Book Burnings, Technology, and Paying to Write

FAHRENHEIT 451 - ONE BOOK: THREE THOUGHTS

1. From our first long car trip, I've been packing books on "tape" for my kids. Yes, that's how long it's been. We started with tapes. Arthur the Aardvark, Magic Treehouse. They love them, and since I get carsick reading, it's a great way to pass the time and still get reading in.

This month, before heading out on 23 hour trip to the Keys, we stopped by the library and picked up a few books on CD - ones that were more grown up for my more grown-up kids, and ones I hoped I could also count towards my reading list for school. A double bonus!!

So we nabbed The Adventures of Huck Finn and Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, classics that are both literary and kid friendly. (Well, Huck had some dialectical and time-driven language that made for interesting conversations...). But it turned out, Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde had seen better days, and the CD was unplayable. So the return trip home had NO BOOKS!! Oh no!!!

Enter... technology. I have a phone. I have a library card. My library now has an electronic resource center. In a matter of minutes, I'd found a book and downloaded it onto my phone and played it over the speakers in the car.

BRILLIANT!!!

The book... Fahrenheit 451. A classic I actually own but have never read. And one which, later, I was thankful my kids decided to not to listen to and instead put their own headphones on and read their own books, because they don't get carsick reading, and were currently engaged with Harry Potter (my youngest), Hunger Games (my middle), and John Grisham (my oldest).

So it was just the hubby and I who got to listen to Fahrenheit 451. And we both were totally taken in.

2. Have you read this book? It is FREAKY!! EERILY relevant. Crazy, absurd relevant. I felt the same I'd felt when I'd read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and realized Jules Verne wrote about submarines before there were submarines. Except this wasn't about machinery so much as society.

I've always thought of this book as "the book burning" book. That's what it's about, right? Book burning and censorship? But no. It's really not. In fact, as we listened to the afterward, Bradbury says that's not what it's about at all. It's about technology and media and how people want to be entertained and have no attention span, and how they get their news and knowledge from headlines and sound bites and pieces of information taken out of context and without context.

The characters walk around with earbuds in their ears, listening to radio and music all the time. They sit in their living rooms and watch wall-size TVs in which there is a false sense of interaction with the outside world. They only tune in to the things that please them, the things they agree with. They eliminate that which makes them uncomfortable or that which they don't fully understand.

Holy heck... this was written in 1953!!!! Blew my mind!!

If you haven't read this, you should. It is a book lover's book. A writer's book. If you want to fall in love again with the power of books, the power of the written word, with authors and imagination and knowledge, with what books leave to the world, read this book.

3. At the end, there's an afterward in which Ray Bradbury writes about the process of writing this book. This is essentially what he said:

I was a dad of two little kids. I had no place to write where they couldn't find me and bug me. I tried the house. I tried the garage. They still found me, pounding on the windows, begging me to play. I got nothing done.

So I discovered one day the library at UCLA had typewriters in the basement. For a dime, you could use the typewriter for 30 minutes. So I'd put my dime in the slot, and type like mad for 30 minutes. Then I'd take a break, and walk around the library, running my fingers over the spines of the books and drinking them in, and then I'd go back and put another dime in. 

(If you read the book, you'll see how the fact that he's in a library influences the story.)

It took $9.80 cents to write the first copy of that book.

I wonder, if we had to pay to sit at our computers, if every word cost us to write, would we be more efficient? Would we be producing more stories? Would we be more focused?

Just a thought.

So that was what I got out of Fahrenheit 451. Out of the vacation, I got some time away, a tan, a few pounds (courtesy of Key Lime pie), a new insulin pump, and a shaking away of the cobwebs.

Time to hit the keyboard again, and see if I can make it worth my dime.

Vacation of DOOM

Every year we spend a part of our summer at the beach. It's our family wind-down time. The only week, really, in the entire year that we get away from all the crazy schedules and activities and stress of our lives and just hunker down as a family together. Just us, a sandy beach, and the ocean.

This year we decided to venture away from our traditional beach and try out Key West. We had visions of it, the Hemingway-tropical-beachiness of it all. If there was anywhere to kick back and relax, surely Key West was it.

It wasn't until we started looking at hotels did we realize there really isn't much of a beach in the Florida keys. No, really, there isn't. It's a tropical island with no sand. How the heck does that happen?

But there are reefs! And we love to snorkel! So we set out on a 1250 mile car trip south with a stop in Savannah, Georgia, where my son and I discovered the TROLLEY OF DOOM. Yes. That's what they call it.

We walked around all night, saying in a spooky voice, "the trolley of DOOM! the trolley of DOOM!" and laughing our heads off.

And then he ate fish and got food poisoning and we spent all night up with him sick. :(

And thus began our VACATION of DOOM.

Once recovered, the family found a beach near Savannah to get our sand fix and headed out. We are used to calmer waters than Georgia, apparently, because my son decided to just wade into the shallow water a little, and along came a wave and BAM threw him to the ground, stealing his glasses and taking them out to sea. So we spent the next three and a half hours - nearly the entirety of our day - in a Lens Crafters trying to find a pair of glasses that fit him and get his prescription faxed and waiting for them to be made.

Goodbye Georgia.

Florida will be better, right? 

Well, the hotel... not exactly what the internet said.

Sure... the service was great, the place relatively clean, great breakfast, free wi-fi and parking, and a beautiful pool:

But the "hotel" was really a motel, and the rooms... well, let's just say that calling them a room was a euphemism for "closet." Which, by the way, the room didn't have. No closet, no floor space... just two full size beds, a sink for one, and a bathroom so small one had to stand on the toilet to the door shut behind you.

This was where 5 of us slept.

It was a miracle none of us killed each other. We had to sit on the beds to let someone pass, and to pass you had to crawl over suitcases. Fun times.

But there was still snorkeling, right?

Ahh... Peace.

Usually I spend a good amount of beach time sitting on the sand reading. Especially this year, I needed this time to catch up on reading if I wasn't going to be writing. But there was almost no sand. Just woods and rocks and then, water. And it was hot. Africa hot. Hot with a humidity that beat even Virginia in August. There was no way I was NOT going to spend the entire day in the water.

I get in after I've gotten all three kids geared up in snorkels and fins and as I'm wading in, my youngest swims up and tugs at my swimsuit. She pops her head above water and says, "You're still wearing your pump."

AAARGH!!! I scrambled over the rocks like an idiot, trying to get out of the water. My insulin pump, which keeps me alive, is "dunk proof" but not water proof, and there were some scary moments there were I thought I'd killed it.

But I didn't. Phew.

Then, two days later, we went on a boat trip out to snorkel the third largest reef in the world.

I jumped off the boat. With my pump on.

And I killed it. My $4,000 pump that I need to wear all the time ... was dead.

I swear. You can't make this stuff up.

After getting back on dry land I called the pump manufacturer and they informed me they could have a replacement to my hotel by morning. All I had to do was give myself shots once an hour for the next 18 hours. That was fun. Especially the "during the night" part.

STILL  - They DID get a pump all the way from California to Key West in a matter of 16 hours (earlier than promised) and I was still alive. So yay!!

Friday we woke to head home and my husband's knee blew out. He's now walking like an 89 year old man with bad arthritis, and in a lot of pain. We stopped on the way home in Georgia to break up the trip, went to dinner and my youngest promptly threw up.

DOOM, I tell you. DOOM.

It seems logical that I'd be dying to get home. But right now I am tucked in a beautiful hotel, with more room than my family of 5 can use. There is carpet on the floor and big fluffy duvets on the three beds. My husband is drugged and pain-free for the moment, and asleep, along with my youngest. My two oldest are watching Pirates of the Caribbean and staying up way too late, and I've gotten on the computer for the first time in over a week. I've not thought about the story I'm working on in a week, and I'm hoping the time away has shaken loose the shackles that are keeping me from writing without fear.

We are safe, all five of us, together, having ended our day with a ton of laughing, a week's worth of memories we will never forget, and some great stories.

And really, can you ask more of a vacation than that?

The Light at the End of the Tunnel Might Not Actually Be a Train

Wow! Where did the last month go? I am constantly shocked at how long I go between posts these days. It seems like I put my head into a story and when I look up my kids have grown a foot, the pantry is empty, and I've neglected the blog!

Today I have a story to tell you.

Once upon a time, I was at my first MFA residency. I was crazy-excited. I was high on everything. The people, the classes, the ocean, the workshops. I had in front of me two years to do nothing but read and write -  to read great books and write my novel, with the help and guidance from some brilliant authors.

One of the first nights I met a graduating student. As soon as I found out she was graduating, I got all teary. "Aren't you so sad?" I asked. I couldn't imagine why anyone would not be sobbing uncontrollably at the thought of leaving the program. This was my dream. Even at the start, I knew it could never be long enough.

Her answer: "No. I'm ready."

What???? How could that be? I would NEVER feel that way, I knew. Come my graduation, I would be the one sobbing and feeling as though with the end of the program came the end of the most perfect era of my life ever.

(Seriously. Have you seen my pictures of the wineries? The bonfires? The ocean-view workshop room? Have you read my updates on staying up all night drinking wine and diagramming sentences and discussing the Oxford comma and great literature? If that is not some sort of literary heaven I don't know what is.)

Fast forward to this semester. I now understand.

I realized today, trying to juggle my son's marching band schedule, two girls spewing craft supplies all over a house I was trying to clean for a guest tonight, sitting in a doctor's office hearing that something I worried about is indeed worth worrying about, getting my blood drawn, making appointments for radiology, stopping by one store to by snorkel gear for our trip to Florida and stopping by another to buy a birthday gift, making breakfast, then lunch, then dinner early for my son and the later for my daughters and even later for my husband, and eating my own dinner at nine o'clock on the way to pick up my son across town, all the while trying to figure out how to finish a story due the day after our planned vacation without me spending a week at the beach in my hotel room with a computer... I realized I wished I were a 50s housewife who could spend the day just cleaning and cooking and taking care of the kids.

When did it all become so stressful? I sometimes think life in the MFA must be no different than it was before. I read, I write. That's what I did before. How is this so different?

I know I wasn't this stressed before, though. If I needed to drop writing for a week to just be a mom, I could. Whatever I wanted to write, I could. Without the thought that I was writing something a very specific person with a very specific style would read, and critique. I wrote for myself, and now, to some degree, I am writing to please someone else.

That is the kicker. Trying to please someone else. Everything I write I end up viewing through my advisor's eyes, and then trashing it and starting over. Merging my voice with his advice... it's killing me.

There are people in this program who work full time outside the home. How they do this I have no idea. I'm in awe of them.

I love writing. I do. I love this program. I am so incredibly lucky that I get to do this.

But I am tired.

And every now and then I think, I'd like to be a full-time mom and wife again. Have a clean house, an organized schedule, cook good meals that take more than 10 minutes thought and 20 minutes throwing together. I'd like to give my full attention when someone is talking. I'd like to sit down and do crafts with my kids, teach my youngest how to knit, my oldest girl how to sew. Bake with them. Make bracelets with them. Play games with my son. Heck, I'd like to just keep them in underwear that fits. And maybe not make them go hunting for the clean ones in the dryer. A girl can dream, right?

Our family mantra right now is "In five months!" The kids are looking forward to that day. My husband is looking forward to that day. And honestly, sometimes, even I am looking forward to that day.

But before I get there... six more stories to write and rewrite and rewrite and revise and revise again, and then polish.

I'm sure there will still be sobbing, though. It is, after all, still me we're talking about.

It's Friday: You're Good At Things!!

During workshop last residency, one of my workshop leaders handed out an article about this book. Yesterday, while going through my critiques during my revising I found the article and read it again. And laughed.

I shared it with my friend, who right there on the spot went to Amazon on her ipad and bought it.

Then I thought, "I want this book. Why haven't I bought it? And so right there, I went to Amazon and bought it, too.

Then we had such a great time talking about it, I put it on my facebook page, and three more people almost immediately said they bought it. In the span of three hours, the Amazon ranking of this book went from 500,000 to 28,000.

Social media win!!

So what is this book? It's exactly what Andy Selsberg's title says it is: a checklist of things you are good at.

This is the description:

You may be suffering from unrecognized awesomeness!

* You have the uncanny ability to always notice when someone has gotten a new haircut.
* You can make the last half-ounce of toothpaste last for a month.
* You're a genius at getting stores to let you in even though it's closing time.
* You're a wizard at resisting the urge to eat all the cheese right after grating it.
This book is a celebration of all your secret skills and unheralded abilities. It calls attention to the way you're able to give your kids names that will never appear on key chains at gift shops, and cheers your talent for wrapping presents using very little tape. In your own way, you're a master, and the world should know it. Because let's face it: YOU ARE GOOD AT THINGS!

I love this idea. The idea of looking at what we are good at in life. Not the big things. Not like singing Opera or taking gallery-worthy photos or raising great kids. Simple things. Uncelebrated things. Like walking through a bra section of a store non-chalantly while your ten-year-old son says, "What is THAT thing??"

So this is what I think we should do today, my dear blogging friends. We should think about what we are good at. I'll start.

• I'm good at staying between the lines when I drive.
• I'm fantastic at getting my kids a Kleenex before the snot reaches their upper lip.
• I'm good at not swearing.
• I'm great at whipping up dinner at 7:00 when at 6:50 I had no idea what we were going to eat.
• I'm good at leaving laundry in the dryer for a week at a time, and then getting the wrinkles out by tossing in a wet towel and drying another 10 minutes when I need something to wear.
• I'm good at wasting an hour on facebook.
• I'm good at writing a first line of a story, then erasing it, then writing another, and erasing that one. I can do this for days.
• I'm good at ignoring voice mail.
• I'm good at keeping the fridge fairly mold-free.
• I'm good at listening to music.
• I'm great at listening to a kid's CD over and over and over, for months on end, without strangling anyone.
• I'm good at tucking my kids in.

And You? You dear readers are good at:

• loading your own dishwasher the right way.
• honking when drivers in front of you are not driving correctly.
• noticing the weather.
• being sarcastic.
• being friendly to cashiers.
• filling in the quiet spaces with the voices in your head.
• drinking out of a glass without spilling much on yourself.
• finding good books, reading them, and passing them on.
• wearing headphones.

So that is my list. I'd love if you added your own in the comments. What are YOU good at?

And if you are so inclined to continue the social win experiment, buy this book. Or post it on facebook and twitter. Give it to a friend who needs to be told they are good at things. I don't know the author or have any stake in this, but it's fun. :)

Have a happy weekend!! Go be fabulous!

MFA Monday: I'm Back and My Head Didn't Explode!

My fourth residency is over, and I didn't blog a single day. I don't know why every time I go, I think I'll find the time. Time is something there is not a lot of at residency!

I admit my third residency back in January was a bit rough. I can't explain why, and it wasn't that I didn't learn a lot, or have great time with friends. It hardly rained at all - a miracle for Seaside! We even had a bonfire on the beach! But it was hard. Made me rethink writing, and my abilities, and the decision to shell out money for a degree I might not be very good at.

Last semester, though, I buried my head and worked my tail off. Harder than I've ever worked before on writing. Not just longer hours, although that too, but I worked harder to get it right. To learn and absorb more about writing, to implement it, to craft a story well and then hone it. Characters, setting, pacing, dialogue, abstracts, tension, conflict, revision, word choice, ideas... I tried to take it all on. Not all with success, but I can say I've never grown more, faster. Painful, but worth it.

(If I could draw what my brain felt like in May, it would look like this. Only less blue. And I wouldn't have the mischievous smile on my face.)

BUT: I didn't end my semester feeling great about everything. I produced a lot of less-than-stellar short stories. I made the mistake of working to please my advisor, of secretly harboring hopes that he would send my work back with the MFA equivalent of an A++ and say I'd managed to master it all. This, even as I knew I'd picked him specifically because I didn't want that, because he is tough and demanding, because I wanted to grow more than I wanted my ego massaged. There were a few weeks I felt like giving it all up - that I'd never make it.

But I came out of that hole in time for residency #4, mainly because my friends there ramped up the excitement shortly before we went, and in the end, I'm really just a hopeless optimist.

And this time around, it was amazing again.

I got more out of the classes. I made time to get coffee every morning and sit in the library and write some. I wrote every day. This is the first residency I've ever done that, and I loved it.

(This is the library at Pacific. Isn't it amazing?? I sat by that big window, behind the stained glass, in big comfy chairs with my feet propped up on coffee tables. I wrote 30 - 60 minutes a day here.)

I was sitting in classes three to four hours a day, in workshop an hour and a half, in faculty readings about an hour and a half, and graduate presentations about an hour a day. 

I roomed with some of my favorite writers in the whole world. (Aren't they beautiful? Every time I think about not seeing these people every six months I cry.)

We had a little apartment and stayed up late drinking wine and diagramming sentences and talking about commas and watching My Drunk Kitchen. Only writers could dub this a perfect night.

We did our share of socializing, too. We weren't entirely geekish. We went out to parties in the dorms next door and talked about commas with whole rooms crammed with drinking people. Because, while on the whole there are a lot of near-alcoholic writers, they all STILL care about commas.

We went to wineries...

...where there was a nearly unlimited amount of wine and blackberries.

And other stuff. But who cared about anything except the blackberries? Not me!

We toasted. A lot.

We ate and drank and laughed and talked. A lot.

We listened to Ann Hood read a piece she'd written in honor of her daughter who died, and we all cried. We listened to Craig Lesley read from his memoir Burning Fences and we all laughed so hard we cried.

We left. Our work here was done.

(Wait! Is that a blackberry on the table?? Someone should eat that!)

I went out to eat at a bunch of great places I don't have pictures of. :(

The first day I went to a place called "1500 Subs" and they only had 15 subs. What a rip off!! (Okay - it actually was a good sub sandwich, and I laughed so hard with Katie while eating it, I didn't care how many were on the menu. Also, I got massive blisters walking there in sandals and spent the rest of the night walking the campus barefoot.)

I also ate Tai food (with one of my past advisors), Middle Eastern food (a special going away dinner with my roomies), Pub food (to celebrate/cry over graduation with my graduating friends), and pizza at my favorite joint - Pizza Schmizza - with two of my favorite newer friends.

(Some of my favorite graduates. Don't get me started. I'm crying just thinking that they won't be back.)

(And some of my favorite "sophomores" and Pizza Schmizza fanatics. Stolen from my friend Katie, because her picture was better than mine.)

I had a fantastic workshop group, with the best leaders and best readers, and I walked away feeling like I actually could write - and knowing how to do it better. I wish I'd taken a picture of that group of people. It was my last workshop ever at Pacific, and it was a heck of a way to go out.

There was EPIC karaoke, in which we stayed up WAY WAY WAY too late and sang a lot and had a blast. 

There was, like always, major stress around advisor pairings. There's no guarantee that who you want as an advisor for a semester will be the one you'll get, and while it always feels huge and critical, it's nothing like THE LAST ONE... the advisor you get for thesis seems so important. Well, it IS important. And rumor was that this was the most difficult pairing ever - that a huge amount of students wanted the same few advisors, and we all sweated a little over it.

But in the end, everyone I know got who they wanted, even me.

So those two good-looking and talented men are my workshop leader (Jack) and my thesis semester advisor (Pete) (again). Seriously, I could not have gotten any more fortunate than to work with them.

So after the pairing there was a lit magazine party that went long long long into the night in which everyone celebrated on an outdoor patio lit by candles and scattered with wine and chocolate truffles. It's a rough life.

And after that, everything was downhill until graduation.

Ah, graduation. Where a million tears were shed. Mostly by me.

 
So many of my friends there in cap and gown, on to bigger things in life. Hard to believe next year that will be me!

And what does one do after graduation, you might ask?

Party!

(and get each others' text number to stay in touch!)

 

And pretend like this is not the last time things will ever be like this.

 

So...

It appears there was much wine, eating, and partying.

There was. But also, a TON of learning. But I can't put everything in one blog post now, can I? :)

For now, I am home, with five months to gather my writing wits and produce enough quality work to bind into a leather-bound-by-monks thesis. I am loving writing again. I am missing my friends like crazy.

And with a little luck, I'll be back on this blog later to tell you more. :)

Residency #4: Here I Come

Less than 19 hours until I leave for my fourth residency.

Fourth. How did that happen?? How have I already completed three entire semesters?

I thought I would get better at this. The first time - ya know - I didn't know anything. And I'd broken my foot and gotten the flu and hosted Christmas for 14 people. So of course I was running like a crazy person (only metaphorically running, not running, literally, because of the foot thing).

I feel like an old geezer, walking around with a cane and my wobbly old voice saying, "I remember when I was just a young whipper snapper getting ready for my first residency, having no idea what to expect and scared and excited and wondering what I'd gotten myself into." (This is much better if you actually hear this in your head with an old, high, wobbly voice.)

And now. Now.

I am STILL frantically trying to figure out what clothes to bring on the day before the flight leaves. I still have nothing in my closet but black. Black! Like I'm some emo artist with goth eye liner. How did this happen?  Oh yeah.. black is slimming. That's why...

I am STILL thinking I can spend ten hours and completely overhaul  my house, finish laundry, pack suitcase and backpack, fill the fridge with food for those left behind, write a list of the kids' schedules and the dog's eating habits, vacuum out the car...

have I forgotten anything?

Probably.

Oh yeah. Homework. I still haven't finished critiquing my worksheets for this residency, which is scandalous because I always finish those WAY early and then have time to go over and over them. And this time I'm hoping somehow I can get them done and printed before I even leave, but that's not looking likely.

And I didn't finish my newest short story. Or the book I was reading.

It will all work out. At least that's what my husband says. I suppose it will. Funny how, two years later, I am still struggling with the same pre-residency issues: letting go. If I end up learning anything in grad school it's this: I cannot do it all.

I'll try to keep this blog somewhat updated with my goings-on there. No promises, of course, but I'll try.

What I'm looking forward to:

• FRIENDS!!! These are people I only see twice a year, and they are like family to me. I cannot wait to see them, hang out with them, room with them, get coffee in the morning and wine at night with them. There will probably be screaming in the airport. I'm not embarrassed about that.
• Laughing.  I've never laughed so much in my life as I laugh at residency. Hoping that trend continues.
• Craft Talks: Cramming my head with an insane amount of knowledge that it will take years to synthesize and incorporate it all. And all the laughing that happens in them, too.
• Vineyards: There is a night at the winery again. Wine, food, author readings... does a night get any better than that??
• Karaoke: Okay, if a night could get better than the winery, the karaoke night is it. There are plans under way that may or may not include me singing. It also may or may not be Bohemian Rhapsody. It may or may not be epic. I'm thinking yes.
• Ten days of not cooking and cleaning. Shallow, I know, but that alone makes it like a vacation.

So blogging buddies, I'm off. See ya on the flip side!