Writer's Notes: Writer's Tools

One of the most productive creative periods in my life was the result of my little rodeo notebook.

My trusty companion for a long time.  Now in pieces.

The rodeo notebook was a pocket-sized notebook that I could carry in my back pocket.  I carried that thing with me everywhere for years.  As you can see, it went through some wear and tear.  The binding didn't hold any longer and this is what's left of it.

The rodeo notebook fell apart years ago.  I haven't carried a writer's notebook with me since then.  I think this is a big mistake.  I often have ideas out in the world, in the moment, in the "wilds" of my life, and not in front of the computer.  As such, we need to have a writer's notebook with us to document the stray thought, the line of dialogue, the interesting character sketch that prompts a story.

I put a notebook in my jeans and a pen in my pocket and I'm equipped for any moment of inspiration no matter what.  And that's the idea here!  Writers can't be expected to be in possession of perfect memories.  Every attractive idea that crosses our mind is competing with a million more.  My problem is that the really good idea I had is often followed by another attractive, but less successful idea.  If I don't write down the good ideas, then I'll never remember them all.  I get distracted by shiny, attractive things be they ideas, women, cars, etc.  Just ask my wife.  She'll vouch for me on this one.  The writer's book solves any number of problems.  It allows me to take a moment to write down an idea and then rejoin a conversation instead of obsessing about it while pretending to listen.  Again, just ask my wife.  She's a trusted resource when it comes to my attention, or lack thereof.

So, in the spirit of touting the benefits of the writer's notebook, I'd like to introduce you to my new one, "Trusty Brown."  I had been talking to my wife about how I needed a new pocket notebook when she spied this free giveaway at a Portland Arts and Lectures series event with Chris Ware and Chip Kidd.  A new pocket notebook and free?!  How can life get any better?

My unassuming new pocket notebook!

I've already dedicated the first page to blog post ideas.  I'm still a little behind so I've only been posting on the promises lately, but the sore throat is almost gone and I'm almost caught up on my grading.  Life is good, people!

If you don't have a pocket notebook, get one today!  You'll be surprised at the results.  Let the brainstorm begin!

Promise-ary Note: Promise #8

I've drawn the new promise for the week:

I love getting mail, and this promise is the beginning of what I hope will be a correspondence relationship.  I have a couple of people in mind, but I haven't fully decided who I will mail letters to yet.  This will be a paper letter with an envelope and a stamp.  I know, right?  Completely unheard of in this day and age.

I love the idea of letters.  It's a romantic notion, a meditative one.  A handwritten letter is the opposite of instant gratification.  Letter writing is the art of meditative affection.  It means that you were sitting in a location thinking only of another person, imagining them, creating a conversation out of thin air with them.  It is focused energy and devotion.  A person who writes you a letter is someone who cares, who had taken time out of their day to think only of you.  It is the type of friend I want to be, but often am not.

So, to you three lucky recipients of my letters, know that I'm writing to you out of a deep and abiding love and affection.

Promise-ary Note: Cleaning Out Comics

My task for this week was to give away something I didn't want to give away.  It took me a long time to figure out what that thing would be, but I finally stumbled upon it as I was picking up my new comics for the week.  To my dismay, the logical answer was comics.  The moment this realization came to me, I was a little heartbroken.  I'm a collector of stories, of pages, of print and images.

Giving up comics means saying goodbye to stories I've loved and cherished at some point in my life. I do revisit old comic storylines.  I go back into my "super secret" attic space and nestle down alongside my longboxes.

(Let it be said that I'm reluctant to break down the following numbers as my wife reads the blog, but here we go.)

I currently possess 17 longboxes of comics.  Each longbox holds between 200-233 comics each.  This means I am in possession of roughly 3400-4000 or so comics.  This is a collection that has been building since 1993 when my friend Seth Ferris got me hooked with my first hit of comic books. (Yes, I AM using the lingo of a drug pusher.  It is intentional.  I blame you, Seth.) It was the X-men Inferno storyline, and I was sunk from that moment forward.

With this many comics lurking around my attic, there had to be some I could stand to part with, and that's where today's task comes in.

I knew the back of the room was full of older books, mini-series, or series I'd stopped collecting, so I started there.  I came across some nice older comics in my search.  Retro gems like:

It doesn't get any teen angst-ier than Fallen Angels from the 80's

I also encountered some more recent books like:

When 22 pages of a story come out once a month, 7 years ago feels recent.  This comic came out in 2007.

Then there were creators I loved, but wound up not following specific storylines:

The rest is a mish-mash of alternate realities, mini-series, crossover tie-ins, zombies, and the like.

The point of this story is that they are all up for grabs for the first person to get in touch with me.  They will not be bagged and boarded as I am going to keep those for future comic purchases, but you will receive, for free, a long box of comics.  Let the race begin!!!

If I had to admit a dark secret, I do feel a little better getting rid of some of these books.  Hopefully they will live on in the lives of some younger person who will enjoy them just as much as I did.

Promise-ary Note: Playing Catch-up

If you haven't been following my promise experiment, then you can catch up here.

I pulled the meditation card last week, which was amazing in light of my anxiety dream that had me freaked out in the middle of the night. I worked through my 3 meditation sessions, and found myself feeling centered and calm.  But, then I fell sick, and so I have been away from the blog for a couple of days now.

Everyone one in my house is sick, so I have to admit that I "sifted" through my promises a bit to find one that I could accomplish that was low energy and achievable.  I came up with this:

I have a particular aversion to "stuff" in my house, but I usually rant and rave about other people's stuff.  This exercise is an experiment in getting me to look at my own possessions.  I will try and find something that isn't easy, something that actually hurts a little bit so I can understand what it is that I'm asking other people in my house to do.

Wish me luck.  I'll let you know what I decide in the next couple of days.

Personal Note: Anxiety Dreams

My dream consciousness begins with a sound, the sharp dry rasp of a cough in fact.  It comes from somewhere outside my room.  It is my daughter's cough, of this I am sure.  I am a parent and I know the sound of my daughter's cough from a mile away.  I listen from deep in darkness in what I am assuming is my bed because I haven't opened my eyes yet.  It comes again, and again.  That same dry, futile cough that does nothing to move or expel phlegm.

"Searching Dreams" a painting by Herve Martijn, a dutch painter.  Find his work here.

It comes again and again from the other side of the darkness that is my only other awareness.  Finally, I open my eyes and realize I am in my room, tucked away in the bed.  In the dream I don't know if my wife or the dog who normally sleep in the bed are there.  I don't even think of them.  I think only of my daughter and the cough.

I rise.

I move through the house silently, searching for my daughter.  I cross the hall to her room, but she isn't there.  I could have sworn I heard her cough from the other side of the door, but when I open it, she isn't there.  I hear her cough again, but this time it is from down the hall.  I move out of her room and further into the hall.  Her cough sounds like it is coming from downstairs, so I mount the stairs and descend into the further reaches of the house.  I search, always hearing her cough in the next room, around the next corner, but I can't find her.

I'm growing more and more anxious, more and more concerned about her cough as  I move because it seems like the individual coughs are growing more insistent, more frequent, and I don't want her to make herself sick with it.

As I move through the house, searching through room after room, I can't find her.  She is always "somewhere else," just beyond my sight, behind one more closed door.

I wind my way through the entire house, making my way back up the stairs again, and I'm becoming more and more unsettled by the whole thing.  I've already taken to calling her name.  I've been calling since I descended the stairs, but the only answer has been that dry hack.

Finally, I open the door to my office and turn on the light.  There she is.  She is curled up in the arms of my old friend Joel.  She is coughing and she is awake, but there is no distress in her.  Joel is equally calm, although he looks at her with a bit of concern.  When he sees me, he says, "I'm sorry.  I tried to take care of it.  I didn't want to wake you.  She's been at it for a while now."  He's so matter of fact about it.  He registers nothing about my panicked calls throughout the house, registers nothing about my pounding heart.  I cross the room to him and that's when I get my first glimpse at Shea.

When I get close to Shea, it is the open wounds I see first.  All over her body are small, crescent sores that glisten wet, but do not bleed.  Each sore is like a grotesque mouth grinning at me from Shea's arm, leg, or face.  The sores have appeared all over her face and one has curled the left side of her mouth into a cleft palette-like sneer.  Her lips are glossy with the seeping sore.  Her right ear is twisted and disfigured with the profusion of sores I find there.  I almost don't recognize her, and I turn to Joel aghast.

"What's wrong with her?"

"What do you mean?  She's got a pretty bad cough," he replies.  His voice is in no way sinister, in no way panicked.  He has the appropriate amount of concern for someone who only worries about a light cough in a child.

I stand Shea up in front of me and ask, "Are you okay, honey?"

"Yeah, Daddy.  I got a cough though.  Sorry to wake you."  This comes from Shea in her normal, sweet voice.  She's always so considerate, and she has no concern over the sores whatsoever.  I run my hands over them, feeling the slight pucker of flesh at each wound and the anxiety of the situation washes over me.  I can feel goose flesh running up my spine and into my hairline.  I itch with anxiousness...

And then I wake.

I wake itching.  While my consciousness in the dream birthed itself in sound, my waking consciousness rises to the itch, the creeping, full body, deep in the scalp itch of anxiety.  My breath is not rapid, but it is not restful.  My heart beats against the plate of my chest with more force than sleeping should require.  I am awake in the brightest, clear-minded sense of the word.  I don't rise through the mist of sleep.  I don't stumble through the cluttered room of consciousness and into clarity, but I rise bright and clear and aware of exactly what has happened, of exactly what my dream has been.

This is unusual for me.  I don't remember dreams.  Not with this amount of clarity I don't.  After using the bathroom and trying to return to bed, I give up on the futility of sleep at this point.  I know I will not fall easily back, so I rise and move through the real rooms of my house, the silent rooms of my house that don't even carry an echo of a child's cough.  I know exactly where I am going.

The nighttime view out my picture window.  A terrible shot, but you get the drift.

My house has a picture window at the front.  I find myself there, indian-style on the floor in front of the giant pane of glass overlooking my street.  It is after midnight and my neighborhood is silent.  I sit for a moment and gaze out into the semi-darkness.  My eyes adjust to the little bit of light coming from the streetlight down the street and the exterior lights of my neighbor's across the street.

The neighbor's light shines out at me from across the way, the nearby basketball hoop catching the light and glowing like a clouded pane of glass that, in another context, might be a patch of clouded sky, it's whiteness a promise of something.  I begin to breathe.  In through my nose.  Out through my mouth.  Again.  Breathe.  In through the nose.  Out through the mouth.  I focus on my neighbor's backboard, that clouded pane of glass.  "My window is dirty," I think to myself, noticing the dog's noseprints on the glass.  I straighten my posture and breathe, focusing on the backboard.  I do this over and over again, wiping stray thoughts from my head as I focus, deeper and deeper.  In through the nose.  Out through the mouth.  Breathe.  Again.  In through the nose.  Out through the mouth.

Picture provided by Jagaro - a meditation blog from New South Wales

I'm glad I chose meditation as my promise of the week.  After an indeterminate amount of time, I felt heart rate return to normal.  Even though the house is cold in the middle of the night, I was able to control my body temperature and focus on sustaining it through breath and concentration.  I felt my posture straighten, not through focus and control, but by my body coming back into itself, coming back through the controlled meter of breath and aligning itself, one vertebrae on top of another, my shoulders pulling back and down, opening my chest, and allowing me to breathe.

I eventually rose and found myself here.  In front of the computer.  I've been able to transcribe the dream with more clarity than I can ever recall having after a dream.  While I wrote this, some of the anxiety returned, the itch came back to my scalp when I remembered the open sores, but it contained none of the electric panic that rocked the earlier dream.  I had breathed that away, one circuit of breath at a time, in through the nose and out through the mouth.

It's something we can all use from time to time: a return to the power and simplicity of breath.

52 Promises

After listening to Alex Sheen's interview on NPR , I've decided to skip the New Year's resolution and, instead, to commit to 52 promises.  

Each week I am going to draw a promise from a tin bucket at my house and complete it within the week. I will draw on Thursdays and fulfill the task by the following Wednesday. This week's promise? Say no to someone.

I've created the promises myself and each of them speaks to something I want or need. I'll try and keep you all posted in the coming months as to how the experiment is going.

Forgive any errors please. My first post from the mobile app. Plus I'm driving down the road as a passenger, so the screen time is getting to me.

Promise-ary Note: Rebooting Motivation for Promise #6

For those unfamiliar with my promise challenge, revisit 52 Promises.

Thanks for all the posts and private messages this week, folks.  I have decided to put the novel outline back in the promise bucket and to draw a new one for this week.  In addition, I will be simply choosing a week in the future where I can complete two promises within reason.

When I reached into the promise bucket, my hand immediately fell upon this:

I can't think of a more appropriate promise than this.  After a tough week where I had to say goodbye to a family member, I could use some meditation.  I used to have a somewhat regular meditation practice when I was younger.  I've lost track of the regular practice and it is something I think would be positive to revisit.  After this week, I think a little mental silence, a. little stillness, and a little focus on breath will be just what the doctor ordered.

When I drew this, I sighed one of those big shoulder-lifting cleansing breaths.  The idea of this feels like sliding into warm water.

Promise-ary Note: Failure

For those of you who haven't been following my year-long experiment,  you might want to click here first.

My promise for the week was to outline my novel.  When I drew it, the enthusiasm for this task was at a fever pitch.  I couldn't wait to dive in.  I've been doing a lot of mental work on the concept, stewing things over in my mind, but I need to get some of these ideas committed to paper so I can begin to suss out the structure of the thing.  I believe I have the first two acts of the novel worked out in a decent amount of detail (I don't really want to outline the third act just yet).  The problem is...I didn't do it.  I didn't sit down and actually do the thing I promised to do.  In this way, I failed.  I failed myself and the experiment.

I could give all kinds of excuses about why it didn't happen.  My uncle passed.  I was writing the eulogy.  I had three batches of essays to grade.  I wanted to spend time with my family.  All of these things are true.  All of these things happened in the last week, but what is also true is that I got a new cellphone and I found the time to set it up.  I also got a new tablet.  I found the time to set that up too.  I watched a movie as well.  I'm not saying that one should work all the time.  God forbid!  What I am saying is that I made a promise, but I did not dedicate the time to fulfilling it.

So what does it mean to break a promise?  Well, for me, it means guilt.  I feel bad about failing to uphold my end of the bargain.  Feeling bad is right.  One should have a healthy dose of guilt for breaking a promise.  The important part is the next bit.  The bit that seeks recompense.  Breaking a promise is not something to be taken lightly, and I don't.  I am not just doing this experiment to be able to go hiking and spend time with loved ones.  This experiment, at its heart, is about being true with your word.  It is about being honest with what you say and do.  In that way, it is important for me to find a solution to a broken promise.  It is a big deal.

So, the question becomes...what do I do next?

Do I simply hold this promise over to this next week?  Do I put it back and draw a new one?  Do I have to do two promises this week?  I'm not sure.  I'd love to hear what you think in the comments section below.  How does one advance from here?  Weigh in and I'll make my move by tomorrow.

Family Notes: Wayne Oliver

Today finds me making another post to commemorate someone lost within my community.  My Uncle Wayne passed away suddenly this week.  It's stunned me into silence over the last couple of days.

I'm sorry if my blog is beginning to feel like a memorial page, but I process grief through words. Sometimes, it's all I have. When I'm face to face with people, I don't know what to say or how to act, but, somehow, when I sit in front of a computer screen and let my fingers dance across the keys, I find a way to say something. There's a lot to say about my uncle, too much to say here, but I wanted to capture a couple of things about him that are important to me personally.

My uncle Wayne, or Wayne O, was a formidable man. He was a successful businessman, a community presence in both local organizations and government, he was a baseball father figure to more people than I can possible comprehend, and he was a loving uncle, father and husband. These are his résumé bullet points, the place we begin when we discuss a life, but there are details underneath these facts that make them poignant, as there are with any life.

How do you sum up a man like Wayne?

You don't.  There are too many aspects about him that need attention, that deserve time and words, but I don't have the energy to do it all.  The one thing I can say about Wayne is that I love him and I respect him.  The reason for this is because Wayne never asked me for either of those things.  Many people, once they achieve success, power, or notoriety, can fall victim to their own press, to their own accolades.  This wasn't true of my uncle.  In sports, they call it showboating.  Wayne was not a showboater.  He was the consummate workhorse when it came to almost every aspect of his life.  He didn't rest on his laurels, he didn't rely on his talents, but, instead, he worked for the things he had and he didn't ask a single other person to recognize him for it.

Knute Rockne is quoted as having said, "One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than 50 preaching it." I can't think of anyone in my life who embodied this more than my uncle.  He lived to be a good sportsman.  In fact, my brother just told me the other day that Wayne was the only coach who ever benched him for a bad attitude.  It was during a baseball game and he benched him defensively in the middle of an inning.  Anyone who has ever played baseball knows how big a deal that is.  Wayne couldn't tolerate bad sportsmanship.  And, like Knute Rockne indicated, his life served as an example to the rest of us.  We'll miss you, Wayne.  We'll miss your example.  We'll miss your humor, but we'll never let go of your example.  You've coached us well.

Promise-ary Note: Promise #6

For those of you who missed the 52 Promises post (a year-long project), you can find it here.

So I am a day early on drawing my new promise, but I liked the idea of giving myself an extra day, especially in light of the new promise.  The new promise for the week is...

The last couple of years have seen me scrap two attempts at the same novel concept.  It's a good thing for me to go through.  It shows me that I'm committed to the writer's life.  Even though hours of effort have been expended on a failed project, I return to the keyboard.

One of the reasons I failed in my previous novel attempts (at least I think so) is because I was writing what I thought I SHOULD write as opposed to what I loved writing.  This realization dawned on me this last summer and a new concept has since arisen to take the old novel's place.  I've been working on character sketches and scene studies for the new concept, but I haven't yet taken the entire plunge and set about writing a linear narrative.  The time is now!

I have a pretty solid idea of how the first act will unfold and how this will evolve in the second act, but I have no idea about the third.  I'm really comfortable with that and feel that it is exactly as it should be.  I don't want an entirely pre-determined ending.  I want the room to discover my characters and the overall story.  

This week will see me formalize what I think I know about the book.  Once I have the outline, I can begin to write in a more linear format and bring this project one step closer to the light of day.  This was one promise I wanted to pull early in the year, and it all worked out.

Looks like I'll be spending some quality time in my writing chair this week.

Photo courtesy of The Writing Fortress

Promise-ary Note: Promise #5 Complete

This week the promise was about my mother, Vicki.  I committed myself to spending some quality time with her and I'm glad that I did.  It's easy for me to get wrapped up with the routines of work, family, personal projects, etc.  Because I have so much motivation in so many directions, I oftentimes sacrifice personal time with family and friends in order to accomplish things on my own agenda.  It's a "bad" habit in some ways, and that is why I made sure to include promises that brought me in touch with my family members.  You guys are coming soon, Kevin, Kerry, and Dad.

When I drew the promise, I knew I needed to schedule the time right away.  My mom can be busy with her volunteer work and things, so I wanted to make sure our schedules matched.  Low and behold, we found Monday day.  As the days passed, I wondered about what we should do with our time together.

What would my mom want to do?  How would she want to spend the day?

That's when it occurred to me that it didn't really matter as long as we could talk all day long and we just kept a little busy.   The perfect plan began to reveal itself to me.  The day would start with a walk.  My mom likes to keep moving and a walk along the logging road was perfect for us to simply catch up.

Photo courtesy of the City of Canby

 I got so caught up in the walk, I forgot to take pictures.  It wasn't that we necessarily talked about anything important, although we did talk about Shea, the family, and things that matter, but it was in a way that was casual, relaxed, without deadline or urgency.  We simply strolled.


After catching a bit of exercise, it was time for a bite to eat.  The Place To Be Cafe was calling our name.  Mom and I settled down to some hot coffee and an awesome piece of sausage quiche.  The conversation raged on as we ate.

With our bellies full, the time had come to head into Portland.  It's easy to hang in Canby and never really get out of town, so I wanted to take my mom somewhere fun, somewhere that was about her and her interests.  I decided on S.T.A.R.S. Antiques in the Sellwood neighborhood.  It wasn't about shopping, it was about browsing, and antiquing is a good way to simply wander around taking in the sights.  S.T.A.R.S. didn't disappoint.

These stores are eye candy.  If you need to find a writing prompt, go to an antique store, find an object and then write the story of the person who was the former owner.  Mission accomplished!  I had so much fun looking at old kid-sized cowboy boots, books, and knickknacks galore.  We didn't buy a thing, but we laughed, talked, and wiled away the afternoon.  My mom kept looking at her watch to make sure we were "on time" for my appointment that afternoon, but I told her to stop fussing.  She's always so concerned about us boys and not "being a burden" on our time, but the day was about her, her and time, her and one of her boys and time, time together, time together with one of her boys without anything else going on.  The moment even demanded a "selfie."

We wound in and out of all the booths in both S.T.A.R.S. locations and made our way down to Wallace Books, an independent bookseller in the neighborhood.  It's an eclectic place with floor to ceiling shelves of new and used books.  It's one of my favorite places to visit on that side of town, and I thought my mom would love it.

By the time we were done in the bookstore, it was time to call it a day.  We weren't but two steps out of the bookstore when I got a text that my daughter was sick.  Although her other grandmother was picking her up from school to bring her home, it was Noni and Dad to the rescue.  We hopped in the car and took off to check on the little one.

Although she didn't feel good, Shea wasn't too ill when we got to the house.  My mom and I got the chance to hang out with her for a while, cook up some Campbell's chicken noodle soup, and give her a quick cuddle before we were off.  I still had to make it to my appointment.

When I dropped mom off at home, I was sad to see the day end.  The whole day felt like a gift, a nice surprise I hadn't expected.  It reminded me of how close my mom and I really are.  She's always been the one I can talk to when I need her.  I know she doesn't have girls (she likes to remind me of this), but I like to think I'm the closest thing to a daughter she's got (another thing she likes to remind me of).  Hey, if it means I get to have all the benefits of having a mother and friend, then she can call me a girl any time.  I had a great day, Mom.  Thanks for hanging out. 

Father Notes: Drawing with your Kids

Shea and I took a couple of moments today to sit down together and break out the art supplies.  Shea asked if I could show her how I make faces in the "detailed" way.  I make cartoony type faces, nothing fancy, but Shea asked to learn something specific from me, so we sat down together and each began to work on our drawings.  I went shape by shape, line by line, in an effort to show her how I draw my faces.

Shea's drawing didn't look anything like mine, even though I know she was trying to imitate me.  While she drew, I repeated my original directions ONLY.  I tried to not over-correct unless she asked me for help.  When she did, I gave a little pointer here and there.

So, what's the reasoning here?  Well, I think we are too quick to try and make our little ones into perfectionists.  I know I am guilty of this at times, jumping in when a word is mispronounced, or taking over a chore/project in order to show her the "right" way to do things.  It's not a great habit of mine.

Somehow though, when it comes to art and creativity, I tend to be a little more forgiving.  I realize that each person's art is their own, that their style needs a little space, a little light and air, in order to grow.

What usually results is something new and interesting given its own space.  So, after a couple of minutes of working on a face, Shea decided that her picture needed a background.  She told me to draw Rapunzel for her.  There was a princess book lying nearby and so she gave me my creative prompt based on that.

Shea's drawing turned out great, full of color.  The background really makes the picture pop.  Mine is a simple imitation, which has its own merits in terms of learning to draw.  It was a nice little break in the day.

Shea's artwork:

Mine:

Sometimes it is hard to let our little ones color outside the lines, or do their own thing, especially after they asked for some help, but I think it's important to let them discover their own way of doing things.  I'm usually pleased beyond belief when I see the final results of these creative efforts.