Guest post by Viva Las Vegas
Author of Magic Gardens: The Memoirs of Viva Las Vegas and The Gospel According to Viva Las Vegas: Best of the Exotic Years, Viva Las Vegas appears Saturday, October 9th at 3pm on the Wordstock stage, and Sunday, October 10th at 2pm on the Wordstock stage.
From the moment I took the stage at Magic Gardens—a small dive strip club in Portland’s Chinatown—I knew I had to write about it.
I was a shy twenty-two year old tomboy with short dirty-blonde hair, dressed in a white satin slip and a pair of second-hand too-big rhinestone-covered ruby-red seven-inch heels. As I tottered around precariously on the Magic’s tiny wooden stage for the very first time, every step brought a new inspiration, a new revelation. I’d always been a writer (was first published at age seven in Highlights Magazine), and could hardly wait to pull on my blue jeans, scrub off the makeup, and process all that I’d seen over coffee and a notebook. And that, in a nutshell, is how I spent my twenties: dancing around in various states of undress before crowds of people, then chastely bundled in denim and cashmere writing for hours in solitary confinement.
Much of my writing about the industry was published during that time in Exotic Magazine, a sex-industry digest of which I was editor from 1998 – 2005 (with a year or so off for good behavior). I wrote a monthly column and lots of interviews with bands and intellectual luminaries (many are compiled in The Gospel According to Viva Las Vegas). The immediacy of the columns frequently bit me in the ass. I could, say, get in a squabble with a boyfriend, write my side of the story, and see it published while the wounds were still fresh. This was never very appealing to my beaux, but the strippers would squeal about it all month long in the dressing room, the customers would guffaw at the bar, and I’d be pleased because ultimately it was they who were my chosen audience. Still, the only romantic liaison that I managed to maintain for more than a year was with a fellow writer—someone who understood that all’s fair in love, war, and periodicals.
I started writing my book in earnest at age 29. Before that I suffered numerous false starts. I was quite disciplined, worked as a writer, and had plenty of flexible time, but I just couldn’t shelve friendships/ relationships/ living in New York City/ other artistic endeavors to make the time necessary to produce a book. Finally, with my thirties looming, I quit one of my jobs, resigned myself to being single, and—THIS WAS KEY—stopped working out first thing in the morning.
It still amazes me that this was the key. Certainly life coaches are known to say, “If something really matters to you, do it first.” I guess I always put my health first, and it was a big deal to delay my meditation/ yoga/ swimming/ running until later in the day, but it turns out that’s what it took. Of course, during this time I also got cancer, but writing requires a certain sacrifice and may, in some instances, actually be deadly.
I’d wake up alone, put the coffee on, and before the caffeine had penetrated my brain, I’d be stringing words together across a blank page. Soon my kitchen was papered with Post-it notes, I had dug out old journals, columns, and soundtracks, and within two months I had ONE HUNDRED PAGES of single-spaced manuscript! And I still managed to work out in the afternoons.
Seeing the project through to publication proved an even greater challenge. It took five years after that initial flurry of activity until I held the bound book in my hands. Relationships, career changes, buying a house, and cancer upended things. But there’s a lot that’s comforting about returning to a well-loved project, one that you’ve sacrificed so much for, and seeing how it can nourish you. You only get out what you put in, right? Indeed, lots of maxims were proving true.
I’ve always loved the Hunter S. Thompson quote about the music industry: “The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There is also a bad side.” The publishing industry as I’ve experienced it is not much different. There are a lot of stripper books on the market, and most of them are crap. I had a very difficult time finding a willing publisher or agent. Finally, on the eve of being diagnosed with breast cancer, a reading I did of my work-in-progress segued into me being signed by Portland’s own Dame Rocket Press.
It was pretty nice timing. Had I been diagnosed before finding a publisher, the book may never have seen the light of day. And then I wouldn’t have had the wonderful distraction of working on my book with a brilliant creative team while I underwent a mastectomy and chemotherapy (something that is explored at length in the Gospel, with permission from Portland Monthly).
In the end, when I finally held my baby in my hands, was it all worth it? Hell yes. People are taking my book to bed with them, and, even more dear to me, taking it to heart. The feedback I get from readers makes every sacrifice worthwhile. I’m proud of myself—that I saw this project through to the end. I consider Magic Gardens a gift to Portland, to my scintillating co-strippers, and to my starry-eyed younger self.
As for the new book, The Gospel According to Viva Las Vegas…. Permit me to apologize in advance, and yet again, to all those ex-boyfriends.
Writing is just writing—a practice, if you like, a discipline, an art, a craft. It’s not a mystery. If you write a page a day for a year you will have a first draft of a novel or several short stories or whatever it is you want to write. We sit down with our tools of choice—pad and pencil, laptop, typewriter and become still enough to hear the story that’s ours to tell. It whispers itself to us. It’s a very quiet little voice and if you’re too busy, too loud, too distracted you might not hear it. We practice coaxing the words out by writing so often and with such regularity that we become good friends with the process. We quiet the mind and simply start regardless of how we feel about it. There is no good or bad, there is only you showing up with attention to listen to the story you need to tell. Later there will be revision of the story and time to shape and fix, but not at first. At first there is only sitting still and listening with openness.
on the McMenamins Stage for a conversation with Karen Karbo “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Book Promotion But Were Afraid To Ask”
na Maria Spagna can be seen on Saturday Oct. 9th of the festival at 5pm on the McMenamins Stage. In addition to her individual appearance, Ana Maria Spagna is teaching a Wordstock for Writers workshop, “Where Stories Converge,” Saturday 3 – 4:15pm Room B116.