The Writer's Life: Getting a Grip on the Snakes of My Expectations

Medusa: Athena's Revenge or Just a Writer Trying to Hold It Together?

 What do writers want, after all? To be read, merely? Or to be famously read and admired for our cognitive extravagance and emotional turmoil? Recently I've found myself up to my prefrontal cortex in swirling initiatives, mostly self imposed which leave me feeling like my hair has become reptilian and the reptiles tails are attached to said prefrontal lobe.

When one thinks of writers one pictures them tucked away somewhere alternately pecking away at a keyboard and staring off into the fog of profound thoughts. And then, after a dismally rewarding morning, donning a fedora and suit jacket and strolling down to the local pub for a solitary drink and then another. When another writer comes in, preferably a male with a dripping ego to match your own, you settle into conversation that covers Proust, Hemingway, Cervantes, Kierkegaard, and Woody Allen's musical repertoire. You then end up drunk and arm wrestling the bartender who is a small women with tattoos on her large upper breasts, a brutal ex-husband, and two young kids who she had to leave home alone so she could come and serve us beer.

But, never mind the romantic stuff: Here's what happened, right after I left the bar:

 I received an order for 100 books in preparation for my keynote address to a meeting of the International Reading Association on the island of Guam in March. Getting my publisher to respond to this took some doing but now it is done and shipments of books are on the way. Then, while my nose was rubbing hard up against the grindstone of producing a professional, curriculum standards-based study guide for the book, came this from the editor-in-chief of The Prague Revue, my favorite, cutting-edge literary 'zine which had published two of my short stories in the past six months:

Doug,

   I just wanted to reach out to you and tell you how much we all enjoyed your story. It really was a fantastic read. Couldn't be happier with it. That's why I wanted to personally thank you for your partnership. It's a partnership I hope we can continue in the TPR Stream section of our site.

   The Stream aims to build a trusted team of writers who can contribute essays about topics they care about once a month. We want to give writers the freedom to explore the issues that interest them and they feel will interest readers. This can be anything from a personal anecdote to how to tie the perfect sailor's knot or really anything. The point here is freedom. If you're interested, I'd like to extend you an invitation to become a part of this team. Interested to hear your thoughts...

 So now I'm wallowing in a writer's success that does not include being famously read but maybe admired for my cognitive extravagance. Ah, an ode to writhing snakes.

We Babysit Dolphins in the Florida Keys: A Paradise Within a Paradise

A kiss is but a kiss: Salty smooches at the Dolphin Research Center

I get lucky sometimes. Once a year or so my brother and his S.O. (who is the medical director of the Dolphin Research Center in the Florida Keys) need a break from their life with dolphins. And when they take a vacation, they need someone trustworthy to come down and stay at the DRC to keep an eye on things after hours--like baby sitting the dolphins so they don't have wild parties, maybe. When I'm asked, being supremely trustworthy, I go. This time, for the first time in three years, my wife, Terry, was able to come with me. Here are some pix from our eight-day stay.

On the balcony in the evening.

 

It's all done with hand signals and fish for a reward. For me, it's good bourbon and a cigar.

Always nice to see a friendly face.

One if by hand, two if by sea: Training is done with hand signals and fish.

Things get dreamy at sunset.

Book Review: They Liked it!

This is all I could fit of the actual book review as it appeared in a newspaper in Greenfield, MA.

You can read the full review, below.

I once read an article about book reviews by a writer who said when he got a good one, he danced around the kitchen. I vowed that if I ever got a good review, I would do the same. So, back in December, when this review of my novel Brothers of the Fire Star came out in a newspaper in Massachusetts, I did just that--skittered around the kitchen waving my hands in the air and doing a soft-shoe version of a jig. It felt good. Of course, we are never really satisfied. Had I been the reviewer, I would have raved on about Arvidson's pitch-perfect ear for dialogue and his lyrical prose, not to mention his marvelous gift for description. But, anyway, here is the text of the review: 

Book review: ‘Brothers of the Fire Star’

By Tinky Weisblat

Friday, December 14, 2012
(Published in print: Saturday, December 15

By TINKY WEISBLAT

Special to The Recorder

“Brothers of the Fire Star” by Douglas Arvidson (Crossquarter Publishing Group, 209 pages, $15.95)

“Brothers of the Fire Star” combines history, spirituality and specialized knowledge to move its reader with a plea for cross-racial unity and love of nature. The book will appeal to children from middle school up as well as to adults.

Author Douglas Arvidson grew up in Ashfield and now lives in coastal Virginia. In 1997, he and his wife, both teachers, found work in a school on the island of Guahan (Guam), an American territory in the western Pacific Ocean. 

Long-time sailors, they lived on a sailboat during their 11 years there. Arvidson soon became a member of an organization dedicated to resurrecting the centuries-old Pacific-Island method of navigation. Practitioners of this art are trained to study the stars, the sea swells and wildlife in order to make their way through the sea.

Arvidson puts his knowledge of navigation and nature to good use in “Brothers of the Fire Star.” The book begins in December 1941, just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when the Japanese invade Guahan.

Joseph, a 12-year-old boy from Massachusetts who has been living on the island with his uncle, hides in the woods during the attack and thus avoids the slaughter that claims his uncle and many of the island’s inhabitants.

While taking shelter in a tree, Joseph is visited by spirits who tell him that he is destined to sail away from Guahan with a boy named Napu. Together they will learn “the ways of the ancient navigators” and eventually return to Guahan to bring back those ways, now forgotten.

Napu, who is just about to escape from the war-torn island by boat, reluctantly takes the American boy along on his voyage. Together they learn to sail, learn about war and learn how to get along despite the differences in their backgrounds.

Arvidson’s prose in the book is matter of fact, letting the story shine through relatively simple words. His young heroes grow up before the reader’s eyes. 

The boys are shocked by the devastation of battle they encounter. Nevertheless, their growing bond and their study of navigation teach them that friendship and communion with nature can transcend war and death.

“Brothers of the Fire Star” isn’t always a happy book. It is set in an unhappy time and place. Nevertheless, its story is touching. And its plea for interracial cooperation and respect for tradition is beautifully articulated and inspiring.

“Brothers of the Fire Star” is available at the World Eye Bookshop.

Tinky Weisblat is a writer and singer who lives in Hawley. Her Web site is www.merrylion.com; her blog is www.ourgrandmotherskitchens.com. 

Water, Fog, Boats: Winter, Such As It Is, Arrives, and I Start the Next Book

This doesn't look much like winter, yet the calendar says it's here so I got her ready.

Eleven years living in the tropics taught me to appreciate the change of seasons offered by the temperate zones. Still, memories of my New England-farm-boy upbringing with 20-below winters served up with plenty of snow forever cured me of any desire moving back up there. This, the true temperate climate of Eastern Shore Virginia, suites nicely. 

Here I am in the beginning of December having just "winterized" my boat. This means getting her ready for sub-freezing temps which means running a non-toxic anti-freeze through the raw water cooling system in the engine and draining the holding and water tanks and putting some of the stuff in those, too. And changing the engine oil, too, except I didn't do that this year because I only ran the engine for maybe ten hours since the last oil change. 

This has all the earmarks of a good winter in other respects, too. Terry gets back from Atlanta on Friday and on Sunday we leave for a week in Washington D.C., she to work, me to avoid work. I plan on spending much time hanging out at the National Gallery of Art just sitting, looking, absorbing. I can't explain the powerful attraction old art has for me. I love the gallery, too. Huge, cavernous--a modern cathedral to allow us to worship the old artists, great and--most of them--dead.

Two days after we get back from D.C., we fly to Atlanta and will have Christmas with the grandchildren--two boys so far, a third on the way in Seattle. Then, the day after Christmas, we fly to the Florida keys to babysit dolphins, a pleasant interlude that is getting to be a regular gig, except Terry will go with me this year. Wonderful. We will sit on the balcony overlooking the dolphin pens and the Gulf of Mexico and drink white wine.

The famous Eastern Shore fog overwhelmed us this week. In fact, Onancock, the name of our town, means "place where there is fog." This is the fishing fleet in Wachapreague.

As far as the new book goes, a while ago I discovered that the secret to writing is to put it off until you can't put it off any more and still call yourself a writer. Then, when you are hungry for it, when the fire in the belly is flaming up, you do it. I've been planning my next book for years, daydreaming my characters and my plot, making notes, writing sketches of scenes, getting ready. Like painting a house, writing a novel is all about preparation. So then, when the anxiety in my heart was too much to bear any longer, I sat down one morning at wrote the first chapter. Here's the first few lines:

“Tell me again, Maggie, about when I was born.”

Maggie’s face had assumed her warrior’s mask and to the boy it was important to soften it, to melt the thin veneer of ice it formed between them. Maggie sighed at the windshield of the old truck with its clattering, slapping wipers. She downshifted and the engine roared and strained and the wipers increased their tempo. 

After a moment her face softened. “Oh, now, Joseph, I remember it as if it was tomorrow—that clear. It was a perfect spring day, filled with bird songs and birds flitting and doing what birds do in the spring.  Your mother, the sweet young lady that she was, called me, her voice so soft I could barely hear her, what with her accent and all. I went over right away although I had just put a pie in the oven…..” 

“No, Maggie,” the boy said, “Not that time. The other time I was born.”

 Wachapreague harbor in the Fog, December 2012

Spontaneous Improvisation: Writing for the Sake of Nothing But Feeling Your Fingers Move

Writing and life are like an old truck--but I don't know why.

I met with a friend yesterday, a friend who wants to write poetry or essays but seems to be afraid to start anything. Can't get anything going. Keeps putting off sitting down and scribbling. What can she do? she asked. What do you do? she asked. How do you get things down? How do you start?

We sat in a nearby cafe and chatted about it. She is a retired teacher and spent many long decades struggling to get her students to write--to just get something, anything down. We drank tea and ate and watched customers come and go and listened to the televisions behind the bar droning on about football while we mulled this over.

What do I do when I want to write and can't think of anything to say? I usually avoid that problem by not sitting down to write until I do have something to say. Sounds easy enough, but what if that goes on for a long time and your not writing anything and you really want to just write something? So, here we go. What's below this paragraph is the result of not having anything to say but wanting to write something just because it feels good:

 Day-to-day life has a rhythm to it and a rhyme and we forget this at our peril. I just rolled out of bed, feet hit the floor, and the rhyme and rhythm of the day began with me stumbling around in my usual fog looking for my glasses. Once I find them, I can see out the back, upstairs windows down to the backyard for my first check on what's happening outside--another cool, clear day it would seem and no fox hanging out.

Down the stairs, clutching at the banister/railing for support, stepping carefully. I'm older now, more tentative. I greet my wife who was already up and getting ready to go to the "Y" for her morning swim. I admire my wife's determination and discipline but I'm over that early morning workout thing. Takes longer now for my bones to grease themselves up. I'll work out later.

Coffee--decaf, damn it, because of my recurrent heart arrhythmia--and a Zone bar to start. I pad around, looking out windows at the birds feeding at the feeders and drinking at the bird bath. Satisfied everything is in order, I remove my self to my cave, my study, my den, my "space." It's warm in there, with fat recliners in which I sit and write and think and nap and study Spanish and play guitar and sometimes watch TV.

I open up this laptop and log on and here I am, the early blogger seeking the blogger's elusive worm of public attention. I'm free to write what I want which is about anything that comes into my mind and so far I don't have anything of any particular interest to say. Can't think of a thing, in fact. So this yammering you're reading is just practice, really, at just writing. Just getting something down, just for the hell of it, because it feels good to see my thoughts emerge through the tips of my fingers onto the blank page. When I write I feel like a musician, a jazz pianist say, improvising on his keyboard.

Today is Saturday and Terry leaves tomorrow for two weeks in Atlanta on FEA biz. I'll spend time with her today and drive her to the airport tomorrow morning and then I'm on my own, the Two-Week Bachelor. I'll focus on my writing and book promotion while she's gone. I started writing my next novel this week. On the second chapter and it feels like I'm back home where I belong.

So, there it is--nothing. I just wrote about nothing and it was fun. I got something down that started nowhere and went nowhere else. I just enjoyed feeling my fingers moving across the keyboard and watching the words appear on the screen through the magic of technology. It felt like I was playing piano in an old bar where no one was really listening and no one cared what I played so I just improvised and noodled along.

A Fox in the Yard, Thanksgiving, Sailboats, 10,0000 and 66

This guy got in and couldn't get out.

I looked out the backdoor window the other day and saw this: a rather skanky looking fox. He'd jumped across the fence to get into the backyard and then lost his way out. We watched, Terry and I, full of sympathetic dread: was he sick (Rabies! Poor thing! poor us!); was he hungry (the poor neighbor's cat huddling at our door must look tempting). At one point, unaware of us, he sat down and scratched himself, dog-like, and looked around. Ten minutes later, he found his way out and was gone. The cat relaxed, we went about our business.

And my business was taking a long walk. The autumn air was crisp, the breeze filled with the perfume of falling leaves and whatever else it is that give fall it's special smells. I set out, down through the quiet streets to the harbor.

Autumn comes here later than New England: This is the middle of November

 The harbor in Onancock never fails to pluck at my heart strings.

I walked four miles with my GPS app satellite lady talking to me every five minutes describing my progress: "Time--5 minutes; distance--.027 miles; pace: 18 minutes, 27 seconds per mile"

Other important numbers for me this day: my novel Brothers of the Fire Star climbed--a temporary spike, I'm sure--to 10,000th ranking on Amazon and on Sunday I'll be 66. My wife pointed out that if you put another 6 on that, you've got me pegged but there's a little devil in all of us.

Photo Shoots, Feature Articles, and Waiting for That Review

At a photo shoot on a beach on Guam: I try hard to look casual, seaworthy, and profound at the same time.

Unless you are a pro at this--say a movie star or a model--photo shoots are a trial and a tribulation. You're extremely pleased to be there on one hand and extremely worried about what camera with its huge, invasive lens is going to find in your face on the other hand.

I'm as vain and anyone, of course, and while the photographer had his bazooka directed at me point blank, I suspected he was saying to himself, "Well, I guess I'll just have to do the best I can with this old guy."

 I worried about the wind in my hair blowing it off the places where I no longer have any hair; comb overs and topical trade winds don't mix well. I worried that I would not be able to suck things in just above my belt for as long as it was taking him to decide which pose I should assume. I worried that the senior citizen discounts I love to ask for would not include a discount on Rogaine and diet bars.

Nonetheless, I got through it, for better or for worse. 

Here is the link to the article: http://www.guampdn.com/article/20121111/LIFESTYLE/211110303/-Brothers-Fire-Star-Former-resident-s-book-tale-Guam-World-War-II?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|Frontpage|p


Or, here it is below, copied and pasted:

'Brothers of the Fire Star': Former resident's book a tale of Guam in World War II

In the dense, dark and mysterious jungle, 13-year-old Joseph hears planes and thundering bombs in the distance. Caught in the thick of World War II on Guam, the fearful boy flees into the darkness and encounters a spirit in a banyan tree, urging him to survive.
"You must not die yet," the spirit says. "You must escape to the sea."
Joseph is a young boy from Massachusetts living on Guam during the war -- born from the imagination of former Guam resident and author Douglas Arvidson.
Arvidson was in Guam just a couple of weeks ago to promote his latest book, "Brothers of the Fire Star." The fictional tale of two boys sailing for their survival is set against historical war scenes in Guam and the Pacific.
Arvidson is an avid adventurer who immersed himself in Pacific traditional seafaring navigation while living on island for 11 years.
Today, the retired Department of Defense Education Activity speech and language pathologist lives in Virginia yet still longs for home -- Guam -- where he's studied with traditional navigator Manny Sikau and has many friends.

Product of passion

The book is a product of his passion for the open ocean and traditions of ancient navigation that he learned while living on Guam.
In 2008, Arvidson retired and left Guam for the mainland. While writing his book, he had an epiphany.
"It was the emotion of nostalgia -- a longing to recapture a treasured past memory -- that made the difference," he says. "You see that in William Faulkner's writing -- a longing for the past. I missed my life and my friends on Guam, missed the great adventure of sailing, I missed the profound sense of both the sadness of the war and the magical past that exists in the islands."
In the story, Joseph is a young boy from Massachusetts. In a way, Arvidson is that boy.
"I would never pretend to be a boy from Guam -- there would be no authenticity in trying to be," he says. "How to solve this problem when developing the idea for the book? Be myself and draw upon my own experiences. As soon as I had figured this out, nostalgia for my youth on the farm in a small, rural town in the hills of New England dovetailed nicely with my nostalgia for my life on Guam and in the islands. After that, the book seemed to write itself and it became a deeply satisfying experience."
It took him nearly three years to write the historical fiction novel, which was released in October and is available in paperback on Amazon.com. Aside from the characters, including Napu, the boy Joseph befriends on his journey of survival, Arvidson tried to include as many historical references from the War in the Pacific as he could, also drawing on his trips through the Pacific on his boat.

Traditional navigation

When Arvidson and his wife moved here in the 1990s, he heard about the group Traditions About Seafaring Islands, or TASI, and became intrigued with the idea of possibly studying navigation under a master navigator. He attended meetings where he met Sikau, a seventh-generation Carolinian master navigator from Puluwat. He became deeply involved, attending classes on navigation in Hagåtña and at the University of Guam.
"I also had the opportunity to meet with Manny privately and to sail with him on the voyage back from Pagan," he says. "I asked a lot of questions, took a lot of notes, and although, of course, I could never have actually been a navigator, it gave me enough knowledge to write the novel. After I was finished with the first draft, I met with Manny and went over the manuscript with him. He and Larry Cunningham provided invaluable feedback."
It's a passion he continues to share with his book and with a lecture he gives that he calls "Secrets of the Navigators."
On Friday, he was in Massachusetts visiting his 93-year-old father and preparing for a presentation on the ancient navigators of the Pacific for the Boy Scouts.
"There are organizations dedicated to keeping the old skills alive and keeping that profound connection to the sea and the sky a part of the island culture is vitally important," he says. "Yes, GPS has largely replaced traditional navigation, but that is not the point. The point is the fundamental connection between man and nature must not be lost."
Arvidson and his wife, Terry, lived on Guam in a boat, where he wrote three other novels, two of which have already been published.
Terry Arvidson is a director of the federal education association for all of the military dependent schools in the United States, which brought the couple back to Guam last month.
"She has to go back usually once a year to talk to all of the constituents there," he says. "She goes back on business and I would go back with her. Now I'm going back on business for myself."

Urging of friends

Douglas Arvidson came at the urging of his friends Maureen Murphy and Shannon Murphy, sisters who loved the book, he says.
"They really went to bat for me," he says. "They set up things with the International Reading Association and I sold a lot of books there. I presented a lecture with (Professor) Evelyn Flores' class at the University of Guam."
Different libraries and other groups have asked him to return next year to make more presentations on writing and on "Brothers of the Fire Star."
"I have so many good friends (on Guam) and so many good memories," he says.
"We love going back and we'd want to move back here on an on-and-off basis.
"We were here for 11 years and got to know the island. We've developed very, very close relationships with the people there. It feels like home to me."