep of chickens, a deceit of lapwings, a tittering of magpies, a mumble of moles, a cast of hawks, a siege of herons, a kindle of kittens, a crash of rhinoceroses, a mutation of thrushes, and an unkindness of ravens.

An unkindness of ravens! And I’ve only been hearing about that “murder of crows” thing, for years!

 

Allodoxophobia is the fear of other people’s opinions, catagelophobia is the fear of being ridiculed, didaskaleinophobia is the fear of going to school, scolionophobia is the fear of school, sophophobia is the fear of learning, gnosiophobia is the fear of knowledge, and kakorrhaphiophobia is the fear of failure. So Allodoxocatagelodidaskaleinoscolionosophognosiokakorrhaphiophobia is the fear of being a high school student.

 

To cabobble is to confuse, blutterbunged means confused or surprised or taken aback, inaniloquent means saying silly things, to jargogle is to mix up or garble something, a phlyarologist is one who constantly speaks nonsense, and to winx is to speak foolishly.

 

Blatherskite?  Foolish person.

Dandisprat? Insignificant person.

Dowfart? Stupid, dull person.

Hoddypeak? Blockhead.

Jackeen? Worthless person who thinks himself important. (This gives me a new nickname for someone at work.)

Ninnyhammer? Simpleton.

Quakebuttock? Coward.

Shabbaroon? Mean-spirited person.

Slubberdegullion? Contemptible person, a wretch.

Wallydraigle? Feeble, slovenly person.

 

And I’m only halfway through the book.

this morning

Dusty Leave a comment

Image result for leaning back in my arms

 

In honor of yesterday’s post, which was more stream of consciousness than is usual for me, and therefore also less coherent, I give you by way of explanation my very favorite poet: ee cummings.

 

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady I swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
-the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

And look what I found.

 

(Seriously, go look. It’s beautiful.)

This Morning

Dusty Leave a comment

This morning I am thinking about perspective.

My wife, who is currently teaching high school art, teaches perspective to her students. There’s a technique to it, and a basic concept that some of the students struggle to master. But if they do master it, there’s more waiting for them. We all know about one-point perspective, and two-point perspective (Don’t we?), but did you know there is also three-point perspective? And four-point? Did you know it goes up to TWELVE-POINT PERSPECTIVE???

If you, like my wife, are a highly trained visual artist, then you might actually know that. In which case your view — your perspective — of this post is different from mine,  and different from most; you might have seen my all-caps and multiple question marks as naive, either irritating or cute depending on how you see me and probably what mood you are in.

If you ARE my wife (and she’ll read this at some point, I hope. I mean, maybe she’s sick of my writing; Lord knows she has to read enough of it. So maybe she’ll skip this one.), then your view of this post will be different again, because not only do you know all of this already, but you are reading about yourself, being used as my example. Again. (And you had to read my little anxiety-comment about being tired of my writing, again, and you probably sighed or rolled your eyes at the apparent need to reassure me, again, that you like what  I write. I mean, 25 years we’ve been together; come on, are we still worrying about this?)

Perspective changes everything.

I was going to lead this off with the old cliche about keeping things in perspective. There are eight weeks left of my school year (I know, fellow teachers, I get out super early, around the third week of May, and it’s sweet — but then we start again around August 1. Inservice is in July. Don’t be too jealous. Though at this end of the school year, with the summer ahead starting before Memorial Day, it looks pretty sweet — so go ahead and be jealous. Just come back at the end of July and read about how miserable I am to be going back to school already, while you probably have a month left of summer; then you can have your revenge on me.), and that makes me both excited to finish and get to my summer, and also terribly stressed that I only have eight weeks left to teach everything I haven’t taught my students this year  — which, of course, is far more than eight weeks’ worth of material. Today is also the first day back to school after Spring Break, which feels terrible right in the moment; but my Break was absolutely lovely and perfect; and of course, there will be many more breaks to enjoy. As sad as going back to work after vacation is, it also means I get to have that last day of work before vacation, and those are wonderful.

So I wanted to make the point that most frustrations are minor. Sure, it’s Monday and I have to go to work; but it’s almost April, and I will have summer soon. Sure, I’m tired; but I’m alive, and generally healthy. Sure, I’m frustrated  with my job and with my lack of a professional writing career; but I’m not a ditch digger nor a slave, not a sex worker nor a sewer worker. You have to keep things in perspective, I thought, and decided that I should write that, as a little encouragement to my fellow workers who are off to their Monday.

But then I thought a bit more about perspective, and I realized: there is no “right” perspective. “Keeping things in perspective” implies that there are big important things, and there are small trivial things, and there is a clear delineation between them, and knowing which are which is the key to happiness, or at least contentment. But I don’t buy that: because importance is relative to the individual. Because the size of issues is time bound, meaning that climate change is a global catastrophe waiting to destroy us all, but it is not affecting me this morning, right now, and my having to go to work is. Having to go to work is infinitely smaller; but it’s also infinitely closer than the climate change catastrophe. (I know it’s not infinite, and I don’t mean to belittle climate change; that catastrophe is closer than we think, and scarier. But I’m trying to make a point here.) That means, essentially, that the two problems are about the same size in my life and in their influence on my mood right now. In fact, the Monday thing is a little bit larger because I’m also tired, which makes Monday worse, and doesn’t have any effect on worrying about climate change. Someone else in the very same situation would have a different view of the relative importance of these things, and who’s  to say that their perspective is wrong? Or right?

So I think the best idea is not to try to keep things in perspective: it is to realize that you can, almost always, change your perspective. (“Almost always” because sometimes things are inescapable, immediate and intense and critical, and then you must deal with them and survive them and get through them.) But when you can gain some distance from a problem, from a feeling, from yourself, then you can shift things around as you wish. You can focus more on a specific aspect, bring it nearer, clearer, larger, and push other things back in relation to that aspect. That power is what’s important — at least right now.

Don’t keep things in perspective. Change your perspective. Make a big deal out of little things, and enjoy your little victories as if they were world championships. Make those large looming abstract worries into tiny, distant problems, and block them out with something right here, right now: do some laundry, and be proud of what you have done. Eat a bagel, and glory in the perfect breakfast. It can be a big deal if you want it to be. In other words, sometimes you can sweat the small stuff and ignore the big things; that is your choice, your privilege, your power. Your perspective.

At least, that’s how I see it.

 

(P.S: I am confident that my metaphor has completely ruined the correlation with the artistic technique of perspective; I’m really talking more about foreground and background and such. I am sorry if that broken parallel was a bigger issue for you than it was for me, but it wasn’t a big problem for me. I’m just happy I got this post written. If you’re my wife and you’re annoyed with me, you can have the pleasure of throwing something at me. If you hit me with it, you win!)

This Morning

Dusty Leave a comment

Congratulations! This morning you have been visited by the Sunday Sloth.

Image result for sloth

The Sunday Sloth gives you his permission to be slothful today. You  may do as little as you like, particularly if it means you get to rest and relax and recuperate. G’ ahead; if sloths can live their lives this slowly, then you can slow down a little, too. At least for today.

And hey look! It’s the Happ Corgo of Happiness! That means you are allowed to be happy today, no matter what! So even if you feel like you can’t be slothy (Which would be a shame, because you would disappoint the Sunday Sloth. You don’t want to do that, do you?), you should be happy while you do your necessaries. The Happ Corgo insists.

Image result for happy corgi

LOOK! HE BROUGHT THE HAPPUPPER WITH HIM! Well, now you have to be TWICE as happy.

Image result for happy corgi

Thank you, Happupper. We all love you.

 

Happy Sunday, everyone.

Book Review: The War of Art

Dusty Leave a comment

Image result for the war of art

The War of Art

by Steven Pressfield

In retrospect, I should have known from the foreword that this was the wrong book for me: Robert McKee talks about art like it’s a war that Pressfield will help me to win; and while I think art is a struggle, I really don’t think it’s a war; indeed, as I am a pacifist, couching things in warrior’s terms is just going to push me away. He also references golf as evidence that Pressfield is a consummate professional (Pressfield wrote The Legend of Bagger Vance, which I have neither read nor seen; I guess it’s about golf? I guess Pressfield likes the game? But he writes anyway instead of playing, which – I guess is impressive?), and there’s the second best way to alienate me. He talks about tearing up over the Spartans’ death at Thermopylae, which was the subject of Pressfield’s other big book, Gates of Fire, which I did read, and did like quite a lot – but it didn’t make me weepy, and I don’t know what it has to do with inspiration to make art. So I’m really having trouble relating to this foreword author – and then he ends his intro with this:

“When inspiration touches talent, she gives birth to truth and beauty. And when Steven Pressfield was writing The War of Art, she had her hands all over him.”

Creepy sexual metaphors, especially about things that are not remotely sexual – like the act of putting words on a page – that is the number one way to make me say “Nope.” So I should have known.

Let me say this, though: this is a book intended to inspire artists, to help people break through creative blocks and create art they can be proud of. I can’t think of many more noble things to try to do, and I appreciate Pressfield’s earnest and genuine attempt to give people tools to do what they should be doing. So: if you do appreciate sports metaphors, and war metaphors, and you like a good, strong pep talk – or as the cover blurb calls it “A vital gem… a kick in the ass,” (which also should have been a warning sign for me) – then please ignore this review, and go get this book. I hope it helps.

It didn’t help me.

There are moments when I agree with Pressfield. He talks about questioning his writing, and feeling hopeless, and the strength and stamina it requires to push through all that and just keep working. He calls it work, and talks about how important it is to just keep putting in the hours, to keep trying, to keep seeking to hone your craft and do the best you can – but first and foremost, to just put the goddamn letters on the goddamn page, and to never give up. And I agree with that entirely. He talks about how he was in his 40’s before he found success, and how it came from an entirely unlikely source, which was, logical or not, simply the book he had to write at the time; and as a 44-year-old writer who is working on his second novel about a time-traveling Irish pirate, I appreciate everything about that.

But then there are the places where he talks about being a Marine, and how other servicemen in other branches are weaker than Marines because Marines love being miserable (This is a metaphor for how artists should be: willing to suffer and be miserable. I kind of see that. This whole Marines-have-bigger-dicks-than-other-soldiers? Nah.) and the other services are soft. Where he talks about writing and art like it is a war to be fought and won; or an animal to be hunted and then eaten; or a football game where you have to “leave everything on the field.” And I hate all of that. He talks about the urges and habits that get in the way of art as Resistance, and that’s pretty good, but he also talks about how like not cleaning your room is a way to lose to Resistance, and – what? And how golf is an art, and Tiger Woods is the greatest artist of all because he can be interrupted mid-swing, stop his swing, and then refocus and hit a golf ball really hard and – I fail to see the art in that. And he says that mental illness, depression and anxiety, are not real, but only a failure to combat resistance, which can be overcome by determination and the earnest pursuit of one’s true calling, and hey, fuck you, Pressfield.

He’s got a strange (And contradictory) section where he tries to talk about thinking territorially instead of hierarchically, and basically he means you should do what you think is right rather than worry about what other people think is right, and okay, sure – but first, he says elsewhere in the book that he knows he’s written well when his family is pleased and proud of him, which is hierarchical thinking by his own definition and explanation, so either he’s a REALLY bad editor who missed that continuity break, or he’s full of crap in one of these places; and second, his example of someone thinking territorially is Arnold Schwarzenegger going to the gym. Which is both weird and not at all artistically inspiring. It gets really weird in the third section, where the devout Christian Pressfield (Though he also admires the ancient Greeks so damn much that he seems to kinda want to worship Zeus and Apollo. I can’t really disagree with that, though I wouldn’t pick the same gods.) talks about angels who help inspire artists to work, because God wants us to create beautiful things for Him to admire, and how everything an artist is comes from God and we should understand that we contribute nothing, that we are only the vessel through which the divine will is worked. I mean, when we’re not being hardcore fucking Marines. Or hitting 310 yards off the tee. Otherwise, though, we should be all humble before God. It is not quite this Christian – he really does admire and know a lot about the Greeks – but it does read that way, as a repudiation of human accomplishment and a glorification of the eternal Whatever. And as an atheist and a part-time humanist, I am not at all down with that.

This thing reads exactly like what it is: a privileged Baby Boomer looking down on everyone else who doesn’t have all of his privileges; and by the way, he says some interesting and intelligent things that show me he really is an artist like me. Just way more of a shmuck. Hoo rah.

This Morning

Dusty Leave a comment

This morning, I am thinking about books.

I have too many books. I have too many books and I don’t read enough. I have a hard and demanding and time-consuming job, one that is important to me to do well, and so that takes up a ton of time and energy; maybe the worst thing about it is that my most-free time is late at night before I go to bed — but I can’t read then because it puts me to sleep. Which sucks because I want to read! And it also makes me feel like a lame-o who doesn’t care enough about reading, I mean, if I loved reading enough, I wouldn’t fall asleep doing it. But that’s dumb, because reading relaxes me, and I’m tired, et voila. Nodding off mid-page and dropping the book, which I do all the time. Scares my dogs. Though fortunately I rarely hit myself in the face. Not never; but rarely.

I also have this second job where I’m trying to write books. That also is draining and difficult and time- and energy-consuming, and so the two things together leave very little time for reading. This one gives me a strange feedback loop, too, because while I want to read as much as possible, as it gives me inspiration and fodder for writing, that means that when I read, it makes me want to write, so if the reading is going well that’s generally when I stop reading to write. Conversely, if the writing is not going well, it makes me want to read more, but then I also feel bad for not getting my writing done, because as much as I want to read, that is still my avocation, my hobby, my peaceful relaxing thing; it’s not my job. I don’t have goals and ambitions as a reader, but I do as a writer, so when I’m reading with the intention of getting back to writing, I am more focused on the getting back to writing, which makes me not enjoy the reading as much.

But I love reading. I love getting lost in a book. I love finding a new hidden thing, or a lovely turn of phrase. I love arguing with the author, or questioning why they did a thing — and I adore when I realize later in the book exactly why they did that thing. I love getting to know and understand characters, and I love seeing how things unfold in their lives. I love seeing how authors begin a story, and how they end one. I love reading detailed descriptions, and perfect metaphors, and ideas that I’ve never thought of before but that resonate with me down to the iron strings inside that Emerson talked about in “On Self-Reliance.” I love doing that, too, thinking of things I’ve read while I’m out in the world, and realizing that the book has had an influence on me, that it matters outside of the time I spend between the covers, wandering across the pages.

I love long books and short books, fiction books and fact books, children’s books and adult books, fantasy and science fiction and horror and romance and everything in between. There is no genre I won’t read, and no subject I won’t at least read about, though of course I have my preferences. Bookstores are dangerous for me, because every time I stop and notice something, I want to buy it. Even knowing that I have too many books at home and I don’t know if or when I’ll ever get to read that new book, I still want to buy it. I want it to be mine. I want to have the opportunity to pick that one right off my shelf, and then dive in and start reading it. When I travel, I pack extra books, because I don’t know when I’m packing which book I will want to read next, and I want that first moment of opening a book to be exciting and welcome, not feel onerous or like it’s just the best I can do. I don’t mind too much having too many books, because I just read that Umberto Eco had a personal library of 30,000 volumes, which he never could have read, but that it’s good to have more books than you can read because then you have to choose, which makes you more invested in the book and gives you the chance to learn new things throughout your life. I like that. I want to die with books unread: but not as many as  books read. That’s my goal.

I don’t ever want to be without books.

This Morning

Dusty 3 Comments

This morning I am thinking about space.

I worry constantly about giving people space. I hate feeling like an imposition, and for some reason, I feel like anything I ask other people to do for me is always, always an imposition. Even the smallest things: if I email a friend and I’m eager for them to write me back, I don’t want to ask them to do it, and I don’t want to hurry them or remind them that they haven’t written me back yet, because — that would be an imposition. I ask my wife, every night, what she wants for dinner, what she wants to watch if we’re going to watch TV; I never start with my opinions or my preferences, because I don’t want to influence her decision by pushing for what I want. And somehow I see simply stating, “I feel like tacos tonight” would be — pushing. Imposing. Rude.

I honestly do not know if this is because I am introverted, or overly polite, or timid, or too nice; or if this is something that everyone worries about, or at least most people, or just some. I think, in fact, that I am annoying with this: I think sometimes my wife would like me to just say, “Hey, we’re having tacos for dinner tonight, and then we’re going to watch  The Umbrella Academy,” so that she doesn’t have to decide for both of us. Especially because I will usually go and get the groceries and make the tacos, if I am the one wanting that dinner. It should seem like less of an imposition if I am doing everything myself, and not asking other people to do things for me. I worry that my writing is an imposition, that I am too wordy or boring, and so asking people to read my work is rude and demanding. Somehow I never think that people enjoy reading my work  and would do so voluntarily. Somehow I never think that I’m the one doing the heavy lifting here; that writing is hard, but reading what I write is probably pretty easy.

On some level this attitude is good; it keeps me humble and grateful. I never take anything for granted. (I’m sure I do, and I don’t know what it is, because  I don’t think about it, because I take it for granted. This is the problem with being aware of what you are unaware of: you can’t be unless someone else points it out to you. So hey, if you know me, and you can tell me something I take for granted and am not grateful for, tell me, okay? If it’s not too much trouble. Thanks.) I think it is quite valuable in my teaching, because I do as much as I can to give control to my students. Because I don’t want to impose: I don’t want to assume that what I think is important is actually important for them, and what I think is fun is actually fun for them, and what I think is right is actually right for them. I am happy to offer my opinions — and if my wife asks what I want for dinner, I will tell her; sometimes, at least — but only as considerations, and only insofar as I can explain and argue for them. I think that sends a useful message and sets a positive example for my students, and I’m happy with that. I also think that everyone is constantly trying to control teenagers, and they need at least some adults in their lives who don’t do that to them, and I am glad when I can be one of those adults. I am also aware that I am a white man, and therefore my word gets taken over essentially anyone else’s, and so I try very hard not to be the one dominating the conversation or making all of the choices in a public/professional setting. I do not want my voice to drown out other people’s.

But I avoid imposing on others so much that I think I disappear sometimes. Which is too bad, mostly for me, but also because I’m a pretty good guy, with pretty reasonable opinions and mostly good taste; I can contribute a lot to most conversations and decisions. And I should do it more. I still like being consulted, so once I get to know people I hope they learn to ask me what I think, and then I will gladly say something; but I should also volunteer what I think, or what I want: as long as I don’t do it in an insistent, domineering, rude manner, it shouldn’t really be an imposition. Right? Just my opinion. Just an expression of my desires.

Hey: you all should buy my book, if you haven’t. And if you have, you should read it. And if you’ve read it, you should rate or review it on the site where you bought it, or on Goodreads. And you should like this post, and subscribe to this blog. And you should comment, if you have comments. You should tell me what you think. I am curious. I would like to know.

If it’s not asking too much.

 

Here: links to make it easier.

My book on Amazon

My book on Lulu.com, where if you don’t mind signing up for a new account with them, I get about twenty times more money because I don’t have to give most of the cover price to Amazon.

My book in ebook format on Smashwords, which links to a dozen other sites where you can buy it in whatever ebook format you prefer. Note that the ebook is broken into four smaller parts, and is appreciably cheaper than the paperback.

My book listing on Goodreads, though there are also listings for the individual ebooks if you want to rate and review those.

This Morning

Dusty Leave a comment

This morning I am thinking about the work of art.

I have often questioned whether or not I’m an artist, a writer. And whether or not I should be an artist. I think that I don’t take it seriously enough, because art doesn’t always come first for me; I do all sorts of things other than art. The most obvious is work: as a teacher, I put in fifty or so hours a week on my job, and since I’m an English teacher, a lot of that time is spent reading and writing and talking about reading and writing. I took the job because I thought it would be both fun and beneficial for me to be surrounded by language and literature,  and to some extent it has been both; but I don’t understand why I didn’t think about how much effort it would take to do the job well. I question all the time whether I should have stayed a janitor, some kind of nice, essentially mindless work that would allow me to go home at the end of the day and write, for hours on end. I ask myself: are you really an artist if you spend all of this time and energy on your job? Shouldn’t all of that effort go into writing? Shouldn’t you quit your job and find a mindless one? Or at the least do your job poorly, with the minimum expenditure of effort?

Maybe so.

I also took this job because of summers off, and the several week(s)-long vacations; I figured I could use that time to write more seriously. And I have; summer has always been my primary writing time, along with spring break and winter break, and fall break, now that I have that. But even in those times, I only spend a couple of hours a day, at most, on actual writing. I’ve read about authors who work for eight hours a day, or who lock themselves away for a month, two months, six months at a time, and do nothing but write, all day every day. And here I am with two or three months off, and I write for — an hour a day? Clearly I can’t be much of a writer if that’s all I can stand to do.

But that’s not fair. Because the truth is that writing is fucking hard. It takes an enormous effort to focus on every single word, every single punctuation mark, every sentence, every paragraph, and make exactly the right choices in exactly the right places; and to do that at the same time that I am trying to keep a larger story in mind? Especially when the story is a novel, and so I have both the complete scene I am writing and the overall story to keep in mind while I am selecting each and every word? Jesus Christ, it’s amazing I can do this at all, if you don’t mind my bragging a little. Of course I don’t make all of the right choices, I probably make wrong choices most of the time; but I’m good enough at this that even my wrong choices are generally not terrible, not unforgivable. And just as a doctor’s first rule is “Do no harm,” meaning make sure you don’t do the wrong thing even before you try to do the right thing, I think my first rule as a writer is, “Don’t write shit. Or at least if you write shit, don’t let anybody else see it.”

But even that is hard, because shit is enormously easy to write. Just ask James Patterson. BOOM! No, I’m kidding, he’s not a bad writer. He’s a whore who made a name for himself and then let his publisher pimp that name out in “collaborations” that Patterson likely has almost no hand in, but his name is prominent on the front cover in order to boost sales — but he’s not a bad writer. I don’t want to actually name any bad writers; I’m not going to throw any writers under the bus quite that hard, because all of us struggle with this. All of us have to put in this colossal effort, and then take this terrible soul-searing step of letting other people read what we write.

It’s brutal. It is laborious and effortful and wearing and taxing and just hard.

And I keep doing it. And I keep doing it well enough that I am pleased with what I produce. And I do it sincerely enough that I feel better emotionally after I’ve done it, after I’ve written honestly and as well as I can; even though I’m generally mentally exhausted after I do it. I will also say that I don’t write much more than an hour most days, but I can always put in that hour: these morning blogs have been quite good for that, it turns out; I’ve also worked on my book every day for the last few days, and I’ll do it today, too. I am also capable of some serious marathon sessions of writing: I wrote the final chapter of my most recent book over one weekend, two days of solid writing for more than eight hours each day; I produced something like fifty pages.

Huh. Maybe that’s why I haven’t written that much in the months since.

But even when I hit these dry patches, I still come back to it. Even though it’s hard — and it is hard, though I sometimes fool even myself into thinking that it’s easy because sometimes the words just come and are perfect; but that is the end result of a whoooooooooole lot of hours spent slogging, and writing and rewriting and discarding the whole thing and then starting over again. Still I put in the time. I put in the work. Because I love it, and I believe in it, and I like myself better when I do it than when I don’t.

I guess I am an artist, after all.

This Morning

Dusty Leave a comment

This morning I am thinking about my wife.

It’s not surprising, I think about my wife all the time: she is always worth thinking about. Everything with her is worth the doing: she is worth seeing all the time, in her beauty and grace and her sweetness; she is worth talking to all the time, in her intelligence and her humor and her generosity; she is worth holding all the time, and supporting all the time, and relying on all the time. She is worth all my time. She is worth all.

Today is our 15th wedding anniversary, though we had been together for almost ten years before we got married. I am excited to give her her present, and eager to get about our day’s activities — I highly recommend to teachers to have celebratory occasions during regular vacations — and so I’m not going to spend any more time writing this.

I wish you all love and joy and perfection. I go to enjoy mine.

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