Category Archives: Writing

Sep 20 2012
16 Comments
Life, Teaching, Writing

Dream Big or Go Home

Every fall, the organization I work for holds a region-wide professional development day. With roots in Silicon Valley and tech start-ups, my charter school group is forward thinking, technology-driven, and business minded. Last year’s theme was the importance of reframing failure as a welcomed opportunity for improvement.

This year, the theme was BHAGs, Big Hairy Audacious Goals. The idea, you have to dream bigger than you can imagine in order to succeed beyond your wildest dreams. You have to think decades, not just years. Then, you have to create an actionable plan to bring these goals to fruition. The more seemingly outlandish, the better.

While I applaud my charter organization for having BHAGs, I decided I needed to also have my own big hairy audacious goals. Usually, I think just one year at a time, maybe five at the most, stretching for what is within reach. Instead, this evening, I pushed myself to imagine the kind of over-the-top success I usually only let linger in my brain for a few minutes before settling on smaller, more seemingly attainable goals.

So, here you go. My BHAGs.

1. Be an internationally published author with readers around the world. I am currently living vicariously through Eowyn Ivey, author of the Snow Child, on her trip around the world to market her book and visit her foreign publishers. To achieve this BHAG, I need to write, write, write, and write some more.

2. At first I wanted to have a blog following of 1,000, but that seemed minuscule in the shadow of a big hairy audacious goal. Instead, I want to establish a following of 10,000. Why not? The more readers of my blog, the more potential readers of my books, and the more likely I can sustain myself as a writer. 10,000 definitely feels big and hairy. Again, I need to write, write, write, and put myself out there.

3. Live or have a vacation property overlooking the ocean. It’s easy to say you want wealth or any number of things that come with it, but I think specificity is important to achieving goals. I want to wake up to the ocean, write with the sound of the waves, do yoga on the beach until I’m a little old lady who can’t do yoga anymore, (aka dead). Again, sounds like I need to write, write, write, because teaching certainly isn’t going to buy that dream.

To write by the sea is the life for me.

My dream.

As writers, I think we’re often discouraged from dreaming big because most of us will never get there. However, as long as your happiness doesn’t depend solely on whether or not you achieve your goals, I disagree with all the disillusioned souls who say it’s too hard, too unlikely. As long as someone out there is doing it, it’s possible. Might as well be me, or you, or better yet, both of us.

Reminds me of my beloved Marianne Williamson quote, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

So shine on and be free with me.

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Sep 18 2012
9 Comments
Writing

Getting There on My Own Time

I’m not the fastest thinker in the world. I need time to cook my thoughts, even if sometimes it takes weeks, or months, or years to find my answers. There is no hurrying the process.

Writing my pitch for my query letter has been like this. I chip away, a little at a time, gradually creating a more coherent, enticing product. Now and then, I impatiently check the oven to see if it is done. Still not there, but a little closer, maybe edible even. Small victories and trust that if I continue to follow the steps in the recipe, it will be ready soon enough.

For you seasoned query writers, a question: Do you write the synopsis before sending out your queries or wait to receive a request for one? Yes, that’s the impatient part of me asking. I fully expect the answer I don’t want to hear, but that’s okay, maybe I need it for motivation.

This week’s extracurricular activity: Query writing, oh the fun!

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Sep 13 2012
4 Comments
Writing

Calling All Emerging Writers!

Umm, yes, please!  Free SF Writers Conference admission ($625), count me in.  And, you too. If you’re an “emerging writer” check out the scholarship submission details. Since it’s a shot in the dark, I don’t mind sharing the love. If you win, you owe me a firsthand account of the whole experience.

Here’s my “Why I Write” blurb I just spit out. One of my major rules for entering this kind of thing is to dive in head first, not overthink it, and see what happens…

Why I Write

I write because there are words inside me trying to get out. If I do not write them down, they swirl around my head, a chaotic mess. I write because each word that touches paper, or the pixels of a computer screen, lightens the weight I carry, letting me sleep at night. By letting my words out, I think more clearly, I connect more easily with the world around me. Writing is the home that roots me in the world outside my head.

I write in journals, notebooks, Word, Pages, WordPress, emails, text messages. When I do not write, I have the jitters of a sedentary athlete. I cannot think straight, my brain taps anxiously. Writing is a daily part of my existence. Sometimes, a day sneaks by too busy or too tired for my words. Those days feel off, terrible, somehow wasted.

Inexplicably, I went years without really writing.

As a child, I wrote all the time, half-finished stories read to friends and family, left abandoned in little piles of paper in all my drawers and special boxes decorated with ribbons and glitter. As a teenager, I wrote poetry, angst-ridden heaps of words about love and life traced in spiraling mazes around the edges of book covers. In college, I wrote passionately about human rights, true tales of torture, human trafficking, sweat shops, international relations.

Then, I graduated to write nothing, or at least what felt like nothing.

Years went by where all I wrote were the economic analysis reports required of my job. Ten plus pages a day left no room for creative writing, save for the occasional journal entry about homeless people in Berkeley or a string of words to inspire me later. Finally, came the year on the train, commuting from Sacramento to Berkeley, when boredom drove me to write again. Another half-finished story, a passing hobby for the train alone.  Those years left dark and jumbled spaces in my brain.

Finally, a shift in jobs, an inspiring book, the birth of a blog, and Nanowrimo all converged to motivate me to write again. I have not looked back. Words pour out daily, my therapy in a world that often makes my head hurt.  I write to cope, to live, to process, to escape, and most importantly, to dream. My words give me a space where life can be anything, where I can crawl away and live inside my head.  Perhaps most importantly, my words give me hope for a future where I write to live, not just live to write.

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Sep 06 2012
9 Comments
Life, Teaching, Writing

Blogging While Tired (BWT)

I think I have a new rule to add to my guiding principles for blogging…

Blogging while tired may be almost as bad as blogging while drunk.  I feel like I need some sort of little indicator that warns me to just give up and walk away. This week has been exhausting, not sure why, hasn’t been a bad week, but I’ve been beyond tired.  The last post I wrote took me what seemed like hours and I still was not able to really say what I wanted– had to go back and do some little cleaning last night, but even then, was too tired to really tackle it.

Then there have been all the other topics I’ve wanted to write about– a child referring to Mitt Romney as “A bad, bad man,” like a predator or the boogie man, while I tried to keep an unbiased, straight face, the less noticeable beauty of the sunset through the roof and tree-lines of the valley, (as opposed to the majestic unobstructed views shared elsewhere), an acceptance to the kind words/blogging award given over at Talkin’ Shit.  But, even today, my brain is just too tired to really piece together a meaningfully intelligent or humorous post.

So, instead, a decree.

No blogging while tired.  And, when I mean tired, I mean really tired, like when you have to read your sentences five or six times to make sure they make sense, (and then you still sit there scrunching your face at the screen, uncertain if you succeeded, allowing way too much valuable time to disappear into the black hole of the internet).

Too bad I’m already breaking my own principle. Hard to stay away. Must stop rereading sentences even if I can’t tell if they make sense. At least I can say I’ve never blogged while drunk… Although, can’t promise it would be much different.

Too tired to think of a whole post worthy of this picture, but I was struck by the reality that the sunset is only a tiny snippet of the sky where I live down in the valley.  Probably why I don’t notice it most nights… Still gorgeous last night though, the result of thunderstorms and smoke/smog/I really have no idea.

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Sep 04 2012
12 Comments
Life, Writing

Stop Chasing Unambiguous Happiness

Driving home this evening, listening to NPR describe “Why We’re Happy Being Sad,” I could not help but reflect on the concept of unambiguous happiness.

I am arguably obsessed with understanding happiness.  After all, my book is titled Expecting Happiness, the Happiness Project inspired me to start writing, and I have been chasing happiness in one form or another since childhood.  Many of us have, right?

That’s the thing.  Chasing happiness makes it sound unattainable, which is untrue.  I just think NPR touches on something real.  Most of us have a complex type of happiness.  In fact, I can’t think of anyone I know personally who doesn’t.

Maybe that’s the secret, stop chasing unambiguous happiness.

Putting it on my list of things to do.

For now, a little more ambiguously (un)happy music.  I have a thing for songs where people shout “Hey” this week, be warned.

And, I have a soft spot for these bookstore-recorded, rawly emotional gems, (probably because they were recorded in a bookstore…):

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Sep 03 2012
13 Comments
Life, Writing

D-O-N-E (For Now)

Oh man, if I could count the number of times I’ve said I was done with my book in the past 6 months, well, I guess I would feel like a liar. But, seriously, this time I mean it!

Six full times through on my own, seven readers, eight if you include myself. 69,536 words. 184 single spaced pages. D-O-N-E.

I’m not allowing myself to read it again right now.  I’m of the opinion I could make subtle changes to my words for centuries. I’m ready to ship this bad boy out and get started on something fresh, something new.

So, in the spirit of publicly decreed focus, here is my remaining to-do list:

1. Format the sucker. You know, double spaced, indents, all that fun crap I should have been doing from day one of Nanowrimo.  You live, you learn.

2. Write my generic query letter to be tweaked per agent. Oh yeah, and I guess write a synopsis too.

3. Enter my last line edits from my two superstar remaining readers.

4. Send the beast out, (starting with the 31 agents I compiled last May).

5. Wait, hope, wait, start something new.

There you have it, a plan, a little excitement, a little trepidation, a little self-doubt, a little self-congratulations. A little of everything really.

I know in reality, if it’s ever going to be read by a larger audience, it’s not done, it will have more editing, more rewriting as it moves through the various states of either traditional or self-publishing. But at least for today, it’s D-O-N-E.

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Sep 01 2012
8 Comments
Family, Life, Teaching, Writing

What do you see when you look in the mirror?

How often do you actually stop to look at yourself in the mirror?  I mean, really look at yourself?  Of course, I’m being rhetorical here, I’m not begging you to respond with an exact answer, I just realize that most of the time when I look in the mirror, I look past myself, checking just the details to make sure I’m presentable to the outside world.  I look without seeing myself, if that makes any sense.

Once in a great while, I actually stop and look myself in the eyes and have this weird moment of connection where I think, I’m that girl, the one with the long brown hair, the one who goes to school to teach children, the one that’s married to Alex and loves to write and travel.  I get that we are so much more than who we are on the outside, but sometimes, making that connection to our physical self grounds us in the reality that we’re here, living life, present.

I was just working on my book and this memory of looking in the mirror and seeing the future came back to me.  At the time, I was an economic analyst in Berkeley, but I knew I wanted to escape. Each morning I walked to work past an elementary school and I wished I was walking there instead of to my cube.  Sometimes, I would look in the long mirror in my office bathroom, and I would see a teacher staring back at me.  That probably sounds odd, but truly, I would look at myself and think, that girl is a teacher, not a cube dweller.

Reflecting on this now, I cannot help but wonder whether truly looking in the mirror is a more powerful tool of self-discovery than we realize.  I know it’s a commonly used phrase to take a long-hard look in the mirror, but I’m beginning to think it has some actual meaning.  Today, I still see a teacher staring back at me.  But, she’s also a writer, a traveler, and a much more alive human being.

As much as Photo Booth can make you feel like a teenager making duck faces for Facebook, it also provides that mirror snapshot. The chance to capture yourself and ask who you see.  I asked myself these same questions the other night after work, laughing into Photo Booth while my husband gave me funny looks from across the couch.  It was one of those rare moments I actually stopped to look at myself and I saw a tired, but happy teacher staring back at me.  When is the last time you stopped and really looked?

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Aug 27 2012
4 Comments
Life, Writing

Tiny Beautiful Things

We live in an oddly connected world.

The image above inspired me earlier this year, surfing Pinterest for some little piece of motivation to put on my blog.  I didn’t know where it came from, but I liked it, so I included it in an entry.

Then, this weekend, a friend gave me Tiny Beautiful Things, promising I would relate, telling me how it moved her soul one little story at a time. Intrigued, I began reading the second I got home. The author, Cheryl Strayed, also wrote a book my stepmom has been devouring, Wild, a personal account of traversing the Pacific Crest Trail, alone, female.

Making the connection, I was even more compelled to read, so I started from the beginning, savoring each and every word, even though my friend told me she jumped around as she went. The book is laid out as advice column entries from Dear Sugar, an online advice forum, and I was quickly sucked in by her honest, deeply emotional, unafraid words.  The first entry that really got me was about when Cheryl, or Sugar, worked with high-risk youth.  I felt like she was one of few people that could truly understand my job, my exact feelings, my own journey, I was sold.

Then I got to a letter she wrote in reply to a young author.  While the young woman who wrote to Sugar/Cheryl was a bit more dramatic than I consider myself, she touched on the same feelings of disappointment in not instantly becoming this amazingly, out-of-this-world, spectacularly accomplished writer. Sugar’s advice made me want to cry because it felt so true and gave me so much hope.

She told the girl, “The most fascinating thing to me about your letter is that buried beneath all the anxiety and sorrow and fear and self-loathing, there’s arrogance at its core. It presumes you should be successful at 26, when really it takes most writers so much longer to get there… And the kindest thing I can do for you is to tell you to get your ass on the floor. I know it’s hard to write, darling. But it’s harder not to. The only way you’ll find out if you “have it in you” is to get to work and see if you do. The only way to override your ‘limitations, insecurities, jealousies, and ineptitude’ is to produce… Write like a motherfucker.”

And, there it is.  That little quote I liked so much a few months ago but had no idea of its origin. The universe brought me the answer, because truly, everything is connected.

Cheryl Strayed has a voice much like Anne Lamott, raw, human, accessible.

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Aug 25 2012
2 Comments
Family, Life, Teaching, Writing

Blogging Rules To Live By

A wise reader suggested I set guiding principals for my blog as my filter for what I publish.  It is all too easy to write whatever is on my mind, letting this become a space for emotional release instead of a platform to base my writing.  I have to remind myself, this is not a journal, it’s a blog with a higher goal.  Tangents are alright, alienating critical audiences is not.

Accordingly, here are my three guiding principals:

1.  Write with the ultimate goal of traditional publishing.

2.  Write in a way that will not betray my loyalty to my school and/or students.

3.  Write without compromising my relationships with friends and family.

Simple.  Right?

Who knew blogging was so layered with goals and audience awareness.  Still, it feels good to verbalize these principals.

Happy Saturday!

Above all, family first.

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Aug 25 2012
6 Comments
Writing

Why E-Publishing Calls My Name

Let’s be honest.  We all prefer traditional publishing.  You know, a real, hard copy of our books available in bookstores nationwide, worldwide even.  Just the idea of holding my book in my hands, tangible, validated by some credentialed person who does not know me, gives me that funny, excited feeling in my stomach, butterflies. However, I keep getting the same little message presented to me by the universe.

If I can’t get an agent, at least e-publish and put it out there.

A coworker friend is married to a writer who just finished a non-fiction book.  They live in a local university community and are friends with people that are both published and publishers.  Instead of querying agents, her husband plans to simply e-publish and hope he can build an audience before approaching or being approached by the necessary people.  His strategy is not unusual.  I read about authors almost daily that e-published, found readers, then published traditionally.

Then, of course, there are all the agent blogs that criticize e-publishing.  A few try to suggest it’s a viable option for some, but the undertone is always condescending, like it is still some kind of vanity press.  My friend pointed out that of course they feel this way, e-publishing diminishes the value of an agent.  Numbers speak to publishers for themselves.  This recent Forbes article sums up the indie publishing debate quite nicely.

Still, I would be thrilled to have an agent fighting for my book.  I’m planning to query the little list of agents I assembled in the spring, thirty some-odd people that represent successful works similar to mine.  But, when I reach the end of that list, rejection rite of passage likely complete, I will be left with the choice to e-publish and put it out there, so perhaps, some people who like it will find it in the sea of other novice, e-published authors.

If you have e-published, how did you decide to price your work?  What platform(s) did you choose?  With what success?  I’m inclined to charge just a dollar or give it away for free, because really, my goal is not so much to make money, but rather to begin the foundation for a lifelong career.  Other books will follow.  I know this is a debated topic, so I am curious to hear your thoughts.

Of course, the goal is this, but maybe in the beginning, it’s better to start somewhere than nowhere at all? (And, yes, this is a recycled pic from my leftover pile of summer reading I wish I had time for!)

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Aug 23 2012
4 Comments
Life, Teaching, Writing

Superhero Training: Focus on the Good Things

Another teacher blogger recently described her ability to let chaos wash over her.  While my little “Relax” poster on my wall attempts to refocus my brain on this goal, I still feel like the young superhero unable to harness my powers.  There are moments when I shut off my frustration and just wait patiently for the storm to pass, feeling no stress, superhuman.  However, there are still plenty of other moments where I forget how to be calm, cool, detached, stuck in my wimpy humanity.

Instead of freezing time, my new favorite (and more attainable) superhero power is a zen-like readiness for everything life brings my way.  Yoga helps a little in this training.  I definitely leave class feeling like my car is floating home, my mind a million miles from whatever stresses emerged in my day.  The other training I too often forget, is stopping to consciously appreciate the good things.  So, a small list, of everything school-related that made me smile today:

1.  A student that moved over the summer sent us a postcard for our Husky Fan Club, so we wrote her back, making our own, hand-made postcards.  Reading the students’ responses reassured me we have truly bonded as a classroom family.

More than one student included the word family regarding our classroom.  Happy tear.

2.  This year I have taken more time to set students up for free-writing by telling them about my own writing process and desire to become published.  Never have I seen my students work so fervently, silently writing as quickly as their pencils will carry them in ten minutes.  When the timer goes off, they groan, wanting more time but excited to count their words.  A lifetime love for writing in the making for at least some, I’m sure.

3.  Brainstorming for their Hopes & Dreams project, students started a discussion about whether money buys happiness.  Of course, they disagreed, but we ended with one student explaining that money buys freedom, a potential source of happiness.  Sometimes they are wise beyond their years.

4.  Lunch with a student today, on a big blue picnic table underneath a gigantic pine tree left me feeling fulfilled.  Sometimes they just need to talk.  If only I could tell their fascinating secrets… Teacher first, writer second.

5.  One more day completed on this wild journey.

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Aug 22 2012
7 Comments
Writing

Sometimes I Say Too Much But Not Enough

If you are a regular reader, you may notice the last two posts disappeared.  This was intentional. Something about those last posts did not sit well with me, too exposed for the good of my current commitments.  Rest assured, I may someday be more candid, but for now my first loyalty is to my students.  It is far too easy when feeling overwhelmed or emotional to lay pieces of myself out for all to see– but when I cannot fully express myself because they are not pieces that should yet be shared, I have to remind myself to wait.  Better to be in a place where I can type openly, than one where I have to censor myself while dancing on a very delicate line that affects real people that I care about.

Those last couple posts, I danced rather unsuccessfully.  The writer in me wanted to expose myself, to create words that are true and meaningful, while the teacher knew my obligation was first to my students.  The result was writing that was neither entirely truthful to my feelings nor as lovingly supportive of my role as a teacher as I would like.  So, for now, limited words on any related frustrations, and an effort for more openness in areas that don’t connect to these loyalties.

If you write, do you find yourself balancing your obligations to different worlds with your desire to write openly?  Which side wins for you?  At what cost?

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