Lessons in Portaging

Posted on August 8, 2024 by dinafried

Seven summers ago I took a canoe trip in the boundary waters in northern Minnesota, a state that seems to have found its way into the spotlight with the selection of its Governor Tim Walz for Vice President on the Democratic ticket.

For days we paddled in a quiet dreamscape, rarely seeing another canoe. No Google Maps here. To get from lake to lake, you needed to consult a large laminated map, where the portage spots were little dots that you needed to approximate by looking at the shape of the lake, the shape of the map, the shape of the lake, back and forth until you spotted it…a small break in the tree-line that just possibly could be a path to the next lake.

We discovered the hard way that once we docked the boat, it was a good idea to take a few steps down the path to make sure it really was a path before carrying the canoe and all our heavy gear. We had a few false starts and a few longer-than-expected portages where I began to wonder if I was on a canoeing trip or a hiking trip that involved carrying canoes.

But, on the whole, things went smoothly–until the last night, where all the campsites on the lake we planned to stop at were full. So even though it was late and we were tired, we portaged to the next lake–where there were still no empty campsites.

“Why don’t we ask someone if they’re willing to share,” I suggested. The areas marked for camping were huge… big enough for many tents. As a New Yorker used to crowds and small spaces, that seemed like the obvious solution. But my companions–all Minnesota born and bred–were not as wild about the idea of intruding on other people.

So we went on to the next lake. The campsites were still full. And it was getting dark.

Finally, we asked a nice family if we could share, and chatted with them a bit before braving the swarms of dusk-ruling mosquitoes as we quickly put up our tents and cached our food.

The mosquitoes were so bad that my sister-in-law hung a mosquito net over the “outhouse” (i.e. stand-alone toilet). It felt like a little boudoir. Still the goal was no liquids after sundown–get into your tent, and try not to have to come out and pee until morning.

I started thinking about this trip again several days ago–before all the Tim Walz hoopla, especially the challenge of finding those hidden portage paths. Because lately a lot of my writing life feels like I’m circling around the lake, unsure of where the exits are that will take me to the next step on my journey.

Each day I consider three projects that all will require some heavy-lifting: a revision of my piano memoir to potentially make it more “prescriptive,” a YA novel that I seemed to have sputtered to a halt on, and a new collection of poems that needs polishing and shaping, as well as some more overall conceptualization. Instead of diving into any of them, I’ve done some minor picking away, and then mostly pivoted to revising individual poems (not necessarily in the collection), sending out submissions, engaging in small social media marketing, and writing blog posts–haha! Then I’ve spent the rest of the day in the garden picking string beans and cherry tomatoes, pulling weeds, and trying to make space among the overgrown beds of irises and lambs ears. My shoulders are aching!

But my mind’s eye is on the memory of those small breaks in the bushes of the boundary waters, because I know that eventually I WILL find the right path to the next lake with all of these projects.

In the meantime, LFG Walz & Harris!

***

For anyone interested, I had a poem about this trip, Lessons in Portaging, published in What Rough Beast, which was a daily on-line publication of resistance-oriented poems from the years of He-Who-Will-Not-Be-Named. We’re NOT going back! (Another writers block activity I’ve been doing is writing letters and postcards.)

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Grandmothers, Chopin, Cats

Posted on August 1, 2024 by dinafried

I’ve been back at the piano nearly four years, and lately I’ve noticed that occasionally I can zone into what I want to express in a piece, rather than flounder around in the notes. It’s such a liberating feeling–like I’ve finally acquired some basic tools in my kit that I can use to deepen my experience of playing. I’m trusting my fingers more to do “the right thing,” giving my heart an opening to put in its own two cents.

Grandma Jeanne with baby Alana (my daughter) 1989. Photo by Shel Horowitz

This got me to thinking again about my Grandma Jeanne, who, in her eighties, still played the piano for at least three hours every day, re-visiting old pieces and learning new ones. In the hot, flat days of her retirement, where she rarely left her Florida condo, itt was piano that gave her days shape, made her life matter–until she developed severe arthritis and couldn’t play anymore.

One of the last times I visited her, she tried to play for me, anyway. Her face was hopeful as she positioned herself on the piano bench, set her hands with their bright red nail polish, straightened her back, took a sweeping glance at the music, a large breath, and placed her hands on the first chord. I watched her wince, as she tried to push through the pain. A few more chords. A run, and then she stopped. Banged her hands down on the piano. Closed the lid.

“You play!” The bark in her speech made it clear this was not a request. It was an order.

At the time, I didn’t have much in my repertoire, but I found her copy of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and began to read through it. She stopped me somewhere in the third line.

“Listen to the melody. These are the important notes. Play them with everything you’ve got! Everything!” Her thinning voice rose to a crescendo, as if she were my coach in one of those Hollywood sports movies, giving the Oscar-moment speech in the scene before the perpetual underdog was about to emerge victorious.

How much did I have to give these notes?

That’s what I think about now, as I play a Chopin Prelude. Instead of worrying so much about the individual notes, I’m focusing on the shapes of the phrases, the interplay of loud and soft. It’s kind of like thinking about the arc of a story. And I’m also thinking, as I often do when playing, about my grandmother cheering me on. “Yes, like that!” I could hear her exuberance as she leaned over close that day, marking the important notes.

I had a cat, Fudge, that died under the piano–a metaphor that seemed more than coincidental, though at the time of his life (and death) the piano was my daughter’s domain more than mine. But he clearly liked music and always seemed to slink into the living room whenever either of the kids were practicing. And while he has no connection to Grandma Jeanne, they somehow both ended up in a poem, that was recently published in Humana Obscura. Even more cool–someone I don’t know read the poem and made this video. (Not exactly what I might have done if I made videos, but I’m extremely touched that the poem affected her enough to do this–just more evidence that our creativity matters!)

Writing: The Joy and the Oy

Posted on July 18, 2024 by dinafried

I’m writing this post in collaboration with Tzivia Gover. Tzivia and I have been orbiting in similar circles for decades, and we’re both regulars at the same drop-in writing group in our community. We recently got excited about a question raised by another writer in our group. “People keep telling me to put together a book. But that would be so much work. I’m retired. I want to enjoy writing, not commit myself to a long slog.” This got us thinking about how to balance the joys of writing with the inevitable oys —the difficulties and discontents. So we decided to carry the conversation into our Substack newsletters. As you will find, having a writing community is one of the joys in each of our writing lives! We invite you to read each of our reflections—and join the conversation in the comments.

Dina …

Even though I’m often jazzed by the editing and revision process that’s needed for long, extensive projects, I’m also a survivor of several slogs–which had many, many moments of NOT FUN. So I immediately understood this far too familiar dilemma raised by our fellow writer.

“To keep going you’ve got to find the joy in the process,” I told him.

Sometimes, that joy can be envisioning the overall outcome and holding onto that vision. Sometimes it can be the pleasure of revising a single poem, or paragraph, or scene. For me that often involves focusing on paring down words I don’t need or substituting words and phrases with more heft and resonance and sound quality. I find it fun to look at the before and after and see how far I’ve come at chipping away at a block of marble to make it beautiful.

The hardest part for me–the “oy”–is when I have to conjure up details about a character/scene, etc., that I haven’t been able to conceptualize, or to clarify something that makes perfect sense to me but others don’t get. In my mind, I often compare this process to giving birth. “Push, push, push,” I literally say out loud to myself. No, it isn’t fun–but that’s when it’s time to go back to the vision and trust that somehow, I’ll get there.

It just won’t be quick. And that’s ok. Patience is a virtue—not one I have a lot of, but one that’s good to cultivate. Besides, while I’m going through these slogs, I can still get some instant gratification by writing short generative pieces that give me the creative rush I’m constantly seeking.

Tzivia …

Some years back, while writing my book, Joy in Every Moment, an inspirational self-help book about accessing more everyday happiness, I was scrambling to make my deadline and tapping out sentences through gritted teeth. The time pressure, the critical voices chiding me, and the overwhelm of everything else that was on my plate at the moment were crowding in on me

I promised myself I wouldn’t make writing a book about joy into a dreary job. To remind myself of my intention I placed a string of children’s wooden alphabet letters on my desk spelling out: J-O-Y. Each day when I sat down to write, that word smiled back at me, reminding me why I was there.

But writing with joy doesn’t mean that I’m going to love every minute of it. Daily writing is tiring. The transition from illuminating idea to words on the page can feel like mud-footed disappointment. Tedium and slog are part of the territory each writer must traverse. But with experience we learn that the effort is rewarded in the form of the well-earned satisfaction of having a reader sigh at the end of your poem, or seeing your work in print and knowing that you’ve said what you wanted to say, and you’ve said it as well as you can.

Meanwhile, I look for joy where I can find it.

Let me wax poetic about rooting into word origins, revising a sentence until each word slips, as if slotted, into just the right place, and of unraveling a knot of paragraphs to find the order that makes an essay sing.

And when the going gets hard, connections with other writers who understand the oy and the joy of the craft sustains me through storms of self-doubt and eases me around the rocky edges of despair when it seems nothing is coming together on the page.

Add to that the act of collaborating with other writers (as Dina and I are doing now) and the joys multiply.

Where are you finding the oys – and joys – in your writing life today? Drop a comment below.

Check out Tzivia’s Substack Newsletter—This Dream is A Poem here.

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Managing Difficult Feedback

Posted on July 14, 2024 by dinafried

A few days ago in one of my writing groups, a member told me she didn’t like the stories I’d submitted because they were too depressing. “The world is such a mess,” she said. “I don’t want to read things about death.”

While this writer is 100% entitled to her opinion, as well as her subjective preferences and dislikes, I found this a particularly hard comment to take in, even though I dutifully wrote it down and thanked her for it. And before going on, I’ll add that I trust this very talented writer in matters of craft. She and I have been in a group together for more than 30 years, and over those years, she’s offered tons of astute and discerning feedback that has made me a better writer.

But this comment wasn’t about craft. It was about personal preference. That’s what made it so hard to deal with.

And what am I supposed to do with that? Only write about happy things?

I’ve been around many writers who’ve bemoaned their predilection for dark subjects, lamenting, for example, being unable to write about anything but their dysfunctional family, their recently passed lover, their fear of climate disaster, or whatever. But several gurus on writing continue to remind us–we don’t choose our subjects; we submit to them.

Because, whether we like it or not–and whether others like it or not–our purest creative juice can be found in what matters most to us at the moment we’re committing pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. Sometimes these can be joyful places; other times we’re compelled to delve into the dark spots. The important thing is to stay with the authentic truth of what matters to us, but attempt to do so in a way to make the impact of what we’re writing universally felt by others.

However, there will be times when these others will not want to feel what we’re writing. All of us have moments where we choose the rom-com instead of the true-to-life re-enactment of some horrible moment in history. And that’s okay. Taking care of ourselves also matters.

So how do we balance our needs to limit how much darkness we can deal with and still be helpful to our peers in the writing world?

We need to bring less of our personal biases and more of our writing selves to the table. First and foremost, we need to consider the piece from the premise of what the writer is trying to do. Then, as much as we can, we need to put our subjectivity aside and respond from an impartial read focusing on our knowledge of craft on where the piece is doing what the writer intended and where it isn’t quite yet meeting that mark. And I noticed, after I got home and read her line comments, that even though my writing group friend’s overall comment in our meeting got under my skin, her notes on the actual manuscript were far more measured and extremely helpful.

And, later I realized that it was actually a good thing l that I knew her biases up front when I read her line comments, because I could evaluate them knowing more about the subjectivity that influenced them. Much as we try to eliminate it, every comment will have a subjective element. There are many kinds of writers and readers out there, all of whom will have their different list of favorite spices to add more perkiness to what’s being offered.

This doesn’t mean that feedback will never sting again. I’ve come up against many readers who don’t get me. But don’t get avant garde jazz or super abstract art. That doesn’t mean it’s bad. It just means I don’t get it.

Anyway, while I’m not ready to abandon dark writing, I am considering the idea of putting together all the joyful poems I’ve written in a little collection. My friend certainly isn’t wrong in wanting to consume content that amplifies all that’s good in life.

When the World Goes Awry, Make Art!

Posted on July 4, 2024 by dinafried

I didn’t watch the debate last week. I knew it would make me too anxious, so I made a conscious choice instead to play the piano, my general 9 pm habit. Not knowing anything about the debacle unfolding, I tried to work out knots in a Chopin nocturne and then run through the first movement of the dark and emotional Beethoven Pathetique, giving it all the passion I had as I channeled a niggly unease–perhaps a sixth sense–that things were not going well. What else could be expected from giving a raving liar free liberties to say whatever he wanted without checking a single fact, and knowing that the media instead would be paying the most attention to the other candidate’s slips as warning signs of his age in order to frame that as a more relevant liability?

Circa 1722, German organist and Barouque composer, Johann Unknown source, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

On January 6, 2021, I was also playing the piano–to try to deflect the horror I was feeling as reports of the Capitol Riot began to filter through. When the World Goes Awry, Play Bach, I later titled a chapter in my memoir. Bach is logical; his music patterned on expectations that never deviate too far from what you might expect. It’s like a calming hand on your shoulder, telling you things will be okay.

I fear we’re living in a “post-Bach” world.

As the pictures and videos plastered the news in the aftermath of January 6, I had to face the nagging question. Why should I be wasting my time playing the piano when there’s so much violence in the world? And now, I’m thinking the same thing as each day inches closer to the possible end of our democracy, especially as the president has just been granted the powers of a king. Is playing the piano any different from the orchestra on the Titanic, fiddling away as the ship went down?

Yet I remember talking with a friend, a visual artist, shortly after the 2016 election. Just do your work–your writing, he said. That’s what we all must do–keep doing our work.

How can we use music, or writing, or painting, any of the arts to channel not only our terror, but our power?

Last night in our poetry critique group, one member presented a chilling and brilliant poem, reminiscent of Sylvia Plath, centering on the psychological effects of the spying on people in East Germany, with only the merest hint of how this was beginning to infiltrate America. The poem was so good, none of us wanted to follow it, but I volunteered. My poem-in-progress contrasted the bleakness of my childhood New York City landscape with my flower garden, exploring through these metaphors themes of aging and the process of acquiring a wisdom that comes hand-in-hand with gratitude, even in times that challenge us and demand our attention to do what we can to make good in the world. It began,

I don’t believe in losing hope
I believe in finding it.

And I do believe we have to keep looking for hope. And that creating art–in any form–is one way of making good in the world, whether you are uncovering horrors, or simply nourishing people by calling attention to beauty and gratitude.This doesn’t mean we can depend on art to change the world on its own, and it doesn’t excuse us from doing more than writing the next poem or making the next painting. ,But art can help us process our deepest feelings, which can enable us to evolve from a state of numbness and shock into a place where we can reclaim our power. And sharing our paintings, photographs, stories with others can also inspire our viewers/listeners to get through their own numbness to a place of action.

What did Arlo Guthrie say? Fifty people a day walking in singing a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out…they may think it’s a movement.

Revisiting “Finished” Work

Posted on June 26, 2024 by dinafried

Yesterday, as an offering to alums of my MFA program, I had the opportunity to meet with a literary agent to talk about my piano memoir, Imperfect Pitch. I’d sent her some materials in advance–an overview/summary and some sample chapters, but I had no expectation that she would open the conversation by telling me she’d fallen in love with the book and was happily going to take it. Those pipe-dreaming days are long over, and the book has already been rejected by more than 30 agents. The few who took time to actually write back (rather than simply ghost me) all said the same thing. The issue wasn’t the writing–which was strong. The issue was the marketability.

So, not wanting to waste my precious 15 minutes searching for compliments or reassurance, I dived right in. What could I do to make this book more marketable?

Apparently–though not surprisingly–it’s extremely difficult to publish a memoir with a major publisher unless you are already a celebrity. Of course, more people would rather read about Taylor Swift than about me. I know this. The only reason I’ve been trying the “big-time channels” with this book is that I believe its underlying message will inspire and help people who’ve lost their creative north star, as I did in my music life, succumbing to the pressure of perfectionism and performance and losing all joy in the creative process. So I’d like the book to get greater circulation than it would from a smaller press.

“You need to position this more as a self-help book,” the agent told me. “Have more about the overall arc in the first chapter about what the reader will find out, and make it clear to readers that the ultimate payback will be getting permission to go back to something they cared about. Also include some instructions—make them broad, so they can apply to other arts.”

What? Give away the arc in the first chapter? My fiction-writer self is quaking at that comment, which goes against everything I’ve learned–both in my MFA program and way before. It’s hard enough to develop the darn arc. Why would anyone read a book if they already know what’s going to happen?

“In non-fiction, the journey is in the destination,” the agent said. She also suggested not being afraid of name-dropping if I knew anyone in the writing world that I could say would help promote the book. Ha! I know many people in the writing world, but most of them, like me, are not household names. In the music world, though, I do have only a couple of degrees of separation from Yo Yo Ma. I wrote about the time he guest-coached my younger child’s chamber group in the book–but likely he has better things to do, like call attention to repressive immigration policies by playing cello on the U.S./Mexico border.

Oh well, I’ll tackle that issue later. First, I’ll have to think about the reframing. I’ll keep the current version, just in case, but in general, I like revision, which I think of as re-visiting, rather than correcting something that was previously wrong. I’ve recently discovered that in my piano life, as I re-visit pieces I struggled so hard with four years ago, like Beethoven’s Pathetique, I have a lot more facility in bringing them back. Frequent practicing has made my fingers stronger and more flexible, and I can focus less on the notes and more on the shadings of a piece, how I want to express it, which gets to the soul of the creative process–especially as I’ve learned to let go of the expectation that I’ll play every note and every rhythm perfectly and without bumps.

I think this is also true for writing. As I’m working on several projects at once, I’ve become even more aware of the difference in my writing confidence and fluidity between slogging through a first draft of a new novel, and revising a poem or prose piece where I already “know the notes.”

So I’m willing to dive in and try. Maybe this rewrite will feel too loud and brash, or predictable, but maybe I can strike just the right balance between memoir and self-help to please both the publishing gods and my own creative vision–and feel jazzed by the discovery of what my fingers and brain can do.

Here’s pianist Daniel Barenboim playing the Pathetique. Enjoy!

Self-Promotion and Blueberries

Posted on June 19, 2024 by dinafried

For the past several weeks I’ve been struggling to figure out how to use this blog to promote my recent podcast and radio interviews in an engaging way that will mean something to others, but I keep getting sidetracked by things I’d rather write about.

Today, instead of self-promotion, I’m feeling called to talk about blueberries.

Photo: D. Dina Friedman

Our blueberry bush is one of the earliest blooming bushes I’m aware of–most of our friends, neighbors and surrounding farms don’t have blueberries until July. Ours has typically started at the end of June, but that date has inched up over the last few years, likely due to climate change. Our harvest season is short–around 2-3 weeks–but the blueberries are the best: crisp (not mushy) juicy, and a perfect mix of tart and sweet.

We pick the blueberries every day–sometimes twice a day–to make sure to catch each of them at the perfect stage of ripeness. It’s a slow, meditative process that I totally love, though in the current heat wave we’ve only gone out in the early morning or just before sunset. It’s been taking close to an hour to get a whole pint, which makes me think of the pressure on blueberry pickers on commercial farms. Of course, with their volume, they’re likely to be less discriminating in what they pick in order to make a profit. And this makes me think of the profit-making motive in writing, the people who make their living churning out one to two formulaic novels per year, or those whom publishers have deigned as destined for celebrity status, or actual celebrities whose books sell well even if they’re badly written or dependent on the skills of a ghostwriter.

While I’ve made it a theme of this blog to recognize and counteract perfectionism, I’m not ready to do this when it comes to blueberries. For me, they’re not a commodity; they’re a delectable treat. And while I know it’s a good idea to let go of the pinnacle of perfectionism when writing, I’m not ready to give up the joy of scaling the cliff in search of artistic excellence, even if it takes a long time and I never quite get there.

And as for the commodity thing–oh yeah, self promotion, as in throw some more mud at the walls and see what sticks–some marketing seminars I’ve been to have insisted that getting on lots of podcasts is the key to author success. While I highly doubt that, I did enjoy talking about political poetry on WMUA’s Poem Talk–both mine and this amazing poem by Jane Hirshfield. I also loved talking about perfectionism and my piano journey in this video from HerStory Circle and on Emma Lynn Dowd’s radio show (Episode 56, starting around 15 minutes in). If you feel moved to listen to any of these, enjoy!

Photo: D. Dina Friedman

If not, I hope you have a relaxing day dodging the heat, with a cold glass of something and perhaps a few fresh blueberries.

Perfectionism and the Birthday Blues

Posted on June 14, 2024 by dinafried

Yesterday was my birthday, which once again brought me right up close to the endless bumps in the winding road toward eschewing perfectionism and embracing self-acceptance.

Even though I know it isn’t productive, I can’t quite let go of my little-kid fantasy that my birthday should be a perfect day where everything I do is significant and special. And my inner kid wants this to happen spontaneously, with others taking charge of the orchestration who will magically know exactly what I want them to do. My inner kid, who still thinks I’m seven and my birthday is the most important day of the year, wants to be surrounded by celebrating family and nearby close friends, and flooded with cards or phone calls, or texts, or social media posts from people farther a-field with beautiful heart-rending messages on how much I matter. But I’m sixty years older than seven. Time to be an adult–as I’ve had to be ever since high school, when my birthday often coincided with final exams.

Adults are busy people, and I admit, I’m not someone who makes a big deal about other people’s birthdays, so it’s unreasonable and impractical to think that people should make a big deal over mine. And having taken a deep dive into my struggles with perfectionism, I can now see how all this birthday stress is just another manifestation of how easy it is to make yourself miserable by getting tangled in the morass of unrealistic expectations.

So, here’s what I’ve learned over the years:

(1) If you want something to happen, make it happen. If it involves others, ask them for what you want. I both like surprises and I like to be in control, so I’m very hard to please, but one year I asked my partner, Shel, to take me on a surprise get-away, location unknown. We ended up having a great few days in rural Quebec, with only one big snafu. Shel messed up where he booked our accommodations, so we ended up double-paying when we no-showed at the place we were supposed to be on the first night and surprising the innkeeper when we arrived at the second-night place a day early, but so what! At least they had a room for us.

(2) Make your own specialness. Ultimately, the choice on whether or not to be happy resides with me. Over the years I’ve planned a lot of birthday adventures that were solo, including a two-day silent retreat in a cabin in the woods, and several day-long jaunts to some of the beautiful and spiritually inspiring places within an hour of home. And guess what! These weren’t perfect either–but they were still wonderful, and at least I wasn’t blaming others for their inability to do the impossible and create a totally perfect day.

Yesterday, I did neither of these things. It was a scheduled day to take care of my grandson, and the adult in me said my birthday wasn’t a reason to forsake that responsibility. I wouldn’t say I had a perfect day, but I had a good day. Shel made strawberry crepes with camembert cheese for breakfast–a surprise that I didn’t need to control (LOL). And when I arrived to take care of Manu, I was greeted by his parents with a strawberry rhubarb pie. (Strawberries are an important birthday theme for me, since it’s strawberry season here in western Mass.)

Manu was delightful and we spent a lot of time listening to wolves on this great short video and doing wolf howls. For the rest of the day I ran errands and did normal stuff, which also felt good. Sometimes normal is what we need. Though it also included answering a lot of social media happy birthday posts, and speaking on the phone with a number of family members and close friends, who had taken the time to call and make me feel special. Afterwards, Shel and I went out to dinner and then to get my free birthday sundae at Herrell’s ice cream to close out a lovely day.

Yet, today, I can’t help but breathe my post-birthday sigh of relief that it’s over. Another bump navigated on this endless road. Hope the path will be easier traveling for a while.

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