SHUT UP!: Advice for New Writers

So what do I have to report? I get pulled back and forth – or in several directions, at least – between setting up a cleanly organized, professional-looking blog (and they DO impress me sometimes) and the scrapbookish/bulletin-board-like mess I choose to keep. It is tenderly attended to and fed regularly, which I always think is the best/main thing about a blog. There is nothing worse than eagerly following a link, and finding out the last post is dated 2011.

But I always read these strident exhortations (mainly on Facebook) to never do the things I regularly do, i. e. have inconsistencies in it, stray from the (single) topic, and (gasp, horrors) use different fonts! One “how-to” article even listed specific fonts one must NEVER use, and most of them were fonts I use all the time. I use different fonts because I love different fonts. I match the font to the tone of the article. Why not? Am I selling widgets or am I selling chunks of my soul?

Most of my posts get fewer than 20 views, and I only have 39 followers, pathetic really, in fact I think it's the worst I've ever seen for a long-running blog, but I have to stop and think what it would take to get more views. Homogenize. Emphasize publicizing the novel (a lot) harder. (OR NOT! See below.) Even at that, it wouldn’t work because good luck doesn’t stick to me. My stuff is always obscure, but it HAS to resonate and express my own world view/soul. 

One would think, OK then,  it’s patently obvious that you need to follow your own path and forget about everyone else. Right, and lose money on all my novels and disappoint my publishers because I don’t know the secret handshake! Funny how things that applied in your childhood drag on and on throughout your life, haunting you. An outsider then, an outsider now, largely because I wouldn’t or couldn’t conform. I always thought (naive me) that publicity should pull potential readers toward the product, rather than push the product aggressively up their nose and down their throat.

I wish I didn’t have to do any of this at all. I am at the point in my life where I don’t need to be told I’m good. I know I’m good, and there is no ego in that. Why would I be wasting my time and energy, not to mention the time and energy of publishers and potential readers, if I was no damn good? But being good, even damn good, isn’t the issue here. If deep in prehistory the storyteller sat alone by the fireside with no one to hear his or her story, humanity might still be writing with a sharp stick dipped in a little pile of dog shit.

Lately I keep finding articles that exhort writers to stop doing certain things – the most recent one being, pushing yourself on potential readers via the internet. The title even contains the words SHUT UP!, a message to all writers who indulge in such blatant prostitution.  The article blasts the idea at us that if you want to sell the first novel (and I hear this over and over again now, as if it’s an anodyne against all evils in the writing field), then JUST WRITE THE NEXT ONE. They don’t explain how, or why, that undertaking will suddenly/magically burst open the barriers on the first novel and send it leaping up the bestseller list.

The subtext seems to be “you publicity whore, why do you even CARE how many copies you sell?” Either that, or once you stop caring about it, success will automatically drop into your lap, one of those New Age beliefs where you just have to wish on a star to get what you want. (The subtext here is that good writing will automatically find an audience, just because it's good. It amazes me how many people believe that.) Then comes the kicker – always – that the writer of the article used the internet copiously to sell her first book, because, though that was allowed back in 2006, you can’t do it any more because it is no longer 2006. It just makes you look desperate and like a know-nothing. 

Then comes even more of a kicker, the revelation that she already has several bestsellers out – likely some sort of homogenized series about dragons and witches, probably having sex with each other – and is much sought after for writers’ events, where “really, I have no control over how much awe they feel for me as they seat me at the head of the table”. Seriously – not a trace of irony in the whole thing. 

But here’s the kicker to the kicker: I went on this author’s Facebook page, and NEVER have I seen more sickeningly aggressive hype for her next book. Splat, splat, splat, splat, post after post after post slapping you in the face.  But hey – SHE gets to do this because she is already a bestselling author! I know if anyone even notices this post, they are likely to say something like, "belt up and quit being jealous," and /or  "just follow your heart, it won’t make any difference anyway”. (Or, assuming this is a wide-open call for advice rather than an expression of frustration, tell me just what I am doing wrong.)  But to avoid being caught up in this, to not care at all how you are rated (and everything and everyone is rated now in the most callous manner possible) is nearly impossible unless you wear blinders and ear plugs. We all must swim in the waters in which we are forced to live.

"You had me at hello"

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Gershwin is a time traveller

Gershwin is a time traveller - you can see him out of the corner of your eye. He did not die in the normal sense of the word, because he did not know where he was. He was in a very high fever and dying all alone in a hospital room after failed brain surgery. When he left his body, he experienced extreme disorientation and for quite a while did not realize he was dead. This meant that a light, loose Gershwin-shaped energy field still moved about the world, and lit up whenever his music was played (which was almost all the time). After a very long time, though it was a mere moment in eternity, he began to realize who and how he actually was, that he was no longer in a body and would have to exist in a very different form. Being a soul sojourner from the beginning, this was not a threat but an adventure to him. But even in spite of this necessary metamorphosis, to a remarkable degree, he retained a George Gershwin shape. No matter what sort of problems he was having in his life, and he had many that we don't know anything about, there was a ferocious static-charged supernatural pumped boost of energy that somehow kept on connecting people with each other when he was around. But ironically, in spite of his sacred mission to join people joyously,in his life he had many struggles with intimacy, which led to a loneliness even as he was the most popular man in the room. During this strange leaving-his-body-and-not-being-sure-where-he-was period, he began to have extraordinary insight into not just his own condition, but the human condition. GG's emotional affect and his emotions seemed curiously light, but there was a galaxy of melancholy within that he did not show to too many people. The stars in that galaxy exploded out of his fingers and his brain and were made manifest as notes of music on the page. Though he lived at a hurtling pace few people could equal, little did he know that he was absorbing all of humanity's travails, gaining an understanding of suffering that would not be fully realized until he found himself in a different form outside his body. It would have been unbearably painful, had his life (as he knew it) not been over, a blessed cessation of all earthly pain. When a soul or entity gains this sort of awareness, mysterious alchemy takes place because the need here on earth for that level of understanding is so dire. Those pained and anguished places in that broken thing we call the human condition began to draw and attract this generous, gentle, deeply broken spirit. There was Gershwin dust in the room sifting down like stardust, particularly when there was music playing. And there was music playing a lot. Someone, not keeping up their guard, felt something strange or warm and not quite familiar in the room, yet also hauntingly familiar. Someone else thought they saw him for a second, or someone that looked like him. There was in some subconscious way a powerful sense that a healing was beginning to happen. As the entity begins to heal, so it heals itself. George's brain gave way, the most disturbing way to die, so that he was basically humbled by losing the genius brain he was celebrated for. Stripped of that, even of that, all that was left was his essence. How can I say how this happens? How can I be sure that George Gershwin is a time traveller and an entity who is basically free to move about within time and space wherever and whenever he wishes?

BLOGGER'S NOTE. Since writing this, one of the first passages I ever wrote about Gershwin and my sense of close contact with him, I found a number of other writings that made my scalp prickle. It does make me wonder: does he have the capacity to move back and forth between worlds, or has he decided to stay in this one, wandering around as curiously and restlessly as he did in life?

Below are a couple of quotes from the many (many, many) books on George. It seems he does appear to people, including his own sad, bereaved brother/writing partner, Ira. It's too bad he could not have enjoyed the return more, sad that he was so terrified at George's friendly, unspectral return.  I feel George as the most gorgeous, the most glorious presence, but at the same time soft, tender - really, quite indescribable, the most beautiful of vibes stealing into the room.

My George experience was completely derailed when everything I wrote was shot down by a so-called friend, a spiritualist medium who has decided to set up his own little fiefdom and call himself God. To be honest, it came out he never read any of the things I sent him, but was still certain that it was all bogus. This was also true when he dismissed my first complete novel as "a zany soap opera" (having never read THAT either). But it's lonely when you have an experience like this. Though I know it's not "craziness" and that George's presence in my mind and heart is a gift, it would be nice to be able to share it with someone who "gets" it.

“George even passed the most acid of tests for great leadership by remaining a presence to his followers even after he’d left the planet. Ann ‘Willow Weep for Me’ Ronell told me some half century after his death that she still ‘saw’ Gershwin regularly in the crowds of the Upper West Side, looking as if he’d just walked out the door. And on that same day, Burton ‘How About You’ Lane testified to an even more precise epiphany. Lane had recently been to a concert of Gershwin’s newly-refurbished piano rolls being played on a baby grand pianola in a pool of spotlight. And as the notes began to go mechanically down and up, ‘There was George for a moment,’ he exclaimed, ‘playing away. I almost passed out.’”

- The House that George Built, Wilfrid Shed

"As Ira grew older, he became not less but more obsessed with George. When he was in his eighties, Michael Feinstein, who had become something of a surrogate son to him, heard him talking to George in his sleep. These were, according to Feinstein, 'lengthy conversations' that were 'often filled with anger, centering around Ira's desire not to stay here on earth and George's insistence that he stay.' Just before Ira's death in 1983, he revealed to Feinstein in a hushed voice something he had never told anyone else. Shortly after George's passing, he had looked into his brother's workroom upstairs at 1019 North Roxbury and seen him 'sitting on the sofa, smiling and nodding to me. It terrified me. I wasn't drinking. I wasn't drunk. But I saw him.'"

- George Gershwin, An Intimate Portrait, Walter Rimler

Games you can Play with your Pussy: some pretty bad book covers

"You had me at hello"

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

The lips don't cut it

Spielberg Gets A Hero For Gershwin Flick

2/01/2010 2:00 PM ET | Filed under: Film Flickers • Zachary Quinto • Steven Spielberg



An interesting choice!

Steven Spielberg is reportedly starting work on a new bio-flick based on the life of composer George Gershwin. Slated to play the legendary piano man is Zachary Quinto. Steven and Dreamworks are so excited about the Heroes hunk coming on board that they have supplied him with accent and dialogue coaches to help him prepare to begin filming in April.

What an opportunity Zach! Guess it wasn't such a hard decision to hang up the pointed ears to take this role!

This has been kicking around the internet for some time now, about five years, and I am not sure what happened to the movie, whether it was ever made or not. My first reaction was that Zach is not very good George material. George was nervous, insecure, ingratiating, dazzling, enigmatic, charismatic, masterful, dreamy, extremely hyper, and knew he was a genius as surely as Beethoven knew (I mean, as Beethoven knew Gershwin was a genius). Zach is hella sexy and has melting brown eyes, and the brow is impressive, but the mouth? George's hallmark was the mouth, the pouty, bratty, sensuous lips that rendered his photo portraits so breathtaking. Strangely, it is very hard to find any shots of George smiling. Nor are there even many recordings, and almost NO film footage except a few ratty-tatty endpapers of home movies.

I said a long time ago that I thought Gershwin was a time traveller. It's weird he left so little permanent trace, except for thousands of portrait photos, many of them similar. Not even a newsreel, George? Only a minute and a half of I Got Rhythm? And what about recordings? By 1937, sound quality was quite good, a quantum leap beyond what it had been when he started out in that alley where they pounded on tin. Any studio would do back-flips to record Gershwin, wouldn't they? Instead, all we have are a handful of scratchy 78s played far too fast because they had to fit 15 minutes of music on a 9-minute side. And dying at 38 - what's THAT all about? Having a big hunk of junk in his brain that nobody knew about, then expiring in a hospital bed, completely alone. The whole thing is hella strange.

Staccato-tom-catto: Gershwin plays the Rhapsody

'Shwin playing 'Shwin. One can easily hear the way the piece has drifted and evolved. I love the "laughing clarinet" at the beginning. A lot of those sassy "wah-wah-wah"s have been toned down too much in recent recordings, I think. This is a smart-ass/kick-ass piece of music that reminds me of those frenetic old silent cartoons. We have a much more polished and sophisticated Rhapsody now, I think, but we've also lost something. Joa-jj's playing is frenetic and has a sort of hoppity-boppity style you don't hear now. There's some really interesting rubato touches. He kind of jerks the tempo around, toys with it like an all-powerful god, which he is. Overall, he's much more staccato-tom-catto than the rest of them Sometimes he just plays like he's in a saloon. (A genius can do that.) And OH how I wish they hadn't had to edit it to fit on one side of a record!

Rhapsody in black-and-white

"You had me at hello"

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

This shouldn't be on a blog. ANY blog.

What slang words have this meaning?

The definitions of these slang words appear below the list.

axe wound – badly wrapped kebab – bald man in a boat – bang hole – bat cave – bean – bearded clam – bearded oyster – beav – beaver –beefcurtain – beef curtain – beef flap – birth cannon – blue waffle – box – bread – buju – camel's foot – camel toe – candy – chach – cha cha –cherry – chocha – cho-cho – chonch – choot – clit – clown hole – clunge – cock – cock pocket – cock socket – coo – cooch – coochie – cookie –coosie – cooter – cuder – cunny – cunt – cunt hole – cunt punt – cutty – cut up – 'c' word – fanny – fish taco – flange – front bottom – fuck hole –fur burger – fur pie – gap – gash – growler – hair burger – hair pie – hairy axe wound – ham flap – ham wallet – hatchet wound – hooded lady –hoo-hoo – hot pocket – ill na-na – incision – jute – kitty – kooch – kooter – kuder – lip – love cave – love taco – lunchmeat – mangina –man in the boat – man in the boat, the – meat curtains – meat flap – meatwallet – meat wallet – minge – moose knuckle – muff – muffin – na-na –nappy dugout – neden – ninja foot – nookie – open wound – pink – pink canoe – pink sausage wallet – pink taco – pink velvet sausage wallet –piss flaps – pookie – poon – poonaner – poonani – poontang – poon tang pie – pootang – poo tang – pooter – pootie tang – prison purse –promised land, the – punani – punanni – puss – pussy – putang – pu-tang – quif – quiff – quim – quivering mound of love pudding – roast beef –roast beef curtains – slit – smush mitten – snatch – snizz – soggy box – sprained vagina – tampon tunnel – tang – trim – tunnel of love – twat –twitchet – V – vadge – vag – vagine – vagoo – vajayjay – va-jay-jay – vajizzle – vertical smile – whisker biscuit – whispering eye – wizard sleeve –woo – woogit – wugget – wuss

Gershwin eating something

P-p-p-p-p-protein! 1977 Purina Cat Chow TV commercial

Fifty Shades of George

(from The Memory of All That: The Life of George Gershwin by Joan Peyser)