On the Immortalizing Power of the Internet

Most of us would like to leave this earth with some kind of legacy. Before the Internet, unless someone was well known, only a small number of people might be aware of that legacy. Now our lives are open books—the good, the bad, and the ugly. We know that prospective employers and suitors Google us to find out who we are. Of course, there is a fluidity to that information. Each search produces something different, depending on a host of complicated criteria.

Summing up a life from an Internet search may produce an alternative bio to the one we’d write for ourselves. My first three pages include 21 of 30 entries that really refer to me. From them, you would see first that I have my own business, that I was on Facebook, that I wrote a study guide for a documentary on career counseling in 1993 (still in demand). Then, you’d note that I was an author on some scholarly pieces as well as some chapters and reports related to current professional field. Finally, on page 3, if you were patient enough, you’d find a reference to my fiction. In contrast, my niece, who is both a scientist and a fiction writer, fares much better as a visible presence in this latter role. It probably doesn't help that I don't use my full name in my blog.

A year ago, I noticed that Googling my dad, using his full name turned up nothing. On the 14th anniversary of his death, I created an imaginary Facebook page for him and published it on my blog so that he would have his own Internet presence. One year later, I Googled him again and was amazed to find seven entries connected to his full name. Only one was my blog entry. The rest referred to patents he held in electronics and physics. Deciding to investigate further, I entered his name, using his first and middle initial, the way he often referred to himself. In the first three pages, 12 of 30 entries appeared to belong to him, including an essay called “Science Marking Time” from New Country published in 1931, when he would have been 27. In that volume, he is sandwiched between C. Day Lewis and Stephen Spender. Other illustrious contributors were W.H.Auden and Christopher Isherwood. It was the only thing my dad ever formally published. The book has been copied and can be downloaded. From these various entries (minus my blog) you would glean that he was a scientist, held various patents in the electronics industry in the UK, had worked for Marconi, lived in England and Lancaster, PA, and was somewhat of an intellectual. Hardly the full measure of the man but not a bad bio.

Of course, this kind of legacy inference is messy work. I had to weed out the entries with the misplaced punctuation, work published after his death, and references to occurrences from too early a time. And any search of my father mainly calls up a certain legendary Kansas City Royals baseball player of the same name. So it helps to have an unusual name to eliminate all the noise. With punctuation, which Google ignores, my first and last names link me with a male and female from the porn industry.

My mother doesn’t fare so well. If it weren’t for my blog entry of April 3rd, she wouldn’t be there at all. Yet her legacy of paintings and prints is very tangible, and she would be pleased to know that several of my friends proudly display her art work on their walls. My sister, whose first name is more common than mine and who, therefore, has a fuzzier Internet profile, also leaves behind a trail of visible markers in the form of the many garments she designed and produced over several decades. And her legacy has become more stable since her fashion archives are now housed within the very real walls of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. (But naturally, you can find reference to this archive on the Internet.)

My husband has the best of both worlds, and he may not even know it. As an events and fine arts photographer, many, many people possess the fruits of his creative labor. Google him, even with his not so unusual name, and not only is he the first entry, but he dominates the listings. Even those in the non-tangible world of legacy can touch many lives and be noticed in cyberspace. One friend is batting 100% on the first three pages of entries with her name—all 30 entries refer to her and her work. One trick? She has been quoted regularly in articles.

A friend of mine from high school has such an ordinary name that there are 40+ of him on Facebook (and he’s not one of them). But in a few months, after his first book (non-fiction and heart-warming) is published, I can guarantee you that you will see his name appear on the first page of the Google listings. It’s going to be that big.

So I suppose the moral of this story is if you want a coherent cyber legacy, make sure you do something noteworthy, do something a lot or in the company of well-known people, get yourself published or in a museum, or start a business and secure your domain. Routinely use your middle initial, and always use the same version of your name. If your name is relatively common, you will have to work that much harder, but you can do it.

On the other hand, while you can make your mark on the World Wide Web, it’s important to remember that you can’t easily wipe away your presence once it’s out there. You can even write your own autobiography, but it will be augmented by whatever the critics have to say, for better or for worse. So, it’s probably better just to get on with your life and do what you want to do. Let the Google entries fall where they may, and, if you must check up on yourself, try another search engine once in awhile.

[Note: Although I have used my blog to give certain members of my family a web presence, this time I have intentionally omitted names so as not to add to anyone’s cyber biography.]

On My Mother, My Muse

Today is the tenth anniversary of the death of my mother, Josephine Carlton Brett (June 9, 1908-April 3, 2000.) She was born in London within the sound of the Bow Bells, making her a true Cockney, but her parents were Jewish immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe. Her life spanned most of the 20th century, encompassing two world wars and the Great Depression. When I was very young, our family emigrated to Pennsylvania for 18 years for my father’s work, but my parents retired back to London, which was always home for my mum. Except for her last year, she lived the final 30 years of her life in a flat in Putney, overlooking the Heath.

My mother was an art teacher and artist, and her huge range of talents, her continual learning of new skills, her creativity, and her productivity in her “golden” years, when she took up a new (to her) art form (silkscreen), serve as inspirations to me, perhaps now more than ever. I own and proudly display pieces from her legacy.

Because of the time in which she grew up and her detour to the USA, she was never quite able to realize all her personal ambitions. Perhaps as a consequence, she was fiercely proud of her daughters and her granddaughter and our professional accomplishments. When I became director of the career services department at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in my mid-thirties, my mum bragged to everyone, “My daughter is a director at Harvard!”

I know she would have been supportive of my writing efforts, if not a little eager for completion of my projects. When I first told her that I was writing a screenplay (probably around 1997), she was very excited. Of course, she kept asking me whether I’d finished it. I think she expected it to magically appear on the silver screen. But even in the last year of her life when she was suffering from severe dementia, she became animated when recalling the passion of the creative process—it’s like “butterflies in your stomach.” Much like love, yes?

A large portrait of my mother as a young woman hangs on the wall in the room where I do most of my writing—serving as my muse. Between my sister (see March 16 blog entry) and her, I should be able to draw sufficient inspiration to last a lifetime. The photo on the left was taken when she was about 23 (and still involved in acting, her other love.)

Below I share a poem about her that my sister and I wrote and read at her funeral, following a family tradition that my mother maintained for many years of composing poems for our birthdays. It seemed fitting to honor her life in a similar way. The last line was originally, “Go in peace,” which she always said to us as adults when we would leave her flat after a visit. I have changed it to be more eternal.


ODE TO JOSIE BRETT

She was-
Creative, imaginative, energetic, vivacious.
Lively, theatrical, talkative, but gracious

She wore-
Tailored suits, high heels, black leather, bright smocks.
Patterned jumpers, silk leggings, red velvet, warm socks.

She did–
Painting, silkscreens, puppetry, and plays
Sewing, knitting, odes for birthdays.

She saw-
San Francisco, Montreal, Boston and Maine
Venice by ship, New York by train.

She shopped at-
Lord and Taylor, Blum Store, M&S with a cart
Fifth Avenue, Liberty’s, always dressed smart.

She made–
Shepherds’ pie, soufflé, sherry trifle, shavas dinner
Sponge cake, stuffed trout, each one a winner.

She took pride in-
Her handwriting, her voice, an organized chart,
All her family’s achievements, her posture, her art.

She was-
Proper, stoical, don’t make a fuss.
Generous, loving, unconditionally supportive of us.

She loved-
White Linen perfume, flowers, teaching children, Matisse.
Sisters, husband, and family.
Now, Mum, rest in peace.

On Failure Deprivation Syndrome

I’m sitting here watching “American Idol” and marveling at the resilience of these young people who in front of millions listen to some pretty raw criticism—“That was horrible!” is a frequent Simon Cowell comment. Of course, these are the finalists; they’ve already shown their mettle against hundreds of other candidates. But I wonder what happens when they are voted off. Do they cry? Say they’ll never sing again? Resolve to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and start all over again?

Years ago, when I was a career counselor, one of my colleagues at Harvard noted that she regularly saw students who came to her devastated because they had received their first lousy grade in their lives, or some professor hadn’t liked their paper. She named this phenomenon “failure deprivation syndrome.” These young people had never failed at anything, and they didn’t have the tools to handle it.

As I thought about my own life, I realized that I, too, had not suffered big setbacks at least in terms of standard achievements by which we gauge success. I did well in school, was accepted into all the colleges and graduate schools I applied to, and generally got the jobs I wanted. Sure, I worked hard and aimed for things that were reachable given my talents. You could say I deserved my rewards. My early love life was another story, but after a slow start, I even landed the guys on whom I’d set my sights. I guess I should consider myself lucky.

And then I started writing. Let’s face it. This whole business is not for sissies. Last year, I sent off queries regarding my novel to four agents; I actually heard from three. I’m told that it’s quite common to not receive a reply. One sent a form letter saying they weren’t taking on new writers. Another took the time to write back, “I didn’t love it, and I have to love it.” And a third, with whom I had had previous contact, was even more generous with her feedback, though I didn’t understand what she was telling me to do. Later, in a one-one-one manuscript review of the first twenty pages of one of my novels, a New York agent told me she didn’t feel simpatico with my protagonist.

Recently, I entered two local short story contests—in one, the odds were about 6:1, and the other, 40:1. I thought my stories were pretty good. I wondered whether I was close to the cut or tossed out after the first read. Unfortunately, I’ll never know.

I wouldn’t say I am a sore loser. A sore loser complains, blames others, doesn’t use feedback to improve. I believe I take responsibility and listen to suggestions if they are offered. Nevertheless, I can’t say I handle rejection well. It slows me down and makes me reexamine my goals. I know that people we now think of as great authors often had their novels rejected many times, and I have a copy of Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections (Ed. Bill Henderson and Andre Bernard), itself a best seller to remind myself of the variety of viewpoints out there (and that agents, reviewers, and publishers all have bad days).

But how do you know whether for you it’s just a numbers game and that someone out there will eventually like you well enough to represent you, or that your manuscript really does need more work, or that you really don’t have the talent? The agent who gave me the feedback I didn’t quite get did say that maybe someone else would like it as it was. Was she saying, “I could see how some people might respond to this, so keep sending it out?” I stopped at four agents, and maybe I should have just kept sending out my novel. Instead, I decided to take the disparate and unclear pieces of advice and do more revision. So now having stalled on that task, I am in a nowhere land. I’ve made it convenient for myself. If I don’t get it out there again, I can’t be rejected again, can I?

All of those who write need to ask ourselves why we write; how much effort to we are willing to put into it after the first one or two drafts and the inevitable suggestions; how badly we need external affirmation for our labors, especially in the form of publication by someone other than ourselves; and how much indifference or negativity from an increasingly deluged and strapped publishing industry are we willing to endure to get to that place. But I suppose that if John Le Carre could keep going after hearing, “You’re welcome to Le Carre—he hasn’t got any future,” I shouldn’t throw in the towel just yet. After all, it’s never too late to learn something new—even how to weather a little rejection.

Now didn’t I just hear about NPR’s latest 3-minute fiction contest?

On Channeling Beth

Like many sibling relationships, mine with my sister Beth was complicated. It was loving, competitive, intimate, and at times rage-inducing. Beth was a fashion designer, and not surprisingly she felt somewhat wedded to fashion trends both good and bad. I, in contrast, held a certain amount of scorn about blindly following what seemed to me arbitrary schemes by the clothing industry to shame women into throwing out their wardrobes every couple of years. On more than one occasion, we had screaming fights on this topic. No doubt we both dug in our heels more deeply than our beliefs would have dictated. I liked clothes, but I shopped with an eye to bargains rather than what was in, what suited me, or what even fitted me properly.

Sadly, Beth died seven years ago on March 16 from cancer. After her diagnosis, I promised myself that I wouldn’t start any arguments with her, especially about fashion. During those 22 months of ups and downs regarding her prognosis, our relationship was about mutual support, particularly since we had lost our last parent, our mum, just the previous year.

For some years prior to Beth’s illness I had been writing a screenplay with a friend, but a couple of months after Beth’s surgery, I returned to writing on my own. I wrote another screenplay based on some experiences I had had in Japan as a young woman. As it happens, Beth had spent the last decade peddling her knitwear designs in Japan, travelling there twice a year. I asked her to read my script, and she gave me some practical suggestions regarding cultural references as well as a hilarious explanation for a character’s physical condition that I incorporated. (I won’t give it away!) Beth herself was a wonderful and humorous writer with a gift for an original turn of phrase, but her literary efforts were confined to letters, then faxes, and finally emails. Had she lived, I wonder if she would have written something lengthier, perhaps a memoir of her years in the fashion industry.

For more than two years after Beth’s death, my own creativity dried up. I didn’t have the heart , nor the emotional energy to write anything, much less to complete the novelization of the screenplay. The loss of my only sibling with whom I’d been so close was devastating, and with Beth’s passing went my connection to my nuclear family and all that history it represented.

Then in 2005 two things happened within a few months of each other. I began to shop, and I began to write again. Oh, how I shopped. I began watching TLC’s “What not to Wear,” and I went through my wardrobe with a critical eye, giving away bags of ill-fitting, out-of-date, and unbecoming clothes in unflattering colors. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I followed the trends. For someone in her middle years, some of these seemed most unsuitable. Rather, I focused more on classical pieces that fit, and colorful fun pieces that I would enjoy wearing. I still looked at price tags and shopped at sales, but my sense of a reasonable cost increased from my 1970s yardstick. And, gasp, I even bought a few things at full price! At times I became obsessed with finding the right top to go with the pants I’d purchased or with one of Beth’s designs that I wore, travelling to multiple shops along the way. I felt possessed.

I am not a superstitious person. I walk under ladders, let black cats cross my path, and don’t worry about Friday the 13th. I don’t consider myself a person of great faith, or even a particularly spiritual person. But I swear that I was channeling Beth. Maybe it was her fun way of getting back at me for giving her such a hard time about her passion. But as I mentioned, I also started writing again-with a greater sense of purpose and with more regularity. I took better classes and workshops to hone my craft, and I not only completed multiple drafts of the novel about Japan, I wrote a second novel. This burst of creativity also felt like a gift from Beth, who was enormously talented and prolific. (The prestigious Victoria and Albert Museum in London recently took all her fashion archives—sketches, photos, costings, etc. as well as several samples from her collection.) I know there may be rational explanations for both of these phenomena; I studied psychology. I also understand that both the interest in fashion and the creativity describe my mother. But I like to believe that Beth, who had provided me some seed funds, was watching over her little sister—giving her a push.

A couple of months ago, I perused my bulging wardrobe and realized I didn’t really need anything new for the time being. Beth would have said it was about “want not need.” As a self-employed person who works at home much of the time, I only have so many occasions where something other than jeans is the appropriate attire. Oddly, during this period, I have felt less creative. Each session at the computer has felt like more of a struggle. I am not suggesting cause and effect here. Maybe I am going through an end-of-winter dry patch. Maybe I need to take a break or an inspiring course. Alternatively, maybe there is a time limit to a spirit’s assistance. Maybe Beth has moved on to more important causes. Or maybe she feels her work is done and that I can do this all by myself. Or maybe like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz I had the power all along.

In the meantime, let me honor this day and Beth’s memory with a very short story (or poem if you prefer) that I wrote for a class during my first few months of renewed creativity (and have since revised.) (Note the structure of the story. The first sentence is 10 words; the second, nine, and so forth.)

Channeling Corinne

Corinne was a clothes horse and a slave to fashion.
Her sisterly advice drove me into a rebellious rage.
“Pleated pants are so unflattering; buy something new!”
“You used to wear them,” I screamed.
“They’re no longer in,” she scoffed.
Corinne died two years ago.
I obsess over style.
Replace my wardrobe.
Corinne teases.
“Shopaholic!”


Beth—RIP. I love you. PS. I did just buy a cute little black jacket with white polka dots. Totally didn’t need it.

February Check-in

So February didn't seem as productive, but I guess it was okay, especially since the month was short.

1. Revised Chapter 1 several more times, chapter 2 a couple of times, chapter 3 once, and gave a cursory revision to chapter 4.
2. Wrote two short-shorts and submitted them to contests. No success.
3. Wrote two new blog entries.
4. Participated in two sessions of my writers' group.
5. Didn't do as much reading as I would have liked. Finished a couple of novels I'd started earlier and am about half-way through another.

I'm feeling a little discouraged about the whole business (see first March blog entry), but maybe it's just the winter blahs.

On Writing as an Olympic Sport

Like millions of people, I have spent a considerable amount of time tuning into the Winter Olympics these last two weeks, watching in awe at amazing physical feats (and giving up some of my writing time.) I admit to a certain partiality for the figure skaters. My interest in the competitive side of that sport dates to the time I watched in person the elegant Peggy Fleming take the American Ladies Single title not long before she won her Olympic Gold in 1968.

My own relationship to skating predates that spectacle. As a child, I recall trying out my neighbor’s hand-me-down skates on the lumpy, frozen pond of the golf course down the street from our house. Oh, how I wanted to sail around that pond, like Hans Brinker. With neither the right mindset nor the right skills, I spent more time huddled at the edge. In high school, a group of us managed to convince the administrators to let us take skating to meet our winter gym requirement (and avoid the dreaded team sport of basketball), but our instructor didn’t understand that we weren’t quite ready for double axles. In my 20s, inspired by the medal winners, I muddled along on skates before hanging up my blades for good by age 30. My fear of falling and my lack of any real talent were the deciding factors. Only in my dreams would I fly along on the ice, backwards and forwards, leaping and turning.

I turned to other, less physically- demanding, pursuits. In the past few years, my main non-paid work avocation has been writing fiction. Compared to all the winter Olympic sports, fiction writing seems most like figure skating. Maybe this particular analogy seems far-fetched and unnecessary, and the similarities between writing and skating are not why I chose the former. Indulge me. You gotta love any sport that has a figure called “twizzles.”

Skaters are the storytellers of the athletic world. Not only must they have the skills to do the jumps and the spins, they must have the artistry to put all their moves together into an aesthetically pleasing program that meshes with the music they have chosen. They must inhabit a character (or a mood) and convincingly convey emotion. As with writers, not all skaters emphasize these elements equally. Those who can land breathtaking jumps will excite the crowd, even when they lack a certain grace. They may even rack up the points (especially under the new scoring system). These skaters are like the writers whose flair for action and plot produces the blockbusters that top the best seller charts. In contrast, other skaters, still with enormous physical talent, are all about the artistry. They are the literary writers. The critics appreciate them, but they don’t always wow the crowd.

Whatever their style, these athletes have spent thousands of hours practicing their sport, getting instruction, listening to feedback, and improving their form. These are things I didn’t do as a would-be skater but am trying to do as a writer. I write regularly, take classes and workshops, belong to a writer’s group, and revise, revise, revise. So far, I have chosen to put my craft out into the world, where I will be judged—with the reward of getting published rather than receiving a title or a medal. The results will mostly not be to my liking. I need to learn what I failed to learn as a skater and what competitive skaters do with such grace. If I fall, I have to pick myself up and continue, to use that fall as an opportunity to become better, not as an excuse to quit or feel sorry for myself.

I also need to be careful not to compare my own writing to that of my favorite authors and become discouraged. Not all of us can win the Nobel Prize in Literature—the equivalent of the Olympic Gold, and most of us may not even be talented, persistent, or lucky enough to be recognized in the public marketplace. In the end, I may need to decide whether I love writing enough to pursue it regardless of any external reward, like one of my college friends, who just self-published his first novel because he didn’t want all the hassles of the seemingly arbitrary publishing world. I could still experience the joy of ruffling through the pages of my bound novel. Why shouldn’t it be sufficiently satisfying to write because I have something I want to say, or to loop around a frozen pond with a few friends, without the judges’ stamp of approval?

On Maine, A Love Story

It’s 3:25pm on a Saturday afternoon. I am in Maine, staring out my large dining room window onto the brown marsh, flecked with patches of snow. I can tell that the tide is out because the ravines that criss-cross the marsh are in shadow; in the winter at high tide, they will brim with water, forming a shallow lake. In the distance, a long row of motley houses hides the ocean, and nearby, a tall tree —its many fingered branches poking at the sky-- breaks up the expansive view. By contrast, in summer, shrubbery and leaves block this restful scene.

What is most remarkable is while predictable in some ways, this panorama varies from hour to hour and from day to day. On our last visit, my husband, awake earlier than usual, came into the bedroom to announce the glorious sunrise he was witnessing. The sky appeared to be on fire. At other times it is the land that calls attention to itself, such as when chunks of ice heave up at odd angles, creating an other worldly surface. In the late afternoon, the buildings along the water’s edge glow pink and orange.

I first saw this place on a sunny January day nine years ago, and I fell in love. This was how I wanted to spend my small inheritance from my mother, who had passed away the previous year. She was a city girl, but I think she would have approved. Covering the walls of our condo are her paintings of rocky coastlines—one a monolith adrift in a turbulent sea, the others inspired by vacations to Portugal and Malta. She was a trained artist but did some of her best work after age 60. Both she and the view serve as my co-muses as I sit at the table in front of my laptop.

It’s not just our condo that I love. It’s the feeling of peace I have when I am here. Mainers don’t see the southern coast of their state as the “real” Maine. But less than an hour and a half from Boston, it still feels like it’s light years from Boston. For a resort area, the south coast isn’t that commercial. Along route 1 in Wells, the one mall (with mainly useful stores) is set back from the road. The shops that dot the highway cater to the unusual and include one that sells weather vanes and another, flags of all kinds. Out of season, there is a small town vibe. The Maine Diner beckons with its friendly service. The shoreline with its wide, flat beach at low tide calls out for walks.

We don’t get here nearly enough, but it has become my personal writer’s retreat. What better inspiration than nature to get the creative juices flowing? And what better way to procrastinate than to look through the binoculars and find some new little secret somewhere on the expanse of the marsh?

Happy Valentine's Day!