Imperfect and tense

It was almost exactly 30 years ago today that I got my first chance at being published without nepotism involved. And it all came about because of a jackass magazine editor.

In 1994 I was playing drums in a rock cover band and earnestly reading every monthly issue of Modern Drummer magazine, cover to cover. I was becoming increasingly irritated, though, with the almost complete lack of women drummers featured in the magazine – so much so that when I serendipitously met Modern Drummer’s editor at an event I can’t remember, I mentioned to him that it would be nice to read about female drummers once in a while. His response? It would “demean the credibility” of the publication.

Oh no he didn’t!

Not long afterwards, I picked up an issue of Drum! magazine, an up-and-coming competitor to Modern Drummer that I found in a music store. The issue included a column by master drummer Barbara Borden and articles on Kate Schellenbach (Beastie Boys, Luscious Jackson) and percussionist Debra Dobkin. Elated, I wrote a letter to the magazine’s editor, Andy Doerschuk, thanking him for being so inclusive.

“The situation is self-perpetuating,” I wrote. “If women are not acknowledged, they’ll be even more discouraged from getting into the business.” I expressed my gratitude that he helped make drumming so accessible to everyone, and I figured that was the end of it.

A few days later, Andy himself gave me a call. He told me that my letter was so well written that he wanted to give me a writing assignment. I couldn’t believe my ears or my good fortune. (Andy Doerschuk, by the way, is a superb writer who far outclassed all of the Modern Drummer authors put together.)

I ended up writing for Drum! for many years, interviewing drummers ranging from Kate Schellenbach to Pete Escovedo to Sheila E to Dave Abruzzese (Pearl Jam) to Dawn Richardson (4 Non Blondes) to Marky Ramone (the Ramones) to Albert Bouchard (Blue Oyster Cult). I was also privileged to do a cover story on Carter Beauford (Dave Matthews Band). One of the people I interviewed – percussionist Carolyn Brandy – actually called me after her story was published to tell me that I was the only person who ever “got” her. It made me realize that I loved writing about other people, and that everyone has an interesting story.

***

I am now going to shamelessly exhibit one of my many writing flaws: veering off-track and telling tangential stories. I prefer to think of it as my calling card.

On Memorial Day weekend in 1995, Andy called me at the very last minute to ask me to write the Carter Beauford cover story. In two days. The interview had already been done, but the writer was feeling ill and unable to pull it all together. Then the story got a bit strange. Andy casually mentioned that the writer, Mark, had Tourette syndrome and that he hadn’t been allowed to do the interview himself because Carter Beauford is black and Mark would have involuntarily screamed out racist epithets. Andy assured me that Mark was an extremely gentle man and didn’t have a mean or racist bone in his body, but the disease was of course uncontrollable. My assignment involved driving through hideous holiday weekend traffic to the East Bay to pick up the tapes and notes from Mark’s wife, who also had Tourette’s. I was in a panic, trying to assimilate all of this while knowing that I had only two days to transcribe a really long interview, collate Mark’s notes, and write a feature-length story, all while hosting a houseguest that weekend. I picked up the phone to call Mark to make the arrangements.

“Oh, it’s great to talk to you, Paula,” he answered in a very soft, sweet-tempered, sincere voice. “Andy has been so complimentary about you and your work FUCK YOU!”

***

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of seeing writer Anne Lamott onstage at the gorgeous, nearly 100-year-old Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco. Anne’s new book about love (and so much more that that), Somehow, is on the New York Times Best Seller list, and she’s been touring the country to talk about it. My friend Roland had introduced me to her definitive book on writing – Bird by Bird – back in the ’90s, and I was bewitched by her wisdom, her humor, her honesty, and her anxieties. Anne found love – and her unique form of Christianity – late in life and lives with her husband and family in Marin County, California, not far from me.

At the theater, when she was asked about her future plans, Anne declared that she was done with writing novels. “You have to assume that each one takes at least three years,” she said, “and then there’s the possibility of great disappointment.” At times – in my wildest dreams – I’ve considered writing a novel, but I know I don’t have the requisite street smarts. After my three years of toil I’d likely be summarily rejected, with my psyche in ruins.

Writing is torture as it is. Why increase the torture to the power of 10?

***

Two decades have passed since the end of my time writing for Drum! magazine, and although I was recently published in The San Franciscan, mostly I’m just self-publishing this blog. And it’s very hard. I’m not like a great songwriter who arrives at the studio after a long night of whisky and debauchery and cranks out a song in 20 minutes.

Finding a topic that will interest a reader is my toughest task. And sometimes I am waaaaay off on my assessment of that.

My best bets, I’ve learned, are usually 1) tales about my anxiety-ridden life or 2) reverent biographies about historical figures I admire. Both of these are on the easier end of the scale for me. The personal anecdotes almost write themselves because life can be so awkward and amusing. And the biographies are a relief because even though the heavy research can be laborious, I’m writing about real people and events, so I need only be a storyteller. I don’t have to conjure anything out of thin air, which is my Achilles heel. When I’ve occasionally tried my hand at just reflecting on abstract issues, they flop. Most of the time I just don’t have the brainpower to come up with brilliant perspectives and I’m too plumb lazy to think all that hard.

My favorites, though, are the love letters I write – about the beloved people in my life, or about my great passions like San Francisco, sports, train travel, Americana.

My first post, about my beautiful parents, came easily, and in huge waves. To this day I swear that it didn’t come from me. It came from them. Over a very short period of time, inspiration would arrive in the shower, while I was out for walks, or, yes, after waking up at night to pee. It was divine, it came from the heavens, my mother and father practically wrote it, and all I did was feverishly jot it down. I think it’s probably the best thing I’ve ever written. (https://mondaymorningrail.com/2016/05/30/the-courtship-of-paulas-father/)

Otherwise, it often takes crushing effort to find ideas. If something funny or awesome has just happened to me, like embarrassing myself at the doctor’s office or serendipitously meeting a longtime baseball idol, writing can be a piece of cake. But if I’m feeling stagnant, which is much of the time, I just stare at the computer screen and tear my hair out. Then I decide to fill the hummingbird feeder. Then I realize that my tires need air. Then plucking my eyebrows becomes an emergency.

***

Once I do settle on a topic, though, what is my “process”?

(I always amuse myself with this word. I use it in much the same way I jokingly refer to my financial “portfolio.”)

First of all, I vow, every night, to get up at 6:30 the next morning and write for at least half an hour before breakfast. I’m successful at this only about 40 percent of the time, but I’m immensely proud when I do it – not because the work is good, but simply because I’ve hauled my indifferent butt out of bed.

The first draft is always a horror story. ALWAYS. In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott describes her first drafts as “long and incoherent and hideous.” Exactly.

Finishing that draft can take me anywhere from days to months, depending upon how much research I have to do and how much enthusiasm I have for the topic.

It can be terribly hard. “You sweat blood,” I wrote in my diary at age 18.

I spend another couple of weeks reorganizing everything and making it coherent, shorter, and less hideous. This is probably the least torturous part for me, because the story already has been told – albeit in a muddled, clumsy way – and now I can move the pieces around so that it all flows, makes sense, and creates an impact. (If I could live my life over again, I honestly would be a film editor.) I typically need to delete about 63 percent of what I initially wrote because it’s too unwieldy, superfluous, and dull. “Throw the things out of the plane that keep you flying too low,” Anne advised from the Goldstein stage.

During that time I’ll also tend to the photos. Older photos are often in the public domain. But otherwise I’m very, very mindful of copyright and of not cribbing someone else’s hard work. I subscribe online to “Shutterstock,” a service that I pay for annually and that offers a digital library of professionally shot photos that I’m free to use in a blog. I’m so careful about copyright that when I wrote about meeting ballplayer Shawon Dunston in Frederick, Maryland, pictures of the Frederick baseball field and the team were available on the Frederick News-Post site but I wrote to the paper anyway and purchased them for a nominal amount. In that same blog post I also wanted to include a snapshot of an old San Francisco Chronicle clipping of Shawon that I’d had on my wall for years, but I wasn’t even sure how legal that would be. So I wrote to the Chronicle and bought the original, just in case. That one wasn’t so cheap.

Lastly, I’ll spend up to a week fine-tuning everything, juicing up the language when I can, watching for typos, and weeding out the repeated words. (Of course, five minutes after the blog post is published I’ll notice three flagrant typos and a dozen repeated words.)

***

When I’m finally done, I’m usually flabbergasted that what was once a piece of absolute garbage has come together in a reasonable whole. I often finish up the writing on a weekend day, and by then I’m so sick to death of the entire thing – and yet so excited to publish it – that I can’t wait until Monday morning, which ideally is when one should publish a Monday morning rail. So I tend to hit the “Publish” button a day early. Which I guess is okay, because it gives my readers the option of wasting their Sunday night on it.

And then I have to start the whole self-waterboarding ordeal all over again.

***

I took an Italian class a number of years ago with my friend Maryl, and when asked to speak, we two perfectionists would tie ourselves into pretzels to get every word right, with the correct agreement and the correct ending, and we’d use up five minutes just trying to scratch out one perfectly correct sentence. On the other hand, the woman next to me was terrible at the fine points of grammar and even worse at pronunciation. For example, the word for “I” in Italian is “io,” pronounced “EE-yoh.” But this woman would use the Spanish word “yo.” It drove me bats. Her constant “yo”s would make my jaw grind itself to dust. Yet, this woman would charge ahead and rattle off an entire unsatisfactory paragraph and charm everyone, in the time it would take me to eke out my five perfect words, and she was always smiling and effortless, and our teacher would never correct her on the “yo”s, and the always-incorrect student would merrily sail through class like an eagle in flight while I floundered like a clumsy dodo.

I think I need to stop dreading the writing process. I need to stop hoping for faultless refinement and instead be okay with my own shambling style. Being imperfect is probably perfectly okay.

Anne had thoughts about this, too: “Perfection is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.”

***

Here’s one consolation: A good friend of mine used to work at a major American publication that focused on investigative journalism – a longstanding, established magazine with a huge circulation. And my friend told me something that shocked my naïve self: many of the magazine’s established, famous writers were in fact terrible writers. Their names carried them, and got them repeatedly published, but the editors effectively re-wrote all their work.

A travesty of a mockery of a sham!

At least I’m not a part of that ignominy. My work is my own, however flawed.

***

What, then – as one friend asked when I complained about the pain of writing – is the payoff?

Maybe I do it to get attention. If people comment, it gives me a moment of affirmation. I don’t know whether the comments truly offset the weeks and months of tension and labor, but they certainly help.

Or maybe I write to be heard. I know that I use the written word to convey what I struggle to express verbally, for any number of reasons.

In many cases, too, my complaints and anxieties have turned out – often surprisingly to me – to be universal. I’d like to think, then, that I’m providing a public service. Anne says that in these instances “we are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again.”

But above all else, I think, this blog has allowed me to leave behind my imperfect love letters. To the great American pastime. To rock and roll. To jazz. To the timeless American railroad. To my beautiful City by the Bay. To everyone and everything helping my clumsy feet to dance.

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COMMENTERS, PLEASE NOTE: WordPress is no longer supporting my particular page type and doesn’t seem to be asking commenters for their names, so everyone is identified as “Anonymous.” If you’re commenting (which I love!), please leave your name if you’d like me to know who you are!

***

Due to popular demand, I am including, at the end of each blog post, the latest random diary entries that I’ve been posting on Facebook for “Throwback Thursday.” These are all taken absolutely verbatim from the lengthy diaries I kept between 1970 and 1987.

August 13, 1975 [age 19] (with my friend Jeanne, still trying to get from New York to Maine to meet up with her husband Steve):

“[after having left New Jersey at 11 a.m. but gotten stuck on the NY State Thruway for hours] We didn’t even get out of New York until 7:00 last night. We saw a few beautiful minutes of Vermont in the daylight, then stopped to eat about a 19-course dinner. Jeanne called Steve and told him where we were, and he said it would take us 7 more hours. I nearly died. The rest of the way was like a dream, and not necessarily a good one. Dark and foggy and either forests or a void on all sides, neither of us speaking much because we were so tense, eerie ‘Tubular Bells’ on the tape deck. We saw weird monster vehicles and hit terrible dirt roads and spans of fog – once we stopped at a gas station to see if the restroom was open and we heard a low wail – scared us to death. I jumped back in the car and we zoomed off. At FIVE o’clock, as dawn was breaking in Maine, after 18 hours of traveling, we got to the farmhouse that is Steve’s family’s home.”

August 18, 1975 [age 19]:

“I just wish my normal personality was like what I am when I’m drunk.”

August 21, 1975 [age 19] (back with my friend Jeanne in South Carolina):

“After dinner Jeanne took me for a ride on the motorcycle. It took quite a while to get it started – I ended up having to push it to get it going, sweating and straining. There were no foot pedals for me so I had to ride with my feet up in the air, and sometimes one of my feet would scrape the ground on a turn. Also, my leg would get really hot from the muffler. We rode down to the beach for a walk, then stopped at a disco on the way home to have a beer, and then we couldn’t get the darn motorcycle started so we had to push it all the way home!”

September 3, 1975 [age 19]: (after a year off, I’ve returned to San Jose State, and this time I’m staying in the dorms):

“I’m writing this Friday morning from my dorm room – it’s 7:40 a.m. and I don’t have to leave for work till 8:00 and I’m behind in this diary. Well, to put it simply, I wish I could go home, and I probably would were it not for all the people who know that I am here for the first time and who are expecting me to make it on my own. In other words, I can’t lose face. Besides, I’ve made a commitment to myself that I cannot bow out of. I really don’t know what is bothering me, either. I’ve got a very nice roommate. It must be my shy nature that’s inhibiting me – when you’re in a dorm, you’re thrown into all these damned social situations and I can’t function in them. Even at the general dorm meeting tonight I was frightened. Of what? People, I suppose.”

September 4, 1975 [age 19]:

“The facts are: I’m still in the process of moving in [to the San Jose State dorms], still have a bunch of clothes which Mom and I will bring down tonight. It’s embarrassing; everyone else was thoroughly moved in three days ago, but I managed to keep putting it off. I’ve had one class – it’s ‘American Novel’ and it looks like a great teacher, a nice small class, but a terribly rough workload – in fact, I have to read The Scarlet Letter this weekend. My study habits are not starting out on a good foot; in fact, I keep forgetting that I must buy books and that I’m going to school at all! Finally, I had my first meal in the cafeteria and it was HORRIBLE. I miss Mom’s cooking. How will I survive this?”

September 5, 1975 [age 19]:

“Today at school was a bummer. My second class [upper division Philosophy] was horrible – we’re going to have to give three-minute oral presentations in there EVERY DAY, a prospect too horrible to endure, so I’m going to have to drop the damned thing and end up with only 12 units. I had my sophomore-year-acquired anxiety and typical voice shakiness when the instructor called my name, in fact could not even correct him when he asked if ‘Bacardi’ was the correct pronunciation, only nod wrongly in assent. What is WRONG with me?”