Listening and Love

A lot of my value has been wrapped up in being a strong and independent person. I have learned over the last couple of years to ask for help in some small ways, but when I am really struggling, I dig in and play the “I’m fine”card.

In a couple of days we will move into the second half of 2018. This year has already been a rollercoaster of wonderful blessings and life-altering changes. It has been challenging to hold both realities. These last couple of weeks have been especially tumultuous.

When I have felt like I couldn’t breathe from the grief, my tribe has risen to hold my heart and soothe me with texts, emails, phone calls and visits. I had to laugh as one friend ignored me all together and brought groceries, despite my protests. Just sitting together, laughing and talking brought me so much joy and light. Each check in eases my burden bit by bit.

This wasn’t the summer I had planned for in many ways, but I am doing my best to listen to what I’m receiving. I haven’t been able to be out in the world much, but I’ve had the time to go inward and process my own world and the worlds I am building in a handful of stories.

I’m also learning to let people in more and accept more help. It doesn’t make me less valuable to be vulnerable, despite how uncomfortable it can make me. I know it is just a by-product of my broken heart. I have faith that it’ll be even stronger after it heals.

The Only Way Around is Through

It has been almost a year since my epic California road trip with one of my best friends. I got the opportunity to visit San Francisco for the first time, explore Big Sur and visit the Red Wood forest, which is something I had been looking forward to since I was a child. Every aspect of our journey was magic, but there were some struggles to overcome. Our rental car was a dud and we had to postpone the second leg of our journey by a half a day as we limped back to the airport to exchange it. Jamie struggles to sleep comfortably the first night in a new place and we changed hotels/locations almost every night. My snoring didn’t help either. Having my wallet stolen at Red Rocks the day before our trip was a huge inconvenience as well. All of that aside, we were able to work everything out and had one of the best trips I have ever been on. 

I have been thinking about this trip a lot lately and wishing I could go back in time and do it again. A full week with one of my favorite people in some of the most beautiful places I could ever imagine. I’m so grateful I got to see and stay in Big Sur when I did. 

Last week I found myself at a coffee shop after class. I had been planning on meeting a friend. I told her where I was in the coffee shop and said I had arrived a little early since traffic had been kind. She messaged back quickly that the day had gotten away from her and she wouldn’t be able to make it. I was faced with the decision to pack up and head home, or enjoy a coffee and work on some writing. I decided to do the latter, and pulled up my working outline. 

I have been working on this novel for a while. I realized about year ago that much of what I had already written was merely backstory. I had to scap a lot of it. And I have been really struggling with the plot points in the second act. Really struggling. Everything I outlined seemed cliche and boring. Yet, as I sat there sipping my Americano, I had a second act break through. I was able to tie in some of the old ideas in a way that felt fresh and rang true for the the characters and how I wanted them to grow through the story. I outlined the whole second act and felt at ease with these new plot points. Now, I have to write it, but I’m excited to tackle this new leg of the journey. Now I have a map. 

Brene Brown speaks about this same struggle in her magnificent book, Rising Strong. She writes of working with Pixar Animation Studios President and staff. The Pixar team explained that the middle of the creative process is the hardest part, in the writing and story telling, but also for the character. I would have to agree. I used to loathe editing, but now it is the part I love the most. The shaping of the story is fun. The slugging along through the middle has had me stuck in creative quicksand for a long time. As Brene states, “You can’t skip the second act.”

This is true in so many parts of life, not just the creative practice. The second act is difficult and trying. There are times it feels as if you will be walking uphill forever. I have been feeling this in my personal life as well. There are great things, don’t get me wrong, but there are deep struggles too. Brene also tells us, ” If we are brave enough, often enough, we’re going to fall. Rising Strong is about what it takes to get back up and keep being courageous with our lives.” 

Holding space and continuing to work and move through the hard stuff can be daunting, but it is worth it. That is one of the reasons I am drawn to storytelling in the first place. It is the shared experience of the human condition that intrigues and excites me. The good stuff wouldn’t feel so grand without the hard stuff to compare it to. There is also grace in accomplishing something seemingly impossible. You always get to keep that prize, you made it through whatever daunting thing had been placed in your path. And when the next hardship rears its ugly head, you aren’t hopeless, because of all the dragons you have slayed before. As Brene so brilliantly reminds us, ” The middle is messy, but it is also where the magic happens.”

Take a Breath

Happy Summer! It has been hot here in Colorado, but nothing compared to some other states! I have been on summer break for a couple weeks and I wish I could slow down summer. Time off always seems to fly by! Every year I  find myself making big plans for productivity and projects as the school year is winding down, and inevitably, I neglect to schedule rest. My body had some plans of its own and I am proud of myself for listening and slowing down this year without judgement or criticism.

I don’t seem to be able to sleep in anymore, which is sad, but it has actually been nice getting up early in the day, even if I am moving at a slower pace. I have found myself being a bit lonely lately too, which makes the quiet difficult. That said, the quiet is what I have been craving. I used to ignore my self care in a reckless fashion, and now that I’m invested in my health (mental, physical, spiritual etc.) I know that when my body talks, I need to listen. 

I have made some goals for the summer, but have given myself some wiggle room for those days when the thing I need to accomplish the most is rest. I have been outlining and organizing my wip in Scrivener. I’ve been journaling. I’ve been napping. I started teaching this week and the structure of seeing kids again has been nice. It is only half days, a couple days a week, but I think I am enjoying it because I have gotten some rest and quiet. 

I also started a new tattoo about a week ago. It is healing nicely, but because of the location of the tattoo, I haven’t worked out in a week. I realized yesterday that the lack of exercise was negatively affecting my mood. Today I was planning on meeting a friend at a coffee shop. She had a conflict, so I sipped my iced Americano and worked on my book. I came home and danced and did some yoga. It felt really good to move again. To breathe in that particular way that clears my head and centers me back in my body. 

There will definitely be adventures this summer. I have already had the chance to do some really fun things with friends. I will go to the mountains and kayak and float in a hot spring. I will continue to work on this story. I will rest. I will breathe. 

For What it’s Worth

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you would have noticed that I have had trouble getting back into a writing groove since The Christmas Child was published. I have had some false starts and some deep dry periods. I don’t know if it’s fair to say I’ve been blocked because I think about writing all the time – I just haven’t gotten many words on the page. 

Things are changing. I have some major writing momentum right now and it feels great. I am flooded with ideas and edits and images. Over spring break, I took some quiet time to go inside and practice some necessary self-care. I worked most of the week on an application for a content writer position for an online magazine I really respect and believe in. It felt like a long shot, but I thought it might be good for my inner writer to work through this and write the two samples they requested for the application. It felt good to find my writer voice again. It felt great to edit and fine tune every paragraph and sentence. It was difficult to write with such extreme honesty and vulnerability, but it shook something loose.

Surprisingly, it opened the floodgates for my fiction as well. I started to work through the details of a short story project I’ve been sitting on for a couple years. I felt renewed enthusiasm for my wip and have a plan for finishing this draft. In this environment of self-care, I’ve been able to drown out a lot of noise. I think some of these ideas just needed a safe space available so they could show up. 

This last week I learned I made it to the second round and they published one of my submissions. I was so proud to see my article on their website, next to articles that inspire and move and challenge me. My excitement only grew when I was met with such support and love from the people in my life. On Saturday, I learned that I got the position and will be signing on for six months, with an option to extend my contract after that. It still doesn’t really feel real as I write that. I have been published before, but never on this scale. I am beyond honored and grateful to join them and add to their work. 

When I let people know, I was overwhelmed by their excitement, joy, encouragement and validation of the worth of my writing and my worth as a writer. I was worried that my work might not be up to par, but these people never doubted it. I even received a handful of comments about how they were happy to see this organization was seeing what they already knew. 

It occurred to me that a lot of the “stuck” energy I have been feeling over the last couple of years has been about not feeling worthy or good enough. I wrote this one thing I was proud of, but could I write something else that was good? I clearly had other stories to tell, but could I get out of my own way to tell them? The answer was no for a long time. That answer has started to change. 

I’m still an equal mix of excitement and nerves. I am empowered and feeling very humbled all at once.  Hearing kind words and support of my worth is helpful, but I am starting to feel my own worth as a writer again as well. I am looking forward to seeing what this next chapter has in store. 

Fertile Soil

Black and White Garden 2015

It’s hard to believe that I have to go back to school in less than a month. This summer has been filled with storms (literal and metaphysical), rest, reflection and growth. I planted an epic patio garden that has flourished from all the rain, I suspect. I have been reorganizing my house all summer. It has been waiting for me for quite some time. It feels wonderful to get things in order.

I know why it’s taken me so long to actually tackle this project. Most of this “stuff” has a great deal of emotional weight and shame attached to it. It also helped that I could shove all of it up in the loft of my apartment, and conveniently forget it was there. I have planned to deal with it for the past two summers, and couldn’t. My procrastination reached rock star level.

I think the possibility of moving in the fall shook me into action. I will not take all this with me somewhere else. I think enough time has passed and I have changed enough, that it is finally possible for me to edit and organize with more distance, less sentimentality and actually move on.

It hasn’t been much fun, but growth rarely is. I will say that I feel lighter when I complete a task and that feeling is leading me to continue and finish – finally. It reminds me of a WIP I have been avoiding as well. I discovered recently that most of what I’ve already written needs to be thrown out. I haven’t been able to get momentum and start back up again with it, but I think that getting my physical world in order is helping my creative world as well. I’ve been brainstorming and plotting. Mulling over changes and character motivation. My imagination is free to roam, now that there isn’t so much clutter.

It seems ridiculous to be sad that I only have 27 more days left of freedom this summer, but I plan to get this organization done and then spend some time among my plants, blossoming.

Tend Your Garden

I have thoroughly enjoyed my patio garden this summer. It is much bigger than the garden I tried last year and I have loved every aspect of it. The actual planting was magical. I had dirt under my nails for days, but being in the dirt felt so grounding. I loved shaking the plant free of it small pot and securing it with new soil, hoping that it would thrive in its new home.

I cherished watching the small plants grow and flower. Carrot tops shooting out of the soil. Lettuce leaves and basil. Delicate yellow flowers that would soon be green tomatoes. Crisp bell peppers and sherbet colored zucchini blossoms. Every day, I enjoy sitting on the patio, drinking coffee or tea, taking in the beauty of growing, living things.

A garden, no matter how big or small takes daily maintenance and thought. I have to adjust my watering based on how much rain we got the day before. I pull off dead bits and leaves, making room for new blossoms and growth. I also discovered recently that one of my tomato plants is lacking calcium so it has blossom end rot. I had to research emergency fixes and try to remedy the problem. There is work to be done everyday, but the work also leaves me grounded and in awe of the creative process at work in front of me, in these pots.

It occurs to me that writing is like gardening. Writing daily is a grounding creative practice. Once in the habit of tending a writing practice on a daily basis, you can weed out the dead bits and things that are starting to rot. You can research new methods to try or use a new point of view to bring new life to something. A daily writing practice has been difficult for me to maintain the last couple of years. I finished a novel I’d been working on for almost ten years and got it out into the world. I was excited to start new projects, but I missed the familiarity of my last piece and the world I knew how to tend. New life felt untrustworthy, but I never gave it a shot and my daily practice withered and died.

Because I tend to the garden a little bit everyday, it is flourishing. There is definitely difference in opinion about what a daily writing practice should entail. I’ve learned that setting up lots of rules and routines boxes me in and I rebel by not working at all. I do better with loose rules and it might change per work in progress or change every couple of days. That said, even five minutes of writing a day – blogging, journaling or fiction writing helps me to be more grounded and flourish.

I sometimes want my daily practice to be more. I’ve tried NANOWRIMO multiple times, but inevitably the large daily word count gets the best of me and I can’t keep up. In reality, a smaller dose is easier for me to handle and as I am learning with my garden, still produces great results. I might have to wait longer for my wip’s to mature and produce, but the harvest will be potent and memorable just like my basil.

Character Flaw

I am currently obsessed with character driven drama’s. I devoured Orange is the New Black and I’m currently watching the final season of The Killing. I appreciate these two shows particularly because they attempt to show a multitude of facets of  the human psyche through behavior and relationships. I appreciate these shows because they continually show me that things aren’t so black and white. Humans are flawed, beautiful creatures and everyone has elements of good and bad.

I am exploring these same things in my current works. I am also having to explore these themes in my personal life as well. I had to make a decision last night that surprised me. Upon reflection, I realize that I agreed to something that I typically wouldn’t because I am a human who values compassion…and I couldn’t withhold that compasion from someone even though I wanted to. Even though they have been less than compassionate to me.

I don’t say this to toot my own moral horn, believe me, I am not always the “good guy”. However, I think it bears writing about because acknowledging my need to be compassionate is acknowledging part of who I am at my core. If I can see and acknowledge this about myself, I have an easier time teasing out the core of my characters.

I also have been extremely angry lately. I’m not going to be on the nightly news, don’t worry, but I am finally allowing myself to feel anger in the present moment without distancing myself from it. It can scare me, because the force of it in my body can be intense. I have been so good at hiding my emotions for most of my life, that feeling anger and letting it process naturally, still feels foreign. Even though I’ve been working on this for years. Understanding my anger also helps me understand characters and why they might explode in one situation and simmer silently in another.

I know that character flaws can be troublesome. However, I think it is the supposed flaws in the humans around me (myself included) that are leading me to be a better writer.

Don’t Be Afraid…

Up until recently the only prose I’ve ever really written and shared was intended for younger audiences. A couple of years ago, a handful of my works in progress started to take a darker turn and I was afraid to follow my characters into the proverbial forest. I was frightened by what my imagination was capable of. This was the same reason I have avoided horror films and books for most of my life…my imagination made them much scarier once I was at home, alone, in the dark.

Knowing this, one of my best friends sent me an incredible article from Poet’s and Writer’s about earning your violence in art. It gave me a new perspective but I was still too frightened to try. Last summer I devoured Gillian Flynn books. I couldn’t get enough. They were brilliant, dark and violent. I love the Hunger Games series which is also very violent. The violence was not gratuitous. It helped move the story forward and as hard as it was to read, it belonged on the page. I started to understand what the article was really saying, but was I ready to go to that place?

The answer was no, since it has been another year of procrastination. However, I have recently been inundated with a dozen of new short story ideas that feature darker and more subversive subject matter. I’m still a little hesitant, but the stories are winning out. I am more interested these days in the dynamics of family, sexual identity and the vast spectrum of good vs. bad in characters and human beings in general. I am also writing again. I wrote three scenes for a short story I have been revising for a couple of years and I wrote 500 words for a new short today.

I’m learning in my personal and creative life to be more brave. The imagined outcome is riddled with anxiety, fear and doubt yet, if I get out of my own way and try…it’s typically not bad at all.

I know I will come to a scene that will push my limits again, but I’m encouraged that now I won’t be afraid to follow those characters where they lead me, no matter how dark or dire. I’m excited to grow in this way.

Gimmick or Writing Block Ninja?

I still haven’t been writing…I’ve been sick and stressed at work. I have also been avoiding even picking up my notebook. It is sitting in the study, waiting patiently for attention and word love, but I am playing hard to get.

I just got a new Writers Digest magazine and there are some good articles about skill building for writers. There were some great ideas that actually sparked me to want to run to my notebook with open arms and confess how I had missed the lines on her pages and the comfort of sharing secrets…but I didn’t.

I was thinking later that these skill building exercises might just be tricks. They might be gimmicks that make me think I am getting closer to overcoming my writers block, but really they lead me deeper into the woods.

Last weekend I Skyped with my two writer soul mates and even though it was wonderful and grounding to hear their voices and stories, I was saddened that I couldn’t report any new writing. My friend is sooo dedicated and never seems to be plagued with the deadly writers block – at least in the last four years since we met. How does she do it?

One of the differences between us is that she puts in the time, everyday, even when the world gets in the way. I used to do this too. I was able to keep this up for about a year while I feverishly rewrote and dissected my novel The Christmas Child, but since then – no dice.

I am a bit of a bi-polar writer if left to my own devices. I am manic and write like a crazy person for a couple of days to a week, sometimes a month if I’m really on a bender. At some point I fizzle out and then slip into the depression. I spend all my gunpowder in one glorious firework and then I have to wait for the next holiday to show my colors again. I was able to keep out of this cycle for a time, by only writing for 20 minutes or so a day and always leaving the page with an idea still in my head, like a line of dialogue or an image that I could use to get me to the page the next day. But alas, this only lasted for a couple of months as well.

I also confessed during my post-Skype chat with my other glorious writer friend that part of the problem is that I don’t know my stories well enough to tell them yet. I worked on The Christmas Child for ten years. I know that world in a visceral way. I know how it smells, tastes and feels. These new wiper-snapper wip’s are unreliable and smell unfamiliar. I’m not sure if we have any chemistry and I am avoiding getting to know them. I have been thinking that maybe I need to work on some short-stories while I court my wip’s and get to know them better. But that would take me actually writing…

Maybe this Writer’s Digest was divine intervention. Could this skill building article be my miraculous fix? Could I use these gimmicks to trick my bi-polar writer psyche into picking up the languishing notebook and knocking out some killer short stories while building the back story and character profiles for my neglected wip’s? Perhaps. It is possible that these gimmicks could actually be secret squirrel ninja tricks that take my writers block and kick its sorry ass.

I hope so!

With Honor

With Honors came out when I was 14 and I remember seeing it in the theater and being very moved by it. I bought the soundtrack and I also remember carrying around a small bag of stones for all my “important memories”.  Silly right? Looking back, nothing of importance had even happened yet that would have merited being including in my life bag, but hindsight is 20/20.

I hadn’t watched the movie in a long time and it was nice to see it again as an adult. I don’t know if the lessons were more impactful, but I saw them with the lens of experience this time.

I still cried when Simon dies. I still got goose bumps when Monty read his obituary at the grave site. He may not have graduated with honors, but he learned how to live with honor.

The movie is a great lesson in character and dynamics. All of the roommates are three-dimensional and we learn just as much from the subtext of their interactions as we do from the dialogue. That is something that film can do that is difficult in books. In a movie, we can see longing and disgust. In a novel, we have to be creative about how to show those emotions in our characters.

In my own life, I always am trying to live with honor. It isn’t always easy, especially when I’m feeling slighted, but I feel I have good, honest character most of my days. I’m in a holding pattern in my own life right now, like Monty, I’m fighting for something I believe in. However it shakes down, I will keep my head up and keep living with honor.

I have been working with my voice journal and that is proving to be enlightening and inspiring. This week, I’ve also been inspired to go back to a wip that I had shelved. I think I am going to dive back into that as I continue to court the characters for this other series.