a new year's writing vibe

I'm starting the year with a positive vibe. Maybe watching fireworks from our friends' deck as we toasted the new year with a group of friends was just what I needed to shake loose the melancholy which had taken hold over the last few months. As we were leaving for the party, I felt I was forcing myself out of the house. But once we were there, enjoying snacks, drinks and stories, I didn't want to be anyplace else. I gained inspiration by talking about ideas and projects for this new year. I know I'm lucky to have good friends.

The first few days of the new year have been active & very productive: a snow bike ride on the 1st; helping Jon install a window on the 2nd. Loading old aluminum siding for the recycler, sorting through boxes of inner tubes, organizing my office. Oh, and not writing.

I've been trying to figure out this dullness in my writing; this fear of putting much of anything (my thoughts & ideas) into words. I'd thought about working on my fiction, but something was holding me back.

Then I got an email from the 49 Writers to attend a "Resolve to Write" gathering. I want to go. I'll know lots of the people, but before I commit I need to actually resolve to write. I started thinking about what might be holding me back. It's not that I'm lazy; I'm a damn hard worker when I'm dedicated to a project. So what is it? On Tuesday, it occurred to me: fear.

This is very strange and it all goes back to what I was working on last summer. I was trying to remember some of the things my mom had told us while growing up; strange things people did. For example, she once heard that the township snowplow driver had gotten stuck and stopped at someone's house. The woman who lived there let him in to use the phone, then offered him something to eat. She then wiped a plate on her pants leg and served him pancakes on that plate! I know; that's a crazy strange thing to do. But I started thinking about what kind of distraction could drive a person to do something like that and used that as the basis of the story. I used a few of these mysteries as writing cues.

Then in early August, I began writing something that was somewhat based on my family. It was about a woman who returns from a wilderness trip and learns that her father has died. I described how he died with a level of detail that included him falling in his bedroom, hitting his head and dying. Ten days after I began the story, my dad fell, hit his head and died. He may have had a heart attack, but that doesn't matter. What mattered and what kept flooding my thoughts when I tried to write any other fiction was this story.

It wasn't as though I was prescient. He'd fallen before. When I'd visited two months earlier I watched him standing with the wobbliness of a child just learning to walk. I saw the fall coming and I chose to write what I saw coming. So when I got the call and went back to Wisconsin, there was a certain strangeness to knowing what I'd written.

I know that what I write is not destined to become reality. (Remember that show about the little boy whose drawings come true?) And maybe writing about this event ahead of time was my way of preparing myself for what was to come. My biggest challenge is to break away from this fear I have and start writing stories that hold the same level of intensity and truth as the one that I was trying to write in early August.

But truth (even in fiction) - truth about human nature and relationships - is very tough to write about. I guess the fact that it has haunted me for all these months means that I am capable to taking my writing to an uncomfortable level. The level where the truth of human existence can be found. I think I'm beginning to understand. And I hope that through understanding I can finally sit down and embrace my writing. It's a new year; I need to write.

that writing life

Last week I received in the mail a copy of Cold Flashes: Literary Snapshots of Alaska (University of Alaska Press). It's a beautiful anthology that includes photos and short pieces of writing, both fiction and non-fiction. And it includes a very short piece I wrote last year for a contest on one of my favorite sites: 49 Writers. Editor, Micheal Engelhard, saw it there, liked it and asked if he could include it in the anthology. I was surprised because I'd written it for fun, stretching my imagination to put together what I thought was a humorous story. Other people thought it was funny too, so now here it is in a book on my coffee table. I pick it up, read a story, enjoy the photos and am honored to be included. It's pretty exciting.

On Thursday morning, I received an email regarding a poem I posted here last October. The editor of a relatively new webzine read it, liked it and wants to use it in his publication. Sometimes blog comments are bogus, but I went to the link to check it out. Riders' Collective celebrates all aspects of cycling: Racing, touring, commuting, riding for fun. The editor, Paul, told me he searches the web for stories. One day he thought "How about some content from Alaska?" He did a search, read through some material (he must be very patient) and liked what he found here on Alaska Bike Girl.

I decided, why not share with a wider audience of readers my own view of the cycling experience? Who knows what it will lead to or who will notice my writing? While there's great satisfaction in knowing that fellow cyclists will read it and think: "yes; that's the experience," there's also the idea that it would be nice to make a bit of a living from my writing.

These editors have given me just the kind of reassurance I need to hear now and then: that something I've written is good enough to be published. The feedback tells me to keep plugging away; that if I keep working on small pieces when I am stuck on a larger puzzle, something may come of it. Because sometimes these little fictions and poems come to me when I'm trying to unlock my writer's block or writer's malaise. They're little byproducts I produce while trying to get back on track. Isn't it nice that they can have lives of their own?

muscle memory

When I was in middle and high school, I played in the school band and in some ensembles. Sometimes, amidst the cacophony of a piece, I could hardly hear myself among the other French horns, the trumpets, trombones, timpani & all the other instruments in the room. It hardly seemed important that I entered at the right time or even if I played at all. At other times, during quiet pieces, it was much more noticeable if I missed my cue. I had to pay attention.

When I became a high school junior, I moved from third to first chair, not because I had improved that much but because the two people above me had graduated and I was "it." I remember Mr. Ebbers, the band director, telling me that he was depending on me. He also assured me that I was ready for the position. That I could do it. Of all the teachers, Mr. Ebbers was the one who I most did not want to disappoint. Not only was band the only class where I had individual instruction, it was also where I felt most at ease and most competent. Even important.

By the time I was a senior, I had earned my first chair. I had tried to be good about practicing in my free time, but of course, one can always do more. I did know that people depended on me, so I certainly worked at it. By the time I graduated, I thought I would major in music. Several years later, I settled on English as my major and, sadly, I was no longer the French horn player I had been.

You have to practice to keep good at anything. Certain muscles have to be used repeatedly so they stay limber and remember what to do. A few years ago I took up the mandolin, and though I'd not played my horn in ages, my brain saw the fingerings on the frets as valves on my horn. It was very strange the way the instruments began overlapping in my mind and it took awhile to learn to think in different keys and to think in strings. But I loved the sound of it as I played each string and tried to play songs from memory. I haven't played much lately, but just thinking about it makes me think it's time to get those callouses going again.

Playing a musical instrument, biking, knitting, writing. They all take practice and they all take thinking. But some of the best moments can come not when I'm trying to think something through, but when I just let something happen. Like when I realize the notes I've just played make up the phrase of an old Beatles tune, or when my mind drifts and suddenly I'm farther down the trail than I thought. Or when one word or idea brings on a wave of clarity I had not anticipated when I first touched my fingers to the keyboard or placed my pen on a blank sheet of paper. Sometimes, we have to not worry about thinking and just feel.

focus... focus

From the wall of Yak & Yeti restaurant.

Is focus really a good idea? Can one have too much focus? Consider this: we just saw the movie Julie & Julia about Julia Child and a blogger named Julie Powell who dedicated a year to cook her way through Child's book Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The film tracked Child's life in Paris as she became The Julia Child and Powell's goal to get through the book and share what was happening with her readers. Cooking was her stress release from her job. But then the challenge became the stress.

Julie's blog was noticed by the conventional media, then it became a book and then the movie. And I think to myself, self, where are you going with this blog? I've talked about cycling, about hiking, skiing, reading, berry-picking, travels. A little about art and politics. Books and music. I've even written about writing. Hmm. So, I'm trying to figure out where to go next, but what I don't want is to have a singular topic because my life is more than just one thing. In fact it is so darn multidimensional that I sometimes do lose my focus.

A few days into the writing workshop, I told the workshop director that I wanted focus. She really couldn't help me find it, darn it. Through writing exercises, readings and discussions, I was reminded that writing doesn't just rely on focus. Sometimes we need to look at the diffuse topics around us. Pull together the seemingly unrelated threads, find coherency in the babble. I've been writing on a variety of topics for the past week since my return, jumping here and there, playing with many forms of writing, and I already see that some of those threads are weaving together. Don't want to force them, though. Must be patient with myself and the words and thoughts that emerge daily.

"Are you going to write something?"

I have some stories. I have some ideas. And I would love feedback as I start putting them out there... stay tuned...