Pursuit of Happiness

So late May/early June is when I hear a lot of graduation speeches.

This can be fairly mind numbing, as clichés seem to have their origins in the Graduation Speech genre. One group of inventive Bowdoin College profs I know (names withheld to protect the guilty) have come up with a sort of “bingo” they play during the graduation ceremony, checking off boxes whenever a speaker utters a particular cliché (references to the ivory tower, going forth into the world, etc.), and jumping out of their seats and shouting the name of the current governor when they have checked off all the boxes on their cards.

It’s disruptive, highly amusing to those in the know, and puzzling to the other graduation attendees.

So I was amazed and delighted to hear a speech, written by a young man who graduated from Middlebury College this past February, which not only made me laugh out loud, but made me think. Rethink, actually. And question my assumptions about a few things I had previously held dear.

Here's the excerpt that grabbed me:

The problem with the American dream, the dream so often spouted on days like today, is not simply that it leaves us chasing material success, thinking that if we just get a bigger car, a bigger house, a bigger TV, then we will be happy. It’s the very idea of the pursuit of happiness. Because happiness is not something you pursue. It’s something you create.

I loved that. The idea that happiness isn't a goal or a pursuit, but a creation. And not necessarily for ourselves.

Then, this week, an article in The Atlantic came to my attention. It was titled "How to Land Your Kid in Therapy," and the basic premise is that parenting with a primary goal of raising happy children might be resulting in a generation of unhappy adults. It also posits that shielding kids from disappointment and rejection and pain doesn't do them any favors.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/07/how-to-land-your-kid-in-therapy/8555/

How many times as parents do we say, regarding our children and their futures, “I just want them to be happy.” As if that's the ultimate bottom line? The most important attribute we could ascribe to their adult selves?

Is there really anything wrong with that?

As a parent, it’s hard to hear one of your kids say “I’m not happy.” I mean, it’s sort of hard to hear it from a three-year old. But it’s sharply painful to hear it from a teenager/young adult. Your instinct, instilled from the moment of his/her birth, is to apply the bandage/erase the hurt/make it better. Because isn’t that our job? To make them well? Guide them along the road to happiness?

This article, and that speech, made me rethink happiness. I wondered, what if we stopped pursuing happiness, or just stopped considering it altogether? What would we insert in its place? What might constitute a better "pursuit?"

And how would my focus as a parent have changed if, instead of "I'm not happy" my son/daughter said, "I'm not ... compassionate."

How about, “I’m not generous.” “I’m not loving.” “I’m not kind.” "I'm not thoughtful."

When I look at it that way ... wow. Being somewhat unfulfilled or a bit bored with life or bummed out because you didn’t get invited to the party or disappointed because you didn’t get into your first choice college is … fine. Manageable. Lacking compassion is devastating.

I’m not sure how to resist being swept up in the cultural tsunami of The Self Actualized, Happy-at-all-Costs Child. It's tough enough to swim against the tide of parents in your own community, let alone a whole nation. Where we seem to think we have a constitutional right to happiness.

Maybe it's simply a matter of reordering priorities. Maybe move "compassion" to the top of the list for things we hope our children attain. Along with a capacity to forgive. The ability to show love. Loyalty. Generosity.

Somehow, I think if we make those sorts of things the goals, happiness will just happen. Something we discover along the way to a productive, unselfish life.

Return of The Dude

It always takes me about one full week to adjust to summer.

Huh? you ask. Adjust to what? Sunshine and warmth? Fresh vegetables from the market, flowers in the garden, grilling, school’s out … ah.

Yes. School’s out. That’s it.

All the glories of summer in Maine aside, my head and my schedule have to make a tremendous adjustment each June to Teens at Home. Large bodies, fairly inert except for trips to the refrigerator, filling the house, filling the couch, filling the bed until long after noon … It knocks me off track, I’ll confess, especially since I’ve had ten months of quiet days to write, with only the dog making demands for the occasional walk.

In all fairness, I’m not describing my daughter, who is a veritable dervish most of time, and even when she is “relaxing” is productive in her art room, or trotting off to the library for a new book on tape, or going to her summer job or heading with friends to the beach. She’s actually the kid we entreat to watch more television, maybe play a few rounds of Angry Birds on the iPad.

No, I’m talking about The Dude, who has returned from college. Where, reportedly, he functioned. He got up and went to class and, judging from the grades he received, did the reading and learned something. He did laundry. He went to meals, joined clubs, made friends. In other words: The Dude was alive.

But then, year over, he returned to the nest.

“So what’s with the vegetative state?” little sister asked me, upon his return. The contents of his dorm room were still strewn about his room, which did not smell good. Which was probably due to the fact that the door remained closed well into the early afternoon, as he slept.

“What happened last night?” his father asked me, when, his day beginning at 2:00 in the afternoon, after his beauty rest and shower, The Dude met up with friends and returned loudly home at 1:30 A.M. It sounded like thieves had broken into the house and were ransacking the refrigerator.

I don’t why everyone expects me to have the answers to these questions.

“What happened?” I asked The Dude. “Did you have a lobotomy when no one was looking?”

“Huh?” was the reply. Truly, he was perplexed.

While there may well be no answer to this problematic question of why and how young people, who fully function as adults out of the parental home, manage to completely regress once back in the bosom of their families, there is a solution: The Summer Job.

In The Dude’s case, this is quite a job. Not only will he leave the parental nest once again and relocate to an island in Maine, but he will be responsible for a camp’s worth of boys for six solid weeks. He’ll be a camp counselor/tennis instructor/trip leader, taking boys into the woods or down Maine’s rivers for days at a time.

He will not only get himself up and jump in the lake at 7:30 every morning, but he will get The Little Dudes up. He will not only keep his tent clean and his stuff organized, he will entreat Little Dudes to do likewise. He will nag. He will remind. He will instruct.

He will know how it feels to push molasses up a mountain. And yes, I’m enjoying this.

Best of all, for six weeks, The Dude’s focus will be on someone else. Instead of being taken care of, he’ll do the caretaking. Instead of “self actualizing” he’ll help others come into their own, make friends, learn new skills. He’ll work to keep them safe and help them have a memorable summer.

I really can't think of a better way for him to spend his time right now.

So, tonight’s the farewell dinner and movie with The Dude, then he’s off. Little sister, The Dervish, will still be home, so life’s not quiet … but it’s not sponge life, either.

The New York Times had a great feature about teens finding summer jobs this season, which we all know is no easy thing in this economy. Take a look. I particularly enjoyed the kid in the carrot suit.

http://tinyurl.com/3ktchjq

Buzzing

This blog is taking a break this week because I'm BUZZING! Visit me at the Random House Teen Book Community, Random Buzzers: http://www.randombuzzers.com/ You can ask questions about JERSEY TOMATOES ARE THE BEST and I'll do my best to answer before the week is out. Thanks for dropping by!

Virtual Tour

Until very recently, I didn't know what a "Blog Tour" was. I don't want to confess how recently, because that would reveal my complete ineptness (is that word?) when it comes to Cyberworld Book Promotion, and book promotion in general ...

I had always assumed you promoted a book by going to bookstores and signing copies, or getting invited to nice events where people wanted to hear you talk about yourself or your book, and maybe they'd buy a copy. Pictured to the left is the "standard fare" of book promotion: stacks of Jersey Tomatoes Are the Best, offered for sale by a couple of very nice people, Gary Lawless and Beth Leonard of Gulf of Maine Books, an Indie Extraordinaire. They attended my book launch party, sold a few copies, and I signed.

That's it, right? Authors head out to stores or libraries or conferences, meet people, and sign books. In person.

But then my publicist told me that Tomatoes would be out on a Virtual Tour, a.k.a. a Blog Tour, and in the course of a mere week we can visit thousands of potential readers from all over the world, let alone Main Street in our home towns. If you're like me, and have only just learned about this sort of thing, here's how it works:

For five days, five different young adult bloggers will post reviews and interviews about Jersey Tomatoes Are the Best. Each blogger has asked different questions, so if you follow the tour you won't be subjected to the same material over and over. At the conclusion of each post, they'll "link" to the next day's blogger, as well as reference the previous post. It's a great way to spread the word about the book, as well as connect "followers" from one blog to another.

Most of the bloggers on the tour will be offering contests/book giveaways, so if you're interested you could win a copy of Tomatoes!

Here's the lineup for the Jersey Tomatoes Are the Best Blog Tour. I hope you can drop in for some, if not all, the stops along the way:

Monday, March 28: Steph Su Reads http://stephsureads.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, March 29: The Book Butterfly http://thebookbutterfly.com/

Wednesday, March 30: Random Acts of Reading http://randomactsofreading.wordpress.com/

Thursday, March 31: The Reading Zone http://thereadingzone.wordpress.com/

Friday, April 1st: Cleverly Inked http://cleverlyinked.com/

Launch Day

The other day I was asked the following question by someone who was reviewing my new book, Jersey Tomatoes Are the Best:

“What has surprised you most about becoming a published author?”

The question itself surprised me. Sure, I’ve learned a lot more about the publishing business since selling a book. I’ve experienced the “process” first hand, of reviewing galleys and going over copyeditor’s notes, and writing bios and jacket flap copy. I’ve sat in bookstores and autographed my book. Stood in front of groups and read aloud (that’s way more fun than signing copies in bookstores by the way …) I’ve done all that sort of published-author-fun-stuff, and yes, it’s fun.

But I guess the biggest “surprise” of all is that I feel like the exact same writer I’ve ever been. Nothing has changed, really. I haven’t gotten rich, although my husband is still planning to retire on the movie rights to one of my books … if and when a big studio decides to purchase the movie rights. People don’t recognize me in the street, except to ID me as so-and-so’s mother. I still buy milk at the grocery store, scrub toilets, fold laundry and walk the dog. Although, now that I think of it, some days, when I’m working, and happen to glance up from the page, I see Frisbee staring at me with more than the usual patient worship. “My owner is a published author,” those brown doggy eyes seem to say. “A published author scoops my poop.”

So, there. That’s something new and different.

The fact is that even if someone decides to give you money and print your stuff, it still boils down to the same thing: hours alone, trying to tell a story and string words into sentences. I’ve been doing it since 8th grade, and the process is … pretty much the same. Although now I have a computer, and back in the dark ages, when I was an 8th grader, I didn’t even have an electric typewriter.

One of my favorite contemporary authors, Anne Lamott, describes this phenomenon brilliantly and irreverently in her book, Bird by Bird. These past few nights I’ve been rereading her chapter on publishing, not only because Tomatoes is scheduled for release this week, but because she just gets it.

Anne Lamott on “Launch Day”:

There is something mythic about the date of publication, and you actually come to believe that on this one particular morning you will wake up to a phone ringing off the hook and your publisher will be so excited that they will have hired the Blue Angels precision flying team to buzz your squalid little hovel …

In fact, Anne spends the day by the phone, waiting for it to ring. I usually don’t hear from my editor on launch day, but I usually send her a little something. Chocolates. A mug. A card thanking her for believing in me and my work.

Anne Lamott on “Being a Published Author”:

I tell you, if what you have in mind is fame and fortune, publication is going to drive you crazy. If you are lucky, you will get a few reviews, some good, some bad, some indifferent. … There will be a few book signing parties and maybe some readings, at one of which your publisher will spring for a twenty-pound wheel of runny Brie, and the only person who will show has lived on the street since he was twelve and even he will leave, because he hates Brie.

And finally, Anne Lamott on “After You Publish a Book”:

But eventually you have to sit down like every other writer and face the blank page. The beginnings of a second or third book are full of spirit and confidence because you have been published, and false starts and terror because now you have to prove yourself again. … What I know now is that you have to wear out all that dread by writing long and hard and not stopping too often to admire yourself and your publishedness in the mirror. Sometime later you’ll find yourself at work on another book, and once again you figure out that the real payoff is the writing itself, that a day when you have gotten your work done is a good day, that total dedication is the point.

For the next few weeks, now that Tomatoes is officially out in the world, I suppose I’ll be reveling in my own “publishedness.” I’ll get to read out loud, to a live audience, which I’ll confess is a lot of fun. There’s a party planned, and a couple of signings.

But then, it will all die down, and it’s back to work. I’m writing a new novel, which means long days alone with make-believe people, my laptop, and my biggest fan: the dog.

And that’s just fine.

Just Write

Is everyone writing in my town, or does it just seem that way?

At a benefit auction the other night I sat across the table from a woman who has been writing short stories and memoir pieces for years. She’s at the point where she’s wondering if she could publish her work. She’s wondering: Am I ready for that? What’s the next step?

A friend across town who has an amazing literary blog (far more productive than I, by far) has just finished a draft of her fourth novel. Two blocks from her, another friend, who has won prizes for her poems and essays, is busily at work. In that same neighborhood there is another memoir writer, and two children’s authors. Across the street from them ….

Wow. Never mind. I won’t be able to list all the writers I know in town, let alone all the others I now imagine are squirreled away in their home offices/writing sheds/the library tapping away at laptops or scribbling in journals. I shouldn’t be surprised. Not only is this a college town, but it’s where Harriet Beecher Stowe lived when she wrote “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” I’m convinced there’s something in the water that makes one want to tell a story.

Because basically, that’s it. It’s not about a career, or fame. Definitely not about the money, although some lucky folks do extraordinarily well. It’s simply a compulsion, to describe and tell and make stuff up and go for a wild imaginative ride and bring a few friends along if they care to listen. That’s it. If you have another goal in mind, I’d suggest abandoning this endeavor, immediately. It begins and ends with a need to tell a story, and tell it as well as you can.

The telling is what matters, because that might be all that comes of it. The best thing I ever heard in the way of writing ‘advice’ came from my advisor in college, the poet Robert Pack, who told us, “Most art isn’t very good, and most art doesn’t last.”

To a self-important 21-year old, this was a shocking revelation. What? Isn’t the goal here to create great art? Award winning novels, poems for major publications, series that resell as movie-rights? Anything short of that would be failure, right?

Oh, so, so wrong. Bob Pack was spot on, and here’s my riff on his wisdom: Most art isn’t ever published. Most published art sucks. So just go out there and tell your story. Because you have to. Because it gives you joy.

Another writing friend (from that same creative writing seminar with Bob Pack) has published several non-fiction books, but also writes many things that he simply … shares. Every year he writes a lovely Christmas story, and emails it to the zillion people he knows who just enjoy listening to him, and it’s a gift. It’s absolutely wonderful to see it appear as an attachment each year and it’s absolutely perfect without a cover or an ISBN number.

At the same benefit auction the other night was another friend who has decided to go a more structured, professional route with her writing. She’s entered an MFA program (Master of Fine Arts) and is currently taking classes with a fiction writer. She said something to me about that class which sparked this whole blog post.

She described herself as “superficial” (so not true) and said this guy is deep, and is trying to get her to be “deep.” She described her writing as horizontal, and this “deep” fellow wants her to be more “vertical.”

Okay, I’m not in the class, and maybe I’m getting this wrong, but can I just say I would love to throw a brick at this guy? This gal has been blogging of late, and her posts are hysterically funny. She has a voice; an authentic voice. I certainly hope Mr. Deep gets that, because an authentic voice is a rare thing. Something he can’t teach.

Beware of writers trying to be deep. They are full of … yeah. My guess is those “deep” stories wind up in the category of don’t-last-aren’t-very-good. Which is all fine, but probably not much fun to read.

Here’s my advice to my not-superficial, horizontally-writing friend: screw deep. Write “true.” What’s the story you want to tell? The story you have to tell, and the character’s voice that speaks to you? Don’t be afraid to tell the truth, to annoy people and rub them the wrong way and say the things that make them uncomfortable. Don’t worry about whether it’s profound. Just dig within yourself and make it true. And whether it winds up deep or published or just in the bottom of some drawer: it’s yours.

Okay, sun’s up in our little town. Coffee’s on. Let’s write.

The Anti-Social Network

I haven’t been able to put my finger on what bothers me about Facebook, but then Stanford University did a study and nailed it for me:

http://www.slate.com/id/2282620/

Here’s my favorite line from that article: “Facebook tends to exploit an Achilles heel of human nature.” A.k.a. You Are Not Invited to the Party.

Yes. My friend Barb and I talk about this all the time. On days when we’re low energy, feeling like we haven’t seen anyone for a while, and wonder if everyone is getting together for dinner but not inviting us … Facebook is the nail in the coffin. It confirms our worst fears: everyone is having more fun, is happier, and, by the way, is better looking, than us.

Luckily, I’m a woman-of-a-certain age, in a relationship, with work I love, so on those low energy days I have much to fall back on and bounce right back. But if I were a teen?

OMG. Forget it. I don’t want to think about how I would have felt, 35 years ago, if there had been Facebook. I would have hated seeing pictures posted from all the parties I wasn’t invited to. I would definitely have felt that everyone in my entire high school was better looking and more popular than I was. What got me through those years was not having it shoved in my face that I was “out of it.” I could content myself with having a few wonderful girlfriends, a handful of activities I enjoyed, music to practice, homework to complete …. That’s how I survived. Ignorance is bliss. Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

I think it’s ironic that the biggest global “social networking” creation of our age is the brainchild of a 20-something who, for all his achievements and brilliance, is a disaster at relationships. Yes, yes, I know, Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook, does have a real girlfriends, so the depiction of him and his ex in the movie “The Social Network” is not accurate. But … pretty much every other interaction he has with real live people is fairly disastrous, don’t you think?

I’m trying to get my head around what this means for our kids who are coming of age in the age of Facebook. Of texting instead of speaking. Of emailing instead of slowly, thoughtfully, by hand, composing letters. I have boxes of old letters from when I was in college: letters from my parents, my now-deceased grandmother, old boyfriends … They are gems. Did you ever notice how someone comes to life for you when you see their handwriting? I have an impulse sometimes to strokes the words on the page; as if pieces of their souls inhabit the ink.

I think it’s fair to predict that when my son graduates from college, I will not have a single letter from him in my possession. I will, however, have received thousands of texts and countless emails from him. Frankly, that’s one of the benefits of sending kids to summer camp where there are no computers: they have to write letters home.

Sometimes I wonder if I should print out his emails, and save them in a box.

Anyway. I don’t plan to delete my Facebook page any time soon. But thank you, Stanford researchers, for helping me better understand what’s been bugging me about the whole “posting my wonderful life” thing. And in all fairness to Mark Zuckerberg, he does appear to have more of a sense of humor than Alan Sorkin gave him credit for:

Mark Zuckerberg on SNL