For any and all of my creative friends out there, some wise words from
Billie Joe Armstrong, Green Day songwriter, singer-guitarist……..
Sounds as if he knows a bit about the muddle in the middle.
You might be happy to know I finally finished Carl Sandburg’s PRAIRIE-TOWN BOY.
So why am I still writing about Mr. Sandburg?
Because this morning I was reading the Rolling Stone interview with Bob Dylan.
Dylan recounts how in February 1964 he spontaneously drove with friends from New York
to Hendersonville, North Carolina, where he knocked on the door of his hero, Carl Sandburg.
From the interview (conducted by Douglas Brinkley):
Mrs. Sandburg greeted the stoned-out New Yorkers with Appalachian warmth. "I am a poet," is how
Dylan introduced himself to her. "My name is Robert Dylan, and I would like to see Mr. Sandburg."
The 86-year-old Sandburg had collected more than 280 ballads in The American Songbag, and Dylan
wanted to discuss them. "I had three records out at the time," Dylan says, laughing at his youthful temerity.
"The Times They Are a-Changin’ record was the one I gave him a copy of. Of course he had never heard of me."
After just 20 minutes, Sandburg excused himself.
I’m betting Sandburg went into the next room and tried to wrap his head around what had just happened.
Still reading Carl Sandburg’s Prairie-Town Boy.
And again, he used that phrase I find so funny coming from him:
" . . . tried to get my head around the English Magna Carta."
I’m reading Carl Sandburg’s childhood memoirs, Prairie-Town Boy.
Sandburg was born to poor Swedish immigrant parents in 1878.
The book was written in 1952.
Last night I was reading the chapter on the books he loved reading as a child.
The History of Napoleon Bonaparte and
Young Folks’ Cylopaedia of Persons and Places.
A series of history books by Charles Coffin.
Young Carl Sandburg loved many of the Coffin books,
especially one on the Revolutionary War.
But when he tried reading those written about the Civil War,
he found them dry.
Sandburg wrote:
". . . maybe it [Civil War] was so big he [Coffin] couldn’t get his head around it."
Wow.
I’m here to say it took me a while to wrap my head around
Carl Sandburg wrapping his head around
Charles Coffin and the Civil War he apparently couldn’t wrap his head around.
Writing is like driving at night in the fog.
You can only see as far as your headlights,
but you can make the whole trip that way.
– – – E. L. Doctorow
I’ve always loved this quote.
But I’m sure it’s anathema
to John Irving who believes
if you’re making it up as you go along
you’re not a writer, just a liar.
Each first draft is different for me.
Each process unique.
What I know ahead of time varies.
Yesterday I felt a combination of
fear and exhilaration as I wrote my 1000 words.
Squinting ahead into the fog.
I haven’t written yet today.
I’m worried the story might be headed for a cliff.
But if that’s the case,
I’ll just have to grab the wheel and make a sharp turn.
And hope I don’t run over any liars
who might be staggering around in the fog.
I feel guilty sometimes. Forty-three years old and I’m still writing war stories. My daughter Kathleen tells me it’s an obsession, that I should write about a little girl who finds a million dollars and spends it all on a Shetland pony. In a way, I guess she’s right: I should forget it. But the thing about remembering is that you don’t forget. You take your material where you find it, which is in your life, at the intersection of past and present. The memory-traffic feeds into a rotary up in your head, where it goes in circles for a while, then pretty soon imagination flows in and the traffic merges and shoots off down a thousand different streets. As a writer, all you can do is pick a street and go for the ride, putting things down as they come at you. That’s the real obsession. All those stories.
– – – from THE THINGS THEY CARRIED by Tim O’Brien
John Updike had an essay in the Nov/Dec issue of the AARP magazine. It was entitled The Writer in Winter, and addressed the challenges specific to aging writers. It’s a very nice essay and I recommend reading it in its entirety. But in the meanwhile, here’s my favorite line:
"Prose should have a flow, the forward momentum of a certain energized weight; it should feel like a voice tumbling into your ear."
Isn’t that lovely?
“As President, I will close Guantánamo, reject the Military Commissions Act, and adhere to the Geneva Conventions” – Barack Obama, 8/1/07
And yesterday President-elect Obama again stated he would sign an executive order closing Guantanamo Bay. I can think of no better first action for our new president. However, Obama needs to know where we, the people, stand on this issue and he needs to know we have his back. The fearmongers are on the talk show circuit right now, discussing torture as if it’s a debatable topic. There is no gray area: torture is wrong and torture does not yield good intelligence.
Please take a moment to let President-elect Obama know you support his promise to restore U.S. morality and leadership.
Thank you.
The most significant dreams came to me shortly after my friend Pete died. He was actually murdered. One night I entered into a dream and Pete was there. He said, "I want to take you to this place where I live." I thought, Well, that’s interesting. When we arrived, I saw it was a wonderful idyllic setting with a lot of creatures flying around: elephants, camels, people. I said, "I’d like to try flying myself." And he said, "Sure, but since you’re not dead, you have to go over to that booth there and rent some wings. They’re only a quarter." I said, "Great," and I went and rented the wings.
I took off, and I was flying around with all the other people, having a wonderful time. All of a sudden, I realized, "This is ridiculous. How can I fly with these twenty-five-cent wings?" Immediately I started to fall. I was terrified I was going to die. Then I thought, Wait a minute, I was just flying a minute ago, and I started flying again. I went back and forth with this — falling and flying, falling and flying — until it finally dawned on me what this was about. I said to myself: It is not these wings that enable you to fly, it’s your own confidence.
– – – Amy Tan in WRITERS DREAMING: Twenty-six Writers Talk About Their Dreams
and the Creative Process
“As an autobiographer I don’t seem to have to dream. There’s a place I get to that’s a little like dreaming. Almost dreaming but I’m awake. It’s an enchantment.
You know, from the age of seven and a half to twelve and a half I was a mute. I believed at the time that I could make myself, my whole body, an ear. And I could absorb all sound. Those years I must have done something to my brain, or with it, so that the part of the brain which would have been occupied in the articulation of speech and the creation of sound, those electrical synapses, did something else with themselves. They just reinvented themselves so that I’m able to remember incredible amounts of data. I would say I get along reasonably well in about seven or eight languages. I have spoken as many as twelve. I have taught in three. I seem to have total recall or none at all. And so, when I need to get inside myself, I can do it without going to sleep.”
—Maya Angelou in WRITERS DREAMING: Twenty-six Writers Talk About Their Dreams
and the Creative Process
(Sometimes I pull a book off the shelf and see what jumps out at me. This is what I found today. Possibly the universe is suggesting I shut up and listen a bit more. Today’s goal: become an ear.)
kellyrfineman got me thinking about books I loved as a child. She’s currently going through some old favorites, identifying those positive story elements that might shape and inform her own writing projects.
As I read her posts, I wondered if I could remember why I connected with certain books. Some of those books and the person I was as I read them, feel so long ago and far away. Those connections feel faint.
Except for one character who stands out: Pippi Longstocking.
And this excerpt from Pippi in the South Seas by Astrid Lindgren says it all:
The arithmetic lesson was interrupted by Captain Longstocking, who came to announce that he and the whole crew and all the Kurrekurredutts were going off to another island for a couple of days to hunt wild boar. Captain Longstocking was in the mood for some fresh boar steak. The Kurrekurredutt women were also to go along, to scare out the boar with wild cries. That meant that the children would be staying behind alone on the island.
"I hope you won’t be sad because of this?" said Captain Longstocking.
"I’ll give you three guesses," said Pippi. "The day I hear that some children are sad because they have to take care of themselves without grownups, that day I’ll learn the whole pluttification table backward, I’ll swear to that."
That pigtailed, free spirit made me laugh then, and she makes me laugh now. All hail Pippi!
My friend once teased that rather than a birder, I was a “ducker” because I was never quick enough to identify birds but could usually, eventually ID a waterfowl as it paddled about. I felt somewhat intimidated by people who knew grosbeaks from finches from sparrows from the multitude of other little brown jobs. No way was I cut out to be a birder.
But somehow in the past year or so I began watching the pigeons that flock near a neighborhood intersection, taking great joy in their synchronized flights and landings. They always made me smile as I sat at the red light. Then I started seeing crows in certain cottonwood trees as I drove Zebu to school each morning, and they made me smile. And then I started watching for birds everywhere I went because I realized birds made me feel good. Calmer and more centered. They give me hope.
Which is what How to Be a (Bad) Birdwatcher by Simon Barnes is all about. Basking in the wonder and delight of birds, and then easing into the understanding of identifying who and what you’re seeing. In the beginning, he warns, you’ll make mistakes. Embrace those errors.
From page 94: “You start by blundering about and making a good few blunders, too. Everybody does. My advice is to carry on blundering in a totally unembarrassed way. The more you look, the more blunders you will make, and the more blunders you make, the more you will see, and you find that slowly a pattern has been building up without you realizing it. This building up of patterns is one of the deeper joys: once you begin to understand the rhythm of birdwatching, you are beginning to understand the rhythm of birds themselves. Which is nothing less than the rhythm of life.”
I happened upon this book in the library and cannot recommend it enough. It’s funny and poignant and life-affirming. The travesty is that the book is out of print. Really, that makes my heart hurt. The good news, though, is there are used copies available. I can’t wait for mine to arrive so that I might read it again, marking the many passages that brought me joy.
Simon Barnes doesn’t go birdwatching. He is birdwatching. And so am I.
Paging through WRITING IN FLOW by Susan K. Perry, Ph.D., I came across a passage from author Tom Robbins that I’d highlighted (with an ! in the margin) during an earlier reading. I’m going to share it here not because it’s a practice I share (really! truly!) but because the whole thing makes me laugh:
Having read his books, this advice shouldn’t surprise me. In fact, it explains an awful lot about how Sissy Hankshaw came to be.
And I’m thinking there might be other fun advice out there in LJ-Land on losing yourself so completely in your writing that you enter some altered state in which time disappears and you’re tapping into the creative core of the universe.
Anyone want to share?
I’ve set a running goal for myself to place in the top fifteen in my age group this Memorial Day in the Bolder Boulder 10k. I’m dedicated to making that happen; I participated in a winter training group and am now in a 10k spring training program. I’m following the weekly workouts. I have a coach available to answer questions and boost my morale when necessary. I’m confident I’m going to reach my goal.
And now I’m trying to figure out how this whole confidence thing works. The good thing about running is the results are objective; the clock doesn’t lie. So when I’m running intervals until my lungs burn I try to remember that the pain is an investment in my 10k performance, and I push on through. But it’s more difficult pushing myself in the writing life. Lately as I work on revisions, it’s easy to falter and second-guess. I know my writing has improved in the ten-plus years since I began my first novel but instead of measuring up against a stop watch, my performance is evaluated by editors. So far I haven’t placed, much less in the top fifteen.
My hope is that as I continue to train, getting stronger and faster, my runner’s confidence will overflow into my writing life.
I’m still working on my JoNoWriMo+1.5 project. Despite being ahead of schedule, I’m experiencing almost daily bouts of Help, my book has fallen and it can’t get up!
Last night I felt the need to take a break from children’s literature so I started reading Edith Wharton’s THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON. The Nick Lansing character is writing his first novel, and Wharton begins her seventh chapter with this:
Of some new ferment at work in him Nick Lansing himself was equally aware. He was a better judge of the book he was trying to write than either Susy or Strefford; he knew its weaknesses, its treacheries, its tendency to slip through his fingers just as he thought his grasp tightest; but he knew also that at the very moment when it seemed to have failed him it would suddenly be back, beating its loud wings in his face.
Ain’t that the truth.
My office somehow became the family office and then the family dumping ground. I’d post a photo of what it looks like today but it’s too damned scary. Visualize piles of papers, stacks of books next to full bookshelves, a dead computer on the floor, various cords and plug-ins, dust, tax files, homework, more dust, bins and boxes, magazines and unpaid bills. Did I mention the dust?
Believe me when I say there’s not a whole lot of space for creativity.
Well, I read
notes on Laurie Halse Anderson in which LHA said writers must create a sacred writing space. Dot quoted her as saying “Writing space creates focus. You’re planting a flag.”
I thought, yeah. But how?
Then today I was flipping through Monica Wood’s THE POCKET MUSE (a great book, by the way) and came across Ingredients of a good writing space which includes “The space should be marked as yours by the decor: a favorite vase, a framed photo, a special charm or knick-knack. Put up a sign, a flag, a fence; pee on it if you have to. It’s yours.”
So I mulled over the possibilities before moving a little desk out of the office and putting it in the weight room. I figure I’m safe in there since I’m the only one in the family who lifts weights.
And I didn’t even have to pee to make it mine. 
The story begins:
I was thirteen when my dad caught me with Tommy Webber in the back of Tommy’s Buick, parked next to the old Chart House down in Montara at eleven o’clock on a Tuesday night. Tommy was seventeen and the supposed friend of my brother, Darran.
I didn’t love him.
I’m not sure I even liked him.
We’ve all done things we regret but most of us are fortunate enough to keep our indiscretions private. Deanna Lambert isn’t so fortunate. When Deanna’s dad catches them in the backseat, Tommy doesn’t keep his mouth shut but broadcasts the story to the high school population. Deanna is labeled at school but even more painfully, at home where her dad hasn’t really spoken to her in the almost three years since catching her in the Buick.
With perfect pacing, Sara Zarr reveals bits and pieces of the pain Deanna feels during the summer after her sophomore year. Deanna explores her version of events – not Tommy’s, not her father’s, not the stupid boys’ at school – but her own version of why she got into that Buick with Tommy, and as she comes to a greater understanding of the circumstances, begins to see herself, and Tommy, in a different light.
From page 125: It was both sad and funny, you know, how two people’s memory of the same thing could be so different. And that was the whole problem, really, that this thing had happened between us, and to Tommy it was one thing and to me it was something else, and once my dad got involved it became something else again. Three people at the scene of the crime, each with a different story. Add onto that the whole jury known as Terra Nova High School and who knew anymore what had really happened?
This is a powerful story of forgiveness and redemption, and not just Deanna’s redemption. Every single character is real and has a story of her/his own. I was blown away by this book, literally gasping aloud when reading a particularly exquisite sentence. After I finished STORY OF A GIRL, I read it again (jotting down page numbers and sentence references because the writing is that good). Then I bought my own copy.
I don’t know what else to say except Deanna could be me or you or someone you know. Her story is unique but in Sara Zarr’s capable hands, Deanna’s pain and struggle are universal.
I got this from
. The following first lines are from books on my nightstand and in the bookcase next to my desk in the office. Here’s hoping you do better guessing the sources than I did with Melodye’s list. (Sigh).
1) In the fall of 1995, after resigning from my last academic post, I decided to indulge myself and fulfill a dream.
2) When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.
3) You grow up with a kid but you never really notice him.
4) First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey.
5) To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth.
6) “I thought you said you read The Book,” said Sam.
7) Mum says, “Don’t come creeping into our room at night.”
8) A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head.
9) All you fish, listen up.
10) Popularity is a drug.
11) Jewel and I come up from the field, following the path in single file.
12) I told you last night that I might be gone sometime, and you said, Where, and I said, To be with the Good Lord, and you said, Why, and I said, Because I’m old, and you said, I don’t think you’re old.
13) In one of my earliest memories, my mother and I are on the front porch of our rented Carter Avenue house watching two delivery men carry our brand-new television set up the steps.
1) READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN by Azar Nafisi
2) THE OUTSIDERS by S.E. Hinton
3) LOSER by Jerry Spinelli
4) THE THINGS THEY CARRIED by Tim O’Brien
5) THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
6) THE NOT-SO-JOLLY ROGER by John Scieszka
7) DON’T LET’S GO TO THE DOGS TONIGHT by Alexandra Fuller
8) A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES by John Kennedy Toole
9) HARRY SUE by Sue Stauffacher
10) SO NOT THE DRAMA by Paula Chase
11) AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
12) GILEAD by Marilynne Robinson
13) SHE’S COME UNDONE by Wally Lamb
Readers suspend disbelief and writers suspend disbelief because writing and reading are acts of faith along the path to knowledge, not just one particular knowledge but any knowledge that is part of the essential truths lurking to be shared by the reader and the writer and all those people in that story, that are coming not to just one conclusion but many conclusions, that follow not one path but many paths, because the writing and the story are not just about one thing but many things, and in this essential multifarious way writing is an embrace of all the complexity of not knowing and wanting to know and getting to know and all the contradictions that reside therein, and that has been our task, on these paths, all of us – writer, reader, character – to embrace those contradictions.
“Being a humanist means that you try to behave as decently, as honourably, as you can without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife. When we had a memorial service for Isaac a few years back, I spoke at it and said at one point, ‘Isaac is up in heaven now’. It was the funniest thing I could think of to say to an audience of humanists. Believe me, it worked – I rolled them in the aisles. If I should ever die, god forbid, I hope people will say, ‘Kurt is up in heaven now’. That’s my favourite joke.”
— Kurt Vonnegut
Thank you, Mr. Vonnegut, for all you gave.
Just pulled Eudora Welty’s ONE WRITER’S BEGINNINGS from the shelf and opened the book to a page (p. 17) I’d marked when reading it several years ago. This was highlighted:
I wanted to add my thoughts after reading the remark from cocoskeeper regarding the Gay Rights postings. When I posted it on my journal, I knew it would probably be viewed as robotic/copycat posting, but I did it anyway because I think it’s important to stand and be counted. Gays are clearly the current societal scapegoats (although I think they’re getting nudged out by immigrants as the new scapegoat of choice)and it makes me sick. We’re embroiled in violence and ugliness here and around the world yet instead of working toward alleviating some of that hurt, people are expending energy to undermine love and commitment. Because, you know, we’ve got way too much love happening here on the planet these days. Sigh.
And this bears repeating:
“Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?” – Ernest Gaines
“Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?”
– Ernest Gaines
wesley_1701 wrote:
“We would like to know who really believes in gay rights on LiveJournal. There is no bribe of a miracle or anything like that. If you truly believe in gay rights, then repost this and title the post as “Gay Rights”. If you don’t believe in gay rights, then just ignore this. Thanks.”
GAY LOVE NO THREAT TO MY LOVE!
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Tracy Abell 