jodiet.com Blog

My entire life revolves around words. The one and only constant in each and every second of each and every hour of each and every day is words. If they are not bombarding my vision, melding together in black and white putting me to sleep, they are ping-ponging in my head. I’m never without words and therefore, I am never truly silent. Even when I am sleeping between REM dreaming episodes, I think the very last song I heard or thought of, whether from the radio, TV or my I-Pod are still echoing in my head. I wake up to go the bathroom in the middle of the night silently humming a tune to myself.

For numerous people in my life, maybe even the majority, my sole connection to them is through words. They are not really simply words on a computer screen. They are my connection to people I care about but for whatever reason, time or space, I am not able to interact with in person. They are words but not just words. The words are me, raw and truthful. I took the time and the effort to choose just the right one and present it in black and white. They are given without expectation or pretense. They are what they are and once they are given, cannot be taken back. Sometimes giving words is risky; you don’t know how the person may react, whether he or she will welcome them, reject them or ignore them, a worse insult than rejection.

For me, e-mail, after the word itself, is the greatest invention in the universe. I adore e-mail. It is immediate and unlike snail-mailed letters, there is no risk of it becoming old news before it reaches the recipient’s hands. Written words are definite. Spoken words can get lost from mouth to ear and if the person doesn’t hear what is said, you can’t go back to prove the truth one way or the other. When it is on paper, the meaning may be ambivalent and subject to negotiation but what it actually says cannot be disputed. So even though after I hit send and am bound to the words in the message, I much prefer it over the spoken word in many situations. Written words leave room for editing where the spoken word doesn’t. When I’m writing, I can sit back, ponder, chew on my fingernails, and I can test things out. If it doesn’t sound quite right, I can sit back some more, sip some coffee, press backspace and start over. Can you imagine how annoying conversing with someone would be if they behaved that way when you are talking with them? Well, I can and if you ever want to give it a try, have a conversation with my seven-year-old son.

I’m a clumsy conversationalist, particularly when discussing something important and emotionally charged. I’m horrible at polite conversation. I’m sorry but it is difficult for me to really care what the person I’m riding the elevator with at a place where I almost never go thinks about the weather and I don’t have the energy to pretend I do. Sometimes I admire people who can strike up conversations with whomever wherever because if I could do that, maybe I’d have more friends. And I do believe the stories of regular people’s lives and how they became the person they’ve become are fascinating but I’m not going to be able to learn that in a two-minute elevator ride and I’m usually so engrossed in my own thoughts, I’m lucky to squeeze out a friendly expression. When the conversation is important or emotionally charged, it is difficult for me to get organized. There are a zillion things whirling around in my head so I don’t know where to start. If I try I end up plucking out random things that do not fit together or make any sense then eventually just give up and not say anything.

When I’m going through a difficult time, writing helps me to figure it out and to deliver it. I figure it out through free writing, just handwriting everything that pops into my head, related or not. I think that once my brain is distracted with making pretty curly cues, lines, letters and words, it is tricked into spilling out the hiding truth. Sometimes it just clicks and I realize how I really feel and what I really think. The only rule I have when free writing is I can only include the absolute truth. Even in fiction there is truth; you have to be honest with yourself and admit what you are writing is fiction. Other times it takes re-reading what I’ve written days, months or years later before I figure out how I got from there to here (or there—but I don’t want to get too philosophical).

The power of delivering the written word is in editing. You can read, re-read, re-write and revise until your message contains everything you want and nothing you don’t. I use this ability to edit myself as a crutch, editing nearly everything I write. Written words are a form of control with me. Editing allows me to say exactly what I want, no more and no less. Even though I have no control over what the recipient does with my message, I have sole control over what I say. I can withhold or provide as I choose.

Words are power created from the underlying power of twenty-six letters arranged in billions of constellations to create billions of feelings and meanings. Words can change life; they can create and destroy, bring birth and bring death. They can mean everything or they can mean nothing. Words can prison and they can free. They can elevate or damn, be tangible or intangible. To be so simple and do so much is ultimate power.

ETERNITY

Days languish in constant motion
Like time lapsed photography.
No sooner than the sun rises,
It falls then starts again.

Calendar pages fly from the wall
Quickly without provocation.
Monday then Friday then Monday again
Before I can catch my breath.

The days slip, float more slowly than they passed,
Accumulate like snow drifts around my feet.
Blizzard of days creep up my body to my neck;
Buried in days spent.

I don’t remember much more than
A wedding or birth here and there;
Retrieve, give, retrieve, give again.
Running constant motion.

Swirl of days, hours, people, life engulf me.
I see just white paper clouds
Sprinkled with fancy fonted typed up time
Then breeze burst shuffles all away.

Scatter through grass then gone, clean, exhausted.
Only adhesive that bound my life to desk remains.
No more time or constant motion, just how to
Fill eternity.

ESCAPE

The world is on the move
But I stand still.
They all have somewhere
waiting.

The world is on the move
But I stand still-
Silent in the noise.
The world has a purpose
But I stand still;
Aimlessly searching.

My chains paralyzed;
Imprisoned by cold,
Racing to nowhere.
Raise head from pillow,
Face the day
Longing for nightfall
And escape.

Peace is only in sleep.
Restless and weary.
Live every moment to
Briefly die away
From reality.

I’ve been thinking lately–there are hundreds of books on the shelves (several on mine) promising to lead the way to publication. They all have a proven method; write this way, submit this way, negotiate this way, pray this way, and wish really really really hard this way and you too will have a beautifully perfect bound glossy hard-covered book and a big fat advance check to go with it. The proof? Well, you’re holding it in your hands!! If I can do it, ANYONE can do it.

But I think, really–ANYONE can do it? What if I can’t do it? Where is the book that tells you how to fail ever getting published? And then when you do fail, how to get your life back on track? Where is the book explaining how to know when it’s time to just give up and accept the fact you suck at writing and are wasting your time?

Not only is there no such publication, there will never be any such publication (unless self-published, I suppose, but then you enter a whole other realm of what many consider, justified or not, failure). There will never be such a book because the fact someone out there is holding the book in their hands would eliminate the author’s credibility. How can someone write about something convincingly when they haven’t actually accomplished the subject of their manuscript? The moment the book is published, the author would cease to be an authority on failing at writing or publication–they would automatically become a failure at failing at writing or publication; they are published!!

Of course, these guides to the holy grail of writing all tell you failure is inevitable or at least it seems so. They say you will rack up hundreds, perhaps thousands, of rejection letters before that one magical assistant happens to be in a reading mood at just the moment your query or manuscript brushes past their desk then passes it on to their superior who also magically is in a reading mood. I KNOW, they say, because this book was rejected for three years before I found a sucker willing to publish it. And you believe that author because you are holding their masterpiece which really isn’t all that spectacular, certainly no better than what you could produce, and you persevere.

The rejections you get from potential publishers and agents are akin to the enabler who assures an alcoholic that one beer won’t hurt them. Writers’ egos are at the same time overinflated and shaky; the rejection letter writer doesn’t want to damage anyone’s self esteem or be responsible for quashing the aspirations of the next Stephen King or J.K. Rowling so their form letters generally include the message essentially saying just because I think your manuscript, idea, etc. sucks doesn’t mean everyone else will; keep trying and keep writing.

I wonder, though, how many of these individuals inputting your name and address into their form letters are chuckling and thinking, “There’s no way in hell, heaven or Earth this fool will EVER get published!” Wouldn’t it be kinder to just tell the author, “You know what, we did everything we could but no amount of resuscitation, electricity or injection will ever bring this manuscript to life. Please consider giving up this illusion and getting a REAL job”?

But then I suppose the over-inflated part of the ego would kick in and dismiss the advice. What do they know? They’re just one of hundreds of over-worked underpaid screeners. After all, my great aunt Sally loved my manuscript and assured me I’d be famous some day. I will show Mr. Smarty Pants; I WILL get my book published. Then the circle of the writing life will continue and God-willing when heaven, the moon, the stars, the galaxy and the whole damn universe align, I WILL have a glossy hard-covered beauty in my hands along with at least a modest advance or royalty check and then I can write one of those “How to Get Published Even Though You Wonder if You Suck” guides. The proof? You’ll be holding it in your hands!!