There is a Dark Side

Writing is art. You can't tell me that Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, Faulkner and Hemingway weren't true artists in every sense of the word. These guys, and many other writers, are regarded as heroes. They inspire and evoke a complete spectrum of emotions through their written words.


However, there is a sad truth that I have recently come to realize all too intimately; art is painful. Artists suffer to create, because you have to show emotion to evoke emotion. The creation is a reflection of the artists soul; put on display for the whole world to see. This is no small thing. Imagine taking all of your thoughts, feelings, emotions, secrets, successes, failures, aspirations, and experiences and laying them out for all to see... and judge.

I never considered myself an artist, like, at all. My mom and little brother absorbed all of the artistic talent that happened to be available in our particular gene pool. Creativity? Forget it; I had none. What did I do? I wrote a few stories and some general musings on life. In what crazy reality does that translate to art?

Then I wrote my essay for Glamour. I turned myself completely inside out and ripped apart the dark, deserted recesses of my memory. I took everything, and I do mean everything, that I found there and I shaped it into a creation that I believed to be the best reflection of me, my voice, and my story. After four months of creating this piece, with one simple click of the mouse, it was off. It traveled to the hands of people that are complete strangers. And these strangers will decide if my creation, the fragile product of all my soul-rummaging measures up to their standards. My humble offering will be scrutinized and judged.

Needless to say, after writing that essay I have felt completely deflated. I have been emotionally raw and exposed. It may not make sense, but that feeling of immersing all of yourself into something of your own creation to be shared with the outside world is terrifying in the most satisfying way.

Of course I care if people don't like it. No one wants to give their best efforts and turn out to be terrible. But when I know I've written something that is truly a reflection of myself and articulates my thoughts and my intentions with complete precision, I am satisfied. I am peaceful. And, incidentally, I am also very tired. 

I have visited some very dark places in my mind and my memories to create some of my work. It is hard to come back from those places sometimes and remind yourself that everything is going to be OK, and writing about painful emotions will make the piece more vulnerable and relatable. Sometimes it's hard to return to the real world. I guess that's why so many writers lose their minds (ahem... Hemingway). And I'm not really sure if Vonnegut was completely right in the head at any point in his life; but I digress. 

So I guess I was wrong about the artistic share of the genetic material. It just took me a little bit longer to discover it. I just never entertained the idea that there could be a tortured artist side of me. I never thought I was that deep. It's funny what you can find out about yourself when you develop the bravery to actually look.   

Coffee Shop Writer

I've always wondered what it's like to be one of those people that parks themselves at a coffee shop table with a laptop and a latte and remains completely engrossed in their work for hours. I notice them while I'm grabbing my afternoon caffeine fix on my hurried way to some other pressing engagement. What fascinates me the most about this group of people is not the nature of their work or whether or not they're just cruising Facebook and simply attempting to look pretentious with their new Macbook; it's how the hell these folks maintain their attention span and block out the chaos around them.

So I'm attempting what I have always perceived to be impossible- I'm writing in a coffee shop. My usual writing environment consists of me, my laptop, and unconditional silence. I tried listening to music for a period of time when I first started but I soon discovered that I remain much more focused in graveyard-like quiet. Needless to say, I am now completely out of my creative element. I'm currently dedicating all of my God-given effort (what little I actually posses) to keeping my eyes cemented to the computer screen right now because all I want to do is raise my gaze to the scenery around me and people watch. It's a lot harder than it sounds. I so very badly want to listen to the conversation the two thirty-something guys are having from the leather armchairs ten feet from my table, or watch the steady stream of distinctly middle-class white folks in khaki shorts and polo shirts grab their mid afternoon iced lattes. 

I must admit, as the caffeine in my own iced coffee works its magic and as I grow more accustomed to my current surroundings the creative process is slowly returning to me. There is something oddly therapeutic about the sound of the steamer and the aroma of freshly ground coffee beans permeating the buzz of miscellaneous conversations and soft acoustic folk music. It's nice to be out in the world, watching life happen as I attempt to create my own contribution to the universe. The isolation I usually encounter during my long afternoons in my home office is virtually non-existent in this particular backdrop. I'm a part of the shuffle and a silent observer all at the same time. 

It's a little strange that I'm starting to realize that writing in public ultimately produces fewer distractions than writing at home. There's no TV to click on when I get stuck on how to finish a thought, no puppy dancing around my feet in attention-starved desperation, and no wandering thoughts of accumulated laundry or unwashed dishes. Sitting in this coffee shop I am forced to focus on my task at hand. It's a lot more like giving up when you close up the computer and get back in the car than just setting the computer aside and checking to see what's new on the DVR. 

I guess the moral of this little experiment is that I will probably join the ranks of frequent coffee shop writers. I'll be that girl in the corner clicking away on the keys and sipping a latte that makes you wonder what kind of people actually sit in coffee shops with their computers.     

The Bittersweetness of Life Getting in the Way

Geez! I just realized that it's been two and a half weeks since my last post. I'm sorry to my sweet little blog and to the small handful of you who actually take the time to read it (I love you, by the way!). My life has just been getting all sorts of in the way. I feel guilty for neglecting my self-proclaimed life's passion but there's just so much stuff to do and so much recovering from stuff I do! I could go ahead and blame it on the end-of-summer need to cut loose or whatever, but that's a weak excuse at best. I could also blame my day job at the bar, which is a considerably less weak excuse but still not a good enough reason to be a lazy writer. When I do carve out an hour or two to devote to my laptop I have been spending that time working on a piece that I am submitting for publication in 2 weeks and I'm getting my first taste of deadline anxiety. So keep your fingers crossed that come the new year, I will be a real-life published writer! But for now I am choosing to use all three of the aforementioned reasons for why I have been neglecting my small circle of readers. Many apologies.

The highlight of my recent hiatus had to be a spontaneous mid-week getaway to my friend Gabby's waterfront house in Cambridge. Even though the trip was all of two nights, it was the perfect outlet for some much needed bowing off of steam. Five of us packed up two cars with beer, liquor, food, coffee (of course), and a few overnight essentials... and then more beer... and headed for the Chesapeake. What ensued over the next 36 hours was the perfect combination of intoxication and relaxation with some of my favorite people on this planet.

We played games, floated in the pool, watched my brother play 157 games of ping pong against anyone that wasn't otherwise occupied at the moment, sat around a bonfire, and kayaked into the sunset. Over the course of the two nights we managed to drink a comically large bottle of espresso vodka, an entire bottle of Kahlua (what's a vacation without white russians, anyway?), two bottles of wine, at least three pitchers of bloody marys, and, if I had to estimate, around three cases of beer. After said alcohol was consumed, the group congregated at the end of the pier and we all lay on our backs and watched the stars for what seemed like hours. With the exception of driving home before noon the next morning and having to cross the Bay Bridge with a wicked hangover, the mid-week mini-vacation was perfection. I would also like to mention that Brandon was not able to make it because of his job, and his presence would have been the only thing to make the entire experience complete.

So I suppose it's time to bid farewell to summer and start hitting the laptop hard (some days I would like to take that literally), because I would hate to succomb to Lazy-Writer-Syndrome, or LWS as I will now be calling it.

P.S. I still intend on offering my thoughts on the new season of Weeds, however, I can't decide how I feel about the first two episodes just yet. I will let everyone know once I have formed an opinion.

Missing: Genius

I'll just come right out and say it- I love Elizabeth Gilbert! It may be super trendy to love this woman right now but I don't even care, I just about worship her. For those who are unfamiliar, Liz Gilbert is the author of Eat, Pray, Love- the international super-mega best seller and Julia Roberts is playing her in the movie coming out on Friday.

The reason I'm swooning over her at the moment is that I recently watched a video of a lecture she gave at the 2009 Technology, Entertainment, & Design Conference on creative genius and its place in our society. She discussed how the Ancient Greeks and Romans believed that humans were not geniuses themselves, but they actually possessed an intangible genius- a creativity spirit, if you will. This belief not only maintained the modesty of the artist by limiting the personal credit he/she could take for their work but also alleviated the pressure put on the artist by allowing him/her to share the responsibility of creativity with their genius. Follow? Good.

My point tonight is that my genius seems to be on vacation; it's that time of year I guess. The heat must have sent the little guy packing. I can't get my mojo going these last couple of weeks. Writer's Block is a massive understatement at the moment. So while I try to coax my little genius back from whatever remote Caribbean island he's on, I thank you in advance for bearing with me. I hope you're enjoying your Mai Tai, buddy, because I'm coming to find you!

P.S. I think I'll name him Gus. Gus has some great ideas but he can be a little unreliable.

Change of Pace

I thought my blog could use a bit of a makeover. I've noticed myself branching out to writing about topics other than marriage; and I'm not even quite sure I would be considered a "newlywed" anymore anyway. So I took the satisfying liberty of registering the domain name jennaclark.com and ditched the title Reflections of a Newlywed in favor of something more inspirational and dear to my heart. Across the Universe is not a nod to the less than stellar Beatles musical or a random title of a Beatles song I decided to rip off. While trying to decide on a new title for my blog I found the lyrics of this particular song really spoke to my heart as a writer. Lennon wrote this song as a response to something his wife was talking about that he wasn't really paying attention to (so I guess it somehow winds its way back to marriage in a way) but I find these brilliant words to represent the art of writing for me. So I'll leave you with them and also the intention of bringing more facets of my life to this blog in the future than just my marriage.

Image from: www.deviantart.com

This Is My Generation, Baby

As part of the research and reporting process I'm undergoing for my book I was instructed by my writing teacher to construct a timeline of my life. This involved contacting old friends (which was an epic disaster), interviewing family members, studying old photo albums, listening to music, and rummaging through the dusty dark attic of my memory in an effort to document as much of my nearly 26 years on this planet as possible. So I sat down and got to work with a yellow legal pad, a pencil, my photo albums, and You Tube; because none of my old CDs function anymore and who the hell still has a working cassette player? Since my high school years are essentially the focus of the book, I began there.

What a phenomenal mess that period of time was! Stuck in limbo somewhere between innocence and accountability lies what can only be called a teenage wasteland (chill, Pete Townshend, the check's in the mail). Miserably unaware of our own ignorance, we were convinced we had the whole world figured out. That ridiculousness of that idea should have been clear from our questionable fashion choices. We were so self-important, trying to rebel against the boundaries of middle class oppression. The following is a list of causes I felt entitled enough to battle my parents to near death over:

1. My right to listen to any music I wanted, after my father confiscated CDs by such timeless artists as DMX, Wu-Tang Clan, Bone Thugs -n- Harmony, and Eminem
2. The injustice that was my mother shredding a tee-shirt I had purchased with the Playboy bunny logo massively displayed in red glitter
3. How incredibly unfair it was of them to ground me and keep me from seeing my boyfriend after finding a homemade bong in the backyard
4. And this is one of my favorites... delaying me from getting my driver's licence for an entire year because, at 14, I snuck out my bedroom window in the middle of the night, walked 2 miles to my friend's house, stole her mom's car, picked up our friends, and went joyriding for 3 hours when none of us had a license.

This list could go on but I had to stop before I gave myself brain damage from rolling my eyes so much at my own idiocy. Since when does a group of kids who spend their weekends drinking Mad Dog and Popov and smoking cheap weed out of a hollowed out carrot have their lives figured out? Logic and reason were grand acts of futility and were often met by vacant stares or razor sharp insults fired with surprising accuracy. 

I am amazed to this day that I somehow got out of that period alive. My Wu-Tang CDs died a slow death in the back of a closet somewhere, my Reebok Classics and JNCO Jeans have long since been retired, and I like to think my English skills have improved since the days of using the words "wuz" and "fug". I'm just lucky there are people in my life that still wanted to talk to me after that.

It's all worth the effort if lessons can be learned. As embarrassed as I am that I used to be that person, I learned so much in the process of growing out of it. The most important lesson, I think, being that teenagers know essentially as much about life as a hamster knows about physics. That, and the fact that gangster rap is not appropriate or relevant for a middle class white girl in Towson.

The Dreaded Day Job

It was perhaps idealistic and a little naive to think that I could transition seamlessly into being a full time writer without encountering a few road blocks. I have unavoidably fallen into the curse of the aspiring writer- the day job. (Gasp!) Yes, it's true. There wasn't the miraculous appearance of a book deal or an awaiting literary agent dying to represent me the minute I devoted the majority of my days to my laptop. Now before you all start laughing at me I'll stop here to assure you that I never assumed this would happen. I hoped, sure, but realistically I was aware that my new career wouldn't be rocketing me to fame and fortune any time soon. So after a few months of focusing solely on my writing while Brandon dragged himself to work every day I had to face facts.

The first thing I realized after just a few days was that writing is hauntingly secluded work. I love my house but spending all day every day in one place will make anywhere start to feel like a prison cell. Brandon would come home from work and I would somewhat resemble a zombie. He would smile and ask me how my writing went that day and I would stare at him with little to no idea of how to respond. After about a month I had all but forgotten how to communicate with actual people. The second thing I realized after the a few more weeks was that if Brandon and I had any chance of achieving the financial goals we set for ourselves when we got married I would have to start bringing in some actual money- on a regular schedule. Bummer. As isolated as I was beginning to feel and as much as it sucked not making money for my work, I was really enjoying working when I wanted to and not working when I didn't want to. Yeah, there's that naive idealism again. 

So after throwing a minor internal temper tantrum about the nasty realities of being a functioning adult and an under-appreciated writer I begrudgingly re-entered the work force. I now bear the obligatory slash in my occupation that so many struggling artists have to endure. My name is Jenna and I'm a writer/bartender. At least I didn't have to take a job at McDonald's; but trust me, we were about 2 weeks away from that. The bartending thing is actually a pretty cool gig, which is I guess why so many actors, writers, painters, etc. do it. It gets me out of the house, I get to talk to some nice people, and I get to make a whole lot of money in a very short period of time. All in all, not a whole lot to complain about; aside from the truth that my career goals have literally nothing to do with working for tips. 

So, here's hoping that one day soon I get to drop to dreaded occupation slash and I get to be Jenna the Writer again. Because the fact remains that I flat out love to write. Even with all the solitude and the frustrations I just have to do it. I never had a choice.

Defining Moments

There will eventually come a point in many marriages when one or the other person involved will want to take a risk. This risk may be of a personal nature; for instance he might want to invest a large amount of money into a high yield stock or she might want to take sky diving lessons. This kind of risk poses possible threats to one's physical or financial well being. And then there are some personal risks that may involve emotional well being. She might want to get in touch with someone who hurt her in her past in an effort to move past the traumatic event. Still other risks may pose a threat to both the physical and the emotional well being of both partners. These risks often are of a professional nature. One person or the other may, at some point, desire to make a drastic career change that could possibly mean financial stability for the family, a lifelong dream fulfilled, and as a result, a happier marriage.
However, the fact remains that if the risk does not pay off it could mean financial struggles, rejection, broken hearts, depression, and strain on the relationship. The latter is a terrifying prospect, but it is unfortunately a reality that must be faced. When one person feels that this is a risk that they want to take both outcomes must be considered by both partners. Then the ultimate question must be asked by the person taking the risk to their partner:
"Will you support me?"
This can be a difficult question to ask and sometimes an even more difficult question to answer. In situations like these the question has many levels. It can mean, will you emotionally support me no matter how this plays out over the next few months, years, etc? It can also mean will you be able to support more of the financial responsibilities while I'm pursuing my passion? And finally, it can also mean, do you believe there is a good chance this risk will, in fact, pay off or am I just wasting my time? None of these sub-questions have easy answers, so what happens when a marriage faces a defining moment like this?

This is what my husband and I are facing currently. I have always wanted to be a full-time writer. From the time I was about eight or nine I knew this is what I wanted to do. I would sit for hours in my room, in the backseat of the family car on a road trip, or even in the pew at church with a small notebook and a pencil writing stories. I wrote characters I wanted to be in situations I wanted to experience. I got lost in my writing and sometimes thoughts came spilling onto the pages that I wasn't even aware were in my brain. The trials of my teenage years overshadowed my desire to write and my passion was forgotten for many years. It was only after I finished college and began the customary quarter-life soul searching process that I rediscovered my overwhelming desire to be a writer. Over the past six months or so I have spent many hours researching graduate writing programs, reading books about how to make my writing better, and simply writing down my thoughts. This blog itself has become an effort to exercise my writing ability while I am planning my next big move. Although it hasn't gotten much attention from myself or other people for that matter, it has been excellent therapy for me to write casually about what I know on those frustrating days when inspiration escapes me.

This past weekend, as it happened, was what I believe to be the defining moment for my aspiring ambitions. Unrelated circumstances caused me to leave my extremely unrewarding job that I had become way too comfortable in over the past few years. There was no other job lined up and my husband and I are not quite financially able to live on one income at the present moment. So basically we had to make a decision. Was this my opportunity to get serious and really devote all my energy to making my writing happen? Or should I just find another soul-crushing job that pays the bills until a better opportunity comes along?
Of course I want to embrace my new found freedom and pursue my passion... in a perfect world, right? But then reality sinks in and I begin to feel that nasty twinge of guilt for asking my husband to shoulder the extra responsibility and trudge off to work at 6am every morning while I get to sit at home in the comfort of my cozy office in my sweats doing something that I love for no money. But bless his sweet stoic heart. He pushes those guilty feelings right out of my head and reassures me that he completely supports my decision. Of course we're both terrified to be so unsure about how this is going to play out and what effect this is going to have on our future. But there is an exhilaration also that we both try to hold onto when negativity and panic try to sneak in when our guards are down.
The fact is, this man truly believes in me. He believes in my passion and also my talent and potential as a writer so much that he is willing to follow me out of our financial and emotional comfort zone into extremely volatile territory.
Relationships are defined by these moments; moments when life gets uncomfortable or changes drasically and suddenly the routine you grew so accustomed to is turned completely upside down. Sometimes it's even harder when the person who flipped it over was someone in the marriage. It's much simpler when you can adopt an "us against the world" mentality and ban together in the face of a crisis. This, however, is new for us. I'm the one who is looking to my partner and asking him to take this great leap of faith with me without knowing if we'll achieve everything we've been hoping for or if we're going to fall flat on our faces. But the fact remains the same: no matter what, we're going to support each other in every way possible.