Tag Archives: 10000 Hours

What To Show After

April 19, 2015 By in Process Tags: , , Leave a comment

The reason for my sorrow is pathetic in the details. For a week I’ve been wondering where all the watercolor paintings Claire and I made have been disappearing to. Claire taped an arrangement on the wall above her dresser. I taped a line of paintings near my desk. After work I’d see that another square of paper fell down (no Pinterist-worthy showcasing in my house, just tape unsticking from walls) and get on with the night. I meant to ask our maid if she’d put them in drawer or cupboard after I’d looked but hadn’t found the missing work.

I asked today.

She’s been throwing them away.

She apologized. I said it was okay, please don’t throw away our art ever again, waited for her to leave and went to my room to cry.

The fourth quarter of any school year is a terrible time for me to conduct a self-inventory but I did that, kneeling at the foot of my bed, crying about all my stupid paintings that were lost to all the other trash down our street. I bought the watercolors and inks because I was so tired (so so so tired) of making art that just sits in a file or gets put on a shelf once the notebook is full, art that rarely finds vocal expression or appreciation. I wanted to SEE what I’d made and enjoy looking at it after the pleasure of creating.

I look out my window and everything is the color of dirt except for clothes draped over balconies to dry. The last five years has been unrelenting examination. I question where I am, where I go. My watercolors were mostly stained glass, laundry on balconies, and maps.

I’m sad those first pieces of my return to an old favorite medium are gone. Like, really sad. Like, still crying about it sad. Because I can’t help but see a metaphor for every single thing I’m trying to do, in those pitched paintings. I can choose colors and let the first wash dry, add salt starbursts, play with texture, define with pen. I can paint with pleasure, an hour gone and the memory of street we walked down on paper. And then it all goes away. Nothing to show.

How much of our work, our art, is invisible after?

The lost watercolors viscerally remind me what I fear for the countless hours and pages I write. So I cry for what I suspect too, that one day all of this goes away. That I’ll find out I should have made play-doh on the stove or cooked better meals. That I should have pursued school leadership or hosted a Bible study. That I should have gone outside more. Something. I trade for my writing. But maybe I find out it’s a lousy trade. I thought about all that, kneeling at the foot of my bed, hoping the kids wouldn’t hear me cry about paintings that took twenty minutes when I’ve got work and relationships that are years, decades in the making, all of it as easily lost, and what to show after?

Fiction Workhorse: Week One 1199 Words

January 29, 2015 By in Daily WP Tags: , , , 1 Comment

Jon knows but doesn’t ask. I keep the key to our old house in the cup holder of my car and stop there after my nursing shift. The kids are already in bed and if I stay at the house late enough, Jon is sleeping when I get to the apartment. The apartment has a front door like it’s a cheap motel. I go in quietly. The smoke from the last tenant is worse now that it’s winter and our boots track in snow. When I crawl into bed, Jon scoots near me, throws an arm over my waist, kisses my shoulder. Sometimes he whispers, Poor man’s theater, and I roll over. I pretend we are back in our house.

The bank owns our house. Elliot was sick, admitted to the ER. Jon lost his job a month later. I picked up extra shifts but we couldn’t make the mortgage.

It’s an old house. The family that lived there before us had three kids. They left their swing set when they heard we were expecting a baby.

The first time I went by after my shift, I was surprised the key turned. I thought the bank would’ve changed the locks. We brought our sons home to that house. I painted its walls. Jon tiled the bathroom. I opened the door and went in. When we’d moved out, I hadn’t gone in a last time, after the boxes were out. We moved nearly everything to storage. I was there with my mom, making sure stuff we needed at the apartment didn’t go in the locker. Jon drove up and parked, called me over to the truck.

Wanna go take a last look?

Mom heard and said she could watch the boys. I shook my head. He turned off the ignition and got out, pulled me into a sweaty hug. That house was good to us, he said. I nodded against his chest. He kissed the top of my head. I started to cry and had to pull it together because the boys would notice and I didn’t want them to think that anything is wrong.

Bluebird Acres has a playground we can see from the living room. Elliot thought it was awesome he could slide the patio door open and race across the grass to play. He and Sam are usually the only two kids out. I thought maybe it was because of tv. Another mom two doors down said the complex had eleven registered sex offenders. Everyone can see the playground, she said. I followed the boys out one afternoon and sat in a swing facing the U of apartments, watching for blinds and curtains to move aside. I didn’t see anything. It might be a terrible idea to let them out by themselves.

Jon is with the boys all the time now. He made friends with the manager and gets a few jobs thrown his way, mostly painting when tenants move out. This winter he’s shoveling and salting the walks. He’d take a job at a gas station or flipping burgers but the hours aren’t fixed. I keep adding extra shifts each week. I’m never home a full day.

I want to move to Towering Pines in the spring. It’s next to the highway, cutting ten minutes from my commute. It’s two hundred more a month. We moved to Bluebird Acres to save for another down payment. I don’t think we’ll ever be allowed to buy another house again, but Jon believes in discipline. We don’t touch the savings unless one of us is dying, he says. I think of Elliot, if we’d had savings then, we’d still have our house. That isn’t true at all, but I think it anyway.

I go online and look up how many registered sex offenders are at Towering Pines. Two. And it’s a huge complex. Jon thinks the boys are okay because he’s around. He’s probably right.

At night when I visit our house, I do math in my head. I buy a cheaper car. We don’t fix the truck. We don’t have pizza night. We eat more rice. None of it adds up to cover the hospital bill and Jon’s missing income.

I walk from room to room. Elliot took his first steps in the kitchen. Sam in the living room. We had our Christmas tree in this corner. We pulled up carpet in the boys’ room and found a girl’s diary from twenty years ago. Sam played hide and seek in our closet. The boys built a Lego city in the hall upstairs. My sons are alive but I see their ghosts. I sit in my bedroom, where our bed was. The light from the street and moon falls in slants on the painted wood. When I was in nursing school, one of my roommates did sitting meditation. I think of her when I am in my bedroom, the slants of light moving incrementally closer. I think of my friend breathing the quietest deepest breaths, facing a wall. I breathe deeply. I try to let it out slowly. I get caught on a jagged cry every time. I can’t stop anything.

When I go home and roll over to kiss Jon, I whisper for Towering Pines. We won’t get a house, I say, But we could live somewhere better than this. Our savings covers the deposit, first and last months’ rent.

Jon pulls me into a hug so tight I can’t breathe. He puts his lips close to my ear. His whole body trembles. I don’t know what he will say. When his body relaxes, I touch his face. I tell him I’m sorry, I know we’re okay here.

In the morning, Jon lets me sleep while he gets the boys breakfast and walks them to school. When he returns, I’m still in bed. He lays down with his winter coat on, his giant boots hanging off the edge. He nudges me, says, Let’s go take a last look.

I roll over. His cheeks are chapped red. Come on, he says. He gets up and pulls the blankets from the bed, tosses a pair of jeans at me.

We take my car over. The heat kicks in as I pull up to the curb and park. I take the key from the cup holder and we go up the walk, let ourselves in. It looks different in the day. Empty, but not as sad. The rooms echo with our footsteps. Jon rubs a thumb on the door frame marking our boys’ heights. I open the kitchen cabinets and drawers, the liner paper with tiny orange flowers. We stand in the doorway of the boys’ room, looking in like we did most nights before going downstairs to our own bedroom, playing poor man’s theater.

Now Jon and I hold each other in our room, standing where I’ve spent the last six months sitting. Anyone walking by could see us, statues keeping balance. I pull a deep breath in, let it out slowly. I don’t cry. I look up at Jon. We look at each other. We must want to say something. Little puddles of melted snow show where we’ve been.

Interrupted Scattered Writing

July 31, 2014 By in Process Tags: , , Leave a comment

In Prague I was spoiled by a cafe around the corner. A few times on our walks home, I stopped for a mocha and an hour of writing while Justin took the kids back to the apartment to play with Lego. I sat in the sun filling my pages, finding my way to a start or flash fiction or prayer. I had time to wander my way into writing.

I lack the discipline to open my notebook and say: This Topic and only This Topic. I do much better to spend a page going on about my present worry or insecurity (usually same as yesterday’s) and then beg God for a little more grace. By the end of a page like that I might feel guilty for not offering gratitude, so I start the next page with all the reasons why I should feel content. About halfway through that I might beg for sincere contentment, the ability to actually live presently and, for good measure, a little more grace.

Then, finally, I might turn to a prompt or pick up a previous WP session and rip through another page or two. Even so, my discipline might be sidelined by the sudden thought of my imminent death (eternal perspective). I throw myself into a paragraph about purpose. I write myself a note to not fuss so much. I start to hate introspection. I return to my work, skipping a line as if to mark an end to that wandering mess. I go on.

Today I had a chunk of writing time, stopping at a cafe (okay, it was a Starbucks and don’t be judge-y about me sitting in a Starbucks when Vienna is littered with real cafes) – anyway, I stopped at a STARBUCKS and sat upstairs facing a wall. I’ve got a fiction start I like enough to keep writing. But I was distracted by the coffee splatter on the wall and the teeny tiny table and people walking inches behind me on their way to the toilet, so I moved to a stool at a high table where I was distracted by the other people in the room (English, Spanish, American) and all the people crossing the intersection I could see out the window.

You know, I wasn’t allowed to drink chocolate milk when I was in grade school and I think I should scale back on the espresso shots now.

This was going somewhere.

Before this afternoon at Starbucks, I worked my WP into our evening. This is the worst time for me to write. If I’ve got something hot, it’s interrupted and I get cranky. More likely, I haven’t got anything hot and the pages trudge through a mire of self-loathing. Sometimes, when I have a few lines left at the bottom of the notebook page I write

End of page
End
of
Page
end of page.

just to get it over with.

But I still manage to write. I find pockets of time to sit with my notebook or stand typing on my laptop or read through revision notes. I find time to do this! If I went through my last few notebooks, maybe a fifth (fifteenth?) of the pages contain something I write into an essay or a fiction piece. But all of the pages feed my process.

I have a husband and two kids. They are lovely and they interrupt me. I put my notebook away or close the file and practice living presently. I think

this is a big deal

I think I am learning to trust that the necessary WP, drafting and revising will get done and may get done well. I think I may be a little closer to being okay with my interrupted, scattered writing. I keep showing up at the page for more.

 

June: Let There Be Fun!

June 1, 2014 By in Process Tags: , , Leave a comment

I just finished a load of revision work and want those pieces to sit another month before a final edit. I have a couple of fiction starts but nothing that’s setting my hair on fire. So what I need is some WP fun! I am writing daily from prompts and posting often.

If you write on any of the prompts or want to share your own June writing, please put a link in the comments.

A Single Set of Circumstances

May 14, 2014 By in Process, Revision Tags: , , , Leave a comment

The first creative writing course I took in college used an early edition of What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter. After college, I returned to the book only occasionally. My stories were terrible but I kept writing , unguided. When I began teaching creative writing to high school students, I found the third edition of What If? and have used the prompts to draft and revise my own work since.

Here is one I love:

Write five mini-stories (limit: 200 words each) to account for a single event or set of circumstances, such as a man and woman standing on a city sidewalk, hailing a cab. Each story should be different – in characters, plot, and theme – from the others.

When I use this prompt in the classroom, we make a long list of situations. A year ago, a student offered

Three teenagers in a gas station

And I wrote five mini-stories. I titled each after towns I knew in Wisconsin. This week I zipped through a revision of each piece. I like the idea that a series of mini-stories could stand as a whole piece. My five are not strong enough to warrant that yet, but the point is: I’m practicing revision. And enjoying the practice!

Below, are two of the pieces. Read only the revisions or take a look at the drafts too, to see changes.

(Revision) The Pitstop
The joke is the whole town is a giant truckstop. North-south and east-west interchanges make a cross of cheap motels, gas stations and a Super Wal-mart. Mike, Jessie and Jennifer started hanging out at the Pitstop their freshman year. They made friends with Delores and Mary who called Mike, Jessie and Jennifer “young things” and made up for burnt coffee with complimentary pie. The five of them, and whichever trucker cared to weigh in, shot the shit.

At some point in the evening, Delores would step out for a cigarette and then let Mary have her turn. “This place was better when we could smoke,” Mary said. Delores coughed and pointed at the three young things. She said, “We’re saving their young lungs.” Mike said he liked a little gravel in the voice and the two waitresses laughed like it was the best joke they’d heard.

When Mike turned eighteen, he stopped at the Pitstop’s front counter, showed his license and bought a pack of Marlboros. At the back counter, when it was time for Delores to go have her smoke, Mike asked to join her. “You’re a baby,” Delores said. Mike shrugged. They stood in the damp alley next to a Dumpster. Delores offered her lighter and Mike sucked a lungful of smoke, coughed. Delores didn’t laugh or look away. When Mike quit coughing, he looked at her, his eyes watering, and said, “Don’t tell.” Delores took a long drag of her own, held it for a moment, exhaled in a slow stream. “Tell what?”

(Draft) Tomah, Wisconsin
The whole town is a giant truck stop. That’s the joke. North-south and east-west interchanges make a cross of cheap motels, gas stations and a Super Wal-mart. When they were freshmen, Mike, Jessie and Jennifer started hanging out at The Pitstop on Friday nights when the rest of the school was at a football or basketball game. They made friends with Delores and Mary who called Mike, Jessie and Jennifer “young things” and made up for burnt coffee with complimentary pie. The five of them, and whichever trucker cared to weigh in, shot the shit. At some point in the evening, Delores would step out for a cigarette, return to the counter and let Mary have her turn. “This place was better when we could smoke,” Mary said. Delores coughed and waved a hand at her friend and then pointed at the three young things, “We’re saving their young lungs.” Mike said he liked a little gravel in the voice and the two waitresses roared. When Mike turned eighteen, he met Jessie and Jennifer at the Pitstop; instead of walking through the gas station to the restaurant in back, Mike stopped at the front counter, took out his license and bought a pack of Marlboros. At the back counter, when it was time for Delores to go have her smoke, Mike stood and asked if he could join her. “You’re a baby,” Delores laughed and Mike shrugged. They stood in the damp alley next to a Dumpster. Delores offered her lighter and Mike sucked a lungful of smoke, coughed. Delores didn’t laugh or look away. When Mike quit coughing, he looked at her, his eyes watering, “Don’t tell.” Delores took a long drag of her own, held it for a moment, exhaled in a slow stream, “Tell what?”

(Revision) Ric’s Kwik Trip
It took a week for Mrs. Nefger to figure out what the three boys were doing. They showed up during the afternoon lull and walked up and down the aisles giggling, occasionally bending or kneeling and then standing quickly, glancing her way. She sat behind the counter flipping through a magazine or checking the tobacco inventory. Each day the boys stopped at the back cooler for neon Gatorades. The medium size cost $1.39.

One day Mrs. Nefger was helping a customer find baby wipes when she noticed the price stickers on the shelves. The thirty-nines were circled in green Sharpie. The next afternoon, when the boys were halfway down the chips aisle, Mrs. Nefger called from her perch, “Hey, you. What’s with the thirty-nines?” The trio froze, looked at one another, then at Mrs. Nefger. She said, “Yeah, I noticed. Is it some kinda pervert thing?” One of the boys blushed up to his white blonde hair, shook his head. “Then what is it?” she said, stepping down from the stool, leaning on the counter. The one wearing a hat pointed thumbs at the other two and said, “We’re all thirteen, that’s all. Adds up to thirty-nine. We call ourselves Thirty-Nine.”

Mrs. Nefger could have said that was the dumbest thing she’d ever heard, but didn’t. Instead she half smiled. “Better than the Three Musketeers.” The baby-faced one giggled. She said, “What are you gonna do when one of you turns fourteen?”

(Draft) Orfordville, Wisconsin
It took a week for Mrs. Nefger to figure out what the three boys were doing. Every afternoon they showed up at Ric’s Kwik Trip during the lull before commuters stopped for gas. The boys walked up and down the aisles giggling, occasionally bending or kneeling and standing quickly, glancing her way. She sat on stool behind the counter flipping through a magazine when she should be checking the tobacco inventory. Each day the boys stopped at the back cooler and picked neon colored Gatorades to drink on their walk home. The medium size cost $1.39. One day Mrs. Nefger was helping another customer find baby wipes when she noticed the price stickers on the shelves. The thirty-nines were circled in green Sharpie. The next afternoon, when the boys were halfway down the chip aisle, Mrs. Nefger called from her perch, “Hey. Yeah, you. What’s with the thirty-nines?” The trio froze, looked at one another, then at Mrs. Nefger. She said, “Yeah, I noticed. Is it some kinda pervert thing?” One of the boys blushed up to his white blonde hair, shook his head. “Then what is it?” she said, stepping down from the stool, leaning on the counter. The one wearing a hat pointed thumbs at the other two and said, “We’re all thirteen, that’s all. Adds up to thirty-nine. We call ourselves Thirty-Nine.” Mrs. Nefger could have said that was the dumbest thing she’d ever heard, but she didn’t. Instead she half smiled, “Better than the Three Musketeers, I guess.” The baby-faced one giggled. “What are you gonna do when one of you turns fourteen?” The three boys shrugged; one of them said they had awhile yet.

 

Intentionality

April 10, 2014 By in Process, Revision Tags: , , , 1 Comment

When I show up at the page, I don’t always know why I am there. Sometimes I ask. Most of the time, I cycle through the top load of junk and find something to take me through a couple of pages. Actually, most of the time, it is that top load of junk that takes me through a couple of pages.

But I show up. And I think that’s enough.

Right now, I’m practicing revision. I like that word “practicing” in front, because I’m learning to return to a piece and work with it. For years I’d finish a crappy short fiction piece and think it was actually kinda good. Then I’d go back, expecting to dust-up extra commas and swap out a few words. Instead, I’d reread the piece and close the file because it was complete crap and I didn’t know where to begin.

Now I am coming to revision work with the same intentionality I have when I show up at the page: I open a file, take a breath, and begin. If I have comments to work from, I have those up too. Most of the time I revise at home, during the kids’ quiet time. Those slots of time are usually short so I like to take revision writing dates out, packing my laptop and heading to a coffee shop. On Sunday I met a poet friend who was also revising old work. And today I worked alone. Both days I put in a couple of hours on a piece I’ve let sit for nearly three years.

And if being intentional about revision happens to come with a triple shot mocha, all the better.

March Revision: Fiction

March 30, 2014 By in Process, Revision Tags: , , , Leave a comment

I revised three fiction pieces.

Melanie: Not the title, but the character. If I cut this piece to a sentence, it’s about wanting what you cannot have. I wrote this piece very quickly, in the shadow of my own want. Because I felt too connected to Melanie’s situation, I threw in all these details that are mine. In the latest revision, I cut a number of them. I am not Melanie, even if we’ve walked the same want. One thing that I gave wholly to Melanie is my close following of Syria. Though I kept a fairly accurate timeline of events in my mind, I cut some of the extra “reporting” from the story.

I Still Want You: This piece has a nameless narrator and is set in Kuwait. Another mom, another wanting what she cannot have. For the past year I’ve felt ridiculous picking at the same scab: lust and discontent show up in my notebooks and fiction. This piece came together very quickly and I revised it a couple times. I’m letting it rest for another week or two. I wrote it in present tense.

I feel less ridiculous about rewriting the topic of lust after reading I Want To Show You More by Jamie Quatro. I think that sometimes there is something in your life that just won’t shut up. While Quatro managed to weave faith and God into her pieces addressing infidelity, I didn’t do that with the two above. I didn’t want to try, really. The two pieces above are not my only writing on the subject and I openly address my faith and prayers and the grit of flesh and spirit in my personal writing, some of which may evolve into essay.

Jeff: Again, not the title, but the character. This piece is also set in Kuwait, following an Afghanistan vet working as a contractor. The first drafts of this piece contained a lot back story on Jeff and his family. In the first revision I cut cut cut. In this revision, I cut to compress.

I’m just learning what compression in fiction means. I need to recognize the purpose of my longer drafting: to let me meet my characters. But wandering back story and exhaustive detail does not allow the reader to sink in the immediate story. These revisions were work, each averaging two or three hours of rereading, scrolling, cutting, pasting, rewording. I was surprised to feel so intensely at some points in my reading and revision. I feared that after having looked at these characters for so long, this latest revision might be a little pale.

But now, I am afraid I’m a little blind to what really works. I’ll move on to the next round of fiction revision and let these pieces sit.