The Creativity Workshop is coming to an official end – and this is where those graduation speech sentiments come into play: the end of something meaningful, but more importantly, the launch pad for something newer, more exciting, bigger. blah blah blah.
Well, yeah…
I belong to a women’s group that meets monthly on the Tuesday night closest to the full moon. Last night we did one of those rituals where you pull a seemingly random card out of a deck, read what the accompanying guidebook says about the card, and make connections to your own life.
We used The Celtic Tree Oracle: A System of Divination. The cards themselves are beautifully rendered – each depicting a different tree that represents a certain mythic concept described more fully in the text.
Sometimes I’m pretty prosaic, so my first thought was, “Oh, good, trees. I’ve been writing about trees.” My first Creativity Workshop story turned out to be a love story – between a house and a tree. My last CW story, Timbre – the one I’m working on right now – focuses on people cutting down trees in a suburban neighborhood. It’s a hate story, I suppose.
I pulled the Ash card. In Celtic cosmology, the Cosmic Ash “connects the three circles of existence… which can be variously interpreted as past, present and future, or as confusion, balance and creative force.”
I’m not so sure yet about balance, but I’ve certainly moved from confusion to creative force – and back again – with my writing in general, and through the challenges of this workshop in particular.
“The Ash can be seen as spanning both microcosm and macrocosm, the little world and the great world… Since the Ash itself carries ‘keys’ (winged fruits), choosing this card is a key to a more universal comprehension of how all things are linked, everything being connected; earthly and spiritual; yourself and the cosmos; lowest and highest. Your deeds form part of a far greater, even endless, chain of events, and your own inner pathways have their reaction in the outer world.”
This resonates with my belief in and respect for the interdependent web of all existence so I’m nodding and smiling while reading/typing the above quote.
But the prosaic kicks in again, and these words stand out in flashing lights for me: Deeds ==> chain of events. Inner pathways ==> reaction in the outer world.
I suppose these are obvious to everyone else, but right here and right now, they are the focusing guideposts I need for completing Timbre and moving forward. What can cutting down a backyard tree set in motion? What can refusing to cut a backyard tree set in motion? Who is affected, and how? How can I entice you, the reader, to care about it?
I see a more nuanced, original story evolving from a fallen tree as part of a cosmic chain of events that reverberates through the universe — or at least through the cul de sac. The story is getting deeper, richer and I can see roots (sorry!) of a larger, interconnected web of — what? deception, possibly, nastiness, most definitely — growing beneath the surface.
So, yes, I will finish this final CW story. And, yes, I will move forward with a tangle of ideas that wiil, I hope, weave themselves into a larger narrative, a bigger universe. NaNoWriMo 2010, can you hear me?
I just looked back at my original intent for this final segment of the Creativity Workshop:
Taking the mythic journey through the heart of darkness, er, suburbia.
I am so there.
::w00t::
[And another shout-out for the fabulous Merrilee Faber for getting this whole inspirational writing workshop rolling. Thank you, and thanks to everyone who slogged along for the journey. It’s been real. ]
It turns out there’s a market segment willing to shell out big bucks to get big butts.
Seriously?
The article provides TMI about flat-bottomed women desperate to add curves to their bums – some surgically (the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery reports nearly 5,000 butt lifts were performed in the U.S. in 2009 at up to $15,000 a butt) and some via padded panties, available at trendy boutiques as well as at Walgreen’s and Target.
These women are obviously not writers. It is impossible to sit with your computer, yellow pad or Moleskine notebook for hours each day and have this, er, problem.
Yesterday I went to Target, and came out with two summer tops, one on sale for $8.60, one for $10.00, and two bags of their organic blue corn tortilla chips with flaxseeds (the best packaged tortilla chips around, IMHO.) I forgot completely to look for Booty Pops while there, but I now know they are available online in black licorice and caramel nude for $19.95 a pair – plus shipping and handling.
I’ve never been much of a trend-setter, but I am so there with this butt thing. I figure if I put on one of my new halter tops, open the chips and sit at my computer to write and eat for a couple of hours, I’ll continue to be ahead of the curve, so to speak. I can work on maintaining my own personal butt, which I had even before it became trendy – and none of this silly Booty Pop business for me.
Exactly one year ago today, Nancy Drew Too rolled out its first blog post! It’s my blogaversary! It’s a birthday! I followed my writing buddies Kathan, Darksculptures, and Dayner into the blog pool and we started swimming. In the deep end.
Little did I realize at the time how much y’all would mean to me as we plowed forward and shared our writing adventures, hopes, dreams, frustrations, doubts, and, of course, our fabulous writing. Bless your hearts and thanks much, darlin’s… Likewise to everyone else who has graced this blog with your presence and comments.
In keeping with the tradition of my first blog post (what is it about these summer colds?), I’m gonna go take some cough syrup and blow my nose now and hope to come up with something clever for the Year In Review when I feel better. Namaste.
So where am I with my Creativity Workshop goals, my One Story Per Week plan? I’ve already admitted that I didn’t write a single word during my vacation. My bad. But I do have a couple of semi-stories in the hopper from my ‘Breaking the rules/breaking the law’ segment — again, more than I’d have if I weren’t slogging along in the needs-extra-help-and-time section of the workshop. So I figure I’m ahead of the game, at least my game, and I’m okay with my limited output.
And now, here I am in Segment Three: ‘Taking the mythic journey through the heart of darkness, er, suburbia.’ I’m plowing right ahead with a couple of tales of suburbia, the slice of American life with which I am most familiar — though I try my darnedest not to fit in here. Today’s Friday Flash may or may not find its way into one of my stories. I have lots of ideas for stories here, and many of them are interconnected. We’ll see what happens.
I do want to learn something about Joseph Campbell and his take on the mythic journey to see if that can enrich this series of stories — and my writing in general. Since I think Bill Moyers is the best journalist in the US, I want to watch the PBS series of interviews between Moyers and Campbell, and thought I’d start those before beginning this series of stories. But we’ve had major thunderstorms here for the past couple of days which has impacted internet/cable/phone service and I’ve not been able to download much of anything that requires speed.
So I’m plowing forward without Campbell, and I’ll let him catch up with me sometime in the future. And if any of you has any recommendations for books/videos/whatever that you’ve found useful about Campbell’s work, by all means let me know.
FINALLY, I’d like to give the talented, energetic, dynamic, gifted, inspirational (I know, too many adjectives — but she deserves every one, and more) Merrilee Faber kudos and gratitude supreme for cooking up the Creativity Workshop in the first place! Whether you are involved in the CW or not, take some time to go to her site and read some of her posts and hints, and the guest writers she’s invited to post during the workshop. Lots of inspirational food for thought there.
Thanks, Merrilee — and everyone who’s shared their thoughts and writing through the Workshop!
“I want those to go, too.” She pointed to the row of rosebushes, yellow and red blossoms bobbing in the breeze.
“Ma’am?” The bushes were healthy, lush, and while he wasn’t a flower man himself, he was sure someone had lavished a great deal of care on them, and recently, too.
She smiled and a cold wind blew across his face.
“I said, I want those to go.”
“Whatever.”
He shrugged and started up the chainsaw. Couldn’t figure out some people no way, no how.
This was fun. Thanks to the fabulous Merrilee of Creativity Workshop fame for sharing the I Write Like link. Of course, I tried it with three different writing samples and came up with:
J.D. Salinger
Margaret Atwood
Stephen King
I’ve always loved Kim Carnes’ voice and this song — even though this isn’t the best version of it, it’s the only one I could find on YouTube. And, uh, Kim is 65 years old here and looks, IMHO, absolutely fabulous, so there’s something to be said for breaking the rules.
Which brings me to the main point(s) of this post:
Thirty writers X ten rules each = 300 writing rules!!!
(Okay, not quite 300 as some of the writers didn’t come up with ten.) I loved reading all of them together to see the different perspectives, similarities and contradictions. I’m going to print out both articles and highlight the rules that spark my muse, see how and if that changes over time.
In keeping with the Six Word Memoir concept (oh, we really should start doing some of these sometime, too!), here’s my distillation of the rules.
A and I took a 2 ½ week road trip, during which I intended to post occasional nuggets from the road that wended its way up through North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine, and then back down to North Carolina.
Well, the road trip to anywhere is paved with good intentions, I guess – but the funkiness of our travel laptop and the quirky, slow Internet access we encountered along the way blew the likelihood of blog posting right out the car window.
But here’s the real deal: I didn’t write one. single. word. during our entire trip. Not one. (Except for mileage logs and where and when we stopped along the way.) The closest I came to a literary experience was spending two days in Maine a half-mile from where Stephen King’s Pet Sematary was filmed.
While all the definitions of vacation fit the trip – seeing new places, visiting old friends and family, changing the pace and rhythm of life – this describes my vacation mindset the best: the act or instance of vacating.
That’s it. Old thoughts, ideas and words vacated my mind. They fled the premises and left all this empty space in my brain for – what?
New thoughts, new words, new directions. Paradigm shift? Planetary alignment? I’m still figuring out what happens when your brain empties out, hits ‘re-set’ and comes up with something different, something unexpected.
Yesterday I was telling a friend about our trip and she projected, “And I’ll bet it felt good to get home, too.”
Well, no, as a matter of fact.
We’d run out of clean clothes, so we were happy to use the washer and dryer. And Polly and Lola had stayed home with a house sitter, so it was great to see the furballs. But if we could figure out a way to travel with them comfortably in the summer, we’d be on the road again as soon as the clothes were dry.
Antsy. Restless.
So, uh, isn’t Tap Dancing at the County Fair supposed to be about a road trip toward self-knowledge? Am I living my novel right now, but without the distance or perspective to write it, or know how it should end?
I was emptying one of the travel bags I’d taken on the road, and found a pile of change in the bottom of one of its zippered pockets: four quarters and three pennies.
Plus this: a funny little metal coin with scalloped edges and a star cut out of the center. WASATCH DAIRY FARM it says on one side; “Good for *1* Quart of Milk” on the other.
Huh? I never heard of the Wasatch Dairy Farm. Neither did Google. The closest a search came up with was a town in Utah. I haven’t been to Utah since a road trip in the early 1970’s, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t visit any dairy farms then. And I bought the bag maybe ten years ago at a Crate & Barrel outlet store in Massachusetts. Where did this rural talisman come from?
So here I am, a couple of days after our road trip, filled with extreme wanderlust, thoughts and words careening around the empty caverns of my mind, waiting to be arranged or re-arranged into something approaching sense, or at least amusing nonsense.
Maybe it’s time to start writing.
And then head off again in search of that free quart of milk.
She stirred the pitcher of sugar-water and smiled. Oh, her hummingbirds surely did love this sweet nectar! And the bees – some days she believed they swarmed under the trees in the back yard, just waiting for her to fill the feeders and the cups so they could drink.
“Mary! Hurry it up with my lunch!” Her husband scowled from his lounge chair. It was the first he’d spoken to her all day.
Well, he’d just have to wait – her winged friends were going to get their lunch first.
She carried the pitcher out on the porch. Goodness, the air was alive today! Her little friends were hungry. She filled the special hummingbird feeders carefully so the nectar wouldn’t drip around the base. Then she poured some nectar into open cups so the bees would drink there and leave the hummingbirds to their own feeders.
The air crackled with excitement and anticipation – she could feel it. And hear the buzzing. She could see a sphere of movement, of tiny wings, circling near the sycamores.
“Dammit, woman! I want my lunch.”
She hurried back to the kitchen. She’d made James a meatloaf sandwich slathered with currant jam. She poured a tall glass of sweet tea.
“I’ll just take it outside so you can eat on the porch. It’s lovely there.”
James grunted and scratched his crotch as he shuffled toward the door. “’Bout time it’s ready.”
She looked at him – his grey stubble, his hard eyes. “Oh, it’s ready,” she said.
The buzzing grew louder as she set the plate on the table.
He grabbed the plate and started wolfing down the sandwich, the nice fruit salad Mary had piled on the plate. She went indoors, went in the kitchen to wash dishes.
She never heard a thing over the sound of the running water, she said later. Not a cry, not the chair falling over.
"From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than ‘objectivity’.
I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble.”
I pulled the Ash card. In Celtic cosmology, the Cosmic Ash “connects the three circles of existence… which can be variously interpreted as past, present and future, or as confusion, balance and creative force.”
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