New Year

I love the last few days of a year. On these days you can be sure to find me clearing out my work-space, stuffing stuff in bags for the charity bin, pulling out couches and sucking up the dust beavers (much bigger and toothier than dust bunnies). You’ll also find me thinking and reflecting and writing on the first pages of a new journal I’ve spent time choosing, making resolutions and setting goals—or rather, making my New Year’s List.

There’s something about putting things in writing. We are writers, most of us here, and as writers we are well aware of what it is to pour ourselves into our writing. There’s something very scary, very revealing of our inner selves, and utterly intoxicating about expressing ourselves through words, through characters we’ve created, and putting it down on paper instead of just daydreaming. It’s a real commitment.

I think it’s the same kind of thing with a New Year’s List. That’s how it feels for me, anyway. I get very excited about it. I’ve been doing it since I was eight when I first heard of New Year’s resolutions. I have rituals. It’s something I hold sacred. And funnily enough, many people don’t understand when I tell them about it or they chuckle about it. They think I’m cute (or possibly crazy. Or maybe both).

But, that’s ok. That’s water off a duck’s back. Other people’s amusement has never worried me one bit, because I know that people who write lists and commit things to paper where they can clearly see them tend (more often than those who don’t) to get things done. And I like to get things done. (That’s why the first thing I do each morning is make a list of that day’s stuff-to-do. There’s something very comforting in breaking life’s daily complexity into small manageable chunks, not to mention fully satisfying as they get ticked off).

It’s a very powerful act—making written goals and sticking them somewhere you can see them, somewhere they can nag at you, or, perhaps more powerfully, where others can see them and nag at you. A New Year’s List is like a good, supportive crit group: it can keep you focused, keep you accountable, and keep you real. (It can’t hug you hard when you’re down or sincerely revel in your joy like a good crit group, though. So if you don’t have a good crit group, perhaps that should be first thing on your List.)

Anyway, here goes. My writing/creating goals this coming year, 2012:

• Finish a solid first draft of my middle grade novel.
• Continue to draw and once again explore my visual art, like, you know, really often.
• Be a consistently supportive crit group member in a consistent and supportive way.
• Be a good editor. Be a good teacher. Continue to care. Work Hard.
• Just keeping doing my thing. Keep having a good time on paper, not really contemplating the future, letting the fluff and stuff pass me by, just focusing on my ultimate goal.

Now I’m accountable, see? And that fires me up! It’s an exciting year beginning, brand new and full of promise. Can’t you feel it?

Thank you for reading Wordy Birdie and a very Happy New Year to you and yours!

Literary Forms, Parte the Firste

Image from http://www.marriedtothesea.com/ Great site, check it out.

Definition of IRONY

(copied from Merriam-Webster online. Thanks, Merriam Webster!)

1

: a pretense of ignorance and of willingness to learn from another assumed in order to make the other's false conceptions conspicuous by adroit questioning —called alsoSocratic irony

2

a : the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaningb : a usually humorous or sardonic literary style or form characterized by ironyc : an ironic expression or utterance

3

a (1) : incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result (2) : an event or result marked by such incongruityb : incongruity between a situation developed in a drama and the accompanying words or actions that is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play —called also dramatic irony, tragic irony

Bye-Bye, Birdman

From the Mother's Day card Charlie made me this year.

Late last night I was drawing... just, you know, skating pencil across paper, seeing what would appear. Having a lovely time, I was, especially when I saw what shapes were emerging. I laughed. I really liked my drawing. It was funny and had a bird dude and it was different to anything I’d ever done.

“Eureka!” I said aloud. And right then I thought of my friend Charlie and knew he’d get a huge kick out of it. I would have to send him a copy when it was done.

Like me, Charlie loves birds and he draws them all the time, quirky birds with personality. For a few years I happily drove a car covered in his bird images: birds skating, birds dancing, birds snoozing, birds falling in love. 

We both really like art. Charlie is a pioneer in the art world. We hit it off the first time we met, and have walked and talked creativity ever since. We’ll take drives out into the countryside and stop by the road to draw something random that takes our fancy. He finds his own perspective, and doesn’t crowd me as I work. He gets that I don’t like someone looking over my shoulder. He understands all about being encouraging but non-effusive. He chuckles a lot. I make him chuckle. We draw together well. 


When, as a widower, he married his wonderful Ginny, he reaffirmed to me that real love and happiness can come at any age. They defined the power of long, true friendship and hope. They are a life-affirming, do-it-all couple who make you want to do it all, too.  


So Charlie and I have gone to various galleries, sharing awe and ideas and the occasional snide comment.Once he took me to the canvas-cluttered Providence studio of his landscape artist friend whose macular degeneration had made him legally blind. This man had to stand nose to vast canvas in order to see light and shade, and yet his landscapes were powerful, rich with subtle shifts in color and light. I saw there are no limits, if you have the will. 


Until Charlie first took me there, I had only vaguely heard of RISD. In his usual, slow, subtle way Charlie suggested it might be a place for me. He kept reminding me and taking me round there until I finally heard him. Over the years he's seen me become a student there and soon after, Continuing Education Faculty. He just smiled and made some wry observation as usual. I grinned. He chuckled. I knew he was proud of me. He knew he’d shown me a whole new world of possibility. Charlie knows how to handle me. I know how to jolly him round a bit. We're buddies that "get" each other.  

Unbeknownst to me, Charlie began a journey yesterday. And early this morning, right about the time I woke, my dear mentor and birdman buddy took flight. But it’s startlingly easy to believe he hovered nearby last night as I drew my quirky bird dude, making slow, subtle suggestions until I heard him, and bursting into belly laughter as I had my Eureka moment. Just as he always does. 

Post in Which You Meet My Handsome Cello.

This is my cello. See how he sits there against my studio wall, surrounded by More Important Things? Watch how he admonishes me silently from his stand. Look closely, maybe you can see the dust there on his shoulders, the reproach in that lovely costume eye-patch he’s sporting. Yet each time I pass him or glance his way, a small feisty part of me is quite convinced that if I picked him up and played him, something exquisite would pour through me along the bow, into the strings and body, and spill forth singing and sonorous, resonant and ethereal. It will just spring from us almost unbidden, effortlessly, with great passion. The experience will feel transcendent.  

But it’s a complex act, playing a cello, and my playing, when I got round to it today, did not sound good.

There are many technical complexities in cello playing, and that’s before you even think about the artistry or the soul of the piece of music. I do know just how tight my bow should be, and I can tune my instrument perfectly. I can pick out an interesting melody and sometimes even hit the right note. I sound almost terrific when I am wearing big headphones and playing along to some *loud* cello music. But my small knowledge is far from enough. 

Playing the cello is something I’d really like to do well, but it’s not on my urgent list. I do feel more strongly about it than learning to blow glass or use a pottery wheel or surf and other things I’d quite like to do but could never hope to teach myself. I probably should take some cello lessons and practice every day, and I will when I have the time, money, and desire. 

In the meantime playing the cello is really hard and not always fun, in fact. Actually, it’s a lot like writing (c’mon, you knew where I was going with this). However, I can readily laugh off how bad I sound as I drag bow across strings and still happily fantasize about one day being listenable. I know I’m not my screechy cello playing, anymore than I am my excellent scone baking skills or my tragic inability to sew. But that’s hard to do with your writing, isn’t it? If our writing isn’t good, we feel it in our core as some terrible damning exposition of what’s deepest and most wonderful (or wrong) within us. Indeed,if I aspired to be the next Yo Yo Ma, I imagine the way I play the cello would be upsetting.

The thing is, we all understand it takes many lessons, a full understanding of tools, and many years of dedicated daily practice and fine tuning of artistry to become a concert musician—and yet we think we should be accomplished writers the moment we sit down to write, and then again each time we write. And when we fear that’s not happening, we quake at the thought of critiques. We shiver at the thought of sharing, of exposing our work and ourselves. We get really bloody frustrated. We let our writing and passion catch dust.

Does that make any sense at all?

All published writers have a long learning curve before they actually "make it." Everyone’s first attempts and early drafts sound like caterwauling cellos. So practice and play, be happy you’re on your way. One day, you will be a maestro. 

Strange Energy

It’s an acutely uncomfortable feeling sometimes, the need to write or create. Sometimes it sneaks up on you, niggling as a vague unease, a creeping inability to sit still or focus, a repeated pragmatic thought that it ‘must be the weather.’ Sometimes it’s disguised as an escalating resentment toward a waiting pile of bills, thoughts of negative energy between you and someone you care about, or the memory of some past hurt—and other times it just carries some essence of those things.

At such times you may resort to doing the dishes, at least, since you can’t settle on anything else on your to-do list. But even though you wash the dishes and clean the kitchen counters and scrub the floor on your hands and knees till it gleams, they’re still there. Words eager to be written.

That energy has to express itself somehow. Carry a notebook, use it, and call it 'Sweet Relief.' Or blog. Then chuckle. Then get back to your WIP. 

Fearless

I haven’t been here for a bit. When I started this blog, it was to try and cure a case of writer’s block, and I’ve used it for that many times. But I promised myself when I began it that blogging would be something I did with pleasure and joy. If that meant blogging, I would, and if it meant not blogging, then I would not. I have been true to that, which makes me happy. My not being here now, I think, really shows how thoroughly invested in and engaged by my current creative process I am, and that too makes me very happy.

But I went to a funeral today, and it’s compelled me to share what’s on my mind. My whole week thus far has been one vivid, powerful reminder that life is short, and that it should be joyful—or at least that a life lived in joy with people that fill you up is the best kind of life to live, the only kind of life that really makes much sense.

In the wee small dark rainy hours of Saturday morning I was woken by a bang that shook the house. Two young girls, college students who’d had too much to drink—just kids—had crashed outside. It wasn’t at all good for the passenger, but she was conscious and I held her and spoke to her while we waited for help to arrive. Some few shocked, sickening, sleepless hours later, I had a joy-filled day with friends, one of the most special and fun in a very long time. The contrast was stark.

Then Monday, I learned of the death the night before of a family friend, Mark Jarvis, whom I’m so pleased to have known and shared a little time with. After some years battling cancer, which he tackled with a loud and enormous guffawing sense of humor and joyful spirit, he passed away quite unexpectedly after knee construction surgery. The very next day I heard about the passing of Bean Bowers, one of my NOLS instructors some years ago, and you can get a sense of the kind of guy he was here. Then today, as I got ready for Mark’s funeral, I saw the news about Steve Jobs, which seems to have infected the Interwebs with a profound sense of joy and live-life-loudly and go-for-it-no-matter-what attitude. This is just how I think of Mark Jarvis and Bean Bowers. They were just those kind of people, too.

It’s all such a good reminder. You’re a long time dead. And life is AMAZING. It can be whatever you want it to be. It is whatever you think it is, and so are you. Fill it with those who help you soar. Choose what brings you joy. Write, if that’s what you want to do. Why the hell not?

"Remembering that you are going to die is the best way...to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose." —Steve Jobs

Making the Traverse (Don’t Look Down!)

I just got back from walking Baxtor around the lake near my house. There are thin, muddy bits where you have to leap from root to root or skirt the edge of the trail, and it made me think about how we get from here to there when we want to write—how we leave Daily Life Valley and climb to Really Writing Peak (as opposed to the Forced Torture Writing Gully: when we write because we should and then feel utterly poopy about what we’ve written).

I’ve gotten into the good habit of going on these walks and runs before I try to write, and I’ve probably blogged about the importance of forward physical motion before. There’s really nothing about it that isn’t good (unless it involves an internal combustion engine), and for me it’s a surefire way to get into the Really Writing space.  

Many of you will be familiar with Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way and the idea of Morning Pages, of starting before writing with a 'brain dump.' But I’ve heard so many people say this about journals and pages, that they don’t like to waste those valuable words and time hammering into something that’s not their Big Project.  

So, this is what works for me and it tickles several birds with a single feather*. I spend the first half of my pre-writing walk or run (or forward moving activity) doing my kind of brain dump, i.e. walking along that edge of a good old grumble to myself and some deep-and-meaningful chat about the meaning of life, love, and IT All. And then, at what I know is about halfway point of my walking/running route, I reclaim a little mental discipline. I become AWARE of the act of thinking about Stuff. I wobble a bit, but I usually do make the conscious shift to thinking hard about my Big Project. It has a really interesting effect, and I love seeing the Stuff-People-Deal-With channel directly into my writing in a creative and usually very productive way.  

By the end of my walk, I’ve usually managed to cross that murky space between the end of the work day or the whatevering, and usually with much more general balance than when I started. Of course it can be bit tricky if you’re someone who writes at night as I mostly do, but it really helps even if I’ve done it earlier in the day.

And then, if I’m still a bit stuck and not yet in that place… well… that’s when I tend to blog about process. :)

I’d love to hear how you make the traverse.  

* Much nicer than killing two birds with one stone.