I’ve got 7,200 words and no plot going on my NaNoWriMo (national novel writing month) novel. To win I need to write 50,000 words by the last day of November.
In 2009, when I won NaNoWriMo (yes, that’s right, WON!), I wrote a young adult novel, but this one I classified as literary fiction. Yes, LITERARY fiction. Not, crappy, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants fiction.
Oh, wait, that is what I’m writing. I have no idea what is going to happen next. Let’s say a song about diamonds comes on the radio as I’m writing, I put a diamond in that scene.
On Sunday morning, I read a New York Times article about a drunk roller, a pickpocket who slices into a drunken and passed-out subway rider’s pocket with a straight edge razor. So I added a scene with a drunk roller.
My protagonist is a crazy, overworked mother of three, a writer, teacher and New Yorker with a benevolently neglectful husband and an active fantasy life. A stretch for me? Not really. As they say, Write what you know!
I wish I had time to write thousands of more words today. After all, it’s quantity, not quality that counts with NaNoWriMo, but I have to get to work. Two of my three children are home sick with a flu today.
Perhaps by tending to my real life, I will find some direction and plot points to share with my protagonist. And, in turn, by writing my novel, I will create a cycle of adventure and creativity in my real life. (This fits with my Rule Number 2: Escape through reading literary fiction.)
Yesterday, chilly, I was on the sidelines for CoCo’s 8 am soccer game. I was rewarded for this parental duty by seeing her score two goals. WTG! FTW!
I got thinking — being a spectator at a soccer game is not as much fun as being an audience member at a school play, as I was last weekend.
It’s better to be a theater mom (than a soccer mom):
1. The hours are more reasonable. (Theater would never start at 8 am.)
2. The seats are more comfortable. (There are no seats on the soccer sidelines.)
3. The show is indoors. (No need to wear mittens!)
4. The cast party has better food. (Last weekend, after the play, we had finger foods and oodles of fancy cupcakes. After the soccer game, we shared a box of Entenmann’s.)
5. The players are a bit more dramatic and entertaining. (There is drama and comedy — before, during and after the show. But before the soccer game, we hunted for the uniform; during the game, we cheered and tried to stay warm; after the game, we tried to stay warm.)
After the play, we lingered, carrying flowers for the performer, waiting for her to make her entrance. Of course, theater mothers have bad reps as stage mothers, controlling divas, whereas soccer moms are wooed by politicians, trawling for votes.
Writing about this — about being a supportive spectator at a play or game — reminds me of how I had to shift my attitude about my own importance once I had a baby. Suddenly, no one was that interested in me unless I brought along the baby. If I showed up empty-handed, people would ask, “Where’s the baby?”
I was no longer the star of my own show, I was a bit player with a walk-on part. Or maybe I was the dresser, making the star look good, staying backstage. At least now, with my kids as teens, preteens and tweens, I’ve moved from “back of house” to the “front of house.”
On the sporting event’s sidelines or in the audience, I want my kids to do well, look good and, God, I hate to admit this, but I also want them to, ever so occasionally, share the spotlight (with me).
I don’t want to make anyone feel bad, especially those sinew-y runner types getting all psyched up for Sunday’s marathon, but I ran today and I ran at a pace of 12:15 a mile. That’s right, beat that, suckers!
I am definitely in the slow lane. I don’t want to make excuses *much. But I have a foot problem… And I have other problems, but I can’t remember what they are at the moment, because I’m so dang exhausted and hungry for chocolate. But hey, I did it. I did something! I pushed myself away from the computer.
I ran with my friend, Liz, at a secret indoor track near work. And I’m not telling you where it is ’cause then it wouldn’t be secret.
Liz and I agreed that it’s way more fun to run with a friend and we wouldn’t have run without each other.
And I do LOVE going out with friends for breakfast, lunch, dinner, happy hour, etc., I also LOVE running and working out with friends. So anyone want to join me running someday? Then after our two and a half miles, you can sprint ahead of me like Liz did. That’s right. When you’re in the slow lane, you’re just happy to be in any lane at all.
All those people passing me? I celebrate them! I do! Especially all those runners I’ll see on Sunday afternoon, wearing silver blankets, looking fabulous and exhausted. I salute you!
Now, excuse me, I have to go and hunt for some Halloween chocolate. I think my kids still have some hidden somewhere.
I always receive some cool insight whenever I get a massage, about once every six months.
“Oh, come on,” my inner child says, “Can’t we do it more? Every week? Every month?” I wish. I cope with my crazy life by writing, working out, going out with friends, traveling, and occasionally indulging in a massage.
Once, in Akumal, Mexico, I had a view of the Mayan Riviera from the massage table in this flimsy white tent set up one floor above the cinnamon rolls in the bakery. Imagine — Cinnamon. Massage. Bakery. Ocean. Bliss. The masseur told me, with Spanish accent, after he’d kneaded me into a pulp, “You have a beautiful soul.” Wow.
I’ve gained several meaningful insights from masseuses and messeurs. Right after I’d moved out of my first marriage, in the early 1990s, Britt at the 10th Street Baths, rubbed my belly, realigning my internal organs. I began to cry. I have no idea why.
Britt said, “Look, if you’ve been with someone for eight years, it will take you eight years to get over them. Don’t rush your grief.” Deep.
A couple of Sundays ago when I went to Ten Thousand Waves, I told the masseuse, R., “I had plantar fisciitis in my feet so they were always sore. And I’m a writer so I carry a lot of tension in my head and neck.”
After the message, R. whispered in my ear, “I will leave so you can integrate yourself. Don’t get up until I leave.” So I stretched and yawned. And integrated. And when R. came back she told me to swing my legs to the side and to lean into her and she swung me up like a baby, lifting me from laying to sitting. I was totally integrated.
“Thank you,” I said, “Being a writer, I live in my head. And you have just placed me back in my body.”
“What kind of writing do you do?” R. asked.
“All kinds,” I said. “I write short poems, long novels, news articles, funny essays, blog entries.” I felt my neck tensing. I breathed. I got back to the deep relaxation I’d felt while getting the massage. “I really needed that massage.”
“Well you dropped in really beautifully. I had a good time too,” R. said.
Masseuses have a good time too? It shows that all kinds of work, even the hands-on healing kind, can be pleasurable.
outside of Santa Fe, near Abiquiu, New Mexico
Another time I’d gotten a massage in New Mexico, I think we were at Ten Thousand Waves, the guy whispered in my ear, “You live in New York? You should try Argentinian Tango. Very sensual.” What the heck! Do I look like someone who need to tango? Wow. Well, okay. Someday, yes.
I want to take this moment to thank every masseuse and masseur who’s ever laid their hands on me.
Ten Thousand Waves is a Japanese-style, many-layered spa, nestled in the cool mountains outside of Santa Fe. We soaked before our massages in the women’s tub, skinny dipping, and then after massages, we soaked, wearing bathing suits, in the co-ed tub in the dark.
I jumped in another tiny tub for a cold plunge. The air was probably 50 and the cold dunk was way colder, but I then lay in the co-ed sauna. Hot and cold. In the hot tub and in the cool night air.
Integrating body and mind. And putting them back into soul.
We do not write to be understood. We write to understand. – C.S. Lewis
This was one of the quotes from Writing for the Soul, a workshop led by Rev. Lynne Hinton in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the United Methodist Association of Communicators. She has written 14 novels. Yes, 14! Oh, to be so prolific.
Tomorrow, Nanowrimo starts so I’m hoping to write one more novel this month!
In Rev. Hinton’s workshop, we began with free writing à la Julia Cameron’s admonition in The Artist’s Way to write three morning pages — which I have been practicing for about 15 years. Every morning, I hand write three pages of brain drain. But give me free rein later in the day to tap into my unconscious and I’m, oh so happy.
Lynne gave us an exercise where we chose random words, picked like wild flowers from our unconscious, to add to word prompts, like these (but not these, exactly!):
Diamond _____
Shelter _____
Instant _____
Prayer _____
Barcelona _____
Boo _____
Avoid _____
Teacup _____
Angel _____
School _____
Write _____
Create _____
Ocean _____
Sun _____
Venice _____
June ____
Moon _____
You get the idea. We wrote our own couple of dozen words down the page on the blank lines. From our written words or the provided prompts, we made sentences on bits of paper. Then we shuffled our sentences and wrote them down in a poem format.
How fun! Our internal censor didn’t even know we were writing a poem, we were just playing around! Writing is play!
It’s impossible — at least, for me — to attend a writing workshop and not make new friends. I find the adage so true — A stranger (or a fellow writer) is just a friend I haven’t met yet.
Often in writing workshops, my friends and I drop into such a deep level of sharing that we cry when we hear each other’s work. I felt this way hearing the poems of my fellow writers, Jessica Connor, Beth Buchanan, Kerry Wood and Isaac Broune. I was blown away as they unearthed playful and meaningful poetry from their unconscious.
I am so grateful for the wisdom of fellow writers, writing teachers and my own ability to tap into my unconscious on a regular basis. Going a little crazy in my writing keeps me sane!
The best part of travel is not the places you go, but the people you meet when you get there.
Lorenza Andrade Smith, Kathy Noble and MB Coudal talking about technology while waiting for the commuter train in Albuquerque. (Photo by Neill Caldwell)
After the conference, I was on the Rail Runner train with a dozen old and new friends, including Rev. Lorenza Andrade Smith. She was our keynote speaker at UMAC (United Methodist Association of Communicators). I was glad to get to know Lorenza on the commuter train trip for an hour and a half between Albuquerque and Santa Fe.
In her address, Rev. Andrade Smith had told us how she went to prison to stand with immigrants who were rallying for legislative passage of the Dream Act in Texas.
She went to prison wearing her clerical collar and heels without stockings. At the prison entrance, she had to turn in her heels, “Because they could be weapons.” Every time she sat in the prison cell’s communal toilet to pee, someone would kneel beside her and ask for prayers. She had to learn to pray while peeing.
Finally, when she found space alone in the cell, she fell asleep, cold on the floor. When she awoke, she was wearing a coat and socks. (Sometimes prayers are answered, even when we don’t know we pray them and we become covered in someone else’s warmth.)
Lorenza is a veteran and a pastor. After our conference, she was visiting a homeless Facebook friend in Boulder, Colorado, then returning to San Antonio, Texas to live among homeless female veterans for a while. She was given a bus pass on Greyhound. Lorenza has renounced her salary and her belongings to live among the homeless and to advocate for immigrants. She has speaking engagements all over, but looks forward to a silent retreat months from now.
She wears a long, but somehow-stylish, black or grey tunic-type outfit that seminary students have made for her. She keeps all of her belongings in a small rolling cart. In it, she keeps a change of clothes, a sleeping bag, a wool blanket and a small amount of toiletries. She said she uses panty liners to preserve the wear of her undies.
“That’s probably too much information,” Lorenza said. Not for me. I love TMI!
She also carries a communion set, a plate and a chalice, but was refused admittance into one shelter because, “It could be used as a weapon.” (Communion cups and high heels, you see, are dangerous!)
So that night when she refused to give up her communion set, she slept on her favorite bench in the park at the Alamo in Texas. She slept too late, and was ticketed for camping. At the courthouse for the hearing, the judge fined her 10 hours of community service to be served at the shelter, coincidentally the one that had turned her away for carrying the communion set.
Lorenza has a smart phone and updates where she is and where she’s going on Facebook. Her bishop had insisted she do this for her safety. I have befriended Lorenza Andrade Smith on Facebook and suggest you do too.
Being a huge fan of sleep, I asked Lorenza if she sleeps well on the street. She answered, “No,” with a laugh. It takes two nights of sleeping safely, like in a hotel, before she can sleep through the night. The nights at the Albuquerque Hotel were restorative, she said, yet they reminded her, as many such opportunities do, that she is privileged and cannot escape her privilege.
“The sleep deprivation is the hardest part,” Lorenza said.
Every time she speaks to groups, she is asked the same questions –
“What’s in your bag?” And sometimes she empties her bag to show them.
“How does your family feel about this?” She speaks openly about being in the process of separating from her husband whom she had already lived apart from. “People who are homeless have to be open and so do I. I have to live honestly.”
Wow. I was blown away by Lorenza. Talking to her has made me question myself, my attachment to my things, my place of privilege and my honesty.
When she decided to divest herself of everything, “The big things were easy to give away, but the small things, like the photos of my son when he was little, those were the hard ones.” She found a home for her photos with extended family members, who, by the way, are supportive.
Lorenza chats with Lester under a bridge in San Antonio. Photo by Mike DuBose.
I asked Lorenza about this photo, taken by Mike DuBose. I have been lucky to work with Mike on assignment and we always have a lot of fun. Before Mike took the photos, Lorenza asked if the people minded being photographed. She said that two out of three of her friends were agreeable and even spruced up a bit before the photos were taken.
Mike has an easy-going, friendly, and respectful manner with everyone. Mike DuBose is one of my heroes. And so, too, is Lorenza Andrade Smith.
On the way out of Ghost Ranch, we explored the Agape Center, a bright, meditative room.
In the center of the circular room, memorial symbols of a gentleman who had died were spread around the table. In the center, taped to a candle, was the gent’s quote, something like: “When I die, dry your tears before the sun sets and replace the tears with happy memories for the sunrise.”
My sister-in-law, E., drove us out of Ghost Ranch towards Abibuque on the Old Taos Highway. We talked about my father-in-law, our husbands’ father, Taid, who had died about five years ago. E. said she was glad that Taid, a Welsh name for father, had visited New Mexico from New York years back. She had always been glad to see him, she said.
At that moment, E.’s phone buzzed with an incoming text. “See who it is, please,” she said, handing me her phone.
I flipped open her phone and no one was there — only the image of Taid, my father-in-law.
Turns out my nephew had seen a big oil portrait of his grandfather and texted the picture of Taid, whom we were just talking about, to his mother’s phone.
We felt it was synchronicity — a sign of the importance of family and father, maybe of travel, most definitely, a sign of happy memories and not tears, dried before the sunset.
I’ve wanted to visit Ghost Ranch forever. I’ve heard it’s a wonderful retreat. I’ve wondered if they need writers in residence. I could report on what goes on there.
Here are a couple of things I would report on from this weekend:
A Men’s Wellness Group
There was an Iron John feeling when we pulled into the retreat center. Maybe 10 men sat in about six circles talking. And it looked, from a distance, although it’s hard to tell, that they were talking about their feelings. Love it! Men talking about feelings. Go figure. So cool and sexy.
The group meets annually, one of the women told us. A previous topic had been Fathers (capital F). This weekend’s session was on Women (capital W). So, for the first time, the men had invited the women to the Men’s Wellness Group to discuss relationships, sexuality and expectations. I would’ve liked to be a part of those conversations.
A Funeral
Another group was leaving. They were dressed in western wear. Yes, this was New Mexico but it was dressy western wear. There was a lot of hugging too. They seemed more familial than the Men’s Wellness group.
It turns out the dozens of dressy/casual folks were attending a memorial.
“I’m sorry,” I told the woman who was loading a saddle into her car.
“No,” she said. “It was his time. He’s in a better place. We’re going now to spread his ashes on the bluffs.”
The Meditative Path
My sister in law and brother in law and I talked about death as we walked down a sandy path.
We walked the labyrinth. At the center of the labyrinth, you can leave a talisman or a symbol. There was a feather, a pin, a tea bag, a rock. I searched my pockets, thinking I had nothing on me.
But then from my back pocket, I pulled out a scrap I had ripped out of the New York Times a few days earlier. I’d been carrying this quote around with me.
If there is any positive message at all in the narrative it is that life is a tragedy filled with suffering and despair and yet some people do manage to avoid jury duty. – Woody Allen
I left Woody Allen in the center of the labyrinth at Ghost Ranch.
***
The sky was brilliant blue in Abiquiu, New Mexico. The one narrow cloud might have been the cloud stream from a high-flying jet. One of my daughters calls that white line in the sky, a skyscraper. I don’t have the heart to correct her. That trail of white cloud looked exactly like it’d been scraped into the sky.
At our social media mania workshop in Albuquerque yesterday we had an awesome group — a lot of knowledge and a lot of support for each other.
Outside the San Felipe de Neri Church in Albuquerque
When Beth (Buchanan) asked for questions on post-it notes, one participant, S., wrote, “My mom cyber-stalks me…I’m scared to blog-because she’ll read it.”
After the workshop, I looked for S. but didn’t find her. I wanted to chat about her question and reassure her. Then I realized I hadn’t called my mother in a week so I called Mom to tell her how great I’m doing.
But Mom had feedback for me. She’d read my recent post on Getting Help. And I have to admit I put the phone on speaker as she spoke and pushed back my cuticles. She said, “You should get more help. The Michael J. Fox foundation will help you get care for Chris and the kids.” She is always after me to contact the Fox foundation for help.
“Mom, I think it’s true that the Fox foundation is a caring organization,” I said. “But I think their money goes into research and not into hiring home health care for people with Parkinson’s. And, as I mentioned in that blog post, I am getting help for Chris. Although, yes, it’s hard for me.” (Did that sound defensive? Um, yes, a little.)
Mom said she’d seen Michael J. Fox on Letterman or some late night show and that Fox reminded her of my husband. “He is not doing well,” she said.
Hmmmm. Here I am at this wonderful UMAC conference, wanting to brag about how great my presentation went. And I want to be worry-free (and free) from my little family for a few days and now I’m getting worried all over again. And I’m worried about worrying, because what if Mother reads this? If you do, you know I love you and I thank you for having good ideas, concern and love for me! 😉
But here’s the thing — worry is contagious and I don’t want to catch it.
The view from my hotel room. The sun was so bright, I had to look down.
I stopped writing this post this morning to think. I went out to my little patio to look at the sunrise. The sunlight blew me away. The sun is much bigger and brighter and closer in Albuquerque than in New York City. There is something valuable, beautiful and worry-free in a big bright morning sun.
I did find S. after this morning’s session. And S., Beth and I talked about the challenges (and joys?!) of having tech-savvy mothers who read our blogs, tweets or updates and then praise, worry or comment.
I vowed to Beth and S. to be a mother who does not cyberstalk her kids on social media. It may be impossible. Like my own mother, I want to protect, get help for and read them well.
Yesterday I was studying memoir with the International Women’s Writing Guild at the National Arts Club. It was a great group of women in New York’s most beautiful brownstone.
This morning I was journaling about how much I love writing conferences and being in community with other writers. I also love Twitter chats around the hashtags #blogchat and #wjchat (web journalist).
Writing is a solitary endeavor so communing with other writers online or in person inspires and energizes me. I fill my soul with other writers’ stories and feel less lonely and more courageous when I return to my writer’s desk to write my own story.
Here is advice on attending writing conferences:
Sit in the front, pay attention
When a volunteer is called for, raise your hand
When a question is called for, have one ready
Make one friend
Tweet one quote from the speaker
Tell someone about your big secret project
Share the struggle, share the joy — be honest
I mostly took my own advice:
I sat in the back, but I paid attention
When a volunteer was called for, I read something funny about marriage and work being overrated (got some nice laughs)
I made a friend who is heading to Abu Dhabi to report from a falconer conference
I tweeted, “Writers make the invisible visible” -Eunice Scarfe #iwwg
I love IWWG women’s writing workshops because, beyond the juicy substantive information, i.e., Eunice shared a ton of unknown delicious memoirs, there is always depth, laughter and understanding among women writers.
I’ve got 7,200 words and no plot going on my NaNoWriMo (national novel writing month) novel. To win I need to write 50,000 words by the last day of November.
100 Days of Poems and Pics 