Summer's call

Since I have become a substitute teacher, my summers have become oh so sweet. They are tiny scoops of gelato, and I try to savor everything about them. My first summer off, I concentrated on reading. My goal was to read a book a week, which I did and then some. Last summer, I was on a mission to show my son, who was preparing for cross-country, that it was possible to get your 300 training miles in, even if you had to walk most of them. I armed myself with Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series on audiobook. If you saw me panting, all hot and bothered, on the side of the road last summer, I assure you it was only partially due to physical strain. That Diana can write a love scene! By the end of summer, I had proven to my son that 300 miles was possible-- a feat he did not reach, though my feet grew a size in the exertion.
So, this summer, outfitted in all new sandals as necessitated by last summer's miles, I have come up with some new goals for myself. I have four, but only one I'll talk about today. Spurred on by my ability to succeed in the summer and by the recent resurgence in my writing career with the publication of my ebook, I am making writing a priority. I have three projects which are in various places in the process: a youth novel, an adult novel, and a memoir dealing with the change in my mother status as my kids get ready to fly the nest.
With three projects going, it is my aim to be organized. I hope that juggling these three projects will stave off boredom, help me to keep working if one project encounters roadblocks, and help me to stay in the flow of writing.

Traditionally, I start my summer brain over Memorial Day weekend. Substitute teachers don't get much work after the holiday anyway. I am using this week to prepare myself. In some ways it is the opposite of the normal flow of life. I am contemplating notebooks, notecards, planners, pens that write smoothly--all the back-to-school practicalities. Of course, this is all compounded because I am geeking out on my iPad. The apps for novel writers are amazing: Manuscript, iBookwriter, Evernote, Notebooks. The choices are dizzying! I am also looking at accessories like keyboards for my iPad. Here is where I will admit that I already have an external keyboard for my iPad; I am not crazy about it. What fun it is to check out alternative options and imagine myself typing away. I am only giving myself this week to contemplate such fancies. (Come next week, it will be all about the writing.) But it is still today, and I can't help but wonder if Staples has a Memorial Day sale.

Dismantling the nest

I am working on a series of essays that is documenting my son's college search and our transition to an empty nest. Will it be a book some day? I don't know. What I do know is that is therapeutic for me. My son is in flux and that is scary for a kid like him who doesn't like change. I don't mind change, but I don't like the unknown. As a parent, I am not sure I am what he needs right now, because I am weighted down with my own insecurities about the future. How will it work for us to pay for college? Will we be able to move out of this area as we hope to do? Where will we end up in relationship to the place our kids end up? Will we need a house big enough for them to return as a safety net? What will my post-kids career look like? What kind of community life do we want to have. Those are the questions at the back of my mind as we look online for college visiting days, register Jonah for the SAT's, and contemplate college essays. Sometimes it feels like the kind of overwhelm I felt as a new mother. What I wouldn't give for the book What To Expect When You Are Expecting Your Child To Go To College.

Being an Artist in a Capitalistic Society

Yesterday, I was interviewed by a college student who was taking a Sociology of the Arts course. Fascinating stuff—not my answers, but the class in general. They talk about how art is formed by society and the ideals we hold. What are the arts like in a capitalistic society versus a communist society? Who decides the trends in arts? Who decides what art is? What is the role of a critic? What is the role of a patron? What roles do government and economics play in art? It made me want to take the class, especially after having recently seen the movie Exit through the Gift Shop, a movie about the commercialization of street art.




One of the questions I was asked was what advice I would give younger artists. One of the things I said is that you have to be a jack-of-all-trades. We live in a competitive society in which the artist must compete for patronage and favorable criticism. This isn't a simple road race; it is a decathlon. And you do a heck of a lot of training before compete. I do my work with the realization that it may be years before I am paid for that work—if I get paid at all. As you can imagine, I don't have many people who work under me. I have learned to do things for myself. I built my own website, sent a press release, designed and sent promotional cards, and wrote query letters. I am still working on doing the numbers. As an artist you frame your work, take photographs of your work, write blogs, address technology, write marketing plans, and network.  None of these skills came prepackaged in my college degree. You learn to fake it until you figure it out. Today, for instance, I am working on the cover art for my book and learning to design custom frames/borders for promotional postcards. Tomorrow, I am working on taxes. At some point, I must figure out how to connect my Twitter account to my blog and vice versa—and to get the links on my website. Did Picasso do all this?
 
Is this what it means to be an artist in this society? It is my experience. I wish I could be a fly on the wall when the sociology class participants give their reports on the interviews they conducted. What do our collective answers and actions say about our society? I'll leave you with one more of the questions I was asked. (I am paraphrasing.)
 
When did you first begin to tell people you were an artist/writer? My answer? I didn't feel comfortable telling people I was an artist/writer until I was getting paid for the work I did (even though the work I was getting paid for was done years previously).
 

My Bad Techno-romance

A lot has changed in my life since my book came out. I started substitute teaching. My running time has slowed to something just above a walk. (I continue to call it running because I am breathing hard.) Three years ago, I created a Facebook page-- ostensibly to help create some momentum for the Lancaster Literary Guild web page. In reality, the Facebook page, along with the iPhone I got around the same time, has reshaped my daily life. Whereas previously, I could not even remember to take my cell phone with me-- I now keep a death-grip on the thing. My electronic self and physical self are Siamese Twins. Of course, I had to buy an iPad. My new obsession only larger. For my ADD mind, these devices are both saint and demon. They help me with the tasks I need to plow through, but I believe that they have also rewired my brain so that I have an even greater difficulty focusing and being present. When it comes to details, I am slipping. I had a great memory for details, but now my husband says I am unreliable if we are talking about anything in the last 3 years. I am still allowed to win arguments when the facts in the case date prior to 2009.


More recently, I have begun to see technology as a Hydra monster. As soon as I master one branch of it, nine new offshoots take its place. Helping my son through his college search, planning a family vacation to Europe. I can find any information I want, but ultimately that information leads me down five other paths until I have a hard time finding my way out. Enter into this a new mission to make my author self a force in the digital world. I am overwhelmed. It isn't enough to have Twitter and Facebook and a web page; they must all be linked. I need to create creative, dynamic content. I recently talked (who am I kidding?—we conversed on Facebook inbox.) to an author friend of mine. She said that she spends more time on social media than actual writing. That thought almost sent me to live under my covers. It isn't that I don't like Facebook. I do. I am thinking of having the post office forward my mail there. But the thought that the world of writing has evolved into this computer game where you rack up points for followers and only have so many lives to keep in the game is scary and unappealing.

I finished reading A Moveable Feast by Hemingway. I was reading it because we are getting ready to journey to Paris. When I think about the romance of Paris, it will forever include images of writers sitting in cafes with their cafe crèmes and their notebooks with a few sharp pencils and their own words for company. That is something to long for. This longing for stillness, for knowing our own minds and finding out our own identities under this madness of technology, is a theme in the novel I am writing. If the world keeps spinning the way it is, I think it will wind up in the fantasy section.

Question

I had my first meeting today with my coach (career, creativity, life). During one sitting, I had compiled a list of roughly 130 questions to use to whittle down to one we could work with as a touchstone for our work. (She assured me that most, if not all, the questions would eventually be answered through this process.) She had me read the questions aloud while she took notes. Some of the question included:

How can I balance writing/art/workshops?

Should I focus on one area?

What do I see myself doing in 7 years when my kids have left the house?

What do I need in order to feel successful?

How does money affect my ideas of success?

How does my spiritual life inform my work?

What gender issues come into play in my work?

What is my last project trying to teach me about my future work?

After we reviewed the questions, Kathy asked for more details about my past. Why did I quit my job? Do the reasons I quit still apply? What do I think is the essence of Jill? (I had a hard time with that last one.) I filled her in on my creative and working life of the past ten years. Many a-ha moments later we came up with the question, How can I live my life to the fullest? This question was punctuated by a crashing leap by Kathy's cat. AMEN!

It may seem like a very broad question, but it encompasses so much of what I am trying to do. When asked leading questions about where I see my focus, I say I want it all. I like the painting and writing and workshop giving. I like raising my kids and making dinners. I like taking it all in and spitting it out in different forms. Like a conduit cable made of many wires.

Some themes did emerge. It became pretty apparent to me (Okay, Kathy told me and bells started going off) that I shut down when I receive criticism and direction. I don't like being told what forms my art and writing should take and this often has paralyzing results. We also discussed money which, interestingly enough, seems to be innately linked to gender roles in my mind. These roles are a big part of my process and art.

I am most excited to be going on this journey with Kathy. A former fiber artist who has studied gender roles in artmaking. That could describe me. I'm not sure where all this is going, but already today, I have written more than I have in the past month. I hope to journal a lot and make sense of this---starting with one large question.

Packaging Girlhood; Part 1

My daughter, a fifth-grader, has been coming to me with more and more specific requests lately. A certain computer game, a specific Webkinz animal, an Abercrombie and Fitch sweatshirt. Peer pressure is advancing! She doesn't watch TV in the typical way. No Hannah Montana or Cheetah Girls. We get Little House on the Prairie on Netflix and we watch Survivor (commercial-free, but for their obvious product placement). But the marketing is getting to my daughter nonetheless, through her friends, pop-music on the radio, and American Girl magazine. As a mom, I feeling the squeeze. She doesn't have all the information to make healthy decisions for herself, so I have begun to educate myself so I can help her navigate her choices.

I borrowed the book Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketer's Schemes by Sharon Lamb and Lyn Mikel Brown. I recommend this book for all mothers and grandmothers of girls--no matter how young or how old. What I like about this book is the fact that it points out the problem areas and gives methods for traveling through the minefield that marketers have set in motion for our daughters. It doesn’t advocate discipline over your child, but rather takes the path of informing you and your daughters as consumers and encouraging discernment. For instance, in a world of fashion merchandising where the same styles are sold from sizes 4-16 (Does a 6-year-old interact in the world in the same way a 15-year-old does?) the authors encourage parents to make choices about what slogans their daughters wear. Supplement a young girl’s wardrobe of slogan T’s that are cropped or form-fitting with plain cotton T-shirts in an array of colors (not just pink and sparkly). Likewise with cropped pants. The message is that girls’ clothes should be cute. Maybe, but above all, parents need to ensure that girls have clothes that give her the ability to be active.

Another disturbing trend is the sexualization of young children. Here we can look to Abercrombie and the sexy way that it markets to the preteen crowd. Not only in the photographs in the ads (nudity for the middle school crowd?), but the blatant STUD printed on boxer shorts for pre-teens boys.

I am also interested in this book because I have started a novel for middle-grade girls. I want to be part of the solution for young girls and not some unaware author who helps them buy in further to the Princess myth. It may be my downfall as far as marketing to my audience. Recently, my daughter was with me at the used book store. She wanted to buy 7 books. I told her she may have two. How did she decide which two books to buy? The covers of course. The cover of one of her choices showed two cheerleaders in short skirts with pom-poms. The other cover showed pre-teens dressed in prom-like dresses. Did I tell her to put those books back and make more appropriate choices? No, but after she reads them, I will ask her why she chose those books. We will have an age-appropriate conversation about images, messages, and what is important and healthy for girls her age.

Family Reunion

We had a family reunion this past weekend. This is not just noteworthy because I got to see aunts, uncles, cousins, and dear old Gramps, but also because I got to chill out with my siblings, the collective of which is known as the Four J's. I am J1. The J's don't meet often enough. We are a close bunch. We love each other dearly, but geography and schedules make gatherings into rare and tricky occasions. So we crammed as much togetherness as we could into a weekend.

Now we don't have any black sheep in this family. We all get along, but we are very different people. J4's husband had an interesting remark in the last hour of our reunion. He said that he can't believe that the four of us were raised under the same roof. Um. Yeah. He kind of has a point. We have different takes on religious life and politics. As for college majors, we ran the gamut of art, electrical engineering, educational counseling , and occupational therapy. We are all well-traveled, though to different places and for different reasons. For J3 it is Paris, and for J4 it is the Paris Casino in Vegas. J2 travels for business, and I am a vagabond--going wherever in the world I can hitch a ride.

I can only say that this kind of relation is great for a writer. Imagine the diversity I can draw from to create characters. They have been warned!

#%&**!#$%

I was contemplating a blog entry on swearing when an article from Writer's Digest on the topic came into my inbox. I love that there is an article on this topic. I had been thinking about swear words in writing, but being an isolated writer, I often think that the things I think about are topics only mused about in my own little writer bubble (the one that happens to be perched on my shoulders). I happen to believe that as an active parent (kids still in the house), I think differently about curse words that a non-parenting writer. I also think that as a writer, I think about curse words differently than non-writing parents. (Maybe I am wrong, but I'm alone here in the bubble.)

I believe in the power of words. I believe that words mean something whether it is a vow, a pledge to meet at a certain time, or a throwaway compliment. I do swear on occasion. Not often. I've heard my parents swear--even less often. It kind of shocked me the first time. Much as it shocked me the first time I heard one of my kids use the s word in the proper context--a bad Uno play.

This is how we deal with swearing at our house. I tell my kids two things. First, I tell them that the act of swearing happens when a weak mind is trying to assert itself strongly. You simply don't have the time to form articulate phrases to emphasize how you feel. For example, I used the preferred Uno game cuss when I knocked over a quart of paint at a friend's house. My son was there. He understood that my mind was weak at that moment. The other thing I tell my kids is that swearing is a negative expression, and negative expressions draw negative energy to a situation. I've told my kids these two things and also told them it was up to them to decide to use words appropriately and to accept consequences if they use them inapproproately--a swear word at school, for example. I actually think this is a good way to approach swearing. Children of friends of mine, in whose houses swearing is outlawed, tend to point out and count the swear words in movies--making them larger than life. My kids don't do that.

As a writer, I don't use swear words often. I used to wonder if it made me seem prudish or motherly. I'm always pushing to be seen as a writer, not as a female writer, so I was afraid that an absence of swear words would seem too ladylike. When I was in the musical Li'l Abner in 6th grade, my lines (not a great number) had to be changed for the audience. Hell to heck. God to gosh. We weren't even allowed those words in the home where I grew up. Rats and sugar were the only acceptable explitives. Growing up in that environment made me question if it was the norm in middle America households or if I got dealt the quaint card. Maybe, by adding some colorful language, I was headging all bets, but I did ask myself some questions while writing my frist novel.

1. What is my character's stance on swearing?

2. Is there a time in the story where they go against their stance. (If so, the swear word should stick out from the story.) Why do they leave their comfort zone? (Usually this is the point.)

The Writer's Digest article raised another point that I hadn't thought about--and that is the reader. Who is your target audience, and what kind of language do they expect in a book? I admit that I only really considered my audience when I read a passage of my book aloud in my hometown. I hadn't really thought about my reader's comfort level before that point. In the end, in this world of HBO Orignial series and movies on demand, I don't think I crossed any lines. But here in the bubble, I just dotted a question mark.

Triathlon

Over the weekend, our friend Jeff competed in a triathlon. He's done them before, but this was the first at this length (mile swim, 20 mile ride, 10K run). And he did well, too. I could never do a triathlon. First of all, I don't swim. My sister-in-law and I ran in the Chicago marathon 4 years ago. That was a once and done thing. As women who gave birth sans drugs, we didn't feel the need to use the marathon experience as a springboard for other forms of physical torture. So no triathlons in my future.

But I am thinking of Jeff as I begin my day. This morning, I am going to meet with a woman who owns a business in Lancaster about giving journaling workshops in her store. (Workshops--event 1) Then I am taking my paintings to a gallery manager to have a frank discussion about my work and the business of selling fine art. (Painting--event 2). Then for the final event of the evening, I am attending a book club in the capacity of the author of the club selection. This book club happens to be hosted by my 12th grade honors English teacher, whom I haven't seen in 20 years. (Writing--event 3).
So, here I am, my triple-threat self (HA!). Trying to decide if cross-training is a good thing, something greater than the sum of the parts, or if I am spreading myself too thin. I'll probably be able to better answer that riddle tomorrow.

Back in the groove

I cannot tell you what a revitalizing effect that painting and writing has for me. A real difference exists for me on the days when I get work done and days that I don't. On Friday, I was doing a little happy dance. Words and paint strokes were flowing in tandem for the first time since the kids went back to school. I was just disappointed that it was the weekend, because I wanted to keep the streak alive. I tried to write on Saturday while my husband and close friends were yelling wildly at the Big Ten Network. (Darn that DirectTV!) But it is Monday, and I am once again in the flow. I finished another painting and am well into the writing of a novel which I am not really supposed to be writing, but I am. (If my agent is reading this--we'll talk soon, I promise!)

What's your sign?

On Saturday, my daughter and I were driving by Wal-mart. A woman, flanked by two young children, stood at the entrance to the parking lot. She was holding a sign that said, There is no such thing as a Christian homosexual. I had to wonder what prompted this woman to gather her children and parade her sign before all those people. Was there a recent controversy I missed, or was she simply spewing her views before the largest gathering of folks she could find? Did she feel her family was so threatened by these opposing values that she would risk ridicule rather than to sit in pew with someone who was gay?

This sign fascinated me because of the characters in my book, SUMMERS AT BLUE LAKE. The opening scene, which takes place inside a church, introduces the protagonist's grandmothers and outs them as lesbians. The entire book emerged from the opening sentence which juxtaposes the words lesbians and grandmothers. It gives a tension in the mind as we counter contemporary gay rights issues with our sociological history. On one hand is a population that is still being shunned (as evidenced by the woman's sign) and on the other hand we have a pair of grandmothers (Who doesn't love their grandmother?) belonging to the revered WWII generation. I will admit that I deliberately set the stage in a church to take advantage of the tension. In my earliest drafts I was very hard on the members of the congregation--judging them for their judgments toward my characters. It took many rewrites to soften my words to the concerns of the congregants. The scene was post WWII America. The happy family was the ideal. Rec rooms. Backyard barbecues. A reality worth preserving against all perceived moral threats. But...What if the church-goers genuinely liked Anja and Lena, the grandmothers? What if they had a hard time applying their moral certainties?

I don't carry any signs. I envy people who have convictions so powerful as to take a stand for what they believe--even if it is, as in this case, a belief counter to my own. I have never marched on the capitol or stood on courthouse steps. I have contemplated both, but I guess that makes me a contemplatist not an activist. I consider things deeply, perhaps to extreme. For every truth I have been taught, I have asked a question. Maybe--just maybe-- that's what makes me a writer.