Yay for the Builders!

 

It’s been a rough four years for us all.  One of the many effects it’s had on me is to quash—or, I guess more accurately, redirect—my creativity. 

Before November 2016, I had written two books and almost a third in my Wyoming Chronicles series.  These are YA novels, British classics set in contemporary Wyoming. So fun to write! I’d written Moreau (The Island of Dr. Moreau) and Pride (Pride and Prejudice) and almost finished Solomon (King Solomon’s Mines).  But the same week as the election, which devastated me and so many others and caused a bit of a mental breakdown, I also got this series rejected by traditional publishing for the final time.

I quit writing.  I hardly had the emotional energy to make it through the day, much less write.  I think I listened to the same comfort music (Vince Guaraldi’s Charlie Brown Christmas) for a year straight. 

Only in the last year have I started to come out of it.  Like everyone, when the pandemic hit, I began to cook a lot. I’ve always cooked a lot because I love it, and I’m a good cook.  It’s something I love and something I’ve devoted a lot of time to.  I’m always trying new recipes from NYT Cooking or WaPo Voraciously or EatingWell. 

I also dove head first back into science fiction.  I’ve always loved science fiction.  Ever since reading so much of it as a teenager—my brother had a subscription to Science Fiction Book Club—I have loved it.  But I focused on literary fiction for much of my adult years, though I’ve always been an avid sci fi movie buff.  (The Expanse ROCKS!)  And as part of that, I thought I’d try my hand at writing a science fiction novel. The result of that is the first book in my Mechalum Space series, The Language of Corpses.

The first step in creating my universe was to create a future history. Oh my gosh, I can’t tell you how fun that is and was!  Thinking through, okay, here’s where we are today, and here’s where that technology is going to take us in 700 years.  The rabbitholes I went down figuring it all out.  So amazing.  So fun.  Absolutely the best!

We are living in a science fiction universe.  All those things you’ve read about as possibilities are coming true.  Just this week, we’re landing again on Mars and moving toward a permanent base on the Moon.  Scientists on CERN are getting closer to understanding hydrogen antimatter, and they announced findings just this week.  We will land humans on Mars in fifteen or twenty years, and we will be able upload our consciousness into computer in thirty. Seriously.  Not just in fiction or in theory.  In my lifetime.

And of course the adults are in charge again. The forces of chaos and hate are at least going underground, and hopefully the solutions offered by builders as opposed to destroyers—I told you we were living in a science fictional universe—will help enough people to turn them away from extremism.

It’s been the best of times. It’s been the worst of times. As they say.  I am so lucky. I can work from home, which I never would have been able to do without the pandemic. I am able to help my teenagers do their school from home.  My partner and I kept our jobs.  We have options.  We are so so lucky. 

So I’m thankful.  I’m still going through deep-but-functional depression, but I’m clawing my way to creativity again.  I don’t think I’m alone in this.

Science fiction has saved me again, as it did when I was a teenager.  So, if you’re so inclined, check out my other blog and my book, The Language of Corpses, if you’d like. Follow me on Twitter at @tt_linse.  I’m deep in writing the second one in the series, The Evolution of Corpses.  And stay tuned here.  I’ll be trying to blog once a week on my other blog about sci fi and here about other things.

My heart goes out to you and your loved ones. We’re all going through such a tough time.  I love you!

Live Life Deliberately

I went into myself because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Exciting Things on the Horizon!

I've been absent here for a while. It's because of a combination of, first, being down but then, second, I was actually getting some writing done!

I'm trying not to stare into the face of the beast too much.  You know, spend too much time online gazing at my and others' navels. Don't get me wrong ~ I love myself a good navel gaze, but it seems to contribute to my depression sometimes, and so I have to look away.

I have to look inside because that's where I need to be to get the writing done. And, boy oh boy, I've been getting some really great writing done! I won't say too much about it right now, other than it's YA, but let me tell you, I got the best reviews from my kids.  My daughter said, "It's just like Percy Jackson!" and my son said, "I don't like it ~ I LOVE it!" Of course they would say that, but it warms my heart to the cockles!

So let me just say, wonderful things coming down the pike. I'll fill you in once I know more.

Happy writing!

UW Summer High School Institute

In 1985, I was a high school sophomore, and I was honored to be invited to the very first Summer High School Institute at the University of Wyoming.  I can’t express how wonderful it was.

First of all, I was an emotional wreck.  I had just broken up with my first boyfriend, and, you know, my childhood. At HSI we had small group where we would get together and talk about our emotional lives. It was the first therapy I had in my life, and it probably saved me.

And the amazing classes I took.  It’s three weeks long, and as part of it you take college courses.  I was introduced to N. Scott Momaday and Chinua Achebe and got to experience Numerical Imaginings. And I got FREE BOOKS (which I still have)! 

And my fellow instituters were and still are amazing.  Pete Simpson Jr, Al Simpson’s nephew, was in that class. They all were so smart and amazing.  I haven’t kept in touch with them, but now I wish I would have. This year, we're celebrating the 30th anniversary of HSI.

And now, they invited me back to teach a writers workshop, which I did yesterday.  It was so great! The kids are whip smart and so much fun.  Their creativity oozes out of them, let me tell you! They have bright futures ahead of them.

There were two classes, and I planned three exercises for each but was only able to accomplish two in the hour we had.  First, I took the first couple sentences of some famous books and then they added sentences and passed them to their left and added to other stories. So much fun! Then they interviewed each other and wrote each others’ Life Story on a Postcard, a la Michael Kimball.  The third exercise was going to be writing their own life story in third person as a fairy tale, but we didn’t get to that.

All I can say is: You people who are cynical about the younger generations, you shouldn't be.  This happens every time I work with young people. I realize how amazing and hopeful and positive they are. They were all avid readers and great writers and motivated and wicked smart.

Our future is so bright, I gotta wear shades!

Amber Leberman, Cool Person

This week, I’m talking about the amazing people I presented with at the Wind River Outdoor Writers Conference.

Amber Leberman

Amber Leberman gave the best presentation about submitting to magazines and how to keep your editor happy.  It was great! It was titled “Keeping Your Editor Gruntled.” Amber is the editor of the beautiful and august magazine Wyoming Wildlife. 

Afterwards we were urging her to write a book called Your Lazy Editor Loves You.  That was one of her main points: Your editor loves you.  She wants to love you.  Don’t make it hard for her.  Don’t be THAT WRITER.

For example, find out when he’s on deadline to go to print.  If you try to contact your editor on the week leading up to this, you’re going to get a very short answer, if any at all.  And, for heaven’s sake, don’t be that person who insists on continuing to talk.  When he says, “Sorry but I’m on deadline,” apologize and hang up. Deadline week is hell for them.

A lot of it is common sense ~ common sense that we lose when we’re wrapped up in our writerly agony. Query first ~ you don’t need to write on spec.  Don’t be difficult.  If the editor wants you to make edits, make them. Don’t be a prima donna. Get your stuff in on time. Make it your best work ALWAYS.  There are many reasons an editor rejects something, often not at all related to the quality of the work. Don’t take it personally. Be your best self. An editor will keep coming back to you if you do.

She was so charming and sensible in her presentation. She’s like, “Look. We want to like your work.  But we’re lazy, like everyone. Make it easy for us.” 

I am so stoked to get to know her and I can’t wait to hang out in the future and talk writing and herding cats ~ er, writers. She does a hard job and is amazing at it!

Here is Amber’s bio:

Amber Leberman is editor of Wyoming Wildlife, a monthly magazine for anglers, hunters and wildlife enthusiasts. She works with more than 50 freelance writers and photographers annually. Before coming to Wyoming, Leberman spent 13 years in various roles (including assistant editor, web manager and art director) with a nonprofit magazine group in Chicago, preceded by stints at Copley Press and the Chicago Tribune. She is an avid backpacker and fly angler.

Please check out Wyoming Wildlife and be awed!

A Day of Travel

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“You got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.” – Yogi Berra

Planning Your Reading Outfit Is Not Writing

by Leonid Pasternak (via)

Like everyone, I struggle to carve out time to write.  It’s easy to let the world sweep away your time.  And so I was thinking of a list of ways small and large to incorporate more writing in your life.

·         Take a notebook wherever you go and scribble in it when you’re stuck in traffic and on the subway and waiting in the doctor’s office and at lunch on your own.  We often think we need a huge block of time to accomplish a writing task, but you’d be surprised what you can accomplish with a minute here and five minutes there.

• The hard part of about doing small bits of writing is keeping a continuity of thought.  What was I writing again?  So to counteract that, there’s a couple of things you can do.  Keep a list of ongoing projects, so when you do have a minute you know exactly what to work on.
• If you only have little bits of time like this, it’s often best to work on small project.  Poetry is a good project for this.  Or small essays.  Or even just brainstorming for longer projects.
• Use commute time to think through longer projects. If you’re driving for hours, think through your plot or your characters or even dream up a new project. Scribble notes, talk into a tape recorder, or pull over to the side of the road to keep track.
• Set a desktop timer.  You know you’ve got 20 minutes till the baby wakes up, and you could fold laundry and start lunch, but instead fire up the computer and set the desktop timer for 20 minutes.  Ignore the siren song of the dishes, and don’t click on the internet for the full 20 minutes.  Just move your fingers over the keyboard.
• Commit to a blog.  Writing begets writing, and so if you commit to writing a blog, even just a few lines and an interesting photo, it’ll keep you in your writing. 
• Do daily pages.  Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way maintains that writing three pages a day longhand is a must for writers.  Much like a blog, it connects you to your writing and exercises that muscle.  It keeps you in practice. It can be anything ~ you can complain about things. You can write the same sentence over and over and over again ~ “I don’t know what to write. I don’t know what to write. I don’t know what to write.” Eventually you’ll follow your thoughts and write something else.
• Write first thing in the morning.  By doing this, you’re committing to your writing. You’re putting your writing first, when you’re fresh. You’ saying, “Writing is important to me, so much so that I’m actually putting my money ~ my time ~ where my mouth is.”
• Write at the same time every day.  Habit is your friend when it comes to writing, and if you write every day, it is so much easier.  I think most people are this way: the hardest part of writing is getting into a project.  Getting over that first hump. By writing every day, you make it easier to surmount that initial resistance.
• Writing is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, as they say. Don’t wait for inspiration. Do the work.
• Talk to friends about writing. Nothing is more inspiring than talking to other people who care about writing as much as you do.
• Tell people no.  The world wants you to do what it wants, which is decidedly not writing. You have to make boundaries or you will never get anything done.
• Last and certainly not least: Write.  Thinking is not writing. Doing research on the internet is not writing. Planning the outfit you’re going to wear to your first reading is not writing. Writing is the only thing that is writing, moving the pen or the keystrokes across the page.

Happy writing. Joyful writing. Sucky I-can’t-hardly-make-myself-write writing.  Force-myself-to-sit-in-the-chair writing.  It’s all writing. Go forth and be fruitful!

Melancholy

I'm so stoked to be visiting Lynda at Books Direct today for the How to Be a Man Virtual Book Tour!  We chat about all kinds of things ~ the sausage-making that is writing a book. You should stop by!

 

Grace, by gokul k, via National Geographic

 

The book tour is absolutely fabulous, and I'm loving it, but on the flip side, I’m a bit melancholy today, though I really have no right to be.  So to cheer myself up, I think I'll just stare at this photo all day.  I've always loved the faces of old people, and when I used to regularly create art, I loved to do pencil sketches of their faces.

Act Like One

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I love the website The Art of Manliness.  As the daughter, wife, sister, and mother of men (and soon-to-be men) I’m really concerned about how to nurture them and help them have pride in who they are.  Also because I’ve often felt like an interloper in an enemy camp ~ many women I know, myself included, have tried to have self-worth by shunning their femininity and trying to be a man.  So I guess you could say I’ve thought a lot about it.

I love this post by Brett, the founder of The Art of Manliness, about how to be a man.  One of his main points is this:  if you want to be a man, act like one.  Figure out what you think a man is and then pretend.  A good man is a good father, and so be a good father.  Don’t opt out or wait until you feel like it.  A good man is someone who upholds his responsibilities, and so uphold your responsibilities.  A good man is a good friend and stand up for others.  And so on.

Above all, don’t wait for someone to give you permission to be what you already are.  Just act.  Just do it.  Even if you don’t feel like you are, that you can own it.  Just go ahead and be it.

This is great advice in any area of life.  This is particularly applicable for being a writer.  You don’t need permission to be a writer.  You don’t need a teacher or an MFA to tell you you’re a writer.  Writers write.  If you write, you’re a writer.  You don’t even necessarily need readers to be a writer.  The one you most need to give you permission is yourself. 

So go forth and virile agitur ~  “the manly thing is being done” or just do it. Do it every day.  Whatever it is that you are ~ stop resisting and own it, do it.

Hello Again

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I’m going to start blogging again, and I’m really excited about it!

I wasn’t excited for the last couple of months.  In fact, I was quite the opposite.  I was as low as I’ve been since high school.  I not only couldn’t write ~ I couldn’t even read for a while.  That’s the first time that’s happened EVER.  I watched a marathon of Law & Order SVU and furiously doubted my very credibility as a writer.  It’s made me think a lot about the way I limit my own writing success just through lack of the necessary self-confidence.  Hubris, some would say.

But now a new day dawns. I’m working on several really exciting projects, which you’ll hear more about in the coming months. Yes. 

I’m sending you all good vibes and good luck!

PS  Very timely.  Chuck Wendig posted a link on Facebook to Hyperbole and a Half's post about depression. Exactly.

A Braver Life, or Today I Write

Bravery, by Nathaniel Eckstrom (via)

One of the things I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is fear as dream-killer.  The opposite of dreams is fear, I’m convinced.

It is very hard to live a brave life.  By brave, I mean following up on opportunities, going for your dreams, and allowing yourself to dream in the first part.  Going against the tides of your life and the world around you to go after that which lights you up, whether that’s doing art or following a career as an animal communicator or going to Africa to help the poor.

It’s so much easier to be safe, to do what we’re supposed to do.  I had a counselor once who said, “Don’t ‘should’ yourself to death.”  Because it can be death, a slow spiral where you feel like you’re drowning.  And the whole world around you and your family and friends all have an agenda for you.  They want you to be answering their needs, doing what you’re expected, and not changing an iota. 

And beyond that, you can take on the fears of those around you.  The political climate of the last ten or fifteen years has included lots of fear-mongering, and it’s like mass hysteria took over there for a while ~ even now with the whole gun thing.  It’s about fear.  And you can also take on the fears of those closest to you, and they only want what’s best for you, so you honor that and before you know it, your life is very small.

The problem with all this is you can’t just make one big decision and everything changes.  Well, you can decide, “I’m going to live a braver life,” but then what it comes down to is a whole bunch of very small decisions every day.  Do you carve away time to do your art, or do you do the laundry?  Do you follow up on that serendipitous connection a friend mentioned, or do you not bother?  Do you take care of your body so it’s in the best health it can be so that you’re ready to follow your dream, or do you get fast food because it’s cheap and easy?

So, a braver life, one tiny step at a time. Today I write.

PS And if you want a smart and hilarious take on being brave, read Patty Chang Anker's Facing Forty Upside Down blog (http://www.upside-down-patty.blogspot.com/) and follow her author page on FB (https://www.facebook.com/#!/PattyChangAnker) and her on Twitter (@PattyChangAnker).

Writers' Training Wheels

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The training wheels came off this weekend!  A major milestone in any family.  As I told them, "one of the harder things in life is learning how to ride a bike."

My son had already mastered the turns and had his taken off a month or two ago. It was my daughter that mastered it on Sunday.  That's because she's more cautious than he is ~ maybe because she's a girl, but also just because that's the way she is, more resistant, more in her head ruminating.  And to be fair, my husband and I are cautious people, and it's definitely rubbed off on them.  We have friends with kids who are always diving and running and getting scraped and bruised, but that's just not us.

Which made me think:  writers have training wheels too.  First it's reading, lots and lots of reading.  Oh how you revel in this!  Then it's imitating your favorite writers and you struggle to find your own voice.  When you do finally find that elusive "your voice" ~ that's when the training wheels come off.  That's when you're on your way, flying down the hill, brakes not necessary.

Here's to training wheels!

Superbetter

Superbetter is an app based on the principles of online gaming that promises to extend your life by 10 years.  You work on your social, emotional, mental, and physical resilience, which in turn affects your well being and hence your lifespan. 

Interesting, right?  I can't decide whether it's one of those things that are supposed to make us feel better about ourselves without having any real impact, busywork, or there's something to it.  I imagine it depends on how well you incorporate it.  I do find the game's creator, the game designer Jane McGonigal, very persuasive.  And I really like the principles involved ~ there's definitely something there.

Here's Jane's great TED talk.

A Finite Resource

Via

Energy is a finite resource.

There’s just this amount of sunlight during the day.  There is only so much oil from just so many plants that powers only this many cars.

I’m sure physicists will argue that energy only changes forms ~ E = mc2 ~ but as far as energy that we can access, it’s limited.

The same goes for personal energy.  A person has only so much energy throughout their life, just as they only have so much time.  This energy is how they affect their world, and how they use it determines how much of an impact they make.

When the energy’s flowing ~ man! ~ I just love it.  If I’m writing and exercising, I’m so much more productive in my work life and at home and in my relationships.  Inertia’s on my side.

But then everything gets stopped up.  There are so many ways that I/we waste energy.  We undermine our own success, and this isn’t as passive as it sounds.  We actively find ways to work against ourselves, whether it’s something we say or avoiding or something else.  Avoiding isn’t a passive thing ~ it’s an active turning away. 

We drink too much, smoke too much, max our credit cards, date the wrong people, have sex with other people while we’re married, abuse ourselves physically and emotionally, overeat, undereat, overexercise, do drugs, and ~ the ultimate self-destruction ~ suicide.

We undermine other’s success too.  If a person finds ways large and small to be needy and destructive and obstructionist at crucial times in another’s life, they’re called crazymakers, and they destroy peoples’ lives and art (see The Artist’s Way). 

Why do we do it?  Why do we spend so much of our energy working at destroying our own energy or someone else’s?  Is it human nature to be self-destructive?  Why are we each other’s death star?

Think how far we each could go if we didn’t do these things.

10 Things I Wish I’d Known When I Was 20

Study of a Young Woman, by Johannes Vermeer

The wonderful Shelli Johnson blogged this great list a while back, and I thought I’d create my own.

1.      Own it: You’re a writer.  You read voraciously.  You write all the time.  You don’t have to be published to own it.  Other people don’t even have to know that you write.  If you write, you’re a writer, so let yourself imagine the thing you want most in the world.

2.      Being smart and persistent are your greatest assets.  People are always telling you tricks to get ahead, and you want to believe them.  You want to find the magic bullet that will fix everything and make it right ~ that will make you all right.  But, you know, the only thing that’s going to fix it is to think long and hard about it (and write about it) and then persistently follow through on the things that you finally understand.  Yes, the secret to success is pigheadedly showing up every time.

3.      Having a regular schedule and good health habits will get you far.  You know how your family thinks sleep is not only optional but something to fight against?  You know how they consider it a weakness? Bad idea.  If you sleep regularly, you’ll not only feel better but you’ll have the energy to be much more productive than if you stay up late trying to get things done.  Also, that idea that you unconsciously took in that being fat (and your ‘fat’ is most people’s normal) is the worst sin you can commit ~ that idea is wrong. If you let it go and move on, you’ll have all this free time to think about things that really matter.

4.      You don’t have to have a man or be a man to have worth.  You are worth something just because you are you.  Your worth is not connected to who you date.  Your worth is not created by how close you pull men or how far away you push women.  You’re not only okay ~ you are damn fine.  I give you permission to like yourself.

5.      You can get a job with an English degree.  Being raised on a ranch has given you the idea that you have to slave your life away just to get the bare minimum to survive, and therefore you need a good-paying job, not one of those frivolous artsy ones.  But believe me when I say: do what you love and the money will follow.  Sure, you need to make some compromises and work hard, but allow yourself to do what you are passionate about.

6.      You are not measured by what you accomplish.  Contrary to popular belief, you have worth just because you’re you, and you don’t have to burn the candle at both ends to prove to the world the worth of your existence.  Chill.  Take a break and give yourself a break.  You need that down time, and paradoxically you’ll be much more productive by giving yourself that.

7.      It’s okay to be angry.  Anger is not the enemy.  Anger is the call to arms telling you that you’ve been hurt.  It does not matter whether people meant to hurt you or not, and it does not make them bad people. What you do with it is what matters.  If you deny it, it will eat you from the inside out.  You must acknowledge it and use it as fuel for your life.  It’s not lemons into lemonade; it’s raw crude into jet fuel.

8.      It’s okay to dream big.  It doesn’t seem like you’ve gotten much or won much in your life, but you have more than you know.  Get over the fact that past experience has shown that you won’t ever have much and move on.  The only way you’ll ever have anything is if you dream it first.  Look around you and learn how to have a big life.

9.      Love will be more and less than you ever dreamed it would be.  Let me warn you: when you read The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck, it will knock your socks off.  Love is not just romantic love.  It’s also friendship and caring and kindness and nurturing and commitment.  Love will be a many-faceted jewel that will brilliantly illuminate your life.  However, it will not solve everything.  You can’t look outside yourself at another person to fulfill your every want and need.  You must love and accept yourself first before you can be an equal partner and friend.

10.  Trust the world and yourself and the process of living.  Right now, you are a chaotic and emotional mess. That is true.  But it won’t always be that way.  Don’t panic.  Trust that you can work it out and that the world will provide what you need not only to survive but to thrive.  You have to be patient, but trust this process called life.  You’ll make it.

‘Make Good Art’

To bookend the video I posted day before yesterday of the wonderful singing of EmiSunshine and then yesterday about disintermediation, here’s Neil Gaiman’s most wonderful commencement address at the University of the Arts.

Whether you’re just starting out or standing proud on a pile of accomplishments, take his words to heart:

“Make. Good. Art.”

A Benediction

The other day, I had a late lunch at my favorite restaurant, Corona Village. It’s a place, by the way, that I will thank in the acknowledgements of my first book because it’s a place I can go and just write. Whether I’m working on my quota of pages or simply bitching long-hand, they single-handedly got me through many a tough spell. I try to go on the off hours, so there’s more privacy, and I’ve gotten to know the waiters and waitresses and bartender and owner well. They’re such good folks.

So the other day I was seated by a new waiter I had not met before. They took my order and brought it, and I was writing in my notebook and eating my arroz con pollo when the young man stopped back by to check that everything was all right. I said it was. And then he hesitated.

He’s a good-looking young man, in his early to mid twenties, medium-tall and slender with dark hair and dark eyes and just a little bit of a California Hispanic accent. He stood hunched forward a little on the balls of his feet with his hands clasped in front of him and his head bobbed forward in good will.

He hesitated, then he took a tentative half-step back and said, “Are you a business woman?”

“Well, I guess,” I said. “I’m a writer and an editor.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You just looked ...”

“Yes, I think you could say that I am.”

“Well, that’s something I would really like to be,” he said, and when he said it, he really meant it. “You see, I own a house in California and that’s what I’d really like to do here. I’d like to be in real estate, own some properties.” He had taken a few more steps back toward my table, and his face was open like a child’s. “Do you have any tips for me?”

Oh, how I had wished I had the answers. Thoughts of the poor economy and my years and years of working service jobs such as a waitress and bartender came and went. I remembered how I had yearned for a better life, how I had vowed that it didn’t matter how long it took and how hard I had to work, I would get that college degree. I wouldn’t be a waitress for the rest of my life.

I just melted on the inside. I did not know the answers.

“Well,” I said, “do you know marketing? You could volunteer to do marketing for any organization you belong to, say a church, and then you could put that on your resume. You could go to LCCC [our community college] and take classes. I think they’re fairly inexpensive.”

And then I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Where had all my years of experience gone, all my useful tidbits?

“It will be hard getting started,” I added, “but you can do it.” It sounded lame, but what more could I say?

“Oh, okay,” he said. “Can I ask your name?”

“Tamara. And what’s yours?”

I thought he said Jason at first, but no, it was Jesse. We shook hands.

“Very nice to meet you, Jesse,” I said as he turned back to his work. I was left with such a feeling of ... I don't know. Empathy, surely. But sorrow too.

And so for you, Jesse, as I can’t seem to find the right words myself, a benediction.

Benediction

by Rabindranath Tagore

Bless this little heart, this white soul that has won the kiss of
heaven for our earth.
He loves the light of the sun, he loves the sight of his
mother's face.
He has not learned to despise the dust, and to hanker after
gold.
Clasp him to your heart and bless him.
He has come into this land of an hundred cross-roads.
I know not how he chose you from the crowd, came to your door,
and grasped your hand to ask his way.
He will follow you, laughing the talking, and not a doubt in
his heart.
Keep his trust, lead him straight and bless him.
Lay your hand on his head, and pray that though the waves
underneath grow threatening, yet the breath from above may come and
fill his sails and waft him to the heaven of peace.
Forget him not in your hurry, let him come to your heart and
bless him.

Pink for Grace

Wearing pink today for Ann Hood's daughter Grace, who died 10 years ago today.  Ann wrote about it in her memoir Comfort.

Shift Your Plate

Black Child Eating A Burger by Ginette Callaway

When my five-year-olds sit down at the table to eat, if their chairs are not aligned with their plates, they do not shift either the chair or the plate. They contort their bodies in such a way that they have one leg on the chair, the other on the ground, and they continue to reach for their food.

This must be an adaptation of childhood ~ accepting the world as it is and trying to fit yourself into it.  You have to because you have so little agency in the world, so little effect.

Maybe that’s one of our jobs as parents ~ to convince our kids that they can have an effect on the world.

And maybe this is the reason for teenage rebellion, the 60s, and the Occupy movement, these sorts of movements that are cyclic and reoccur every so many years.  Kids suddenly realize that in fact they can affect the world.  They’re also at the most idealistic of ages, and so they try to make the world a perfect place.  And they always think that their generation was the first.

Related to this is identity and career choice.  When you’re a kid, people make it seem like there’s one right choice for you in a career.  “Whatcha going to be when you grow up, Tommy?”  So you try on all these things, and rarely do you land on one thing that seems perfect.  One of my brothers is an exception ~ he always knew he wanted to be an engineer.  There must be something very comforting in that. And as it turns out, there was only one right thing for me ~ a writer and editor ~ but it did not seem to be the practical thing to do.  How can you make a living as a writer?  I vividly remember the day in college when I realized I could be literally anything in the world; I could learn anything in the world from a book.  What a day!

Maybe some of this is the reason we sometimes feel like we’re pretending to be grownups, you know?  I catch myself every once in a while and think, oh my gosh, I’m a grown up with a grown up life.  I AM.  Not someone else.  I’m responsible and I have a job and a house and a family.  That’s what grown up people do.

But I guess my main point is that there are some people who believe they have no agency in the world.  Sometimes it’s true ~ they don’t have the money or power or social influence. But sometimes it’s not true.  Sometimes the only thing that is holding us back is ourselves, our fear.

Yesterday, I read the story “Death in the Woods” by Sherwood Anderson in the wonderful collection The Story and its Writer, edited by Ann Charters.  This and The Ecco Anthology of Contemporary American Short Fiction, edited by Joyce Carol Oates, are hands down the best anthologies of short fiction in existence, IMHO.  The story is about an old woman who spends her life feeding animals and men and freezes to death in the woods. She did not have agency, to be sure.  Also in that collection is Dorothy Allison’s wonderful “River of Names,” about whole generations without agency.  Yet Dorothy herself was able to rise above it.  I’ve met her a couple of times, and I just love Dorothy.

Like Dorothy and so many others, we have to reach over and bring our plates to us.  Either that, or shift our chairs to be in front our food.

Desirable Advertising

I received the latest copy of Poets & Writers last night, and of course it was what I read as I relaxed in a hot bubble bath.  Some great stuff, as always.  A profile of the lovely Cheryl Strayed, who is also Dear Sugar, about her forthcoming memoir Wild. A great piece by ~ oh no! I've forgotten her name! ~ about jealousy that turns into a great piece about dedication to the art.

But also an observation.  Poets & Writers and the The Writer's Chronicle are almost the only periodicals in which I avidly read the advertisements right along with the text.  I literally read it cover to cover. The ads, instead of being annoying wastes of space, are rife with possibility and information.  Oh! So he's teaching at that school and at those three conferences?  Boy, he gets around!  She's got a new book out. Yay!  Hmm.  That's an interesting possibility.  I could send something there or approach it that way.  When I first read P&W I was overwhelmed by all that I didn't know, but now I know a lot of the names either personally or online or I know of them. Now it feels like a community and inspiration out in this wilderness that is the world.

PS Maura Kelly writes that great piece mentioned above.