WordWacky

Garrison Keillor and Andy Warhol may not have much in common. At all. But today’s Writer’s Almanac celebrated the birthday of someone much more well known for his visual art than his writing. Maybe.

Today’s poem, “Andy Warhol for Familiar Quotations” by Peter Oresick is one with repeating lines (if anyone can identify it as a specific form, please let me know — I couldn’t find it anywhere). It begins:

Andy Warhol said, Always leave them wanting less.
Being born, Warhol said, is like being kidnapped.
Everyone will be famous, Andy said, for 15 minutes.
I thought everyone was just kidding, said Andy.

Being born, Andy Warhol said, is like being kidnapped.
Think rich, said Warhol, look poor.
I thought everyone was just kidding, said Andy.
Dying, Andy said, is the most embarrassing thing….

At first I wondered what Andy Warhol was doing on the Writer’s Almanac, but as the quotes wedged their way in again and again, I realized how pithy and quotable the man was. While quotes may not be exactly writing, they require thought, editing, and precise wording. Sounds a lot like writing to me.

Back to Andy and Garrison: there’s a pleasing converse, parallel effect between them. Andy was the very epitome of cool and — despite what he said — for a lot longer than fifteen minutes. He took the popular and ordinary and lifted it from its day to day to make it extraordinary and even more popular. (Are you gonna tell me you don’t think he sold soup?)

Garrison, on the other hand, is the very epitome of uncool. He’s midwestern, nerdy, and old fashioned. He takes the bizarre and unpopular and makes it extraordinary and at least a little popular.

I don’t know if I’m right, but I suspect they’d be friends, were Andy still around.

Be well, do good work, and always leave them wanting less.

And I guess I did, too, though only until about age six, by which time I was entirely too worldly and jaded to buy in anymore. But my mother could be found watching his show, even in adulthood. I know, strange, but he still makes me cry.

Apparently, Mr. Rogers wrote all his own songs, including “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” the subject of this lovely anecdote:

Once while rushing to a New York meeting, there were no cabs available, so Rogers and one of his colleagues hopped on the subway. Esquire reported that the car was filled with people, and they assumed they wouldn’t be noticed.

But when the crowd spotted Rogers, they all simultaneously burst into song, chanting “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.” The result made Rogers smile wide.

Read all of the 15 Reasons Mr. Rogers Was the Best Neighbor Ever at CNN.

Mom, Mr. Rogers, I miss you both.

As a writer, when I call myself an artist, it is always with the suspicion that someone behind me might tap me on the shoulder to remind me, “Um, no, you’re not an artist. You’re just a writer.”

Perhaps visual artists — maybe painters in particular — feel ordinary, old school, unoriginal. They are not bursting from a canvas wearing a bloody apron and a half-burned tutu. Nor are they installing six-foot View Masters that revolve with the pull of a slot machine arm. Flat, bulky, tangible things they create to hang on walls, so much decor.

But to me, visual artists — maybe painters in particular — are the quintessential artists. So when they take their medium and blend it with my own, I’m enthralled. I noticed recently that, coincidentally or not, most of the original paintings in my home have words somewhere in the picture. That I didn’t buy it all myself makes it an even more compelling fact.

Today I visited my friend, Kathryn Daily’s studio in the International District for an open studio event. I love Kathryn’s work, so it was a joy to see what she’s doing. There were many other terrific artists there, with all their wine and cheese and equipment — including a letterpress that I got to work myself!

I was most taken by the work of Edward Ancher Nelson, particularly his watercolors of groups of people. The image is an example of the many on display in his studio and in the hallways of the building. One slim painting traversed the length of the staircase, with myriad portraits of people and their characteristics, fading into the horizon line at the bottom of the stairs. “Scatalogical.” “Cat-like.” “Self-Involved.”

Nothing puts me at a loss for words like a painting. I blame my inadequate art history education for not being able to describe what I like about a work of art. Sure, as I said, I love words in art, but that isn’t all that appeals to me about his work. There’s a feeling of both individual importance and anonymity that Nelson’s paintings create. We are only one character, one trait, one moment, and we are together, standing out and blending in all at once. Next to each other one trait shines brightly, while anything else we may be is eclipsed.

And maybe that’s not it at all.

I talked to one artist in her studio about how difficult it is to know where to begin with visual art. For me, that’s usually not the case with writing. Yet I wouldn’t say writing comes easily, either. It comes slowly, not without pain, and with a tremendous deliberation, analysis, and unending correction. I imagine the painter throwing his or her soul against the canvas, using technique only as a lens. The creation is already there in the mind. Perhaps that’s not how it is.

But for my writing, every moment feels precarious, uncharted. Every word, as it appears on the page, means crap. Crap, crapping crappiest crapness. And later, when I look it over again, sometimes it means more. Sometimes not.

How pedestrian, how droll to trade in meanings, line my ideas up and assassinate them with periods at the end of every sentence. How boring to explain. Quick, someone give me a canvas, and a clue where to begin. There’s a soul here in need of throwing.

I bought business cards the other day. They identify me as a writer.

There are many opinions about when you get to call yourself a writer [Ed: see comments]. I like to think that like other parts of one’s own identity, it arises from within — only you know whether you’re a writer or not.

Doubts I have, though this identity has been with me as long as my oldest friends. It’s been a secret. It’s been a title. It’s been a lie. It’s been the only thing that keeps me alive. I have rolled around in the mud with writer, wrestled it and conquered it, only to lose on rematch.

And even when you get over coming out as a writer and you claim the identity, there are other people in the world to think about. Will they call you a writer?

Apparently the late, great George Carlin struggled with this side of the dilemma. He was not just a comedian, but a writer. From his last interview, with Psychology Today:

It sounds like you think of yourself much more as a writer than a performer—is that true? How do you think about performing?

It’s my primary delivery system. I used to, in my early years, when I would do an interview I was always proud to tell the writer that I wrote my own material, if they asked me or even if they didn’t. I wanted to be distinguished from the ones who didn’t do that, and I was proud of it, so I would say I am a comedian who writes his own material. And then at some point, I discovered what I really had become was a writer who performs his own material.

This was a really important distinction for me to notice—it happened way after the fact. I’m a writer. I think of myself as a writer. First of all, I’m an entertainer; I’m in the vulgar arts. I travel around talking and saying things and entertaining, but it’s in service of my art and it’s informed by that. So I get to write for two destinations. The writing is what gives me the joy, especially editing myself for the page, and getting something ready to show to the editors, and then to have a first draft and get it back and work to fix it, I love reworking, I love editing, love love love revision, revision, revision, revision.

Last year a group of us from the little writing school that could, Bent, went to Saints and Sinners, a queer literary festival in New Orleans. Traversing one of those cobblestone streets en masse, we talked about the fear of calling yourself a writer. And we practiced. In turn, we said it, out loud, so that everyone with us could hear. “I am a writer.”

I am a writer.

Those of us who have come out in other ways know how scary – and ultimately liberating – coming out can be. But when I came out as queer, it was just done. From then on I could be. Could love. Could  breathe and smile and curl up in the arms of the person I loved and who loved me, freely.

Calling yourself a writer means that now you must work. Because if you don’t have “something to show for it,” sadly, nobody will believe you.

You may as well tuck that journal back under your mattress and go back to keeping secrets.

Discovery News reports that monks charged with writing Biblical texts may have been poisoned by the ink they used. Back before the 1500s (when texts started to be printed rather than hand written), a type of mercury, cinnabar, was used in ink for its red hue.

One scientist suggested an entry point for the mercury: 

He told Discovery News “it is very human to lick the brush, if one wants to make a fine line.”

The article goes on to speculate about the diets of the monks and rules out dietary and “medicinal” mercury exposures.

Little did they know that their precision and dedication was killing them, with a scenic stop at mad-as-a-hatter along the way.

  Just in time for Pride weekend, Tom Spanbauer will be visiting Seattle to read from Faraway Places. Spanbauer’s first book has been reprinted by Hawthorne Press, a cool Portland indie publisher:

All of our titles are published as affordable original trade paperbacks but feature details not typically found even in case bound titles from bigger houses: acid-free papers; sewn bindings that will not crack; heavy, laminated covers with double-scored French flaps that function as built-in bookmarks.

The new volume features an introduction by A. M. Homes, who’s a new favorite of mine. From the introduction:

Faraway Places, Tom Spanbauer’s first novel, is not enormously long, but it is a big book. And it is masterly—a near perfect book. Built upon keen observations of human behavior—ranging from God, to farming, the scent of one’s father, the magic of sex and the exact number of steps from here to there—there is enormous originality, drama and spirit to this tale. It is a family drama with a pitch perfect crescendo. The story is hypnotic, mesmerizing, delicately brilliant—and so well made. While you are lulled by the language and the characters, the storyline builds and then like a well timed firework explodes—surprising, enthralling, captivating.

I’ll be there to get his paw prints on my yet-to-be-purchased copy of In the City of Shy Hunters.

You should be there, too.

Tom Spanbauer
Elliott Bay Books
Friday, June 27 at 7:30 p.m, Free!
101 South Main Street
Pioneer Square, Seattle

Tomorrow is Richard Hugo House’s Write-O-Rama, a day of rapid-fire writing workshops to get you started or keep you going on your writing projects.

Write-O-Rama is a full day of hour-long workshops offered to anyone who wants to write by the creative writing teachers at Hugo House. On June 7 we will hold over 30 writing workshops, and to sustain you as you write we will also have free food, beverages, two open mics, and a wrap party following the last session. Guests will have the opportunity to generate new writing, meet fellow writers, share their work, sample the work of Hugo House writing teachers and find new motivation to write.

If you’re too far away to get there, Write-O-Rama is also a fundraiser. You can donate to my campaign by visiting the Write-O-Rama Laureate page and designating me as your sponsoree (under Dedication).

It’s a truism of writing a novel in this post-everything literary climate. There are no new stories, no truly unexpected twists, not a single surprise, anywhere. The butler did it. He gets the girl in the end. After his circular journey, the hero comes home.

Here’s an old story:

One of my heroes was caught retelling that old yarn at a literary festival in Wales.

Ian McEwan — whom I read voraciously, and who is almost prolific enough to keep up — read a passage from a work in progress. One attendee spoke up, reporting that the anecdote had been written about before. Most famously it was told by Douglas Adams in So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, and so many times in all that it’s a standard short film assignment for would-be directors. McEwan’s version uses crisps instead of biscuits, but it’s the same old story.

It’s something of an urban legend, this story. McEwan says he overheard it. And though the festival incident may seem embarrassing for McEwan, there are two other writing truisms well illustrated by the story.

First, always have readers. Is it so impossible that this very thing may happen in the world? No. Could he have gotten away with printing the story? Probably. Would it have been awful? Certainly. He was saved from a much greater embarrassment — a McEwan-sized printing of that story in his next novel.

Second, yes, we’re back to “kill your darlings.”

The mix-up over the crisps had the feel of an urban myth to it, McEwan said, adding that he would be grateful for any more information about the anecdote’s provenance.

[Ed: Provenance. Don't you just love that guy?]

Folks, if it sounds like an urban myth to you, it should likely be cut. I’ve learned that myself, and I have the darling carcass to prove it.

On the other hand, if there aren’t any new tales to tell, then why not just retell the good ones — the ones with adages to sum them up and all of the characters neatly paired off in the end?

Every now and then, for years, I have strolled down Broadway in Seattle’s Capitol Hill and passed Brett Dean McGibbon and his sidewalk book stand. Sometimes he’s handing out free poems to passers by. Always there are his own works, handbound in both paperback and rough-cut leather. He sells similar volumes as journals.

I remember taking a poem from him once, and though I don’t remember how I felt about his poetry, I do remember thinking long and hard about his business model, only to decide he must be at least a little off to think a home-baked scheme like his would work.

On Friday, after a happy hour cocktail smoothed my work-frayed mood, I passed McGibbon, sitting at his card table with his books. He was outside the new location of Capitol Hill News, on the north end of Broadway. Feeling chatty, I stopped to talk.

“So can I ask you something?” I’ve never been one for false formality.

“Sure,” he said, his face not revealing any sign of unease.

I waved my hand at the table. “So, do you make your living from this?” Maybe my incredulity was insulting. “I mean, I’m a writer, too, and I just wondered if you were able to support yourself this way.”

“I make my living through my book sales, yes.” And a man who knows his audience, he then tried to sell me a copy of his CD, Successful Self Publishing of Fiction and Poetry.

I didn’t buy the CD. It’s not that I support wholeheartedly the publishing institutions, it’s more that the leap of faith required to “go McGibbon” is so great that the barriers to getting your book published through traditional means seem minor in comparison.

Returning to the car with my copy of Lucifer’s Redemption, I told my wife, “I’d be good at that. Sitting around talking to strangers and selling books.” I started to read the book aloud to her during the ride home, and we’ve left it in the car for story time. While I’ve found a few places that McGibbon could have used a good copy editor, and the book is decidedly handmade, I’m also finding great sentences and vivid imagery.

It’s a little bit like building your own house versus hiring an architect and a contractor. The outcome may not be as polished as some of the other houses on the block, but every inch of it is your own.

1. Write at the same time every day, no matter what.
2. Never, ever use an exclamation point!
3. Have an agent if you want to sell to a big publishing house.
4. Don’t expect to get rich writing — do it because you love it.
5. And conjunctions don’t start sentences.

I buy at least a couple of books on the subject of writing every year. Seldom do I ever pick them up to read them. And even more infrequently, I finish them.

I read Strunk & White in high school or college, and it was a godsend. Through careful editing and rigid adherence to the standards, I could make my writing correct — even if correct did not necessarily mean good.

Strunk & White’s best quality? Its length. The book is about 100 pages long.

As a story addict, a lover of narrative in its true, fictional, and semi-fictional forms, instruction books are the least appealing way to spend my reading hour and my library quarter (library delinquent that I am). That includes instruction books on writing. Yet who doesn’t wish for a few guiding principles, a checklist which is guaranteed to make a piece better?

Roy Peter Clark, author of Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer, has posted a collection of 50 solid tools to add to your craft toolbox. Thirty-two of them are even podcasts — you can “read” them in the car driving to work. [via Writers Unbound]

“Learn the rules, then you can break them.” That this idea would only tame the unkepmt talent! The argument is that by choosing when and if you break a rule, you can use the rules themselves to say something about the story, the characters, the setting, whatever you choose. I subscribe to this idea, and my most exciting moments in literature often happen when rules are carefully broken.

The prescriptivists would say that standards are the keepers clarity, the basis of common understanding of new ideas, while the descriptivists think the linguistic mores of this time are fleeting, at best, and will always be broken.

Keep this in mind: if language changes from the bottom up, the writers are the last to catch up.