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Does Absence Make the Heart Grow Fonder or Is It Out of Sight, Out of Mind?

July 19th, 2011 by Suzanne | 1 Comment | Filed in writing

It’s been a while since I sat down to write. Not on CUSS (this may be the longest I’ve gone between posts), not on BlogHer, and not on my book or any side projects. Partly this is due to lack of time. Unfortunately, part of it is due to brain overload. The ideas are not flowing, which sucks.

I miss writing, though. I miss sitting down in front of a blank computer screen and letting my fingers fly over the keyboard. I miss seeing the black words cut across that cast whiteness of the screen. I miss feeling like I made progress on something.

My hope is that the absence from writing will create fertile ground later, like when farmers leave some fields fallow to rejuvenate the nutrients in the soil. Actually, I like thinking of my brain space that way: loamy, dark dirt that is just slightly moist when you let it run through your fingers. My worry is that the longer I don’t write, the harder it will be to get back into it.

Next week I am going to a house in upstate New York. I plan to take a few hours to sit with my lap top and see what – if anything – comes out. I’m nervous, but excited too. Who knows what will happen?

Triggers

July 4th, 2011 by Suzanne | 7 Comments | Filed in Damn, family, Jewishness, other rants, sadness, writing

Saturday morning we went out to breakfast with a family friend. She told us about her husband’s experiences as a ten year old who carried messages for the Dutch resistance during WWII.

“Oh,” my dad said. “My father never spoke about his life in Warsaw except when he told me how he left.”

I froze mid-chew. How many times had I asked my father what he knew about his father’s life in Warsaw or afterwards and he said he didn’t know anything?

“He left Warsaw with a friend,” my dad continued. “As they ran trough the forest, the Germans were strafing it with bullets. His friend was killed right next to him. I think he was decapitated.”

I fought, uselessly, against the rage and despair that flowed through my veins. Getting angry or crying would not help. “Why didn’t you tell me this before? I had no idea that he left with a friend. I thought he was alone.”

“Oh no,” Dad replied. “I guess I forgot. He was with his best friend.”

It would have made a difference to know this while I was writing my thesis. I asked so many questions in as many ways as I could to find out what I could. And my dad had this crucial, heartbreaking detail stored away in the back of his brain all along. My mom also had heard that story and forgot.

I don’t know what to do to unlock these important memories. The brain is complicated and it is not my dad’s fault for not remembering, although at the same time I cannot understand how one would forget that his father watched his best friend die as they fled Warsaw. It is frustrating beyond belief. I am on the verge of tearing my hair out.

I’m angry at other people for forgetting or for not saying anything in the first place. I’m angry at myself for not pushing for information while I still had a chance, even though it probably would have done more harm than good. I’m angry at archives for not being helpful and again at myself for only speaking English and not being able to read some of the few works that are out there.

I want to know what happened. I want to know so badly that it leaves a coppery taste in my mouth when I think about it until that taste is replaced by the saltiness of my tears that result from the futility of it all at this point because what can I do?

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When I Grow Up

May 19th, 2011 by Suzanne | No Comments | Filed in hilarity, random, those were the days, writing

“There are about a million things I want to be when I grow up,” I wrote in a semi-autobiographical story when I was in fourth or fifth grade. “First of all, I want to be an author, second an advertiser, and third a baseball umpire.”

By the time I mastered grammar and punctuation, I moved on to other professional aspirations. At the age of twelve, I resolved to become a district attorney in order to improve safety in poor neighborhoods. In my bat mitzvah speech, I asked God for a scholarship to nearby Northwestern University so that I could later attend a good law school.

Of course, I wound up going to NYU as an undergrad, then dropping out of Fordham Law School on my third day. Instead, I worked for a year at a government agency. I turned down a 3/4 tuition scholarship to policy school at NYU because I wanted to go to school full-time and instead went to policy school at Columbia while working part-time at a community development financial institution. (“I don’t need math,” I had told my math teacher my junior year of high school, “I’m going to be a lawyer!”) I turned down the opportunity to work at the Ford Foundation in a program associate program and continued to work at that organization after school, then at another CDFI, building an expertise in child care facilities development in affordable housing projects. Just like I always planned!

Then I burned out and started writing. I had some personal essays and policy articles printed in local papers. Off the Beaten (Subway) Track came out in August 2008. I entered a creative writing MFA program a month later. I went back to the nonprofit world, working for the first time at Jewish organizations, first as a grant writer, then as a program officer.

I guess achieving one of my three original goals isn’t bad. Who knows what will happen when I grow up?

Another Hand-Wringing Post about Careers

April 25th, 2011 by Suzanne | 4 Comments | Filed in oh happy day, sadness, writing

For seven months, I worked from home, stringing together consulting jobs, trying to work on my book about my grandfather/grandparents. For six of those months, I had writer’s block. Nothing I wrote was interesting, not was it even guiding me in a direction toward writing anything interesting. I just wanted to go back to my career in nonprofit management/public policy.

Then on March 9, as I rode the subway home from my friend’s reading, the outline for a book came to me. Because I struggled with not enough information for a compelling nonfiction book, I would take the few facts I had and use research to make up the rest. Yes, I was attempting fiction. My first drafts were nuggets of ideas. In the past few weeks, I finish the first chapter. I’m very close to finishing the last chapter of part I, which is set in Warsaw from 1927-1939.

I have never felt like I was a real writer. For the first time, when people asked me what I do, I came close to telling them that I was a writer. I loved the hours of research, my notes, and my maps. I loved the sentences that were coming out of me and the scenes that were taking shape. I loved the mostly positive feedback I was getting, and the constructive criticism.* This is what writers do. Instead I said that I was an unemployed person from the nonprofit/public policy world filling my time pursuing my writing hobby while waiting for a job.

Then I got a job. My first day is May 9. I’m excited and nervous, as anyone is when she starts a new phase in life. I think I will learn a lot. It may even help the book, as it is a nonprofit/foundation that aids Holocaust survivors. It is good work that should fulfill the part of me that misses being out in the world and working for positive change in low-income people’s lives.

Now, of course, the progress on the book will slow down. Instead of sheer glee at my stroke of luck, I also am sad for the career that is being set aside while I do what I need to do to pay the bills and add to our savings. For the first time, I might have to consider myself a writer with a do-gooder job. It’s kind of crazy. I like it.

*If anyone is interested in reading it and offering me feedback, I would love to send it to you!!!

Crazies and Writing Bugs

April 13th, 2011 by Suzanne | 1 Comment | Filed in bad puns, other rants, random, What is wrong with people?, writing

If blogs were part of a system of protective services, I would be reported for neglect. One thing that surprised me when I entered my MFA program in the fall of 2008 were how many students did not blog. I could not imagine not blogging. It was my daily writing exercise and my brain dump. I often got ideas for longer stories from my posts.

Yet, over two years later, I realize that it is hard to blog and write longer works at the same time. When it takes me almost a whole day to come up with one double-spaced page, it is hard for me to sit down and write a few more paragraphs. Plus, to be honest, nothing really interesting is going on. I run a lot, as I am preparing to participate in a half marathon in June. I also read the newspaper over breakfast and think mean thoughts. (Examples: “If Americans want to live in a third world country, who am I to stop them?” or “I hope the Republican fanatics get their way and ban private health insurance plans from offering abortion coverage so middle-class women will wake up and realize what it is already like for women who need a medical procedure and can’t get one because of money. Then maybe things will change.”) Then I read books about Warsaw in the 1920s and 1930s and compare things to today. It is fascinating to note that illegal abortions were rampant in those days (and that it is easier to get an illegal abortion in Poland today than it is to get a legal one in some places in the US).

I also realized that because many of our elected officials are batty, they probably are also rabid. It is the only logical explanation I can come up with for why so many horrendous policies are being proposed and passed. Rabies! Incidentally, I share my birthday Louis Pasteur, the man who invented the rabies vaccine. He also invented pasteurization. I always thought that was cool, although these days people hate life-saving vaccines and are convinced that pasteurization is unnecessary despite the fact that people used to die all the time from various illnesses and get sick from bacteria in milk. Strange days, I say.

See? Crazy, albeit typical, thoughts. Nothing worth writing about, but I will try and be more attentive to my blog. It’s what got me infected with the writing bug in the first place.

Out Like a Lion

April 2nd, 2011 by Suzanne | 2 Comments | Filed in writing

The last week of March was fierce. I picked Tycho the rabbit up from the vet, where he had boarded while we were in London, and discovered that he was partially paralyzed. Then his digestive system began melting down and he became more paralyzed. I had a job interview. The vet told me that Tycho was unlikely to recover and I knew he had to be put to sleep. I passed my ex-boyfriend from high school while I walked down the street. (He looked at me, I looked at him, and the spark of recognition flew. Then he looked away and walked faster and I continued my conversation with Husband on my cell phone.) I said good-bye to Tycho for a final time, petting him as he passed on. I edited six articles I wrote for an almanac on haunted America. I went to my writing group. I did additional research on two places in the Bronx for a walking tour I am leading next Saturday so I would have some good pictures to pass around the group. I was emotionally exhausted. Thus March did not change the opinion I formed in February that 2011 was shaping up to be an extremely shitty year. (April started with a rejection letter for a story I submitted to a writing contest in January and two of my friends moved to bumblefuck Missouri.)

Yet. I am really excited for the novel-memoir I am writing. Every second I spend working on it is hard, but rewarding. Characters and scenes are slowly taking shape. I am close to finishing a first draft of a full first chapter. The research I am doing is depressing at times, but engaging. I’m mapping out a life – literally. I put together a map of Warsaw’s main Jewish area from some print outs someone gave me when I was there last June. It’s exciting to think about where the character of my grandfather worked and how he got there from home. It’s amazing reading Isaac Bashevis Singer and making notes about the sounds, smells, and sites my grandfather/the character would have encountered. In short, I love the process.

For once, I don’t feel like an unemployed policy person/nonprofit manager. I don’t entirely feel like a writer, either, but I feel like I’m accomplishing something, and it is a great feeling. Now I just hope I can make it good. Hope springs eternal.

Writing and Working

March 16th, 2011 by Suzanne | 1 Comment | Filed in writing

My sister emailed me to let me know that she was disappointed that I have not been blogging more often. She is a first grade teacher and on her spring break, and she said that she used her time to catch up with CUSS. She also said that she understood that I was busy working on the book, though.

The book is making slow, but important progress. I am carefully re-reading The Family Moskat by Isaac Bashevis Singer and taking notes. It is set in Warsaw from about 1912 to 1939, so I am looking for details about life in the city at that time. What did people wear? What sounds did people hear in the streets, in the hallways of their apartment buildings, and in the markets? What did it all smell like? The book has yielded many important insights. I only fear that I may wind up a plagiarist. Next, I will re-read Shosha, also by Singer by set in the 1930s, and his three memoirs. I’ve written about 21 pages so far, most of it new material for the fiction part of the book. My writing group met tonight to discuss it, and they thought I had made a good start.

All this is extremely good because what I think of as my real career has come to a dead halt. I have a teeny bit of consulting work, but have only had one phone interview for a job. I have no idea if they will ask me to come in for a fuller interview. I love writing, but it is really my hobby. I’ll always want to do it, but probably not full-time. Even if this book (which I am tentatively calling “Family Reunion”) is finished, published, and a miraculous best-seller, I will want to work in public service. It is my calling. It is what interests me most. So, I am grateful that I have the time to do the hard work on the book, but still worrying that I will never again work full-time in my field.

I’m fortunate to be off to London on Friday night, and hope that a week of tea, scones, and Mars Bars will do me well psychically. To offset the scones and Mars Bars, I’ll also run in Hyde Park, which I am quite excited for. British endorphins!

Structures

March 11th, 2011 by Suzanne | 4 Comments | Filed in family, writing

I’ve been struggling lately. I left my full-time job last September to do some consulting projects that exciting me. The risk, I knew full well, was that when they ended in a few months, I could be left with nothing. However, I justified the decision by noting that I could also spend more time working on the book I want to write about my grandfather, which requires extensive research at libraries and institutions with limited hours. Also, I hoped I might find a meaningful full-time job. The economy laughed in my face on the consulting and full-time employment dreams, and then writer’s block spit on me.

Then last Friday I had lunch with a former school mate. She studied fiction, and although we knew each other through weekend courses and mutual friends, we had never really discussed our work. She was intrigued by my book project. “Have you considered writing it as a hybrid fiction-nonfiction book?” she asked. I told her that I had, since it was clear that I would never get the full amount of information necessary to craft a compelling story, but that I didn’t know how to handle it. She suggested alternating chapters. I took her suggestion and filed it near the front of the information storage tank that serves as my brain.*

On Wednesday, I went to the New York Public Library to read about book about Warsaw between the two world wars, since that is where and when a good chunk of my grandfather’s missing story takes place. I knew that I was losing it when the following sentence made me laugh for a good two hours: “The decades of Russian rule had seriously retarded the development of a hospital system able to meet the needs of [Warsaw].” Aside from that, I learned a lot and was particularly pleased that the book mentioned the specific challenges facing Warsaw’s Jewish community and their accomplishments. (Anyone who denies that Poland has a history of anti-Semitism really should look at the laws passed over time, including one specifically granted full rights to all minorities except Jews, but that is another topic. And I am not saying that all Poles are anti-Semites because there are many, many people who are not.)

All of this lolled around in the primordial ooze of my mind. By Wednesday evening, a structure for the book emerged:
-Part I will be fiction, set in Warsaw from 1927 (when my grandfather’s father died) to 1939 (when he left Warsaw). I will use the few facts I have and, well, make up a story about them in the context of history. -Part II will be memoir, set in Chicago from 1983-1995. I will write about the relationship I had with my grandfather.
-Part III will be fiction, set in Poland and the USSR from 1939 (when my grandfather arrived in Bialystok, only to be arrest and deported to Russia) to 1946 (when he was repatriated to Poland). Again, I will use the facts I have and then fill in the rest in a historical context.
-Part IV will be memoir, set in New York from 2004 to the present. I will write about my quest to find out what happened to my grandfather’s family, including some trips that I made to Paris, Tel Aviv, and Warsaw.

OK, so I said it, so now I need to do it. I’m terrified. I’m terrified that this will be yet another false start. I’m terrified to write fiction, which I have not done since I was in junior high (see: Always, the YA novel I wrote in 8th grade). I’m terrified to get the details (like what people ate at Rosh Hashanah dinner in 1939 or what they wore to a funeral in 1927 and then had at the shiva) wrong. I’m terrified to write a story that has nothing to do with the actual life someone led. I’m terrified to fail.

But I’m also excited, maybe more excited than I have been before (see: fear of false starts), and I’m optimistic. For the first time in ages, I wrote all day and I loved it. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. As they say,** sometimes when one door closes, a window opens up the tiniest bit to let in some fresh air so you don’t suffocate.

*Powered, as I have mentioned before, by a hamster named Maurice who runs on a wheel.
**Note: Whenever I say “as they say,” I am making up the following aphorism.

Nicole Krauss

February 19th, 2011 by Suzanne | 2 Comments | Filed in writing

On the flight back from Istanbul, I read Great House by Nicole Krauss. I thought it was a beautiful, amazing, and touching book. At the same time, it did not make me want to read her previous book, The History of Love. I’m not sure why. I think I didn’t really know what it was about, plus I find her husband insufferable, not that disliking one’s spouse’s writing is a good reason to not read the work of a person whose current book is excellent. Still.

When I visited my friend in Washington, DC a few weeks ago, she pulled The History of Love (THOF, from now on) off her bookshelf and insisted that I take it. “You need to read this,” she said. I told her that I had just read Krauss’s new book and loved it, thanked her for the book, and dropped it in my bag. On the train back to NYC, I read other things. I neglected to tell my friend it was on the bottom of my list of things to read.

Mere days after I got the book, another friend and I discussed the book I hope to write about my grandparents. “You know,” she said, “you really should read The History of Love if you haven’t already.” She thought that it would help with with my story. As I like to say, “If two groundhogs agree, than it must be true.” I resolved to read the book as soon as possible.

Thus on my way to visit my parents last weekend, I began reading THOF. The opening pages captivated me. I cried. I read faster and faster, hoping to finish the novel before I landed. I did not, so I snuck in the last 25 pages the next morning, reading super fast. I liked it, but I had a lot of questions. I felt it was less resolved than Great House, which I preferred to THOF as a result. I solicited people on Facebook to discuss the book with me. Another friend said somethings that confused me more. I re-read the second half of the book.

This is a problem I have a lot when I read something I am enjoying: I read too fast in my excitement to get to the answers. In THOF, I missed crucial bits of information. When I took my time to go over it this afternoon, I realized what I missed. The book is devastating and brilliant in how it all comes together.

Nicole Krauss is an amazing, talented author. I always felt that I was inadequate for not being able to write in a straightforward, linear manner, but her books follow different threads and characters and now I think that it is equally hard to tell a story that way and make it compelling as it is to get everything lined up and told in sequence. Good stuff.

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It’s Time

January 17th, 2011 by Suzanne | 8 Comments | Filed in random, those were the days, unshaved snatch, writing

Five years ago when I started blogging, the Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS) & Other Rants was the perfect title for my efforts. I wanted the space to share my sometimes offensive, sometimes outrageous, sometimes obnoxious thoughts on the ridiculous standards and pressures that people face in the US these days. The title was a grab for attention in a crowded field of blogger blogs. I thought that the only people who would ever want to link to it would not be deterred by the title.

Over time, however, I turned down opportunities to participate in various blog activities because the parties behind the show wanted me to drop the “Campaign for Unshaved Snatch” part of the title. I understood their concerns, but declined to do so. It didn’t matter to me that CUSS wasn’t syndicated or part of an ad network. The blog was what it was.

This past week, though, I realized that my post on blood libel and Sarah Palin had potential to go further, but that the blog title probably discouraged people from reading it. (Maybe.) Whether that was true or not, I really haven’t written about bikini waxing in a long time. I still find it vile on a personal level, but unless some new terrible trend pops up, I said what I needed to say. My posts have been so much more about family, Judaism, politics, racism, and yes, other rants these days.

It’s time to retire the original, full title. Oh, I’ll still use my logo and sticker (which I adore), but I’ll just be CUSS. (I’ll still swear, so the CUSS part is relevant.) I may or may not reapply to the ad network that rejected the application they solicited from me years ago. I’ll continue exploring in short posts what bothers or excites me, what I hate and what I love, who I hate and who I love, and hopefully even continue to improve the quality of the writing on the site. Some posts will be sad, some funny (I hope), some obnoxious, and some outrageous. The day I begin to bore myself (and/or the people kind enough to read CUSS) is the day I’ll call it quits. Hopefully that is a long time from now, though.

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