Novel Gazing

I supposed to be working on my novel today before I leave for Montana tomorrow for a week. My assignment for my writing group is due next Sunday, but as I will be busy with the Boy and his therapy, I won't have time.

What am I doing instead? All writers have their favorite forms of procrastination. Jigsaw puzzles are my weakness, especially these elaborate wooden jigsaw puzzles from Liberty Puzzles. Carla introduced me to these puzzles and now I have my Dad hooked on them. They are mediative, where I allow myself to sit and think and not expect myself to be busy or productive.

Writing a novel (for me, anyway) is somewhat like doing a jigsaw puzzle. I have lots of small parts put together but I don't see how they are going to fit together yet so the whole thing is kind of chaos.

I have written a bunch of scenes about my main character, Betty, but I am not sure what the full picture will look like. Betty is very loosely based on my best friend from college who is wicked smart but then married a venture capitalist and now plays tennis as her vocation. (Perhaps that makes her even more wicked smart, that she found a way to get a luxurious life without needing to work, but the jury is still out on that.) The real Betty immigrated to the US from Taiwan when she was seven and didn't have an athletic bone in her body. Betty the character and Betty my friend both suffer from lack of problems in their lives, which is then actually a problem. In a sense, Betty is the opposite of Job, a biblical character who suffers every sort of indignity and still maintains his faith in God. Everyone has problems, but most of Betty's friend don't see her problems as real: How can someone so beautiful and wealthy with well adjusted sons and a well meaning husband actually suffer? I've known Betty for so long, I know she has struggled and she does have problems, especially with her mother-in-law, who is just plain wicked. I find it fascinating. I want to figure it out so I am plodding through a novel about her.

"Betty seems superficial," my writing group has said at times. I struggle because at times that is the point. How then does Betty grow from that point of perceived vacuity? My writing group has a point, though--readers need to be relate to Betty otherwise they won't bother reading about her.

Considering I am fighting two crises at the same time--one with the Boy and the other with Jack, I am having very little patience with Betty the character whose life floats by. The real life Betty is fine, but she is not the first person I call when I am having a hard time. When she had problems with her husband, she told him she was going to leave him and poof! he went to a therapist, got his head out of his butt, and everything is hunky-dory.

Betty and my lives were very similar until we turned twenty-eight. She had a baby who is now in college, and I had a baby who died. She has kind and supportive brothers (except one, but she has two others who are.) My brother is insane. Betty's kids are stable and productive. I have a kid in treatment for anxiety and depression. Betty's husband is smart, hard-working and attentive. My husband is smart and hard-working. Her husband is finance and money can't love you back so he spends time with his family. My husband is a prominent physician who is adored by everyone he works with who gets most of his meaning from his job.

I still love Betty in spite of her easy life, even though it would be easier to dismiss her instead. I know what she doesn't share with her friends who are wives of Silicon Valley leaders. When she was growing up in Texas, she was a black haired girl in a sea of blondes, that in spite of her traffic-stopping beauty, she could not get a date in high school, that she would love to have a day with with green eyes and an Anglo name like Lauren Jennings.

So I go back to my jigsaw puzzle, trying to find the bigger picture, to see where this is all heading. Unlike life and a half-written novel, a jigsaw puzzle has a tidy solution. I know the puzzle will work. I wish I had such faith about the book I am writing and my personal life.

Writing and Bipolar

Tuesday was a good day. Great, in fact. My rehabbed knee got good marks at my post-surgical and physical therapy appointments. I was fitted for a skiing brace. I made major progress on my novel--the groundbreaking kind of progress where seventy-two pages of chaos finally found its purpose. I had a writing class, and then a job interview. I got called back for a second interview. Yay!

I haven't had too many awesome days like this in the past two and a half years, so allow me to gloat a teeny bit. The downside of my good day is that I have positive news on the job front and the writing front. I write between phases of my job search to keep me productive and having a sense of accomplishment. When my writing starts to flag, I usually approach my job search with renewed vigor.

Here is the deal: I love to write. I also hate to writing. Let me tell a story.

Years ago, I read part of Kay Redfield Jamison's Touched With Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament. (I read all of her book, An Unquiet Mind, about her battle with what is now called bipolar disorder.) Her thesis in Touched with Fire is that the emotional ups and downs of creative people is really bipolar. From the amazon.com review:

The anguished and volatile intensity associated with the artistic temperament was once thought to be a symptom of genius or eccentricity peculiar to artists, writers, and musicians. Her work, based on her study as a clinical psychologist and researcher in mood disorders, reveals that many artists subject to exalted highs and despairing lows were in fact engaged in a struggle with clinically identifiable manic-depressive illness.

While I have the utmost respect for Jamison, I think there might be another explanation. When I write, I have great days and miserable days. There are days when I get feedback that my topic is fascinating and my writing is clear and interesting. There are days when I think whatever it is I am writing is crap/unpublishable/boring and I should give up and get a real job where I could get dressed up every day, be around other people and get paid. Then I imagine the $2M book/movie deal with Matt Damon in the leading male role. Maybe I could make it big, I imagine. And then I started reading Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff and I think I suck. It isn't fair for me to compare my unfinished first draft to a final product that has been reviewed by professional editors, but I do.

I've been going to writing conferences and taken writing classes for almost ten years. If nothing else, writing is a wonderful hobby, but I wonder if I can make it a job, given what I like to write about. I know that in order for something to be published it needs

1. an interesting topic (this is the pitch),
2. to be well executed (this is the manuscript), and 
3. a potential audience (this is the marketing plan).

I think my novel has an interesting topic and a potential audience, which is great, but not sufficient. The book needs to be well written, and in all of my years of writing, I've never written fiction. It is fun to try, but another thing to succeed.

Unlike math jobs I've had in the past, writing has more ups and downs. Quant jobs have incremental progress, where projects progress one step at a time. Writing happens in fits and starts. Of course, a writer needs good habits. The hardest part of writing is getting your butt in the chair. I have decent (not awesome, but decent) writerly habits. Even with good habits, I find writing fiction full of highs and lows. Some days, I think this novel is the most viable project I've worked on, that this will be the one that gets published and finds an audience. Other days, I talk to writers and am reminded of the slog of finding an agent, editor, and publisher. After that, I'll find an article about agents who need new material and are searching for new talent.

I've never had this much of an emotional roller coaster in any other job, even running for office, as I do with writing, but I don't think I've developed bipolar disorder in the last two months. I think writing and other creative endeavors bring out the highs and the lows. I see my writing in the changing light of morning, noon and dusk. Sometimes the light shows me the value of what I have done, other times the flaws. Perhaps the act of creating and nature of creative work causes these deep mental fluctuations, not the other way around.

Parents' Voices v. Kids' Voices

I am taking a novel writing class at the Hugo House taught by Sonora Jha. She has an older son, and she says his comments haunt her now instead of her parents' words. As my kids would say, #relatable. When I was younger, I would hang on the words of my mom. Now, I hang on to the words of my daughter. When my mother would harangue me, I would often bite my tongue and not respond to her. Instead, I would go off and complain to my father, friends, and brother about how I was wronged.

Last week, Claire-Adele and I went to see Hidden Figures. As much I as I enjoyed taking the time to see the movie with her, there were times that I was annoyed at her rudeness towards me. We were running a little bit late as I was talking to my father right before we left. There was a power outage, and Claire-Adele ran to Starbucks to get lunch, only to find their power was out, too, and were not serving food.

We got to the theater after that drama, and I am jogging up the steps, a major accomplishment for me considering that last year at the same time I was learning to walk without a brace or crutch. Jogging and going upstairs were out of the question, let alone trying them together.

"You are the most embarrassing person in the world!" Claire-Adele scolded me as I moved quickly up the stairs. She didn't consider yelling at me in the middle of a crowded movie theater embarrassing, but whatever. I am sure she didn't want to be seen with me at all, but none of her friends wanted to see this movie.

After we had found our seats, Claire-Adele wanted some popcorn because she missed lunch.

"Can you get it for me? I want to see the previews," she said. After being told I was the most embarrassing person in the world two minutes earlier, I told her to get her own popcorn. I gave her money, but I had no desire to stand in line and miss the previews for someone who had been rude to me.

This Christmas, she told the family that she had no plans of coming back to visit after she graduates from college during the holidays. Of course, she wants to be invited on vacations, but God forbid she has to spend a holiday with us.

If another friend talked to me like this, I'd probably drop them--unfriend them on Facebook, block their phone number, etc. Instead, she is my daughter. I don't have the luxury of writing her off. This weekend, I went to visit my dad and my mom in Ohio. I got home around 11:00 p.m. last night, and the kids were in bed. This morning, Claire Adele was sniffling, and I asked how she was doing.

"There is nothing wrong with me," she yelled. "Why do you think there is something wrong with me?"

Good morning to you, too, I should have said. Later, I went to wake up the Boy. As I passed her room, she asked me for the fabric scissors.

"Why do you need them?" I asked.

"To cut my head off," she said as she rolled her eyes. "I need them to cut fabric. Can you get them for me?" She had blue fleece spread out over her floor. She is part of a group that is making blankets for homeless men and women.

"I need to get your brother up, and then I can get them," I replied.

When I went to get the Boy, he was excited to see me. "How was your trip?" he asked. I told him, and we talked about how his friend got his remote control airplane out of a tree. This was big news, as the plane had been stuck forty feet up in a Port Orford cedar since the end of winter break.

"Are you going to get me the scissors?" Claire-Adele barked. "I need the scissors."

"Shut up," I said frustrated with this person who has said nothing nice to me in weeks. "I am talking to your brother." I was so tired of the world revolving around her. "You are interrupting my conversation. Just wait."

"You know," she said. "You say I am rude to you but spoiler alert -- you are ruder to me."

I could let those words haunt me, like the words of my mother stuck with me as a kid. Instead, I look at the millions of micro-aggressions and insults she has hurled at me for the past few years. I know I am the grown-up here and she is the kid. I should be the example of the right way to behave.

Yet, it is so hurtful to be constantly told how wrong and awful and embarrassing I am, and I need to respond. How is it that I am rude when I call my daughter on her rudeness to me? Why? I wish I had Michelle Obama's grace of "When they go low, we go high." This is different. I am living with this lowness, and it is in my face when I wake up, when she comes home from school and before she goes to bed. She directs her sass at not just me, but to her brother as well. I shouldn't defend him because that makes him look defenseless. She has no awareness of the link between yelling at her brother and then his yelling back at her.

"Dad didn't yell at us all weekend," she said after I told her to shut-up. Argh. Jack was probably in "Distracted Parent Mode" all weekend, squeezing in work, looking at his phone, and generally ignoring the kids. He probably didn't notice them enough to yell at them.

"Where is my water bottle? I've been looking for it for two days!" Claire Adele continued to rant.

"I put it in the drawer with the other water bottles. It was in the dishwasher. You should yell at your dad about that. I wasn't home this weekend," I said. She glared at me and stomped away.

Claire Adele will be leaving for college in a year and a half. I've talked to other parents about life as an empty nester. I've always imagined it being so hard and lonely. I always wondered how moms coped with the person they raised for eighteen years leaves to go off on their own. Why aren't all of these women crying and crying? Why aren't there support groups for moms when their kids go to college and leave home? When Claire-Adele was six, I talked to one mom who had what I thought was a nice and lovely daughter say she was sad for about a day when her daughter left for school, and then she was fine. I tried to push out of my mind how I'd feel when Claire Adele leaves the house, my firstborn, my baby. I couldn't imagine.

Now I get it. Claire Adele needs to leave me as much as I need her to leave. We need a separation, time apart. Hopefully, someday, we can be friendly to each other. She might need to push me away to make her own departure easier for all of us. She is succeeding, I have to say. She is succeeding.

Ode to Melinda Gates and Age of Innocence

I am starting to write a novel about women of privilege. I have a friend, Lisa, who lives in a rarified and wealthy corner of the world. She started telling me all of these crazy stories about her world.

"You should write a book about this!" I said.

"No, Lauren," Lisa replied. "You are the writer. You should write about it."

Wow. I thought. She has a point. I could write about this. It would be so different than writing essay and memoir. I thought I'd give it a try. Writing a novel is harder than it looks, which is fine. In memoir, writers can stick to the truth more or less. The truth is typically more compelling and complex than a whitewashed version of events.

I met with a friend, Sereena, for lunch yesterday who comes from an opposite world. While she is super educated and intelligent, she had a bout of homelessness after she was struck with a disability and lost her job. She was not suffering from chronic homelessness caused by mental illness or an addiction, but rather she had a spell of bad luck. She has been in stable housing since I've known her. Sereena is a wonderful education advocate and I have a tremendous amount of respect for her.

Why am I writing about a world of privilege instead of the plight of those suffering from poverty or racism? I am hoping to figure out how my friend Lisa's crazy world relates to the rest of the world.

I am doing massive amounts of reading as research for my novel: Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The Great Gatsby, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I am reading Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton for the first time. The novel is about privileged New York society in the 1870's, when Wharton was young. I saw the movie with Daniel Day-Lewis years ago, and I hated it back then. I thought the movie was boring and nothing happened. Someone told Ian McKellen, the actor who played Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings movies, that he didn't understand the plot of these movies. He was reported to have said if you want to understand what is going on, read the books. The same holds true for Age of Innocence.

Edith Wharton grew up in a class where women--and most men--didn't have to work. Edith chose to have a literary life, and volunteered in Paris during the Great War.  Wharton wrote this book after World War I, after she had seen a great deal of suffering. I haven't yet figured out what inspired her to write it, but I hope to get there. I don't think she likes her main characters. I think she thinks they are vacuous and self-absorbed. Newland Archer reminds me of one of my high school boyfriends, and not in a good way. (Not Sean or Rob, in case either of you are reading this. My other high school boyfriend whose name will not be mentioned here.) Nevertheless, the book is interesting.

Many of the women in Lisa's world are both privileged and relatively powerless. Their wealth comes from their husbands. While they have everything they want, they lack purpose, even though they have enough financial freedom they could do whatever they want. Lisa is a stay-at-home mom and she loved her boys. She embraced motherhood more than other women I know who gave up careers for their kids.

My husband Jack will often ask me, "If you could do whatever you wanted to do, what would it be?" That is hard question to ask a mother like me when my kids are not yet settled and require my attention.

I wonder how the women in Lisa's 1% world would answer that question. Most of them play tennis. Some of them exert their power in mean and cruel ways over other women who have fewer means. I asked Lisa if any of these women do meaningful volunteer work, like serve on boards for arts, health or human services organizations. Do they write novels or music or are they trying to save the whales?

"No," was her short reply. She didn't even ponder. She almost yelled it.

In thinking about women who lead privileged lives, I started to think about Melinda Gates. I know some people in Seattle criticize the Gates for their undue influence in education. Let's remove that from this equation and look at what else Melinda Gates has done. Instead of frittering away her fortune, education and intelligence, she has put all three to good use. She advocates for improving health for pregnant woman and getting global access to birth control, and not just writing a check and hoping someone else will make it happen. She goes to the places where the work needs to be done, and she talks to people who are directly involved.

I remember reading a story in a magazine about Melinda's trip to New York City. She was in a posh hair salon, and the women working there didn't know who she was. The women who work there probably take care of the "Who's Who" in New York, but they didn't know Mrs. Gates was married to the richest man on the planet. This says a lot about Melinda's low-key approach. She'd probably rather hobnob with a midwife in New Delhi than strut down a red carpet.

I was googling Melinda and I saw her Twitter feed where she talks about access to healthcare for women all over the world. In her pictures on her Twitter feed, she isn't wearing visible make-up or jewelry. She looks downright frumpy but she is smiling and looks happy. I love it. Good for her! I am sure she has an amazing jewelry collection but that is not what is she using in her image to the world.

Sure, some people might think, I could do all sorts of cool stuff like that if I were as wealthy! But that is the point. Some people are wealthy (well, no one is as wealthy as Melinda and Bill) but they choose to spend their time, money and energy primarily on frivolous things like the characters in Age of Innocence whereas Melinda does not.

My friend often says she looks at people by how they carry their burdens. I would add to look at people how they carry their privilege, as well.