The Furious Spinner

Or close to it.

How is everyone doing?

We're home from the coast. It was a great weekend. I am on the mend. Much is right with the world. I can hear birds singing outside. The sun is out. I smelled an onion today. Ahhhh!

I sold about a third of my books. Took fourteen bags of books to Powells. Lots and lots of books. Mario is going through his things, too. He's going to sell his collection of F&SF. It's not complete, but he's got nearly forty years worth of them. Do you remember when I was in AZ the first year and was by myself after Mario left? I bought these painted ponies? I was depressed. My first and virtually only splurge spending. Some are kitchy and some are cool. In any case, I'm going to sell them, too, this summer, as a group, for a deal. I want to get rid of as much stuff as I can. As soon as it stops raining, we'll start putting things outside to giveaway. I love doing that. I don't think of myself as having a lot of stuff but then I look around and I've got stuff. As with many writers, I've got soooo much paper and so many books. I went through my clothes to get rid of some, but since I have about five shirts and three pairs of slacks, there wasn't much to get rid of. Yeah!

Onward.

I had an interesting conversation Monday which has helped clarify a number of things for me. Someone who would know told me that I can't make a living writing what I write now. "What you write is beautiful and has something to say, and it's not commercial." He said that my novel sales are pretty good so I should be able to get new books published, but I'm not going to make a living at it. Hearing this from him was stunning, even though he said what I already knew, clearly, since I've been trying to make a living at it for twenty-seven years and have not done so!

When I told my father about this conversation, he said, tongue firmly planted in cheek, "If they're not buying what you're writing, why don't you write something they'll buy?" And I said, "Why didn't I think of that?"

So after the conversation I had to decide, again, if I want to change the way I write. We have friends who see writing strictly as a business. It's putting down words in a certain order. It's a job. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this viewpoint or way of writing. But for me, writing is more than a job. Remember that line of Emily Dickinson's, "This is my letter to the world that never wrote to me?" Well, my books are my letters to the world.

At one point in the conversation with this person, I said, "I'm not Emily Dickinson. I've never wanted to write something and put it away in my drawers." And that's when he said, "But you are like Emily Dickinson. What you write is beautiful..." Etc.

After I got off the phone, I sat on my living room floor. I wept. It wasn't the feeling sorry for myself kind of cry. It wasn't a this is the end of the world kind of cry. I wept as I let go of a goal, a lifelong dream. And as I let it go, I remembered that the part of myself that went into hiding after I got sick. That brave young woman who said she wasn't going to live like everyone else. She was going to eschew the consumer culture as much as possible. She was going to dance the beauty way through life. That's why we quit our jobs and moved out West to live in a rundown house within a stone's throw (if you were a giant) from the ocean.

When I got sick, first got sick, all I knew is that we had no money and we had no health insurance: how was I going to survive? I had to get a job, a good job, I had to get money. I had to do something, be someone. Because to be invisible in this society means you will disappear. Attention must be paid. So much of the counterculture part of me went into hiding. Not all. But a lot.

Now I'm on the lookout for that ol' Amazon me again.

What does this mean? Will I continue to write? I've written since I was five years old. Difficult to imagine that I'll stop now, but who knows? Three days ago I had decided that once I migrated to the new website, I would leave up Furious Spinner for a short time and then I'd take it down. Now I'm leaning toward just leaving it up. As a kind of historical document. For now, I will continue to write novels and send them to my agent or I'll write them and send them out to publishers myself. Or both. Maybe I'll just put up all my novels on the internet. I already give away so many of my words. Maybe I'll give away more.

I like giving things away. Letting go. It is very freeing.

I'm a new woman.

Today I danced around the house sans clothes again. I recommend this to absolutely everyone. Home alone. Go for it. Music up. It is so freeing. Good aerobic exercise. Silly and glorious.

Learn to love your bodies, babies.

Boom chicka boom.

May You Live, Love, and Dance in Beauty! 1 comments

Sunday, April 06, 2008

Still Here...Well, Actually There