Harvey Milk’s Birthday, 1979

Originally uploaded by freerangelibrarian

Last night the news that New Hampshire had passed a marriage-equality bill to legalize same-sex marriage in January didn’t even lead the stories. This turn of events — the sixth state to pass this historic civil-rights legislation — is now just part of the rolling stone of social justice happening in our country and worldwide. I can’t think of a better present for Harvey Milk — late by a few days, or several decades, depending on your point of view, but a lovely gift all the same.

I have several copies of this flyer in my personal collection; I vaguely remember handing out this flyer, back in 1979. (I don’t remember the actual celebration, though I did read about it when I did primary research for my essay, “David, Just as he Was,” published a couple of years ago in White Crane.) I was reminded of it when I heard that there is a move afoot to make Harvey’s birthday a holiday. I heartily support this idea — but for me, it always has been one.

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Beha’s year reading the Harvard classics has great complexity — death and love, fear and epiphany, life in the moment and memory — but what struck me most of all was not his assessment of the classics and their impact on him but first, my memory of what it was like to be 27 and adrift, and second, my own encounter with some of the works he was reading that year.

It’s a difficult age, the late 20s, a time when some of us looked around to realize that some of our friends were (seemingly) settled and prosperous. I was 27 the year I joined the Air Force on the heels of eviction and other financial disasters,  and Beha was 27 when he broke up with his girlfriend, moved back in with his parents, and took up reading the great books.

Beha’s observations about the great books are astute and interesting, and this book serves as a minor refresher course (Pascal and Augustine, my good old chums!) and an enticement to the texts we haven’t read  (Allesandro Manzoni sounds swashbucklingly fun).

But The Whole Five Feet is no book report; Beha’s reflections are far the richer because he delicately wheels and dives among both the great writers’ ideas and his own life experiences — proving, if we needed proof, of the greatness and centrality of reading. About John Stuart Mill, Beha reflects on the nature of pleasure and happiness, observing through the prism of his own illnesses, “Your comfort, especially your physical  comfort, isn’t under your control, so you’d better find something else to work at.”  The idea here is mature far beyond his years, and yet the style is all salt spray and blue sky.

And so it goes through the The Whole Five Feet, ending only slightly clunkishly in an “afterword” about the Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction. (Beha is at ease with the great essayists and philosophers, but he becomes strangely tonguetied over Jane Austen — then again, I can see her having that effect on people.)

If I were working in a traditional library I’d take great  pleasure book-talking this book to a diehard fiction reader, or recommending it to a book group in search of something fun and different.   But I can recommend it to you, and hope you or your patrons will enjoy it as much as I did.

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I haven’t written fiction since a high school creative writing class in 1974. I was initially inspired to work on this story by some axes I wanted to grind, but as often happens in writing projects, it developed a life of its own. The people I wanted to mock weren’t that interesting on paper, and a character emerged whose motivations and life-roundedness became at least mildly interesting to me, at least as a problem to solve.

I’m not entirely sure I want to write fiction on a regular basis, and since I don’t earn a living from my literary writing, I certainly don’t have to keep doing it. But it’s educational to force my brain around the problems of fiction — particularly short fiction, with its myriad conventions. I find myself sneaking back to favorite books to reassure myself that there is life beyond the short story.

“Say, Mum, let’s not open in scene this time!”

“But Buffy, we’re supposed to.”

“In Cold Blood didn’t open in scene!”

“And Capote died a miserable alcoholic. Is that how you want to end up?”

Perhaps that was a little unfair…

But what I really wanted to say (really, how can we not love blogging, with its subway-conversation bagginess) is that a few months back I heard someone at a conference talk about the characteristics of good technical documentation writers, which included people who knew how to do really good structured writing, “Not like those creative writing types.”

I began snickering and quickly trotted away, since I didn’t want to be rude to this colleague. But I began wondering, does anyone read any more? Because you can’t talk about good writing without noticing how something as distinctive and memorable as voice is nothing without an impeccably correct structure. By correct, I mean, right and inevitable and seamless, a structure that appears self-evident, and is as discrete and omnipresent as a good butler.

Maybe that too is unfair, because if we’re writing well, a good reader should assume it’s easy. Nothing spells junior effort like a work where the skeleton pokes out all over the place, like a skinny kid in too-small clothes. Yet structure is hard.  Many writers go through several drafts just finding the right structure for their work. It’s a discipline and it’s a slog. But puzzling through structure is a great way to exercise the writing muscle — and I am sure it has produced more than a few people whose day jobs include dazzlingly well-wrought technical documentation.

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I was trying to explain to a young man why you always, always carry a writing notebook and a pen, so I showed him this genuine, overhead-in-the-hallways, can’t-make-this-stuff-up line I had jotted down minutes earlier, and no,  I’m not telling you who said it — not here on this blog, anyway.

But every time I repeat that line  (wickedly including the source) there is much covered-mouth tittering. Not at ROB, of course, who thinks he is a Pulitzer-winning author with a gorgeous reading voice, and he would be right, and who generously gave of his time at this conference, as did Philip Gerard, Pat MacEnulty, and others. And of course, the point is made: you can’t be a writer if you aren’t ready to write good stuff down the moment you hear it.

This was my first year attending the Tallahassee Writers’ Association conference. It was much bigger and better than a conference that size would appear to be, and I really can do little else than blurt out some of my cryptic notes and say, if you are a writer in this region, be at this conference next year!

I also met with an agent, and one thing I said is why can’t I put together a collection of published/publishable writing and publish it to Kindle? Well, she asked, then why do you need me? My response was for the expertise on the things I don’t know how to do.  She had never had that question before. But why not?

Stuff Heard, and Written Down

Speaking of Mr. Who-Does-He-Think-He-Is, Robert Olen Butler told us in his keynote, “Great writing comes from the place where you dream.” The only craft you legitimately earn is the technique you have forgotten. A short-short story has as its center a character who yearns.

Butler also said the Kindle is the future of publishing. He has a Kindle II, and read from it.

Philip Gerard had many good things to share. The persistence of vision is a nearly-perfect metaphor for how scenes work. A character goes into action to satisfy a yearning or escape a fear. If we don’t care about the characters, we don’t care about the story.

“Action is character; we watch what people do and thereby we know them.” (He says this is a second-hand quote.) Plot is often derided, but he holds it dear. (I knew these notes would appear nonsensical out of context.) Setting: he thinks of this as if he were staging a show. Setting is a stage of action. Also consider the apparent subject and the deeper subject.

“Choose language carefully,” Gerard said, noting that this is something “you can rarely do in the first draft.” Be sure you “earn the emotion.” As for creative nonfiction, it has to pass the “eulogy test” (alas, I no longer recall what that is!).

On building a book, Gerard first quoted F. Scott Fitzgerald: “Every person should have a bottle of champagne chilled at all times.” The minute you give a book to someone else, you’re no longer alone. The writer’s work ethic involves a “peasant mentality” — the willingness to work a 12-hour day, all the way through.

In the first stage,  you work on the pre-vision.

What is the aboutness of the work? It can boil down to something very simple; it’s somebody in motion toward a goal.

Why do you want to write this book? Nobody can tell you what book to write. What’s in it for you?

A good ending has rectitude.

Pat MacEnulty (Sweet Fire, among other books), spoke about voice. “Once I find the voice, then the book writes itself.” “Most writers are actors,” assuming roles. As writers, we are allowed to hear voices in our heads. “Don’t censor the voices.”

Try having your characters say one thing and think another.

There are many approaches, but try layering: build a skeleton of your writing. She likes beginning with dialog and then adding action and description. For description, be sure to note the quality of light.

What is it like to be inside that character’s body?

Every scene does not need conflict and resolution, but a scene is more engaging if there’s tension in it. Let the reader experience the events.

Try writing scenes as if they were in a play (just as an exercise).

More Gerard (workshop, The Retrospective Narrator): If I’m a retrospective narrator, ask, how retrospective am I? Where am I in reference to this story?

A story is told by somebody, to an audience, at some time, for a reason.

Gerard also mentioned the Kindle. (The Kindle would come up at least four times at the conference.)

Have a business plan for your writing career.

Yet more Robert Olen Butler: Write what is authentic. Write every day. Begin close to your demographic. Go straight from sleep to writing. Use muscle memory. Listen to your writing (thrum thrum thrum… TWANG).

It’s always a struggle, but you learn how to struggle.

Books and other Writing Recommended, Seen, Desired

Pat MacEnulty, Sweet Fire

Robert Olen Butler, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain [since borrowed and read -- quite fabu]

Robert Olen Butler, Tabloid Dreams

Philip Gerard, Secret Soldiers

River Teeth – see Gerard’s essay, “Thirteenth Hour”

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Sugar lady, be my saviour,
‘Cause I’m tired, I’ve been eight days on the road.
That’s right, eight days on the road,
Travelin’ through the night,
There ain’t no town, ain’t no town, ain’t no rest tonight.

I am zooming through this post since the work-bell clangs in 24 minutes, but here’s my latest adventures:

Whisked off to Computers in Libraries, had what may have been the first-ever Evergreen User Group meeting, followed by a harrowing experience where I almost missed a panel presentation I was on because I was in the wrong room (there were many programs labeled Open Source in the CiL schedule… and I had shown up bright and early for the wrong one), though Kathryn Greenhill, Cindi Trainor, and Ryan Deschamps figured out I had not in fact missed my session and got my hide into the right place.

(I had never realized that I could perspire from every pore in my body.)

It was a great session, though I wish I’d had time afterwards to celebrate it with Ruth Dukelow and Andrea Neiman and Karen Collier, who were magnificent. But on to Reagan I went, then bump-bump to Houston for the Texas Library Association, arriving near midnight (it was also a week for hotel rooms with stunning aerial views), then bright and early the next day into the company booth.

That itself was a lot of fun; it’s pleasant to be at a conference where I am not running from meeting to meeting. I squeezed such work as I could for the Evergreen conference, now about six weeks away.

Then hist! On back to Tallahassee Friday night. (My bedtime medicine was my first glass of my fourth brew, E.J. Phair’s Phat Quail Ale — bravo me! Ruddy, tasty, and hop-a-licious.)

Next morning I plunged into the Tallahassee Writers Association conference, which itself was magnificent. I have many notes that I will blog tomorrow.  Probably my favorite moment was Robert Olen Butler’s reading yesterday, when he pulled out his Kindle 2 and read “Jealous husband returns in form of parrot,” from Tabloid Dreams, an out-of-print story collection.

(Audience question: How is it you are so expert at the female voice? Butler: I’ve been married four times.)

I had really wanted to attend the Tallahassee Book Festival on Saturday night, but I was exhausted and hadn’t written my pitch for the agent I was seeing. (”The pitch is a bitch,” saith my writing friends.) That’s ok, because the agent I spoke with waved it away and we talked. She thinks I should write a book. I have this book idea. I have to figure out if I can write this books in the nooks and crannies of my life, and now it is 8:29 and time to press the Publish button.

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But I had this link roundup written, so here you go. As more of us are on Facebook sharing links left and right, the link roundup feels a little less necessary, but there are times when I want to share links people have sent me that are more fun in the aggregate.

Bits n Pieces

I like the voice in this inaugural post on this blog from New York Public Library.  Nice job, folks (except for your craptacular URLs — just “fixed” the link so it would point to all the wobbly stuff on the end — craptacular stuff gone, thanks NYPL!).

My writing friend Thomas Peele (we were at USF together) is one of the investigative journalists who seriously rocked an unsolved Bay Area murder.  I wonder if he and his peers are reinventing journalism?

A friend forwarded this Yahoo article mocking a Virginia resident’s “stimulus” suggestion to invest in local craft brewing.  Let’s see:  local labor, local products, American grains and transportation — what’s not to like?

(Did you know homebrewing was still illegal in six states?)

True confession: until I went to Code4Lib, I thought Rhode Island was actually an island (which in my head explained why it was so small). I don’t have a link for that. Just wanted to share.

Tallahassee Sundries

Do you tweet in Tallahassee? Add the #tallahassee hashtag to relevant tweets.

The Big Read is coming to Tallahassee! It’s Fahrenheit 451, and it coincides with the TWA conference (discussed below).  Yay for Leon County Library, Tallahassee Community College, and everyone else involved! I’m going to buy a used copy of Fahrenheit 451 so I can write in it. (I had a copy… in fact, I may still have it. Hmm, no, on closer inspection, that’s Frankenstein.)

Whoa! Tallahassee Writer’s Association just had a major website makeover! Haven’t hit all the links yet, but it’s at least surface-pretty. The old website made my eyes bleed. Oh hey — blush — my Pushcart nomination even gets a mention.

Speaking of which, the upcoming TWA conference, April 3-5, will be awesome. Robert Olen Butler, Philip Gerard, many other good folks, plus a book fair that Sunday (come by and buy my books — I’ll sign them!).  Zowie! I am genuinely enthusiastic (and I’m doing a small session Sunday morning on creative nonfiction). Hope to see some of you there!

Finally, are there any local homebrewers interested in participating in The Big Brew on Saturday, May 2? I did a half-batch of Saison du Mont this weekend (extract version — all ingredients are at Homebrew Den) to see if I like it and to tinker with my technique. (Our house is now perfumed with sweet and bitter orange, slow-cooked grain, and warmed honey. I won’t know for a month or more if it tastes good, but anything the color of a bull’s-eye caramel that smells that yummy is almost worth making anyway.)

Why Homebrew?

I have realized that homebrewing takes the place of rose-gardening, which I can’t do here in Tallahassee — our house is all shade, and it’s too hot/humid anyway. It’s all the same skills and predelictions: very specific domain knowledge, lots of planning and strategizing, many subspecializations, many enjoyable hours whiled away thinking “what next,” gradual, iterative skill acquisition, interesting gadgets and equipment that can be acquired one little bit at a time — and you can spend as little or as much on it as you want and your pocketbook allows.

Plus, I consider roses and beer very practical outcomes (though I never had to exercise extra hard to work off the roses).

Regarding purchases, I do practice restraint, though it pained me not to walk out of the store this Saturday the proud owner of the Funnel of my Dreams or a gleaming stainless steel digital scale… but oh, someday when my ship comes in: between specialty baking pans, siphons of every size and shape, and a suite of funnels so large they could drain Wakulla Springs,  I’ll need a second kitchen!

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I have had trouble writing lately and I think it is due to the enormity of global events.  I am stuck in the agonized present, watching the world tumbling ass-over-teakettle, unable to go to that other place writers go, which we describe as all pain and teeth-gnashing and angst but is  for many of us actually a comfort zone where our head snuggles into that third place where we peacefully assemble and re-assemble the jigsaw puzzles of our stories, poems, and essays.

I can’t get to that warm, humming place. I have abandoned all my good writing habits (write first thing in the morning, schedule writing time every week, take an hour or two on a trip just for writing, etc.). I get up early to do personal writing and instead launch into work stuff… or I set aside time to do personal writing on the weekend and then do errands until all the time is exhausted.

Like my mother I feel my chest squeezed with empathetic pain, feel my helplessness and my frustration with my helplessness. I avoid cable news and I turn off even NPR if it gets too bleak, but the demons of truth sneak snippets of reality into everything I view or read, stalking me in the wee hours when I’m vulnerable, shaking me awake at 3 a.m. to tell me that my world will never be safe and comfortable again, that everything I knew was wrong, that we have not even begun to hit bottom.

Again in my childhood, I remember college students chanting, “The whole world is watching.”  We are all watching and in some ways I wish we were not, but it must have felt like this in 1939, that the only thing worse than watching was not watching.

The one true thing is my writing group, where no matter how breathlessly distracted I am, I pull myself into the discipline of reminding everyone when we meet, reading submissions, revising my own submissions (if I can’t create I can always revise existing pieces, and revision is the truly golden art), getting together, laughing and thinking and being serious with our work, then driving home in the aftermath feeling at ease and safe for a sweet  moment, as long as I do not switch on the radio.

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Ninth Letter

The latest issue of Ninth Letter — a physically-gorgeous journal from the University of Illinois — includes my essay, “The Outlaw Bride,” about my marriage to my partner Sandy in 2004 and its aftermath after our marriage was invalidated by the state. It’s an essay about the meaning of marriage, and love, and stuff even bigger than that, and I hope you read it.

I remember thinking that with marriages being legalized in California, “The Outlaw Bride” would be an anachronism.  Remember the old days, when we couldn’t marry? Instead, as Californians head to the courts to fight the passage of Proposition 8, it’s very timely. I write about what it was like to have a wedding… and what it is like to be married. And after sixteen years, there is really nothing the state can do to unmarry us.

Happy Valentine’s Day, one and all. Remember that love makes us all outlaws one way or the other.

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Literary essays accepted for publication: 3

Literary submissions rejected: 7 [Note: should be much higher; this means I didn't submit enough.]

Literary essays included in “Best Of” anthologies or nominated for the Pushcart Prize: 2

New essays started: 4

New essays completed: 1

Essays in SubmissionLand as of 12/28/30 12/28/08: 2

Trade articles published: 6

Posts to this blog: 143

Writing classes taken: 1

Writing workshops taught: 2

Writing critique groups led: 12

Backlog of books not finished reading: 21

Unread books received as gifts: 10

Unread books purchased in airports during “reading emergencies”: 3

Unread books purchased during Cormac McCarthy fixation: 3

Writing conferences attended: 1

Neologisms coined: 0

ALA committees/task forces served on: 3

Library conferences attended: 23 (approx)

Presentations/panels given: 17 (approx)

Number of times luggage lost by Delta: 3

Countries outside U.S. visited: 2 (Canada and Australia)

States visited in Australia: 5

Time zones crossed in Australia: 4

Jobs resigned: 1

Jobs quit on the spot: 0

New jobs started: 1

Hair color changes: 3

Hair style changes: 3

Hair stylist changes: 4

Number of times cell phone plans changed: 3

Orders placed with Amazon: 25

Amazon orders that included books: 16

Pairs of shoes purchased online: 6

Pairs of shoes purchased in stores: 0

Clothing purchases at White House, Black Market: 1

Catalogs for White House, Black Market received since that purchase:  6

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