Category: Rant

I’m not Unemployed, I’m a Writer

Terah Van Dusen8 Comments

I’m a private person. With the exception of writing my memoir, I get squirmish if too much about me is revealed. I’ll often write a post here on WordPress and then just save the draft not wanting you to know my thoughts. As if knowing those thoughts you can crack the code and know everything about me.  A lot of those posts are your everyday post/rant-types. A sort-of “I’m not feeling inspired to write actual memoir or a pretty poem (as if I do that) or a short story so I’ll blah blah blah on here for five minutes about my day.” It’s like posting a status on Facebook only painfully longer.

My fellow bloggers do this well. Most the time, not all the time, I enjoy those though. I don’t mind reading that a blogger whose writing a thriller took the day off to do her laundry or that a musician strolled the art walk and didn’t play guitar but took pictures and here they are. I guess I’m always afraid of being irrelevant. But irrelevance is OK. It happens. Daily. Why not let a few of these rant blogs slip through. Thing is–it appears that at least a couple people look at my blog every day. Well, this blog is for you. So you don’t leave empty handed headed.

 

 

I’m not Unemployed, I’m a Writer 

On October 31, 2012 I applied for unemployment. I was officially laid off on the 30th. I can now go change the bio on my blog to read “unemployed” instead of “work at a young women’s substance abuse residential treatment facility”; or I can just leave that out, or just say “writer”. Now, for the first time, I am not a social worker and then writer or a park ranger who writes or a pizza slinger poet: I’m just a writer. I’m nothing else. And, I don’t have to accept work that pays less than my former job did or that isn’t work that I’m qualified to do. In other words: I don’t have to work until I find the right job for me. So for now, I’m a writer. If anybody asks, that’s what I am. And guess what? I just hired myself.

Wait what?

I just hired myself on the condition that I show up for work on time, can meet deadlines and be a great team player. Not wanting to wear myself out, I gave myself the ideal schedule. I work part time (in a perfect world, wouldn’t this be the case for all of us?) and have the weekends off.

 

 

 

Eugene Public Library

Schedule:

Monday: 10 – 2 (I just love Mondays! Everybody’s buzzing about, getting down to business!)
Tuesday: 3:30 to 11:00 p.m. (during this time I drive to my writer’s workshop in Portland) *every other Tuesday
Wednesday: 10 – 2
Thursday: 10 – 2

My office:

Eugene Public Library (just a skip, hop, jump from home)

 

 

 

 
Additional perk:

I get to wear whatever I want to work!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s the thing: I must stick to it. I must be the nicest most stern boss I’ve ever known!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tips? Have you done this? I know I have the determination but too my fear of failure sickens me. This is my dream schedule and my dream job. Surely I won’t quit or be fired. Here’s a post from a fellow blogger whose doing the same thing only she has a real job and kids and a husband and a…(pet, probably?)

Props to Marlene Luneng for making a schedule and sticking to it. (You’ve inspired me!)

Pearls of Lidia’s Wisdom

Terah Van Dusen7 Comments

The support from my friends, family, and primarily my coworkers with regards to my current writing goals has been over-the-top generous lately. One coworker offered to switch shifts with me so I didn’t have to rush back to Eugene for work after attending Lidia Yuknavitch’s writer’s workshop in Portland on Tuesday evenings. Because of my coworker’s generosity, I can chat after the workshop with my new writer friends or get lost driving in the big city (which is what I did after this first workshop).

Given all the support I’m being flooded with lately–and the fact that I recently learned some of my coworkers actually follow my blog–I figured I’d share a post about the things I’m learning in the workshop: pearls of wisdom straight from the pretty, wide mouth of Oregon’s epic author, Lidia Yuknavitch (hint: links to one of Lidia’s powerful essays). Check. It. Out. What I love (a good example is the said essay) is how Lidia addresses social issues and shouts out loud for change while using primarily her personal experience and memoir. Lidia’s past is a sopping wet rag and she’s twisted it and pulled it until the information and insights have poured out of it like warm water. And she intends to use every last drop. How much of your past have you used to change the world? If you’re like me–not enough. There’ve been a lot of lessons learned, no? Write about ’em.

Pearls (note: these are Lidia’s ideas interpreted by me–not her exact quotes):

  • A memoir can be a bunch of essay’s stitched together. In fact–it’s nearly gotta be, one doesn’t tackle a memoir in one swift movement. That’s a lot to take on. Write scenes, then stitch ’em together.
  • “Stitching” is a tough chore indeed, but it can be done.
  • Overwrite your memoir–Lidia says it was only through majorly overwriting that she found the pieces  that needed to be in the book.
  • If there’s a story that’s really scary for you to write (i.e. too revealing, too painful, too bold) for godsakes write exactly that.
  • The voices you hear in your head are your friends. Unless they start to tell you to do bad things, or are highly obnoxious or dangerous sounding in which case maybe you need to see somebody about getting properly medicated and assessed.
  • Fear, irritability, sadness, desperation…if you are experiencing these feelings, it is an excellent time to write (see, there’s always a bright side!)
  • It’s never too late to start the writing career you’ve always dreamed about. It’s never too late to start doing any of the things you’ve always dreamed of doing. It’s never too late. It’s never too late. Lidia knows from experience.

Were these pearls useful for you? Hopefully they reinforced some of the wisdom you already had but forgot, like “it’s never too late” or “write when you’re sad”. For me, as a writer, I need daily reminders of these facts. And I can’t always rely on myself for that. It’s nice to have Lidia around to give me permission. Permission to follow my crazy dreams. Permission to mess up along the way. Permission to tell the world my dirty little secrets. Writing with Lidia is very freeing, I’m very much in tune with her, we’re marching to the same drum, or the same marching band at least. I like her. I hope she likes me too. I bit my tongue a lot at the first sesh but I suspect I’ll start fighting for her attention more in the upcoming weeks. I only have 3 more sessions with the Goddess after all…

The Fruit of My Labor: A Piece About Writing and the Process

Terah Van Dusen10 Comments
Not finished, but it’s all about the journey, not the destination. I feel good, and thank goodness for digital copies!

Some days something can go wrong but nothing, nothing, can throw you off course.

Today I woke at 4:55 a.m. but went back to sleep knowing the library didn’t open until 10:00. That’s where I needed to be and rather than wait around for the big event I went back to sleep. I woke without an alarm at 10:20 or so on my day off and showered, chugged some water, did a couple of necessary things and headed out the door with my necessities: library books for return, my wallet, and my black binder filled with the rough draft of my memoir and the 20 or so “loose” scenes I needed to merge into it.

This day had been awaiting me and after it was over I would call Nan Phifer, a local memoirist, and tell her how it went. Nan agreed to counsel me as I merged my freshly typed scenes into my first draft which I’ve been writing for, ahem, three years (this shit is not easy). I was nervous about the process of merging, wondering if these scenes even had a place to go and too I am anxious about writing the ending. Yeah, that hasn’t happened yet. Um…what does happen in the end? When does it end? Now? 2 years ago? 4 years ago?

Well aware of what a big day I had ahead of me, I first drove to a coffee shop near my house. I ordered a medium carmel latte and an everything bagel and sat down in a corner with Steven King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. He’d written it on what he thought was his death-bed and the result is a very honest, in your face account about the life of a writer and what to do and what not to do and when to give up because some people just should, according to him.  So, yeah, it’s good stuff, for sure. Hey, I had to have caffeine, and inspiration, and yeah, I had to eat too.

I burnt my tongue. I still feel it as I write this now. I thought “shit, this is the worst. Nobody should have to burn their tongue this bad on one of the biggest days of their life. Dammit.” The latte was too hot and not sweet enough and I bopped over to the self-serve counter and added some of that natural brown sugar and sat back down. I finished my morning meal and inspirational reading and nodded politely at the staff and headed on my way to library with the remaining gorgeous cup of latte in my hand.

I had to take big, deep breaths all throughout the morning. I will brimming with excitement. After returning my library books, I scanned all three stories looking for the perfect location at which I would work. Like a real writer. All sprawled out and in…the…zone. I didn’t know if this was going to take me 1 or 2 or 3 hours. I took long swings from the water fountain before I sat down at a square, polished pine table. I retrieved my black binder, my pencil-case, and Nan Phifer’s book Memoirs of the Soul, for guidance as needed.

I immediately stood up. It was instinctive. This was not a sitting task. Like Nan suggests in her book, I laid out all the scenes to merge (Nan actually applies this concept to the entire rough draft of your book, where the scenes are actually chapters, with titles, and you arrange according to your liking. I’ve adapted this concept to what I have going) and I set the rough draft off to one side. I am familiar with the scenes to merge, so I arranged them in chronological order (i.e. what happens first in the storyline). I took a good, long look at the titles of the scenes to merge. Then I sat down and started quickly reading, for the most part scanning, the rough draft of my book.

Instantly the places where the scenes needed to go started popping up. I had to dig deep into the material at some points and insure that a scene was going, relatively where it needed to go. If the scene was in the general vicinity of where it needed to go, great. It never had a home anyway, and sloppily throwing it into the book could ultimately make the story more creative and fun and non-chronological (like Lidia Yuknavitch’s memoir!) I felt I was putting these scenes just where they needed to go. I’d move ’em later if I hadn’t.

Thirty minutes later I was done. Done. There was the draft, everything I had written, nice and tidy on the corner of a square pine table in a library, in Eugene, Oregon, in a sunny room, in the best place in the world as far as I was concerned. I still needed to double-check my zip drives for scenes that may not have made it to print, as I didn’t recall seeing Tyson or Dug Out — two very important scenes. A few minutes later, in the computer lab I found that yes, there were still scenes to print and merge. I printed, I merged again, big smile on my face, standing at the square, pine table in the sunny room near a wall of local art that I really enjoyed and took a moment to look at, remembering how in the email my boyfriend’s mother sent me today she said “don’t forget to stop and smell the roses”. Good point.

An hour later and I’m at Office Depot on 11th Ave., one of my favorite places, picking up a copy I had made of my memoir. Of most of my memoir. Of my memoir, minus the ending, as you know. It is fruit. It is the fruit of my labor. It is not ripe, no, but it is there. It is food, it is hope, it is tangible and fucking sexy as hell. It is a joy to be this far. Tomorrow Nan and I will talk about, well, whatever I want to talk about and in another small way, I will have arrived. I said in the beginning that I was writing this book for me. And if that is so, than I have made myself very happy today. I am pleased today, for myself. I say most of the time nowadays that I am writing this book for other people. That is the idea, to share it with other people. Maybe with young girls who are becoming women and are making decisions and need someone to relate with. Maybe for men who like reading memoirs. Maybe with you.

The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch

Terah Van Dusen3 Comments

When visiting the Eugene Public Library, a bi-monthly event, I sit down at a computer and do a quick search for memoirs. I snatch one of those little square white slips of paper and one of those baby pencils with no erasers and scrawl out the call number and the first four letters of the author’s last name. Usually the memoirs are found in section 921. I write down about 7 books, knowing that I’ll be unable to locate a couple of them, for whatever reason, and that one or two I’ll end up not liking at all, upon seeing the cover, upon reading the first few lines. I’ll leave with four books or so. I’ll get ’em home and read half of those. Right now, for example, I’ve got a book called Patty’s Got A Gun, it’s about Patty Hearst. I read a little bit but it didn’t catch me because, as intriguing as the story is, I already know the gist of it and the author’s writing isn’t making me feel like he’s going to tell me anything new. The author’s writing. The author’s writing.

I used to be a big believer in fate. Not so much in destiny really, but that if I sort of held my hands out in front of me and closed my eyes and slowly walked (figuratively, for the most part) toward the places and people and trees and parks and coffee shops that felt good, that felt right, warm, light, loving, that I would end up where it was appropriate for me to be that if I had mindlessly walked into life that day. That I would end up where I was supposed to be. I used to look for signs everywhere pointing me to these places. I used to keep my eyes wide-open. I used to. I used to. That was a long time ago. Since then I’ve realized that I hold the power, regardless of how spiritually mindful I am being or not, to make things happen in my life, to change things, to get what I want, to make decisions. It’s almost as if it’s entirely up to me, and not depending upon the Universe at all. This took a while to come to terms with, being that I was raised up by such a religious father. My father always told me things like “God will take care of it.” Now, whether it was the Universe leading me to Lidia Yuknavitch’s book or that I just happened upon it: I feel that this was meant to happen. Not predetermined, just meant to happen. At this time. Not one month ago, not one year from now. Now. I’m having one of those: ohmigod, what if I had never come across this book/person/story/insight feelings.

Let me tell you more…when I did that computer search for memoirs roughly a week and a half ago I came across a book description that mentioned something about a drowning. A drowning? Hey–I know about a drowning! My Dad drowned, wait, almost, you know, not quite. Done. I wrote down the call number and the letters YUKN. My boyfriend was with me that day and he and I set out to find my memoirs. If I remember right, he found the first memoir, handed it to me, I mentioned something about it having a beautiful cover, and I tucked it under my arm, almost instinctively. I got that book about Patty Hearst, which had been mistakenly filed under her last name, like it was her book, like it was a memoir. I didn’t look twice at that book, it was like once I had Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Chronology of Water, I was all ready to go home and start reading.

When I began reading the book, I was instantly impressed with Lidia’s poetic writing. I said aloud to my boyfriend in the car, “she just called her still-born baby ‘little dead girlfish’. That’s awesome.” I looked at him and quickly said, “but not, you know, of course, but, I mean, who does that? Nice...” We got home and I put the book away and got busy for a few days with a ballet recital and family visiting and I forgot about the book. Not entirely of course. I picked it back up and got sucked into the story. Some people like to cover things up and ignore them and pretend like they never happened like an unmarked grave. Not Lidia.

I’ve got a lot to learn from Lidia Yuknavitch. Just like she had a lot to learn from Ken Kesey. About one-quarter way through the book, Lidia moves to Eugene. Eugene! That’s where I live! I’ve read other books where people move to Eugene but within a page or two they pick up and move somewhere else, like I’ve sometimes wanted to do. But Lidia, she stayed. Lidia knows that where a person lives does not make or break them. Unlike me, Lidia doesn’t say “I just feel like I’m supposed to be somewhere else” or “It will all come together when I live there and am doing that.” Lidia stays in Eugene for a decade or more and starts off going to creative writing classes at the U of O, classes that she isn’t even paying for, isn’t even signed up for, and she learns that although she feels like she can’t do anything right, she can write. She can write. Lidia stays in Eugene and she learns how to write, amidst a sea of people she feels she is nothing like. She goes to seminars with a flask tucked in her pocket and she fucks the author speaker, man or woman, at the Best Western down the road, the same Best Western where my family just stayed at when they were in town, visiting. She drives the same road I do to get to the coast and she lives in the same neighborhood, just closer to the train tracks.

I google Lidia Yuknavitch and discover that she was recently at the U of O presenting a lecture at the Memoir Fest. I knew about the Memoir Fest but decided not to go because it’s on campus and you know, I’m so above and beyond that and what does campus want with me anyway? I should’ve tucked a flask under my arm and gone. I should’ve, I should’ve.

I read some more and discovered that Lidia Yuknavitch has a Writer’s Workshop! In Portland! In September! It’s not full yet and it’s happening, it really is, on Tuesday’s, at 6:30! (If you can’t tell, I totally plan on going. And if you don’t know me, know that when I say I’m going, I go. I’ll just pretend to hear your “I’m so happy for you!” Dude, it only costs, like 150 bucks.)

I haven’t finished reading the book yet. When I have a good book I like to draw it out like my dad’s loogy. Speaking of dad’s…remember how Lidia’s book description talked about the tragedy around drowning, or almost drowning? That was her dad, her dad almost drown. She still hasn’t gotten back to that. It’s sort of hanging out in the air. I want to know what happened but I wouldn’t imagine most readers do, because nobody cares, because he was a rapist. Lidia’s got a lot of loose ends to tie up in this book, but whether she does or doesn’t, I don’t care. That’s how good this book is. I can dig any book that talks about broken women and lots of sex and S & M and men and women that behave like men and writing and drugs and more drugs and hope and hopE and hoPE and hOPE and more HOPE and VICTORY. I can dig a book that breaks all the rules. I can dig Lidia Yuknavitch.

Happy Mother’s Day, Dad

Terah Van Dusen6 Comments

I love my father.

Over the past three years, as I’ve been writing my memoir, I’ve mentioned my father a great deal. My memoir is intended to be a father-daughter story after all. It’s too early to tell, as I look over the draft, if I’ve captured that or not. In fact I look at the draft and have a hard time seeing it for what it is: a book. All I see is my life looking back at me, but for the first time in the form of words and pictures and arrows. It’s still missing some of the best parts. It’s cut short, not yet complete. It’s so hard for me to tell if my father is there, if the reader can see him standing under the shade of a cedar tree, whispering prayers into the wind, looking over at his daughter with his bright blue eyes, sheepishly feeling into his pocket for his rusty sneak-a-toke. On Mother’s Day, I usually try to get in touch with my dad. He’s likely to be out in the woods but eventually he’ll hear my message wishing him a Happy Mother’s Day, dad.

It was just me and my dad living up on the river in that little red cabin. Around town, people always called me “Robby’s daughter”, as if that was enough. And it was. I didn’t need to be Terah. With my hair and skin tones mimicking my father’s, “Robby’s daughter” just worked.

People often told me how lucky I was. Lucky to be Robby’s daughter. My cousin Cevin, who was a year older than me, told me this once and I really listened because Cevin wasn’t the sensitive type. That day, I felt like he really wanted me to know just how good I had it. I felt like he wanted me to never forget that, that I had a good father. And, I haven’t Cevin, I haven’t forgotten it.

Cevin’s dad was locked up in a California state penitentiary. He got out at one point and I remember him running to meet Cevin at the front door, hoisting him into his big, prison-built arms and then, with Cevin in tow, climbing up to the top branches of a fir tree. He had just gotten out but I think he was already back on the drugs. Even my Dad didn’t climb to the top of a tree with a kid in his arms. Cevin’s dad was gone within a week and I remembered again what he had said about my dad and I felt for him. My dad would always just be Cevin’s uncle, never his dad. Nobody could ever be his dad but his dad. There were step-dad’s but they were all cuckoo.

My dad made mistakes. You’ll read all about ’em in the memoir. Some of those mistakes were downright chilling, I’m not gonna lie. But I’d like to take a moment to focus on all the good my father did for me, his only child:

1. Kept me after my mother left. He didn’t pawn me off on an aunt or try to track down my mom and give me back.

2. Found a good job to support us.

3. Joined a church in a desperate attempt to free us from the drug culture that surrounded our home.

4. Built us the little red cabin.

5. Took me baw-hawin’, hiking, beach-combing, and gold panning.

6. Never complained about his parents who both drank wayyyy too much and were highly neglectful to him and his siblings.

7. Never really complained about anyone.

8. Never hit me.

9. Answered questions I asked him as a child honestly.

10. Has always accepted me and allowed me to be myself, no matter how pathetic my self became.

I look forward to sharing more stories about my father, Robby, a dad whom I always call to wish a Happy Mother’s Day.

My father recently filled out a lengthy interview I sent him in the mail. I asked him to do this so that it might assist me in my memoir writing. I asked him all sorts of questions about what he remembers from his childhood, and what he remembers from mine. I asked him to talk about his marriages and his memory of a significant life-death experience he had at age 9. He filled it out and provided me many insights. He also stumbled upon an old journal of his that spans from his adolescent years to the year 2000–the year my father and I went our separate ways. He gave it to me. I was amazed when I read it, amazed that a 22 year-old boy (my dad nonetheless) would journal about the birth of his child, and falling in love. I’m hoping these words and memories he has recorded and provided me with will help me to better share with you the very essence of my father. My father is different.

Poems By A Horny Small-Town Gal

Terah Van Dusen4 Comments

Howdy readers,

I wanted to inform you that I have recently acquired a publisher! A small publishing house out of Bend, Oregon, is currently releasing a collection of my poetry on Amazon.com! The book, titled Poems By A Horny Small-Town Gal, will be available for Kindle users for a 90-day period. If the book is purchased, receives positive reviews, and for some wild reason gains moderate success on Amazon.com during the 90-day trial period, then the said publishing house will print hard copies that will be available for purchase in stores like Barnes & Noble! Cool huh? Oh! And this book has poems that you have never read, including some that you have read. My recently published poem Caliente! is an example of a poem from Poems By A Horny Small-Town Gal. I encourage you to read the book when it’s available, it’s super fun. If you think the poems on this site are desperate, you haven’t read anything like Poems By A Horny Small-Town Gal.