Category Archives: Writing

Living, Poetry, Spirituality, Writing

Crystalline

The country road I drove down this morning looked magical.

A feathered path down its middle where the few cars had passed.

A vortex of flakes pulling me through the windshield.

Boulders, trees, leaves touched by a light dusting.

The magic messed with by industrial orange dump trucks spewing their salt,

but reemerging in a parking lot, of all places.

A perfectly formed star pulled from the sky and placed on the fleece forest of my glove.

Another and another.

In relief against the black rubber strip of my car,snowflakes

the honey colored curls of my daughter,

the harsh, manipulative world we live in.

A tiny reminder of

the awesome, wondrously made world we sometimes forget we live in.

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Identity, Writing

Schooled in the Ways of Crap

When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school . . .

I have always loved that song by Paul Simon.  I wasn’t entirely sure I agreed with it, because I did, in fact, learn lots of useful things, but his thrumming on the guitar was so infectious I’d bounce along in time.

Then I became a teacher.  I student-taught in high school, but ended up in the seedy underbelly of the ancient junior high building I attended myself as a skittish prepubescent.  Many of the veterans I spoke to said junior high was where we all started out, paid our dues, and then transferred to the high school.  The general tone was that no one wanted to spend much time with the roiling turmoil that was the junior high population.  I can still hear the words of a talented veteran, though, who also happened to be the mother of a good friend I made in that school years earlier.  She said stay put until you earn tenure and if still like junior high kids at that end of those three years, this is where you’re meant to be.

I spent the next seven years with junior high kids, teaching English/Language Arts.

I might still be there if it weren’t for an extended leave after the birth of my second child that turned into stay-at-home-mom-dom and a third child.

I’m still very much a teacher, though.  And not just in the “parents are the first teachers” sort of way.  It’s definitely a mindset.  I’ve kept all the instructional materials I created, the units of study I formulated, the texts I used to teach.  I still read books in such a way that makes me wonder if I’ve taken my analytical reading to another level or if I’m dissecting it in order to reconstruct it with an imaginary class.  I listen intently to fellow parents’ descriptions of child behavior and learning experiences as if I have a stake in their success or struggle.  I’m sure I make my child’s teachers wonder why I’m nodding as if I know exactly what they’re going to say when they explain how educational standards are once again changing.

These are all positive carry-overs from my teaching career.

There’s also a bane that comes with teaching: the feeling that you never graduate.

I counted down the final days of student teaching until graduation, only to fall headlong into another classroom.  The fact that it was in a junior high that I had already spent two years of my life in added to the sensation of demotion.  Back to homework – because giving it to students means you yourself have it.  And that’s just the correcting.  Not the involved planning (though the planning and successful execution of lessons was by far the most enthralling part of teaching).  You perpetually feel like a student yourself.

Like I did when I sat down to the computer this morning.

Hmm . . . how to start today’s blog entry.  Let’s see.  Well, I started with a question last time.  Oh, a quote?

That’s when I realized I was walking myself through the eight types of leads I’d taught my students.  And that I was as haunted by all that crap I’d learned – and taught – in school as Paul Simon was.  The role of perpetual student did not end when I left the classroom – neither sitting in the desk nor in front of it; it still follows me.  And while it’s humbling and rather uncomfortable to still be learning the lessons I taught my junior high students, it’s validating to know that at least one lesson was valuable if it’s germane to my current writing.  At least that day I wasn’t trying to learn them some crap.

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Writing

Somewhere Out There

I write best when in my car.

No, I’m not one of those people you see mouth agape going eighty miles an hour applying mascara.  I’m not reading the map spread across my dashboard as I try to maintain lane (disregard the fact that ergonomic dashboards and GPS have made this point moot).  I’m not even trying to eat a sloppy sandwich as I steer with my elbows.

I have both hands securely planted on the wheel, watching both the speed- and tachometer, the radio adjusted to a safe level so as not to cause distraction.  My youngest daughter is safely secured in her five-point harness in the backseat.  My eyes are on the road and what the traffic ahead of me is doing.

Some part of my mind, however, is in the hills lit by sunlight on the horizon.  The clouds sweeping across the crest of the hill.  That part of my mind is parsing words and phrases, building them up and fine-tuning them.

the roadInto poetry.

Into a thousand different perfect prompts for this blog.

Into the character quirk I’ve been needing for Dmitri.

Into metaphors and images, symbols and signs –

all of which leave me when I sit down hours or days later at the keyboard.

There are times it’s happened in the ether just before sleep.  When the body has relaxed just enough to quell the mind’s obsessing, but not it’s creative processes.  Perfectly formed paragraphs gather and congregate.  Teasing me to remember them, knowing I won’t fight the exhaustion to lift a pen and record them in the notebook on my bedside table.

In the morning, the memory of them remains but not the perfect manuscript.

A voice to text application would probably help.  But I have such a nostalgia for and dedication to hand- and typewritten words.  I’m searching for a place to display the ancient Underwood typewriter my father’s holding for me now.  It would feel disingenuous somehow to speak my words into thin air and have them magically transform to text.  Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment.  Maybe I just hate to hear a playback of my recorded voice.

I’m hopelessly devoted to forming the perfect mental manuscript and promptly forgetting it when my hands touch the keyboard.  If only mental memory would transfer to sense memory in this one instance.  Just another form of writers’ block, I suppose.  Or another rationalization for not writing what I’m supposed to be.  It’s much easier to lament the perfect lost words than write the imperfect permanent ones.

So I’ll take leave of you now.  Perhaps to go for a drive.  Perhaps to build on the momentum I finally reengaged in my book yesterday.  Or maybe to go stare out the window and dream of the perfect words floating somewhere out there.

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Uncategorized, Writing

The Next Big Thing

* LATE BREAKING NEWS!  I am pleased to announce a last minute addition to The Next Big Thing Blog Tour.  Annie Cardi, a fellow New Englander writing young adult novels, has joined us.  Please follow the link to her blog as well as the links for the two other writers at the end of this entry.  Thank you!

2013 is off to an auspicious start.

As last year came to a close, the lovely and talented Heather Rigney invited me to join her on The Next Big Thing Blog Tour.  Heather and I met in our first lives as middle school teachers (though our school was having an identity crisis as one of the few named junior highs remaining in the state).  We reconnected in our second lives as writers, attending an institute together at Rhode Island College.  Her work is witty, quirky, and entertaining, involving zombies, mermaids, and, yes, junior highs.  Her blog, Mermaids Love Sushi, showcases her wit and joie de vivre.

Before I could even digest the questions I’d be responding to as part of the tour, RK Bentley – friend, blogger, writer extraordinaire – hit me with another invite.  Rob’s comics have graced my personal library for decades.  Within the last year or so I’ve been fortunate enough to see his scifi novel, Where Weavers Dare, take shape in the writers’ group he organized.  Rob is an integral part of the local writing scene and he shares his “ramblin’s” about that and his other passions on his blog, RKB Writes.

As part of The Next Big Thing Blog Tour, Heather and Rob answered questions about their current work, much like a published author would do to garner support for their latest book.  I think I speak for all the authors taking part in this tour that we do so in the hopes that our writing will, in fact, be the NEXT BIG THING!

So here goes:

1) What is the working title of your book?

Next in Line

2) Where did the idea come from for your book?

Ironically enough, a kitchen remodel.  We totally gutted the kitchen in our previous home and a plasterer came in to patch things up.  He was so knowledgeable and kind that we learned a lot about his personal background, which got me thinking about family businesses and legacies.

3) What genre does your book fall under?

young adult/realistic fiction

4) Which actors would you choose to play in your movie rendition?

I’m really fighting the urge right now to call on the cast from My Big Fat Greek Wedding; my main character’s name is Dmitri Tslakas!

  • Maybe Zachary Gordon from Diary of a Wimpy Kid could play him.
  • Camilla Belle for the lovely yet unassuming Francesca.
  • Olympia Dukakis for Gram?  Sorry, couldn’t resist.
  • Mandy Patinkin with a beard for Spiro, Dmitri’s dad.
  • Isabella Rossalini for Maria, Dmitri’s mother.
  • Can I get Max Cascella from his Doogie Howser, MD days for Dmitri’s friend, Anthony?  This whole thing is wishful thinking, right?maxcasella-now2

5) What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

Dmitri, a seventeen year-old sculptor, is trying to build his skills and his strength – to hone his craft and stand up to his father.

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Any takers?  I’d like to see what an agent could do for me.

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

~ two years, in fits and starts.

8) What other books would you compare this story to?

  • Takeoffs and Landings by Margaret Peterson Haddix
  • Lord of the Deep by Graham Salisbury

9) Who or what inspired you to write the book?

  • My plasterer and his teenage son on the brink of adulthood
  • any kid who’s trying to get out from the shadow of his or her parent(s) and stand on his or her own.

10) What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

  • Dmitri has undiscovered family history that ties him to the past as well as his father’s expectations pushing him toward the future.
  • He is an amazing, naturally talented artist.

I’m so honored to be part of this blog phenomenon!  A big thank you to Heather and Rob.  I’d like to share the love with two very talented writers both of whose work I highly enjoy and which you should check out, too (They’ll have their posts up in about a week).

Julie Robertson Dixon

Kelly Kittel

Annie Cardi

 

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anxiety, Identity, Living, Writing

A Rock to Remember

Last week, I was forced to go to the beach.

I was cranky.  I was tired.  It was a holiday and all three kids were home, but my husband was working.  I still had tons of tedious tasks to do to get settled in the new house.

My parents said, it’s a beautiful day, let’s go for a walk.

I walked from the breach way to the border of this same beach with my parents when I was a girl.  It was like coming full-circle treading it this day with my own children a short distance from the place I now call home.

The girls dove straight into rock hunting with my mother.  I didn’t even have to chase my three year-old out of the waves, as she plopped down in one spot and proceeded to sift and stack.  I sat down, too, and gave myself over to the sound of the rocks chattering against each other in the surf.

My other home was a short walk from a small inlet on Narragansett Bay.  It was a lovely spot and we were fortunate to live so close to it (though we didn’t make the trek nearly enough).  But it had nothing of the raw power and expansiveness of this beach, the open ocean.  I am not used to the mass amounts of rocks, perfectly pounded and rounded by the constant tumbling of the sea.  The smooth spheres of granite, mica, and other minerals I should remember from science class and Rhode Island history.  Their shapes were so alluring to me, beckoning me to pick them up, roll them in my hands.

And so I did.  I sat just apart from my daughter’s sifting and sorting and felt the weight in my hands.  The cool heaviness, the sun-soaked pressure.  I searched for the one that fit perfectly in the palm of my hand.  Then I spun it round and round, the smooth surface soothing me in a way that didn’t seem needed, but became suddenly essential.

I felt my hackles lowering, my blood slowing in my veins, my body decompressing, my soul expanding.  I was running, running, running so quickly, so constantly, that I didn’t even know how wound up I was.  I didn’t know how much I needed the salve of the sea.

I recalled a stretch of preteen fall days when a friend and I rode our bikes to the sand flats with our notebooks and sketchpads.  I was so disappointed that I was caught without a notebook when the muse was so apparently calling to me, when an epiphany was beating me over the head with a smoothly-shaped rock.  I hoped beyond hope that I could bottle this feeling and bring it home with me.  It’s been diluted over the last week, but I did bring some rocks home with me as reminders.  I picked out some beautifully speckled, striated, spotted ones that I stacked into cairns in my garden.  I selected two larger ones to use as worry rocks, prayer stones, literal talismans to ground me; I planned to give one to my husband so he could benefit from my lesson, too.

As I kneaded these rocks in my hands, I thought of the many manifestations of humanity’s need for physical reminders of the spiritual side of life, of our souls.  Kachina dolls, worry dolls, worry stones, chime balls, stress balls, rocks perched on gravestones, relics . . . there are so many examples.  But they all begin at their basest level with a bit of the natural world.  There is a reason humans turn to nature to reset their moods, their demeanors, their selves.  While I cannot put my finger on it, there is something about it that resonates in our souls.  I’ll just have to wrap my hand around those rocks each time I forget.

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Literacy, Writing

Blank

Words haunt me in my dreams, in my waking hours

They carve themselves in my grey matter

They pull my hands in loops and lines

The click of keys, the satisfying clunk of return

Bits and pieces of phrases and lyrics

Familiar yet fleeting

Disparate yet part of my collective consciousness

Inspiring love, eliciting hate

Droughts or a copious spate

A blank screen, a taunting cursor

Time to sit, reflect, create

A swirling maelstrom in my brain

I cannot settle on a name

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Living, Writing

Oblivion is Bliss

Sometimes I wish I were oblivious.

Years ago, as my husband and I enjoyed a sumptuous dinner and breathtaking view of the Pacific Ocean we were paying entirely too much for, the couple at the table next to us broke out into a quite heated and quite loud conversation.  She had used a French term to describe something and he’d corrected her pronunciation, irritating her and derailing her whole story and subsequently the whole meal – for all within earshot.  Except my husband.  He had no idea what I was talking about when I mentioned it.  While I stewed about their inconsiderate behavior toward all those gathered in this hushed dining room, he told me to ignore it and enjoy our nice food and each other’s company.

He was right.  I, however, could not acquiesce.  Not because I’m nosy.  Not because I can’t mind my own Ps and Qs.  Not because I feel like an authority on proper etiquette.  Because I chose two of the worst professions for one who wishes to be oblivious – even if only for some of the time.

Years in the classroom as an English teacher developed both my ears and the eyes in the back of my head.  Multitasking is an understatement.  I needed to address a large group, scan for questions, read body language, catch the note being passed at the back of the class, hear the tiny whisper above the rustle of papers.  I had to ‘put my roller skates on’ as one of my colleagues used to say and move about the room facilitating group work, attending to one group while still monitoring the sounds of work and/or inactivity from others’.  I had to be the fly on the wall, the all-seeing eye.  Front and center and everywhere.  Attendant to all even while listening to one.

All of which does not make for a pleasant dining experience when one cannot tune out.  Or even a trip to the mall.  One time, I had to bite my tongue in order not to scold some kids down from a raised barrier around a flowing fountain.

Then I took on writing.  Early on in this venture, I heard Jack Gantos speak, saying that to be a writer, one has to notice everything, even if only for a little bit each day.  I saw stories at the bus stop, on the sides of trucks, in snippets of conversation.  Most of them stayed observations, never switching to story, but boy, did I notice.  Now I’ve fine-tuned my observational skills and cull what I know I can truly use.  But that’s not to say I don’t still hear it all – like last night.

My writers’ group convened at a cozy booth on the upper level of a restaurant surprisingly boisterous for a Wednesday night.  Next to us was a booth twice our size and packed to the gills.  The group was mixed so I had trouble imagining what might have brought them together, but the tone and volume of their conversations suggested celebration.  My group layered our conversation in amongst the din and started our critiques.  All was fine until our talks wound to a close and theirs up to a fevered pitch, perhaps in direct relation to their intake of wine as the night wore on.

I heard them lamenting MCA’s death, which I did, too, when I heard (not on a personal level, but for the loss of a hugely talented contributor to the music world), but they said how it freaked them out because he was the first of that generation to die of natural causes.  Last I checked cancer was not a natural cause of death.  And these people were too young to consider themselves part of his generation.

The fragment that most got me, though, was when a woman who, by my estimation, is at least ten years younger than I am waxed philosophical on her decision to dye her hair.  At first, she said, she wanted the grey to add to her esteem, her perceived wisdom.  But as more and more grew in, she decided it was making her look too old.  I’d venture to guess she had ten grey hairs hidden beneath that black dye.  I wanted to call across the bench seat, you want to see greys?  I’ll show you greys – and with no hair dye to cover them up.

Maybe I’m bitter because I went grey at an early age (which may have been her case, but I toughed it out, chica, and didn’t use it as an accessory to my image first).  Maybe I’m pissed off by clueless people.  Maybe I just wanted them to be quiet.

Maybe I just wish I could tune out all external stimuli.  That would help with a whole lot more than dinner conversation, now wouldn’t it?  It’s not something that’s easily turned off, though.  Sometimes, I really do think oblivion would be nice.

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anxiety, Living, Writing

Back to the Future

When I was a kid, particularly a teenager, the only time I would clean my room was when I had a report to do. Might seem like faulty logic, but the crippling thought of sitting down and starting a report actually made cleaning my room look like a fun endeavor. I had to clear off the desk before I could sit at it to write, no? And Mom had been after to me to clean for some time now. It needed to be done!

By the time it was apparent I could not put off said report-writing any longer, I would become a conglomeration of the many phrases my mother often used to describe me: running around like a chicken with its head cut off, burning the candle at both ends, pulling through in the eleventh hour. And while it was undoubtedly stressful and quite a haphazard way of doing things, I would always finish the report – and usually quite well. I’d get some inspiration at the last minute and write like a fiend until I’d proven my point – much to my mother’s chagrin. While she did not want to see me fail in school, she frowned upon my methods. Clean room or no, I think I made her more nervous than I did myself.

Procrastination and spontaneous ‘Hail Mary’s have always been my way. Being out of college for over a decade now (ugh – how did that happen?), the phenomenon hasn’t been as apparent, but it still exists. Knowing I have a week until my daughter’s birthday party, I’ll putz around the house all week and stay up until 2 AM the night before scrubbing toilets and baking cakes (not at the same time). Well aware that the parade that runs close to our house happens the second Saturday of June every year, I’ll be planting containers with patriotic-colored flowers at dusk the night before. I’ve just shifted the focus from class work to housework. Though maybe if I had more papers to write, my house would be cleaner – ha!

But I am writer. As a writer not under contract, I use self-imposed deadlines to keep me active and productive. I follow my writers’ group guidelines of submitting a week before our meeting. I post to my blog at least once a week, every Thursday. Except for weeks like this. I’ve fallen off the wagon, people. And because, as far as I can tell, most cases of procrastination are born of crippling ideas of perfectionism, I am paying for it. Oh, the guilt.

I’m in the middle of revising my young adult novel. I’ve heard a lot of writers say they love the revision process, struggling through the draft process just to get to it. As someone who loves to wait till the last minute and work off an epiphany and has problems with spatial relations (chapter reorganization, wha?), it’s trying to say the least. So instead of figuring out how to fix the problem in the chapters I was due to submit to my group, I went into cleaning mode. Luckily, I had the perfect excuse for rationalization. My friend was coming over with her baby and he needed a clean floor to frolic on, no?

We had a lovely visit, and spirits buoyed by my ordered surroundings, I even strapped myself to the computer after they left and fixed the problem (I think – we’ll see how next week’s meeting goes!). But, like a game of dominoes, my cleaning pushed the writing tile back a day, which pushed the blog tile back. Hence, today’s post should have been yesterday’s.

But no sense living in the past with its failed promises and rumpled to-do lists. I may relive my bad behavior patterns from time to time, but it’s a waste of time to punish myself for them. Trying to change them bit by bit would be good, but being aware of them is a start, right? I also need to acknowledge what such behaviors say about me. I do work best under pressure. And while it’s starting to make me as crazy as it used to make my mother, it still does offer a certain level of success. And all of us really are just stuck between past and future. I guess it works to operate within some combination of the two.

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Living, Writing

Dreaming in Blog

Last night, I dreamt I was walking down the broad, curving main road that passes by my street.  I waved to my daughter’s playmates.  I laughed at the bizarre boat race in the bay.  I pushed my children to the side of the road when a snow plow came careening around the corner.  It was at that point that I probably should’ve realized my subconscious was in control.  Even though I live in New England, the weather does not shift that abruptly.

But no, I continued on down that street.  I think there may have even been a parade.  Then as easily as they do in dreams, the street morphed into another, further removed from my  home.  I passed by small businesses, restaurants whose culinary ancestors hailed from various countries.  In fact, there were two such restaurants from two apparently feuding South American countries directly across the street from each other.  I knew the origin of each cuisine from the outline of its country on the front of the restaurant, of course.  And I knew they were feuding because, well, some things are just understood in dreams.

As I passed the front porch of the restaurant closest to me, a man in an apron stepped onto it and deposited something that looked like a pizza box on one of the outdoor tables.  He was trying to sneak off the porch when another man in an apron stepped out the door.

He questioned him.  “Aren’t you from [feuding country’s restaurant]?

“Yes, I’m just taking part in the ancient tradition of the holiday truce in which we share our culinary treasures with our foes,” he said, and moved off the porch.

The second man’s face softened.  “I thought that tradition had died out,” he said.  “I’m glad to see it lives on.”

All this as I moved (apparently very slowly) past the building.  But time, like place, is also fluid in dreams.

As my husband and I (who knows where the kids had gone!) moved on to a nearby hotel’s sorely lacking continental breakfast and I melted my swizzle sticks in my cup of coffee, I thought, “What an amazing blog entry this would make!  A story of cultural divides torn down, if only for a day.  And I witnessed it firsthand!”

And then I woke up.  Is it bad to say I was disappointed when I did?  When I found out that none of that which seemed so vivid and heartfelt was real?  And that I missed out on a kick-ass blog entry?

Now, those that analyze dreams would have a field day with this one.  I walked through all these scenes without interacting.  I created hybridized cultures and foods.  I thought I’d found the answer to many of the world’s problems.  I lost my kids.  And thought melting plastic into my morning drink was a good idea (not to mention I don’t even drink coffee).

But if I had to hazard a guess, I’d have the following to say:

  • I stayed up way too late blogging because I was so psyched about my new-found versatility; said staying up late caused restless and insufficient sleep
  • Cause of staying up late meant I had blogging on my mind
  • I dreamt of coffee because I knew once I woke up I’d be dragging; I screwed up the coffee because my subconscious knew I wouldn’t like it
  • I saved my kids because I’m always afraid I won’t be able to some time in real life
  • I dreamt of varied foods because I’m always looking for something new and delicious; and because I’m apparently in denial about this blog not being about food.
  • Holiday traditions?  Thinking of the true meaning of what we hold dear after Easter’s recent celebrations?
  • And I’ve always wanted world peace – even if it’s one restaurant at a time.  What can I say, I’m a sucker.
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