Writing or When Was the Last Time I Cried?

Sometimes inspiration is not enough. Motivation is not enough. Sometimes I need a cat to gently nudge me into action. Okay, wrong adverb. Wrong verb. Wrong cat. There's nothing gentle about Kočka. He bites.

In this case, the inspiration comes from Facebook. One of those questionnaires. You know --

     "It's fun to learn odd little things about my friends.
          1. What’s your middle name:
          2. Last time you cried?
          3. What's your favorite pizza?"
        etc.

As a writer, these random questions can start me thinking. And, rather like an artist too poor to hire a model, I can explore my own reactions to stories. Stories that my friends tell me. Stories I find in the media.

My Michigan cousin Gary's questionnaire on Facebook reminded me of my own tearful responses to two recent stories in the media.

The first was a National Public Radio piece on Flint, Michigan.

A little background:  A series of changes to the water supply led to a federal state of emergency declaration in January 2016. Because of lead contamination, Flint residents were instructed to use only bottled or filtered water for drinking, cooking, cleaning, and bathing. The water is now declared to be safe, but residents are instructed to continue to use bottled or filtered water until all the lead pipes have been replaced, which is expected no sooner than 2020.

The NPR story aired on October 26. The reporter Ari Shapiro was revisiting Flint citizens to find out how their lives are now, almost three years after the emergency declaration. The last interview of the piece was a woman, who along with her husband is raising two boys. Her name is Jeneyah McDonald.

During the interview her 9-year-old son Justice speaks up, "Why does the pipes break in Flint and in the others they don't?"

The reporter explains that Ms. McDonald goes into a long, fact-based explanation about the state government's decision to change water sources in an effort to save money. Then the reporter says that later when the children are not in the room, she says that question from her son really threw her.

     "MCDONALD: It's his first time asking me that ever. And that kind of - that was a lot.

      SHAPIRO: Is it hard to know what to say?

      MCDONALD: It is. It is, and especially trying to contain my emotions 'cause I don't, you know,
      just want to break down in front of them 'cause they're not understanding, why is she so upset?

      SHAPIRO: What's the answer that you would have given to that question if it had not been asked        by one of your children?

      MCDONALD: I probably - honestly, I feel like it was done on purpose because Flint is
      predominantly black. And who cares? I feel like it's pretty much where the nation is right now.
      You see young black boys getting murdered by white police officers all across the nation. So
      what do I think as a black mother raising black boys? How do I think a government that's
      predominantly white - how do they - they showed me what they feel about me and us here in
      Flint. They showed us.

      Everyone want to say racism is not alive. It is so alive, and it's so sad. And I - you know, it's
      hard not to teach your kids about it without sounding racist. You know what I mean? I don't
      want my children to hate anyone because of the color of their skin. I just - I want to be careful
      when I'm answering things for him because I want him to be an adult that's able to change the
      world."

And what made me cry? It breaks my heart that this is happening in America today. That America must be taught by this mother, who has been on the receiving end of racism, saying "I don't want my children to hate anyone because of the color of their skin."

Not all my tears come from a broken heart. Sometimes I cry when I see something so beautiful or hear a story that opens my heart.

With all the ugly campaign advertising on commercial TV recently, I've found refuge in Public Television, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and TED Talks.

Four days ago, I listened to Andrew Solomon giving a TED talk about "How the worst moments in our lives make us who we are."

Solomon is a Professor of Clinical Psychology at Columbia University Medical Center and a past President of PEN American Center. His book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression won the 2001 National Book Award, was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize, and was included in The Times list of one hundred best books of the decade. Solomon's Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity was honored with the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award.

His work has been mostly about how people deal successfully with adversity. Parents with handicapped children, people living in the midst of war, people surviving their own disabilities. In this twenty minute TED talk he describes forging meaning and building identity from his own life's adversities.

Solomon tells a story about Harvey Milk. You may remember Milk was the gay activist elected to San Francisco's Board of Supervisors in 1977 and then assassinated a year later along with Mayer George Moscone in San Francisco's City Hall.

Solomon says when Milk was asked by a young gay man what he could do to help the gay movement, Milk said "Go out and tell someone. There's always somebody who wants to confiscate our humanity and there are always stories that restore it. If we live out loud, we can trounce the hatred and expand everyone's lives."

Solomon ends his talk exhorting us to "Forge meaning. Build identity. And then invite the world to share your joy."

My tears were from my heart opening. For the assurance that there are people like that out there.

This is what writing is for. To tell stories. To connect people to other people so they can share stories.  Just like the song says, "Put a little love in your heart. And the world will be a better place for you and me."



For the NPR story click Flint. To watch this TED talk click Solomon

My Life According to The Rolling Stones

Sometimes Facebook inspires me. Grace Wagner posted the following:  "Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Pass it on to 15 people you like and include me. You can't use the band I used. Try not to repeat a song title. It's a lot harder than you think! Repost as "my life according to (band name.)"

If you decide to do this, too, I suggest picking an artist or band that's been around for a while and covered everybody in the business. Plus choose someone who just makes you happy.

I'm not including all the questions. Lord knows I've spent most of the morning on YouTube revisiting these songs. I've put links to the songs I do name here just in case you want to spend too much time with Mick and the Boys. So here goes.

Pick your Artist:  Well, duh – The Rolling Stones
The closest I've ever come to them was many years ago, driving west on US 66, yeah the famous one. It was late at night and The Stones were playing in Norman, Oklahoma, less than 50 miles south of the little town I was driving through. I knew they were there and I was listening to them on the car radio, just cruisin' and groovin'. And then, and then, there were flashing lights in my rear view mirror. Yep, I was being stopped by the only police officer on duty in that very small town. Speeding.

Back to the Facebook questionnaire.

Are you a male or female:  Honky Tonk Women
This video is from 1969 when Charlie Watts still had dark hair.

Describe yourself:  She’s a Rainbow

How do you feel:  Just My Imagination

Describe where you currently live:  Under the Boardwalk

If you could go anywhere, where would you go:  Down the Road a Piece
This video is from 1965 on the TV show Shindig! back when Mick and I were just babies. This is what we watched instead of American Ninja Warriors. Shindig! was probably lower budget, but then it was in black and white.

Your favorite form of transportation:  Driving Too Fast
Another one of those rockin' songs that could get me in trouble on the highway. That's why they call that electronic device in a motor vehicle cruise control and I should always use it.

Your best friend is:  Midnight Rambler
OMG! What Mick lacks in rhythm, he makes up for playing the harmonica. And Charlie Watts with white hair. Can't sit still while this is goin’ on?

What's the weather like:  Gimme Shelter
Reminds me of the Whoopi Goldberg movie, Jumpin' Jack Flash -- I can't understand what he's saying on this one either. But, who cares, it's rock n roll!

Favorite time of day:  The Moon Is Up

If your life was a TV show, what would it be called:  Out of Control
What can I say? Keith has finally gotten as old as he's always looked, and Mick and I aren't babies any more.

What is life to you:  Silver Train

Your relationship:  You Got Me Rocking
My husband keeps me rocking and I don't mean in a chair.

Your fear:  Ventilator Blues

What is the best advice you have to give:  You Can’t Always Get What You Want (but if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need.)

Last year this song was in the news because the 'rump campaign used it. The Stones to tweeted “The Rolling Stones do not endorse Donald Trump. 'You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ was used without the band’s permission.” In this instance I didn't get what I wanted or needed. I just hope we all survive it.

Kendrick Lake Park -- nonfiction

Kendrick Lake is one of the several walks we do. The trail around the lake is one mile. It is generally not too much uphill nor too much downhill. That's important because people who walk with us are at all fitness levels.

Our walking group is very fluid. Anywhere from three to ten walk on any given day. Here are five of our walking group.

Kendrick Lake is especially fun because the people who live along the shore decorate for the holidays and maintain beautiful flower and vegetable gardens.

                      

             Halloween Spider. It moves!                         and the Grinch rises up out of the chimney.

 

Donut Burst

Our walks are not just for physical fitness. They are also for our mental health. So after the fresh air and restoration by virtue of Mother Nature, we meet for coffee and whatever. We have different favorites depending on which place we walk. When we walk Kendrick Lake we either meet at Donut Burst or Taste of Denmark. We share political opinions, book and movie recommendations, find out about travel destinations and new grand babies. And generally solve the world's problems.

Kendrick Lake is five minutes from my home and like most everywhere in Lakewood has a beautiful view of Green Mountain. The lake has been an inspiration for two pieces of short fiction. It has a thick reed bed at the west end -- a perfect place to hide bodies! Did I mention that I write murder mysteries?

 
Kendrick Lake with a shaft of sunlight illuminating
a patch of Green Mountain

#atozchallenge

Where I Was 3 Years Ago Today -- Nonfiction

In 2013 my daughter Grace invited me to write as a guest on her blog Sin and Inconvenience. This is what she published Tuesday, August 27, 2013, three years ago today. Facebook reminded me. And, yes, the novel in question is available from Amazon in both paperback and Kindle additions -- Murder on Ceres.

My first novel, first draft almost finished. How did I get here? If I were Michener I would start--In the beginning, God. This blog post begins only a little later than that, but well before cell phones and the internet.

I used to write and submit poetry for publication. Acceptance letters along with the standard thank you and a promise of two copies of the issue in which my poem would be published thrilled me. But in those pre-cell-phone days, it cost a fortune to call all my friends and relatives long distance to tell them the good news. Not to mention the expense of buying additional copies of said issue and postage to send those copies to friends and relatives.

I’ve worked for a small-town daily newspaper. I’ve seen my by-line and my name in cutlines enough. But the idea of a book with my name on the spine sitting on a shelf in the Edmond Public Library seems much too grand. It shimmers above me in the night sky, brighter than the moon. A dream, a desire, a star too brilliant to look at and too distant to touch.

Knowing that a novel was beyond me, my book started out as a short story. I’ve written short fiction. I took a course in college. I understand how it works. So all I needed was a prompt of some kind and a deadline. My daughter provided the prompt and the deadline allowing me to choose the genre.

I ignored her prompt and chose murder and science fiction. And I went to work.

The deadline came and went, and the work proved to be as undisciplined as I. The story would not limit itself to short fiction. So I reconsidered the situation and decided to do a little book, a murder mystery that takes place on a colony in low orbit around the asteroid Ceres. But I needed help.

I happened to attend a monthly meeting of Oklahoma City Writers, Inc. at which William Bernhardt was doing a two hour presentation on novel writing. He talked about outlining. An instant turnoff since my research paper days too many years ago. But he made sense and showed how to plan the structure of my book. He was talking about the actual nuts and bolts of constructing a book-length story.

Three years plus several months, three of Bill Bernhardt’s intensive writing workshops plus a conference here and there, and I am coming around the last turn on this full-length murder mystery science fiction novel.

Bill said write every day. Four hours a day. If I had done that the book would have been finished long ago. Did I mention that I’m undisciplined? I heard somewhere that Stephen King says to write four hours a day and read eight hours a day. Or was that Mark Twain?  The eight hours reading I could go for, whoever said it.

There was a recommendation that I join a writers’ critique group for support and critical input. But that meant I had to also give support and critical input. I left every one of those meetings feeling bad because I had said harsh things to people as earnest about their writing as I was about mine. Tact is not one of my virtues. And have I mentioned lack of self-control?

Then somewhere else the advice was to just write it all the way through, do not do any editing until the story is complete. What a good rule. But mine is a murder mystery. As I wrote I discovered things that needed to appear earlier in the story. That required a rewrite of a scene. Editing? Even sitting down to begin the next writing session without looking at what I’d done the day before was impossible. Reading the work from the day before required minor or major changes. Did I mention that I tend to break rules even when I impose them myself?

What have I learned these past three-hundred, ten pages, and counting? Somewhere I heard that the definition of the verb to persevere is to begin again, and again, and again. No matter how many times my discipline fails, my control is lost, and my rules are broken, I can begin right now where I am. My book will be written and I will be launched into the night sky to find my name on the spine of a book in the Edmond Public Library. Just gotta finish this book first.

Claudia Wagner

I was born in Oklahoma. I learned to read under my mother’s ironing board. I learned the importance of stories around the dinner table during holidays and in the cellar during storms. I started writing to entertain my classmates. I continued to write because classes or work required it. Sometimes I wrote to understand my life. I have been office help, a welfare case worker, a fast foods manager, and a roustabout in the oil patch. I have also worked for the USDA. I’ve managed a veterinary clinic, helped care for my dying mother, and been a Page at the Edmond Library. I am a woman, a wife, a mother, and a grandmother. I believe the future of humanity is as unlimited as the Universe. And I believe that we as a species are imaginative enough and brave enough to move beyond the Earth into that Universe.

Why? -- On Writing

image from measurethefuture.net

See all these books? Your public library probably looks very like this. Prefer to read on your electronic device? You can probably get ebooks from your public library. Your favorite bookstore will either have the book you want or they can get it poste haste. That bookstore most likely will help you get the electronic version if that's what you want. And there's always amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.

Now why, with all these choices would you read a book that doesn't suit your purpose?

And as far as television and movies go -- same question. Why would you willingly, or worse yet unwittingly, donate your time and intellect to a production that will not meet your needs?

As a writer I have three needs that should be met by the books I read and the movies and television I watch. 1.) inspiration   2.) education  3.) entertainment. Yep. It's all about me.

(Well, okay there's one more but we're not supposed to talk about it.  4.) kill time, exercise denial, and avoid. All available on demand from the internet.)

The thing is, if what I'm reading or watching meets any or all of the first three needs, I'm less likely to spend time on the fourth. And more likely to get the laundry done, go to bed at a reasonable hour, and write.

Good writing inspires me. Barbara Kingsolver's work is an excellent example. She is a maestro of English. Much of her work is in first person which in the hands of many authors actually distances me from their characters.

She uses simple language beautifully. Here's a sample from Animal Dreams published in 1990.

"It was hot and my mind was fraying at the edges. I wiped the sweat out of my eyes and massaged my prickly scalp, thinking I must look like a drowned hen, but maybe nobody would recognize me today. Living without a lover was beginning to produce in me the odd sense that I was invisible."

Here is a woman returned to the small Arizona town of her unhappy youth after an absence of fourteen years. She's broken up with her boyfriend of ten years. She didn't belong in that town when she was in high school and she didn't feel that she belonged there now.

I am inside the character. I can feel what she is feeling. Inspiration.

Compare that with Andy Weir's The Martian.

"It's a strange feeling. Everywhere I go, I'm the first. Step outside the rover? First guy ever to be there! Climb a hill? First guy to climb that hill! Kick a rock? That rock hadn't moved in a million years!"

If he didn't use exclamation points I wouldn't know he was experiencing any feeling intensely. And what was his "strange feeling?" I don't know. Expletive deleted! Here's a man alone on Mars with little chance that he'll survive long enough to be rescued. Surely something is going on inside him. Wonder? Amazement? Sheer terror?

Okay, to be fair, Weir is writing his castaway as though in his mission log. And a log is traditionally a formal document expected to hold fast to unembellished facts. That would seem to preclude exclamation points. Or an exploration of the astronaut's emotional response to his predicament.

I understand that the very situation should give the reader a "feeling." But a writer is supposed to show that the character is having a feeling. I just never could get close to Astronaut Watney. It's hard to be inspired by someone I can't relate to. Need number one -- unmet.

Education from The Martian? Hardly. Either Mr. Weir chose to ignore Martian reality or he didn't do his research.

Mars does have dust storms. And they do present problems. They temporarily block out or reduce sunlight which is the major energy source for equipment on Mars. According to NASA "The winds in the strongest Martian storms top out at about 60 miles per hour" but with an atmosphere only 1% of Earth's atmosphere, that 60 MPH wind would not be enough to do the damage ascribed to it by Mr. Weir.

Emotion is hard for me to write, too. My own writing weakness is enough reason for me to read someone who does it well and learn how it's done. Inspiration and education.

So, yes, I threw Weir over for Kingsolver. And now I'm also being entertained.

If you're a writer, you will probably have the same needs, but those needs will be met differently. The trick is to find out what suits you and don't pay too much attention to what meets my needs.

The Race -- On Writing

Today is R in the 2016 A to Z Blogging Challenge. The 20th letter in the alphabet. Eight more letters. Nine more days. It's getting hard to sit down at the keyboard. To think of a topic or title that's appropriate. Maybe if I blogged about cooking. Or astronomy. Or rivers.

But I write about writing -- the mechanics of the craft, research (ah, that would have been good for today), book reviews with a nod to the author's style, bits of flash fiction and flash nonfiction, or excerpts from my book Murder on Ceres.

I read about bloggers planning ahead, deciding on a theme for the Challenge. Maybe even getting a few pieces written and ready to go. If you know me at all, you know I'm not that organized or that mindful.

That is not to say that I wait 'for the muse to strike' before I write. I had in mind a piece of flash fiction for today, but the story was like Topsy, Peter Rabbit's sister, it just grew and grew. Until it wasn't finished for today.

Inspiration for stories comes from everywhere. The Race comes from my exercise teacher's story about her grandmother's arranged marriage jammed together with an NPR story on this year's Paris-Roubaix.

Begun in 1896, Paris-Roubaix, sometimes called 'The Hell of the North,' is a one-day, 161 miles plus professional bicycle race. What makes The Race unique is the cobbles. Normal, fairly smooth road racing gives way to extended patches of cobbles -- old, loaf-sized paving stones that are anything but smooth.

The concept of smooth sailing giving way to bone-jarring, treacherous cobble stretches, is the storied path of true love and, in my story, the path of a marriage.

The moral of this blog post might be "be careful what you say around a writer, it may end up in print." Or "don't plan a project that's too big for the time or space allotted."

An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth -- a review

 

 

This is the most inspirational book I’ve ever read. I qualify this statement with the explanation that I’ve been out of my self-improvement stage for at least 15 years. I do not read inspirational books and you won’t find this one on those shelves at the bookstore.

 There are so many quotable statements in this book. I put post-its on the ones that especially spoke to me so I could come back to them for this review. The book looks rather like a porcupine with all those strips of paper sticking out around its edges.

Chris Hadfield was nine years old when he went to a neighbor’s to watch Neil Armstrong walk on the Moon. According to his book An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, he decided that very night that he wanted to be an astronaut. That probably didn’t make him a minority of one. But he dedicated himself to that goal, and he achieved it.

The first major obstacle to his ambition was his birthplace. He is Canadian. NASA only accepted Americans into the astronaut program.  There was no Canadian Space Agency then. “But . . . just the day before, it had been impossible to walk on the Moon. Neil Armstrong hadn’t let that stop him. Maybe someday it would be possible for me to go too, and if that day ever came, I wanted to be ready.”

Knowing full well that he hadn’t much of a chance at the job, he started right then to prepare himself. He did what any determined 9-year-old would do. He imagined what it would take to become an astronaut. He must be physically fit and he must fly.

He did have several things in his favor. His father was an airline pilot and flying was a part of his life. His parents encouraged education, responsibility, and good sense.

He flew in space three times – the first two during the Shuttle Era, first to MIR then to attach Canadarm2 to the ISS.

This photo was taken 7/2/2014 from the ISS of Hurricane Arthur

off the Florida coast. The object in the upper right quadrant

is Canadarm2 installed by Hadfield in 2001

His third space flight was on a Soyuz back to the ISS where he served as commander living in space five months, returning to Earth in May 2013.

 He talks about attitude. “Our safety depends on many tens of thousands of people we’ll never meet, like the welders in Russia who assemble the Soyuz, and the North American textile workers who fabricate our spacesuits. And our employment depends entirely on millions of other people believing in the importance of space exploration. We work on behalf of everyone, so we should behave the same way whether we’re meeting with a head of state or a seventh-grade science class. Frankly, this makes good sense even if you’re not an astronaut. You never really know who will have a say in where you wind up. It could be the CEO. But it might well be the receptionist.”

 About leadership. There was an emergency EVA just before he returned to Earth from his mission as ISS Commander. “Throughout the five-and-a-half-hour spacewalk, I felt a bit like a choreographer probably does while watching dancers perform; there was a sense of involvement and responsibility, a feeling of shared risk and reward, but also a necessity to detach and trust them to do their jobs properly.” He expresses pride in his team’s work on that EVA and in himself for “living up to NASA’s belief that I was capable of commanding the world’s spaceship.”

 

 

“Determined as I was to be ready, I was equally determined to enjoy myself. I lack the gene for martyrdom.” 

 



Here he is with his cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity"

with a few changes to the lyrics.

Give it a listen and a watch.