Staying the Course

Yikes! In all the excitement over the past few days, Wednesday slipped by before I knew it.  Election night was something of a fairy tale with a huge happy ending, and many of us are basking in the afterglow of all those euphoric feelings about hope and change. I've been thinking a bit about dreams, and the visions we all have for our lives, particulary our writing lives.  We talked about our wildest writing dreams here a few weeks ago, and pondered the challenge of plunging forward to make those dreams come true.  It takes courage to embark on a quest, whether it's toward achieving our goals as a writer, an athlete, or a leader.  There's a great deal of excitement involved, and heady anticipation at the prospect of things to come. 

The outcome of our election is a good reminder of the way dreams come true.  But geting there involves not only the courage to embark on the project, but the strength to stay the course when the going gets rough. 

Those of you who are involved in NaNoWriMo are about to be tested in that regard.  These first few days were a picnic compared with the middle of road humps that are just ahead.  Those are the days when it seems as if your characters and plot are totally ridiculous, you have no idea where the story is going, your mind draws a blank when it comes to description and dialogue.  At about the mid-way point in your novel writing journey, you have to drag yourself to the keyboard, and those 50,000 words appear as an insurmountable goal.

Here's where you might need to employ "cheap tricks," as Julia Cameron calls them, to keep you on track. (The Right to Write)  A change of scenery works for some - taking your computer to a cafe or coffee shop.  Phoning a writing friend can help, someone who will encourage you to keep at it.  Even bribing yourself can help - the promise of a dinner at your favorite restaurant or even the indulgence of massage or manicure to celebrate the achievement of writing goals can sometimes be the incentive to get you started.

Cameron's favorite "cheap trick" is what she calls the "writing date," personally connecting with a writing friend and working in tandem.   "There is something enlivening about writing in duos," Cameron says. "A great deal of usuable track can be laid in chummy proximity."

I'm sure President elect Obama has plenty of experience with the doubts and negativity that plague us in the pursuit of our dreams.  His ability to stay the course was likely tested many times during the campaign, and will be tried many more during his tenure in office.  His dedication to the dream was inspiring, and we can take a page from his book when it comes to fulfilling the writing dreams we all share.

How about you?  Are you having a hard time staying the course toward fulfilling your writing dreams?  What are you doing about it?

Amazing!

Last night was amazing, wasn't it?  Who could tear themselves away from the television or computer, watching that sea of faces (more than 125,000!) in Grant Park, thousands more in Times Square, all eagerly anticipating the beginning of a new day in America.  It was a moment none of us in America will ever forget, another one of those "where were you when..." moments with which those of us who have lived more than half a century are so familiar. I've certainly never seen anything like it in my lifetime, and it gives my weary heart hope.

Joining in with all the multitudes watching this poised and confident young man step forward into the history books, I realized how hungry Americans had been for a leader we could admire and trust.  A leader who cared about us, and who, like a wise and loving parent, expected much of us.  I saw how the country, like a rowdy teenager under the care of neglectful parents, had run amuck, out of control.  How we needed someone with a firm hand to rein us in, set us on the right road, and keep us there.

There are a precious few people who have that special "it" factor - the charisma, but also the intelligence, the drive, the ability to inspire people - that can make history. And this man surely has it in spades.  But so much rides on Barack Obama's shoulders. Not long ago, he told a reporter that the thing keeping him awake at night was not worries about what to do if he lost the election, but what he would do if he won.

And now he has. And he must hoist a multitude of American people - black, white, yellow and red - on those shoulders with him. His election proves that the American people can speak out, that we have the strength to take back our country from the hands of old line politics, that we can embrace change with our hearts and minds.

But we must be realistic, and not expect that he can change things overnight.  It will be a slow, but hopefully steady process, this business of getting the country under control, of gathering us all together under this umbrella of hope.  As Obama said last night, we must buy into the notion that there we are not a collection of "red states and blue states, we are the United States of America." 

Like a fractured family, who has gone far too long without the oversight of a wise and intelligent parent, it will take time and love to get ourselves back on the right track.

But after the spectacle of last night, I believe it's possible. 

 I believe we can!

Getting A Blessing

It was one of the singular pleasures of my girlhood, a trip out to my Aunt Lil's house. The 30 mile car ride to her little house on Elizabeth Lake was an all day affair, and we'd start out about 10:00, my mother, my grandmother, and my Aunt Lissie.  I'd clamber eagerly into the back seat with a book tucked securely under my arm.  My grandmother always had a paper grocery sack filled with home baked goodies, because of course one never went visiting without taking something to eat. I remember the ride down Telegraph Road, the parade of stores and restaurants  finally giving way to lakefront views and tiny cottage size homes.  Occasionally I'd have dozed off in the back seat, the gentle motion of my aunt's big Buick sedan rocking me to sleep.  The crunch of tires on Aunt Lil's gravel road always woke me quickly, for I knew we were nearly there.

She usually heard us coming, my aunt did, and would burst through the screen door of the little gray shingled house, untying her faded apron, or wiping her hands on a clean cotton dishtowel.  "There you are!" she'd call gaily.  "Hurry on in, lunch is on the table!"

I have no idea why those lunches around her big kitchen table were so exceedingly good. Usually they were quite similar to our lunches at home - cold cuts, like boiled ham or that corned beef you get in the can which opens with one of those miniature keys, a dish of crisp lettuce leaves, radiant red garden tomato slices, and sweet bread-n-butter pickles.  A loaf of fragrant, fresh baked bread was often sliced at the table, and strongly brewed iced tea was poured into tall, slender glasses with a pattern of leaves stencilled gracefully on the edge.  I would sit, happily munching away at my sandwich while the women's voices rose and fell harmoniously around me.

"Wait 'til you see the material I got at Penney's yesterday,"  someone would say.  "I'm going to use it for curtains here in the kitchen."

"Did you talk to Jen yet?" another voice would ask.  "Have you heard what that boy of hers is up to now?"

"I swear, I cannot get Carl to stop smoking" - this from my grandmother, who was on an eternal quest to rid my grandfather of the habit that would eventually (as she always promised) be "the death of him."

So I absorbed their conversation along with my lunch, the cadence of their voices nurturing my soul as their food fed my body.  By modern standards, their lives were simple and commonplace, yet the ordinary events of their days seemed almost magical to me and certainly filled me with a sense of security and comfort. The memory of those times around the table is as vivid as if it were yesterday, rather than 45 years ago.

Today, a sparkling fall day, with the last of autumns glory clinging to the trees etched golden and ruby red against the brilliant blue sky, my mother and I took the drive out Telegraph road to say our final goodbyes to my Aunt Lil, who died last week at the age of 92. 

Much was said today about her ability to cook and her love of "putting on a spread."  We all remembered holiday dinners around her table, when she and my grandmother would vie over who could put the most food on one surface and still leave room for plates and silverware.  Many people recalled her energetic spirit, her love of "visiting" with her friends and working in her church.  Stories were told about her annual car treks back and forth from one daughter's home in Texas to the other daughter's home in Michigan - a journey she made alone each year, driving in her little Plymouth, taking only the back roads and stopping at least 10 times to visit friends and family along the way.

She leaves two daughters, seven grandchildren, and nine great grandchildren - a good legacy, I think.  A few years ago, she gave me some advice I've called upon quite often.  She was talking about some volunteer work she'd been doing at her church, saying it had become something of a chore because the people she worked with tended to whine and complain about everything.

"Honey, I was coming home every week just mad at the whole place," she said in her Kentucky accent, made even broader by the years she'd lived in Dallas.  "And I thought to myself -why, if I'm not getting a blessing from this, I shouldn't be doing it at all." 

I've found myself using this criteria for a lot of things in my life, and it's helped me to put some of them in a very different perspective.

And so one more of the old guard in my family is gone.  But I'll remember her energy and spirit, the sound of her laugh which rang out over everyone else's.  I'll think of her when I go shopping, for she loved to wander the stores and looked forward to getting a new outfit each season.  I'll recall her wisdom and strength, her kindness and good humor.

And most of all, I'll remember those summertime lunches around her kitchen table, and the warmth that spread right into the heart of a little girl, to dwell there forever. 

I surely got a blessing from that.

The Age Factor

My friend Millie is quite a bit older than I - in fact, she's old enough to be my mother.  Somehow, though, I always think of her as a contemporary.  She's stylish, fit, active in all aspects of life, and she keeps a schedule that makes me tired just thinking about it! Millie is one of my musical mentors...she taught me everything I know about playing handbells, shepherded my acceptance into Classical Bells, encouraged me to do all the kinds of things I didn't think were possible.  We've traveled together, lived together, shared lots of laughs over hot coffee in the morning and glasses of wine in the evening.

Although I no longer perform with Classical Bells, Millie and I are stand partners in our church bell choir, a group she herself directed for many years (played in and directed at the same time, I might add, and that's no mean feat!)

Last Sunday we played in church for the first time this year, and I was forced to accept something I've been noticing for a while.

She's not as sharp as she used to be.

Oh, she's fine in rehearsal, but when the pressure of performance time hits, and she gets a little flustered, things go wrong.  She loses her place, or picks up the wrong bell, and then she gets more flustered and perhaps turns two pages.  And then, it's pretty hard to recover. 

Now you'd never guess it to look at her, or listen to her speak, but my friend Millie is 72 years old.  And when you reach that age, it's pretty inevitable that the brain synapses aren't going to fire as rapidly as they once did, that change is going to be a bit harder to handle, that stress is going to take a bigger toll than it once did.

So, why am I telling you all these things about my best friend, whom I love so dearly?

Because the man who could be President of this country is also 72 years old.  Should he be elected, in the ensuing four years he will face unparalleled stresses on his mind and body.  People aren't talking a lot about the age factor in this election, but they should be.  A man that age, particularly one who has already suffered some pretty significant health problems, has absolutely no business running a country, especially one in huge crisis.

When my friend is pressured, gets flustered, and loses her place, it's not a big deal.

But if it happens to the leader of the free world, it's a very big deal indeed.

Marathon

My apologies for the late posting this week...I have been inundated with work, and the past few days have been a marathon of writing (of the medical, technical variety).  My daylight hours have been chock full of typing and paper shuffling, and last night during the time when I usually put the finishing touches on Write On Wednesday's post, I was sleeping blissfully in my easy chair. C'est la vie.

Speaking of marathons, there is a real writing marathon about to begin, the equivalent of the Boston 26 miler run in a chill November wind.

It's called NaNoWriMo.

Short for "National Novel Writing Month," it's an internet based writing venture whose participants pledge to write 50,000 words (a 175 page novel) between November 1 and midnight, November 30. 

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

In 2006 and 2007, I completed the challenge.  Although I'm not a runner, I believe the experience was something akin to getting through one of those long races...the initial excitement at you start out with chapter one, the miles midway when it feels as if your heart (and head!) will burst with the effort of slogging through the daily 1667 words, the moment when your second wind kicks in with a brave new idea or direction for your story, and the final rush of adrenaline when the your word count hits 40,000 and you glimpse "the end" in sight.

What do I have to show for all that work?  My "trophies" - sheafs of typed pages neatly bound in paper folders and tucked away at the bottom of my bookshelf  - will probably never be read by anyone other than my grandchildren, who may run across the pages when they're clearing my belongings out of the nursing home.

The other "trophy" - the sense of accomplishment, albeit a private one, the sense of satisfaction that, yes indeed, there was a completely evolved story residing inside my head which I was able to coherently put it on paper in the space of 30 days - well, that one I get to carry around with me forever.

Although I'm taking this year off from NaNoWriMo, I'll be here on the sidelines cheering on all the participants as they pound the keyboard in their race to the finish line. 

Write On.

So, how about you?  If you've done NaNoWriMo, what was the experience like for you?  If you've never done it, do you think you could?  Do you have a novel residing in you somewhere, waiting to get out?