A Year of Gratitude

What kind of awesome was 2011? All kinds of awesome. This past year, I decided to use my Twitter account (I’m @damari19 if anyone’s interested) as a sort of personal/public gratitude journal. My goal was to tweet about something I found awesome every day for a year.  I missed a few days, but very few. I highly recommend doing this, whether via twitter or post-it notes or a silent thought right before you go to sleep. Getting in the habit of noticing one specific good thing each day has helped my mood and attitude tremendously.

I tried to find something new each day, though sometimes I forgot I’d already counted something as awesome earlier in the year. Omelets got three separate mentions. So did Dr. Who.

Looking back over my year in gratitude tweets, certain themes are prominent:

My top category seems to be food, which might explain what’s happened to my waistline. See omelets, above. Pie got two nods from me, once on 3/14 and again at Christmas. But I was also grateful for lettuce from our garden, basil from our garden, and the salsa I made using jalapenos from our garden. Halloween candy. A falafel dog from Mutt’s in Oklahoma City. Also drinks – coffee and tea come up, tea more than once.

Family and friends garnered many mentions. My husband cleaned the windows. I noticed when my kids did chores without being nagged. Got to visit my mom. My brother and sister-in-law knocked themselves out as hosts when we visited for Thanksgiving. Coffee with a friend. Inside jokes with old friends. I am immensely and always grateful for my various relationships.

I notice I commented a lot on the trouble don’t last category. Getting over a cold. Kids getting over colds. Rain after a drought. Figuring out how we’re going to pay for unexpected expenses. Cicadas went away. It’s all good.

Then there was nature. Crocus. Daffodils. Peonies. Autumn leaves. Goldfinches who visit our yard every day. Playing in the snow.

I had lots of comments on internet stuff, either cool websites or links to inspiring stories. Here are a few.:
1,000 Awesome Things – my inspiration
ALEKS – my daughter does her homeschool math through ALEKS.
Khan Academy – another educational resource
TED Talks
Fictiondb – near-comprehensive lists of fiction series.
Newsreel footage of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan.
Project Gutenberg – free ebooks

Literature plays a big part in my life. This past year I’ve found awesome in authors’ birthdays – e.g. Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut. Various books. Meeting with a new writers’ group. Meeting writing goals. Getting paid to write blog entries and newspaper articles as part of my day job. My son asking to go to the library because he’d read everything he has in the house. A student running a banned books library from her school locker.

Events, small and large:  Corn maze. 4th of July fireworks. Biggest family vacation ever – a trip to Florida where we visited Universal Islands of Adventure (one a side note, the Forbidden Journey is the best amusement park ride I’ve ever experienced) and my kids saw the ocean for the first time.

Those that defy categorization:
2/24/11: W. Shatner singing Mr. Tambourine Man & L. Nimoy singing Where Is Love on same CD
3/7/11: Using the large almost-vintage paper-cutter at work, with its dials and wheels. A combination of meditation & steampunk.
7/19/11: Seeing the interior lights come on when I click the unlocker in the direction of my van. It looks so happy to see me!
10/17/11: Curly hair being considered cool again. Thanks Alex Kingston and River Song!

And finally, one from a category I think of as “In Retrospect, the Joke’s on Me.”
“10/22/11: Procured winter coat for son at a great price.”  Yeah, he’s already outgrown it.

 

My November Word Count

6,207. I said it in my previous post, and I think I’ll have to adopt it as my motto: “No sneering, NaNoWriMo participants. I’m a busy woman.”

I know many of you cranked out 50,000 words this past month. Yay for you! I mean that; it’s not sarcastic. Or bitter. Really. No, really, I mean it. I’m impressed. Maybe some year it’ll be me.

Knowing I would have next to no time in November (day job at which I worked extra hours in early November, one homeschooling kid, one public schooled kid who has auditory processing difficulties and thus requires a fair amount of parental involvement to keep track of what’s going on, providing driving lessons to the older child who has a permit but no license yet, taking one of the kids to physical therapy appointments, taking the other kid to orthodontic appointments, assisting with the running of a writers’ conference, oh and a fabulous week-long vacation in Florida, which required planning and packing for and unpacking from) there was no way I could do NaNo. I regret nothing, especially not the vacation.

Still, I tried to absorb inspiration from all the dedication wafting around in my writerly circles. I decided to make an effort to write every day, even if I only had ten minutes, and keep track of my word count.  This went okay until vacation, when I dropped the ball (or quill or something) and didn’t pick it back up for ten days.

I have written a bit of a novel. I also counted blog posts, both personal and work-related. Add in a couple of other miscellaneous forays into the brain-ink continuum and my 20 total days of writing resulted in 6,207 words. One of those days, I managed five minutes for a word count of 76.

Thing is, though, I can keep this up year-round, and accomplish a respectable amount, all things considered. For now, I accept my lot as a plodding SoMisWriYe (Solitary Miscellaneous Writing Year) tortoise amongst the crowd of NaNo hares.

Eventually, I might join the race. Or I might not.

And to  think, I could have spent that time at a desk, subsisting on coffee and toast crusts, hunched over a computer, frantically typing until my fingers bled. Awww…too bad for me.

My First Novel: a Love Story

When I say love story, I’m not talking about the plot. I’m speaking of the relationship between me and my book.

I finished writing the first draft of my first novel a two years ago. A couple of people read and offered me their thoughts. I have done a couple of revisions. I’ve sent it out a few places and been rejected.

Now, I’m meeting with a novel-writing group and having my manuscript read by more people, who are giving quite helpful feedback. Hearing their comments, I’ve come to see the strengths and weaknesses I display should have been predictable. I’ve spent countless hours of my life immersed in poetry. In more recent years, I’ve produced a number of short stories. My strengths in my first novel, according to my first and second responders, are in dialogue, description and character development. I have many individual wonderful scenes with great dialogue. But it’s obvious this is the first time I’ve plotted something this size. I need to work on the story arc.

I’m trying to decide whether to do another rewrite and work on getting this volume published or whether to let it be and move on. I already have a start on my second novel. I’m about 5,000 words in at the moment. (No sneering at me, please, NaNoWriMo people. I’m a busy woman.)

The other night, while I was pondering my options regarding my firstborn book, I had a happy epiphany. I possess a very healthy emotional relationship with this novel. Whether I do any more revisions, whether I ever publish it or not, I’m so happy to have written it. It’s a story I needed to tell and I’ve told it, if only to a handful of my closest fellow-writers and my spouse. I’m not staking my entire self-concept as a writer on getting it published. I’ve gained some publication credits with several poems and a small handful of short stories. I’ve even been paid some of those times. I learned a lot in the first-novel process and my second book is benefitting already.

See, I don’t have a co-dependent thing going. But I do have a deep, true, abiding love. I’m able to see my novel’s flaws and still care for it – warty story arc and all.  I love my characters. I love my sense of accomplishment in having finished an entire book. I love how much I learned. No matter what I do with my writing in the future, no matter how many books I finish, I will never forget you, first novel. You will always have a special place in my heart.

Veteran, Author – Kurt Vonnegut

“The nicest veterans in Schenectady, I thought, the kindest and funniest ones, the ones who hated war the most, were the ones who’d really fought.” – Kurt Vonnegut

One of my favorite authors, Kurt Vonnegut, was born on Armistice Day in 1922. His experiences as a soldier and POW in World War II influenced much of his writing, especially his novel Slaughterhouse Five, published in 1969. Slaughterhouse Number 5, Dresden, was Vonnegut’s address after he was captured by German soldiers. As a prisoner of war, he was held in the basement of a slaughterhouse, which ironically ensured his survival during the firebombing of Dresden.

Slaughterhouse Five is a novel I feel the need to re-read every few years. I believe Vonnegut’s ability to use time travel and aliens to show his readers absurd truths about real wars showed true genius. I will never forget the image of a soldier trudging for hours through the snow in shoes that are tearing his feet apart.

Happy birthday, Kurt! I know in some version of reality, you can hop in your time machine and come to 2011 to read this blog post.

 

 

Books That Scared Me Silly

In honor of my favorite holiday, here’s a handful of books that scared me silly even as they were refusing to be put down. The fear came in a different flavor with each one. Not all of them are technically horror novels.

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. For years – literally years – after I read this, I had nightmares about discovering that everyone in my life had become vampires. What if you were the last person on earth, so far as you knew, who had not been turned into a vampire? What if they came for you every single night? Brilliant book, but save up your money first to pay for the increase in your electric bill from sleeping with the lights on.

Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow. What’s so scary about werewolves is that they’re us. It’s been my observation that werewolves have been the most sympathetically portrayed monsters in horror. In Sharp Teeth, Barlow is masterful at building non-stock, well-developed lycanthropes. In verse. Did I mention he does it in verse? What made this book nail-biting for me was how much I cared about a couple of the characters and how human nature was just as threatening as animal nature. This is one of my all-time favorite books in any genre.

1984 by George Orwell.  I value my privacy. The thought of being watched every second of my life is anathema to me.  For the watched, even one slip-up in something as minor as facial expression can mean death. Add in the inability to trust anyone else and  the constant head games played by the government and this is about as dystopian as it gets. Scary because it seems so possible. Oh, and the rats.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Again, scary because I can imagine it happening in real life. Extreme religious fundamentalists take over and implement selective Biblical practices. Not the ones about the rich selling what they have and giving money to the poor.  Rather, the ones where many women are considered as no more than property and are pressed into service to bear children for those who have been rendered infertile by a wrecked environment. And as someone with severely dry skin, let me say how horrified I was by the lack of hand lotion.

The Dollhouse Murders by Betty Ren Wright.  This is theoretically a children’s book. I read it as an adult and it creeped me out no end. But it impressed me, too, with its exceedingly clever premise. A big old house, with one room containing a dollhouse that’s a scale-model reproduction of the real domicile, including the furniture and dolls representing the original residents. Each night, the furniture and dolls are moved around to re-create a murder scene. Is it the victim’s ghost trying to communicate in some way?

Dracula by Bram Stoker. In the novel, Renfield scares me more than Dracula does. Actually, that’s true in some of the movie versions as well.

Beloved by Toni Morrison. There are ghosts and then there are GHOSTS. Knowing I would have reacted just as Sethe did and thrown away everything. That part gets me. The parts based on the true history of slavery are the scariest, though.

 

Adventures in Communication

My day job (and often evening job and weekend job) takes place in a public library. For a middle-sized Midwestern city, my town is home to a fair number of non-native English speakers, probably because we also have a fair number of colleges and universities. Many of these folks find their way to the library.

I have a lot of respect for someone who is willing to move to a new land, learn a new language and actually go out in public to communicate with strangers. I’m not sure I’d have the courage, myself. It’s a good exercise for me to speak with someone who is still learning English. I have to practice true listening and I relearn the lesson that sometimes communication takes effort.  But if I keep trying and the patron keeps trying, we almost always end up arriving at an understanding.

I’ve had enough experience with this by now, some things are easy. Somebody looking for ESL materials? I get that one right the first try almost every time. Somebody looking for something more particular? Well….

This morning, it was a gray-haired gentleman asking for books by, um – Chaser? Much known English writer. Okay, I understood that part of the explanation. From age ago. Alright – not contemporary, then. My mind was working – much known, wrote in English, ages ago – Chaser? Chaucer! Chaucer! Did he want books by Chaucer? No, not Chaucer – Chaser.  Okay, let’s keep working.  Does the gentlemen know any titles by this writer? Yes – Juries Seize Her. We’re not quite to charades yet, but almost. Author sounds like Chaser. Title sounds like Juries Seize Her. Aha!  Julius Caesar by Shakespeare!  He wanted to read Shakespeare!

See: patience, listening, persistence, successful communication! We did it!

Bronx Zoo Cobra Revisited

Remember the Bronx Zoo Cobra. I almost didn’t until I was looking through one of my notebooks and found a poem I wrote about it at the time. I figured I’d better go ahead and share before nobody can remember what I’m talking about.

 

Bronx Zoo Cobra

Snake on the lam
America’s most wanted animal
The hooded Houdini of hiss
Slithered its way out of sight
And into mind
Who would have guessed
A poor humble immigrant serpent
Would become an asp of such ascendance
Climbing to heights of fame
Undreamt since the days
Of Cleopatra

 

Now it occurs to me this is the second snake-themed poem I’ve put on my blog. I don’t know if it means anything.

R.I.P. William Sleator

Singular author William Sleator  has passed away.

As a teen I read and re-read and re-read certain books. One of those was “House of Stairs” by William Sleator. It’s a science fictionish tale of a group of teens who are subjects in a behavior modification experiment. This book, for me, encapsulates one the most fascinating aspects of science fiction/fantasy. It explores the  question of how people will behave in unusual, even unprecedented situations.

I think this is why I tend to prefer “soft” science fiction. For me, the draw is not technology, it’s people. I love Ursula K. LeGuin for her anthropological approach. Ray Bradbury is another favorite in this area. I know some people are dismissive of genre fiction as “not serious” or something, and William Sleator was double-labeled, because he was also considered a young adult author. But I’ve read widely and eclectically throughout my life, and in my opinion, if you want fiction that explores the human psyche, you could do worse than picking up a book by Sleator.

Hmm…maybe it’s time for another reading of “House of Stairs.” I haven’t visited it in years.

The Anxiety Dreams of Writers

Right now I have 21 pieces of work – 4 stories and 17 poems – out for consideration. I know responses tend not to come in the summertime, so I’m bracing myself for rejections piling up like autumn leaves in two to three months.  Last night, I dreamed they all came at once. Every single submission was rejected on the same day, but it was all in one form. Sort of like the common application for colleges, I suppose, except there weren’t even multiple copies. It was one sheet listing everything I’d sent out everywhere and next to each entry was a red rubber stamp with the word “REJECTED” in all caps.

I woke up and mused on the fact that my unconscious has not yet adapted to the reality of most rejections happening by email now.

 

 

Joplin Tornado Relief: Writers Can Help

“The Joplin (MO) Writers’ Guild, in coordination with the Missouri Writers’ Guild, is seeking fiction, non-fiction and poetry to be included in an anthology, Storm Country, to be published near the end of the summer. All proceeds from book sales will go to the purchase of books for school libraries damaged or destroyed by the May 22nd tornado. Midwest writers are encouraged to submit their original work June 1st through July 15th.”

See http://www.missouriwritersguild.org/ for guidelines.