Back to Sixth Grade

Because the world needs readers, too.

Because the Detroit Science Center where I work is also home to the new University Prep School of Math and Science, because the school is innovative and nurturing, because the teachers work in close-knit teams, because every student has an advisor, because no student is left to fall behind, because English class is called Humanities studies, because I said yes I would volunteer, I now have a student to tutor in reading and writing (and thankgod not in arithmetic). For forty-five precious minutes on Thursday mornings until school lets out in June, Cayla is mine.

A sweet little wisp of a six grader, Cayla puts on a tough exterior she doesn’t really mean. “Oh, she’s my little chocolate marshmallow,” explains Cayla’s Humanities advisor, “I call her that because inside she just melts.” Yes, I see that. Our first day, Cayla barely speaks. I actually work up a sweat teasing out that 1.) she’s good in math, because it’s easy and she likes her teacher, and 2.) she’s “bored” in Science and English (I mean Humanities) because there’s too much work. Bored reading the children’s classic, The Cay? No way. This will not stand. Not on my watch - that is to say, for the duration of 45 minutes each week.

And so we began to read, and I begin to understand: Cayla is a capable student, fluent enough in reading, reasonably astute in puzzling out new vocabulary, competent enough in writing to be earning A’s and B’s - not C’s. Hell, she even corrects a spelling error I make : Baja! What holds her back is a mystery to me. Possibly little more than hormones. Near the end of our session, we find common ground in discussion of American Idol, which elicits a spontenous high five. In return, I present her with a small token of appreciation - or bribe -- a blank journal. “It’s yours. Write in it. Whatever you wish. Just bring it back next time.”

And the next time she indeed brings it back. I see she’s filled the first pages with a draft of her “Survivor Story” -- her assignment for the unit on The Cay. Cool. As for the story? Well, Cayla is 11 years old, her reading of choice is The Magic Puppy. In her story she survives a shark attack on a boat with friends on vacation in Mexico where she and her buds mostly enjoy shopping together. Seems plausible enough to me.

Third session. This week. There’s method to my madness. We begin with an exercise. “This is exercise for your brain,” I explain. “Take out your journal, Calya. Write. And don’t stop until you’ve filled the page.” And I take out my notebook and pen, and together we write. Our first Morning Page. It’s a start. Thank you, Julia!

When you least expect it.

Hey, Kids!

Lookie!

So, I'm writing my morning pages this morning and commenting on how totally monochromatic, misty and mooshy gray the lake is when whaddaya know? Not just one pink balloon, but a big bouncing bunch. Bozo was here. As usual.

Keep your eyes open this week. Life is full of amazement and serendipity. Be sure you get your share.

Annie

Dueling Artists

Please play the banjo theme from Deliverance in your head. I'm answering Viv's Wayward Artist post.

And Viv, if you think I have solutions for that "how come she's so self-congratulating and I'm just standing here on the platform watching the dragon leave the station without me? Again?" angst -- well no. I don't. Some days I've got somethin' for that, some days I don't. Some days I'm right there on the platform next to you.

I have been waiting my entire adult life for the Glamour Makeover that would make me the woman of my dreams: energetic, organized, calm, centered, gorgeous, published.... Well, maybe tomorrow.

I believe, though, that if you're down, you're not off track or in the wrong place. The Zen folks would say it's the Down that gives us the Up. As a distinction. The front of the hand, inseparable from the back of the hand. No hand at all without it.

They would also say, more adroitly than I can, that every moment -- good, bad, dumb, tragic, fabulous, boring, messy, whatever -- is the access point to truth. The way in to authentic,unvarnished experience.

And about that Big T Truth, we're all, whether we know it or not, on the same page. It is what is. And every work of art that's worth anything starts where it is.

Not in how it feels. Because it feels crappy and then it feels ecstatic and then crappy and so on until the sun burns out. You know that. We know that. That's why we're so drawn to the fairy tale of happily ever after. And so bummed when we turn the page and see some wayward unhappiness.

Here's something else. Our Julia is not immune to these concerns of yours. Oh, yeah. She rode the dragon. But I've read almost everything she ever wrote and, baby, the dragon dumped her off a bunch of times. Don't read Finding Water if you can't handle the truth of being an artist or a human being. Lady is struggling. She'd like a Glamour Makeover, too. She's getting older. She worries about the money running out. Her life is finite, just like everybody's. She could really use a drink. And yet she just keeps on. You could cry. You could pray. You could worship what she's up to because she tells her truth with courage and dogged determination.

Unless I've missed the point completely, the creative life is a footrace, a dance, a stumble, a slog, a bog. But it beats the dickens out of the other kind, where the innate creativity that lives inside everybody, maybe even serial killers for all I know, gets denied or subverted into something deeply unsatisfying.

So, that's my banjo. Your banjo is an honest report on where you are -- or where you were last night. Honesty like that is a gift and we thank you for it.

Great weekend, people, one and all! Onward to Chapter 11.

The artist wayward

Twelve Weeks to Creative Freedom. Now on Week Ten. Time’s dwindling down, and here I am: near the exciting conclusion of The Artist’s Way at Work: Riding The Dragon, and I’ve just now noticed that the sub-sub title of the book reads Twelve Weeks to Creative Freedom. Sounds so promising and transformative. Truthfully? I have yet to feel the “luminous intensity” described on page 208, as in Julia’s words, “the dragon soars in heaven, this time trailing fire . . . with uninhibited access to its own creative energy . . . alive with joy, purpose, and the glorious knowledge of its own power.”

Wow. I must have been sleeping in class. Which goes to show that instruction is only what you make of it. Sometimes the magic works. And sometimes it doesn’t. (That line, if you don’t remember, is a direct quote from a scene with Chief Dan George and Dustin Hoffman in the 1970 movie Little Big Man ) “Am I still in this world?" he asks, "I was afraid so.” A colleague of mine, an art director here in Detroit, often used the magic quote. We’d laugh and move on. “Next? What other ideas you got?”

The brain is a shark. It never sleeps, but swims in a constant stream of thought . . . sometimes the magic works, and sometimes the mind wallows in the shallowest waters, wondering what’s next. And so here I find myself anxious about conclusions and self-congratulatory passages. At a loss in Julia’s twelve step plan, it would seem I’ve only been practicing for the real thing. I need to turn the page, move on, and start again.

Are you with me?

Week 10. Yes, it is.

Ten of Twelve!

This is the home stretch.

My Artist's Date (since I'm coming up a little short on those of late) was my fabulous creation of that awesome numeral 10. Here's how I did it:

I chose a font in Word. (Britannica Bold. Not my dream font, but I had to pick one.) Made it size 200. (I could also have changed the percent size of the Word page, but I didn't do it like that.) Colored it red. Took its photo on the screen of the laptop with the iPhone. Emailed the photo to myself in gmail. Saved it to the desktop. Dragged it into iPhoto. Messed with it in the Edit box. And made it so cool. I coulda cropped it better, but really, I'm supposed to be doing other stuff today.

I'm getting questions about what week it is. And having some small trouble responding. I was pretty sure it was 10, but not positive enough to spend time on that big numeral above without checking.

So. Now I'm focusing. Here's my personal life lesson from Chapter 10 and our Julia.


"Fame, the desire to attain it, the desire to hold onto it can produce the 'How am I doing?' syndrome. This question is not,'Is the work going well?' This question is, 'How does it look to them?'"

I don't know that I'm obsessed with fame per se. I would say that I want to be published because I want the pleasure (and no doubt possible pain) of interacting with readers. By being for someone else what writers have been for me: i.e., gatekeepers of imagined experiences that have enriched my life. And do I also want to see myself on the cover of The Rolling Stone? Yeah. Probably. Sue me.

But as Julia also points out, "The point of the work is the work."

Look how freeing that is. You discover your creative voice or medium and you pour yourself, your time and your life -- as much as you can spare from the tasks of survival and the nurturing of assorted key relationships -- into it. And the work is its own reward.

What did you learn from Chapter 10? I figure it's something different for everybody. But the magic of The Artist's Way is that everyone will find something worth considering, something that could be life changing, in every single chapter. I don't know that Julia guarantees that. But I do.

Get yours from 10 and get ready for 11.

Oh, the places you'll trek

Would you ride a bicycle to get here?

My husband, Malcolm, shot the photo on the right in the town of Volterra on a Trek bike tour we took through Tuscany last October. Best trip ever! But not without hard work. Climbing those hills. The Trek people billed the activity level of the 6-day tour as “moderate.” I suppose if you spend your life on a bike, riding the hills of Tuscany might be considered moderate.

From the moment we met our touring companions, I knew I was among avid riders. Ten out of our group of twenty were biking buddies from Southern California, climbers all. Three were Trek dealers. Two were marathon runners. One a semi-pro cyclist. And another, an adrenalin junkie on holiday. And there was my husband, soaking it all in, happy to be in his new, rarified element, flying up and down the narrow roads, miles ahead of me. My personal objective on the trip was to stay upright. To stay on the road. To pedal without complaint. And to live to see another day in beautiful Italy. And I did, indeed. Riding at my own pace, I proved to myself that I was capable and crazy enough to do almost anything, especially for guilt-free gelati, pasta and biscotti consumed in abundance every day. And did I mention the museums, restaurants and shopping in Florence? All sublime.

Cycling is a passion for some. An addiction for others. For me, uh, not so much -- though admittedly it was an extraordinary way to see Italy. I find riding is a lot like writing. There will always be those who are stronger and more skilled. Those who will always outdistance me seemingly without effort. The only way I imagine I could survive the writer’s life if I were to pursue it now would be to spend more time in the saddle. “In the saddle” is an expression cyclists like to use, referring to training or some such nonesense involving hours of sweating in spandex, pedaling obessively, either on the road or in stationary position hooked up to computers, measuring stuff like speed, cadence, heart rate, distance... Blechhh! It’s all in the details. And so it is with writing. It can be scary, especially in traffic. It takes persistence, focus - and it takes exercise to build those climbing legs for the hills. But oh, those hills! They can be beautiful once you get there.

Spring is almost here, and along with it, a new trek. The bike awaits.

John Pritchard is so pissed at me.

Never heard of him?

That's why he's mad. He's the protagonist of a novel I wrote entitled Twice As Dead. Except old John is Three Times As Dead because after he survived all sorts of adventures, including a brush with his own personal nemesis on that icy lake in the photo there, I killed him. Me.

And that's not the worst of it. I killed off a couple of nice kids, too. Perrin Summers who saved a great deal more than the world in A Parsnip Universe. And Tim O'Neal, too. He saved, oh, I don't know, all of Time? In Motes? Hard working heroes all. (160,000 words between them.) And I starved them to death. Walled them up in the basement of my Word Processor like that evil guy in The Cask of Amontillado. What's up with me?

Well, now that I've finished Chapters 9 & 10 of The AW, I kind of remember. Oh yeah. I'm a nutcase. I sent Parsnips to just about ONE publisher. She LOVED it. Wanted the protagonist to be older. I said okay. And then went to sleep like a princess in a fairy tale. And all the time said, "Well, there's obviously something wrong with that woman. Or that publisher. Or me." I finally rewrote it. The lady had moved on. The young guy who took her place was lovely to me. Gave me good advice. And then decided that the book wasn't for his audience. Which it wasn't. So, I put it in the digital equivalent of a drawer and moved on. Motes, which was the next one, is essentially done. Needs about a month of work. Drawer, too. Sorry, kids.

Then Twice As Dead? Well, I sent it to a lot of agents. Maybe 12. Possibly 15. One requested more pages. (This is a very good sign in the agent world.) She didn't want it ultimately. Sorry, John. Drawer for you, too. You hot, old, black, ex-CIA operative, you. You, I decided, I wasn't "up to." Drawer. And drawer for the 35,000 words of your second adventure, which I really loved. But what do I know about writing a) men b)black men c) black ex-CIA men. Really. Four Times as Dead and counting.

So, now we have Allie, don't call me Alice, Harper and Tom the blind bombshell and their $256 million in MondoMillions winnings -- and their cast of murderers and thieves. Poor Allie and Tom. They don't know how dangerous it is in Ann Land. I have come to "the conclusion" in the last couple of months that Somebody's Bound to Wind Up Dead needs about 15,000 more words. I'm not writing those words, you understand. I've got them pulled down around my ears like a &^%$%^ blankie.

But now, with God, and you guys, as my witnesses, I am not going to chicken out again. I'm going to start querying agents again and simultaneous look into those additional scenes. My guys have only been without oxygen for about 3 minutes. They can be revived.

So, you wonder what blocked looks like? It looks like that. For me. How's it looking for you? Which of your dreams is pissed at you right now. If it's NONE of them, weigh in and make us all feel encouraged.

And if you need a witness for your promise to go forth and kill no more, bring it here.