What's Growing In My Garden

"Bloom Where You Are Planted" -- oh, the lessons a garden can teach us 

(Ashland County, OH)

Summer seems to resist letting go this year. We’re reaching the end of September and still the sun bakes me as I weed like a madwoman and begin preparing the garden for some of that end-of-season moving and shuffling of plants. The lilac that was planted in the spring just doesn’t have as commanding a space as it deserves. It needs to be advertised more and thus will be move next week. My anemone that grew and smothered a lot of my spring-blooming plants as the summer progressed did get moved, but now I realize that small runner plants are exploding out of the ground like a million little volcanoes. The whole anemone must be ripped out and destroyed before it takes over my entire front garden.

My aenemone blooms glow in the night

On the other hand, my zinnias seem to dance continually on their tall, arching stalks, having made a deal earlier in the summer with the butterflies and hummingbirds that they would stay as long as needed. My impatiens have patiently waited out the heat of July and August and are as fresh as the day I planted them.

Almost-opened zinnia and friend

 

 

I seem to be blest with a late summer yellow columbine, a plant I thought was strictly about spring’s cool weather. This week an iris bloomed in the most beautiful pale lavender. I love it but don’t understand its untimely appearance. The same with my delicate evening primrose — as pink and hardy as it should have been in the spring but wasn’t. It’s these unexpected surprises that spur on a gardener.

  Unexpected gift of autumn

As I’m tending to my garden, I’ve also been paying more attention to my life. Hence, my long absence from my online world. I don’t know if it’s been the reduction of carbohydrates in my diet or the beautiful weather we’ve had this summer, but I’ve experienced a drive to de-clutter my mind and re-arrange my life in an attempt to gear up full speed ahead to a writing life.

My summer residency at Ashland University’s MFA program left me exhausted, confounded, and exhilarated. Just when I thought I had defined my writing path, they introduced me to new strategies, fabulous writers I hadn’t read, and new perspectives on the work I had thought I had finished. So now I feel like I’m at square one because I want to pour everything I’ve learned into the first draft of my thesis, which is due in December. But I can’t do it all.

To clear my mind for writing, I’ve become overtaken with an impulse to purge spaces in my house (clean house, clean mind?) and start making phone calls on that whole-house renovation project I’ve threaten to do for too long. Now that I’ve more fully embraced the writing life I’ve wanted for so long, energy for other things seems to lift me and carry me along with house projects, tackling French again, organizing my books (although I admit that it only lasts until about 9 o’clock at night, at which point it’s a cup of tea and TV).

Surprise, surprise. When I tend to my life as energetically as I tend to my garden I seem to be rewarded with unexpected blooms of words, feelings of accomplishment, and creativity. It’s going to be a good autumn, I believe.


Meanwhile, a some books I’ve enjoyed and hope that you might:
Making Toast by Roger Rosenblatt — When his daughter dies unexpectedly Rosenblatt and his wife move in with their son-in-law to help raise the three young children. His story of dealing with his own grief and the more important job of helping his grandchildren grow is told in a series of vignettes in the spare, beautiful, fluid language that Rosenblatt has been known for in his lifetime of essay writing and as a political columnist.

Kayak Morning by Roger Rosenblatt — the follow-up to Making Toast. The style is just as spare and beautiful as the previous book as Rosenblatt continues to reflect on the new direction his life has taken.

Carrier: Untangling the Danger in My DNA by Bonnie J. Rough — Rough and her husband are ready to begin a family, but her biological legacy sits heavily on them. As she begins to research her family’s medical history she begins to unravel something deeper in their past. Steeped in scientific research and family stories, she and her husband must face modern personal dilemmas in their own quest for a family.

Safekeeping: Some True Stories From a Life by Abigail Thomas — Thomas eschews straight narrative technique as she examines her life. Through vignettes and stories she tells, with vivid style, the life of an ordinary woman who made mistakes and had successes, who had failed marriages but tended to her ex-husband during his last days with the help of her current husband. She goes from an 18-year old single mother to a doting grandmother who always finds cooking as the answer to many life problems. It’s a confession and a universal story about a woman who figures out who she is and holds on to that.

You never know who you'll meet on the backroads of Ohio

Tell me in the comments what’s growing in your garden. Have you tackled any new projects or completed any old ones? What’s giving you energy these days? What have you read?

Let Us Now Praise Famous Women . . . Writers

Oh, the irony that at the same time we’re celebrating Banned Book Week a well-known male writer declares that he will never teach women writers in his classroom. “I teach only the best,” David Gilmour said in an interview about what he reads and what he teaches. Apparently women’s lives and ideas are banned from his classroom because for him “the best” is defined as “[s]erious heterosexual guys.” He’s all about manly men.

I know, I know. “Banned” is probably too strong a word to describe this situation because he’s not fighting to get all women writers stricken from the department curriculum. He’s happy to allow someone else to handle the lesser, estrogen-influenced literature. However, his students are aware enough to realize at some point that they’re not reading any contemporary female authors in his class. Their education is missing something. To that he explained, “I say I don’t love women writers enough to teach them, if you want women writers go down the hall.”

When social media and book bloggers went crazy over this admission he tried to hide behind the standard jerk’s response of “my words taken out of context.” In its defense, the website that posted the original interview immediately came back with the complete transcript of their discussion.

So why should you care that one writer-teacher has such a Neanderthal approach to his classes? Over on Book Riot, one columnist wrote a thoughtful response about the danger of this limited vision coming from a teacher. The classroom is where we explore a wider world-view, not study only what we like. How can we allow a classroom instructor to declare from the beginning that the ideas of women as a whole are not worthy? That talents of an entire gender are particularly lacking?

 

While I know that Gilmour doesn’t care what I think about anything, my first thought is that if we can’t find female writers whose works will live for centuries to come, is that because they’re inherently lesser writers or is it because there are great writers not being given the chance? Virginia Woolf (whom Gilmour places on the lower rings of not-a-hetrosexual-guy purgatory) ruminated on this exact question in her essay, “Shakespeare’s Sister.” Who knows what “Judith” Shakespeare could have accomplished if cultural prejudices hadn’t held her back?

In a more modern method, the VIDA organization tracks the role of women in the literary world by maintaining statistics on how many females have their books reviewed by heavyweight book review sources and how many females are published in literary journals. The numbers they’ve charted can cause sleepless nights among those of us women who want to be published. Is this because women don’t write as compelling pieces or because there are a bunch of male editors who hold an opinion similar to Gilmour? Or because of the age-old problem of not enough women in the decision-making roles at the office?

This week I was originally planning on telling you about a book I’m reading. Mira Bartók's The Memory Palace, a mesmerizing book about family and love, and forgiveness. After leaving for college she and her sister sever all ties with her mother, who had once been a promising classical pianist but who had sunk deeper and deeper into mental illness. The book tells about reconciling as a family when Bartók receives word that her mother is dying in a homeless shelter. There are many memoirs about dysfunctional families, but Bartók stands out because of the “memory palace” she created to tell her story. After a car accident, she’s left with extreme memory loss and inability to remember things from one day to the next. A Jesuit priest told her how to build a memory palace, where everything she wants to remember has an image. Each image has a particular place in this palace in her mind. Throughout the telling of her story, she returns to her memory palace often, guiding us through her rooms and making connections for us between the abstract images that make her memory. Bartók teaches us how to map our lives, how following the path backward through landmarks can lead us forward to reconciliation with the present.

More than once a man has said that they don’t read women writers or books with female protagonists because they just can’t relate to the story (go ahead and ask your guy friends; I’ll wait). But you rarely hear women say they don’t read male authors.

And so I’m also reading Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It. I know nothing of murder, or fly fishing, or the rough characters of bunkhouses in the West, or of the wild outdoors. But that’s why I read it. I want to understand. And I want to soak in the clean language: “I am haunted by waters.” Ultimately, both Maclean and Bartók talk family -- something which we all experience.

Maybe that male inclination to avoid what they just can’t relate to explains a whole lot in the world.

So in recognition of Banned Book Week, pick up one of many books by women writers who have enough trouble getting the literary respect they deserve from a bunch of people whose minds are the size of lentils. They just don’t need Gilmour disrespecting them, too. Here are a few to get you started:

Harper Lee To Kill A Mockingbird
Alice Walker The Color Purple
Kate Chopin The Awakening
Lois Lowry The Giver
Isabel Allende The House of the Spirits

source

Share titles of works by your favorite female writers, fiction or non-fiction,

in the comments box. Or just share what you’re reading now.

Back To School With Random 5 Friday

Fall is in the air in the Black Forest of Germany

Fall is so quickly blowing in. During the day it may be almost 90˚, but I take my dog out at night and I see dried leaves curled on the sidewalk and the air feels like I should build a bonfire. Soup weather is quickly approaching. I need to find some Jonathon apples and make my first pie or apple crisp of the season. Of all the signs of fall, none signal it more than the march of children back to school.

And so as part of Random 5 Friday I offer five memories of starting school each September when I was young.

1) Mom took us to The Model, a clothes shop in downtown Kirkwood. This was before shopping malls, or boutiques, or national chains. We got to pick out our first-day-of-school dress – always a dress per 1960’s dress codes – and our saddle shoes, sometimes black and white, sometimes tone on tone. My oldest sister recently told me that she had found out at some point after our mom had died that Grandma always paid for our shoes. With four girls in the family, paying for so many shoes a year was an issue. Grandma paid for a pair of school shoes and a pair of Keds for summer. If we were good and patient while all four of us tried on the clothes, sometimes Mom would take us to The Velvet Freeze ice cream shop across the street for a scoop of the world’s best ice cream.

2) We walked to school. There were no buses except for students who lived on the far edges of the suburban community. So all the kids on our cul-de-sac gathered by 8 a.m. in the morning and walked together, down Wilson then half a mile straight uphill on Simmons then right on Peeke to cross at the crosswalk on Geyer guarded by Pete, the retired policeman. He lived on Evans, across from my Brownie leader, who held meetings on Tuesdays. And we reversed it on the way home after a quick stop at the gas station across the street to buy some Bazooka gum. Often I walked alone because I dawdled or because I had Brownies. We only got a ride if it rained hard. Not even in the cold winter months. We didn’t live in a world of “stranger danger” and “Amber Alerts,” unlike now when parents are buying GPS trackers for their kids, anticipating every possible horror.

3) The best part of starting the school year for me was buying the supplies. Such a cornucopia of folder and notebook choices! Even down to the small spiral assignment notebook. Oh, the colors and themes. The perfect color for each subject. And the excitement when I finally was allowed to switch from wide-ruled to college-ruled. From fat #2 pencils to thin ones – even to mechanical ones in high school. And then blue Bic pens. I never have outgrown my obsession with just the right notebook. I will buy them now assuming before I die I will have filled them all with writing. And I’ve started buying even more when I’m in France because, well, they have different kinds.

When I started back to school to earn my MFA this year, I stocked up on notebooks for writing, found my best pens (2 – one in purse, one by computer), and wandered the aisles of Office Depot hoping I would spot some special school paraphernalia that I absolutely had to have. This go-round for my education, though, it’s just going to involve taking my student ID to the Apple store and getting a new computer. Not half as exciting as new notebooks.

4) The buying of the metal lunchbox (with matching thermos, of course) took more mental space than anything else I ever did in grade school. I’m pretty sure of it. I gravitated toward animal themes over teen heartthrob themes.

5) We actually carried everything to school each day. Like, in our hands, unless we rode our bike, at which point we put stuff in the metal basket on the handlebars. We didn’t carry it in a car, or in a backpack, or on a computer. We carried actual stuff in our actual hands and shifted the books from side to side in response to that biting ache that came from keeping the wrist bent just so and arm straight to hold it all tight against your body to keep it from tumbling to the ground. Which it did on several occasions, so you hoped that you were with friends who would help you chase down handouts, permission slips, and homework that needed signing as it blew down the sidewalk and into the street.

Most schools around here start long before Labor Day now. However, for me it’s the early part of September that always brings out the nostalgia. It also is my emotional New Year’s Day. Perhaps that seasonal cycle became so deeply ingrained because I also taught school for so long. So all I want to say today is Happy New Year!

The tiny notebooks I carry in my purse on a daily basis for writing ideas, taking notes at the doctor's, or jotting down the name of a contractor someone recommends. The Moleskine notebooks are for travel because they're lightweight and flexible. The larger Mead are for writing at my desk.

What memories do you have about the start of school for you as a child or when you were a parent sending your own children off to school. Share them with us in the comments box.

And you can find other wonderful Random 5 Friday writing here.

Midlife Crazy, Or You Can't Jump Halfway Out Of An Airplane

Things have been a little crazy around here lately

Life has been a little crazy lately.  I’ve been trying to organize my ideas finally to start a MASSIVE renovation on our house.  I’ve been trying to figure out my travel agenda for the rest of the year (from Louisville, KY all the way to Tunisia in North Africa).  My geriatric dog has developed a little problem with making it outside in time.  We had a few tornadoes touching down in town recently.  You know, just a little busy.

And so, well, I guess all of this activity overtaxed my brain and warped my perspective a bit.  Or maybe it was hormones,* because I decided to go back to school and get yet another college degree.  The three I already have simply couldn’t give me what I needed.

Starting a blog when you’re not trying to sell anything but your stories and your infectious (I mean it – best to keep your distance) personality is like dipping your toe into the water.  “Will anybody read me?”  “Will anybody say anything to me?”  “Which bloggers will let me sit at their lunch table?”  How insane is it to even start writing that first post when there are tens of millions of blogs on the internet?  How would I ever be found?

But some of you wonderful people found me and stuck around.  You shared your stories in the comments and encouraged me.  You made me think I could write.  I met other writers online who inspired me and made me feel guilty for not doing even more with my words.  And then I finally told myself it was time to step up to the challenge.  So I filled out the first college application I’ve completed in over 30 years.

I want to create long-form essays.  I want to improve my travel writing skills.  Perhaps I’ll even try poetry.  Someday I’ll finish a book, maybe two. I might even go back to teaching.  However, it’s difficult to achieve any of that without a writing community to give feedback or deepen my understanding of the practice.  Spending a recent weekend at the AWP Writing Conference surrounded by people who could not only talk writing, but who could also talk writing theory and history of writing (I’m a sucker for that academic stuff) showed me how far removed I was from doing what would make me happy.

I don’t want to dabble in writing.  I want to be a writer who talks regularly with other writers and constantly expands her range of writing skills.  That’s when the decision to earn an MFA burst through my walls of doubts about not being talented enough to get accepted or not having the time or the stamina to produce yet another thesis.  Finally fear was conquered by desire.

At least this time I don’t have to live in a cheap, buggy apartment surviving on hamburger and canned vegetables.  Universities have developed low-residency programs for people like me who have made the crazy decision midway through their adulthood that they need to live a writing life.  With two weeks of intense on-campus time for three summers, followed by constant online conversations and massive amounts of writing being passed back and forth for the next three years, I’ll be well on my way to finally earning the title “writer.”

You might remember the little barn quilt tour I took you on last summer.  That was near Ashland University, which so kindly decided that I qualified for its MFA program.  It will be my haven where I’ll get to talk Creative Nonfiction ad nauseum.

This does feel a bit like jumping out of a plane.  Someone will now expect something from me in this game.  I can’t waffle and stall by giving five hours a week to serious writing when they’re expecting five hours each day (yikes!).  I’m not going into this simply to try it on for size, not at the current price of college tuition.  Like jumping out of a plane, I can’t do this writing gig halfway.

For reasons I don’t quite understand myself, once I hit mid-life I’ve felt like jumping out of that plane more often.  I dare to say I want to be a writer.  I not only travel across the ocean, but have a home there. I talk with my husband about returning to the Scottish Highlands to finally make it to the top of mountains I failed to climb when we were there ten years ago.  I have plans that will take me long past the day of my death to check off my “to do” list.  This one’s exhilarating.  And scary.  But the door to that plane just opened.  One . . . two . . . three . . . .


*Today I saw a face serum for women that said “for skin hormonally affected.”  I think that means “for wrinkles.”

What have you done that’s like jumping out of a plane?  Inspire us in the comments box. 

Creativity Could Become Habit Forming

Is your creativity as overflowing as this Natchez porch, or do you need a little work?

Don’t you just hate it when the cosmos gives you too many shoves toward what you should be doing?  Last week I made some big statement about developing the habit of “getting started.”  Like it meant something.  Like I planned on working seriously on this habit.  Yeah, right.  Then just when I almost managed to forget that I was supposed to develop the habit of habits by focusing on a priority for five minutes each day, when I was about to get back to eating some Ben & Jerry ice cream while reading a garden magazine, well, the importance of habit slapped me upside the head again.

Since I’m so much behind in my serious reading I turned on my e-reader to give five minutes to a book that had sat there ignored since mid-summer.  Jeff Goins, in You Are A Writer (So Start Acting Like One), gave me that proverbial shove. Weightlifters, he said, don’t get sore muscles like we do because they get up, push hard, and then do it again the next day.  “If you practice every day you don’t get fatigued.  All muscles are built this way, even creative ones,” he reminded us [my emphasis].

Oh, I see.  Make it a habit.

Then when taking five minutes to catch up with blog reading, here it came again.  On the Copyblogger blog, Dean Rieck hit me hard with his proclamation about a primary trait of creative people:

And to a large degree, creativity is a learned behavior. It’s a matter of how you approach things, how you act or react to new circumstances, your proclivity to look at things in different ways, your willingness to question, experiment, and take chances. In other words, creativity is not “what you are” as much as “what you do.”  Think of creativity as a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets.

This perspective on creativity seems to be habit-forming.

When I was deep in the academic world, every day wonderfully intelligent and creative people surrounded me as icons and mentors and inspirations.  It was easy to use that part of my mind to produce ideas and paragraphs that made other people talk and think.  It’s now so much harder to produce the routine of creativity when the people I should be modeling are not live presences in my day but rather only words on a page or a long-distance relationship through e-mail and social media.

I know that many great artists got up every morning and produced and pushed even if no one recognized their genius.  They kept working those muscles.  Their habits became a passion.

Can I be allowed thirty seconds to whine about how hard it is to build that habit of creativity if you haven’t been able to find or construct a like-minded community?

Ok.  Rant over.

In the meantime, I think I’ll form my own fantasy creativity team, people who know something about putting in the time and pushing through even when the path seems blocked.  I’d love to have them all to dinner just to listen to their thoughts on what makes a person creative and how they trained their own muscles:

Samuel Johnson – prolific 18th century writer in multiple genres and compiler of The Dictionary of the English Language

J.K. Rowling – the mind that imagined the incredibly complex world of Harry Potter and peopled it with absolutely distinct and unique characters

Keith Urban – guitar god and songwriter; human jukebox (really, there’s not a song he can’t sing) [true story: I actually did have breakfast with him, or rather, three feet away from him but I became catatonic due to his gorgeousness, fetching Aussie accent, and infectious laugh; then he was gone before I could gather my wits and make my feet move in his direction]

Leonardo da Vinci – well, wouldn’t you want to know how he did what he did?

William Shakespeare – well, duh, yeah

Benjamin Franklin – where wasn’t he creative?

Jon Stewart – the honorable art of parody and satire has not died, thanks to Jon

Dr. Suess – a master of creative language; maybe he’ll instigate a rhyme-off after dinner

I realize that I’m not exactly gender-balanced with this list.  And it’s not very long.  But it’s late.  So I leave it up to you.  Who would you invite to this banquet honoring the creative mind and its habits?  Add to the comments box who you think would be suitable dinner partners (and perhaps some suggestions for the menu).  OR tell us what you do to keep the creative muscles well-lubricated.
 

Final Dijon Whimsy - Why I Love France

Things have been happening here at too rapid a pace to take time to write about it.  Tomorrow I head home and I have a lot of unexpected business to take care of before I leave.  I try to look at it all through the rose-colored glass of this enclosed terrace, though.  So if you’ll be patient with me, I’ll explain all and bring even more stories of France after I touch down in the U.S. and get a good massage and take my dog to the park.

Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with a little video that shows why I love Dijon.  We were sitting at a restaurant at Place de la Liberation having before-dinner drinks and this drumming troop started up across the plaza.  They drummed and worked their way along the restaurants that line this very large horseshoe-shaped plaza.  In Dijon you never know when something like this might happen.

And I also leave you with the 11 commandments of writing and creativiy by Henry Miller, shared by travel writer Nancy Pistorius.  I think it could apply to more than persistence with the written word.

Tell me in the comments box where is your favorite place to do people-watching or to catch the unexpected?  Where do you like to go just because you know sooner or later something will happen to entertain you?
 

A Postcard From Dijon

I've already sent these.  How would you like one of your own?

Dear Readers,
Wish you were here.  Today a young guy rode by me on his bike.  He was wearing the head of a donkey.  It took a second for me to realize that something was strange, then for just a tick I thought I was in a street performance of Shakespeare’s Midnight Summer Night's Dream.  But then his friend rode up behind him wearing a helmet camera.  Wouldn’t you love to know that story?

That’s why I love to travel places where I can go à pied.  On foot you’re so much closer to all the quirkiness of the world.

One way I refuse to adapt to this country, though – I have made a habit of NOT giving correct change.  This characteristic of the French is not quirkiness.  It’s just plain irritating to stand in line behind three people who all insist on counting out every centime.  And no thank you, Madame.  I don’t need your help digging through my coin purse to see if I have that one final euro that makes the count perfect.  Just take my 20€ bill for the baguette and let’s all move on.

On Sunday we tried to go to the Musée Gorsline in Bussy-le-Grand.  American artist Douglas Gorsline moved to France for inspiration.  The museum isn’t much bigger than a three-car garage in a small village in the middle of nowhere.  Except we didn’t get to see it.  The sign said knock on the door across the street and someone would come let us in to the studio-museum.  We never got anyone to answer our knock.  That’s sort of how things are over here.  C’est la vie.  You have to learn to just go with the flow.  Reserve expectations for things like success at open-heart surgery, not day to day events or plumbing (see all past comments about French toilets and my hot water problem).

Word for the day: éthylotests

France has always been very strict about drinking and driving.  On July 1 the country began requiring that all cars carry two breathalyzer tests in the glove compartment.  Two, remember.  Not one.  If you’ve spent the night drinking alcohol (duh . . . you’re in France), then you’re required to administer the test to yourself and abstain from driving if the response says you’re over the limit.  On Sunday night before the big Euro2012 final I saw a line stretching down the sidewalk at the Tabac shop (pretty much what it sounds like).  I guess they thought they might have a sip or two during the match and needed to be prepared for after.  The regulation is still debated.  Many see it as yet another impôt (tax) or a good ol’ fashioned vache à lait (cash cow) for the state.

Went to see Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom Monday night at one of the theaters that shows movies in English.  I’m slowly adjusting to the fact that they don’t sell any food of any kind at the cinema.  Sometimes they might have a vending machine. The important thing is, though, that you see that film.  Bruce Willis, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Edward Norton.  How can you go wrong?

So that’s what happened over the weekend.

Here is what I see as I walk

 

Postcards.  Snippets of impressions.  No room ever for the whole story, but enough to give you a taste of life in another part of the world.  With internet, smart phones, Skype, and every other instantaneous form of communication (did you know that I can call from a land line in France back home to another land line for FREE?) the fine art of letter writing dies a little more.  No more glossy souvenirs arriving through the post box, dreams of the future that you hang up over your desk while you await the day when you will get there yourself.

However, I want to slow down that sad literary decline.  If you like postcards, raise your hand.  Or, more practically, go to the comments box as usual and tell us about your postcard/thank you card/letter writing habit or history (you know, those things where you have to supply your own message).  Then if you want your own postcard from France, find my e-mail address on my profile page and send me a message by July 8 with “postcard” in the subject line.  Include your full name and address in the e-mail and I’ll send you a bit of vacation nostalgia.  Maybe one day you’ll return the favor.

HAPPY JULY 4TH!!!!!

Happy Belated Wordle Day

As part of Michelle Rafter's Blogathon Challenge we were supposed to turn a blog post into a Wordle creation.  It was supposed to happen on Monday, Memorial Day.  However, I wanted a real Memorial Day photo and post for the day, so here is yesterday's post re-imagined in the colors of summer.  I hope your holiday was grand.

I went swimming at my sister's on Monday.  Leave me a note in the comments box about the fun things you did for the holiday.

Summer Reading For You

Summer reading.  I know it’s at the top of your priorities right now as you settle into that pool recliner on Memorial Day.  To make it easier for you, I’m offering a list of the many wonderful memoirs produced by the immensely talented presenters at my nonfiction writing conference sponsored by River Teeth magazine.  I vouch for the poetic language and unforgettable characters in all of them.

Ana Maria Spagna
 -- Potluck: Community on the Edge of Wilderness The Washington state community in which she lives is so remote that it takes four hours by boat and six hours by car before she even reaches somewhere that she can board a plane.  But in the simple coming together of American potluck suppers she gives an honest portrait of the difficulties and rewards of living with others in a small, isolated world.
-- Test Ride On The Sunnyland Bus: A Daughter’s Civil Rights Journey  Because her father died when she was young, Ana never knew that her father had been arrested for a bus protest in Florida during the height of the Civil Rights Movement.  His case went all the way to the Supreme Court.  She begins her search for the other original remaining riders to learn the truth of conflicting stories at the same time she begins caring for a mother diagnosed with terminal cancer.  This book is the winner of the 2009 River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Contest.

Hope Edelman
-- Author of Motherless Daughters and Motherless Mothers, Hope wrote the memoir The Possibility of Everything about a time when, in the midst of many kinds of upheavals in her life, her 3-year old daughter started exhibiting extremely strange and disturbing behavior.  With few effective treatments left to her and her husband, they take a leap of faith and head to the jungles of Belize seeking an alternative cure with a healer. Of course, what they discovered in that jungle applied to more than their daughter.

Walt Harrington
-- In The Everlasting Stream: A true Story of Rabbits, Guns, Friendship, and Family, award-winning Washington Post writer Harrington brings to life the annual hunting rituals on his father-in-law’s rural Kentucky farm.  Four African-American men of the South introduce a white city-slicker to the world of the woods, hunting, and a different definition of manhood.  He learns lessons of adaptation and growth.

Joe Mackall
-- The Last Street Before Cleveland: An Accidental Pilgrimage  Joe returns to the street where he grew up upon hearing of the death of a childhood friend who had long been lost to him.  He came back to understand the life of his lost friend, but he is drawn into larger questions that get at his own rejection of this neighborhood, his depression and addictions, and the over-arching Catholic faith that defined his youth in this blue-collar world.
-- Plain Secrets: An Outsider Among the Amish  When an Amish family of one of the most strict sects moves in next to him in his Ohio town, Joe has no sense of how much he will be drawn into that world.  He writes this book not from the perspective of an anthropologist or someone temporarily immersed in the extreme strictness of this life.  It is written from the perspective of a neighbor who is witness to the daily life and the familiar struggles of this Amish family and their community.  His attempt to understand this world and write about it tests the friendship of the Amish and this “English” man, but it results in a very human portrait of this traditional American clan.


What will you be reading this summer?  Please share in the comments box.
 

Ohio Is Getting A Bit Squirrelly

 

Source

I’m still in Ohio at the conference.  Today I saw a black squirrel and it stopped me in my tracks.  No camera available because the computer was heavy enough.  I hope to get a picture of one tomorrow.

We’ve spent the weekend trying to come up with new terms for what we do.  Creative nonfiction?  Nah, why do we have to make an argument for its creativity.  Personal essay?  What about raising it’s image (oh, memoirs were sooo last year) to memoireture?  What do you call the essay that’s even too long to be a Kindle Single?  Something the equivalent of fiction’s “novella”?  Can we come up with something unique for the short nonfiction pieces that match flash fiction?  How about “memoirette”?  And while we’re at it, what is the appropriate number of words that makes “flash” flash?

Yes, we’re playing the part of word geeks to absolute perfection.  Some might think that we’re some kind of academic elite who need to come down from the clouds and join the real world.  But what could be more real than focusing on the words that we all use every day.  What could be more real than devoting time to telling the stories of extraordinary, ordinary lives?  If woodworkers got together and exchanged techniques for cutting curves for tables that worked better than anything that came before or if they spent long afternoons talking about woodworkers they had known and admired they would not be accused of not living in the real world.

So we gather and talk for twelve hours a day about how to tell stories.  Because there are so many stories that need to be heard.  And it’s so hard to do it well, to be both truthful and engaging.  So forgive us if things get a bit squirrelly.

What could you talk about forever with friends or colleagues?  What brings out your inner geek?  Share your story in the comments box.

Let Me Get Back To You, I'm Busy Blogging

This weekend I’m on the road and in Ohio at the River Teeth writing conference.  Lots of good people speaking and expanding my mind.  Also on the agenda is one-on-one work with Joe Mackall, whose memoir The Last Street Before Cleveland: An Accidental Pilgrimage needs to be on everyone’s reading list.  Then when you finish that, move on to his look at an Ohio Amish community in Plain Secrets: An Outsider Among the Amish.

Blogger Nadine Feldman pointed me toward another blog that likes to keep it short and sweet.  If you only have a minute, try out Just a Minute, I’m Busy.  After reading an entry you’ll still have time to eat a sandwich before your minute’s up.

When you’re cutting into a fresh, delicious piece of salmon or halibut, think of fabulous blogger and Alaskan fisherwoman, Tele.  Right now she’s out there in the cold northern ocean with iffy internet connection. You’ll be hooked on Hooked when you read her last post just before she hit the wide sea.  It tells us a touching and eye-opening tale of a side of that large, wild state most of us never hear about.

Sometimes a delayed flight is worth it.  What do you think?

And finally, if you’re wondering when I’m going to return your phone call, answer your e-mail, or otherwise take care of business, maybe this has something to do with it.  (If you posted this on your blog this week, please speak up in the comments so I can give you credit.  I forgot to note the source for the link.

source

What are you doing for the weekend?  Share your plans in the comments box.

Can I Borrow Some Butt Glue, Please?

This is what the inside of my mind looks like.  Is it no wonder I have trouble starting

and then completing projects, writing or otherwise?

This might sound like a broken record after two posts on the subject in a week (broken record - when will we reach the point when that metaphor becomes completely incomprehensible - after my children have children?), but my weekend was filled with more inspirational awesomeness as well as some good, old-fashioned butt-kicking of the necessary kind.

I spent the weekend at the Missouri Writers Guild Conference.  It was two and a half days of trading business cards, repeating a million times “What are you working on?” and trying to scribble every bit of fabulous writing advice as my hand cramped like Captain Hook’s claw.  Those of us in the audience hoped every session that the über-successful writer/speaker would hand us the secret to making our writing come easily and brilliantly so that the first agent we approached was sure we had a book that would sell a million copies and become a movie starring George Clooney.

They kept telling us in many ways that we had to spread glue on our chair every day and stay there until we accomplished something.  Maybe I need to try a different conference.  That doesn’t sound like some “magic wand” answer.  Maybe I need to follow the right person on Twitter who will, in a surprise move, direct message me with that writing success secret I failed to hear at the MWG Conference.

Maybe I’m just doing what Christina Katz (aka, The Writer Mama) called “living an imaginary writing life.”  Reading about writing, talking about writing, declaring I want to be a writer but not really finishing anything.  “Be projected oriented,” she told us.  Writing more and more builds writing momentum and focuses my “sweet spot.”  All of that hungrily taking in what other authors say about their writing habits or their strategies for building character or their process of finding an agent aren’t really transferable.  We can’t emulate another’s path, she warned all of us novices.

The essential question we have to ask ourselves:  What are the things I want to write about before I’m done?  Katz is all about having a million ideas, but making them distinct and then making choices.  Writers tend to exist in an abstract realm.  We see visions of where we want to be.  Our heads swirl with other worlds, a thousand great ideas, the perfect final lines, entire biographies of characters we haven’t even plugged into stories yet.  We get bogged down in all that “potential” and become too overwhelmed sometimes to even move forward in any significant fashion.  (What?  Not you?  Never?  It’s only me that falls into that “great idea coma” on a regular basis?)

Katz has a straightforward response to that swirling cloud of stuff that gums up the cogs in the writing wheel.  Just ask yourself “What can I do next week?”

It reminds of me the story Anne Lamott (you remember her, don’t you?) told in her fabulous guide to writing and life, Bird By Bird.  Her brother had a school report on birds that he had not touched in the three months since it had been assigned.  On the night before it was due he was paralyzed by the amount of work he had to complete.  Their father put an arm around her brother’s shoulder and advised him, “Bird by bird, buddy.  Just take it bird by bird.”

What can I do next week?  Pick a project and just get to it.  Put some butt glue on my chair and focus, first for one paragraph, then one page, then two.

A writing life is really not so different from any other life.  We writers may spend a little more time in total isolation, staring into space and talking to ourselves, but whether we decide to train for a marathon or change a career or clean the basement, we have to focus on what is in front of us.  Pick one thing, one project.  Set a frame of reference for measuring progress, and then understand that we have to work toward it in increments.

We can’t write a book in one day.  We can’t be qualified to run a marathon the first day we lace on a pair of athletic shoes.  This lesson seems almost too obvious.  But why is it so hard for me to see, not just in writing but in every other area of my life?  Probably I give too much time to visualizing how I want that project to look when it’s completed.  It’s so complex and perfect and awe-inspiring that I’m afraid to even begin the process.  The process can’t possibly be as perfect as the project fully formed in my mind.

However, this weekend Christina Katz had immense tolerance for this one novice writer who asked questions incessantly as if she might hit on the magic one whose answer would reveal all.  And because Katz had a marvelous blend of patience and well-placed butt-kicking I decided to write one page today rather than collapse in a useless heap because I couldn’t write an entire book in 24 hours.

It’s better to accomplish something than be perfect.  I can always revise after I have pages in hand.  Lesson learned.  I better get in a large supply of glue.

Are you someone who has that enviable gene that lets you focus until something is done?  What strategies to you have when faced with large projects or distant goals so you can make progress?  Or have you always been the kid up at midnight trying to make the poster of all the natural resources found in each state in South America, with accompanying data legends and sources (be honest; I know I’m not the only one)? Share in the comments box your fears or your wisdom of just getting it done, whatever “it” is.

This is me with the so-patient Christina Katz.  You can't see it in the picture,

but she's in the process of kicking me in the rear.

  

A Lot of Nashville Nirvana (Pt. 1) -- Books, Yes Books

My favorite town, Nashville -- the street of dreams, Lower Broadway

Country music and books.  Pretty much a perfect kind of week for me when I get both on the same day in my favorite town – NashVegas.

Last week I was in Nashville for the third All For The Hall concert.  It’s a fundraiser for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.  Two Nashville guitar gods – Keith Urban and Vince Gill – began the series of concerts, pulling in the best of country music both old and new to make a lot of music and raise a lot of money for the repository of country music history.  I was there for the first two and plan to be at every one, front row, until they decide to stop.

But first let’s talk books.

Recently Nashville upped the independent bookstore ante when Parnassus Books opened on Hillsboro Pike.  Author Ann Patchett and veteran of the publishing world, Karen Hayes, decided to buck the decline of independent bookstores by opening one of their own after Borders went under and a town of that size was left with only one national chain store and some used book places.  So of course I had to do my part to support their endeavor by spending a small fortune.

I got lucky on that trip, though.  I showed up on the day they inaugurated a conversation series with local luminaries talking about books they love.  The place was packed to the gills with people there to talk about the written word and hear what the mayor of Nashville, Karl Dean, had been reading.  I love the written word.  I love reading it and I love writing it.  I want to smell the binding and the pages.  I want to scribble my comments in the margins to create a dialogue with the author.  With a book I commune with the past and contemplate the future.

At the store I was surrounded by so many great books I needed to read.  Over here the recommended new fiction.  Over there tables of non-fiction I hadn’t read.  A special display for poetry.  If I had won the half-billion dollar lottery prize the previous week I could have used a wagon to haul all my book purchases to the car.  Since I didn’t and I still had a stack of books at home waiting to be read, I but the brakes on and bought only two: an essay collection I knew nothing about but loved the title, When I Was a Child I Read Books by Marilynne Robinson, and a novel that got great reviews, The Song of Achilles by first-time author Madeline Miller.

Patchett herself walked in as I was paying for my purchases.  She stood behind a table stacked with books, giving recommendations in abundance to customers seeking her guidance.  If I had not already been so drunk on books I would have done something profound like demonstrate insights I had gained after reading her new memoir-ette, the Kindle Single The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing And Life.  When she wrote, “I’ve come to realize that I write the book I want to read, the one I can’t find anywhere” I nodded in agreement because I, too, am writing to create the small stories I don’t see very often.  I should have told her that when she talked about a willingness to be bored at the computer instead of giving in to distractions, it was a kick in the pants I needed to persevere because too often if I’m bored while writing I take it as a sign to give up.  The point, she declares, is that you keep writing until you’re past boredom.

Oh no, it didn’t occur to me to talk to her, writer to writer.  In that room, surrounded by a couple thousand linear feet of books all I could do was tell her how much I loved her store and how much I enjoyed the afternoon listening to her mayor talk about fascinating books I hadn’t yet read (but I have the list and will add them to my TBR pile).  I congratulated her on stepping in to the literary void and taking the chance on the dying animal, an independent bookstore.  I told her I’d be back.

And then instead of doing the logical thing of grabbing the nearest copy of Bel Canto and asking her to sign it, I did a very Nashvillean thing.  I grabbed the Parnassus Hatch Show Print I had just bought to add to my collection and stuck it out for her signature.  What?  You don’t know Hatch Show Print?  It’s a Nashville – and American – institution that puts words on paper the same way Gutenberg did with the first press.  Instead of talking about writing, we had a serious discussion of where to put her autograph so as not to destroy the symmetry and art of the poster.  She also added the date.

As I walked back to my car I realized I had blown the chance to start a conversation that would give Patchett an opening to say something immensely wise that was original and directed specifically at me, writer to writer.  I had been so in a trance from breathing in the aroma of the pages and leather bindings and dreaming of finding my name on a similar spine facing outward to a reader one day that I had come away only with a bag of more books I don’t have time to read and her clear signature in the white margins of my Hatch print.

Sometimes when I’ve gotten all fangurl and wanted to talk to a singer after a performance or stand in line for an autograph at a book signing or wait to talk to some other notable person, I’ve had some people say (usually while waiting impatiently for me), “Why bother?  They don’t care.  They’re not going to remember you.”  But I know that I myself don’t get tired of hearing someone say they appreciated something I put my heart and soul into, whether an apple pie or a piece of writing.  And I harbor a desire to connect, even for a moment, with those that inspire me to pursue my own interests.

An art like writing is almost completely about reaching out to make a connection.  Yes, I may have been forgotten by Patchett before I left the parking lot, but it was a perfect and perfectly energizing moment.  It engaged my passion.  That’s never a wasted moment.  Nelson Mandela said, “There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”  No, nothing penetrating or heart-stirring happened in an afternoon at a bookstore in Nashville.  However, it’s often those small and random encounters with what drives you that can encourage movement onward to something bigger instead of sitting still.

I came home from Nashville and set to writing again.  Even if I temporarily bore myself.  I want to be on the bookshelf of Patchett’s store and talk with her engaged Nashvilleans.  And perhaps have another chance at a conversation, writer to writer, that I missed.

Watch what goes in to making a Hatch Print

 

Do you have a favorite bookstore? What makes it so special?  Have you had an inspiring encounter with a place or person that spurred you in your passions?  Or did you have an opportunity and blow it?  Inspire us all with your story in the comments box.

Come back on Wednesday and we’ll talk Nashville and music.   

What Is My Passion? Outrunning Fear and Regret

Underneath the sculpture "Cloud Gate"  by Anish Kapoor at Millenium Park in Chicago.

The locals call it "the bean," as in "I'll wait for you at the bean." Our passions frequently

are as unfocused as our reflection under the sculpture.

What’s your passion?  How often do you get to surround yourself with the best of the best behind it?  How far do you go to pursue it?  This past weekend I took a step closer to my own when I flew to Chicago to attend the AWP Conference for writers and writing program directors.  (Of course, the actual traveling to the Windy City was not my passion if you read any of my tweets or Facebook posts from that fateful day.  It was an experience best never spoken of again.)

In this middle part of my life I’m changing courses, trying to return to the writing that had been such an essential part of my identity when I was young.  It got pushed to the periphery as more and more daily responsibilities claimed its space in my life.  One day the lid blew on the pressure cooker of adulthood and I pulled out a yellow legal pad and pen and started writing for survival.  It came in fits and starts because I had almost forgotten how to put one sentence after another on a page.

As I wrote, I read.  I started seeking out people who shared my rediscovered passion.  Yet something was missing because I hadn’t yet found that one thing that would push me to my A-game or focus my efforts.  Except for this blog, my writing stayed hidden because (if I’m being honest) not sharing it with the world meant I didn’t risk having it rejected.  No rain would ever fall on my parade if I didn’t leave my room.

Fear prevents many from mastering change in their lives or taking risks.  Joe Robinson, author of Don’t Miss Your Life, talks about this fear and its effects here.  We’re biologically conditioned since the days of the mastodons and saber-tooth tigers to live with fear as our default mode.  It’s that willingness to take risks, however, that turn us into explorers, inventors, and artists.  Or even simply to change our job or try waterskiing.  As Robinson points out “Fear is momentary; regrets are forever.”  We can pay for living with safety as a default mode with a life of boredom.

Embracing risk doesn’t mean we all need to thumb our noses at it by climbing Mt. McKinley next year.  For Robinson, even taking on a simmering passion like salsa dancing late in your life asks you to overcome fears, even if it is only the fear of looking foolish.  Last year, I wrote about how I was making a vow to open my arms wide to failure and gather it in.  With my writing, however, I stayed huddled in the back of my cave, hoping the wild beasts out there didn’t see me and eat me.

There’s an antidote to this fear.  According to Robinson, risk is about managing uncertainty.  The more you know about what you fear, the more prepared you are to take on this new challenge.  You don’t make your first race the Indianapolis 500.  What has scared you is no longer a threat as you learn more; it becomes an act of exploration and actually changes your memory of that fear.  “Each time you recall a memory and add or subtract from it, you are defanging the initial fear,” Robinson says.

So I took on my fear of actually calling myself a writer and leading a writing life.  When Annette Gendler, a writer and teacher of writing I had met through an online class, said, “Come to Chicago.  There will be lots of writers.  It will be good.”  I took her up on it. I put my money down and committed to wading through the waves of 8000 people I didn’t know to see what life was like among those who dared to call themselves “writers.”

I came, I saw, I was invigorated by the passion of all of these people following my same passion.  I met and talked to people who were where I want to be.  I began to understand the steps I needed to take to walk the writing path.  It was like reaching the top of my first mountain.  Robinson says of achieving an initial goal, “There's an extra incentive of bagging a ‘first,’ a distinction we can use to turn the discomfort of doing something new to its flip-side: excitement.”  He doesn’t tell us how to maintain the momentum, but it probably involves keeping alive this new memory of success rather than the older, more entrenched memory of fear.

And maybe each week I can ask myself what will be my “first” that week – my first submission, my first new piece I start writing that week, the first time I make it around the park on my bike without pushing it up any of the hills.  Salsa dancing or yoga may not be mountain climbing or hang gliding, but we’re all capable of outrunning fear and regret.  Notch a “first” on your belt before the month is out.

Did you start following a passion later in your life?  What was the trigger that made you get up off the couch and say “I’m going to do that”?  What “first” do you want to bag?  Share your fears and your risks and your passions in the comments box and get us fired up to do something new and exciting ourselves.

The Chicago skyline reflected in "the bean."  You can see my reflection, too, taking the photo.

Dahling, You Don't Look a Blog Post Over 50

Cats in the window and copper pots.  This must be France

Wow, can you believe it?  I just turned 100 this week.  One hundred blog posts, that is.  I didn’t notice it until after I posted my Valentine’s Day piece.  Note to self – start looking at all the statistics generated by the statistics-gathering plug-ins I plugged into this webpage.  Considering that I started this project in 2009, I might reach my second hundred before retirement age. 

When I set up home on the internet as a way to share with my family the stories and pictures of a summer in France, I had no idea that I would still be doing it and that people I’ve never met would be reading it and joining in conversation with me.

In developing my own blog, I’ve found many others writing with voices stronger than my own and with so much to teach me – about writing and about life.  They may not be headlines on today’s celebrity news, but they tell stories of remarkable encounters, of the poignancy of everyday life, and of the uproariously funny oddities of the world that confound us all.  In the span of 100 posts I’ve gotten inspired to up my writing game.  I’ve gotten more disciplined with putting words down on paper (digitally speaking).  I’ve seen that it is possible to be that strange creature called “writer.”

I’d like to thank everyone who has read during these growing years.  And if you have taken time to share your thoughts, I doubly thank you.  I’m trying to get to the websites of each commenter, but it’s a slow business.  Knowing you’re out there makes me eager to sit down and start each new online conversation.  Especially when I return yet again this summer to the place that started it all.

To mark this day, I’m turning on the Wayback Machine and sharing a few of my posts from the summer in France that started this whole writing experiment.  Enjoy.

J’ecris (I Write) -- “It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, who may not be who we essentially are.” --Alain de Botton The Art of Travel
This quotation started off my blog.  It expresses why I travel.  The post says why I write.

Look Up -- Up is where the French obsession with geraniums takes root. Up is where the lights glow. Up is where the architectural intricacies hide. Up is where unrecognized music drifts out of unknown windows.
You could get vertigo trying to keep alert to all the life that happens above street level in cities like Dijon, FR.

Suits Me To A Thé -- French cafés invite engagement with the world. There is nothing on the internet more entertaining than a French street on market day. My senses overflow.
American coffee shops may offer free wi-fi, but their atmosphere pales in comparison to a ringside table at a French salon de thé on market day.

While I hope that you’ll click on the post links, above, and make comments on them, I also hope you’ll come back here for some more conversation.  How does travel inspire you?  What projects or activities did you start on a whim then find you couldn’t stop doing?  Where are you traveling this summer?  What do you want me to write about next?  Share your responses to these questions or add any other thoughts you have in the comments box.

I think it is not possible to have too many geraniums on too many bridges over too many rivers