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Here I Sit

November 29, 2011 By 1 Comment

I recounted to a friend the other day my background with writing. Not the resume, the stories and articles published, the conferences and workshops attended or the awards won, but the whys and wherefores. The ones before my husband told me I should do this thing.

I remembered a writing conference my English teacher took me to in junior high. The teacher, a published writer whose name I’ve long since forgotten, gave us a writing prompt: here I sit. We could take this anywhere. We could look out an imaginary window, describe the room in our head, share why we sat, what we contemplated as we sat. Anything. Here I sit.

This was not the first time I moved pen on paper. I had written before this, which explains why my English teacher chose to take me to the conference (did I win a competition? I don’t remember). Under my belt I had tucked short stories and even one novel written the year before (a murder mystery in which a girl on a sixth-grade class cruise was found dead when the cruise ship made an emergency dock on a deserted island before sinking; let’s not discuss the suspension of belief required to get into a story of sixth graders going on a cruise together as a class–I dreamed big).

But this, these simple words, brought my writing from class cruises and unicorns and whales to something closer to home, something more me. Here I sit, gazing at the world around me, observing how it spins, noting how its people move. No one else can see it exactly the way I see it.

This is not to say that stories of class cruises and unicorns and whales can’t be close to home, can’t describe our world and how it spins, but mine didn’t. Not anymore. They encapsulated the world of a third grader and sixth grader. But in junior high, moving from one state to another, saying goodbye to my entire known existence and discovering that life existed somewhere else, my world had changed, and this prompt gave me the voice to express that.

Now here I sit, chronicling the life changes of humanity, the seven acts and the exits and entrances, the dreams lost and gained, the relationships developed and unraveled, and I always have this, a unique perspective from my chair, in my own little corner in my own little chair.

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That Old Black Magic

November 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

picture by ruslou koorts via flickr, all rights reserved

It happened again. I had penned the first couple of pages of a new novel when I realized I had no idea what I was doing. What right do I have to tell this story? What is this story? I closed the lid of my computer and turned to housework.

You know it’s bad when I prefer housework.

Maybe I should put writing aside for a bit, I thought. I could peck away at a short story here and there, but no pressure, no thoughts of pushing myself, of duty to character or audience. What did it matter? What did it matter if I didn’t put my butt in the chair every day, or at least most days, and look at the one-inch frame?

Maybe I don’t have to be artist right now. I could be wife, mother, homemaker, and not writer. Later, I thought, I’ll be a writer later. And I settled in to this new unplugged life.

Only to wake up early the next morning with ideas. Ah-ha, that’s what this story is about. Not wanting to disturb the muse, I lay in bed watching the ideas bloom like a time-lapse video of spring.

So back to the hard work of writing during nap time.

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Random Writing Thoughts

November 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment

After my post this week at The Master’s Artist about motherhood and writing, I read this about Andrew Stanton, lead writer of the Toy Story trilogy and writer and director of Finding Nemo and WALL-E (my favorite):

You can feel his love for his wife and his son and daughter onscreen.

What a beautiful thing to say about an artist.

I read or heard something else about someone or something relating to this, but I forgot. Oops.

Also, good to know that my writing insomnia hasn’t left in motherhood. The other night, I couldn’t sleep until I got up and spent a couple of hours editing a piece. In Bible study yesterday, someone remarked about my ability to sound coherent after eight months of interrupted sleep. God prepared me for such a time as this with a lifetime of insomnia.

Also, I’ve started a new piece. I love the energy of starting fresh, but I hate the crappiness of first drafts and having to put these words down even though yuck, just yuck. But here it is and here I am, and I’m still writing.

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The Land of My Imagination

October 6, 2011 By 1 Comment

My aunt chatted about the people of her church, and I sat at the kitchen table with a pumpkin crueller from McMillan’s Bakery (where God sends his angels to pick up donuts), and I missed my protag from my last novel like you miss a friend who’s moved away. Another character who had been sitting quietly with her Mead composition book and field hockey stick in the corner of my imagination whispered, “This is my home. This town, this church, this parsonage.”

Hereford Inlet Lighthouse, Wildwood, NJ

Hereford Inlet Lighthouse, North Wildwood, NJ

Later, pulling Keegan in a little red wagon behind me, I walked back to my aunt’s house from the beach, sand sparkling like diamonds on my skin. I cut through the lighthouse garden where giant begonias overflow onto the path. I passed a home with weathered white siding and silk flowers in pots, the wind teasing the rocking chairs on the porch. “This is where Claire lives,” my character told me.

I put Keegan down for a nap, pilfered my dad’s computer and opened a Google Doc, and the ideas came, and I learned, this is the land of my imagination.

My previous stories and novels have been set in New Jersey, but after living in Texas for some time now, I thought, Dallas is my home. This is where I live my life. This is where I should set my stories. I penned two short stories set in my neighborhood, or a nom de plume of my neighborhood. I edit and edit and edit them, but the stories still lack something indescribable, something living, something warm and empathetic. One story became almost pedantic. The more I edit, the more this something eludes me.

Then I came to New Jersey. I came home. This is the land of my imagination, and twenty-four hours after landing, my writing horses chomped at the bit. Perhaps I have too much Jersey girl left in my heart to write truly, or truthly, of somewhere else. Perhaps being a little removed allows me to write without intruding on my neighbors.

Life and hope and joy animate my mind, my fingers, and I want to stay up late and chat with my character. A girl’s night, a sleepover. We’ll pop corn over the stove and warm milk and chocolate.

This is my lighthouse.

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Phantom Itches

September 15, 2011 By 3 Comments

I lie supine as Keegan crawls over me. The other day, I posted on Facebook that his theme song is “Climb Every Mountain” (except he’d sing it in a rock/jazz fusion style, kind of like Trombone Shorty or Jamie Cullum). I’ve given up attempting yoga or Pilates because have you ever tried to do crow pose with a six month old hanging on you? And this is fun, and I laugh, and he laughs, and I think these days are so short.

Except some days I watch the clock, three and a half more hours until your daddy’s home, and the days are long, and what happened to my writing? Am I still a writer?

They say women use 20,000 to 25,000 words in a day, and those words used to be put on page, words in a short story, in a novel. Now I use my words to sing “Baa, Baa Black Sheep” because Keegan loves this song and he practices saying “baa.” We sing our ABCs and our body parts song, and I laugh, and he laughs, and he sways his body to the music. But are there any words left for my story about Claire? Will she wait for me if I tarry long?

Here I am, an introvert spending all my day with another person, an adorable little person who loves to climb and plays Tupperware instruments and tells me “baa,” and I wonder is it wrong to want a day with no people except the characters in my head?

Love for this little guy overwhelms me, and I love being a mother, this new person–these new persons–I’ve discovered, Keegan and me, and I tell Keegan stories–stories of his parents, imaginary stories of a boy who jumps to the sun and of lightening that gets stuck in the ocean–but where has the old writer gone? What happens to the characters in my head if no one tells their stories?

And I know–timing, everyone says, life stages, and someday, but I’m no good waiting for someday. The characters aren’t good with waiting either. My fingers itch to type the words.

I think of another time my fingers itched. I called it a phantom itch. I’d given up music to go to seminary except music worked its way back in as I composed songs for classes and a musical for my thesis and I continued to teach, and now I sit at piano with Keegan on my lap and he plays and we call it abstract music.

So I make a decision today. I will wake up an hour earlier to tell their stories. (This is serious. I am not a morning person, but I will endeavor to become one, or at least pretend to be one.)

Wish me luck.

Filed Under: motherhood, writing Tagged With: ,

Fugues on Fisher Price Instruments

July 21, 2011 By 1 Comment

Some days, I don’t want to be a writer. I’d rather read or knit or sometimes, even clean the bathroom. Writing is hard work, and sometimes, I just don’t wanna. I don’t wanna be disciplined. I don’t wanna struggle over how to word this paragraph or handle the denouement or best present this character so you really get him.

So there it is.

All rights reserved by olemiss_artdept

The other night, I had this dream. I was playing in an orchestra, and we were debuting a new work. The composer orchestrated the piece on Fisher Price and homemade instruments–a toy saxophone, dried spaghetti in plastic canisters, kazoos made of cardboard tubes and wax paper. He appropriated toys with buttons that made sounds not in a random Cage-esque manner but in a way that exactly incorporated the pitches in the development of the theme. The composer had been inspired by Dr. Seuss, and indeed some of the instruments resembled a Whoville concert. The percussion section alone required a dozen musicians.

Yet this piece, with its joy and freedom, was complex. To hear the piece without witnessing the instruments would be to never know the orchestration, so well did the composer manipulate the sounds. He employed fugue and counterpoint, intricate chords and harmonies, development techniques that would shame Mozart. He showed us that it’s not about the Stradivarius or the Steinway but about the joy of music itself.

And I remember why I love writing, why the stories and characters and themes linger when I should be sleeping, why I fight at the blank screen or steal a second to type that sentence before I lose it. It may be a tale that I tell to Keegan, employing Fisher Price instruments to weave complex themes, or it may be a short story on chess, tea, and estranged siblings. Yes, it’s hard work, working these out-of-tune recorders and whistles, unwieldy kazoos, and plastic snare drums so that they make beautiful music, but it’s joyful all the same.

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The Master’s Artist: Beringer Words in a Black Box Story

July 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I’m writing today at The Master’s Artist about wine, words, and West Side Story. Who could ask for anything more?

Writers love words. They are our raw material–our mahogany or clay or musical notes. We thrill over “fabulation” or “sybaritic” or “quodlibet.” We roll such words around in our mouth, swishing and savoring them like a fine wine.

Sometimes, though, those words just won’t do. Sometimes, we have to use “blue,” though azure satisfies our idyllic sensibility.

Read the rest of “Beringer Words in a Black Box Story.”

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The Master’s Artist: The Art of Rest

June 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment

In case you haven’t been reading this blog (or my tweets or my Facebook posts), my life has drastically changed. Which means a drastic change to my writing and creative process.

These days, I’m learning the art of rest.

I’ve had to come to terms with this word that reads like sin to me. I’ve had to accept that sometimes undisciplined is okay, that sometimes, undisciplined means rest. Sometimes it means savoring those snippets of my son’s life that dance like the sun through the leaves, creating ever-changing patterns. Sometimes it means sitting back and, for a moment, just a quick moment, doing nothing.

Read the rest of the post: The Art of Rest.

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The Existential World of Chess

June 15, 2011 By 1 Comment

I am learning how to play chess.

I’ve never learned before. Okay, that’s a lie. I learned in elementary school and even played a game or two back in the day–the day, meaning when I wasn’t choreographing dance moves to New Kids on the Block or Debbie Gibson and filming the dance in front of a live studio audience made up of my stuffed animals. I didn’t like chess back in elementary school. I wasn’t exactly what you would call a strategic thinker (maybe you got that from the choreographing antics).

I haven’t touched the board since the sixth grade. Except to dust it. (We have this really cool one my husband got in Africa.) To be honest, I don’t really want to learn now, what with learning how to be a mother and all. I think there’s enough learning going on.

But the story demands it. I can’t fake it.

So I checked out a couple of books from the library. (When my husband saw them, he mentioned that he already has some books on the subject and would be happy to teach me how to play. My husband is an excellent teacher when it comes to things like these, but I don’t want him to realize how stupid I am, so I’m reading about how to play first.)

The book I’m currently making my way through (slowly–see above comment about learning how to be a mother; see also numerous tweets about having a boy who doesn’t believe in naps) is Let’s Play Chess: A Step-by-Step Guide for New Players by Bruce Pandolfini.

When the man says “step-by-step…for new players,” he wasn’t joking. With some detail, he explains the chessboard, the difference between a board and pieces, between White and Black players (meaning, according to the lighter and darker squares on the board, not according to ethnicity), between a piece and a pawn. He describes what a move is and informs us that you can’t capture your own forces (no friendly fire here!). He defines legal and illegal moves: “A legal move abides by the rules of the game: it can be played. An illegal move violates the rules of the game: it can’t be played.”

Thank you, Captain Obvious.

He also gives us handy mantras and mnemonic devices, like “light on right” (to remember the starting position of the board for naming the horizontal ranks and the vertical files) and “queen on the square of her own color.”

Here’s the interesting thing: chess raises existential questions, like the fact that you can’t move a unit in two different directions on the same turn (except for the knight), or that while the rest of the pieces retain their original queenside or kingside designations throughout the game, no matter which side they have now moved to, the pawn is renamed every time it moves. Identity crisis? Chameleon?

Perhaps there’s a story to the game itself, to how the pieces move, to how they exist in time and space. Maybe this will be my saving grace as I attempt to relearn this difficult enterprise.

Or, perhaps, I’m doomed, for according to Bruce, “If you can’t ‘see ahead’ it’s hard to play chess with logic and purpose.” I’m more of a live-in-the-moment sort of girl.

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Write Like You Might Live for Another Few Decades

June 10, 2011 By 4 Comments

I had a scare recently. The doctor felt a lump in my breast.

He wasn’t too concerned. Statistics were on my side: I’m young! I have no family history of breast cancer! I’m breastfeeding! Just to be sure, though, he scheduled an ultrasound for me.

Most of the time, I took my cues from him. I feared not, for statistics! But some of the time, I worried. Who would take care of my husband and son if the worst what if came true?

What ifs have a funny way of making me think about how I would live my life if I only had a limited time left. Okay, so we all have a limited time left, but if I knew my limited time to be shorter than average, would I live differently? Often, we use a question like this to make sure we’re living Quality Lives, that we’re not setting aside the Really Important for the Frivolous.

If I knew I had only months or a year left, I would change things about my life. I would eliminate blogging, tweeting, facebooking. I would exchange fiction writing for writing letters to my husband and son to read when I’m gone. I would ask my husband to take off as many FMLA days as he could so we could have many, many family cuddle days. This is how I would spend my Last Days.

But I can’t spend a lifetime of Last Days. I have to spend most days like Ordinary Days. Chris has to go to work so we don’t fall into debt. And as far as my writing? I believe my writing–my attempts to create something truthful and beautiful in this world–have the possibility of leaving a legacy for Keegan. Even if I never receive worldwide renown (I’m sure this is just around the corner–any day now!), crafting words (and sometimes music or yarn or food) shows Keegan (and perhaps others) a piece of who we are meant to be as humans. Just as my husband displays kingdom truth and beauty in business, I do so in writing. In this way, we serve God’s kingdom work. Keegan needs to see this.

The sono showed the lump to be benign. So today, while Keegan naps, instead of holding him and watching him sleep (like I did yesterday, so thankful that, at least for now, breast cancer won’t be robbing me of a life with my son), I sit at computer and write. I toil over words, discovering, responding, communicating.

And when he wakes up, we’ll go to the dairy farm for milk and cheese. Then we’ll dance to Tchaikovsky or maybe Fiddler on the Roof. And yes, when he eats, I’ll tweet and facebook. It’s my lifeline to adult conversation, after all.

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