A Different Perspective

My family loves Pete the Cat. Especially when he's wearing his cool, blue, magic sunglasses.

He's groovy, he's mellow, and best of all, he reminds us to LOOK AT THING IN A WHOLE NEW WAY.

It had been a while since I'd read this particular book to my daughter, (PETE THE CAT AND HIS MAGIC SUNGLASSES, by Kimberly and James Dean) but a few days ago, she pulled it out of the bookcase and handed it to me.

Boom. Couldn't have had better timing.

We read the book three times in a row because, three years old.

In short, the book is about what happens when Pete has a really bad day. His friend gives him a pair of cool magic sunglasses and - Presto! Suddenly Pete's bad day gets pretty fabulous. He sees the sun shining, hears the birds singing, and realizes life is still good. Are the sunglasses really magic? Or is it just that they help Pete look at the world differently?

As I read, I remembered my friend Cheri, who once told me that if I got stuck on a problem, all I had to do was brush my teeth while standing on the bathtub ledge.

Because, SEE THINGS IN A WHOLE NEW WAY.

Blue sunglasses, toothbrushing from on high, walk on the other side of the street, whatever it takes.

The reason this is so light-bulby to me this week is that I've been stuck. And sometimes, in spite of the obviousness of the solution, I forget to change perspective when this happens. Trying to move with agility and insight through plot points? Plodding character or scene arcs? Sometimes I feel like I'm boxing in a tub of molasses and the harder I punch, the stucker I get.

Often, all it takes is some time away from the work, or even just a good walk or run. I think really well when I am moving.

But when that's not enough, SEE THINGS IN A WHOLE NEW WAY. Maybe it's brushing my teeth on the bathtub ledge. Or with a cat on my head.

But it could also be taking a walk or a run when I am NOT plugged into my music and lost in my own head. Paying attention to the world around me to see who's doing what and why. Taking an hour at Starbucks without burying my head in a book or my phone. Watching faces and interactions. Listening - I mean, really listening - to the conversations around me.

Ok, yeah, invasive, but aren't all authors?

The point is, getting unstuck means getting out of your own head and out of your normal perspective.

How do you get out of ruts?

POETRY LIST

I love seeing/listening to the play lists that inspire authors. Sometimes I end up poaching a song for my own play list; at the very least, I get a trip down memory lane or an education.

And of course, I love making my own play lists. My music tastes run the gamut: rock, r & b, folk, roots rock, classical, jazz, pop. I am just old enough to have loved Bob Dylan before he was a "Golden Oldie"... 

... and just young to know that dancing it out to Pink cures most ills.

But you know what else my muse digs?

Poetry.

I've always loved poetry. Reading/speaking/hearing my favorite poems makes me warm inside, makes me dreamy or fired up or achingly melancholy. Perhaps I'm in the minority, but I still thrill to the Eliot lines "Dare I eat a peach? Dare I disturb the universe?"

Or how about Cummings's Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls ... This: "if sometimes in its box of sky lavender and cornerless, the moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy."

I am forever in awe of that line. Forever. It makes me swoon.

And so, for me the act of writing is necessarily accompanied not just by music, but also by poetry. I have created poetry lists for each ms -- poems that inspire the plot, the characters, the dialogue, and most certainly the mood of my writing.

My latest includes these:

1) The Four Quartets, by T.S. Eliot
2) Melancholia, by Paul Laurence Dunbar
3) When Lilacs Last at the Dooryard Bloomed, by Walt Whitman
4) The Unquiet Grave, Child Ballad 78

And my play list?

1) Awake My Soul, by Mumford and Sons
2) The Unquiet Grave, by Joan Baez
3) The Unquiet Grave, by Ralph Vaughan Williams
4) Where Was Eva Sleeping, Unknown
5) Mr. Rabbit (From Music Together - children's arranged music)
6) Somewhere Down the Lazy River by Robbie Robertson

Does poetry inspire you? Who are your favorites?

THINGS CHANGE

First, my mea culpa.
My blogging habits have been terribly lax, and I am sorry.

.
 I allowed the summer, then a new WIP and then binge-watching the X-Files for the first time (yes, I'm pretty late to the game) to derail my blog.

Quite frequently, I've had a thought that made me say, "hey! That'd be a great blog post!" And then I do nothing about it. And suddenly another month has gone by.

So here I am, months before the official time to make new resolutions, resolving to be a better blogger.

Onward.... about change.

I've learned this lesson so many times, you'd think I wouldn't be so surprised by it. But this is the first time I've actually begun to acknowledge this truth as it applies to my creativity, not just my life.

When I was in college, I thrived in my major -- poli sci. Out of that rather broad inquiry, I created my own focus: feminist political (largely deconstructionist) theory. I planned to be a forward-thinking, ground-breaking lawyer.

My life was very meticulously planned out: go to Kenya to teach English for one year, come back and attend Boalt School of Law.

Hah. Because yanno, plans that specific always work out, right???????

So this is what ACTUALLY happened:

1) I fell in love with Kenya, for all its beauty and tragedy, and decided to extend my contract.

2) While there, I realized I was better suited to advocate for women by telling their stories. The way I saw it, both could be public service -- but I preferred the pen and its wider public forum to the courtroom.

So, 2 years in Kenya, followed by a Masters in Journalism, and my life looked nothing -- I mean, NOTHING -- like what I'd planned. And it was awesome.

Fast forward to today. Nearly 20 years in journalism, several stints as a teacher/professor/instructor of all things English and writing (and some politics and media thrown in for spice). I became a war bride and then a mother of two.

And I could no longer ignore the muse. She called gently, then firmly, then finally hit me over the head. I hadn't planned on this career step until the kids were older, until I could get some more sleep.

HAH.

I'm working on my third book. My new WIP is a ghost story and I LOVE it. I am having so much fun writing it, it feels like I was BORN to write this book. I've planned and plotted it meticulously because it has a lot of moving parts and I want to be sure I don't get lost along the way.

Over the weekend, my characters hijacked the plan.
I mean, they TOOK OFF and went somewhere I had not plotted or planned.

Wait, what?

And it's not the first time this has happened to me. In fact, it has happened every single time, with each of my books.

Because things change.  Usually without warning.

I don't try to resist the change. I actually never did, in spite of how uneasy it made me -- so now I just have to learn to trust that, in my books, as in my life, my characters will take the lead and they'll do fabulous things. Unless they don't, but that's what revisions are for. (Which is so much nicer than real life, where you don't get that lovely, infinitely forgiving do-over).

Does change wig you out?
What do you do when your characters take over??

Blooming Cacti

I've been a bad blogger.

Nothing for more than 20 days - completely ignoring the advice I give my blogging Webinar students. (Like the ones I've been creating a brand new class for).

 Yes, I've been developing new classes, and yes, my family and I also went on vacation. So I (kind of) have reasons.

But. Also.

Been kinda -

Yup. Me and kitty, that's us.

Why? Because - editing.

Got two mss I'm trying to polish, and you know how it is ... eyes crossed, slogging through bad writing you were once very hopeful about .....

And it wasn't until I saw this:

And these:

That I began to feel inspired again.

They reminded me: even prickly things bloom.

Spring in southern Arizona (where I live) is not quite as miraculous as it is in other places - where you've survived Snowtopia and feelings of doom that suggest you'll never be warm again. But even here, in the land of the mundane winter, there is beauty when it's over.

Because things here flower too. Not the things I grew up with: we have no lilac, no forsythia, no hydrangea.

What we have is cacti.

Cacti are not particularly lovely. They're spiky, thorny, unfriendly things that don't need a whole lot of water and thus they live a long time and don't care much if someone doesn't love them.

There's a simile there. (My 8yo is studying simile, therefore I am too).

I think my writing is like the cactus. Not the part where it doesn't need TLC  - all writing  needs that!! But, rather, the part where it's unlovely and unremarkable.

BUT THEN. I remember that similes are only perfect for a small moment in time. Because even the cactus BLOOMS. And then it's remarkable. And everyone stops and looks at it and takes pictures and says, "What an amazing thing this is! How lovely and worth my taking a moment to stop and admire."

So if that can be true of the cactus, it can certainly be true of my writing, no?

Do you ever feel like your writing is like a cactus and you're just desperately trying to coax the blooms from the thorns?