That Song by Elton John, or, Litquake

I have been a little out of sorts over the past few weeks, floating just under the surface of a freshwater pond, looking out from under the water to the blue sky above and telling myself to maintain optimism.  I am happiest when I do that, and lately it's been a challenge, particularly with my writing, or the writing world in general.  Folks are lined up, on Twitter, on Facebook, in my Google Reader blog feed, with writing miseries and how I am to expect that the writing world sucks and will never change.

Yet, it's supposed to be worthy of writing about.

Where, I ask myself, holding my breath in the pond, is the hope of being a writer?  If all is screwed, then why make notes?  Why curve off some letters into thoughts?  I needed a Church of Hopeful Optimistic Writers, San Francisco Parish.  I needed a family of fellow scribes from all walks--poets, journalists, novelists, short story writers--to comfort me.  I didn't want the answers.  I just wanted hope.

I have lived in the Bay Area for seven years, and have always wanted to go to Litquake, the Bay Area literary festival held every year in October, but have never been able to go.  The reasons why are no longer important, but finally making there is.  I had my writing groups on Monday and Tuesday nights, an interview on Wednesday morning, and then Thursday came and the reasons for staying away were irrelevant at last.  I reviewed the rest of the week's events and found the following:

Thursday Evening, San Francisco Public Library's Main Branch

• Religious Renegades - Writing about religion in a secular city
• Literature as a Window to Iran - Self-explanatory
• Where News is Headed In the Bay Area - Partnering Technology with Getting the Story Out in the Bay Area

Saturday Afternoon, Z Space in the Mission District

• Short Story Writers Panel - Discussing their craft
• Novelists - Discussing their craft

Saturday Evening, Litcrawl

• Various venues in the Mission
• My destination was 826 Valencia, but they were full up before the "doors" opened, so I headed home

I required only one thing of myself:  to attend with no expectation of what I would hear.  I wanted hope, but if the panels were full of negativity like the internet, then I had the option to head home.  I didn't find what I wanted to see based on preconceived notions, like "Iranian literature...they're all going to talk about American stuff in Tehran," or "Nobody reads short stories, so why listen to the writers?"  None of the world outside of the pond surface came with me.  

By expecting nothing and shelving everyone else's negativity for the day, I found I could come up for air, even get out of the water.  Let me stress again, there were no answers given, no solutions established.  Writing doesn't work that way.  But there was hope in abundance.  One woman had written a novel about Hester Prynne's child, and she was from East India; she spoke of how people asked her at the time of the novel's release, "Are you supposed to be writing that story?"  She too saw the negativity, the giving up of others.  The panel joined her in saying that, given the choice between squashing the external force keeping you from writing and writing the thing everyone feels you have no authority to write, you should go for the thing you have no authority to write.  The others, they all agreed, can sit back there and complain about the world and hold its rules to gospel while you learn to fly.

We're not going to tell you how to fly, mind you, they said.  Just know that you can.  That you have your own answers, no matter "how the world works."

Play ball, and bless you, scribes.  

P.S. - This song is the inspiration of today's post of Life For Rent.  The video is choppy, yes.  I picked it because the lyrics fit for me and the courtesan's character seemed to represent the world above the surface, while the poet sings of hope, a bird insistent to rise out of the pond.  Oh, yeah, and "Moulin Rouge" is my and my brother's favorite Baz Luhrmann movie.  The French subtitles are free of charge.