The Challenge

I've been thinking about challenging myself for a while now.  I've gotten a little complacent with my writing practice.  So, I've decided to commit.  I've decided to ask myself for the things I want.  I've decided to write every day.  Now, I've done this before, or attempted it at least, and I've never been able to sustain it for long but I have hope this time around. 

So, here is the basis of the challenge.  I need to write every day for fifteen minutes.  That's it.  Fifteen minutes.  I know that if I sit down for fifteen minutes and write then I will oftentimes find myself writing for an hour, but the first fifteen minutes are the big hurdle.  

The reason for the challenge is I taught a fiction workshop this summer and I was writing almost daily with my students and at home.  It felt great.  I've felt better about my writing practice than I have in the last three years.  So, I want to keep it going.  I don't want to falter.  Here are the steps I've taken to ensure that I keep on my regimen.

* I've set two alarms in my phone that will go off at 9 am and 10 pm reminding me to write every day.
* I've changed the background on all of my computers to display a picture with the text "Write Every Day!!!" written across the front of it.
* I've scheduled two events in Google Calendar that say "Write Every Day" which will come out at 9 am and 10 pm.  These reminders will land in my email each time.

I'm serious about this.  I need to practice.  I need to create.  And unless I get my butt in the writing chair, this will never happen. 

Here's to sustained motivation and practice!

Dear Zachary

I stayed up later than I should tonight as I've been sick lately, but I couldn't help myself.  I was doing some light grading when I decided I would start a documentary from my Netflix queue.  I've had "Dear Zachary" in my queue for a long time now and I finally decided to watch it.

It is one of the hardest and most beautiful things I have ever had the pleasure to witness.  It is a true crime documentary about a murder; it's a tribute to the victim's life, loves, and family; it is the story of a custody battle; it is a devastating look at what happens to those who are left behind; it is a condemnation of a broken legal system; finally, it is the story of progress and change that only seems to happen out the back side of tragedy.

I wept.  I wept openly.  I'm writing about my weeping.  It has affected me this much.  You can find more information about it here.

It has brought me here to the keyboard in the wee hours of the night with an ache to say something, but I know I will find little comfort in my own abilities tonight.  Sometimes, I can't write past this kind of pain.  There are moments in life when art reflects our pain back to us.  It isn't because the subject matter is the same as our pain.  It isn't because I identify with this person or that person in the movie.  It is because something happened in the creative process that transcended the individual and became the communal.  It shared.  It touched.  And I am sitting here alone in the dark now surrounded by the idea that I am small.  That we all are.

The funny thing about all of this is how grateful I am to be reminded.  There are times where I feel large in the confines of my life, but that is because I live a small life.  When the roads of my daily travels are worn and the limits of my daily tasks are repetitive, it is easy to believe that I have a semblance of control, but I don't. 

The world outside looks a little scary tonight, a little uncertain, but my heart is racing good and strong and I know I'm alive.  It's like how Shea must feel a lot of the time when we take her to new places.  She doesn't have much frame of reference for new things and all kinds of things must get her blood pumping, but she laughs, and she smiles, and every now and again she even lets loose that high pitched scream that is the perfect mix of terror and delight.

An Object at Rest

I have strep throat.  I have strep throat and I've been required to stay home and rest for the last two days.  It's been a LONG time since that has happened.  I've been dedicated to work, to family, to everything else I've chosen to prioritize. 

It's been nice. 

If you take away the body aches and my throat feeling like acid, it's been really nice.  I've watched like four films.  Small ones.  Independent films.  I haven't read a single student paper and I haven't served a single person a drink.  I've had some quiet times in the evening with my family, but otherwise I've been alone. 

I used to laze away weekends watching movies.  I used to laze about and read, write, and do nothing.  I almost can't tell you the last time I did nothing.  I'm feeling better.  The aches are gone, the throat is still scratchy, but my head feels clear.  Sometimes you have to love being forced to stop.

Bon Appetit!

When seafood comes into season, my wife's internal radar goes off.  She'll hear a snippet of conversation where someone will say, "I found crawfish for sale at $4.99/lb," and be off to the races.  Scallops, lobster, crab, crawfish, and salmon all get her blood pumping.  So, when she heard a friend of hers say she got a good deal on crawfish at our local fish house, she was at the market the next day.

When we sat down to eat the crawfish, it was already cracked.  Tracy knows I don't like to work too hard for food (I'm lame, I know), and so she spent the early part of the evening cracking her way through ten pounds of crawfish.

Shea, resisting dinner as has become her new custom, toddled around the kitchen and living room playing Billy Bop, a new game she'd invented.  It's basically "how long can you keep the balloon up in the air," but when compared to a name like Billy Bop, who can compete?

"Shea, dinner."

"I don't want dinner."

"Shea.  We said it was time for dinner."  You have to love the parental "we", don't you?

"Come play."

"Honey, I've told you twice.  Now come up for dinner.  We're having seafood."

Tracy's love for seafood is apparently genetic because Shea has received the gene.  She loves it all as much as her mommy does. 

"Are we having crab?"

"Kind of.  It's crawfish, or crawdads.  Now, come on and get up to the table."

Shea dropped her balloon and scooted up into her chair.  Tracy set the plate in front of her and you could see her little eyes scanning the plate.  The red and white flesh of the crawfish is similar to crab and the presentation of a lump of cracked meat on her plate was the same as well. 

"Are you sure this isn't crab?" she asked as she stuffed a claw into her mouth and started chewing.  She let out a little groan of delight, mmm.

As Tracy and I finished dishing up our own plates and made our way to the table, Shea was intently eating her dinner.  At one point she dropped a piece of crawfish and she pointed her little hand to the ground with her eyebrows wrinkled up in anxiety.  I got it for her and she popped it into her mouth.  (C'mon, folks, three second rule totally applies)

Digging her little hands back into the stack of claws on her plate, she lifted one up and said, "Bon Appetit!" with the straightest of faces.  Tracy and I are not prone to using the phrase at all, so the moment was instantly hysterical.  Our burgeoning little foodie!

My life used to seem like an endless quest for entertainments, but that appears to have come to an end.  Now, all I need to do is sit down at the dinner table and wait.  Bon Appetit!

The Hospital

I drove by the hospital where Shea was born today.  It is such a mixed bag of emotions when I revisit this place.  It is, of course, filled with joy because this is the place where I was introduced to my lovely young daughter, but it is also the place where Shea experienced her first unlucky turn in life.

I've been thinking about fate, destiny, and God's will lately as it has come up in a number of things I'm reading and my fiction writing students seem to love the concept, but there is a darker side to fate, to luck, in this world.  It isn't always being named the "Boy Who Survived" like in Harry Potter.  It isn't always being deemed a hero and finding a destiny that wins fame and accord.

Shea's first brush with fate was the day she was born.  With the cord wrapped around her neck, she came out not breathing.  That first cry you expect when a new baby is born was delayed for what seemed like more than a few minutes and I remember alternating between breathless anticipation and trying to distract Tracy from the fact that she hadn't cried yet.

That moment, the moment of her arrival, has marked her, in much the same way that Harry Potter was "marked" after his brush with death.  For Shea, it left two grey spots on her brain that may, or may not, have something to do with her mobility issues.  She's had to undergo physical and occupational therapy since before she celebrated a single birthday, but she doesn't know anything different.  She doesn't quite know that she's been touched, blessed, cursed, to have a life that is just slightly different from the other kids that fill her life.

This won't always be the case.  Shea is four now and she will soon come to realize her difference.  She will begin to actively realize that other kids don't wear braces on their feet.  She'll observe how quickly they can run and jump, and how easily they maintain their balance.  This won't be the case for her and soon she will be coming home from school with questions. 

I plan on being frank with her about her difference.  As does Tracy.  But there is still something inherently difficult about laying the burden of difference upon your child.  About telling them that sometimes people have bad luck, that the fates are cruel, and that doesn't mean that the life touched by fate has to be any more or any less than others.  She is beautiful, smart, loving, compassionate, hilarious, and gifted with numerous other talents.  The key is to show her those talents and not let the shadow of "It That Shall Not Be Named", or difference, fall to heavily upon her shoulders.

Hitting My Stride

For the last two weeks I have been teaching a creative writing fiction workshop at PCC.  While my degree is technically in Creative Writing Fiction, all of my teaching experience has been in literature and composition.  So, it was with a degree of timidity that I walked into that classroom two weeks ago.  I was mildly sweaty and unsure of myself. 

Later that day, I even drove out to Forest Grove to talk with my mentor from grad school.  He was in town from Michigan and I had to pick his brain.  He asked me how I laid out the class, what were my assignments, and then he simply nodded and said, "Yep, sounds about right."

That was my first sign that things were all right.

My second sign came in the classroom today.  I had decided before the class had even begun that I would translate my graduate essay into a lesson or two.  Today was that lesson.  As I showed them examples of stories I loved and the craft elements I had identified, I saw students nodding.  The lecture made sense to them.

This lesson plan was developed from about a year and a half of the most intensive reading and writing I had ever done.  It was the labor of months.  To see it translated in the classroom today, to know that I had developed an "expertise" on this topic made me take a deep breath and relax into my role as workshop leader.  I may not know it all, but I know some stuff that will be useful to these young writers. 

We begin workshopping stories on Thursday.  Color me excited!!!

Coming Soon.

I just got done submitting a guest blog post to "Cheek Teeth" the blog presence of Trachodon literary magazine.  It should come out in a day or so.  It is all about time in comic books and how readers perceive it and creators control it.  For those of you interested in the medium, you will be able to understand a little bit about comics that you never thought of before.  I hope it proves entertaining and educational.  You can find the "Cheek Teeth" blog here.