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Lost & FoundFebruary 13, 2008 I know for a fact that too much isolation makes a person squirrelly, and that though writers need plenty of solitude, it's a fine line between "plenty of solitude" and "too much isolation." Like many another fine line, you don't know exactly where it is till you're on the wrong side of it, and being on the wrong side tends to impair your judgment of exactly where you are. In Eight Below, the movie I saw the other day that was set in Antarctica, the scientist didn't realize he was doing something really dumb till the ice gave way under him and he wound up chin-deep in freezing water with a broken leg. He was lucky: thanks to his quick-thinking guide and a well-trained dog, he got out. Or consider a dilemma more common in temperate climes: When we're sober, most of us know that driving drunk is a bad idea. When we're drunk, that knowledge goes right out the window. So when are we generally called upon to decide whether we're sober enough to drive? When we're too tipsy to make a sound decision. This is why the "designated driver" strategy is so brilliant: it puts the decision into the hands of someone sober. When you get too isolated, however, there's generally no clear-thinking person in the vicinity: you're the only one around and your thinking is already somewhat muddled from lack of interaction with anything outside your own head. I've fallen through the ice before and been well on the way to mental hypothermia, but something -- the inner equivalent of the quick-thinking guide and the well-trained dog -- tosses me a lifeline and hauls me out. Something grabs the keys out of my hand, pushes me into the passenger seat, and starts the truck. Some people choose to call that something "God," but not me; sometimes I'll refer to it as "the muses," but my muses aren't an external force: they're a spark within me that has saved me over and over again from the consequences of excess ratiocination. Don't think I'm discounting the importance of external forces, however. Rhodry, for instance, my not-so-well-trained dog, tosses me a lifeline with every look and woo-woo. "Help me be the person my dog thinks I am" makes a pretty good prayer. It's all too easy to discount the power of human expectations as well. Expectations sometimes get a bad rap. Unreasonable, inflexible expectations -- of yourself or of other people -- can be hazardous to the health of everyone in the vicinity, but there are other, quieter kinds of expectations. Like sometimes the only thing that gets you out the door is the colleagues who expect you to show up at work, and the only thing that makes me keep plugging away at a manuscript is the production editor who expects it to show up on the appointed date, and the only thing that keeps me from giving up is the knowledge that several people expect me to keep putting one foot in front of the other. So I was getting a little squirrelly there, thinking that no one -- well, hardly anyone -- gave a good goddamn what I was writing or whether Mud of the Place ever gets published and who the hell cares anyway? Way back in about fourth grade my report card said I was deficient in the area of "Asks for help when needed," to which my immediate response was, "But I don't need help." The main reason I've survived this long is that I keep taking on projects that require a lot more help than I reckoned on needing when I started. So about a month ago I realized that my Grace Paley clipping, the one I got Mud's title and epigraph from, had gone missing. After a few days of rummaging through less-and-less-likely hiding places, I called The New Yorker. The issue I sought was old enough -- May 16, 1994 -- that my inquiry got referred to the warehouse, where it died. So I posted a query to Copyediting-L. Within an hour I had four responses from fellow editors who had the entire New Yorker archive on DVD and were willing to search it for me. Before the end of the evening, I had virtual copies of my clipping. (The paper version still hasn't shown up.) This was a sign. Getting Mud ready for publication involves a lot of asking people to do things. Like I said, I don't like asking for help. I especially hate making phone calls asking people for help. People are always saying, "Go on and ask -- the worst that could happen is they'll say no." No, that is not the worst that could happen. The worst that could happen is that they'll laugh in my face, tell me I'm a worthless piece of shit, and hang up on me. Mind you, no one has ever actually done this to me, but I'm still afraid it's going to happen just about every time I pick up the phone. The next-to-worst thing that could happen is that I'll have to shell out some money to get what I want. This isn't exactly rational either, because I actually like being able to hire eminently qualified people to make my job easier; what it boils down to a fear that if I spend any money, pretty soon I'll be living in a big cardboard box under some bridge somewhere. So at the beginning of each week I make a list in my datebook: five projects to be accomplished, or at least started, in the coming week. So far, so good. Each week I manage to check off at least three and usually four projects, and I've been at it long enough that I've got some tangible results, like that picture of Rhodry and me. Even better, I've got some momentum going, and a growing belief that I'm not in this all alone. Take that Grace Paley clipping. I'd decided to ask permission, or maybe blessing, to use the "mud of a place" quote as Mud's epigraph. Grace Paley died last August, so whom to ask? The most recent issue of off our backs included a tribute to Paley written by Judith Arcana, whose books include a literary bio of Grace Paley. So I found an e-mail address for Judith, explained my problem, and within 24 hours had snail mail addresses for Paley's widower and daughter. This past Monday I snail-mailed off my request, one copy to each. Soliciting blurbs for the back cover is the other pressing project. I'm asking writers I admire who are much better known than I am to (a) read a 440-page manuscript, (b) like it well enough to associate their name with it, and (c) write a couple of glowing sentences about it. A considerable imposition, in other words. Well, the first person I asked was mystery writer Cynthia Riggs, who grew up on the island. She said she'd be glad to have a look. She also invited me to her Groundhog Day party and asked me to guest on her cable TV show On Island Writing. We taped the show last Friday; it airs tonight. One of the people I met at the party, Jan Pogue, co-owns Vineyard Stories, a small press dedicated to publishing work about Martha's Vineyard. One of the press's titles is by a guy I'd love to have look at Mud but for whom I hadn't been able to find contact info. I e-mailed Jan; she e-mailed back a phone number and e-mail address, with a warning that this person doesn't check e-mail regularly. Let me know if there's anything else I can do, she said. So far almost everyone I've asked to take a look at the ms. has said yes. The only exception didn't laugh in my face or tell me I was a jerk; she just said no. I think she just doesn't do blurbs. The asking is getting easier. Even better, I'm slowly but surely expanding the circle of people who know the book is coming. Mud is developing its own support network. Now it dawns on me that over the years, as reader, reviewer, bookseller, editor, I've been part of other people's networks -- why the hell was it so hard to realize that other people would become part of mine? Because too much isolation makes you squirrelly, that's why.
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