My Unintentional Evolution To Unique Artist

 

Me at the Walt Whitman Exhibit at New York Public Library, NYC 

When I was in elementary school at P.S. 53, either third or fourth grade, my teacher asked us to analyze the Harry Chapin song, "Flowers are Red."  These were the days before the Internet, and I didn't even ask my parents to help.  Actually, I thought I would have no problem figuring out the meaning of this simple song, so I just read it and analyzed it the way I was sure Chapin meant it.  I forget exactly what I wrote, but I said that the color red symbolizes something, and the color green symbolizes something else, etc.  After the assignments were graded, our teacher presented two essays to the class.  One essay was the correct interpretation of the song, and the other was the one that she said she wanted to show us because it was so creative and unique.  Mine was the creative essay, and I was embarrassed when the teacher read it to the class because I felt like a failure.  I wish I still had that essay today, but I threw it away after class because I didn't want to remember that feeling of not being able to comprehend the assignment the way everyone else was able to.  

At 18, I was a songwriting student at Berklee College of Music, and I resisted following the advice of my teachers who taught us formulas to use while writing. I had already studied piano since I was 6, so I just took to the keys and composed my own way.   At the time, I thought my songs were great.  In total, I have written nearly 100 songs and recorded at least half of these, all between the ages of 16 and 21.  However, years later, when I listened to a CD of several of them, I noticed how similar many of them sound to each other.  Although I utilized different key signatures, I often used the same chord progressions. Still, I think they are catchy. They are sometimes melodic, sometimes dissonant, and they don't sound like anybody else's. I like my art to be unique.  My songs sound like me: upbeat with singing that is slightly off-key. During that same period, I worked at Tower Records in Boston.  One day, a coworker of mine told me about the rock band he just joined, and as he explained their typical "rock band of the moment" style to me, I had a revelation.  Why even bother putting in the work with the band when they weren't creating anything new?  It made no sense to me to make the effort when his band was just going to sound like everybody else's.

In my early twenties, I shifted from writing songs to writing stories because I felt confined by the songwriting format.  I believed the music was more important than the lyrics in songwriting so I focused more on the music, and that made the words of my songs take a backseat.  In turn,  I felt a need to express more and more of my thoughts, but I didn't want wordy songs. My other dilemma was that I couldn't stop rhyming!  The same problem happened in my Women's Writer's Workshop when I wrote rhyming poetry.  My teacher told me people aren't rhyming that much anymore.  Walt Whitman had the opposite problem in his day as the first non-rhyming poet.  He got rejected by publishers and had to publish "Leaves of Grass," his masterpiece, on his own.  That's also what writers who wanted to do something different did in the past: writers like Virginia Woolf and Anais Nin.  Writers still do it today which brings me to mention the independent publishing company, New Pop Lit, run by the very unique and talented writer and publisher, Karl Wenclas.  

New Pop Lit is doing what I've always strived to do which is to create and publish a new type of writing.  Why not invent something new? They keep it clear and relatable.  They don't just mimic what everyone else is doing.  Just like how the MFA creative writing programs grind out identical writers, Berklee can grind out identical songwriters which wasn't the songwriter I wanted to be.  I am proud to have my writing featured in two of New Pop Lit's zeens: "Zeenith" and "Literary Fan Magazine." New Pop Lit's zeens redefine the Literary Journal.  They are "technicolor literary journals" and feature really cool artwork as prominently as their stories, articles, novel excerpts, and poetry. They make literary journals fun to read. They bring uniqueness back to the writing business.  Because what is the point of spending all this time writing if you're just going to sound like everybody else?

You can find unique, original and talented writers and artists featured at NewPopLit.Com and purchase their zeens at NewPopLit.Com/Shop/.

Bingeing Bourdain

Photo by John Reardon from article on theguardian.com

Last month, we celebrated "Bourdain Day" to honor Anthony Bourdain - the former chef, writer, and star of the TV shows "No Reservations" and "Parts Unknown." In these two series, he traveled to different parts of the world to have meals with the locals, or sometimes he brought a friend or fellow chef with him to eat in different restaurants. June 25th was chosen as Bourdain Day by his friends and fans because that was his birthday.  Tragically, June is also the month he took his own life last year, however, the motto for Bourdain Day is "Get out and live," and I think that's a better way to remember him.

Last summer, I binge-watched "Parts Unknown," so this summer I decided to binge-watch "No Reservations."  I watch his shows to escape. I'm not traveling this summer so I like to see all the faraway places he goes to. Many are around oceans and have vacation vibes to them. But he also visits poverty-stricken places and never hesitates to sit down for a meal at a family's home and eat the same things they do. I enjoy listening to his monologues during the shows. He explains each place's history and his own feelings about how the meals taste and how the people treat him and each other.

Bourdain was definitely a storyteller. He philosophized about life. I particularly enjoyed the Vietnam episode of "No Reservations" where he spoke about the desire to move there for a year to write his own novel. I think a big part of the allure of his shows for me is that I like people who write. I like and relate to people who can tell stories.

My only criticism about his shows is his obsession with eating meat. He constantly talked about wanting to eat meat, and we'd have to watch him eat meat, and sometimes we even had to sit through watching the locals trap pigs and other animals so they could slaughter them, all while Bourdain observed and told us about it. As a person who doesn't eat land animals at all, I hate these segments.  But actually, for meat-eaters, I think it's essential that they show the entire procedure that goes into eating meat so people can learn. Otherwise, they are just cooking and eating the packages of plastic-wrapped red squiggles that they pick up at the supermarket. Even though Bourdain ate so much meat, at least he saw first hand how the animals were killed rather than how the usual meat-eater just turns a blind eye and doesn't want to think about the fact that it is an animal they are eating as opposed to a cooked red squiggle.  I'm not a vegan (although I wish I were), and I still eat fish. My reasoning is that I can handle watching people catch fish and then cooking them so I'm being realistic about where my food comes from.

In addition to eating tons of meat on these shows, Bourdain also eats fruits, vegetables, noodles, and desserts. Oh, and if you happen to binge-watch his shows, notice how many times he mentions eating "sea urchins." He seems to eat sea urchins in about every other episode!

So this summer, I'm again living vicariously through Bourdain's travels and meals. It's devastating that even though he traveled the world and seemed to have a job he really loved, he still couldn't get over his depression. It got me thinking: Even though I love how much of a realist Bourdain was, maybe too much reality isn't good?  Considering how he left us, it seems it wasn't good for him.  Sometimes we need to turn that blind eye - like the meat-eaters do during dinner - in order to survive.  Escaping is good for us. Or more accurately, it's necessary.

IMDB.Com

With President Barack Obama (Vox.Com)

The One Thing Every Fiction Writer Needs

Keri Russell as Jenna in "Waitress" movie written by Adrienne Shelly

"The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say." - Anais Nin


It amazes me how some writers are able to muster up the courage to write about troubling and controversial feelings that most people won't even admit to, much less write about. Sometimes I'll read a writer's story and wonder: What did her mom think (and say to her) after she read this? I have definitely written my novels and stories from my heart, but I know that I haven't written entirely from my mind. I don't write everything I'm thinking, and I hold back for fear of what others will think about me after they've read me.

When I saw the movie "Waitress," I was blown away by how deep and honest the dialogue was. The screenplay was written by Adrienne Shelly who also directed and acted in the film. Tragically, she was murdered at the age of forty shortly before the film was released. The film is about a young woman's feelings about her unborn baby while pregnant. Shelly was also a mom whose young daughter was only two and a half years old at the time of her death.

Jenna is the lead character in "Waitress," and she is a compulsive baker of delicious pies. I use the term "compulsive" because she can't stop herself from baking them whenever she needs to release her emotions. She names the pies according to what she's feeling while she bakes. One pie is named "Baby Screaming Its Head Off in the Middle of the Night and Ruining My Life Pie" which is a good example of the unsettling feelings she's having during her pregnancy.



Jenna isn't happy about being pregnant at all, and she definitively says so to anyone who asks. But she feels a sense of obligation to have her baby. When her doctor tries to assure her not to be nervous during her first sonogram because it is normal to be nervous, she surprises him by telling him that she isn't nervous about her baby at all. Noticing how unenthusiastic Jenna is about her pregnancy, one of her friends gives her a notebook to write letters to her unborn baby, hoping this will summon up some feelings of warmth in Jenna. These letters are read throughout the movie, but instead of helping Jenna feel more bonded to her unborn child, she writes letters telling her baby how much she resents her. Later, when she has to pay for the crib, she writes the baby a letter telling her that the money she spent on her crib was supposed to be her money to get out of town and start a new life. She writes that now every time she puts her baby down in her crib, she's going to blame her for the fact that she had to pay for this crib and, in turn, couldn't start a new life. Once her baby is born though, Jenna immediately falls in love with her.  Shelly poured her entire heart out in the screenplay, and if any of these feelings and thoughts were actually Shelly's during her own pregnancy, it took an amazing amount of courage and self-examination to write these down for the script.

Amy Koppelman - writer of novel "I Smile Back"-  and Sarah Silverman who starred as "Laney" in the movie

Another writer who is incredibly brave is Amy Koppelman. In her novel, "I Smile Back," she writes about a wealthy mother who feels so much pressure to lead the perfect life of a suburban mom that it causes her to break down and secretly live recklessly by using drugs and having sex with strangers. Again, not autobiographical, but it was written as an exaggeration to show how a woman often struggles trying to live life in the role of a happy and well-adjusted suburban mom. Koppelman, who is also a suburban mom, has stated in interviews that all of her novels contain at least something of herself and her life. Koppleman's book takes courage to have out there because no writer would want anyone to believe that the things Laney does and says are in any way autobiographical. Readers often believe that at least SOME of a novelist's protagonist's thoughts and actions come directly from the writer's own psyche and experiences. It took a lot of courage to write so uninhibited and to take the chance that anyone would think Koppelman felt Laney's feelings or worse did the things she does in "I Smile Back." There is one scene where she masturbates with her son's stuffed animal and another where she tells a stranger she just met in a bar to lick her ass during a sexual encounter. Laney acts out due to fear and depression which is explained in much of the dialogue in the movie: "I just don’t understand why anyone bothers to love anything at all. I mean by the time you’re three you’ve pretty much figured out that everything you love is going to be taken away." Laney doesn't see the point of being happy when there is so much misery in this world.

Quote re having a child said by Sarah Silverman starring as Laney in "I Smile Back" movie based on the novel by Amy Koppelman 

I feel that both Shelly and Koppelman have successfully and commendably completed works with a no-holds-barred approach. They have dug deep inside their souls and wrote about the feelings that all of us women have lurking somewhere inside but would never have the courage to admit, much less write about.  Again, not everything a fiction writer's protagonist says should be deemed autobiographical, but we do know that many literary giants have admitted to basing their novels' protagonists on themselves and that events in their plot lines were often true events.


I still have yet to conquer this fear of what others will think about me when they read my writing. This is a hurdle that every fiction writer needs to overcome in order to be truly great. Of course, the best way to write is as if nobody will ever read it, and then, once it's done, just release it and throw caution to the wind! We have to become fearless in writing, same as we need to take chances in all other facets of our lives. For women, this often gets easier with age. Most of us can only become truly radical once we are older. We have to risk being not liked. We have to risk not being dutiful and good. We have to deal with the verbal onslaught and mistrust that will ensue once we have gotten our writing out there. It's not the end of the world. I guess that's the only way to be brave enough to write EXACTLY what we are feeling and thinking and to never hold back in writing ever again. To realize that whatever happens after we've released our writing to the public, it will never be the end of the world.

Adrienne Shelly

I Choose Writing (Over Wine, Opiates, Laudanum...)

When I'm upset, if there is a choice between having a glass of wine or writing my thoughts down on paper, I'll always forgo the wine and instead find a pen to write my feelings down on paper. I've released my emotions through writing for many years now.  I call this habit "Therapeutic Writing." I just let all my words flow out in a stream of consciousness until my mind is finally less foggy.

As a teenager, this essential outpouring of feelings most often took the form of song lyrics, stories and poetry. But in my early twenties, I was given a gift of a blank journal with inspirational quotes on each page called a "Book of Days." At the same time, I'd been indulging in reading my first Diaries of Anais Nin. Inspired by Anais, I decided to write in my "Book of Days" daily, under each labeled day. By the end of the year, I filled the book up completely, even if some days only contained one sentence. I was amazed at how there was always SOMETHING I could come up with to write once I formed the habit of sitting down every day. I believe this is how I developed the "necessity" to write.

These days, therapeutic writing is no longer a conscious habit. Instead, it is now a sense of urgency where as soon as I feel emotional about something, I just HAVE to get it down onto paper. Even if it's on bits of scrap paper that I tear up afterwards, just the act of emptying my thoughts from my mind through my hand makes me feel so much better.

A coworker once told me that my emotions are all at the surface. I asked her if this was good or bad. She said it was good. She said it meant I was in touch with my emotions. I know that when I get upset, my thoughts are completely ruled by my emotions. Most of the time when I have a desperate need to write, I am either angry or very confused. Somehow, the act of writing my emotions down allows my brain to understand what I'm feeling. Even if I can't solve the problem, I do gain a sense of clarity, and I don't stop writing until the familiar feeling of relief comes over me. Suddenly, something that seemed insurmountable just minutes earlier has now become clear, and I'm finally calm. I am able to write down the facts of my situation and to identify the fears that are behind these emotions.

Speaking of coworkers, years ago, I noticed that two of my coworkers seemed constantly upset. They were very negative in general and always conflicted about decisions they had to make. So for Christmas, I gave both of them blank journals and told them about my very essential, daily writing habit. I suggested they write something in it every day, even if it's just a sentence, just so they can develop the habit. I explained that in no time, they will be able to use their journal as a mental medicine that will help them think clearly about what is positive in their lives and to identify their inner thoughts in order to enable them to make decisions. Sadly, I don't think either of them took me up on it. Maybe they needed an expert in the field to guide them and to confirm my beliefs about the benefits of therapeutic writing. I believe that the book I'm reading now, "Writing For Bliss," by Diana Raab, Ph.D. would have convinced them!

I met Dr. Raab through our devotion to Anais Nin because we both contributed writing pieces to Volume 13 of the Anais Nin Literary Journal "A Cafe In Space." Another thing we have in common is that both of us use the word "Bliss" in our titles! My first novel's title, "Bliss, Bliss, Bliss," is based on a quote that has the word "Bliss" in it several times and is from "The Early Diary of Anais Nin, Volume 4." Dr. Raab's new book is a great starting point to learn how to use writing to heal and to release the usual everyday tensions and stressors in a healthy way through writing rather than engaging in destructive outlets.

Dr. Raab describes the importance of journal writing in these quotes from "Writing For Bliss":


"A journal, diary, or notebook - whatever you choose to call it - can play many roles.  It can serve as a vehicle for self-expression, a tool for clarity, a repository for observations, and a container for thoughts.  A journal may also be a powerful tool for comfort during difficult times...Journal writing can be as calming and grounding as meditation is.  It can orientate you and stabilize your emotions."


I highly recommend Dr. Raab's step by step guide, "Writing For Bliss," which is extremely thorough and includes numerous exercises to get you in the habit of therapeutic writing. It is a good way to get real with yourself and to confront painful memories from the past. It helps you to learn to write from your heart, which is where the truth is, rather than from your mind. It also helps get you started on writing your own poetry and memoirs, if you've ever considered doing that.

Basically, I don't know what I would do if I didn't have writing to release my tensions and emotions. It's truly amazing how something so simple and cheap can heal so much!

It's Perfect To Be A Messy Novelist

"I want to be decadent. I want to eat hot dogs and write novels instead of perfect short stories."

I remember writing this in my early twenties. I was a brand new writer, and I desperately wanted to get published. I worked as a volunteer for a literary magazine where my job was to organize the writers and prepare them to read at launch parties the magazine threw when they released each new issue. I'd also offered to emcee the events because I knew the publisher's girlfriend hated doing it. I'd never seen anyone as thrilled as she when she got the news she was off the hook! But even though I was official Emcee and named in the masthead, I couldn't actually get my own stories in the magazine! Each time I submitted, all I got were encouraging words to try again. I was a creative writing student, following advice from my teachers, and couldn't understand what I was doing wrong! Finally, I showed my brother my short stories, and he suggested I try a more traditional literary magazine, as he felt this one was wildly experimental.  I could have searched further, but instead, I decided to take a break from writing short stories and began work on my first novel. The thrill of seeing my own story in a magazine would have to wait.

When I sit down to write a short story, I often wind up writing something similar to a chapter of a novel. This is because I enjoy writing longer works where I can spend more quality time with my characters. I long to explore their needs, desires and growth. My characters' personal progress and evolution over time are what propel my books forward. However, when I write a short story, it is my "idea" that is first and foremost. This is difficult because I have to constantly come up with amazing ideas. Ray Bradbury did this better and more frequently than any other fiction writer. It is beyond me how he wrote so many short stories and came up with so many brilliant ideas. His mind was constantly filled with greatness! But when it came to his most famous novel, "Fahrenheit 451," I wasn't as impressed, and I feel he was better at the short story form.



In short stories, every single word must be carefully chosen to move the story forward. For me, that makes writing short stories feel more like business than fun!  In my literary novels, I can go wild. l can play with words, and I get to hang out with my characters because the length permits me to do so. I can go off on tangents and know that even if these tangents remain in the final edit, readers won't mind because they are in it for the long haul. My former writing teacher said that short stories are expected to be read in one sitting, but novels are read chapter by chapter, night after night. This permits more wandering around since readers expect that they will be putting the book down, then picking it up again, over and over, as opposed to everything being wrapped up neatly at the end of their sitting.

Maybe novels are truer to life than short stories are. Life is messy. Words aren't always perfectly chosen or perfectly executed. It's possible that novelists are more accepting of imperfection than short story writers. This could explain why certain writers prefer one format over the other. I've never expected life to be perfect, or rather, I've learned over the years that it is impossible to be perfect. My house, my writing, my cooking, and all aspects of my life, will never be perfect. I know others disagree with me. They're constantly gritting their teeth, comparing themselves to others who they assume are perfect. It's a disaster if they burn their cooking or have a less than pristine house when guests come over. I'd related to that kind of thinking when I was younger and when I was involved in the writing community, writing short stories that I expected to get published upon completion. But when I got frustrated with my pile of rejection letters that was getting closer and closer to 100, I sat down and expanded my favorite short stories into a novel. A few years later, I did the same thing and wrote another novel. Then years after that, with two independently-published novels under my belt, I began work on my current novel. I don't know why, but I am enjoying the process of writing this novel more than I have any of my others. People ask me, "So are you nearly done? When are you going to publish it?" But I'm not even thinking of that. "Not yet," I tell them. Because right now, I'm having way too much fun.

I've given up hot dogs since my twenties, but I still gel with the idea of being "decadent" and writing novels. I'm not saying I'm unambitious. Of course, I want to get my latest novel published. I'm also working on a couple of short stories (which started out as flash fiction stories but, of course, are now extending into longer pieces of fiction which may branch out into novels one day too), and I do want to submit them and try to get them published. But I feel the main reason to ever write fiction is to enjoy the process and not just what results at the end. Maybe that's the way life should be lived too.

Finally - Dad. (Part 1)

I prefer to remember my dad the way he looked as a young man. The way he looked in the pictures I saw of him taken in the 1950's and 1960's. Not when I knew him when he had that wild, curly, 1970's hair that used to reach the roof of his car even though he was only 5'10." In the 1980's, he lost that 70's hair.  Not because of the cancer treatments he started in 1981 (oddly enough, he never lost his hair like the majority of patients do) but rather because the styles changed, just like the best things in life always do.

After he died in 1984, I took out his college graduation picture and made a conscious effort that any time I thought of him, I'd only think of how he looked in the 1950's and 1960's. Somehow, it made thinking about him less sad.

My father only walked this earth for 41 years, and I only knew him for about one decade of those if you count the years I was an old enough child to have a clear memory of him. A few decades later, he has become an almost mythical figure to me, and I have to rely a lot on what people older than I am can remember, and I'm always anxious to hear stories about him. Luckily, my relatives and his friends are always more than happy to share what they remember of him with me.

One of my favorites comes from my mother's first cousin, Carol. My mom is an only child who grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and every summer to escape the City, she and my grandmother spent the entire summer in Scranton, Pennsylvania, with her my grandmother's sister who is Carol's mom. My grandfather joined them on weekends. When my mom and dad became serious, she brought him along on one of the visits to meet Carol and her sister, Barbara, who were like sisters to her. Carol told me about the first time she "almost" met my dad. She said she went out to her country backyard to meet him where he had climbed a tree and was just sitting at the top it, enjoying the country air. She told me that when she spotted him all the way up there, she thought: "Well, I guess we're not going to be meeting him today."

Even though my father had what many people would consider a short life, he did a lot in those 41 years. He was a Language Arts teacher for 17 years at Prall Intermediate School, I.S.27, on Staten Island, New York, and he was also a singer and songwriter. He enjoyed teaching and often brought in his song lyrics to have his students analyze them as assignments.  One of the projects he had done in the late 1960's or early 1970's was an album based on Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" poetry book. Whitman was considered pretty "out there" for his day so he self-published and paid for "Leaves of Grass'" first edition and even did most of the typesetting. So basically, Whitman joins the ranks of today's indie writers like myself (or on my bad days, I choose to think of it this way). What my father did with Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" is kind of like what Kate Bush did years later when she wanted to use James Joyce's Molly Bloom monologue from his novel, "Ulysses," as lyrics for one of her new songs and wasn't granted permission. Instead, she wrote "The Sensual World"  and just changed the words, writing her own version of the original prose, keeping in line with the feeling of the words, which in the end is all that really matters - what feelings pieces of music bring to its listeners.  

After my father died, I went through every single loose leaf paper he had in his bedroom dresser drawer, and there were tons of them. It took me months to go through them all, but every weekend when my mom and brother were out with their respective friends, my 15 year old self grabbed another pile from his drawer, sat on my living room swivel chair in front of the TV, and read through every single word. When I read the lyrics based on Whitman's work, I hadn't yet read the original "Leaves of Grass" that they came from. As a grieving teen, I don't think I was really ready for it. It wouldn't have impacted me the way it did when I finally picked up the book several years later. When I read through "Leaves of Grass," I was amazed, and I could see what the appeal of the book was for my dad. It is a celebration of life. It was written for people who enjoy sitting at the top of trees all by themselves enjoying nature around them. I imagined my father reading Whitman in college and embracing his days as a young man, enjoying this earth while it was still his.

My father was a well-liked person because he accepted everyone as being the same as him. He felt a connection with others and with nature around him so I can easily understand his identifying with "Leaves of Grass." Below is an excerpt from Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" which is part of "Leaves of Grass":


“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you."


My dad wrote this song version of Whitman's "Song of Myself":

My dad wrote at least 9 songs based on "Leaves of Grass." Once I read the original book, I was happy it moved me as much as it moved him because there was now another reminder I could forever have of him because these reminders keep his memory alive to me on those days when I really miss him. My whole life has been a quest to recapture what I can remember of him. Whitman wrote:


“Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged. Missing me one place, search another. I stop somewhere waiting for you.” 

 
Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" is both a celebration of life and also a celebration of nature. He believed we should enjoy the little things in life and embrace the natural world that was given to us. His words are affirmation that every human being is connected to one another regardless of generation or even century of time.  He believed human life was carried on THROUGH nature because every generation walks the same green earth. He meant this figuratively AND literally, proclaiming that human beings once deceased eventually are "reborn" again through the growth of the grass beneath future generations' feet.  This passage below is simply beautiful and is one of my favorites from "Leaves of Grass": 


"What do you think has become of the young and old men? 
And what do you think has become of the women and children? 

They are alive and well somewhere, 
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, 
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the 
end to arrest it, 
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd. 

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, 
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.” 


That last line brings me comfort. I like to imagine my dad is in a happier place even though he can't be here physically with us. I know that I titled this blog entry "Part 1," and eventually I'll write a Part 2, but I have no idea when. Processing the loss of my dad has taken me a long time. In fact, it was not too long ago that I could finally display his school teacher picture in my house which is the picture I have that looks most like the way he looked during the years I knew him. So like I said, there will be a Part 2 one day. In the meantime, I, and hopefully now you, will celebrate Whitman.

Dad and Grandma in the 1970's

My Book Review Of Amy Koppelman's Latest Novel "Hesitation Wounds"

A couple of months ago, I spent the afternoon watching a new movie I'd known nothing about which was based on the novel "I Smile Back." Sarah Silverman played the lead role, and her performance, plus the script, completely drew me in.  I instantly became fascinated by the author of the book. This is how I discovered Amy Koppelman! My favorite authors are the ones who write in deceptively simple language about the everyday things we often overlook -- the tea kettle boiling; the wind chimes gently rocking in the breeze, etc. Yet underneath their simple words are the deepest, most potent, emotions few human beings have the guts to bring to the surface, let alone write about. My short list of these writers include diarist Anais Nin and novelist Banana Yoshimoto. They have been my favorites for years. I'm so excited to finally add a third writer to my club, and this is Amy Koppelman. Here is my book review of her latest novel, "Hesitation Wounds."

“Hesitation Wounds” is the story of Dr. Susanna Seliger who treats patients with severe depression by administering shock treatment therapy. For many years, she has shuffled through life by keeping herself closed off and ignoring her emotions which is why this work suits her. She doesn't believe in talk therapy and doesn't want her patients to confide in her. She just wants to buzz their feelings out of them. But everything changes when she treats Jim for whom the shock treatments don't seem to work. Talking to Jim takes her out of her shell and, in turn, forces her to face her grief over her brother, Daniel, who died when she and Daniel were both teens. “Hesitation Wounds” is mostly a dialog between Suze and her late brother. Many times, it reads like a letter to him. Throughout the book, Suze recounts moments from their life together. Many memories are pleasant. She recalls the summer when they hung outdoors with their friends, listening to the boom box, lying down and staring into the black city sky:

“It's the end of summer now. We are on our backs, arms and legs touching. We gaze at the moon. Margo thinks the moon is hanging especially low. It wants to shake your hand.”

But other times, the details of his tragic and somewhat reckless death creep through.

Her patient, Jim reminds her of Daniel. They both have similar builds and voices. Speaking of Jim elicits constant thoughts of death in her because he is suicidal. Just before he is about to receive another round of electric shock treatments which he has no faith will work, he asks her to tell him a story about what his life will be like six years from now. Koppelman's account through Suze of what a day in the life of a future, happily-adjusted, family man, Jim, will be like is beautiful and cinematic. It truly moved me, and I hope there will be a film version of “Hesitation Wounds” someday to see this passage unfold in pictures.

While most books depict grief by showing the event, having the mourner cry it out, completely traumatized, then describe them on the pathway to healing, Koppleman's portrayal of the grief experience is not like this.  Grieving is not interpreted as overblown and dramatic. It is simple and matter of fact. But it's the facts that people have the most trouble facing. Grief does not get better over time but rather you learn to function better. As Koppelman explains, every day you are reminded of the person you lost through the mundane things around you. She asks: “What would Dan think of cell phones?” This sentence hit home for me because my father died in 1984, and with every new technology that comes out, I'm reminded of him: “What would Dad think of laptops? Social media? The internet?” This is truly what grief is all about: Your thoughts on a daily basis. In Koppelman's stream-of-consciousness dialog to Daniel, she writes:

“Things I forgot to ask: I forgot to ask you why you didn't like egg in your fried rice...how it was we began eating potato chips with ketchup, who your favorite Beatle was...”

“Hesitation Wounds” reminds us that life is about the little things. Besides grief, it is about depression and the simpler things most of us take for granted but can cause a person suffering from depression to get completely bogged down by. Every movement, interaction and inner thought becomes a feat of near impossibility, leading to exhaustion. Suze's depression is primarily caused by many years of unresolved grief. Here is how Suze has learned to survive her crippling thoughts of grief:

“I turn away. Memory is like this for me now. I can turn away from it. I repeat this thought out loud, as if the mere act of saying it, like an incantation, will transform the idea into reality. And because it's true. I can do this now.”

She stops and adds:

“Most of the time.”

Because that's how you move forward from grief. You just choose to forget. You don't heal completely, but you learn to live.

To order Amy Koppelman's "Hesitation Wounds" go to 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25622463-hesitation-wounds

http://www.amazon.com/Hesitation-Wounds-Novel-Amy-Koppelman/dp/1468312189/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1456144245&sr=1-1&keywords=amy+koppelman+hesitation+wounds

My Love Letter To Writing

Yes, I'm in love with writing. I couldn't survive without it.  Flannery O'Connor once said: "I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say." That's exactly it. My mind is an emotional mess until I write my thoughts down. Afterwards, I feel better, less emotional, less confused, and I have an enormous sense of relief.

My mom was the first person to suggest I become a writer. I was 8 years old. It wasn't because she recognized talent in me, and it didn't stem from anything positive. It was because I was driving her insane with my phobia. There was a huge northeastern snowstorm that year, and I had read a news story about a boy who got buried in the snow in his yard and hadn't been found until a month later. The several feet tall snow drifts in our backyard hung around the entire winter, and I was terrified that the same thing would happen to me. I remembered every detail from that news story and kept on replaying it in my head: how the mailman found him because his mitten was sticking out from the snow; how the picture of the side of his house that looked like a barn had an "X" marked on it near the spot of the snow where he was found; how they used the word "vanished" in the article; and how everyone thought he was somewhere in the neighborhood, but he had been in the front yard all along. Every day I asked my mom if that was going to happen to me. She listened to me recount the details in the article for her, and one day, she finally said: "You should become a writer. There's got to be something positive you could do with all that misery stuck in your head!"

My mom's advice came in handy when I was 14.  My father was very sick, and my two best friends from school had turned against me.  I hated school and hated life and couldn't wait for the year to be over.  So I created a 30 year-old woman named Nazd to hang out with. She had long brown hair, brown eyes, wore a long, beige, raincoat and had her nails painted that neutral color you never see anymore.  We went everywhere together. My novel-to-be was simply titled "Nazd." As often as I could, I'd lock my bedroom door, put on Prince music, and write about Nazd with my same red pen on sheets of loose-leaf paper. Nazd was wise and said little.  She wasn't a chatterbox with her feelings always out on display.  She had all the answers. My world was falling apart, but I had Nazd as a shoulder to lean on.

In high school, I sat in the back of class and began a screenplay on tiny scraps of paper.  The action takes place in one day where a young woman sits in a dimly-lit Brooklyn apartment as an older man tells her about a doomed couple he knew years ago named Jimmy and Diana.  Jimmy often visited Diana in her Brooklyn brownstone, but her parents were against the relationship because they were wealthy, and Jimmy was poor. He was also heavily involved with drugs and eventually hanged himself. Diana was so distraught that she left home, left life, and became a bag lady on the street.  In the last scene, the woman leaves the dark apartment into the bright broad daylight and walks onto the street, crossing paths with a woman whose purse has fallen to the ground and opened up, exposing tons of junk.  She helps her, and when the woman looks up, she gives her a wide smile. She looks world-weary, but her smile is youthful.  She picks up her purse and walks away, leaving the main character to believe she has just bumped into the real Diana.

Luckily, as I wrote on my scraps during class, I had a knack for being tuned into whatever the lesson was about and was always able to quickly replay my teacher's question in my mind and answer it. I once read that creative people are unable to shut off the sounds going on around them.  I can be engrossed in a conversation at the diner but can still hear that one ring of the little bell from clear across the room signaling our food is ready which always fascinates whoever I'm eating with. 

But that's what makes writing even more necessary for me. I've trained myself over the years to now use writing to turn off all those extra sounds going on around me and instead to escape and break free from the rest of the world for a little while.  I figure that's okay, as long as I'm always able to come back and not be found one day sitting in a chair, muttering to myself, like Nicole Kidman playing Virginia Woolf in "The Hours" movie: The kids are pointing at her and laughing, and she's oblivious:  "Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself," she suddenly says out of nowhere. Mesmerized.

"Iggy" Novel Coming This Winter!

Iggy was bored so he moved to New York.  Before there was Felicity -- the lead character of my "Bliss, Bliss, Bliss" novel -- there was Iggy.  In fact, if there hadn't been an Iggy, there would have never been a Felicity.

When my best childhood friend, Ania, and I were teenagers, we loved taking the subway on Saturday afternoons to Greenwich Village in Manhattan. We saw people with dyed black or blue hair, mohawks, and black leather clothes with silver studs and safety pins on them when we went to the Village.  We shopped at the stores "Flip" and "Butterfly," which sold black leggings and punk clothing.  Butterfly also had jewelry and postcards.  It was a Bauhaus postcard that gave me the idea for Iggy's look.  That dyed black, punk hairstyle spiked up high, and black eyeliner always stayed in my mind.  That was a real punk.

Years later, while living in Canada, I enrolled in a Women's Writer's Workshop at the local college and wrote several short stories with female lead characters, but I never liked them.  They didn't speak for me, and I couldn't find a female voice I could relate to.  One night, while flipping the TV channels, I stumbled upon a 1970's movie starring Jon Voight called "The Odessa File."  Something about the mood of the scene captivated me.  It is about an American man living in Germany with his German go-go dancer girlfriend.  He spends many hours one evening reading a manuscript when his girlfriend suddenly enters the living room and says she's trying to get a taxi for work.  He says, "Don't I always take you?"  They both seem aloof and moody, and the scene just drew me in.  Suddenly, Iggy was born.

I immediately wrote a short story called "Iggy's Dailies."  It was about a moody male character who I put into a scene similar to that evening in Germany in "The Odessa File" movie, but I made him live in Greenwich Village, NYC. I remembered that Bauhaus postcard I'd seen in the punk shop those years ago. I made him look like that.  There was still the problem of what to name him.  I had such a hard time coming up with one, so I told myself that I was just going to look down at the magazines on my coffee table, and I'd choose the first name I looked at.  The first thing my eyes caught focus of was a tiny picture of Iggy Pop.  Iggy.  I couldn't come up with any other names, so I decided to just call him Iggy.

I brought "Iggy's Dailies" into my Women's Writer's Workshop.  They didn't like the title and told me it was not a "slice of life" story, as I'd called it. At the time, I took their word for it, but looking back, I think Iggy is a slice of life story.  It is a sample of Iggy's life.  It's him hanging around in his living room, reading his manuscript.  It's Iggy. Simply Iggy.  It's a depiction of Iggy's everyday reality.  The only difference between my novel and a typical "slice of life" story is that I developed Iggy's character.  He's not just a bit part in a story that's front and center. 

I took Iggy with me to my Novel Writing course and began writing Iggy in chapter form. Next semester, I took a Screenwriting class and adapted the first 10 pages of my Iggy novel-in-progress as a screenplay.  Our final assignment was to choose a few people from our class to act out the dialog in the screenplay.  I chose someone named Joel to play Iggy. He was an actual actor who I'd seen in a Canadian beer commercial where he said "Hi, I'm Joel, and this is my beer commercial."  He played Iggy and told me afterward that he really enjoyed it.  I got encouraged.

When I moved back to New York City, I submitted a few chapters to "Antimatters Magazine," a magazine that published articles about the musicians who performed at a very popular East Village Antifolk Music Club called "Sidewalk Café."  Iggy seemed to be a good fit for the magazine because he lived in Greenwich Village, and he had a musician's look and hairstyle. "Antimatters" published excerpts of Iggy in four of their issues. 

Now, I'm preparing to publish Iggy in complete form as an E-Book and limited paperback.  I will be pinning to his "My E-Book Iggy Gorgess" Board on Pinterest, tweeting about him and running contests on my Facebook Author Page, and I've got a first line for his introduction into the social media world too:  Iggy wanted to meet you all, so he decided to join Facebook.

I'd Rather Be Eating Cheetos With Hannah Horvath

Now that Season One of HBO's "Girls" has finished, how will I live without its creator, writer and star, Lena Dunham's quick-witted dialog every Sunday night? How will I live without her overly personal, too-true-to-life scenarios?  Come to think of it, how did I EVER live without "Girls?"

I particularly relate to lead character, Hannah Horvath, because she is a writer. In "Girls" we see her as a struggling essayist, doing things like working on a book called "Midnight Snack" and attending the book release party of her former classmate who Hannah proclaims is a horrible writer.  But the lowest moment of Hannah's writing life is when she bombs at a book reading where nobody relates to her essay or even her feeble attempts at breaking the ice with jokes. She leaves the reading feeling embarrassed and socially misunderstood.

As a writer in my early twenties, I didn't have a Hannah in my life to commiserate with during my lowest writing moments.  I was the youngest member of my short story writing workshop, and I created a character named Iggy who was the same age as I was to keep me company.  He was an antisocial punk, and I brought him everywhere and stayed in character all the time.  During the class, all the students had one twenty-minute break.  Everyone went downstairs to the lunchroom to network and to have coffee.  But I always chose to stay in the empty room alone, eating my small bag of Cheetos and drinking a can of Welch's Grape Soda as I read an extremely good collection of VERY short stories called "American Short-Shorts." 

Because of the personal nature of the stories we brought into class to workshop, there were very few male participants, and the ones who did attend could have been straight out of an episode of "Girls."  There was "Wench Man," who referred to all women characters in his original stories as "wenches"; there was "Abomination Man," who when asked to comment on a story during the one and only class he ever attended had no comment except for: "I think that writing fiction in present tense is an abomination";  there was "Sci-Fi Man," who attended every single class yet never brought in a piece of his own until one of the very last classes where he was condemned by some for bringing in a polished sci-fi piece and for not conforming to the purpose of the class which was to workshop your raw, unfinished stories each week WITH the group; and finally, there was "Reba McIntyre Man," who used to frequent the record store I worked at and had asked me if he could please, PLEASE, have the life size, stand-up, cardboard display of singer, Reba McIntyre, which stood near the Country Music Section.  I remember carrying that silly stand-up (which was taller than I was) all the way from the record store and through the turnstiles of the subway where we had agreed to meet so I could give him the stand-up.  It was Reba McIntyre Man who also gave me some crushing news after which I really could have used a friend like Hannah Horvath to lean on.

For some background, an older woman in the workshop had brought a piece into class that she said was a short-short. When we went around the room, she got all positive reviews until she came to me. I said I liked her story but felt that, in my opinion, her short-short would have fared better as a traditional short story and not as a short-short which is a very difficult format to write in. I knew this because I had been extensively reading the "American Short-Shorts" book that featured stories by writers who excelled at short-shorts. About a week or so later, Reba McIntyre Man ran into me at the record store and told me that this particular woman had just thrown a party and invited everyone from the entire class except for me!  Even Sci-Fi Man had been forgiven and invited, and so, years later, it makes me wonder:  Should I not have been honest about her story?  And if this had been an episode of "Girls," what would Hannah have done?

I thought back to the episodes and recalled the one where Hannah goes home to Michigan and sees her college friend perform at a club as a singer and dancer for one final time before the friend packs up all her things and moves to California to try and make it in show business. Hannah tells her date how horrible this girl's performance just was, especially considering she's planning to uproot her entire life and move to California when she really isn't that good!  And of course there is the book release party episode I mentioned earlier where she continues to harp on about the awful writer who wrote the book. She criticizes her best friend, Marnie, for buying the book because it's written by such a dreadful writer!  I know, in my heart of hearts, that if Hannah had attended my short story workshop, she would have given that woman the same critique I had.  After all, I was just being honest about her piece, and if she had listened, I could have spared her many years of rejections and of wondering why all the magazines had never accepted any of her short-shorts!  But that's okay because, again, I know that Hannah would have done the same thing that I did and have not been invited to the party either. Instead, Hannah and I would have hung out together that night, read magazines, ate her favorite cupcakes, my Cheetos, and had a Party of Two.