An unintended vacation

I haven't updated this blog in nearly two weeks, mostly because I was on vacation and, prior to that, hurriedly getting ready for Christmas. During vacation I had limited access to a computer—there were eight of us in one house vying for time on the computer. When my turn came it was always with interruptions as people walked into the bedroom/study, or usually with the feeling that someone was hovering nearby, ready to pounce on the keyboard if I even left for the bathroom.

I am sorry that we have become so tied to our computers, but I realized something important about myself: I only like to write when no one is around. Not just in an empty room but in an empty house, if possible. If that's not possible, I want to have time/room to myself with boundaries clearly demarcated. (However, I have been able to write in coffee shops, sitting by myself and intent on my work because there is no one there to interrupt me or ask me to do something for them.)

I wrote half a blog post but then couldn't finish it because the ending required that I slide into deep thought to gather my thoughts in a circular way. With people talking around me, my thoughts just kept skidding and going in obvious and superficial directions, so I gave up. I surrendered to the holiday or the idea of holiday, knowing I could make up for it later. I wrote part of a short story in my head, while trying to go to sleep at night, ready to dictate it through my willing fingers in a few days.

This recent experience has made me admire Jane Austen even more. The biography, Jane Austen, by Carol Shields, which I skimmed through last year, said that Jane would write while others conversed around her, and was quick to hide her work if anyone came into her room. She had little time for solitude. (For more, see Jane Austen paragraph in QACW). Of course, Jane Austen didn't have children and there were servants around to clean and cook. But it makes me a little sad for her that she hid her writing from her family, that it was just something she did on the side, as a hobby, and probably wasn't taken seriously at first. If she had been a man, I imagine he might have asked for and gotten time and space to himself even from the beginning. And he wouldn't have been considered an asshole for making such demands, even if he turned out to be a lousy writer.

I know this last paragraph should come to some kind of conclusion, but I have a kid here tap-dancing and talking to me about one of her Christmas presents, so I'll just have to end it where it is.

Writing Home word cloud

OK, so I'm a little behind, and maybe everyone already knows about this, but I think it's cool—it's a Wordle* representation of the most-used text on this blog (click on the thumbprint to see it enlarged):

* From www.wordle.net/: Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.

The next big idea

Stephanie Meyer (who wrote the Twilight series) says the story came to her in a vivid dream: “In my dream, two people were having an intense conversation in a meadow in the woods. One of these people was just your average girl. The other person was fantastically beautiful, sparkly, and a vampire.” (SM Biography)

J.K. Rowling says that “the idea for Harry Potter simply fell into my head” during a train ride from Manchester to London.

Today, feeling a little tired already, I decided to lie down and wait for the next big book idea to come to me. I made myself as receptive as possible, taking deep relaxing breaths and shooing away any thoughts of doubt or feelings of guilt for lying down so soon in the morning after getting up.

And there the visions came to me: a mailbox of colorful mittens saying, “Hullo guv-ner,” just like the chimney sweeps in the Mary Poppins movie. Since I was passively letting these visions flow through me I didn’t respond to them, and they didn’t say much beyond, ‘hullo, hullo” or do much except for flapping around in the mailbox.

Then I saw a girl with white-blond hair skating on an icy river, flying off with suddenly sprouting wings. She didn’t look around at me but just headed towards the distance.

In my final vision, I saw a large boatful of Medieval monks in black robes with hoods, traveling into a tunnel singing Gregorian chants.

So, to summarize, I got:

• a new character (maybe) for Pee Wee’s Playhouse, if it is ever revived
• a new Barbie movie or movie heroine, a skating fairy or a bewitched princess
• a scene from a movie I think I’ve already watched

At least I felt a little more rested.

Markets for short non-fiction

I made this list of non-fiction markets for anyone who might benefit from it—but keep in mind it's mostly here so I won't misplace it! Markets that specifically publish flash or short non-fiction were hard to find, which is why I included the Creative Nonfiction list of publications from Poets and Writers; perhaps hyperlinking through it will lead to other markets.

Brevity - Check guidelines page for submissions calendar; usually don't accept in summer months.

Conclave - Publishes personal essays 750-1,000 words.

flashquake - Says it publishes flash fiction and non-fiction.

Poets and Writers - Creative Nonfiction list - A list of ALL literary journals in their catalog that print non-fiction, regardless of length. (But I thought the list was useful, so I'm including here anyway).

The Sun Magazine - Readers Write feature - No word limit given on guidelines page, but they normally run length of two columns or less. They list a new topic to write about each month, which Sun readers are to write about.

* * * * * *

Here are some anthologies devoted to short nonfiction (but, given the dates of publication, some of the markets/pubs are obviously no longer going to be valid):

• In Brief: Short Takes on the Personal (1999!)
• In Short: A Collection of Brief Creative Nonfiction (1996!)
• Short Takes: Brief Encounters with Contemporary Nonfiction (2005)

Sundays in the South

A realtor was quoted recently in the Washington Post Real Estate section saying, “Most buyers have no use for a living room.... It’s functionally obsolete...” Instead, people are converting those spaces to home offices, where they can work more quietly, and alone. The realtor then goes on to explain why: “Everyone here (in the D.C. area) is so uptight. We are so hustle and bustle. Everything is work mode.”

Perhaps this explains why I rarely go to people’s houses around here and sit in their living rooms and talk. Rarer, still, for my entire family to go to someone’s house for the sole purpose of sitting and talking together, as we did when I was growing up in the South. Now we are usually too busy on weekends. And even when we're not busy, we don't know that many other people who aren't busy or whose sudden lack-of-busyness coincides with ours. (I know, also, that some people never have us over because they are too busy to keep their houses clean).

When I was young, Sundays would find us sitting in our grandmother’s living room, joking and sharing with other family members. My Uncle Raymond and his wife and kids would come up every other week from Salisbury, 70 miles away, but most of the rest of us simply walked down the street to be there. We visited her during the week, as well, but those less formal visits were confined to her den or kitchen. On Sundays in the summer, we'd walk across the street to Aunt Maxie and Lola Belle's and sit on their front porch, amid large pots of Christmas stocking ferns, watching cars drive by while we rocked ourselves on their porch swing.

(When I returned to my grandmother’s house after going away to California for a few years, I was surprised at how small it was. The elegant couch and ashtrays with tiny pink china roses seemed almost ordinary, the room and house itself smaller than I remembered.)

I would get bored sitting there with my elderly aunts, my fidgeting cousins and smoking male relatives. Sometimes moments would pass with no one saying anything. Often the topic of conversation was who was sick in the neighborhood or who was having troubles in their lives, things I didn’t care to know as a child. In the winter, in the overheated house, I longed for fresh air and spring warmth.

But still I learned about my family, I learned the history of each of my relatives, and how we were akin to each other. I learned about how sweet my great-grandmother had been, how good with his hands my grandfather had been. We were surrounded by history. Maxie and Lola Belle lived in their parents' house; their brother and other sisters married and moved out, but they stayed on, adding a chandelier in the dining room, plush carpet in the living room, other parts of the house entirely unchanged, their father's furniture still in most of the rooms.

Now my own children hear about their great-grandmother intermittently, with no tangible thing to attach to the recollection, most of the people in my stories long gone. My grandmother's house was sold years ago and I don't know who lives there. There is never anyone outside it. No one is sitting on any of the porches in the neighborhood when I drive by. Perhaps they are inside, watching television together—or they are sitting alone in front of their computers, in their home offices, writing about the past.

(Pictured: My grandparents, in their living room, in an undated photo. He died when I was six.)

My other kid

My teenage son, Isaac, came up to me a couple of days ago with a funny look on his face; after pausing for a few moments, he finally asked, "Why don't you ever write about me on your blog?"

While this isn't entirely true—he was mentioned in the posts Mea Culpa, Dinnertime conversations in an eccentric household, and Urban legends and bad poetry—they're all from last year.

The simple answer is that I didn't think he'd want me to mention him, especially in my recent posts about children's books. Yes, he sometimes listens to children's books in the car with me and his eight-year-old sister (usually as a captive audience), but I didn't think he'd want me to broadcast it. And, because he is gearing up to go to college next year, I guess I was granting him more independence, in my mind, than he would have as fodder for one of my blog posts.

The more complex answer is that I view his comics and short stories and doodles as his own creative/intellectual property, not something I can distribute without permission or that I should even ask permission to distribute.* They are his to do with as he wishes.

This begs the question, though—why do I feel that I can upload Emily's drawing and ideas but not his?

I suppose the main reason is that she doesn't have access to the Internet or other forms of distribution that he does, should he choose to share his stuff. I made that decision for her, then, when I shared samples of her Smiley Book Club and I'm not sure I entirely have that right. But I know, from past experience, that the titles from the Smiley Book Club are likely to disappear or rip or disintegrate in the next few years and be forgotten, and it was a way to preserve a sample of them electronically. And it was so perfect, to see the Smiley Book Club suddenly appear out of her backpack right after I wrote about listening to Andrew Clements' books. I hadn't known that his books (particularly Lunch Money) had had that much effect on her.

If blogs had been around when Isaac was young, I imagine I would have at least occasionally posted samples of some of his political cartoons and comics, particularly if they had been inspired by something he/we were reading. But the time has passed when I can post his childhood drawings—I don't want to embarrass him retroactively. And eventually, I suppose, Emily will want me to keep her drawings and books off my blog. I wouldn't want her to fear that showing them to me would risk their appearance on the world wide web.

So I have mentioned my son in my blog now. Perhaps this will be the last time he'll want me to mention him again, at least for awhile. But I'll certainly link to anything he chooses to put on the Internet in the future, proud mom that I am.

(* Addendum: Shortly after I initially posted this, Isaac suggested I add a picture of him as an illustration; he chose the digital self-portrait that now appears at the top of the post, which he drew this summer).

The Smiley Book Club

A few days after I wrote my post on children's books, my eight-year-old daughter cleaned out her desk at school and brought home a collection of little books she has been writing whenever she finishes a test or task early. She calls them the "Smiley Book Club" and checks them out to her friends if they sign a take-out slip or promise to write a review on the back page, e.g., "This is a good book!"

Except for the fact that she is lending them out for free, her book club is reminiscent of Andrew Clements' Lunch Money, which we listened to in the car this summer. In the book, Greg Kenton creates the Chunky Comics book club and sells the comics to all his friends. His initial desire is to make money, not to be an author, but he discovers his creativity along the way.

She said her inspiration for "Chuckie Cheader" came from a combination of Chuckie Cheese and The Tale of Despereaux, which her dad was reading to her at night. I asked her why the mouse in the picture on the second page of her book repeats the text and she said, "Mom, that's a caption." I didn't know she knew what a caption was.

The inspiration for another book, "The Kings Wonderful Singing Dumplings," came from her love of Chinese dumplings and a fairy tale book that's in her classroom. "I tried to follow the fairy tale style," she says. In the book, the king finds his favorite dumplings sitting on the counter singing:

He picked one up and put it to his ear. Laaaaaaa!! He droped it with surprise. La La La La Laaa. The king was astoded. The dumplings were singing the most beautiful sound. He picked up the bowl and ran to the prime minister. "Listen to this!"...

How cool that is, to be inspired and then just go and draw or write something without worrying whether it is good or where it will be seen or what its purpose is. Children have a natural license to be creative. How do we lose it when we grow up? The only adults I know who have that capability are artists and writers—and maybe bloggers. I think that is why I choose to blog these days rather than writing pieces for publication. I'm inspired, I write, I put it on the computer and walk away. It is the process of getting something down, transforming a thought into words that matters. It is a form of elation.

(Note: The books were drawn with pencil on notebook paper and are hard to see unless you click on the picture and see them enlarged.)

The writer, reading (listening)

“Read a lot” or “read widely,” writers are often advised. But most of my reading these days takes place in the car, with books on tape, and most of the books I listen to are children’s books. My daughter does not want to hear fiction written for adults—or any of the Teaching Company lectures (on Mark Twain, on great books, on the history of music, etc.) I was able to listen to when she was a baby and couldn’t complain about it.

She also likes to read one author at a time, everything they've written in order of publication, or all books in a series in exact numeric order. And so, over the course of a year, we listened to every Little House book. We listened to all the Beverly Cleary books that were available on tape, and I read the rest to her (first the Henry Huggins books then the Ramona series), a chapter at night before bed. She has been on an Andrew Clements kick lately and I sometimes find myself just as eager as she is to get in the car and see how the child protaganist(s) will figure out how to right things before the end of the book.

The thing about listening to books on tape instead of reading them is that, in my mind, the voice of the narrator often becomes the voice of the actor performing the book. When I think of the Little House books I now hear the raspy, slightly twangy voice of Cherry Jones (she of "24" fame). Ramona's story comes to me in the matter-of-fact delivery of Stockard Channing now. I'm not sure this would be a good thing for most people, but for me it has extended my repertoire of interior voices I hear when I read--I used to hear Dan Rather's voice when I read the newspaper, or the voice of a generic professor when I read anything philosophical. Now I am inspired to hear fictional characters in more than one voice when I read in silence, and I try to give them more individuality when I read aloud to her.

I've come to appreciate the complex simplicity of children's books (though my appreciation hasn't yet compelled me to attempt writing one). The plots may be simple, but the best writers really capture what it is like to be a child and/or present what it is that children want to hear. I am amazed that Beverly Cleary, already a responsible adult, was able to sit down and write about being seven years old. That Clements could take his experiences as a teacher and turn them around so that the children are at the center of his stories—the teachers are just there for occasional guidance and reaction. And, that the Little House books continue to present a world, as a teacher of mine in library school said, that children can relate to because it is one where children matter.

And so we ride along the streets, immersed in stories. Who knows what the other people sitting at the traffic light are listening to—talk radio? shock jocks? light rock? We are rehearsing for a holiday concert, struggling to survive in a prairie cabin, or walking to school in our new rain boots. And, sometimes, when we delve into fantastic tales like the Spiderwick Chronicles, we can almost see the fairies flying by.

The illustrated journal as art/the blog post as illustrated journal

A short article in this month's Smithsonian magazine has inspired me to look at blogging (and also, perhaps, journal keeping) in a new way.

The article, Drawn From Life, describes how the museum's Archives of American Art has acquired artist Janice Lowery's lifetime collection of illustrated journals (a page from one of them has been inserted above; click on the photo to see it whole).

I read the article shortly after a friend of mine commented that "I always seem to read your blog when you're talking about writing." I didn't know how to respond to her comment—I've tried to restrain the discussion here to creativity/writing ever since a workshop speaker told me I was doing this all wrong because my previous blog couldn't be described in five words or less. (Writing and creativity is still a wide net, though, compared to such blogs as The Brian Williams Tie Report or The Truth About Cars, et al.).

But seeing pages from Lowry's journals has inspired me to incorporate more visual aspects to this blog and to my irregularly updated, offline journal. I've taken photographs that will never go in a gallery, so why not post them here? I'm not saying the blog will be entirely visual, or necessarily go beyond the usual small illustration at the top of each post. But I now have the inspiration to do with the page and the blog post box what I will.

(For more pages from Lowry's journals, see the Smithsonian page, Journal 101.)

The new poetry.com for blogs?

I got this strange email today:

This is Shiela from hp-ink-cartridges.org.
We stumbled on your blog while searching for Hp Ink Cartridges related information. We operate the largest hp cartridges website featuring more than 30,000+ blogs. Our site averages 200,000+ uniques visitors per month. As a kind note We have featured your blog at http://hp-ink-cartridges.org/blog_awards/index.php?id=811 We would be grateful if you could add the following details to your blogs main page.
Looking forward for your confirmation.

I don't remember ever mentioning HP Ink Cartridges on this blog—could they know that I have an HP printer? More likely, they are writing this message to any blog they can find on the Web and the gullible blogger, like me, checks out the site. I had a momentary hope that maybe HP had created a blog awards web site and I had been chosen for it, but a quick look at their ".org" site revealed it to be a commercial enterprise selling ink jet cartridges. Perhaps such gullible optimism accounts for their 200,000+ unique visitors a month.

My blog wasn't actually listed on their site although there were plenty of other blogs there already, from the "DIY Poetry Publishing" blog to the "Drugstore Divas" blog: "Life is expensive; toothpaste shouldnt be." I'm supposing Writing Home won't be among them unless I create a link to the HP ink jet.org web site, but that's not going to happen. Here's hoping this post does not give them any additional traffic!