The Sunday Salon: Reading and Rambling Along

The Sunday Salon.com Nothing stops me from reading.

You all know that.

No matter how many boxes need packing, how much stuff needs sorting, how much laundry needs doing, when my heart feels tugged toward my book my body soon follows it to the comfy chair in the corner of my writing room where I can curl up and escape into a different world.

Throughout my entire life, I’ve found books my most tried and true companions. When I’m happy, I love to celebrate it with reading. When I’m hurting, losing myself in the words and ideas of others soothes my soul for a while.

For the books I’ve loved the most, I’m always curious to know more about their authors. So often, reading a book sends me down a virtual pathway to that writers door. I research biographies, collections of letters, published versions of their journals. If you were to search my shelves, you’d find little villages where an author “lives” in the printed word, surrounded by her own books like she would be children.  Madeleine L’Engle has a large amount of real estate in this neighborhood. So do Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf. As does Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Anna Quindlen is there - her novels and her memoirs. Gail Godwin’s novels have been joined recently by her two volumes of memoir.

Over the years, there has been criticism devoted to people who try and place authors too squarely in their work, who try and figure out what it was in the writer’s personal life that led them to write a certain character or develop a certain theme.

It shouldn’t matter, they’ve said. The writer’s personal life does not affect our interpretation of her work.

But how can it not? I think. And why wouldn’t I want it to? For me, it adds that extra bit of seasoning when I realize how an author’s own personality or life experience has shaped their work. It’s a gift, an extra layer in the cake that makes up our shared human experience.

It’s also one of the things that I’ve loved about “book blogging.” It has allowed me to meet so many writers through their blogs and on their Facebook and Twitter. It does not at all detract from the “mystery” of their writing. On the contrary, it adds a deeper dimension to my reading of their books.

Reading is the whole package for me - it’s The Story, but it’s also about the Creator of The Story. I love getting to know both of them.

One Week to Go

This is probably the last weekend we’ll be living in this house. I can qualify that by saying living "full time” in this house, since it will probably be several months before we’re ready to put it on the market.

But beginning next Friday, our everyday living at Brookwood Court begins.

Yikes.

I ran into one of my mother’s friends at the grocery today, and she gave me a warm, motherly type hug. “You have been through so much this year!” she said.

Well, I suppose you could consider selling one house, buying another, moving into the new house, and then getting yet another house ready to sell a lot.

Yes, I suppose you could.

Especially for folks like us who have never really moved before.

I don’t know whether I’ve become a more sanguine personality in my old age, or whether I’m in some sort of real estate shock, but I’m not extremely perturbed about the situation. Maybe I’m just burying my head in the sand, and come next Friday I’ll have a complete emotional collapse.

But I don’t think so.

One thing I’ve noticed about being my age - stuff just doesn’t carry the magnitude it once did. I’m talking about the stuff of life, the stuff that used to make me crazy and keep me up nights just thinking about it. Now the really big stuff- aging, and illness, and death - that stuff worries me. And I have been through a lot of that in the past three years.

Compared to that, everything else seems so manageable.

Still, this moving thing is Pretty Big Stuff.

I wander through the little hallways in my house, comparing the number of footsteps it takes to get from my bed to the coffeemaker here (9) with the new house (21 and 15 of them are stairs).

I open the backdoor and let the dogs out at 10 pm and realize that starting next week, I’ll have to go out with them. (no fences)

But then I look at the leaves on the 57 trees scattered around this 1/2 acre lot and realize I’ll never have to rake leaves again. I can scorn the snowblower when I walk by in the garage, plan on giving it to Goodwill, because whenever there is more than one inch of snow it will be shoveled for me.

Mostly, I look at a neighborhood that served this family well for 60 years, but one that is undergoing a major sea change, a metamorphosis that moves beyond anything we can do to change it or make it work for us into the rest of our lives.

The next week will be busy and exciting and sad and frightening all rolled into one.

It will be an experience I never forget.

One week to go.

 

Write On Wednesday: Three Reasons Why Writers Should Work Out

<huff huff> <pant pant>

In case you couldn’t tell, I’m fresh from my morning work out.  I've amped it up this week to combat a few extra pounds that managed to creep around my waist when I wasn’t looking. I try to exercise at least five days per week, and it’s become habitual enough that I feel out of sorts if I miss a day.

There have been several physical benefits to my exercise regimen. My lower backaches have all but disappeared. I’ve stopped having chronic sinus infections. Best of all, I can eat practically anything I want (in moderation - the aforementioned extra pounds were directly related to my failure to follow this rule and a bag of Ruffles potato chips) and not gain weight.

Physical exercise is good for more than the body. There are real reasons why working out is good for your writing too.

1. Physical exercise boosts creativity. I’m sure there are scientific studies that quantify this fact, but I don’t need them - my own experience is validation enough. I always make sure to have a notebook and pen at hand because so many good ideas come flooding into my head while I’m exercising that I could never remember them all without jotting them down.

2. Physical exercise improves your mood. Unless you’ve discovered a huge market for sob stories, depressed writers are not terribly popular or productive. The endorphins released during exercise plus the stimulation of  blood flow to the brain help you feel happier and less stressed.

3. Physical exercise improves your strength and endurance. Writing may be a sedentary occupation, but it still requires stamina. Strengthening the core muscles prevents back fatigue and pain that can distract you from the work in progress, and force you away from the desk earlier than necessary.

Invest some time and energy in discovering a form of exercise that works for you. I think it’s key to find something you enjoy doing and that fits into your life without too much disruption to your daily schedule.

Then make a habit of it. The dividends are well worth it.

How about you? Has physical activity helped your writing? Discuss.

Earth Shattering

For my generation, it was the second “where were you when...” event in our lifetime. For my mother, it was the third such occasion.

Unforgettable days like these - December 7, 1941, November 22, 1963, September 11, 2001 - are etched in the memory of every American who lived through them. They become landmarks in our personal history as well as in the history of our nation. And what happens as a result of cataclysmic occurrences like Pearl Harbor and John Kennedy’s assasination and the terrorist attacks changes the course of every living person on the planet.

Earth shattering.

Stephen King’s novel, 11-22-63, does a marvelous job of revealing the way the course of history can be changed by one event. I sometimes forget that one historical action leads to a series of reactions that shape the future. Without the impetus - the action that sets the dominos falling - the future becomes completely different. In King’s novel, we see his vision of a modern American had Kennedy lived to fulfill his term.

And it isn’t pretty.

Of course that’s just fiction, and Stephen King’s fiction at that, so we don’t expect it to be rosy. But it clarified what a stunning impact one event can have on the future of the world.

So on this anniversary of one particularly earth shattering event, I can’t help but wonder how life eleven years later would be different if those terrorists had been stopped at the security gates, if they’d never been allowed on those planes that beautiful fall morning.

How the world would be different if those same men had grown up without all that hatred in their heart.

If we could all tolerate the diverse beliefs and opinions that exist throughout the universe.

If we could all live in peace.

Earth shattering.