When I first started gardening seriously, I got myself a bunch of books and read like a maniac. I hadn't grown up in a gardening family, and I didn't even meet my first real "plant people" until I was in college. So I had no background in it, no natural feel for growing things. I just knew that I felt a strong desire to grow things, and I had a clear vision of my own garden.
The vision was especially important. In those first few years, I spent a lot of time looking at pictures, thinking, "THIS is what I want my yard to look like." I like a heavy tropical look, so I salivated over rare aroids, tropical epiphytes, and exotic ferns. I got in the habit of driving very long distances to track down unique and unusual plants, and when that didn't work, I found people who would mail me cuttings or root sections.
I didn't really know it then, but I was making a critical mistake that I'm still working to undo. My idea of the perfect garden was a snapshot. It was literally a photograph. I knew what I wanted, and it looked exactly like the pictures in the books. I figured once I collected enough rare plants, once I figured out how to grow them, I could have that garden. It would be mine forever.
I viewed this garden as a static place, a place of frozen beauty. Of course, anyone who has spent years gardening knows that's ridiculous. But I was new. I didn't get it.
Since then, now going on 15 years later, I've had too many moments in my yard to count when I marveled at the beauty of it all. But never the same vision twice. At one time, I had a huge stand of ice cream bananas. They were gorgeous, but they're gone now. I've had 20 orchids blooming at once in my yard; I've had rows of papaya all heavy with fruit; I've had beds of color; vines loaded with fruit. All gone now.
This is what gardening has taught me: there is no goal, and in a way, the only ending is heartbreak. If I stopped taking care of my yard today, by the end of the summer, it would have reverted to sand and weeds. It only exists through the sheer force of my will, and even then, I'm only barely in control. It's forever changing, a kaleidoscope of color and texture, life and death. There are days it looks beautiful, and days it looks awful.
So it goes with writing. I think sometimes writers get attached to an idea of after. "After I sell this book ..." and "After I get a big advance ..." and "After I can quit my job ..." But I'm beginning to understand that the writing life isn't meant to yield those kinds of rewards. If it does, it's purely accidental, fleeting. The more I write, the deeper I travel into my own writer's journey, the more I see that writing is very much like my garden—the process IS the point, and at the end, the only reward I can reasonably expect is the satisfaction of the journey itself.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Respecting Red Lights
I dated this girl for a while who had a thing about red lights. She HATED red lights. She would sit at red lights and rant and rave about the damn red light. To her, every red light was basically a personal insult leveled by the state's transportation gods against her. She often tried to calculate how much of her life she would spend sitting at red lights, assuming 1 minute per red light, and X number of red lights a day, multiplied by weeks and years, and holy cow, before I knew it, she had thrown away whole YEARS of her life because of red lights.
In novels, we don't really bother with red lights. Or cat naps. Or TV time, reading time, eating, sleeping, and the 90% of every waking hour that's just a yawn of time. This is why novels will never be like real life—real life doesn't have the advantage of an editor. I might be bored out of my gourd for the next four hours, but no editor is going to highlight this morning and delete it, saying, "C'mon, Jon, are you really moving the story forward here? I mean, what are you doing exactly?"
(But oh, how I wish for such an editor sometimes.)
A novel is a collection of moments, and if it's handled well, you hardly realize that the writer has strung together six or ten or twenty minutes from a single day and turned it into a cohesive narrative. You know what I really admire? Writers who can blink by a whole day or whole month with hardly a bump in the narrative.
I got dinged last night in my writer's group because I botched an important minute. It was a meeting between two characters, and although the actual time sequence is less than a minute, it's a very important minute. These characters will spend the rest of the story getting to know each other and developing a relationship. You can't really afford to blow these scenes.
But, see, I'm always concerned with pacing. I don't like red lights in my manuscript, sitting there sucking up time and insulting my readers. The problem is the natural tension between characterization and pacing. A very fast-paced novel tends to have less character, and writers who spend pages developing characters are less concerned with writing a bullet.
When I was thinking about fixing this particular scene, I went back to that minute and realized my problem: I hadn't fully inhabited the moment. Not in my head. Not really. I basically wanted to move past it, to go down the stairs, into the basement, not to linger there at the doorway while they make that first contact.
I have to remind myself that sometimes it's OK to slow down, to linger. If a moment is important enough to include in the story—more important than all the other moments that surround it—I should respect it enough to give it life. I never really said this to my girlfriend (she was kind of volatile), but if there's a good song on the radio, and it's a nice day with the windows down, I sometimes like red lights. They give me time to think.
In novels, we don't really bother with red lights. Or cat naps. Or TV time, reading time, eating, sleeping, and the 90% of every waking hour that's just a yawn of time. This is why novels will never be like real life—real life doesn't have the advantage of an editor. I might be bored out of my gourd for the next four hours, but no editor is going to highlight this morning and delete it, saying, "C'mon, Jon, are you really moving the story forward here? I mean, what are you doing exactly?"
(But oh, how I wish for such an editor sometimes.)
A novel is a collection of moments, and if it's handled well, you hardly realize that the writer has strung together six or ten or twenty minutes from a single day and turned it into a cohesive narrative. You know what I really admire? Writers who can blink by a whole day or whole month with hardly a bump in the narrative.
I got dinged last night in my writer's group because I botched an important minute. It was a meeting between two characters, and although the actual time sequence is less than a minute, it's a very important minute. These characters will spend the rest of the story getting to know each other and developing a relationship. You can't really afford to blow these scenes.
But, see, I'm always concerned with pacing. I don't like red lights in my manuscript, sitting there sucking up time and insulting my readers. The problem is the natural tension between characterization and pacing. A very fast-paced novel tends to have less character, and writers who spend pages developing characters are less concerned with writing a bullet.
When I was thinking about fixing this particular scene, I went back to that minute and realized my problem: I hadn't fully inhabited the moment. Not in my head. Not really. I basically wanted to move past it, to go down the stairs, into the basement, not to linger there at the doorway while they make that first contact.
I have to remind myself that sometimes it's OK to slow down, to linger. If a moment is important enough to include in the story—more important than all the other moments that surround it—I should respect it enough to give it life. I never really said this to my girlfriend (she was kind of volatile), but if there's a good song on the radio, and it's a nice day with the windows down, I sometimes like red lights. They give me time to think.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
On Failure
I was watching last night when Lindsey Jacobellis failed out. For anybody who isn't following the winter Olympics, Jacobellis is a snowboarder. At the last winter games, she had a solid lead for a gold medal in the snowcross racing event. But she stumbled just short of the finish line and had to settle for silver. This year, much was made of her comeback moment. She did interviews, NBC ran features on her, she got endorsement deals. It was a Big Deal. An athlete seeking redemption, or in the words of Bob Costas, a chance to "silence her critics once and for all."
But Jacobellis didn't even make the finals. In the semi-final, she kind of bobbled coming off a jump, then clipped a gate, and her race was over. It didn't look like much, honestly, and it was probably the kind of thing that's happened to her a million times before in practice and during lesser races. But this time it cost her.
I watched the replay a few times. Right after she went out of bounds, she raised her hands as if to say, "How can this be happening?" Then she stopped and just looked down the hill, where her Olympic dreams were racing away from her.
At the same time I was watching this, my wife was watching a girl get cut from the final 24 in American Idol. I didn't see it, but she said this girl broke down and begged the judges for a chance. My wife said it passed the point of spunk and just got embarrassing. This singer, who came so close, just couldn't understand that the decision was made, it was irrevocable, and her own want—no matter how large it was—meant nothing.
I kind of understood how this feels. I've never failed on such a big stage, or so publicly, but I've definitely notched up an impressive list of failures. The worst, of course, came just last year, with a massive book rejection.
Contrary to what they say, I don't really believe failure builds character. Failure is just failure. What builds character is what comes AFTER the failure. Sometimes I think we place too much emphasis on emotion, too much care and thought are given to processing and recovering from and understanding a failure. Is it really that hard to understand? Jacobellis bombed her race. My book wasn't good enough. Or as Simon told the American Idol contestant when she asked what she did wrong, "You just didn't sing as well as they did."
If I could give my kids any wisdom I've learned from getting kicked in the teeth over the years, it would be this: "Feel whatever you have to feel, but DO what you have to DO." After you flame out, go ahead and throw a pity party, doubt your talent, get angry, get sad, cry your eyes out, get drunk, sober up and get drunk again, annoy your friends with forlorn emails, curse the powers that be ... do all these things. But whatever you do, don't QUIT. Stay in motion. Keep writing. Keep singing. Prepare for your next event the way you've prepared for every other event. Let the emotion run its course, move through the stages and let it drain away. But the one thing you can never, ever do is give up, because once you've done that, then all you'll ever know is failure.
But Jacobellis didn't even make the finals. In the semi-final, she kind of bobbled coming off a jump, then clipped a gate, and her race was over. It didn't look like much, honestly, and it was probably the kind of thing that's happened to her a million times before in practice and during lesser races. But this time it cost her.
I watched the replay a few times. Right after she went out of bounds, she raised her hands as if to say, "How can this be happening?" Then she stopped and just looked down the hill, where her Olympic dreams were racing away from her.
At the same time I was watching this, my wife was watching a girl get cut from the final 24 in American Idol. I didn't see it, but she said this girl broke down and begged the judges for a chance. My wife said it passed the point of spunk and just got embarrassing. This singer, who came so close, just couldn't understand that the decision was made, it was irrevocable, and her own want—no matter how large it was—meant nothing.
I kind of understood how this feels. I've never failed on such a big stage, or so publicly, but I've definitely notched up an impressive list of failures. The worst, of course, came just last year, with a massive book rejection.
Contrary to what they say, I don't really believe failure builds character. Failure is just failure. What builds character is what comes AFTER the failure. Sometimes I think we place too much emphasis on emotion, too much care and thought are given to processing and recovering from and understanding a failure. Is it really that hard to understand? Jacobellis bombed her race. My book wasn't good enough. Or as Simon told the American Idol contestant when she asked what she did wrong, "You just didn't sing as well as they did."
If I could give my kids any wisdom I've learned from getting kicked in the teeth over the years, it would be this: "Feel whatever you have to feel, but DO what you have to DO." After you flame out, go ahead and throw a pity party, doubt your talent, get angry, get sad, cry your eyes out, get drunk, sober up and get drunk again, annoy your friends with forlorn emails, curse the powers that be ... do all these things. But whatever you do, don't QUIT. Stay in motion. Keep writing. Keep singing. Prepare for your next event the way you've prepared for every other event. Let the emotion run its course, move through the stages and let it drain away. But the one thing you can never, ever do is give up, because once you've done that, then all you'll ever know is failure.
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