because i needed letters of recommendation for my application to Naropa, I sent my boss, who also writes, a copy of the story i’ve been submitting around, at his request for a writing sample. involving my boss in my writing was something i really really did not want to do. i didn’t send him the full story, because the punchline wasn’t exactly “work appropriate,” and even if he wouldn’t hold anything against me, it’s better that i don’t let the more, let’s say, colorful aspects of my creative output influence how my manager views me. i’ve also found examples of his writing (he mostly writes poetry) and, diplomatically, he and i don’t exactly share artistic sensibilities. as a result, i have no idea how to take his feedback seriously. is some of what he commented useful? sure, i’ll admit that. being an artist requires that i take an objective view of my work, which means sometimes admitting that someone you disagree with might have a valuable perspective on what does and doesn’t work, what is and isn’t effective, what might be “awkward” or “distracting.” but i can’t yet make changes based on the notes he’s left, because i’m still cringing over the fact that i shared the story with him at all.
then there are other comments that i’m just like, okay shut up. i don’t care about this. these details might be obfuscating or distracting to you, but they’re important to what i think the story is up to. also you can’t just say “show don’t tell”: that seems like you don’t know what else to say about something that doesn’t work for you. it’s one of those pieces of writing advice where the essence is useful, but it’s so endlessly repeated that it itself is the kind of hackneyed phrasing that the advice is supposed to work against.
anyway, once the discomfort about the whole thing wears off i’m sure the advice will help improve the story. i recognize that a quality that separates pretenders from true artists is the ability to take criticism and work with it: i’m not so egotistical to believe someone who i don’t share sensibilities with would have nothing of value to say.
in a bit here i’m going up to the used bookstore with a stack of books i’m trading in for credit. my shelves are overstuffed, because i steal books from the donation bin at the library i work at. some of the best books i have came through that donation bin: i have a copy of the Sefer Yetzirah, Gary Webb’s Dark Alliance, a paperback Library of America edition of Leaves of Grass, McLuhan’s Understanding Media, the full Moncrieff translation of Remebrance of Things Past, a complete Shakespeare and a complete Plato, among many others, all donated to the library. And before you get all uppity about me stealing books from the library, these all were either going to be sold by the Friends of the Library for between .25 and $3.00, or else would have been shipped off to some service that they sell books to by the pound. though you can judge me for the fact that most of the books i’m taking to the used bookstore for trade credit were also swiped from the Friends of the Library, so that I can leverage them into better books for my own collection. i’ll report what if anything i end up buying at the used bookstore.
finished a story draft that i know very well is going to need a lot of reworking but i have to put it away for at least two weeks before i can think about what to do with it. it’s a mess, but there are a lot of things i like about it, and i’m trying to be okay with not knowing exactly what the fuck is going on with it. today after the bookstore I’m going to get a beer and work on a different story that’s hopefully just sort of fun and easy for me to get through; i’m feeling right now that i need to aim just a little lower than i tend to in the interest of getting stories finished and practice plotting/story/description/character, before i dive back into the unwieldy mess that is the novel i’m trying to get written.
i’ll finish the rest of this after i go to the bookstore.
ok so I didn’t write this afternoon and i’m not really writing more here because the day didn’t exactly go how i hoped and i maybe drank un poco demasiado mucho pero not that much but enough to make it hard to have sex and that’s not something i’d usually divulge here but that’s the spirit of this project and such a confession makes up for me shorting this post and skipping yesterday’s.
i bought a selection of charles olson’s writings and the savage detectives by roberto bolaño with my trade credit.
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