Suzy Spencer's blog

I’m stuck in Whataburger and I don’t want to be. 

Rain from Tropical Storm Hermine is slashing out of the sky.  As much as I don’t want to be in the WB, even more of me doesn’t want to get soaked to the bone, as my grandmother would have said, running to my car.

I don’t want to be at the WB because I think I may have just written the opening of my book-after-next (meaning the book to be written after I write my second sex book).  This book-after-next is an idea that’s been sitting in my brain for years.  I’ve written openings for it before, but I knew they weren’t quite there yet.  This one may not be there yet either, but it’s closer than any of the other of the openings I’ve written.  In fact, it’s so much closer that it has me eager to research the book and write it; I want to be sitting at home writing emails to begin the research rather than sitting in the WB.

But since I’m stuck in the WB without my laptop and without my cell phone, which I accidentally forgot and regret because I’d like to post a photo of my WB “desk” and work, let me back up and write by hand how this all started.

It started with the Sept/Oct 2010 issue of Poets & Writers magazine.  I’ve been reading this one issue of P&W for weeks, savoring it like a fine chocolate truffle.  Okay, truth – savoring it like the fine hamburger I ate at the St. Regis Hotel in Beijing.

Where I ate my St. Regis hamburger

Oh, my lord, that was a great hamburger.  Wish I had a photograph of it.  Anyway, I’m digressing with food as I frequently do, so back to the subject.

The Sept/Oct issue of P&W is so inspiring that, since the second day of reading it, I’ve been bringing my yellow legal pad to the WB so that I can scribble notes as the P&W articles evoke ideas in me – hence, my ability to write this blog even though I don’t have my laptop with me.  

I want to post links to the articles “The Porn Star Who Came to Dinner”, to which I could relate, and “Face the Fear”, which encouraged me.  Alas, both are available only in the print version of P&W.  So please, subscribe to P&W.  Often, a one-year subscription is less than $10 and less expensive than buying two issues off the newsstand rack. 

But it’s another print only piece that inspired me today – “The Taste of Memory”, which is a profile of novelist and attorney Monique Truong.  I’m embarrassed to say I’d never heard of Ms. Truong until P&W.

… For the narrative of her first novel, The Book of Salt (Houghton Mifflin, 2003), she imagined Binh, a gay Vietnamese cook who worked on the home of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. The book was enthusiastically received and went on to win the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, the Bard Fiction Price, a Stonewall Book Award—Barbara Gittings Literature Award, and the Asian-American Literature Award.

– Renee H. Shea, describing novelist Monique Truong in Poets & Writers

Though that quote opens the P&W profile of Ms. Truong, it’s not the one that grabbed me.  The one that made me stop and think I’ve got to share this was deeper into the article.  It was a quote from Ms. Truong.

As writers we are socialized into a state of perpetual gratefulness—to receive a grant, a publishing contract, a book tour—as if we didn’t earn anything with our labor and talents. Lawyers don’t think that way. They know that they have valuable skill and expect valuable compensation for it. I love my fellow writers, but I wish that they would think and behave—just in this instance—more like lawyers.

– Monique Truong

That quote was especially poignant today as I lost a gig.  The potential client didn’t think I was worth the money. We writers get that all the time.  And we encourage such thinking by offering our services for pennies, if not for free.  After all, I’m laying out my heart and soul, my work and my writing, to you for free right now, which insinuates, and thus perpetuates the belief, that my time, talent, and work – that a writer’s time, talent, and work – are worthless.

The only way we writers are going to change such thinking is if we start demanding just pay for our words.  But in a poor economy, with thousands of writers struggling to be discovered, with class after class and magazine after magazine and blog after blog advising yet-to-be-published writers to write anything, anywhere just to get their work and names out there, well, that’s probably not going to happen.

Just today, Arianna Huffington was on ABC World News promoting her new book Third World America. As part of the story, Diane Sawyer and Ms. Huffington discussed how our nation’s economy could improve if each business would hire just one more person for six months.  I found this ironic since Ms. Huffington doesn’t pay the majority of the writers who contribute to her highly successful Huffington Post.

Apparently, at least as evidenced by the fact that she doesn’t pay the majority of her contributors, Ms. Huffington has little or no respect for the written word, unless she’s writing it.  After all, she’s not offering her book for free—at least that I’m aware of.  But maybe I’m wrong about that.  Since I’m not being paid to write this, I haven’t bothered to do in-depth investigative research.  In fact, that’s why much of journalism suffers today.  A writer can’t afford to do quality research when one is being paid perhaps $7 for 500 or 1000 words.  If you don’t believe that’s a going rate, just check out the job postings for writers at Craigslist or www.journalismjobs.com and see the pay rates.

But I’m not going to put the blame on those hiring us.  I’m putting the blame on us.  We writers don’t have enough self-confidence to demand what’s just.  Perhaps that’s why we’re writers – we can write and bare the weaknesses, such as lack of confidence, that every human being experiences at some point but most are loathe to admit.  Indeed, we writers seem to find inspiration in our weaknesses and loathing.  For some reason, novelist David Foster Wallace comes to mind, but maybe I’m wrong about that.  Just as I’m embarrassed to admit that I’d never heard of Ms. Truong, I’m even more embarrassed to admit that I’ve never read Mr. Wallace, though I did read quite a bit about his suicide.

Again, I’m digressing.  Apparently, my mind is flowing in and out with the bands of rain.  So I want to say one more thing before I return to the point of this blog post.

Today, after lamenting to one of my sex source friends about the lost gig, which I guess I should admit that I somewhat sabotaged because I was concerned that the potential client might be a pain-in-the butt to work with, my friend wrote me, “well, remember you are worth what you charge and good riddance to that pain!  hope you have a good day, and STOP doubting yourself!!!!”

No wonder she’s become one of my most cherished friends.

Besides, as I told her, I know that if I’d use the time I would have spent working on that non-client’s work to write my own book, I could make more money (I hope).

What I didn’t say to her is that I also know that if I’d use that time to write my own book I’d feel so much better about myself.  Maybe that’s the real reason we writers show so little respect for ourselves and our work by giving it away for free – writing makes us feel so good.  I don’t mean to shock you here, but I’d gladly trade one great sentence for that fabulous hamburger in China.  And I LOVED that hamburger and that trip to China.  Someday, maybe I’ll tell you how that trip changed my life.  But if I do, that will be in a book.

Anyway, and finally, back to Monique Truong.  According to P&W, on April 23, 1975, when she was six years old, Ms. Truong was airlifted out of Vietnam and relocated to the United States. 

Just the month before, in March 1975, I’d been in Malaysia on a mission trip with the Baylor University Baptist Student Union.  We’d flown over South Vietnam, and I’d peered out the plane window, into the darkness, and watched the orange and yellow glow of the bomb fire below us.  I remember the anger, fear, and violence in Texas over the following months (and years) as the refugees from Vietnam came to our Gulf shores and began shrimping.

In small town North Carolina and in Houston, Texas, Ms. Truong, the daughter of a Shell Oil executive, was the victim of prejudice and racism.  In part, that motivated her to become a lawyer – she didn’t want to feel helpless in a country (the U.S.) governed by attorneys.

But Truong was also influenced by Southern Gothic novels and Harper Lee, William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor.

“One of the things I always try to think about when I am telling a story is that I want to reclaim certain things that belong to me, my personal history and the larger History with a capital H,” she told P&W.  “I wanted to tell a story of the American South that included someone like me in one way or another.”

And maybe that’s what motivated me to start writing on book-after-next.  But I’m not sure.  I started writing this at noon. It’s now well past midnight.  Tropical Storm Hermine has been lashing at my windowpanes for 12 hours, and I’ve been toiling over these words, trying to get them right, for that same length of time.  They still aren’t right.  But the rain is so hard and loud that it sounds like water banging against tin rather than drops striking double-paned glass.  I can’t hear myself think.  So I’m going to beg you once again to go buy the Sept/Oct issue of Poets & Writers. Read the article on Monique Troung, pay attention to the way she talks about writing, about the South, about family, and maybe you’ll understand why I’m inspired.

“I think this story starts with Henry, my father,” I wrote at Whataburger.  “At least that’s the way I intended it to start.  But maybe it begins with L’Ida Lee.  If it hadn’t been for L’Ida Lee, I never would have been born.  L’Ida Lee killed herself.”

* * *

Monique Truong’s latest novel is Bitter in the Mouth.

I’m sitting in Whataburger trying to work on my sex book.  I’m editing a chapter in which I meet swingers – lifestylers, partner-swappers – through Craigslist.  But I’m having trouble concentrating because there’s a lifestyle group meeting in my neighborhood this weekend.  Part of me, a large part of me, wants to be at their party watching and reporting.  Since I can’t, since I need to write rather than report, I came to the WB thinking the lifestylers might drop in for breakfast.  I think I was right … as I sit here watching the customers, trying to figure out who might and might not be swingers.

So far, I think I’ve seen six possibles.  (Freudian slip – I initially typed sex possibles.)  Two were females who ran in to get drinks and as they filled their soda cups, they talked about the men they’d seen and the ones they were attracted to.  Two were male-female couples.  One couple was older and ultra-fit.  In fact, the man – if not for his aged face and toupee – would have passed for 20 years younger.  He was that buff.  After briefly checking me out, he kept watching the two younger women getting their drinks.  His wife?  She reminded me of a fit blonde I saw at the first swing club I went to.

Piles of garbage lined the sidewalk to our right.  Three lengths of velvet rope stretched along the sidewalk to our left.  Maybe a dozen people stood behind the rope trying to get into the club, but we weren’t going to that nightclub.  We were going to the one across the street, the one that had garbage in front of it – a club for couples who have recreational sex with multiple, consenting partners.  Utilizing the vernacular of the 1970s, it is a club for swingers, though today’s practitioners prefer to be called lifestylers.*

For those who don’t know me, I was at the swing club solely for research.  The WB?  Well, I’m here for the sausage biscuit, endless supply of Diet Coke, and the swingers. 

As for the other swinging couple at the WB, actually, they were the first ones here.  They were sitting near my favorite table, so normally I would have sat near them.  Today, I didn’t.  I was thinking I needed space and privacy to edit.  Now I wish I had sat near them so that I could have talked to them.  He wasn’t as fit as the older gentleman, but he was flirtatious with his wife like he was ready to party.  And she was dressed ready to flirt in her bikini with a skimpy cover-up that revealed her pierced belly button.  In fact, that’s something I noticed about lifestyling women – the older they get, the more likely they are to get piercings and tattoos.  But that’s for book two, not the book I’m working on today.

Oh, wait!  Four more lifestylers just walked in.  I gotta go watch.  As a friend of mine said about me, “I watch; I write.”  The writing’s going to have to wait ‘cause … “Are you with the lifestyle group?” I whisper.

“Yes,” he says.

* From my sex book-in-progress.

I saw something the other day that caused mixed emotions in me.  It was a hardback book, spread-eagle in the middle of the parkway, its pages flapping in the wind as cars drove over it.  Now the cars weren’t smashing it with their tires, thank God.  They were straddling it.  (Yes, I know, there are lots of sex puns there.  They’re not intended.)

My mixed emotions came from the fact that I was so thrilled that someone was actually buying books, perhaps even reading them.  That was juxtaposed with an equal amount of sadness that the book was being treated so poorly.  I wanted to rush into traffic and grab it and protect it like a child.  But I was rushing to Mickey D’s for a sausage biscuit.*

Besides, maybe the owner of the book would miss it and come looking for it.  Then again, maybe the owner didn’t give a hoot about the book and had tossed it in a rage.  A wife furious at what her husband was reading?  A student fed-up with school?  Maybe furious at a specific teacher?  Or did it accidentally fly out of the bed of a pick-up truck and that student wants that book?  Will he get in trouble for his carelessness?  Does he need the information it contains to get into college?   Does he love that book?  Maybe it holds a love sonnet he wanted to copy for his girlfriend – or words of inspiration for his baseball team. 

For struggling writers, this is where stories and books come from … from seeing something that triggers questions and daring to find the answers to those questions.  

Yes, part of that is the proverbial “then what” or “what happens next” question.  I used to use that when I talked to elementary students about writing.  A kid’s dreaming of a Slurpee, I’d tell them.  He goes to the 7-Eleven with a dollar in his pocket, but just as he gets to the 7-Eleven, that dollar blows out of his hand, and he’s really, really thirsty.  Then what?  From that, the kids would take off on an adventure, with me constantly asking, “Then what?”  And it’d usually end when the teacher and I would get freaked when the kids would have the monsters or bad guys show up.

But that doesn’t just work in fiction; it works in nonfiction too.  Suzy, an uptight, white Southern Baptist chick, starts researching and investigating Americans’ alternative sex practices.  Then what happens … to her?

Now I’m dreaming of the book I could write if I’d picked up the book I saw spread-eagle in the middle of the parkway and searched for the story behind it.  Maybe it’s the book owner’s story?  Maybe it’s the story of the book’s author?

But I’ll never know because I went to Mickey D’s and stood at the counter with mixed emotions.  They were serving breakfast and lunch.  I didn’t know what to choose.  I hate breakfast; I love lunch.  But if I had lunch now, which is 1000 calories, I couldn’t have lunch later today.  But if I had breakfast, ugh, that’d be 500 calories, and I could still have lunch later today.  Then what?

Mixed emotions. 

* So what happened that Suzy ended up at Mickey D’s instead of Whataburger?  My neighborhood Whataburger has gotten so filthy that I’m not going as often.  And Suzy really wants her daily Whataburger.  What happens next?

When I was a kid at summer camp, in order to get dinner, we had to create marching routines.  We’d rehearse our routines, march to the chow hall, perform our drills, and be judged on them.  Only then were we allowed to grab our military dinner trays and eat.  On the first night of camp, it was usually a simple routine as 12 barefoot girls would line up in rows of two, arms length apart, and march to the chow hall calling, “Left.  Left.  Left, right, left.”  We urged our voices as deep as schoolgirls could go.

As the camp term wore on, we morphed into lyrists and choreographers creating unique songs accompanied by elaborate maneuvers.  When we marched, we were part drill team and part chorus line dressed in faded cut-off jeans and t-shirts, usually with a pocket over the left breast.

There are two things I remember most about those marching drills.  First, I never could get in sync with my cabin mates.  While they were calling, “Left.  Left,” with their bare left feet hitting the hot pavement in perfect beat to the word left, my right foot was hitting the pavement, then stumbling over a stray pebble of granite, or my left foot was hitting the pavement two milliseconds after theirs.  To say I have no sense of rhythm is an understatement.

Yet, the second thing I remember is the bellowing rhythm of “left, left, left, right, left.”  It is so engraved into my memory that 40 years later I would hear it in my head as I walked the outdoor track at my old gym.  “Left.  Left.  Left, right, left,” and I stumbled over a chunk of cedar bark. 

But, no!  I couldn’t be thinking about summer camp and the way granite smells when it’s heated in the sun.  I couldn’t think about the sound of the motorboats as they skipped over the water, the rhythmic chirps of crickets in the late afternoon, or the chit-chit-chit of the water sprinklers on the Saint Augustine grass.  I needed to be thinking about SEX!  I had a sex book to write. 

Yes, some people have to force themselves to not think about sex.  I have to force myself to think about sex.  So as I stumbled and tumbled along that cedar bark track, I coaxed myself into calling, “Sex.  Sex.  Sex, right, sex,” for at least three figure eights around that track.  “Sex.  Sex.  Sex, right, sex.”  For one mile.  “Sex.  Sex.  Sex, right, sex.”

I always wondered what the male joggers thought as they passed me.

“Sex.  Sex.  Sex, right, sex.”

No, I only wondered for a split second because I was trying – forcing – myself to think about sex. 

As many of you know, I turned in the first draft of that book on May 1, 2009, which was a little over a year after I switched gyms.  There’s no track at my current gym, and now I’m back to trying – forcing – myself to think about sex because my editor has sent me her notes on the first two-thirds of the sex book.  They aren’t horrible notes.  In fact, I like them.  There’s a part of me that is so psyched and – do I dare say – excited to get back to working on the sex book.  But when it comes right down to it, I can’t seem to do it.  I’ll do anything other than think about sex.  I’ll write this blog.  I’ll vacuum.  I’ll even iron, which I hate doing.  I’ll go outside and pull weeds, and believe me, there are enough weeds to keep me pulling until next fall.  I’ll even work on my taxes … because that HAS to be done.

And still, the sex book sits on my desk – the first 230 pages printed out, my editor’s notes laying on top of them.  I glance at them and read:  “I think the main narrative of the book definitely starts in the right place with you talking about your …”

Ah, this is good, I think.  I can do this.  I turn on the computer, check Facebook, pull weeds, check Facebook again, and pretty soon it’s time to go the gym.  My new gym is small, intimate even.  Though the trainers and I sometimes quietly joke about sex, they don’t have me constantly thinking about sex like I need to.  And it’s too small of a gym to be pushing my feet against the footplates of the elliptical trainer while calling out, “Sex.  Sex.  Sex, right, sex.”

I’ve got to start thinking march, food, sex.  March, food, sex.  March, food, sex.  So if you see a brunette, wearing red eyeglasses, marching and stumbling somewhat rhythmically into a Whataburger, using her laptop as a military serving tray, and crazily shouting, “Sex.  Sex.  Sex, right, sex,” as she exits, maybe even swinging her laptop over her head as she throws in some fancy arm routines, “Sex.  Sex.  Sex, right, sex,” you’ll know it’s just me working on my sex book.  “Sex.  Sex.  Sex, right, sex.”* 

*  I don’t know what happened to me.  When I was typing that last line of “Sex.  Sex.  Sex, right, sex,” suddenly I heard a new line with it.  “Thrust that laptop toward his chest.”  You know, like, “Sex.  Sex.  Sex, right, sex.  Thrust that laptop toward his chest.”  Oh, geez, I don’t know where it came from.  Maybe it means I’m thinking about sex.  “Sex.  Sex.  Sex, right, sex.” 

By the way, let me know if you start walking around saying, “Sex.  Sex.  Sex, right, sex.”  Especially let me know if you add, “Thrust that laptop toward his chest!”

Over the past few days, I’ve heard from a friend struggling with juggling work, motherhood, marriage, and graduate school and a client struggling with her writing.  I understand.  I struggle too. 

Right now I’m struggling to write this because I’m sitting in Whataburger.  Let me back up.  For years, I had a set writing routine.  I’d wake up, check my email, shower, check email again, get dressed, check email again, and walk out the door to Whataburger — hence, the Whataburger cup on the home page of my website. 

I’d order a number one meal (Whataburger, fries, and soda), fill up my cup with ice and Diet Coke, sit down at one of my three favorite tables (next to the door or windows), pull out a hard copy of my previous day’s writing, and start editing.  By doing that, by the time I left the WB, I knew exactly where I needed to began writing, what I wanted to write, and how I wanted to start it.  And, and this and is important, I thought about that opening all the way home so that all I had do to when I got home was flip on the computer and start writing. 

Other times, I’d take my laptop to Whataburger and start writing there, sometimes getting so lost in my work that I’d stay for hours.  I’d “wake up” to realize I’d written through an entire Whataburger shift change.  I loved that.  I loved that the Whataburger employees found my work and me intriguing enough that they’d let me sit for hours and leave me alone.

But as some of you know, I moved, which meant a switch in Whataburger’s.  While my new WB is filled with great employees, I’ve never felt comfortable working here.  Only one employee seems curious about my work, and that’s because he wants me to edit his school papers for him, which I would do if he’d ever remember to bring them to me.  Plus, this store is too small to let me take up a table for hours.  And the clientele is different.  Musicians and homeless men frequented my old Whataburger.  Retired corporate executives and blue-collar workers fill this Whataburger.  Some people would consider that an improvement.  I don’t.  They don’t feed my creative juices.

I remember sitting in my old Whataburger when Jennifer Gale walked in, her brown hair flowing over the shoulders of her apple red Christmas sweatshirt.  For those of you who don’t know Austin, Jennifer was a transgendered homeless woman who frequently ran for mayor.  She was a sweetheart.  I can say that from personal experience because as she walked out the door one day, she stopped, turned around, came over to me, and with a big, beautiful smile on her face told me how much she loved my eyeglasses and that she hoped I had a wonderful day.

Jennifer Gale

Such kindnesses don’t happen at my current Whataburger.

And, indeed, Jennifer made my day wonderful.

I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t feel the emotional support at my current Whataburger that I did at my old one.  And I’m sure I’m projecting myself on my friend and my client when I say that often we find ourselves struggling when we feel like we’re not getting the emotional support we need. 

I know that’s happened to me over the past few years as I’ve struggled with my sex book.  People who once supported it turned against it.  One person even told me that the book is going to destroy my career and … well, I don’t want to say what else she said.  But perhaps worst of all, the person I depended on to be my biggest, loudest-cheering champion gave me such harsh critique that I lost my self-confidence.  Initially, the harsh critique was done in the name of making me a better writer.  At first, that’s what it felt like – hard critique to make me better.  But over the years it seemed to turn into cruel, unnecessary digs intended to make me doubt myself.  And that’s what it did.  Like the cliché acid, it ate away at my self-confidence.  The scars run deep and red. 

I’ve thought about that a lot over the past hours … ever since I got the email from my client … saying her writing wasn’t going well … that her work (in essence, since I’ve been coaching her) is missing its former elegance, that it seems forced and clunky. 

She’s right.  And I know the reason why.  In the name of making her a better writer, I froze her with my harsh critique. 

“Stand up and shake,” I wrote her back.  “Literally.  Just stand up and shake me off.  Then go read my blog about writer’s terror.  Don’t think or worry about me.  Just write.  Just write for yourself … for your soul … like nobody’s listening.”

That’s what I said last night.  Today, all I’ve been thinking about is my mentor Ben Masselink.  Ben was my favorite instructor in the University of Southern California Master of Professional Writing Program.  All Ben ever told me was go, go, go, go, go, you can do this.  You’re almost there.  Go, go, go, go, go, go … though Ben usually said it with a ton of typos as he pecked out the words on one of his black Underwood typewriters. 

So, to my client, I want to say I’m very sorry that I’ve made you doubt your talent. Truly, I have been hard on you because I do believe in you and do believe that you are talented.  In fact, you might be the most innately talented writer I coach.  I’ve been harsh on you because I thought you were strong enough to handle the critique and because I wanted to prepare you for the harshness of this industry.  I still believe you are strong enough to handle the critique, but I failed to remember that we all need a Ben Masselink in our lives.  So, girl, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go.  You’re almost there.  You can do it.  I believe in you.  Go, go, go, go, go, go.

And to my friend, I believe in you too.  I know it’s hard.  I wish I were there to help you juggle.  But I know you can do this.  Go, go, go, go, go.  Or, as Ben told me, “YOURE GOING TO DO IT!!!!”

No, you ARE doing it.

USC classmate, friend, and novelist, Mitchell Sam Rossi, me, and our beloved mentor, Ben Masselink