I recently got a healthy dose of inspiration from a master – by the name of Matisse.
It happened in the Metropolitan Museum where there’s a current Matisse exhibit. I’ve seen many of the paintings before but this exhibit is unique, for side by side with famous works are the persistent efforts that led to the final result. Matisse was a champion reviser – openly so. Even his famed “Young Sailor” is displayed in versions labeled “11” and “111.” For most artists the second version would have been great enough, but Matisse, never satisfied, insisted on exploring further and found his way to the strikingly simplified third version. And what multiple varied images of “The Dream” before it finally evolved into a vibrant evocative shape. As the program notes, Matisse was constantly in the “dogged pursuit of the truth.”

Why do I find this inspiring? Because it’s giving me faith to reconsider some of my short stories that I’d given up on. I’ve just gone back to one I’d already rewritten numerous times, giving it new life through a different point of view that had eluded me for years. Sometimes you have to keep pursuing through revision after revision – as Matisse did so tirelessly – before you reach the point where you feel yes, this is the way it should be.

I also realize it isn’t a matter of simply adding on to a previous version, but starting from scratch to gain a totally new vision – whether you’re an artist, writer, or merely struggling to compose a letter (or blog!). As someone said of Richard Blanco, this year’s Inaugural poet, “He doesn’t simply revise; he re-imagines.”

BUT (there’s always a “but,” isn’t there?) a pitfall lies in wait. For when does revising become overkill? The question to ask ourselves is: “Am I making it better– or just different?”

Each time I go to a lecture and authors ask for questions from the audience my hand automatically waves – always with the same question: “How do you know when a piece is finished and you can let it go?” I’ve gotten all sorts of replies, ranging from candid to coy. But my favorite answer is from a well-known writer who said bluntly, “When I can’t stand working on it any more.”

What would Matisse tell me? Probably not answer at all. He’d be too busy painting another version of a masterpiece.

website: annehosansky.com

Books :”Widow’s Walk” – available through iUniverse.com; “Turning Toward Tomorrow” -xLibris.com; “Ten Women of Valor” – CreateSpace.com or Amazon.com

Watching the Golden Globes, I had a moment of kinship when Anne Hathaway received her award. Looking at the inscription on the statuette, she called the moment “bittersweet.” Why this reaction? “You spelled my name wrong,” she said plaintively. Apparently the E had been omitted from Anne.

My empathic twinge was because of what I did with my name in my12th year (many decades ago). Legally “Ann” on my birth certificate, I added E to make my name look more elegant. I was inspired to do this because a cousin, Helene, had put accent marks over both E’s in her name to “make it French.” (Rivalry flourished in my family, but that’s another blog.)

My new spelling of Anne drew wrath from my father, who erroneously declared this was Annie. I think his pride was hurt because I’d been named for his departed sister. Nevertheless I stood up to my father (a rare event) because it felt so important to have a spelling that gave my insecure adolescence a new self-image.

“What’s in a name?” Juliet famously asked. “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” For the flower, but not for many of us. My aunt, who had been christened Rose, hated her name, probably because her feisty personality included a lot more interesting facets than sweetness. So as an adult she renamed herself Bobbe (a family surname). It fit so perfectly it seemed unbelievable that she’d ever been called anything else.

Many people rename themselves to detour around an ethnic identity (Ralph Lauren instead of Lifshitz?) or are given new names by movie moguls (Archibald Leach transformed into Cary Grant, an undeniable improvement). But for some of us the name resonates for subterranean reasons. In my theatre days I was friends with an actor named Milton Schneiderman. He went to court to have it changed. The clerk asked him if he wanted a shorter last name, tactfully suggesting one that would fit more easily on a marquee. But it wasn’t his last name that Milton was shedding. “I want to be Mitchell Schneiderman,” he declared.

Writers have the power to choose the perfect cognomen for each character they create. How aptly Margaret Mitchell named her heroine Scarlet. Would she have seemed such a conniving creature if she’d been Susie? When I was writing my memoir, “Widow’s Walk,” I included a vivid description of a difficult relative. Changing her name to protect myself, I dubbed her Villa. The thin disguise failed to fool my family. ”For villain?” my savvy niece laughed.

I once heard about a Native American tribe that allows children to choose their own names when they reach puberty. Given that latitude, I wonder what each of us would choose. Though that freedom sounds tempting, those of us who are plagued by indecision would have one more choice to agonize over. Easier to  blame or bless the parents who made that decision for us.

Yet I have never regretted my slight embellishment. After all, it’s one more letter in a byline!

Web address: annehosansky.com

Books: “Widow’s Walk,” “Turning Toward Tomorrow” and “Ten Women of Valor.” A short story is in the current issue of “The William and Mary Review.”

I had planned to write a blog about our annual tendency to make – and break – New Year resolutions. But it’s the lack of resolution with regard to gun control that’s obsessing me. We writers are blessed with imagination, but that blessing can also be a curse. I’m continually imagining the bloody scenes in the Newtown elementary school. I see the terrified faces of those young children more vividly than I’m seeing people around me. And I keep replaying images of those courageous teachers rushing their charges into closets for safety.

The tape in my head is asking: Where’s the next one, after the speeches are finished and the flags return to full staff? With guns controlling our country, none of us is safe.

As a mother and grandmother I ask myself, what are you going to do about
this national madness? In my more youthful past, I took part in numerous demonstrations: against the Vietnam War, for Women’s Rights, etc. I’ve thought that my marching days were over, but my unbreakable vow this year is to put on those marching shoes again and do what I can to fight this epidemic of violence. Do it not only through demonstrating, but through the truest skill I have: writing.

Since this is supposed to be a writers’ blog, I’ll add a confession. We writers are scavengers. For no matter what terrible thing is going on in our lives and in the lives of those around us, an insistent voice within says: What a good story this will make! Months before Newtown, but inspired by Aurora (names that are all too familiar now), I wrote a short story about a murderous rampage in a school. Now the built-in voice within me is applauding, Great timing!

It’s shameless to benefit from tragedy, I tell myself; a feeling shared by many fellow- and sister– authors. Yet if our stories, plays and articles make anyone more aware of the necessity to end this scourge of violence, then creative use of devastation is forgivable. The “pen is mightier than the sword” and, hopefully, than guns.

A purposeful New Year to all.

In a mad rush (isn’t everyone these days?) I raced into a stationary store to purchase holiday cards, picked out a box and took it to the cashier –  two seconds before another woman plunked her box of cards on the counter.

“Who’s next?” the cashier asked. I held out my cards. But the woman beside me shouted, ”I was here first!”  I said, “I was!” She called me a few un-Christmas-like names and the volume escalated. In the midst of mutual shouting I glanced down at the cards. Inscribed on both of our selections was the word “P E A C E.”

Yes, the holiday obstacle course is upon us again. Seeing all the tense faces around me, I wonder where the “season to be jolly” is actually taking place. Maybe in some mythical island that Target hasn’t targeted yet.  Certainly  not here in New York.   Friends who are comparatively balanced the rest of the year go to pieces during the holidays, thanks to the frenzied scenes in stores, the demands of hosting or being hosted, plus and plus…   as we frantically dash about.  (Santa’s ”Dasher” reindeer is aptly named!)!

What adds to the pressure for many of us compulsive writers is finding time to write and the inner space to be creative.  Creativity these days seems to revolve more around what paper and ribbons to use on gifts or what ornaments to put on the tree uprooted from the forest. I yearn for my own  “forest primeval” in which to hide and hopefully write. My only solution to this turmoil  is to: a)  imitate Scrooge and “bah” the holiday away; or b) find a hiding place. Because the barometer of my mood depends on how much writing the world allows me to do.

I’m  stealing time to write this belated blog. ”Stealing” because today I’m hosting a holiday  dinner  for ten.  Since cooking isn’t my forte, stress is on the menu. I have still more cooking to do, additional trimmings to prepare, and has the bathroom been cleaned yet?

Yet  I’ve  decided  that for my mental salvation it’s necessary  to make time for a private party,  just me and my computer, The greeting my soul needs isn’t  “Merry…” anything, but the sweet voice of my muse saying, “So you haven’t completely deserted me.”

Happy Holidays and to all a Creative Year!

This is a blog I hadn’t planned to write. I didn’t want to get into politics, but now I feel I must. As I write this, the first presidential debate is history and the future debates are as yet unwritten – or unspoken.

As a dedicated fan of President Obama, I – like most of us – was disappointed in his performance in that first debate. Whatever the reason, whether altitude or attitude, he let himself be overridden by Romney’s boisterous, rude and mendacious performance.

As a former actress, I recognized that this was, indeed a “performance”; not something coming from any deep core beliefs. (What beliefs – Today’s? Tomorrow’s?)

Perhaps Romney should be handed an Oscar or Tony. A synthetic one, for synthetic is something he understands. But I am not voting for best actor or debater. I am voting for the presidency of my country. I want a leader who is genuine, and who genuinely cares about the middle class I’m part of – as well as those less fortunate. A leader who counts women and their rights as part of “all the people” he has pledged to serve.

Obama had a poor night. But he’s had impressive years in so many ways – including the health plan I’m deeply grateful for. Someone very close to me has a pre-existing condition. Because of Obama’s determination in the face of shocking hostility from a Congress determined to defeat him, my loved one is now covered. I am a senior and want Medicare protected, not shredded into vouchers. I also want a president with a globally cool hand, not someone who spews militaristic bullet points to get votes.

Against his score of achievements, Obama’s first debate listlessness rates a small percentage.

The night of the debate I went to sleep feeling depressed and afraid. I imagined Obama feeling far more depressed, and beating himself up for “failing.” That’s the behavior I resort to.

But he didn’t waste much energy on that. The next morning he was right back in fighter mode, speaking at a rally with all the passion and strength missing the night before. And later that day in Madison, Wisconsin, he gave a fiery speech that ignited a crowd of 30,000.

As a writer I point a lesson to myself. Being pummeled by fate or foes (can’t resist alliteration) doesn’t have to be a knockout punch. I have never seen a truer example of the saying that what counts is not how many times you’re knocked down, but how many times you get up again. Maybe we should all make that our mantra when the next rejection or poor review threatens to flatten us.

What does a writer do when she  can’t write?  I’m  not talking about writer’s block, but social media block.  How do any of us find time to compose books,  articles, short stories (even short-short ones), when we have to read and respond to messages from LinkedIn, FaceBook, Twitter, et al?

In my original innocence I signed up  for every LinkedIn group I was told about, which means getting 50 or 60 messages a day.  We’re told it’s advisable to respond to these so I tried answering all of them, until the clock and my energy ran out. I confess I now resort to deleting many of the messages without even reading them. But that pushes my anxiety button: what potentially useful tip am I missing?

I’ve   discovered that those tips are sometimes valuable – one LinkedIn response of mine led to two radio interviews;  another to being interviewed for a blog.  But I also find those tips are hidden within a deluge of trivia. For instance, one LinkedIn group constantly asks, “”If you knew you’d never make money would you still  write? At least that was good for a laugh!  I did answer, with an impassioned OF COURSE!  But I now get twenty repetitions of  that same question every day.

I have another confession: I’m trying to cut back on FaceBook . Does that make me un-American ? Or un-modern?   I do enjoy seeing what fellow and sister writers are doing,  but I’m not all that interested in seeing my second cousin’s vacation pictures from the Caribbean (especially when I’m sitting home in 95-degree  heat) or endless photos of cute kittens, puppies and babies (not necessarily in that order). Yet I can’t resist taking a look when a “notification”  is “pending.”  Usually it’s because someone wants to “friend” me. (Remember when friend was a noun, not a verb?)  I also can’t resist putting birthday greetings on someone’s ”wall” – even someone I barely remember.  And I succumb to poring over messages of advice from the lucky people who’ve found the secret to “Happiness”  — though I’d  be a lot happier if didn’t detour  from the novel I’m trying to finish.

The prospect of adding Twitter to the pile has me all a-twitter. Writing at length takes me much less time than figuring how to condense to 140 characters!

We’re told  it’s important to post notices, to send helpful answers to other people’s questions, to keep our name ”out there.”   But where in that mythical “there” is time to work on whatever we’re really trying to write? Even this blog is very late.

Have to sign off   now — two dozen messages have popped up while I’ve been writing this.

I’m about to embark on a too-brief vacation. It’s for just one week, but with my usual syndrome I seem to have packed for a month. “Can’t you leave anything home?” my partner asks (pleads), since he’s the one who carries the suitcases.

The truth is, what I really need to lighten is the baggage in my head! (“What’s on your mind?” is a question I dodge. The answer would take weeks. ) Worries scuttle around in my brain like ants spoiling a picnic. Get rid of one, ten more pop up. Unending worries about everyone I love (will disaster strike one of them while I’m away?). Worry about the state of the world (and the state of states in the election). And, of course , the continual worries about how and when I’ll finally finish my novel, find the right ending for my newest story, get a new agent, do some networking, etc. etc. etc. Worries that should be left at home when you go away, but insist on coming along like stowaways.

Today, as we’re about to leave for a carefree (?) week , the special Vacation Chatter has started its usual program. What if – the hotel loses our reservation? The car breaks down before we even get there? I get a sunburn that ruins the trip? I get a cramp in the lake and drown? We might not even get the sun at all or any chance to swim, if the ominous weather rains on us every day. Not to mention that I’m worried about the mess I’m leaving in my apartment, because if something fatal happens (earthquake, tornado, collision) people will discover what a poor housekeeper I am.

If traffic’s heavy on the Parkway, we can detour to back roads, but I don’t seem able to detour around these obsessive thoughts. Obviously, worrying is part of my DNA.

I don’t even have the masochistic pleasure of believing my mental mania is unique. How many of you (I see raised hands already) are also addicted to this kind of baggage? This time, though, I promise myself to at least try to stay “focused.” Dutifully meditate. Remain calm in any storm (did I remember to pack an umbrella?).

I’ve been advised that visualization is helpful. So I’m seeing myself staying in the much publicized ”present, “ free for one whole week of dwelling on past mistakes and future problems.

No worries? I’d worry about that.

Why do many of us opt for “making do” rather than treating ourselves to something better?  Take  my phone, for example.  In the small room I work in  (I call it my “studiola, ” a word stolen from  Renaissance painters) the phone was  prone to static and the answering machine incapable of reporting the correct time of a message.   Instead of heading for a store, I dove into my storeroom of a closet and unearthed a phone stashed there since the last century. The only problem was that I couldn’t make outgoing calls, nor did it have the Caller ID which protects from unwanted interruptions.  I decided it would be economical to use this anyway and to carry in a mobile phone from the bedroom whenever I wanted to make an outgoing call. After months of this peripatetic arrangement, I told myself that as a professional writer I should have a more professional set-up.  I purchased a 21^st Century digital phone with a built-in answering machine.   But when I brought it home I hesitated to open the box.  Did I really need  a new phone?  After all, the old one was still working  – more or less.  And how important is it to know what time someone calls?  My doubts fed on the directions for setting it up.  “Possible shock. . . fire. . . if not installed properly.”  (Ever notice how scary directions are for everything from gadgets to medications?)

After some tolerant friends assured me this was an excellent machine, and wouldn’t blow up the apartment,  I paid a neighbor to install the phone  and it’s transformed my life.  Imagine, incoming and outgoing calls on the same phone!

I go through the same back-and-forth with almost every purchase.  Take the computer, for instance.  I had one that was so decrepit it made my writing take three times as long as it should have.  Yet I kept putting off buying a new one for several years, until the computer gave out (along with  an unsaved manuscript)!

Then there’s my car . . .  Vintage 1983.  Obviously,  an object has to die of  old age before I replace it.

This isn’t miserliness, for when my adult children need something I unhesitatingly fork over the money. So why this trauma when it comes to purchasing something for myself?  Is it guilt?   Negative  self-esteem?  “Do I deserve . . ?“

A friend once confided that she and her husband inherited a set of expensive china from his parents. “For years I saved it for guests ,” she told me. “But one day I decided we should enjoy the dishes ourselves. And we do, every evening.  Better than saving them for the future.”    Better, indeed. There wasn’t much of a future, for she died a few years later.

Maybe we should all make a mid-summer vow that we are worth treating ourselves to the best  –  while  we can.

“What do you do?”  That’s the  question I dread, especially at those author cocktail parties where  you’re supposed to network.

Notice, the question’s rarely,  “How do you do? ” but , what . That’s when I try not to stutter, or drop my prop of a wine glass. For, as we writers know, the question is really what do we write about and I find it impossible to define that.

How can I explain in a one-minute encounter that my books range from bereavement to Bible?  Or that my short stories include an indescribable   variety of situations women cope with? And my articles range …well, you get the idea.

I did try getting attention from an assured  woman who boasted that she writes chick lit by telling her that  my latest short story is about a mother whose child is kidnapped.   Shuddering she retorted, ”What made you write about that?”  Then hurried on to the next prospect without waiting for my answer.

A friend advised me to say that I “cover the waterfront,” assuring me it’s a stock phrase for diversity. So at the next   literary gathering, I answered the usual question by telling a man,  ”I sort of cover the waterfront.”

“Water sports sell these days,” he said.

Left alone in that crowd I overheard a woman tossing off a blithe, “I’m a generalist.”

When I tried out that word I felt so military, I expected to be saluted.

Recently I was interviewed by British blogger Morgen Bailey, who wanted toknow  whether  I ‘m a  fiction or non-fiction author.  When I said I straddle both sides, she listed me as “multi-genre.”

Now there’s an impressive phrase!  But when I rehearsed it in private   I had trouble with the “r” – should it be pronounced or ignored?

Surely I’d get good advice from my articulate nephew, Benjamin Kassoy. At the awesome age of 24 he’s already co-authored two books. I asked him how he answers that inevitable networking question.   He told me that,  as I know, he loves to talk. He also loves to write.  But his twin loves fail to join forces when asked what he writes. “I let my writing do the talking,” he confides.

I’ve  now decided that the next time I’m asked what I write, I’ll say,  ”Words.”

Who’s listening anyway?

[Anyone with a savvy reply is welcome to share on my blog.]

WEBSITE: annehosansky.com

BOOKS:

“Widow’s Walk,” available through iUniverse.com; “Turning Toward Tomorrow,” available through xLibris; “Ten Women of Valor,” available through CreateSpace.com and Amazon. Also available for Amazon Kindle.

Who’s the first person you wish you could share a success with?   If Robert only knew, I find myself thinking when a problem story finally comes together the way he’d suggested.

I met Robert many years ago. It was a humid spring evening when I ventured into my first (and only) writers’ group.  Since I had just written my first short story, I dared myself to risk exposing it to strangers. Clutching my typed manuscript (remember typewriters?),  I walked into a Greenwich Village apartment.  Three women were sitting in chairs, while a sole man lounged on the one sofa, a crutch beside him.  Ranging from young to middle-aged, dressed in jeans and wrinkled shirts, they all looked unprepossessing to say the least.  This is going to be a zero , I told myself.

A woman who appeared to be the leader said, “Since you’re new, you read  first.”  (Nowadays we let the newcomer breathe first!)  I read my story,  pages  shaking so much I had trouble seeing the words. When I finished there was an ominous silence.  Everyone seemed to be looking at their feet. Then that woman said solemnly, ”I like it.”  She was interrupted by a male voice. “Of course most of this is garbage.”

I still don’t know why I didn’t run out, or how I knew that the blunt words were Robert’s way of saying there was 10% of my story worth saving.  In some intuitive way I understood that he was trying to help me . His perceptive comments then pointed the way to a trimmer and deeper story, as did the critiques from everyone else there.  So  I decided to join the group – and have stayed for  25 years.  .

The common belief is that writers are notoriously competitive. But every time one of us has had an acceptance the reaction from the group has been unanimously enthusiastic.  You see,  we feel we’ve each had a hand in it. And I will never forget the generous response from everyone the night I announced that my first book had actually found a publisher. “Fantastic!” proclaimed Robert, who used that word very sparingly.

He was also sparing – and adjective free – in his writing.  A minimalist who made Raymond Carver look verbose, his surgical deletions in my stories were invaluable because I tend to overwrite. ”Sentimental!” he would write in the margins, in glaring red ink.  Or– the worst crime –“Overt!”

Though his critiques usually ended up being right, there were times when his astringent spareness became the wrong fit for me. One time I confessed to him that I hadn’t  taken  every one of his suggestions about a story.  “I would hope not!” he said.

I’m a compulsive reviser, but he far outdid me with 50 to 100 revisions of every story and poem. “I have another Golden Oldie,” he’d invariably announce at each meeting.  So his output was slim, though he did have some two dozen pieces published in small magazines.

His stories were intellectual puzzles, but his hidden emotional side came through in his poems.  They gave us glimpses of  the women who came and went in his life, of friends who had died (mainly of AIDS) and the happiness he finally found in marriage to the widow of his best friend. He would have been embarrassed if he’d realized how much of himself he revealed in those poignant poems. Death was  a constant theme, as it was in his mind. He’d suffered most of his life with an illness similar to polio and had to use crutches.  For years he talked about which selections he wanted included in  his  “posthumous” book.

I’m putting all this in the past tense because Robert died two years ago, when his illness finally caught up with him.

Knowing these were probably his last months, he painstakingly arranged his stories and poems, demanded our sternest critiques,  and then paid a publisher to print his collected work in three slim volumes.

I had envied him the restrained beauty of those poems. So much so that I once ventured to bring in samples of my secret vice: my poetry. “I’m really not a poet,” I apologized.

“You have the instincts of a poet,” Robert surprised me by saying. ”But you’re lazy.”

Those words have reverberated within me, a challenge.  Recently I began revising my poems, and cut one about my father’s dying  from three pages to one.  I thought Robert would probably say it was still too long.  (He complained that Pound’s famous two- line poem,  “In A Station of the Metro,” was one line too long!)

This year my  poem about my father became my first one to be published.  Look what you did for me, I longed to tell Robert.

There had to be some way to thank him.  So I brought his books to Manhattan’s prestigious Poets House,  where they are now  with thousands of other poets.  You will find him under Fagan, Robert.  He would probably take the books from your hands to make a final revision.

BOOKS:: Widow’s Walk, Turning Toward Tomorrow, Ten Women of Valor

LINKS:: annehosansky.com; Facebook; LinkedIn

COMMENTS:

“Another eloquent and poignant piece. As a writer, this resonated very deeply with me. A writing community is so vital, both for support and honest critique. Same with friendship, right?”  –  Ben Kassoy

“A very moving story and insight into the development of a  writer.”- Warren A.