The other day a young woman asked me what I did for a living.  What an interesting question.  If I had to live off the money I make from writing, I’d be living in a garden shed.  On the other hand, it is through writing that I live.  So, in a very real sense, when I answer that question by saying, “I write for a living” I am telling a far deeper truth.

Then  I asked her if she was a reader.  “Oh, yes,” she replied.

“And what sort of books do you like?”

“I love James Patterson.  His books are great.”

“Are they?” I asked.

“Just great.  So entertaining.  I don’t have to think about anything when I’m reading them.”

View from Dylan Thomas's study. The long view.

Later that same day, I bumped into a woman I know while grocery shopping.  She was speaking to another woman and introduced me to her friend by saying I was a published writer.

“How wonderful,” said the friend.  “I just finished reading the most glorious book!”

Assuming it wasn’t mine, I asked which one, fearing I would once again have to feign enthusiasm for a popular thriller.  “Brooklyn, by Colm Toibin.  Not a great deal happens, and yet I was riveted.”

“I’ve read that,” said my friend.  “One of the best books I’ve read in a long time.”

Both women were now animated, hands flying, eyes bright.  “how that man gets into the head of the young woman!” “How he makes us feel everything she feels, how she makes her come alive!” “I was utterly involved in her life; felt like I was experiencing her life as an immigrant.”

These are the very women I write for.  Okay, it’s true that my books are a little different than Toibin’s, in that quite a lot generally happens, and there’s nothing wrong with folks who like thrillers (I love a good mystery myself, and am in awe of people who write them well), but My People are those readers who want to be immersed in a life not their own; people who want to be stretched, pulled out of their shells, rattled a little; people who want to empathize with a life very different, perhaps, than their own.

But how many people want to do that these days?  How many people just want to read the same thing over and over…whatever vampire/thriller/time traveler/love story happens to be popular at the moment.

For better or worse, and I like to think for better, I don’t write those kind of books.  I write books that will probably take you to a world you aren’t familiar with.  I don’t know whether the publishing business wants that anymore, regardless of quality.  Take this rejection letter concerning my recently-completed novel, set in the 7th c. (I haven’t edited the letter, except to take out the publisher’s name):

As a former archaeology minor who spent quite a bit of time studying this period in history, I couldn’t have been more thrilled to have this on submission.  I  dove right into it.  And I cannot tell you what pleasure Davis’s book has brought me–she paces her story perfectly and her research lends the story both a backbone of fact and history, and intriguing details and twists in character and plot that I found fascinating…and compelling.

And yet, for as much fun as I had with this…and for as long as I know Aisling [the main character] will stick with me…I am just not sure how to position this on the ——-  list to ensure that it finds the success and support it deserves.

And so the editor passes.  Really?  Huh.  Breaks my heart, that does, to have a fine editor pass on a book she obviously like because of ‘positioning’ (read, ‘marketing’).

Well, if you happen to be an editor who enjoyed Jim Crace’s The Gift of Stones, an editor like, oh, I don’t know, the one who took Tinkers, by Paul Harding, after so many others (20)  had refused, or who pulled Harry Potter out of the slush pile, or Jack London’s final editor (after 600 rejections)… there are any number of such stories…perhaps you’d like to give my agent a call.

In the meantime, I’m working on my next book and keeping the fires of hope alive, fed by the knowledge there are wonderful readers out there who don’t necessarily want to read the same old thing and editors who are hoping to satisfy them.

"Writer's Desk" by Joan Griswold

The Hidden Power of the Gospels by Alexander Shaia, Ph.D.

I believe Alexander Shaia may have written a book which will change the way people look at the gospels entirely, and I’m not just talking about Christians.   The gospels, Shaia posits, are not to be taken literally but rather they create a “Great Map of Transformation” universally relevant, regardless of background or viewpoint, even to those claiming no faith at all.  I found this book well written, terrifically researched, full of scholarship and thought-provoking, innovative ideas.  In fact, dare I say, it has utterly altered my own perception of the gospels, and the way in which I will approach them.  Shaia has made them personal and applicable to my own spiritual journey.

Each of the gospels, Shaia suggests, ask a specific question. The question of Matthew is:  How do we face change?  The question of Mark is: How do we move through suffering? The question of John is: How do we receive joy?  and the final question, asked in Luke, is: How do we mature in service?

Four stages, four gospels.  We surrender, we struggle and endure, comprehension finally dawns, and then we gradually learn the practices that make our understanding or our discovery repeatable, consistent, and real — and then we bring our works and our words to each other.

Shaia is a psychologist, spiritual director, educator and a fine writer.  He was born in Birmingham, Alabama, to a Lebanese Maronite family.  He is the founder of the Blue Door Retreat in Santa Fe, New Mexico (the doors, I assume, on the cover).  It was during his educational years at Notre Dame that he “learned about the ancient four-gospel reading cycle that had been rediscovered by the scholars of the church and just restored to use in Sunday worship.”  He goes on to say, “I was so taken by the idea that the early church had had a beautiful and systematic design for all four gospels that I determined to pray them that way myself on a weekly basis.  And I have done so, from that day forward.”   Although he graduated from Notre Dame and subsequently entered the seminary to be a priest, he found “this long-anticipated plan did not work at all.  The spiritual home in which I found myself failed to nurture my spirit as expected.  I sought expansiveness and joy, yet found instead an institution training people to become narrow and lifeless, threatening to lose the deep resonance of centuries.”  And so he left, “shamed and bereft” and started over again.  He found a position on the staff of a Catholic parish.  There he helped implement the church’s restoration of the ancient rite of Christian baptism, which he saw — based on his anthropological studies — as a “four fold rite of initiation and maturation.” He also trained with the Swiss Jungian analyst Dora Kalff, herself a devout Christian and practitioner of Tibetan Buddhist meditation.  He became a clinical practitioner, using the “Sandplay” technique developed by Kalff.

Author Alexander Shaia

During this period he noticed that the outer story told by the images used in ’sandplay’ matched the inner story experienced by the client, and the pattern was invariably fourfold and sequential, regardless of background or culture, and without conscious awareness of the client.  He concluded the same four-path existed in the practice of psychology as in the baptism rites, here in a contemporary, cross-cultural setting.

This set him off on a long investigation of the great myths and epics of ancient literature, involving “the summons,” “overcoming obstacles,” “receiving the boon” and “returning to community.”

At last, he turned his considerable curiosity, intuition and intelligence to the Gospels.

He realized, upon examination, the following:

“…each gospel was organized around a different metaphorical landscape.  Matthew, writing after the Great Temple of Jerusalem had fallen, uses the metaphors of mountain and rock and stone.  Mark, directing his gospel to Christians under the sentence of death, uses the metaphor of wilderness and Jewish historical equivalents for wilderness — deserts and bodies of water. John’s gospel, likely written as a study for baptism, uses the metaphor of the garden, often explicitly the Garden of Eden.  The Gospel of Luke, written to burgeoning communities of new Christians throughout the Mediterranean, has a core metaphor that is less apparent — the road: everything in Luke happens between places.”

How interesting!  Shaia structures the book into eight chapters, much like a journey, in fact.  He tells us the story of how he came to his thesis.  He prepares readers to take the journey.  We climb the mountain of Matthew.  We cross Mark’s stormy sea.  We rest in John’s garden.  We walk Luke’s road.  We ponder what Shaia calls, “The Eight Essential and Continuing Practices of the Fourth Path.”  We meditate on the paradigms and promises.

For each of the gospel chapters, Shaia opens with a contextual essay.  These essays are so valuable to any serious study of the gospels that they are worth the price of the book alone.  All the writing is clear, accessible, even occasionally poetic, but these essays are particular gems. He then takes us through the text, noting symbols and metaphors.  He also notes the differences between the gospels, the seeming contradictions and inconsistencies, reconciling them in the light of the author’s intention — what was the author trying to tell his audience about the spiritual place in which they found themselves? — and applying the various messages to contemporary readers.  I found Shaia’s thoughts around the varying resurrection accounts particularly illuminating.  More than once I found myself with an aha! moment — Yes, of course, why didn’t I see that before? Experience has taught me that that sort of recognition signals a deep truth.

Shaia has almost given us a retreat-in-a-book.  He includes prayers for each of the four steps of the journey, and questions to ask ourselves, and meditations.  There are so many ways to use this book!  Okay, I think the title is dreadful — bringing to mind a lot of very bad pseudo-religious ’secret’ books, but I hope you won’t hold that, or the odd bit of probably-marketing-department-inspired hyperbole (particularly in the first chapter), against it.  It’s a fine book with what, for me at least, is an utterly new perspective.  It deserves a wide readership.  Read it, and then tell me what you think.  I’d love to know.

Rat Medicine & Other Unlikely Curatives. My first 'child.'

I admit I’m excited about this.  My first collection of short stories (the book that stared it all), RAT MEDICINE & OTHER UNLIKELY CURATIVES, is now available in Kindle format.  (I have one of those, and like it much more than I thought I would.) This book was written in early sobriety.  The Globe & Mail review said it contained, “candor that could strip paint.”  Well, I don’t know about that, but I do know I’m proud of it, and am so glad it might be getting a bit of a second life.

At last, folks in the US have a simple way of buying my work.  If this is successful, look for THE STUBBORN SEASON and THE RADIANT CITY to follow.

James Joyce (Lipnitzki, Roger Viollet, Getty Images)

This is Bloomsday, of course, and literary folks are even now tromping through Dublin, commemorating June 16, 1904, the day on which Stephen Deadalus and Leopold Bloom, the two characters at the heart of James Joyce great wanderdream of a novel have their adventures.  (Thursday, June 16, 1904 was, by the way, the date of Joyce’s first outing, a walk to Ringsend, with his wife-to-be, Nora Barnacle.)  Some Bloomsday celebrants will go off with the ghostvoices of Stephen Deadlus and Buck Mulligan (all stately and plump) to Sandycove for a tour and reading at the Martello Tower; maybe some have taken a dip at the Fort Foot.  Others have followed Leopold Bloom from his house at 7 Eccles Street and shared breakfast with  him and Molly, eating what must easily be the most famous kidney in literature.

MR LEOPOLD BLOOM ATE WITH RELISH THE INNER ORGANS OF BEASTS and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencod’s roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.

Kidneys were in his mind as he moved about the kitchen softly, righting her breakfast things on the humpy tray. Gelid light and air were in the kitchen but out of doors gentle summer morning everywhere. Made him feel a bit peckish.

It is a long day’s journey, and a celebratory one, for Ulysses is nothing if not a celebration of ordinary, everyday, plainwalking life.  Joyce’s masterpiece is, for me, the best example of how words can capture the beauty in our sometimes drab, yet sparkfuelled lives.  Which is to say, Joyce seems to be examining the possibility that everything is our ‘city,’ the place/space/reality in which we live; that there is no separation between our thoughts, our sensations, our daydreams, our tea kettles, our half-forgotten memories and the streetsigns on the corner, the waste bin, the birdsong.

It is a wonderwork of attentiveness, of observation.

People are often afraid to pick up Ulysses, being put off,  suspect, by all the honor heaped upon it.  After all, how can an ordinary person hope to understand the book that has generated more scholarly examination that any other?

And it has its detractors.  Virginia Woolf, for example, dismissed Ulysses as “a mis-fire.” In a diary entry for September 6, 1922, she wrote: “The book is diffuse. It is brackish. It is pretentious. It is underbred, not only in the obvious but in the literary sense.” Perhaps.  But all books are flawed, as are their writers.  Is it a failure?  Maybe, but what a brilliant failure.  I should fail so spectacularly!  I can’t help but wonder if Ms. Woolf wasn’t just a teensy bit jealous given her own idea that “identity, rather than depending on the concrete circumstances of a person’s life, is primarily constructed from within, through an individual’s deployment of language.” (Kate Flint, ‘The Waves’, in Julia Briggs (ed) Virginia Woolf – Introduction to the Major Works) Both Joyce and Woof were working in the same field, so to speak.

In Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Life in Joyce’s Masterpiece (W.W. Norton, September), Declan Kiberd, a professor of Anglo-Irish literature at University College Dublin, tries to bring the novel down from the dusty academic topshelf. He posits  it is “a book which set out to celebrate the common man and woman endured the sad fate of never being read by most of them.” His point is that Ulysses has much in common with the work of Whitman, intended to be about and for the common people.  Kiberb says Ulysses is “an extended hymn to the dignity of everyday living,” best appreciated by those who do that living.  I agree.

Marilyn Monroe reading Ulysses (photo by Eve Arnold)

And on that note I urge you today to pick up your copy of Ulysses, or go and buy one, or go on-line, even and read even just a few smatterings of this wonderful prose.  I’ll leave you with a snippet,, describing the sea, from Book 1, Telemachus

In long lassoes from the Cock lake the water flowed full, covering
greengoldenly lagoons of sand, rising, flowing. My ashplant will float away.

I shall wait. No, they will pass on, passing chafing against the low rocks,
swirling, passing. Better get this job over quick. Listen: a fourworded
wavespeech: seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos. Vehement breath of waters amid
seasnakes, rearing horses, rocks. In cups of rocks it slops: flop, slop,
slap: bounded in barrels. And, spent, its speech ceases. It flows purling,
widely flowing, floating foampool, flower unfurling.

Under the upswelling tide he saw the writhing weeds lift languidly and
sway reluctant arms, hising up their petticoats, in whispering water swaying and upturning coy silver fronds. Day by day: night by night: lifted, flooded and let fall. Lord, they are weary: and, whispered to, they sigh. Saint Ambrose heard it, sigh of leaves and waves, waiting, awaiting the fullness of their times, diebus ac noctibus iniurias patiens ingemiscit. To no end gathered: vainly then released, forth flowing, wending back: loom of the moon. Weary too in sight of lovers, lascivious men, a naked woman shining in her courts, she draws a toil of waters.

(Photo by Ron Davis)

In Pursuit of Silence by George Prochnik

My review of IN PURSUIT OF SILENCE by George Prochnik is now up on the Globe & Mail website.  Recommended, especially for those of us who spend a good deal of time with our fingers in our ears.

Maybe I should travel more often!  I’ve had some lovely things happen while I’ve been away these past two weeks.  One was the interview I did with poet Diane Lockward on www.Shewrites.com, which I linked to in the preview blog, and now this:  Renee Miller, at www.Examiner.com has written a beautiful review of THE RADIANT CITY and has also published an interview we did.  Renee, like Diane, asked terrific questions, and both interviews were a pleasure.

In between interviews, the Best Beloved and I have been rambling through the Cotswolds and drinking gallons of tea.  At the moment we’re sitting in a wee cafe on the ancient market square in Stow (which is about the only place you can get wifi access in the Cotswolds we think).  We have met a lot of lovely people and a lot of lovely sheep. We’ve even had more sun than rain, so we feel quite blessed.

Home on Sunday… and then it’s back to work for me.

I am writing from beautiful Stow-on-the-wolds in England — cheerful beyond measure by splendid countryside and cream teas.  While I’ve been away, the folks at the social networking site for women writers, Shewrites.com, have kindly posted a feature on me, called “Five Questions for Lauren B. Davis.”

This week poet Diane Lockward asks award-winning novelist Lauren B. Davis five questions about The Radiant City. A native Canadian, Lauren lived in France for a decade. She now makes her home in Princeton, NJ, where she is Writer-in-Residence at Trinity Church.

1. The single-sentence first paragraph of The Radiant City—“The night is the wrong colour.”—reached out and pulled me right into the novel. The next paragraph begins, “The first sound he heard was the horses. They sounded like eagles torn apart, like metal gears stripping, like speared whales.” This is an intense and exciting opening. As a poet, I also found it poetic. How consciously do you work on style?

I’m flattered you use the word “poetic” as I don’t consider myself a particularly poetic writer. I have enormous admiration for poets, and language-driven prose, and often read poetry as a sort of mental stretching exercise before I start my writing day. However, in my own work I’m more obsessed with character than language—with what makes people tick, with their blind-spots, their frailties, and their yearnings. Everything stems from that and any linguistic pyrotechnics are in the service of revealing my characters interior worlds, and their conflicts.

For me, the more I concentrate on style, the less authentic it turns out to be.
The best writing comes from a deep place in the subconscious, and is then polished by the conscious mind. When I write it’s a sort of meditative state in which I “dream” a scene and allow whatever’s down in the dark tangled roots to bubble up to the surface. I get a scene on paper noting as many significant sense details as I can, and then go back and craft the language, the images, the “mechanics” of the scene, if you will, to serve the narrative.

2. The novel reminded me of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, relocated to Paris. How did it affect you to spend so much time with such dark, complex characters, with their wounds and scars, their degradation and their need for confession and redemption?

You’re right, it is a sort of journey to the heart of darkness, Jung’s “shadow.” And I would suggest the characters in all my books are pretty complex folks. Jack Saddler’s character in The Radiant City, for example, is a man haunted by violence, and by certain acts he committed in his past. This guilt informs everything he does, both consciously and subconsciously. Matthew is haunted not only by the violence he’s witnessed, but by the violence he was unable to stop. I put myself in these characters’ minds, in their bodies, in their situations.

Writing can be dangerous, psychologically. But it also offers enormous benefits for the writer (okay, perhaps not financially, but certainly emotionally, psychologically). Like most writers, I write about things that obsess me, questions for which I want answers, and/or situations I want to come to terms with. An overarching theme in my work is compassion—for others, for one’s self, for our terrible and beautiful fragility—and although spending so much time with damaged “people” can be heartbreaking, it’s also broadened my sense of compassion. In my faith tradition we have a prayer that asks God for forgiveness for what we have done, and what we have left undone. I hold that prayer in mind when I work with my characters, and am constantly reminded that I am, in so many ways, just like them. It helps me to see the interconnectedness of all things.

But I’m not sure I’d be able to write as deeply as I try to do if I lived the chaotic, drama-filled, self-destructive life I lived as a younger woman. I tell my students that the best thing for their writing is to live a simple, stable life. If one’s days are filled with high drama, one has very little energy left for the page. Quiet your life, leave the crises for the story. And, if you’re like me, get sober! Having a wise, gentle and supportive spouse also helps. It gives me a safety net. I can go into the subterranean depths, go deep, explore the underworld, if you will, and then come up at the end of the writing day to a place where I’m loved and where the light shines brightly again. Cooking also helps, and gardening. There’s something about either chopping vegetables or pruning the roses that grounds me. And friends who have kids tell me there’s nothing better for “resurfacing.”

3. Your protagonist, Matthew, a journalist recently wounded in Israel, now living in Paris and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, is struggling to write a book about his experiences. What made you decide to make your protagonist a writer with writer’s block?

Oh, I suspect it’s because it’s one of my great fears. I know no other way to make sense or meaning of the world. Writing is how I process my experience, how I discover what I think and feel about things. Joan Didion once said she wrote to find out what she thought and that if she had any access whatsoever to her own mind she wouldn’t write. I feel the same way. If I couldn’t write, I fear what would happen to me.

A few years ago, when a manuscript was rejected by publishers, I fell into a horrible loss-of-faith-and-meaning depression. As a writer, if I couldn’t publish again, what would I do? Who was I, in fact? I had invested so much in the idea of myself as a Real Writer, by which I meant a successfully published one. Up until that moment I thought I had surrendered to The Writer’s Life, but I hadn’t. Not to all of it. Oh, I’d surrendered to the sorrow of never quite writing the book you imagine, and to difficulties with agents and publishers, to envy over other writers getting bigger advances and better reviews, etc.; to the stresses of book tours, and bad sales, and the general disappointment that floods in when the publishing experience isn’t what we think it will be; BUT I hadn’t surrendered to the possibility (inevitability) that once having been invited to the party, I might (will) be uninvited.

I thought, I can’t do this anymore. I quit. And so I stopped writing, blocked by the business end of this life. Or, I tried to stop. What I discovered after several AWFUL months was that, publish or not publish, as crazy as the business makes me, I’m actually less crazy when I’m writing than when I’m not writing. And so, I learned to surrender to a deeper level. To write again regardless of the publishing outcome.

4. I was astonished and awed by the range of knowledge displayed in the book, e.g., the variety of ethnic cultures, the background of recent history and current events, even your description of the layout of Paris. What kind of research—and living—went into writing the book?

I lived in Paris while I wrote The Radiant City. I lived in France for ten years, and it seemed the natural setting for this book. People have been coming to Paris as political and psychological refugees for as long as anyone can remember, and Paris permits it, even if it doesn’t truly like it. It’s quite remarkable in that way. The French have an expression: “Parce que j’ai le droit.” Because I have the right. Which means they pretty much do what they want, when they want, how they want, where they want, and they expect you to do the same. It’s an attitude that can be infuriating if you’re expecting people to take your comfort into account, but on the other hand it permits the individual an unbelievable amount of personal freedom. This makes it a good place to get lost, as Matthew and Jack want to do, but it has its dangers, since it is easy to lose your way in the winding streets of Paris, both metaphorically and concretely.

When I’m preparing to write about people whose lives are vastly different from my own, I try to do enough research to stimulate my imagination without overwhelming it. Since I write fiction, rather than non-fiction, the work is essentially a construction of my mind’s eye, with facts as foundational elements. Of course, you do hard research, and you pray you get the big facts right—because if you don’t it will detract from the story and people will write you unpleasant letters! But part of the trick is not over-researching. Still, I take my research seriously and it often takes years of reading, interviewing people, and scouting the environments, where possible. In the case of The Radiant City, I wandered through the Parisian streets looking for relevant and evocative sites… the Passy cemetery, the bois de Boulogne, the chapel to Saint Rita, patron saint of prostitutes, and many others. I went to the Lebanese Cultural Center on rue d’Ulm near the Panthéon and spoke with people there, spent time in their church, wandered through the North African neighborhood—Barbés and Belleville—taking photos and absorbing the smells and the sounds and the textures of the place, eating mounds of couscous and tagine, drinking innumerable cups of espresso. Then I went back to my little room and let it all flow out, clothing the characters.

I also spoke to a number of journalists I knew, I read extensively (for every book I write I read at least a hundred), both memoirs and reportage on the places I refer to. But really, at the heart of it is a lot of dreaming with eyes open. Hopefully, a writer has developed the ability to empathize, to imagine what another’s life would be like, what their feelings would be in this situation, or in that situation. You research what the facts of the event are, and then you sit quietly, close your eyes, and dream.

5. One of the epigraphs to the novel is a quotation from The Very Reverend Ernest Hunt: “Cynicism is the last refuge of the broken-hearted.” Those words are reiterated to Matthew by Anthony, a former cop and another of the wounded, displaced characters. That line seems central to the novel. Tell us a bit about what those words mean to you.

I began writing The Radiant City just after the horrible events of 9/11 and those events haunted me as I worked. Because I was living in Paris at the time, and not New York, I didn’t feel qualified (and still don’t) to write about events specifically, but there’s no doubt they affected me. I suffered a fairly bad depression after 9/11. I was obsessed with the news, cried on and off for months, and I felt increasingly guilty about that.

I felt I should have already known what this awful disillusionment felt like. It shouldn’t have ambushed me this way—how could I not have known? I was disappointed in myself. I was disillusioned not only with the world, but with my understanding of it. So, what was it about this particular event that crushed me more than any other? I suspect it was that I felt closer to 9/11 than to Chechnya, or Yugoslavia, or Auschwitz, or Rwanda. I’m ashamed to admit that, because I think of myself as someone whose mental borders are global, not national, and certainly not tribal. But for whatever reason, I now knew something, viscerally, profoundly, about the world’s potential for barbarity, that I didn’t fully recognize before. And it shocked me. And the fact that I was shocked, shocked me. So I began writing in order to figure it all out.

I wanted to know if it was possible, after suffering a profound disillusionment, to continue to walk through the world with a compassionate heart, or if one was doomed to cynicism. How do we protect ourselves against the insidious cancer of cynicism?

And so, Matthew and Jack and Saida and Anthony were born, people full of disillusionment, hounded by their devastating pasts. They are all battered, brittle survivors of violence in one form or another, and yet they still may be powerless to turn away from violence.

And then one day, Rev. Ernest Hunt, the priest at the American Episcopal Cathedral in Paris at the time, said, “Cynicism is the last refuge of the broken-hearted.” It was as though he’d been reading over my shoulder. And he was kind enough to allow me to use the quote.

I’ll be back to regular posting when I’m home next week.

A long time ago, I was standing in my kitchen with my friend, Michael.  Michael a big Guyanese guy with an easy smile and a laugh to fit his size, asked me if I had a piece of gum.  I said I did and handed him one, but  forgot to mention it was a new sort of gum, and with a liquid center.  Before I could warn him, he bit down.  The expression on his face was of instant horror and disgust, as though he’d just bitten into a nice juicy cockroach.  When my laughter subsided, I explained, and happily he found the event funny as well.

It’s not that the gum was disgusting, it’s just when you’re not expecting a liquid center, well, it can be a bit discombobulating.

Publishing can be like that.  It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just rarely what we expect.

All of us, I think, harbor a fantasy about what we think happens to writers once they publish.  I know I did.  Here are ten things I wish I’d known about life-after-publishing.  I’ll add more in future blogs:

1. Publishing will not cure your insecurity.  After publishing you will be no less insecure, and possibly even more so, since you’re not hiding your work in a drawer any longer.  You have, in fact, opened the top of your head and flashed the world its contents, some of which you might not even know existed.
2. Your publicist, if you’re lucky enough to have one, will be overworked, underpaid, and will spend three weeks or less publicizing your book, unless you hit a best-seller list.  Then you get a couple more weeks, maybe. Saying “your” publicist, by the way, is misleading.  S/he might be working on your book, but s/he’s probably working on six other books at the same time. Be grateful for her help, but roll up your sleeves and get to work yourself.  You have more of an investment in its success than does anyone else.
3. You might think you’ve written a book so clear and precise no one could possibly misinterpret it.  You’re wrong.  People will come up with all sorts of crack-pot ideas concerning your book’s meaning. Example?  I once had a television commentator insist one of the characters in my book was Jesus and the book was an allegory for the wedding at Cana in the Gospel of John.  Really?  Snort.   Another example? A woman once showed up at my door, furious at how I’d ended a particular novel.  I asked her how she understood the ending.  I was stunned.  None of her conclusions were on the page, but she insisted she was right and I was wrong.
   Okay.  Fair enough.
   Read two or three reviews of any book, often you’ll find it hard to believe they’re about the same book.  Readers bring to every book their own perceptions.  You can’t do a darn thing about that.  You just need to accept that readers are in co-creation with you, as an author.  It can be wonderful, magical, and enlightening.
4. People who aren’t in your book will insist they are.  People who are in your book won’t recognize themselves (which can be a blessing), or they will (which can be a nightmare).  Accept this odd truth, but keep it in mind when you’re writing about your mother, if you know what I mean.
   

   waiting for reviews is rough.

5. Nothing is more nerve wracking than waiting for reviews, because a) you might not get any, or b) you might. Alert your friends to your impending state of psychosis and ask them to be gentle with you. Invest in a 10-gallon drum in which to infuse chamomile tea, which is said to be calming.
6. Further to this point, the pleasure of a great review is intense, but brief.  Conversely, the pain of a bad review is intense, and corrosive.  It can eat through your soul for years. I advise not reading reviews, but if you must, at least have them vetted by someone you trust.  No one ever heeds this advice, of course, including me.
7. To offset some of the pain of those bad reviews, if you’re lucky enough to get a good review, have it laminated and hang it on your wall.  My Best Beloved did this for me, and at first I thought it was horribly egotistical, to be surrounded by good reviews, but as the years went on, I realized I was NEVER going to overcome my insecurities; turning to that wall now and again and being reminded some folks understand and appreciate what I’m trying to do is comforting.  It gives me the encouragement, on really bad days, to go on.
8. Some friends will expect you to give them a book for free.  Maybe lots of your friends will expect this.  It’s odd, but you’ll hear things like, “Give me a copy of your book and I’ll be happy to read it.”  People will say this, even though they would never think of walking into, say, a bakery, and telling the baker to give them a loaf of bread, which they will be happy to eat without paying for.  Some folks just don’t understand that although it is a privilege to have readers, what really makes a friend stand out is their willingness to actually BUY THE BOOK.
9. Inevitably, someone you know — maybe someone you know very well — will take the time to tell you he doesn’t like your book, even though you haven’t asked his opinion.  This same person would probably be offended if you walked up to his child and insisted (because you’re SUCH good friends) on mentioning those elephantine ears, and that regrettable turnip-like nose, and that unfortunate low-wattage intellect.  He would be highly offended in fact, and would probably end your friendship as a result, but he won’t see the correlation.  He also won’t understand why you’re hurt by his comments.
10. I wish someone had told me that once you’re published, writing doesn’t get any easier.  In fact, it sometimes gets harder, because now you KNOW what a rocky road publishing can be and you know not everyone will be supportive and kind.  You KNOW what an enormous investment of time, effort, tears, fears and hope writing a book is and now here you are, faced yet again with the blank page.
    

    It WILL roll down again...

The good news is you’ve done something almost no one else has (by which I mean published with a traditional press, I’m not talking about self-publishing here, which it seems anyone can do, regardless of actual talent).  You’ve seen a long difficult project through from first imagining to finished product, and it’s been good enough that people like your agent and your editor believed in you.  You’ve learned where some of the dangerous spots are on the trail, and you might be able to avoid them in the future.  Even if it’s been a hellishly hard road (and the reviews were bad! Ouch!) you’ve survived it.  You can do so again.  And if, by some miracle, none of the bad things have happened to you, you can count your lucky stars (and consider yourself forewarned for next time).

Keep writing!

I was in New Orleans recently, arriving shortly after the oil catastrophe (’spill’ is hardly an adequate word).  Even though officials said they didn’t know how bad the damage would be, every Louisianian I spoke to had little doubt, and the horror showed in their faces.  My heart breaks, as I’m sure yours does.  I am angry, as I’m sure you are.

Please read this request from Chief Arvol Looking Horse, 19th generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe of the Wolakota Nation, and join us in prayer.   Pass the message along.

An oil soaked bird struggles against the side of the HOS Iron Horse supply vessel at the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana. Photograph: Gerald Herbert/AP

My Relatives,

Time has come to speak to the hearts of our Nations and their Leaders. I ask you this from the bottom of my heart, to come together from the Spirit of your Nations in prayer.

We, from the heart of Turtle Island, have a great message for the World; we are guided to speak from all the White Animals showing their sacred color, which have been signs for us to pray for the sacred life of all things. As I am sending this message to you, many Animal Nations are being threatened, those that swim, those that crawl, those that fly, and the plant Nations, eventually all will be affect from the oil disaster in the Gulf.

The dangers we are faced with at this time are not of spirit. The catastrophe that has happened with the oil spill which looks like the bleeding of Grandmother Earth, is made by human mistakes, mistakes that we cannot afford to continue to make.

I asked, as Spiritual Leaders, that we join together, united in prayer with the whole of our Global Communities. My concern is these serious issues will continue to worsen, as a domino effect that our Ancestors have warned us of in their Prophecies.

I know in my heart there are millions of people that feel our united prayers for the sake of our Grandmother Earth are long overdue. I believe we as Spiritual people must gather ourselves and focus our thoughts and prayers to allow the healing of the many wounds that have been inflicted on the Earth. As we honor the Cycle of Life, let us call for Prayer circles globally to assist in healing Grandmother Earth (our Unc’I Maka).

We ask for prayers that the oil spill, this bleeding, will stop. That the winds stay calm to assist in the work. Pray for the people to be guided in repairing this mistake, and that we may also seek to live in harmony, as we make the choice to change the destructive path we are on.

As we pray, we will fully understand that we are all connected. And that what we create can have lasting effects on all life.

So let us unite spiritually, All Nations, All Faiths, One Prayer. Along with this immediate effort, I also ask to please remember June 21st, World Peace and Prayer Day/Honoring Sacred Sites day. Whether it is a natural site, a temple, a church, a synagogue or just your own sacred space, let us make a prayer for all life, for good decision making by our Nations, for our children’s future and well-being, and the generations to come.

Onipikte (that we shall live),
Chief Arvol Looking Horse
19th generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe

If you read this blog even occasionally, you know how ambivalent I am about social networking.  I do it mostly because it’s part of my job, to be honest.  It’s not that I don’t want to hear from readers — on the contrary, hearing from readers is one of the things I LOVE about being a writer — but rather because my natural resting state is in solitude, quiet solitude, and somehow all these tweets and posts and so forth seem so…well…distracting and LOUD. I often wonder, to be truthful, if the people reading this blog, or connecting with me on Facebook and so forth, are actual readers.  How many of you/them buy my books and read them, and how many are just scuffling round the web?

However, every once in a while something lovely happens.  On Facebook recently I noticed the name of an old friend from high school on the page of another friend.  Huh, I thought, Neil Ornstein.  Well, well.  Now Neil, and I hope he won’t mind my saying this, was one of those kids in school who was so smart and so talented that he rather intimidated me — truth be told, almost everyone did back then –  but he was so funny and with such natural kindness, that in spite of my ever-present feelings of inferiority, I enjoyed hanging out with him. What a pleasure it is to see he’s still making this SPLENDID art.  You really should visit his website and take a look.  He’s good.

Public peepers

Re-connecting with the talented Neil Ornstein, however, puts me in a quandary.  I’ve been distressed by recent reports of Facebook’s ideas on privacy, and have been wondering whether it’s time to get out.  And apparently I’m not the only person thinking about this. I don’t like what Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerman has to say about privacy.  Apparently he doesn’t believe it’s a social norm any longer.

Really? I sort of feel as though I should get off Facebook as a protest to that statement, if for no other reason.

We NEED privacy, people.  According to Jan Holvast’s paper, The History of Privacy (available in THE FUTURE OF IDENTITY IN THE INFORMATION SOCIETY, edited by Vashek Matyáš, Simone Fischer-Hubner, and Daniel Cvrcek,) wherein he quotes Alan Westin’s study, Privacy and Freedom, we need privacy for these reasons:

The first is the need for personal autonomy, which is vital to the development of individuality and the consciousness of individual choice in anyone’s life. Privacy is equally important as it supports normal psychological functioning, stable interpersonal relationship and personal development.  Privacy is the basis for the development of individuality.

In the second place we need privacy as a form of emotional release.  Life generates such strong tensions for the individual that both physical and psychological health demand periods of privacy. It supports healthy functioning by providing needed opportunities to relax, to be one’s self, to escape the stresses of daily life, and to express anger, frustration, grief, or other strong emotion without fear of repercussion or ridicule.  The consequence for denying opportunities for privacy can be severe, ranging from increased tension and improvident expression to suicide and mental collapse.

A third function is that of self-evaluation and decision making.  Each individual needs to integrate his experiences into a meaningful pattern and to exert his individuality on events. Solitude and the opportunity for reflection are essential for creativity.  Individuals need space and time in which to process the information which is coming to them in an enormous amount. Privacy allows the individual the opportunity to consider alternatives and consequences and to act as consistently and appropriately as possible.

A fourth function is for a limited and protected communication, which is particularly vital in urban life and crowded environments and continuous physical and psychological confrontations.  The value of privacy recognizes that individuals require opportunities to share confidences with their family, friends, and close associates.

In short, privacy is creating opportunities for humans to be themselves and to stay stable as a person.

If you are a writer, or someone otherwise involved in creative pursuits, who spends more time on the public aspect of publishing, say, than the private activity of actually writing, you would do well to read over that sentence:  Solitude and the opportunity for reflection are essential for creativity. And yes, although Margaret Atwood seems, for the moment, to have a shockingly active Twitter life, I suspect she may be doing research for her next book, don’t you?

So many of us, me included, seem rather addicted to Facebook/Twitter and so forth these days.  Can we go back?  Can we find another way to build professional profiles, to network, even to connect with old friends, without feeling like we’re living in a glass house with no curtains?

And then, too, I wonder how truly revealing any of this is?  For most of these sites, unless one chooses to be truly self-revelatory, truly intimate with someone, it all seems quite superficial.  I know My Best Beloved sometimes asks me if I’m comfortable with how much of myself I reveal, for example, on this blog.  But the truth is I’m quite careful about what I reveal; there is always that temenos, that sacred private space which I keep to myself.  It may SEEM as though I bare all, but I don’t actually.

So, have I decided to pack it in and pull up my Facebook welcome mat?  No, not yet, but I’m thinking about it.  I’d love to hear your thoughts.