This Writer’s Life | Kelsey Timmerman

McPhee to writers “You’re going to get there.”

By Kelsey

“When a person is twenty-one or twenty-two years old and facing that great enigma about what to do, envying the law students or medical students who can get on a set of rails and run on it and know where they’re going, the writer doesn’t know. But a writer should also bear in mind there are numerous paths to this goal and they’re all O.K….You’re going to get there. If the person expects the big answer at twenty-one, that’s ridiculous. Everyone’s in the dark.”

(John McPhee quoted in Literary Journalism in an essay by editor Norman Sims)

When I was twenty-two I was a world-traveling SCUBA instructor with a degree in Anthropology hanging on the wall of my vacant bedroom at my parent’s house. I wasn’t allowed to put holes in the wall of the attic, accessed by fold down stairs, in which I lived in Key West.

Would I ever actually use the degree?

I didn’t want to be an Anthropologist. I wanted to write. But how?

When I turned off the light in my attic I was literally and figuratively in the dark.

I’ve recounted my writing path before, so I won’t do it again here, but I would like to touch on something that McPhee said. I have always envied folks on a traditional career path, including med students, law students, and teachers. They know they have to go to school for X many years and then for X many years more, and then they’ll find a job doing X. A writer faces uncertainty.

You can work your tail off writing your novel only to complete it and no one wants to publish it. You can travel the world chasing the tags of your clothes with a notion of an idea that could be a book, maybe, and you could return with nothing to show but a wallet $8,000 lighter.

Writing takes courage, faith, and, in my case, a very a patient spouse.

I was a columnist earning less than $30 per week. Then I was a freelancer earning a couple of hundred per story. Then I was an author who was paid a year’s salary (a year working at McDonald’s). Then I was a freelancer earning up to $3 per word. Then I was a speaker, earning a couple grand per talk. And now I’m all of the above, sometimes.

I’m not really sure.

I had a day job, but it is no more. I know how I’ll earn a living from now until December, but after that I have no idea. The Nothing Personal book proposal is very near to going out. Even though I think it’s a killer book, who knows how it will be received? My last two proposals had some interest, but not enough to give them life. So much of a writing career depends on someone else believing in your story.

At 21 I lived McPhee’s quote and at 31, a published author, I still do. Yes, I live the uncertainty, but more than that I have faith in what McPhee says, “You’re going to get there.” I hope that I will always be striving for a there — another book, the next speaking gig, This American Life, the New Yorker, Esquire, a novel.

A writer must constantly evolve. McPhee says, “It’s like a huge river with a lot of islands in it. You can go around an island to the left or right. You can got to this or that island. You might go to an eddy. But you’re still in the river.”

What’s next for me? Maybe a book. I’ve got some cool radio pieces in the works and an exciting list of fun speaking gigs coming up. Maybe school.

To grow as a writer I’m auditing a graduate course in Literary Journalism at Ball State that led me to the book below (affiliate link) and McPhee’s quote. Maybe I’ll take the course for credit and pursue my MA.

When I grow up I want to be a writer. I’m not positive how I’ll continue my pursuit of there, but one thing is for sure — I’ll never stop paddling.

This Writer’s Life

He-Man vs. Dora The Explorer

By Kelsey

I watch Dora the Explorer, Wonder Pets, Go Diego Go, Ni-Hao Kai Lan. I absorb them by osmosis while my toddler stares mesmerized. I barely watch any ESPN. I should have my man card revoked purely for the reason that I sing this song everyday…

What I’m saying is that I consume as many cartoons now as I did when I was six. And while the cartoons of today teach my little girl how to share and be a good friend and how to say “hi” in Spanish and Chinese, I feel like they are lacking in the imagination department (Backyardagins is a phenomenal exception).

Lenny, Tuck, and Ming Ming (the Wonder Pets) get a call from an animal in trouble, they put their airship together and zoom off to save them. When they arrive there is some problem that needs overcome: the animal is a skunk and they have to free him without scaring him, or the animal is high in a tree. Whatever. They always work it out in the end with Teamwork. (By the way – in our house one of the great ways to stop Harper from crying is to call out: “What’s going to work?” And then she sucks it up and responds with a teary-eyed: “Teamwork!”) Problem solved.

The show like many of the others we watch seem too formulaic. I tell Harper, “Your cartoons aren’t as good as the cartoons when I was a kid.” I worry about what this means for the development of her imagination, and her understanding of story.

But nostalgia can be blinding, so I really started to consider my favorite cartoons of the 80s. And I found that they weren’t as imaginative and non-formulaic as I thought.

Let’s examine a few:

HE-MAN
When the shit hits the fan Prince Adam raises his sword to the heavens and hollers “By the Power of Grayskull, I have the Power.” Skeletor proceeds to get his butt whooped by Battle Cat and He-Man. (On a side note: Who the heck thought of the name He-Man? How uncreative is that?)

Voltron(The one with the cats not the cars. Tell me you didn’t like the one with the cars!)
King Zarkon and/or his son Lotor, and their witch buddy Haggar unleash yet another Robeast on the planet Arus. Quick to the robot lion ships! The robot lions get smacked down by the Robeast. Uh oh, let’s form Vol-Tron! Voltron is formed and he holds his own for a bit before taking a few lumps. Now let’s show him how a robot-man made out of robot cats does it! Form flaming sword! And no Robeast is a match for a flaming-sword wielding Vol-Tron. Peace falls on the land of Arus. Hey, geniuses why not just form Voltron with blazing sword from the get go, kick some ass, and then you can all get back to trying to woo the princess in the pink cat?

(Isn’t this Optimus Prime introducing Vol-Tron?)

Gummi Bears
Trouble. Trouble. Duke Igthorn is at it again with the help of his ogre minions. Oh no Grammy Gummi is captured. Drink Gummiberry Juice. Bounce on helmets of Ogres. Zip down Gummi shoot to underground Gummi lair. Laugh. End show.

Thundercats
See He-Man. Replace “By the Power of Grayskull…” with “Thunder…Thunder…Thunder Cats Ho!” Skeletor = Mummra. Snark = Orko. Toys = Sold.

Silverhawks:

Exactly like Thundercats but in space with hawks.

And all of the above are basically just rip-offs of Popeye. Poor Popeye can’t defend his lady – not sure why he wants to defend the homely Olive Oyl anyhow – eats some spinach and kicks Bluto’s butt.

They are all the same show!

Granted there were other genre of cartoons back in the day, but they were often similar to others. Transformers = Mask = GI Joe

And that brings me to what I feel to be the best and most imaginative cartoon of the 80s: Duck Tales. Woohoo!

How much of my wanting to explore the world came from watching Huey, Duey, and Luey protecting the fortune of Uncle Scrooge, I’ll never know.

What is your favorite cartoon of today? How about of the 80s? (I’ve left some good ones off the list.)

This Writer’s Life

An Uncle’s Job

By Kelsey

My brother, Kyle, and his wife, Jenn, just welcomed their first child into the world.

Max Timmerman weighed in at 6lbs 9oz and was born yesterday a few skips from Houston’s Space Center. The sky’s the limit for Max. He’s got two really smart parents one of who – my brother – is a bit of doofus, but he’ll be okay.

I’ve been a proud uncle to Annie’s sister’s kids, Jared and Cale, for six years now, but it’s different with your own bro’s kids, you know? I feel like I have a little more latitude to teach Max the important things in life: how to spit, how to cuss, how to sneak sips of beer when the adults aren’t looking.

I just signed him up for lifetime subscriptions to Playboy, GQ, Esquire, the New York Times, and the New Yorker. I actually didn’t. But that’s the kind of uncle I want to be (minus the Playboy which would get me in a lot of trouble with Max’s mom).

An uncle’s job is to teach a boy all the things his mom won’t let his father teach him.

It will be an absolute honor, my man, Max.

This Writer’s Life

Stuck on Train

By Kelsey

I’m stuck on a train in Connecticut. You can follow my tale of survival on twitter at #stuckontrain . There’s no AC, but there’s plenty of gaseous kids.

This Writer’s Life

Two guys walk into a butcher’s

By Kelsey

Brown & Co. Butcher. Kettering Road, Northampton

From Flickr's Creative Commons by Northhampton Museum

Many of you know that I’ve embarked on my latest project – Nothing Personal – with Andrew Newton. We’ve covered 10s of thousands of miles around the globe, crossed oceans and mountains, suffered nights on trains, planes, and buses, recorded days of interviews, and met some amazing people. Andrew arrived to Muncie last week and when we haven’t been getting him tested for malaria (that’s another story), we’ve been working on the Nothing Personal book proposal.

So far our project has been a success. Much more of a success than our recent trip to the local butcher here in Muncie.

Meat is manly, especially bloody meat surrounded by the sharp cleavers and knives that cut the bloody meat. That’s why there are few places more manly than a butcher’s.

We approach the counter of dead animal. I wait for Andrew to say something. Andrew waits for me to say something. Each of us hopes the other knows something about meat.

“Can I help you?” The woman behind the counter asks.

We look at each other and the realization sets in that neither one of us knows jack about meat.

“Yes, what steaks would you recommend for two adult males and one adult female?” Andrew says.

She stares at us. Perhaps it was Andrew’s accent and the way he puts a long “A” on adult. Perhaps it was the way we were nervously sweating as we watched our respective manhoods slip away.

“Well…ladies tend to like the New York strip and men the T-bone,” she says.

We both turn to the T-bone. It has more meat on it than an entire cow in Ethiopia. It’s huge. Taking it all in requires turning your head from side-to-side.

The head butcher steps up when he sees us floundering.

“Whatchyou fellas need?” He says with an East-coast accent and a bit of gravel in his throat. It’s a manly voice.

We turn to the New York strips, the ones the woman butcher told us the ladies liked. “Boy, those are kinda thick.”

“No problem,” the butcher says, “I can cut ‘em in half for you.”

“Oh, I can cut them in half when we get home,” I say.

“I doubt that,” the butcher says without the slightest bit of sarcasm. He grabs a hunk of meat and a sword-like knife.

Bam. Bam. Bam. Three ladies’ steaks cut in half.

We sheepishly approach the counter and pay for our pansy steaks. But as soon as we exit the world doesn’t know what transpired within.

We are just men leaving the butcher’s, carrying meat, and it doesn’t get much more manly than that.

This Writer’s Life

“I Slept with the Prophetess” and other ways not to start a query

By Kelsey

I’m hoping to develop a longer version of my Faith in the Poor post for a magazine. So, I pitched a hip Christian magazine that likes to challenge their readers. I began with this…

I slept with the Prophetess. How many folks can say that?

Yep, probably not the best way to begin a query.

Needless to say, I probably won’t be hearing from them. If they made it through the whole sleeping with the Prophetess bit, they were probably put off by the question that followed. Sleeping with the Prophetess is bad enough, but bragging about it…

It was one of those pitches that I sent out between a bologna sandwich and a diaper change. Somewhere post-diaper change I realized that they might think that I, in fact, slept with the Prophetess (not just a prophetess but THE capital P Prophetess). Actually, I spent the night in her son’s apartment on a small couch. It was an amazing and powerful experience that I hope to share soon.

The opening sentences I wrote might be appropriate in a query to a Christian Porno Magazine.

Dear Porn-Again Christian,

There I was in the slums of Nairobi. Seeing all that poverty made me horny. And then I saw her dressed in a purple uniform. Our eyes met. She said, “I can see the future. And I see you and me…

(Okay, I’ll stop there. I was starting to weird myself out.)

This got me thinking about other inappropriate ways I could start a query.

A pitch about how curious children are: I once stuck my finger up a Doberman’s butt.

A pitch about how I feel bad killing lighting bugs when I drive: I’m a killer.

A pitch about a bond between a mother and a son: My mother took me to my first topless show.

A pitch about Key West: I was molested by a 6’5” drag queen.

I could go on forever. But I should get busy sending out some new queries.

If you have any other “Ways Not to Start a Query,” I’d love to here them. @kelseytimmerman me on Twitter or leave ‘em in the comments.

Sincerely this guy (I’m considering using this shot in my bio and sending it along with all my queries. What do you think?),

This Writer’s Life

How I learned (the hard way) not to give your father the finger

By Kelsey

(This is an excerpt from a column I wrote 5 years ago.)

I was five when my dad presented me with the throne.

It was made of plywood and 2×4’s; most people would have called it an ugly chair, but to a seven-year-old it was a throne.

My father built me the chair to preserve his own sanity. For some reason the swiveling roller chair, which I had previously occupied at the dinner table, annoyed my father. After a hard day’s work, watching me execute 360’s and figure eights, while I skillfully filled my mouth with Mac ‘n Cheese, was not his preferred method of winding down.

The wood throne was stiff and unmovable. If much wiggling took place splinters tended to work themselves into my back and rear. There was just one problem with my father’s plan…I thought the chair was cool.

Empowered by my lofty seat, I was inspired to try new things. At that young age I itched to put the day’s lessons to use as soon as possible. That day the lesson was in sign language, delivered by an older neighbor boy. His words echoed in my round head, “Do…THIS… to your dad.”

So I did.

In a lull in conversation, as the rest of my family chewed, I looked Dad in the eye from my throne. I held out my skinny arm with an upturned fist and let fly the longest of my tiny little fingers, the King of all fingers, the Bird. Chewing stopped, breathing may have too. My father’s eyes adjusted focus from my cherubic face to my midget digit.

He pushed his swiveling roller chair from the table and approached the throne.

It was one of my earliest lessons in table manners.

—

Happy Father’s Day dad!

This Writer’s Life

My heart of stone

By Kelsey

There’s a pebble in my pocket.

The pebble is polished from countless times checking to see that it was still there. On a deforested hillside swinging a pick next hardworking day laborers, tearing up stumps in Ethiopia, I checked for the pebble. Spending the night on a small couch in the Mathare slums of Nairobi, I checked for the pebble before attempting to close my eyes. In Uganda while talking with a single mother with AIDS about the future of her children, I checked for the pebble. In Ireland, while sitting across from a man who lost his son and wife by suicide within three months of one another, I checked for the pebble.

The pebble was always there. I’d find it in the deep corner of my pocket and rub it a few times between my thumb and forefinger. It almost became a tick. I became self-conscious about it. There’s a name for active hands floundering around in a man’s pocket. I’m not sure if they have pool in Africa, or at least call it pool. I saw a few snooker halls.

“Honest, I’m not playing pocket snooker, I’m just touching my tiny pebble.” I had my excuse ready for any disapproving looks.

I firmly believe that you shouldn’t travel with anything you can’t afford to lose. It’s a good thing too because I lost a lot of stuff on my six-week trip, way more than normal. I lost my cell phone. I left it in a Kenyan friend’s car. It was old. I emailed him to keep it. I lost a pair of underwear. My working theory is that Justin at Rule29 stole them; he’s got underwear thief written all over him. I lost a Moleskine notebook with some contacts I would really like to have back. I left it on a bus in Dublin. For four days AirFrance lost my checked luggage. It included all of my clothes, some of my recording equipment, everything but my toothbrush, computer, Kindle, and, most importantly, the pebble.

At first glance there is nothing special about the pebble. But to my daughter Harper there was something about it that called to her. We were on a walk with my mom in the woods surrounding her home. Harper squatted down, her tiny butt a half-inch from the ground, weeds towering over her head, and she picked up the pebble. A smile crossed her face and her little legs carried her as quickly as possible to Mom. She stretched her arm out and dropped the pebble in Mom’s hand.

“Thank you, Harper,” Mom said.

Mom smiled at Harper who was toddling off to explore the woods further and then Mom looked at the pebble. She saw it too, that special something.

Soon I would be leaving on my trip to Africa and Ireland for six weeks.

“Harper gave this to me,” Mom said. “You should take it with you on your trip.”

I didn’t think much of it. I just nodded and said I would. It wasn’t until I saw the pebble lit up by the African sun that I saw the special something too.

When times are tough and when it seems the only thing in shorter supply than money is hope, the most important thing we can do is see that special something in our family and friends and value it above all else.

Some people have hearts of stone and some wear their hearts on their sleeves. For six weeks the stone was my heart and I carried it in my pocket.

This Writer’s Life

A good place to be a cow

By Kelsey

I went for a walk. I met a few cows and one fisherman. I did some thinking. I shot a few videos; here’s the first:

This Writer’s Life

I have a superpower

By Kelsey

Unfortunately my superpower is summoning birds to swoop from the heavens and poop on my head.

All I have to do is say or think something after which it would be incredibly ironic if a bird pooped on my head.

For instance, today, I was crossing the Liffey River in Dublin looking up at a statue of a famous man. Streaks of white poop ran down his metal forehead. I thought to myself, “Boy, someday I hope I’m famous enough to be a statue that birds poop on.”

The sky parted. A distance “ca-caw” could be heard on the Irish summer breeze and then BAM! I was hit! I instinctively ducked in case it was a squadron of bombers. I put my hand to my head to survey the damage. And damage there was.

Green. Chunky. Damage.

I’m not sure what birds in Ireland eat, but that bird wasn’t healthy.

The first time I used my superpower was in Baja, Mexico. After a long day of diving, I was on the deck of the dive boat chatting with over-privileged teenagers about our day. I was their dive instructor and they were hammering me with “What if” questions.

“What if my buddy and I both run out of air at the exact same time?”

“What if there is a current and we’re being swept out to sea away from the boat into a circling school of sharks that have laser beams strapped to their heads?”

You get the idea.

That’s when I said, “What if…what if…what if a meteor shoots from the sky and sinks our boats?”

BAM! To the delight of all, I was blessed by a seagull in the head, across the face, and down my shoulder.

I hope this stage is me just feeling out my power and understanding how to control it because it would be pretty sweet if I could summon birds to poop on someone else’s head.

Hey Mr. Strutting-down-the-street-in-your-muscle-shirt-two-sizes-too- small. You might think you look cool now, but wait until a bird poops on your head.

Howdy Ms. Cut-me-off-in-your-shiny-red-convertible. Ever have a bird poop in your eye while traveling 70 mph?

Any superhero worth the Spandex, sees their power as a curse as much as a gift. Fortunately, if great power comes with great responsibility, I’m pretty much off the hook.

—
If you had the power to summon birds to poop on someone’s head, who would be your victim?

This Writer’s Life