Ripples

I tend to think and speak in metaphors. 

Perhaps it’s a way to connect all the disparate random thoughts that fly through my head – to bring some order to them, categorize them, in the same way that spreadsheets and flow charts can make a seemingly impossible project seem manageable.

Friends and family are kindly indulgent.  They listen to me struggle to express a thought, and then smile as I say, “You know, it’s like that scene in Casablanca…,” “it’s like when you let a balloon go…,” “it’s like watching your child grow up…,” “it’s like…”

Well, this morning I was looking at the statistics on this blog.  Not only the US, but the UK, India, France, Indonesia, Austria, Canada, Russia, Singapore, Hungary, Ukraine, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, and Australia. 

I turn to Robert, and say, “You know, it’s like donating blood…”  Possibly your eyebrows, like his, are raising in puzzlement.

But the other day, as I was lying in the bus that comes to our office every eight weeks or so, I wondered again about the idea of something that lives inside my body going out into the world and into another human being’s life, without my even knowing about it.

It’s a very personal exchange, but also a very anonymous one.  I have no idea what the path of those red blood cells, those little pieces of me, will take, and how they will affect others. 

“You know, it’s like writing…”

~~~~~

Disappointing Others With Our Need to Write

I’ve seldom wanted to, but I know I’ve disappointed others.  I’m disappointing some right this very minute.  Sometimes, it’s unavoidable. 

I need to write. This has been a fact of my life that’s run as an undercurrent since I was very little, and perhaps the strangest part about it is that it doesn’t hinge on whether anyone actually reads what I write. 

Here’s the thing:  It’s the way I make sense of the world.  It tells me clearly how I feel.  It’s like breathing:  Constant, sometimes refreshing, sometimes labored and difficult, but apart from very short breaks, always necessary.

But writing takes time, and quiet rooms, and reading, and reflection.  This makes me unavailable.  My response time to emails lengthens.  At times, I turn off my phone and don’t answer my front door.  I’ve been called occasionally –- and teasingly, I hope -- a “recluse,”  “antisocial,” or even “obsessed.”  (If you don’t mind terribly, I’d prefer “committed,” “dedicated,” or if you absolutely must, “literarily eccentric.”)

Pardon me if I sound just a smidge strident here.  I’m generally a “pleaser,” and often will put my own needs in second place if only to avoid confrontation.  But I’m afraid this is as close to “non-negotiable” as I get.

The etymology of the word disappointment, from the late 15^th century is, quite literally, “to fail to keep an appointment.”  And so often, this is an appointment of the heart, led on by the expectation of another that we’ll be, or say, or do more than we’re able.

That look in my son’s eyes at five or six years old comes back as clearly as if his little self is right here next to me.  “But you said…” he says softly, as his tears start welling up. 

“I know I said I would TRY, but it didn’t turn out that way. I’m sorry.”

That was a moment when I wanted to say, “Oh, okay.  Never mind.  I won’t… go to work / finish that poem / visit a friend who needs me on Saturday / take a much-needed mental health day alone / accommodate your father’s schedule….We’ll go to the movies instead...”

But I would weigh the consequences -- holding a little boy’s disappointment in one hand, and my responsibility in the other.  I could even hear a voice in my head at times, saying “Well, he’ll have to learn about disappointment someday. We can’t always get what we want.” And when the Rolling Stones’ voices followed, wailing, “But we get what we ne-eed!” I would turn away, and so would he, running his hand across his face and wiping the hot tear on his t-shirt.  And my heart would break a little.

I’d venture to say there’s not a person on the planet who hasn’t felt the clench of stomach and droop of shoulders that comes with disappointment. It’s certainly not a stranger to me.  We expect so much of each other, and of ourselves.

When I was younger, much younger, my home life was so out of control I remember thinking that when I could control it, it would be perfect.  I would be responsible only to myself, and disappoint no one.  As I said, I was much younger. 

But the slowly-dawning surprise of this life has been that it doesn’t stop, this necessity to sometimes hurt and disappoint people, even through the best intentions.  I won’t quote Abraham Lincoln here, but you really can’t please everyone.  If you try, you’ll end up pleasing no one, including yourself.

So, the door is closed, my phone is off, and I write.  And there are people who want me to do otherwise.

Our next lesson, class?  How to avoid the guilt that comes with meeting our own needs and as a result, disappointing others. 

There will be a test after.  Multiple choice.  Unfortunately, none of them perfect.

~~~~~

On Jealousy, Envy, and the Color of the Other’s Grass

Although it’s getting close to Valentine’s Day, this is not about romantic jealousy -- although I could, of course, write at length about my history with the green-eyed monster.  Another day, perhaps.

This burst of thought was actually brought on by watching my Twitter timeline roll merrily by, and the hundreds of writers I follow.  I read their cheerful postings of brilliant blog entries, novels available on Amazon, kudos from their fellow writers, and the ubiquitous hastag of #amwriting, with a mixture of emotions. 

The first, I’m glad to say, is respect for their work.  Then, there’s a general feeling of pride in the writing process.  But creeping in hard on the heels of those noble reactions are jealousy, envy, and wishing I were living in what I perceive to be their much more disciplined and verdant pastures.  (Random observation: Isn’t it interesting that jealousy is characterized as “green,” which is also the color of the other person’s grass?)

I don’t suffer from writer’s block.  Far from it, actually.  At any given time, my brain is buzzing with at least ten things I’d like to write about, not to mention the unfinished novel that has left all the characters in truly dire straits and in desperate need of rescue.

Lately, I’m afraid it’s as simple as writer’s laziness.  I can hear my childish voice saying:” I want to play…”

What I should do is:

1) Write this blog entry

2) Write another chapter of “Grace’s Heart” and save those poor people

3) Get further on the transcription of my two grandmothers’ journals before the fragile little books  disintegrate

4) If “none of the above,” then at least give a much-needed vacuum to the living room.

What I want to do is:

1) Watch another endlessly “Quite Interesting” and gloriously funny episode of Stephen Fry’s “QI” television series

2) Play a game of “Risk” on pogo.com, and subsequently take over the world

3) Click every link that Twitter has to offer, which always leads me on a lovely, labyrinthine path through quirky news items, New Yorker cartoons, and YouTube videos

4) If “none of the above,” then get my car washed, stop off at the store to buy the Fritos I’ve promised to bring to the Super Bowl Party we’re attending later, and breathe in one of the sparkling, icy mornings I love so much.  

We have a phrase in this family, and I would be told right now that I’m “shoulding all over myself.”  The words “I should write” run through my head more often than I care to admit.  The truth of the matter is that “I love to write” is a sentiment that's always there.

So, I forgive myself the desire to loll aimlessly on a Sunday.  I try to remember that I give fifty hours a week to commuting and working, a few hours more than that to sleeping, and from the rest must be found time for a dear husband and busy family, chats on the phone or in emails with precious friends, a little learning and growing, a lot of laughing, a scratch behind the ear and change of water bowl for the cats, and the various minutiae of daily life.

And yes, also to taking over the world in a game of “Risk,” and breathing in the beauty of an Idaho morning…

…and writing.

~~~~~

The Seven Sentences Challenge

I follow a gentleman named @GeoffTalbot on Twitter.  He has a website, sevensentences.com, which he calls “Daily Inspiration for Creative People.” 

He asks writers to distill their thoughts into seven sentences only -- with a beginning, a middle and an end.  He offers creative questions that “have the power to unlock your imagination and increase your productivity.”

Now, anyone who knows me, and my belief that “if one word is good, then ten must be better,” will know what a daunting task this was. 

Seven sentences into anything, and I’m just warming up the engine.

I’ve just taken on his most recent challenge, to write about the inception, or “creative birth” of a writing accomplishment.  I enjoyed the exercise much more than I thought I would.  I’ll leave it up to you to decide if it works. 

These are my seven sentences:

I ask myself what makes me write, but more to the point, what made me write this?

This novel: twelve hundred words placed just so -- in this order, with emphasis, adjectives, syntax, lovers, motion, scenes, kisses, anger, laughter, tableaux, abandonment, decisions, tears -- words, and words, and more words, every one a choice.

To each day turn on the computer, tap forehead, write and delete, sip coffee, listen to music, write and delete, walk around, search for inspiration, write and delete,  then write and keep, and move on to the next words.

Like keys on a piano, words wait here to be improvised, scratched out, rewritten, sung, howled, whispered, loved, despised, accepted, owned, and finally, formed into a sort of symphony -- individual as a fingerprint.

What made me write this novel, this story, this poem?

The answer comes, and it’s simple. 

I wrote it because I cared about the people in it, and I wanted to know how it would end.

~~~~~

Words As Little Miracles

I suppose this “writing thing” was inevitable. 

Paper and pens were my preferred toys when I was little –- for drawing, scribbling words, making large bubble letters that were strung together into nonsense sentences.  While other little girls played with dolls, I fashioned a stationery store in my bedroom, complete with a desk as a counter, a partitioned box as a cash register, and displays of supplies that I’d gathered from drawers and shelves all over the house.  When my forbearing father wanted to use a stapler, he was forced to buy it back from me for the exhorbitant sum of a nickel. 

I never cared much about the money. The real gift was getting to write out the receipt –- a piece of paper on which I’d painstakingly drawn straight lines with a ruler, and could now fill in with item, price and even some sort of tax.  I’d take the nickel with all the solemnity of a shopkeeper, and then cheerfully say, “Thank you for coming in today, sir!”

I can’t tell you how many times my sweet father bought that stapler from me. 

Those low-tech times gave me the opportunity to decide that I was going to read the dictionary from beginning to end –- and I’m aware that this puts me firmly into some sort of “club,” as I’ve heard the same thing from many other writers since.  But if I close my eyes, I can still feel the fragile pages with their gold-painted half-moons, just the size of a child’s thumb, each with a letter.

And like many others, after a stab at “begin with A, and go through Z,” it became a sort of metaphysical scattershot method of tightly shutting my eyes, opening the book, and dropping my finger onto the page.  I began to imagine that the word thus randomly chosen could inform and direct my day.  “Voyager” meant a walk around the block, “mottled” indicated I should spend time in the garden peering at leaves, “kabob” meant searching out skewers and stringing Cheerios on them for breakfast.

I think I’ve never looked up a word in a dictionary that I didn’t also learn another one.  As I scanned the columns, reading aloud, my forefinger traced a line from top to bottom of the list of words -- I was like a puppy, “What’s this?  What’s that?”   It took forever to look up a word, because “neophyte” would yield “necromancy,” “nefarious,” “negligent,” and “nemesis” on a path to the definition. 

I thought words were little miracles, really.  Sets of letters that meant something.  I was fascinated by “The Miracle Worker,” and that moment when Helen Keller realizes that letters make words, and words have meaning.

All this is not to say that I believed the best words were the most complicated or obscure.  My college Communications thesis was a “readability study” of the university’s catalogue, a book sent out to high school seniors, hoping they’d enroll.  Through in-depth counting of the types, sizes and clarity of the words used in the catalogue, I determined that you needed to be in your second year of Graduate School to properly understand it.  My professor sent the study on to the Admissions Department with a wry smile.

And my love affair with words continues today.  Dictionary.com has a “popular searches” column, a word of the day, and a new Beta program called Word Dynamo that estimates your vocabulary.  The website functions for me in the same way those delicate pages did so long ago –- you can even “Browse Dictionary” randomly -- it’s the best of technology, I think, when it mimics the real thing in spirit.

In the end, I can imagine myself in the last moments of life, trying to describe it, saying, “What’s the word I’m looking for….?”  Ah, yes…“transition…that's it...”

~~~~~

A Confession About Reading

I find myself feeling a bit stuffy in my middle years, puffing up about the way some in the current generation seem to study great literature by the light of YouTube, while texting, watching DVDs and googling.

I tell myself, despairing somewhat, that as a child, I read Little Women and was given the gift by Miss Alcott of creating the March family out of imagination -- and that now, whatever visions a girl might have of Jo have been supplanted by Winona Ryder.  If you ask someone today if they’ve read Atonement, they might cheerfully tell you, yes, they saw the movie. 

But before I get too righteous in my indignation, out with the confession.  And an unflinching look at my own high school study habits. 

When I was in my formative years, the literary hue and cry was about Cliffs Notes.   Just in case you’ve not seen them, these are small yellow-and-black booklets which summarize and condense the plot, characters, and spirit of books -- many of them classics -- into bite-sized, manageable ideas.  I’m ashamed to say that my fellow students and I used them liberally when English class report deadlines loomed. 

It was possible to read Hawthorne’s 750-page The Scarlet Letter in an evening, through the 128-page, large-type, easy-to-digest summary of the chapters.  This allowed us that extra night on the weekend to drink at the beach with friends, or to take the drive up the Pacific Coast Highway with eight-track tapes blaring, or perhaps to spend an afternoon doing next to nothing and moaning about it.

Then, Sunday night would bring the frantic scanning of the trusty Cliffs Notes booklet, with its eloquent opinions already formed, its syntax in perfect order, and its insight into the motivations and symbolism of Hester Prynne’s shame already canned, sterile, and ready to put to the page.  I never plagiarized, mind you, but my thoughts were decidedly bent in the same direction as the person who wrote that little summary.  

So you can see, I really have nothing to be judgmental about.  I suppose I could grasp at straws and say that the visual nature of films, television and video clips tend to shortcut all imagination, even down to hair color and tone of voice –- whereas the Notes still allowed us to create the characters in our minds, but really, I don’t have a leg to stand on.  I’ll simply put myself in the town square, as Hester did, and wear the truth on my frock.

I didn’t read The Scarlet Letter in its entirety in high school, but I did in college.   And I’ve re-read it since.  It changes as my view of the world changes -- as it will for the ones now watching Demi Moore and Gary Oldman play out the story in Roland Joffe’s 1995 version of what he thinks the story means.

What I know, above all else, is that great books endure.  They sit patiently on the shelf until we’re ready to take in what they have to offer.   

They have all the time in the world.

~~~~~

TED Talk: How To Write and Stay Sane

TED Talk: A New Way to Think About Creativity
by Elizabeth Gilbert


The author of "Eat, Pray, Love" talks about the double-edged sword of a bestselling novel.... "Aren't you afraid that now, you'll fail?"  


Keeping our focus intact in the face of success...

☆*♥☆♥*☆

Writing For the Love of It

Once when I was expounding… (perhaps I was obsessing)…about someone who owed me money, my dear and sensible husband said, “What if you tried giving money to someone with no intention of getting it back? Just give it with love. That’s what I do. Then if it does come back, it’s a gift.”

(When I’m obsessing, that’s really not what I want to hear, by the way.  I want commiseration, sympathy, or at the very least, a “tut” or two.  But Robert has always been better at making his way through the real world than I’ve been.  When I’m smart, I listen to him.)

Since then, I’ve found that before handing over my hard-earned cash, I ask myself if I would resent never getting it back.  I can’t express how much it’s helped, because I let the money go without strings, or I don’t let it go at all. 

(And the important thing for me to remember about strings is that they’re not only tied to the other person -– they’re tied to me as well, and sometimes I get tangled up in them, while the other person walks blithely away, whistling.)

Yes, I’m getting to the point…about writing.

I wonder if the name “author” is only reserved for those who get paid for it -- or if it’s possible to be an author while giving it away, without strings.

(You see, I can’t seem to stop writing, no matter how little I get paid for it.) 

A novel-and-three-quarters written, and starting on a third.  Not only have I been paid next to nothing, but I’ve actually spent a little printing books to give to friends.  And I don’t regret a penny of it.  In fact, it felt really, well…good.

So, if we put a value on our writing –- and I do –- then as we blog, and post, and price books at 99¢, we’re giving gifts.

No regrets.  No expectations.  No strings.  Just for the love of writing.   

(Don't get me wrong...if someone handed me a big check right now, I wouldn't be turning them away...)

But really, I do love to write.  For the love of it.

~~~~~

On My Bookshelf: “One Man’s Meat” by E.B. White

One of my earliest and most enduring literary influences was E.B. White, who contributed regularly to The New Yorker Magazine and Harper’s Magazine in beautifully concise and elegantly simple writing.  Most will know him best for the beloved books, “Charlotte’s Web” and “Stuart Little,” and students of language may know him as one-half of the team of Strunk & White, who crafted the small Bible of writing, “The Elements of Style.”

White wrote magazine columns, which were the blogs of their day, I suppose.  Virtually “something about nothing very momentous,” but with a point.  If we’re lucky as writers, that point stays with people – they wonder about it, they apply it to their own lives, and they come out a little different for having read it. 

 “One Man’s Meat” is a collection of columns and essays set from the years 1938 through 1943, when White lived in Maine on a salt water farm, raising hens, sheep, blueberries and mackerel.  It’s the kind of book you can pick up anytime: on a plane or a subway, on vacation or a break at work, and read a little gem of a story in its entirety that will make you smile and sometimes cry, but always, think.

One example: White attended the World’s Fair in 1939, grandly titled “The World of Tomorrow,” but he did it with a head cold.  In his lovely understated style he wrote: “When you can’t breathe through your nose, Tomorrow seems strangely like the day before yesterday,” but he bravely set forth to see it all.

The World of Tomorrow had a ride, set in the far future of 1960, full of purple light, fast cars, and trees enclosed in glass bubbles.  White watched a small boy named David as he traversed the magical future, and then listened to him describe the ride afterwards.

David, in his excitement, chose the one thing that he would always remember.  At the end of the ride, David said, “the car gave a great—big—BUMP!”

And White wrote:  “…mostly the Fair has vanished, leaving only the voice of little David Wagstaff and the rambling ecstasy of his first big trip away from home; so many millions of dollars spent on the idea that our trains and our motorcars should go fast and smoothly, and the child remembering, not the smoothness, but the great—big—BUMP.”

I realized then, and have felt it true since, that we always remember the bump.  When we talk about our weddings, we recall the words transposed, the trip up or down the stairs, the wind, the rain, the cake never delivered.  They make for good stories afterwards, and we laugh, and feel stronger for having moved through them with grace and good humor.

White saw that, right away.  He celebrated the bump as a thing to learn by, a way to connect to each other, and a reason to smile.

This is a book I loved when I first read it thirty years ago.   The real test is that I love it even more today.

~~~~~

Small Moves

I’ve started writing a story that begins in 1979, and it’s asking me to remember how I felt about politics, social conventions and popular culture back then.  That’s what writing does, because even the most outlandish fiction requires a strong underpinning of truth.  In the same way that actors must recall their feelings, painful and otherwise, in order to feel what their character is feeling, we, as writers, must pull from deep within to find the motivations of the people who populate our stories.

So, in short, I woke up on this Sunday morning thinking about the ‘60s in America.  More particularly, that decade in the suburbs of Los Angeles and San Francisco, where I spent most of my formative years.  I wasn’t overtly politically active, but I did run for Girl’s League President in high school on the basis of asking for more variety in the cafeteria, and, on a platform that will cause wide eyes from anyone under fifty, the right for girls to wear denim jeans to school, even if they did have a few holes in them.

Not really “changing the world” sort of stuff.  And I suppose most of the people you ask from that generation would say that we were disappointed in the results of “The Summer of Love” and the hippie culture.  We were co-opted by a lot of young people who simply wanted to get high and drop out, and so, hippies are now remembered by many as dirty, lazy, and drug-addled, which, in truth, is what lots of them were.

At seventeen, that was my first experience of disappointment in the ability, even of a large movement of people, to change the world in big ways.  But seventeen is an idealistic age, and we wanted massive change, so we were bound to be disappointed, weren’t we?

Now, I’m more a believer in “small moves,” in the way I saw Ellie in the film “Contact” scan the outer reaches of the universe for signs of life.  If you go too fast, you might miss something. 

I now know that nothing ever stays the same.  By being here on this planet, each of us changes things in small ways.  And as writers, we have the opportunity to make people think about things they never might have thought of otherwise, and that most certainly effects change.  It ripples outward in ways we can’t even begin to imagine.

Small moves.

~~~~~

To Read or to Write: That Is the Question.

It’s Saturday. Husband is at work. Yes, there’s an undecorated Christmas tree in the living room. No, I haven’t determined the quantities of ingredients to buy at Costco tomorrow to make Christmas cookies for friends and family.

But I woke with a feeling of abundance, the prospect of a day at home, cats curled around me against the cold outside.  A full day to write.  Bliss.

But first…just a peek at Twitter.  (Just to see what’s going on, mind you.)  First one blog, then another calls out to me.  Fellow writers, putting their struggles and how they overcome them into words –- beautifully, succinctly.  It’s my struggle too.

I tell myself this is research.  It is, isn’t it?

Then, a link to a new survey on authors…then to a talk on TED.  They’re talking about writing.  (I need to know what they have to say!)  I listen to one, then another.

A link from a tweet, to an exerpt from a Book-On-Tape.  My commute to work is an hour there, an hour back, and if I spend that time listening to books come alive through my car speakers, it flies by.  (I’m nearly done with “Mansfield Park,” after all.)

As a writer, I need experience.  I need to hear new voices, to learn of places I’ve never been, to explore other professions, to feel the hot wind on my face in a Sahara desert, or the biting cold of a dogsled in Alaska.  All of that is on the internet.  (All of that and more.)

On YouTube, you can take the Eurostar from Paris to London.  The countryside speeds by, and if you concentrate, you can feel the vibration, the clack-clack of the rails, as if you were there.  You can fly from Seattle to Reykjavik, and then on to London.  It’s almost as if you’re pulling your bag across the tile floors of the airport in Iceland as you change planes...

Ah, you get the picture.  Choices.

So how do I write today?  I’ll portion out my day -- half in learning, half in writing.  I’ll do my best to give each my full attention, the way I used to when I had a full-time job and a small child.  I’ll try not to wish I was doing one when I’m doing the other.

In short, focus on the now, and when I move on to the next thing, focus on that.

Focusing…Here’s hoping…  ¸¸.•*¨* ☆

~~~~~

On My Bookshelf: Stephen King's "11/22/63"

I should start by saying that this is the first Stephen King novel I’ve ever tackled.  Considering how prolific an author he is, and that he is, in his own words, “the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries,” you’d think I would have picked one up at some time or other, at least for a good beach read. 

But the closest I’ve come to the man is watching the film versions of “The Green Mile” and “The Dead Zone” in their entirety -- and parts of “Carrie,” “Christine” and “Cujo” through my fingers. 

I don’t do well with horror films or books.  They become too real for me and refuse to leave my side even long after I’ve finished with them.  Not helpful for sleep.  But his latest, “11/22/63,” sounded too interesting to pass by.

I was ten years old when that day came and went in America.  It was the beginning of a long stretch of the painful reality of violence.  First John Kennedy, then Martin Luther King, and then Robert Kennedy -– the three of them linked forever in tragedy.  It seemed that no one could stand up and speak their mind without finding a bullet at the end of the proposition.  It was a frightening, disillusioning time, and it changed American history -– politically, psychologically, culturally, and in every other way possible.

It won’t ruin the book for you if I share what it’s about, since every piece of publicity tells us:  “On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed.  If you had the chance to change history, would you? Would the consequences be worth it?”  The teaser goes on to say that in a small diner in Lisbon Falls, Maine, a portal is discovered that can take you from the top of the stairs in 2011, to the last step, which lands you in 1958.

Going back to the Big Mac and fries analogy –- I know I’ve never ordered at McDonald’s without knowing that it’s not good for me, and also that ultimately, I’ll enjoy it.  I suppose that’s the spirit in which I began reading.

King’s dialogue can jangle, his metaphors may seem tired, his characters appear to be stereotypical -– but after leaving it, I couldn’t wait to pick up the story, and I had a very hard time putting it down again.  We know what’s  going to happen, but not how it will happen.   The story combines the simultaneously nostalgic and futuristic feel of time travel with the talent of a man who knows how to “spin a yarn.” 

King may not be an expert technician, but he’s a master storyteller.  He writes in the same way that the elders of the tribes have sat crosslegged around fires and recounted tales –- not always in a linear fashion or with exquisite grammar, but in a way that puts a knot in your stomach and makes your eye speed to the next word, and the next.

I loved it.  Every minute of it.  And as far as how the man writes?  The snobbish English Literature major in me cringes just a bit.  But the rest of me thinks:  I should be so lucky to write like that.

~~~~~