Write Like a Dancer
and come to Grotto Night at SFPL Main on Tuesday, January 27 @ 6pm
TL:DR
J9-AI* summary: the post looks at Janine’s ballet career and compares it to attitudes toward literature but what she really wants to do is drum up support for Grotto Night @ SFPL Main.
Details here:
Local, Indie, and IRL: A Grassroots Approach to Building an Author Platform
Tuesday January 27 6PM - 7:30PM
100 Larkin, Urban Fiction
San Francisco
Learn how you can strengthen your writing practice and build your writing community. A memoirist, a bookseller, and a librarian share their secrets. With Susan Ito, Daniel Duque-Estrada, and Michelle Jeffers. Moderated by Janine Kovac.
Free! Plus punch and pie**
Full post
When I was a dancer, my friends and I knew everything.
We knew which directors would only hire tall dancers and which ones had roaming hands. We knew which choreographers would bring dancers with them to their next gig. We knew which pointe-shoe cobblers were retiring soon. Which theaters had the best contracts. We knew the companies that toured versus the ones that stayed at home. We knew what repertoire you would dance—story ballets? Balanchine? The director’s own choreography?
We knew it all.
It didn’t matter whether I was in a small company like Ballet El Paso, a big union company like Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle, or in a company where I didn’t speak the language, as in Graz—somehow my friends and I still knew everything.
Through word of mouth (the internet would not be in our palms for another twenty years), we knew which theater was going to fold, which auditions to avoid, the bigwigs who quit versus the ones who got fired. (By the way, pianists and stagehands are great sources of information.)
It wasn’t just gossip, though. Every day in a dancer’s life is a quest to improve. Part of the quest is to know which choreographers’ ballet were hard on the body and whether that might be mitigated by an in-house masseuse.
It’s how we got jobs, how we kept them, and also, how, as a collective, we fortified a profession. We were like Sequoias. Our roots didn’t run deep—they ran wide and tangled with each other.
At the end of the day, all we wanted to do was to be able to dance more. I don’t hear that from writers or in messaging to writers. The messaging is how to sell more books or get more followers but there rarely seems to be exclamation marks around how to spend more time writing. If anything there is the oft-repeated lament (attributed to several sources from Oscar Wilde to Dorothy Parker to Mark Twain) about we hate to write but love having written.
You would never hear a dancer say that. What dancer hates to dance? And the present perfect “have danced” means that the dancing is in the past and no dancer ever wants that, even if it means less pain. The career is short enough already.
Writers, let’s fold this into our writing with our writing community. What if we were constantly scheming, what do we have to do to keep writing?
Thirty years ago I trudged daily to a job that most people didn’t care about. We did our job. We loved our job. We knew that the general public didn’t give a shit. We held each other up by sharing every tidbit of information we knew.
I see parallels between ballet back then and literature now—especially in the sadness that comes with believing that the art that drives you is not valued by others.
If writers were to fortify the ballet-way, we’d be sharing information constantly. What’s the standard consignment percentage at an indie bookstore? What’s the going rate for a “substantial advance”? Which libraries do author events where writers can sell their own books? Forget the algorithm. That is a moving target. But giving love to your favorite indie bookstore, frequenting your favorite reading series, writing with your buddies. That’s where it’s at.
In fact, this topic is so important to me, I’m moderating a panel at the SFPL on Tuesday, January 27 so I can discuss it with writer/teacher Susan Ito, Daniel Duque-Estrada of Rosa Blanca Books and Michelle Jeffers, SFPL’s Chief of Community Programs and Partnerships.
Michelle Jeffers is SFPL’s Chief of Community Partnerships and Programs. I plan to ask her how she chooses the One City, One Book as well as how she chooses the books for SFPL’s book club.
You all know Susan Ito! She is everywhere! A board member for Mesa Refuge, a teacher at Mills, a writer, a taiko drummer! She is so generous with others. I’m going to ask her how she refills her cup. I also want to know about retreats she’s led at St. Sabina and elsewhere and what to do when the world moves on and the space you use for writing is no longer available.
Speaking of generous, Danny Duque-Estrada (in addition to being Jesus Sierra’s nephew) is such a rock-star. The owner of Rosa Blanca Books in El Sobrante, a dad, an actor, a playwright, and the person you want to contact to pre-order (at a discount!) Eirinie Carson’s new novel Bloodfire, Baby. (email danielito@rosablancabooks.com to pre-order). I’m going to ask Danny about MONEY.
Please join me! Deets here:
Local, Indie, and IRL: A Grassroots Approach to Building an Author Platform
Tuesday, January 27 6PM - 7:30PM
100 Larkin, Urban Fiction
San Francisco
Learn how you can strengthen your writing practice and build your writing community. A memoirist, a bookseller, and a librarian share their secrets.
Free!
Plus punch and pie!**
*Janine’s “Artist Intelligence”
**because I was told by a PR expert that more people will show up if they think there will be treats