Decatur Book Festival - Part II

Yesterday was a whirlwind, a full day that felt even busier and more inspiring than Saturday. I hopped from event to event while still making time to wander the exhibition booths again. I love the chance connections I made with people and the insights gained by paying attention to the writers on the stage and from simply people-watching. Both Saturday and yesterday I called my friend Mary to talk briefly, because last year, my first DBF, she came over from South Carolina and introduced me to the wonder that is the Decatur Book Festival. It was great to have a DBF-experienced friend along, and we discussed what we saw and what we learned. But this year she couldn't make it, and I realized I like the festival just as much when I go it alone. There may even be perks to going alone, even though I love company. Mary (who had been to DBF solo before) and I both agreed that as wonderful as a companion may be, there are just some ways in which having time to contemplate, people-watch, and let the fates guide you, without worrying about another person, is better. I'm very grateful for the time I got to spend in the wonderful city of Decatur at the largest independent book festival in the country.

• First of all, my still-recovering-from-a-cold body overslept and I had to rush out the door with the pbj sandwich lovingly made by my husband so I could get to my first session on time. I was a few minutes late, but they let me in anyway! The first event was at my beloved Eddie's Attic, "A Celebration of Short Fiction." The guest writers were Alix Ohlin, talking about her short story collection Signs and Wonders, and Adam Prince, author of The Beautiful Wishes of Ugly Men. Wyatt Williams moderated, guiding their conversation from the themes in their own work to what's different about writing a short story (and collecting them) and writing a novel. I wish I could write down everything they said, but here are a few snippets:

Alix: The short story is like a playground, it's a moment of crisis or intrigue or mystery in the characters' lives, and you can really stretch the techniques of fiction in a short story in ways you can't easily sustain in a novel.
Adam: You can dwell inside a novel--it's its own world. A short story is a moment. A short story is a form that because of size restrictions creates its own tension.
Alix: A book has a life of its own once it leaves the author's hands & is sent out into the public. The readers' interpretations, reactions, are separate from the author's control, aesthetic, etc. in working on the stories.
Adam: The stuff that surprises you [as you're writing] is often the best stuff.
Alix: Once the voice is right in a story, it's like "lift-off," the story achieves a feeling of buoyancy as you write. Often if the story is not coming along well, she'll work with different voices until she gets that lift-off.
Adam: Details in a story are there because of who the character is--the details are what the character will notice, not just what the author thinks would be interesting.
Alix: Personally, it's difficult to set a page-per-day goal for the daily writing life, but having a set time at the same time each day helps even when the writing's slim or shoddy some days. At least you're not sitting around saying you'll write "when the inspiration strikes."
Adam: On the days when the creative highs flag, get in there, and feel bitchy, and keep writing!

• Next I attended a seminar on "Portraying the Natural South through Photography and Writing," featuring Janisse Ray author, Wayne Morgan photographer, and Charles Seabrook author. "Humans have an innate love of trees, water, and grass. Artistic expression is one of the key ways to connect urban citizens with nature again." Mr. Seabrook grew up near the salt marshes along the coast of Georgia, which have been threatened by commercial activity, and now as a writer he's spent his life trying to "make the salt marsh sexy." He said if we feel strongly, passionately, about the ecological subject we write about or photograph, that love will come through to the reader/viewer. Wayne Morgan photographs remote stretches of the Satilla River, which he grew up fishing. He began taking pictures shortly after he was given a pacemaker at the age of 35 and realized he needed to do something for the river in the precious time he had left. Often finding trash along the river from hikers and fishers, he'd clean it up before taking photos, but recently he started taking pictures of the trash before cleaning it up, to show our impact on the natural places around us. Janisse Ray spoke about her role as both an artist and an activist. She said that more important than activism is action, doing something yourself and in your own community, above and beyond working to change or influence leaders & legislators, which is important too. She read a quote that said essentially, "Obligation comes out of relationship," and if art helps create and nurture a relationship between people and their natural surroundings, then they will naturally want to help take care of it.

• After that session, I wandered the booths and ran across a local small press I'd found online a while back, liked, then let it slip my mind. They're Universal Table / Wising Up Press, and they're based in Decatur. I talked to one of the co-founders, Charles Brockett, about how they find their writers and what kind of work they publish. He talked about their mission and outlook of fostering empathetic narrative conversations over sticky social issues, how they publish highly credentialed writers as well as first-time-published authors from all over the world. I bought a book of short stories from them, said goodbye, and proceeded to my next session on "The Importance of the Small Press," at the Old Courthouse, where I ran into Charles on the stairs. Turns out he and his wife/co-founder Heather Tosteson were on the panel along with Bill Boling of Fall Line Press, and Bruce Covey of Coconut Poetry. They talked about how small presses can foster community, find niche audiences more effectively, and reinvent the distribution of literature. To these small press mavericks, it's about passion rather than economics. As Mr. Boling humorously put it, "We're not the Dippin Dots of the book world," but I really appreciate the hard work they do for little or no payoff, all to champion great writing and art.

From L-R: moderator Jared Dawson, Bill Boling, Heather Tosteson, Charles Brockett, and Bruce Covey

• Gail Tsukiyama was next, talking about her novel A Hundred Flowers. Hearing her was a delight since she spoke a lot about her writing process and challenges. Echoing Alix Ohlin earlier in the day, Gail said that finding the right voice in a novel is crucial to getting the story right. For A Hundred Flowers, she rewrote the first 100 pages four times and couldn't get it right. She finally found the right voice and the novel took off. This idea of finding the right voice for the story or novel is something I admit I haven't consciously considered as I'm drafting. When I get stuck, I tend to try to plow through, hoping a breakthrough will come, but now I'm going to try playing with the voice. Maybe switch from third person to first (or vice-versa), maybe switch the main voice from one character to another, maybe give the writing a lighter tone or a more sarcastic tone. Play is the key idea. Gail said, "If you think you're going to write anything, it never turns out that way." She often discovers what she's writing as she goes along, in a two-steps-forward-one-step-back kind of way, going back to revise the previous day's work, then carrying on from there. She advised writers to write what you feel over what you know. She has written several historical novels set in the China and Japan of her parents' ancestries, as a way for her to understand where she came from. "Every book is written for a reason," she said when someone asked her which of her novels is her favorite. "You write a book because you needed to learn something you could only learn in the writing of it."

• Finally, back at the Old Courthouse, I sat in on Austin Kleon's talk "Steal Like an Artist," based on his book of the same name. He read some from it, talked about originality and creativity, and took lots of questions from the audience--even though he was almost hoarse from a bad cold he was still getting over. Cheers Austin! Here are a few highlights from his talk: Embrace influence instead of running away from it. We can trace the genealogy of our ideas--what we make is a mash-up of our influences. Climb the family tree of your influences by picking one writer or thinker you love, studying everything of theirs, then study their top influences likewise. It's in the act of doing things and making things that we find out who we are. In imitating and failing to perfectly imitate our heroes, we find our unique voice. You have to start doing the work you want to be doing.

I highly recommend finding a book festival in your area and attending. They're usually free, and I didn't go the first year I found out about it because I was afraid to go alone, but they're usually filled with kind bookish people and kindred spirits. Nothing to lose! If there's not a book festival in your area, consider starting one. You don't have to be anybody special to start a book festival, just start talking to people in your area. Contact libraries, independent bookstores, writers clubs and get the conversation going. Google "how to start a book festival" and see what you can learn.

As I walked to my car yesterday evening, I passed the exhibitors taking down their booths, white tents flapping vacantly in the early stirrings of a thunderstorm. Their signs were gone, their tables were empty or emptying. In my waking hours this morning, I imagined the grounds of the festival as a kind of castle, an enchanted domain that appeared magically this weekend and has disappeared until this time next year. As I said Saturday, the fates guided me throughout the weekend, and the fates were very good to me. Thank you, Decatur Book Festival!

considering recognition

I take issue with something I said in my last post. I've been thinking about it ever since I re-read it right after publishing:

"...this kind of recognition from a journal like Glimmer Train bolsters my legitimacy..."

I think I let the excitement get to my head a little bit. Perhaps the nod bolsters my legitimacy in the eyes of other publishers. But I don't believe, nor do I want to propagate the idea that outside recognition (i.e. awards, publication, record deals, etc.) gives legitimacy to a person's writing (or any creative work). Lord knows plenty of men and women never received that recognition in their lifetime and yet we view their work as some of the most "legitimate" forms of art enduring today.

However, it is affirming that I'm on the right track. That's all--an affirmation of what I already knew I wanted to devote my life to. I'm grateful, excited, but not a better writer than I was before I got an honorable mention. Ha! Thanks for letting me vent.

the art of getting out of the way

Every year the company my husband works for takes all their employees and spouses on an annual conference. So I get to go along, help behind the scenes, and attend sessions where well-known leaders, researchers, and entrepreneurs from all over the world teach on their area of business expertise. I don't usually expect to get much out of the sessions. I'm not a business person, and most of the time business jargon irritates me.

This year, though, at the last session on the last day, they managed to inspire me.

We came back from a break to see the local philharmonic orchestra arranged on the stage in the center of the conference room. The conductor, with a nice fluffy head of gray hair, stepped to the podium and led the orchestra in the first movement of a piece. Then he stopped and addressed the audience. He drew parallels between leading an organization and leading an orchestra. He showed examples of bad conducting--bad leadership--where the orchestra played out-of-sync, or played without luster, or played too stiffly.

The message: get out of your own way.

It's not a perfect analogy, but a good conductor, a good leader, a good artist, gets out of his or her own way. Out of the way of the musicians, employees, characters, images. Let them make mistakes. Let them be cumbersome at times. Let them rise through autonomy to their own glory.

I can't impose my ideas on my stories, or I will stifle them. A conductor can't dictate every mood and phrase of the orchestra sections, or the musicians will lose the life they bring to the piece. A manager can't have her finger in every pot or she'll exhaust herself and keep her employees from becoming self-motivated. I need to let my characters teach me who they are, I need to let the images come to mean what they mean rather than what I think they should mean. A good conductor trusts his musicians, treats them as professionals, and works in a symbiotic way with them. Get the ego out of the way and let the process become collaborative.

At the end, the conductor picked a man from the audience and invited this admittedly non-musical businessman to the podium. The man took the baton, and, guided by the conductor's own hand, led the orchestra through the contemplative, sweet second movement--conducting the right way. Whenever the camera projected the man's face on the big screens, a collection of nervous giggles rose from the audience. Because right there in plain sight was the stricken awe of someone experiencing something beautiful. His face--eyes half-closed, lips parted, head slightly tilted--displayed the flickerings of tenderness, humility, transcendence, joy, that many of us only allow ourselves to feel privately when listening to music or watching the sunrise or standing at the edge of a canyon. As soon as he heard the murmurs, he straightened his face into a more professional composition. But before long, he lost himself in the music until the camera cut to him again.

When they finished the movement, the conductor gave the man the mic and asked him to describe the experience. I forget exactly what he said, but he was clearly trying hard to come up with the right words for such an inexpressible moment, probably unprecedented in his life. He finally said something about the connection he felt with the musicians, the sense of creating something together that was greater than the sum of them. He used the word "poetic."

It seems the business world is waking up to the fact that there's an artist inside us all. And the best thing to do is get out of the way, trust the process, and let the music rise.

where does your inspiration come from?

As a writer, I'm always looking for inspiration for my next story: news stories, friends' stories, overheard conversations, dreams, family stories, "what if" questions. I get a lot of ideas, and a lot of ideas get shelved. But I've never been inspired the same way twice - I can't look for inspiration to come the way it came before. Each story I've written began from a unique, unexpected seed.

One story stands out in particular, a story inspired from my incurable people-watching. I can clearly trace it to the moment in time when I thought, "I want to write a story about that." Now, probably five years later, it is "The Yellow Pantsuit," the title story of my thesis:

About five years ago, around this time of year, I sat in a sandwich cafe with my husband for lunch one Saturday - the kind of upscale fast-food cafe that's intentionally plopped in the middle of a busy shopping district. Lots of wealthier people shop there. We were just there for the food.

Anyway, I watched an older couple enter the store and order their lunch. Their demeanor toward each other and everybody else struck me as telling. They were aloof, entitled - yet domestically aloof with each other, by which I assumed they'd been together a long time.

The husband - a tall, thin, elegant man - sat down at a table as far away from other patrons as possible, while the wife - short, round, and ostentatious - ordered at the counter. She brought their food to the table and did all the talking, serious and curt, while he did a lot of staring out the window. All of a sudden, she began to choke on her sandwich, and he seemed unfazed. Not a hint of surprise, or concern - he didn't move fast to do anything for her. He eventually held her hand and continued eating and looking out the window while she sputtered and coughed and turned shades of red. After a few minutes, she recovered on her own and continued her monologue, both of them acting like nothing at all had happened.

Their behavior was so surprising to me, so fascinating, that I couldn't forget it. I began writing by imagining myself in the husband's place. What was going through his mind while he stared out the window and pretty much ignored his wife and everyone else? What does he think of his wife? What did he think of her when they met, and why has that changed? The story has gone through several revisions, but it began and remains as his inner monologue while he watches his wife order and eat and talk and choke and talk again. It's my advisor's favorite story, and it was a lot of fun to imagine and write and revise, which is a rare gift in my experience.

I'm always curious about the genesis of other people's creative ideas - whether it's writing, web design, photography, sewing, music, etc. In what ways do creative ideas occur to you? What do you do to foster and watch and listen for inspiration?

writer's block--

You try to write every day--you take off work so you can really focus on writing, and the most you get all day is one new paragraph. 


You've written for a month-and-a-half and produced six drafts, some a page, some five or six pages, none of which feels right. 


You realize you have no idea what you're doing. 


Some people call this writer's block, but there's got to be a better term for it. 

From my own experience (see above), writer's block is synonymous with self-condemnation, a crisis of confidence. And it doesn't apply only to writers... Artists. Musicians. Parents. Designers. Entrepreneurs. Teachers. Plumbers. Mentors. Someone going through a "mid-life" crisis. We look at what we've done and see that it doesn't amount to what we want from ourselves. So we try again, and when that doesn't work we begin to doubt who we are or what we do.

I don't have the be-all, end-all remedy, but I can tell you what helped me. I stopped striving and had faith. I took Ira Glass' words to heart.

“What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. . . .

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. . . . 

It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile.”

Listen to yourself: do you really care about making what you do matter? Do you care about making it great? Then you've got what it takes. Every person on this earth has the spark of a creator within them, somewhere between their heart and mind. Whatever it is you do. You are an artist, or have the capacity to be.

One thing that fosters artistry is child-like curiosity. Wonder. Coming at a project from every angle. What gets in the way of artistry? Striving--trying, grudging, contending. Instead of letting the inner spark ignite and swinging the doors wide open to let the winds of imagination fan it into flame. Which takes repeated, regular practice.

Once I got through those six drafts that weren't going anywhere, I tried a seventh. I don't think I could have gotten to the seventh without the first six dead-end drafts. But I stopped trying to write the story I thought would be good to write. I allowed my imagination to illuminate a path I couldn't have conjured and the road kept opening up before me. A little at a time, just a couple of footsteps ahead, but the flame was living, it was breathing, and I was following.

copyright Sarah Shaffer 2011