Theodora Goss

One of my favorite bloggers, Hecate, wrote a blog post called “Elegant,” about the concept of elegance.

Here are a couple of quotations.

She quotes from Matthew E. May, the author of Elegance and the Art of Less: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing:

“Something is elegant if it is two things at once: unusually simple and surprisingly powerful. One without the other leaves you short of elegant. And sometimes the ‘unusual simplicity’ isn’t about what’s there, it’s about what isn’t. At first glance, elegant things seem to be missing something.”

And then she herself says:

“Elegance, I want to say, matters. And, although life is messy, an elegant life is unusually simple and surprisingly powerful. Like good legal writing, like good magic, an elegant life takes two things. The first is a blindingly clear objective. And the second is ruthless editing. Like good real estate, which is location, location, location or like getting to Carnegie Hall, which takes practice, practice, practice – elegance takes editing, editing, editing. Take things out. Remove the extraneous (which requires you to know the essential). Get down (as we do in Winter in the garden) to the bones.”

These quotations struck me in particular because I think they have to do, not only with how I try to live my life, but also with how I try to write. In a recent interview for Clarkesworld Magazine, I said that I do not try to write beautiful prose, and that’s true. I don’t try for beauty. But I think I do try for elegance. And Hecate is exactly right, it takes ruthless editing.

Even writing this blog, I find that I’m continually editing my sentences, trying to make them simpler and more powerful.

How to be elegant?

I look around this room, and it seems elegant to me. The furniture, all of oak and ash, the cream-colored carpet and walls, the green bedspread and cushions. I have edited the colors so that nothing jars, nothing clashes. The paintings on the walls are like windows, looking out at lakes or flowers or fantastical scenes. There is, alas, currently an excess of paper on the desks. I could clean up, but instead I think I’ll make the room more elegant – same thing, but doesn’t the latter sound finer? And of course books, the books I love most, and so already carefully edited, perfectly elegant.

And sitting here writing, I feel elegant. Black turtleneck, slim jeans, a thick black leather belt. Marcasite earrings in the shapes of dangling flowers. Perfume, of course, light and gingery.

Are my words elegant? I try to make them simple and powerful, and perhaps that achieves elegance. At least I hope it does.

If this blog post were truly elegant, it would have ended with the sentences above. Don’t they end the post almost abruptly, leaving you wondering if perhaps there is more? If I meant to write another sentence? That, at least, is what I was aiming for. But today I want to end with one other quotation.

So many of you have read the post I wrote yesterday, “Write Every Day.” I hope it helped you, as much as writing it helped me. I think all of us need that sort of encouragement, that sort of reminder sometimes. I particularly liked something that Nathan Ballingrud wrote about my post, in a post of his own called “The Beautiful Grind.” So I’m quoting part of it here:

“Theodora Goss wrote on the subject of writing every day on her own blog yesterday, comparing it to keeping the body in dancing shape. It’s a terrific analogy, because it illuminates the fact that what we’re training ourselves to do is more than just stay in shape, whether as writers or dancers or what have you. I’m a good enough writer that I can not write for several months and still sit down and compose a solid and well-written draft. What we’re training to do, though, is to be better than in shape. We want to be remarkable. We want to be like nothing else anyone has yet seen.

“I’m getting an object lesson in the consequences of neglecting that exercise. Language moves around in unexpected, disorienting ways. There are days on which it seems that I’ve forgotten how to make sentences work. Words are strange and unwieldy. English is a sluggish, petulant beast.”

We do want to be remarkable, don’t we? We do want to be like nothing anyone else has yet seen. And I think part of that is elegance, because elegance is individual. Editing implies choice, and choice is always individual, because it’s based on our objectives. Hecate says that the first component of elegance is a blindingly clear objective, and that’s the first thing we must define: the objectives of our lives, of a room, of a story.

That’s what I need to do in my own life, define my objective so that it is blindingly clear, so that I know the essential and can remove the extraneous. My objective has to do with writing, and once I began to understand that, I could begin to define what was essential, like writing here every day. Because Nathan is right, language has a mind of its own, and writing is a sort of compromise between the writer and language. The more I write, the more I learn how to move in language, as a dancer moves elegantly across a floor. The more language and I move together. So that it’s not a sluggish, petulant beast, but my partner.

Once upon a time, I worked at a law firm in Boston, in the financial district.

I went into the law firm in the morning, and I came out in the morning, usually about 2 a.m. When I came out, I got into a car that drove me home. Law firms of that size pay for a car to drive you home, if you’re there past a certain hour. I was often there past that hour. And they pay for dinner as well, if you’re there at dinner time, which I almost always was. So I drafted documents, and ate take-out, and didn’t get enough sleep.

I was in terrible shape.

That was when I started taking dance classes. And since I’m me, I started taking dance classes at the Boston Ballet School. I had taken ballet as a child, but I had not danced for years, so it took me several months to learn the steps and positions again. And it took me that long to get back into the shape I needed to be in, to dance.

One of the interesting but also intimidating things about the Boston Ballet School is that you’re among the professional dancers. They pass you on the stairs, but also they sometimes take the beginning or intermediate classes, particularly after they’ve been injured and need something easier to do. Because they, of course, dance every day.

I danced for several years after that, both while I was a lawyer and after I started graduate school, and I’ve never been in such good shape in my life. Ballet reshaped my body, made me stand and move differently. You can see it if you look at the pictures of me in my Resolutions post. If you look at the first picture, you’ll see that I have ballet hands.

I have not taken dance classes for a while. It’s difficult to, living here in Lexington. Commuting, teaching, and writing the dissertation take all my time. There’s no time left over for dance. But I try to stay in shape by exercising the way a dancer would (you know, pilades, yoga, that sort of thing).

You’re wondering what all this has to do with writing, and here it is: I have to do it every day.

I realized this particularly over the last semester, which was one of the most difficult periods of my life. Among other things, I stopped trying to stay in shape. When you’ve been exercising as long as I have, you don’t immediately turn into mush. It takes a while. But I haven’t been feeling well. So recently, a couple of weeks ago, I decided to start exercising again, specifically so that, once my dissertation is over, I can go back to taking dance classes. I miss dance, the discipline of it, feeling as though I’m pushing myself to my physical limit.

But again, I have to do it every day. Oh, I suppose I don’t have to. But when I don’t, even for a day, I feel the weakness in my core, or my shoulders. I feel that I’m not as strong or flexible as I was the day before. When I do it every day, I feel tight, together, as though I can move effectively and efficiently. Flexibility is particularly important. You lose that overnight. Every morning I wake and start to stretch, start to gain flexibility again. And if you do that every day, it’s easier the next day, and the next.

(Last night was particularly bad. I haven’t had a nightmare for a while, several weeks, but I had one again last night. At first I couldn’t get to sleep at all. I lay awake for what felt like hours. But when I finally did get to sleep, I dreamed that my lover was being pursued by the police. He had run into the forest, up into the hills. Then finally they caught up with him and shot him. I was not there, I only heard about it. And then I dreamed the terrible feeling of having lost someone you love, the permanent absence of it. The blankness of knowing that person was gone and would never come again, not on this earth. Mike Allen once wrote that he enjoyed his nightmares and would turn them into stories. Not me. My nightmares are horrible. And – this was my point – I woke stiff all over, barely able to turn my neck.)

I think writing is like that. The brain is a muscle that needs to be exercised every day, and whichever part of it writes, that needs to be exercised in particular.

What did I write today? I wrote part of the first chapter of my dissertation. Well, really I revised it, because it had been written some time ago, but I’m trying to revise both the first and second chapters to make my argument clear. And then I wrote this blog post.

I think both of those count as writing, and later today I will need to work on my Folkroots column, which will count as writing too.

Writing every day, whatever I’m writing, makes me stronger and more flexible as a writer. If I didn’t write for one day, I think I would feel it. I think parts of my brain would feel – well, mushy.

I will end with two photographs. This is a picture of me exercising my writing muscles:

And this is a book I saw in the YA section of Barnes and Noble. I include it for your amusement!

Yesterday, after I posted my blog post, I started to worry.

Did it really have anything to do with writing? Because I had promised myself, and promised you, that this blog would be about writing. And was it too personal? Because after all, I had shown you the contents of my closet. Or half my closet. (The other half of that closet is filled with books.)

What did my clothes have to do with writing? Or my shoes? Or the fact that I had bought a pair of shoes for $7.49 at a thrift store?

And then I thought, my life has become about writing. That’s the change I’m making this year, that’s the commitment I have made to myself. And so everything in my life has also become about writing, and it either enables my writing or – gets in the way of it.

For example, those (adorable pale pink) shoes. If I had actually bought them at Anne Klein, they would have cost closer to $74.90. And that’s part of a plane ticket to a con, or how much I would pay to have a hundred copies of a booklet printed up, or my SFWA dues.

As it is, those shoes cost less than what I was paid for the two poems in Mythic Delirium 23. (So thanks for the shoes, Mike Allen!)

I would still pay a great deal to go to Nepal. But that trip would become part of who I am as a writer. And because I’m a writer, I think I would go to Nepal in a particular way, not staying in the tourist centers, wanting to see as much of the country as I could. Looking for authenticity. Thinking all the time about what I could write about, writing stories in my head, because that’s what I do. That’s the way I live.

And I would probably blog about it. If I could get an internet connection in Nepal?

Yesterday, I had the following conversation.

Friend: I’d like to go to Nepal.

Me: Let’s go trekking in Nepal!

That night I thought, could I actually go trekking in Nepal? After all, I do have a sort of cat-like appreciation for comfort. I like to curl up with a blanket and read Calvino, or watch Cold Comfort Farm one more time. I like going to the Museum of Fine Arts and having a banana split. (You’ve never tasted a banana split like the ones they make in the new café, in the American Wing. It is the apotheosis of banana splits. There are caramelized bits in there, and the cherries are steeped in brandy. It’s most definitely a banana split for adults.)

But that appreciation for comfort comes from the same place as an instinct that is almost opposite to it: the instinct to travel light. The place is Soviet-era Hungary. I think friends of mine who were born in the Soviet Union or any of the Soviet bloc countries will agree with this: even after you left, it infused your childhood. You were taught certain ways of looking at the world that you could either accept or rebel against, but either way they became a fundamental part of who you are. So for example, I was taught that comfort was not important. I rebelled against that particular lesson. I decided that comfort was important to me, that I was going to be comfortable when I could. But I was also taught to travel light, not to have too many possessions, not to care too much about the ones I had, because possessions could be lost. At any moment, one might have to flee the country.

So I think I would actually do rather well, trekking in Nepal. I would be comfortable when I could, but I would travel light, sleep where I had to, eat what I was given, carrying what I needed. And taking it all in, because the greatest luxuries are new experiences.

The notion of traveling light made me think about my Christmas presents. This was the only one I asked for:

It’s a bracelet from the Museum of Fine Arts, and as you’ve probably already guessed, it’s based on Monet’s waterlily paintings. There’s a pair of earrings that go with it, but the museum store was out of those, so they will come later to join the bracelet in my jewelry drawer. In addition to the bracelet, I also received these adorable notebooks to write in:

And I bought myself a present as well. It was a membership to the Museum of Fine Arts:

Now I can go whenever I want to without worrying about the entrance fee. (And I can bring a guest. So if you’re coming to Boston, let me know and I’ll take you.)

It also made me think about my stuff, what those Christmas presents were being added to. And I thought, I don’t have a lot of stuff, really. Here’s my jewelry drawer:

Note to thieves: there is absolutely nothing in here worth stealing. I love beautiful things, and all the things I have here, the strings of coral and pearls, the silver brooches, the earrings and rings with marcasite, are beautiful. But what’s the point of having expensive jewelry? I’d rather go to Nepal.

Most of my clothes fit into one side of a closet:

And one chest of drawers:

Although I have to admit that there are a few boxes in a linen closet downstairs with the really fine stuff, the silk scarves, the art deco purse made all of silver chains, the fan with Imelda Marcos written on it that my secretary from the New York law firm gave me. (She had been a model in the Philippines, and had once traveled as part of a cultural troupe with Imelda Marcos, who had given out such fans to foreign dignitaries.)

And speaking of Imelda Marcos, that includes shoes:

My most recent purchase is this adorable pair, which I will have to wait until the summer to show off:

They were $7.49 at a thrift store. That’s because I’m saving for my trip to Nepal!  Or wherever else I go next . . .

Yesterday, I received an email from Duncan Long with the following portrait attached. Duncan told me that he had seen my blog post on Resolutions and had decided to take the first picture I posted as his daily exercise. And he created the portrait I’m including here.

I was, of course, absolutely blown away to receive something like that. My grandmother was a painter, so I’ve lived with art, and among artists, my whole life. When I go to conventions, I always come home with limited edition prints or, if I can splurge, something original.

And I’ve always loved being painted, much more than being photographed. My grandmother’s painted me of course, and my husband has drawn me. (He was trained as an artist, and is a talented cartoonist as well.) When I was in college and needed money, I worked as an artist’s model, both for classes and for a professional artist who lived in the area. A friend of mine was startled to walk into the senior art show and see me on the wall, in a fairly large lithograph.

Paintings have a perspective and focus that I think photographs lack. For example, to me, Duncan’s painting isn’t really a painting of me. It’s a painting of light. I’m the object (or in this case subject) on which light falls.  (Although I’m amazed by the hands, which are so completely my hands.  I think I would recognize them anywhere.)

What a wonderful present to receive on the last day of the year, so I could post it on the first . . .

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions.

They don’t seem particularly useful. If there’s something I should be doing that I’m not already doing, the solution isn’t to make a resolution, but to figure out why. When we don’t do something we think we want to, or think we should, it’s usually because we lack the motivation. We don’t really want to. When we’re motivated, I believe, we do whatever it is – we accomplish, no resolution necessary.

But I think I might make one this year. Not because it’s something I feel the need to do, but because it’s a way of expressing something that I think has been happening over the course of the past year, and that I want to express.

My resolution for the next year is to become myself.

We spend so much of our lives accreting. As we grow up, we gain knowledge, qualifications, traits we think we ought to have. Sort of like rocks in the ocean that slowly, over time, are covered with seaweed, barnacles. We gain all those things, and yet underneath, our shapes disappear.

I think there’s a time in your life when you need to start getting rid of the accretions that obscure your natural outlines. When you need to start figuring out who you are under all the things you’ve been taught, and have adopted without necessarily thinking about whether they’re authentically your own.

Particularly when you are an artist. We have all been trained in so many ways, and training is important. It can give us tools. But it can also obscure who we actually are, and if you are creating art as anything other than your self, you are creating art that is inauthentic and probably not worth creating in the first place. (I do look back at stories of mine and think, that was worth writing because I learned something from it, but it’s not my voice.)

I know I’m not explaining this very well. It’s because I’m stumbling, not entirely sure what I’m talking about. I’m writing out of an instinct that this is the time when I need to do that, figure out who I am and become it. When I need to find my own voice.

I was looking back through some photographs from this past year, and a few from Thanksgiving, when I was in Virginia, seemed to express where I’ve been this year, and where I’m going.

Looking out the window. What possibilities are out there? This is where I started.

Going outside. The world suddenly seemed so much larger than I had thought. And so I sat for a while, looking around, trying to get a sense for which way to go.

Across the fields. I was heading somewhere, although I wasn’t exactly sure where or why.

And this is where I am now, I think. On some sort of fence, some sort of boundary. Headed toward the woods? I don’t know. But it’s me, and it’s my journey, and I’m making it. That’s my resolution for the year.

I decided to start anew – to strip away what I had been taught, to accept as true my own thinking. This was one of the best times of my life. There was no one around to look at what I was doing, no one interested, no one to say anything about it one way or another. I was alone and singularly free, working into my own, unknown – no one to satisfy but myself. I began with charcoal and paper and decided not to use any color until it was impossible to do what I wanted to do in black and white. I believe it was June before I needed blue.

– Georgia O’Keeffe

Reading this quotation, I started thinking about what I was doing, and what I wanted to be doing, with my writing. In it, Georgia O’Keeffe is describing a process she went through relatively early in her career, when she decided to stop imitating the art she had been studying and try to find her own style. She restricted herself to drawing in order to find the essence of what she was doing – of what she was doing, as opposed to anyone else.

I wish I had the time, the solitude and silence, to do that.

I have a fantasy of being able to go somewhere, maybe even the Southwest where O’Keeffe painted, so different from the forested Northeast where I live now. For a week, I say when thinking conservatively, but in my fantasy for more than that – perhaps a month? Of staying somewhere alone, or with friends nearby that I see in the evenings, so that the days are my own. And of reading. I would read, and I would write, and I would try to figure out who I am as a writer, what my own style is. I would write poetry, prose, whatever came to mind, and try to get to the essence of it.

I do feel that the more I write, the closer I come to understanding both myself and my own writing. But I have a craving, just now, for solitude and silence, for time by myself to discover who I am, what I think. I would particularly like to read books that I have not read, more by Vladimir Nabokov for instance, or some of the modern novels I just can’t keep up with, to see what I think about them, where I say “yes, that’s good,” where I say “no, I don’t think so.” Because those judgments inform my own writing.

I would like some time to do nothing but work on short stories, one after the other. And then I would like to write personal essays, one after the other. And then I would like to find a new way to write poetry, a way I think I’m reaching toward but never have time to develop, because poetry is more time-consuming than anything else I write. I can write most of an essay, or most of a short story, in one day. Or most of a poem. A poem is a particularly inefficient form of writing, alas. And when I’m finished with it, I have – something to put in a drawer.

Solitude and silence, a great deal of sunlight on a cushion where I can curl up. Tea in a mug. A large stack of books and a brand new notebook, every page lined but blank. A brand new pen.

That’s what I want, universe. Are you listening?

I’m concluding with some other quotations from Georgia O’Keeffe. They helped me, and perhaps they’ll help you as well. Here they are:

I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I wanted to do.

To create one’s world in any of the arts takes courage.

I think it’s so foolish for people to want to be happy. Happy is so momentary – you’re happy for an instant and then you start thinking again. Interest is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous.

Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest.

I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me – shapes and ideas so near to me – so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn’t occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.

Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.