As I lie there in that headspace between thinking and sleeping, I wondered vaguely how I was supposed to contain all of my teeming imagination into something that resembled a narrative, a coherent story. And then I had a vision, a very clear image appeared unbidden before my eyes: an acorn.

An acorn?

Now I’ve done my share of reading in dream interpretation and symbology and whathaveyou, and I couldn’t really come up with anything better than perhaps an acorn was my subconscious’s way of saying we are all trees. We start out tiny and buried, but within us we hold the stuff that, given half a chance, with a little nurturing, can eventually touch the sky.

That was around two years ago and since then I haven’t thought a lot about acorns. Then the other day I had a conversation with a friend in which we discussed our next steps in Life, like you do when you’re 40-something and start to realize that life ain’t gonna live itself. And I mentioned I’d been always been interested in Jungian psychology, that I feel alive when I read that stuff.

So when I got home I started window-shopping on Amazon and eventually landed on a book by James Hillman called The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling. It sounded interesting so I bought it.  Imagine how I felt a few days later when I read in the book’s preface that it is all about Acorn Theory.

As stated so succinctly by Wikipedia, “[Hillman's Acorn] theory states that each individual holds the potential for their unique possibilities inside themselves already, much as an acorn holds the pattern for an oak tree. It describes how a unique, individual energy of the soul is contained within each human being, and is displayed throughout their lifetime, and shown in their calling and life’s work when it is fully blossomed or actualized.”

Holy synchronicity, Batman.

In the story I’m writing, I’ve created a lot of “vampire science” so it’s fun to read others’ take on things in the same vein.  For instance, vampires have super-strength like many other insects. My favorite is how science shows that “insects don’t breathe like we do, nor do they possess a human heartbeat.”

I must say I’m glad I haven’t had to try to shine any light on how vampires sparkle. And since my male blood-suckers’ weenorial units are just remnants of their former human lives with no functional value, I haven’t had to drill down on sex and spawning.

Go to Starbucks. Take as much time as possible to buy soy latte and scone. Sit down at table, open laptop and Word. Stare at big white space on computer screen. Use latte and scone as excuse not to start typing. Try very hard not to open Firefox. Open Firefox. Log on to free internet and surf. Chastise self. Close Firefox. Stare at screen. Take about one hour to type three to four sentences. Erase them. Wash, rinse, repeat until allotted writing time is over.  Go home and hate self, writing, the internet, and vampires.

I’m getting a little tired of this routine. It’s very annoying to be at the mercy of one’s fear of sucking. It’s kind of like being a trapped audience when a friend is whining. You can only do it so much before you want to tell them to nut up and get over themselves already because both of you have better things to do with your time.

As we all know, however, fear is a tenacious, egotistical mistress. She doesn’t get outta the bed just because you tell her the missus will be home soon. So I’ve been brainstorming ways to lure her away and so far the best I’ve come up with is to tell myself who cares if my writing sucks if I’m the only one who will ever read it?

It’s not false modesty or undue pessimism to say that the odds are against any book I write being published, regardless of quality. As depressing as that sounds, it’s actually sort of liberating, too. When what others will think is a non-issue, its easier to immerse yourself in the pleasure of writing and your story, to bound along like a husky in the snow.

—

There’s a line in the movie (and maybe book, I can’t remember) Fight Club that has always stuck with me.

We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.

I don’t know about the pissed off part, but I think the rest is true. The last few generations have grown up with the message that celebrity — standing out among the crowd, being recognized, approved of by the majority (if only fleetingly) — is the most crucial part of success, and Hollywood rakes in the dough because they somehow make it seem attainable, even a given.

Kind of like through advertising, the fashion world makes us all think we can be “beautiful” even though most of us realize at some point that we will never, ever meet its [ridiculous] definition, no matter how much of their shit we buy.

—

Fear of writing shitty first drafts must be nearly universal among writers because I’ve seen Anne Lamott’s essay on the subject referenced on a million writing blogs.¹  Given that she wrote it in 1995 and has several more books under her belt since then, I’d love to read a follow-up essay.  Does the fear of artistic suckage ever go away, or are we stuck with it no matter how much we practice?

Maybe it’s a matter of degree, like exercising to change your basic body shape: if you work out consistently, eventually your hips and thighs will ensmallen, which is great. But you’ll still always be a pear, just a smaller pear.

A sleek, healthy, kick-ass pear. One could certainly do worse.

1. Including mine.

If I haven’t been blogging much these days, you can be sure it’s not for lack of subject matter. Regardless of what’s going on in my life, I always have something to say about it. The horses in my head are always pawing the ground, pacing the pen, eager to run. When the gate swings open, they’re off, tearing joyfully if heedlessly across my crazy brain terrain.

On the page this translates to semi-coherent stream-of-consciousness babbling — the raw stuff of genius flows fast and furious. But to fashion that into something worth reading is a horse of a different color. Every five minutes of writing takes half an hour of rewriting. (Trust me, I do this for a living.)  And who has that kind of time, when there are all those old episodes of Heroes to get caught up on?

I don’t know why I feel that every blog post must be a tiny work of art. I don’t think it’s necessarily because I’m a “writer.” I have a non-writer, non-blogger friend who feels exactly the same way about writing e-mails home to mom: that each one must be a thoughtful meditation on Where He Is In His Life Right Now or its not worth the bandwidth. Blurg. No wonder Twitter is so popular.

What I do know is that despite my passion for expressing myself in words, it is often difficult. Babbling is easy; writing can be hard. And when so many other things are calling me — gardening, housework, exercise, Netflix — well, it’s all too easy to just drag the doc to the trash and go lose myself in Sylar’s eyebrows.

But. I’ve got a big but.

I don’t want to bin the Rib. She reminds me of the importance of being creative, even when it’s work. That the alternative, at least for me, is to die a slow, painful, corporate death from which not even the miraculous Claire Bennett could resurrect.

So I apologize in advance if the horses thunder by once and a while. Or even maybe a lot. The last season of Lost will be available on Netflix soon.

1. Attributed to Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw and Blaise Pascal.

Most of the letters in my closet are from friends and relatives to me. But I also have a manila envelope of full of letters sent from my mother to her mother.  They are mostly typed on non-standard sized papers with what appears to be an old manual typewriter, though they always end with her hand-written signature.  The dates on them span the last ten years of my mother’s life, after she’d left home until just before her death in 1971.

I was just shy of three years old when  my mother was killed, so her letters are little windows into the soul of a crucial person in my life that I never really knew.  They’re rose-tinted windows, to be sure, because that’s how one writes to one’s mother when one is so young and her love and approval mean everything. But even that tells me something about her, and I can never know enough.

My grandmother tells me that for a long time after my mother died, I recited the poems she taught me, over and over. One of them was “If you’re happy and you know it, clap you hands.” The other was a prayer.

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

April is National Card and Letter Writing Month.  Write to your mother, your daughter, your grandmother. Give them a glimpse of your soul to keep.

The questions were the usual where-are-they-now superficial ones about career, house, spouse, 2.5 children, etc., with a token philosophical one at the end:  “If you could tell your 18 year old self anything, what would it be?”

As I recall, I didn’t fill out the 10-year questionnaire, figuring no one would remember me except those extremely few people I still keep in touch with and they already know all this shit so why bother?

Turned out I was incorrect about that and spent way too much time repeating myself at the gig.  So when the 20th rolled around, I dutifully handed in my report. I’d thought long and hard about that last question and finally answered “lighten up” since by then I was growing tired of thinking long and hard all the time.

That was four years ago. Since then I’ve had a creative renaissance of sorts, and if I had to answer that question now (not that I’ve thought about it), I’d tack on “and let go” to my answer. Not of hurts and grudges and cynicism, but of rules.

It’s not that I was a sticker for ALL rules growing up. On the contrary, I quite enjoyed breaking social rules because I was a sucker for shock value. And I guess I’m still that way, which is why I kissed a girl (“and I liked it, hope my boyfriend don’t mind it”) at the reunion and wear white shoes after Labor Day.

But when it comes to those subjects about which I actually care, I’ve always been somewhat of a goody-two-shoes-of-acceptable-color. If one wanted to do it right, one followed the example of those who already had.  So to be a good writer, say, then clearly it was crucial that one abide by the rules set down by writers generally recognized as good.

I couldn’t understand other perspectives on this. I was appalled, for instance, when we were asked to write a sonnet and a fellow student blithely submitted a piece that did not adhere precisely to the criteria. The nerve! Didn’t they see that those rules were there for a reason?

Of course, now I know that I was annoyed because their indifference to the rules made me feel insecure about my need for them.

An irony that’s not been lost on me since then is that many of the writers generally recognized as good were considered so because they broke the rules. Stream of consciousness prose wasn’t legit until Virginia Woolf did it.  Ditto for confessional poetry and Anne Sexton. Mysteries were pulp until Raymond Chandler defied the literati and turned them into art. The simplicity of Hemmingway’s writing set tradition on its ear.

The problem is that soon, committing the great sin of Missing The Point, the academic powers that be promptly fashioned the living skins of these fine wild creatures into coats for the rest of us. And we are determined to wear them, never noticing how frumpy they make us look.

So my advice to 18 year old Uppity now would go something like this:

“Lighten up and let go. Learn all the rules you want to, and then forget about them. Totally. Like a dead relative, they’ll never really leave you. They’ll weave themselves into your subconscious, a loose net of strong ropes with great big holes. Do not be alarmed by the holes. If you don’t have those holes, your imagination will turn blue and pass out and, eventually, die. And then the rest of your life won’t be worth living which would be a shame because there are no do-overs. So your assignment is to read The Principles of Grammar and then move on to Strunk & White Shoes After Labor Day. Trust me.”

Tune in next time for the thematically-related but infinitely-more-interestingly-entitled post “In Praise of Sucking.”

Vampires. Everywhere. All bloodsuckers, all the time.

You might remember from previous Rib posts that I am writing a vampire story. I started it prior to the current mania that has everyone panting like Renfield.  All of a sudden there are vampire books, movies, t.v. shows out the ying yang, none of which I read or watch and yet cannot escape thanks to modern advertising. Consequently, I am getting a little tired of vampires.

Yes, Rib readers, I AM GETTING SICK OF MY OWN STORY. This is a crime against nature. It is not supposed to happen until one’s editor demands the 37th rewrite.

It doesn’t help that now when people find out what I’m writing, they immediately think Eddie-Bella-Sookie-Buffy-Anita-Lestat Rip Off. You get the knowing little smile, or the carefully blank expression, or even the eye roll. Those are the polite ones. The more forthright just say it: “Reading Twilight, are you?”

Derivative is a fightin’ word and makes my muse wanna get all up in their face. “Hey, I was writing my story before Edward was a sparkle in Stephanie Meyers’ eye! And my vampire isn’t an emo refugee from Teen Beat!”

But you know, what are you gonna do? Whatever’s going on out there, you have to “fill your paper with the breathings of your heart,” as Wordsworth said.  So I’ll write my story, and eventually when editors send rejection letters that say “Oh, honey, vampires are so 2010,” I will just wait another ten years to resubmit it. And maybe then I’ll get to ruin some other writer’s life.

Ah, the joys of working in online retail during the holiday season. We are down two managers this year, so guess who’s doing double-duty? And when work makes me sit at a computer for 12 hours a day, at home I just can’t sit no more.

I gave up on this year’s NaNo when the 20th rolled around and I realized I would have to do 4000 words a day to make 50K and oh hahahaha, that was never going to happen. My thumbs and forefingers are already going numb from carpal tunnel and there are days when my ass actually hurts from sitting on it.

It was hard to give up at first, but then I figured hey, I have a pretty good reason this year.  Unlike the last two NaNos when I wanted to give up just because writing is haaaaarrrd – yes I’ll take cheese with my whine, thank you – but Kevin convinced me to nut up and finish, quality be damned.

There’s always next year. And by then the 2 new managers we hired yesterday won’t be making more work than they are doing (ideally) and I might have a life during the holidays.

But this December, ye old Rib might be a little quieter than usual, though I do love Christmas and may need a place to come and sing its praises since everybody else is sick of it already.  Just sayin’ if you don’t see a plethora of posts for a while, it’s because I am literally trying to save my ass.

So all we can say is: KNOCK IT OFF. Knock off buying this shit, and knock off cranking it out. It is tough enough being a lady in this world, Author-friends, without having it hammered into our goddamn heads that we’re STILL supposed to sit tight, shut up, and look pretty. We are NOT HAVING IT. If anybody around here gets to be a werewolf, it’s gonna be US. And we will eat you right up, believe it.

Preach it, sista.

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