One thing she mentioned was a book she'd like to gather together and self publish (you know, publish the really cheap, fun Print-On-Demand way).
"I have another book I've thought about publishing that seems to be a hodge-podge of semi-autobiography and thoughts."
I sensed she was having some hesitation about that work. A lot of us have a similar hodge-podge we've written through the years and we go back and forth between wanting to save it and cringing as we imagine the review it might get (forgetting that 99.999% of written things never get reviewed at all). "This 'Thing' is self-indulgent, boring,pointless, self-absorbed. How did this get published? Even P.O.D. should have rejected it. What made this idiot think anyone wanted to know any of this stupid stuff?" You know, that kind of review.
Actually, it's not hard to find people who would say that and worse. They're often in the publishing business or were English majors some years ago. They usually know their stuff. But stuff changes, and they don't always keep up.
In fact, whatever you write -- if you can stop yourself from trying to 'clean it up,'and make it all proper and organized which will make it phony, and phony really is useless -- will be fascinating to grandkids and historians. I think everyone should find a way to save their writings for posterity. How much do you wish your great-great grandmother had written one of those...things? Who cares if publishers and literary people don't like it?
But what is it? It's hard to get to work on something when you don't know how to structure it into some shape.
But the hodge podge she describes has no name I know of (is it a novel, is it a memoir, an essay, a journal? Why are those grocery lists in there?). However, it's something all the same, and a common something. People keep writing these things and they often continue to write year after year, decade after decade.
There must be a reason for this, this activity must come out of something innate and purposeful, like gossip, for instance (which I'm sure you all know has been the subject of more than one PhD thesis) (I'm not joking.)
A number of years ago I picked an amazing anthology about the writing of autobiography at one of the bookstores near Columbia Univ. In it was a brilliant piece by a man, at that time quite old, named Georges Gusdorf. One day I saw a conference on autobiography studies advertised in The Saturday Review, to be held in Baton Rouge -- and this man was supposed to be there. (He did show up, very briefly, and had a beautiful face and a sweet smile.)
It was summertime, my kids were in California with their father, so on an impulse I paid for a place and bought a plane ticket to Baton Rouge. It only cost a few hundred dollars and I figured my money was as good as anyone else's. I got off the plane, took a taxi to the college, put my suitcases in one of the dorm rooms, and went down to listen to the academics speak. At the coffee counter outside the auditorium where it was all to happen, I met the man who had edited the book, (I guess I should reveal its title: "Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical") by the name of James Olney. I told him I thought the book was terrific, and, knowing what he was doing, he responded to my enthusiasm by asking me if I'd be willing to start a newsletter that would go to all the members of the audience as a way of connecting these people from different departments who happened to specialize or be interested in autobiography. He hoped the newsletter would encourage them to share bibliographies they'd gathered and that this would be the beginning of a separate discipline of autobiography studies that would build into a department of its own.
I said, Sure.
He knew his people. At the end of one of the conference sessions he went up on the stage and asked for a volunteer from the audience to start this very same newsletter. He waited. There were over 100 people in the audience but not one of them raised a hand. He waited a little longer. Asked again. Waited. And when he was sure no one else would volunteer -- or at least that he had publicly demonstrated that he'd given it a try, since I think he pretty much knew in advance that no one would volunteer -- he pointed at me and announced that I'd be doing it, said my name, and asked me to stand up which I did. Everyone's jaw dropped, all their eyes were on me in some kind of shock I couldn't figure out. They seemed to be trying to figure out who I was, if anybody, and I wondered what I'd gotten myself into. Fortunately, a kindly young man took me under his wing and explained what such a journal could mean to this audience, but that's another story.
As it turned out, the newsletter was great and was soon on its way to becoming something bigger. I ran it for two years, as I recall, and enjoyed it more than running my business. I was getting bibliographies in the mail like gangbusters and using my special (pain in the neck) typesetting machine, printing out a few hundred copies and licking stamps to mail them all over the country. Then these same people started submitting papers and when I tried to read them I quickly realized I was in way over my head. So I invited people to be guest editors and lined up issues dedicated to Medical Autobiography, Romantic Autobiography, Early American Autobiography -- I had enough guest editors in place to handle content for at least two years. This little newsletter turned into what what I believe was the first academic journal for autobiography studies. It's called 'A/B' and it's been run by real academics out of a university instead of my back room for a long time now.
I tell you all this to explain that back then the people who attended that conference and who wanted to publish papers and share bibliographies were still struggling to create a place in the academic world for a separate study of autobiography. Most established department heads and professors were disdainful of this enterprise feeling that autobiographies were merely a small part of any kind of literature, and anyway, they were probably history and not really literature at all. It's a thrilling discussion for people who are thrilled by that sort of thing. Modern Language Association. Calls for papers. Heady stuff.
Thing is, you're a part of it. You're actually writing in a form as clear and distinct as that one, with the same lack of self-consciousness, the same informality and hopefully, the same honesty. It's just that nobody recognizes it yet. (As far as I know, anyway.)
But when you look at your own hodge podge stuff, it doesn't seem to rise to any such standard and, forget about being accepted by scholars, it never seems right to publish these scraps on a mimeograph machine, much less in a bound book, even using P.O.D. I mean, what the hell is it? Who will care?
Still, when you peek into it you can't help noticing that some of the stuff you wrote is pretty interesting. Some is even really good. Not sure what to call it, but maybe if you leave it in a footlocker somewhere, to be found after you're dead, just maybe the person who finds it would figure out the form. There's some kind of tradition for that sort of thing, isn't there?
All these things you might think as you look at your hodge podge of writings. I know. I did.
And then the perfect form showed up.
This form suits the material as well as it suits the nature of the people who write this kind of stuff. It is called a 'blog.' You must have a blog. A truly easy, no brainer kind of blog, that you can put up in less than a minute. For the technically challenged to avoid frustration (essential!! because such folk are so easily discouraged anyway!) I recommend Blogger.com. They don't pay me, I don't even know who 'they' might be, but I do know that the easiest, free-est place around is Blogger.com. I personally don't care if my URL includes the name 'blogspot.com' It seems refreshingly self-effacing in some way.
Ah, but I think I just heard your/her objection to a blog, no matter how easy: "Well, I'm not sure I want the whole world to read this stuff. It's kind of personal."
While that's not the sort of thing an internet marketer would worry about, I do understand.
On the other hand, you sure would like some people to read it. Preferably someone who would see its amazing qualities, those that elude you, and would admire it, delight in it, and even tell you so.
Here again, a blog seems just right. If you add no keywords, and you say no popular words like 'sex' or 'success' or 'internet marketing secrets' probably no one will come. And if they do, well, you could get a pseudonym and email address from Yahoo or Google or someone and if a surfer happens to see it while killing time with StumbleUpon or something, they won't know who wrote it.
If, on the other hand, you'd like some people to read it, you can use Twitter or send a private email -- that's something we can get into later.
More importantly, is this stuff of yours worthy to be called writing?
On blogs, literary standards can be low; nobody's in charge, so no one can stop you from putting up any kind of junk. (That's enough reason to do it, as far as I'm concerned.)
But regarding the value of what you've written, as someone who put in a few years of passionate independent study about autobiography, and who majored in anthropology, both of which profess to respect 'what is' as opposed to 'what should be,' I have an opinion that I (or someone) could probably defend:
You bet it's worthy to be called writing. This messy-looking, disorganized, genre-free writing that falls unselfconsciously from our thoughts at a certain moment in time is a treasure. The form itself is a footprint in history. No alien creature, however developed, could possibly create anything in just this way. It reflects a pattern of how human brains and human feelings actually work, at least in one culture at one historical time, and how they are -- very oddly if you think about it -- expressed by writing them down on a page.
Now, much as I enjoy thinking about that sort of thing, I really don't think this argument would have satisfied the woman on my bulletin board. There was something else going on, but I've seen it accompany this discussion of value so often that I have to bring it up. This particular enterprise has a way of making you feel like you're old and irrelevant. And weary.
Here's the way she said it [sort of]"I feel broke, old, worn out uninspired, unmotivated, and don't know what will help me get out of this funk."
Her inner conflict is no doubt a big part of what wears her out. So is fear of being criticized and exposed. It's easier to feel all washed up, past your prime, shlumpy. Since our culture backs up that kind of thing, I stepped in with some very good advice, the kind I don't often give, and I'll give it to you, too, if you care to know:
Read my book. (The one that was published in 1999.)
I don't care if you don't buy it, but read it. (My publishers won't be thrilled to hear me say this but I honestly mean it.)
Get it from the library or go to a superstore, sit down on a chair or the floor, and read it right there. Read a chapter or two and go home and come back the next day and read another chapter or two.
It's called "It's Only Too Late If You Don't Start Now" and it's the only book I know of that can turn this kind of attitude around. (Well, think about it: If I'd liked the others, I wouldn't have written this one.) It has a grim test in the beginning -- one that matches her attitude. And that same quiz shows up again at the end whereupon, if you have used your head and listened to me and actually read it, you will find yourself answering every question completely differently. I think there are some reviews in the 'Rave Reviews' forum of my bulletin board
I told her something else you might want to think about: If you don't read that book you have to keep your complaints to yourself. Because the people who have read it (and that's a whole lot of people) say it actually changes their viewpoint completely.
I imagine she knows some of my stuff, but if you don't, you might not know this about my work: I'm convinced that I'm not spiritual (no matter what some of my fans say) and I dislike positive thinking and don't go for The Secret, or Personal Power Empires of the male military model or whatever's out there now. I also am totally turned off by talk of menopause, investments and incontinence. This book is different. It's a hell of a book. I mean it.
If you've read this far, you'd best read the rest -- why I told her she had to read it.
"I could hear in your voice last night that you have some very special kind of gift that might really help people. I didn't let you discuss it last night and I don't want you to discuss it here because I don't want you to settle for the gratification you'd get by talking when that would almost guarantee you won't actually do it.
Listen. There are people whose lives might change if you started to teach art with that special kind of gift (never mind what it is, dear reader, because that's not so relevant and would take too long to explain), and withholding it is simply unethical. Especially when you're being stopped by the 'self-pity' mood. Because when you feel sorry for yourself you're always stingy and selfish.
In fact, there's hardly any label with 'self' in it that's useful. Self-pity, self-confidence, self-love, all of that will have you hauling your wagon down the wrong road in the wrong direction because they're always about the wrong guy - you.
The right guy is the person who could benefit from your gifts. Truth is, you really have no right to withhold them. You didn't work for your gifts. No one works for their gifts. You're born with them. That means you owe them big time to the people who need them.
That's what I told her. And long ago, that's what I told myself, when people were far from encouraging about the life I wanted to build. I listened to myself, and went on to write five books that sell well and stay in print year after year, and more importantly, that I'm still proud of; and I've designed and run a couple of really good, original programs and I've taken care of myself and my family, all because I listened to myself saying what I just said to you.
"If I were you," I said to her :-) "I might want to think about that for awhile. It could actually get you out of that funk."
