Category Archives: Writing

Feb 08 2013
7 Comments
How to do what you love, Writing

Stop everything and think about this

cool picture(Skip to the quote if you’re short on time)

So I’ve been using the thinking part of my brain and the talking part of my mouth recently, having those kinds of conversations with older people that make me wonder why I ever thought I knew anything in the first place.

One of those was with my former professor, who I now call by her first name and that’s a little weird. I don’t remember the exact words of the conversation, but I remember coming away from it, shocked to learn that there are many stages in life, and the fact that she is a professor right now doesn’t mean she will always be a professor and in fact she hadn’t even imagined she would ever become a professor.

To me, this was mind-blowing. For some reason, probably because I’m too intelligent, I imagined popping out of college and entering “career” or “dream job,” neither of which turned out to be true, and in fact I don’t even know what my dream job looks like. Understanding this stage in my life as part of something greater is extremely relieving, because that means I still have the chance to revive 30 Rock and write for it in 10-15 years.

On the note of life stages and the illusion of permanence, I read an incredible quote today, courtesy of Literary Jukebox. The quote is from someone I’d never heard of with an equally unknown book, which gives me hope that one day my words might inspire someone even if they’ve never heard of me. Debbie Millman in Look Both Ways: Illustrated Essays on the Intersection of Life and Design writes: 

“I discovered these common, self imposed restrictions are rather insidious, though they start out simple enough. We begin by worrying we aren’t good enough, smart enough or talented enough to get what we want, then we voluntarily live in this paralyzing mental framework, rather than confront our own role in this paralysis […]

Every once in a while — often when we least expect it — we encounter someone more courageous, someone who choose to strive for that which (to us) seemed unrealistically unattainable, even elusive. And we marvel. We swoon. We gape. Often, we are in awe. I think we look at these people as lucky, when in fact, luck has nothing to do with it […]

If you imagine less, less will be what you undoubtedly deserve. Do what you love, and don’t stop until you get what you love. Work as hard as you can, imagine immensities, don’t compromise, and don’t waste time. Start now. Not 20 years from now, not two weeks from now. Now.”

When I read this, I find it extremely challenging and convicting, and it reminds me of something that Stephen Elliott of The Daily Rumpus (and other) fame said once in one of his letters.

He said that people will never be surprised at your failure if you try to do something “impossible,” like make a movie, or publish a book, or travel around the world. In fact, they expect it. They’ll say “of course you couldn’t publish your book, of course you couldn’t make your movie, of course you couldn’t change jobs” etc. etc.

But the reality is that people are doing those things every day, and the only difference between them and me is the fact they’ve been pursuing their passion with a relentless fever, making the impossible happen for themselves and not listening to the consolation of others.

What does it take to be extraordinary? I’m not completely sure, but I know that part of it is steely tenacity. Today I resolve to be more tenacious.

(By the way, if you don’t read the site Brain Pickings, you should. A side-burn of Brain Pickings is the tumblr Literary Jukebox, which is also fantastic.)

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Nov 08 2012
16 Comments
Humorous, Two minute read, Writing

Life Would Be Easier if I Didn’t Blog

the blogging muscle is close to the trapezius muscle.

Boom. I’m sitting on a borrowed airbed in a small room with one window that faces into a courtyard full of construction and home-maintenance equipment and old shoes.  My fingernails are getting too long and doing that thing where they click on the keyboard and it’s driving me insane but the cure is far far away in the bathroom.

It’s early-ish in the morning, and I’m in the part of the day I designated as “blogging time.” My hair is clean, my face is puffy, and I’m sitting at my computer still coated in Cairo-dust. And as I go to blog a blog, I find I’m gosh-darn-it stumped and have no idea what to write about. Should  I talk about my new job in a way that doesn’t reveal the fact I’m only doing it for the granola bars? Should I discuss cats? Should I try to write a fiction post about popsicle sticks and fish scales?

I was having a real time with it, and then the thought occurred to me, “This would just be easier if I didn’t blog.” Ding! Ding Ding! We have a winner! Balloons fell from the ceiling, a man with a kazoo and a clown’s nose started parading around my room and I had to ask him to leave, the band struck up a number, and I knew I had my blog topic.

If I didn’t blog, I would never have to worry about what to write on. I would never feel guilty for not blogging or delayed responses to comments, or have to figure out how to describe my blog to other people. Me: “It’s a humor blog….I write about things I think are funny….” Other person: (eyeroll) (swift kick in my gut). My life would be marginally easier and I would have more free time to fill with poking other people on facebook.

But, and here’s the cheesy awful part. I lurve blogging, and the less I do, the harder it is. The times I feel most on top of my blogging game are when I’m crushing it with 5 posts a week and can feel those blogging engines primed and ready to shoot off into unexplored areas of the human intestine. It’s when I lower this standard that blogging becomes more difficult and it’s easier to imagine my life without Snotting Black.

Blogging is a muscle. Writing is a muscle. The heart is a muscle. The airbed I’m sitting on is a muscle. And if we don’t use these muscles, they die and go to the place where atrophied muscles soak in hot tubs all day and get pruny while talking about their former glory. It’s disgusting and I don’t want my blogging muscle to go there, yet.

I wrote this meta-post so it could get some exercise. Now it’s your turn to exercise the muscle of something you love to do.

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Nov 05 2012
4 Comments
Modern Life, Serious-ish, Three minute read, Writing

The Mask’s Inside, Dummy

Amsterdam.

Sitting at a café on Geary and 6th Avenue. I’m in San Francisco, dummy. This is the part of San Francisco that tourists don’t come to because Geary looks like a highway and is lined by things like lamp shops, which are uninteresting to the visitor but for people who like to read a little bit in bed before they go to sleep and also sleep nightly in the city, lamps are of a certain kind of appeal and necessity and knowing where to purchase one is even more crucial.

Last Saturday, I want to a masquerade-themed party in Oakland, at my friend’s house where there are trees outside every window and spiders weave webs wherever they can, and there are tubs of things like spelt flour in the basement. Freaking hippies. I made a mask by smearing glue all over a pre-made plastic mask from Michael’s and sprinkling sequins on it. It took about 5 minutes. My primary goal in every craft project is to finish it. I’m not great at crafts.

The party was fun, but it was surprisingly hard to talk to people wearing masks, not being able to see their faces or mouths moving, to calculate if they’re joking or if I went over the line with my last comment. We depend so much on everything besides words, so don’t you forget it. That’s why I thought I wouldn’t get the job at an interview because I was blinking too much. Did I seem nervous? Unprepared? Bizarre and/or inhuman, like the algorithm that controls my blinking was out of whack?

And then at the party I was talking to a girl/woman/lady/chick/gal about why I’d left the field of International Relations. She’s in law school, trying to decide between international law and intellectual property, and she wants to have a career she finds meaningful and help people. And she asked me “what’s Oklahoma like” and I droned on about obesity and chain restaurants before she got bored and wanted to take pictures with everyone else. I was bored of the subject too so I was glad to leave it but I was left with a taste in my mouth like doubt. She seemed so smart and passionate and should I go to law school and do something sexy like maritime law and defend the lives of refugees? Is that even what they do?

She was dressed as what she imagined to be a woodland elf and I got the impression she wanted to be that free-spirited-pixie girl, the one who is brilliant but also fun and spontaneous. Did she even know what it takes to be a woodland elf? Would a woodland elf go to law school and try to figure out what kind of legislation helps the most people? Would a woodland elf even care? Depending on how nerdy you want to go, it’s possible to theorize that because elves are immortal, they would view the suffering of others as so temporary as to not be worth their time. So there.

And my facebook status hasn’t been getting as much traction as I would have liked.

Is it about the journey? Is it possible to get to what you think you want to be, even when it’s proven that most people know nothing until they’ve turned 50 and it seems like it’s too late?

Join me over the next decades and we’ll find out!

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Oct 30 2012
11 Comments
Humorous, Modern Life, Two minute read, Writing

A Desire Burns in My Breast

So I want to change the world. Go figure. Who doesn’t? The question is: how the blork am I going to do that?

The solid, hot truth is that I have no freaking marbled cake idea of how this dumb globe even works. Thanks a lot, 4-year education at an “accredited” institution.

If only I’d read a little bit more Dante maybe I’d know what the heck was going on, and how hurricane what’s-her-face is connected to the plight of migrant workers is connected to Wal-Mart is connected to the Christ and Madonna and soaring flocks of macaws in the Amazon.

Heck, I don’t even know how to dress myself. Every single pair of pants I own has or had a hole in it, and I spent two hours today trying to figure out what a person who goes to a professional job for work looks like. I failed miserably and ended up gawking at tubs of extra-terrestrial creatures at an Asian supermarket before day drinking and retiring to my abode where I contemplated the chocolate-covered toffee on my desk and felt the impending free time about to destroy my brain.

I must do something.

This is the eternal desire, the ever-burning flame within my pasty breast. I must do something. But what does it look like? How does it taste and smell? Does it like children? Will the child I babysit like it more than me? These questions bubble to the surface of my existence like those tell-tale doom bubbles in the lower intestine after a July chili cook-off.

What must I do? Should I climb the tallest mountain? Should I chop down the tallest tree in the forest? Should I drink the tallest milk shake? Tell the tallest tall-tale? Slap the tallest man? Braid the hair of the tallest woman? Wear the tallest pants? Take a dump in the tallest building?

Am I even on the right track with the tallest thing? Do you see the problem here? Sometimes the world is spinning and spinning and just when I think I have the game down and I’m hopping and stepping in time with everyone else like at St. Gregory’s Church, I catch my breath and realize I have little to no idea what’s going on.

It’s refreshing and terrifying, like a cucumber-scented bodywash that dissolves your skin days after you use it.

And then, after I figure out what I must do, how do I do it? Are the discovery and the doing part of the same thing? Can you have one without the other?

But here’s a better question: how do I forget all of this and just get to the point where I want to make a lot of money? Isn’t that a safer and less confusing place to be—more easily quantified too!

And then I could blog about money, and everyone would want to read my words and learn out how to get rich like me and I would purchase a pair of shoes without holes.

Alas alas, I am in the holey time of my life, and there is much pondering to do. Join me, if you dare. Mock me, if you will. Just don’t ask to see the inner thighs of my pants.

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Oct 22 2012
14 Comments
Humorous, Writing

Weather: The Forbidden Topic

I read once that an author should never start a book with the weather. I don’t remember who said this. It was in the context of a Guardian article in which writers shared their wisdom on writing, and this particular author (I believe it was a woman) mentioned one exception, that there was an author that was allowed to start a book with the weather  (I believe it was a man). The reason I bring this up is because I want to talk about the weather but couldn’t lead with it, so instead I introduced the whole topic of weather-discussion through the very fact it is forbidden at the beginning of a work, such as a blog post.

Let’s start in San Francisco, where I’m looking out the window through the gaps between the blinds. I can’t see much, but what I do see is shades of grey and raindrops, but it’s not sensual. It’s cold and I want to get back into bed and see how many months I can sleep.

If I were the heroine of a romantic novel, I would probably choose this time to go wandering the streets in inappropriate footwear. If I were a detective in an action movie, I’d smoke a cigarette on the street corner somewhere and remember an afternoon all dappled in sunlight in my life before I started police work and got caught bum-deep in the grime of the city. Part of me wishes I had stayed in the sun, but the other knows I didn’t have a choice. I take one last drag on the cigarette and toss it to the ground, waiting to hear the “tssss” of the embers dying in the water.

My real character sits in the mostly dark of her room and types, looking out the slats of the blind occasionally and piecing together the world behind it. The day is October 22, 2012. The rain falls harder outside. Next week is Halloween and a celebration of all kinds of things the administrators of my elementary school found frightening enough to have a night at the gym called “Hallelujah Night” to counteract it. I don’t think it worked, considering many of those students later wound up as pimps and ho’s at frat parties, the dressing-up itch still unscratched. And now they’re deciding who they will be all over again.

North of here, maybe it’s sunny. South of here, it’s definitely sunny. In the lumpy parts of the United States, snow is already falling. As people are leaving their houses all across America, some grab umbrellas, rain boots, down jackets, wind jackets, suit coats, water bottles, brown-bag lunches, and keys. They pat the dog, kiss the loved one, and get in the car, run to the bus, or hop on the bike. It might be wet, dry, hot, cool, leafy, humid, gray, or bright on the outside. Maybe they wish it was a different way, but that doesn’t change what they have to do, unless we’re talking about chalk artists or hot air balloonists.

Now comes the time for some great metaphor about the weather, or better yet, a simile. I’ll say, “The weather is like a hot dog, but you don’t always have to enjoy eating it when the bun is soggy.” You can unpack that statement, or move onto the next one which is this: soon I have to leave to get on the train and go to work, where I’ll probably sing to an 18 mo-old. I’m going to read a book on the train and I’m looking forward to that, despite the weather. I hope you have something you’re looking forward to today as well.

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