Category Archives: Writing

Jul 11 2012
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Family, Life, Writing

Enough.

“I would like to share what I’ve discovered in my considerable years of experience. The secret is a simple word and will at first, without contemplation, sound rather flat but give it some thought. We have been raised to have high expectations and excel for excellence — to be the most, the best, the ultimate. And, although I still believe we should work hard and strive for a better life, my contention and my prayer for those I love is that they will find the life they have chosen to be ENOUGH. I believe that word is the most underestimated word in our culture. To look at your husband, family and friends and think this life is enough… What a gift from God!”

Some of my favorite words, left as a blog comment by my aunt earlier this year.  I love the truth of her statement.  Every time I start to get impatient, I remind myself that what I already have is enough.

Thank you, Aunt Debby!

We always think that achieving specific milestones will fix everything, but really they’re just icing on the cake!

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Jul 11 2012
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Writing

Scenery Writing: More Help From the Internet

“Sometimes you may find it useful to let your characters huddle in the wings without you preparing for their roles, improvising dialogue, while you set the stage for their appearance.    Imagine yourself the set designer for a play or for the movie version of the story you are working on.”

-Anne Lamott, bird by bird


I was a strange child.  By fifth or sixth grade, I was attempting to read Steinbeck, Hemingway, and Dickens, in addition to more predictable childhood favorites like R.L. Stine and Madeleine L’Engle. What I remember most about those classic authors was the detail with which they described almost every scene.  Even my adult eyes now sometimes grow impatient when met with that much description.

One of my theories about why these authors included such long descriptions of space was because the world was a different place when they wrote.  Mass media did not exist.  People’s prior knowledge of places beyond the familiar was much more limited.  Today you mention practically any major city around the globe and mental images abound, helping to catch the reader up to speed without the necessity of a two-page Steinbeck description of Salinas.

However, I also recognize that good writing needs to put you in the setting, so that you can see, smell, feel the place where the characters exist.  Admittedly, I have a tendency to glance over this aspect of writing, more fixated on the inner workings of my characters and the actual action of the plot/dialogue than taking the time to carefully establish scenery.  I blame this on being part of an impatient generation that is bombarded by imagery in fast-paced entertainment.

So, of my own accord, I am going back into each chapter and making sure I created scenery that provides enough detail, inspired in part by those same great writers that sometimes make me impatient.  Today I took myself back to the Gare d’Austerlitz train station in Paris.  As I imagined all of the sights, sounds, smells, etc., I began googling for inspiration.  Funny how six seconds on YouTube can evoke such strong memories.  I am now aching to hear the anxious clicking of that departure board again in real life.

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Jul 10 2012
10 Comments
Life, Writing

Happy One Year Blog Birthday!

Okay, so technically, I started my blog on 7/22/11, which means today is not my actual blog birthday.  Still, I am one of those people that likes to give presents early and draws birthdays out into weeks, maybe even whole months, so why not celebrate a little ahead of schedule?  Besides, I’ll be traveling 7/22, and I want this to give this post some thought.

So, let’s take a little trip back in time.   One year ago, this month, I decided to start a blog. Inspired by Gretchen Rubin’s the Happiness Project, I was determined to create a regular space for something in my life that I love, writing.  I was also coming off my first juice fast, so the world looked especially magical through my newly cleansed, hippie eyes.  Thus, I named my blog, “Today is the best day of my life,” my little pinch-me-it’s-real reminder for my first summer break in years.

However, as with many good things, I eventually came to hate that name.  Funny how sometimes we even manage to annoy ourselves with our own optimism.  Still, the name stuck, because I did not know what else to call it and part of me wanted to hang on to that reminder to live in the moment.  Then, two months ago, my cousin suggested I move my blog to WordPress, clean it up, prepare to put myself out there as an author.  My chance for a new name, my own.

I took his advice, and here I am.  I have to say, there is a night and day difference between Blogger and WordPress.  Exponentially more readers, yes, but also the unexpected enjoyment of deeper connections with others.  Writers, teachers, travelers.  Turns out that deciding to start a blog was less about putting myself out there on my own and more about finding a community, a place to belong, words and all.

Here’s to many more years of blogging and writing happiness!

Live Life, Be Brave is still the guiding principal for my blog, 150 posts and one year later!

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Jul 09 2012
14 Comments
Family, Life, Writing

Overexposure.

“Studies have shown that, indeed, introverts are more likely than extroverts to express intimate facts about themselves online that their family and friends would be surprised to read, to say that they can express the ‘real me’ online, and to spend more time in certain types of online discussions… The same person that would never raise his hand in a lecture hall of two hundred people might blog to two thousand, or two million, without thinking twice.”

– Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking

This statement is generally true for me, (although I might raise my hand in a giant lecture hall if my participation grade depended on it…).  I express myself better with written words and find that I share more willingly behind the protection of a computer screen.  However, every once in awhile, I blog and walk away unsettled with some piece of myself that I too openly shared.  Yesterday, was one of those days.

I wrote about the pressures on women to have it all, flourishing careers and children.  Inspired by the brave author of that Atlantic article, Anne-Marie Slaughter, I found myself sharing more than I normally would about my own tug-of-war between career and children.  Each time I reread my words, I had a hard time pinpointing what exactly made me feel uncomfortable, but still, there was something there, some part of me overexposed and vulnerable that I just could not leave on the internet for all to read.  I deleted it.

In bird by bird, Anne Lamott says, “We write to expose the unexposed.  If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must…  Most human beings are dedicated to keeping that one door shut.  But the writer’s job is to see what’s behind it, to see the bleak unspeakable stuff, and to turn the unspeakable into words…  You can’t do this without discovering your own true voice and you can’t find your true voice and peer behind the door and report honestly and clearly to us if your parents are reading over your shoulder.  They are probably the ones that told you not to open that door in the first place.”

That’s the funny thing about blogging.  It can be very raw and exposed for that exact reason.  All of the people in your life are sitting on your shoulder and sometimes it is difficult to find the exact words to help them understand what you’re really feeling.  Even though I did not say anything over-the-top, or crazy yesterday, and no one in my life reacted negatively, I still felt vulnerable because the topic of family is sacred to me.  I could not expose myself without feeling overexposed.

I like what a close family member said to me last night, sitting out under the stars, “Expose yourself in fiction.”  For now, I agree, even if I deeply admire people like the author of that article, people willing to expose themselves to make some greater point.

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Jul 09 2012
5 Comments
Home, Life, Travel, Writing

Squeezing Every Second Out of Summer

This is my last week of summer vacation at home.  Five days, really.  Saturday is off to the Bay, then Kauai, the Oregon coast, teacher retreat and back to work!  Talk about a whirlwind!

No complaints out of me, truly.  I will be sad to see my summer go, but I also remember the years spent with three weeks vacation, total.  Oh, what I would have given for these glorious seven weeks of summer then.  Now, I just feel lucky.

Even so, time is quickening.  The seconds seem to matter more than in those first couple weeks. Here is what I hope to squeeze out of these last days of summer at home:

1.  I am reading up a storm.  Finished bird by bird and The Snow Child.  Started Sarah’s Key this weekend, already 2/3’s through.

  • bird by bird, Anne Lamott:  I sound like a broken record, but this is my favorite book on writing, to date.  Read it.
  • The Snow Child, Eowyn Ivey:  Based on an old fairy-tale, couple in Alaskan wilderness makes a child out of snow, dark story of magical realism unfolds.  Slow but good read.
  • Sarah’s Key, Tatiana De Rosnay:  Modern-day journalist uncovers a tragic story of loss from the perspective of a child during the Holocaust.  Amazingly quick and engaging read.

All the books that remain on my overly-ambitious summer reading list.  Hope to make it through a few more!

2.  Yoga, anyone?  In addition to squeezing in those last few 90 minute daytime classes that are impossible during the school year, I’m also getting ready for yoga on the road, thanks in large part to this awesome post on yoga while traveling.  My new travel yoga mat arrived this morning.  It is perfect for keeping my practice going, and will also double as a great mat cover for my regular hot yoga classes.

This super thin travel mat will fit easily in my carry-on and make yoga on the beach much more enjoyable!

3.  I am writing, writing, writing.  Suddenly, 30 minutes here and 30 minutes there are actually getting me somewhere.  I refuse to put an end date on Expecting Happiness, but it is slowly drawing to a close and feeling a lot stronger thanks to the amazing insight of my readers and all that time to think on my road trip.  I am hard on myself, it is definitely a first work, but I am also incredibly proud that I’m sticking with it to arrive at a place I feel comfortable.  I am also really excited about what comes next.  I have a young adult book I want to write for my students (and share with them throughout the year), and a more brooding adult piece that will hit on the topic of human trafficking in a different light than what I have come across.  I’m very excited!

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Jul 07 2012
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Life, Writing

Memory & Writing Set to Music

Heart-felt, folk-inspired songs are the soundtrack to my writing, my life.  Each familiar voice brings me back to a separate set of memories, gently guiding my writing beneath the layers of my subconscious.  Today, as often is the case, Pandora is set to “Lullaby” by the Dixie Chicks, conjuring a list of songs and memories that span my lifetime.

Norah Jones puts me on the big red Unitrans bus in college, evoking independence, that first real freedom.  Then, Sarah McLachlan transforms me into a fourteen year-old girl, sitting in the back of my mom’s old station wagon, driving up to the hills to see her boyfriend, her notes like open wounds, angry Nirvana blasting simultaneously through my headphones. Next, Joshua Radin draws in the San Francisco fog as I drive to my first apartment in the City, happy but alone. Finally, Lullaby by Dixie Chicks comes around, makes me want to cry, every time, dancing slowly together in our little Berkeley apartment, a ring on my finger, How long do you want to be loved?  Is forever enough?  

Sometimes, I forget to listen to music while I write.  I’m certain those days my writing lacks the same poignancy.

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Jul 07 2012
6 Comments
Travel, Writing

Writing Inspiration from Google Maps

Google Maps Street View is one of my favorite tools as a writer.  When I set out to write Expecting Happiness, I first asked myself what kind of book I was in the mood to read.  My answer, something involving a travel adventure, so I set to work creating characters that wanted to leave behind their boring lives and hit the open road, (real stretch of the imagination, right?).  Of course, I ended up taking them places I had been before, because writing about places I had never actually seen felt daunting.

However, I quickly realized that my fuzzy memories left holes in the pictures of these destinations, and the characters’ personalities also started to take them places within these cities that I never visited.  My solution?  Google Maps Street View.  Now, I do not pretend to be the first writer with this clever idea, but it is one of my favorite tricks to help me understand the layout of a city and visualize its scenery.  If you haven’t checked it out before, you should give it a shot.  You never know what sort of inspiration you’ll find.

My male protagonist wanted to run in Paris, but what would he see?  What parks on the list of places to jog in Paris might he visit?

I needed a place for my female protagonist’s cousin to live in Nuremberg.  What do the suburbs a couple of stops past the Hitler rally grounds look like?

Hmm, I wonder if I could find my dorm room while studying abroad in Burgos, Spain… Okay, this trick also gets me sidetracked.

Alright, if my female protagonist wanted to walk to a school in the Sarrià-St. Gervasi neighborhood of Barcelona, what would she see along the way?

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Jul 06 2012
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Writing

How did you pick your writing tagline?

I get that for some of you writers out there, your genre is pretty darn obvious.  You write romance, or scifi, or horror.  But what about the rest of us, just writing books about life?  What do we call it?

I’m not self-important enough to claim that I write literary fiction, maybe someday, but not there yet.  Neither is my work popular enough to call it popular fiction, (heck, I’m not even published, so much for popular).  And, I hate the term chick-lit, because really, why alienate half the planet with that label?

Labels, labels, labels.  I like what John Updike said, “The category of ‘literary fiction’ has sprung up recently to torment people like me who just set out to write books, and if anybody wanted to read them, terrific, the more the merrier. But now, no, I’m a genre writer of a sort. I write literary fiction, which is like spy fiction or chick lit.”
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So, I guess that leaves me somewhere in the range of contemporary, modern, commercial, or mainstream fiction.  But, which one is it?  Aren’t they all the same thing?  Today I received advice from a young literary agent whose weekly blog posts I really enjoy.  She suggested I create a new tagline on this page, something that better describes my writing.  While I agree with her, I have trouble picking the right words.  Somehow calling myself a writer of contemporary fiction does not say very much. Writer of modern adventures, perhaps?  Even that may be promising a thriller instead of just a story about life.  If you write in the sphere of literary or contemporary fiction, how did you decide to label yourself?
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Even Powell’s blue “literature” room is a catchall for the books that do not fall under the traditional genre umbrellas. But, how does calling something literature describe it?

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Jul 05 2012
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Writing

The Joys of Writing in Circles

Sitting in the car for nearly 24 hours over the past week left me with a lot of time to think.  Mostly, I thought about my writing, how far I have come, and how far I have left to go.  I’m sure that reading bird by bird along the way did not hurt.

I had a few epiphanies that I want to share because writing cements them in my mind.  The first is that I was writing too fast.  Nanowrimo was amazing in getting me into a disciplined practice of producing words quickly, but it also instilled this frenzied need to write for a deadline.  The more I pore over my work, add sections, listen to feedback, and rewrite, the more I realize that books emerge on their own time.  Instead of pushing myself to finish with a deadline, I’ve switched philosophies.  As long as I’m working everyday to make it better, I have no deadline.  I’d rather create something I’m proud to share with an audience than something I’m proud to have finished quickly.

Second, the ability to write well develops slowly.  I get impatient when things do not come easily.  I have always loved to write, but I never believed I was capable of writing a book.  It seemed too complicated, too hard.  Nanowrimo was amazing because it pushed me past those first few chapters that always left me stalled in the past.  Now that I know I can write a whole book, I have to refine my abilities, even if it means that sometimes I am writing in circles.  Acknowledging that learning to write well takes time is important because I am determined not to give up.  In the grand scheme of things, I am still a writing baby.  It will take time to grow into the writer I want to be, I need to stop pressuring myself to grow too quickly.

Third, I have to remember why I write.  I write because it’s fun, because I have this deep need inside myself to let all the words in my head escape.  For me, writing is like running or drinking coffee, it’s something that I wake up with the need to do each day.  When I wrote my book, I wrote it for me.  I asked myself what kind of book I would like to read and then lived inside the story as it unfolded.  It was amazingly fun.  Sometimes I forget this feeling when I start to pressure myself to get it right for other people to read.  That’s why I think it’s important that I continue to remind myself that I write because it’s part of me, because I derive enjoyment from it.  This is why I’m removing my internal deadlines.  Deadlines make it feel stressful, take away the joy.  At this point in my writing career, they’re just not necessary.

So, there you have it.  Writing thoughts from 24 hours in the car and reading bird by bird.  If you have not read bird by bird and you are a writer, I highly recommend it.

I’m realizing that my writing evolves on its own timetable, not mine.

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Jul 04 2012
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Life, Travel, Writing

Lessons Learned from Three Teachers in a Prius

When I was first invited on a road trip to Olympia and back with three other teachers on my team, I was hesitant.  As much as I hate to admit it, I am particular.  I like to be in charge of trips, I like to control my own time.  Knowing that my travel companions can be more boisterous and free-spirited than I normally am, I worried I might feel out of place.  Thankfully, I pushed myself outside my comfort zone.  Here is what I learned from my adventure:

1.  We all need to get out of our boxes from time to time.  It’s so easy to surround ourselves with people that are like us, which are undoubtedly wonderful people, but it is also important to get out there in this big world and meet others who are different.  Not only did I bond with my team of teachers in an entirely new way, but I also met a lot of travelers whose stories will stick with me.  A woman from Wisconsin with her two dogs and a cat stuffed into her station wagon, the old man by the sea, a transplanted waitress from Placerville now living in Reedsport, a starving young artist selling t-shirts in Portland…  The list goes on, you get the point.  I met a lot of really friendly people wanting to talk.  Some I met because I traveled with a car full of extroverts, some I met just being me.  Their stories were fascinating, my notebook now full of characters.  Nothing sparks the imagination like the half-told stories of strangers.

2.  Sometimes you have to go in circles to get where you’re going.  My mom likes to say I’m a type 3 personality, insinuating that type A isn’t enough to describe me.  Accordingly, I’m usually very impatient with being off-schedule because I try to stuff so many experiences into each day.  However, on this trip, since I was not in charge, I just sat back and let things happen.  Sure we got lost and time disappeared sitting in the car, but that time going in circles ended up holding its own adventures.  At the end of the day, we always ended up where we were trying to go.

3. Laugh, a lot.  Four women in a car for five days makes everything funny.  Never in my life have I laughed so hard or so frequently.  More than anything else from my adventure, I will remember the distinct laughters of my travel companions and the fun we had in every moment, whether it was stuck on a bridge in Portland or waiting for coffee at a Dutch Brothers.  After all, anything in life is better if you keep a good sense of humor.

Our little road family in Waldport, Oregon.

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Jul 03 2012
1 Comment
Life, Travel, Writing

Oregon Coast: Old Man & The Sea

Yesterday I hiked a ways with an old man.  He had to be in his 80s, at least.  He walked alone with his Bichon Frise, a friendly girl named Maggie.  At first I tried to walk away, to stay up with my group, but he kept talking.  He told me about moving to Alabama during the height of desegregation, how his daughter adapted a Southern accent in just two weeks to fit in, being drafted after high school, wondering what his life would have been like if he had become a vet at UC Davis like he planned instead.  He was a Sacramento transplant living on the Oregon coast.  Life left him alone and he needed to talk.

Riding away in the car after we parted ways, I felt a little sad.  Here all that old man wanted was someone to listen to his story and I was trying to walk faster to keep up with my group. Once I really stopped to listen, I was happy I did– he told some incredible stories, I only wish I got to hear more.

Every time I visit the Oregon Coast I do not want to leave.

Our hike to the sand dunes.

Sunset picnic on the beach.

 

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Jul 01 2012
4 Comments
Life, Travel, Writing

My Love Affair with Powell’s Books

One hour to explore the world’s greatest bookstore.  The results:

  • Three books found me instead of me finding them.  Powell’s is an amazing labyrinth of stacks and stacks of books, (4,000,000+ to be precise).  I headed for Milan Kundera in literature and was sucked into countless book covers and displays along the way.
  • Finally reached my original destination– Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, had second thoughts because my arms were already full, opened to a random page, which turned out to be a passage about writing a novel for the first time.  Fitting, sold.
  • Tears.  Literally.  I wanted to stay all day.  I have never been in a bookstore that sucked me in to this degree.  All those words, all those authors.  So many worlds captured.  A live poetry reading by a published author.  I will be back for much more than an hour next time.  Maybe I will just move to Portland.
  • Last, but not least, new life goal– someday have my own book hidden somewhere in those glorious stacks.

So many choices, so little time.

The bounty of my 30-minute shopping spree, (including two t-shirts).

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