NaNoWriMo again

I am attempting NaNoWriMo again this year and, like last year, I am hopelessly behind. As of the beginning of Day 13, I stand at 7,659 words—when my expected total should be 21,671.

I attribute my slowness, in part, to the hurricane at the beginning of the month, which took out the power for a couple of days and flooded our basement. Since then I have been busy, some days, until late evenings, with paid work and other responsibilities (like cleaning up the basement). Rather than be agitated about not meeting the daily deadlines, I have made my peace with it. I'm still aiming to write a book (a series of related short stories), but I'm probably not going to have it all done by Nov. 30th.

I compare this to an older person who runs a marathon, knowing that they are not going to finish in under three hours, or even under 4.5, per the average time. I am walk-running a six-hour marathon instead, happy to keep trucking along at a 15-minute mile. At my current rate, according to my helpful NaNoWriMo Stats page, I am not expected to finish until January 23rd.

I just wish there was a slower NaNoWriMo—a two-month (or even three-month) book marathon for busy people (and parents) who still want to reach the goal but just can't get there as fast as those who are freer and unfettered.

Women Who Rock (their clothes)

Speaking of rock music, I went to see the Women Who Rock exhibit at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in D.C. last week. It was a fun exhibit and I loved the costumes, but that was the problem. Most of the female musicians were represented by what they had worn—that's fine for someone like Madonna (above) or Lady Gaga or Cher, for whom costume drama and sets are as much of their art as their music. But  it was puzzling to see a singer like Marianne Faithful represented by a glam outfit that she wore God knows when (also in her glass box were two prominently displayed faxes Keith Richards had sent her; apparently he scribbles in the same decipherable way that he speaks). I would have liked to have seen pictures of the dewy-eyed Marianne Faithful alongside pics of her more haggard, cigarette-throated elder self, or even better, a looping video showing her transformation over the years, which would surely be a better representation of her life.

Would a "Men Who Rock" exhibit have any kind of focus on items of clothing they had worn? Here is the pair of jeans that Bruce Springsteen wore on the cover of "Born in the U.S.A."; here the chambray shirt Dylan wore on "The Times They Are A-Changing." Not very distinctive, or for that matter, very important in terms of the art produced.

I'm not sure what else one could use to visually represent rock music. Some walls played videos of performances, and there was an entire wall of album covers. Each room had its own soundtrack, according to time period. We walked through in less than an hour and then had lunch. Still, I have to admit, I was thrilled to see the outfit that Cindy Lauper had worn on the cover of "True Colors" and the short (and tiny) red dress Tina Turner had worn in her "What's Love Got to Do With It" video.

E-girl reviews rock music

One of the joys of being a parent has been witnessing how my children respond to music.

When he was in-utero, I-guy would kick so much when a Dylan song came on that I had to sit down (or turn it off). Once—and only once—in the midst of dinner, when he was about three, he very seriously began to sing "Hard Times" by Ray Charles—all the way through, without stopping. ("My mother told me/ 'Fore she passed away/Said son when I'm gone/Don't forget to pray..."). Now he likes ska music and the Smithereens, among other things, continuing to find his own musical paths.

E-girl hated to be in the car as a baby and would start to scream about five minutes in. I found the only thing that would calm her down was if I sang "Hello Dolly" in an Ethel Merman voice. (The other day she started to sing that song and then said, "How do I know these words?") I have no idea how we came up with this antidote to her discomfort. Later she gravitated toward classical music and begged to hear it in the car when we drove anywhere together.

This long intro is really just an excuse to share some of E-girl's recent musical opinions. I try to keep my kids off my blog, at least in any exploitative way. Even if blogs had been much around when they were toddlers, I very much doubt if I would have publicly proclaimed their toilet training successes and failures. And I try not to brag about them widely, or live through them in any way, because I want them to have their privacy, and private, not-publicly-shared histories. (I think this also strengthens my own sense of identity). My biggest justification for doing this right now is that I want to park her quotes where I won't as easily lose them. And, I think, they're unique.

Keep in mind that E-girl's current favorite pop/rock group is Cold Play and her favorite album is the soundtrack from "Once."

• The B-52s: Those girls sound so good and then this guy just keeps trying to talk over them.
• Rihanna: Her voice is all auto-tuning.
• Janis Joplin: She has a certain style.
• Neil Young: His voice is soft and soothing, like running your hands in lotion, except with your ears. I think he could sing in a Muppet movie. 
• Grateful Dead: They suck.
• Taylor Swift: All her songs sound the same.

The plot thins

For all my good ideas over the years, I have failed to produce more than a handful of short stories, only two or three of them published (in addition to a couple of novels that need heavy revising). Instead, I have dozens of notebooks filled with descriptions of experience and emotion, which I have sometimes turned into essays, but rarely into any kind of cohesive story.

It wasn't until after I attended a lecture by Pam Smallcomb last year, on how to write children's picture books, that I began to realize I don't know how to write a good plot—or any plot, really. Plot is so essential to fiction, I don't know how I missed its absence.

I like poetic prose and deep insight, which is why I tend to read literary fiction rather than genre fiction. But those books rarely keep me up at night—unlike the Harry Potter books, whose pages I continued to turn long after my bedtime, until I had read the whole series. It was those little hooks along the way that kept me interested, which I've mostly ignored in my own fiction.

I never felt this way about poetry, perhaps because writing good poetry—especially form poetry—is a learning experience. I didn't assume that I knew what I was doing just because I could put down words and make rhymes. I understood that there is cadence and form, and building toward some kind of epiphany, all within a few lines. A massive, humbling undertaking if done well. And so I felt no embarrassment in consulting guides like The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics as I wrote poems.

But plot? I didn't think I needed to study it. Wasn't the telling of the story the same thing as plot?

Now I am reading, as Pam suggested in her lecture, 20 Master Plots (And How to Build Them). They include variations on the two essential plots that have been described over the years: a stranger comes to town, a journey is taken. But I'm finding it helpful to break down books I know and love into their mechanical parts, using this book as guide. Next, I will apply it to my own fiction; it's hard to admit that I am still a beginner at all this, but I'm never going to be a better writer unless I acknowledge my current limitations.

The saddest songs ever (Melancholy music redux)

In the midst of my seasonal melancholy a couple of years ago, I wrote a few blog posts about the music I use to heighten my misery, which concluded with a short list of sad songs.

Now Adam Brent Houghtaling has taken the list many steps further, cataloging the saddest songs of all time in his book This Will End in Tears: The Miserabilist Guide to Music (Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings" is number one on his list of top 100 sad songs, which is why the video is embedded above). Houghtaling said he began writing the book after he realized that the soundtrack of his life was composed of artists with a defining attribute, of "having an uncommon understanding of the varying shades of sorrow."

As the days grow shorter and darker, my soundtrack gets a little gloomier each day, until it reaches a delicious dismalness just before the Winter Solstice. So, of course, I am putting Houghtaling's book on my Christmas Wish List.

A moment of serendipity in the laundromat

Due to our ongoing septic problems, I've been going to the laundromat a lot this summer. I like watching families doing their laundry together and women looking after each other's children and, especially, visiting the adjacent Mexican food truck. It is a far less lonely pursuit than running up and down the stairs to my laundry room, where I've stood alone many evenings folding warm laundry straight from the dryer.

The other benefit is that the laundromat offers me one of the few occasions these days to just sit and guiltlessly read. Unless I've gone out to the food truck for cilantro- and radish-filled tacos, I must sit and wait 43 minutes until the final spin. It was with this aim that I went to the laundromat yesterday morning after rushing to drop E-girl off at school. To my dismay, I found I was without either a book to read or a pad of paper to write on. The three flatscreen TVs on the laundromat walls were all tuned to Spanish-speaking stations, with captions also in Spanish; no free newspapers were scattered on tables there, as they had been on weekend afternoons. It was going to be a wasted hour, with nothing to do, and no one else to watch. But then, fumbling through my purse, I found the two most recent copies of One Story magazine. So the next half-hour was spent reading His Other Fathers—the words like a snack for a ravenous child.

Yes, I could have had a Kindle with me and, therefore, potential access to hundreds of books. But I am still resisting the lure of the eReader partly because I think I would miss those occasional serendipitous moments where you read whatever you have on hand.  My resistance is also because having an array of books always at my fingertips might give me that anxious feeling I used to get in bookstores: all those books calling out to me at once. Given too many choices, like when I receive a stack of books for Christmas or have a pile of New Yorkers to read, I often don't read at all, going outside to garden or walk—or I'll read what is quick and easily accessible, like that day's newspapers. I feel the weight of words, and (now, more and more) the limits of time pressing against me.

A crappy summer

My summer has been crappy—literally. Our septic tank backed up into our basement at the beginning of the summer. Then did it twice more, even after it was pumped out three times. Since then I've spent most of my free time with plumbers, backhoe people, septic pump guys, home renovators and tree cutters, trying to resolve the problem and correct the consequences. (It will supposedly get resolved next week, when huge trenches are dug in the front yard). Unbelievably, though we live in a metropolitan county, public sewer hookups are not available in our neighborhood.

All this to explain why I haven't written a blog post—or anything for fun—in weeks. Owning a home seems to suck up what would be free time if we lived in an apartment (with only a tiny lawn or a community garden plot to attend to). Creativity feels like a luxury right now.

It has been an alien experience, going this long without any means of creative expression, and yet I realize some people who are too busy with work or other obligations must live like this all the time. Maybe they sing in the shower or keep up long-distance correspondences... or maybe they have no need for self-expression? Maybe, for them, walking and conversing and doing is enough? I really don't know, this is so alien to me.

I've still got an itch to say something. Phrases form in my head and, though I haven't had the time to write them down, I know they are still there, needing me to free them and let them run across the page.

Instagramatic

This post mostly serves as a buffer between my last post in July, about my friend Joan Preiss, and what was was written as my next post more than a month later (on Aug. 24) about my crappy summer—because as E-girl just pointed out, it looked like I was talking about Joan on the same page as my complaints about our sewage spill, which seemed disrespectful. So, this post was written on the 24th also, but pre-dated Aug. 23rd. 

I haven't had time to write this summer, but I did find moments to take photos on my phone, whenever I was waiting somewhere or en-route to somewhere else. The photo at the top was taken when I was waiting for my friend, Orit, to show up at our CSA (community-supported agriculture) pickup. These were the vegetables I had just taken out of the box to divide between us. I took the pic and loaded it up on Instagram in the few moments before she got there. And then I rushed back home to get something else done. But there's that moment, recorded.

Perhaps technology is offering people more opportunities for quick moments of expression. But it's such a time-suck otherwise, especially with the allure of social media and video gaming, that it seems a two-edged sword (I tried to think of a less cliche way of saying this, but am rushed to finish this post in the few minutes I have free...).

I took this photo at the top of the ferris wheel at the county fair last weekend—altered and loaded on Instagram before our car swung back to the bottom.

I'm not sure who is looking at all the pictures loaded onto Instagram and Facebook—both could be infinite cyber-galleries. Is it art if no one really looks at it? Does it matter? For me, Instagram has just become a visual diary of where I've been, sometimes. I don't load up a picture every day because much of what I've done recently is too mundane.

I took this picture of a lake I had tried to paint in a watercolor moments before. The photo looks so much better than the painting, which grew muddy as I added too much color (the secret with watercolor is in what you don't do). But trying to paint the yellow parts of the green leaves and grass, where the sun was shining, made me see everything more vividly as I took the picture. What fun to take the time to play for an afternoon, with a child's watercolor set, sitting in the shade at a park with E-girl and my friend, Mary.

Perhaps photography is like watercolors, in that part of the art is knowing what to leave out or show. The last photo I'll load up here, above, was taken at a diner during one of the first weeks of summer. Is it art if everyone who walks into the diner sees the same scene—and could take the same picture with their phones? I don't know. It's one of those questions I'd like to ponder for awhile, perhaps for the rest of my life...

Life as art: Joan Papert Preiss

Years ago, via one of those serendipitous moments the universe occasionally hands you, I met a woman who influenced the rest of my life. I was sitting in a library in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, reading that month’s issue of Ms. Magazine. A short letter to the Editor caught my eye: You write about child labor as though it is a thing of the past, the writer said, when farm labor currently uses children in the fields. Signed, Joan Papert Preiss, Triangle Friends of the UFW. She must have given her address (this is before things could be looked up on the Internet) because I wrote her and asked if she needed help. “Yes,” she replied, and a few months later I was on a bus to Durham, NC, ready to volunteer in her office, which happened to be in the guest bedroom of her home.

Joan, as I learned at her memorial service last Saturday, almost single-handedly brought farmworker activism (and attention to the plight of farmworkers) to North Carolina. And she did so with a playful, creative style. She became known as the lady with the tiaras, including a Mt. Olive pickle jar headpiece that she wore to picket lines during the Mt. Olive boycott. She made her own boycott lapel pins out of bake-able clay, and painted colorful signs and posters. She also was known for wearing a grape costume that, I think, consisted mostly of purple balloons during the UFW grape boycott.

She spoke fervently and persuasively about farm conditions to gatherings large and small, even though she admitted that she had once dreaded public speaking and still considered herself a shy person. Even in the face of circling policeman, angry store managers and apathetic shoppers, she continued on with an unmitigated enthusiasm. I have never known anyone who so exuded a persistent sense of purpose. After raising three sons, she committed herself to the cause of farmworker rights. But she also found time to cook gourmet meals, keep up an herb garden, hold girlfriend get-togethers, go sailing, host sleepovers and playdates for her grandchildren, volunteer at the local hospital, keep a materials/news file (now archived at Duke Library), and seriously compete at badminton. And she found time to have fun with me when I was working with her. On one of my last days there, before I left to go back to school, we decided spontaneously to have a “milkshake orgy”—and so set about making shots of cranberry milkshakes, followed by pumpkin, peanut butter, etc., in her kitchen. Too full, we went for a walk in Duke Forest, chatting and laughing together.

She offered me a blueprint for an active and happy life. More importantly, she offered a level of acceptance and confidence in my abilities that I’d never experienced before, at least from someone older than me. What a gift knowing someone like that.

I often told her that I should write an article for Ms. about how we’d met, which would segue into an article about her amazing life. Some of what I would have said is in this blog post now.

In another bit of serendipity, a bookend to the first, I was updating my list of cell phone contacts recently and I saw her phone number, realizing I hadn’t heard from her in a long while; the handmade holiday cards had stopped coming a few years ago. With a sense of dread, I googled her name and found her obituary. Without that bit of discovery I would have missed her memorial service and a chance to say good-bye. We sang “Union Maid” and “De Colores” and other songs, were reminded of how much she had meant to so many, and then dispersed out into the hot afternoon.

Stuck somewhere between childhood and "Twilight"

Recently E-girl wanted to cash in her Barnes and Noble gift cards and buy a copy of The Hobbit since none of the local libraries have a copy of it on their shelves. (We'd already listened to it on CD in the car last year, read by the excellent voice actor, Rob Ingles).

BN.com has lots of ways of finding books for recommended ages and reading levels. First she looked at the lists of books recommended for ages 9-12, but found that she/we had either read them already  (the Percy Jackson series, Wonderstruck, A Wrinkle in Time, etc.) or they seemed too easy. So I suggested she plug in her Lexile score, using their Lexile Reading Level Wizard, to see what books match it. The results were not promising: Ethan Frome, Hiroshima, Animal Farm, The Jungle, A Farewell to Arms, To Kill a Mockingbird. All great books but not a good fit for a kid who still likes happy endings. (The Lexile score obviously represents mere vocabulary comprehension rather than level of emotional connection or life experience).

So we looked at books recommended for 12 and up. And here is the depressing part. Once you leave childhood (and Wimpy Kid, The Magic Thief, Percy Jackson, etc.) behind, according to BN.com's helpful recommendations, you're in the land of Pretty Little Liars and Hunger Games and Twilight—a place of malice and implied (or not) sexuality, where the good girl/guy doesn't always win.

My kid, so far, has not been eager to rush into young adulthood. She has resisted any interest in The Hunger Games, despite the urging of several classmates, because she knows she wouldn't enjoy it, at least not yet. But where does that leave her? Winnie the Pooh is a distant country already and even Beverly Cleary is slipping behind her.

Frustrated, she was about to give up the search for another book (and the $25 minimum for free shipping) when she happily discovered that BN.com carries DVDs. So now a copy of The Hobbit and the first season of "I Love Lucy" (which is one of her favorite TV shows) is on its way to our home.

Classic TV can be a refuge, particularly for those destined for unknown, and unfolding, lands. So, too, at least for a time, I think we'll turn back to the classic books of adolescence, written in a less cynical time, where characters didn't shop for expensive brand-name clothes or try to kill each other. Better start looking for my copy of My Side of the Mountain...