Thoughts Happen

Why I Have a Problem With Elizabeth Gilbert

So—Elizabeth Gilbert’s new book, “Committed” is out. Haven’t heard of it? Perhaps you’re familiar with another little thing she wrote, called “Eat, Pray, Love”?

 By the time I first heard of it several years ago, “Eat, Pray, Love” was already in paperback and an international best seller. The new girlfriend of a friend we were camping with was reading it at Plaster Blaster, and I glanced at the back cover after taking in the subtitle, “One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia,” under the 3-word title ingeniously spelled out in pasta, mala beads and flower petals. From this brief introduction and later snippets I gleaned from media coverage (you’d think this book had singlehandedly saved the publishing industry), I gathered that Gilbert a) had gone through a foundation-shaking life crisis; b) managed to take a year off to travel and deal with said crisis; c) wrote a book about said travel and crisis; and d) was now an overwhelmingly successful writer because of said book.

I was perhaps just a slight bit jealous. In the midst of a crisis of my own at the time, I snarkily thought, “Well, wouldn’t that be just great if we could all run away from our problems by traveling for a year and then make an unholy amount of money writing about it?” I was damned if I was going to read the thing.

Then I heard Gilbert would be speaking in L.A. with my favorite author, Anne Lamott. If Anne deemed her worthy of a co-appearance then her book might, just might, be worthy, but I still wasn’t ready to part with any cold, hard cash for it—I put a hold on the audiobook at the library. I did not, however, end up going to L.A. for the talk, and consequently forgot about the book.

A month later I hurt my neck and spent hours each day flat on my back on the floor with a heating pad or sitting very still on the couch looking straight ahead. My hold on the audiobook percolated to the top, and, since I couldn’t do much else, I spent a lot of time listening to the author reading it aloud.

I’ll admit, the book was good, and as I listened to it I learned that her trip fell together more as an unnatural set of circumstances rather than being planned by a flighty rich girl with commitment issues, as was my first impression. Afterwards, I discovered that while I distanced myself from the book (just another pop book to tick off my "I’ve read that" list) I was at the same time inexplicably drawn to Gilbert’s interviews, from the Borders Book Club to her recent TED talk. Maybe I’m trying to suss out exactly what it is she drew upon to give birth to this megapopular work, or maybe I’m just waiting for her to mess up. Either way, I’ll begrudgingly admit that she seems like a pretty genuine person in the midst of extraordinary circumstances.

 I read the prologue of the new book, a combination of memoir and historical treatise on marriage, at the bookstore the other day. I’ll probably end up reading it, but I’m still not willing to give up my hard-earned cash. Some grudges die hard.

A Hyphen-Free World

Argh! I just can’t stand it anymore! I’ve been doing this purple-bracelet “stop complaining” exercise for almost three weeks now (and am on my record 5th day of not complaining) but I can’t hold it in any longer because every time I look at the half inch of rubber encircling my wrist I want to gouge a little hyphen between “Complaint” and “Free.” It’s “A Complaint-Free World,” people, not “A Complaint Free World”! Oh the irony of complaining about the "complaint free" bracelet. But really!

The general populace seems to have hyphen-phobia. I don’t know why, but it bothers me. My inner copyeditor cringes when I see “a fat free food.” Ack! If I get paid to be picky about grammar does it still count as complaining? We’ll get back to that.

I am hyper-sensitive to hyphens lately because one of my Twitter friends posted a question asking whether the phrase “gluten free” should be hyphenated. My instinct was that it is, but to get some additional information I searched for “hyphens” on the Grammar Girl site and also posted the question to the Grammar Group at LinkedIn. This led to some lively discussion, the consensus of which was that you hyphenate before a noun but not after it.

Why is this? Here’s my best explanation: hyphens group modifiers together for clarity. Say you have a red brick house. Is it a red house? Yes. Is it a brick house? Yes. Therefore, no hyphen is needed. However, what if you have a “gluten free recipe.” Is it a gluten recipe? No. Is it a free recipe? No. Therefore, a hyphen is needed to group the modifiers together so you know the recipe has no gluten. It’s a gluten-free recipe.

Why then do you not hyphenate after the noun, e.g. “the recipe is gluten free”? The temptation is to throw in extra hyphens just in case, e.g. “the recipe is gluten-free.” But it’s just as bad to over-hyphenate as to under-hyphenate, and it really isn’t necessary. Here’s why: when the modifier comes after the noun, it’s only modifying the one word immediately after it. So we ask ourselves, “What kind of ‘free’ is it?” and the answer is “gluten.” It’s gluten free.

So “The world is complaint free,” but it’s not "A Complaint Free World." And it’s not a complaint-free world anymore, either at least after this post. I’m going to switch my bracelet now and start back at Day 1. But it was totally worth it.

The day I met Anne Lamott

It was February 22nd, 1999. No, I'm not like that woman in National Geographic who can remember every day of her life since age 11 with photographic recall. Nor am I an Anne Lamott stalker, recording every encounter in a secret journal. (Dear Diary: Today I rode in a taxi and I swear the driver was the one Anne described in Grace (Eventually). I felt around in the seat crack to see if I could find any stray dreadlock hair to no avail. Maybe next time.") No, nothing like that. 

It was a pretty benign encounter at a book reading at Warwick's in La Jolla, and I know the date because she inscribed my copy of Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith with the note "2-22-99 for Louise, with best wishes, (heart) Anne Lamott."

It must have been a weeknight, and for some reason I couldn't leave my six-month-old daughter at home with my husband, so I had her with me. Maybe he had a class, or maybe I knew I'd need to nurse during the time I'd be out. Even though I was pumping breast milk, we waited too long before trying her on a bottle, and she would scream and wail if we tried to get her to drink from a plastic nipple as though we were trying to make her drink poison, so often I just took her with.

I don't know if I'd ever gone to a book reading before. It wasn't the kind of thing I did. But I had read Lamott's funny, personal and offbeat book on writing, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, and the unflinching honesty of it was like cayenne pepper on a sweet honeydew slice. You mean even published writers are insecure? And they procrastinate and tell themselves they have no business being a writer but then go ahead and do it anyway? This was back in my I-couldn't-ever-imagine-myself-as-a-writer-but-I-keep-buying-Writer's-Digest-and-going-to-classes-and-reading-writing-books-because-I'm-weirdly-compelled-to-do-so phase, and this was news I needed to hear. I figured if this woman was going to be anywhere I could get within earshot, baby or not I was going.

So I showed up at Warwick's with my baby in a sling like a literary earth mother. The reading was nice, although I had to keep walking around the store to keep my daughter from getting fussy so I was often out of sight of the podium. Lamott read from Traveling Mercies and the only thing I remember was a question from someone in the audience about her use of the phrase "mixed grill" in one of her essays. Lamott said she couldn't ever remember using the words "mixed grill," but later on when I read the book, there they were. Eventually I had to get baby out of the sling and let her flop around on the floor in one of the aisles a bit. Thank goodness she wasn't crawling yet, but I hadn't thought to bring any toys with me.

I bought a copy of Traveling Mercies in hardcover and a paperback of Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year, since there I was with a new baby and all myself. It was getting late, and while waiting in line to get them signed my daughter got fussier and fussier. Eventually I crumpled up the paper bag the books were in and gave it to her to play with. All I could think was that I hoped Anne realized that I had indeed bought the books at Warwicks instead of sneaking in an Amazon purchase, which I had heard her say she got really miffed about. 

When we got to the front of the line she smiled at my daughter, who was now of course being an angel, and asked our names. She signed Operating Instructions to her, again "with best wishes," but this time adding "Annie Lamott, Sam's mom."   

While finishing up this post my now ten-year-old came up to me at the computer and read the title out loud. "Yup," I said. "You were there, but you don't remember it. You were a baby." I picked up Operating Instructions and flipped to the page signed to her. "And here's something else you've never seen." "Cool," she replied. Yeah, pretty cool, I'd have to agree. Happy Birthday Anne Lamott, a.k.a Sam's mom.

Why I (Heart) Blogging: Confessions of a 40-something writer

The short answer to "Why do I love blogging?" is because I love to write, although it's taken me 40 years to realize that I am a writer. The longer answer is that blogging hones my craft and connects me to some of my deepest values. Here's how:

Writing, as most things that are worthwhile doing, requires practice. Bill O'Hanlon, in his wonderful book, "Write Is a Verb: Sit Down, Start Writing, No Excuses," suggests that writers ask themselves, "What gets writing done?" After you've answered that question, do more of whatever it is. I realize that for me, what gets writing done is a) a deadline, and b) an audience. Since I don't yet have publishers pounding on my door night and day, I use blogging to keep me writing on a regular schedule even when I am between assignments. Nothing begets writing like writing.

Having an audience is also important for developing my craft. My blog is not an open journal—I am very conscious of writing for other people, and knowing that my blog is available to anyone keeps me accountable. Is my writing clear? Does it pull readers forward and offer them something valuable in return for their time spent with me? Even if the only people who read my blog are my family and friends (and judging from my stats lately, that's not far off :-), having an audience helps me put out my best effort. 

Blogging also connects me to my deepest values. Right at the top of my blog it says, "kindness, curiosity, and humor," so my posts had better reflect that—blogging under this banner keeps me focused on what's most important to me. Genuineness is another of my deepest values, and blogging keeps me from going for a cheap laugh at someone else's expense knowing that my readers range from faceless strangers to my immediate family. I've had to ask myself, "Would I say it to their face?"

Lastly, blogging develops patience. All good relationships take time,and I'm slowly building relationships through my blog. I'd love to have lots of comments and interaction, but even when that doesn't happen, I just sit down and keep writing. 

I'm really glad TypePad started this idea to talk about why we love blogging. I'm also supposed to tag some fellow bloggers to write their own "I Love Blogging" posts. Some of the bloggers I read are Don Hayen at The Trip Over, Marla Beck at The Relaxed Writer, Jennie Cromie at The Golden Pencil, Mignon Fogarty at Grammar Girl and Joanna Haugen. Consider yourselves tagged. 

Anne Lamott meets Winnie the Pooh (Happy Birthday A.A. Milne!)

I’ve been re-reading Anne Lamott’s wonderful book on writing, “Bird by Bird," and finding it amazingly relevant to everything that’s been happening with me the past several years. She writes about fiction and characters, and that writing is about wanting to tell the truth in some way, even if you are lying when you do it (e.g., making things up.) She talks about having compassion for your characters, and correspondingly, yourself, because there is part of you in all your characters. That’s how we recognize these people. It’s all very Buddhist. I’m amazed at how much of the Buddhist philosophy appears in this book.

We were also recently reading a Winnie the Pooh story with our daughter (you're never too old for Winnie the Pooh), and I realized that what I love, and I assume everyone loves, about Pooh and Piglet and all of them is that we do feel so much compassion for them, because they are us. Milne writes them as such identifiable characters, and they are so individual, you can easily identify them by their dialog (another thing Lamott brings up).

Pooh is a bit muddled, and simple, but smarter than he thinks he is, because he’s wise in the ways of creatures of habit. And he’s so creative, he’s like a rapper in the way his rhymes just flow off the tip of his tongue, but to him it doesn’t mean anything important, it’s just something he does. And he loves his hunny and gets easily distracted (not that any of us do that). And he’s a good and loyal friend, above all.

Piglet is a Very Small Animal, and very timid, but brave when he needs to be, which makes me weep inside, because isn’t that just what all of us are? The story we were reading was "In Which Piglet Meets a Heffalump," and in this story Piglet worries about the Heffalump and looking timid most of all, but he screws up his courage to check the trap anyway. And then when he realizes that it wasn't the Heffalump after all that frightened him so but instead was just Pooh with his head stuck in a jar, he realizes how foolish he’s been and is so embarrassed that he rushes home to spend the rest of the day in bed. We love him, because who hasn’t felt like that? We all want to cover our asses, we all want to avoid disgrace and embarrassment and seek praise and pats on the back.

Today is A.A. Milne's birthday, and I am thankful for these wonderful characters he has brought to life that have given my extended family so much joy over the years. It's a funny thing that sometimes the clearest way to see our humanity is when it's personified by a stuffed bear and his friends in the Hundred Acre Wood.