So I just finished reading this discussion between Kate Durbin & Kate Zambreno, posted a couple of days ago on herkind. And in the spirit of this discussion, I am embarking on this here blog post before regaining complete "control" of myself (if I ever had it in the first place, which not so much).
Had an interestingly intense rapidfire series of reactions to reading this, which I suppose I could have expected--everything brought up in their discussion was too relevant to my own experience, both "literary" and personal, for it to be otherwise.
Almost girlypeed myself when I first saw the interview posted, first off. Both of these ladies have a close link to my direct circle of influence (thanks to great CW profs like Lara Glenum & Laura Mullen; I am a lucky lgirlwriter indeed). Kate Durbin has been a figure of intrigue (and a bit of intimidation) since I saw her read at Delta Mouth Festival, and Kate Zambreno... well, actually, I've framed up more than one post about following her blog, Frances Farmer Is My Sister, and how it is exactly how I want my own blog to be. Except hers is better, what with the actual knowledge of theory and writing effort behind it, &c. In any case, both writers are pretty inspiring, especially to someone in my position. (This inspiration is coupled, inevitably, with not a little handwringing over what I could/can contribute to the generation that participates in/follows this. No pressure.)
So: eagerness to read about how the Kates here deal with issues of control & the anxiety control (and/or lack thereof) generates is joined with a nagging sense of dread: they still have to fight with this, too. In fact, their concerns about control are way bigger (more real? not sure what that means though) than mine--not in spite of, but because of the fact that they've already gotten their work "out there". They are out of the training grounds, and in the arena.
So this kind of fretting (actually, let's go with agitation; fretting makes it sound petty, which it decidedly not) from Kate Zambreno scares me even more:
"People answered – well-intentioned – yes, you should go to an MFA program but only do it for fun or to have time to write but not for a JOB, you won’t get one anyway, and I wanted to fight with the world, and counter: but I have three books! And I have been in the adjunct trenches forever! I have been progressively making less money every year for the past ten years since I’ve become a writer and now make less than an extremely bad graduate stipend!"
I've attempted to train myself to realize that being published is not the end-all-be-all, nor is it any kind of guarantee. I mean, I know. But still--that is the goal I happen to be striving(ish) towards at the moment... actually making money off my writing is still a flit of a concept in the back of my head. So to the idea that getting published has the potential to put me in an even more uncomfortable place than I'm in now is, will, it's nervous-making. Again, Kate Zambreno:
It seems to me, when I was unpublished, I was a lot freer as a writer. Yes, I didn’t have a community, yet, I had to invent this invisible tea party, like Sontag’s Alice in Bed, except it was with Zelda and Jean Rhys and Colette Peignot (the woman known as Laure). But I had no sense of the scene, of the climate of publishing, of who my contemporary peers were, or what genre whatever monstrous project I was envisioning would be shuttled into, or who would publish it, or how much I was going to have to struggle to get published, or what people would write or say about it. So I wrote and wrote, a girl-Darger, and dreamed and wrote in my journal and I remember this period as a magic time, like your girlhood, that I wish to get back to.
Yeah, that's where I am now. Except I am already fretting (yes, here I use the word deliberately) about launching myself and my work into that world, that scene (about which I am still virtually ignorant). The budding prematurely of the control crises. And it does make me wonder just what I could be losing by attempting to look ahead, to shape myself, the channel out a groove even before I have a have a sense of the pattern (and is a sense of the pattern even necessary?).
And then I fret about such fretting.
And so on and so forth.
I would love to be about to expound more profoundly on the actual discussion of their topic, control and fredom in (specifically women's) writing. But my own feelings about it (is it even feelings I should be guided by in this? but I suppose that that's the question exactly...) are kind of hazy and wavering at this point. Because I am, after all a woman. Kidding. (Not about the woman bit, about the hysterical stereotype bit. Duh.)
Something to mentally chew on, though. And incredibly relevant to more than one of the projects I'm attempting to work on at the moment. (Hint: cyborg theory.)
The last part, though, got me a bit choked up--their thankfulness for a supportive and like-minded (in the relevant senses) community of women writers, stubbornly making a way in their world. One last bit from Kate Zambreno:
"Sometimes I look at myself, or some of the woman writers a bit younger than me—and I think it’s not really about talent, succeeding as a woman writer, which I think means continuing, going forth, pushing on, but it’s about whether we’re strong enough. I think we need these sorts of bonds and confidantes to assure ourselves that we’re not crazy, we’re not weak, that we’re original, that we’re brilliant, when sometimes we don’t know it ourselves."This really hit close to home, for some reasons that are too sappy and dealing-with-other-people to get into here. I just agree with this statement wholeheartedly, that these "bonds and confidantes" are a wonderful, necessary boon I have seen flourish even (especially) in my generation. Really, the value there can't be understated. But nor can they be used as a crutch; I am currently at the juncture of realizing that. Being "strong enough" has to, in the end, rely on yourself, I guess? Ye gods, that's really after-school-specially. So instead, I'll end with a fabulous sentiment from Kate Durbin (channeling Lady Gaga):
"To me, to be a woman, an artist, and to be free, the bitch has to trust herself, has to trust her art."
