Gifts Differing

For a while today I felt a bit like the beautiful woman who wants to be admired for her mind.

I’ve been reading about writing again … real writing.  Serious writing.  Shakespeare, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Buechner.  Writing that defies time and tide; digs down into the bedrock of the human condition and takes a good, hard look at who we are, who we aren’t, who we should be.  I read about how good writers, serious writers put a lot of themselves in their work–as in, “opening a vein,” spilling their hearts’ blood.  And as I read I started to feel like a pygmy among giants, a gnat among eagles, a dirt clod among mount–

Well, you get the idea.  Shakespeare I ain’t.

It made me feel sort of sad and shallow, like I was lacking somehow.  I wondered if maybe I was a bit of a cheat.  If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times:  The greatest gift we have to give is the gift of ourselves.  So how much of myself do I put into my books?  Do I keep my distance or do I give until it hurts–my joys and heartaches, my passion, my doubts and fears?  Well, I couldn’t really say.  And if I’m going to be brutally honest, I’ll have to admit I couldn’t even say for sure I would have the guts to open that vein … on purpose, I mean.

I pondered it all for a while, trying to come to grips with my place in the literary scheme of things.  I am, after all, 99.999% sure I’ll never write anything remotely equivalent to The Tempest or The Brothers Karamazov or Huckleberry Finn. You never know, but odds are against it.  So where did that leave me?  Somewhere between hack and dilettante?  Purveyor of pulp fiction?  (Assuming I get even that far.)  Could I even call myself a writer without blushing?

The conclusion I eventually came to was this:  God never says, “Oops!”

I write according to the gift I’ve been given, giving myself to the extent and in the ways I’m able.  I’m no Dostoevsky, but then, he was no Kathy.   I don’t mean that in a comparative sense–as far as I know, delusions of grandeur aren’t among my many faults–only pointing out that we each have our place in the grand plan.  You know, like Esther coming to the kingdom for such a time as this.  I’m here, writing what I’m writing the way I’m writing it, for God knows what reason.  And that’s reason enough for me.

Balancing Act

Delicate balances aren’t exactly my forte.  My personal style tends more toward Martin Luther’s metaphor:  A drunkard who falls off the right side of the horse, staggers to his feet, and tries again to mount, only to overshoot the mark and topple off the horse’s left side.  Still, even I know delicate balances are usually important … although sometimes I’m not real clear on how to go about maintaining them.

Take writing, for example.

When I start a book or a poem, or even this blog, for that matter, I write both for myself and for you.  If I wrote only for you, I doubt I could come up with a single sentence–I would be too busy trying to figure out what I thought you wanted to hear, too afraid of boring or offending you to type a word.  If I only wrote for me … well, that’s just too ugly-arrogant to contemplate.

Writing–at least, writing as I know it–is an inside job.  The story takes shape within me, and I have to write it out as faithfully as I can, regardless of who might or might not read it.  At that point, it’s the story and me, mano y mano, and I’m absorbed in it … or by it, not sure which.  I’m grinding out sentences, often word by word.  I’m caught in the gears.  Furthermore, writing is solitary.  It’s emotionally and intellectually dense.  The process as I know it doesn’t leave a lot of room for anyone else, and my gaze is turned inward toward the story unfolding in my mind.

And yet ….

The story that took shape in me isn’t really for me … not for me alone, anyway.  There’s a greater purpose–has to be, if the process is going to be anything more than a narcissistic exercise.  The story’s genesis lies in an idea, a point, a message.  If it doesn’t speak to a need in at least one person’s life, why bother?

The balance between the inward focus of the writing process and the gaze that goes beyond myself is one I constantly struggle to maintain.  I need grace to carry it off.  Without grace, I take a header off the horse, to one side or the other.  Either I lose the point and get clever for my own sake, or I freeze up and find myself unable to spit out the message at all.

Thinking it all over, I come to the conclusion that once again, writing strikes me as a microcosm of life.  The delicate balance between the inward gaze and the eye that sees beyond ourselves is one we all struggle to maintain.  I guess we all need grace.

Perspective

This is the voice of experience speaking:  Lessons in humility tend to pop up when you least expect them.  In my case, “when you least expect them” equals “the precise moment I’m fullest of myself,” which is, of course, when I’m ripest for the teaching.  Take the summer of 1976, for example.

The ink on my B.A. in German was barely dry when I enrolled in a total-immersion, graduate-level summer program.  For I don’t remember how many weeks, 30 or so of us spoke nothing but German.  We studied in German, we ate in German, we watched movies in German … and by the end of the course, we dreamed in German.  By that time we had developed an insouciant continental swagger and a condescending smile, as we strolled amongst mere monolingual mortals incapable of deciphering our increasingly fluent exchanges.

The final night of the program our professor, Herr Doktor S., invited us to his home for a celebratory supper.  The thought of speaking English scarcely occurred to us … we would have sneered had anyone so much as suggested it.  So there we were, having a high old time high on ourselves, when Herr Doktor S. signaled for silence.  Expecting the kudos we so richly deserved, we gave him our complete attention, smiling when he brought his two preschool children into our midst.

“You have all done very well,” he said in his clipped Marburger accent. “You have accomplished a great deal and come a long way in the past few weeks.  But before you get too proud of yourselves, I must remind you of one thing.”  He placed a hand on each child’s shoulder.  “My children aren’t even in school yet, and they speak both German and English fluently.  Any child over the age of two can learn a language.”

It was all a matter of perspective.  You could almost hear the egos deflating.

As far as writing goes, one trip to a large bookstore usually helps me keep things in perspective, reminding me the world isn’t holding its breath on this author’s behalf.  As a matter of fact, on a recent amble through the Borders in Houston’s Galleria I thought, “There must be 10,000 books here.  Why on earth should I … or anybody else, for that matter … bother writing one more?  What makes me think I have anything new or even slightly different to offer?”

In The Writing Life Annie Dillard contrasts writing a book with selling shoes.  Everybody needs new shoes more than they need your book.  If they need your book at all, that is–which, she says, they don’t.  “Why not shoot yourself, actually,” she writes, “rather than finish one more excellent manuscript on which to gag the world?”

How’s that for putting it in perspective?  Anybody for a heaping helping of humble pie?

I guess writers are hard-headed … or delusional.  Whatever the reason, reality checks don’t seem to stop us.  Faced with Annie’s question, I shake my head in self-deprecating bemusement, shrug, and offer the only answer I have:  We finish the manuscript, because it’s there.

The Writer On My Shoulder

In his book The Seven Storey Mountain Thomas Merton wrote …

But then there was this shadow, this double, this writer who had followed me into the cloister….  He rides my shoulders, sometimes, like the old man of the sea.  I cannot lose him….  He is full of ideas.  He breathes notions and new schemes.  He generates books in the silence that ought to be sweet with the infinitely productive darkness of contemplation.

Most authors aren’t out to become religious contemplatives.  We don’t see the writer on our shoulder as a threat or a hindrance we want to lose–it’s who we are, what we do.  Still, I think I understand where Merton was coming from.  The writer on my own shoulder is seldom at a loss for words or ideas.  It’s sometimes hard to keep her in her place.

Unlike Merton, I see writing as integral to my spiritual life.  As a matter of fact, I was recently reminded of the need to take my own writing more seriously.  More seriously, as in writing whether or not I feel inspired, whether or not it’s going well, whether or not I’d rather be resting after a long day at work or lounging in my recliner watching the latest NCIS marathon.  This is my craft and my calling, and the only way to get better at it is to do it.  Suppose Rembrandt had contented himself with the occasional doodle?

But like art, writing is a means of communication, never an end in itself, and that’s the part the writer on my shoulder doesn’t always get.  She loses sight of the others, the someones beyond myself the writing is meant to reach out to.  She also doesn’t get the bit about a time to every purpose under heaven–like, for example, a time for her to cut the chatter so I can focus on One greater than myself.  A time to stop whispering in my ear about the next scene or the next book so I can hear other people.

It’s up to me to rein her in.  Honesty forces me to admit it’s not always easy, and I don’t always succeed.

But I’m learning.

The Art that Drives Me

I’ve been thinking, and I’ve decided that when it comes right down to it, I don’t understand writers at all.  I reached this interesting conclusion shortly after I finished writing for the day, which, I suppose, only goes to prove my point:  Writers just don’t make sense.

I’m not sure who Gene Fowler is or was, but he once said something like, “Writing is easy.  You simply stare at a blank piece of paper until tiny drops of blood form on your forehead.”  Yeah.  That’s about right.  So why do we love it?  Why do we feel only half alive when we’re not doing it?  Tell me how that makes sense.  Anybody?

I picked up a book today:  The Writing Life by Annie Dillard.  Read a page.  Got scared and closed the book.  I’m not sure I’m ready to read about my experience in her words–her very blunt words.  Words without wiggle room.  Look at this:  “You must demolish the work and start over.  You can save some of the sentences, like bricks.  It will be a miracle if you can save some of the paragraphs, no matter how excellent in themselves or hard-won.  You can waste a year worrying about it, or you can get it over with now.”

The next sound you hear will be rubber meeting road.

Explain it to me again:  Why do I love this?

An Old Testament prophet once said words to the effect of, “So, okay.  God talked me into doing this, but it wasn’t working out the way I expected, so I decided I would quit.  I just wouldn’t do it anymore, all right?  Except when I stopped, the words smoldered inside me like a fire in my bones.  The pressure was unbearable.  Holding back wore me out.”

Sort of reminds me of that old song about how fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly.  Writers gotta write.  No matter how miserable it sometimes makes them.

You know, come to think of it, life’s probably the same for everybody.  I mean, if you’re a doctor, you’re probably not happy unless you’re doctoring.  If you’re a teacher, you’ve got to teach.  A mom, you’ve got to take care of your kids, even when they think they don’t need it anymore.  (But what do they know, right?)  Nobody promised you the job you were created to do, the one you love and long to do, would always be easy or pleasant.

Hmm ….  Not exactly the somewhat mystical, self-serving-in-a-deeply-gratifying-way explanation I was hoping for, but I reckon it will do.

Growing Up vs. Growing Weird

I’ve decided writing a series of novels featuring the same cast of characters is a tricky business.

On the plus side, writing the same characters gives the author a chance to grow those main characters up–you know, flesh them out and let them get older and wiser and that much more interesting.  Complex relationships can evolve.  We the readers get to know the characters, until reading about them is almost like reading about good friends.  We can’t wait to see them again in the next novel.

Jan Karon’s Mitford series is a dandy example, probably one of the best.  Father Tim, his wife, their adopted son, the highly eccentric denizens of Mitford … everybody and his mother growing and changing as they struggle to deal with life’s latest curve balls.  We’re talking multidimensional growth here–physical, social, emotional, marital, and spiritual.  No wonder we found it hard to wait for the next book!  We looked forward to visiting those wonderful characters again and again.  Made us feel sort of warm and gooey inside just to think about them … like old home week.

(Pause for fair warning:  It occurs to me that perhaps my readers … all ten of them … might get whiplash trying to follow my tastes in fiction.  Rural, small-town Mitford to action-packed adventure?  What’s with that?  I’ll let you know as soon as I figure it out myself.  For now, just buckle your seat belts and make sure your tray tables are in the up-and-locked position.)

Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt novels are populated with enduring characters.  (And I’m sure Clive will be gratified to hear me say so.)  Now I’m one of those late arrivals who read the most recent books first, got interested, and went back to pick up the old ones.  I only mention it because, in all honesty, I like Dirk and his friends a lot more now.  This is no doubt because I’m female and thus unable to appreciate some of the … shall we say, rougher edges? … on Dirk’s early character.  Thankfully, Dirk has cleaned up his act, especially where the ladies are concerned.  (Dirk Junior, please take note.)  Anyway, I always look forward to Dirk’s devil-may-care daring-do, as well as his and Al’s smart remarks, which never fail to catapult some villain (or villainess) into a murderous rage.

Brad Thor’s Scot Harvath would be another case in point.  Scot is a counterterrorism operative extraordinaire, and I’ve followed him through several novels.  The former Navy SEAL–well, technically, he’s still a Navy SEAL … it’s complicated–is growing and changing in important ways.  Like wanting to start a family, for instance.  Speaking of which … I would just like to state for the record, I devoutly hope the bad feeling I have about him and Tracy turns out to be wrong.  Be that as it may, Scot gets more interesting, his life a bit more complicated, with each adventure–which is exactly as it should be.

Now we come to the minus side, where ongoing characters go awry, off the wire, nutso.  As my little gray-haired mama likes to remind me, “If you can’t say something nice about somebody ….”  So I’m not going to name names.  Suffice it to say, the characters in question are getting a bit … well, weird.  The tough counterterrorism operative breaking out with a bad case of potty mouth … this, I gather, is meant to demonstrate raw, tough masculinity (puh-leeze!) … and a near-psychotic, kill-anybody-who-looks-at-you-askance attitude.  The male-female detective duo who went from a being a couple of highly trained, tough, sharp cookies to a pair of near-neurotics.

Watching formerly interesting characters crash and burn isn’t much fun.  (Insert frowny emoticon here.)

I feel kind of silly, white-knuckling a paperback as I yell, “Pull up!  PULL UP!”

Variety Is the Spice

Some books are a walk in the park.  You go because it’s fun and entertaining, and because you just need to get away for a while.  Lord knows, in today’s world we can all use some park time.

Then you’ve got your sneaky books.  They’re entertaining, too, but they’ve got ulterior motives:  They want to get under your skin.  Or they want to put you in someone else’s skin.  They want to make you think, except you don’t know you’re thinking, on account of you’re all caught up in the plot, the imagery, the characterizations.

Some books are a workout, extreme aerobics for the mind.  These books make you wonder if you really do speak English after all.  You stare at the page, brow furrowed, and suddenly realize that knot just above the bridge of your nose is your brain slowly twisting itself into a pretzel as you try to make heads and/or tails out of what you’re reading.

I just finished two books like that, and I’ve got to tell you, there were passages where I almost hurt myself trying to hop the authors’ trains of thought.  I would have been happy to get an inkling of the message, let alone grasp it.  Why did I bother?  I don’t like feeling dense … at least, I don’t think I do.  But I kept slogging through ….

Why?

Because every blessed once in a while, a passage would all but light up the page and me right along with it.  I would get it … I would so get it.  And the parts I got fed my soul.

“Affliction,” wrote Simone Weil.  “Time bears the thinking being in spite of himself toward that which he cannot bear, and which will come all the same.  ‘Let this cup pass from me.’  Each second which passes brings some being in the world nearer to something he cannot bear.”  (Gravity and Grace)

She also wrote, “We must recognize our brother in a stranger, and God in the universe.”

In between those two things, she wrote a lot of stuff I didn’t get at all.  But the things I did get are pure gold; they were worth the hard-rock mining.

Same with Pascal’s Pensées.  Like Weil’s Gravity and Grace, Pensées was more a series of notes, scraps of ideas, than a book.  Some of Blaize’s scraps left me wallowing in a sea of utter cluelessness.  Okay, a lot of them left me wallowing in a sea of utter cluelessness.  But the fragments I understood … oh, brother!

I have a feeling we need all three of these kinds of books in our lives.  They fit together like pieces of a puzzle.  And the puzzle is us.

Not Rocket Science … Oh, wait ….

At the risk of sounding nonsensical, there’s something too wonderful for words about a well-written science article.  No, really.  Have you picked up a copy of Discover magazine lately?  Reading one of their articles is almost as good as eating ice cream.  Almost.  And that’s saying something.

Now, by science articles I don’t mean the ones written for actual scientists.  Those are full of intimidating equations and mysterious jargon and teeny, tiny footnotes referencing names only a molecular biologist could love.  I’m talking about science articles written for the rest of us, the great unwashed (scientifically speaking) masses who get a kick out of reading about things like “Why Your Brain Loves Math.”  (Mine doesn’t, by the way, but I appreciated the thought.)

The truly wonderful thing is, you don’t actually have to buy any magazines to get a taste of this stuff.  New Science, Discover, and Technology Review all have terrific websites.  Better still, they tweet.  There is absolutely no more rousing way to start to the day than logging into Twitter and finding some irreverently funny tweet pointing you to a entertaining-yet-informative article from New Science!  Trust me on this.  Better than Wheaties.  If you aren’t following them–New Science, not Wheaties–you’re missing out.

I know I promised to give you some helpful pointers on bathtub books, but that was before I read the blurb about haptic-feedback devices and got carried away all over again by the marriage made in heaven, i.e., the marvels of modern science and first-class writing.  I thought about trying for a tie-in … you know, magazines as bathtub books … but that was before my copy of Discover wilted in the rising steam.

The Corn Is as High ….

Lord, but it was a beautiful day here in God’s country!  I almost broke into song walking over to the library, but I caught myself in time.  First of all, there wasn’t a single stalk of corn in sight, let alone one as high as an elephant’s eye; and second of all, I don’t really sing that well anymore.  But it’s hard not to feel inspired when the sky is blue like a robin’s egg, and the sunlight splashes everything in burnished gold, which seems to be the color sunlight gets this time of year.  The live oaks dappled the sidewalks in shade.  Usually, I’m in a hurry to get to the library and back–has to do with that segment of the time-space continuum known as the lunch hour.  Today I wouldn’t have minded if the library were a couple miles farther away, lunch hour be hanged.

If I had world enough and time ….  That’s not original, by the way.

I picked up a couple of adventure stories to read while I’m on my exercise bike.  (I’ve run through all the Kemprecos I have at the moment.  I’m fixing to order a couple more.)  I like a good mystery/action/thriller for exercise bike riding.  You get caught up in a plot where your hero’s in danger, you’re going to ride faster … burn more calories.  You lose track of time.  That’s always a plus when you’re riding like blue blazes and not getting anywhere.  I tried reading weightier tomes whilst riding–I do like weightier tomes, you know–but it’s hard to concentrate on complex arguments or poetry when you’re huffing and puffing and dripping with sweat.  (Not a pretty picture, I admit, but in the interest of accuracy ….)  Besides, what with the world the way it is, there’s a lot to be said for entertainment and books where the good guy always wins.

Now where was I?  Oh, yeah … coming back from the library with an armload of books.  Today’s haul includes one author I’m familiar with, Vince Flynn, and a new one I’m trying out for the first time, Olen Steinhauer.  (With a name like that, I’m expecting big things from Olen.)  I look forward to diving into Mitch Rapp’s latest adventure tonight.  Hmm.  Maybe diving isn’t the best choice of words, given the fact that I’ll be balanced on that bike, holding onto a book instead of the handlebars.  Well, you get the idea.

You know, it occurs to me, I’ve written about bike books twice in a row.  I sure don’t want to be redundant.  Maybe next time, I’ll tell you about bathtub books.

The Write Stuff

So I’ve been reading these novels by Paul Kemprecos.  These days he writes the NUMA Files series with Clive Cussler, but way back when, he wrote these terrific mysteries starring (although the protagonist would be amused at the choice of words) Aristotle “Soc” Socarides.  I’ve got to tell you, these books are the most fun I’ve had since … well, since the the time I watched my younger sister try to ride a hog.  (Another story entirely, and it didn’t end pretty.)

Our hero (sorry, Soc, but if the gumshoe fits) is a Vietnam vet and former Boston cop with a wry, sardonic outlook on life and a self-deprecating sense of humor that no doubt speak to many of us.  He does drink a bit, has problems with commitment, and his wardrobe is mostly thrift-store GQ. Kemprecos surrounds him with a cast of secondary characters second to none, my favorite being the cat, Kojak.  How can you not love a cat so pacifistic generations of mice have been born  … and died of natural causes … on his watch?  Soc suspects Kojak even attends rodent christenings.

I can’t count the times I’ve laughed out loud while reading these books.  Couple of those times I was riding my exercise bike, which nearly caused an unfortunate accident; but when you’re my age, you’ll take your exercise diversion anywhere you can find it.  Oh, heck, it gave me a chance to work on my balance, right?

Of course, Soc’s life isn’t all chuckles and 9-Lives cat food.  The mysteries in these stories will more than keep the pages turning.

Okay, that’s the good news.  The bad news is, these books are out of print.  You can still get them through Amazon, though, and they’re well worth the effort.  Just be careful if you’re on your exercise bike ….