Writing about writing again, but sometimes confessions are necessary...

“I hate writing. I love having written.” - Dorothy Parker

I bought this from The Rumpus.

I can’t tell if this is too “inside baseball” because many of my friends are writers. We do what writers do: 1. Talk about writing. 2. Procrastinate. 3. Repeat steps 1 and 2.

I AM working on a second book. It has a shape and a focus, but I tend to be “all or nothing” about my projects; if it can’t be perfect, then I don’t want to make the effort. And there are so many important things that need doing. Earlier this summer, I realized I forgot to watch The Wire. So I watched all five seasons in about a month like it was my second job. Then I had to start watching Luther, because Idris Elba.

I put off buying an e-reader forever. I LOVE BOOKS. How could I betray my beloved READING EXPERIENCE with an electronic device? Then I bought a Kindle Fire and it made me feel like I could live without paper forever, even just for the thrill of thinking of a book I once read a million years ago and being able to download it at 1 a.m. and read it. Instant gratification. Writing is not instant gratification. Unless writing a Tweet, which is extraordinarily satisfying. I have written almost 8,000 of them, which in sum total is a book-length work, albeit a boring one.

I still write ideas down in a paper notebook. I also have Evernote on my phone, laptop and tablet. I can’t say that technology has made be more productive (probably the opposite), plus instead of just a notebook full of brilliant ideas mocking me from the depths of my shoulder bag, the mocking comes from multiple sources. I have Tetris on my tablet for some stupid reason. A feed reader of informative blog posts and articles to attend to. I’ve watched 50 episodes of Shin Chan on Hulu in the past three months.

All of this side business (bullshit) means that my notes stagnate, angry, unruly, unattended to: “Hey, um, so…think you’ll get to work on me this weekend? You know, ‘cause you said you were excited about it and all, but here we sit—how long has it been? A month? I know you’ve got all that television to watch and those naps to take and, well, I’m sure that fascinating thing about your ex-boyfriend from a million years ago really needs to get written for your blog. I’m sure all of that takes precedence over, say, the possibility of a review in the Times before you turn 80. Whatever.” My notes are a sarcastic bitch.

It probably doesn’t help that I want my second book to be mine-all-mine, not advice, not for anyone else, my Didion book. And I decided that 45 would be a good age to publish this unwritten masterpiece, which is not right now, but later. Except this one doesn’t want to wait and it isn’t going away. But I push back. I’ve been on central time for three and a half years now and I still can’t get used to prime time television starting at 7 p.m. I have a day job that requires a lot of reading and editing, and it pays the bills, so if I feel like watching four hours of television or staring at the ceiling instead of writing, hey, at least my bills are paid.

Weary of covering my ears and humming every time a new thought surfaces, I set a schedule. I resolved to sit down and use the 5,000 words of notes I have accumulated, turn them into 60,000 words of brilliance, and I will do this for 10 hours a week. Last week, I wrote for one hour (not counting day job related writing or navel-gazing blog writing or Tweets or vaguely insightful Facebook posts). I know it’s bad when things I hate take precedence over my writing schedule: Laundry. Vacuuming, which I do monthly when my dog is at the groomer so she won’t go mental when she sees the Bissell Pet Vac (as in "good for sucking up pet hair," not "good for sucking up pets," but dogs think what they think). Financial paperwork that I don’t care about (someone else can figure out how to roll over my 401(k) into whatever stupid savings thing that won’t cause me to have to pay taxes). Did I already say laundry?

I have coached writers. I know what I am supposed to do when my brain wants to scrub the bathtub and organize the linen closet before I can sit down to write. Those are the thoughts I should ignore. I should sit in front of a blank page and let the words come. I should deactivate my Facebook account. I should stop reading the amazing ideas of others and start writing my own. Physician, heal thyself? I used to think it was weird to see doctors smoking cigarettes or eating fast food, but maybe it’s not weird at all. Maybe it comes down to a choice: Help others or help myself.

So, first step. I will forget the “what ifs.” What if this person gets mad because I wrote a thinly veiled description of a thing that happened a long time ago? What if people judge me? What if I don’t have a second book in me? What if I fail? Then I will find the rational part of me that hates the fact that I am never satisfied with my last great achievement and convince it to hunker down and get to work on a chapter outline.

I’m telling you these things because I need you to know that I am not fragile. You can expect things from me. I won’t flinch, make excuses, or fall apart. This is what we do, my friends. This is what we do, having written. Let's all write like motherfuckers.

An imaginary conversation with Elizabeth Wurtzel...

I "get" difficult women. I know a lot of them. I've worked for some and am related to several. I am one. I appreciate the stick-to-her-guns fuck you mentality of not caring (at least, appearing not to care) about what people think about you/her/us.

I read Elizabeth Wurtzel's memoir, Prozac Nation, when it came out. I was in college. It spoke to me. I even saw the movie. It didn't speak to me. In the late 90s, I (still in college) read Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women. You probably heard me cheering about it at some point. I read her second memoir, this one on addiction, a few years ago. I don't remember a lot about it, but I know I identified on some level. I've never met Lizzie (but in my mind I call her Lizzie because I follow her on Twitter and that's what she calls herself and I think if we met in person she'd be cool about it), but in the past couple of years - since she's popped up again writing pieces for The Guardian and New York Magazine - I've been paying a little more attention. She seemed to drop off pop culture's radar for a bit, and I had the sense that she had gone through something similar to my own (hate to call it mid-life because I know I'll live past 80) crisis. A loss of voice. And these pieces, varied as they were, attempts to find her voice again. Kind of like I've been doing for a while now. Except a lot more public. And with comments. On the internet. It feels like an odd question to ask about someone who wrote a book in praise of difficult women, but I also wondered why all the hating on Lizzie?

She's a little bit older than I am, but I consider her a sort of contemporary. And when I read her most recent piece in The Atlantic, "I Refuse to be a Grownup," I promised myself I wouldn't read the comments. Then I read the comments, or the first 20 or so. I wished I knew her in real life so I could tell her that she's doing the right thing, this writing she's doing to get her voice back. And this is the most "back" I've seen her since the 90s.

If you know me personally, you probably know that I rehearse conversations in my head (and come on, you do too, right?). On my way home from work, during that cursed/blessed worst Austin traffic drive time, I had one with Lizzie. It went something like this:

Me: Hey, so good on you for the Atlantic piece. I hope you didn't read the comments.
Lizzie: (leaves her sunglasses on, which is fine because I am kind of the sophomore to her senior in this scenario) Nope.
Me: I mean, I don't know who has time...but the one from the "TL:DR what's the point?" guy...he didn't even read...
Lizzie: I don't read the comments. I don't care what people think.
Me: Hey, that's really great...so, you of you. There was that one "psychologist" who comment-diagnosed you with narcissistic personality disorder and that isn't even a thing anymore; it's not even in the latest DSM...
Lizzie: (icy silence)
Me: I wanted to tell you that I get it. I hate that you have to see criticism all over the freaking internet when you're just being honest, I mean who isn't a narcissist? What's wrong with not wanting to grow up? For those of us who choose not to get married, not to have kids, to remain emotionally...um, I want to say... immature? Why do people care so much?
Lizzie: I don't. So I wouldn't know.
Me: I wanted to say that I'm on your side. Write all the crazy. Just write. Let the haters hate and do it anyway, even if it's just for lines like "I wish people were judging each other a great deal more, and more carefully, but they are not. Knowing this, I have no trouble being myself. It works well. I will die screaming." BECAUSE ME TOO, LIZZIE, ME TOO.
Lizzie: Calm down. (exhales vapor from her e-cig)
Me: OK, so I'll let you go, but just one more...
Lizzie: No.
Me: DidyoutotallyfreakoutthatChristinaRicciplayedyouinthemoviebecauseherforeheadOMGherforehead...
Lizzie: No.

And that was it. She probably wouldn't like me in person. Nor should she. I wanted to tell her about that one time I was on Prozac because my best friend died when I was 23 but it didn't work and how my mom is a therapist and told me the worst thing with mental health issues is to "be in the system" so I always made sure I saw private shrinks, off insurance, sometimes under assumed names, and I think talk therapy is overrated and that most people think I'm younger than I really am too because I don't really have responsibilities, but I do have one cat and one dog just like she does but the cat has hated me for 14 years now and also sometimes I am ridiculous too. When people grossly underestimate my age, I assume it's not based on my appearance, but on my behavior. I don't behave like a person who has the weight of other people's problems on top of my own, rather, I behave like a person who thinks her problems are the only important ones. And, BAM!, right back to narcissism.

Hate her or don't. Hate me or don't. I have had worry. I have had grief. I have had despair. None of these things permanently damaged me. Not even a line on my forehead (yet, but totally fine when it does happen, because it will). So to the critics, to the commenters and trolls, to anyone who cannot follow her stream of consciousness while she reaches for the voice she might think she lost by detouring to law school and relationships and doing things other than writing - pay attention. You're not. She is. And she says it better than I:

"Nothing is more bracing than not being concerned about what other people think. I have no idea why anyone cares. Trust me: No one is looking. I know: I am looking. People are self-involved."

p.s. If you don't know who Elizabeth Wurtzel is or if you were in a coma in the 90s, here are all the Tumblr posts in the world tagged with her name. Enjoy.

Recognizing each other in the mundane...

I had a lot of fun talking about navel-gazing in my essay this month for Skirt! For those of you who haven't gotten your hot little hands on the print edition (we're in 12 cities now - no excuses!), I'm sharing it here because my friend JAZ at Wicked Winter reviewed it so eloquently that it made ME want to read it.

I’ve had my own personal web site for more than four years now—a blog, if you will. I started it for kicks, but soon began to use it as a repository for observations about myself that were either (a) not well-developed enough to become an essay or (b) not interesting enough to say out loud. Or both.

As a result, what I have is four years worth of navel-gazing, sometimes so deeply I’m in danger of turning myself inside out. One example from my list of “50 Things You Can’t Tell by Looking at Me”: I adore tiny vegetables. I will eat any vegetable, even weird ones, if they are tiny. Fascinating, yes? Not really. Yet I had four perfect strangers email to tell me that they too enjoy a tiny vegetable. Afraid of frogs? I am. It’s called “ranidaphobia” and when I shared that bit of information (I don’t swim in pools at night unless someone has done a frog check first) on my blog, I’m fairly certain I heard a collective “OMG WHO CARES” from the Universe (or at least the online version of the universe). But then I had no less than eight people contact me with sympathy, advice, and mutual identification.

Want to see a picture of my cat? No? I’m putting it up anyway. Did I mention that she’s a long-haired cat but in this photo she has just been completely shaved and has a SWEATER on her tiny hairless body with her big giant head poking out? And that she’s really pissed off about it? My cat photo just got a whole lot more interesting, at least to the blogosphere. I got more comments on that cat photo than on any other post that year, ranging from “how could you torture an animal like that?” to “I could DIE from the cuteness.” And I still correspond with the woman who e-mailed me to ask for the full-size photo so she could print it out and put it on her bulletin board because it made her laugh.

When I tell people I have no secrets, I mean it. They’re all out there in their vast and mundane glory for anyone to find. Cat photos are just the tip of the iceberg. On my site, which anyone can find by Googling my name, I’ve written about my most embarrassing moments for the world to read. The time my skirt fell down while I was dancing in front of about 150 people at a Joan Osborne concert. My bad teenage poetry. Summer camp. The time I cried during a massage. That I stuffed my bra with Kleenex in the fourth grade after reading Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret a few years too early.

Who cares about all of this introspection, meaningless confession, and minutiae? I do. After all, it’s my navel we’re gazing into so raptly, is it not? And if a few other people out there hit me with an “I know how that is!” every now and then, it’s just a bonus. It’s comforting to know that I’m not the only one who ever accidentally farted (audibly, BTW) while on a date. Or that someone else in this world owns a copy of “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo” on DVD. Or that three people (besides me) are willing to admit that they find James Gandolfini from “The Sopranos” sexually attractive. Besides sharing my innermost thoughts with perfect strangers, blogging is a great way to communicate with friends. I can’t count how many times I’ve been with a group of friends and started to tell a story, only to have a friend finish it because she’d already read it on my site. The other upside of having my own site: Free stuff. I once received coupons for three free cartons of eggs just because I wrote that I thought Eggland’s Best eggs really do taste better than the ordinary egg. And after writing that I love to read graphic novels when I’m overworked because they’re easier for my brain to process than regular books, someone sent me a copy of Craig Thompson’s Blankets, which now has a slot on my “100 Favorite Books of All Time” list, graphic novel or not.

When I overhear someone on a cell phone, say in a grocery store or pharmacy, discussing in great detail the merits of super versus super plus or plastic applicator versus cardboard (hopefully with a friend or family member on the line), I want to tap them on the shoulder and firmly advise them to take it online. “Think about the time you’ll save by boring the crap out of all of your friends at once instead of one at a time,” I’d say. “Think about the cell phone minutes you’ll save!”

Whenever someone asks me about my blog (usually in the context of “what the hell is a blog and why do you have one”), right after I ask them if they’ve watched CNN at all in the past five years, I explain that it’s all about identification. The addictive thing about writing for the cyber-universe is the call and response. I tell you that I think Smart Dogs (soy hot dogs) are better than regular hot dogs; you tell me that (a) you agree wholeheartedly or (b) why you think my vegetarian hippie ass is trying to bring the pork and beef industries down single-handedly. I tell you that I’m over 30 and recently painted my bedroom pink; you tell me that you’ve been waiting for your husband to get his own place so you can do the same. This is what it is: We recognize each other in the mundane. We’re not alone out there. And we love tiny vegetables.

Kelly Love Johnson is managing editor for Skirt! She has a slight overbite, skipped second grade, and thinks “Xanadu” was the best movie ever. E-mail her at kelly.love@skirt.com.

I eat caution for breakfast…

A friend recently told me that I should stop putting warning labels on myself. He said I enter new relationships with clauses, footnotes, and sidebars full of messages that all seem to say, “Enter at your own risk.”

This is what I do now:
I am not easy to get along with. I am not a morning person. I have a quick temper. I sometimes say spiteful things to people I really care about. I do not suffer fools gladly. Sometimes I feel like I’m held together with filament and wax and all it takes is hearing Verve Pipe song on the radio and I’m guilt stricken sobbing with my head on the floor. I end relationships for no reason. A lot of people think I’m a bitch. I don’t want to change. In short: If this doesn’t work, you can’t say you didn’t know what you’re getting into. Be afraid.

What I should say:
I laugh a lot. I am smart. I am kind. I am generous to a fault. None of my friends think I’m a bitch. I’m fun and I like to stay up late. I make up words and catch phrases. I am open to new things. I move on easily. I have a poor short-term memory, therefore I seldom hold grudges. I do not own a dishwasher because I like to sing while washing dishes. I am quick. I don’t cry a lot. I am financially independent. In short: I’m a catch.

It’s all in the way we think about ourselves, isn’t it?

Lust wins again...

I got this quiz from Uncle Zoloft's Sunday Meme-o-Rama. Apparently, I'm a lazy whore, but not a greedy one. I must have been lying when I said I'd rather nap than have sex.

Your Deadly Sins

Lust: 80%

Sloth: 20%

Envy: 0%

Gluttony: 0%

Greed: 0%

Pride: 0%

Wrath: 0%

Chance You'll Go to Hell: 14%

You'll die from overexertion. *wink*

How Sinful Are You?

I really did think Pride would be at the top of my list, considering the size of my ego. Or Wrath, given the number of people who think I'm a Mean Girl.

"Bless me Father, for I have sinned; it has been [coughcough] years since my last confession..."