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.

Today, for the first time, I watched Twilight. I’d read the books, and though I’m not the fan so many of my friends are (after all, I am a bit old), and although I would call neither the books nor the film amazing, I found one absolutely brilliant aspect to the film. 

So many films do this wrong when they translate a book into a movie. The plot may remain about the same, the characters stay consistent, but the mood of the film changes. What is mood? 

Good question. Wikipedia doesn’t even answer it (not yet, at least)… but it’s a feeling, blended from the setting, lighting, music, vocal resonance of actors, and the list goes on. And I’m a fan of films–even not so great films–that hold a mood all the way through. 

Honestly, most films don’t. Moulin Rouge had flashes of genius, and its “Roxanne” scene may be one of the best scenes ever put on film, but the film itself doesn’t keep its focus. In my opinion, the first forty minutes of it are pretty horrid. The frenetic cuts of film, the attempts to make what is going on funny (and none of it achieve actual humor), the odd twists that add nothing to the tone set at the very beginning of the film–all of this works against what I think the point of the film is.

But I’m not writing just to pick on Moulin Rouge. Despite its weaknesses, it has some brilliant scenes. Overall, though, its mood fails. Other films have the same problem: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Australia, Titanic, and many older films come to mind, but the list is too extensive for me to name.

Twilight manages to get that right, at least. Part of it is the setting–a dimly lit world from the overcast Northwest (an area I’m particularly fond of, since I live only a few hours from Forks). But the music plays a huge roll in the mood of the work–highlighting the softer, foreboding moments, mirroring the other elements pretty seamlessly. Firelight, a film I’ve used in composition classes, has a similar focus, primarily created through lighting, setting, and music (though the music does get a bit obvious, especially after several viewings). 

Now, in writing, the mood must also be created, but writers don’t have the same opportunities to use other media to help create it. All we have is words, yet those words serve to create the setting,  the dialogue (making word choice crucial at every point), and even the music of the piece (yes, you know from poetry that words are musical, too). 

So, what mood are you creating in your work? Does it follow through the whole piece? Where does it falter? Where does your novel not keep its focus?

Tomorrow I’ll give you an exercise to create mood. Be ready.

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?

Well, they’ve done it. My church has finally found a music director. 

So that should mean I’m done, right? Well… not quite. He lives in California, so he has to get all his stuff together and move up here. That means we have at least another month to wait. So, today, mixed in with all the other obligations, I’ll need to figure out what I’m playing for Sunday… four pieces of music. I’ll need to practice, practice, practice every day for the rest of the week so that no one seems too bothered that I’m playing instead of him (he played last Sunday, as part of the interview process).

Some of you might think I’d be disappointed after all this time filling in. I’ve been playing, for the most part, since September. I might be feeling a sense of loss. I might be regretting that I didn’t just apply for the job when it came open, biting the bullet and practicing my heart out so that I could get good enough to do it.

But it just isn’t so. I feel relief. Sheer relief. No regret. No sadness. No disappointment that, in a month, I won’t go so early to the church to run through everything. Or spend the few minutes before church starts frantically wiping the sweat off my palms. Or listen to the sermon to figure out when it’s ending, so that I can get up to the piano in time for the next part. Or feel embarrassed when I flub a song I thought I’d really worked on.

It’s funny, but several things have been working themselves out of my schedule lately. Because of budget cuts, I won’t be teaching in the spring term, beginning in March. That will leave me only four of my six jobs, freeing up my time tremendously (even now I am facing a stack of about 20 essays to grade, and that will continue through mid-March). 

All this shifting has to mean something. Maybe it means I’ll have time for more writing, more time to really spend on my kids during the day, instead of grading. Maybe it means I need to refocus on the projects I’ve let slip. Maybe it means something else is coming. Usually the change is an improvement–at least, I always seem to be able to think it is (part of my optimism).

Whatever it is, I can’t wait. The month can’t go fast enough for me. 

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?

Some might call it mere worry, this tendency of ours to plan and plan, practice and practice, all for something that never happens.

I’ve been doing quite a bit lately, and I’ve done some major things in the past as well that fit the pattern:

1. I made tons of cookies for my daughter’s cookie party, but most went to waste because the snow kept most people away.

2. I’ve practiced HOURS a day to play Christmas songs for church services, but the last three services (Sunday, Christmas Eve, and Christmas morning) have all been cancelled. I’m missing the next Sunday (we were delayed going to family for Christmas), and the following Sunday is Epiphany, meaning I won’t have any reason to play Christmas stuff.

3.  I once wrote two poems to inspire a music professor to write a song for a benefit concert. He then flaked and didn’t compose anything at all (let alone use either of the poems).

4.  I have now nearly finished my third novel, yet so far none have earned me a cent for all the years it took to write them. 

I’ve also done all sorts of other prep work for stuff that never happens. Now, you might think, what a waste! You might consider the option of not preparing anything, just in case your efforts are wasted. 

But is anything ever truly wasted? If my novels never get published, does that make writing them not worth it? Didn’t it still give me something, if nothing more than a chance to dream, to escape my current reality, or lessen my own insanity? The two poems I wrote were both good, and each poem I write makes me (slowly) a better poet, helps me be more aware of the movement involved in language, on its images and sound patterns.

Even if practicing Christmas music doesn’t mean I play much of it in church this year, I always have next year, and I have music in my own home until then. The truth is, I love to play piano, and I love it even more if I play it well, and I won’t get there unless I practice, and practice, and practice. My efforts simply can’t be a waste, for they make me better, little by little. Who knows what a year more of practice will do for me?

I suppose my only question for myself is this: When do I not make the effort I should because I fear it will be wasted? 

I know the answer to that question, and it may very well show up on tomorrow’s blog. Do you have your own answer? What do you regret not trying? 

After I had finished playing piano at church today, and a woman gave me two compliments. The first one was that my playing was getting really good. Now, the reason I took this one to heart is that she is the first person who didn’t say “getting better,” but who actually claimed I was doing what I was doing well (okay, so she said “good,” but that doesn’t work grammatically). 

Now I knew that I had made a ton of mistakes. I knew I had mangled the first hymn until it was unrecognizable–but I was saved from disgrace because my fellow pianist was playing it too (I on organ, she on piano). I also knew I was playing some things one handed still, after all these months, because I’m still not good enough to keep pace with the congregation playing both hands. 

But did that mean I ignored her compliment? Nope.

She also gave me another one: She said I looked beautiful today. Then she added, “You looked statuesque.” Now, I have never, never been called that in my entire life. I assumed one had to be at least 5′ 8″ to be statuesque, and in a world where supermodels are all 6′ 1″, even that might not make it. And I’m 5′ 5″. I could list out the other bodily imperfections I know I have, but I don’t want all of you writing in all the ways I’m pretty (since NONE of you regular readers have ever seen me, except my sister). I’m not fishing for compliments, so I’ll spare you. But this woman did see me, and despite my shortcomings (emphasis on “short”) she called me statuesque.

Now, I am not fat-headed enough to sign up to be a professional musician, playing piano in a night club. I don’t have enough material to last thirty minutes. And I’m not foolish enough to set off for all the local modeling agencies, intent on becoming a supermodel. I’m not an idiot (and I hope my blog is evidence of that).

But I have no intention of negating this woman’s comments. On days when my world looks (and smells) like a stinking garbage heap, or even a field of trash as far as the eye can see, her comments will be a wildflower among the refuse, dappled with dew, pink in the bright sunlight, waiting to cheer me. I love those wildflowers. They seem so small, so fragile, yet they survive years of turmoil. I have wildflowers I’ve kept since I was a very young child.

We all know the opposite can be true, as well. Perhaps we know someone who holds onto the harsh words, the bad events, clinging to them even when life is good. Someone who can look out onto a field of wildflowers and obsess about the one crushed tin can lying in the shade under a tree. The rotting smell of spoiled food from the can negates the pleasant fragrance of each flower, the sunlight glinting off the metal, blinding the person, making their head pound.

So, which are you? It’s easy to fall into the second pattern, to ignore the happy in one’s world so that one can dwell on past hurts or one irritating exchange. But it is so harmful to live this way, unhappy despite the happy parts of one’s life. 

I, for one, intend to feel statuesque the rest of the day. It might even improve my posture.

Even after all this time, I find it hard not to revise when I’m writing. 

I just wrote about six pages of novel–my minimum is three, but if I get on a roll, and my kids don’t need me to stop right then, I keep going until I get to a good stopping place–but even knowing that I’m being productive doesn’t end the urge to start back at the beginning, some 150 pages ago, and reread.

Do not misunderstand me. I believe in revising like I believe in breathing, and the hair on the back of my neck stands up when I hear a writer claim he “never revises.” Nothing is more certain to keep writing mediocre (if not pathetic) as lack of revision. Yet there is a time and place for everything, and revising while you are in the process of generating text is simply not the time. 

Think about the two sides of your brain. They usually work together on things, but each lobe of your brain, according to research, is responsible for different tasks. Your left brain is the more logical side, where I’d like to think grammar centers are located, where our “rules” are, where we analyze. The right brain deals with emotion, creativity, and synthesis, ideas. Yet these two do not always work so well together. 

My left brain, I have discovered, works only at certain times of day. After ten p.m., for instance, it shuts down completely, and is useless until at least 6 a.m. If my husband tries to talk budgets with me after 10, I tend to become a blithering idiot, unable to process any but the simplest concepts, something like “don’t spend money.” I can’t understand and weigh the various elements at all. My left brain doesn’t work that late, and it won’t until morning.

My right brain, the creative side, works at any time of day, but it is also easily distracted. I can be in the middle of a chapter, and find it very compelling, but if my kids want breakfast, I have to stop writing. One whine in my direction pulls me away from what I’m doing. I can be in the middle of a piano piece, but the phone ringing or my kids fighting, or even the unending “Mom? Mom? Mom?” of a child waiting to get my attention throws me off completely. Ideally, I would write all night, while my kids are sleeping. I’d probably write a novel a month that way (only I’d drop dead before then from lack of sleep).

And this is why I keep my revising Left Brain away when my creative Right Brain is working. My left brain is the voice of reason, telling me, “Ooh, that sounds stupid,” or “Why would the character do that,” or “spelling error!” It’s the critic, and having a critic when my right brain is trying to write makes writing that much harder… my right brain will simply get too distracted to work properly, and it will give up.

So I tell my left brain to wait. It will get to put its two cents in. It will get to dig, modify, change, delete, rip apart, reword, add to, and clarify. But not now. Not while the right brain is busy working. After all, if the right brain doesn’t get its space, nothing is going to be put on paper at all. There will, in effect, be nothing to revise.

I always find it interesting when my students’ first question, upon getting a new assignment, is “How long do you want it to be?” 

I know the answer they want. A certain number of pages (the fewer the better). I also think it’s rather funny when I hear novelists brag about how many words their novels ended up being: One novelist will say his first novel was 90,000 words, and the next will say hers got all the way up to 135,000. 

But does length really matter? Is longer better? Is shorter better? How important is length, anyway? 

All I can do is offer my own thoughts, but then, it’s my blog, so that’s what I’m supposed to do. And I contend that length is absolutely immaterial. It’s pacing that matters. In fact, pacing is just as important in a short story, poem, or short novel as it is in a 1,000-page epic. An author should pay far more to what is happening each moment–to the speed of action, the constant movement and ebb and flow of a piece–than she should to the overall length. 

Let me give you a few non-writing examples to illustrate first: Imagine a football game where every play seems to end in a penalty. Each play stops with a whistle and a long delay, and an hour of play time–along with a 20-minute halftime–turns into four and a half hours of torture. In the end, one team beats the other 6 to 3 (we’re talking American football here, not soccer; in other words, it’s a low scoring game). The next game also takes a long time, but each point is hard-fought and hard-won. Dramatic plays, dramatic defensive plays to prevent what would have been glorious touch-downs…and the game lasts 4 1/2 hours and the final score is 6 to 3. 

I assume that most of you are NOT that into football, so let me give you another example: Someone is playing a well-known song, one that you personally love, on the piano. But they are slow to go to the next note, and each chord seems to pull out too long, until you are growing impatient. Finally, the pianist seems to realize he has run out of time, so he shortens the ending by an entire refrain, then plunks the last few keys abruptly to end it. Another pianist, intent on showing how quickly he can find each note, speeds up the music until its lyrical qualities are lost to you, its emotion so disturbed by the fast pace that it doesn’t sound like the song it was meant to be. Yet a third pianist begins slowly, building speed at moments of emotional crisis or triumph within the song, and softens and slows the pacing again when passages call for more emotion and contemplation. 

Which game would you rather watch? Which pianist would you rather listen to? 

I tell my students to make their papers as long as they need to be. Too brief, and information and explanation suffer. Too slow, and I am bored to tears. And it’s the same with novels, though in a more complex way. Novels have to balance conflict–the drama underlying events, the suspense of what will happen, the difficulties characters face–with pacing, so that climaxes don’t go on for too long, so that the tension in scenes don’t falter because the novelist loses sight of the overriding struggle. We should, as readers, learn to wait (otherwise novels would be four pages long), but we shouldn’t have to wait while wading through immaterial crap just to make the thing take longer. If it doesn’t contribute to the novel, it shouldn’t be in there. 

At the same time, the delay can be fascinating. Good characters doing interesting things while they move inextricably toward a dramatic climax…what could be better than that? I dare say that, for me, the ending is never as interesting as the journey to get there. 

Think about it this way: When you die, will you be more concerned with how you die, or with how you lived? 

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.