This is probably the exact wood violet that Glück was talking about in her poem. Maybe.

My father recently sent me a quote from the poet Louise Glück who, in her collection of essays, Proofs and Theories, writes that the fundamental experience of the writer is…

…helplessness…most writers spend much of their time in various kinds of torment: wanting to write, being unable to write, wanting to write differently, not being able to write differently. It is a life dignified…by yearning, not made serene by sensations of achievement.

Which is affirming, if you look it at one way, and see it as confirmation that your own struggles — and what writer does not struggle? — are par for the course, a consequence of the difficult art you have chosen for yourself, and not a symptom that you suck.

So many people that I work with think that their writerly torment means that they are doing something wrong, or that they shouldn’t be writing, or they believe that that no one else finds it so hard. Me and ole’ Louie G are here to tell you otherwise.

At the same time, though, jeeze, Louise. Bleak much? I replied to my father’s email with just such a sentiment. “I get it,” I wrote to him. “I experience it, but what’s the freakin’ payoff? Why do this?”

His reply: “Well, the reason for doing it is that there’s no other way of ‘getting’ it than by doing it. That’s the payoff: being in it. ‘Cos otherwise you’re not in it. And then where are you?”

That’s a prime esoteric father response right there, readers. I get it though. Do you? Is this your reason for writing or are you driven by something else entirely?

As a closing note, here’s a link to a Glück poem, called “April,” because we are in April and despite all the writerly torment that we all put ourselves through on a daily basis, the spring sunshine outside is glorious. This is not at all what the poem is about, though.

Part one features Elmore Leonard, Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Helen Dunmore, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Esther Freud, Neil Gaiman, David Hare, PD James, and AL Kennedy.

Part two features Hilary Mantel, Michael Moorcock, Michael Morpurgo, Andrew Motion, Joyce Carol Oates, Annie Proulx, Philip Pullman, Ian Rankin, Will Self, Helen Simpson, Zadie Smith, Colm Tóibín, Rose Tremain, Sarah Waters, and Jeanette Winterson.

Instead of asking people to loan me money for school, I’m now asking them to simply give me money. To that extent, I’ve created a fundraising page on fundable, and if you can spare $10, please pledge towards my goal. Since I can’t get a loan and there is no way my parents can pay my tuition, I’ll have to rely on the kindness of strangers.

You can check out his fundraising site directly here. At time of writing, Denis only had $10 in contributions. Is this because his campaign is brand new (launched 7/13/09) or because there’s a recession on, or because this idea simply isn’t going to work?

There’s also this article, over at Publisher’s Weekly, about writer and blogger Dianna Zandt, who, after signing a deal for her first book that provided no advance, decided to “crowdfund” the money she needed to write over the summer. It helps that her topic is “…writing about the power of social media to shift perceptions and cultural values.” She’s been pretty successful so far, it seems – you can read her thoughts and feedback on the process (plus tips for others who are considering going the the same route) here.

What do you think? Are Denis and Deanna smart to try this approach? Is their initiative laudable? Do their requests for funds seem justified to you? And is this a sign of things to come?

This interesting article from the Wall Street Journal should make anyone (like me, for example) who seems to spend hours in unfocused thought feel a little better. A couple of quotes:

…our brain may be most actively engaged when our mind is wandering and we’ve actually lost track of our thoughts, a new brain-scanning study suggests.

And:

By most measures, we spend about a third of our time daydreaming, yet our brain is unusually active during these seemingly idle moments. Left to its own devices, our brain activates several areas associated with complex problem solving, which researchers had previously assumed were dormant during daydreams. Moreover, it appears to be the only time these areas work in unison.

A third? If all is going well, I’ll spend longer daydreaming than that, mate. There’s nothing like a good daydreaming session to make me feel productive. The brain mechanisms that this article talks about might also be the reason that I get great writing ideas when I run. As I’m plodding round the park, sometimes, admittedly, I’m listening to 1980s rave tunes and reliving my clubbing days. But other times, my mind enters a fugue state and, well, I just realize something. That scene I have been stuck on, about my grandmother? It’s really about my father. Aha. Of course.

Haruki Murakami, a novelist I admire, is also a runner, and his book, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, contains his own treatise on why running is good for the writer’s life. In this quote from an interview on the Runner’s World website, he seems to describe the same experience that I have had, and that the researchers in the Wall Street Journal article are talking about. Murakami says:

I try not to think about anything special while running. As a matter of fact, I usually run with my mind empty. However, when I run empty-minded, something naturally and abruptly crawls in sometimes. That might become an idea that can help me with my writing.

Our next challenge is to pay attention to that thing that has crawled in. Write it down. Follow where it leads.

I am here today to tell you about two pieces of software that, combined, might just be saving my life right now. Hyperbole? Not even. I’m deadly serious.

The first is called Freedom and I’m afraid it’s for Mac users only, though there may be a PC equivalent. What Freedom does is block your access to the internet for the amount of time that you specify. It’s that simple. Free yourself from your internet addiction! Ditch the distractions! Write without checking your email every five minutes! Get your Freedom on! Download it here!

Wouldn’t it be great if we had the self-control to limit our own internet use, without the need for a technological intervention? Sure — but when every coffee shop in the metro area seems to have free wireless, to do that you’d need the will power of a superman. I don’t know about you, but that just ain’t me. I’ll take the help, thanks.

Freedom is also, um, free. But please consider making a donation if you use it and like it. In the immortal words of George Michael: You’ve got to give for what you take.

The second piece of software that is rocking my world right now…

…is called Scrivener, and it’s designed to provide writers with the tools they need when drafting books. It was heartily recommended to me by two clients who have sold their books, and I finally gave it a spin myself. It’s pretty easy to use and has two functions that I absolutely love: the cork board, which allows you to see your book outline as index cards on a virtual board (and move them around just as easily) and the document reference tool, which allows you to embed any research documents with your writing files, so that you can access them easily, side-by-side. Awesome! And so helpful if you are juggling several different sources, as I am at the moment.

Scrivener isn’t free, but it’s not expensive either, and you can download a trial version to try it out before you buy.

Sometimes I just love technology…when I’m not fighting against it, that it. And, by the way, I got the link to Freedom through a tweet. Yes. I’m twittering now. Follow me.

Scary! But fascinating! Read more here.

Update: Of course this idea is already at play in popular culture — hello, Dollhouse! Check out this excellent blog post about why this series is and yet isn’t and yet is worth watching.

I tried to embed the video and once again, failed. It’s not me, it’s WordPress…honest. Anyhoo, follow the link. It’s worth it.

To which I can only say: Yay! Looking at all the exhibits was like walking around inside a bunch of intelligent, creative minds. Now, I’m not an overly technical person, so much of the programming part of what these people were doing was totally beyond me, but what I found so fascinating was that they were all making interesting connections. Taking a concept from one area of thought and applying it somewhere else. Twisting ideas around to get new, more interesting ideas. And, along the way, quite possibly coming up with products that will be part of our daily lives in the near future.

Take Amanda’s project for example: Urban Windchimes. It’s so awesome. Check out the website for more info, but the basic concept is that, in our urban environments, people don’t always want to listen to other people’s windchimes. With this invention, you can place a wind sensor on your window ledge or fire escape and pay the chimes through your computer. There’s the possibility of placing sensors all over the world — ever wanted to listen to the wind on Mount Fiji? Or in the Bahamas? How cool would that be?

Then there were a few projects that were dealing, in one way or another, with memory. And this got me thinking about the connection between memory and technology, and how the digital revolution means we might well remember things differently in the future. This, in turn, has some pretty interesting consequences for future memoirists.

Already, online social media networks like Facebook provide a digital archive of our lives that just didn’t exist a few years ago. Want to know what you were doing the summer of your junior year? Check your status updates! Can’t remember when you started that college internship that proved to be so formative? Check out your LinkedIn page! Personally, I have long been haunted by my future memoiristic self: I can’t throw away my old Filofax calenders from 1995 or my journals from when I was twelve, just in case I’m working on some future project and I need an aide memoire, or to fact check my own life. But soon I won’t need paper records at all — it will all be online.

Here’s a project from the ITP show that takes it to the next level: a social network site combined with google maps to created an online memory repository. It’s called remmbr.

And here’s another project from the show that plays with how memory is linked to technology — and the idea that both can degrade: portrait of a memory in vhs.

Now all we need is a chip inserted into our brains that will record every memory we ever had, right? Scary thought, but perhaps not too far off. The question is, though: would this actually hinder memoirists? After all, creating memoir isn’t just about what you remember. It’s not just the facts — it’s what they mean. It’s being able to plumb memory for meaning. And we are able to do that, partially, because certain memories loom large and take up more room than others. What we recall, and the level of intensity with which we recall, is a guide to what’s important to us. It helps us piece together significance. If everything is retained without differentiation, wouldn’t we be autobiographers rather than memoirists? Perhaps one of the most important aspects of writing memoir is what we don’t know and so must create.

Interesting, I thought, and kind of smart. After all, if David Bowie can do it, why not Tao Lin? Make some money, get some publicity, and build an audience. A few days after I found out about the offer I went to check out Lin’s blog, Reader of Depressing Books, but I was too late. The offer had been closed. No matter — I probably wouldn’t have shelled out the cash anyway. Instead, I found myself drawn into some of the other posts, in particular one about how Lin had been flamed on the internet (by what he calls “a shit talking entity”) and so he was inviting his blog readers to chime in about what a good and honest person he is.

I’m intrigued. What is it that people are saying that could be so bad that he feels he has to mount such a public defense? Then I remember that I have heard about Lin before – on Gawker, no less – when I was directed, by a link, to this article from the Seattle based alt weekly The Stranger, in which Lin charts the various levels of writing greatness. I remember reading that piece and thinking — hmm, there are not many people I know who could compare Anne Tyler to a $9.98 Petco Gerbil and get away with it. I remember also thinking, there’s someone who is very clear-eyed about how this whole publishing world works.

So I hang out at Lin’s blog a little more and read more posts, and the comments left in response to those posts, and I deduce a few things. The first is that Lin has quite the following, and many of his acolytes leave comments that seem to be written in his own style. Ergo, Lin is already influencing people. Ergo, he must be original to some degree, and have things to say that others respond to. So what exactly is his style?

Based on a reading of his blog (I can’t comment on his other writing because I haven’t read it) I’d say it was specific, acerbic, oddball, compellingly honest, verging on sarcastic at times, generous at others, and self-depreciating in a hard to read kind of way. Arch, and ironic, but that bite is undercut by the struggle to say something true.

He uses scare quotes a lot — to indicate, I think, a degree of distance from what he is saying. Or maybe the scare quotes are a defense against the possibility that what he is saying is, in some way, false. For instance, he says that reading work written by a friend of his “made me “stop being a little bitch” for an amount of time.” I can identify with that. Who doesn’t feel like a little bitch now and then, and who hasn’t had the experience, when reading great work, of being released in some way, or experiencing your own self (and so the world) as a little larger and fresher? Great work can do that.

The thing about trying to speak the truth is, it can leave you feeling pretty vulnerable. I can understand how scare quotes could be a useful way of countering that vulnerability. In some cases, their presence serves to heighten it, or heighten the reader’s sense of it, as in: wow, if he’s using scare quotes, he must really feel the need to seperate himself from those feelings, he must be afraid of them, and so they must be true. It’s actually putting a spot light on the vulnerability to some degree. That’s my reading of it, anyway.

Here’s a post from Tao Lin’s blog that heightened my sense of him as a vulnerable, honest person trying to make sense of his place in the world, and which also happens to be a great model for begining writers about how the process of submitting work to literary magazines can so often play out. Here’s another of his posts that performs the same set of functions. [I forgot to mention, in the original post, that Lin is also funny.]

What do I get from all this and why am I blogging about it? Well, for a start, it’s pretty rare, in my opinion, to come across someone whose voice, even if it is on a blog, is so unique and well-formed. Second, in reading Lin’s blog, I had a sense that he had formed his own universe — a great achievement for any writer — and that I recognized aspects of it but was intrigued by others. Third, he’s ambitious and savvy, both qualities that will probably mean he’ll go far, and qualities that other writers may also have, to various degrees and in various combinations, but might not manifest in the same knowing, playful way as Lin does. Lin has interns and he encourages them to promote him. One of his stated aims is to have a regular income without having to have a job. Seems like a pretty good aim to me.

I’m running out of time here — my dog needs walking. She’s looking at me with a pleading expression and batting me with her wet nose. So I’ll conclude by linking to a Tao Lin poem with an excellent title: I’m Going To Touch You Very Hard. An excerpt:

the only reason i am not an out-of-control asshole
is because it feels like an amazing person is licking my heart

I didn’t intend for this post to be a defence of Tao Lin, but it seems to have turned into one. Not that I really think he needs defending. The aforementioned “shit talking entity” is clearly cracked and I have a feeling that Lin will do just fine despite him.

From The Guardian (scroll down for this juicy snippet):

Forbes magazine has revealed that JK Rowling is not only the world’s richest author, but the world’s highest-earning celebrity; her income last year was £150m. But before aspiring scribes boot up their computers en masse, inspired by dreams of wealth and fame, it is worth remembering that becoming rich through writing is only slightly more likely than achieving an Olympic medal in Quidditch. According to the Society of Authors, the average salary for a writer in the UK is £10,000 – which should give anyone thinking of entering the field pause for thought.

Thank god there are other rewards. Like the creative satisfaction. The intellectual work-out. The joy of sharing your art with others. Right? Right. Right!

I think I just moved through the three stages of writerly grief there: Disbelief, resignation, defiance. Finally, acceptance. Write.