The Writing Spider

    I confess, Dear Reader, that I am a writing group reject. Yes, I have been unceremoniously booted forth from a writing workshop led by an eeevil dictator. It didn’t start that way…but the honeymoon was short. We were together nearly a year and we had some good times. It was a messy sordid affair.

     Occasionally, I email my favorite creative writing professor from my MA program and ask if there is anybody in his classes he could set me up with to get a group together. The only time he said yes was to point me toward a man we’ll call Joe but to whom I privately refer as “Captain Crazyman.” Our first meeting was dinner at a favorite restaurant and we talked about writing. He seemed interesting and said he had a group of five or six people he was getting together for a writing workshop. They were a group of talented writers and I was excited to join them.    

     Things went sour quickly. The first few months I found I truly disliked his writing. Also, he would IM me at work with odes to my breasts and once said he loved me. He knew I was married, but persisted in throwing lavish compliments my way. I was more interested in getting to the business of writing. I deflected his faux woo and tried to focus on literary pursuits.

    Over time in the writing group, he became dictatorial, chastizing and admonishing behind their backs those who he felt were not up to his standards, praising my efforts within the group. He had invited my friend C to come to meetings which she did, but when she could not keep up with his rigorous demands for commentary and critique, he dropped her out of the group.  Others were threatened with the same.

     On a personal note, he was invited with C to come to my birthday party that year and proceeded to frighten the guests with his belligerence, obscure references to history and literature, and intrusive opinions on such things as the military. When he met a woman he married a few months later, he insisted that he and I were such good friends that my husband and I should meet her and share our opinion. He dominated the evening with inappropriate comments on their sex life, rude comments toward me and Husband, and more obscure references that none at the table understood. I was getting more unhappy with this “friendship.” 

     (Also, he ends his name with “Esquire.” He is neither an attorney nor a gentleman. According to wikipedia, here’s what the term means: Esquire (abbreviated Esq.) is a term denoting social status. Within the U.S., its use as a postnominal honorific is to indicate licensed attorneys. The term carries little social distinction today outside of the United States. The term is British in origin. Ultimately deriving from the medieval squires who assisted knights, the term came to be used automatically by men of gentle birth. The social rank of Esquire is that above gentleman.)

    Though I enjoyed some of the work from other  writing group participants, I found Joe’s writing boring and bad. Critiques of his work provoked him to loud defensiveness and belligerence, yet he insisted we mark up the paper as much as possible. He wrote impossibly long chapters of a complicated militaristic spaceship novel that drew on his history in the military and love of the sci-fi genre. I love sci-fi, too, but this was nearly unreadable. HIs behavior in the meetings and out was off-putting. I was coming home from our monthly meetings unhappy and resistant, where other writing workshops have energized me.

    The end was swift and ridiculous. I had submitted a piece to the workshop, providing the caveat that this was a first draft and not ready for line-editing or deep analysis. “Please just look at the bigger picture right now,” I wrote in my email. “I need to fix the plot before I can work on the spelling!”

    Joe sent it back to me a few days later, having used Word’s track changes feature. I am not exaggerating when I say that almost every line of the 12 page story had something that had been commented on. There were no more margins left, having been used for comments such as, “This name clearly refers to the Byzantine pope who was responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent Muslims. Reconsider this character’s name.”  Comments pointed to obscure references or focused on exactly what I had requested they all ignore.  He wanted to use this “as an example of how people should be marking up others’ manuscripts,” he said.

     Actually, he wrote a three page treatise on why this is how the group should mark up work, and the various shortcomings of the other group members in this department.

    I said no. I said no, you cannot show this to the group. This isn’t what I wanted, this isn’t right, and it’s my work so I get to say how it’s used.

    Things got ugly and in a series of emails. He insisted that since it was his group, he should be able to do whatever he liked and it was only through this example that we would all gain the benefit of his wisdom. He pitched a grand old hissy fit which ended in “See you in the funny papers.” I was subsequently bumped off the group listserv and have not seen or heard from a single member of the group since.

    Wha happened???  I don’t know, really, considering I was a strong member of the group. I was a published author, had an MA with a creative writing focus, and read everyone’s work every time we met - I can’t say that for all involved. I’m certainly better off without him in my life, and what good was it to be forced to read his drivel month after month?

    I’m still looking for a good writing group.

    I recently discovered that I am highly (annoyingly) allergic to fragrance. That means I had to go find new shampoo, body wash, shaving cream, hair goo, deodorant, laundry soap, lotion, lip balm, and makeup in order to continue with the state of hygiene to which I (and Husband) have become accustomed. (You probably don’t realize this, but fragrance is everything. I threw out about $50 worth of lipstick alone.) If I perchance use some hand soap fortified with fragrance, well… I itch from my nose to my collarbone plus a spot on each wrist. It’s incredibly uncomfortable and rather looks as though I have an enormous hickey just south of my jawbone. I prefer not to risk it and I’m going totally fragrance free from now on.

     I started my search for new fragrance free stuff at Target. Good old Target. Love Target. I found everything pretty quickly, but they let me down in the shampoo/conditioner department. At my Target, you can only get one kind of fragrance-free (not lightly scented, not scented for sensitive skin, not full of masking fragrance) shampoo and that is California Baby’s super-sensitive formula. Which is $8 for 8.5 oz. That is some damn expensive shampoo.

     The bottle has all kinds of lovely earthy feel-goody things on it about how the women who make it are mothers and want the best for their babies and for the planet. It’s biodegradable, made of natural ingredients that I can pronounce and have heard of. I thought I was making a good choice.

     The results, Gentle Reader, were disastrous. I hate that baby shampoos do not lather. The first real problem is this: my normally shiny thick hair felt as though I had smeared a pound of Crisco into my follicles, so dull and heavy were they. No amount of rinsing could help. No change in the amount provided relief and I am now stuck with $18 worth of shampoo I will never use.

     I wrote the company, sure to start out by saying I love their company’s ethic on sustainability and producing a good product, but alas, that I was not happy with my purchase and could they please let mek know if this is normal for the product to illicit such a response.

    That was six weeks ago and nary a word. No “Thanks for trying our product, sorry it didn’t work out, have some lotion.” Nothing. I find that very bad customer service and I hated the product to boot. Tell all your baby friends to stay away from California Babies. I say, California Baby, you suck.

     I loved doing projects in grade school. The ones that involved some kind of diorama were my favorites and my least favorites were anything involving public speaking like in eighth grade when I delivered my presentation on President Eisenhower in my friend’s dad’s army dress jacket and hat.

     In my school, Our Lady of Perpetual Hellish Misery*, we starting doing science fair projects in the fourth grade. My first project was with Jennifer and we did something about blood and platelets because her mom was a nurse and could get us the real thing for the project. I don’t really remember what our deal was…but we made play-doh cells and platelets and put them in real petrie dishes and had vials of blood carefully mounted on our presentation board. In the fifth grade, Susan and I did lungs and lung cancer and our project featured used air filters from a local bar procured from my father, an air filter salesman. High ‘ick’ factor there. By eighth grade I was flying solo and pulling tablecloths off fully set tables as an example of inertia.

     I was also a big fan of food in my projects. Didn’t always go over so well. Mrs. Howard** was my junior high science and history teacher at Our Lady of Perpetual Hellish Misery. She assigned a project on planets and somehow I got stuck with Pluto (which is now a plutoid and that sounds like something one might expel from one’s lungs when one has a very bad sinus infection). I thought it would be so cool to build a Pluto out of blue ice creams with maybe some of those edible silver ball thingies.***  Pluto, in case you didn’t know, is made of three layers - silicate and water ice, water ice, and frozen nitrogen. How cool, I thought, because I could make this tri-layer ice cream bombe and then after my presentation we could have a snack.

     I pitched my idea to Mrs. Howard who gave me the look she always gave me whenever I spoke, only slightly more intensely - as if I had lobsters crawling forth from my nostrils, waving their saline antenne as they clattered to the floor.

     She shot me down without even so much as an explanation for why or a “That’s really creative, but…” The modern education system tends to beat the creativity out of all of us.

     Sophomore year in high school I built a parthenon out of cake, complete with tubular pirouette cookies for columns. I gave my whole parthenon presentation then passed out the forks. I offered my teacher Mrs. J her piece and she declined politely saying, ”I’m diabetic.”

     Oops. (I got an A, though.)

     I think one of my very favorite projects was our Indian project in fifth grade. We drew tribe names out of a hat and I wanted something cool like the Hopis or Aztecs, but I got the Aleutians. They turned out to be a really cool bunch, living on the islands off the coast of Alaska in these crazy underground homes in the winter and the women washed their hair in pee the night before their weddings. Apparently, they also dunked their babies in the cold ocean if they cried. That’s my kind of discipline.

     I built this ridiculously intricate model of the underground living quarters. I had dried play-doh meat curing on toothpick pegs, a notched twig serving as the ladder down into the room, Hawaiian Tropic Barbie with the Pacific Islander/Inuit features and black hair standing in for an Aleutian woman. This thing was off the hizzook. It took three days to build and I burned the fingerprints off my left hand with a hot glue gun in the process. Heaven.

    Nowdays, my projects entail vile tools such as PowerPoints and stupid slide shows. Honestly, I’d rather just make you a diorama of the bottom line.

*Names have been changed to protect the guilty and stupid. 

**Name has not been changed because this woman hated me and I think teachers who actively hate their students should be pointed out to other people as examples of What Not To Do In Life.

   ***Dragees, I believe they are called.

I’m terminating the 100 words bit on this blog. From now on, I will just write some stuff. Period. Semi colon.

I think I’m stuck. I am having real serious trouble changing my habits. I don’t feel I’m making good use of my time. I’m not getting much done. One thing I hate more than anything is wasting time.

Let me ’splain.

I’m having to DRAG myself to the gym these days and half the time I talk myself out of it completely. I used to be Ms. Good Gym Going Person - 4 times a week at least.  I’m not writing regularly - as you can see here, I haven’t posted in several days.

I get up, I work, I come home, I putter around the house a little, make dinner, catch up on email (because I can’t do it at work since the fascist pigs are watching and blocking anything remotely useful), read, talk to Husband when he gets home, go to bed. Rinse. Repeat. Sometimes I garden. Sometimes I visit with friends. Honestly with gas what it is, I feel like driving around is too much of a luxury right now.

I am overcome with restlessness and unfocus.

I guess I’m getting some things done. The garden looks nice. I get myself to work and stuff. And maybe my problem is the tension between what I WANT to do versus what I think I should be doing versus what I’m afraid to do because I might fail. (Like, write or try to Get Really Buff.)

My overall feeling is that time is running out and if I don’t get in shape/write a book/DO SOMETHING FOR GOD’S SAKE well…I might never get to.

So I think I mentioned that I started a novel. And telling people that has helped because then I have to tell them what it’s about, I have to think about how I want to describe it to potential readers and therefore how to tell the story.

The thing that has surprised me the most? The complete and utter faith that complete strangers have in my writing. Granted, it doesn’t cost them a thing to toss out encouraging words, and most of the time, I’ll never see them again so what’s the harm? But nobody has to say those things. Nobody would notice if they didn’t say nice things.

Take exhibit a: A woman I met on a work trip to Victoria, BC, Canada. I spent roughly four days around her in the workshop we were both attending. We had lunch together a few times, and spent a little time getting to know each other. I had mentioned my writing to her at a dinner one night and we didn’t talk much about it at the time. We were saying good bye at the end of the last day of the workshop and she said, “I can’t wait to read your book. I know it’s going to be good.” I demurred, waving her compliment away with a fluttering hand. “No, I know it will be,” she said with so much confidence and quiet assurance all I could think of to say was, “Thank you. I will send you a copy.”

Exhibit B: A woman in the grocery store. Turns out she’s a nurse from Tennessee visiting her daughter. I told her I was a writer and she immediately wanted my email. I was so taken aback I gave it to her. She said, “I can tell. You’re going to be a famous writer.”

I KNOW this is nonsense, but I just noticed how wonderful it feels to hear such things from people who have no real vested interest in me or my work. My dream, dare I say it, is that I somehow project an air of writerliness and confidence such that they all just assume I’m more a writer than I think I am.

So I should get to work writing that famous book, eh?

My sister lives with my parents right now. We are all big animal lovers so I wasn’t surprised when, last year, the beloved family dog passed away and to ease the unbearable sadness, they all went to a breeder and bought a Labradoodle. (Which sounds like a toy you get from Mattel…”It’s a science experiment AND an art studio! Turn your little Einsteins into Picassos with LABRADOODLE!”) Well, they went back to the breeder this week and got…

wait for it…

a one-eyed Morkie. A Morkie is a cross between a Yorkie and a Maltese. This one in particular was doomed to most certain death when the breeder’s various compatriots said he’d ruin his reputation if people knew he was breeding one-eyed puppies. I’m not sure how my family found out about the vision-impaired pooch but leave it to them (well, us…I’d have done the same if I was in the market for a dog) to bring her home and love her to death. My sister had all sorts of signs that pointed to GET THE ONE EYED DOG which I won’t go into here, but trust me, you’d have gone to get the one-eyed Morkie, too.

She isinsanely adorable. She’s very small, black and brown and likes to sit between your feet. The Labradoodle is slowly getting used to her, although I suspect she feels like the older sibling who desperately wants a playmate in her new baby sister but is disappointed that said baby can’t play until she gets bigger.

I suggested they call her Mindy. Mindy the Morkie. Or Pirate. But they chose Lucy which is cute.

I just say the word “Morkie” and I have to snicker.

This is something I remember.

In the sixth grade, it was very popular for those of us girls who wanted to be Babysitters to take the Red Cross Babysitter Certification class. This entailed a few Saturdays spent at the Red Cross learning first aid, how to call poison control, how to hold a baby, and other such valuable lessons, at the end of which you earned a card to put in your wallet and show any parent who might be considering your services.  The class was held in a large teaching room at the downtown Red Cross, and the fifteen or so of us in the class didn’t even come close to filling it up.

Occasionally, when we came in, there would be stuff left over from another class - diagrams of CPR procedures, for example. One rainy Saturday though, we found our class had a new member. Choking Charlie, the Heimlich Maneuver practice dummy. Choking Charlie was a full-sized man torso and head, face contorted into an eternal breathless choke. He had no arms or legs. You could unsnap a panel on his chest to reveal a bunch of rubbery organs. (He also didn’t have any clothes, but I suspect you’d be more interested in your choking than your clothes, if you were a victim of an uncut up hot dog or a grape, both common choking hazards.)

Charlie’s primary function was to help people learn to do the life-saving Heimlich properly. This was achieved with the aid of a rubbery ball which was lodged in Charlie’s mouth and attached to a filament line that would save the Maneuverist a trip across the room by restraining said ball. Somehow, when we got hold of Charlie the ball had become untethered and had also become rather gnarled such that it looked like a small dusty meatball.

We placed our small girl arms around Charlie’s limbless torso, jerked in and up as we were told, and watched in wonder as the meatwad shot with astonishing force across the room. Ahh, so that’s how it works, we thought. During a break, giggling, we took turns clumsily wielding Charlie’s poor torso around, shooting the meatwad at each other. A particularly good shot fwapped off a girl’s shin. Another zoomed perilously close to another’s ear.

The teacher finally broke up the hysterics, pushing the rubbery wad back into Charlie’s craw and stuck him in the back of the room where he sat in silent choke for the rest of the class. We never saw him again. While I have not had the opportunity to practice my skills learned with Choking Charlie, I’m sure that if you are ever in need, I could perform admirably. Just make sure you’re not choking on a meatball. 

Stuff to drink out of: A coffee mug that reads “ARE YOU A GOOD BITCH…OR A BAD BITCH?” and which I cannot bring myself to take into work. A Derby glass. An empty Diet Caffeine Free Coke can.

The paper goods: An Amazon label I printed out to send something back that was a gift I already have. An AT&T magazine that I saved with the idea that I will someday write to the editor and ask if I can freelance for him, but really I am just using it as a coaster for the BITCH mug because I’m too chicken to ask the about freelancing. Also, I Have a box of note cards from which I took one this morning to write a note to my friend who gave me a purse she found at a yard sale that was just the absolute perfect thing ever, not because it’s a purse but because it reminded me of some things of which I desperately needed to be reminded. A package of red Chinese envelopes adorned with brilliant goldfish in gold and orange foil which I will use for a little feng shui later. Two packages of momiji note cards. A copy of a magazine in which I have an article. A pad of round orange post it notes. A tiny pink pad with my name on the top. Some printouts I don’t remember why I kept.

Everything else: A handheld fan I took to a wedding on Sunday that was well-used because it was so effing hot. My digital camera which I forgot to bring to aforementioned wedding. Two pens, one from a jewelry store downtown run by large men with pendants the size of hubcaps (one of them actually IS a hubcap) who give the best service of any jewelry store I know. Also, my PC speakers and the monitor.

I read PostSecret’s site every Sunday. It’s a little voyeuristic, I think, but we’re all a little bit Peeping Tom, aren’t we? Sometimes the secrets are funny, some are touching. But some make me really really upset. Secrets where someone is hurting someone else are very sad. The ones that are most upsetting are the ones about people hurting animals. A few months ago, a woman posted a secret that she was giving her cat antifreeze or something justso she could go see the cute vet. Today, a woman posted that when she felt the urge to stuff her face, she stuffs her dog’s face instead. I don’t understand the impulse to hurt animals in this way. Are they so selfish that a cat’s existence is just a means to a date with a vet? I can’t even wrap my mind around it.

I have the same reaction to people hurting kids but people don’t put secrets about hurting kids up on PostSecret. (Well…maybe Frank weeds them out or something.) A few months ago there was a spate of stories on CNN about various child abuses and I had to stop reading CNN for a while. Now I just avoid those stories. But at PostSecret, if someone mentioned hurting a child I suspect they’d be turned in to the police. But somehow it’s ok to post that you’re abusing animals.

PostSecret is supposed to be a cathartic non-judgemental way of sharing your secrets. There’s a catch about secrets though. You want to let them out because sometimes they’re just hanging around inside you, chewing on your insides. It makes you feel better to let them out but then they are hanging around whoever hears them, chewing at them instead. So when I read some of those secrets, I feel like the person must feel better but the trade-off is that the readers feel worse. 

I don’t really know where I’m going with this. I started writing and this stuff just kind of came out. Maybe my lesson here is that I need to stop reading CNN and PostSecret.