Finding Your True Writing Self Through Zen

Many Zen parables have something to say about writing. This one seems to ask the question, who are you trying to please?

 

The First Principle

When one goes to Obaku temple in Kyoto he sees carved over the gate the words "The First Principle". The letters are unusually large, and those who appreciate calligraphy always admire them as being a masterpiece. They were drawn by Kosen two hundred years ago.

When the master drew them he did so on paper, from which the workmen made the large carving in wood. As Kosen sketched the letters a bold pupil was with him who had made several gallons of ink for the calligraphy and who never failed to criticize his master's work.

"That is not good," he told Kosen after his first effort.

"How is this one?"

"Poor. Worse than before," pronounced the pupil.

Kosen patiently wrote one sheet after another until eighty-four First Principles had accumulated, still without the approval of the pupil.

Then when the young man stepped outside for a few moments, Kosen thought: "Now this is my chance to escape his keen eye," and he wrote hurriedly, with a mind free from distraction: "The First Principle."

"A masterpiece," pronounced the pupil.

 

Think of yourself as Kosen. Like he has his calligraphy, you have your writing. The pupil is the voice of doubt that lodges into all of our heads… it is the voice that says, even as we work diligently on draft after draft, “This is no good. Nobody will want this.”

It is only when Kosen becomes fixated on pleasing someone other than himself that doubt lodges itself in his head... and his work suffers. It makes one wonder if Kosen’s first attempt and last attempt were one in the same.

Who are you trying to please? A writing instructor? A friend? An agent? The market? Some authority figure outside of yourself?

I always found it ironic that Kosen is the master, but he relinquishes aesthetic authority to his pupil, the one tasked only with making the ink.

Kosen bows to the unearned authority of a voice outside of himself. Kosen literally loses himself and frantically (and mistakenly) seeks the approval of this one person.

I don’t think this is an anti-teaching parable. It’s not trying to say that you have nothing to learn from critique… or that all outside voices are false or detrimental. That’s why I believe the writer of this parable subverts the relationship. Kosen (the master) in this situation becomes the pupil of an uninformed, unseasoned teacher.

As a master, Kosen has clearly already defeated the dragon many times. This looking to the approval of a pupil is a step backwards in his artist’s journey. Read about the Artist’s Journey: here

Kosen doesn’t take the time to say, “Wait, I know what I’m doing, and this pupil can’t possibly know what I’m trying to do.”

Be careful from whom you seek approval for your work as you might relinquish your own ability to approve of your work.

You might say, “But at the end, it’s the pupil that declares it a masterpiece. Didn’t Kosen, in the end, only stop because of the pupil’s approval?”

I would say no. I think Kosen saw by this point that he approved of what he’d done, with or without the pupil’s approval. That’s why I think the parable writer included the line at the beginning, “those who appreciate calligraphy always admire them as being a masterpiece.”

The execution of the art is admired by many more informed people than just the pupil.

Is that the point? That in the end Kosen’s hard work met with approval and praise from others?

I don’t think so. The point is that when Kosen freed himself from distraction (in this case the desire to please a false voice) he did his best work. His true self emerged and created his masterpiece.

We must create this way while we write. We can’t think, “Has this already been done? Am I being derivative? Is this something the markets are looking for? Will that one agent want to read this if I add this theme, though the theme doesn’t interest me? My friend doesn’t like first person; maybe I should change the POV.”

Write for yourself. Trust yourself. Free yourself from distraction and please yourself first with your writing and you will likely do your best work... provided of course that you have passed through the camel stage of the Artist's Journey: again here

(As a note, I do think too many people feel that they've passed through the camel phase when they haven't.)

Ironically, this effort to write for and to please yourself (and trust yourself) is much more likely to lead to the praise and acceptance of others… just as the parable suggests.

If you find my blog posts instructive, please consider purchasing a copy of my new book of short stories, The Neighborhood Division, as a donated payment for the "class."

From the Publisher (preferred): here

From Amazon: here

Book Trailer: here

Writing in Trauma

Writing about trauma?

No, that’s not what I mean. Not at all.

Recognizing it or no, you are living with trauma. You have been for months.

 

Recognize it for what it is… life altering. We will not be the same.

 

Here’s an article about what a traumatic experience does to the brain: here

 

And, that’s a single traumatic experience. We are living in an ongoing traumatic experience that seemingly has no end.

 

I see it changing the people around me. They are struggling. They aren’t who they were though they struggle to be.

Same goes for me.

 

We navigate around each other on a knife’s edge some days. Other days are ok. Other days will offer near bi-polar highs for no reasonable reason… only to feel forlorn the next day.

 

I sat this week in my driveway, ten feet apart, with a student/friend and his girlfriend. We were talking about everything that’s happened since March. I brought up the idea of trauma, and she said, “I never really thought of it that way, but yeah, we are.”

 

We didn’t hug goodbye at the end of the night. We couldn’t.

 

We don’t know when we ever will again.

 

The long-term implications of what we are going through collectively (though not equally) are unknowns. In Art Spiegelman’s graphic biography MAUS, he watches while his father, a Holocaust survivor, collects bits of wire while they take a walk decades after the war in the "safety" of an American suburb. When he questions his father as to why he has to pick up every bit of garbage he finds, the father tells him that the little wire is strong and good for tying things together. “You never know what you may need.”

 

He was traumatized by his experiences, and they changed the trajectory of his life.

 

People who experienced the Great Depression often never got back to a normal because their brain no longer accepted normal… even when normal became seemingly better than the previous normal. They lived a Depression-era life long after the Depression was over.

 

Often, they lived it to their graves.

 

I imagine people wearing masks for many years to come. Some will forever after when in crowded settings. Some will never shake hands again. Some will always accept their change from a cashier with a bit of trepidation.

 

I notice things in myself. I’m suddenly averse to loud noises. Even a door closed loudly in the house can send my heart racing. I’m edgy. I’m very emotional and can get weepy over the smallest things.

I wept at the end of our vacation standing out on the deck, looking out over Sutton's Bay... haunted by the week's ghosts of laughter and abandon. For a week, we actually lived... kind of.

It was so hard to come back home. In the past, I always wanted to get back home. It used to be I was never much built for vacationing. Now I weep when vacations end.

 

I’m changed, and I know it. To what extent, I’m not sure. But I am forever changed. The idea of it frightens me.

 

I’ve learned to be forgiving. At least I’m trying to learn it. As together as we are if we are lucky enough to be quarantined with someone, we are also wholly alone. We are each tackling this in our own way.

 

I try to forgive. I say to myself, “This is what he needs to do; this is what she needs to do.”

 

I try to see all behavior first as coping before I see it as somehow personally related to me.

 

If someone I love wants to watch TikTok videos for three hours while in the same room with me without saying a word, I think, “This is what they need. They are coping.”

 

As the song says in Hamilton (something we’ve watched on repeat in this house as a coping mechanism)… “They are trying to do the unimaginable” … which is to go on living through horrendous, ongoing trauma.

 

Sometimes I think we watch Hamilton so often because there’s a comfort in knowing what comes next (they’ll sing this song, then this song, then this song… and they always will)… there’s no unpredictable as there is in the daily task of simply opening your eyes in the morning and looking at your Twitter newsfeed.

 

Usually to be gutted by something.

 

So, I do my best to forgive and forgive and forgive. “Finding my inner Jesus” as a friend of mine would say.

 

And, I forgive myself. Or I try to.

 

And, as writers, we must forgive ourselves in these times. Forgive the lack of ideas. Forgive the lack of motivation.

 

Recognize that we aren’t writers, but that we are writers living in trauma.

 

And some of us are even trying to write… trying to do the unimaginable.

 

There’s already an audacity to the practice of writing in normal circumstances. To say, I wrote something and you should read it and even pay to read it.

 

Audacity.

 

Trying to write now with the same goal is even more audacious.

 

Don’t compare yourself to others. Some are thriving. Churning out words. Creating.

Let them.

 

They aren’t better people than you or more driven or more dedicated. They have simply found a way to cope, to shut out the goddamn world for a while.

 

I hope you can find the same sometimes.

 

I hope I can.

If you find my blog posts illuminating, please consider purchasing a copy of my new book of short stories, The Neighborhood Division.

From the Publisher (preferred): here

From Amazon: here

Book Trailer: here

L by Theresa Smith: A Book Review

In an early scene from the movie Adaptation, a Hollywood studio executive says to the screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, “Boy, I’d like to find a portal into your brain.”

I could say the same for myself regarding Theresa Smith, the author of the short story collection L (Expat Press).

 

[Yes, that’s the title… L.]

 

I’d like to survey the firing synapses that are at work when she is writing her stories. As a matter of fact, her stories made me feel the same way I felt when I first watched Kaufman’s Being John Malkovich or his Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

 

Her stories are that good, that new… that much the product of a unique intellect and spirit.

 

This is not hyperbole. These stories are unlike anything else I’ve read. You should be reading them.

 

You just should.

 

Reading Smith’s work is akin to watching a movie scripted by Kaufman, which is akin to watching a magician. Like Kaufman, Smith’s literary sleight of hand will leave you asking, “How did she do that?”

 

If you’ve read my blog, you know that I’ve committed to buying and reviewing small press books. In the past I’ve reviewed:

 

Silt (Alternating Current Press) by Chris Geier: here

A Dog Between Us (Stalking Horse Press) by Duncan Barlow: here

Collected Voices in the Expanded Field (11:11 Press): here

 

When L arrived, I was impressed with the overall look of the book. Then, I started reading the stories and immediately flipped to the front of the book to see what literary magazines they’d been published in.

 

But, there wasn’t an acknowledgments page. That lead to me reaching out to Manuel Marrero, the publisher and lifeblood behind Expat Press to ask about it. Was it an oversight? Were none of these stories previously published (very rare for a short fiction collection)? Did Smith just send you the entire manuscript with no previous publications?

 

Marrero: “Finding Theresa Smith is actually the origin story of the press. I wanted to put out writers I thought were exceptional, many of whom only had a passing interest in publishing, who wouldn’t self-advocate in the way it takes to send their work out for consideration. I’d found Theresa’s writing on a music message board actually. She had these tumblrs that I’m not sure are still up, that were really geeky, about science, philosophy, but with humorous angles like, an algorithm to determine which member of Rush wrote a given song. I had seen her at shows in New York. She was in a band. I private messaged her on that music message board, she met me and my then-partner at a bar, and we fast became good friends. She started sending me writing and as far as I know, she only ever sent them to me. I published iterations of her work on the site and in early zines. I propositioned a book, and she delivered.”

 

That is just one cool origin story for a press!

 

Back to Manuel in a moment. He and I have been corresponding a bit, and it’s been a true pleasure.

 

But, so… L. It’s a question I’ve been asking myself as I’ve been reading: How does one make potential readers understand the writer/mind at work in these groundbreaking stories?

 

I make bold now my attempt to do just that.

 

For instance, in the story “Henry” the narrator summons from watery depths the body of author Henry James… and then reanimates the corpse. The goal? To interrogate the now undead author to settle an argument about James’ book, Turn of the Screw.

 

Each of the stories, if given a short synopsis, would sound something like that. It’s bizarre and good stuff.

 

Really good.

 

Genius, even? I would say yes. An easy genius to live with? I don’t know. When the Hollywood executive tells Kaufman she’d like a portal into his brain, a sweaty Kaufman (played by Nicolas Cage) responds, “Trust me, it’s not fun.”

 

I wonder if there are days that Smith would answer the same… a brain like that can be a burden and a gift.

 

I think the extent of her writing genius would be best appreciated in some short excerpts.

 

In the story “The Transformations of the Archaeologist” an archaeologist gets prepared to drill into a monument of an historical figure. Smith enjoys writing lists in her stories, and the list in the excerpt that follows demonstrates her creative genius. It has to be the most believable and wholly fictional list in literary history:

 

            “The next task was to obtain permission to drill through the monument. This could effectively displace hundreds of historical objects interred in the same monument, including, but not limited to, Farglan’s Knives; the three paroles of Mxin, a fellow of the Fourth Academy; the logical connective “but”; the roots of the prepositional calculus; Photh’s sulfuric gaming set; the barrier between kingdoms, rendered in invisible gradations; the last tock of Nnob’s favored timepiece; the battle standard of M’s army (forced to retreat into a geological impossibility and therefore never technically vanquished); the similarity between P’s and p’s battle swords; the word used by F to describe a blemish on his silvery livery; the world-sized anvil of X, a basket-shaped arrangement of the known elements according to their relative propensity to compose materials pleasing to the senses; a census of all the law-breaking shapes residing in V’s protectorate; N’s self-branding brand.”

 

In another story titled G.A.M.E. a bartender describes how a popular video game seemingly takes over human existence. I’m not certain if it’s my own need to find a message in a story, but in this one it felt like Smith was possibly saying something about the ubiquitous nature of technology in our own lives… where virtual reality is becoming difficult to distinguish from reality.

 

But, Smith might not have meant this at all.

 

The story includes the copy that originally appeared on the back of the game box:

 

“A puzzle that exploits the basic psychological requirements of organization and delineation! At the core of human experience is the need to make sense of a chaotic and uncoordinated world. The Game uses patented suggestive techniques to pleasantly aggravate your natural impulse to categorize events and objects as it diminishes and eventually destroys the conceptual space between these objects, creating a Fun Conundrum in which efforts to maintain distinctions between classes of objects are consistently undone by frequent intimations of a higher conceptual unity (cards included). But not to worry: positive affirmation tokens (available for purchase) and special polarized eyewear (make your own!) could allow you to be the first to escape from the Funundrum, leaving other players to deal with the massive cognitive dissonance induced by the simultaneous recognition of the object of cognition as a plenum and a unity!

 

            It sold like crazy, of course, because it was something people were basically already doing, only now they could quantize it and beat other people at it, which is something people love to do, and always have. I can’t help wondering how many remedial versions of the game have been invented over the years which, because they lacked this precise scientifically-calibrated balance of metaphysical certainty and intellectual sadism, faded into obscurity, or became religions.”

 

Even as I excerpt this book and try to review it, it dawns on me that I’m failing. To make you understand the unique genius of these stories, I’d have to excerpt all of them in their entirety.

 

It’s that good.

 

I did have more opportunities to ask Manuel Marrero some question about ExPat Press. We got on one of my favorite subjects, which is that readers should first purchase small press books directly from the publisher’s website rather than Amazonopoly. Marrero doesn’t even have ExPat’s books available on Amazon. When I told him about my quest to get more people to buy direct, he had this to say:

 

Marrero: “Haha, we’re of one mind and you’re talking to a mirror. I always buy directly from the author or press if I can, even if more expensive. If you want the world to look like Amazon, buy exclusive. If you want sacred spaces like bookstores and if you want salt of the earth interaction, engage actively. Some presses don’t bother with it and do all their business on amazon. I don’t judge. I buy books on amazon when the author is dead or if there’s something specific that I want and can’t find anywhere else, but I gotta put my money where my mouth is, you know?”

 

I admire his approach to publishing as it’s probably a risk to forego Amazon.

 

But, just because it’s not on Amazon doesn’t mean that L doesn’t exist. It’s for sale on Expat’s site (just scroll down to find L and click Add to Cart): here

 

If you take a chance on this book, you very likely won’t be disappointed. What I would say of Theresa Smith is that she’s writing entirely to please and perplex herself… and thereby, I believe, she’s truly writing for all of us.

Jeff Vande Zande is an English professor at Delta College in Michigan. His latest collection, The Neighborhood Division: Stories, is now out through Whistling Shade Press and available: here

Always Carry Copies of Your Book. Period.

 A short post here from my vacation in Suttons Bay, MI.

 

 

 

It’s simple advice, really. Do you have a book? Is your book available in physical copies?

 

Then ALWAYS carry copies of your book with you.

 

Always.

 

Have a couple in your car, have a couple in your laptop case, have a couple in your office (when we all have offices again)

 

Have a couple in your suitcase too!

 

This vacation is a microcosm of my advice.

 

I could have sold 4 or 5 books this week. We vacationed with friends and family (no worries, we were all strictly quarantining, masking, sanitizing and wiping down our wisdom teeth and pinky toenails prior to the trip).

 

As we were packing, I almost thought about bringing some copies of my new book, The Neighborhood Division: Stories. Then, I thought, “No, vacation is not the time for a book sales pitch.”

 

The thing is… it wouldn’t have taken a pitch. It would have been completely organic. The book came up naturally as we all talked about what we had going on in our lives.

 

And, people asked whether or not I had copies with me for sale. I would have made sales right there on the spot (and could have offered discounts because I didn’t have to ship)… and I could have signed them personally.

 

But, when people asked, I had to say, “No.”

 

They were genuinely disappointed.

 

We talked about how they could order them, how they could Paypal me, how I could sign and then ship, etc.

 

But, there’s a lot of steps in the process now. My guess is only a handful if any of these sales will now actually happen.

 

When selling books, you have to cut out as many steps as possible. If it’s “well, go to this website, and then click “buy” and then that will take you to paypal, and then you fill in your credit card information…” well, a lot of people simply won’t follow through with “all that work.” (Why do you think Amazonopoly has a BUY NOW button… they are appealing to our self-created need for speed and instant gratification).

 

I promised to keep this short. I also have some swimming to do. So, again, the advice.

 

If you have physical copies of your book… ALWAYS HAVE COPIES WITH YOU.

If you find my blog posts instructive, please consider purchasing a copy of my new book of short stories, The Neighborhood Division, as a donated payment for the "class."

From the Publisher (preferred): here

From Amazon: here

Book Trailer: here

Collected Voices in the Expanded Field: A Book Review

You see a watering hole. Reprieve from the old dusty path.

 

So begins each of the 34 chapters in Collected Voices in the Expanded Field (11:11 Press). Each chapter was written by a different author… “and, branching outwards, works in unison with the chapters around them to generate something wholly unique”… “[a] novel”… publisher Andrew J. Wilt would have you believe according to the book’s foreword.

 

Having just finished reading it, I feel in a unique place to say what it is and what it isn’t… at least according to my perspective, which is the only perspective I feel confident to represent.

 

Something that it is? It is a super handsome book. If this speaks to the overall quality of 11:11 books simply with how they exist physically, I’m impressed. I’ve been lugging it from room to room in our house over the last couple weeks, and it’s a tactile pleasure each time I pick it up.

 

Something that it isn’t (and I’m not sure this is important)… it’s not a novel. At least it’s not a novel in the sense that I was thinking when I first purchased the book. I thought it would be a unified story told in chapters by 34 different authors… with each subsequent author having read the preceding chapters and trying to add to an overall story. 

    [I mistakenly thought I was going to a traditional museum with some unconventional docents]

 

Even so, as it turns out, the definition of novel in my head varies a bit from the actual definition:

 

: an invented prose narrative that is usually long and complex and deals especially with human experience through a usually connected sequence of events

 

I mean, Collected Voices in the Expanded Field is “long and complex” and mostly deals with “human experience” but it certainly doesn’t represent a “connected sequence of events” (not by a long shot)

 

[But then notice that the word “usually” lets them off the hook, too]

 

But I don’t want this to be a diatribe on the definition of the word novel (although that could be a super cool conversation to have). I’m just saying, it threw me for a while because I was expecting one thing and then read to realize I was getting something else. Even if the nod is made to the word “novel” in the introduction/foreword, the title of the book is the saving grace because it lets on that this is more of an anthology of sorts… a collection of voices.

 

I know I’m supposed to be letting the whole definition thing go, but there is another definition of novel that fits this book well (and may be what they maybe meant):

 

: new and not resembling something formerly known or used

 

Yeah, that describes this book. [It’s like nothing else I’ve read… and that’s good]

 

So what is it? It’s a sampler of some of the more experimental writers I’ve come across in my reading history. And by experimentation, I would ask that you look at some of these sample pages from the book... the most experimental to be sure. (Some of these authors are as much visual artists as they are wordsmiths)

 

 

 

After my initial reaction to finding out that this was not going to be the experimental novel I thought but instead was the experimental novel I had not thought to anticipate but needed, I dove into the experience, like finding a watering hole after too many weeks on a dusty path.

 

And I think that “dusty path” might be all of the conventional conceptions of what stories, words, narrative, etc need to be when really they can be anything.

    [Bear in mind, those pages above are the most experimental. Much of the narrative is more straightforward in its use of words]

 

{With my experience with film festivals, I believe I’m well-suited to review Collected Voices in the Expanded Field. I learned fairly quickly that indie films are not lower-budget versions of Hollywood films. They are their own thing… taking risks, expanding perspectives, and saying, “This too is film.”

 

I’ve taken friends to film festivals, and I always have to coach them ahead of time. They can’t expect a slick, but cookie-cutter movie like they saw the week before in the multiplex. They have to be open to the idea that the curation of a film festival results in something that has not been seen before under the sun.}

 

(Same goes for this book)

 

Even if they really don’t build off of each other, each chapter of this book is a trip. There is a surreal quality to many of the pieces, though some are more conventional in their storytelling.

 

It’s challenging for me to review this book (at least in a conventional way) other than to say I find it an important book because it carries out its mission to bring together many of the more cutting-edge voices in experimental writing. I really enjoyed that each chapter ended with the author’s bio. Each bio contains a book or books that the author has published, so if you enjoyed your introduction to a particular voice, you have easy access to more.

 

            [In the foreword, Wilt likens the book to MySpace, which early on was a platform for more experimental, indie musicians to get their music out to people who might not otherwise hear it or be aware of it]

 

                                                                                                (I approve of the analogy)

 

Some of the stuff I’m doing here with brackets and parenthesis… well, I feel I have to. I’m 50 years old, and I’m just trying to fit into this experimental world!

 

*8*8*8*8*8*8*7

 

Even though I wasn’t necessarily pulled into the story of each piece, I was always intrigued by the imagination and vision of each artist… in some cases asking the air in the room around me, “How the hell did they come up with this? What guts it took to say, ‘Yes, this is what I’m going to write.’”

 

I appreciate, value, and celebrate the risk-taking in many of these pieces.

 

I also truly appreciate the celebration of sentences in this collection. Let me share a few.

 

            [Would you let me do that?]

 

{ok, thank you}

 

 

“Drink your magnesium infusion and let yourselves be lost in the repetitive flashcrash while all your experiences since the last uploading session are being sucked out by the dancers of the purple flame, statistically managed and returned to you tagged with their proper significance by the everpresent Mygdala queen.” – from chapter 7, by Germán Sierra.

 

 

“According to Dad, ‘You’re a soldier and it’s time to go to war with your own physical limitations and it’s gonna be really barbaric and really insane.’” – from chapter 14, by Benjamin DeVos.

 

 

“A playground.           I’m a first kiss turned blackbelt fight.            I’m a

 

gnashing poodle.         An apple.                     A wooden block. Each of these as an elegy.

 

 

I’m not an engine, but an oil.              We’re all pins and needles in the monolith’s soft

 

meat.                            Every job is a gig. I gag.                                 A sore on the lips of many

 

shores.” – from chapter 24, by Evan Isoline.

"A castle on fire is on fire and the fields between us and the castle and the castle and the horizon are on fire and a fire is on fire with a new kind of fire a sentient fire of bodies licking like flame or everything we picture here is from another story like every other description of an inferno is from another inferno and every book is of another book and every day is the day of another fire and we meet each other in this place where something is out to get while the getting is good." -- from chapter 30, by Adam Tedesco

 

 

“This began when you bought the ouroboros in that pet shop that you mistook for the progressive sex shop: The Smitten Kitten.” – from chapter 33, by Candice Wuehle

 

 

“He thinks: why are the people you share the most of yourself with the ones who you risk never talking to again?

 

He thinks: How much of myself has come from people I will never see again?

 

He thinks: What are we but slices of everyone we meet?

He thinks about all the pieces of himself and all of himself that is composed of pieces he has taken from others.” – from chapter 34, by Andrew J. Wilt

 

 

%%%%%%%%%%%%%

            ()()()()()()()()(

 

&&&& and &

 

Whenever I go to Chicago, I usually skip the Art Institute of Chicago (the traditional museum containing that which you must see as Art because others have determined that it's Art) 

Most of the artists are dead. Most of the work is vetted, and much of it I’ve seen before in pictures, etc.

                [it's kinda boring]

 

Instead, I often go to the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

 

            It’s here that I experience the weird, the out there, the risky, the ridiculous…

    It challenges. It asks me to ask the question, "Is this important? Is this Art?"

 

                                                Something nascent and unknown being given its due space.

 

Collected Voices in the Expanded Field is just such a museum for these 34 pieces/authors.

 

Go on. Get a ticket. Check this stuff out.

 

            Exit through the gift shop… just past that watering hole.

While in the gift shop, purchase the book: here

Jeff Vande Zande is an English professor at Delta College in Michigan. His latest collection, The Neighborhood Division: Stories, is now out through Whistling Shade Press and available: here

Book Trailer: here