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Tuesday, December 5, 2006

For some reason, I never really feel right unless I have a trip on the horizon. I think it’s a sickness. Or perhaps, a delightful personality quirk. Let’s go with that.

About a month ago, I was invited to read a short story at a lit journal issue launch party in DC. The invitation came the day after I returned from San Francisco, and Steve was still freaking out about the shootings in the Castro, so despite the fact that flights were cheap and I could have stayed for free on a friend’s couch, I didn’t. Also, we had Steven’s family Thanksgiving at the same time as the reading, so that would have been a sticky issue in itself. And blah, how yucky? I mean, I hardly ever submit anything and then I do and then I get invited to be a reader? How many times does that happen in your life?

Not a lot when you only send out one submission a year.

I am fully aware of how broken that is.

Then something interesting happened. I got another notice from the Barrelhouse editor. There’s going to be another event, this one a week after New Year. In New York City.

Oh the possibilities there! I haven’t been to NYC since my freshman year in college, when I spent my first ever writing earnings on a trip to NYC to take Jane Pratt up on the offer to visit the offices of Sassy and glom onto a reluctant Mike Flaherty, who openly hates fat chicks. Or hated them in 1990, anyway. Maybe his proclivities have changed. Maybe he pines wistfully for the cute young Wendy in his past? Who knows.

I wasn’t going to do this. I really wasn’t. And Steven really wasn’t crazy about my going to New York, since according to him I was practically grazed by flying bullets on Halloween. He actually blames me for it, despite the fact that as soon as we started feeling uncertain about the situation in the Castro, we took off and were well on our way back to the apartment when the first shot was fired. If Joel hadn’t seen it happen, Steven wouldn’t even realize that it happened. I pointed this out to him and he pointed out that his not knowing about it doesn’t make it safer. I think he blames me for traumatizing Joel. Dude, if Joel hadn’t decided to stop for SUSHI rather than meet us at the agreed upon time and location, he wouldn’t have witnessed to Oakland style street theatre either. But that, as Steven likes to remind me, is not the point. It COULD have happened anywhere. I COULD have been shot. In the head. Dead. And I do not take. My safety. Seriously. This is exactly how he says it, as though I myself placed the piece in the gangsta’s hand and then encouraged him to pop a cap in the crowd’s collective ass. I’m not trying to be flip about this, and I appreciate his concern for my well-being but man, I could drop out of the sky in a broken airplane too. I could get hit by a bus in Green Bay or the wiring in my brain could frizzle out while I’m sitting in my annoying but perfectly safe cubicle. I’m certainly not going to sit back and cower just because the world is a scary place.

Wow, did it just get very inspirational in here all of the sudden? Sorry about that.

So I decided fuck it. I’m doing this. I declared the vacation days required and logged into my airline’s site to put a flight on hold because even though I am solid in my decisions, I don’t trust fate and figure that something will come up if I act rashly. Which is another dose of broken, but whatever.

I informed Steven of my decision and he said “Awesome. Have fun. Just be safe, ok?” Which means that I’ll just have to make sure to call him on a regular basis to reassure him that I haven’t been stabbed to death in a gutter. Although really, I was 18-years-old and hanging around a pre-Guiliani Times Square. From what I’ve heard, NYC today is pretty tame and there’s a Gap where the beaver shows used to be. It should be fine.

I mentioned the lit reading to Jake yesterday and then this morning, he is once again the best travel companion ever.

Once upon a time, I was standing on Fifth Avenue and decided that I wanted the kind of life that existed in New York City. And while I may not have hit the mark geographically and I may complain a lot, seriously, I have the greatest life. I never dreamed it would be seventeen years until I went back but I think this return will have been worth the wait.

I am seriously stoked.

So yeah, if you’re going to be in NYC on the evening of January 5th, I’m going to be there too, reading one of my short stories at the KGB bar in the Village. And then apparently breaking into the chorus of Seasons of Love, because how Jonathon Larson is that anyway? E-mail me for details.

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It’s gotta be the shoes

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Grades are in for the semester and I invite you to bask in the beauty of my new ‘Still A 4.0 GPA and Only One Year Until I Get My Masters’ shoes.

Yes, I have nothing to wear them with and nowhere to go once I do, but damn, you have to admit that these are some fine-assed shoes, yes? Maybe once I get my degree, I can be a high-classed call girl. Smart Fat Girls Who Quote Margaret Atwood appeal to a very specialized client base, but one that is untapped. Note to self: run idea past the husband. Maybe need some charts to support business case.

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Manifest Destiny

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

I should totally write a manifesto. Except that it seems exhausting and, you know, like work.

So instead, I will tell you about my recent heartbreak. It is this: a few weeks ago, I went shopping for a birthday present for a friend and I found nothing. Or rather, found a lot of things for myself, the most important of which being a rocking pair of black cowboy boots decorated with red flames. Marked down 70% and then 50% off of that, which brought them to the lovely price of $16.

Normally, when I find such buys, they are not in my size, but not this day and I snatched them up and then did a little dance in the aisles of the store. It did not occur to me at that moment that I have almost zero opportunities to wear such masterpieces of footwear (red FLAMES), mostly because tragically I am not Patsy Cline nor do I have a stripper routine choreographed to ‘Save a Horse Ride a Cowboy’. I sort of want to pair them with my suit for my next big important meeting in Shermer, walk into the boardroom, put a leg up on the projector, and yell ‘Yeeeehaw’. Because if anything’s going to get me promoted, it will certainly be that.

Except for reasons that I will not even pretend that you will believe, I had not actually tried them on until today, when I was sort of filled with ennui and hating humanity (for many reasons, least of which is that my Wallet Chain boyfriend got eliminated from American Idol’ holy fuck did I just type that? Because I can’t believe it either) and thought: hey, I’ll stomp around the house in my boots! That will cheer me up. So I took them out of their box, hiked up the leg of my jeans and then tried shoving my foot into one.

It wouldn’t go.

This didn’t make sense. After all, it was my left foot. My good foot. Nay, my less 12C and more 11.5B foot. Clearly I was having a bad sock day.
I pulled on the shaft (heh heh) and felt the sickening twinge of my nail bending backward, threatening to break, so I let go and then stomped around on it. Finally, I managed to cram my foot into it, but the zipper refused to budge.

The world. My world. Oh fuck the world. Ennui!

So much so that I’m going to stop writing this right now.

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Spoken word

Monday, April 3, 2006

There had been some confusion about the time that the reading would start, with the bookstore claiming that it started at 8 pm and the organizer insisting that it was 7:30 pm. Since the organizer wasn’t there, the bookstore was telling everyone that it was at 8 pm. About quarter till, we wandered into the reading area and I was a bit relieved to see that there was a microphone. The reading posse wandered around, browsing at books, and Desmond, one of my buddies from past workshops, came up and made sure that he knew how to pronounce the title of my story “Billets Doux”. I gave him the phonetics and then realized that it meant that I was up first, because he was about to get started. Early. Oh shit. At least I had done some creative visualization beforehand. He read my bio, including the parts about the toast, and the crowd laughed lightly, which was a good sign, since it maybe meant that they were going to accept a little irreverence.

I went up and the rest was a blur. My voice shook the tiniest bit, but it helped that I could hear people laughing at my favorite parts, and I think I only stumbled over words two or three times. There was a decent amount of applause when I finished, and then Desmond mentioned that he was proud to helped workshop the story last spring, which was cool.

Next up, was the Birkenstocks guy, who was, true to his pseudonym, wearing Birkenstocks on his winter-chapped calloused feet. His piece was, in Monique’s opinion, a Hemingway ripoff, but it was probably the best stuff I’ve seen from him so far. He has a decent reading voice and didn’t do the weird lilting thing that some poets do, although he did give the words a lot of weight, reading them slowly and drawing out the most simple of phrases.

Maybe I just get impatient with slow talkers but that bugs the shit out of me.

When he finished, Desmond asked for a round of applause again, since we were essentially, the warm up act for the established poet/faculty member. I’ve actually registered for and dropped her classes at least twice, if not three times, because it either doesn’t work with my schedule or I see the reading list and can’t bring myself to read Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony again. She’s a friend of my undergrad advisor, though, so I figured that I would have a good rapport with her. But listening to her read, I was really struck by what I used to think was a great reading and how I feel now.

Sometimes, I just have to roll my eyes and think ‘Oh my god, we writers are such pretentious assholes.’

I think I was a little embarrassed, actually. I wish it had been Dr. O. Henry reading, rather than all the vibrato and stage performance poetry stuff. At one point, she couldn’t find a poem that she wanted to read and kept saying ‘Fooey’ into the microphone, and then one time, said ‘Fooey! Ooops, can I say that in here?’ which seemed to be a specific comment about my using the word ‘Fuck’ twice in my story, without even worrying about the fact that I was saying ‘FUCK’ into a microphone in a very pretentious book store. Ah well. At least this is the last of the student readings of the year.

After the reading, my workshop buddies came over to talk to me and shake my hand, which was kind of cool, since it was all guys and they brushed past Birkenstocks to come talk to me. I introduced them to Steven, and then the faculty member who read came over and told me that I had such a great sense of humor. Which is I guess what you say when you can’t say that you enjoyed a story.

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Understudy

Thursday, March 30, 2006
 So. I am reading a short story in a bookstore tomorrow.

The truth of the matter is that I am freaking out about this. Getting sort of ridiculously silly, to the point where I can’t breathe kind of freaking out. I am nervous that I’m going to read too fast, too monotone, nervous that the audience isn’t going to laugh at the right parts, or that I’m going to succumb to nervous laughter over the lines I particularly like and sit there laughing like a goon over the phrase “ass-less chaps”. I am nervous that I’m going to be the first reader and that there will be boys in the audience. I am nervous that the cutest boy of all is going to be in the audience and he’s going to hate yet another of my stories, or worse, give me his patented “It’s goooood, sweetie!” line, which means that he doesn’t get it but he’s trying to be supportive. I am nervous that I’m going to have a syncopal episode and hit the floor with dramatic thud. I am nervous that my very sweet and adorable independent study professor is going to be there and I’m going to have to say the word “penis” and she’s going to get flustered in her very Dame Maggie Smith kind of way. Or Dr. Clark is going to look at me with his serious respectful face and I will immediately lose all resolve, as I do not even remotely deserve Dr. Clark’s full and rapt attention, even though he’s my advisor. And most of all, I am nervous because I have absolutely nothing to fucking wear.

I am specifically picking a more humorous story because I have an easier time making people laugh than making them think. I don’t know why that is, but so it goes. And while I know damned well that I like my story, right now, I really don’t like my story. It’s weak. It’s insipid. It’s too much like chick lit. I have no talent nor do I have even one pair of super cute jeans. If I were writing something heart wrenching and solid, I could get away with distracting people with my bosom, but with pseudo chick lit, I can’t wear a) pink, black or white, b) too much make up or jewelry, c) something businessy, because that’s trying too hard, d) something that makes me look like a prostitute or e) basically anything in my wardrobe, because I just described everything I own.

I don’t know. Perhaps I’ll just e-mail the coordinator a pod cast of me reading the story. That would actually resolve all of this. My iPod’s butt never looks big, regardless of what it wears.

Bitch.

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Mid-century Modernism

Friday, January 27, 2006

If the color is careless It seems that one of my ideas has been noticed by brass and now I will be traveling to the corporate headquarters for weeks at a time throughout spring semester. Which is really cool, because hello IKEA and Nordstrom and Trader Joes, but also sort of not cool because a) more work, b) not enough professionally fabulous outfits (although that is easily fixed by the proximity to the Best Shopping Ever) and c) I would have to miss at least four weeks of class.

Thus, my very happy first day of school on Tuesday became full of questions and surprises. First of all, I had forgotten that I HAD studied Modernism as an undergraduate and also that I really fucking hate Modernism. Apparently, I had blocked them from my mind because of all the hatred.

Blinders are beautiful things, but sometimes they bite you in the ass.

I was fully willing to plug onward, but looking at the syllabus and reading load and level of participation required, it was painfully obvious that my travel schedule would prevent me from giving the class the attention it required. And also, the Modernism’ oy vey, it makes me roll my eyes.

Dear Modernism,
Really, I’m sorry. I tried. It’s not you, it’s me. Stay gold.
Sincerely,
Wendy Wimmer

PS. Your plums, they were delicious so sweet and so cold.

So, fine. Really, I couldn’t imagine any professor cheerfully allowing me to be absent for four weeks of semester. The clear answer would be an independent project. I asked a few professors, but everyone plead that they had an overflowing schedule. I talked with my advisor, Dr. O.Henry, and he too was slated for a miserable spring. He suggested that I take off a semester and work on my writing. Which would be fine for most English majors, but my goal-oriented Type A personality is already frustrated that I got into this program two years later than I should have and also that I only have enough time in my life to take one class per semester, thus taking double the amount of time to earn my Master’s. I’m the same person who took 18-24 credits every semester, plus full loads during summer and intersession, just so that I could blow through my undergrad work as quickly as possible. Take a semester off? Inconceivable. But then, maybe that word doesn’t mean what I think it means.

After sending e-mails to anyone I knew with letters after their name (including the nefarious Dr. Frank, just for grins) everyone said no. Yesterday afternoon, I went home and sulked into my computer screen for a half hour, despite my plan to catch up on housework and (fucking) laundry before leaving for the lands of flatness. If I’m going to be honest, there may have been a frustrated tear or two. And then, fine, I resigned myself to the reality that this is what happens when you try to have it all and that these are the choices I made when I decided not to sacrifice a paycheck to go to school and maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to take a semester off. Because after all, look at all the (fucking) laundry I’d now have time to do.

Then I got an e-mail from my darling professor last semester. She mentioned that everyone had their back up against a wall and weren’t accepting independent projects, but if I was willing to truly work independently, she would work with me during her office hours. I assured her that I would be very low maintenance and she replied that I could go ahead and register. To which we jump up and down and scream and start crying like we just got a call from the governor with a stay of execution.

I’m not quite sure why my school stuff brings up such anxiety. I think something very fundamental in my psyche got damaged during the All Encompassing quest to get into graduate school. But thankfully, all is well and yay, I don’t have to take a semester off because of stupid work. I heart Professor Darling. She’ll probably never fully know how much.

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Screwy decimal system

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Next semester, I’m taking a Lit class. I think it will be my first official Lit class as a graduate student, although really, my first one under Professor Clark almost counted as a Lit class. Not only do I know nothing about this professor, from e-mail discussions with her, we’ll be reading a lot of Gertrude Stein. I think I’ve mentioned before that, considering I have a bachelor’s degree in English Lit, I have a very narrow background in traditional literature. Sure, I could pretty much teach a class on Native American authors and perhaps write a dissertation on gothic British fiction, but I somehow managed to graduate (with honors in the major) without having touched Stein, Woolf, Hemingway, Nabokov, Vonnegut, Murdoch, Austen, Waugh, Ford, Updike and just about any other book written before 1965. Except Shakespeare. I had lots of Shakespeare, as though he somehow would bring credibility to my reading oeuvre. Whatever.

So, I’m excited. New semester. New books. A class with people who are not necessarily in the creative writing program.

Note to self: must endeavor to sound smart.

The spouse and I put together a bookshelf yesterday. It may have been a definitive moment in our marriage. We actually had two that needed to be assembled, but after we got one together (despite a failed start during which the spouse was using the wrong set of directions and couldn’t understand why the D piece, which should have been a brace, was actually one of five shelves), we decided to go to lunch and then, ah, wait until I had the new rug until putting the other one together. I then spent most of my holiday digging through the storage bedroom, looking for my books. I need to go through there with a bunch of large garbage bags, I think. Or maybe just open the window and pitch the stuff out onto the Clampett’s driveway.

Heh.

I did pull some of the boxes of books into my office, though, and start sorting them in my weird methodology. I’m toying with the idea of having one shelf devoted to women short story writers, but then I’d need to have a short story section devoted to male authors and I don’t know that I want that. And then I realized that I could now have a section written by people who started writing their stuff online, since I have tomes authored by Mimi, Pamie, Gwen and Mil. And that just makes me laugh, because here’s my sorting logic: non-fiction psychological stuff (e.g. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, Shantung Compound, School Girls) writing and/or lit theory books (e.g. The Art of Fiction, things by Natalie Goldberg and her fruity artiste-opening cohorts), old dead white guys usually published by Penguin Books (e.g. Shakespeare, Marlowe), poetry (e.g. Harjo, Frost, Locklin, a bunch of random things from undergraduate work), essays (e.g. Rakoff, Sedaris, Vowell), lit journals (because apparently I can’t throw away anything), short fiction anthologies (e.g. Best American Short Stories collections, Pushcart Prize collections, O.Henry collections), children’s lit (e.g. my childhood Golden Book encyclopedias, Shel Silverstein) stuff I wish I would have written (e.g. Coupland, Atwood, Irving, Pahliniuk, Boyle) and the non-snobby fiction (e.g. Anne Rice, Buffy the Vampire Slayer novels, anything with a cover art derived from a movie still, especially those featuring Renee Zellweger). Really, an Internet Writer section really fits in rather nicely.

I’m sort of stuck right now, because the non-assembled bookshelf has to go on top of the rug which is being shipped, while the one that is assembled is next to Penny’s Late Husband’s Chair (she gave it to me, but I still think of it as Andy’s Chair) should hold mostly the books that are yet to be read, preferably at eye level, either sitting in the chair or standing. Therefore, I may delicately pluck a volume from the shelf and then snuggle into the chair for long bouts of uninterupted reading time. Or that’s how the theory goes, anyway.

And that, my friends, is way too much insight into my logical process. To impart more would ensure that I get ambushed for an intervention the next time I walk into The Container Store. My only excuse is that I’ve been waiting for this damned office for five years, and that’s a lot of time to develop complicated fantasies involving organization and leisure and also Colin Firth.

Well, the Colin Firth thing would have probably happened regardless.

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De stressed

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Let’s see, when last we left our intrepid heroine (or \”plucky girl detective\” which is a phrase used on the back of a chick lit book. It’s funny now, but the sad thing is that they were totally serious. And yes, the front of the book featured shoes and feet. Seriously, Chick Litters! Stop being shoe strumpets! Fricking schlock tease!), she was still trying to come to grips with the fact that she doesn’t have enough time in the day.

Next semester, I’m taking a Lit class. I think it will be my first official Lit class as a graduate student, although really, my first one under Professor O.Henry almost counted as a Lit class. Not only do I know nothing about this professor, from e-mail discussions with her, we’ll be reading a lot of Gertrude Stein. I think I’ve mentioned before that, considering I have a bachelor’s degree in English Lit, I have a very narrow background in traditional literature. Sure, I could pretty much teach a class on Native American authors and perhaps write a dissertation on gothic British fiction, but I somehow managed to graduate (with honors in the major) without having touched Stein, Woolf, Hemingway, Nabokov, Vonnegut, Murdoch, Austen, Waugh, Ford, Updike and just about any other book written before 1965. Except Shakespeare. I had lots of Shakespeare, as though he somehow would bring credibility to my reading oeuvre. Whatever.

So, I’m excited. New semester. New books. A class with people who are not necessarily in the creative writing program.

Note to self: must endeavor to sound smart.

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How to not give a public reading

Thursday, December 22, 2005

I just got an e-mail from the admin in my graduate program. Apparently, I agreed to participate in their student/faculty reading series, as long as he scheduled me in the spring rather than in the fall, since my fall was similar to that of Humpty Dumpty’s in that it was great but my crown still hasn’t quite recovered.

I think I had hoped that he would forget or misplace my name at some point. I sort of really very much a lot hate to read my writing aloud. I know. It’s ridiculous. I have a background in drama. From my first step onto the stage to play the Virgin Mary in my Sunday school Christmas pageant at age 4, I’ve spent a huge amount of time working in theatre. I was in so many plays during my childhood and early adolescence that I can’t even remember the names of all of them. I was the president of the damned drama club in high school. At one point during my senior year, I was in four plays at one time, which involved a death by fire equivalent of time management and I think may have introduced my addiction to schedules which are packed to the balls. Some schedules apparently have testicles. Mine do, anyway.

But the main difference here is that when you are acting in a play, you are usually not emotionally invested in the work. You want the play to succeed. You want to do well. You want everyone to fall in love with you and with drama, maybe just a little bit. But the very fact that actors regularly change the wording of the piece tells me that they are not as engaged in the work as they would be if they had written it. The writer chose those words specifically. If they are like me, they rewrote that line probably a dozen times, changing the words, playing with syntax. If they are a little bit of a drama queen, they might say that they bled a little onto the page. I would not say that, personally because my god, then I’d have to hide in shame forever.

I know what to do to make something sound good. I know how to have dramatic presence, how to play to the back row and sell it like the rent is due. But as soon as it’s my stuff, my hands turn to ice, my voice starts to shake and I start feeling like I’m taking too much time and so I start rushing, tumbling over words in a monotone because I don’t want to grandstand or make more of the writing than it is, and then wishing like anything that I could just skip ahead to the last paragraph and be done. And while I can be fearless about almost anything, reading my own work is exposing something very vulnerable, like chewing ice with an exposed nerve ending.
That having been said, it’s a good thing for me to do. If I can think of something to read and then practice it (instead of going in cold and not thinking about it ahead of time, then being waylaid by the ishy feelings as soon as I opened my mouth) and maybe desensitize myself, it will be ok.

I think the crux of the issue is something I was discussing with Doug earlier this year. I think that writers have two modes of operation: either they are attempting to quell something in their brain or they are trying to expose it. Are you writing with the door closed or wide open? I am stuck firmly in the latter category. There are things in my fiction that I would never say to anyone, and yet, there I must stand, at a podium and say them to an expectant audience. Fucking hell. No wonder writers become alcoholics and drug addicts.
I have marginal success with the stuff that is more comedic, so I might wimp out and pick one of the funny stories. Or maybe I will have written something really great and not scary and that is so good that everyone who hears it achieves the highest peak of Maslov’s Hierarchy of Needs and therefore experiences self-actualization and therefore forgets that my voice was shaking.

Either way, if you’re in the Milwaukee area on March 2, I will be reading at Von Trier’s. Reading, out loud, to people. If it starts to go badly, I may stash a dagger so that I have an out, but there it is. Either some marginal fiction along with great stuff (my classmate’s and the faculty member’s) or a little seppuku. Good times.

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Lolly lolly lolly get your clue here

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

There’s a Christmas mad-lib going around the office, and my coworkers had to ask me what a noun was. And then what an adjective was. And then an adverb. I patiently explained and provided examples in kind. Then one jumped in and started singing ‘Conjunction Junction’ like that was supposed to help.

I countered ‘That’s ‘and’, ‘but’ or ‘or’, which are conjunctions, not adjectives nor adverbs.’

She retorted ‘Well, I’m glad SOMEBODY’S going back to school for this!’

I replied ‘You learn that in grade school, not graduate school.’

But seriously, how can someone not know what an adjective is? Isn’t that part of the autonomic nervous system? Breathing, heartbeats and Strunk and White’s Elements of Style? Can I get a witness?

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