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Last night, my husband and I went to our first Cirque du Soleil performance, Luzia. David has wanted to go for years, decades even, but we just haven’t ever gotten our act together and bought tickets. Until this month.

We’ll be keeping our act together a lot more in the future.

I had some impressions (totally false) of what I thought it would be like. David used to watch performances on TV, when we had cable, and I would sit in for a few minutes and watch, but I could never follow it. I thought I had to understand the storyline (writer, much?), and I was always struggling to do that. Then the camera would either zoom in on one person (who might or might not be doing the most fascinating thing, from my pov), or would pan out and be showing you the whole stage, and–I’m sorry–that is nuts. There is NO way to follow what’s going on across the whole stage and up in the air. David is much more visual than I am (really, if there aren’t written words in front of me, I often just don’t get the point), so I always figured that my non-visual brain wouldn’t really get it. I bought the tickets for my husband, because, yes, I’m that nice.

Last night, when the show was done, I thanked HIM for coming with ME. 🙂

At some levels, the show was simply amazing. The things these people could do–the guy who spun on a strap above a water pool, with one shoulder “in” the strap, flipping (with that shoulder as the pivot point) over and over and around and around. While I wasn’t just staring, I was (I’ll admit it) thinking about all the shoulder surgery waiting for him down the line. The young man who was essentially a contortionist, getting into yoga-like positions where you honestly couldn’t tell which way (for him) was up and which was down, left or right.  The acrobats flipping from swinging platform to swinging platform, doing spins and somersaults in the air. If it was supposed to help my stress levels that the platforms were relatively close to the ground, then they shouldn’t have let their acrobats jump so high before coming back down!

At another level, I loved the parallels to a more traditional circus (although I can’t honestly remember if I’ve even been to one of those). The guy with the shoulder was doing all his flips and twirls over and around a puma, I think, a puma “costume” that had been built for the show, then placed on top of the shoulders of performers, who made it walk and growl and purr and ask to be scratched in a totally cat-like way. This were the big-cat show. The hair was long and straight, and he swung it around in the way a “regular” lion-tamer would crack his whip. This was SO much nicer than seeing that whip and real animals being “tamed.” And there was a clown. Not a scary clown, not a clown with a red nose and big feet, not an irritating clown. But a clever, funny clown who had all the kids and all the adults laughing in sympathy with him whenever he showed up on stage. When the rainfall that was coming from the ceiling kept moving around so he couldn’t catch any water to fill his canteen, the little girl next to me kept saying things like, “Over there! Get it! No, over there!” That’s how engaged she was.

But the best level? The one that I needed so much last night and hadn’t even realized I did need. The utter delight. When I wasn’t gripping my husband’s arm and holding my breath until somebody landed safely, I was grinning and smiling without even realizing it. The rhythm of the dancers as they flipped through rings on the big treadmill, the energy of the two young women who spun themselves in big hoops for minutes on end, the grinning musicians with their tuba and their accordion and their guitar, the people wearing costumes that simulated animals from Mexico (oh, the woman’s cape that spread out to be an iguana!), the movement and the balance and the grace and the joy. My hands kept moving to cover my mouth–my husband thought I was scared the whole time, I think (although that’s just silly, because scared=gripping his arm!), but what I was, was happy.

There has been so much crap lately, we are all so stressed, and we all know it’s going to go on for a while. Stay aware, stay committed, stay active. But, oh, yes, schedule times to bring joy and amazement back into your life. Step out of the anger and worry and find something that will fill your brain with energy and smiles. Maybe it is a Cirque du Soleil performance. Maybe it’s something else. You know best what it will be–just go get some on your calendar!

 

 

 

 

If you’ve been watching the news out of California, or just checking in at my Facebook page, you know that we are having quite the winter. No snow, no blizzards–I think I maybe heard hail on the skylights for a couple of minutes back in December. But rain…oh, my goodness. Rain. I live just a little ways up into the Santa Cruz mountains, where the slides have been closing and washing out roads right and left.

And, yes, I know we’ve been complaining about the drought for years.

But this post isn’t a complaint. This post is a story, and this post is a reflection. And I’m not sure that the post would have caused the reflection, so quickly or so clearly, in any other year before this one.

We’ve had a couple of long drives to get home this winter. In the first slide, it took me nine hours to go a distance that, in any normal Bay Area traffic, would have been at most an hour and a half. Long story, inaccurate navigation software, and an inability to believe that they wouldn’t open the highway soon. Since then, if it looked like the roads were going to be trouble, I’ve been meeting my husband at his office, and he’s been taking us home through the back roads–he rides them all the time on his bike and knows them, and he isn’t as prone to the OMG-IS-THAT-A-TREE-DOWN anxiety as I am. So there were nights we took a long time to get home, but we got home.

Until earlier this week. We went out to dinner in town, perhaps foolishly. While we were there, another slide hit, this one between town and our house. And all the back roads we had been taking had been closed for at least a week.

We were fine. We stayed at a family member’s house, and we went out to breakfast the next morning, and when it looked like the highway wasn’t going to be open anytime soon, we took a new, slightly longer route home. It was a bit of a pain and a bit of an adventure. And, even with the night out, we know that–compared to plenty of people in our mountains–we have still been incredibly lucky.

And yet…it was unsettling. We’d actually each been carrying a bag of spare clothes in our cars, in case of this happening, but we’d hadn’t thought about grabbing them when we went for dinner. We didn’t have our computers–for home or for work–and neither one of us had a book (!!!!). And Alice was up at the house, and we’ve left her overnight before, and I knew when we did get home, she’d be happily asleep on the couch (and she was). But of course I worried about her, and I worried about when the highway would open, and I wondered if the new route would turn out to be closed somewhere along the way. And I didn’t  have a change of clothes, and I didn’t have a toothbrush, and I wasn’t sure when I was going to get either.

It was all, very much, nothing more than a small inconvenience. And I knew that. Still, until we actually got on the road–and, okay, yes, even while we were on the road–I was kind of grumpy. I was grumpy, because my equilibrium was shoved a little off balance, and because I didn’t know for sure when I was going to get home and I didn’t know for sure where I was going to sleep that night.

Yeah. I got a tiny, super tiny, taste of what so many people live with every day, for days on end. People who are homeless and who, with these rains, have been flooded out of the places they try to rest and sleep. People who are refugees who have left their old homes forever, and still haven’t got a clue if they will ever have anything they can call a new home. People who don’t know where the next mortgage or rent payment is going to come from. People who have four walls with a roof,  but who don’t feel comfortable or safe inside them.

Lucky, lucky, lucky. That’s what I am.

And those others are really not lucky. Even less so, obviously, now that we have a completely uncaring man in the White House and a whole crap-load of uncaring men and women in the Senate and the House.

No answer, no solution. A story and a reflection. And maybe, just maybe, another reason to stay in the battle.

So I think I’ve mentioned here before that this WIP feels a little different than others I’ve worked on.

Hey, it has magic! 
That’s not really the kind of difference I mean, but it is new for me as a writer, and it is all kinds of fun. 

But the story also seems more connected to a real kid’s world and a real kid’s concerns than the other books I’ve worked on. Maybe for just that reason, I think I care more about this protagonist, too. And, on a personal note, I feel like this book has the potential to lift me and my writing to the next level. Whether that will be enough to get me agented and/or published, I couldn’t tell you. But a step up is a step forward. 

So, I’ve been doing a few things different as I write this draft. (I call it my 3rd draft, but it has tons of new material in it. If I didn’t abhor the word, “should,” I would tell you that I should have been doing this work and writing this material in the second draft, but let’s not go there.) 

So what’s new for me? 

• I’m slowing myself down as I write each chapter. I could blast through them again and get more words on the page, but I did that for two drafts already, very possibly one too many. 
• As I write more slowly, I’m thinking more about the truths of each chapter, for my protagonist and for the secondary characters. 
• I’m letting myself (or maybe making myself) drop those truths onto the page, however and wherever they land. If I don’t think of it until the last page, when I should be doing the wrap-up or cliff-hanger? I write it. I suddenly and thoroughly derail some snappy dialogue by dumping it all into a horrible explanatory narration “disguised”as a spoken response only by the quotation marks? Write it. Insert it as an entire page of boring internal monologue with zero action? Write it. It’s painful and grates on the part of me that prides myself on pretty prose, but it’s the only way I’ve found to get to the this in,”The scene is about this.” 
• I’m revising. As I go. Not as I first write the scene. But I don’t put it in my binder until I’ve read it through and, almost always, made changes. Sometimes I’m lucky, and those changes are mostly tweaking. Every now and then those changes leave me still feeling like the scene is a mess, like I still don’t know the this. But most often, I find myself looking at those truths I plopped in, getting a new scene focus, and revising around one of them. And feeling much better about what I do put in the binder. 

Where is all this going to get me? I’m hoping that I’ll end up with a version of the story that is ready for a full-read from some Beta readers. (Even if I still don’t quite understand the difference between critique partners and Beta readers.) Maybe something that is ready for an SCBWI mentorship program, if I can find one that looks doable, location- and time-wise. Maybe something ready for a professional editor (manuscript, not copy) to look at. 

At the very least, though, I think I will end this draft still very much in love with my story and my characters I think I’ll feel as though I’m giving them my full commitment and care. And that’s a lot. 

What do you do to shake up your writing process? How do you push yourself to go deeper into your story and the worlds of the people in it? I’d love to hear your thoughts! 

So I picked my word for 2017 a bit early. Uou can see my blog post about “Bravery,” back here.  And I don’t do resolutions, because–for me–that’s a bit like setting up a bear trap and directing my foot to step right into it. SNAP! Pain and stress and not a whole lot of resolution-based accomplishment.

But…I have been thinking about 2017 (who hasn’t?) and about this turning of the calendar page that feels like more than just that. And I know pretty much what I want to be doing this next year.

I want to do more. I want to write more pages than I wrote last year. I want to (continue to) write more deeply than I have in the past. I want to spend more time volunteering tha n I’ve been doing (which amount has pretty much rested at zero since my son got above parent-volunteering-at-school age, so…). I want to do more fun, adventurous things with my husband. I want to see my friends more. I want to read more books–okay, well, no, I’m probably good if I just read the same number of books I read in 2016!

And–here’s the “interesting” part–I want to achieve all this increase with another more: more calm.

*Pauses for brief moment of hysterical laughter*

No, I get it. Really, I do. If I can put the calm first, then the more will follow. Because the calm will leave me time and space and oh, a magical mental and emotional flexibility the likes of which I have never seen before. Right? Except I typically put calm second. Well, that’s kind of minimizing things–I have been working at putting calm first for many years, and I am way better at it than I used to be. Much of the time, though, it still comes as a secondary step. I experience, I react, and then I remember: oh, yeah, calm. And that’s okay. Better than okay. It takes me out of the spinning and swirling, let’s me take a step back and a re-look at what’s going on. It’s actually all good.

But wouldn’t it be lovely if the calm came first? Always?

Outside of some Star-Trekian brain-and-chemistry transplant that hasn’t been invented yet, that’s not going to happen right away.

So in 2017, I’m still not making any resolutions. But I am going to push myself for more–more actions and more calm. What I really know is that it won’t be a simply sequential path, the actions and the calm will ebb and flow like the tide, and there will be days when I want to run and splash through the waves and days when I want to stand very still and let the edge of the ocean barely kiss my toes before it pulls back and away.

And I’ll go with that. While I’m probably never going to hang ten at the Mavericks surfing competition, 2017 is definitely going to see me out there with my little paddle board, kicking away and getting things done.

Each year for the past few years, maybe on and off a bit, I’ve picked a word for myself. That word was usually focused on my writing, because, well, I’ve been pretty darned lucky, and I have room and ease in my life so I could focus on my writing. 

This year feels a little different. Okay, it feels a lot different. On the one hand, I still have a life of room and ease, and I feel relatively safe from the things I fear are coming down the road. On the other hand, I know I may NOT be safe–I’m a woman and I’m Jewish and I’m a liberal…all groups who are already coming under attack and who will almost certainly continue to be attacked.

Still, the odds are decent that, if I chose to, I could tuck myself into my sheltered little life, duck my head, and come out relatively unscathed. 

But I don’t want to. I want to stay out of my shell, keep my head out of the sand, and fight.

This will take, I’ve been thinking, courage. Which is the word I’ve been leaning toward for 2017. And which, ironically, I’ve been leaning away from, too…out of fear.

And then, today, I picked up my copy of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic, thinking I’d start a reread to get inspired for the next year of writing. And almost immediately I came across a description of what a poet named Jack Gilbert (no relation) told some of his writing students. 

“Most of all, though, he asked his students to be brave. Without bravery, he instructed, they would never be able to realize the vaulting scope of their capacities. Without bravery, they would never know the world as richly as it longs to be known. Without bravery, their lives would remain small–far smaller than they probably wanted their lives to be.”

I was not a brave child, teen, or young adult. Cravings for adventure? I had none. Impulse control? Enough for a dozen kids. Fear of what MIGHT go wrong? Drove most of my decisions (usually to NOT try something). Growing up and growing older has been, in many ways, a process of growing braver. 

In the past few years, I’ve thought that maybe I had got “there,” that I was a good level of brave, that I didn’t have to keep stretching myself. And then November 8 happened and now January 20th is right around the corner, and I find myself thinking about bravery and wondering–yet again–if I’m brave enough. And, honestly, dreading having to get back into that stretching place.

But in one paragraph, Jack Gilbert and Elizabeth Gilbert reminded me that bravery and growth isn’t only about the struggle, but also about the growth of capacities and richnesses we maybe just can’t see yet. They reminded me of all the rewards I’ve claimed whenever I did step out of my safe spot and taken a risk (which so many other people wouldn’t even see as a risk). They made me sit up and look around at the bigger, happier life I have, because–sometimes in very small steps and occasionally in leaps–I was being brave.

So, it may be just semantics, but I’m setting aside “courage” for 2017 and choosing “bravery” instead. The bravery to get my introvert self out there, with people and crowds and noise, and find some way I can volunteer and make a difference. The bravery to make a time commitment and stick to it, when maybe (probably!), I just want to go home, hold my cat, and read my book. The bravery to attach my name and identity to my beliefs, in public and in person.

And, on the other side, the bravery to take care of myself and choose to tuck myself away when I need it, trusting that almost 3 million people voted for Hilary Clinton and Tim Kaine and against Donald Trump and Mike Pence, and that some of them will keep the shields up if I’m not there that day or week. The bravery to actively look for and at the good things people are doing for each other every day and to soak in that goodness, not discount it as not enough. The bravery to find balance between valid worrying and overall happiness. And, finally, yes, the bravery to carve out time for my writing–unselfishly because words and stories are important, and selfishly, because the writing nourishes and sustains me.

Bravery. 

Have you got a word for 2017?

I’ve been thinking about motivation lately. About how, even when we want to be writing, when we have a project we love, when we want to see that chapter or that draft or that book get done, we still might not be writing as much as we can.

Where does the motivation come from, I was thinking. And where, when it’s not there,  did it go?

And then today, at my day job, I was reading a study report about the maker movement and its place in education. (If that’s of interest to you, or you want more context for the small part I’m about to quote, the report is from Agency by Design at Project Zero, a research organization at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and you can find it here.)

Anyway, I’m reading along, and I get to this:

“…to be called a cyclist, you not only need to have the ability to ride a bicycle, but you have to be motivated to ride your bike on a regular basis, and you have to be alert to occasions to do so.” (Bold font, mine.)

Huh.

And a bit more:

“…the biggest bottleneck to behavior isn’t a lack of motivation and skill, it’s a lack of sensitivity.” 

Double-huh.

The article goes on to bring the metaphor back to students, and I went on to read more about them. But in that one instant, you just know that I completely replaced cyclist with writer. Oh, come on. So did you.

Maybe I haven’t been thinking about motivation. Maybe I have plenty of motivation. Maybe what I’ve been missing, especially, since–oh, I don’t know, early November?–is the awareness of opportunities to do the writing. Maybe I’ve even been helping to pull the cloud cover of fear and anger and worry over my awareness and blur the edges of whatever awareness I was managing.

You think?

It pretty much always comes back to mindfulness, doesn’t it?

I’ve done better this month than last, in terms of separating politics from life and compartmentalizing a little bit more. Not as well as I’d like, but better. And it’s something I think I’ll have to keep working on, because what’s going on in politics (and life) is important and–guess what–what’s going on in my (our) writing is important. And having a knock-down, drag-out fight between them in my brain is only going to make me tired.

And tired brains miss opportunities for writing. Or drawing. Or composing. Or any creative art.

I can do battle with a tired brain. But I can’t write with one–not fully or deeply like I need to be doing. Like any readers I might someday have need me to be doing.

Like your readers need you to be doing.

So back to the now, whenever we can. Back to the safe, quiet place where the monkey brain is tucked into a soft blanket and told, gently, to hush for a while. Just for a while, while we go bring ourselves to awareness, to seeing and seizing the opportunities.

Right? Right.

I’m blogging today over at MG Lunch Break, talking about the amazing voice with which Jason Reynolds drew me into his new novel, GHOST, and kept me there, in love with his hero and his story.

http://www.mglunchbreak.com/2016/12/06/jason-reynolds-ghost-the-sentences-behind-the-voice/

This morning, I watched Hillary Clinton’s last ad for her campaign. You can see it here. As is typical for me when everyone is raving about how great something is, I started out cynical. It’s well done, but it uses words advertisers could and probably would us for any candidate, including her opponent.  Yes, it’s more true for her, obviously, but still…unbelievable as it is, there are people who would honestly say that about him.

And then I got to the end. Where you hear Hillary’s voice saying, “I’m Hillary Clinton, and I approve this message.”

And I started tearing up. It took me a second to realize why, and then I got it. Because it was a woman’s voice saying those words. For a campaign for the Presidency. A super smart, capable, practical, get-things-done woman. And, once again, as has happened to me so many times since Hillary won the primary, it came home to me how over-ready I am to have this happen, to have a woman in the White House. How much it really, really means to me.

Logically, I have always known that life is harder for women, as a group. My mother was one of the first women to be accepted, attend, and graduate from UC Davis’ School of Veterinary Medicine. And it’s not just in my personal life, it’s all around us–look at the numbers, look at the imbalance, look at the subtle, “well-meaning” comments. But I’ve also stayed out of that imbalance, in many ways, for myself. I have a father who thought it was a dream come true that he met a woman in the same field of his, a woman who wanted to join him in running their own business. I have two sisters, no brothers, so–if there was going to be even a subtle, unintentional bias in my own family–it didn’t happen. I majored in fields that were heavily populated by women and that were, in all probability, discouraging to the men who wanted to be there. And, overall, I have pursued careers that have a high percentage of women doing the job. But I can see and I can interpret. I know sexism is out there, I know it still governs so very much of the way our world operates. And as I get older, I get angrier.

Still, I have been surprised every time, in the past few months, that the tears have come. Surprised at myself for wanting this so badly, for craving the possibility so deeply. Because why?

Because we so often don’t let ourselves feel the emotions. We have to work in and through this world, we have to deal with the realities of the way things are. And so many of the people we know, who might not get how important this is, are nice…very nice. And funny. And engaging. And we have conversations that don’t include politics, and they like and respect us and we like and respect them. And we push down the need, the craving, and the anger, so that we can function in the society we have.

It’s not just about women’s rights and women’s opportunities, obviously. I grew up knowing a relative who had been in a concentration camp, other relatives who had left Germany to escape them. I know that the world Clinton’s opponents see as “great again” is anything but, and that it is truly, truly possible. Eight years ago and four years ago, I voted for Barak Obama, and I thought–how must it feel, to be Black and to see this finally happen. Is the weight lifted? Is it made heavier by knowing how long this has taken and that the world isn’t going to change overnight, maybe not over a decade or a century? What are all the layers African Americans in our country must have been feeling?

I think I may have a taste of that answer today. I  may have tried to push the want away, tried to tuck it into boxes of Well, we’re making some progress or It’s better than it used to be, but the want doesn’t actually go away. Sometimes it’s a feather tickling our brain, sometimes it’s a rock sitting in our stomach, sometimes it’s a dark cloud messing with our mood for days on end. But it’s always there.

It’s what brings the tears.