I have no word count for today.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Pull Up a Chair
I have no word count for today.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
"I'm on the Road to Nowhere..."
I drove 93 miles today. And I'm still waiting.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
The Waiting Place
"Oh, the Places You'll Go!" is my favorite Dr. Seuss book. I give a special gift set to everyone I know when they are going from and moving on toward.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Farther Than Flagstaff
Yesterday was eventful - some good, some not so good. Like every day I suppose, but yesterday felt like it had too much caffeine in the morning.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Finding Her Voice
My 14 year-old daughter, Sophie, wrote this piece about a month ago. I wanted to print it right away, "Do you want to publish it? You can put it up on my blog if you'd like."
I Finally Found my Overalls
My mom told me about a week ago that if I cleaned out my closet she would take me to get new clothes. Seeing as I desperately wanted new shirts this didn’t seam to be a bad idea. Today was a half day at school so I picked today to go through my closet.
It’s always interesting what you find in a closet. There is always a lot of “Hey I didn’t know I had that.” or “So THAT’S where my English paper was!” And, every once in a while you might find something you didn’t bargin for. Like these overalls.
I wore these almost everyday in second grade. During the summer it was just me, my best friend Ry, and the overalls. Climbing trees, pretending to be super genius wizards who could make a poison out of everyday items; we saw the world in a different way. That thing in the backyard it wasn’t a tree to us, it was a look out post over our entire kingdom. *Pauses*
But people grow up, and apart. And one day, one summer, there were no more kingdoms, no more crazy concoctions, no more happy endings. The overalls started to see less and less day light and I saw less and less of my best friend.
Years passed, schools passed, summers passed. New friends were made, I discovered what cell phones, make-up, and boyfriends were. But I never let go of that little second grade me who loved castles, adventures, and tree climbing. The little second grade me who loved her best friend. I did, however, start to lose my overalls. I would do whatever people said was the “right thing” the “cool thing” I was just looking to find a new best friend.
Back to today. I was cleaning out my closet, and I made two piles on my bed: keep and give-a-way. As I got to the back of my closet I figured I could just throw all of what was left into the give-a-way pile. But then I found my overalls, and this time, I didn’t let them go.
-Sophie Biddle
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Too Tired To Title :)
I bet I woke up half a dozen times last night after falling asleep well after 1:00AM. Ugh. I can't complain too much because each time I awoke, a problem was worked out in the novel.
Monday, April 19, 2010
I Learned So Much By Not Writing
Sara has a tattoo. I don’t know what the words are or the image is yet. I learned that her favorite color is orange and fall is her favorite season. Or was. Barney is not a dog; he’s a rabbit. I don’t know who gave him to her yet. I might not ever know the answer to that open query. I’m okay with that.
I learned that she’s ditching the lab for tech class to take the bus to this appointment. I know it doesn’t matter what time the bus comes, or if the place is closed, because she already knows the answer.
Her oldest friend has red hair, blue eyes, and doesn’t wear glasses. And he smokes. But, he’s the annoying kind of smoker who can smoke when he’s with smokers and then not smoke for months. He's a wanderer at heart and can’t wait to leave this country.
And finally I learned that she’s getting tired of telling this story. She feels like she’s almost done and wants to wrap up this very long day and go to bed. She also wants to skip school tomorrow, but she can’t.
I learned all of that collaging for three and a half hours this morning. So cool. :)
Photo courtesy of wwarby
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Today's Entry -
Top Five Wishes for my birthday:
Saturday, April 17, 2010
The View From Above & The Walk on the Ground
I sat down yesterday afternoon to write what I loosely refer to as Chapter 19. I have a 500 word per day goal which has proven to be a stretch but attainable. In fact, generally once I hit 400 words I'm well on my way to 600 before I come up for air again.
The cool part about that experience yesterday was being surprised. Chapter 19, at least in this first draft, is only 227 words. I queued up another new window and started on Chapter 20, and that really surprised me. I can't wait to see what happens toda
y. I keep thinking I should reign this all in. Make it bob and weave with just the right rhythm and intrigue. Throw out enough rope to hook the reader and lull them into My Girl's world ever so quietly without really noticing how attached you're getting to her, so when the hammer falls, you, the reader, are devastated. I should make that all happen in a fairly cohesive way in my first draft.
Snort. Right. I think there are writers who make that work. Writers who actually shape their work to that degree of precision while progressing through their initial draft(s). I started down that road and wound up paralyzed. For me it was a wonderful exercise to sketch out the plot lines, since I have three, and lay the conflict across the top to give a look at my landscape. An aerial shot. But after that, I still have to hike the trail myself. I could extend this metaphor into its own entire post, I'm sure. I guess the point here is that I tend to come from the school of "both". Do we teach our kids to read using "phonics" or "whole language"? Both. And so on. I need the aerial shot, and I need to walk the good walk. When I'm lost and not sure what comes next, I can pull out the schematic and refer to the larger picture.
At the end of the day yesterday, I had drafted Chapters 19 & 20. I packed up my gear to head home and wondered, okay, now what? And then I had an idea. I pulled out my dozens of index cards with elements of the aerial view, laid them out and surveyed the arrangement. Aha! This! My Girl wants to talk about this and that makes total sense. Of course that's next.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
So - To Sum Up...
Well, this week I shaved three minutes off the time it takes me to hike up this puppy and tumble back down again. This is not all that impressive since I was nearly carried off the first climb on a stretcher a few weeks ago. Even today a woman in her 70’s totally kicked my ass up the first two hills, but I wasted her on the moguls. :)
Remember the “unfortunate laundry incident”? (That’s a great bit from one of our local sportscasters, Tom Leander. Originally he used the phrase “the unfortunate golf cart incident” when discussing an NBA player’s injury.) Well, that ridiculous little finger pull is now swollen fingers – plural – and hand pain. I’m so sure. And yet I am still expected to perform household tasks. Clearly these people do not understand the escalating nature of my injury.
The novel (working title: Name Period and Date) is progressing quite nicely. My warehouse space has a bug or two to get worked out, but I am already finding my way through the words in a whole new way. Today I had a hard time wrapping my arms around the nature of a new character. He makes a one-time appearance in the book, but he’s extremely important. All I had to do was walk over to my collage table and spend an hour piecing him together. I absolutely love the space.
It's good to stand back and take inventory. Look around at what has been accomplished and where we need to go now. This post shows part of my week. Another part of my week begged for a little more attention. Future attention. Some now. Some soon. I’m summing up today to set the stage for my future absences. For a bit I’ll be here less, and unfortunately I’ll be reading your blogs less. Life is a funny thing. It’s not too terribly concerned with convenience.
Anyway, talk amongst yourselves, and I’ll be back shortly.
Be well -
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
When You Tear the Cellophane Away
Last night I caught the bug. The “I must read now” bug. I am of the one-day-click-order-from-Amazon school of lit-tra-ture. Imagine my surprise when I drove to the library. My memories of the library of my younger summer days were not wonderful. Mom had MS, and part of her maintenance therapy was to rest her legs every day for two hours. Lying down. I was eight; my brothers, five and three. We did not want to lie down for two hours every afternoon.
Mom dragged us (me) to the Yucca Branch of the Phoenix Public Library every single week. She made a haul of six or seven books, my brother John found three or four science fiction books, and Dave, the toddler, drooled on his picture books. I wandered. And sighed. And protested. “There’s nothing to R-E-A-D.” Moments later mom had pulled a random volume of Nancy Drew (in which the 15 year-old heroine wore gloves - gloves) from the shelf.
Last night I read Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”. The last time I made contact with this material was as a freshman in high school. Funny how different a work feels and sounds after 30 years. (I wish I’d kept Miss Schner’s reading list from my senior year.) I fully intended to write about my lovely experience with this piece of miraculous prose, but a funny thing happened on the way to the typewriter.
I went to the library again.
Today, though, I noticed people were culling and perusing and flipping through books, and they were happy about it. I turned my attention to the books and really took them in. Mostly cool plastic wrapped hardcover books. Have you ever noticed that when you crack the spine of a library book it crackles like fire? Or do you think the pages of an old book smell like your grandma’s couch from when you were ten? Of if the book is newer, do you think the pages smell just like a fresh pack of three-ringed notebook paper at the exact minute you tear the cellophane away?
I slid my index finger across titles looking for just the right words. Those words that stop a strolling finger in its tracks: “Ash Wednesday” by Ethan Hawke. Ahh…. See, in my writing, I just made reference to an Ethan Hawke string of dialogue from “Reality Bites” and this was surely providence.
After my daughter’s rehearsal, after a late dinner, after my son hugs me three times, I will take my book and kiss my husband heading down the hall to our room. I will lie down and read my new book. For two hours. While I rest.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Social Media Sets the Stage: From Ottawa to Phoenix
On February 11, 2010, Space 55 Theatre Ensemble, in Phoenix, Arizona, premiered an unlikely double feature: the U.S. premiere of "Tangelico" by Sterling Lynch and the world premiere of "A Cube With A View" by Mare Biddle. Barely a year before, the two playwrights had not yet known of each other’s existence. Thanks to social media, they met, shared their work, and became friends. Eventually, Mare introduced Tangelico to Space 55 and wrote A Cube With A View as a companion piece to it. As a result, Sterling and Mare’s unlikely double feature was born. This volume includes both plays and the playwrights’ reflections on social media and their international collaboration.
When you buy a book, please use the links below. It won’t affect the price you pay, and Sterling earns a commission!
If you want to order from Amazon.ca (Canada), please click on this link:
Social Media Set the Stage: Tangelico and a Cube with a View
If you want to order from Amazon.com (U.S.), please click on this link:
Social media set the stage: Tangelico and A Cube with a View
If you want to order from Amazon.co.uk (U.K.), please click on this link:
Social Media Set the Stage: Tangelico and a Cube with a View
Please spread the word. Social media got us this far. I’m sure it can take us even further.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Something Old
Saturday, April 10, 2010
All Great Lessons Are Learned At America's Taco Shop
The patio was really crowded so we had to kind of lean into each other to talk. We talked about the class he's teaching at ASU's law school, some of our co-projects in the community, and my impending move into the warehouse. So exciting and so forth. We got up to go, tossed our trash, clasped hands and headed across the street. To where we were parked. Illegally.
And then I started talking about the novel. What this experience is like - Sara's story and how she tells it and where she seems to want to spend her energy. How interesting it is to sort of hear her telling it to me. Sometimes I get to a certain transition and think, "where was i?" and then I know to circle back to Sara and her mom at the bus stop. Current timeline. I think the story should be more focused on the old memories, but Sara really really really wants to talk about what's going on at school this year. She wants to talk about the systems and structures and that are stealing her air.
When we pulled into the driveway, I felt a little silly for going on about it. I thanked my husband and he said, "No, it was great. I'm glad you wanted to talk about it." I circled back to our conversation today. I wondered about Sara, and truly contemplated that idea of spending more time with this school year and how much sense that made to me.
I processed. I listened. I learned.
About Sara.
Friday, April 9, 2010
The Bull's Eye
She spoke at a conference in San Diego several years ago and talked about the nightmare of giving a very long interview in which she thought she remembered discussing her mother. When the article was printed she was mortified to read the quote about her mother. Anne had been lulled to sleep, and made a reference to her mother that was "too close to the bull's eye."
Her words were a cautionary tale. My husband frequently reminds me to speak in short declarative sentences and to talk in sound bites during interviews. Ironically, the only television interview I gave wound up on the editing room floor because I wouldn't bite. The reporter chatted and massaged the other women and eventually got them to give her the crap she was after. And I was really okay with that because I wouldn't want to own those words.
Sometimes I think blogs, email, and all social media are the "lull". For me anyway, I forget that I'm attaching words - immortalized-in-the-cloud words - to real emotions, experiences & people and then putting all that out there for anyone to read. Stories about myself and my family. My friends. My colleagues.
Tonight I sat down to write and was going to post about a very personal experience between my daughter and me. Something very close to her bull's eye. And I wondered if I was willing to look into her baby blues and own those words. Later. Forever.
So I wrote about Anne Lamott instead, who by the way, is my favorite author. :)
Thursday, April 8, 2010
In These Terms -
The reason I haven’t ever written about him in any kind of public way is because I can’t imagine where to start. Or how much to reveal. Or how to put any of it into a meaningful context. We are all a product of our context, and for my son that is exponentially true.
This is the start. The beginning. The introduction of my son's life through my muscle memories.
I’m not sure how to tell you who he is without qualifying his life in these terms: he flat-lined while holding my hair when he was three years old. His heart stopped for the longest four and a half seconds of my life. His blue eyes locked on mine. Our faces were maybe ten inches apart.
My son routinely missed 50 days of school every year. And once a week, I inserted three needles into his belly for a gamma globulin infusion. When we went to the Cleveland Clinic in March of 2008, we shipped more than 1500 pages of medical records ahead of us to six different specialists.
His life is very different today. While the underlying conditions are all still real, his treatment protocol took a 180 degree turn, and now, this 12 year-old walking box of changing voice, leads a healthy and normal life. As normal as it can be given how he spent the first 10 years of his life.
Last night, one of my friends took her 4 year-old son to the ER at Phoenix Children’s Hospital (PCH) for stitches. She sent out a photo.
“Lemme know if you want company – or a sweatshirt.” I wrote.
“Yeah, it is cold in her. You spent waaay too much time here.”
“LOL. Text me the name of your attending, and say “hi” to Child Life for me.”
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Conundrum
Do you ever have those days when you sit down to write and there is quite simply nothing to say? Or at least nothing that comes to mind to say?
I very much want to write a particular post, but the content seems so familiar to me that I'm afraid to put it out there. Perhaps I lived that life for so many years the writing of any part of it will always seem familiar. I suspect this quandary is blocking all other writing from coming into my consciousness. Either that or I'm just stuck.
Too there is the possibility that preparing tax returns for two family members along with our own has left me fried.
Whether I'm obsessed with writing this oddly familiar post, stuck in "writing no man's land", or baked by tax returns, I will leave you with these words today:
Have a great day! See you tomorrow! :)
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Sticky Fingers
Over the last three years, in subtle ways, I started to suffer from sticky fingers. Too many finger prints on the work, and pretty soon it didn't look anything like what I intended to write in the first place. I was too eager to please and consequently abandoned my characters and their stories. I have purposely stayed away from participating in any writers' groups with this novel. I may, and I may not, eventually find myself sidling up next to one.
For now, it's so exciting to pound out those 500 words every day. Even more so when I reach 630 or 1,326 in any given day. Listening to My Girl is thrilling. She has so much to tell me, and who knows, maybe the first 30,000 words were necessary to get to the heart of the story. Maybe I only think I know what her story looks like. As Anne Lamott says, "follow the guy behind the chain link fence". I did in fact meet a guy who showed up out of the blue. I suppose it could even wind up being his story. The cool thing is that I just feel like I'm along for the ride with this first draft. Sticky or clean, so far the only finger prints are mine.
Monday, April 5, 2010
A Space to Call My Own
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Proclamation
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Because I'm British!
Friday, April 2, 2010
In Your Face
Facebook.
My husband broke the news to me while I was straightening my hair this morning, “The kids want Facebook accounts so they can stay in touch with their theatre friends.”
Huh. Now, see, I thought my husband and I were of the same opinion on this matter. We don’t use our kids’ names or put their photos on-line. We want them to have lives that are not forever documented on video for as long as possible.
Can you imagine? My god, I wouldn’t want more than 20% of my life before the age of 25 available on-line. And to be clear, that 20% would be me sleeping. In my own bed. Alone. In response to his bait, I said nothing.
Then I remembered my son telling me how Zander was taping rehearsals because this is the last show he can do with the youth company because he is now 18. (I use his name because he is 18, and because he readily uses his name all over the net.)
Facebook.
My son said on the way home from rehearsal this week that he kept running away from Zander because he didn’t want to wind up on Zander’s FB page. I felt like crap.
“No, buddy, that’s okay, you can be in his videos.”
“But mom, he’s going to upload them. You said—“
“Well. This is different.”
My son was silent. My daughter was silent. I could hear their telepathic victory dance, and I giggled. Crap. So it would follow that they would first approach their dad with what was surely going to get shot down by me out of the gate. My husband is the harbinger of all-things-bad-ideas.
In the car this afternoon, I asked. “So. Dad said you guys want Facebook pages. Is that true?”
Daughter, “Yes.”
Son, “Uh-huh.”
Long dangerous pause.
I love wielding so much power. Mwaa-ha-ha. “Here are the ground rules…” They nodded and made we-understand noises. They didn’t care if I said they both had to do the laundry until they moved out. Darn it, why didn’t I say that? “Okay, you guys we’ll set up the accounts.”
My son was silent. My daughter was silent. I could hear their telepathic victory dance, and I giggled. Crap. Here we go.
Facebook.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
An Injury of Devastating Proportions
Well, it was bound to happen. I mean I’ve been walking this high wire for more than 30 years and these sorts of – what – mishaps are predictable. To be expected really. I was seriously injured yesterday. My right hand nonetheless. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to show up at the keyboard this morning. Much to my relief I am pecking. Not really typing and certainly not floating across the keys as is usual for me. Not nearly.
No stitches were required. Ice and Ibuprofen got me through the night. I notified my dear friend as to my impending absence from his inbox. Of course, he was deeply troubled to be left out in the cold by not receiving the requisite 14 emails a day from me. Devastated really. He asked. I hesitated. I knew he’d be upset.
“Laundry,” I wrote. “I have a laundry injury.”
“Laundry injury!! Oh, no!!” As you can see, he was so beside himself he could barely muster an appropriately distressed response.
When my husband emerged from his cave (read: our home office), I regaled him with the details. “You can always file for workers’ comp, baby,” he said with a particular smugness to his tone. “See how that goes for you.” He smiled and walked to the kitchen for an iced coffee. He did not even offer to pour me one. What was happening here? He didn’t lead me to chair to help me carefully sit my clearly traumatized body.
“What did you do?” he said passing me in the hall.
“I told you. I was putting up the empty hangers on the really high bar, and I tripped and grabbed a hold of them and jerked my right hand enough to burst a blood vessel.” I displayed my injury. “Just there, see?”
“There?”
“Oh for god’s sake that’s my wrist. No there. My middle finger. In the joint. It’s already black and blue. And swollen.”
“Oh right. Sorry. Looks bad,” he smiled – there was that smugness again. “Looks like no more laundry for you today.”
Ah-ha! That’s what I was looking for all along. Disability leave. How many days I wondered? Best not to discuss. Best to just tip toe around the hamper.
I looked at my poor, swollen finger and decided it needed ice again. Over my shoulder I called, “I bet I can’t even type.”
He said something like, “oooh” or “Mmm” or “Aaah” – something vaguely sympathetic before closing the office door behind him. Did he just close the door on my pain? On my disability? On me for god’s sake?
Humph. I pulled the freezer door open to retrieve the small ice bag. Well that’s fine, I thought. When he needs underwear, we’ll just see who displays a hint of smugness in her smile?