I’ve got something better growing

Tags

creativity, crocuses, flowers, gardening

Walking through the neighborhood today I was delighted to see strong signs of Spring. There’s no turning back now: the flowers are going to bloom, leaves bud and unfurl. Before we know it, it’ll be all-get-out Spring!

I have no crocuses growing in my yard. Along with snowdrops, they are the first flowers to bloom in this area. I was thinking I’d like to plant some so I can have color and life early in the season. Looking in my backyard to see what’s happening back there I saw something better.

I’m growing dragons!

What’s showing  in your yard or neighborhood?

(You know I’m going to have to write about this in a story now, right?
Yeah, you knew that.)

Following the Story

Tags

creativity, story telling, thoughts, writing

Some writing-related things I pondered today:

I have to follow the story wherever it leads, no matter how far or dark or unexpected or uncharted or difficult the path it takes is, I have to follow the story.

Sometimes I am afraid to follow and so I don’t move much from the little clearing that is the start of the path. I attempt some fitful starts, nervous pacing, walk in circles, or I walk down the paved road. I peer into the distance to see if I can catch a glimpse of where the story would go, to see if I can judge from here how far, how difficult, how exhausting, how winding the path.

From the clearing of my starting point I can’t clearly see the path the story will take and I can’t see where it will end. The distance and any details glimmer in the dappled light and are soon obscured completely.

Any height looks daunting when viewed from the bottom. The trick then, if there is one, is to climb. Gauge and prepare, certainly, but in the end I must climb; I must risk falling to see the breath-taking vistas from atop, just as I must follow the story through tangles of forest and seemingly endless prairie and rain-soaked muddy countryside and over the uncertain footing of scree if I am to write honestly.

To remain safe in the valley is to remain in shadow. To remain in the clearing is to miss out on many adventures, many opportunities for wonder and personal growth. (And a strange sense of deja vu just now.)

Poem accepted and Nikki Giovanni

Tags

creativity, culture, poetry, politics, why art is important, writing news, writing philosophy

A few exciting things happened these last few days:

– poetry editors Erin Keane, Drew Morse, and Sonya Taaffe at Strange Horizons have accepted my poem “Sea-Change” for publication! How thrilled am I?! Thrilled! Not only are they themselves an accomplished group of poets, but they’ve also published works by Rose Lemberg, Anne Sheldon, Mike Allen, Jo Walton, and so many other talented writers.

– tonight I heard poet, activist, teacher Nikki Giovanni give a talk thanks to the UW’s Distinguished Lecture Series. Wow, what an amazing woman. Her clarity, passion, joy, intensity, knowledge… just, wow. I laughed, cried, scribbled notes… and afterward, I biked into the night with a renewed sense of hope and purpose. And duty.

Here’s a few quotes I’d like to share:
– This is the year two-thousand and twelve. I think being alive is a good idea. I want to recommend it, I really do.
– Nobody beats the machine. John Henry couldn’t beat the machine.
– I was so upset, I wrote a poem.
– I urge you not to think of success, but to think of truth.

Nikki spoke on so many topics. And like any intelligent, creative, engaged human being she wove these stories and anecdotes of seemingly disparate topics into a cohesive, moving, meaningful, urgent lecture. And there was poetry. Of course.
She spoke of the importance of a quality education and the difference it can make in an individual’s life, the importance of art education, women’s rights and reproductive freedom, Pullman porters and A. Philip Randolf, John Glenn and black women humming when faced with death and fear, eating dinner alone and watching tv, and she spoke of grandmothers as the hidden person of the 60’s – the hidden voice behind the civil rights movement telling their grandchildren “nobody is better than you” even though the kids were being spat on, beaten, worse… and who is going to say to their grandmother, “no, we couldn’t do it” after these women had survived so much, had thrived, built families and communities, and loved and worried and lived their lives… exactly. That’s how you move forward despite great odds. And the civil rights movement did just that.

And I think that’s what artists are charged with, too, to be true to themselves and humanity and create the best art they can create. Which is to say, not to give up, to keep fighting the good fight. Change the world for the better, do not let it conform you. Nikki said: “What you can do is what you believe in and not wind up saying ‘I wish I had.'” That’s one of the times I cried. I might question myself and my abilities as a writer, but it is what I believe in, it is where my passion lies. I can’t give up. I can’t go back and say “I couldn’t do it.”

Nikki said: “I believe the Universe is just.” Well, I don’t know if she said “Universe” or “universe”; regardless, the Universe is awesome and it is what we have and are a part of. As Carl Sagan said, we are a way for the universe to experience itself. That’s a duty, too.

“Woman of Wood” at Goblin Fruit!

Tags

creativity, fantasy, poetry, the creative process, writing, writing news

It is published! My poem “Woman of Wood” is available in the Winter 2012 issue of Goblin Fruit along with the poem “Qasida of the Ferryman” by my dear friend Sofia Samatar. You will find many fine and wondrous poems as well as the artwork of Rose Lemberg, the guest artist for this issue.

As far as content is concerned, writing of “Woman of Wood” wasn’t the most difficult of poems. I have pieces in my repertoire that I have been working on for years now; pieces where the right metaphors and images, the ones that will bring to life the meanings and emotions I’m looking to share, simply elude me. But “Woman…” was all right there, she practically sprang forth like Athena from my head (or thigh).

In a former life I was a wood worker; a residential carpenter, cabinet maker, and painter. There is something about working with wood that is satisfying on a very basic emotional level; the feel of a well-sharpened chisel through wood, the smell of the sawdust, the patterns of the wood grain, building something useful and beautiful with my own hands and back and brain. There is one piece of furniture I had in mind while writing the poem: a beautiful night stand made of air-dried walnut. Because of the drying technique the wood retains more of the complexity of its color than when kiln-dried, which is the more common technique of the two because it is faster (indicative of so many things in our culture – it’s faster so that’s the way we do it, but it is not necessarily “better” and it certainly isn’t prettier, just cheaper). The walnut I used for the night stand is layered with bands of lavender and silver and crimson. Real faerie wood! Gorgeous. I wish I had time and the facilities to make more furniture with that wood.

As for the implications of the content, the layers of meaning that brought it about and the layers of meaning that it holds, well those have been forming in my brain and psyche since I was born. You’ll no doubt see shadow images of faerie tales and other popular stories, of cultural norms approached from that fantastic stand point, you’ll hear the wood I worked with speaking through the hands that shaped the wood, and more. Surely there’s plenty of my feminist background stepping forth and commenting on the traditions passed on to me through the two cultures I was raised in. Perhaps I’m commenting on my creative feminine side through the eyes of my male-dominated career self.

What was difficult about “Woman…” was the format. That took, let’s see, over a year to figure out. I had the whole thing written in one voice: the now first person her side and the third person his side were all jumbled together. It was a bit of a mess. Powerful imagery and phrasing were there, a unique story, but the story was out of focus, chaotic.

It’s that process of thinking, of wondering ‘what is it that I’m really trying to say here,’ otherwise known as editing, that forced me to keep working on the poem and make it better. How these things happen, I don’t know, but there was the moment of epiphany when I realized that what I had written was a story of the woman of wood and her forced transformation as well as the story of how a woman of wood is created, the physical and social forces that shape her. And it occurred to me that these two related stories might be better told as two intertwined stories. It’s the magic of thought we call creativity, that moment… and since writing is how I think, that’s what I do: I rewrite and rewrite and rewrite, because I don’t know what I’m thinking until I write it and analyze it and rewrite it to see if that’s what I meant to say.

As the saying goes: don’t believe everything you think. That’s what the process of writing is (that is writing, rewriting, and editing): a better form of thinking.

I hope “Woman of Wood” makes you think, and feel, and transports you to another place, a place filled with the sound of axes chopping trees and the snap and crackle of a log thrown on the fire, the smell of fresh sawdust and of woodsmoke.

Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud and why fantasy is important

Tags

creativity, speculative fiction, why art is important, writing philosophy

From “About the Author” section of the translated selection of short stories by Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud entitled A Life on Paper: Stories:

“… Chateaureynaud is a founding member of the contemporary movement La Nouvelle Fiction: “New” because it rose up against the prevailingly minimalist and confessional tendencies (autofiction) of recent French writing, seeking to rouse it from what critic Jean-Luv Moreau called “the slumber of psychological realism,” and to restore myth, fable, and fairy tale to a place of primacy in fiction.”

What interests me most, and excites me tremendously!, is the part about restoring “myth … and fairy tale to a place of primacy in fiction.” Which is exactly what we need to do. Sadly, there is a tendency in many circles of our society to demean or belittle fantasy. For many, the fantastic is unacceptable: it is childish (that something for children should be seen as unimportant says quite a bit about these people, if you ask me), nonsense, trivial, and lazy. Fantasy is simply unimportant, child’s play. And is therefore dismissed.

But fantasy is important. Very important to our being human, to our growth as individuals and as a people, to our ability to create and innovate, to learn… actually, fantasy is an integral part of our ability to discover science “fact.”

Never mind that writing fantasy is a whole heck of a lot more work than writing “non-genre” stories: the author has to create worlds and inhabit it, and create the histories of that world and all its people, and more. Non-fantasy writers simply use everything that’s already around them, they don’t create whole new worlds.

This is a topic that Ursula K. Le Guin has written on, beautifully, passionately, and in depth. And I’d like to take up the dialogue. Because I feel it is of vital importance to human culture and human survival. … and through extension the survival of many entities on the planet.

So, I shall come back to this topic later. I am on a short time schedule at the moment, but I wanted to introduce this topic as it has been tumbling about my head for the past year, and it is about time I started to discuss it.

Happy Holidays! and the rights of story

Tags

creativity, Emerson, life, why art is important, writing philosophy

Hello dear Reader,

It has been  much too long since I’ve posted. The holidays are already upon us and the new year is imminent. This then is a post to wish you a happy Winter and whichever Holiday or none it is you celebrate or don’t. I like to wish people a happy Solstice, because even if it is not a phenomenon they think about in celestial and cosmological terms, it affects them and their lives. The return of Light – something we can all appreciate and enjoy.

It has been difficult for me to get into the Christmas spirit this year: Madison is unseasonably warm (and no, I’m not complaining) and the trees and ground are not covered in a blanket of sparkling snow. The streets are not even covered in dirty gray snow and sludge. Thus, I kept feeling like I had weeks before Christmas arrived. I was wrong.

A friend mentioned that it feels like we are in borrowed time, a borrowed November. I do not know whose November nor whether or not they miss it and want it back.

The solstice was only a few days ago, so really it is only winter just now. Anyone who knows Wisconsin, however, will let you know that it’s winter once we’ve put the jack-o-lanterns in the compost and the Halloween candy’s been eaten up. Two seasons comprise 75% of the year and two share the remaining 25%. If you know anything about Wisconsin you know that Spring and Autumn are all too brief; you can miss them if you for some reason don’t venture out of doors for a spell, such as if you have a nasty illness or a project that you must focus on and finish. Shut your eyes for a little too long and you’ll be lucky to see the tail end of Autumn as Winter comes barreling in. And yes, Winter comprises the majority of that 75%.

My goal for 2012 is to revise Daughters of the Spirits, my 2011 NaNoWriMo novel, and begin At the Table with Kings, the SciFi novel that’s been in my head and somewhat on paper, the one that was my first choice for NaNoWriMo but that I shied away from. Well, I shan’t shy away anymore.

Which is a resolution of mine, as a writer: I have resolved to write the stories that present themselves to me, the stories that swirl and crawl there way up my throat and into my mouth and into my fingers, the ones that have struggled through my insides and other untold spaces. They have worked so hard to present themselves, how can I deny them life? Who am I to say, ‘no you’re not publishable, look at you, what sort of a plot arc is that? How am I going to package this so someone will want to print you?’ I shall never tell a story, “stories don’t look like that.”

How often have I heard, as example, that how I acted or looked was unfeminine, when everything I do, by definition is feminine. What those people meant to admonish me with, is that what I did or looked like was culturally unfeminine… traditionally unfeminine wouldn’t have worked, because there are so many traditions and have been so many more traditions that such a statement is quite useless. Of course the same can be said for culture… unfeminine according to current dominant culture, pop culture (you’ll enjoy the typo that I corrected: “poop” instead of “pop”) which is no static thing.

Stories have every right to exist as they are without the imposition of a culturally faux consumer-driven publishing market dictating the shape and scope of their existence. Which is to say: my creativity and my thoughts are legitimate and beautiful as they stand. The worlds I create have a place in the Universe and are not inherently less privileged than any other worlds.

I will reread Emerson, especially “Self-Reliance”:
In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts… Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.
We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. … Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind.
For non-conformity the world whips you with its displeasure. … but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause,–disguise no god, but are put on and off as the wind blows, and a newspaper directs. 

This critique of society and the sway of popular culture still applies today. It also explains why “bad” novels sell so well. Thankfully, there still are presses interested in intelligent stories, and publishing houses that appreciate well-written work, creative work, works of art and genius.

Circuitously to say – my resolution is to be genius, that is, to write the stories that are within me and express myself wholly. To accept the divine idea only I can represent.

Happy Holidays, warm wishes of Light and Peace, within and without.

Day 15 – half way there

Tags

challenges, creativity, NaNoWriMo, story telling

Hello everybodies,

Here it is, the half-way point, the 15th of November. And I’m on target! A wee bit ahead, actually. Word count: 26,238!

To keep the pressure on, my goal will be to finish the 50,000 word NaNoWriMo challenge before the deadline of November 30th at midnight. I am usually working on projects up until the last minute, rushing to get it done and hand it in, often breathless and sweating from the running to get it in on time. Not this time folks! At least, I am setting an earlier deadline to rush to. Similar, but different enough as to be different and a challenge.

Also, I’d like to entertain the possibility of including/incorporating into my story an element that someone else suggests – someone like you! My Oma would tell my brother and me stories every night before bed, when we visited her in the little village she lived in (and still lives in, actually). She pulled the feather beds up and tucked us in, wishing us a good night. We asked her to tell us a story, please, please. She agreed, but asked us pick three things we wanted her to include in the tale. We wanted red dancing shoes, a pot that turned everything placed in it to gold, an enchanted forest, a talking owl … I curled up under the blanket, and listened with rapt attention. She told wonderful, enchanting stories.

Now it’s my turn to tell a tale, and I’d like to ask you for a detail or a prop or a place you’d like me to include. So post a reply if you think of something you’d like to see in the story. It’s a fantasy story; the main character is the youngest of the four Daughters of the Spirits, Tree Daughter; plot point: the fourth Daughter is missing; their grandmother, the Seer, was a Daughter of the Spirits before she was chosen to guide the People, she was River Daughter; the Spirit’s gift to the Daughters is called the Sight, and it runs strongest in the one chosen as Seer; their lives are agrarian-based, community is important, as is consensus, they practice art for its own sake, as well as a form of spirituality; the big bad is the Queen (as yet unnamed) of the land to the North.

Thank you, everyone, for your support.

Tomorrow I write on!

Too much to read – and now there’s even more!

Tags

creativity, speculative fiction, writing, writing news

I was updating my “about” page as I thought it would be a good idea to include links to the websites of writers whose work has given me hope, thrilled me, entertained me, given me something to think about and talk about, etc. Thereby, I caught up on my reading of Catherynne Valente’s site, and am reminded how little I actually do, because look at this:

http://www.catherynnemvalente.com/2011/11/a-picture-is-worth-about-470000-words/

“That’s everything that I’ve had published in 2011: novels, short stories, essays not counting the blog. (Not actually though, the Wyverary Govournesse webfiction and A Silver Splendour, A Flameare not pictured, because we didn’t have any more screens to show online stories on!)

It’s just shy of half a million words of fiction.”

and this:

http://www.catherynnemvalente.com/2011/11/prester-john-drawing-short-fiction-and-the-internet-hates-me-today/

“Today is the day when All My Writing comes out.”

Though I may never approach the awesome prolific-ness of Catherynne Valente (really, I simply won’t – she has insomnia, which I do not envy her, while I suffer on the other end of the spectrum) I am encouraged to continue with my writing, because simply knowing it is humanly possible to write that much, is inspiring.

Now go read her awesome work.