{Toddler, circa June 2009}

“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.”

Henry David Thoreau

Tuesday. August 31, 2010. What’s so special about today? Nothing. Something. Everything.

Today is a pocket of time. Of seconds and minutes and hours. Of responsibilities and meetings and appointments. Before you know it, today will be over. Done with.

And it will be Tomorrow. Another day. The next in line. Another morass of mundane and meaningful moments. Moments that will slip slide away into the future. A future that is always there, around a corner, hovering.

Today is time. A sparkling stream that beckons. It is our job to stand. To tie a fly on. And to fish. We must cast out. Be patient. We might get a bite. Or none at all. Today might be about something, something big. Or it might be quiet, coy, unassuming.

What are you fishing for today in the stream of time? Happiness? Knowledge? Success? Love? Understanding? Freedom? Family? Strength? Peace? Awareness? Justice? Health? Wealth?

Or are you fishing to fish, living to live?  Are you a creature who enjoys the simple act of standing there, here, on the edge of the stream? Do you fling the fly just to feel it go? Do you seek for the sake of seeking? Do you relish the sport of existence, the fine art of squinting at the opaque and glittering surface of the water that awaits us?

Either way. Today is time. A tiny stretch of the big stream.

Let’s go a-fishing, friends.

_______________________________

• Today, I am fishing for knowledge and peace and relief. What are you fishing for today?
  

Once upon a time, I did many things. I went to school and worked hard, yes, but I also played sports. Three of them. Soccer. Basketball. Softball. In high school, I was the captain of all three teams and nothing made me happier than slipping into my Dalton uniform, playing an afternoon game, and coming home bruised and grass-stained and smiling. I also played the trumpet. In the orchestra and in various jazz groups.

I also collected things. Cabbage Patch Kids and baseball cards and Absolut Vodka ads. (Anyone else on this third one? This seems bizarre now.)

I set up lemonade stands in front of my house. I made jewelry out of tiny toys with friends. I played jacks and jump-roped.

I did things.

Now. Now I am doing things too. I am raising two wonderful, energy-zapping little girls. I am writing words here and elsewhere. I am ingesting embarrassing amounts of terrible television. (Yum. Yuck. Yum.) I am making to-do lists and running errands and checking Facebook and floating tweets and bemoaning the fact that I no longer have hobbies.

What happened? When I was a kid, I did so many things and indulged in such a variety of activities. Now that I am a big girl and have kids, not so much.

Is this just what happens? Am I in a stage of life where my most important purpose is raising and rearing creatures and finding them happiness and hobbies? Will there come a time when our kiddos are a bit older and Husband and I reunite with our hobbies or find new ones? I don’t know. But I hope so.

Who knows… Maybe ten years from now, I will be captain of a Central Park soccer league, have a gig playing trumpet at a famous jazz bar downtown, and sell organic free-squeezed lemonade at the local street fair. But will this be as cute as it once was, or will it have midlife crisis written all over it?

Am I the only one who has lost her hobbies along the way? Or am I viewing things through the wrong lens? Perhaps the fact that I no longer do the things I once did and enjoyed is not in itself problematic. Maybe, just maybe, I should realize that I have embraced new hobbies. (Dancing with little girls before bath, picking outlandish wallpapers, having conversations with Husband, writing blog posts, etc.)

Are my words today just further evidence of my allergy to adulthood, my unwillingness to embrace the stage of life in which I sit squarely? It’s entirely possible.

(Childhood was awesome, huh?)

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• Did you do many things as a child? What were those things?
• Have you been able to maintain a healthy dose of hobbies?
• Do you think this loss of hobbies is about adulthood or parenthood or both?
• Is it up to us to maintain the “play” alongside the “work”?
• Did you collect anything as a child?
• Are you having a hard time embracing adulthood too?

For a chance to win a free copy of Life After Yes, please click over to Luxury Reading and enter Vera’s great and generous contest!

I don’t know where to begin, but begin I will… I am a woman. I am a writer. I am interested in telling stories about existential grays. About life and love and relationships and philosophy and pain. I have high hopes. With but one book under my writerly belt, I am still a rookie, but I do hope my stories will, over time, reach oodles of people. I also hope that they will receive critical acclaim should they deserve that acclaim. It would also be nice if, by doing what I love (and, man, this is it right here), I am able to contribute mightily to the financial integrity of the family I cherish. That’s right, here I am, at the starting gates of this literary race, hoping humbly and boldly for commercial and literary success down the road.

(Per New York law, dreaming big is perfectly legal.)

Late last night, friend and fellow blogger Kristen of Motherese sent me a link to a Huffington Post article by Jason Pinter wherein Jennifer Weiner and Jodi Picoult, two vanguards of women’s fiction whose talents and careers I respect deeply, discuss a recent online controversy about “the alleged shoddy treatment of commercial writers, in particular writers of what is commonly referred to as ‘women’s fiction’” that arose after the New York Times and other publications extensively covered Jonathan Franzen’s most recent novel Freedom. In this Huff Po piece, Weiner and Picoult offer “their thoughts on what role gender plays in literary criticism, the importance of popular fiction in our culture, and whether progress is being made.”

I implore you to click over and read the entire article now because it is stuffed with insights and angles and I can only scratch the surface of it here. Picoult and Weiner argue, each wielding her own compelling arguments and anecdotes, that the literary establishment, and the Times in particular, tends to overwhelmingly review male authors over female authors and “literary fiction” over popular or “commercial fiction.”

Something Weiner said really struck me, and concerned me: “I think it’s a very old and deep-seated double standard that holds that when a man writes about family and feelings, it’s literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same topics, it’s romance, or a beach book – in short, it’s something unworthy of a serious critic’s attention.”

When asked why she deems it important that commercial fiction receive critical attention, Picoult responds, “Because historically the books that have persevered in our culture and in our memories and our hearts were not the literary fiction of the day, but the popular fiction of the day. Think about Jane Austen. Think about Charles Dickens. Think about Shakespeare. They were popular authors. They were writing for the masses.”

Is there this double standard? I don’t know, but maybe so. Why might there be this critical rejection of tales that appeal to the masses? Again, I don’t pretend to know, but these things worry me and make me wonder about the literary world into which I tiptoe at this very moment. Here’s the thing. I have tremendous respect for Picoult and Weiner. Both of these women are immensely gifted; their writing is good and resonates with so many of us. I also love the Times. I grew up watching my parents flip through this paper at the breakfast table and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t dream of one day seeing a book of mine reviewed in its pages.

So what now? Should I duck behind my decidedly male name and allow some readers or reviewers to think I am a man? Of course not. Should I whip up some tales of espionage or murder? I don’t think so. I am a woman and I will write the stories I want to write.

What more is there to say? A whole lot. This thicket of questions and concerns is far too complicated for me to understand or address fully on this Friday morning. But what I can and will say is thank you. To Kristen for sending this article my way. To Jennifer and Jodi for standing up and speaking up on behalf of all of us. To Jason for bringing this article to life.

And thank you to you guys, my readers – writers and people – for allowing me to dream big here. And doubt big, too.

____________________________________

• Have you followed this controversy? Have you read the article? Thoughts?
• Do you agree that there is a double standard in the writing world (and maybe in other professional worlds)?
• Do literary and commercial success need to be mutually exclusive?
  
• Why do we insist on a distinction between literary and commercial fiction? Can’t a book have literary heart and soul and pack a commercial punch?
• Do you think I should keep my unwieldy dreams to myself?
  
• Have you read books by Picoult and/or Weiner? Have you enjoyed them like I have?
  

“All first drafts are shit.”

Ernest Hemingway

I am a perfectionist. Full of paralyzing pride. I like to do things well, and right. Quite often, this perfectionism serves me splendidly. There’s nothing wrong with having sky-high standards, right?

Wrong.

Particularly when it comes to writing. As I have mentioned, I am in the process of writing my second novel. And, depending on the moment, my fingers are flying fabulously or I am having a hard time. In these difficult moments, I am getting stalled and stuck and stranded. And I think I know why.

I want exquisite prose and deft dialogue to tumble out of me. I want my ideas to be crisp and spicy, full of authentic and existential bite. I want my story to take shape like a famous statue. Right away.

Ha.

Thankfully, I have a good memory. I recall Life After Yes’s infancy. That famous first draft. It was utter and unequivocal crap, a big clumsy pile of paper riddled with inconsistencies and holes and nonsense. It was embarrassingly bad. But, you know what?

It was also a start. The start.

I shaped that pile of paper, that stream of words, into something better. And then? I shaped that something better into something even tighter. I did this over and over again, working hard, having fun, chipping away, adding, reinventing. And one day? One day, I had something that was okay. And then one day I had something that was good. And one magical day that good thing was really good. And then great. (Hey, I am biased. I wrote the thing.)

It is so helpful for me to remember this. That this writing thing is a process. It is so helpful for me to read Hemingway’s words. And I am not a fan of profanity but I make an exception here because, well, first drafts are shit. They just are. And an important and subtle distinction must be made. That distinction? First drafts are perhaps meant to be shit. This has nothing to do with experience, with rookie-dom. This is the way it should, perhaps must, be every time. Writing a first draft is an inherently messy endeavor; we are spilling shreds of self and story onto page, gathering bits of imagination and invention, collecting ingredients for what might become something wonderful.

But not yet.

So, on this fine Thursday morning, I want to thank Mr. Hemingway for his sage words and reminder to just write and write and write some more. To spew shit. The good kind. There is plenty of time to clean up later.

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• Do you agree with Hemingway that first drafts are meant to be mangled and messy things?
• Are you a perfectionist too? Does this help or hinder you more in your life?
• Do you spend more time writing or editing?
• Do you agree that there is wisdom in Hemingway’s words not just for the writer, but for the person? That, so often in life, we should just stop worrying and act and then edit the drafts of days later?
• Would you be suspicious of someone who claimed her first drafts were marvelous? (I would.)
  

Okay, this is a bit random. But also interesting. (To me.)

Have you ever been to UrbanBaby.com? Well, it’s a message board largely populated by urban parents and discussions chez UB range wildly from the practical (paint color suggestions, pediatric advice, baby name votes) to the more bizarre (sexual confessions, political rants, comparisons of household income to waist size – huh?!) Anyway, I used to frequent this site quite a bit when I was pregnant with Toddler and when she was young. At some point though, I stopped because I was disenchanted with the palpable meanness and snark that emerged in this anonymous forum.

Recently, I have popped back on from time to time. Out of curiosity. To be honest, this site is an amazing resource for the writer. Where else can you log on and get a real-time sampling of human conversation and concern? Where else can you pose an anonymous question and get a near-instant response from real people? (Warning to all: if you are a UB regular, your antics might just appear in my next novel!)

Anyway. I was on the site the other day and I watched a curious debate ensue. I will give you the basics. A mother of three children says that she has lost all of her baby weight, that she is quite thin actually, but that she still has a conspicuous belly (she calls it a “ball”). Fine. So what? People have kids and their bodies change. This is hardly revolutionary, right? Anyway, this woman says that she does not want to lose any more weight, that she has tried every exercise under the sun, but that this “ball” will not deflate. And. And her husband will not stop talking about it and mentioning it.

Ugh.

This woman mentions that she cannot afford plastic surgery and that she just doesn’t know what to do. Then she (foolishly?) turns to the UB population for advice. And this lucky lady gets some pretty unanimous advice: Don’t worry about your baby belly. Lose the husband. Yes, that’s right. People get angry and told her that the issue here is not her body, but her betrothed. A few people defend her husband a bit and say that he is allowed to make comments about his wife’s appearance, that partners should be able to be honest about such things. Another responder says that there is a vast difference between discussing issues of weight and health and suggesting that a woman change something about her appearance that she might not be able to change. The general feel here is that this man was essentially evil for disparaging his wife, and particularly her belly, that safe and cozy place where his own three children had grown.

I logged off and thought about this some. Obviously, none of us has the whole story here. We have no real grasp of the dynamics in this marriage, or whether this guy, this critical-seeming husband, is bad news. But. I will say that this woman’s words made me a bit sad and a bit feisty. What should she do?

Of course this is not just about this one woman. This is about all of us, isn’t it? When we enter into relationships, are we tacitly agreeing to an atmosphere of honesty even on tough and upsetting concepts? Or are there things that are off-limits like body and particularly body after babies? Goodness, I don’t pretend to know.

What I do know is that in my opinion, 99.9% of women have some kind of body issue/insecurity. (I really can’t speak for men, but I imagine most men do too.) Personally, I could never be with a man who criticized my body at any time (short of some more serious obesity/health concern). I have witnessed men telling women not to eat the bread rolls at dinner or that they better watch it (and women saying these things to men too) and this stuff makes me cringe. I could never handle this. But maybe I am super-sensitive and idealistic?

Then again. Presumably, we all want to look good. For ourselves and those we love. Maybe, just maybe, this anonymous poster on UB is just as frustrated and critical of herself as her husband is. Maybe she wants to get her body back and is genuinely seeking advice about how to do this? I have no clue.

All I know? These body battles are tricky, tricky things and maybe come down to the individuals involved. One more thing I know? If Husband ever said anything negative about my body, particularly after popping out his precious progeny, there would be some old school fisticuffs. Thankfully (for him and for me), Husband, my sweet and supportive man, has never gone there. Maybe that is because I am so freaking hot and perfect???

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• Has your partner ever said anything critical about your body or your eating habits? How have you handled this?
• Do you feel at liberty to criticize your partner’s body or eating behaviors?
• Do you think there should be an added sensitivity surrounding body after babies or no?
• Do you think this man in the hypothetical above seems like a bad guy, or just honest?
• Do you have any advice for the woman who dared air her issue on UB? How to banish the belly “ball”?
• Assuming you could afford it, would you ever consider plastic surgery apres kiddos?
• Are there any places you go to cull instant and killer writing material?