“I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.”
“People without hope not only don’t write novels, but what is more to the point, they don’t read them.”
“I don’t deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.”
“Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There’s many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.”
“Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn’t try to write fiction. It’s not a grand enough job for you.”
“The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may well be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal ways of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock — to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.”
So you know how I wanted to have a picture of myself every month? How that was a thing I said I’d do?
Well, I have zero pictures of me from this month. So instead, you get this picture of a brief moment in my bathroom.
I’m in the room, so it totally counts. I think you can see the shadow of my hand if you look closely enough.
Or, hey, speaking of my hands, which are probably my favorite part of my body (not as default – I have seriously cute hands and feet. But feet pictures are coming next month. Springtime feet.), here is my hand this morning as it clutches my coffee.
It’s a little scraggly, because I did dishes last night and didn’t moisturize properly. I always forget to do that – to take care of myself as well as taking care of everything else. I’m taking part in the reframing collective with Story Sessions and Brandy Walker’s Be course for Lent. Self-care goes right along with those. I’m learning; I’m just doing it slowly.
Here are a few images from our reframing – our finding the extraordinary in the everyday –
I love this little pot on my windowsill. It knows that spring is right outside the window. It is empty now, but soon, it will hold new life.
Chocolate batter for birthday brownies. I love this rich, deep color. And I wish you could smell it, because I totally added rum.
The fence around my apartment building has tree limbs breaking through. A lot of trees were cut down last year to make room for the new apartments next door. But these ones got to stay, and they’re claiming their place.
There will probably be more of this next month…
You know what? I’m going to stop talking about next month. I’m going to stop planning the way that beauty comes. It always changes and surprises me anyway. So I’m going to let it.
Yesterday, I turned 39. And like the good 39-year-old I am, I spent the entire day at home in yoga pants and drinking coffee and cocktails (only because I had no wine in the house to complete the stereotype). I also spent the entire day listening to this song, courtesy of a friend from high school (thanks, Carolyn!) who posted it on my Facebook page:
It was sweet of my first fandom to serenade me. Hello there, fellas. Happy birthday to me indeed.
When I sang it, though, it kept morphing into New Edition’s cover of Earth Angel.
Acceptable.
My Facebook flist is fantastic. I spent a lot of time basking in their overwhelming well-wishing. If you had told me twenty years ago that I would ever get this excited over something on a computer screen, I would not have believed you. It made my day.
Then I had to go buy a pear tart. HAD to.
The picture is fuzzy because my hand was shaking with excitement (or perhaps an even higher dose of caffeine than usual).
I did some editing. I edited a chapter of Fishbowl. Then I got stuck on a phrase and had to put it aside. This gave me time to map out my chapters in the order I want them to appear in the finished manuscript. So that’s what I did. One thing led to another.
AND NOW I HAVE THE WHOLE BOOK OUTLINED.
I know how it ends. And more importantly, I know how I’m getting there.
If you are not jumping up and down right now in celebration of me, you clearly didn’t read it right. Go back. Read it again. I’ll wait.
Do you feel it? Do you get my ecstasy?
(If you don’t, you should totally lie to me and just nod.)
Last night, I hung out at Tammy and Matt’s. We had pizza (goat cheese pesto pizza from TJ’s – FAVORITE) and soda and made super-rich brownies:
“We should add chocolate chips to it.”
“Okay!”
“And some rum.”
“Bring it.”
I like the way my sister thinks.
Then we watched Saving Mr. Banks. Such a good movie. See it if you haven’t. It’s already available on Amazon Prime.
This morning, I returned to work, and Jillian made this sign to prolong the merriment.
This week’s prompt for our writing community at Andilit is to write out ten pieces of advice that I would give myself as a writer.
I do love a good list. I’m writing this to me, but maybe you’ll see something that applies to you, too. Disclaimer: if you are looking for advice from a writer who has actually published something…then you should go read that (Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird or Stephen King’s On Writing are my top recommendations), because brilliant as I may be, I’m not there yet.
1. Get it together!
My schedule is crazy, so if I don’t plan, it doesn’t matter how many story ideas or “I should write a blog post about that” I have. If I don’t plan, writing doesn’t happen. Schedule writing time, but don’t stop there. Schedule specific blog posts by topic and date. Write ahead so that when something comes up on that day, all that is left to do is copy, paste, and click publish. Organize writing time into specific sections for each WIP, self-editing, editing for friends, blogging, and poetry, or, because I know me, I know that I will spend the whole time writing ranty posts that, while fun, will not get that manuscript finished this year.
2. Have different editors for different days.
I need tough criticism. Most days, that’s the kind of critique I want. But some days, when Bob (Fishbowl’s main character) is feeling particularly fragile, I just want to protect and defend him, even when he says stupid things that directly contradict what he said two weeks/chapters ago. So on those days, I need to read feedback from people who love Bob almost as much as I do. There are all sorts of tips out there on the kind of critiques that will make your work better, but I don’t think there’s just one kind that helps. I teach public speaking, so I’ve had to give a lot of feedback, and I know that hard critique doesn’t mean it’s bad – it just means that it could be better. But I also have a mean inner critic and dark seasons, so sometimes I need the outside voices to tell me all the good things so I can remember that I’m not a total hack and that there’s no need to host a Fishbowl bonfire. And because I hope that my book will be read by lots of different people once it’s published, it just makes sense to get feedback from lots of different people before it’s published. I like to think of it as collecting preliminary ratings.
3. Learn the difference between distraction and inspiration.
When I take a writing class that is prompt-intensive with lots of deadlines and designed for people who need help getting started, I get distracted by the socializing and the prompts and my compulsive need to be the best student ever, and I don’t actually write anything toward the projects I already have started. When I participate in NaNoWriMo, I focus and write like the wind. When I watch Friends, I’m just vegging out. When I watch Firefly or Gilmore Girls, I end up pausing it so that I can rewrite some dialogue on a piece that hasn’t been working. I can’t tell anyone else what their distractions or inspirations are, and I imagine that they differ wildly from mine. But I know what distraction and inspiration look like. If it spurns you to create, it’s an inspiration. If it spurns you to nap, it’s a distraction. I’m not saying eliminate the distractions, because sleep (and by association, whatever gets you there) is important, but inspirations should outnumber them. And if any of them leave you no time to write, see #1.
4. Write every day. That means all the days. Is it a day? Then write at some point during it.
Failure to do this is how I end up at the end of the month with little more to show for it than I had at the beginning of the month. Having made the schedule (all things circle back to #1), stick to it. If I skip a day, that’s a day I get nothing done. Obviously. But it also makes it exponentially easier to skip the next day. And the next. And then it’s Friday night, and that’s one more week that I’ve delayed finishing all that I’ve started. That’s one more week that I’ll never get back.
5. Set goals, and tell someone about them.
Since I keep going back to #1, I’ll pause and let you know where the things on the schedule come from. I make goals. The most helpful thing to me about the community Andi facilitates is that every Monday, we set goals for the week. And every Friday, she checks in and asks how those goals are going. She doesn’t let us get away with just making plans. She comes back and says, “So…those things you meant to do. Did you do them?” Have someone who does that for you.
6. Every once in a while, let a polar bear walk through.
Confession: I didn’t watch Lost until it was finished and came out on DVD. I stand by my decision to do so, because it gave me angst, and I would not have survived the week-to-week (not to mention season-to-season) wait. Many things have stuck with me about the show, but this scene is one of my favorites:
I can see the writers sitting around, wondering where to go next with the crazy plot lines on this shows. I imagine that it’s 4:00 in the morning, and nothing new or fresh is coming to any of them. Then one of them says, “What if they were chased by a polar bear?” and because they’re filming in Hawaii, the rest of the writers look at this person like she or he has lost her or his mind. Then, because it is 4:00 in the morning, and losing one’s mind is the normal thing to do at that time, it starts to sound like a good idea. And that’s how polar bears wind up on Lost, sparking dialogue and becoming part of a memorable scene.
I don’t actually know if this episode was written by multiple people, or if so, where the sun was when they wrote it. I just know that sometimes, you have to throw a polar bear into the mix. I mean, it can be a penguin. Or a car crash. Or an unexpected visitor. But don’t be afraid to surprise everyone. Especially yourself.
7. Read all the things.
Read Elmore Leonard to learn how to write dialogue. Read Robert Jordan to learn foreshadowing (specifically, how to act like you’re dropping a plot point and then pick it up four hundred pages later). Read Twilight and Bridges of Madison County to remind yourself that even if you and all the Internet hate it, someone will like it enough to make a damn movie out of it. Read other people’s work, because that’s how you learn. Read other people’s work, because you want others to read your work. I don’t trust writers who don’t read.
8. Don’t be stingy.
If you want people to read and edit your work, return the favor or pay them to do it. It’s rude to ask people to work for free, and editing is W.O.R.K.
9. Speaking of people…have some.
I never stuck to a writing schedule before I joined my online writing communities via Andilit and Story Sessions. I didn’t start my manuscript until I admitted to friends that I wanted to be a writer, and they called me on it by saying, “So…what have you written?” I can make a goal and really mean it at the time, but I will let myself off the hook when something easier with more instant gratification comes up if I’m the only one who knows about it. Knowing that others will ask how it’s going is sometimes the only thing that keeps it going.
10. If you break every rule, don’t dwell. Move on.
I read lists like this, and I am tempted to say, “Oh, there’s all the things I’m doing wrong.” Then I focus on how wrong I’m doing things. I give it a good, long ponder.
All my other distractions put together don’t waste as much time and energy as this does.
Obsessing over doing it wrong is doing it wrong. It’s good to know what trips you up. It’s good to recognize distractions. But self-awareness is the means, not the end. Letting mistakes stop the process is like looking in a mirror, noticing you have jam on your face, and letting it stay there. Wipe it off, and then put the mirror down and go on with your day.
(There are many performances of this piece online. This one lights that third movement on fire, the way it was meant to be.)
“The girls we once were are coming back to us now.” – Brandy Walker
I was a Renaissance girl.
That girl did everything. Even when it was hard. Even when people tried to tell her that she couldn’t.
At holiday, the girl I once was shaped homemade candies and learned how to get them to turn out right. When she was shooed out of the kitchen because her help became a frustration, she went outside, formed a kitchen of her own, and made mud pies.
She learned cross stitch. She made intricate gifts and Christmas ornaments that are still cherished and hung on Mom’s tree every year.
The girl I once was shelled peas and was taught to make jam. She grew up understanding the connection of sustenance to the land She unraveled mysteries of the universe over the pings of Cream Crowder peas in a metal bowl.
She walked out of the backyard and sat down at the piano with bits of dried mud pie still under her fingernails. She heard the beauty of the trills and the thunder of the bass. She began formal training at the age of eight, and she practiced an hour a day, even when she didn’t want to. In early junior high, when she played a simplified snippet of Liszt’s Second Hungarian Rhapsody at recital, the winner of the top performer award told their teacher, “She should have won this.” The comment was reward enough.
The girl I once was worked hard at gymnastics, and although no one who knows me now will believe it, the balance beam was her best event. She took ballet, tap, and jazz dance lessons. For the first time in her life, she had to work twice as hard as everyone else just to be average. She loved it.
She was heavily involved in her church. Every time the door was open, she was there. Everything she could do – youth group, choir, VBS teacher, children’s music camp assistant, handbell choir, sorting clothes and food for the mission – she did. Her yes was always yes, and her no was rare.
In high school, the girl I once was was told that she couldn’t do everything – that she had to eliminate some things. So she did. She crossed off athletics and Future Farmers of America. Everything else – she did, and she did it well. National Honors Society, the speech and drama team, Texas Association of Future Educators, marching band, flag corp, jazz pianist for stage band, concert band, Future Homemakers of America, UIL, the gifted and talented program, and probably a few others that I have forgotten. And she graduated second in her class. Because she could.
Her senior year, she played Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata – the whole thing. She played it so often that she memorized it. She played it so often that even now, twenty years later, my fingers still move whenever I hear it. At her senior recital, she won that top performer award. She also won the award of awed silence between the final note and the first applause.
One day, the girl I once was forgot what she could do. Someone else told her that she had to choose, and this time, she believed it. She believed the lie that she couldn’t do all the things that she’d always done, and because she couldn’t possibly choose, she stopped doing it all. She grew up and became good at waiting. She grew up and became good at watching the whole world go on without her. She grew up and learned the lie that things just don’t work out for her and that expecting them to do so would only make her a fool.
But this girl? She’s not done growing. She has learned to set healthy boundaries and has embraced the luxurious freedom of no.
And that girl I once was? She is coming back.
In every verse I read in shaky voice, she is coming back.
In every meal I make and share with others, she is coming back.
In every coconut nougat dipped in chocolate that I taught myself to temper, she is coming back.
In every pie I bake in this kitchen of my own, she is coming back.
In every blanket I knit, she is coming back.
In every story I write, she is coming back.
In every song I sing and every move I dance, she is coming back.
In every “Our Father,” and “Lord, in Your mercy,” I pray, she is coming back.
And if I have to eat Ramen noodles for six months and sell everything but my books, I will get a good keyboard this year, because she is coming back, and she’s going to need one.
“That day I consciously picked up his Renaissance attitude to life and decided that if I couldn’t decide between theology and art and music, then perhaps I would just do them all.” Maggi Dawn in Giving It Up
February was a fun trip to meet dear ones from the Internet in person, a gathering, and weird weather.
It was affirmation, anxiety, a bit of melancholy, and a grounded feeling that I’ve been missing lately. Welcome back, old friend.
I attended the IF: Gathering in Austin, and I stayed with Story Sessions sisters at a house in Dripping Springs. The conference was good and nerve-wracking and triggery and crowded and inspiring and loud. The stay at the house was relaxing and lovely and easy (for the most part). And Nicole and Jennifer gave me shells and found poetry (don’t judge their gift by the quality of the picture above).
February weather is on crack. I mean, I know I am in Texas, so I guess I am used to it. But it was icy the first half of the month and 60-70 degrees the second half. And today it’s “icy” again.
Here’s what I was into this February:
To write:
I am on schedule with my goal to write 100 blog posts this year. I totally count posts that I guest-write for other places.
I finished Plum: Gratifying Vegan Dishes from Seattle’s Plum Bistro. There’s not much chance that I will ever make any of the gorgeous dishes in this book, but if I decided to, there’s plenty of detail in the recipes. There is a great chance, however, that I will make a point to visit the Plum Bistro the next time I’m in Seattle to taste the gorgeous dishes in this book.
My favorite thing that I read in February was probably Style Me Vintage: A Guide to Hosting Perfect Vintage Events. When and if, at long last, I finally get married, the bachelorette party will be a Speakeasy. I already have the playlist started and half the menu planned (and by “half the menu,” I do mean the beverage portion).
To watch:
This month, I learned what everyone was raving about. Downton Abbey and Sherlock. I love Downton Abbey, but I need to own Sherlock and watch it forty-two times and maybe write some fanfiction.
I also started watching The Following. My boss suggested it, and I agreed to give it a try, because I love me some Kevin Bacon. I don’t know if I can recommend it, because you guys – this show freaks me out. It’s so damn creepy. I wouldn’t wish the emotional and mental torment this show has put me through on anyone. I am also attracted to the serial killer on the show, and I am a little uncomfortable with that. If you watched Dexter or Breaking Bad, you can probably handle it. I’m just not used to this sort of thing. But it’s so good, so I just can’t quit it.
To hear:
Because I’m super excited about the Veronica Mars movie, and I’m currently reading Welcome to the Monkey House (Vonnegut), it just seems fitting that February would be full of The Dandy Warhols.
Also, Stephanie Trick on piano makes me miss my piano:
And I have basically been listening to every version and spoof of Let It Go I can find. Here are my favorite three:
To taste:
So, on the way home from Dripping Springs, Adela and I stopped at Rolling in Thyme and Dough. Weird name. GLORIOUS BREAKFAST SANDWICH. Egg and cheese on a croissant….with pesto. Also, it’s just a cute place. It would not be unreasonable for you to travel from wherever you are just so you can enjoy this sandwich.
This pales in comparison to the Breakfast Sandwich of Glory, but I have also been on a chicken salad kick. I normally despise mayonnaise, but occasionally, I just have to have chicken salad. My favorite – rotisserie chicken (because I totally cheat and get my chicken already roasted at the Kroger), Vegannaise, red grapes, celery, and pecans on rye.
This post is an answer to a prompt from today’s Story Sessions write-in. The prompt was “What would you do differently if you knew nobody would judge you?
My initial response was –
*snort* Nothing. I do what I want.
Then I immediately thought of three things. Well, that was humbling.
1. I would wear sleeveless shirts so that I could feel both rain and sun on the skin of my shoulders.
I know that I am the only person judging the appearance of my upper arms. Let me rephrase – I am the only person judging the appearance of my upper arms whose opinion I care about at all. I’m sure there are catty acquaintances who would have snide things to say behind my back. But I am the only person whose judgment of my arms stops me. One day, I just need to put on a sleeveless shirt or dress and walk out the door without grabbing a cardigan or checking the mirror. If I did, I might never wear sleeves again.
2. I would date inappropriate men.
I would date men whom I would have otherwise dismissed because they didn’t exactly fit The List or because I would feel too much need to justify dating them to concerned friends. This is an area where the judgment from others sings loudly.
I like men who love words more than they love hammers, drills, or guns. They wouldn’t fit as well into my family, but they would fit better with me.
I occasionally like men who are outside the bounds of a 10-year radius in age from me. Some are younger (still legal, just to be clear), and one or two have been older. I seem to talk myself out of saying yes to them or pursuing them, though, because I just don’t want to be bothered by the bullshit stigma it might place on me.
I occasionally like men who are outside the bounds of my religion. I don’t know how this would work for me long-term, but I do know that it has worked and is working for others. I know that it would bring challenges, but I also know that challenge is relationship’s middle name. Some days, I feel outside the bounds of my religion, and even on those days, I still work with me, so I’m not convinced that it would be the end of the world that some friends seem to think that it would be to date someone who lives there.
I like charming men. There. I said it. Charm is an art, and I like it. Throw all the verses about how deceitful it is and the warnings about smarmy (not the same word as charming – can we just recognize that? Perhaps there’s a reason?) fellows at me that you want to throw. I still like it. I like not having to babysit a guy at social occasions, and that makes charm super attractive. Liking it and being bamboozled by it are not the same thing.
3. I would edit the words that come out of my mouth less strictly.
I have a well-trained inner editor. Sometimes, she goes on vacation, but most of the time, she is one hell of a watchdog. I am grateful for her. In fact, I wish more people had one, because it’s okay (read: preferable) for every thought that we think not to spring off our tongues.
But sometimes, my editor is a workaholic. I’ll hear someone else say something and think, Yes. That’s what I actually wanted to say. I envy them a little, but mostly I’m just glad that it got voiced. And mostly, I’m sad that I didn’t have the courage to be the one who voiced it.
How about you? What would you do differently if you knew that you wouldn’t be judged?
M. Suzanne Terry 