Love

Love is in the air this season. Spicy love. Chocolatey love. Familial love. Literary love. All the loves.

I was reminded of (potential) writing love when I suggested to a composition writing student that he connect the essay topic to his major or intended profession. By finding a "way into" the essay, he can focus on the ideas and facts: presenting the main one, supporting it with smaller ones and working to craft each word, sentence and paragraph into a strong, well-defined essay. This approach pulls him away from being bored by the subject.

This is really our goal with everything we do. We have to figure out how to make mundane, time consuming and annoying tasks more interesting by connecting them to something that interests us. Annoyed by folding laundry? Listen to a podcast or focus on the tactile experience as you manipulate the material. Bored by having to cook another dinner? Give yourself a theme or challenge for each meal to entertain yourself as you're doing it. Or stream a movie to keep your mind off of things and allow yourself to take a break. 

Keep love in the air between you and your intended, the little ones at home, your chores, your paid work and, quite importantly, your written words. Be kind to your writing. Give it a treat this weekend - maybe a new, shiny verb tense - or even a break. 

And remember that not everyone is as free to create and make choices as you might be. Do you have financial love available to help another writer in need? PEN American Center is a global community of writers working to promote literature and to defend free expression. They advocate for writers across the globe who risk their lives to write. Donate here. 

To love! All finding a "way into" your day and all of its parts. 

Snow Days

Exploring (former) igloos other kids built

Snow days once meant snuggles, hot soup and catching up on reading, writing and work.

Snow days are considerably less romantic and less literary with a toddler. There are the 4:30 am wake-up screams, struggling to get boots and snow pants on an apparent octopus and inventing indoor activities that will result in a nap.

Sure, we had a lot of fun sledding, making pizza, playing with stickers, watching movies and playing a game he calls, "luggage," which means he takes all of his toys (all. of. his. toys.) and scatters them around the apartment. There have been many highs and lows these last few days, sometimes only ten minutes apart.

That is all to say, toddler life.

Cabin fever hit early. Even our son said, "when do I see my friends again," asking about his return to daycare.

Daycare had a delayed opening on Thursday, early closing on Friday and today, Tuesday, we still don't know when we'll be back to what was once normal. Yes, I'm thankful to Pepco that we have electricity, RCN that we have internet, my husband for digging out our car so we can leave when we have somewhere to go, and my (previously) flexible schedule that we still have lots of food to eat. We are alternating between family time and parenting separately so we can do our best to get some more emergency work done.

I do miss my work. I am lucky to do something I chose to do because I really, really like doing it. I like writing and talking about writing (i.e. teaching.) I like a day off like everyone else, but when online classes don't know about the day off, not working is simply stressful.

The other day I received a link to an article from a former student. She sent me Ada Limon's To What Do We Owen this Pleasure: On the Value of Not Writing from Richard Blanco's blog. It ends, "What I mean is, there are times poems do not come and life is too heavy to be placed on the page, or life is so deliciously light and joyful you must suck it down before anyone notices. That is okay. You are still the writer watching that train, doing laundry, getting lost in this massive mess of minutes. There is value in this silent observing."

Thank you, student, for encouraging me to pay attention to life, sharing this beautiful article, and reminding me why I love teaching: connecting to people like you who continue to teach me about life and writing.

Let Your Writing Live: Show Your Writing

Last week on my writing coach blog, I wrote about if and when to share your writing, particularly memoir-related work. I'm writing to encourage you to share your work in 2016. For real. Just a few kind words from (not particularly close) friends have gotten me moving again.

I've been submitting my poetry manuscript about early motherhood and it has been rejected. More than once, as rejections often go. I've been feeling discouraged and annoyed by the process on so many levels.

But then I started to share the poems, poems I once felt confident about, with some new readers. One, a new mom-friend-visual artist, shared that she had similar feelings about a miscarriage and early parenthood. Another, a poet who is a colleague, noticed the timeline in a way that I hadn't looked at it.

Those discussions really invigorated me. I've been wondering if the poems were self-indulgent or no longer relevant, since that time in my life has passed. But by talking about the poems and listening to reader's reactions, I am reminded by what motivated me to write them and share them in the first place.

Sure, a reader could easily say something superficial or mean, but we'll just ignore that possibility for now and try to keep that writing high.

No, this doesn't mean that I will take the praise and stop examining and editing the poems. It means that I will do that even better this time around, in an effort to honor the poems.

We write to connect with readers. Writing is worthless if it doesn't interact with a reader and participate in that conversation. If you feel your work is ready to be submitted for publication, why not look around you for readers? Let your work live.

My Brand of Optimism in 2016

Spotted at Powell's bookstore in Portland, Oregon

Here's my brand of optimism: F*ck it. One day we'll be dead. So we must do what we want to do before that day comes. 

My adult memoir writing workshop students laugh when I say that, but I mean it. We only have so much time and that should motivate us to meet our goals.

With that in mind: Welcome to 2016! Cheers to writing, reading, spending time with people we love and resting. Yes, resting, too. We must honor our minds and bodies so we are capable of meeting our goals.

For more specifics on creating writing goals and how to meet them, here's a recent post on my writing coach blog. 

Writing Isn't Playing Hooky

Giacometti and Calder at the National Gallery of Art

Writing isn't playing hooky from your job, family or endless chores. And that can be hard to remember, especially on a writing day that feels so delicious.

The other day, I had a meeting close to the Mall and spent the afternoon wandering in art museums and writing tentative lines in a notebook. I felt like I was cheating. Other people on the street were rushing in uncomfortable heels while I wrote before art.

That afternoon was just the jolt I needed to return home to edit, revise, cut and otherwise strengthen old poems while drafting new ones. We easily get stuck in writing and life ruts. Seeing something new or looking closely at something old in a new way can be just the muse we need.

Of course, writing is work. It takes concentration and careful study of published work and your own work as you craft your voice, form, words and ideas. Always remember why we write: to understand and experience the joy of that understanding. It doesn't always come and sometimes it need to be more than gently pushed, but it can happen.

In 2016, I hope to spend at least four quiet afternoons looking and thinking. What do you do to nudge yourself back to and further along in your writing? How do you return to that writing joy?

Thinking of Peace

Humans continue to hurt each other. Why? How come? These are hard questions that I won't pretend to know the answers to. 

It is devastating. 

For now, I return to the poem Revenge by late Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali, translated by Peter Cole, Yahya Hijazi and Gabriel Levin. I often think of this reading from the Dodge Poetry Festival in 2006. Perhaps one day it will no longer be relevant. You can also watch it here. 

For more poems, read through Split this Rock's database of social justice poetry. 

Moving House

We did it! We moved with an energetic toddler. I was pretty sure it would be impossible, but it happened. We are still working on a lot of things, but our belongings are in this home with us and we successfully sleep and eat here every day.

Well, the move happened a few weeks ago. Now you can understand the relative blog-silence this month.

Do I have advice for parent writers moving with kids? Here's the best I've got: Things will go wrong, like with any move (or really, anything). When they did for us, I tried to think, "here it is! One of the things that will go wrong. Now, let's try to solve the problem." At least I tried my best to take that approach. My husband and I kept saying, "We will laugh about this later. Right? Right?"

We hired movers for the first time, which was an enormous help, except that they arrived late, one of them likely drank some of our beer (before I carried it to the new place myself) and finished much, much later than promised.

In the midst of boxes and a toddler who had worn himself out with excitement over the moving truck, we ordered Chinese food that arrived hours late. In the meanwhile, we ate cheesecake on the floor in the new kitchen. Our toddler loved it. He still points at the floor and says, "we eat on the floor! Cheesecake!"

So, with his refrain in mind, we decided to consider the move a success.

We are waiting to have some work done on the new place, including building a gigantic bookcase for all of our books - my poetry, my husband's political science, with some fiction, nonfiction, comics, cookbooks, Italian literature, travel and art history books thrown in. We really can't wait. Studies show that books in a house will help a child learn to read and explore. Also, we love our books.

Leading up to and after the move, the teachers at our son's daycare were very supportive. In fact, one day they dedicated story time to a book about moving homes just for our bambino. He really appreciated it and seemed to recognize his own experience among pictures of boxes. For a list of books for toddlers and preschoolers about moving, check out this page on Stir the Wonder.

For adult thoughts on moving, check out David Ebenbach's beautiful collection of poetry, We Were the People Who Moved.

I've drafted a few poems about moving, but mostly I'm still focused on unpacking, organizing, fixing things and keeping up with the classes I'm teaching. This isn't a fertile writing time, but it is a cleaning up and out time, which feels good.