Begin at the Beginning

September feels like a new beginning to me - I suppose because I'm still a schoolgirl at heart.  September buzzed with the excitement of new classes and books, seeing all my friends everyday, projects and parties and programs.  But this year, there is no school bell in my future, nary a one.  Neither student, nor teacher, not even that ubiquitous "staff member" appelation I wore for the past 15 years in my capacity as music department accompanist.  So I've been searching for ways to get a bit of that September enthusiasm into my regular work place and my home life.  Last week I cleaned out my desk at the office, re-arranged my overheard compartment, and hauled my recycle box to the storage room to await the shredder. 

At home, I made a trip to Office Max and picked up new file folders, then emptied out a desk drawer where I can now store all my home office paperwork in one place, rather than the fragmented assortment of bins and baskets where it's now located.

Now all I need are some inspirational posters, post-it notes in bright colors, and stickers that shout "You Can Do It!" and "Hang in There!" or "You're Tops!"

In short, I've been keeping really busy so that I don't think too much about this big change in my life, this absence of music and school and interacting with young people.  Because while I won't miss the hectic schedule, or the last minute programs at holiday time, or the winter festivals that always occur during prime time traveling season, I will miss working with musicians, and helping kids realize their musical dreams, and being around the energy that radiates from talented teenagers.

Yep, I'll miss those kids a lot.  A few weeks ago I set up a Facebook account,  and rarely a day goes by that I don't receive a "friend request" from a former student, even from as far back as 1993  - this one a young mother who is sending her daughter off to kindergarten tomorrow!

And I'm a little worried about my musical skills, because I know myself pretty well, and I won't be working at the keyboard unless there's something specific to prepare for.  Technique goes pretty quickly (like muscle tone!) when you stop practicing and performing.

But mostly I'll miss the sense of working to accomplish something important that I always feel when I'm musically active.  My music jobs are never about making money - they're always about challenging myself to become better at my craft while accomplishing something that makes other people happy or more fulfilled. 

Actually, I suppose that's the way I feel about every job I have.  I've always been fortunate in that I could work at jobs which were personally rewarding to me.  I like to be challenged, to master new skills and interact with people I respect and from whom I can learn.  And that's probably why I always loved school so much, because it offered the opportunity to become better every year, to expand my mind and my social life and all my horizons.

So perhaps I should start looking for some new ways to engage the brain matter, musically or otherwise.

September beckons.

How Lucky am I?

My gift from Laundrygirl

August has been an unusually lucky month for me - I've won two blog giveaways, and was a prizewinner in a blog reading contest.

The wonderful wire sculpture of the letter "b" (is for becca's byline and for bookstack!) was a gift from artist and blogger Kristine Mays, who writes at notes from the laundromat.  Kristine works in wire, and as I hold this piece in my hands, I'm in awe of the skill and patience it must take to create these artistic renderings. 

You can't know how much I cherish these kinds of gifts, for I have absolutely no artistic talent of this kind.  I clearly recall my elementary school art classes, which were almost as nerve-wracking for me as math class.  None of my projects ever turned out the way I wanted them too, and I spent many tearful, frustrating times working away, usually making them worse in the process. 

So, mille grazie, Kristine :)

My winning streak continued when Gautami emailed to tell me I had won a signed copy of Matrimony, a novel by Joshua Henkin.  After reading her review, I was really excited to read this book, so I'm eagerly watching my mailbox for that to arrive.  I'll be reviewing the book, and hosting my own giveaway of an autographed copy (courtesy of the author!) sometime in October.   I'll keep you posted on the details.

THEN, last but not least, yours truly was the "silver medalist" in the Olympic Reading Challege, which I participated in over at Bookstack, my book blog.  My prize (an Amazon gift certificate!) has already been spent on - a book! what else??  

And now, before my lucky August runs out, I'm off to my local convenience store to buy a lottery ticket.

Practice Time

My best friend Lisa and I started taking piano lessons when we were about six years old.  We had the same teacher, and were quite competitive (well, at least she  was).  I recall Lisa was never able to come out and play between 6:00 and 6:30 because it was her set time to practice piano.  There was a wind up kitchen timer always sitting on top of her piano, and her mother would set the timer for 30 minutes, during which Lisa was to practice her Hanon and scales, do the workbook exercises we were set each week, and then practice her pieces. I have to confess, my practice techniqe was much more haphazard.  I would sit down for 15 or 20 minutes in the morning before school, and usually play for a while as a way of relaxing after I came home.  I often did the workbook pages in the car on the way to my lesson.  As for Hanon and scales - well, let's just say I didn't get many gold stars on those pages in my lesson book.  My parents never forced me to practice, or chided me if I didn't.  I loved playing, and since I seemed to be at the piano for a good portion of every day, they were never too careful about exactly what I was doing. 

A few weeks ago, we talked about our writing practice in terms of an activity we held in high esteem in our lives, approaching it almost as a spiritual, ritualistic event.  This week, with the beginning of a new school year upon us, I'm thinking of writing practice in a bit more, well, practical  sense.  Here's how Natalie Goldberg describes it:

This is the practice shool of writing.  Like running, the more you do it, the better you get at it.  Some days you don't want to run and you resist every step of the three miles, but you do it anyway.  You practice whether you want to or not.  You don't wait around for inspiration and a deep desire to run.  It'll never happen, especially if you're out of shape and avoiding it.  But if you run regularly, you train your mind to cut through or ignore your resistance.  You just do it.  And in the middle of the run, you love it.  When you come to the end, you never want it to stop.

That's how writing is, too.  Once you're deep into it, you wonder what took you so long to finally settle down at the desk.  Through practice you actually do get better.  You learn to trust your deep self more and not give in to your voice that wants to avoid writing.  It is odd that we never question the feasibilty of a footballe team practicing long hours for one game; yet in writing we rarely give ourselves the space for practice.

I have a long standing writing practice, and I admit it's a bit like my piano practice.  I write every day, with a cheap, ball point pen, in a brightly colored spiral notebook, three pages of anything.  Sometimes it's stream of consciousness garbage, sometimes it's a list of everything I'm worried about, or happy about, or thinking about.  More often than not, it starts out as one thing and becomes something else - today, what began as a simple memory about a conversation I overheard as a child turned into five pages about my neighborhood. 

My favorite time for writing practice is first thing in the morning, after one cup of coffee and about 15 minutes of reading.  Often, something in my reading will ignite an idea for writing -this morning, it was a passage in Richard Russo's Bridge of Sighs that got me started. 

I don't hold myself to any time limit (no kitchen timers for me!), but I usually find myself spending about 20 or 30 minutes on these pages.  I write loosely, and messily, on one side of the page.  This writing is for me, and it doesn't matter whether it's grammatically correct.  When I'm really "on," the pen can barely keep up with my racing thoughts - sometimes, I feel as if my brain is running away with me, like flying down a steep hill on my bike.

"This writing practice is a warm-up for anything else you might want to write," Goldberg continues.  "It is the bottom line, the most primitive, essential beginning of writing."  Through the daily writing, we learn to listen to our own voice and trust it, we learn to free our thoughts and then corral them into words, to improvise like a jazz musician at the keyboard, experimenting with the tools of the trade. 

So this week, I'm channeling my friend Lisa's mother - if you don't regularly practice writing, challenge yourself to do so.  Get yourself some brightly colored spiral notebooks (they're on sale everywhere just now!) and a package of pens.  Find a time each day when you can sit down for a few minutes and just write.  No need to pressure yourself - you'll know when you've said all that need to be said. 

By the way, lest you're wondering how our musical career's ended up - my friend Lisa stopped lessons in 10th grade, and hasn't played since.  Me, on the other hand - well, I've been playing the piano regularly for the last 42 years, working as an accompanist, a solist, and just playing for the pure love of music.

How about you? Do you have a writing practice?  What's it like?  How has it helped you become a better writer?  If you're thinking about starting a writing practice, how do you envision it?  What would work for you?

Occasionally, Write On Wednesday  will offer a writing activity to use in your writing practice notebook, or as an idea to blog about.  Here's one to start you off...

Writing Practice Idea: Write about a time in your life when you were learning a new activity - a musical instrument, a sport, a language - and how you went about practicing it.

Silence Is Golden

The world is such a noisy place, isn't it?  Cacophonous, really, with cell phones ringing, televisions and radio's blaring, cars engines surging, road crews pounding, weedwhackers buzzing...incessant.  Talking heads every which way we turn.   It seems as if we're afraid of quiet, as if we won't be able to survive even a few moments in the dentist's waiting room without the latest episode of Oprah to keep us company. And I haven't even mentioned the riotous inner voices, the ones that crescendo in your head - the long to-do lists, the nagging worries about family and friends, concerns about money and health and the state of the world, the anger at those 10 pounds you can't seem to lose - noisy reminders that life is so much less than we'd like it to be.

When my son was small, he created a series of cartoon characters called the Knight Enforcers, whose mission was to abolish all unwanted noise throughout the world.  They'd careen around town in their specially equipped vehicle, looking for babies crying too loudly (his personal pet peeve), construction workers with hyrdaulic drills, and any other poor unsuspecting creature disturbing their sense of aural peace.

Very often, I wish I could call out the Knight Enforcers.

In this month's print issue of More magazine, Katy Butler writes about attending a six-day silent retreat at Spirit Rock, a Buddhist center in Northern California.  Although I often feel myself a victim of noise fatigue, there's also a part of me that feels slightly terrified at the thought of imposed silence, and six days of it...well, frankly, I can't even imagine it. 

However, Butler makes it sound quite appealing.  "By day three," she writes, "my inner state has changed.  The neurotic voices get quieter, then disappear altogether.  My neck ache goes away.  My thoughts meander along, rather than speeding by like cars in a city tunnel.  Some unknown source gives me the energy to sit upright, totally relaxed and silent.  I realize that although I may not control the details of my life, I can control my peace of mind if I choose to."

It's not likely that I'll be attending a silent retreat anytime soon, so I'm looking for ways to gain some of the benefits of silence in my daily life, an antidote to that ever present voice in my head telling me what I should be doing, not to mention the noises imposed so rudely upon me by modern society.  Could it be as simple as taking a few minutes every morning and tuning in to the deeper sounds of my soul?

Perhaps.  Butler refers to a book entitled Happiness Is an Inside Job,by Sylvia Boorstein, who writes that silence "doesn't have to be something holy and elaborate, like a spiritual practice, but just a little me time.  Silence is not self-centered.  It simply counteracts the fact that women, stereotypically at least, are taught to listen not to themselves but to the demands of their community."

Boy, do I know about that.  And those demands, many of which are never even spoken aloud, are just as vociferous as if they were a chorus of noisy jackhammers pounding in my mind's ear.

The remedy?

Spending 5 or 10 minutes each morning, before turning to book or even morning pages journal, sitting quietly with my coffee cup enjoying the rich aroma wafting over the rim.  Eating a meal in silence, savoring each bite, noticing the tastes and textures that pass my lips.  Unplugging for a part of each day - switching off cell phone and radio and computer.  In time, consider expanding these episodes of quiet time into an entire morning, day, or even weekend.

I think I'll give it a try.  At least until the Knight Enforcers get here.

Write On Wednesday: Writing Style Meme

I was a strange little girl - I loved homework.  I still recall the bitter disappointment on my first day of kindergarten when the teacher did not give us books to take home or a homework assignment to complete.  This week's Write On Wednesday is to placate my inner child, who's been awakened by all the back to school advertising and the plethora of school supplies in every store. It's an assignment!  Answer the following questions about your writing habits/style.

Goodie!

Wait, I have to get some clean paper... and sharpen my pencil...hang on, maybe I'll use this notebook instead, the one with the pretty purple cover...

O-kaaay...I'll get to work now.

1. Do you write fiction or non-fiction?  Or both?  I actually do write both, although I've always considered myself more of a non-fiction writer.  I have fun dabbling in fiction, especially at NaNoWriMo time!
2. Do you keep a journal or a writing notebook?  I write morning pages quite religioiusly, and use ordinary spiral notebooks you buy in the Walgreen's.  I kept a separate notebook for the last novella I wrote, with divided sections for research, ideas for plot and character development.
3.  If you write fiction, do you know your characters’ goals, motivations, and conflicts before you start writing or is that something else you discover only after you start writing? Do you find books on plotting useful or harmful?  In the two novellas I've written, I had a pretty good idea of the characters goals and motivations.  As I wrote, some rather surprising things turned up, and they were so interesting I decided to use them.
4.  Are you a procrastinator or does the itch to write keep at you until you sit down and work?  Sigh.  Mostly a procrastinator.  But when I do make it to the page, I can go on for hours.
5. Do you write in short bursts of creative energy, or can you sit down and write for hours at a time? .  See above.  However, if I'm pressed for time, sometimes I get a lot done because I know I don't have the luxury of doodling around.
6. Are you a morning or afternoon writer? Definitely morning.  Or late night.  Not much in between, which is usually reserved for the detritus of everyday life.
7. Do you write with music/the noise of children/in a cafe or other public setting, or do you need complete silence to concentrate?  I really need SILENCE.  Have to have it.
8. Computer or longhand? (or typewriter?) Mostly good old Microsoft word.  If I write longhand, I get going so fast the writing becomes illegible.
9. Do you know the ending before you type Chapter One?  Or do you let the story evolve as you write?  I ususally think I know the ending - but it seems like it often surprises me!
10. Does what’s selling in the market influence how and what you write?  Not really.  I think I write the kind of things I like to read, in my fiction and non-fiction - stories about real women facing real life situations and emotions. 
11. Editing/Revision - love it or hate it?   Hate it.  Scared to death of it.  Desperately need help with it.  Sigh.

If you'd like to be part of the class, go on over to Write On Wednesday and join in :)