Thursday, February 25, 2010 | by nathan

Endurability

Dani Shapiro, in the Los Angeles Times, gives some advice that I really, really needed to hear this week:

…my internal life as a writer has been a constant battle with the small, whispering voice (well, sometimes it shouts) that tells me I can’t do it. This time, the voice taunts me, you will fall flat on your face. Every single piece of writing I have ever completed — whether a novel, a memoir, an essay, short story or review — has begun as a wrestling match between hopelessness and something else, some other quality that all writers, if they are to keep going, must possess.

Call it stubbornness, stamina, a take-no-prisoners determination, but a writer at work reminds me of nothing so much as a terrier with a bone: gnawing, biting, chewing, until finally there is nothing left to do but fall away.

This week I gave a copy of my novel to two of the people I love and trust the most in this world. And for a full 48 hours after I did that, every time I thought about it, I almost had a panic attack. As I thought about passages in the book, story points, characters, I suddenly realized that the whole thing was crap. I contemplated breaking into their house and stealing the book back before they could read the horrible, horrible first chapter.

Fact is, what’s kept me going throughout this process was the merest bit of that determination Shapiro is talking about. The way I finished NaNoWriMo was to not think for one second whether what I was writing was any good, but just to write and to trust the things I know about crafting a novel and about the process of writing well. The way I got through it was to write what I knew was a shitty first draft, occasionally letting bad writing lie there, knowing I could come back later and fix it. Which I did, this month. And while I’m sure there are problems, still, things that I’ll need to fix and tweak and re-write, I’m holding on to the fact that when I set the thing down at the end of that long month of editing, I thought to myself, "You know, this isn’t the best novel ever written. It’s not the next Great American Novel. But it’s good. It’s good work. I’m proud of it." 

I’m going to give two more copies of the thing out – I’m trying to keep the reading circle small for this next bit of revision – and I’m sure I will have equally panicky moments when I let go of the binders. I’m practicing endurability here, sticking with it even while my faith in myself is waning. All artists have to do that, I think. I can’t imagine working on something as hard as I’ve worked on this and not having some moments of doubt. But it’s the first novel-length piece of fiction I’ve ever written that I’ve been even remotely comfortable showing to people who weren’t Professional Writing professors. Which is a step. Soon I’ll take another. Then another. Then someday soon I’ll have a piece of writing I want to show the whole world.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010 | by nathan

On Being Safe To Be Unsafe

My latest piece is up over at OpenSalon. I like to call it my "origin story." Also, it features Treehouse of Horror.

Let me be as clear as I know how to be:

I.Am Not. Okay.

And I LOVE being good at things.

I may have accidentally, a long time ago, confused the accolades I got from my parents and teachers with – and I’m just saying it’s possible that I did this – love. At six years old or so I might have unintentionally started to think that being good at things would mean that I wouldn’t have any problems whatsoever, and, conversely, that the way to avoid having problems was to avoid doing things I was bad at.

Well, you can see the problem.

All the pieces I’ve published at OpenSalon up to this point were written just about a year ago; my next piece will be of brand new, 2010 vintage. I just have to … you know … write it. Anyone got some ideas for me?

Monday, February 22, 2010 | by nathan

the only difference being that I don’t have access to any liquid nitrogen. Not since the … unpleasantness.

When I matriculated at Wake Forest University in the fall of 1998, they were one of the most "wired" campuses in America. The internet boom had yet to turn bust, and recently-graduated Sanskrit majors were leaping headlong into the information revolution and becoming overnight millionaires (then, it turns out, overnight thousandaires). Wake had a really pioneering program wherein a part of our exorbitant tuition costs allowed each student to receive a laptop upon enrollment. Then, two years later, you’d trade in your laptop for a different, newer laptop.

It didn’t suck.

Since then laptops have become ubiquitous on college campuses; some people even argue that it’s hard to learn without one. To tell you the truth, I think that in my four years of free-laptopdom at Wake Forest, I actually took the thing to class exactly one time, and even then I sat there talking to a friend on AIM. We all had them, sure, but I never saw a Wake Forest classroom where people were wildly typing notes. You just didn’t see them in class. I’m sure this has changed now.

When I started my abortive half-semester at Yale Divinity School in the fall of 2002, I bought a brand-new Sony Vaio. Things were different in the Ivy Leagues, and on the first day of class, when I whipped out a pen and paper to take notes, I found myself in a minority of me; everyone else had their computers out. So I thought, what the hell, Nate, join the now.

Thing is, I found that I didn’t remember anything. I type about 110 words a minute, give or take, so I could literally almost type the lecture word-for-word. But none of it stuck. I quickly went back to being a one-man minority. I find that the physical action of writing things down, even if I don’t get every single bit, helps the information to stick in my mind. Typing doesn’t do that; it lacks the physical connection to the information. Going back and reading my typed notes later, I found myself thinking over and over, "I don’t remember him saying that." I felt disconnected from the lecture.

This isn’t true for everyone; it just is for me. At any rate, by the time I made another go at grad school and found myself as the teaching assistant for an Introduction to Mass Communications class at the University of Oklahoma, laptops were everywhere. So was MySpace. I warned the students in my discussion group within an inch of their lives about using the internet during the lecture. Bring your laptop to take notes, fine. But I stationed myself at the back of the class and watched those laptop screens.

One student in particular became a problem. Not only was she constantly MySpacing even after I asked her not to, she was distracting the people around her with it, showing them videos or photos or wall posts that entertained her. ALL WHILE THE PROFESSOR WAS TEACHING. Maybe it’s that my father is a college professor, but I found myself enraged by this behavior. The professor noticed it and asked me to do something. So, one day, after I’d already asked her once to either keep it on Microsoft Word or put it away, I walked down and sat next to her, a big, big grin on my face.

"Give me the laptop," I said happily.

She giggled. Oh, you’re so funny. Ha-ha.

"I’m not actually kidding. Give it to me." 

Her eyes got wide, but her smile remained.

"Right now." 

I’d tried to whisper, to be quiet, but now the whole class, comprised of somewhere in the neighborhood of 175 students, mostly freshmen, were staring at me.

"I want the computer. Hand it over. Right now." 

"Are you serious?" 

"Do I look like I’m kidding?" 

Her face orange with shame and fake tanner, she closed the computer and handed it over. I stood up and suddenly noticed the sea of kaiser-roll-sized eyeballs staring at me.

"LET THIS BE A WARNING TO THE REST OF YOU." 

The professor was barely managing to suppress a laugh. At the end of the class the student walked up to me.

"Can I have my computer back now?" 

"What computer?" I asked.

"My computer. My laptop. You took it away."

"Oh, that?" I said. "I threw that away. You might be able to dig it out of the garbage can out in the hall. But I also threw half a yogurt in there."

Her eyes welled up. I couldn’t take it anymore; I pulled her laptop out of my bag and handed it to her.

"You understand that MySpacing during class is, like, super rude, right?" I asked.

She nodded, chagrined.

"See you Wednesday." 

All that is to say, as awesome as I think the internet and mobile computing are, I somewhat question their value in the classroom environment. This long, long story drives home a point that was put much more succinctly by a professor at that same august institution, the University of Oklahoma, in a video I found on Engadget:

Monday, February 22, 2010 | by nathan

A Little Pee Shy? Miss Coco’s Here To Help.

As a man, there are few things to me more upsetting than peeing in public. Ladies might have to endure the momentary, temporary pain of childbirth, but men? Men have to use urinals OUR WHOLE LIVES. You never feel so much like some kind of barnyard animal as when you’re standing in a public bathroom, in front of a porcelain fixture, trying to go. And when you’re at a sporting event – the long troughs at Oklahoma Memorial Stadium are especially cruel – it can be like torture. Especially when some dude you don’t know wants to talk to you, like, "Hey, did you see Bradford throw that 47-yard pass?" and all you can say is, "Yep!" The whole time your mind is spinning, praying you can squeeze out some little stream of pee lest the other guys realize that a mixture of stage fright and social anxiety disorder have stopped the whole works cold. Your body is begging, BEGGING you to pee, but your mind is like, IN FRONT OF THESE JAGS? I DON’T THINK SO.

…until you’ve been to a gay bar. Specifically, until you’ve been to the Copa in Oklahoma City. Now – I haven’t been there in a couple years, but back in my day there were swinging saloon doors opening more or less into the line for the bar. So even after you go inside you can still see all the patrons lining up for their swill vodka with diet tonics. Occasionally the bar line backed up into the bathroom; that was when you just learned to hold it. Sometimes a sweet girlfriend would invite you into the ladies’, but that was rare. So, into the mens’ you go. And crammed into a seven-by-two foot space are four urinals without dividers. You find yourself standing shoulder-to-shoulder, and almost every time something like this happens:

You could sorta be okay if you managed to get the urinal on the very, very end; then you at least could pretend the wall on your left was a divider and that things would eventually be Okay. But more often than not you were at one of the two middle ones. The walls in there were painted purple, and over the middle urinals there was a frame with some ads in there, because what else is one thinking about while peeing other than, "Gosh, I wonder who has the best limousine service in this city? And does anyone know of a good, gay-friendly plumber? AND IT’S POSSIBLE I MIGHT BE GETTING A DUI LATER – COULD SOMEONE WRITE DOWN THIS PHONE NUMBER FOR ME?" 

What I remember about standing at the Copa urinal is that I was usually standing there next to some giant drag queen or leather daddy, and in my most authoritative, deep-throated, mentally-ill sounding growl, repeatedly saying, "EYES FORWARD. EYES FORWARD." 

So now, peeing in public doesn’t really phase me. Not if I can just close my eyes, picture a purple wall and a limousine ad and think to myself, "If you can pee in the Copa, you can pee ANYWHERE." And it works every time.

POSTSCRIPT: It’s stories like this that won me Runner-Up for Best Writing in the Okie Blog Awards!

Thursday, February 18, 2010 | by nathan

Growing

My latest piece is up at Open Salon. Here’s an excerpt:

I want to put a seed in the ground, throw a little water down, and then have steamed zucchini on a plate. I don’t want to wait, and I certainly don’t want to tend. I’m hungry now! And no matter how much compost I throw down, no matter how much I crouch on the ground waiting for the little green shoots to crack the dirt, I have absolutely no control over the timing.

This is why you’ll find me, in the coming days of early spring, with the seeds in the ground and all the life happening where I can’t see it, four or five times a day staring intently at my little two hundred square feet of tilled-up dirt. I squat, I stand, I get down on all fours and squint, then stand back up again, wave my hands over the whole business, and shout, “GROW!”

There you have it: a picture of my spiritual life in action.

And as to the identity of the "friend" I mention in the story – all I will say is that this is the most highly-fictionalized piece of creative nonfiction I’ve ever written. No essayist tells the entire truth; David Sedaris, Anne Lamott, all my literary nonfiction heroes pepper their personal narratives with changes of detail, meant to protect the innocent*, as it were. All I’m saying, kids, is don’t litter my comments section or my Facebook wall with guesses, mmmmkay?

* The person(s) in question are hardly "innocent," but they didn’t ask to be written about and certainly don’t deserve to have me shouting their names from the rooftops, even if such a thing weren’t legally questionable.

Thursday, February 18, 2010 | by nathan

Loud and Clear

Some amazing video by Tanner Herriott from Saturday night’s show. For the full-on awesome, click over to YouTube and watch them in 720p Hi-Def:

In addition to being awesome, these videos make me covet a digital SLR that can do high-definition video. Canon just introduced its new ti2 digital SLR, capable of recording 1080p High Definition video in 24, 25 or 30 frames per second and snapping 18 megapixel photographs. My absolute favorite thing about it, though, is that unlike other cameras with these features, this one might actually be within my price range. It’s possible I will reward myself for reaching 30 with a one of these cameras.

At any rate, enjoy the videos. Buy Orchid when it comes out on March 2.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010 | by nathan

A Proposition

Whoops – I posted this on OpenSalon late last week and forgot to tell you about it! 

…it seems to me that this nation’s parents have a lot more than homosexuality to worry about when it comes to what their kids are learning in school. After all, most of us spent a whole lot of time trying to recruit ourselves – and having other people recruit us – out of homosexuality, and that never worked. What makes anyone think we could recruit pre-pubescent kids in, even if we wanted to?

WHICH WE DON’T. Just for the record.

Have a read. Let me know what you think.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010 | by nathan

No, You Hang Up!

The past weekend took me so wholly by surprise that I can’t even be sure it happened. My friend Dylan, whom I conscripted into the armies of the homosexual in 2001 – thereby earning my toaster – flew into Oklahoma City on Thursday night. Dylan, a native North Carolinian, has now made four visits to Oklahoma, each time prompting his fellow Triangle-dwellers to check him for a fever and surreptitiously slip him travel brochures for places where normal people take vacations. Places like Daytona Beach and Provincetown. Places that have brochures. We don’t have brochures.

Without explaining how I earned a place in the Drunken Idiot Hall of Fame this weekend (we forgot to eat all day on Friday), I will just say that while Dylan was ostensibly in town to see me, he really came because K.C. Clifford was holding a two-day musical extravaganza to celebrate the upcoming release of her album Orchid.

COMMERCIAL BREAK: Orchid is an incredible album and you should all make plans to purchase it when it hits the streets for realsies on March 2. 

Without subjecting you all to a litany of specifics, I will just say that this weekend was a nice little slice of life. Two or three years ago I thought, vaguely, that the friends I had at that time, the ones I’d managed not to scare away, were the friends I’d always have. And to be honest, that was fine with me. After all, it was getting to come home to friends like Jayson and Laurie, or any of the assorted tribe of family and friends I’ve known for nearly two decades, that made moving back to Oklahoma not only bearable, but the best possible thing for me. And it was having people like Dylan out there, in the world, that helped me to remember that friendship is reaching out, that it sometimes requires a bit of effort, and that it’s almost always worth it. 

But I’d thought, my whole life, that I wasn’t good at making friends. Believe it or not, I’m a little shy around people I don’t know, and as I got into my late twenties I began to think that I’d settle into my mild little case of social anxiety disorder.

I’m not sure what happened. What I do know is that in the last few years Brian and I have met and befriended some incredible people. And this weekend, when I wrapped up the second draft of my novel, I realized that it’s largely about male friendship, which is something I despaired of ever having. Don’t get me wrong – I am honored to call some very, very amazing ladies my friends. But as a young man I actually feared making friends with guys. They were rough and always bigger than me. Girls were safer, easier, nicer. I have some awesome male friends, but those friendships always came at a great cost of comfort, and a great expenditure of emotional energy.

But friendships with men now – I can’t explain why, but over the last few years it’s become easy. I’ve gravitated toward it, whereas before I all but actively avoided it. I don’t want to get too weird about it, but I will just say that I have some very cool, very kickass, very creative male friends, and I am supremely grateful for them. And I’m very, very grateful that all my friends – male and female alike – are the kind of people who can put up with, and help me laugh at, my dumb empty-stomach-drunk antics at the Blue Door Friday night, who consistently encourage me in my writing and my work, and who help this world to be a safe place for me. I’m grateful.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010 | by nathan

Waiting Out February

God, isn’t February just the worst? I hate it so much. January should be worse, what with the nearly six weeks between paychecks and lowest average temperatures of the year, but … there’s just something about February. It’s dark. It lacks the "new start" feeling of January. By February you’ve broken in the Christmas presents, reneged on all your resolutions, lost your sense of hope, stopped seeing the wonder in freshly-fallen snow and started to wonder why they even bothered giving the so-called "New Year" its own number, it’s so obviously indistinguishable from the previous one.

I mean, if you’re like me. Which you’re probably not. I’m sure you’re fine.

I always get seasonal affective disorder in February. It has something to do with there not being enough light, or warmth, or possibly I just really hate Valentine’s Day. And Presidents’ Day. Yeah – screw Presidents’ Day! I don’t even get off work for it.

This year, though, I’m trying to actively resist my annual slide into seasonal affectiveness. I’m doing this by editing the shit out of my novel. I’m over halfway through it and will be hand-selecting a few friends to read the third draft for me – for pay – by the end of the month. I’m also trying to get a lot more exercise, including going to the gym on my lunch breaks. This has been difficult of late, as my day job has kept me hopping through the midday hours. I hope to return to this habit on Monday. WHAT ELSE ARE MONDAYS FOR? 

Still, though, I’m ready for March. I’m ready to start my seeds and spring those clocks forward. I’m ready for thunderstorms and lighter coats and not having to bundle up head-to-toe just to take out the damn garbage. My dad always says you shouldn’t wish your life away. As hard as it is, I’m trying not to hasten February’s demise, but instead to be really aware, to notice the winter passing by, and to get as much done as possible in preparation for longer days, green grass, and warmer air, the kind you want to breathe deeply, the kind that carries the sounds of the birds and the smells of new things growing. Until that comes, I’ll edit, and try to exercise, and try really, really hard to believe that it’s coming, if I’m just patient enough.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010 | by nathan

Okie Blog Awards

One of the things that I love about Oklahoma is that, in the absence of a national spotlight shining all over us, we give rise to some really surprising and inspiring pockets of creativity, much of it of the DIY flavor. The Flaming Lips are perhaps the most well-known example of this, having achieved international stardom and artistic genius while based here, in what most of America considers to be a "cultural wasteland." But living here I am continually surprised by the stuff that people are doing, and even more surprised that people I know are the ones doing it.

My buddies K.C. and David are wonderful examples of this (and if you’re not busy this Friday and/or Saturday, K.C.’s record-release shows at the Blue Door promise to be amazing). Also of note are our burgeoning improv and stand-up comedy scenes, including Twinprov, the outstanding two-man improv group staged by my old friends Buck and Clint.

I think we’ve got a lot of people here in Oklahoma who could be getting ready to see their careers take off. After editing two chapters of my novel early this morning, I honestly believe I might be lucky enough to be among them. So why am I so honored to be nominated for an Oklahoma Blogger Award? I don’t know. But I am. It’s cool, especially considering how many great Oklahoma-based bloggers there are, and considering that blogging is such a weird thing to do. The blogger blogging his blog.

I have a love/hate relationship with blogging. On one hand, I am awed by how much amazing writing and creativity is out there. On the other, I can’t help but remember what Doug Marlette told me on more than one occasion, that blogging is "karaoke for writers," and that having one doesn’t make one a writer, any more than my awful, fourth-beer rendition of "Let’s Stay Together" makes me a musician.

Maybe the point isn’t to be a writer. Maybe the point is to care about something. My friend Greg is passionate about food; that’s why his food blog, The Corner Booth, is so great – because he gets to talk about something he cares about. David lives and breathes music – he knows more about it than anyone I’ve ever met. I like to see people getting enthusiastic about stuff; I find myself infected by it. If someone is talking to me about something that excites them, I find myself interested. I can’t help it. That’s why I think blogs are so great – all your better ones are people sounding off about what they care about. Be it food, music, their families, their own creative pursuits, or the way they imagine Jon Arbuckle’s life might be had he never visited the pound – it’s cool that people can put these things out there.

Me? I’m passionate about writing, and about humor, and bad movies, and Oklahoma, and Jesus. And I’m kinda stoked and honored to be nominated for Best Writing in the Okie Blog Awards. I really recommend going through the list of nominees and finding some new, excellent reads by Oklahoma-grown bloggers. Their excitement for their subject material, and for this weird-ass state we call home, is infectious.