shakespearemom

Dear Readers:

I know you lead hard, busy lives. I know some of you are working two jobs, have kids, are seeking a degree, have illnesses in the family to deal with, have dishes to do, bring work home, and are otherwise feeling overwhelmed.

But, you see, that’s just it. You need a break from all of that, a way to rise above all that tedium for just a few minutes, to let your right brain free, if only for a moment, so that you can show the world the genius you are keeping so tightly reined in for days on end.

Yet all the tedious activities are winning out. You look at a writing exercise, and think, Well, I’d love to do that, but it would take about ten minutes to complete, and I could take a shower in that time, or fold a load of laundry, or unload the dishwasher, or call two clients, or give my kid a bath…and on and on. So you don’t respond. You don’t take the ten minutes to do something you truly love because you let it fall to the bottom of your list.

And meanwhile, your own novel bides its time on your laptop, waiting for you for weeks on end, without a change. And that novel wakes you up at night, calling to you like an overstuffed eclair, and though you cannot find the strength to resist the eclair (after all, who could?), you find the strength to turn over, face the wall, and put yourself back to sleep. After all, you say, if I don’t get enough sleep, I won’t get as much work done tomorrow.

January 1st is always the time for New Year’s resolutions… yet April 1st is better. Couldn’t you resolve to play–to be the fool–at least once a day for the rest of the year? I’m sure most of you have already given up on your New Year’s resolution (I haven’t, but I tend to stick to things), so let’s make a new one. Resolve to put at the TOP of your list one foolish, playful thing each and every day. Don’t allow yourself to do the dishes until you’ve done it. Suck all your obligations up, and force yourself to do something no one else would value.

Color with crayons (it is really quite therapeutic). Put on some tango music and pull your significant other out on the dance floor, especially if you don’t have the first clue how to tango. Pull out that novel and write on it–even if you only get a paragraph written in those ten minutes. Take a completely useless walk. Go to a coffee shop with a magazine tucked under your arm, and don’t leave until you’ve gone through the whole thing. Take time out to round yourself a bit more, to venture off into the unknown.

And next time you read a blog, and it gives you something creative to do, don’t say you don’t have the time. Just write already! Do it for me. More than that, do it for you. You’ll be glad you did.

The title is true. One picture can evoke countless feelings, can shatter assumptions, or can create for us a reality we cannot create through our own imaginations. But can we put that picture into words? Can one feeling be passed from genre to genre?

Of course it can! 

Just this morning, I heard a musical composition taken from a poem–and the poet, commenting on the musical version of his work, found it lengthened the pathos of it movingly. We see books turned into musicals, ballets turned into children’s books, art turned into opera, and the list goes on. 

So, as practice, here’s a picture:

Your task is to take the picture and make it into something written… evoking a feeling, creating a situation from it, etc.

Now, before all of you people with hours of free time on your hands plan on writing a thousand words from this picture, I’m not giving you that much. Instead, using 100 words or less, create a background, a set of events, a poem, or a very short story from this picture. Think outside what seems immediately apparent. And write something in. Even if you only have time for a haiku, do that. Anything will add to our view of the photograph.

So, what are you waiting for? Show me what you got! I’ll throw in one of my own once I’ve seen what you can do.

I thought of posting a picture like the one I saw on Tuesday, but I simply couldn’t (though I do suggest you check out David Haworth’s website and check out some awesome photographs of space). I didn’t want to taint the picture I had in my own mind, and I couldn’t find a single photograph that captured what I witnessed that night, just after the sun went down. 

I had just left my class about fifteen minutes late (the students and I tend to start talking and let the minutes slip by), but I’m so glad I was late–and that Daylight Savings Time had just ended. It meant that, just as I rose above the rest of the highway system on my way out towards Monroe, I was met with what may be the most breath-taking vision I have ever come across. 

Imagine this, if you will: The white ground, still retaining a few inches of glistening snow, now darkening to blue in the twilight. Above that, further in the distance, the thick, dark line of evergreens, black next to the glistening snow. Above that, the white-capped range of mountains leading to Steven’s Pass, already mostly blue, though the sun had just set. And slipping up above those mountains, surrounded by the vivid royal blue sky, a golden moon, ten times bigger than it looked when high in the sky, close enough for me to see each crater. It glowed with sunlight, full and almost orange.

I know I cursed when I saw it, if only in astonishment. I probably almost wrecked my car. I had to remind myself that I needed to keep driving, needed to concentrate, all the way to the line of trees. After that, I caught a few brief glimpses of the moon, but nothing else, and by the time I had reached home, the moon was high, barely yellow, and so much smaller. 

Oh, what disappointment I felt that the scene was gone! I know it isn’t likely I will see such a thing tonight, after my class, but I might just keep the students talking, or stop and go the restroom, if only so that I might catch the moon, in just the same way, on my way home. 

One thing is for certain. I will never forget that sight, not for the rest of my life. Perhaps I should paint it, if I ever get good enough to do it.

Got a story like that one? Share it!

Today is my thirty-ninth birthday (and the crowd goes wild!!!), and for many, this is a time to feel old, grumpy, morose, depressed, etc. But being grumpy just doesn’t suit me, so instead, I’m going to be my typical Pollyanna self and make a top ten (or whatever number I come up with) list of THINGS I’M GRATEFUL FOR:

1.  My husband. Yes, he’s late for stuff a lot, but he’s got a soft heart, and it’s softest for me, and nothing makes him more unhappy than when I’m sad, or mad, or disappointed, especially if it’s his fault. It’s nice to have somebody else revolve around me once in a while, even if it’s only every so often. Besides, he gives great back rubs, and that makes up for almost anything.

2.  My daughter. She’s darling, she’s as soft hearted as her father, and she loves to do what I’m doing–including writing her own books (she staples pages of typing paper together, writes the story out over the pages, and then draws in pictures), painting, drawing (she’s practicing pointalism right now), sewing, cooking, etc. And she loves school (and I will do everything in my power to keep that going, too).

3.  My son (bet you all saw that coming). He’s darling, in a sneaky sort of mischievous way, and he keeps me on my toes. But he also loves school, and he’s learning to read and do math surprisingly fast. And he battles with his temper the same way I do (only I don’t get to throw myself on the ground and scream–darn it!). Mostly, though, he’s super cheery, snuggly, and independent. All good things, if you ask me.

4.  Mom–and by that, I mean my mother-in-law. While other married people seem to be cursed with dominating, bossy mothers-in-law, Mom is just the most amazing person. We share a lot of hobbies, have extremely intelligent conversations about religion, psychology, and the world in general, but she’s also the most capable woman I think I’ve ever met. She can install a toilet, put up drywall, make any food imaginable, and a lot of it. I have yet to find something she couldn’t do.

5.  Sis (if you’re a regular reader, you saw this coming, too). My older sister is my biggest fan, gives the best advice, and is a never-ending source of support and encouragement. She also gave me the best birthday present EVER last year: a niece. And, from her most recent commentary, Roxanne is taking after me in many ways (even down to liking cottage cheese). So, now I have a psychic link with another Pisces, and I get to share her growing up, and I will NEVER forget her birthday. Very cool.

6.  My readers. Yes, even on this blog I have some, those loyal people who stop by to commiserate with me, share their own stories, offer advice, and try out the sometimes excruciatingly difficult writing exercises I force upon them. But this also includes all the guinea pigs who read first and later drafts of my novels, who read my plays dramatically so that I can hear them, and who offer commentary on my developing writing, nudging more description out of me, or telling me when something is going horribly wrong. I need all of you, for it is impossible to write in a void. 

7.  Writing. It is my therapy, my encouragement, my solace on long, rainy days. It’s often what gets me up in the morning, happy to get the day started if only I can write a few pages before I go to bed that night. It’s priceless to call myself “a writer,” to see myself as a creator, a crafter, a storyteller.

8.  My other pursuits. When I can’t (or don’t want to) write, I have so many other interests, from playing piano to singing to painting to sewing to theatre to teaching to reading, and each one fills a little facet of me.

9.  Friends. These include some of my readers, but they are also other moms who are trying the same sort of balance I am, who know what it’s like to raise kids and still have a life of one’s own, who take me to brunch on my birthday (yes, that’s you, Sue!), who are pretty much there whenever I need to phone somebody before I go absolutely insane. And they give me a chance to be nice back, too, for they sometimes need me to help them maintain their own sanity. And being needed is a good thing.

10. Everything else. Yes, that includes all the pain I’ve endured, the two C-sections, my old family, and every life experience I’ve had, good and bad. You see, I could be bitter about things. I could resent people or events, or see myself as missing out on something, but every event and person, even those which hurt me, made me into who I am today. They weren’t the events or people I would have planned, but they were helpful, nonetheless. And overall, my life so far has felt rather extraordinary.

So, there’s my list. It’s pretty exhausting, but so is life, if you think about it (or even if you don’t). I can’t finish a blog without trying to nudge a bit of writing out of you readers, though… so, what are you grateful for?

You know the feeling: nobody understands you. No one sees what you are going through. No one can possibly see the world through your eyes, see your pain, sense your true level of frustration, notice you. The feeling might come at work, or at home (I remember an ad where dishes are washed, diapers changed, etc., all by unseen hands), or online. You think nobody hears you, or if they do, they aren’t really listening. 

What can you do? You can start screaming at people around you, biting at them in the same way Harry Potter snapped at his friends in book 5. Not very effective, really. It works well to chase people away. You can also give up entirely, playing the martyr, ending your long suffering by tossing your novel in the trash (nobody wants to read it anyway, you might say). 

Or you can ask for help. 

It’s tough. Tougher if you’ve never done it. It means you have to put your own emotional vulnerability in front of people. And they might scoff. They might ignore you still. More than likely, though, they have similar feelings of their own–or have had them–and they will reach out and reassure you. 

I thought about this as I read one of my favorite blogs, and it’s funny that it came from her, since she just received an award on Today.com and her blog seemed to be going strong. But her latest blog entry was a little plea for help, a plea that someone–anyone–reply to a blog so that she knew they were there. I did, and I was one of many who wrote back, the unseen readers she’d had all along without knowing, since they hadn’t written a response to any of her entries. You should check it out, and give her a few words of encouragement… she needs them right now.

I’m lucky. My sister checks my blog out several times a day (thanks, Sis!), writing encouraging words at every turn. And I have a playwrights group now, though I don’t meet with them as much as I’d like. They read my stuff, give me feedback, and then let me do the same for them. We support each other as we all struggle to work on our craft. I have moms to turn to when the kids drive me insane, and friends who share some similar struggles, or who like to read my writing and give me a gut reaction.

If you feel alone, find a network. It might be online, it might be a meet-twice-a-month-at-a-coffee-club sort of group. It could be for moms, or dads, or writers, or readers, or actors, artists, whatever. And if you can’t find one (craigslist is a great place to start), make one up, and post meeting times. Meet at the library–it’s free–and see who else shows up. 

Believe it or not, your cry for attention may be exactly what others need… most of us go through life far more lonely than we should be, and one person, by reaching for help, can change the lives of many more who feel the same way.

So reach out. See who reaches back. You might be surprised.

Just don’t give up…

Show me another time in school when you can spend hours and hours looking at a single piece of paper, with nothing but a brush in your hand and paint spread around you. When the teacher put classical music on, and you could feel yourself slide away from every other part of life for an hour or two. Where you can get messy with clay in your fingernails, or fingerpaint colors squishing into the sleeves of your shirt, or colored chalk marks on your cheeks while, or all of these on your shirt, and no one gets mad. Where your dad is willing to let you have an old ripped shirt of his so that you have a “painting shirt.”

Yes, art class is a time of concentration, relaxation, focus, and dreaming. It’s exploring–can you really use chalk to make something besides a still life? Yes, you can!–and the exploring helps you discover what you love about the world, what you find interesting, what you detest. It can be done in absolute silence, though only a few would object if you hum while you work. (I personally hum when I paint. I hum even when I color in a coloring book with my kids. I sometimes hum while eating, if I’m nervous. Just ask my hubby.)

Do you remember art class? Remember the teacher who was just a shade shy of abnormal, who loved everybody’s work, who gave whacked-out assignments using colors, shading, and perspective, and who said to every single student, at one time or another, “Wow! You are a real artist”? I had a bunch of those… and though I didn’t take art in college, I never forgot my art teachers. And their influence made certain I never forgot art, either. 

So now I have my own art class… still, after all these years… and it’s filled with art paper, a collapsable easel, acrylic paints, pastels, charcoals, watercolors, everything I need to make myself happy. And every once in a while, I take them out, pick an afternoon to relax, make sure the sun is streaming in through the windows, and go back to art class. 

I need to visit there more often. And so do you. Start small. Buy yourself an $8 box of pastels and some colored paper. Turn on some great music. And get drawing. And if you have old art supplies, dig them out of the garage and get to it. Hum while you work, if you can stand it. Let your kids join in. My kids have had “art class” for their whole lives. As soon as they could hold a brush, they’ve been painting, even if all they end up doing is mixing the watercolors into a sort of pinkish brown. But with each class they get better. Last summer, they had art class nearly every day. They loved it. I loved it. It brought me back to those art class days, and brought my creativity out in entirely new ways.

And, just like that art teacher, once you’ve done what you wanted for the day, once the sun is going down, and you know the class is over, at least for the day, look at your finished product and declare, “Well, my word, you are a real artist!”

One of my loves in film stems from my love of other arts. I tend to gravitate naturally to films about art, music, and theatre. Yet I often find my interest flattened if the film is about a writer–mainly because so many films are about writers. I know the adage says to “write what you know,” but I don’t want to watch a film about someone as boring as I. The only exception I’ve found to this is Shakespeare in Love, for two reasons: 1. It was funny, and 2. It had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Shakespeare’s life–at all. As such, I could suspend any sense that he was actually a writer and just enjoy the film as a film. Give me a film about an aspiring screenwriter, and I gag immediately–could a screenplay be anymore self-absorbed than that? Here, let me just write a play about a playwright–or a poem about a poet! GAG! BLECCCCHHH!

What I DO like watching, though, is films about music and art (and theatre). As a teenager, I remember going to see Amadeus, a film detailing Salieri’s view of Mozart, and remember being absolutely blown away, walking out of the theatre as if my legs were made of jelly. Magnificent film, I thought, the perfect blend of music and drama. I’ve seen the stage play since (and I prefer the film, with the changes Peter Shaffer made to it). My favorite parts remain places where the music reflected Mozart’s own personal struggles–with various loves, the struggles with his overbearing father, with his need for something magic when so much is going wrong–and his Requiem became the perfect backdrop for the ending of the film. 

But this is not the only such film. I also loved the treatment of Beethoven (one of my personal favorite composers, since I was very young) in Immortal Beloved. A unique treatment of the composer’s life, intended to explain many strange things about the man. And the music, again, creates the main interest, shows the passion, tells the story as much as the plot line does. 

Other films like The Agony and the Ecstasy and Lust for Life do the same for artists, in this case Michelangelo and Van Gogh, showing how much they fought with their talent and through their talent to make what they did come alive. Their stories, I find, make their art more apparent than it was to me before I watched the film. I find I appreciate the artwork for more as a result, even when I loved it already. A film on theatre that I loved–probably because when I saw it I was writing a full-length play about Othello’s wife Desdemona–is Stage Beauty. The Phantom of the Opera is also a personal favorite, for more reasons than I can count.

These are only a few. Do you have some favorites of your own?

It isn’t just Fruits Basket that inspires my blog today.  I’m starting to feel the pull of art on me. I’ve been writing pretty well for months, and I still have writing to do (once I finish a mound of reading–and this current class, I’m afraid). But the itch to take out my paints is building, and reading manga and children’s books tends to increase art’s calling effect on me.

The manga, by Natsuki Takaya, is brilliantly drawn. Some of the best graphic novel illustration I’ve seen, honestly. The story line… well, not sure about that yet… but the artwork keeps me going, in the same way it does with children’s books. My daughter is as drawn into a book by the art as she is by the story–no, perhaps more so–and looking at all the glorious illustrations in a children’s book slows down her reading, but obviously adds immeasurably to her enjoyment.

So, now, I’m wanting to paint stuff from my books. When I wrote my first novel, I painted a picture of the healer in it, still imprisoned in her stone grave marker. The painting was imperfect at best–after all, I don’t work on my art enough, and it has been 20 years since I participated in any semblance of an art class–but I loved my painting. Here’s the best photo of it I could manage: 

Even now, I want that painting–or a better version of it (one that I paint myself)–to be on the cover of it. And I want to paint the covers, at least, for all my books… and do the pen-and-ink drawings for the inside chapter headings, or at least four or five illustration pages. Nothing extensive, since they are YA novels, but a little, just to bring a little of my own impression of these characters and their situation.

And that brings me to books in general. Wouldn’t it be nice if more of them had illustrations? A really good illustration in a chapter that runs kind of long could keep me reading… especially if it showed something interesting that was going to happen near the end of the chapter. And illustrations placed sporadically through the book might motivate me, too, for I’d want to get to the scene that was depicted, to find out more about it than the caption itself revealed. 

I think graphic novels are getting it right. In an age when so many of us (like my hubby) are glued to the television set, it might take a bit of visual to bring us to reading. Think of how many reluctant readers would be more likely to read if they had something to help them move through a longer work. And why not mix two of the most amazing forms of expression: art and writing? Theatre does this, to some extent… movies less so (in my not-so-humble opinion)… but why wait for performance art to do it? And why restrict it to children’s books and graphic novels? Why not spend a little extra on the publishing side to make a novel easier to pick up, to make the reading experience richer? 

Just my take on things. Now I need to get out my watercolors and paint something for my Ark novel (as soon as I get all this reading and grading done!). 

Oh, for the past, when I thought everything is merely good or bad. According to developmental theory (I think it’s Chickering, but don’t quote me on that), most COLLEGE FRESHMEN come to college still in that mode, believing everything is black or white–it’s called dualism. Whatever they believe is right–or good–is totally right or good (parents, religion, politics, you name it), and whatever they believe is wrong (same categories apply) is totally wrong. Debate is moot, for their beliefs are totally correct, and they will argue forever that they are right.

But then, without even trying, the vast majority move into what is called multiplicity…in a few years, they realize that everyone doesn’t look at the world the same way, including themselves, and that there are plenty of ways to see the world, all of them gray. 

I thought, when my husband told me about these levels, that the description was actually wrong. I had seen some gray areas in the world before I started college, but my world was still, for the most part, black and white. Yet what I ended up with wasn’t a world of gray but of rainbows. And the rainbows are in everything, for better and for worse. 

Take marriage. Society labels it as some pristine thing, two united as one, exclusively heterosexual, monogamous, etc. It should be the best thing that ever happened to me. And I speak from the point-of-view of someone very happily married when I say it ain’t so. I deeply love my husband, but he can be really annoying. And bossy. And pig-headed. And I know that from experience, because I can be just as annoying, bossy and pig-headed (it takes one to know one). Perfect marriage isn’t. It isn’t some white, pure essence that fills me with happiness. Instead, it’s a mix of white–a sort of peace, for me–and red (romance), blue (devotion), yellow (annoyance), chocolate brown (comfort), orange (anger) and many other colors, all rolled into one. It’s a huge, interesting mixed bag of colors, and I don’t think I’d have it any other way (though I’d love a little less of the yellow and orange).

But everything is this way. I love playing piano, but it isn’t just greens, blues and purples (my favorite colors). It’s tangerine (nerves), forest green (frustration), and such a rainbow of feeling. Just yesterday it was romance, for I played a soft, sort of sexy version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” for my hubby (adding, no doubt, to the marriage rainbow). 

If you’ve had kids, I don’t have to explain the rainbow to you. The deepest blacks of my life exist here (when my kids are sick–or when I’m up all night with them–or when I have nightmares about them dying), but they also bring some of the brightest, softest, warmest colors to my life. And that rainbow will only become more dramatic when they become teenagers, I imagine.

Writing holds this same bittersweet rainbow for me, the darkest colors reserved for fear of failure (poop brown–sorry, but I couldn’t think of a color more fitting), depression (black), rejection (reddish-orange) and writer’s block (gray). But the rest of the rainbow is there, too, and the darker, meaner colors just add contrast so that the bright ones show up better. They make the brighter stuff worth it. And they make the experience deeper. 

What rainbows are working on you? Instead of pushing the unwanted colors away, embrace them. They are part of the experience, and they are telling you more about yourself than you know.

I know several of my blogs begin with the title “The Importance of” something…and it’s for two reasons: First, LOTS of things are important, and there’s no way I could write about them all at the same time. Second, I love The Importance of Being Earnest, and each of those titles are in homage to the play. I was in it in college, and the first time Richard saw me was onstage as Cecily Cardew (if you don’t know who that is, read the play).

And like my sister’s blog suggested, I am pilfering her ideas to create my own blog today (see the Rocket Scientist blog, if you want to see how her idea stemmed from another blog). She discussed play at length, showing how important it is to members of her family, and I commented that much of what I do is play as well:

I’m pretty much all about play. Not only do I love painting, crafts, sewing, writing, etc., but I also have “play” piano, and write, of all things, “plays.”

And there’s a reason for all of that. It’s a “need,” just as Lee said. He’s absolutely right. Much of what I do and write is play, rather like a rehearsal for life, playing with different outcomes, with different characters. And thinking of it as play makes me happier than thinking of it as work.

My comments got me thinking about my current novel, and the one I finished this summer as well. If I take myself too seriously, believing that one wrong move in my character or plot development will result in disastrous boredom or sure rejection by agents, I’m doomed. I avoid writing, I dread going to the next outlined event, and the writing process suddenly runs like a broken dryer–even if it flips around and around, and dries a little, it makes a horrible thumping noise that turns my stomach and sets my nerves on end (I speak of my mom’s dryer–it’s in tough shape). 

But if I see the whole thing as play, that my work is speculative, trying out a situation or a scene to see if it works, leaving myself open to change ANYTHING when I go back and revise, I am a much happier and more productive writer. 

Play reminds me that I’m not looking for perfection. I’m just getting by, knowing that my knowledge and expertise will only increase as I practice. And in the mean time, I’m having a wonderful time, living in the moment, playing with the world I live in and the world I’m creating on the page.

What fun!