This week I finished reading a complex, important, heavy novel called A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, by Anthony Marra. The subject is Chechnya during the war (1994-2004) and the web of characters affected by this war. It was a deeply moving novel, and an inspiring work in terms of its construction and prose style, how the plot lines build and intersect, how everything every character does is weighted in purpose and for most of them the purpose is survival. When I finished the book I was elated, loved it too much to lend, but when I sat down to work on my own novel a day later I became depressed, which is unusual for me. I kept thinking how paltry were the stakes of my own discovery draft compared with Chechnya and war! I swung toward weightiness, even had the Blind Inc. workshop become a prostitution ring in my mind. I slogged along in my own work unenthusiastically until yesterday, when I had one of those urban encounters I so cherish.
I was packing up my laptop and relatively low stakes scenes (compared to war) and about to leave my regular café when one of the baristas, a drama major who writes plays, asked me how my work was going. I told him not well, that I couldn’t shake the Chechnya syndrome and explained what I meant. He said two things to me: 1) you are probably more Chekhovian, like me, seeing the world in a teacup not in a situation of civil war, and 2) remember what Kierkegaard said, “do not wish to be Caesar and not the person you were meant to be.” This from the guy who makes me my half-caf soy lattes every morning. I think I’d better look at Kierkegaard in my spare time.
I’ve been thinking all day today, as I’m gradually getting back to my old writing self, how true, how true. I’ve never felt jealousy for other writers, don’t really belittle someone else for getting published (no “my work is better than hers, etc.”), and am shocked at my reaction to Marra’s work, that I could so easily lose faith in my own novel just by reading someone else’s stellar work and comparing.
Leslie Rodd is a retired public librarian who spent over three decades promoting books and reading to blind people, prison inmates, and adult literacy students in San Francisco and Oakland, California. She graduated from the Creative Writing Program at San Francisco State University, where she received the Wilner Award for Excellence in Fiction. Her novel, Good Mother Lizard, was a quarter finalist for the 2009 Amazon.com Breakthrough Novel Award, and an excerpt from an early draft won a Hackney Award for Short Fiction and was published in Cyanosis. Three current short stories, “Fiery Night” (published in Bosque in October, 2011), “The Philosophers Club” (2010 first place winner, Literal Latte Short Story Award) and “Las Manos Grandes” (finalist in The New Guard fiction contest 2012) plus “Audition,” are chapters in The First Blind Man on the Moon, a novel-in-progress. “Audition” most recently was short-listed for the Fish short story prize, and the novel-in-progress was a finalist for the 2013 Dana Award for the Novel. She has also been published in Transfer Magazine and The Sun and has been a member of Bookwriting World since January 2011.
That’s a really nice piece, You go, girl!
Love this, Leslie. I had one of the most profound conversations with the guy who installed my bedroom rug. Not about writing, but about his taking on the raising of a grandchild who was abandoned by his drug-addicted daughter. I was floored by his big heart, and would never have known if I hadn’t stopped to ask and then stopped longer to listen.
I,too, have been question if the stakes I am writing about are high enough. Your piece was exactly what I needed at exactly the right time. Thanks!!
Thanks for this reminder. I’m often horrified by my own tendency to get down when I read something I love and compare my own work to it, finding mine oh-so-lacking. Other times I read something I love and am inspired. What makes the difference? My mood? What I ate for breakfast? Anyway, I appreciate your honesty on this topic, which all writers share, I’m convinced, even if we don’t all admit it.
Great piece Leslie, I’m reading “The Bat” and it takes place in Australia, written by a Norwegian and so very good. I’m thinking my dumb stories done’t even hold a candle to all I’m learning about Australia. But now I’m thinking how I can copy some of his techniques and make them my own, just as i’ve learned in the craft class.
That’s the joy of this writing gig, always learning, growing— one stop forward two steps back but still on the path.
So very apropos, Leslie. Thank you for this. What a wonderful and wise writing supporter you have in your barista. (And, what a fly on the wall job!) The comparing thing is *deadly*. I have a story of my own to respond with, but it’s longer, so I’ll hold that for now. I did read this today, though: in an interview with Amy Hempel, she quotes Barry Hannah, who said, “You know, just be master of such as you have.” That was his advice to anyone who was writing. Don’t try to be someone else, struggle toward someone else’s material. Instead focus on the material and perspective that only you have. As Lea has said in her parenting book, have faith that you are enough.
Bree–wonderful that you’re reading Jo Nesbo too! His later novels have riveted me and I just got “The Bat.”
Thanks for sharing this moment with us. Always a good reminder.
Dear Leslie –
I was really glad that you wrote this – I too have had this reaction after reading some amazing book and then opening the file of mine on the computer. It’s so easy to get self-judgmental and unsure. But I think about how great things come from tiny steps, be it a great musician practicing every day for years, a novel written over the course of a long period of time, a sculpture carved down from a block of stone bit by bit. Who knows how long Marra worked on his book, and how many drafts he did?
Your subject matter is important and real. You too are drawing from your own life experiences, and though they are not about war, they are about serious and worthwhile things. I believe in your voice and your subject because you have something to say and you say it beautifully.
From the time we are children, we learn by observing, comparing, imitating and then, when it’s time to be creative, we distill our lives into the backbones of our work. You are bringing your life into your book, and to devalue that is to devalue your life. It’s a lesson I have to learn too, because I get to be a musician who plays with the best that there is. But I’m not as good a writer as I am a horn player, and if I think about it too much, I can get discouraged. Still, to aspire to making your work the best it can is in some senses its own reward, an embracing of growth from exercising the creative spirit.
I look forward always to reading what you write.
Take care,
B
Robert N. Ward
Principal Horn
San Francisco Symphony
Thank you, everyone, for your responses! I sent this piece out first to my workshop buddies and each person had a different story to tell along the same lines. Now with the addition of the remarks of other BWWers I am reminded of what an incredible support team we can be for each other if we speak up when we’re having difficulties.