ILLNESS: the ultimate writer’s block

Sometimes it is impossible to write. There are many reasons for this.

Sometimes the words just won’t come because the outside world intrudes. Say a kid that decides to parade up and down your street with a boom box on his shoulder, sharing his love for Eminem. Sometimes the words remain locked inside while you wrestle with the argument you had with your spouse that morning. Then there is the classic writer’s block when a seemingly insurmountable problem in the composition appears to vex you. Some days you are unnerved to be pleasantly distracted by the bird song and sun coming across your window sill.

All these variations of writer’s block have their solution. Mine may or may not.

The last few months I have not been able to put much down on paper. My blogs postings have stopped altogether. I’ve written drafts of only a couple of poems. Essays remain half written. The reason is I’m a sick puppy.

For months I could not fathom why I was so tired, unable to focus or concentrate. I was experiencing my usual blurry visual irritant — owing to Fuchs’ Corneal Dystroph, a rare genetic disorder. Along with this, something even more insidious was at work. I could see the screen of my computer but the experience of gazing made me uncomfortable. It was as if there were an invisible force field not letting my see with my eyes.

So now, most days reading and writing are tedious chores. A half hour at my computer or with a book would leave me exhausted. There are days I can do nothing but sleep. I just came off a 36 hour sleep marathon. Some days I sit in a chair and wonder what I will do if I lose my sight. Today was a good day, so I’m posting here notes accumulated over several days.

After seeing two doctors in my home town I know little other than I am ill and need to travel out-of-state (1,500) to see two specialist for evaluation and treatment. I will see two neurosurgeon and an endocrinologist at the University of Washington. What I do know is that I have an aneurysm the size of a dime in my right middle cranial artery and a suspicious looking pituitary gland. The pituitary gland may account for my deteriorating vision, occasional nausea and fatigue. The aneurysm is simply a ticking time bomb.

As much as I love to travel and as much as I’d like to leave the snow (yes, snow is still on the ground here, May 2), I’m not looking forward to this trip. I do not like sanitized hospital environments (though I’d much prefer them to less sanitized ones).  Still, I want this physical writer’s block to go away. This might not be possible. What might be possible may not be preferable. It may be something radically different. Most of the options are not comforting: limited vision, blindness, disability, paralysis, chronic pain.

I’m hoping and praying for health, yet know what I want may not be what will result. What I want is the vigor necessary to explore the world and love and care and share with my family. Beyond that, I want to write what needs to be written.

THE LONG VIEW OF POET JOHN HAINES

JOHN  HAINES — 1924 – 2011

Last year, at the first anniversary of his death, I drove to poet John Haines’ homestead cabin. I was curious to see the specific landscape which fired his imagination and produced that first literary earthquake of a book, Winter News. It was a typical Alaskan late winter day, windy, not deeply cold. The sky was host to a few billowy, fast-moving clouds. It was the kind of day that restores hope of light after a long, dark winter.

I began by driving through the haze and fumes that make Fairbanks and North Pole some of the worst polluted air of any city in the world. I passed the long fence of Eielson Air Force Base. I sped along the forested flats dotted with mailboxes and driveways where lift-kitted, four-wheel drive pickups covered in mud pointed toward dented trailers owned by people living out their version of the Alaska dream. I passed the too frequently flooded community of Salcha. Steered my way along the road’s bends and twists at Harding Lake before dropping down and alongside the slumbering Tanana River – now a flat expanse of white, littered with brown upended roots and tangles of spruce logs.

At a pullout, I pulled my little car up close to the river’s edge. I climbed out to stretch my body and give my dry eyes relief from defrosted air. The wind-driven air cut threw my shirt and pants. I stood for a few bracing moments observing the white peaks of the Alaska Range wobbling and  shimmering in the distance like a long line of pearls under shallow water.

Energized, I climbed back into the car and read a short essay of John’s, called, “Readings From An Alaskan Journal.” This quote stood out, “Like most of us, I am a descendant of European immigrants, hardly yet at home on this continent. But I have nonetheless been trying all my life to understand what I have found, what I think I know.” The power of that line seemed to come as much from my formidable surroundings as from the page. It is a definitive statement for all writers. Even though I cannot yet count myself a published author, John’s words seemed to sum up what I’d been doing with paper and pen for so many years – trying to understand ‘what I have found and think I know.’

That day next to the sleeping Tanana, a small flag of hope flew in my thoughts. John was in this country a long time before his revelatory first book of poems. This trajectory of John’s publishing life was a long, lonely apprenticeship far from the centers of the literary establishment. In that crucible of solitude, he became well acquainted with his own personal and literary limitations. His Poem Of The Forgotten begins “I came to this place,// a young man green and lonely.// Well quit of the world” and ends with him waking “in the first snow of autumn, // filled with silence.” Most important, in these long, cold, deep silences, he began to hone his craft.

I’ll have more on Haines’ poetry from time to time.

~~~~

Here is a video portrait of John at his Richardson Homestead.

Are Poetry Books Too Cheap?

In Ted Kooser’s short poem Selecting A Reader,  he imagines a women picking up a book of his poems, flipping the pages, and deciding “for that kind of money” she could have her dirty raincoat cleaned. She returns the book back on the shelf.

As typical of Kooser, the poem is intriguing – simple on the surface with various undertones. It is whimsical, sensual, and sad. It is a poem about poetry and potential readers, about poetic imagination and harsh reality. For Kooser, the ideal reader is too practical to buy poetry at all. It raises the question, what is a book of poems worth.

This poem came to mind as I was thinking about eBook prices. In preparing for my self-publishing ventures, I’ve read a lot of publishing advice columns and blogs on book pricing. There is little consensus. I am certain there are book sales gurus who have it all figured out but most news on this aspect of publishing comes down to trends and generalized data like this one. Without separating out genre, the data above is of limited help. It does tells us one sure thing whether you are selling poetry, fiction or non-fiction, the cheapest price is not always the best price.

From my own unscientific survey, poetry books as a whole tend to be priced like fiction — whether they follow indie or big publishing houses. A quick survey of poetry eBooks on Amazon shows prices range from .99 to 5.99. I’ve often thought to myself, “If it’s ninety-nine cents, it’s probably not worth reading.” The reason I think this way goes back to something I learned many years ago.

The summer after I graduated from high school, my mother and I held a yard sale. I was going to college and I needed to lighten my load for dorm room-sized living. My mother wanted to unload too many memories from a previous marriage. We lived on a high-traffic, four-lane, main artery in a suburb of Detroit. We spent the early morning setting out our wares and sticking little circular tags with the prices on each item. By mid-morning people began to stop and sift through our clothes and pictures and books and knickknacks. Yet, few bought anything.

At noon my stepfather arrived for lunch. He asked how it was going. We told him sales were dismal. “Oh,” was all he said and turned from us and began to pace in front of the tables like a general reviewing his troops. He took all of two minutes and returned to give us his report.

“Nobody will buy anything because it’s too cheap,” he said. “Double and triple your prices and sales will double and triple.”

This seemed crazy to me. Why would anyone pay more for what they won’t buy for less.

“But hardly anyone is buying anything now,” I said.

“Mark everything up and I guarantee more sales.”

Ron was a successful salesman, so my mother and I followed his advice.

What followed was a miracle. Within minutes sales began to boom. Our customers seemed happier too. A few even exclaimed they had found a treasure. In a day and a half I made $250, good money then, more than I made as a doorman at a swanky movie theater.

My domestic vignette’s take away is this: often a higher price will suggest greater value to a customer.

I believe most poetry books are worth more than a handful of pennies. I believe readers of poetry believe that too. If some poetry readers are wearing dirty rain coats they can’t afford to launder, then we know poetry sales have a limited and specific audience. The group of readers who buy poetry will not balk at a higher price for the simple reason that all of us know that something of higher value costs a bit more.

What are your thoughts on book pricing?

Have you ever under sold your abilities or the value of your book?

Let me know with a comment below.

Readin’ Writin’ Racin’ and hearing the corn grow

I traveled to Michigan in December to visit my mother. While there I drove into the backwoods to visit my uncle, my mother’s brother. I hadn’t visited for some time and he was thinner, grayer but still vigorous. He had recently finished cutting and stacking 10 cords of firewood. At seventy-seven I hope I’m that spry.

It wasn’t long into the visit when the talk turned to racing. My uncle drove race cars at Flat Rock Speedway, southwest of Detroit. I still have vivid memories of that track and those roaring race cars, which were delightfully deafening to a 10-year-old. To this day I recall that track whenever I smell burnt rubber and high-octane gasoline exhaust.

We discussed the latest racing news. This trip he was all excited to tell me that, two-time Indianapolis winner, Gordon Johncock moved to a neighboring town and that, former NASCAR champion, Tony Stewart may drive in the Indianapolis 500 for car owner Roger Penske.

As always, I quizzed him about his racing days. This trip I learned his car owner was too cheap to buy new tires for his race car. He didn’t have to say it but I knew from my own racing experience that good rubber makes for good racing. The lack of fresh sticky rubber would mean his car would have little traction. “I won a couple of heat races but the best I could do was one third (place) in the features.” Like us all, I’m sure he’s thought about what might have been had circumstances been different. Not one to dwell, he has nothing but fond memories of his racing days.

After dinner we wandered out to his garage. He keeps an immaculate workshop. Every tool in its place and the floor squeaky clean. On one wall hung a 1962 photograph of him in his Flat Rock race car. It sported an unusual number: two and three-quarters. He said he wanted a number that would get noticed, so he added the fraction. I had him take the picture down and I used the camera in my cell phone to snap a picture of it for a keepsake. It truly is of historical value, both to my extended family and the history of short track racing in southern Michigan.

Charles Bartle, Flat Rock Speedway, 1962.

The picture captures the spirit of that time and place. The open-faced, leather-eared helmet says it all. This was home-brew racing. The car was a renegade racer built from the ground up of parts from various cars. Strapping yourself into one of these beasts means you were a warrior from a long line of chariot racers. Taking a seat in a car like that required a degree of trust in your car builder just like it does for any breakneck speedway racer today.

My uncle’s expression in the picture is that of a savvy racer — serious, fearless and proud. He told me the picture was taken between heat races. I think it is classic vintage photo even if he wasn’t my uncle.

When I went to leave he gave me a book, Lone Star J.R.: The Autobiography of Racing Legend Johnny Rutherford, three-time Indianapolis 500 winner and member of the International Sports Hall of Fame. “You’ll get a kick out of some of the stories he tells.” He knew I’d get a kick out of it because he knows I love motor sports and saw Rutherford race three times at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The book chronicles the racing career of Rutherford — a brief glimpse of his childhood and ragtag years building a name for himself in racing. It is filled with vintage racing photos and tells brief stories about the now famous racers he raced with.

Published in 2000, this book should be in the library of serious race fans, racing history buffs and motor sports writers. My only criticism of the book is that he often takes you to a track, tells you he learned a lot about racing there, but doesn’t tell you what he learned. Surely he did not forget those hard-won lessons of racing. It is a minor thing but readers would have relished this information. That said, the book is filled with information on race tracks, racers and the people who made big time racing possible for the past 60 years. The narrative is plainly written and at times can be lyrically sweet.  

On one road trip, exhausted and hungry, he pulls off the road to sleep, opens both car doors, and stretches out across the front seat. “On a nice warm summer evening, if there’s no breeze, you can actually hear the corn grow. It wheezes and snaps and crackles. At first I thought I was just hearing things, but later I asked a farmer about it and he said, “Oh, yeah, you can hear corn grow if it’s a still night. Corn makes a lot of noise.”

Ah, the pleasure of hearing the corn grow after a weekend of race cars roaring in your ears. This is great stuff.

Click here to see how Rutherford is being honored at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum.

Let me know if you have any racing stories.