Be Bold and Mighty Forces Will Come to Your Aid

How was your weekend, dear readers? My weekend was a flurry of travel and visits with family in my small Michigan hometown. I'm thankful that I live in Chicagoland where I can work and visit the wide-open arms of its sweeping skyline whenever I want, and that my rural roots are just across the lake. In 4.5 hours [I'm not speeding, I promise, Dad!] I'm able to make the trek home to say hello and spend time with my parents and two younger brothers.

250 miles seems so short when I compare it to being halfway across the world or when I think about how far-flung some of my other family has become. Yet, I sometimes wonder at how far one can get in less than a day's time. We left on a sunny Friday morning, and before I knew it, it was Sunday afternoon and my grandmother and I were driving the curve back around Lake Michigan to Chicago where I found myself sitting at a friend's bonfire eating brats and burgers as the sun slipped behind the trees. As with many Sunday nights after a weekend visit, How did I get here? was the singular thought floating around in my head as I crawl into bed.

I'll be headed back this weekend just to spend time with my mom for Mother's Day. As you go about your week, I encourage you to take a moment to give thanks for your mom, or any woman in your life that has nurtured you and encouraged your dreams. If she's here with you, healthy or fighting for her life, be sure to give thanks for the time you have together. If she's gone, my prayers are with you as you reflect on her legacy and wish that you could tell her thank you one more time. Write her a love letter, because you and I both know that the task of raising you, helping you grow, wasn't always a picnic, but she put her brave face on and taught you how to live life in this world anyway...

[Post title taken from Basil King, not Goethe as Frances McDormand says in the above clip.] 

Inspiration : "Steal Like an Artist."

This week was sort of lack-luster, in case you couldn't tell from my last post. I'm not one to let the weather get to me often, but the incessant rain left my spirit sodden with... ennui.

Yet, hope springs new when you need it. My friend Kate shared a link with me on Facebook the other day, and it was a fresh well of inspiration:

Austin Kleon, author of Newspaper Blackout shared some intriguing and true insight for artists in his recent post "How to Steal Like an Artist (And 9 Other Things Nobody Told Me)." One thing that really stuck out to me in his post was this thought:  

"An artist is a collector. Not a hoarder, mind you, there’s a difference: hoarders collect indiscriminately, the artist collects selectively. They only collect things that they really love. There’s an economic theory out there that if you take the incomes of your five closest friends and average them, the resulting number will be pretty close to your own income. I think the same thing is true of our idea incomes. You’re only going to be as good as the stuff you surround yourself with [...] 

Identify one writer you really love. Find everything they’ve ever written. Then find out what they read. And read all of that. Climb up your own family tree of writers. Steal things and save them for later. Carry around a sketchpad. Write in your books. Tear things out of magazines and collage them in your scrapbook. Steal like an artist."

I remember when I took the class that convinced me that writing was the only thing I could do. I was a senior in high school taking Mr. Zonyk's Advanced Composition class. I was introverted, quiet, and starved for answers to big life questions: Where should I go to college? What should I study? Who do I want to be? (Clearly, not much has changed.) Zonyk, who I am convinced was Sean Connery's inspiration for Finding Forrester, gave us an assignment that I will never forget. He gave us passages of classic literature and ask us to replicate the sentence structure using our own words and subjects. In a sense, we were mimicking the writers. Yet, Zonyk was not encouraging us to rip them off, he was teaching us: 

We were learning how to uncover the secrets of good writing by examining sentence structure, vocabulary, and voice. After taking that class, I was a ruined reader - in a good way. Every time I read a book and fall in love with it, I find myself compulsively re-reading it to find and understand patterns and structure that distinguish the author. And I was a ruined writer - also in a good way. My new questions: 

How can I write about this or that experience? How can I write it better? I needed only to read, read and read some more to find the answers. 

So, thank you Kate, and thank you Austin Kleon, for reminding me that when we feel starved and empty of inspiration, or rain-sodden and depressed, we must continue to soak up the good things that will spur us toward new and better work. 

Keep going, friends. 

[ Photo, Images 1-3]

Shel Silverstein tells it like it is...

Rain

I opened my eyes

And looked up at the rain,

And it dripped in my head

And flowed into my brain,

And all that I hear as I lie in my bed

Is the slishity-slosh of the rain in my head.

I step very softly,

I walk very slow,

I can't do a handstand--

I might overflow,

So pardon the wild crazy thing I just said--

I'm just not the same since there's rain in my head.

Can I go on vacation now?

Poem : Easter Sunday

Easter Sunday

My heart is most thankful at the end of a day

when my appetite for life is deeply satisfied.

When working hands are stilled

stomachs filled

and eyes have cried the tears that say,

"this is my life - 

take it all from me"

because I know

that You are so much more adept

at making it beautiful.

How was your Easter weekend, friends? Mine was less about momentum with my blog and work and more about catching up on life at home since I've been so busy. I had time to rest, clean, make Easter dinner for my husband and a friend (steaks, roasted carrots and parsnips with a honey glaze, basil mashed potatoes), and - most important of all - reflect on my faith.

Sometimes stepping away from my work can go a long way toward recharging my creative energy - when I went to bed last night my mind couldn't rest without jotting a few thoughts into a poem after a whole weekend of no writing. I think sometimes putting our hands to work helps our minds rejuvenate. Today I'm ready to put my nose to the grindstone and get back to making plans, dreaming big, and writing.

What are the things that help you rest and refocus?

Mine: cooking and cleaning.


Much love to you on your Monday, friends.

Creative Influences

Recently, my wonderful husband and I watched all three Anne of Green Gables movies start to finish. That's right. Matt not only sat through them, but he's the one that suggested we watch them in the first place! On VHS, no less.

I hadn't watched them in several years, so watching each of them again reminded me of my early teens when I watched them endlessly, amused at Anne's often silly yet sincere attempts to become a writer.

Funny as it is to reflect on now, I think it was watching those movies that encouraged me to think about becoming a writer. There are so many influences that encouraged me when I was young, but there was something about Anne's character and her desperate yearning to be a successful writer that mirrored my own imagination and passion for reading and writing.

If I think about it, there were dozens of stories, films and books that influenced me when I was young, that "raised" me as a writer, in a sense. Belle of Beauty and the Beast loved to read, Judy Blume's Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself is about a girl with a wild imagination and a flair for story-telling, Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy encouraged me to journal (although I didn't journal about spying on neighbors and classmates), and there were many, many others. Yes, most of them female.

Further example: last night Matt's bandmates came over to practice new songs. Afterward, Matt's longtime friend and bandmate, Thad, pulled his old video cam-corder and played "old-skool" video footage from their old band. Some of the footage dated back 10 years, to their days of pipe-pants, spikey hair, pop/punk tunes and the occasional "rude-boy" outfit. It was hilarious to see and hear some of their influences, to listen to them laugh about their old haunts, friends, clothes, and how much they tried to be like this or that musician.

Influences can come from anywhere - books, film, music, images, fashion, and more. From stage of life to stage of life - from childhood, adolescence, young adulthood to adulthood - creative influences shape our imaginations as fixed icons that speak to us and later help us remember who we were and what we were like and what we loved when we were young.

After mulling over this concept through the past several days, I came across this quote:

"At all ages, if [fantasy and myth] is used well by the author and meets the right reader, it has the same power: to generalize while remaining concrete, to present in palpable form not concepts or even experiences but whole classes of experience, and to throw off irrelevancies. But at its best it can do more; it can give us experiences we have never had and thus, instead of 'commenting on life,' can add to it." — C.S. Lewis

This speaks more to writing and fiction than music or fashion, but even so, when we think about how art influences us, when we recall those images, words, or sounds that inspired us most, we regard them as a part of what made us who we are now. They speak of life in terms that we understand, and therefore add to it.

So my question for you is : Who were your influences growing up? 

Do you have boxes of tattered and love-worn books from your youth? Old movies you watch on occasion? Albums or songs that throw you back in a time machine of places, feelings, friends, sights and smells? Stacks of magazines with corners folded to favorite looks that you still try to emulate or wish you could wear?