Updates in Various Areas

1) Body update.  I haven't exercised since Friday, when I went hard core and lifted for an hour, then ran 5 + miles.  I felt like a million bucks, then crashed hard at about 9PM.  Life and staying out too late drinking too much wine then sleeping in too late has made me feel slothful and flabby.  Tomorrow! I'm back to a life of discipline and physical fitness.

2) Body update 2 (for the ladies): It's coming up on two months on the IUD.  No discernible bad effects.  I'm paranoid that my skin is not as glowingly wonderful as it was when I was on the Pill, but that's probably my imagination.  More detailed post to follow, one of these days, after I go back for my checkup.

3) What I'm reading in bed:   

A Passage To India.  Keep falling asleep while I read it and having to go back and repeat the pages that I was reading the night before.  So far, I have no impressions to report.  Also trying to finish "Unhooked Generation" which is generally terrible but which I feel obligated to read and review because someone sent it to me for free.   While I'm admitting it my slacker reading habits, I'll say I still haven't finished Lost In Place or Listening to Prozac.  Or Mary Gaitskill's book of short stories.  Or Ray Carver's.  They're all hanging around my bed making me feel guilty. 

You know what I *am* reading, and feeling very virtuous and informed as a result?  The Week.  It's exactly as much news as I want to know.  Maybe a little more.  It makes me want to subscribe to Science News, which my dad gets and which is about as much science as I want to know.  If anyone wants to buy me a present, that would be a nice one. 

4) What I'm thinking about: The truth is, I'm not a fiction writer. I'm an essayist, or a creative nonfiction writer, or a feature articles writer, or something like that.  It's the sad truth.  I get paralyzed by the idea of making up plots, and I find it almost baffling that anyone would want to.  Why make stuff up when the world is just so interesting as it is?  It seems silly.  My fiction lacks any emotional depth.  It's not real to me.  I don't think that's true about my writing in general.  Do you think I lack emotional depth?  I think when I try to tell the truth as I see it I can convey emotion, and say things that are reasonably worthwhile and important.  Maybe not Important with a capital "I".  But I can touch people, and engage them, and make them feel things.  That seems like the point of writing, for me.  Look at the world, tell the truth about what I see, and touch people if I can.  Does the fact that I think I can do that better with nonfiction than fiction mean that I'm simply new at fiction, lazy, undisciplined about it?  Or should I make something of the fact that I can produce thousands and thousands of words when I sit down to write about the world as I see it, and get frozen and awkward and stupid when I sit down to invent a story about people who don't actually exist? The best way I get around this is to write about people or places I know and then change the names and a couple of details.  And that seems stupid.  Why not just write about the real ones? 

Anyway, this revelation is disappointing me, a little bit.  I'm a pretty good reader of fiction, and I like it a lot.  And I think that's what "real" writers do -- they write fiction.  So that's what I should want to do.  I'm certain of that.  But it doesn't seem to be what I actually want to do, if you look at how I spend my time and my energy. That's undoubtedly because I'm lazy and shallow and not smart enough, but at this point, I'm beginning to think maybe I should stop trying to be different and just try to do what seems most interesting and engaging.

5) My love life is none of your business: Just as I started to get charmed by a charming gentleman in Boston, he jumped on a plane and went as far away as it's possible to go.  Right now he's deep in a jungle somewhere in the vicinity of Kuala Lumpur, where he'll be for a while longer, completely out of touch.  His absence is giving me plenty of time to freak out and second guess myself.  Is he as terrific as he seems?  Even when he comes back, he'll still be in Boston.  Is that what I want?  Ack. Anyway, it's not the kind of thing I write about on here, so I've already said too much.  Great.  Something else to second guess.   

6) What I'm thinking about, Part 2: Should I get my eyelashes dyed?  Is it worth it?  How much does it cost?  How long will it last?  Will my life be Better with darker eyelashes?

7) SEND FAST SAILING VIBES.  Please direct them to my sailors, in Connecticut and in NH this weekend.  This is a big weekend, and so is next.  Your vibes helped this past weekend.  Let's do it again. 

Comments

[Al Wheeler]

I thought A Passage to India was the greatest novel of the 20th century when I first read it. But circumstances may have played a role as well, as I was in India at the time, and if memory is correct, there was a thin tract I'd just finished reading called "Mysticism and Morality" that prepared me for the philosophical issues (as opposed to the political issues, which I didn't really pay attention to) covered in Passage.

[christine]

if you end up liking forster (I hope you do), try howard's end next. or you could just rent the movie, which is also good :)

[Eleanor]

About the writing -- I don't think there's any shame in all in not feeling the fiction bug. I do think you're an extremely good non-fiction writer (since everything on here is non-fiction and is enjoyable, thought-provoking, etc).

Have you thought about New Journalism? Maybe it's called something different now. But basically, you do things a normal reporter does -- find a juicy conflict/scene/event, snoop around, try to see all sides -- but then you get to write about it in vivid ways, with your own thoughts there too. I think you'd be good at that, and I bet there are some indie magazines or newspapers that take submissions from the general public. Anyway, it's food for thought.

[a]

After reading your thoughts about fiction v. non fiction, and then eleanor's comments, I sympathize that you see fiction writers as the real-deal and see yourself as not-quite-good-enough to do it well right now.
I bet that as you get more disciplined in your writing - any writing - you'll grow more accustomed to it. And practicing with the stories that come naturally to you will make it easier once that great fiction story idea finally comes around. Otherwise you risk losing all of the joy writing brings to you simply because you're not yet ready to pen the next great american novel. And that would be such a shame!

[Scheherazade H.]

I second the Howard's End movie recommendation. I think it is a Merchant Ivory film - all the MI ones I've seen have been very good.

[PG]

Passage to India probably is the most difficult to read of Forster's well-known novels, and I agree that Howard's End or A Room with a View is a better place to start. Plagiarizing myself:
E.M. Forster's best-known epigram is "Only connect," but that is advice to the middle-aged, from Howard's End, given by one character to another for whom fragmentation becomes a concern. My favorite phrase of Forster's is "Beware of muddle," from A Room with a View. Earlier in life, when one is going through the convulsions that determine the future, tangles are a far greater concern than lack of connection.

He heard her in silence, and then said: "My dear, I am worried about you. It seems to me"--dreamily; she was not alarmed--"that you are in a muddle."

She shook her head.

"Take an old man's word; there's nothing worse than a muddle in all the world. It is easy to face Death and Fate, and the things that sound so dreadful. It is on my muddles that I look back with horror -- on the things that I might have avoided. We can help one another but little. I used to think I could teach young people the whole of life, but I know better now, and all my teaching of George has come down to this: beware of muddle. Do you remember in that church, when you pretended to be annoyed with me and weren't? Do you remember before, when you refused the room with the view? Those were muddles -- little, but ominous -- and I am fearing that you are in one now."

[PG]

Oh, and about the writing: I think that if you don't have people appearing in your head to talk, or made-up situations that you want to tell people about, then you shouldn't push yourself to write fiction. I have fiction phases and I have nonfiction phases -- I never seem to be writing both simultaneously. And I don't think fiction is superior to nonfiction; both are good in proportion to how much truth they tell. Some people have more truth in fiction, some people in nonfiction. You seem to enjoy other people's nonfiction writing, so you shouldn't feel compelled to write something else yourself. I haven't read any of your fiction so I don't know whether it's good, but your nonfiction writing is very good. You have the courage to write about how you really feel without needing to mask it behind made-up people's identities, and that's rare enough in high quality writing (as opposed to the 5 million teenagers pouring their cliched guts into all-lower-case livejournals) that you shouldn't have to do anything different.

[nina]

and what's your exercise schedule?

[pjm]

I wandered by your office a few hours ago, looking for food in the Union (and striking out.) Back to the track soon, since there's no way for me to get online with my own machine here.

I feel like all the fiction writers I read interviews with, read non-fiction all the time; and the non-fiction writers are devourers of fiction. So I'm not too surprised. (But that would make me a fiction writer, and I'm not, so this is apparently not a very solid theory.)